Mark “Coop” Cooper

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

The last gun went silent, and Coop gave a weary sigh. The jubilation of being rescued from the bunkers was long gone. Eradicating Earth of the alien plague took longer than anyone thought. The BAMFs and roaches dug in like ticks, and tried to suck every last drop of human blood out before they were stomped. Tens of thousands more soldiers and spacers died in the coming skirmishes, that would have been bloody battles in any other war. People who’d survived in the bunker complex, suffered against all the shit that rained down on them, only to die in a ditch a few weeks later. Coop was getting really sick of Earth.

Grunts, HI, and he even spotted a MOUNT – wherever the hell that came from – went charging into the breach after they finished the bombardment. Hopefully, it would be the last time. Coop had been a part of one of those charges recently. After the rescue, they were only given so much time to reconsolidate before being thrown right back into the suck. In the coming battle, he and Eve had risked their lives again and again. Skill and a shit-ton of luck led them to this point.

“All clear,” the command came down, and Coop secured his weapon. The 250mm cannon was smoking on his back and he was beginning to feel the heat through the armor.

There was no cheering or wild celebration from the HI troopers on the artillery ground. The nets were just empty silence. If Coop had to guess, most of the grizzled old men and women – some still shy of thirty; age didn’t matter when you’d lived through what they had – were either taking a nap or crying. Coop himself felt a little overwhelmed. He didn’t cry, but he did feel like the armor was closing in around him for a second; like a black hole that would grind him to nothing if he didn’t break free.

“You good?” that freedom showed up at exactly the right moment. Eve stook next to him in her smaller V2 LACS, which had a lot more repair work on it since they’d left the bunker.

Coop drew in a shaky breath as he got to his feet. Even in the fairly new V4, there were groans from damage that mimicked how his body felt. His nose was blind to the stench of his own body. He couldn’t remember the last time he hadn’t eaten something out of a tube, and his armor’s medical systems were still dealing with his multitude of injuries. Sometimes it was easy to forget he was still missing a limb and had regrown skin of nearly half of his body. When there was shit to do, it was easy to ignore it, but now that it was over; a dull ache seemed to spread through him.

“As good as can be,” his voice was bitter to his own ears. “Not your fault,” he made sure Eve knew that before she added another injury to his growing list. “Just . . .”

“Yeah, this is all fucked,” she took a seat next to him and leaned her metal shoulder against his.

“I . . . I’m not sure I want to do this anymore,” Coop couldn’t believe the words that came out of his mouth.

He’d never done much in his life, been much, or been good at anything. He’d been a poor Rat, not any type of human being to write home about, but he’d been a good soldier. He hadn’t always done the right thing; he got wrapped up in money and pussy before settling on Eve, but he knew in his bones he’d been good at that. To toss all of that away was like cutting off a nut.

“Well tough shit,” Eve replied in her typical straightforward manner. “We’re both under contract as warrant officers, and after this shitstorm, I doubt the Commonwealth is letting anyone go. You’ll have to go AWOL, and then flee the Commonwealth. I won’t be with a quitter.”

A flash of anger, that was only multiplied by his frayed nerves, shot through him. “I didn’t say I was quitting,” he spat at her. “I just said I don’t think I wanted to do this anymore.” He shuffled away so they weren’t touching anymore.

He felt stupid for doing it, but he’d done a lot of stupid things, he gave a mental chortle.

Eve followed him and smacked her shoulder back into his. It was a possessive strike, that had an undertone of “unfuck yourself” to it.

“We need a vacation,” she announced, like that was going to happen. “We need to drink, fuck, and just forget about all of this for a week.”

“Sure,” Coop scoffed, still bitching like a petulant child. “I’ll just grab us a few tickets to Disney World, and we’ll catch a cruise to the pleasure planet,” he rolled his eyes underneath his helmet.

“I’m not fucking joking, Coop,” her voice wasn’t hot with anger. It had dropped to that cold level where she was warning him to get his shit together. “It’s not only us we need to worry about. We need to get our shit straight before she gets here.”

a wave of embarrassment replaced the rage. He’d totally forgotten about his unborn daughter in his current funk.

“Yeah,” he said slowly as the rage dissipated. “We do need a vacation.”

His HUD flashed with a new rally point as they sat there collecting themselves. They were packing up and moving on. Other assets were doing the cleanup work in this sector, and he hoped they were going to let them go about their business soon. They both wanted leave to see their daughter, and the infantry granted maternity leave to both parents when she was born. Of course, it wasn’t a vacation with a newborn; and there sure as shit wouldn’t be any drinking or fucking, just pooping, eating, and sleeping.

***

Sonya Berg

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

Sonya caught a ride down from Aggie. She felt better after getting a decent amount of medical treatment, but it was far less than what was needed to get back to one hundred percent. She didn’t mind that. There were others who needed the nanites and surgeries more than her.

Despite everything that was going on, she had a full personal security detachment coming with her. Technically, she was still the Chief of Naval Intelligence, and the fleet had lost too many flag officers in the battle to lose another one to an accident on the ground.

The Spyder carrying her did a combat descent over her chosen metropolis, and as her stomach did barrel rolls, she witnessed the destruction up close and personal. This was one of the more intact metropolises the planetary governor was trying to regain control from. One look at it, and she didn’t envy the person. Most of the skyline looked like half-used candles. The great superstructures of humanity’s homeworld had melted under the onslaught of the alien’s thermal weapons. Planetary Defense centers had survived, but they were small circles of calm in a sea of madness.

Mostly it was just destruction, and she couldn’t even fathom the number of civilians that died. She’d looked up the numbers the PDC’s could hold on the ride down, but like most things on Sol, war was not a primary concern. Mutually assured destruction was real, and the starfarrings powers tended to take their grievances out on each other where the bulk of the human species did not live.

she tallied in her head. Sol was about to be relegated to a third-world system, not much better than the colony worlds out on the Rim.

She couldn’t even comprehend the immigration issues that were coming, and she didn’t have to. her Spyder set down on the roof of a military hospital that had been inside a PDC. Even from the landing pad, she could see beds spread out for hundreds of meters; like a shantytown around the hospital.

Normally, there would be a hodgepodge of administrators and senior doctors waiting for someone of her rank to show her around. On the edge of the pad there was only a nervous-looking orderly. He was probably more used to cleaning shitters than showing around admirals. Still, he did a good enough job to get her from point A to point B. She found the reason she was here not long after she landed.

The room was crowded despite only having two people in it. she thought as she squeezed in beside her daughter and Mark Cooper. They both looked like they’d seen better days, but they smelled clean, had received a few hot meals, and were in a fresh set of CMUs. Both had the dual black stripes of a Chief Warrant Officer Two. It was the least the Commonwealth could do for the MOUNT pilots who’d survived.

“Hi, mom,” Eve gave her a gentle hug, and it might have been the first time her daughter had hugged her in a decade. It took her by surprise.

“Ma’am,” Cooper just sounded tired, and after reading the reports, she couldn’t blame him.

“Chief,” she gave him a respectful nod before turning her attention to the reason they were all there. Well . . . two reasons.

Eve’s daughter was in the OBGYN wing two floors up, along with thousands of other fetuses that didn’t even realize they’d lived through the biggest battle in human history. They’d grow up in the aftermath after everything had changed.

“How is he?” she looked down at her other child.

Derrick Berg looked like burned shit. His battlecruiser had been a stationed at Fleet Base Constitution when the ET’s showed up. It had fought bravely in the defense, but ultimately been destroyed. A decent chunk of the crew escaped to the pods, and jettisoned close enough to Earth that they were able to make landfall before the ET’s. After that, it was a game of escape and evade with the ground forces until they reached friendly lines. Derrick had been horribly wounded during the fighting, bisected from the waist down by a beamer. If not for the nifty ET body bags that put people in suspended animation, he’d be dead. As it was, he was undergoing a long and arduous rehab that started with regrowing everything south of his large intestines.

Derrick wasn’t conscious, and wouldn’t come out of the medically-induced coma until everything was reattached and working appropriately. Still, Sonya wanted to see her injured child . . . and future grandchild.

“You two are being redeployed,” she informed the two WO’s behind her. “the universe if still going headfirst down the shitter. The Windsor’s will get uppity when they have the ability to do so. This new corporate abomination is already turning the screw to the Commonwealth, and has the muscle to stand up to us for now; and there are always the Blockies. They lost sixty percent of the forces they contributed, but they contributed less than us. The balance of power is still relatively even, but that is a step down from where we were. We’ve also lost good people,” the image of Michael Ward swam through her head. “It wouldn’t surprise me if there was a draft soon. Turns out the galaxy is even worse than we realized, and the Prime Minister wants us prepared.”

Cooper didn’t look too thrilled with her words, but he didn’t say anything. Even Eve looked a little perturbed. Sonya reached down an put a hand on Derrick’s upturned palm. There was no response on the variety of monitors flowing the air around him, but that was ok with her.

Sonya had her own work to do. The top of that list was finding out who the hell attached Earth, why, and what were they going to do next. She didn’t envy who got the job after her, but she had work to do until the PM formally relieved her. She had her resignation letter good to go if that order didn’t come soon. Deja was a friend, but there was no way Sonya could stay on when she’d so completely failed.

“If they transfer us before the birth, we’ll take her with us,” Eve stated, bringing Sonya’s attention back to the moment. “Will you be free in a few months for the birth?” there was a vulnerability in her daughter’s eyes she hadn’t seen before. Near-death experience, and becoming a mother would do that to a person.

“I would love to be there,” Sonya didn’t promise, and Eve heard that, but she hoped her daughter saw how much she wanted to be.

That would have to be good enough.

***

Hailey Armstrong

Location: Earth, Sol System, United Commonwealth of Colonies

“Read my lips you ignorant fuck; get . . . me . . . the . . . hell . . . out . . . of . . . here,” Hailey practically spat at the ticket agent. She’d just thrown down three times the amount of a normal ticket, and a third of that was to bribe the fat asshole sitting in front of her.

After spending the last two months in a fallout shelter some doomsday prepper had put together a few centuries ago, she was ready to do anything to get out of here. She thought about offering to suck to fat bastards’s dick, but she’d debased herself enough lately. The people who’d beat her to the shelter had only allowed her entrance in return for sexual favors. She’d had to perform those for a time, but her training had prepared her for that. It also prepared her for the series of “accidents” that befell the people who took advantage of her.

At first there was suspicion, but once it looked like they weren’t leaving the shelter anytime soon, the rest of the inhabitants were glad for less mouths to feed. Nevertheless, when the Commonwealth took back the planet, she’d gotten the hell out of there before someone told someone with a badge about the whore who’d been around when a number of their men had died.

Now, she found herself at the overcrowded spaceport. Getting regular travel to and from Sol was still months off, but warships redeploying to different sectors were playing ferryboat to civilians getting the hell off the Earth. The fat bastard gave her extra credits a greedy look before scooping them away. He worked some magic on his terminal, and then a ping on her newly purchased IOR showed she had a flight up to a cruiser that left in ten minutes. The ship was headed to Acheron, well away from any of her known contacts, but the syndicate was everywhere. She knew what to look for at spaceports that would tell her who to contact with the boss for orders. Being on Earth during the catastrophe of epic proportions should be enough to buy her clemency on missed payments after her account ran dry. It wouldn’t save her from the compiled interest, but she had skills people could use. She’d be fine.

She spared a quick thought for Coop, but she’d had enough of thinking about her ex. Derailing his plans to possibly tie her to the death of his father had fucked her harder than Coop ever had before. She wasn’t going to spare any more mental energy on the man.

She had better things to do with her life.