Mark “Coop” Cooper

Location: CWS Argo, System 1861, United Commonwealth of Colonies

“Anything yet, XO?” Ben was sitting in his command chair anxiously tapping his fingers against the armrest.

Everyone else on the bridge was busy at work analyzing the data sent in by the drones, or running Argo. Currently, the gunboat was decelerating toward the planet it was going to orbit around while the drones scanned the locations.

Coop watched all through the helmet sensors in his LACS. He was standing guard with another PVT. It was standard operating procedure to have a marine guard stationed at the hatch to the bridge when in enemy territory or even unknown space. Some skippers had the marines on guard twenty-four-seven no matter where they were. Thankfully, Ben didn’t have that big of a stick up his ass, but he’d still requested Coop to be on guard detail once the ship starting heading into the system after transition.

Coop adjusted his view and magnified. The XO was currently bending over something and…

The way the other PVT chuckled showed that he was enjoying the same sight. There really wasn’t much else to do on a small gunboat out in the middle of nowhere. VR porn only got you so far.

“Contact.” The XO’s curt alert dramatically changed the atmosphere on the bridge. A ripple of tension rolled outward from her.

Coop couldn’t blame them. They’d fought pirates once before and won the traditional battle, but they’d lost the war. They lost their captain, several marines, and then got benched for months because of it. It was in every spacers’ best interest to do well on this mission or their negative evaluation reports would follow them through the rest of their careers.

“What do you have?” Ben looked cool and collected – like a leader was supposed to – but Coop saw the change. The most telltale sign was that he’d stopped drumming his fingers annoyingly against the seat.

“I’ve got faint radiation readings coming from location alpha.” She made a swiping motion and the information traveled to the skipper’s display. “They’re still falling, but you can see there is an undertone of EM and even some basic radio waves.”

Coop zoomed in on the data from his post. He didn’t understand most of it, but there was a chart with numbers and shit on it. All the HI trooper needed to know was that there was a line with a zero. If there was no one home then the various signals Argo’s scanners were set to detect would come back with jack squat. Instead, the lines were elevated and fluctuating. Like the XO said, they were going down, but Coop knew what that meant.

The same thing happened back in the PHA. The Rats didn’t need any fancy equipment to pass the word that the cops were coming to do a welfare and contraband check. Lockouts passed the word when they saw the po-po blocks away and everyone sprang into action. Even the geriatric old bastards did their part. The black market goods sold in plain view in the lobby were packed away into secret compartments throughout the tower. That’s what Coop was seeing here. He was seeing the local black market trying to shut itself down real quick when they knew the cops were coming.

Coop had trouble thinking of himself as a sort-of-cop, but as long as he didn’t get the short end of the stick he really didn’t give a shit. He might even be able to use this to his advantage.

The various gangs and even tower complexes sometimes had a few cops on the payroll. As Rats they didn’t have much, but they could scrounge up a few bucks, some recreational narcotics, or even a fine woman for the cops to look the other way on something that would otherwise get a Rat busted. That was the life Hailey had been looking at before Coop took her as his own.

It had been the first time Coop thought about his old fuckbuddy in a long time. It felt like another life, because it was another life.

Anything that happened before Basic belonged to weak-ass Coop’s life. Now, he was HI trooper Coop, the biggest baddest motherfucker in this system.

He shook his head and cleared it of the vision of the amber-eyed girl from his past and focused on the present. Being the cop in this situation might be a good thing after all.

“They’re trying to power down, but they’ll fire back up the moment they know we’re onto them.” The XO was still clicking away at her terminal. “I suggest we set this course.” A dotted line appeared in the holo-tank in front of the Skipper.

“Good thinking.” Ben mused for a second, but made a few tweaks. “We’ll use the planet to block our signature while we power up for a slingshot maneuver. We’ll use the planet’s gravity to cover the ground between it and the asteroid in half the time.”

Half the time still constituted seventy-three minutes, but that was the nature of space. It was really fucking big.

“When we’re within a light minute I want an active scan of that rock. Let’s give the marines something to work with.”

No soldier liked to go into an op blind like this, and some planning was better than no planning at all.

What they did know off the bat was what was in the files when the Commonwealth was hollowing out the big rock to begin with. The design was pretty simple. There was a bay in the front that acted as a buffer to space and a place to dock supply ships when they came in the grab the stored supplies. Behind that was a central cavern with the bulk of the supplies. Smaller nooks and crannies would be drilled for more sensitive items like weapons and ammo, and secured according to regulations. A vault door really wouldn’t do much to stop a determined thief, but it would at least slow them down.

This particular asteroid was a hair over two kilometers long and three quarters of a kilometer wide. It fell somewhere in between a weirdly shaped battleship or assault carrier. Having been on the latter, Coop knew that meant there was a lot of empty space in there for people to be hiding shit that went boom.

The minutes droned on and on as Argo executed the slingshot around the planet. Coop felt the floor rumbled a little when the little gunboat hit the appropriate coordinates and the engines went to a hundred percent thrust. The compensators handled it perfectly and they didn’t get liquefied as they used the planet’s gravity to increase their speed and fling them toward their ultimate target.

About five minutes after exiting the planet’s dark side on their new course they saw the pirates respond.

“They’re coming back online.” The XO informed as the sensors started to pick up a lot more activity. “Targeting radar is painting us!”

The crew had been at battlestations since they initiated the slingshot, but Ben still hit the button and red lights started to flash along with a claxon’s wail.

“Defensive measures only, guns.” Ben ordered.

“Aye, Sir. Playing defense only.” The older CPO at the weapons consul acknowledged.

“Missile launch! I’m reading two bogeys coming at us at zero-one-zero and three-five-zero. They’re…”

Coop felt his sphincter tighten when the CPO didn’t say anything for a moment.

“They’re…barely holding together.” The senior NCO tried hard not to laugh. “I could knock these out of space with a wet fart.”

“See to it, Chief.” Ben was smiling as Argo continued on its course.

That smile disappeared when both missiles prematurely detonated twenty-thousand kilometers away.

“Radiological alarm!” A new blaring rang through the ship. “ES armor engaged.”

“Idiots.” Ben shook his head as Argo continued on its heading. “Who the hell uses thermonuclear warheads anymore?”

Coop had a guess. No one used thermonuclear anymore because they were dirty, and a nuclear blast didn’t pack as much punch in space as it did on a planet. No one used them on planets anymore because of the dirty part. They had antimatter bombs now. They were just as powerful if not more, and there was none of the follow-on cleanup.

Coop watched through his sensors as Argo monitored to two new suns that were burning brightly in space before them.

The shockwave of the two blasts ratted Argo for a second, but they powered through it. There hadn’t been any chance that was going to hurt the gunboat. The Commonwealth built them sturdy.

As expected, sensor readings coming from the asteroid were shit until all the radiological material from the blast dispersed into space, and then Coop’s assumption became reality.

“Jailbreak!” The XO frowned at her terminal as the information updated on the holo-tank.

The holo-tank cleared and Argo started picking up a dozen ships hauling ass away from the asteroid. Coop couldn’t help but be impressed. The tactics might be on a bigger scale, but he’d seen this done before. When Rats in the PHA didn’t get word early enough of a raid, or they couldn’t bribe the cops, they initiated a distraction. Usually it was something small like a fire, but full on riots had started as a result of a housing block not wanting to get their shit searched.

Coop couldn’t help but respect the people on that rock he was going to kill, but more importantly, he couldn’t help but give himself a pat on the back. He’d seen this coming when the professional spacers hadn’t.

“Damn.” Ben had a sour look on his face, but everyone knew there was nothing they could do.

Dozens of ships were bugging out in different directions. There was no way Argo could catch more than one or two of them with her superior engines. Ben had to make a choice, and Coop thought it was a pretty easy one.

“Re-direct the drones and get as much data as you can on those ships. I want emission signatures, engine IDs, and profiles. If you can give me a visual of the ship I want a Polaroid picture of the hull number stamped into the stern. I want the Fleet to be able to track these guys down in the next few weeks.”

“Yes, Sir!” The crew could tell their captain was irritated.

Seventy minutes became an hour and then forty-five minutes. As the time wore down and the remnants of the distraction faded from their sensors Argo got a much better read on the station.

“I’m reading multiple generator sources with conduits to the surface. It could be environmental or weaponry.”

“Institute minimum evasive actions. What is our new ETA?” Ben made a decision.

“Sixty-one minutes.” The XO pushed several buttons, but Coop didn’t feel any change in the ship.

“How long until we’re close enough to do a scan for lifeforms?”

“Forty minutes, Sir.”

Ben rubbed his chin as he evaluated the data. “Sergeant O’Neil, I need a deployment plan for your people.” He called out to one of the few marines on the bridge. “Cooper, get in here.”

“Moving, Sir.” Coop held back his smile. He was starting to like being in the loop while all the other grunts sat around twiddling their thumbs and waiting for orders.

The holo-tank split in two and a 3-D picture of the asteroid popped into existence complete with all the data they had on it. Coop thought it looked like a giant bean. Stuff was highlighted on the surface, but his focus was on the front door.

“These things are designed to only have one way in and one way out.” The ship’s marine detachment SGT poured over the information. “The only way in is through the front.”

“We could make another way.” Coop’s mouth got the best of him.

Both the SGT and Ben turned to look at him.

“What I mean is…”

“No, I get your meaning, Cooper.” The SGT gave him an ‘it’s ok’ look. “We could make a hole in the asteroid for a second entry point, but that involves a lot of risk to Argo and the asteroid. We aren’t a battleship that can take a lot of hits. We’re designed to be fast and avoid getting hit, so sitting and firing at a target to make a hole isn’t what we were built for. Plus, if we go too far we could crack the asteroid in half and kill everyone, or not go far enough, and our team would be trapped and useless on the surface. Do you want to do a two-klick hike on the surface of an asteroid during a battle?”

“No, Sergeant,” Coop replied just as they felt the ship shudder.

“Enemy has engaged.” The CPO informed. “They’ve got three energy cannons that were camouflaged on the surface in the two-hundred-terawatt range, but their fire control sucks. I’ll take them out when we get closer and have a better firing solution.”

The CPO spoke casually as Argo flew into a storm of energy blasts that would erase Coop from existence like he’d never even been there in the first place. He wanted to be able to see bullets coming his way and make his own decisions on how he lived or died.

“The hangar bay it is.” Ben nodded and the SGT concurred.

was Coop’s thought on the topic, but people above his pay grade had already made a decision. It was his job to do or die, and he did not intend on dying on some worthless rock in the middle of nowhere. He was going to send those poor pirate bastards to meet the reaper.

“Go lock and load, Cooper. Mission briefing in ten.” The SGT dismissed him, and he quickly obeyed.

He went back to see the armorer. He saw Lee at a corner intersection. She was busy doing engineer shit, but she shot him a smile and a wink. The meaning couldn’t have been clearer. It said come on back to me and I’ll show you one hell of a good time. He intended to do just that.

He knew the drill with the armorer. The gunboat was pretty damn new because there wasn’t even dust on the auto-loader for the LACS. Coop watched as the numbers ticked up as he got a full combat load for the first time in his career. No non-lethal or anti-riot crap. This was a true-blue combat load.

He practically salivated over thousands of 3mm plasma-tipped rounds for his Buss. The bullets would hit with the punch of a heavy weapon and ignite the plasma for a big, satisfying boom that would turn the target into mush. That was on top of a fully loaded 40mm grenade tube with extra rounds in his armored compartments ranging from buckshot to high explosive. Those would finish anything the plasma rounds couldn’t. He had his eight hypervelocity missiles in the launcher and a railgun fully packed with fifteen thousand rounds. Lastly, he had his 125mm spine-mounted artillery tube. He got his twelve thermobaric, ten kinetic HE penetrators, ten anti-personnel, and five electronic warfare shells, but they refused to give him the one-kiloton antimatter round. Since setting that thing off inside the asteroid would kill everyone and break the big rock into several much smaller rocks, Coop couldn’t really hold it against them. He took another anti-personnel round instead.

By the time the pirate’s asteroid base came within a couple of light-seconds of Argo’s sensors Coop was cocked locked and ready to fuck some shit up, and judging by the data streaming in, the enemy was ready to dance.