Mark “Coop” Cooper

Location: Unnamed Planet, Contested System, Unaligned Space

The Confeds had a fire team caught in a crossfire. Coop didn’t know how the team leader walked into that one, and it really didn’t matter. All that did matter was that one grunt was dead, another injured, and the rest were huddled under a dwindling shield that was going to give out at any second.

he grunted as he looked over his options.

Per the LT’s request, he couldn’t just blow the enemy to hell. They’d set up on top of one of the compound’s buildings. That told him a lot about the enemy’s stealth gear; namely, it was better than the Commonwealth’s.

he growled.

The LT had drones out, Spyders were flying overhead, and the most obvious place to look for an ambush was on top of the roof where a bunch of marines could fire at you in defilade. All of those eyes on that space, and they still didn’t spot the trap. That said a lot about the enemy.

Still, and it was a long shot, but the fire team leader might just suck. Coop had been with enough units, and fought enough battles, that he knew some officers, NCOs, and grunts just sucked at their jobs. Hell, Murphy could have set up this whole situation. Coop could see it now. The LT thought the Spyders had cleared the area. The Spyders thought the LT had it covered, and the team leader was a CPL who just put on his second chevron. Coop knew firsthand that more and more of the squad-level NCOs were as fresh as a never-been-kissed version. It was likely someone who’d never been in the shit would miss something like that.

It was Coop’s job to unfuck them without leveling the building and taking out all the nice marines and possible civilians that would make up their human shield once shit went sideways. He didn’t have some brilliant idea of how to neutralize the Confed marines while keeping everyone all safe and cozy. He just walked out into the crossfire, and used his bulk to shield the beleaguered fireteam.

“Move!” he snapped at the CPL when they didn’t immediately seek better cover. “Do you need me to call you a cab?” he shook his head inside the metal war machine, and turned to the Confeds.

He had to give credit where credit was due. The guys and gals that broke away from the Commonwealth had balls; big, heavy balls. The building only came up to my MOUNT’s shoulders, so he was literally looking down at them. If anything, they took advantage of that. Heavy rounds started to punch into the shield right in front of his face.

he grinned.

So far, they hadn’t encountered many heavy weapons. It made sense to hold them in reserve for some final defensive position, but the enemy commander obviously wanted to try and take an enemy MOUNT out of the fight. The problem was, there was no way a heavy machine gun, energy or projectile, was going to scratch a MOUNT’s paint. There had to be more to it.

Thankfully, he was already on high alert, when the AI beeped a warning. The alert was something he’d custom programmed into the armor based on his experience. If this was a fresh pilot, and not a season veteran, they’d get a chance to see if the rocket moving at supersonic rates actually had a chance at penetrating the MOUNT’s shield and armor.

systems designed to control a MOUNT’s flight path during an orbital drop – yeah, you could drop one of these babies from a starship in orbit with all the shield capacity they had – fired and propelled Coop out of the way.

At the same time, EW systems started blaring to confuse the incoming ordinance. If he’d had more space to work with, the swatter would have engaged, but this was a close-ranged attempt to off him. The difference would have been the swatter maybe knocking the rocket out of the sky. Instead, there was a hiss boom and Coop’s sensors whited out for a second to compensate.

Shield power dropped on his left flank, but only to three-quarters power. Whatever had exploded had been big, but nowhere near big enough to kill with a near miss. On the other hand, the building was not so lucky; which meant the Confed marines were shit out of luck.

“Report!” the LT’s voice yelled over TACCOM.

“It wasn’t me,” Coop fired back, as bits of construction material, and people started to rain down around him.

He sent the sensor data to back him up, which explained the new ordinance. A bomb-pumped laser closely followed by a bomb bomb. It was meant to be a one-two punch strong enough to get a shield down and do some damage. AI said the jury was still out on it being enough to damage a MOUNT, but it had backtracked the angle of attack to a position outside the settlement. A micro-missile went off to whoever fired the weapon.

Coop was still waiting on a battle damage assessment when he got orders to reposition. The LT had located the enemy HQ in the settlement, and they were tightening the noose. The Confed’s were falling back, and the loss of the heavy weapon and rocket-propelled laser bomb was going to hurt them.

Coop barely even registered that he’d been within a dozen meters of possibly dying. It didn’t even crossed his mind. This was all in a day in the life of the Commonwealth infantry.

***

Benjamin Gold

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

“Get me a sitrep,” Ben’s foot hit the ground like a jackhammer. It was easy to forget how big he was until he put his weight behind something.

A1 was settling into orbit, and the AI was getting a rundown of everything that had happened. The marines’ short-range nodes should hit the databanks any second, and then . . .

Data started to spit onto the holo-tank. It wasn’t good. Sixty percent of the marines were dead, another ten were WIA. That ratio was usually reversed, so that told you just how fierce, and deadly, modern ground combat had become. Even worse, there wasn’t much Ben could do from all the way up here.

“I want the battlefield on the holo-tank, now,” he ordered.

It took a couple minutes to happen, but when all the systems were linked up, and protections against viruses put in place, a 3D rendering of the settlement came into focus. His staff gathered around him to brainstorm, but there was a reason they were naval officers and not marines.

The big difference was the scope. Every single weapon on A1, which had nothing on the battlecruisers still en route, and might as well be spitballs compared to the Collie’s battleship, were just too damned big to engage the enemy.

“Still too close,” they ran simulation after simulation of virtual fire support strikes, and every one of them came back with them basically blowing the whole settlement to hell.

Whoever the Commonwealth commander was, he’d done the smart thing to get in close.

“Sir,” tactical’s voice was brighter than usual as she zoomed out and brought up a wider view of the area. “We’ve got an enemy Spyder inbound for the settlement. If we move fast, we can . . .”

“Guns?” Ben was way ahead of her. “Can you do it?”

“Thread the needle? Absolutely, sir,” the chief looked back with a grin. “Give me a minute.”

“You’ve got twenty seconds.”

That was probably being too generous. The bird was moving fast. The gunnery department had to plot the route, decide what the best weapon would be, prime the weapon, aim the weapon, take into all the mathematical equations necessary to adjust for a weapon going through the atmosphere, and only then could they fire.

By Ben’s count, it was twenty-three seconds when the chief came back to him. “Ready to fire on your order, sir.”

Ben didn’t hesitate. “Fire.” He just hoped no one had misplaced a decimal point somewhere.