“Private Coop, I swear to every shit-sucking god in the universe, if you go into that building before the strike team arrives, I’m gonna bust your ass. Again.”

Coop snorted. He was currently Private First Class and had lost count of the number of times he’d been demoted by the High Council of the United People’s Security Forces. He’d made it to Corporal a time or two, but he always managed to piss someone off by ignoring orders. Coop was of the opinion a stupid order didn’t need to be followed, and being property of the UPSF, he couldn’t be discharged. All they could do was demote him and incarcerate him. He didn’t care about rank and he was too good at what he did to be locked up indefinitely

“What was that, General? General Asshole? You there, sir?”

“Fuck you, Coop. I gave you an order.”

“Did you? I can’t hear you over the chatter.”

While General Ashpholt spewed invective into his ear, Coop checked his gear again. The battle rifle on his back was an AC-013, sized to his specifications. It sported sound suppression, extra gas vents, and a thirty-round clip. It switched between single fire and three burst with a mental command from the visual display embedded in his helmet. There was no scope, he didn’t need one with his advanced visual display. A secondary barrel beneath the primary fired miniature grenades from a three-chamber revolving cylinder. At either hip, he had a SC-001, a sturdy, reliable, ten-round pistol.

Coop figured fifty shredder-slugs and three mini-grenades should be enough for the job.

“Are you listening to me, Private Coop?”

“That’s a negative, General Asshole.”

What was left of Coop’s body was encased in Cypress Mk. 009, the most advanced power armor the UPSF had ever commissioned. It was one of a kind, designed by the late Dr. Cypress Ark, one of the only people Coop could remember from before the incident that had destroyed body.

Two and one-quarter meters tall, Coop was a four-armed, hulking, monstrosity. He was the deadliest weapon the UPSF had to deploy, so long as they weren’t willing to use the Worldkiller. His armor was built from carapace plates of an Armored mantis secured over the thick flexible hide of a Redeye behemoth His helmet boasted a crown of horns harvested from a Thornskin lupine and his faceplate was carved into the shape of a scowling skull from harvested bones of the same beast. A pair of retractable claws from a Stonebelly ursine sprouted from the backs of his upper hands, a pair of nozzles protruded from the underwrist of both his lower hands each with access to internal tanks filled with bovine bile, mink saliva, and mephat urine.

Finally, against all regulation and advice, Coop put a hand on the hilt of his personal sword. It was a single-edged, curved blade with no crossguard. The blade transitioned directly into a thick metal handle. The handle was a rough cross-hatch of scored metal that tore up any fleshy human hand that tried to use it. He ran his thumb over the rough-edged handle gently, like comforting an old friend.

Coop looked at the timer on the visual display overlay. The strike team was fifteen minutes out. With a thought he flipped the display to show him the layout of the building in front of him: Ezzex Paper Supplies. Storage on the ground floor, offices on the upper two. A UPSF satellite had shown heat sources throughout, with the highest concentration on the upper floor. That’s where the kids were being held.

“You did hear the part where the kidnappers threatened to kill the orphans, right?” Coop said, interrupting General Ashpholt’s tirade.

The general made a sound like he was choking.

The heads-up-display of the power armor was two-fold. First, it was his user interface, allowing him to control the Cypress Mk. 009 with mental commands. Second, it translated the enhanced senses of the armor. While his eyes and ears still functioned, the sensors built into the armor were vastly superior to human senses and his visual display translated the information into a lighted display overlaying his real-world vision.

Coop scanned the side of the building and chose a window on the third floor. With a mental command, he prepped the jumpack built into his suit, powered by the bladder of a Kitewing condor. Fighting up through three floors of hostiles seemed like a good way to fuck up the mission.

“Private Coop, power down your jumpack immediately.”

“I’m sorry, General. I can’t hear you. There must be some interference.”

“Gods-fuckin’shit there’s interference. Shut it down. Now.”

“You know how I love to follow orders, General, but I’m not going to let these assholes kill a bunch of kids. If you wanted me to exercise restraint, you should have left me in my bunk.”

“You engage, and the first thing they’ll do is shoot those kids.”

Coop knew the general was not wrong. If the kidnappers were as single-mindedly ruthless as they seemed, killing the kids would be an obvious first step. He also knew he was faster, stronger, and better than anyone in that building, and the longer the kidnappers waited for their demands to be met, the more likely they were to start killing kids anyway, just to make a point.

“Bobby, I can do this. You know I can. Get that demotion ready.”

Coop stood, letting his armor’s beast-enhanced concealment ripple. It worked best when he was still and he knew once he got going it would fall away completely, nowhere near as good as the actual beast’s camouflage. It was one of the things Dr. Ark hadn’t perfected about the suit before she’d died.

Coop let his visual display plot his course, jump-point, and trajectory through the third floor window, then locked it in.

“Here we go,” he said to himself.

“God damn you, Coop. Always gotta be a damn hero.”

Coop muted every channel but emergency. He didn’t need a play-by-play critique of his every move between now and the end of this thing.

He rolled all four shoulders, one after another and stretched to his full height. He pulled his knees to his chest, one after the other. Though his body was more synthetic than biological, it was still best to warm it up before springing into action. He bent his neck side to side without hope of easing the perpetual crick.

Though this body had been designed by the incomparable Dr. Ark, it sat on him like shoes a quarter size too large and too small at the same time. It pinched and chafed and slid upon him at every moment. He was always on the verge of a headache, his lower back always hurt, and his knuckles always needed to be popped. He’d gotten used to it, like the constant hiss of radio static. And though it made him irritable at the best of times, he could ignore it when he needed to.

He glanced at his armor’s energy level in the upper left of his visual display: 99% More than enough.

Coop sprinted along his plotted course. He felt his jumpack power up, filling with air, as he approached the launch point, and when he leapt, the condor bladder exhaled, propelling him in a perfect arc toward the third story window. He curled himself tight into a ball and watched the window approach. He crashed through like it was paper. Wood, glass, and masonry crumbled around him.

His mechanized, armored body was enormously strong, but it wasn’t terribly adroit and he knew the landing would be rough. Once through the window he tumbled to the floor like a drunken toddler, limbs splayed. He was especially grateful he couldn’t hear General Ashpholt’s caustic observation of his poor landing.

There was confused shouting and Coop knew he had moments before someone reacted. He pushed himself to his knees, looking in the direction of the heat sources his visual display had detected. He saw five armed adults and his visual display marked them red, hostile. The kidnapped orphans huddled together and he estimated there were ten to fifteen of them but could not make them out as clearly. His visual display marked them yellow, neutral.

Three of the hostiles lifted firearms to point at him. One stood in shocked indecision.

The fifth moved to point his weapon at the hostages. He held a Lintock Special, a cheap, indiscriminate sprayer of slugs as likely to jam as not. Against a visual display mass of unarmored children, it would do a lot of damage in a hurry.

Coop saw combat in a series of precise moments. Each moment allowed him a certain number of actions: drawing a weapon, taking cover, striking a foe. Nobody he’d spoken to about it understood him. Most described combat as loud, messy, and chaotic. But for Coop, combat was a precise puzzle. Each action emphasized efficiency, killing enemies with minimal harm to allies. And he was faster in a moment of combat than anyone he’d ever come up against.

The magnetic locks keeping the AC-013 rifle to the back plate of his battle harness loosed as he reached back with his upper arms and drew it hard to his right shoulder, cradled in his upper left hand, upper right hand firm on the grip, finger on the trigger. He loosed a burst of three into the chest of the hostile threatening the hostages even as he drew the SC-001 pistols from either hip with his lower hands.

The 7.5 millimeter shredder-slugs tore through the first hostile’s chest, nearly separating his head and shoulders from the rest of his body.

All in a moment.

Coop took a moment to focus on his visual display and, with a mental command, engage his armor’s shield. Engaging the shield required more focus than the rest of his visual display commands, a full moment, but it was worth it. A shield of telekinetic force radiated three centimeters from the surface of his armor. It could only take a few direct hits before collapsing and required an hour to recharge, but that was usually enough of an advantage in a fight.

The next fastest hostile was also a sloppy shot. Coop didn’t bother with him. The next two were more likely to be on target. He chose the hostile on the left, fired another burst of three, and paused to let the AC-013 cool. With both pistols in his lower hands, he aimed at the hostile on the right and put a couple slugs into him. As the two dropped, he focused on the sloppy shot and another burst of three took him down.

Another moment gone.

The one who’d stood in indecision finally decided to draw his pistol. Coop put a shredder-slug through his skull and it exploded.

All five hostiles were down. None of the neutrals seemed harmed. Coop took a moment to look at them. He let his visual display count and evaluate. Thirteen kids ranging from eight to twelve years old. They all wore faded, olive-green UPSF jumpsuits. That struck Coop as odd. How had a bunch of no-talent thugs kidnapped UPSF cadets? The report hadn’t said the orphans were also cadets. There was something more to the situation, but he could hear the kidnappers from the two levels below charging up to meet him.

Coop approached, and one of the cadets, a spunky-looking androgynous kid with a pair of black stripes on the shoulder of their olive jumpsuit, met his gaze. Not that they could see his eyes through the skull faceplate of his helmet.

“You trained with a dome shield?” Coop withdrew a handheld device and held it up.

The kid shook their head.

“If the shooting gets too close, press this blue button. A telekinetic shield will enclose you. You’ll have to stay close for it to cover all of you. Understand?”

They nodded, expression defiant. Coop tossed them the device. He was sure General Ashpholt was shitting with fury at that. It was an expensive toy and he’d given it to an untrained cadet.

Coop turned his back to the neutrals.

While he’d engaged the kidnappers, the sensors on his armor had been busy taking stock of the room and his visual display had taken that information and translated it into a map displayed in the upper right of his vision.

There were two stairwells and one elevator feeding to the top floor. The elevator was on the far wall, in the center. The stairwells were opposite each other on either side wall. Filling most of the floor space was an old-fashioned cubical farm. Beige and grey, chest-height partitions separated one work space from another. They’d be no cover against firearms but would be an impediment to anyone trying to close the distance.

When the door on the left opened, Coop launched a grenade through it. The grenade bounced off the wall over the head of the first hostile through the door. She looked up and back, following the path of the grenade. There was momentary shouting.

The explosion rocked the building. The wall separating the room from the stairwell buckled and cracked. The door blew off its hinges and the hostile was thrown through the air and cubicle partitions. The stairs were concrete and likely had survived the blast, but Coop hoped it would be enough to dissuade anyone else coming up those stairs.

The elevator at the far end of the room pinged.

Coop let loose another minigrenade, timing it so the doors opened just as the grenade would have struck them. It impacted the chest of one of seven men crammed into the elevator car. The man staggered and looked down, expression turning to terrified surprise just before the grenade exploded, incinerating them all. The elevator car wasn’t sturdy enough to take a grenade blast. It buckled and cracked, falling down the shaft. Coop was certain anyone not killed by the blast was killed by the fall.

He turned his attention to the stairwell door on the right, expecting more kidnappers would come through that way and grateful he had one grenade for each point of entry. But after several moments, no one came through.

“Is that it?” said one of the kids. “Is it over?”

“Doubt it,” said Coop. “Stay low.”

Coop’s shoulders tensed. He hadn’t had a firm count, but he was certain there were more hostiles in the building than he’d killed. Perhaps some of them had run away. He wasn’t sure they were smart enough for that. He was considering unmuting his communication channels when a projectile arced into the room in their general direction. It was vaguely spherical and Coop’s visual display predicted its trajectory. Whoever had thrown it was good or lucky. It would land just outside the cubical partition closest to them.

It was a Hellbomb. Packed with shrapnel from the fist of a Rocknuckle gorillanoid and enhanced with the bile of a Mudcoat bovine, it had a prodigious blast radius of skin-melting heat.

“Grenade!” Coop hoped that would be enough to spur the two-stripe cadet to engage the dome shield. In a moment, he holstered the pistols, dropped the battlerifle, launched himself at the grenade, and caught it, pulling it close to his abdomen and curling himself around it. The Hellbomb was heavy duty artillery for a bunch of low-rent kidnappers. Something more was definitely going on.

The explosion knocked out his shield and damaged his armor. He didn’t feel pain, but he did feel discomfort. A red warning flash lit his visual display informing him his armor had taken significant external and internal.

One of the most impressive aspects of the Cypress Mk. 009 was its self-repair capabilities thanks to the liver of a Slickscale viper, a massive snake that could repair any wound, given time and rest. Which blinked through his mind between when the explosion threw him back and when he struck a telekinetic shield behind him, bouncing forward to his knees.

“Well done,” he grumbled, glad the cadet had initiated the dome shield in time.

Coop cast his gaze around for his battlerifle and found it a smoking ruin, blasted several meters from the grenade’s point of impact. The cubical partitions, desks, and computers were scattered and smoldering. He reached for his pistols and at his touch his visual display diagnosed them: battered but functional, as was their hallmark.

Four hostiles entered from the stairwell on his right, rifles up and at the ready. Some were armored. Coop checked his energy level. 82%. He knew he’d be burning energy with the viper liver trying to repair his armor while he continued the fight.

He pushed to his feet and charged, pistols forward, firing into the group, less worried about precision, more worried about making a spectacle of himself. If they were more focused on him, they were less focused on the cadets. Packed tight as they were, his slugs were sure to find targets. With a mental command, he prepped the nozzles on the underwrists of his lower hands, Mudcoat bovine bile on his right, Deathgag mephat urine on his left. Firing slugs dead center of the group, he launched a spray of the deadly juices to either side of them before sweeping in, attempting to pin them.

The bile of the Mudcoat bovine was extraordinarily flammable. Contact with nitrogen rich air was enough to set it ablaze. The urine of the Deathgag mephat wasn’t only malodorous but caustic. Breathing in a hint was enough to sting throats. Getting a face full could melt lungs. When the two combined, they were explosive.

Just as Coop had hoped, the hostiles used their moment to focus their fire on him. He took a few direct hits and several more grazes. He hoped the dome shield was still up, that none of the stray shots hit a cadet.

When the streams met, a whumph of purple-green fire mushroomed into existence. He shut off the stream from his nozzles before that fire could race back to meet him. Even so, the pressure of it knocked him on his ass. He kept firing his pistols as he fell until they were empty. He had extra clips on his belt, assuming they’d survived the grenade, but he didn’t think he’d need them.

The hostiles screamed as they burned and melted.

The cadets coughed. The gas created by burning mephat urine wasn’t as bad as the liquid itself, but it certainly didn’t feel good. Coop couldn’t smell it. He couldn’t smell anything thanks to the advanced filtration of his helmet. And the fact that he didn’t breathe.

His visual display flashed red again and maintained a lingering halo to show him his body was in bad shape. Not that he needed the warning. He felt like shit, aching head to toe, more than usual. It wasn’t pain exactly, but it made him groan and grumble as he pushed to his feet. He turned to look at the cadets and found the tell-tale lavender shimmer of the domeshield still in effect. He nodded.

He unmuted his communication channels to hear a cacophony of shouting. He focused on one.

“You goddamned, fucking asshole. Turn on your coms.” General Ashpholt groused.

“Affirmative, General. Do you need something?” Coop checked his energy: 77% The fight had taken more out of him than normal. It was the grenade and subsequent healing that’d done it.

“You set the building on fire!”

“I take it an evacuation team is on the way?”

“For the hostages, yes. I’m going to let you burn.”

Coop was fairly certain General Aspholt was kidding, but he decided not to push it. “Understood, General.”

After several moments of only background chatter, the general cleared his throat. “Looks like you got pretty beat up, Coop. Why did you hug that grenade?”

Coop did his best to stretch even though he knew it wouldn’t ease the aches. “Seemed like a good idea at the time.”

“You forget how to throw?”

Coop was glad he couldn’t blush. In his defense, there probably hadn’t been time to have thrown the grenade back, but he hadn’t even considered the possibility.

Something in the right stairwell lurched and shuffled. A deep rumbled shook the building. One of the cadets screamed. Coop focused on the stairwell door. A person shoved their way through the debris of the stairwell and the still-burning door. He was nearly as tall as Coop and clad in power armor, thick plates of an Armored mantis held to a synthetic mesh. He had no horns and only two arms, but Coop recognized Cypress-class power armor.

“Uh, General, you send another Cypress in?”

“Negative, Coop. Looks like a traitor to me.”

Coop had the unique cybernetic enhancements and armor of the Cypress Class Power Armor Mk. 009, known better by its shortened designation: C-009. It was the last and best power armor Dr. Cypress Ark had ever designed and built. This guy looked like he was a C-002. C-003 at best. He’d be stronger and faster than his fellow kidnappers, but without all the upgrades Coop enjoyed. On the other hand, he was far less blown up than Coop. On the other, other hand, he had plenty of fleshy bits exposed. Fleshy bits that almost certainly contained blood.

Coop put a hand on his sword as he heard her shiver and sing. For all that he was battered and burned, she was undamaged, unblemished, as she always was so long as she was fed. She hummed in anticipation.

Firearms empty or destroyed, Coop extended the claws on his upper hands and prepped the nozzles on his lower. The hostile roared like a beast, wading through the debris of the cubical farm, shouting incomprehensibly and pointing at Coop. Coop moved to meet the man. He lowered his left wrist and fired mink saliva at the hostile, who was slow to react. Though he dodged aside, Coop grazed his upper left shoulder. The man howled in pain and redoubled his efforts to reach Coop.

There wasn’t enough time to use another spray without being caught in it himself, so Coop sprinted to meet the hostile while he was still off balance. The claws of the Stonebelly ursine were long and curved and though to the naked eye had a thin, razor’s edge, under a microscope those edges were made up of a snarl of hooks designed to rip. The best proof against ursine claws were the claws themselves. The hostile seemed to know that, and while Coop came at him in a flurry of attacks, the hostile parried skillfully.

As he attacked, Coop assessed the hostile’s armaments. He had a poorly maintained scorpion-class pistol at his right hip, but that and his power armor enhancements was it. Coop had fought opponents with the ursine claws before. He paused in his barrage and stumbled back a step, inviting the hostile to come for him.

The hostile took the bait.

Leading with his right, Coop neatly slotted his claws between those of the hostile’s and twisted his wrist, locking the hostile’s claws between his. The pressure made his wrist ache and his visual display pulse a warning.

Coop grabbed the hostile’s forearm with his lower hand. Shouting with a sound like an infuriated predator, the hostile swung with the other set of claws and Coop managed the same maneuver. Four arms was a definite advantage as Coop pulled the hostile’s arms apart, leaving him open to a skull-cracking headbutt.

Coop’s helmet boasted six horns of the Thornskin lupine arranged in a crown just above brow level. They curved up and in, making their points difficult to use, but the horns weren’t meant to stab. They were thick and tough and knobbly. They were meant to bludgeon. The hostile grunted and staggered, but Coop held him up and hit him again with a snapping strike of his head. And on the third, he heard the man’s helmet crack.

Definitely a C-002. The C-003 had introduced the light-weight, shock-absorbing hide of the Redeye behemoth to reinforce the armor. Coop would have needed at least five headbutts to crack the helmet of a C-003. He released the hostile’s forearms, letting him stagger back. Though the armor covered the hostile head to toe, Coop knew where the vulnerable bits were. In this case, he would aim for the left armpit where the hide was thinnest.

He drew the sword in a practiced motion, taking a step back to make room for the thrust. She vibrated in his hand, a faint song of anticipation. She had no crossguard to keep his hands from sliding onto the blade upon impact, but that sharp, rough, crosshatch grip held tight to the palms of his gauntlets, so at the jar of impact when sword tip met hide armor, he kept his grip and forced the blade through. He knew when the metal touched flesh and pierced it. He knew she tasted blood. He could feel her shivering with delight as the blood soaked into her. He knew when she found the heart, plunging through, for she sang so loud, surely the cadets would hear.

The hostile gurgled and staggered back, but no blood bubbled up his throat to escape his lips. No blood sprayed from his wound. The sword, she was covetous. She would claim it all. The hostile collapsed to his back and Coop let go the sword. He watched the armor fall in upon the shriveling corpse.

His energy slid to 72% and held steady. His armor wasn’t fully healed, but now that he was out of the immediate danger of having absorbed the grenade, if he didn’t move too much the healing could happen passively and take up little energy.

“Why do you carry that thing, Coop?” General Ashpholt grumbled in his ear.

Coop looked down at his sword. “She’s good at what she does.”

“It’s against regulation.”

“You going to try to take her from me?”

General Ashpholt grunted. “Not a second time.”

Coop nodded, retracted his claws, and pulled the sword from the hostile’s torso. She hummed happily to herself. “Any other bad guys in this building, boss?”

“That’s a negative. Get those kids on the roof for evac.”

Coop turned to the kids. “Drop the shield. Everyone on the roof.” He glanced to the corner of his visual display and a mental command showed him a pair of helicopters three minutes out.

The spunky kid handed off the dome shield generator to another kid and stepped to the fore of the group. They crossed their arms, jutted their chin, and planted their feet.

“What if we say no?”

Coop frowned. Not that they could see it through the helmet. “What’s the problem? Weren’t you kidnapped?”

The kid shrugged, then nodded. “We don’t want to go back.”

“Go back where?”

“The institute,” said one of the other kids in a high, whispery voice.

Coop knew the strict upbringing of the UPSF could be tough, but he was surprised to hear they didn’t want to go back. Usually kids joined up as cadets to get out of a bad situation, to serve the greater good.

“You’re runaways,” he said.

The kid in the lead swallowed hard, then nodded.

“And what about these thugs? Did they really kidnap you?”

The lead kid nodded. “We were doing just fine, but these assholes found us and figured out who we were. They demanded a bounty for finding us.”

“Shit.” Coop glanced at his visual display to make sure General Ashpholt wasn’t muted. “You hear this?” he demanded. General Ashpholt didn’t respond. Coop turned away from the kids so they wouldn’t think he was addressing them. “I’m talking to you, asshole. What the fuck is going on?”

General Ashpholt cleared his throat. “Compulsory admission.”

“What the fuck? Since when? We don’t force kids into the army. They can leave anytime they want before full enlistment. Even enlisted can enforce a discharge.”

“Not these kids.”

“Are we conducting slavery now? Child trafficking, is that it?”

“We’ll talk about this at headquarters.”

“No, we’ll talk about it now.” Coop could hear the thwuping roar of helicopters approaching.

“The building is on fire, you idiot. Get those cadets on the roof or they will die.”

Coop grit his teeth and stretched his neck against a building headache. He turned back to the cadets. “No one can make you stay in the army at your age. I understand you’re pissed. That you don’t want to go back. But if you don’t leave with me, you’ll burn to death here.”

The lead kid looked around at the others as though considering it. The kid with the whisper voice shook her head. One of the others shrugged. Another, not the smallest, cried into his hands. The lead kid sighed. They gestured to the one with the dome shield and the shield went down.

Coop went to the door first, sword out, to make sure the way was clear to the roof. He assigned the spunky kid as rear guard. In short order they had arranged themselves into a loose block as the helicopters came in. For all that they didn’t want to go back, their training had been effective. Coop couldn’t remember much before waking up in this body. He didn’t know if he’d been a child cadet, if the training had been rough, if he’d thought of running away.