Mark “Coop” Cooper

Location: North American Eastern Seaboard, Smokey Mountains, United Commonwealth of Colonies

Coop was rudely awakened by his face hitting the cold, concrete floor. “Ugh, what the fuck,” he grumbled. A lesser man would have broken his jaw from the drop off the bed.

He tried to look around but the lights were out. Since they were deep underground that meant complete and total darkness. It had been a long time since little Coop was afraid of the dark back in the PHA, and he was only afraid because the dark corners of the public housing usually held tweakers or gangbangers out to do something bad for his health.

A fear of dark places was rational. Despite being a pilot of the most advanced combat mech in the Commonwealth, Coop shivered as a tendril of fear worked its way up his spine. He was injured and alone in a dark place. He still had no idea what the fuck was going on with Eve. There was still better than a fifty percent chance she was dead.

His body still ached, but it was infinitely better than before. The most annoying feeling was the full body itch that seized him. It was an itch he knew he couldn’t scratch. He curled his hands into fists to avoid the temptation, and was thinking about what the hell he should do when the door burst open.

The LCDR, in full scales, looked down at him through her armored helm. “Good, you’re up.”

He still didn’t know what had woken him up, but it was something big enough to toss his ass onto the floor. “Okay,” he answered simply, and accepted her offered hand.

His room might be pitch black, but they’d strung lights across the hallway of the bottom levels. It was enough to work off of, and enough to see everyone was in a panic. The support staff were in full armor, and judging by the awkward movements, it didn’t look like they’d been in their armor recently. The scales were sized for the person to allow for maximum mobility, but if you hadn’t worn them in five years, and put on a few kilos . . . it led to some serious chaffage.

The LCDR led Coop past an impromptu barricade that wouldn’t stop an ET’s wet fart. The two logistics specialists held their IARs like they hardly knew which end the bullets came out of. Not that the flimsy 1mm rounds would do shit against a roach, much less a BAMF.

Mid-step, the ground lurched beneath him. He grabbed the LCDR for support, and the two of them nearly went crashing to the ground. “They’re getting closer,” there was a tinge of acceptance in her voice mixed with fear and exhaustion.

“Sounds like we need to do something about that,” Coop replied, glad he’d busted his head against the floor and woken up before the party was voer.

It was one thing to die, but it was another thing entirely for some fucking alien to kill him while he was passed out in bed. “Do you have a gun for me?” he asked.

At the moment, he was in CMU bottoms and bare chested. He might be one of the biggest, toughest human beings in the base, but without a gun he might as well piss into the wind and hope the ET’s were allergic to his dick.

“Even better,” she pushed past an armored guard that looked happy to be in the rear with the gear and not getting his head blown off.

The heavy door yielded to her code and hissed open. By her tone, Coop was expecting another fucking MOUNT. Instead he found himself looking at a LACS. Sure, it was the hulking mass of a V4A, the same LACS he’d worn when with the SRRT, but the firepower in the latest generation LACS was still far below what a MOUNT had to offer.

“We got this in one of the last shipments to arrive. I don’t know shit about it, but people tell me you do,” she gestured at the LACS with a shrug.

“I do,” he gritted his teeth and yanked up his CMUs. He winced at they knitted over his new skin, but he sucked it up. He didn’t have time to fuck around. “Help me into this, and point me where I need to go.”

***

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Eve Berg

Location: North American Eastern Seaboard, Smokey Mountains, United Commonwealth of Colonies

A beamer sparked off Eve’s shield as she dived away. It hit the energy barrier for a second too long, and punched through. Thankfully, it sliced past her leg, and despite a few internal temperature warnings on her HUD, there was no damage. That wasn’t the case for the three troopers who didn’t move fast enough.

The squad level shield was already down, so all they had between them and the high-powered lasers was their scales. The directional armor melted like butter under the enemy’s attack, and sliced through the three soldiers. They lost various parts of their body in the process. Her armor’s computer read that two of the three were still alive, their armor doing everything in its power to save them, but the bottom line was the defenders were pulling back. Eve couldn’t grab them, so even if their armor did save them, the BAMFS would crush them before moving on.

“Hit the charges!” she yelled.

A moment later, a shockwave slammed into her, nearly knocking her to her knees. Dust and pebbles peppered her recharging shield, but it was clear . . . at least for a minute. She picked up her pace, and passed a gaggle of soldiers retreating with wounded comrades in their arms.

“How many more?” she asked over the net as she spotted a pair of HI troopers at the next intersection.

“Two more fallback positions until we hit the medical wing,” the armor with SSG markings sounded completely exhausting. “Docs are moving everyone as fast as they can, but they aren’t going to get anywhere near as much supplies out as they could if we bought them another hour.”

“We’ll have to make do,” she replied dryly; even if that mean that people who would otherwise live would die from their wounds instead.

“What do we have at the next position?” she moved on to the next task on her to-do-list.

“The usual,” the SSG led the way to where layer upon layer of shields were being set up and charged.

Twin heavy cannons were waiting at a bend to be rolled out. They were the next best thing to mobile artillery they had. The heavy rounds had a fifty percent chance of penetrating a BAMFs shield if they timed a perfect one-two punch. There were the three HI troopers and half a company’s worth of soldiers getting set behind portable barricades. Before fucking aliens invaded, this would have been an impregnable defensive position that the Blockies would have to throw an entire battalion at to overrun. For the ETs all it took was a couple BAMFs.

“Charges?” she asked.

“Being set,” the SSG pointed at a pair of Sapers drilling holes through the walls and planting shaped charges. She couldn’t tell if they’d actually killed anyone with the charges that were using the burry themselves and buy time, but they didn’t have a choice.

“Good, we need to . . .” a blast knocked her on her ass, and white lances of light stabbed into the hall. The sappers were cut down where they stood, and a BAMF snarled and charged.

In hallways meant for humans, the BAMFs took up the entire things with their bulk. It was intimidating as fuck, but it also made it impossible to miss. An ant could walk down the hallway on the bullets the Commonwealth soldiers opened up with. It was full of led, and the boom boom of the artillery firing at the charging BAMF sounded like God bitch-slapping the world.

Her ears were ringing despite the armor’s sensory protections, and then the world fucking exploded. The rounds hit in their perfectly synchronized one-two punch, and the BAMF’s shield failed. Bullet’s ripped into the creature’s armor, but it kept coming. Eve unloaded her own 3mm plasma tipped rounds right into the fucker’s face, but it just wouldn’t stopped.

“I got this,” a voice she never though she would hear again announced as a hulking metal shape shot bast her.

A whirring sound started up as a big V4A lacks activated the chainsaw feature on its blade and met the BAMF’s charge head on. The biggest LACS in the Commonwealth’s inventory was a little bigger than the BAMF, and they looked like two titans struggling for dominance. Metal fists and blades hammered into the two combatants. The ETs sparked off a shield at full power, while the LACS cut into the alien. The BAMF roared in pain as the LACS’ man-made strength drove the whirring blade deeper into its body.

Then a leg slashed out, and the LACS was suddenly on its back, holding back a knife with both its hands. The chainsaw blade was forgotten as the alien struggled to end the boyfriend she thought was already dead.

A scream roared out of the depths of her very soul, and before she knew it, Eve was charging across the space. The BAMF barely had time to look up, before she hit it with a textbook tackle. The big alien rolled off Coop, but now she was on top of it, with nothing to fight. The alien’s dagger slashed and it sliced through her shield and three cm of duro-steel armor like it wasn’t even there. She grabbed for the knife hand, and then Coop was there. The whirring sword was in his hand, and he was driving it toward the BAMFs neck.

The big alien tried to buck her off, but she held on with the skill only a woman could. Knowing it was too late, the BAMF still roared and fought to the end. Even as blood spewed out of the thing’s stump of a neck, the big fucker still twitched and fought.

Even encased in armor, she could tell Coop was breathing hard. “You’re alive,” she reached out and touched him to create a connection.

“Barely,” she could feel him grinning behind the armored helm.

“If we make it out of this alive, I’m gonna fuck you so hard . . .” she left the rest unsaid.

“Well, now that I have something to look forward to,” Coop replied flirtatiously.

“Sir, ma’am,” the SSG’s voice interrupted their reunion. “You better get the fuck back here.”

The two LACS troopers were a good twenty meters from the Commonwealth’s lines, and in the other direction, three roaches and a second BAMF were pushing their way through the collapsed tunnel the first BAMF had beaten them through.

“Move!” they both yelled at each other as they surged to their feet, made for their lines, and opened fire at the aliens all at once.