Eve Berg

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

“All hands, Echo Flight arriving. I say again. All hands, Echo flight arriving. Clear the flight deck.”

Eve wasn’t anywhere near the flight deck, but it irritated her every time an announcement like this came over the ship’s intercom. She felt like kicking a private that just happened to be walking by when Charlie flight arrived, and she might have scared a couple LT’s when she stomped into the officer’s mess during Delta flight’s arrival.

Logically, she knew it shouldn’t rub her the wrong way. Every flight meant more men and firepower the ship could bring to bear on the enemy. She still didn’t have a great idea who the enemy was, but she knew it involved Derrick and Coop. The last thing she wanted to be doing was sitting around on her ass while her brother and fiancé had god only knew what was happening to them.

“All command staff level officers, report to the flag briefing room at 1500 hours. All command staff level officers . . .” that got her attention.

It was ironic that as a CW2, she was a command staff level officer in this case. It probably wouldn’t be the case again anytime soon, but this shit show was being thrown together at the last minute, so there wasn’t enough time to get a proper MOUNT contingent together. Emergency orders had come down, and she currently had six pilots onboard; a team and a half. The other team leader was onboard, but she was the ranking officer of the two of them. That, plus the regular infantry commander didn’t know a MOUNT’s capabilities, she’d been elevated to the lofty status for the duration of the mission.

Her IOR said she had fifteen minutes to make the time hack, which on a beast the size of a battleship was not enough time. “Make a hole!” she yelled, and through her bulk forward. If people didn’t move, it was their problem.

She made it with thirty seconds to spare, but looking at the faces of the officers in the room, she might as well have been five minutes late.

“Pull up a chair, chief,” the only person that didn’t give her grief was the one that mattered.

The rear admiral at the head of the table wasn’t one she recognized, but there were plenty of those. She’d been on maternity leave so long, she probably wouldn’t even recognize the lieutenant commander she routinely got email traffic from. She was just relieved he wasn’t pissed.

She was the lowest ranking officer in the room by a mile. Technically, she wasn’t even the same class of officer. There was the RADM and a CMDR that was his XO. A pair of other CMDRs looked like the infantry and CAG OICs, and they had a couple staff people tagging along; but they all kept to the sides. She was the only person below O-4 not sitting against the wall and trying not to be noticed.

“I’m not going to lie people, it doesn’t look good,” the RADM pulled up an image from a tactical plot. It wasn’t Eve’s forte, but she’d been around enough to get the general picture.

It didn’t look like that big an enemy force. From what she’d seen coming aboard the ship, it should be able to take a couple battlecruisers and destroyers alone. she reminded herself.

“We’ve got a clock on us,” the RADM continued. He’d explained the enemy disposition, but that didn’t concern Eve. She needed to get boots on the ground to make a difference. “They’ll have been down there fighting it out for close to two days before we’ll hit the system. Even then it’ll take several more hours to get to a point we can do anything, and that’s only if the Confeds cut and run.”

Eve didn’t realize she had a death grip on her chair to the point it was starting to warp. She didn’t want to be sitting in a metal tube tens of millions of kilometers away when she could be on the ground helping Coop. It was literally the most infuriating thing she’d ever felt.

““All hands, Foxtrot Flight arriving. I say again. All hands, Foxtrot flight arriving. Clear the flight deck.”

The RADM looked up at the announcement. “That’s the last of our gear people. Department heads, I want a readiness brief in thirty. We’re going to put the pedal to the medal right out the gate. Infantry,” he turned to the CMDR and Eve, “I want a battleplan on my desk by the time we hit the system. I don’t want us sitting on our hands longer than necessary.”

“Yes, sir,” Eve was the first on her feet, and the first out the door. If the other officers were offended by a mere CW2 taking the lead, they could suck it.

***

Mark “Coop” Cooper

Location: Unnamed Planet, Contested System, Unaligned Space

Coop spun, and barely avoided taking a round up the ass. Literally, there was a Confed grunt with one of those overpowered man-portable missile launchers that nearly sent one straight up his poop shoot. That would have royally screwed him, especially with his shields at thirty percent. Having his shields above twenty-five was a blessing.

The Commonwealth grunts were still fighting, but it was starting to sink in that the perimeter wasn’t a defense anymore, it was a noose the Confeds were closing tight around their throat. Still, they didn’t give up. Neither did Coop. He was running around like a mad man, trying to plug all the holes in the line. There were so many, that if this was an old wet navy ship, they’d be sunk.

Even worse, his ammo was just about shot. Down to less than ten percent on everything. It was just that kind of day.

“We need . . .” there was a large explosion behind him, and the transmission cut out.

His battle AI told him what had happened as he sprinted around the side of a building. He zigged instead of zagged out of instinct, and the atmosphere exploded around him. His MOUNT emerged through the flames like some type of ancient war god, and he couldn’t think about how close he’d just been to buying the farm.

Ever since he’d killed the other MOUNT, the dead enemies’ buddies had been gunning for him. He expected it, but things were starting to get dicey. The Confed brass hadn’t committed another MOUNT to the field, so maybe Coop took out the commander, and they were just going to wait him out. Why ruin a multi-million dollar piece of equipment when you could just bleed Coop’s MOUNT dry.

he ignored the next-gen magnetic accelerator shell with his name on it, and focused on plugging the hole.

The swatter covering the sector had run dry, and an arty shell had smacked right in the middle of a fire team’s position. Medical status informed him they were both already dead, but sensor showed the Confeds were trying to take advantage of the chaos to advance. The only thing between them and separating the Commonwealth defenders, one Mark Cooper.

He barreled into the opening just as the lead Confed elements reached the big hole in the ground. He didn’t bother opening up with his remaining rounds. He just kicked the first person in armor her saw. The poor bastard went sailing back out of the crater and hit some of his buddies with the front side of his armor sticking out the back.

Blades came out, and Coop played lumberjack. He ignored the screaming, he just cut, hacked, and sawed at anything that moved. The Confeds didn’t go down without a fight. They pumped rounds into him until his shield was only showing five percent. It held there as Coop stomped his big metal boot down on an enemy grunt and pancaked him.

“Fucking hell,” one of the sergeants had been able to peel a single man off their portion of the line to reinforce Coop.

Over half a dozen bodies surrounded Coop’s MOUNT, and they all look like they’d died hard. Even though he hadn’t lifted a muscle, Coop’s chest was heaving inside the war machine.

“Set up here. If you feel you can’t hold, radio in, and fall back,” Coop knows the kid won’t be able to hold for long. But a few minutes was a few minutes, and if the Confed’s tactics continued, they were going to hit another part of the perimeter now.

“Ye . . . yes, sir,” Coop could hear the grunt gulp as he hopped down into the crater and went prone. He didn’t even have a shield generator.

“All clear in sector four, repositioning to . . .” Coop never finished.

The whole world lurched, and the lights went out.