Mark “Coop” Cooper

Location: Stewart-Benning Training Center, Earth, United Commonwealth of Colonies

{This stuff is so bad ass,} the man sitting next to Coop directed his thoughts into Coop’s mind. It was unintentional, but it was about the hundredth time he’d done it. Coop gripped the edge of his chair and took a few deep breaths to beat back the annoyance he felt at the current situation. The arm’s metal frame protested with a soft groan of warping metal.

{Concentrate, Bill,} Coop wasn’t sure if his thoughts conveyed the grinding of his teeth, but he hoped they did.

Of the recruiting class sitting in the lecture hall, most were E-5’s and above. Coop would have fit in with them easily before his undeserved demotion, but now the NCOs stuck with their own. That left the few enlisted personnel in the class to band together.

Corporal Bill Gonzales was the type of guy who had his head stuffed in toilets during high school. That 25th century swirlies were even more disgusting than their ancient counterparts due to water conservation didn’t stop the time honored tradition between bully and bullied. If this was a few years ago, Coop might have taken a turn at giving Bill the old dunk and flush. Fortunately for Bill, he wasn’t a Rat, and had grown up comfortably in the burbs.

If anyone had tried to dunk the CPL’s head in the latrine now, he probably would have torn their arms off and beaten them to death with them. For whatever reason, Bill had joined the Infantry, ended up in HI school, and had taken to the technical side of the heavy troopers equipment with impressive quickness. Coop was sure he was on the specialist track, which was why it was a bit surprising to see his new battle buddy in recruiter training.

he thought for the tenth time as he scanned his new classmates.

Coop knew the general breakdown between HI and regular soldiers. A battalion was extremely lucky if they got their full complement of 10 HI troopers, one per Company. So, less than 1 in a hundred soldiers were HI, and it was probably closer to one in two-to-three hundred based on his experience. As he looked around the room at the assembled future recruiters, easily one in three had the enhanced build of HI or one of the R&S units.

Coop thought to himself as he looked across the hall. Eve was sitting with a group of SGTs and laughing at something her new battle buddy said. In an ideal world, Coop would be teamed with her, but their rank difference, and disclosed relationship to the cadre, put an end to that.

Coop hadn’t met the new guy yet, but he couldn’t deny the pit of jealously slowly growing in his gut. The guy looked like a million bucks. Her definitely had the best money could buy growing up which formed him into an Adonis even before joining the infantry and getting enhanced. On top of that, he had a SEAL badge on his chest. Coop knew they liked to get the special operations types in for a recruiting stink every once and a while. Hell, Coop’s SRRT badge was a big selling point for him, but he never though they’d take this many highly-trained operators off the front lines and put them in the rear for something as pointless as recruiting.

Things might have calmed down, but he knew the Blockies and Windsor’s were still out there ready to take a bite out of the Commonwealth’s ass when it let its guard down.

{I’m sorry, Bro, but this is so freaking sweet. I wonder what the bandwidth allocation on these things are. If our brains are basically the CPU then it would be virtually limitless. There are over a hundred trillion synapses connections in the brain. If that is any indication…} Bill continued, but Coop ignored him. He’d already told Bill he hated being called “Bro”, but the soldier from Alta California had the vernacular ingrained into his DNA.

Coop wasn’t sure how he felt about all Commonwealth military personnel being given IORs. It went beyond his squeamishness at poop nuggets being put into everyone’s brains. This was an alien device that had only come on the market a few months ago. Coop and the SRRT teams had been the guinea pigs, and everything had gone fine, but a few months was a quick turnaround time to give it to everyone despite what Gold Technologies was guaranteeing. Coop wouldn’t tell anyone this, but alien mind control was a real paranoia of his, especially after having seen more species of aliens than most of humanity. The Stormbreakers back on the Golden City of whatever-the-fuck still freaked him out a bit.

{Atten-hut!}

he shot to his feet like everyone else as the class cadre walked into the room.

A CAPT walked onto the raised stage and turned to face the class. Coop could practically see the females in the room swoon. He believed the word to describe the man was “silver fox”. The CAPT was in peak shape, looked flawless, had all the right badges and ribbons, and when he smiled, Coop wanted to trust him before his ingrained prejudices kicked in. The blue in the man’s eyes made him fight back a grimace.

Coop took another careful scan of the room and noticed more and more beautiful people in the class’ ranks. Before, he’d only been focused on the SGT with Eve, and Bill’s pestering voice in his head, but now that he looked around, he noticed everyone had high-quality breeding, or the money to look good. It was almost enough to make Coop feel inadequate. Then he stole a sidelong glance at Bill.

Bill wasn’t butt-ugly, but he wasn’t like the CAPT and the rest of the beautiful people out there.

“Man, I’d break me off a piece of that,” a voice whispered behind him.

Coop choked off a laugh, which had several NCO’s scowling in his direction.

The woman behind him was bigger than Coop, which even for HI was unusual. Enhanced women were generally smaller than enhanced men, but she was the exception to the rule. At 237 centimeters, CPL Camila Wheeler was taller than Coop or Bill, who was just a hair shorter than Coop at 229 centimeters. She also looked like she could bench press a Spyder, which was at odds with the athletic litheness of Eve’s enhanced form. Her midnight, black skin was also at odds with Eve’s snow white flesh, which stressed over hulking muscles that would make most men feel emasculated. That didn’t bother Camila. Coop knew from his limited interactions with his new classmate that her ego was as big as she was, and she could run her mouth with the best of them. He didn’t know where she’d grown up, but she’d spent enough time with grunts that any manners or civility she’d been raised in had been stripped away. Coop thought she was hilarious, and wondered what mommy and daddy Wheeler would think about their blue-in-her-eyes baby girl as a hulking killing machine.

If the CAPT heard Camila, he ignored her, and continued his spiel about the long history of recruiting and its importance to the Commonwealth’s mission. As a career combat grunt, Coop took the speech with a grain of salt.

{Grooming standard will be upheld and physical training will also be a major indicator of your performance here. I know most of you aren’t used to this environment, but every aspect of your appearance will be closely scrutinized. We are supposed to be the example of what our recruits can be.} The CAPT looked at the gathered group of good-lookers, and pointedly ignored the few ugos in the crowd.

He tried really hard not to roll his eyes. Coops mental ramble went on.

{Welcome to the Recruiting Corps. Replenish the ranks!} The CAPT finished with a spot-on motto that forced another eye roll from Coop who was finding his new assignment to be the punishment the brass intended it to be after Harper’s Junction.

{Replenish the Ranks,} he replied weakly.

{I’m going to tinker around with this a bit, maybe I can get into…} Bill’s idle thoughts continued.

Camila had already broken off to talk with another, handsome, but unenhanced CPL that looked like he was going to do whatever the HI woman wanted out of fear alone. Coop thought it was a good time to head over and talk to Eve since the class was back to mulling around until cadre came out and told them what to do. There seemed to be a lot of idle time while in garrison duty.

“Hey, Eve,” he came up behind the ground of SGTs that she was at the center of.

One of the SGTs, and unenhanced man with a Greek god’s face gave Coop a sidelong look, followed by a barely hidden sneer. “What do you want Corporal? Stand at the position of parade rest when addressing an NCO!”

“You’ve got to be shitting me,” Coop mumbled.

“What was that, Corporal?” The SGT turned around and squared off against Coop. He came up to Coop’s mid chest.

“I’m sorry, Sergeant. I said, ‘you’ve got to be shitting me’,” he couldn’t help but grin at the SGT’s stunned face. That was not what the man expected to hear, and his face went beet red.

“Drop and give me twenty, Corporal!” The SGT put his hands on his hips in a poor interpretation of a drill instructor.

Coop’s temper flares and his hand twitched as he imagined grabbing the little man by the throat and throwing him over the seats around them. The SGT must have seen something in his eyes because he took half a step back.

“I’ve got this Dan,” Eve emerged from the group of NCOs who were starting to notice the large enlisted man among them.

“Hey, Coop, let’s go over here,” she grabbed him by the elbow, and her touched calmed him down a notch.

She led him to an empty section of the auditorium and her neutral expression turned into a scowl. “What the hell are you doing?”

“I just wanted to talk with you and Sergeant stick-up-his-ass got in my face,” Coop replied as he clenched his fist.

“Sergeant Monte is an NCO and above you in the chain of command, Coop,” she deadpanned.

“I was a sergeant. Been there, done that, not too hard,” Coop shot back.

“Then you were demoted, so you obviously didn’t do a great job,” she shot back.

“Saved your ass,” Coop mumbled, and immediately wished he hadn’t opened his stupid mouth.

Eye’s eyes went harder than steel and she stared him down until he looked away. Slowly, her eyes softened and she took a deep breath. “You’ve got to adapt to this change, Coop. We aren’t on a small, elite team anymore where your opinions mattered as much. We’re just cogs in the machine now. A lowly sergeant and corporal,” she pulled herself closed to him and laid her head on his chest. “You’ve just got to think like its Basic again. Adapt your mindset and we’ll get through this.”

Coop felt all the frustration leak out of him. “Only good thing about Basic was you,” he replied.

“I like to think we learned some useful things here and there,” she pulled away and grinned up at him.

“I’m sorry,” Coop apologized. “I just thought we would be battle buddies, get to spend more time together, and then we got broken up and you were assigned to Captain Commonwealth over there.” He cocked his head at the SEAL SGT who wasn’t trying to hide that he was looking at them.

“Sergeant Halpert?” Eve looked over her shoulder and the SGT quickly looked away. “He is handsome,” she quickly looked back at Coop and laughed at the look on his face. “Mark, he isn’t my type,” she used his first name to bring him back down. “Stan wouldn’t take a shit unless it came down through the chain of command. You know I like men who can live their lives a little outside the rules.”

“Are you calling me dangerous?” Coop couldn’t help but feel his ego soar.

“In all the right ways,” she leaned in close and gave him a quick kiss on the cheek. “I love you. I chose you. Don’t forget that and piss me off.” She gently pushed him away and walked back to the other SGTs.

“Love you too.” He still felt weird saying it, but it felt right in his heart.

He gave himself a shake, and headed back to the group of enlisted who were all looking at him like some sort of rock star. He gave his ego a last second boost before Bill’s errant thoughts inevitably crept into his mind.