Mark “Coop” Cooper

Location: Unnamed Planet, Contested System, Unaligned Space

“Shift the machine gun over there,” the NCOIC stated, and an icon blossomed on Coop’s HUD.

Since they didn’t have two extra guys to lug around the heavy equipment, Coop and the SGT were playing Ripley from Aliens. He hoisted up the heavy weapon and shifted it to a new pit they’d established. It wasn’t much, but oldies were goodies when you didn’t have a choice. They’d dug a hole and stuck a shield generator beside the gun. It had commanding views of a potential avenue of approach.

In the end, Coop knew it didn’t matter what weapons were covering what areas; the Confeds would drown them in bodies. The satellite network in orbit had been left intact by both sides. Both were too arrogant to think the enemy would were be able to benefit from the data being broadcasted down to the settlement. Because of that, Coop had a good idea what was coming. Or . . . he didn’t once the LT clued him in.

He was on the outs with the command group, which was probably going to get more than one person killed. Coop wasn’t sure he bought the innocent slip of the tongue excuse.

If Gold had been trying to sow discord, he’d hit the ball on the head. The LT was playing things close to the chest, and the NCOIC was using him as a human wheelbarrow. On the bright side, he was still breathing, so he had that going for him.

“Here they come,” the statement suddenly rang through his MOUNT’s audio, and everyone else’s.

A link came over the net, and Coop opened it. he scoffed as a shit ton of Spyder-like assault shuttles detached from the warships in orbit. he stopped counting.

Fifty bad guys a shuttle, and they were already outnumbered ten to one, and they were till coming. He was still amazed anyone wanted this ball of dirt that bad. As far as things went on the cosmic scale, this place was a dump. Sure, it had some good resources; but it wasn’t a pleasure planet. People wouldn’t want to emigrate here; especially with it being on the border of two contesting powers.

At most, you’d get temporary boomtowns, like in the old west of the Americas. They’d pop up at a dig site; mostly to supply beer and women. They’d be there for six months, pack up, and move to the next sight. It would be rough people on a rough world, and they probably would never even realize a bunch of soldiers killed themselves over dirt and metal.

Coop thought. The shuttles were hitting the atmosphere, so they had ten to fifteen minutes before things got interesting.

“SGT, you’re on the front lines,” he ordered.

Grunts were already streaming out of the makeshift barracks to their assigned positions. Everyone had a place to be at this dance, and for now, Coop’s place was indirect fore control. He’d also be guarding the most important asset in the entire place.

Once the Commonwealth took the fabbers from the Confeds in the first takeover. It was only a matter of time. Especially with modern warfare, people needed a lot of rounds, or powerpacks, to get through extra shielding. Fabbers provided those materials, and they’d been cranking out extra supplies ever since. A few hours, and they had the rounds to fight all day. It was Coop’s job to make sure the supply line kept flowing.

He ran a diagnostic to make sure he could make that happen. He was green on everything. His shields were one hundred percent, all his ammo had been replaced, and even his micro-missiles were cocked, locked, and ready to rock. It took a hell of a lot longer to produce a missile than a plasma-tipped round, but it was worth it for the damage he could do.

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The swatter would be key, and the single grunt running the fabber had the dual duty of reloading the MOUNT’s swatter ammo when he ran dry. That would suck ass to do solo, but there wasn’t much of a choice.

Coop was still looking over his inventory when his AI blared a warning at him. “Drones!” he relayed to everyone. “Heads down.”

Drones were something he’d expected. The warships overhead couldn’t take a shot at them, and neither could the shuttles; but drones were a different deal. The ones his sensors were picking up intermittently were small versions. They’d infiltrate the lines, take shots with their single onboard energy cannon and soften things up for the troops. The swatters were the counter. Thankfully, it wasn’t just Coop.

The SGT’s guns spun up as well, along with three more individual swatters the defenders never had to bust out. That was some silverlining in all this, those guns were fresh since the Commonwealth had only mounted a land operation. Those guns came to life as the drones came in hard and fast.

Nothing was slaved to Coop’s AI. It might have been the smarter move to have the AI assist with targeting packages; but the LT wasn’t in a trusting mood. Still, Coop could push the packages to the guns when his AI got a better read on the drone’s camouflage and firing patterns. The first update got pushed five seconds into the attack; just about the same time there was a scream and an explosion. All the drones had ganged up on one position, overwhelmed the shielding, and torched the heavy weapon’s emplacement.

it was the one Coop had just moved the machine gun to. and just as much for everyone else. They didn’t have the men to spare.

His buddy was yellow on medical, only some mild flash-burns from the laser, and was jumping on the gun. Tracer rounds flashed all over the place as the swatters tried to kill the drones like the annoying insects they were. Fireballs started to fill the sky as drones died. It was a beautiful sight.

A drone even had the balls to take a shot at him. It didn’t do any good. It was built to take out fighting positions, not a walking war machine. His shields dropped ten percent, and started to recharge as his swatters blasted the drone out of the sky.

Of course, the chaos was the secondary objective of this entire thing. Sure, it was good to kill a few guys, hassle the enemy, and general cause some mayhem. Hell, maybe the Confeds would even get lucky and hit something or someone important. The real objective was so the shuttle could set down unmolested by indirect fire. If the drones weren’t wreaking havoc along the Commonwealth’s lines, Coop would be dropping thermobaric shells all over the enemy LZ.

Everyone knew the shuttles were most vulnerable when they were disgorging their troops, and it was usually the point of an invasion when the enemy force was most exposed. The drones did a perfect job of covering for that. By the time his AI registered the last of the drone’s dying, the satellite links showed the assault shuttles off the ground and in an overwatch pattern. If the Commonwealth troops strayed too far from the settlement, they’d get a 30mm round up the ass.

Coop had the SGT firing an artillery shell at the position just in case he could catch the enemy with their pants down. A Confed swatter took it out before it even got close. The enemy command was doing things by the book. They’d landed and consolidated their forces, put up protections against indirect fire, and were organizing a march to the settlement. In less than an hour, there would be close to two hundred Confed troops kicking down their front door.

Coop had his AI count those numbers again. For the number of shuttles he’d seen that was too low.

he groaned when his AI started to filter the satellite imagery.

They were hard to see, and trying to be sneaky, but the Commonwealth had a lot of data on their cammo gear. It was hard to make out, and only for a second, but Coop caught the outline of four Confed MOUNTs. Not these shitty first generation, Commonwealth reject MOUNTs. These were the real deal ones Coop had fought in back on earth.

He felt his pucker factor dial up to eleven as he replayed the footage three times before sending it to the LT. It didn’t matter if the guy was wary of him, this was shit he needed to know. The fight just went from hopeless to absolutely no chance in hell they’d live through it. All of a sudden, surrender didn’t seem like a bad plan.

Just when things couldn’t get any worse, the satellite link went dark. He immediately cut any connections he had to that net. It probably wasn’t a virus. The Confed’s wouldn’t want to wreck their own gear. That shit was expensive, but better safe than sorry. The last thing the underpowered, soon-to-be overwhelmed defenders needed was a malware attack fucking with their coms.

“Sergeant, did you . . .?”

“Roger that, chief,” she sent back. “It’s been good knowing you.”

“Make’em bleed,” he sent back, and then focused on his own shit.

Coop put everything he was worried about in the back of his head. Eve, Emily, everything, he shoved it all in a black hole in the back of his mind. He couldn’t worry about his mortality in a fight like this. It was time to be a human buzzsaw, and kill as many of these assholes as he could before his clock went out.