Mark “Coop” Cooper

Location: North American Eastern Seaboard, Bethesda Naval Hospital, United Commonwealth of Colonies

“Initiate,” Eve’s voice whispered in his ear.

Neither was sure the tight beam laser they were using for comms was secure this close to an enemy position. They knew the enemy’s cyber capabilities were vastly superior, and being cut off from any other Commonwealth forces, they didn’t know if their cyber geeks had discovered any work-arounds.

With a sense of urgency, Coop toggled to his next gen magnetic accelerator and hit the brace button. His right foot was in the air, and a meter-long spiked drill bit shot out right before he stomped down. There was a whine as the drill activated and bit into the earth. A second later a green light appeared on his HUD, indicating he was braced. The cannon hummed as it rotated position, and then came the calm before the storm; a split second where everything was silent before it tore a hole in the world.

Even braced, Coop was rocked back by the force of the blow. Thankfully, he didn’t fall on his ass. The round ignited the air as it drew a line to the target: the administration building the ETs had stolen from the Commonwealth. The round flew so quickly it looked like it detonated simultaneously when fired. Smoke, debris, and bits of alien body parts leapt into the air and came down in a destructive downpour.

Then Eve hit it. Her round came streaming in with its own fiery trail, and smashed into the target. Roars went up from the defenders as they realized they were under attack.

“Shield is still up,” Eve announced. “I’ll try to get through. Hold them off.”

Coop felt his blood sing as he retracted his drill spike and sprinted into the growing dust cloud.

Plan A was to hit the enemies shield cone, take it down, and book it. Their scouting returned no fewer than twenty-four of the aliens in the immediate area; twelve being BAMFs. They were confident their initial strike would take down four, maybe five, but it all depended how many were in the actual building. They’d only seen sentries on the walls, and extrapolated from there.

They still had no idea what the military organizational structure of the enemy was. So far, no one had seen ground forces other than the BAMFs and the little roaches. They hadn’t seen any formations, seen any officer insignia, or even seen ones giving orders to another. The closest thing was when Coop took down the ETs trying to BBQ the small town on his way to Bethesda, and that had only been an BAMF in a shield construct that Coop assumed was some type of commander. He had no way of knowing. Hell, that BAMF could have been taking a human-sized dump, and the command shack could have been a shitter. In the long run it didn’t matter because he’d killed them all, but the amount of intel on the enemy was concerning. You couldn’t defeat them if you didn’t know anything about them.

With Plan A being a bust, Plan B involved an attack on the defenders, the destruction of the shield cone so the battalion could break out of the sauna the hospital was becoming, and they could all beat a hasty retreat toward the mountain fortifications. That all sounded well and good, but Plan B also meant Coop had to hold off all the enemies until Eve could get there to help. She had the shield standing between her and the enemy’s position, and while she’d been able to cut a hole so her super dense, super accelerated round could get through the shield and hit the target, to make a cut big enough to fit her big metal ass through would be much more difficult.

The flecks of the shield buster round forged into their blades made all that possible, but it was going to be slow going. It took time and muscles to make a six-meter hole, and then squeezing through it was a whole different story. It was not the intended purpose of the MOUNT to contort like that, but when you were neck deep in shit you, learned how to doggy paddle or you died.

The cloud swallowed Coop as he sprinted into it, his massive legs carrying him half a dozen meters with each step. It made visibility shit, but if he couldn’t see, then neither could the enemy. Thankfully, his Battle AI was running algorithms to help that.

{On your right.} An outline appeared in his vision. I was one of the roaches, probably on a scouting mission to find out what the hell just brought the hammer of Thor down on their asses.

Coop grinned in his womb as he pointed and clicked with his graviton cannon, turning the roach into roach soup . . . which of course made one of the remaining BAMFs go ape-shit. Coop moved away and laid an ambush, ejecting one of his corrupted missiles to use as a high-powered grenade.

The BAMF walked right into his kill zone. The cloud exploded outward as the three-meter monster skidded to a stop at the fallen roach. It seemed to wail in sorrow and agony at the sight of its fallen kin, and then Coop hit it in the face with a fastball. He pulsed a data transmission at the missile at just the right moment so it exploded in the ugly fucker’s face. It didn’t break through the BAMFs shield, but it succeeded in stunning it, and knocking it on its ass. That let Coop jump into the fray, cannon blazing, and pounding it while it tried to get up.

The third ball of hyper-dense gravity knocked out the shield, the fourth punched into its chest, making a concave portion of its armor break bones and god knew what else in the alien’s biology. The fifth hit the thing’s head hard enough to kill it, but just to be sure, Coop put another round into its chest. He was going to triple-tap it to make sure the thing was dead. The last thing he needed was it getting back up and . . .

Something big and heavy hit him from behind. He was knocked down onto his face, and instinctively rolled. Thankfully he did, because a one of those big-ass knives drove pommel deep into the ground where he’d been. As the BAMF that had ambushed him tried to retrieve its blade, Coop just punched the ET in the head. Apparently, it hadn’t been prepared for that, and got propelled into the air. Coop got to his feet, reached down, and yanked the ET’s knife out of the ground.

“I’m going to kill you with your own knife, asshole,” he taunted, although, the way the ET just looked at him, it was clear it didn’t speak English. It did however, not like its shit stolen, so it charged him.

Blade in one hand, and cannon in the other, Coop shot it down as it approached. He knocked out the shield and shattered a leg, so it was easy to grab the thing by the head and slit its throat; fulfilling the promise he’d made to it.

“ETA?” Coop asked as he slinked back into the debris. The enemy would send out more scouts and know it had a fight on its hands. If they had any indirect fire, or orbital bombardment options, he wanted to be somewhere else.

“Almost there,” Eve’s voice sounded strained.

“That’s what she said,” Coop joked as he rounded a corner, and his shield sizzled as a bream of white light punched into it. “Fuck!” he threw himself back behind the cover of the buildings, which didn’t last long under the beam’s assault.

He replayed the sensors and caught sight of two BAMFS walking down the boulevard toward him. He told himself as he laid out his options. he toggled to the accelerator.

It took five seconds to get everything set and power up. that would make him too big of a target. He just hoped he didn’t break anything. He jumped out into the intersection, lined up the shot, and fired.

The back blast shot him into a nearby building, completely destroying the small shopping center, but it was better than one of the BAMFs, who basically exploded on impact when hit with the shell. Its shield didn’t do shit.

he mentally patted himself on the back as he extracted himself from the ruins. He scanned the battlefield. the other BAMF was nowhere in sight. Leading with his grav-cannon, he advanced toward its last known position.

“Come out come out wherever you are,” he did his best impression of a serial killer on the prowl.

In response, a beamer engaged from his right, smacking into one of his directional shields. Its power level dropped precipitously before he was able to get out of the way and put two graviton shots into the location. He rolled out of the dive, and fired as quickly as he could as he advanced on the target. Afterall, that’s what you did when ambushed: fight through it.

The beamer fire died out, and Coop smashed through the building the enemy was inhabiting. A final graviton shot pounded the two-story building before he burst in with the ET knife ready to skewer him some BAMF. Only problem was there was nothing there. Just the shattered remains of a beamer.

“What the fuck?” Coop backed out of the store and scanned the area. He saw movement a moment too late, and the BAMF slide in under him and jabbed upward. Its blade hit Coop’s already depleted shield, and punched through with minimal resistance. His armor held a little longer, but the blade was able to punch through and hit something vital.

Red warning icons flashed in Coop’s vision.

{Power conduits to graviton cannon severed,} the AI informed. {Dispatching repair bots.}

Coop grimaced as he turned to face the BAMF.

Instead of worrying about how the enemy had lured him to the store with a decoy, weakened his shields, and then stabbed him at just the right angle to do the most damage in a quick strike, Coop detached his portable shield and faced the enemy with blade laying against the top. Slowly, he advanced.

he grumbled as he moved forward.

His plan was to get in close where the BAMF couldn’t maneuver. If it could maneuver, it could dodge, dip, duck, and dive around like a fucking ballerina. This wasn’t a time to extend and slash like he was using a rapier. It was time to get in close while jabbing and stabbing like he was armed with a gladius.

He stomped closer to the BAMF, angling toward it with his shield to try and box it in. The BAMF looked at the blade of its fallen friend in Coop’s hand, and Coop was sure it was growling, clucking, cackling, and snorting in whatever passed for being pissed off with these aliens. It lashed out with renewed vigor, and it was fast. Coop caught them all on his shield, and then using it as cover, jabbed forward. The BAMF dodged around it, trying to counter, but Coop withdrew and had his shield back in place. He continued to force the BAMF back towards the buildings. They were blocks over from the target structure, but that didn’t matter. He had to deal with this threat before they could take the shield down.

he could hope, as he continued to push forward.

The BAMF tried to get around him, but he cut it off and reoriented, continuing to push it back. His shield sparked and sizzled as the BAMF furiously counterattacked, but his shield stayed strong, and Coop bought it time to recover by jabbing at the big alien, forcing it back until its back was to a wall.

Coop pushed forward with his shield, trying to smash it against the wall so he could run it through, but the BAMF had other plans.

As Coop tried to slam it against the wall, it leapt up, used its two longer arms for leverage to push back on the shield. Coop’s push actually gave it the momentum it needed to spring up and onto the roof of the building he’s been trying to pin it against.

“Son of a . . .” Coop growled, just before the BAMF jumped down on top of him.