Mark “Coop” Cooper

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

“Don’t worry about me. My balls are just swimming in nut soup over here.” Coop mumbled under his breath while waving at the passing people. The return looks he got were a perfect summary of the current mood in New Savannah and the Commonwealth in general.

As far as planets went, New Savannah was a pretty nice one. Its orbit around the local yellow dwarf star was a little closer than Earth’s, so the climate was on the hot and humid side. It was the cause of the twenty-four-seven swamp ass Coop and the rest of his unit were battling. The people were ok, but not willing to mingle with the soldiers much, which made getting Coop’s pole polished a problem.

The best thing about New Savannah was that it was in the rear; way in the rear. It was in the last band of planets considered part of the Core Worlds, but it was on the opposite side of the Commonwealth from the Blockies, and nearly on the opposite end of explored space from the Star Kingdom of Windsor. There was nearly no chance either enemy would show up in orbit.

It was a well-established colony, several hundred years old, and with over a billion and a half citizens spread over the Earth-sized world. Gravity was a comfortable 1.04G, so after a few days of adjustment it didn’t bother him.

Because of the planet’s location it was an optimal place for the Commonwealth to conduct research and development. Most of the companies were private defense contractors, but there was a small, three-battalion force with a full Rear Admiral on the ground to keep everyone in line. Since Coop had arrived a month and a half ago, all the geeks in white lab coats had been scurrying around like someone kicked over their ant hill.

Coop shook his head at the thought.

York System was long gone. New Lancashire hadn’t been the only target on that infamous day. The other fledgling colony in the system had been wiped out. None of the ships assigned to protect it had survived. The Blockies hadn’t fared any better, and all of their colonies had been repossessed. The only exception to the rule of destruction was the Euros and their single colony.

When another small fleet with three Dreadnaughts, but no Superdreadnought, arrived in their system, they hoisted up the white flag and parlayed. After a few hours of talks, the Windsors let the Euros transport all of their people off the world. It looked like the time-honored European tradition of appeasement was alive and well, but to their credit, they did get all of their people to safety. Coop had to give them that. Although, they did end up forfeiting their entire colonial infrastructure, raw materials, and any future claim to the system in the process, but that wasn’t a huge concession when no one had any desire to go back to that region of space.

News of all of this reached Coop in the infirmary back on Thor within a week. He’d spent most of the journey back to the Asgard System on some level of pain medication, and with nowhere to go on Argo he spent most of the trip popping pills and trying to forget what happened.

About a month after arriving back on Thor, Coop, and the rest of the troops got to participate in a military-wide physical and psychological evaluation in preparation for all the fancy, new alien tech that was going to come down the pipeline. A few weeks after that, he got his orders to report to New Savannah along with the rest of Charlie Company 2223rd Infantry Battalion. The LT was pretty close-lipped about everything, but the rumors going around were that since the Company had been in the middle of the shit back on New Lancashire the R&D people wanted to pick their brains to help develop defensive doctrines and strategies to combat the Windsors’ advantages.

That was the part of the orders you could decipher from reading between the lines, or down in the fine print. The orders on the paper were that the Company was assisting the local defense forces with election security. Coop remembered more than one riot back on Earth that took place around the time they chose their leadership for the next few years.

The discontent stemmed from the Commonwealth’s voter registration laws. Not every citizen of the starfaring nation was eligible to vote. You had to be eighteen years of age, and a citizen, but you also had to have served a minimum of three years in an approved suffrage service. The most common service was the military, but there were a host of NGOs and charities that a person could participate in to earn the responsibility of participating in the election process.

Coop was fuzzy on the whole reason behind the practice, but he remembered something about nations before the Commonwealth being full of entitled twats who thought they had a right to anything and everything. The Commonwealth’s policy evolved from that and was simple: things had value if you had to work for them. The vote was something you had to earn through being in the military, teaching at a shithole PHA school, providing aid to a system suffering a plague, or even helping to push the boundaries of explored space. If you put some skin in the game you were more invested in seeing it went well.

If you spot this tale on Amazon, know that it has been stolen. Report the violation.

Of course, not everyone saw it that way. People thought they should be able to participate in the election process just because they existed. Hell, Coop used to think that way back in the PHA when the holos showed the lines of voting-eligible citizens waiting to cast their ballot. Now that he was on the other side of the fence, where the grass was a little greener, he felt more invested in protecting his future right. He was still two years from gaining the privilege of voting, but if some people fucked it up before he got there then he was going to be pissed.

Coop resisted to urge to shift his nuts in his CMUs.

Today was the Primary; a sort of pre-election that Coop really didn’t see the point of. All the major candidates running for their parties would be narrowed down to one from each. Then, those winners would go head-to-head in the general election which took place in a few days.

As their orders dictated, Coop, Mike, Nickelbaucher, Goldsmith, and Stern were the Commonwealth-level guardians of a voting center. They’d all survived New Lancashire and were part of Coop’s team, even though Mike had just made CPL as well.

A squad of local police was also present, but they weren’t mingling. In fact, the cops kept shooting sideways glances at the five infantrymen like they were PHA Rats about to rob a BSA ration stand.

“Thank you for doing your civic duty.” Coop smiled behind his HUD and gave a passing hottie the thumbs up.

The woman actually huffed, looked down her nose at Coop despite him being half a meter taller, and gave him the cold shoulder as she walked into the voting center.

“Smooth.” Mike laughed over the net from where he was stationed on the other side of the building.

Coop had deployed Goldsmith and Nickelbaucher to the other two sides of the building to give them a three-hundred-and-sixty-degree view on STRATNET, while keeping Stern close as the errand bitch. The building itself was a two-story rec center that had been transformed for the week-long election process. A full guard needed to be kept on the voting machines at all times, so on top of being out here sweating his ass off, Coop had to develop a watch schedule for half his team to be on duty at all times for the next few days. It was better than getting shot at, but trying his luck with the garrison chicks back at the top-grade facilities the military rented out from the defense contractors was more his style.

Coop looked out over his little fiefdom.

New Savannah architecture didn’t hold to the same standard as big cities on Earth, Asgard, or New Washington. Large skyscrapers, with anti-grav tech that allowed them to be a few kilometers tall, was shunned in favor of smaller, more colonial-style buildings. Each section of the city had a small park at the epicenter. You could take your lunch break there, take the kids for a playdate, or meet up with a special someone. For someone who liked to people watch, you could spend all day sitting on a bench and watching people pass by.

For Coop, it was more people to keep an eye on in case they tried something stupid. If they did, he wasn’t in the best position to respond to it.

The Commonwealth rated New Savannah’s current mood as being discontent with how things were currently being done. They were in a two-front war with enemies that didn’t pose a threat to New Savannah. Taxes were going up to pay for new ships, and then word of those ships getting blown out of space was filtering back to the planet while the Commonwealth demanded flesh for its war effort. The people of New Savannah were not fond of sending their sons, daughters, and treasure to fight a thousand light years away. Only the lucrative defense contracts and their corporate lobbyists in the planetary government were keeping the discontent below a simmer.

Coop caught the police squad leader giving Coop the evil eye before turning away. Not only did Coop have to protect the polling place from anarchists reported to be operating in the city, but he needed to watch his own back against the local PD.

Coop couldn’t stand it anymore. He reached down and furiously started scratching his crotch.

An old couple started ascending the stairs at just the wrong time.

“Smooth,” Mike repeated after an old man finished yelling at Coop in the cultured, southern drawl that had immigrated to the planet along with its name.

“We could have avoided all of this,” Coop fumed.

Coop and Mike had both been forced to leave their climate controlled V2 LACS behind at the armory, and instead had on oversized Dragonscale armor. The armor and smarthcloth were usually pretty good about regulating temperature, but there were technological limits to what could be done when you were sitting in the humid sunlight for hours on end.

“It looks too aggressive.” LT Wentworth had replied when Coop made his displeasure known.

Ever since they’d tangoed with a mech together, the LT had come around to Coop’s unique sense of humor…to a point. Or maybe it was because Gold was boning her on the regular. Coop wasn’t sure, it was only a rumor, but either way the LT’s tolerance with him had increased, and he had a better gauge of where that line was when he spoke to her. In this situation, that line ended at aggressive. So, Coop and his fire team were suffering while people trickled in to cast a vote in an election that wouldn’t count because it wasn’t the actual election.

was what Coop was thinking when the bullet smashed into his helmet.

If he was a lesser man it would have knocked him on his ass, but it only ended up pissing him off.