Eve Berg

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

Eve sliced at the shield with her sword. It wasn’t like cutting butter. The shield felt like a living, breathing thing. It resisted her attempt to punch through it, and when it felt like she was gaining ground, it would twist like a snake and rebound. she grumbled as she continued to work at it.

The shield buster fragments in the sword were undoubtedly helping, but at the moment she wished she had the whole sword, or at least a full edge, of the shield-defeating material.

She worked the tip up and down, back and forth, fighting the torrent of energy until finally . . . something gave way and the sword slipped through. She twisted the blade, trying to make more room, and tried to push her accelerator through. It took a few minutes of finagling, but she got it.

“Initiate,” she ordered.

The sonic boom of Coop firing his accelerator cracked the world open, and was followed by the ground-shaking explosion as his round hit the target. When the shield didn’t flicker and die, she knew her assumption had been right. The enemy, much like the Commonwealth infantry’s own tactics, had layered shields around the main shield generator. That made it harder to kill, even for the Commonwealth’s best weapons.

Eve didn’t waste any time in adding her firepower to the attack. Her MOUNT bucked from the backblast, and the weapon slid out of the opening she’d created.

she cursed. She got her sword back out and started cutting. She’d bring that up in the giant AAR the Commonwealth was going to have for this gigantic failure of a military operation.

Seconds mattered as she heard the aliens do their weird, sorrowful moaning. She knew that sound only meant trouble. They’d fucked up the little roaches and the BAMFs would be in rampage mode. Not a few seconds later, she heard the roar of a rampaging BAMF and the sound of battle.

she was sweating inside her womb despite all the climate controls.

After what felt like an eternity, she felt the slip as she sword sank into the shield and she twisted it to make a larger hole. Once it was big enough, she slipped her metal gauntlet through the hole. Two shields sparked against each other a she leveraged her strength to pry open the shield. It resisted every centimeter, but she kept pushing.

When her arms were fully extended, she brought a foot up and stepped on the glowing edge. She almost fell over from the effort. It looked like she was a burglar trying to sneak in through someone’s window. She hoped an ET didn’t walk up and see her looking like this. She’d be an easy target.

With her stronger legs, she was able to make quicker progress. Soon the opening was big enough that she was able to duck and slip in. she remembered her rebellious years after her father’s death and her mother’s constant absence. She’d never actually gotten away with sneaking out. Derrick always found out, but it looked like this time it was going to work.

As she slipped through, the shield snapped shut behind her, resuming its integrity. She didn’t give it a backwards glance as she raced off into the dust-filled air. The sounds of battle were ahead.

***

Mark “Coop” Cooper

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

“Fuck!” Coop tried to bring his shield back up as the BAMF fell toward him. He thought he had the asshole. He had the thing pinned against the building, and all it would take was a few good stabs to turn the ET into Shish Kabob.

Now, the thing crashed into him like an armed tornado. It landed on his shield and used its two central arms to pull it down. Technically, it wasn’t as much pulling it down as it was just hanging on as gravity and the thing’s body weight did the real work. While the center arms made his shield a liability, the two, strong outer arms went to work. Both were armed with the daggers, and both stabbed at Coop.

One stabbed at the center of his chest, right where the womb was located. The repair bots had patched him up after the last fight, but there was a slight discoloration to the metal, and the ET had zeroed in on that like a heat-seeking missile. The other blade went for his face.

His shields screamed warnings at him as the blades made contact. Coop did the only thing he could think of; he dropped his portable shield and went to grab the ET’s arms. He got the one aimed at his womb just in time. The blade was just about to penetrate when his hand wrapped around the ET’s digits and squeezed. He expected to hear bones break, but the ET just roared in pain and tried that much harder to score a killing blow.

He wasn’t fast enough to get to the other arm, but he did instinctually move his head away from the blade as it penetrated his shield and slashed in a downward arc. Reports of damaged sensors flooded his vision, but he immediately dismissed them. The ET had overextended with the slash to try and take off his head. Now, he had the ET’s arm pinned across its body while they struggled for control of the second blade.

“Fuck you!” he activated his external speakers right before he bashed his damaged head into the ET’s armored helmet. The shock rocked the alien back, but it didn’t let up. “I said, fuck you!” Coop snarled as he bashed his head into the alien’s again.

Their shields sparked against each other, until Coop felt a slight give in the ET’s position. He was stronger, and in a grapple like this, he had the advantage. The ET tried to improve its angle of attack, and Coop countered. He twisted, catching the alien by surprise, and pitched it over his hip. It crashed to the ground and was too slow to get up. Coop jumped on top of it, passing its guard, pinning its stronger, outer arms, and started raining down blows into its head.

The shield sparked from the impacts as the ET tried to buck him off, but eventually he got through. One . . . two . . . three, the ET’s armored helm cracked under the power of his hammer fists. He grabbed the edge of the cracked helmet and yanked. It split like an egg he wanted to scramble and revealed the ET’s face for the first time.

“Ugh, you ugly motherfucker!” Coop cursed.

Its head was oval shape, with a trio of eyes, cords hanging from the back of its head like dark green dreadlocks, and a maw that opened up like some sea creature’s from a nightmare. What started as a normal-looking mouth split open three ways to show rows of jagged teeth, and a central beak-like thing that snapped as the BAMF sat up and tried to take a chunk out of his metal face. All it hit was shield, and it screamed in agony.

“Time to die,” Coop grinned and was about to bash the fucker’s face in when something hit him from the side. “You’ve got to be . . .” he rolled with the blow, and more blade strikes registered against his shields. A new BAMF was trying to stab him in the heart . . . again.

“Where are you all coming from?” he yelled to no one in particular, as he kicked up, caught the BAMF in the chest, and sent it flying.

The creature twisted in the air, pulled out a beamer like a kung-fu action star, and shot Coop in the face. His shield saved him, but it was down into the single digits. He struggled to his feet to face the new foe, and the ET, whose bucket he’d ripped off, tackled him from behind, driving him to his knees. Then the thing grabbed his arms from behind and pried them open. The hydraulics protested as they fought the pull, but these fuckers were strong. The other ET got up, shook itself off, and hefted its blade and stalked back over to Coop.

Coop frantically tried to do something, but the ET was already on top of him, and plunging the dagger into his chest.

His shield sparked in resistance, but it only held for a few seconds, before it slipped through and into his armor.

{Warning. Outer shield and armor penetration. Inner shield integrity at eighty-seven . . . sixty-six percent. Recommend evasive actions.} His AI deadpanned.

Coop didn’t have time to respond before a heavy presence shot past his head, and the feedback pierced his mind like the worst hangover ever. He looked forward as his vision wavered and saw the BAMF stumbling back as it was rocked by more strikes. The thing tried to raise its beamer, but a chunk of it got blasted apart as its shield failed in a swirl of lights. A second later, its bleeding carcass was on the ground twitching. Both the ET behind him, and Coop, were too surprised to react, but then the moment caught up with them. Coop surged forward and tried to roll away. The ET abandoned the hold on his arms and went for the throat. Coop let it, because he didn’t need it to breath. He concentrated on driving elbows into the BAMF’s sides until it let up enough for him to wiggle free.

Coop rolled away ready to fight, but Eve shot the BAMF dead on the ground as she approached. Green gore splattered all over him as the kill shot sprayed its unarmored head across half a city block. The black beak-pincer thing clattered against his shield as it was blown clear out of the ET.

Coop bent down and picked it up. The appendaged was still shivering and clicking because the nerves in it didn’t know it was dead yet.

“About time,” he called out to Eve, more than a little irritated. He’d been up to his ass in BAMFs.

“Um, Coop,” she pointed at his chest.

“Damnit!” Coop cursed as he pulled the alien dagger from his chest for the second time in as many days.

{Dispatching repair bots,} his AI informed. {We are running low on supplies, so in the future please refrain from getting stabbed.}

“Hahaha, you’ve got jokes now,” Coop wasn’t in the mood, as he mag-locked the ET’s weapon to his side, and went to grab his own sword and shield he’d dropped when the BAMF jumped him.

“You good?” Eve asked, concern thick in her tone.

“Nothing a beer won’t fix,” he replied. “Now let’s finish this thing,” he activated his accelerator and turned it on the location of the shield generator. “I think if we give it a good one-two punch, we should be able to overwhelm the generator’s shielding.”

Eve didn’t reply, she just activated her own accelerator, anchored her position, and waited for his go. They let their AIs work out the timing, and then the battlefield ripped apart by duel accelerator blasts.

One salvo ended up not being enough, but a rapid reload and second did the trick. The generator went up in a respectable ball of flames, and the shield it was powering flickered and died.

“Let’s move,” Eve ordered as she led the way. “We get to escort the remains of the battalion out of here. If we can make it to the mountains, we should have a fighting chance.”

Coop didn’t know about that, but he did know that was where his baby girl was, so that’s where he wanted to be.