Eve Berg

Location: North American Eastern Seaboard, Bethesda Naval Hospital, United Commonwealth of Colonies

“We need to shrink our perimeter and reconsolidate,” the battalion commander yelled over the net.

Eve heard the sizzle of sustained beamer fire in the back. Whatever had gotten through their lines was pressing toward the HQ. During the siege of Bethesda, or at least that was what the troops were calling it, the soldiers of the battalion had already developed slang for their attackers. Beamers were the white laser carried by the enemy heavy troopers. They were capable of five seconds of sustained fire, and could take a squad level shield down in that amount of time. Their recharge time was unknown, and the best way to counter them was overwhelming force on a back azimuth to the source.

Like any good weapon, the enemy’s laser cannons were dual purposed, and the Commonwealth grunts called the alternative use: a blaster. It fired lower-powered bolts of white energy from the weapon. Still, the “lower-powered” energy was more than capable of punching through a PVT in their scales. The squad-level shields were able to handle much more blaster fire, but the enemy didn’t need the recharge time on the lower setting, so the defenders weren’t gaining much of an advantage. It was also more difficult to target the heavies on blaster fire with their stealth tech. Without the sustained beam they couldn’t pin down their location long enough to bring heavy weapons to bear before the enemy moved. Even though the beamers were far more dangerous, the defenders sometimes preferred that scenario because they had a chance of hitting back.

Then there were the aliens themselves. The little ones were called infiltrators by the officers, but the grunts called them roaches. They were small, quick, and impossible to find in their stealth tech. You just wanted to stomp on them, but they were hard to kill. The big ones, everyone called BAMFs: big ass motherfuckers. There was no other name of the three-meter monstrosities that were a mix between a tank and ballerina. The movement they were capable of would tear a human’s muscles to shreds. They were as perfect a killing machine as Eve had ever come across, and she’d seen a lot of weird things during her service.

At the moment, she needed to get to the HQ to stop the BAMFs from taking out the battalion’s command and control. Right now, that was the only thing holding the force together. She jumped out from behind the cover of a building, and the squad shields between her and the enemy lit up as multiple beamers opened fire. Fortunately, the BN had started deploying shields in depth, to give their personnel time to move around in the interior of the lines without being sniped. Eve had several seconds where she was able to move to more cover in the hospital complex before the beams broke through.

She slid behind a maintenance building, startling a squad of mortarmen, whose tubes were red hot from the constant firing they’d been doing. All the SGT in charge did was point back toward the HQ. Apparently, they were trying to support the counterattack being launched. Eve nodded, and kept her head low as she moved forward. The sounds of heavy fighting were up ahead, which made her shuffle faster.

The first thing she came across was a roach. She almost missed it, but her sensors picked it up when it knocked over a couple food pallets piled near the HQ. She immediately leveled her graviton cannon and blew it to pieces. She couldn’t risk it getting away and wreaking havoc behind their lines; even if the kill had consequences. From nearby a guttural roar split the air.

Eve drew her sword and shield and charged toward the sound. If she could get there quick enough, she might end this before it started.

For whatever reason, every time they killed a roach a BAMF went crazy. They didn’t know why, but the BAMFs went into rampage mode, and went full berserker on the Commonwealth soldiers. The BAMFs had no regard for their own well-being or safety, they just wanted to kill everything in their sights. Eve would rather she be in their sights than the vulnerable grunts.

She hurtled into an opening and caught a BAMF leaping through the air at an entrenched position. The soldiers and heavy weapons were pouring fire on full auto into the BAMF. Its shield had already been whittled down, and chunks of flesh, blood, and bone were being stripped from the creature for every centimeter it progressed. The thing didn’t care, its single-minded rage was focused on the troops.

Eve charged forward as the BAMF reached the fighting position and tore into the soldiers. Swiping left and right with a short blade, it cut grunts to shreds. The heavy machine gun continued to pour fire into its gut until the BAMF grabbed the gunner, held it over its head, and tore him in two. Its roar of rage was cut short as Eve did the same to it.

The only good thing she could say about the BAMFs in berserker mode was that they were single-minded and had tunnel vision. It didn’t even see her coming in its blood-rage.

“Get on that gun, soldier,” she used the external speaker to motivate the only survivor: a girl who still had acne on her face. Eve could only tell that because the girl had removed her helmet to vomit all over the ground. “If you don’t get on that gun, more people will die. Get synched with the net, find your fields of fire, and lay into the bastard. For your buddies,” Eve pointed to the dismembered remains surrounding the young PVT.

The woman gave a nod, gagged, and vomited a second time before replacing her helmet and moving to the big gun. Eve left her to it as she moved forward, and couldn’t help but smile when the bark of the gun sounded behind her.

She continued to circle the building until she came to the entrance courtyard that led to the HQ. Beamer fire lit up the area like the Fourth of July. Multiple BAMFs were inside the perimeter; dipping, diving, ducking, dodging, and pirouetting around the defender’s return fire. A few lay dead, but smoking corpses of Commonwealth soldiers littered the area. Multiple heavy weapons emplacements were silent, and it looked like they’d been pushed back nearly to the entrance of the building. Gunfire from the roof continued to rain down on the enemy, but if the odds didn’t change fast, the ETs would be in the hospital wreaking havoc in minutes.

Eve opened up with her graviton cannon and charged into the fray.

She hit a BAMF a few times before it noticed she was there, and was able to cripple it by blowing off its leg. She left the grunts to deal with the rest and moved onto the nearest enemy with sword and shield, while her swatters sprayed a third.

Like every engagement, it was hard to kill the quick-moving BAMFs with her close-quarters armaments.

{Do you have it yet?} she asked her AI as she parried a strike from the enemy’s short sword and tried to smash it in the face with her shield. The enemy rolled to the side, avoiding her strike, and slashed at her exposed leg. Her shield sparked but held.

{Fifteen more seconds,} the AI replied calmly, way too calmly for the battle it was engaged in.

After her first fight with a BAMF, she had her AI go back and analyze how the alien moved. She needed to be prepared for the next fight, and having some idea of how the enemy fought was the best thing she could do at the moment. Her AI was building a database on the ETs movement patterns, and while every combatant fought a little differently, if they were able to review some footage, plug it into an algorithm, the AI would be able to give her a heads up of what the BAMF might do before it did it.

Eve hadn’t seen much use in the AI until it helped her rack up some BAMF kills. Now, she couldn’t imagine living without it

{Data accumulated, analyzing . . . analyzing . . . analyzing . . .} and not a moment too soon.

The alien rolled around her strike again and hit the exact same place on her shielding leg. This time the shield buckled, and the blade cut into her armored calf. The armor held, but icons started to blink red and warn her things could get a lot worse. In the meantime, she couldn’t let the BAMF land another hit there. She lowered her shield to more easily protect the spot, but that opened up more of her body.

Fortunately, she’d done this before, and knew a plethora of moves the BAMF would make to take advantage of the new weakness. The AI calculated the probabilities in a nano-second and gave her a heads up. The BAMF continued its roll, sprang up, twisted in the air in a move that would snap a human spine, and struck. Eve waited until the last second to turn, ensuring the enemy had over-extended itself in exchange for a killing blow.

In mid-air, with nothing to do but squirm, Eve was able to rotate using all the mechanical muscular structure of her mount. She brought her shield up from its guarded position, and smashed it into the BAMFs gut. She didn’t know how the thing worked internally, but suffering blunt force trauma to that degree wasn’t healthy for anything biological, which was observed when the thing screamed out in pain. It didn’t end its lunge in a combat roll as much as flop like a fish out of water onto the ground. It coughed, seized, and bled, which gave Eve all the time in the world to drive her sword into its back.

{Swatter ammo on gun one down to ten percent. Ammo on gun two down to eight percent,} her AI informed, and Eve ordered it to ceasefire. She’d bought herself time by wasting ammo, but she couldn’t do that anymore. That would make things harder in future bouts.

She removed her sword from the enemy’s back and turned to face her remaining opponents . . . only to find no one there. Troops were cheering behind her, and chanting her name.

“Iceberg . . . Iceberg . . . Iceberg!” It wasn’t her codename, but it had a nice ring to it.

Her scanners swept the area with everything they had, just to make sure this wasn’t a feint of some kind, but she picked up nothing. “Raider, this is Valkyrie, courtyard seems to be clear for now.”

“Roger that, Valkyrie, all clears seem to be coming from all across our lines. Seems like the enemy is pulling out.” The LCDR sent back.

That was wishful thinking. The enemy couldn’t just bypass hundreds of soldiers on their march to wherever. The risk of getting fucked in the ass was too great. Eve thought. They’d been playing with the battalion for too long, only sending a dozen or so soldiers at a time to wreak havoc. Eve understood the LCDR’s wishful thinking, because there was no way they’d survive a serious push again even a hundred ETs, not unless a couple squadrons of MOUNTs showed up to reinforce the position.

Eve hadn’t heard from anyone in twelve hours. Presumably, they were dealing with the same thing as her at the sites they were assigned to protect. That was up for the LCDR to decide, but EVE hoped she made a decision quickly. Their position was becoming untenable.

“Ma’am, I’m getting something over here,” Ricco, the comms specialist announced. “I’m getting some weird interference that wasn’t there a second ago.”

{Get me a full scan,} Eve ordered the AI. Sure enough, it pinged back with results moments later.

Eve raised her graviton cannon and pointed it straight up. She fired off a blast that soared up into the sky until connecting with something solid and unyielding. An energy field sparked and sizzled, but her blast didn’t get through.

“Looks like we know what they were planning to do,” she sent the LCDR. “They just locked the door and threw away the key.”