Mark “Coop” Cooper

Location: Toronto-Buffalo-Cleveland-Detroit Metropolis, Earth, United Commonwealth of Colonies

“Why don’t we step inside and talk,” Hailey gestured to the room she’d emerged from.

Coop might not be the brightest guy in the world, but he wasn’t stupid enough to fall for that one. “I think this nice, cozy hallway is just fine,” he kept his smile going, and damn if those recruiter dentists didn’t do a good job. Instead of shooting him, Hailey just rolled her eyes and crossed her arms across her chest. The gesture got Eve to relax too.

“Ok,” he rubbed his hands together, “Let’s start with what you want, and what I can do to help.”

he smiled to himself with a mental chuckle.

“Well…to start, you owe me about a hundred grand in lost product and revenue that was pre-positioned based on our verbal agreement before you ghosted me.” Hailey wasn’t smiling.

Coop’s grin slipped off his face as his ego took a gut punch.

“Somehow I doubt the Commonwealth’s intelligence sharing agreement with you back on New Savannah had anything to do with you pushing guns, drugs, and ass,” Eve scoffed.

Hailey’s glare flicked back to Eve and her hand twitched toward her gun before she could stop herself. Eve’s hand tightened around her own pistol’s grip, so Coop jumped back in.

“Obviously, Eve has a point, Hailey. The Commonwealth, even for vital intel, wasn’t going to turn a blind eye and let you do whatever you wanted. That being said,” he quickly added as Hailey’s face soured, “I know I screwed you personally, to a degree, and I’ll pay for that. I won’t and can’t pay a hundred grand, but…” he quickly checked his bank account. Not the MFAS account where all his military pay was deposited, but a few choice, seedier accounts he’d set up for his side deals. He hadn’t touched them in months after the heat from Harper’s Junction, and recently Eve’s mom, but now seemed like a good time to take the risk. “…I can give you ten grand right now.”

“Fifty,” she automatically countered. Coop knew this was going to be a negotiation even before it began. The hundred grand number was probably high to begin with.

“Fifteen.”

“Forty.”

“Twenty.”

“Thirty-five.”

“Twenty-two and a half,” Coop started to vary his tactics. Partly because it was a good strategy, and partly because he needed to be thrifty. He did have a kid on the way after all.

“Fine, twenty-five, final offer,” Hailey looked pained, but he could work with that.

“Deal,” Coop held out his hand to shake on it.

“Sorry, Coop, but your word doesn’t mean much to me anymore,” her comment hurt more than Coop was willing to admit. “We’re good when I see the money in my account.”

“Fair enough, give me your info.” Coop received the details and made the transfer. Five digits disappeared from his account and a soft chime announced their arrival in Hailey’s. Like a gentleman, he covered the transfer fees.

She checked the balance and with a nod slipped her PAD back in her pocket. If she had questions about how Coop did it all without the now-obsolete device, she didn’t ask. “Good. We’re square, so want to tell me what you’re doing here?”

“We’re here to see his father,” Eve spoke up. “We’ve got some news we’d like to tell him in person.”

“So, you two are getting hitched, or you finally knocked someone up,” Hailey stated immediately. “Those are the only two reasons I can think why you would come back to this shithole and talk to a man you hate.” She looked around with disgust. “Since you’d only be coming back to rub his face in it, I’ll save you the trouble. Walter is dead. Going on awhile now.”

Coop, didn’t expect the news to hit him as hard as it did. He’d watched men die in front of him, and he’d killed more than his fair share. He’d lost his leg, twice, and seen the woman he loved tortured and mutilated. Hearing dear old dad had finally kicked the bucket shouldn’t hold a candle to that. Despite all of that, he felt his legs go wobbly, and he needed to steady himself against the wall.

The thought solidified in his mind as he took a few deep breaths to compose himself. His mom’s suicide was an old wound that was ripped open.

“How?” was the only question he could think to ask.

Dealing with his inner turmoil, he missed the twitch of Hailey’s face. But Eve didn’t. Wisely, she didn’t say a thing.

“Gangs finally got him,” she replied simply and ambiguously.

Coop merely nodded. His dad was dead and having it be in the most likely way was a small comfort. “Did he suffer?”

“Not from what I’ve heard,” Hailey was slow to respond, but Coop failed to notice again.

“Ok,” Coop took a very deep breath, and tried to blow out all the internal conflict as he stood up straight. “I need a drink,” he looked to Eve for a bit of comfort, and she nodded. After the encounter, she could probably use one too.

“Since you tend to pop up unexpectedly, I’m going to assume I’ll see you again at some point,” he looked over his shoulder at Hailey.

She just shrugged as she waved for her people to gather up while Eve and Coop made their way back to the departure platforms.

The SGT manning the machine gun emplacement waved over the LT when he saw them approach.

“Just hopping back on,” Coop told him succinctly. “Turns out we don’t need to be here after all.”

“Sorry,” the LT replied with a stern look. “All mag-lev trains are shut down for the foreseeable future.”

“Shut down!” Eve pushed Coop aside and towered over the smaller officer. “We’ve got movement orders from our commander. We need to get out of here now.”

“Not my problem,” the LT shrugged and turned around to walk away. Coop had to grab Eve’s shoulder to stop her from spinning the little man back around.

“Call the commander,” Coop suggested. That would help with her frustration while he scanned for alternative courses of action.

Unlike them, Hailey and the PFH goons hadn’t headed for the train. They were headed for the stairs down to the PHA proper.

“Hey,” he called after them. “Where’re you going?”

She just raised an eyebrow in response as she looked over the gathered soldiers. Coop left Eve’s side while she engaged with their command over the IOR.

“I know you sure as shit aren’t staying here overnight, and the trains are locked down,” Cooper whispered to Hailey. “That means you’ve got a way out of here.”

“Maybe,” she gave a coy smile that he’d seen many times before. “But it’s gonna cost you.”

“How much?” Coop sighed with his own eye roll. “Do I at least get the friends and family discount?”

“It’s normally a grand per passenger, but since you were a good fuck once upon a time, and you have to have gotten that big bitch preggers, I’ll do it for five hundred a pop,” Hailey replied.

Coop looked over his shoulder to where Eve had reengaged the LT, and the officer was still shaking his head. “Deal. Half once we leave the station and half when we’re out of here.”

“Fine,” she crossed her arms and waited.

A few minutes later, Eve walked over looking dejected, which quickly turned to annoyance when she saw Coop and Hailey standing together.

“The reserves aren’t talking to, or taking orders, from a commander out of their chain of command. It’ll take more time to go up the chain of dick measurers than it will for us to walk back. We’ve been ordered to find alternative methods of transportation.”

“Done,” Coop smiled. “Let’s get moving so we aren’t late for formation.

Eve looked at Hailey without bothering to hide her contempt. “Figures. You like a good ride.”

Hailey bristled, but Coop quickly inserted himself between the two women. “Here’s the money. Let’s get out of here.” He made the transfer and steered everyone away from the station.

It was a tall order. He’d faced better odds against the Windsor’s.

ADM Sonya Berg

Location: Naval Intelligence Black site, Codename “Umbra”, Asteroid Belt, United Commonwealth of Colonies

Sonya scrutinized the data in front of her from the QE burst Umbra had picked up on its way to the Mars node. It was the reason Second Fleet was scrambling, and it had to be the reason there was a bubble of nothingness headed straight for the cradle of human civilization. The problem was…the data didn’t offer a lot to go off of.

It was a grainy image, taken by a scope of some sort. The corresponding sensor data showed nothing but empty space, so either this was some naturally occurring phenomenon or the data was corrupted somehow. They only had the picture to go off of, and its poor quality left only so much for the AIs to enhance, pull, and speculate about.

“It looks like a cigar,” one of her staff members spoke to themselves where they had broken into groups to analyze the data. “We’ve seen interstellar objects with this shape pass harmlessly through our system.”

“Second Fleet command wouldn’t put the entire planet on high alert because of some previously-seen, naturally-occurring phenomenon,” someone challenged the theory. “Plus, look here. It’s hard to see, but there are some glints reflecting the light. Umbra’s AI has those as a seventy-three percent probability of precise right angles. Those don’t occur naturally. Those are ships.”

Sonya thought as she stood in the center of the working groups and pondered the information they did have.

It was difficult to get an exact measurement with the poor quality, but her IOR estimated the tonnage to be about thirty percent larger than an assault carrier. That was bigger than anything put the prototype Dreadnaughts in the Commonwealth’s dockyards, but it wasn’t bigger than what the Commonwealth had faced before. The Windsor’s Superdreadnaughts were larger than what the scope had caught a glimpse of, but this could be something new they’d designed in retaliation for Harper’s Junction. Plus, the shape of the warships was roughly similar to the Windsor’s designs.

her hands twitched involuntarily as she thought about manipulating data in a holo-tank in front of her. She sighed and instead used those hands to rub her eyes. She’d gone the last twenty four hours without sleep, and as the unidentifiable mass passed Jupiter, with all the refineries and stations ceasing the communicate as it approached, it was getting tougher to think of anything else when she closed her eyes.

A spark of insight flashed in her mind and she grinned.

“Umbra,” she addressed the newly installed AI that ran the covert listening post. “I want you to extrapolate based on the following parameters: estimated size of the sphere of interference, estimated size of the ship in the image, and cross reference that with known Windsor naval strategies; specifically, fleet dispersion regulations.” She turned to see her staff staring at her. “We aren’t going to be getting any new data. All we have is a grainy picture, so we need to use that and what we know to fill in the blanks.”

“We need to know the size of the enemy force,” it was the shuttle pilot who finally put it all together.

“I have the data you requested, Admiral Berg,” Umbra’s AI voice was a deep, masculine rumble.

“Put it in the holo-tank and my IOR.” The data rushed into her vision and appeared in front of her team.

It wasn’t pretty.

Taking into consideration the estimated size of the ship, and Windsor naval doctrine, the bubble of empty space advancing on Mars held approximately seven hundred and fifty-three of the new warships with unknown capabilities.

“Cross-reference with fleet dispositions from the attack on Queensland and refresh,” she ordered.

The number floored Sonya, and quickly sparked alarm in her staff. If the same fleet disposition of warships attacked Mars that attacked Queensland, Second Fleet was looking at close to fifteen hundred enemy warships baring down on them. Second Fleet had four hundred ships in her MTOE, with only forty percent being battleships and ten assault carriers.

Panic started to flare through her staff, but after the shock of the numbers passed, confusion set in. Her IOR quickly adapted and brought up the information she was searching for. One of her briefings from less than a month ago had estimated the Windsor’s naval strength. All of the Houses and the Imperial fleet weren’t even half of that number after the losses they’d taken at Harper’s Junction.

Sonya hypothesized, but that didn’t make sense. If the Windsor’s were going to beat down the Commonwealth they’d go for New Washington or Asgard.

The Sol System wasn’t a Commonwealth system, it was humanity’s home system. Sure, the Commonwealth owned most of it, but there were other powers at play here. First and Second Fleet together massed about three quarters of the possible attacking force. That alone wouldn’t be enough. But it wasn’t just Commonwealth facilities that had gone offline since this whole thing started. EU and Blockie installations had also stopped transmitting. Umbra had picked up transmissions that Beijing was throwing a fit and blaming the Commonwealth, but she knew that was a kneejerk reaction. Once it became clear the Windsor’s were taking on everyone, they’d have the EU’s Home Fleet to contend with. While not as large as First or Second Fleet, or the Blockie’s massive Motherworld Fleet, it was still a force to contend with; especially thanks to the mutual defense treaty that had the Commonwealth sharing the new Hegemony tech with them. The PM was sharing the tech slowly, but the Euros were an inventive people, and with no wars to zap their strength, they could put that new tech to good use.

Together, the fleets of the three major starfaring nations outnumbered the incoming force, so why were they attacking?

For the hundredth time she cursed her limited network inside the Empire. She didn’t like all this guessing. She wanted facts.

“Ma’am, we need to get this data to Second Fleet,” one of her staffers interrupted her thoughts and brought her back on task.

“Yes, Umbra…” she stopped herself. So far anything and everything that could communicate had gone silent outside the asteroid belt. If she transmitted, there was little doubt Umbra would suffer the same fate. Whatever was happening, the Commonwealth still needed Umbra’s secret network operational.

“Everyone back to shuttle, we’re heading back to Mars. Umbra, transfer all data to my IOR.”

“Yes, Admiral. Have a nice trip.” The station AI did as she instructed as they headed back toward the small landing bay.

“Ma’am,” the pilot came up to her as they all hustled aboard the shuttle. “We’re not going to be able to make it back to Mars,” a 3D holo appeared in his hand with the course for them overlapped with the approaching enemy fleet. They didn’t make it back before the enemy. Mars’s orbit just wasn’t doing them any favors.

“We can make it to Earth and transmit the data when we think we’re at a safe distance,” another course appeared on the holo.

“Ok,” Sonya nodded as she digested the information. If they could warn Second Fleet that was good enough. First Fleet, Home Fleet, and the Motherworld Fleet were all stationed around Earth. If Second Fleet failed, the rest of the fleets would have the data they needed to crush the enemy.