ARC Angel (ARC Angel Series Book 1) Read online

  “Enough, Parkins,” their coach chided. “We respect the judges even when we disagree.”

  “But it isn’t right, coach!” Natalie said.

  “It’s okay,” Angel said, blinking away her tears. “Don’t worry about it.”

  “I’m so sorry, Angel,” Natalie said, but the bigger girl was already moving toward the locker rooms.

  “Coach, do you mind if I—”

  “Go ahead, Murphy,” he told her.

  Normally she would have stayed to cheer on her teammates. It was considered uncouth to leave the gym before the meet was over, but Angel knew her career was finished. She hadn’t scored well enough to place, much less catch the eye of one of the scouts in the stands who might offer her a shot at competing for the national team. Her days of competitive gymnastics were over. She could stick with the sport, coach perhaps, maybe even open her own gym, but those things held no allure for Angel. She lived for the challenge of competing and didn’t think she could hang onto her passion for the sport if she was forced to coach others.

  She waited until she was in the shower stall to cry. The locker rooms had private showers and the sound of the water hid her quiet sobs. She gave herself ten uninterrupted minutes of grief, then switched the water from hot to cold. It was hard to stand in the frigid stream, but she let the cool water pour over her face for a full minute, before shutting off the water. She hoped it was enough that her eyes wouldn’t be puffy and red when she came out of the locker room.

  A side door allowed her to slip away and avoid the crowds still watching the meet. The gymnasium was part of a larger sports complex and as she made her way through a large atrium she saw a man approaching. He wasn’t a scout, that much was certain. In fact, he wore the uniform of a Colonial Space Fleet Marine, black pants with a black coat, cinched at the waist with a gold belt. Ribbons were pinned to the left side of his chest, and he carried a black beret folded in one hand.

  “Miss Murphy,” he said. “May I speak to you for a moment?”

  “I’m on my way out,” she said.

  “I’ll walk with you, if that’s alright. I have an offer I’d like you to consider.”

  “Don’t tell me the CSF is starting a squad,” she said as she approached the large doors that led out to a massive parking complex.

  “No ma’am, we aren’t. But I think you could help us with something if you might be interested. I can’t give you much in the way of details, but suffice it to say that you’d be playing a vital role in the future of the space expansion program.”

  “I’m really not interested in military service,” Angel said.

  “Do you have plans then? College perhaps?”

  “My plans were squashed back there,” she said, pointing her thumb over her shoulder. “Right now I want to take a little time to figure things out.”

  “I respect that. I saw your program. You are very talented. I know you probably don’t think we have much to offer you, but that’s not exactly the case. In fact, your gymnast skills are exactly what we need.” He took hold of her arm and turned her to face him. “Look, I know I’m imposing, but there isn’t much time. I’m offering you an officer position in the CSF Marine Corps. We need your help.”

  “How can I possibly help?” Angel asked.

  “Sign a non-disclosure agreement and I’ll show you.”

  He pinged her phone with a message that had his name and contact info.

  “Call me and we’ll set up a time,” he told her. “Just don’t wait too long. We’re on the clock here and I need an answer soon.”

  Woodlake, California, U.S.A.

  The ride home from Bakersfield had been difficult. Angel had to wait for the meet to end and the other girls to clean up before their coach finally loaded them into a passenger van and drove them north toward the Sequoia National Park. Their home gym was in Visalia, about half an hour from her home in Woodlake. She had to hold herself in check until she got to the gym. There would be time to clean out her locker and say her goodbyes when the pain of her dreams being dashed wasn’t so raw.

  Driving home was usually how Angel relaxed. After a difficult training session or painful injury, she looked forward to driving east toward the mountains. The traffic slackened as she moved out of Visalia, and the Sierra Nevada peaks seemed to rise up in the distance. Her parents had a small home, just a simple two-bedroom bungalow on a street of similar homes. Angel was an only child, her mother was bedridden from MS and her father was already drunk by the time she got home at four in the afternoon on a Saturday. No one asked how the meet had gone, or even spoke to Angel as she slipped quietly into her bedroom.

  Everywhere she looked there were gymnastic metals, ribbons, and trophies. She collapsed onto her bed and let the tears fall. For half an hour she cried over the injustice of it all. She had talent, no one could deny that. She had passion, knowledge, and was willing to work hard, yet she had been denied. There was no reason behind the decision, no fault of her own she could point to, just an arbitrary decision she neither understood nor agreed with. So what if she was big, that didn’t mean she couldn’t do the same moves as a girl half her size.

  Once the crying stopped she began to assess her situation. It was time to find something else to do with her life besides gymnastics. She had gotten her high school equivalency, and college was an option, but it would have to be a state school, something small so she could work her way through. Angel had no work history, which might make finding a job more difficult. Most of the girls her age had done something, all Angel had ever done was gymnastics.

  When she picked up her phone, the contact information the marine had given her popped up on her home screen: COLONEL ISSAK JAKOBSON, MILITARY INTELLIGENCE, COLONIAL SPACE FLEET. Angel had never even considered the military, but at that moment she thought that getting out of town and as far away from her old life as possible sounded pretty good. She decided she would call the next day, if she still felt like it was a good idea.

  After preparing a quick dinner of baked chicken breasts, rice, and broccoli, which her father turned his nose up at and her mother couldn’t chew, Angel went to bed. She was tired, wearier than she had felt in a long time. She didn’t dream, or even wake up when her father fell down trying to stumble to the bathroom in a drunken stupor. The next morning, her body woke up promptly at six. Years of early morning workouts had left her unable to sleep in. She dressed quickly and went for a run, her mind turning over the possibility of a new life. It wasn’t a hard decision. The colonel, she knew his rank from the contact info he had pinged onto her phone, had told her that her training was important to the project he was recruiting her for. Perhaps, she reasoned, years of hard work in the gymnastic arts hadn’t been wasted. All the training, all the early mornings and grueling afternoons, the constant pressure and repetitive practice, might somehow pay off. He had mentioned an officer position. She knew very little about the military, but she understood that officers had more freedom than a basic enlisted person. It couldn’t hurt to find out more.

  When she got home she showered, ate, and began cleaning the house. Her father had left things a wreck as he always did. Her mother rarely left the bedroom anymore, her MS made it difficult just to get to the bathroom. Angel did most of the cleaning, and all the cooking. Her parents had been so supportive when she was young, but over the years their problems had crushed them. It scared Angel to think of what might happen to them once she left, but she had to live her own life. They both knew she had been hoping to make the national team. If she had, she would have moved to Boulder, Colorado. Joining the CSF wouldn’t be that much different. She might end up on a planet light years from home, but it would be the same to her parents who were on a downward spiral that would only drag her down with them if she stayed.

  A little online research revealed that the CSF was solid career choice, with attractive base salaries for officers that increased with every year of service. They had bases on every continent except for Antarctica, and space stations in or
bit around Mars, Neo Terra, and in the Groombridge system nearly sixteen light years from Earth. The largest base, Fort Matthis, was on Mars near the domed metropolis of Bezos City. The more she researched, the more exotic the Colonial Space Fleet sounded.

  Finally, once she had done everything she could think to do, she picked up her phone and sent a message.

  This is Angela Murphy. I’ve considered your offer.

  Good to hear from you, Ms. Murphy. I hope you’ll be joining us.

  I’ll take a look at what you need, but no promises.

  That’s all I ask. I’ll send the NDA for your signature.

  A transport will be waiting for you at the

  Woodland Airport tomorrow morning 0700.

  I look forward to seeing you again soon.

  Angel felt a slight thrill. It was good to be wanted, she thought. And it was exciting to think that she would soon be on a flight far away. It had to be far if they were going to pick her up at the airport. Woodland only had a small, municipal airport where local pilots flew small shuttle craft and some recreational gliders. It felt to Angel as if she were going on an adventure, and while being denied a spot on the national gymnastics team was still difficult to even think about, it helped to let her mind wander through the possibilities of what the CSF might offer her.

  Telling her parents that she hadn’t made the national team was difficult. Her father was sick from drinking too much, and self-medicating with more liquor. Her mother cried over Angel’s failure to get a score high enough to continue pursuing her dream of becoming an Olympic gymnast, but they both seemed relieved that she was making plans. She wasn’t sure what she could tell them about the meeting with Colonel Jakobson, so she told them as little as possible. They knew she would be going on a job interview and that she would let them know how things turned out. That night sleep was hard to come by. All her life she had been focused on only one thing, gymnastics. She knew about the off-world colonies and the space stations in various star systems where millions of people lived and worked doing everything from mining asteroids and gas giants to building massive interstellar ships that could break through normal space and travel through hyperspace.

  Unable to sleep, Angel spent most of the night on her phone, studying the history of off-world expansion. Only five habitable planets had been colonized, once mankind had discovered a way to travel the vast distances between star systems. Six more worlds were being terraformed to allow for human colonization. The Colonial Space Fleet was created to ensure that the various worlds had a protective military presence. Headquartered on Mars, the CSF had three branches: the Navy, which staffed and operated the interstellar ships; the Air Force, which was made up of pilots for both small fighter craft and unmanned drones; and the Marines, who did the actual fighting.

  No extraterrestrial intelligent life had yet been discovered, but the CSF had over the years gotten involved in trade disputes and civil unrest on the colonies, and had dealt with some native species on the colony planets that had become too dangerous for the pioneers to deal with. Nothing she read gave her any clue as to how her gymnast training might be useful to the CSF, but that only made her more curious. As she finally drifted off to sleep, she dreamed of a new life among the stars, a life full of adventure and fun.

  Woodland Municipal Airport, California, U.S.A.

  “This isn’t a game, Ms. Murphy,” Colonel Jakobson said. “Everything I am about to show you is classified, and the CSF takes its secrecy very seriously.”

  “I understand,” Angel said, feeling a little nervous as the colonel lectured her on what they were doing.

  “You’ve signed the non-disclosure agreement which means that if you choose not to join the service you must act as if this meeting never happened. And if you choose to join us, nothing you see or hear can be repeated to anyone outside the service. Is that absolutely clear?”

  “Yes,” Angel agreed, wondering just what she had gotten herself into.

  The ride to the airport had been uneventful. She had left home before either of her parents had even gotten out of bed. When she got to the airport a full ten minutes early, she found Colonel Jakobson already waiting for her. He escorted her into a small room with a tiny window with a view of a small private plane that was being fueled and prepared for takeoff.

  “Good, there is a lot to go over, but first we need to show you exactly why we selected you for this project,” the colonel said. He placed a small device on the table and opened a program on his phone. From the device a hologram sprang into the air. It looked like some type of body armor, sleek and formfitting, with strange devices on the shoulders, wrists, hips, legs, and ankles.

  “This,” Jakobson said, “is a prototype of a new mechanized armor. It’s called an Assisted Rapid Combat suit. The purpose of this suit is to maximize movement of the wearer.”

  “It makes you run fast?” Angel said, studying the hologram.

  “Not just run,” the colonel said. “Jump, flip, change directions. The armor is made of shock-absorbing material, impact-resistant microfibers. These nodes here,” he pointed to the shoulders, “and here on the forearms, legs, and ankles, are boosters to enable the wearer to do what you did Saturday at that gymnastics meet.”

  “What?” Angel asked in surprise.

  “The floor competition,” Jakobson said. “Tumbling, flipping, diving, and rolling, that’s what this suit is made to do. But not in a straight line. The boosters should enable you to twist, change directions, even start and stop at top speeds.”

  “Why?” Angel asked. “Are you wanting to be able to dodge bullets or something?”

  “That’s not the purpose of this suit. It’s a disruptor, made specifically to confuse and disorient an enemy combatant.”

  “Okay,” Angel said.

  “Questions?”

  “A ton of questions,” Angel said. “How much does it weigh?”

  “Just over eighteen kilos.”

  “Wow, that’s a lot of added weight. I don’t think many people could do much with an extra eighteen kilos weighing them down.”

  “Which is exactly why I chose you, Ms. Murphy. Unlike the majority of your contemporaries, you have the strength and build to test the ARC suit.”

  “That’s what you want me for? To test it?”

  “That’s right. Your experience is vital. You won’t be the only test pilot, but my guess is that you’ll be able to do things in the ARC our people won’t be capable of.”

  “Will the impact-resistant material lessen the strain on the user’s body?”

  “That’s right,” Jakobson said. “It’s a little like the springboard floor you would train on, only more advanced. The suit should enable the wearer to tumble across an open expanse, say three kilometers, and keep it up for ten to fifteen minutes.”

  “That’s impossible,” Angel said.

  “Why?”

  “Running maybe, but not tumbling. The strength and energy to jump and salto alone taxes most people. It takes years of training to do a floor exercise, and that’s nowhere close to a single kilometer. Even if the suit reduces the impact strain, the wearers would be exhausted in seconds, maybe a minute or two if they are at peak physical shape.”

  “The boosters should make the moves easier to accomplish,” Jakobson said. “Our R&D people have done their homework.”

  “Have they ever done the types of movements you’re describing?” Angel asked. “One of the hardest things about a floor competition is the extreme concentration required to stay focused on what you’re doing. It’s not just the pressure of competition or the difficulty of the moves, it takes years of experience not to get dizzy and fall flat on your face.”

  “That’s why we’ve sought you out,” the colonel said. “You know things from practical experience. You can help us make this hardware better, more usable to our people in the field. That is, if you’re willing to join the service and be part of the space expansion program.”

  “Tell me more about that,”
Angel said. “What are you offering exactly?”

  “A commission in the CSF Marine Corps usually involves a level of higher education, extensive training, and an initial six-year commitment.”

  “Six years?” Angel said, worried she was getting in over her head.

  “I can fast track your placement,” Jakobson said. “Your gymnast training will substitute for higher education. And we can reduce your basic training to four weeks. Officer Training will be a three-day intensive, then you’ll join the R&D department to help develop the ARC suit. You’ll be a second lieutenant, assigned to planetside duty for the duration of your six-year commitment.”

  “I won’t go into space?” Angel asked.

  “You might be needed for testing in hard vacuum or low gravity scenarios. But we have facilities for that kind of thing in system. You won’t get farther away from home than Mars unless you want to.”

  “It’s a lot to think about,” Angel said.

  “I know it and I wish I could give you more time, but unfortunately there isn’t any time.”

  “Why not?” Angel asked. “Why is there a rush on this technology?”

  “I’m not authorized to share that information with you. I know that’s unfair, but suffice it to say we have our reasons. The service needs you, Ms. Murphy. And I need an answer today. In the next few minutes, really. If you accept I’ll be flying you to an intake facility at the Hill CSF training facility near Ogden, Utah. That’s where you’ll do your basic training too.”

  Angel felt a thrill. She could be part of something important and that felt good. She was a little reluctant to leave her parents, but the thought of going home was depressing. If she turned down the colonel’s offer she would have to get a job somewhere, making minimum wage and starting life all over again. The only friends she had were other gymnasts and Angel knew from experience that once a person stepped away from full time training they rarely kept in touch. The idea of being surrounded by other people with the same goals and ideals was enticing.