Mark “Coop” Cooper

Location: North American Eastern Seaboard, Smokey Mountains, United Commonwealth of Colonies

“What do you think?” the crew chief stood next to the six-meter MOUNT like a proud parent.

Coop just stood there gaping. “Well . . .”

“I know. No thanks necessary, sir,” the chief patted him on the shoulder and walked away.

Coop didn’t even watch the man go. His eyes were on his MOUNT. he felt his soul break a little inside him as he looked at the once-beautiful dealer of death and destruction.

Now, the MOUNT looked like some patchworked monstrosity. Duro-steel had been grafted over gaping wounds, including the one that made Coop a peg-legged pirate for the time being. Eve’s MOUNT stood in its cradle next to his looking practically brand new compared to his. She still had her fair share of alloy transplants, but nothing compared to Coop’s; especially the large discolored piece directly over the womb.

An involuntary shiver worked its way up Coop’s spine. He’d gotten everyone he could to safety, and his AI had even walked into the bunker under its own power; but he’d come very close to never seeing his unborn child or Eve ever again. All of that made him reconsider his life choices for about thirty seconds, and then the base’s obsolete intercom system barked to life.

“Warrant Officers Berg and Cooper to the command center. Warrant Officers . . .” they were already moving.

The command center was always busy, but now it made the previous weeks look like an anerobic swim class of seniors at the rec center. “We’ve got comms!” the LCDR looked like she’d taken some uppers from when they’d seen her last.

“With who?” Eve asked as they strode to the holo-display lighting up the center of the room with the strategic situation. One look at it and anyone could tell it wasn’t good.

Scouts and sensors had picked up a sizable force moving at the from the west, while a smaller, but still respectable force, pinned them from the east. Coop and Eve had been battling that eastern force to a standstill for weeks, and now they’d called for backup.

“Everyone!” the LCDR’s face lit up like a Christmas tree, despite their position caught between a rock and a hard place and about to be ground to dust.

“Everyone?” Coop was looking for a little more data.

“The cavalry arrived with some goodies up their sleeves,” the LCDR never stopped moving. Coop looked at the previously sparsely manned communications section that was now full to bursting. “Fleet’s got a patch to our comms issue. Anything that was previously affected by the malware is useless, but we’ve got some old nodes from storage up and running. They’re not as good at the modern stuff, but we’ve got contact with the inbound fleet and forces all over the planet. We’re coordinating a global response. They’re going to landing more troops to retake this planet.”

Coop saw the LCDR’s pupils were so wide you’d think her eyes were black.

“Fan-fucking-tastic,” Coop exhaled. At the very least, all this meant proper replacements for his MOUNT. It was borderline combat ineffective as it was, and had been for weeks.

“ETA?” Eve asked the more logical follow-up.

“We’re still looking at twenty-four hours, maybe more. The Blockies and Euros have fleets in system too, and they’re rallying now to make the push towards Earth,” the holo-display shifted until they saw the solar system and the fucking armada advancing toward Earth. They were routing the signals through some of the older satellites that hadn’t been in use when the enemy attacked, so the feed was glitchy at best.

Coop fought back a grin that mankind’s laziness, and inability to pick up their trash, was its savior at the moment.

“That’s tomorrow’s problem,” the LCDR continued, her enthusiasm only diminishing a tad. “We’ve got issues today.” The display flipped back to the tactical situation in the eastern half of North America. “We need to hold until the fleet arrives.”

All Coop could do was grimace. They’d been fighting the eastern force to a standstill, and the western force looked to be a third again their size. They couldn’t win in the east and conduct another breakout. There were too many civilians and too much equipment that the enemy would just scorch in its path. They also couldn’t fight in the west, or split their forces to defend against both. They were truly fucked with the cavalry right on the doorstep.

“We need a defense in depth,” Eve and Coop both stated simultaneously. “Send everyone and everything as deep as they can go. We’ll hold outside and fall back into the bunkers. We’ll let those ET fucks in with us. Set up booby traps, ambushes, kill zones; anything and everything to slow them down. Every second we can buy is a second more to land another division of troops to save our asses,” Coop finished.

Eve just nodded. The LCDR had already come to the conclusion. “I’ve already ordered evacuations to the lowest levels. Our engineers are rigging traps, and I’m redeploying our troops to man our fixed defenses as well as possible ambush sites. The only question left is where are you two going to be.

“The tip of the spear,” Eve grinned. “Like we always are.”

“I’m going to need one of you on each front, coordinating and routing communication on top of kicking ass. We have comms, but not enough to go around. Most of the comms in our armor is already fucked, but you guys should be able to talk; even with a mountain between you.”

“Yes, ma’am,” it would add another distraction in combat, but it couldn’t be helped. For all intents and purposes, it looked like Coop and Eve would effectively be in command of ground forces on their two fronts.

Coop was sure there would be some brass back in the command center, or even company and maybe battalion commanders out in the field, but no one was going to have the real-time data Coop and Eve did.

he chuckled as Eve started going into detail on deployment patterns for the western front. She’d always been gung-ho, and it looked like she was going to take on the bigger threat. While the two women talked, Coop went over the terrain he’d been fighting in over the last few weeks. He was pretty sure he could pull a rabbit or two out of his bag of tricks.

***

Sonya Berg

Location: CWS Agincourt, Sol System, United Commonwealth of Colonies

Agincourt shuddered from the impact. “Hull breech on levels sixteen and seventeen between sections D and G. Damage control is on it. Shield reforming,” the chief in charge of updating ADM Ward on the status of his flagship yelled over the chaos on the flag bridge.

The ADM barely paid any attention as he orchestrated the battle like a maestro. The man was used to combat, but Sonya sure as shit wasn’t, and she felt her guts do a flip at the knowledge they’d just had a hole punched through them. Despite all the upgrades, even a ship as large as Aggie was still vulnerable to the enemy’s incredible energy weapons.

“There . . . there . . . there!” Ward was yelling, jabbing at a point in his holo-tank like a mad-man. “Kill that fucker!”

Kill that fucker they did. Sonya saw what the enemy was doing. For the past several hours they’d been maneuvering token forces to slow the Commonwealth’s advance on Earth. Whether it was to pull their people off the planet, or coordinate a stronger defense, she wasn’t sure. What she did know was they were paying for time with lives and tonnage. The eighth and final enemy ship was cut in two as the combined weight of Strike Force Two’s firepower ripped into the portion of the ship’s shield that had been overloaded. Spin and acceleration did the rest, torqueing the ship and flinging the two pieces farther apart into the void. Something went critical on one section and it exploded like a small sun being born. The second half just continued to drift aimlessly away from the advancing fleet’s course.

They’d killed twenty-four of the enemy ships as they approached Earth, but had lost fifty in the process. Some were completely gone; like the half of the enemy ship that had gone up like a supernova; but others were just combat ineffective. They’d established a casualty collection point back near the portalling location. Most of the resupply ships and troop transports were remaining there until it was safe to move forward, but in the meantime, they were looking over the damaged ships to see if they were salvageable. Many had fallen to the incredible beam weapon the enemies had mounted at the front of their ships. It made her wonder if it wasn’t worth investing in a similar weapons system in the future.

Strike Force Two was down three battleships and a third its escort force after the few engagements they’d been in, and they weren’t even at the forefront of the advance. “Status!” Ward’s command voice echoed across the bridge.

“We’re looking at one more pair of bogies,” the tactical OIC announced. “They’re coming in on heading two-six-three, and should be intercepted by Strike Groups Ten and Twelve well away from the main body of the fleet. After that, it looks like smooth sailing to the main concentration of the enemy force in orbit between Earth and Luna.”

Sonya nodded along with Ward. They were getting some data from the satellites in Earth’s orbit, but the enemies EW was making those number unreliable. They’d shift from one second to the next showing no enemy force, and then over a thousand enemy ships. Since they had a general idea how many ships they were facing, they were only using the incoming transmissions to generalize the location of the enemy force. They’d wait until the AIs on the better-equipped warships got closer to take a crack at cutting through the EW. At this point, she was confident there were under two hundred enemy ships in their path to retaking Earth. That didn’t seem like a lot, but after seeing First and Second fleets get pounded, she knew they were going to need every ship to finish this fight.