Mark “Coop” Cooper

Location: Outside Savannah City, New Savannah System, United Commonwealth of Colonies

Coop had to fight with all his willpower not to reach back and yank out whatever was crawling into his crack.

He was in his CMU’s, not LACS, so the action was possible. However, if he’d been in LACS in the first place this wouldn’t be a problem. Sometimes he just didn’t understand what the officers and senior NCOs were thinking when they developed the training schedule.

{You ok over there?} A message appeared in Coop’s vision. He swiped his eyes left to clear the text, and started a reply.

{No. Why the fuck are we doing this? I’m HI, not some snake-eater, Force Recon, scout sniper. My job is to close with and destroy the enemy, not fuck around at a few thousand meters.} With a thought the message went off to its intended recipient…Eve.

{Maintain communications discipline.} A third and final message appeared from GYSGT Cunningham, and that ended the impromptu conversation.

It might have seemed like the mundane back and forth of grunts, but it was anything but. First, Coop and the rest of the SRRT team weren’t wearing any comms gear. They had on standard helmets to protect their head, but their HUDs weren’t active. This had been the first time since being brought out of their medically-induced comas that the team had used the Individualized Organic Router feature in a combat simulation. They’d only sent messages so far, but that only scratched the surface of what the IORs were capable of. The SRRT members just weren’t quite ready to be in each other’s heads just yet.

In fitting military fashion, their inaugural use had been one soldier bitching to another. It was a time-honored tradition from Alexander the Great to the great Mark Cooper. So far, the gear worked as advertised.

Not that Coop was happy about what they were doing at the moment. Just because he could communicate basically just by thinking at Eve didn’t make their training iteration any less shitty. It had all started out much better. After being brought out of their comas, and given a full day’s worth of medical poking and prodding, the SGM had them in the briefing room for their next training iteration.

“We’re doing a sniper stalk.” The team’s senior NCO’s words elicited a wide variety of reactions. Coop wondered what the hell that meant, while Eve perked up.

When push came to shove, Coop had enjoyed the first part of the training. They’d jumped out of a Spyder at five thousand meters and glided nearly twenty kilometers to their AO. Unlike everything else the team had done so far on New Savannah, this training was happening in one of the planet’s many tropical forests. Coop thought the change of pace would be nice from urban operations, and he’d been proven wrong within ten minutes of getting his boots on the ground.

He’d grown up in a cooler climate and didn’t have the best grasp on what a hot and damp place could do for the proliferation of insect populations. Today, he was learning that the hard way as the team’s first mission was to hump fifteen more klicks through the thick underbrush. Coop thought that had been hell, but then the real stalk began.

Their targets were life-like androids that were walking a predetermined perimeter at the objective. They were cheap, expendable, and best of all meant the SRRT team got to use live ammo. Along with the mechanical men were a cadre of system defense force and Commonwealth officers whose sole purpose in life was to identify the approaching snipers. Coop thought he’d be able to get to a good firing position in twenty minutes, take the shot, and be out of there in time for evening chow. He couldn’t have been more wrong.

They’d started the slow crawl to their selected firing positions two hours ago, and Coop had gone a grand total of seventy-five meters. He thought that was agonizingly slow, but according to the info he was getting from his IOR, he was the farthest forward member of his team.

Coop couldn’t take it anymore. As slowly as he could, he reached behind himself and gave his ass the best scratch of his short life. He felt stuff squish, and as much as the feel of dead bugs in his ass made him shiver, it was infinitely better than live bugs.

{Settle down, Cooper. I can see the vegetation moving around you.} The GYSGT was twenty meters behind him and fifty to the right. He wasn’t sure what firing position she was heading toward, but he was pretty sure he had the best one.

Fifty meters ahead there was a slight berm that would be a perfect place to position his rifle. Coop was grouped and zeroed on the weapon at fifteen hundred meters, but with a maximum range of four times that, all it proved was he could hit something at spitting distance. If Coop was honest with himself, he didn’t feel comfortable at anything more than eighteen hundred meters. His selected firing position got him to eighteen hundred fifty, and that would just have to do.

Slowly, he removed his hand from his ass and continued forward. He snaked forward an arm and pushed off with the opposite leg. As best he could, he avoided the giant mushroom plants that seemed to be popular in this section of the rain forest, and finished the movement. He’d gone maybe another half meter.

He heard the crunch of approaching boots and froze. The officers near the target location were keeping their eyes peeled, and would radio the walkers to check out suspected movement. If a walker stopped within three meters of him it was an automatic fail. If he shot at the target and missed, it was a fail. If he shot and hit the target, but his location was identified, it was a fail. To Coop, it seemed like a lot of ways to fail an exercise that could easily be accomplished with a well-coordinated indirect fire mission.

“Here?” The walker was close. Too close for comfort. “Negative. No sniper within three meters.”

If Coop had to guess, he was maybe eight meters from the walker.

{Slow down, Coop. Sit there for a few minutes before moving again, and break off at an angle. Pick a new firing position and adapt.} Eve sent his way. She was almost two hundred meters away, but the transmitter in his brain made it feel like she was right there with him. It was a little weird.

Slowing down was easier said than done. He remained motionless for about three minutes before some other critter from hell worked its way across his skin and started its way toward someplace warm where the sun didn’t shine. Either it was going to take up the mantle of burrowing to lay eggs, or it was going to eat whatever Coop had already killed. Either way, Coop lost.

It had only been a little over two hours, but Coop already knew he hated sniping. If it came down to this in the real world it would be an urban op, and he’d be a spotter. Eve and the GYSGT were better shots anyway. Coop was cool with pulling close security and relaying instrument readings to one of the women.

he repeated the manta to himself as he finally reached his firing position over an hour later. He knew he’d rushed it, but at this point he didn’t give a shit.

Slowly, or as slowly as someone who saw the light at the end of the tunnel could, Coop pulled the rifle from beneath him. He’d been crawling with it underneath him the whole way, but surprisingly it wasn’t disgustingly dirty. He cautiously brought it up to rest on the slight berm. He made sure the muzzle was clear, but left the mud on the barrel. Any camouflage he could manage was worth it.

With the high-tech Truthfinder scope bolted to the top of the rifle, Coop had more information at his fingertips than any other sniper in the history of warfare. He thought that would make the job easier, but Eve, the GYSGT, and the SGM had all told him that was bullshit. The tech only helped so much. Being a sniper was still an art. Personally, Coop thought it was bullshit, and the Rangers didn’t want one of their group’s specialties being usurped by lowly HI grunts.

Coop looked through the scope and got a good site picture.

The mission specified what target was assigned to what sniper, so Coop had to scan the area for his target. The androids were vaguely humanoid, but even from eighteen hundred and fifty meters he could make out the grooves and rivets of their design. Each one was color coded, and after a few minutes he spotted the one painted bright blue.

He didn’t engage right away. It was a moving target, which automatically made it harder to hit, and Coop wanted to map its patrol route first to see if it made any deviations. If the exercise’s planners wanted to make it a pain in the ass, they’d have it doing random routes and movements. Thankfully, whoever planned this out wasn’t a giant ass.

For ten minutes the android walked the same path, and Coop felt comfortable starting to set up his shot. While it walked the same route over and over again, Coop only saw a few times when he could reliably take the long shot. There were still trees and other androids that it crossed paths with, and he was sure shooting a different target was another way to fail.

{Alpha Four in position.} Coop sent once he was confident he could take the shot and hit the target.

{That was quick, Alpha Four,} the SGM responded. The senior NCO was doing his own stalk and was half a kilometer away and over two hundred meters behind Coop’s position. That was taking slow and steady to a whole new level. {Remember to check your externals, proper position, good trigger control, and proper breathing.}

The pointers had been drilled into Coop for the length of the training exercise and he was sick of hearing them. {Roger that.} He glassed the area one last time looking for anything out of the ordinary before settling in. His universe became a small square on his scope.

The Truthfinder was truly awesome. As Coop sighted where he was going to take the shot, the scope analyzed temperature, air density, and humidity for various terrain features along the bullets flight path. All of that data was uploaded and calculated into the firing solution. If it had been a farther shot, the curvature of the planet would be added to the calculation.

Coop scoffed as he focused on his breathing.

From his previous observations, he had a five second window to take the shot. He was tempted to hit the rangefinder once more to verify the distance, but each time he used it was one more chance the spotters had to lock onto his position. The Truthfinder’s signals were supposed to be top notch, but the universe had a way of fucking with people when they least expected it. It had been eighteen hundred and fifty two meters before, and he needed to trust it to be the same again.

{Alpha Four preparing to fire.} He sent the last message to the SGM and GYSGT. If they were going to wave him off now was their last chance. They remained silent.

Finally, the android took a ninety degree turn along its patrol path and started to climb the small embankment. Its entire back was exposed to Coop, and this was the best time to take the shot. He breathed in…held it for a second…and…SNAP! The rifle had virtually no recoil, but Coop held it deathly still, like his life depended on it.

It was three of the longest seconds of his life before, {Hit. Lower back.} The SGM relayed the data being transmitted to him from the spotters and the android’s sensors.

The lower back surprised Coop. He’d been aiming for center of mass, and at less than nineteen hundred meters that was a big distance between what he was aiming for and what he hit.

Coop knew taking the shot was only the first part of the mission.

He heard the crunching of boots and his heart fell. The walker was heading straight for him. Coop could only hope the man stopped more than three meters away. That hope was quickly dashed when the walker stopped nearly on top of Coop.

“Bingo!” The guy said, and Coop knew he’d failed.

“Fuck,” Coop hissed as he got to his feet.

{Alpha Four. Return to the LOD and start again.} The SGM sent Coop’s way as his icon continued to inch forward.

“What?” Coop said out loud. The line of departure for the mission wasn’t where they’d started the stalk a few hundred meters back. It was kilometers back. “You’ve got to be shitting me!”

{You heard the Sergeant Major, Cooper. Get your ass moving or you’ll be doing your stalk in the middle of the night while the rest of us enjoy some hot chow.} Coop couldn’t infer tone from the text blinking in front of his eyes, but he was sure the GYSGT wasn’t in any mood to put up with his shit.

{You should have slowed down.} Eve sent her condolences as Coop shouldered his rifle and started heading back.

Coop hoped Hailey would call him with some information soon. He was sick of the jungle warfare, sniper shit. He wanted to kick down doors and kick some ass. The New Savannah Liberation Front surfacing was the best chance for him to do that.