Mark “Coop” Cooper

Location: Alamo, Lone Star System, United Commonwealth of Colonies

“Da . . . Da,” Coop said the two syllables slowly and intently. “Da . . . da,” he repeated, when he was met by nothing but silence.

He stared into a pair of stubborn blue eyes, so like Eve’s, and frowned. His face’s transformation from intense to frustrated elicited a giggle, which only made his frown deepen.

“You can’t say my name, but it’s funny when you piss me off,” he stood and towered over the baby in its little playpen.

Emily giggled again and clapped her chubby, baby hands. Her face was full of joy, even though it still had that baby chub and hadn’t filled out to look like a unique person yet. This was only the second time he’d seen her since birth, so she still looked completely different to him. Despite having only existed for less than a year, so looked vital, healthy, and happy.

Eve and him had tried to give their daughter every advantage possible; that way, she didn’t have to join the military to get the same enhancements they had.

“You’re never going to have to fight anyone, baby girl,” his face softened as he went to scoop her up out of her pen. She was walking, but she stumbled around like a drunken spacer most of the time. Eve assured him that was ok, but he’d never really gotten to hold her much, so her took the opportunities he could get. “Dada is going to kill anyone that looks at you sideways. Isn’t that right?”

He launched a tickles attack, and her laugh made him smile. It was infectious, but so was the smell coming from her. Coop had been around a lot of charred corpses, but somehow, his daughter’s voiding her bowels was so much worse.

“Okay, you can do this,” he psyched himself up, and wished he could use his IOR to shut down his olfactory senses. “Damn girl,” he gagged, and tasted shit in the back of his throat.

Emily just sat there and giggled like they were playing peek-a-boo. Coop knew there were all kinds of devices a person could use to take care of a baby in the twenty-fifth century; especially now that there were AI’s you could purchase and load into an android to play nanny. Eve didn’t want any of those, and honestly, neither did Coop. At least, not when the baby first got here. After changing the first toxic poop, which the Commonwealth could use as a bioweapon against its enemies, he was reconsidering his stance.

A beep in his brain announced an incoming call, just as he was buttoning Emily up. It wasn’t Eve, so he ignored it. He was on leave, and he didn’t know, or care, what was going on back with the training battalion. The beeping stopped as he lifted his little princess down from the changing table, and let her wabble down the apartment’s hallway toward her horde of toys. All of the stuff made a literal mountain a dragon would be jealous of. Grandma couldn’t be here, so she was spoiling Emily from afar; and she had the money to do it.

The beep sounded in his head again. This time louder. this time, he just cut the call short.

Once he did that, his brain started blowing up with incoming information. He stumbled from the influx of data, and this time answered the incoming call. He didn’t know the man on the other end, but the rank insignia that blazed over the face that overlaid itself across his vision told Coop he needed to shut up and pay attention.

“Chief,” the Commander stated.

“Sir,” Coop saw the man had fleet insignia on his chest, and the name of a ship he didn’t recognize.

The conversation was brief, but it fucked up Coop’s life. The fleet had a way of doing that. As he stood there, Emily wandered off and got into some trouble. As he cut the connection, she let out a shriek. Paralyzing fear shot through Coop as he rushed into the main living area. He found his wayward daughter, giggling, and buried in a pile of stuffed animals.

Eve took that moment to walk in with a hover-cart full of groceries. She took one look at the scene of destruction and rolled her eyes; then she saw Coop’s face.

“What?” she asked, but he could already see her changing plans from having that romantic dinner they’d been hoping for.

He told her, and she shrugged. “Come back alive,” were her parting words as he rushed out the door. He made sure to kiss his daughter before he left.

***

Benjamin Gold

Location: CCIWS Stakeholder’s Views, Contested System, Unaligned Space

“Missile launch,” Tactical’s voice was professional, but tinged with surprise.

Ben’s own eyebrows shot up, but he kept his mouth shut. he reasoned, as eighteen scarlet icons lit up the holo-tank at eight million kilometers. That was double what a small ship like Red Tides was capably of a few years ago.

“Acceleration is . . . impressive,” tactical’s voice evaluated the new missile design.

Ben saw it for what it really was.

Like any competent spacer, he’d studied the Battle for Sol in great detail. He’d watched the tactical scans available, double and triple checked the doctrine used, and come to the same conclusion he thought the rest of the naval community had: the missile was no longer the primary weapon system.

Sure, it was important to have range, and be able to reach out and touch, or intimidate, an opponent; but the age of throwing thousands of expensive missiles back and forth across space had ended. It was ineffective and a waste of resources. Energy weapons were the future.

It seemed the Commonwealth weapon’s designers were clinging to the past instead of accepting the future. There was just no way you could put enough punch in a missiles warhead to overcome a ship’s shields. You needed to get up close and dirty in a spaceborne knife fight.

“Twenty seconds,” tactical stated as the red icons went through their burn phases. As they hit their final burn sequence, it was like someone lit a fire under their ass.

“EW online,” the EW officer announced, and Ben saw a good half of the incoming lose their targeting lock.

“Countermissiles away,” the gunnery chief stated, as A1 spit out their four, and only, countermissiles for this exchange. “Point defense online and tracking.”

As the missiles grew closer, powerful lasers struck out from A1’s hull and burned them into chunks of molten nothing. Of the eighteen fired, only one made it through to detonate, and that ended up being a good thing. A powerful laser blast wasted itself against A1’s frontal shields, but it provided invaluable data on the new Commonwealth ordinance.

“Damn,” the Gunnery chief whistled as A1 broke through the distortion of the bomb-pumped laser.

The blast hadn’t even scratched the destroyer’s paint, but the energy that struck their shields was above their expectations. A dozen of those things detonating against a shield would require some recalculation.

That was part of being a modern-day captain; not only did the regular running and fighting of the ship fall under his preview, but last second calculations and changes of shield distribution could be the difference between life and death.

“Your orders, sir,” the bridge crew turned to him expectantly.

They were still a few million kilometers out of their own effective missile range, and even then, they would have to draw much closer to use their primary weapons systems. The overpowered lasers were effective about a million kilometers out, but three seconds was a lot of time to engage evasive maneuvers. It was really under half a million where they could do real damage.

“We’ll give them a double volley at maximum range, let’s get a good read on their shields,” he ordered, and everyone went to work crunch data to find the best firing solutions. He just hoped one of his missiles would get through.

The Collies didn’t follow up with another missiles launch until several million kilometers later. They’d gotten the sensor data they wanted from the first volley, just as Ben was planned to do. So far, there was no reason to think Red Tides skipper wasn’t competent.

he still couldn’t believe the other captain was willing to fight it out over something so stupid.

“Missiles away,” this time red and blue icons danced across the holo-tank and passed midway between the two warships. There were a lot more red than blue.

This round, A1 put out several volleys of counter missiles in the outer engagement envelop; then, all power went to the lasers. Compared to the hellfire raining down in space, it was positively quiet in the warship.

“Increase power to forward shield’s by twenty percent,” he ordered when he saw the Commonwealth missiles surging toward them.

It only took a second to make the transfer, the systems had been designed for it after all, and he was glad he did. The Collies had fired a triple volley; fifty-four missiles. Their fire control had to be taxed to the breaking point; it was only a destroyer. That, or they were letting them make their attack runs on automatic. Possibilities whirled through Ben’s head as more bomb pumped lasers started to go off.

This time, A1 shuddered under multiple blows; but none got through. The point defense lasers trimmed the incoming missiles like hedges and made it so the only ones that arrived to explode in the destroyer’s face were angled toward the enhanced frontal shields. It was new fleet combat 101, and Ben had used it to survive an exchange that might very well have crippled an older ship.

Of course, his own eight missiles didn’t do much against Red Tides, but as data came streaming back, he had a better idea what he was up against.