Mark “Coop” Cooper

Location: Savannah City, New Savannah, United Commonwealth of Colonies

Half a millennia ago, a soldier, or cop, who descended into a dark, underground space would have cause for concern. As Coop did the same, he didn’t have the same concerns. It didn’t matter that no one turned the lights on, his visor’s optics automatically activated and painted the room with light and color. He could have been descending those stairs in the middle of the day for all he knew. His problems were the stairs themselves.

He cursed and hesitated at the top. That meant any meathead with a gun could be standing right behind them and blast away at his legs. Having lost one of those already, Coop was not keen on a repeat.

Thankfully, he had a quick fix for their problem. “Grenade,” he announced into TACCOM as he unclipped another flash bang from his belt, tossed it down the stairs, and made sure to bounce it off the wall at an angle so it would explode in the center of the room.

He turned away from the forthcoming explosion while his helmet went into automatic lockdown mode, but even through the artificially created silence, he still heard a loud pop as the grenade detonated.

“Let’s go!” Feeling much more confident in his tactical situation, Coop rushed down the stairs with Eve and GYSGT Cunningham behind him.

No laser blast came from behind him as he hit the floor and went to cover his sector of fire. The basement itself looked like it had been recently carved out of the ground. Several thick support beams ran the length and width of the house above them, while the ground itself was slightly damp clay. Apparently, the insurgents hadn’t gotten around the finishing off their little hidey-hole.

Coop ignored the slight sucking of the ground against his boots as he pushed forward, because they were not alone. He sensed more people in the room, but his eyes were on the man straight ahead of him. After the near mishap upstairs, the rules of engagement flashed through his head. The guy in front of him was dressed in business casual smartcloth. If Coop had seen the man on the street, he would have guessed CPA, not domestic terrorist. While the tango might look like he wielded a calculator as part of his day job, the rifle on the ground did a lot more than add and subtract.

Coop chuckled at his own joke as he continued to move forward.

The rifle was on the ground, so the ROE said Coop could end him, but still, he was a clear enemy of the government of New Savannah and had to be subdued. Currently, the guy’s hands were over his half-blinded eyes, and he was crying out in pain, but that’s what you got when you fucked with people you shouldn’t. Coop didn’t bother yelling something like; ‘police’ or ‘get down motherfucker’, because they guy wouldn’t hear him anyway. Instead, Coop rushed forward and planted his boot firmly in the man’s chest. It was a textbook, perfect front kick, with a surprising result.

Coop didn’t think about his enhancements often, mostly because he was surrounded by people with the same enhancements, and he often forgot about the wide disparity in physical and mental prowess present in the human race in the 25th century. Not all men and women were created equal. In fact, some were a hell of a lot better than others, and the militaries of the galaxy in particular tried their hardest to make their people the best.

When Coop’s boot lashed out to strike the insurgent, he fully expected the man to be picked off his feet and thrown backward. It was supposed to hurt and incapacitate the tango, not obliterate him. When Coop’s boot made contact, the man’s whole chest caved in like a crumbled beer can. Even through his helmet, Coop was pretty sure he heard everything in the guy’s chest snap or burst. The guy was picked off his feet and thrown backward, but the Gumby-like way his body moved through the air said something was very very wrong.

“Ah shit.” Coop said without thinking as he stopped dead in his tracks. Fortunately, there were no more obstacles or insurgents in his sector or he could have been putting his team in danger.

“You good, Cooper?” the GYSGT asked. She had a guy on his face and was cuffing him for a later interrogation. Eve stood over a body that had a tight grouping of bullet wounds in his center of mass, but the guy still had his rifle clutched in his hand.

“My guy is gone.” Coop didn’t know a way to spin this one. “Death by front kicking his scrawny ass.”

“I saw.” The GYSGT must have replayed his helmet feed. “We’ll worry about it later. We’ve got bigger issues.”

So far, the mission’s success was questionable. It was designed to kill or capture leadership as a sort of retaliatory decapitation strike to counter what the liberation movement had just pulled off. SRRT Team Two’s Alpha team had several prisoners, and a few dead to show for it, but the GIC scans the GYSGT was doing weren’t turning up big players. They were low-level organizers at best.

“I’ve got something.” While Coop was lamenting over his recent kill, and the GYSGT was doing her team leader stuff, Eve had walked over to a built-in shelf on the far wall.

A cursory look of the shelf didn’t point to anything out of the ordinary, aside for it being the only piece of furniture in the whole basement. The rest was polyplast crates. Coop popped the lid of one and found weapons and ammo.

“I’ve got guns,” he relayed.

“And I’ve got where they went,” Eve’s voice was strained as the sound of warping metal reached Coop’s ears.

Coop dropped the piece of polyplast he was holding and walked over to join her. She had been able to dig her fingers into some groove in the shelf, and was yanking it away from its place in the dirt wall. The problem was, when Coop peeked on the other side, he didn’t see more dirt. He saw a tunnel.

“Gunney, we’ve got rabbits.” Coop lent his strength and pushed while Eve pulled. The secret passage’s door was clearly only supposed to be open from one side.

“Watch Dog, this is Alpha Two, we need a sweep with ground penetrating radar heading north of my position, over.” The GYSGT sent the request up to command, which would relay it to the fleet in orbit.

“Alpha Two, sweep in three minutes, Watch Dog out,” came the reply ten seconds later.

“Any they’ll be long gone in three minutes, out of the tunnel, into another safe house, or scattered,” the GYSGT grumbled for a moment. “Fuck it, we’re going in. Get that door all the way open and let’s move.”

“What do you think we’ve been doing?” Coop grumbled back as he threw his shoulder into the shelves. Their progress had ground to a stop, and he could see why. “There’s a warped piece of duro-steel as thick as my wrist jammed in here,” he explained. “Seems like the bad guys didn’t want to be followed.”

“Easy fix,” the GYSGT walked to the polyplast boxes and began to flip them open one at a time until she found what she wanted.

“Is that…?” Coop’s HUD identified it as a thermal grenade before he could finish asking the question.

For the most part, the infantry didn’t issue those grenades anymore. They’d been standard issue a while back, but they were expensive and didn’t kill a lot of people. When the grenade detonated, it released plasma that burned at over five thousand degrees, but only in a five-meter kill zone. All a person had to do was get a good leap in and they were clear. What might not have worked well against mobile soldiers would be more than enough against a stationary target.

“Frag out,” the GYSGT announced as she activated the grenade, magnetized it, and plopped it down on the warped piece of duro-steel before calmly walking away. Coop and Eve had already taken cover.

The detonation wasn’t loud, but the sizzling sound that accompanied it made Coop’s skin crawl. He also felt it get very hot for a few seconds before starting to cool back down.

“That should do it,” Eve got up and put her boot into the side of the shelving unit. Once…twice…the third time something snapped and the unit fell away. “Now we can…”

Coop had walked up beside Eve, so he had a great view of the tunnel as well. There was a black layer over just about everything, which was the rapidly cooling plasma remains, and the burned and broken metal interior of the unit. Dust and debris from Eve’s kicking blocked any further view. Coop’s eyes quickly passed over that before snapping to his HUD which had given a small chirp. The chirp could have been anything given the amount of shit kicked into the air by the thermal grenade, or the remaining interference its detonation created, but Coop hadn’t stayed alive by ignoring the feeling in his gut. That gut feeling spiked as his HUD gave a second chirp.

“Down!” He threw himself forward at Eve and tackled her out of the way half a second before something hot flew over his back. His HUD’s warning chirps became a full, wailing warning, as it registered a plasma blast passing over him.

The blast, a ball about a meter tall and wide, soared over him and crashed into the far wall. Thankfully, it missed all the support beams or they’d be really fucked. Coop landed hard on top of Eve while the GYSGT stepped into view and unleashed hell down the tunnel. Coop didn’t known if she hit anything because all he was thinking about was being pressed up against Eve again. Even if the exo-steel breastplates were covering the best parts.

“Just like old times, yeah.” He couldn’t help himself.

Eve let something like a laugh escape her lips before her knee rose up and made solid contact with his nuts.

“Awww mother…” he rolled off her and covered his twig and berries. “Why?” he wheezed. His SEALs skin blunted the blow, but even a blunted blow to the nards hurt like hell.

“Thanks for saving my life.” Eve got to her feet and dusted off her ass. “But if you try to cop a feel again I’m going to cut them off and feed them to you. We clear?”

“I wasn’t…” Coop tried to reply but bile rose in his throat, so he closed he mouth to keep from barfing. The pain in his nuts was bad enough. Having to walk around with puke smell in his helmet for however long would just be the icing on the shit cake.

“You two good?” the GYSGT asked as she trained her weapon down the tunnel, but no return fire headed their way.

“Not a scratch. Cooper’s nuts just fell on my knee. Give him a second.” Eve replied for them.

“Don’t mind me.” Coop was on his hands and knees and trying to catch a full breath without a stabbing pain in his groin. “I’ll be there in a sec.”

“Ok. Data incoming.” The GYSGT passed along the results of the pass some ship or satellite had done.

Coop concentrated on breathing as he pulled up the info and saw the results of the insurgent’s hard work. A five hundred meter tunnel stretched from where they were to a building just outside the residential neighborhood. The pass also revealed heat signatures. Coop conveniently didn’t see Alpha Team on the scan, which proved the SEALs skin worked, and why the plasma weapon had trouble locking onto them. The image of the tunnel actually showed the burning white signature of the plasma blast halfway to its target, and the orange indicator of the person that fired it. The image also showed another larger space halfway down the tunnel’s length with three more orange indicators who were supposed to stop Alpha team, or at least hold them up so the HVTs could escape.

“Ok, let’s do this people. We’ve got four, maybe three, tangos down the tunnel. Violence of action is key. Don’t let them regroup. On my mark.” The GYSGT was down on one knee with the barrel of her rifle pointed down range.

Unlike Coop and Eve, the GYSGT had chosen to pack a rifle, and underneath the rifle was a tube. Coop recognized it as a grenade launcher attachment. The design wasn’t as efficient as the multi-barrels of a Buss, but they weren’t supposed to be a military strike force here. Still, Coop was glad the GYSGT thought ahead as a three-round burst of grenades flew out of the tube, down the tunnel, and seemed to fly for a long time before detonating with a muted roar.

“Two hundred and fifty meters…hit the antechamber halfway…GO!” The GYSGT was already on her feet and rushing forward before she finished. Eve was right behind her.

Coop’s nuts still ached, but he hauled ass as best he could. It anything came their way, Eve and the GYSGT would take the hit before him. That was good and bad at the same time. Despite the violent assault on his manhood, Coop didn’t want anything bad to happen the Eve, which was why he’d tackled her out of the way in the first place.