Mark “Coop” Cooper

Location: Harper’s Junction, Star Kingdom of Windsor

Coop thought he knew the meaning of the word pain. His life hadn’t been easy up to this point, and he felt he had a solid grasp of the concept. As he opened his eyes in that dark, dry cave in the mountains, he knew he didn’t know what pain was.

Everything hurt…everything. Even his balls had an uncomfortable ache to them that had nothing to do with dreaming about Eve. He grunted and tried to sit up, but the world revolved like someone spun his head like a dreidel, and his stomach leapt into his throat. He would have puked all over his HUD if he had anything in his stomach. Instead, he dry heaved for a solid thirty seconds before a little bit of stomach acid dripped out of his mouth and onto the smartcloth at his neck.

The combat drug kits the LACS released to keep him in the fight were a marvel of medical science. You could be on the verge of death, but it would keep you fighting for an hour, and with a raging hard-on at that. All the adrenaline pumping through your system made you act a little crazy, but that was nothing compared to when it all wore off. Coop checked his IOR and saw he’d been out for nearly sixteen hours.

A VR crash was bad. Going from fighting for your life one second to sitting in a black box the next was jarring to the senses, but you learned to manage it. There was no way to manage the hangover from a combat drug kit, and that was exactly what this was. His body was rebelling against the potent concoction that had ultimately saved his life against the ambushing Windsor Company, but it came with a price.

“Ugh,” was the only sound he could make as he tried for a second to get into a seated position. Again, his head spun, but the stabbing pain in his side kept him from executing the simple maneuver.

His armor squawked a medical warning to him, and he felt the cool spray of nanites in the area of the pain. The V4 had a better integrated medical system in it than his old V2. He’d lost a leg in that one and survived, so this suit would definitely keep him alive.

He pinged the medical alerts he was getting and grimaced. A few broken limbs, first degree burns on his side where his armor had been breached, and one of his lungs looked like it had been fried a bit, which explained why it was difficult to breath.

he reminded himself as he fought to sit up, and barely managed it.

He was alive, but combat ineffective, so of course that’s when he suit picked up nearby movement. The cave he in wasn’t very large. It was less than fifty meters from the opening to the back wall, and he’d curled up to lick his wounds off to the side of the entrance. A rock jutting out of the wall gave him good cover and concealment, so he used that as he picked up his buss and…his hands groped the ground around him but felt nothing.

Coop couldn’t believe it. His odds of surviving another encounter with a Windsor patrol went from slim to shit.

He still had his pistol in his leg holster, so he pulled the puny peashooter out and made sure one of his nano-blades was easily accessible. He promised himself he’d make the fuckers work.

The crunch of rock under something heavy was his first sign that company was close. He readied himself and begged the LACS for more drugs to help him get to his feet. The system beeped back a refusal. He didn’t have a chance to ask why.

A hulking metal figure stepped into view while its weapon swept the cavern. Coop aimed for the head and pulled the trigger, but nothing happened. The pistol just beeped defiantly at him, just like his armor had.

he paused as the drug-infused thoughts finally got organized. Then he sighed with relief and lowered his weapon.

All the Commonwealth weapons had friend-and-foe designators tied to STRATNET and whatever new interface the IORs were using. Coop couldn’t fire on the man in armor because they were a friendly, and since the rebels on this planet probably hardly had a pot to piss in, much less a V4 LACS…

{Howdy,} he sent a short-range broadcast to the other LACS. {Welcome to my humble abode.}

{Damnit, it’s you, Cooper,} GYSGT Cunningham’s voice spoke into his mind.

Enjoying this book? Seek out the original to ensure the author gets credit.

{Nice to see you too, Gunney,} he matched her sarcasm with some of his own.

{Give me a SITREP.} She wasn’t in the mood to banter, so he quickly download the shitshow the last twenty-four hours of his life had been.

{Shit,} she must have finally got to his medical status because she slung her weapon and rushed over to him.

{I feel about as bad as I look,} he wagered a guess he didn’t look so hot.

{You look worse than usual,} a video stream from the GYSGT’s IOR popped onto his HUD. It showed Coop’s side, and he had to try really hard not to vomit up more bile.

His armor was a mess of blackened, warped metal, and underneath it, charred shin and bone. He actually saw when his V4’s medical system kicked in and a puff of spray exited the armor and onto his wounds. It acted as antibiotics and topical anesthetic to keep the pain down, but to really get fixed up, he’d need proper medical attention.

{What did you do, fight off the entire Windsor occupation force?} She asked, as she evaluated his wound and how it impacted her plan.

{Nah, just a Company,} he shrugged, which elicited a wince. {I’m also pretty sure they nabbed Mike earlier.}

The GYSGT just nodded and made a waving motion over her shoulder. A squad of regular grunts swept into the cavern. Judging by their ragtag looks, Cooper guessed they were the rebel forces the SRRT was supposed to link up with. The GYSGT exchanged some words with them and a few ran back out while the others stood guard. After watching them for a second, Coop didn’t have high hopes for their already fucked mission.

Coop saw a bunch of untrained farmers. A few actually had modern weapons. He noticed some submachine guns the team had strapped to their armor with the intention of bestowing upon the rebels, but the modern, compact weapons didn’t make them intimidating. He was sure he’d still be able to waste all of them without getting to his feet. They basically had no armor. A few wore what might be centuries-old flak jackets, and they all seemed to be wearing headgear that was somewhere between a baseball cap and a helmet, but wouldn’t stop a well-thrown rock from doing serious damage. Most of the squad was equipped with the shotgun he’d seen on the farmer’s daughter when he first arrived.

he thought, but didn’t voice that aloud to the people helping him.

{We’re going to move you by vehicle back to headquarters,} the GYSGT explained. {Once they’re we’ll patch you up and figure out our next move.}

Coop knew the only logical move was to send a tight-beam to Argo telling them everything was FUBAR and get orders from someone higher up the chain. He didn’t want to stay on this planet any longer than he had to.

his conscious reared its ugly head, and he sighed with frustration. Thankfully, the GYSGT didn’t see any of his inner turmoil.

Since none of the locals could even pick up one of his limbs, it all fell to the GYSGT. She handled it easily enough with her LACS.

{You gonna carry me across the threshold, Gunney? I have to warn you I’m in no shape to put out right now.} He laughed at his own joke, which turned into a cough.

The GYSGT just shook her head and didn’t dignify him with a response. She emerged from the cave to see a big truck full of raw ore. It was pretty good cover for moving around in this area, and it was even better when the locals moved aside a few big chunks to show that an open space was concealed at the center. Not only did that hide them from aerial view or casual observers, but the magnetics of the ore would probably throw off the Windsor’s ability to detect IOR transmissions at short range.

The GYSGT unceremoniously dropped Coop’s ass on the metal flatbed, and pushed him into the hidey-hole. She followed behind him along with the two rebels with the submachine guns. The rest of the squad hopped into the cabin at the front of the rig and drove off.

“Want to tell me what the hell happened?” Coop asked over his external speakers. He quickly briefed the GYSGT on the Windsor’s abilities to track nearby IORs.

“That fits,” she admitted, as she switched to audio. “I’m still trying to figure out what happened, but I’m guessing some kind of scrambler device.”

The suggesting made Coop shudder. He didn’t like being chopped up at the molecular level in the first place. That someone can scramble him after that was unnerving.

“We do the same thing to stop transmissions and communications in sensitive areas, so it only makes sense that the Hegemony has got some tech to stop people from Splitstreaming right into top secret facilities. The Windsor’s seem to have it while we don’t.”

“Fan-fucking-tastic,” Coop grumbled.

The GYSGT ignored his bitching and continued. “I’m the only one that appeared at the LZ. The only other person I heard from was Sullivan, and he’s waiting for us back at HQ. Everyone else was out of range, but I’ve been doing patrols and trying to extend my range to pick up other signals. I was on my way to check on Mike’s signal when all hell seemed to break loose. I was able to ambush a small Windsor contingent from the battle and interrogate them. After that, it was a matter of checking all these little caves for you. Thankfully, the locals have a better lay of the land than the enemy.”

“Well thanks for finding my ragged ass.” Coop meant it. If she hadn’t found him, he was pretty sure he wouldn’t have been able to leave the cave. “So, what’s the plan?”

“Same plan, different day. We still need to scout this place and gather intel before the fleet arrives to take the planet back.” She kept her voice low. She clearly didn’t fully trust the locals either. “It’ll just be harder now that the enemy knows we’re here and already has at least one prisoner. Now we need to figure out how to get our people back and fuck up their day at the same time.”

Coop was onboard, but he doubted he’d be able to do a lot in the short term. He just hoped the local docs were up to the task of stitching him back together so he didn’t look like Frankenstein. It was always beach season somewhere and he had a hot girlfriend to impress.