Two Worlds – Chapter 337

Mark “Coop” Cooper

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

“How the fuck did you miss?” Coop wiped his hands across his face to push some of the sand and dirt out of his vision. “Your targeting icon is literally in your brain. All you have to do is point and shoot. Are you trying to get me killed? That has to be it. How else could you suck so much at such a simple task.”

The PFC in the prone firing position on the ground in front of him grumbled defensively as Coop continued to lay into him with increased vigor. It let him blow off some steam that had been building due to his new phase of life.

It had been a year since the clusterfuck that was the Battle of Sol. Even a year later, the numbers kept changing, but the number of dead was concretely in the billions. That was with a B. The ET’s microwave weapons had melted whole metropolises. The PDCs had saved millions, but they weren’t built to hold everyone. Afterall, it was Earth; who would threaten Earth?

The whole human race was learning from their mistakes the hard way. Earth was back down to early twenty-first century levels; barely ten billion. Instead of being the largest population center of the human race, it was now just one of many. The various spacefaring governments were all teary-eyed, made the date of the battle a Commonwealth holiday, and promised to never forget; but people always forget. Coop was positive they were practically giddy on the inside. A large chunk of the welfare Rat population had been sterilized in one fell swoop. The Commonwealth might have lost all the industrial capacity that Sol represented, but it also lost all those extra mouths to feed and bodies to support. The cost benefit was close to even. It was sick and wrong, but true.

The place where the Commonwealth had taken the biggest shot to the nuts was the military. Tens of millions had died between the earthbound forces and the fleets sent to rescue them. It had only been a year, but already tension started to fray. The grand alliance of humanity against the alien menace was yesterday’s news.

The Blockies were balking at continued peace negotiations. The Windsor’s were getting uppity now that they’d recovered from the Commonwealth retaking some worlds, and there was always the ever-looming threat of the ETs. Even worse, because of the tonnage lost at Sol, there were less ships to patrol the commercial space lanes. Piracy was one the rise everywhere, even in the core worlds. But the cherry on top of the cake that was the Commonwealth’s new reality was the Confederation of Corporate Interests. Gold and his flunkies had forced the Commonwealth into negotiations to use their proprietary technologies. The Commonwealth would have just taken them, but Gold had been planning this for a long time. There were self-destructs built into the technologies, and despite the politician’s clamorings to the contrary, Gold built the best stuff.

Even the second-best stuff was built by companies that had defected with Gold. The Commonwealth was forced to rebuild a lot of product lines and supply chains from scratch, but even in trying to do that, they ran into resource problems. The Corpies owned the systems, asteroid belts, rare metal refineries, fabbers, and knowhow to make most of this stuff. With a third of the Commonwealth suddenly unavailable, on top of Sol’s losses, the government was suddenly finding themselves strapped; something the largest polity in human history had never really experienced before. As a result, the tension with the Corpies was building toward a boil, both sides knew it, and it was only a matter of time.

The once mighty Commonwealth was now wounded. They were still the megalodon of the galactic seas, but they were hemorrhaging blood, and that was attracting the other sharks. Bite by bite, they’d take down the greater beast, and it was Coop’s job to make sure he took a chunk out of anyone that tried to snack on them.

That was why he found himself on the hellishly hot, covered in desert, asshole of the universe, planet Alamo. It was named after one of the great last stands in history, but it didn’t give Coop much comfort to know everyone who fought there died.

<That’s a little too ominous for my taste,> he grumbled when he first read up on the history.

Alamo was technically identified as a planet, but it was one of several moons around a very large and resource-rich gas giant. It was on the edge of the mid-worlds and rim, and had previously been pretty unimportant. Now, you’d think it was the second coming of Asgard. Within a year, a fleet shipyard was born around the moon. Cradles capable of handling the production of dozens of battleships at a time sprung up in a spiderweb lattice that you could see from the surface. There were smaller cradles as well, and those were pumping out destroyers and cruisers as fast as humanly possible. Alamo was building their own fleet from the ground up, and they needed infantry to go with that.

As such, a basic training facility was established on the surface. Not in the temperate zone around the equator, where you were lucky if a day passed where you couldn’t cook on egg on the asphalt, but a hundred miles north in a large canyon complex. Building the barracks and training facilities into the rock gave the whole place a bunker-like appearance that was mildly reassuring after Sol nearly got wiped from the universe; but staring at rock and duro-steel for months at a time got old quick.

That was how it worked; one class on and then two weeks off to recover. Each Basic class ran eight weeks, and then the new PVTs moved straight on to their specialty schools. They taught everything from pay clerks to HI on Alamo, but there was one specialty that everyone wanted. An MOS that had been highlighted for its bravery and skill at defeating the giant ETs that burned Earth’s cities. Their exploits were played over and over again in recruiting footage that overloaded the nets as the Commonwealth looked far and wide for recruits. The PM didn’t want to have to initiate a draft, but as economic conditions fell, the military was a solid bet for people out of work and in need of something to believe in.

Names like Valkyrie, Ballboy, BOS, Hammer, Ninja, and the dozen other MOUNTS that had fought with skill and valor in defense of Sol had reached near-legendary status. The few armored cavalry operators who lived went on to do different things; some went on the PR tours, others went back to the front lines to command the next generation of MOUNTS, some went to the specialty school to teach the new pilots, one became a mother, and one more needed an attitude adjustment.

In hindsight, Coop knew he shouldn’t have laid out that Commander, but the jumped-up asshat started spouting shit at the officer’s club; which Coop quickly learned that despite his CW2 rank, was a place he shouldn’t be. The whole incident was a bit of a blur. The officer had said something disreputable about the infantry on the ground during the invasion, and how he could have commanded them to do better.

<Or was it that he wouldn’t have rolled over and died like so many had,> Coop wasn’t sure exactly what the man said. All he remembered was the rage, and then the CMDR was on the floor, his jaw shattered and suffering from a brain bleed that would have killed him had he not gotten to the hospital quickly.

The MPs came and hauled his ass to jail, but that put the Commonwealth in a conundrum. He was a certified, grade A, fucking hero. He had the Cross of Honor to prove it. Eve had one too. Plus, there was another oak leaf cluster on his Purple Heart and citations from everyone from the bunker Commander to the PM herself. On top of that, he was one of the most skilled MOUNT pilots in the entire armed forces. They couldn’t let him go after he nearly killed a mere Commander.

Still, punching out senior officers was frowned upon, so he went for some neural therapy to deal with the mental scars of Sol, and now he was teaching back-to-back MOUNT MOS classes as punishment. MOUNT school was longer than basic for obvious reasons, so it had been months since he’d fucked his fiancé or seen his baby girl.

That’s right . . . fiancé. Coop finally sucked it up and proposed. Him and Eve had seen too much shit to think they didn’t want to be together, and with little Emily in the picture, it seemed right. Of course, they probably weren’t going to actually get married in this century if the Infantry had its way. Eve had been on maternity leave for the last three months, but that was almost up, and then she’d get orders to go do something dangerous. Coop was stuck here for at least another few rotations, and then, god only knew what.

Being heroes had gotten them stationed together, and getting married would keep it that way, but needs of the service would always trump their happiness; and until shit settled down enough for the government to let soldiers go, they were in this for the long haul whether they liked it or not.

Which brought Coop back to his current issue: a PFC that couldn’t shoot despite the fucking dot in his vision showing him exactly where his bullets would go.

“Do it again,” he ordered, and sent the command over his IOR. The range reset and the PFC grabbed a fresh hundred-round magazine to qualify.

Honestly, Coop didn’t know why they bothered. The qualification on the IAR, and its 1mm darts, was pointless. The weapon had become obsolete in the last few years. Graviton cannons, next-gen magnetic accelerators, energy, and plasma tipped projectiles were the future. In Coop’s oh-so humble opinion, anything less than the 3mm plasma-tipped rounds should be scrapped. Why waste resources on something that wasn’t going to kill anything?

<Why send me someone to pilot a multi-million-dollar piece of equipment who can’t shoot for shit?> It was a mystery of the universe that only the personnel officers could bullshit an answer to.

That was something else Coop was getting used to. The MOUNTs he’d fought in on Sol were taken by the R&D folks to study. From what he heard; they didn’t get much out of them. Systems slagged, and hardware became useless when they tried to hack the data core and get Gold’s blueprints, but they had enough to work with to design and implement a program to build their own MOUNTS. The six meter killing machines that Coop had slaughtered BAMFs in were dead and gone. In its place was a four-meter LACS-MOUNT hybrid that bore the MOUNT name in a blasphemous sort of way.

Coop likened it to something he’d been reading about the old World War Two back on Earth. The MOUNT was like the German Tiger tanks; superior in every way. The Commonwealth was taking the same approach as the old USA had with their Sherman tanks. They weren’t as good, but they could make a lot of them.

The new MOUNTS had no stealth mode, which wasn’t too much of a loss in Coop’s opinion, but the polymorphic makeup of the armor’s skin was shit. Where the old MOUNT could really blend into the environment, the new ones were programmable to a solid color that was generally present in the operating environment. On Alamo, that meant the MOUNTs were the color of sand. It worked well in an place with a single color like that, but they weren’t going to be fighting a war in the deserts of Alamo, and Coop knew one of these new kids was going to get overconfident in their ability to blend and get dead for it.

Defensively, the R&D guys had been able to recreate the directional amplifiers for the directional shields. Even a brief time fighting with the old-school bubble shields reminded Coop of why the new tech was better. However, they didn’t quite get it right. The new MOUNTS powerplant wasn’t quite as powerful as what Gold managed, so there was less power overall, and the positioning of the amplifiers left holes in your defense if you knew where to look for them. That meant an after-production configuration change by the armorers at the unit level, and that meant the pilot had to pray his techs got it right. R&D promised they’d fix it on their next model, but each new MOUNT Alamo got was the same old Model 1 (M1) they’d been dealing with for the last six months.

Offensively, instead of the dual, 10mm forearm cannons, the M1 only had a single 6mm forearm cannon on the pilot’s non-dominant arm. The reason for this was; apparently, the small-caliber weapon hadn’t been used much against the ETs. Coop knew that was right, but in a fight against non-aliens, not having a large-capacity, anti-personnel weapon could come back to bite them in the ass. Of course, no one listened to him, or asked for his input in the design.

Thankfully, or the whole MOUNT project would have been a bust in his opinion, the new MOUNT had both a grav-cannon and next-gen accelerator . . . sort of. The grav-cannon was underpowered from what he was used to, and had a longer cycle time; both bad things in combat. The accelerator, instead of being mounted on the shoulder, was mounted along the forearm of the grav-cannon side. The combination made it impossible to use the MOUNT’s dominant hand for any tactile movements, and the shorter railgun feature decreased its power and range. Coop couldn’t reach a starship in orbit, and he might not even hit some hypersonic fighters providing overwatch for the enemy. The accelerator was yet to be proven in battle, which was just great for the first people who had to use it. Standard swatters and mini-missile loadouts completed the offensive capabilities; which, thankfully, were identical to the old MOUNTS. Plus, there was the added protections the fleet was able to come up with so a virus couldn’t knock everyone back into the stone ages.

Cyberwarfare was a thing again, and the MOUNTS were uploaded with the best AIs the Commonwealth was willing to spend money on. Since the infantry bought their shit en-mass from the lowest bidder, they naturally got nothing but the best. All in all, Coop hoped he never had to face a Gold Technologies MOUNT in battle; and he wasn’t even comfortable against a Windsor mech.

<Tough shit,> he knew what his fiancé and commanding officers would say. <Go complete the mission.> Right now, the mission was to get these kids combat ready in only a few months. It didn’t matter that they were only a few years younger than he was. When it came to war, he was an old man at this point.

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Clans of Atlantis – Sneak Peek 4

“You ruined my summer vacation, Drake,” Gus’s worst enemy spoke up before Gus even reached the gathering.

“Nice to see you to, Ulysses. I was counting the minutes until I could see you again,” Gus shot back.

“I’m sure you were. I’m surprised it took you all of forty-eight hours to fuck up, and that included travel time. By the Creator, man, you managed to diminish Atlantis’s reputation on the world stage in the same amount of time it takes my sister to decide what she wants to wear in the morning.” To add insult to injury, Ulysses swiped at his nose with his thumb and made a loud snort.

If there were any questions left in Gus’s mind about the paparazzi photos, that answered them.

Ulysses Yinglong, Gus’s archnemesis from before they were even born, and heir to the rival House Yinglong was the last person Gus wanted to be attending boot with. He looked a lot like Gus with tan skin, dark silky hair, and darker, stormier-blue eyes than Gus’s. He was a few centimeters taller than Gus, his shoulders a little broader, his face a little more symmetrical. Basically, in all the shallow ways one person could measure another, Ulysses came out ahead. Thankfully, when people did get to know him, their respect for the Yinglong plummeted. He was a total ass.

Gus knew it was petty bitching about being the top one percent of the one percent, but he hated that Ulysses was better than him at anything. Even worse, Gus hated when Ulysses used those moments to rub it in his face.

“Enough you two,” one of the few women present among the platoon leaders stepped forward. “We’ve got to work together to be successful here, and Drake is in charge, no matter how much that rubs your ego the wrong way, Ulysses.”

Anyone coming to Gus’s defense at the moment of his embarrassment was a vote of confidence in his leadership; except when it came from Cordelia Wyrm. House Wyrm was the closest ally House Drake had, which would normally make Gus and Coraline fast friends. Like Ulysses, a lot about her was skin deep. She was gorgeous, that was to be expected, but Gus had made the drunken mistake of sleeping with her a year ago. Now, everything she did was aimed at them spending the rest of their lives together. Whether Gus wanted that or not. With everything she did tinged by that ulterior motive, her presence was a hinderance more than a blessing.

“We’ve only got seven and a half minutes now,” a confident voice reminded them.

Gus smiled as his friend interjected to move things along. Roman of House Vulcan was a very peculiar person on many levels. He was built like the pagan god his family was styled after: fifteen centimeters shorter than Gus, but much broader, with muscles that had been put to use on the school’s national champion rugby team. His skin was two shades darker than Gus’s, and his head was completely shaved. A face that could easily have been hard as granite was covered in smile and laugh lines. Gus always admired Roman’s humor considering his situation. Despite being from one of the great houses of the Shallow Sisters, Roman had not been gifted by their creator. His grandmother had married an immigrant. Their son, Roman’s father, had also married outside the indigenous Atlantean population; thus, Roman had fallen outside whatever tolerance the Creator deemed necessary for his chosen people. He was a norm, although, he was anything but normal.

For one thing, Roman was a technical wizard who worked true magic as far as Gus was concerned. With hands that looked like they were built for crushing skulls, they were surprisingly nimble and dexterous. Gus had seen them dance across keyboards and interfaces during their many nights playing video games in the palace, or on the Vulcan estate.

Now that they were at Boot together, Gus’s first order of business was to use Roman’s talents to gain access to the outside world again. That meant getting his ocular nanites online, and making sure he could get a signal out with his new holocom. CPT Livingston insisted that the holocom was only connected the SECNET, but Gus was sure Roman could prove otherwise.

Realistically, getting access to what was going on outside Camp Sweat wasn’t a priority. The other men and women in front of him were. “And I burned four minutes talking to the ones I already know,” Gus kicked himself.

“My liege,” another platoon leader fell to her knees during the lull in conversation. “Liliana of House Lune, Clan Lupus, sir,” she bowed her head and waited for Gus to respond.

Gus knew all about Clan Lupus. They were one of the most heavily populated Atlantean clans, and House Lune was effectively their royal house. Gus also knew their territorial seat of power was out of the city Moon River, in a valley in north-central Creta, where they owned several mining and energy conglomerates. Most of the solar farms in Atlantis were owned by the Lune’s, and if they weren’t, they ended up supplying the raw materials to their competitors.

Liliana was someone he wanted as an ally.

“Please, Liliana,” he cupped her chin so he could look her in the eyes. They were a very cool steel color. It reminded him of Rose for a moment, but there was a sharpness to Liliana’s eyes that the Confed didn’t possess. “We’re all recruits here. No more of this bowing and kneeing. Just call me Gus.”

Liliana smiled as she rose to her feet with a grace that surprised him. She was tall, only a handful of centimeters shorter than Gus. Her skin was several shades paler, which was more common in her clan, but her hair was completely white. He didn’t know if that was natural, or a stylistic choice, but his money was on the later. Like him, she was only eighteen.

He moved around the gathering to get all the other platoon leaders’ names. There were five others from Clan Lupus, but he could see in their stances that Liliana was their alpha. If he needed something done, she was the one to go through. She was also the platoon leader for First Platoon, the platoon that he was assigned to, so they’d be seeing a lot of each other.

Aside from Ulysses, Roman, and Cordelia there was only one other member of the ruling Clan Draconus among the platoon leaders. Her name was Andromeda Wyvere. He couldn’t recall anything about the smaller house from his political training, and she was the leader for platoon one-seven, far down the line from where he would be.

“She does have very kind eyes,” he noted the twin hazel pupils that gazed back at him when they shook hands.

The other clans and houses kind of blurred together as the seconds ticked down, and the group found itself running for the hangar to meet the CPT’s time-hack. Livingston was waiting by the door looking at her holocom when they entered through the open door.

“Three seconds to spare, class leader. Take your seat,” she instructed, and the twenty-one members of Class 01-84’s leadership team found a spot in the rear of the seats. A projector was already powering up and bringing up a presentation on military customers and courtesies.

Gus looked over his shoulder and saw that the CPT was gone. She had better things to do than babysit, and this gave him an opportunity. But, like always, Cordelia had managed to seat herself next to him.

“Do you mind switching with Roman,” he smiled and turned on the charm. “I’d love to hear about what you’ve been up to for the last few days, but I’ve got some class leadership stuff I need to go over with him,” he held up his holocom for emphasis and shrugged, playing the fool.

“Boys and their toys,” she looked upset at his request, but it looked like she bought it. “Roman,” she whispered and waved down the line.

Roman had to suck it in and turn sideways to avoid giving everyone along his path the butt or crotch. “Thanks,” he squished into the newly vacated seat. “Vivian, the girl from Clan Aves, was starting to bitch at me about not being able to go flying for eight weeks.” Roman hid the hurt on his face, but Gus knew it bothered him.

Good-natured Roman wouldn’t say anything to the other platoon leader, who clearly didn’t know he was a norm, but it still hurt after all these years of knowing he would never get to fly like the other members of his clan. It was a good thing Gus had a task that would cheer him up.

“I need to know what is going on outside this sweat lodge,” he whispered and slipped his holocom to Roman. “See what you can do to get me connected, but give it back to me before this waste of time lets out. That’s an inspectable item, and I’m sure the CPT is going to hound me about it every time I see her.”

“Sure thing,” Roman’s eyes lit up like it was Yule. It wasn’t every day that he got to tinker around with military grade hardware.

Gus let his buddy have at it, and tuned back into the presentation. The SGT on stage was going over the various ranks of the navy and marines. Gus had memorized those when he was two and a half and playing with action figures.

The royal navy and marines were made up of four groups of personnel with different tasks and responsibilities: enlisted, non-commissioned officers, specialists, and officers. Enlisted personnel (E1-E3) made up the bulk of the grunt force. Their jobs were largely to do what other people instructed, and didn’t require much specialty training. For the royal marines those ranks were Private (PVT), Private First Class (PFC), and Lance Corporal (LCPL); for the navy they were Seaman (SN), Able Seaman (AB), and Lead Seaman (LS). Generally, if you were enlisted in the navy you were just called seamen. No one bothered with the differentiation. Enlisted duties would encompass a recruit’s first tour if they decided to stay on after boot. It would take a minimum of three years, by regulation, to be eligible to move on to NCO or Specialist ranks.

NCOs (N1-N5) and Specialists (S1-S5) personnel were dual career tracks dependent on the specific duties. NCOs generally operated in combat units and were specialized in training, motivating, and leading men in combat operations. They were: Sergeant (SGT), Staff Sergeant (SSG), Gunnery Sergeant (GYSGT), Master Sergeant (MSG), and Sergeant Major (SGM). For those NCOs at the rank of MSG or SGM, if they were in a position of non-commissioned officer in charge (NCOIC) of a unit, they would be addressed as First Sergeant (1SG) or Command Sergeant Major (CSM). For the navy, their ranks were: Petty Officer Third Class (PO3), Petty Officer Second Class (PO2), Petty Officer First Class (PO1), Chief Petty Officer (CPO), Senior Chief Petty Officer (SCPO).

Like NCOs, Specialists were personnel with gradually increased levels of responsibility, but fields of focus were narrow. Like the NCOs were for training and combat, Specialists were expected to be subject matter experts in their chosen field. Their ranks were Specialist Third Class (SPC3), Specialist Second Class (SPC2), Specialist First Class (SPC1), Chief Specialist (CSPC), and Senior Chief Specialist (SCSPC). Theirs’s was the only area where the marines and navy had the same rank structure.

Last, but not least, were the officers (O1-O9). These were the people the King had entrusted with command authority to lead his marines and navy personnel. Unlike some militaries of the world, all Atlantean officers came from the ranks of the prior service; meaning they’d served as enlisted, NCOs, or SPCs before. Just because someone had managed to stay sober enough to complete a four-year degree at university didn’t mean they were ready to lead men and women in battle.

For the marines the ranks were: Lieutenant Junior Grade (LJG), Lieutenant Senior Grade (LSG), Captain (CPT), Major (MAJ), Lieutenant Colonel (LTC), Colonel (COL), Brigadier (BG), Lieutenant General (LTG), and the commander of the entire royal marines was referred to as the Commandant (CMDT).

Gus knew Commandant Wyrm very well. Cordelia’s uncle, and one of his father’s closest friends and advisors, the King and CMDT built a bond back at their own boot and kept it going strong for decades.

“I wonder if I’ll have the same experience?” Gus’s idle thoughts continued to flow.

The navy’s ranks were: Ensign (ESN), Lieutenant (LT), Lieutenant commander (LCDR), Commander (CMDR), Captain (CAPT) – not to be confused with the marines CPT, which was an O3 compared to the navy O5 – Commodore (CDRE), Rear Admiral (RADM), Vice Admiral (VADM), and the commander of the entire navy was the Fleet Admiral (FADM). Gus also knew Fleet Admiral Yinglong, who was Ulysses father. While not his father’s best friend, they still worked together for the good of the Kingdom.

Gus spent the rest of the briefing thinking back to the many dinners he’d been at with the men who ran the military. He tried to piece together anything he could use to better accomplish his tasks as class leader, but nothing came to mind.

He’d nearly nodded off from heat and boredom when Roman elbowed him hard in the ribs. “I’ve got you access…kind of,” he handed back the holocom. “The holocom has the ability to access civilian networks, but was shut off. I turned it back on, but that was the easy part. I’m sure usage is being monitored throughout the base, so we’re going to need to mask your searches. I’ve wrote up a quick algorithm and imbedded it in the code, but we’re going to need other holocom IDs to throw people off your scent because I know you don’t want to throw your platoon leaders under the bus. Once we get the IDs, which I saw need to be logged on a master spreadsheet, you should be good to go. All you need to do is be patient and wait a couple of days.”

“It’ll take a couple days?” Gus wondered how Roman could narrow it down like that.

“Sure, once the rest of the recruits get their holocoms we’ll be able to clone their unique identifiers and you’ll be set. Just don’t go looking at a bunch of porn or anything that’ll easily tie back to you,” he added quickly. “The CPT will get a read on everything and come investigate whoever’s ID you’re using. Don’t buddy fuck them.”

“The rest of the recruits get holocoms?” Gus had felt special until a few seconds ago. Now, like the CPT had promised, his was more a burden than blessing.

Roman shut up as the CPT reentered the hangar and ordered everyone to their feet. “Class leader, take charge of your class and get them to chow. You have one hour to be seated back in this hangar. Execute.” Just like that she left, and everyone else turned expectantly to Gus.

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Two Worlds – Chapter 336

Mark “Coop” Cooper

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

The last gun went silent, and Coop gave a weary sigh. The jubilation of being rescued from the bunkers was long gone. Eradicating Earth of the alien plague took longer than anyone thought. The BAMFs and roaches dug in like ticks, and tried to suck every last drop of human blood out before they were stomped. Tens of thousands more soldiers and spacers died in the coming skirmishes, that would have been bloody battles in any other war. People who’d survived in the bunker complex, suffered against all the shit that rained down on them, only to die in a ditch a few weeks later. Coop was getting really sick of Earth.

Grunts, HI, and he even spotted a MOUNT – wherever the hell that came from – went charging into the breach after they finished the bombardment. Hopefully, it would be the last time. Coop had been a part of one of those charges recently. After the rescue, they were only given so much time to reconsolidate before being thrown right back into the suck. In the coming battle, he and Eve had risked their lives again and again. Skill and a shit-ton of luck led them to this point.

“All clear,” the command came down, and Coop secured his weapon. The 250mm cannon was smoking on his back and he was beginning to feel the heat through the armor.

There was no cheering or wild celebration from the HI troopers on the artillery ground. The nets were just empty silence. If Coop had to guess, most of the grizzled old men and women – some still shy of thirty; age didn’t matter when you’d lived through what they had – were either taking a nap or crying. Coop himself felt a little overwhelmed. He didn’t cry, but he did feel like the armor was closing in around him for a second; like a black hole that would grind him to nothing if he didn’t break free.

“You good?” that freedom showed up at exactly the right moment. Eve stook next to him in her smaller V2 LACS, which had a lot more repair work on it since they’d left the bunker.

Coop drew in a shaky breath as he got to his feet. Even in the fairly new V4, there were groans from damage that mimicked how his body felt. His nose was blind to the stench of his own body. He couldn’t remember the last time he hadn’t eaten something out of a tube, and his armor’s medical systems were still dealing with his multitude of injuries. Sometimes it was easy to forget he was still missing a limb and had regrown skin of nearly half of his body. When there was shit to do, it was easy to ignore it, but now that it was over; a dull ache seemed to spread through him.

“As good as can be,” his voice was bitter to his own ears. “Not your fault,” he made sure Eve knew that before she added another injury to his growing list. “Just . . .”

“Yeah, this is all fucked,” she took a seat next to him and leaned her metal shoulder against his.

“I . . . I’m not sure I want to do this anymore,” Coop couldn’t believe the words that came out of his mouth.

He’d never done much in his life, been much, or been good at anything. He’d been a poor Rat, not any type of human being to write home about, but he’d been a good soldier. He hadn’t always done the right thing; he got wrapped up in money and pussy before settling on Eve, but he knew in his bones he’d been good at that. To toss all of that away was like cutting off a nut.

“Well tough shit,” Eve replied in her typical straightforward manner. “We’re both under contract as warrant officers, and after this shitstorm, I doubt the Commonwealth is letting anyone go. You’ll have to go AWOL, and then flee the Commonwealth. I won’t be with a quitter.”

A flash of anger, that was only multiplied by his frayed nerves, shot through him. “I didn’t say I was quitting,” he spat at her. “I just said I don’t think I wanted to do this anymore.” He shuffled away so they weren’t touching anymore.

He felt stupid for doing it, but he’d done a lot of stupid things, <like joining the infantry,> he gave a mental chortle.

Eve followed him and smacked her shoulder back into his. It was a possessive strike, that had an undertone of “unfuck yourself” to it.

“We need a vacation,” she announced, like that was going to happen. “We need to drink, fuck, and just forget about all of this for a week.”

“Sure,” Coop scoffed, still bitching like a petulant child. “I’ll just grab us a few tickets to Disney World, and we’ll catch a cruise to the pleasure planet,” he rolled his eyes underneath his helmet.

“I’m not fucking joking, Coop,” her voice wasn’t hot with anger. It had dropped to that cold level where she was warning him to get his shit together. “It’s not only us we need to worry about. We need to get our shit straight before she gets here.”

<Oh,> a wave of embarrassment replaced the rage. He’d totally forgotten about his unborn daughter in his current funk.

“Yeah,” he said slowly as the rage dissipated. “We do need a vacation.”

His HUD flashed with a new rally point as they sat there collecting themselves. They were packing up and moving on. Other assets were doing the cleanup work in this sector, and he hoped they were going to let them go about their business soon. They both wanted leave to see their daughter, and the infantry granted maternity leave to both parents when she was born. Of course, it wasn’t a vacation with a newborn; and there sure as shit wouldn’t be any drinking or fucking, just pooping, eating, and sleeping.

***

Sonya Berg

Location: CWS Agincourt, Sol System, United Commonwealth of Colonies

Sonya caught a ride down from Aggie. She felt better after getting a decent amount of medical treatment, but it was far less than what was needed to get back to one hundred percent. She didn’t mind that. There were others who needed the nanites and surgeries more than her.

Despite everything that was going on, she had a full personal security detachment coming with her. Technically, she was still the Chief of Naval Intelligence, and the fleet had lost too many flag officers in the battle to lose another one to an accident on the ground.

The Spyder carrying her did a combat descent over her chosen metropolis, and as her stomach did barrel rolls, she witnessed the destruction up close and personal. This was one of the more intact metropolises the planetary governor was trying to regain control from. One look at it, and she didn’t envy the person. Most of the skyline looked like half-used candles. The great superstructures of humanity’s homeworld had melted under the onslaught of the alien’s thermal weapons. Planetary Defense centers had survived, but they were small circles of calm in a sea of madness.

Mostly it was just destruction, and she couldn’t even fathom the number of civilians that died. She’d looked up the numbers the PDC’s could hold on the ride down, but like most things on Sol, war was not a primary concern. Mutually assured destruction was real, and the starfarrings powers tended to take their grievances out on each other where the bulk of the human species did not live.

<The population decimated, industry destroyed, orbital infrastructure reduced to debris, and the system already robbed of most natural resources,> she tallied in her head. Sol was about to be relegated to a third-world system, not much better than the colony worlds out on the Rim.

She couldn’t even comprehend the immigration issues that were coming, and she didn’t have to. <Not my job,> her Spyder set down on the roof of a military hospital that had been inside a PDC. Even from the landing pad, she could see beds spread out for hundreds of meters; like a shantytown around the hospital.

Normally, there would be a hodgepodge of administrators and senior doctors waiting for someone of her rank to show her around. On the edge of the pad there was only a nervous-looking orderly. He was probably more used to cleaning shitters than showing around admirals. Still, he did a good enough job to get her from point A to point B. She found the reason she was here not long after she landed.

The room was crowded despite only having two people in it. <I’d forgotten how big they were,> she thought as she squeezed in beside her daughter and Mark Cooper. They both looked like they’d seen better days, but they smelled clean, had received a few hot meals, and were in a fresh set of CMUs. Both had the dual black stripes of a Chief Warrant Officer Two. It was the least the Commonwealth could do for the MOUNT pilots who’d survived.

“Hi, mom,” Eve gave her a gentle hug, and it might have been the first time her daughter had hugged her in a decade. It took her by surprise.

“Ma’am,” Cooper just sounded tired, and after reading the reports, she couldn’t blame him.

“Chief,” she gave him a respectful nod before turning her attention to the reason they were all there. Well . . . two reasons.

Eve’s daughter was in the OBGYN wing two floors up, along with thousands of other fetuses that didn’t even realize they’d lived through the biggest battle in human history. They’d grow up in the aftermath after everything had changed.

“How is he?” she looked down at her other child.

Derrick Berg looked like burned shit. His battlecruiser had been a stationed at Fleet Base Constitution when the ET’s showed up. It had fought bravely in the defense, but ultimately been destroyed. A decent chunk of the crew escaped to the pods, and jettisoned close enough to Earth that they were able to make landfall before the ET’s. After that, it was a game of escape and evade with the ground forces until they reached friendly lines. Derrick had been horribly wounded during the fighting, bisected from the waist down by a beamer. If not for the nifty ET body bags that put people in suspended animation, he’d be dead. As it was, he was undergoing a long and arduous rehab that started with regrowing everything south of his large intestines.

Derrick wasn’t conscious, and wouldn’t come out of the medically-induced coma until everything was reattached and working appropriately. Still, Sonya wanted to see her injured child . . . and future grandchild.

“You two are being redeployed,” she informed the two WO’s behind her. “the universe if still going headfirst down the shitter. The Windsor’s will get uppity when they have the ability to do so. This new corporate abomination is already turning the screw to the Commonwealth, and has the muscle to stand up to us for now; and there are always the Blockies. They lost sixty percent of the forces they contributed, but they contributed less than us. The balance of power is still relatively even, but that is a step down from where we were. We’ve also lost good people,” the image of Michael Ward swam through her head. “It wouldn’t surprise me if there was a draft soon. Turns out the galaxy is even worse than we realized, and the Prime Minister wants us prepared.”

Cooper didn’t look too thrilled with her words, but he didn’t say anything. Even Eve looked a little perturbed. Sonya reached down an put a hand on Derrick’s upturned palm. There was no response on the variety of monitors flowing the air around him, but that was ok with her.

Sonya had her own work to do. The top of that list was finding out who the hell attached Earth, why, and what were they going to do next. She didn’t envy who got the job after her, but she had work to do until the PM formally relieved her. She had her resignation letter good to go if that order didn’t come soon. Deja was a friend, but there was no way Sonya could stay on when she’d so completely failed.

“If they transfer us before the birth, we’ll take her with us,” Eve stated, bringing Sonya’s attention back to the moment. “Will you be free in a few months for the birth?” there was a vulnerability in her daughter’s eyes she hadn’t seen before. Near-death experience, and becoming a mother would do that to a person.

“I would love to be there,” Sonya didn’t promise, and Eve heard that, but she hoped her daughter saw how much she wanted to be.

That would have to be good enough.

***

Hailey Armstrong

Location: Earth, Sol System, United Commonwealth of Colonies

“Read my lips you ignorant fuck; get . . . me . . . the . . . hell . . . out . . . of . . . here,” Hailey practically spat at the ticket agent. She’d just thrown down three times the amount of a normal ticket, and a third of that was to bribe the fat asshole sitting in front of her.

After spending the last two months in a fallout shelter some doomsday prepper had put together a few centuries ago, she was ready to do anything to get out of here. She thought about offering to suck to fat bastards’s dick, but she’d debased herself enough lately. The people who’d beat her to the shelter had only allowed her entrance in return for sexual favors. She’d had to perform those for a time, but her training had prepared her for that. It also prepared her for the series of “accidents” that befell the people who took advantage of her.

At first there was suspicion, but once it looked like they weren’t leaving the shelter anytime soon, the rest of the inhabitants were glad for less mouths to feed. Nevertheless, when the Commonwealth took back the planet, she’d gotten the hell out of there before someone told someone with a badge about the whore who’d been around when a number of their men had died.

Now, she found herself at the overcrowded spaceport. Getting regular travel to and from Sol was still months off, but warships redeploying to different sectors were playing ferryboat to civilians getting the hell off the Earth. The fat bastard gave her extra credits a greedy look before scooping them away. He worked some magic on his terminal, and then a ping on her newly purchased IOR showed she had a flight up to a cruiser that left in ten minutes. The ship was headed to Acheron, well away from any of her known contacts, but the syndicate was everywhere. She knew what to look for at spaceports that would tell her who to contact with the boss for orders. Being on Earth during the catastrophe of epic proportions should be enough to buy her clemency on missed payments after her account ran dry. It wouldn’t save her from the compiled interest, but she had skills people could use. She’d be fine.

She spared a quick thought for Coop, but she’d had enough of thinking about her ex. Derailing his plans to possibly tie her to the death of his father had fucked her harder than Coop ever had before. She wasn’t going to spare any more mental energy on the man.

She had better things to do with her life.

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Two Worlds – Chapter 335

Mark “Coop” Cooper

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

It took days to dig them out. It was funny, because they’d buried themselves in a series of explosions that took a matter of seconds. <fight . . . explosion . . . pause . . . fight . . .> Coop rubbed his war-weary eyes as he led the vanguard of human survivors into the large maintenance bay.

He wasn’t sure what he expected to see. Everything in the bay was destroyed: Spyders, weapons, repair racks, and even individual tools were finely dispersed matter. The ETs left no stone unturned, and then they destroyed the stone just for good measure. The look on the LCDR’s face showed she was mourning her battered and broken command, but he really didn’t give a shit.

He shot a glance in the direction of the tunnel where two scouts had pulled bis barbequed body to safety. He could tell where the grunts and Eve had started their defense in depth, and was thankfully they’d been able to hold on for so long.

“You good?” Eve asked as she marched up beside him.

They were both still in their armor. He didn’t know about her, but he wasn’t getting out of the extra level of protection until every last BAMF was off earth. He didn’t want to admit it, but nearly dying several times in the last few weeks meant he was going to need some cognitive therapy. Making sure those neural pathways didn’t develop and lead to stress disorders was critical for soldiers in the twenty-fifth century.

“I’ll be fine.” Despite being in a three-meter LACS, he wasn’t moving much faster than the rest of the Commonwealth personnel. He was basically dragging one leg like a cripple.

<Still not taking it off,> he told himself as he finally saw someone new.

The man who came forward looked beyond harried, and was wearing fleet CMUs. If his state of dress was mirrored by the rest of the fleet, then it was a miracle they’d been able to relieve to bunker at all. His eyes were bloodshot, he had a few days’ worth of stubble on his face, and there was flecks of blood on his uniform. He wore the dragonscale chest plate, and nothing else, which Coop took to mean he hadn’t really seen what a BAMF could do. He might as well be wearing toilet paper.

“Ladies, gentlemen,” his voice cracked as he tried to raise it so the hundred people in the bay could hear him. “We’ve got busses set to take you to secure areas. Large portions of North America are still contested. We have several breach heads established, and are gradually increasing out zones of influence. Admiral Gilmore believes we will have the planet pacified in one to two weeks.

<Since we held for several times that, I guess that’s fine,> the tired thought flittered across Coop’s mind.

“If everyone will continue through the east tunnel, we’ll get everything situated,” he pointed in the direction Coop’s near-lifeless body had been rescued from. “I’m going to call out some names. If those people could please standby: Warrant Officer Eve berg, Warrant Officer Mark Cooper . . .” he said a few more, but Coop stopped paying attention when his name was called.

It wasn’t dread that filled his stomach, it was resignation. He might be a battered hunk of shit right now, but his fight might not be done.

“Come on,” metal squealed against metal as she took his arm and maneuvered him out of the flow of people.

Once they were separated, the petty officer pointed them to the opposite tunnel. “You have a different ride.”

He heard the sound of guns over the Spyder’s engines right before he felt the jerk in his inner ear of the Spyder going into a combat descent. It wasn’t just him and the few people called out back in the bunker. The Spyder had made half a dozen stops at different besieged sites, and picked up more HI troopers. They all looked just about as beat to shit as Coop and Eve, so no one talked as the Spyder powered through the atmosphere to their destination. With the sound of guns, that destination became clear: the front.

Instinct took over as the slight vibration of landing shocked everyone into motion. It was clear everyone here were veterans as the popped their harness and unassed out of the Spyder. This was the most vulnerable point for them and the Spyder. Once they were clear, everyone would feel a little better.

The assembly area where they debarked looked just like every other assembly area Coop had ever been in; which was a small comfort. Soldiers were moving around in formation to get wherever they need to go. Spyders were coming and going; dropping men and supplies in an endless stream to fuel the human war machine.

Coop saw dozens of soldiers grabbing supplies in exoskeletons and moving them to points farther forward. He instinctively looked up, and the V4’s HUD showed him the layers and layers of protective shielding crossing above them. It flickered every once in a while, as outgoing rounds passed through, but for the most part, the layers of energy were comforting.

All the HI just stood there in a gaggle until someone showed up tot take charge. No one knew who he was, but he was a full CMDR, so they fell into line and followed him. Once they arrived at their destination, everything became clear, and Coop breathed a huge sigh of relief. After the fight in the tunnels, he wasn’t ready to dive headfirst back into the shit.

Thankfully, he didn’t have to. Their destination was a large open are littered with other HI and old-school artillery pieces. All the HI were in the kneeling position taught in HI school as the proper fire support technique. The boom of their 125mm and 250mm spine-mounted cannons went off at irregular intervals, but the sight was just as comforting as the shields overhead.

A communications tech needed to stop by to patch them into the proper fire support net, and then the CMDR positioned them all in the open space. After than it was incoming calls for fire, and it felt like he was back in HI training. It was rote, relaxing, and the thought of his high explosive shells tearing apart BAMFs, roaches, and whatever the hell those alien bastards had in reserve, and blowing them straight to hell was as the best thing that had happened to him all week.

***

Benjamin Gold

Location: Aurum, Gold Technologies Corporate Territory, United Commonwealth of Colonies

Ben ignored the incessant beeping in his head. The IOR was a wonderful piece of technology that had revolutionized the way humans interacted and communicated in the last year. Everything was at a person’s fingertips at all times. You could shop, research, and talk with friends throughout the universe if you were rich enough, and will to pay the ridiculous QE fees to send messages across the galaxy instantaneously.

Theoretically, they were also supposed to have unrivaled privacy features. Despite the “do not disturb” feature Ben had activated, and a fuck off text he’d sent to the ID that was relentlessly calling him, someone was unwavering in their task to get a hold of him. He had a pretty good idea who it was.

Their honeymoon was long gone, and Jacobi had gone to work for Gold Technologies in the new Confederation of Corporate Interests. Despite his father’s wishes, the confederation was not Gold Technologies or vice versa. Thomas Gold might be the CEO of the ruling Board of Directors, as well as president and CEO of Gold Technologies, but in the first weeks of the new nation’s birth, it became apparent that not all the corporate titans that had signed on with Gold wanted him to be in charge. Like all politics, there were now competing factions forming under different ideologies. What made it a little different was that all the ideologies were pro-corporate and business oriented; it just depended on what degree.

Ben had no illusions that Thomas Gold was running the show. It just wasn’t as easy as his old man wanted it to be. That realization was almost as good as the sex on his honeymoon . . . almost.

Still, it sucked the Jacobi had spent the last few weeks being assimilated into the new corporate machine. Getting out of the infantry and into R&D was a dream come true for her, and her surname was helping. Ben knew she didn’t need to lean on the Gold name to get things done, and that she would conquer whatever obstacles the corporate world put in her path just as efficiently as she’d led troops in battle. He wasn’t worried about his wife, but apparently, people were worried about him.

For the most part, he’d spent the last few week sulking. It was the word he used, while others used less-flattering explanations for his actions. He knew he was sulking – or being a little bitch – as some put it, but he felt he had the moral high ground.

<They committed treason,> he kept telling himself. <and not just my father; citizens, other corporations, whole planets, and entire fleet detachments.>

Even worse was the timing of the defection. The battle for Earth had been all that was on the nets recently. Most of the QE buoys had been destroyed in Sol, but a few were salvaged by powering down, and once the battle was won, they were able to bring minute-by-minute updates of the devastation. Those close to earth, with a decent line-of-sight, were even able to show the battles taking place on the surface.

It was like watching a video game from hundreds of light years away, and it made Ben sick. Sick enough that he didn’t bother to reply when his assignment orders arrived by way of his father. The man didn’t actually show up to tell him he was joining the corporation’s newly minted fleet, but the IOR message had used pretty straightforward language. Of course, Ben just tossed it in the trash folder and ignored it.

He ignored the day his duty was supposed to begin. Ignored any calls except for his wife’s, and was content with sitting on the couch and catching up on the latest shows. It was amazing the storylines the came up with for mid-day soap operas.

The incessant beeping in his head stopped, and he refocused on what tomfoolery the inhabitants of a small colonial town were getting up to. He was guessing who was sleeping with who now when a terrible screech ripped through his mind. Pain radiated through his temples as he fell off the couch and his whole body seized up. He was still trying to figure out what the hell was going on when he blacked out.

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