ARC Angel (ARC Angel Series Book 1) Read online

  “What about seeing my parents?” Angel said.

  “Once you finish basic you’ll have access to whatever communication methods you prefer. They can even attend your graduation ceremony if they want to make the trip. There won’t be an opportunity for leave until the ARC suits are ready for deployment, but it’s nothing like an off-world tour. You’ll be able to stay in touch.”

  “Alright,” Angel said, making up her mind. “I’ll do it. I’ll join the CSF.”

  “Excellent. We’ll see that your vehicle gets returned to your parents. The shuttle should be ready soon. Welcome to the Colonial Space Fleet, Ms. Murphy. You’re a marine now.”

  Hill Colonial Space Fleet Training Base

  Ogden, Utah, U.S.A.

  The flight from California to Utah was quick, no more than an hour from take off to landing. Angel sent a text telling her parents that she was joining the CSF and would contact them in a month, but she hadn’t gotten a reply before they landed and she was asked to hand over her phone.

  After signing what felt like a thousand intake forms, she was given a physical. The CSF had rigorous standards, but years of gymnastics training ensured that Angel was in shape. After the medical team cleared her, Angel was taken to the mess hall where a new class of recruits were waiting to begin their basic training. Angel got a tray and was surprised to find that she could get as much food as she wanted. There was a wide variety of options, and she selected grilled fish, sweet potatoes, and steamed green beans with almonds. She ate her lunch quickly, preferring to eat light, unlike some of the other recruits who ate as if they hadn’t had a good meal in a long time. They were all just finishing their lunch when a woman in camouflage fatigues came into the mess hall, followed by two men, both lean and rugged looking. The men stood at attention behind the woman, who spoke in a loud and commanding voice.

  “On your feet!” the woman demanded. “I am Staff Sergeant Gordon, your training instructor for the next sixteen weeks. I will accept nothing less than perfection. You are not marines, you are nothing until you have completed this training and proven beyond all doubt that you are capable of wearing a uniform and serving humanity as the finest warriors in the galaxy. Many of you are soft and weak. That will change. Many of you will be incapable of accomplishing the tasks I set for you, but you will give me a perfect effort. The alternative is worse than you can imagine.

  “To my right is Gunnery Sergeant Green. On my left is Gunnery Sergeant O'Neal. They will be your barracks commanders for the duration of your basic training. If you have any problems, go to them. I am not your mother. I am not here to build your self-esteem, or feel sorry for you. This is the CSF Marine Corps, not the Air Force, not the Navy. We don’t coddle, we kill. We don’t whine, we win. This is the finest fighting force in the history of mankind, guardians of the stars, warriors of humanity’s expansion through the galaxy, and we will be perfect. When I ask a question, you will answer with an emphatic “yes, staff sergeant.” Is that clear?”

  The group of recruits, including Angela Murphy shouted their reply. It was sloppy, some were grinning and others seemed embarrassed. Staff Sergeant Gordon’s eyelid twitched. Angel was accustomed to grumpy coaches who put their students through grueling calisthenics. She had seen the look on the staff sergeant’s face before and knew the next four weeks would not be easy.

  “Angela Murphy!” Gordon said in a loud voice.

  Angel stood up. “Yes ma’am.”

  “Do not call me ma’am. I am not your mother. You will all address me as staff sergeant, is that clear?”

  “Yes, staff sergeant,” Angel said, her face flushing with embarrassment.

  “Come with me,” Gordon said. “As for the rest of you, women are with Gunnery Sergeant Green. Men are with Gunnery Sergeant O’Neal.”

  Angel quickly made her way to where Gordon was waiting. The staff sergeant turned without a word and led Angel just outside the mess hall. They were of equal height and had similar builds, but Gordon’s hair was cut very short, her skin tanned a dark brown, and there were deep lines around her eyes and mouth.

  “You’re on the fast track which means I only get four weeks to make sure you are ready to be a marine. But do not think for one second that I will take it easy on you. On the contrary, I expect officers to set the example for everyone else. You will be the first one up each day, the first to complete every challenge. Anything less is unacceptable.”

  “Yes, staff sergeant,” Angel said.

  “Do not disappoint me, Murphy. I’ll be watching you.”

  Angel nodded, and Gordon sent her back into the mess hall. She found the other recruits split into two groups, the boys on one side of the room, the girls on the other. Angel fell into line with the others and the gunnery sergeants led them out of the mess hall and into a building where they were taken into what looked like a locker room. The boys and girls had their own space, which made Angel a little less nervous. She had been on teams with male gymnasts, but she wasn’t comfortable with the idea of changing clothes in front of a boy. Each recruit was given fatigues and shown how to stencil their names to specific areas on each garment. They spent an hour adding their names to pants, tee shirts, fatigue shirts, sweat suits, socks, and underwear. Gunnery Sergeant Green showed the female recruits how to roll up their new clothes and then stow them in a large green rucksack.

  They were given sturdy boots with thick laces, then marched to the barber shop where each girl’s head was shaved. Many of the girls cried over their hair, which fell in thick ribbons around the bottom of the barber chairs, but Angel didn’t mind. She always kept her hair cut short so that it was out of the way while she practiced and easy to fix in the morning. It saved time that could be spent sleeping or working out. Cutting her hair down to the scalp would mean one less thing she would have to worry about while she was training.

  Once their hair was shaved, the girls carried their rucksacks to their barracks, which was a long cinderblock building with no air conditioning. It was dim and hot inside, but slightly cooler than out in the hot sun. There were two rows of metal bunkbeds with wooden lockers at the end of each. Angel could tell immediately that there were more beds than they needed.

  “Bottom bunks only, recruits!” Gunnery Sergeant Green bellowed from the front of the room. “Stow your clothes in the foot lockers. Change into running suits and line up outside. Two minutes, recruits. Move, move, move!”

  Angel grabbed a bunk in the middle of the room. It didn’t take her long to pull her clothes from the rucksack. They came out in neat bundles that were easily stowed in the foot locker. She had just enough room for the clothes, shower shoes, dirty laundry mesh bag, her toiletries, and rucksack, all of which had been given to her. Nothing from her old life was left. Her clothes, phone, and thin gold necklace were stowed in a gallon-sized storage bag with her name stenciled on it and left in a locker at the intake center. She pulled on the running suit and laced up her boots. She wasn’t the first person out of the barracks but she didn’t linger either. Within a minute they were all outside, the sun was harsh overhead, and across the dusty road the male recruits were lining up as well.

  “Recruits!” Gunnery Sergeant Green shouted. “Time for PT, we will begin with a basic warm up.”

  They did jumping jacks, stretches, and sat down in the dirt to do sit ups. Some of the girls struggled, but most seemed to be in good shape. Angel was sweating freely by the time they turned over to do push-ups, and didn’t need to drop to her knees like most of the girls did. Her gymnastics training had required not only stamina but core and upper body strength.

  “On your feet,” Green shouted. “We are going for a run. You will stay in formation and keep the pace. Is that clear?”

  “Yes, sergeant,” the group of recruits replied.

  Some spoke loudly, others could barely catch their breath and looked shaky. From across the dusty road the male recruits suddenly shouted, “Yes, sergeant!”

  “Are you really going to let those apes sound
off better than you?” Green demanded.

  “No, sergeant!” the girls shouted.

  “Damn right,” Green said. “Now we are going to run until someone quits. Gunny O’Neal and I have a bet going. I say one of his fat lug heads will drop before any of you. Now prove me right. Right face!”

  The entire group of recruits turned to their right. The boys turned in the same direction on the opposite side of the road. Gunnery Sergeants Green and O’Neal shouted at the same time and everyone started jogging. It was a slow, steady pace. Angel knew she could keep up a much faster run for at least five kilometers, and if she pushed herself she could reach ten, but she focused on keeping the pace set by the sergeants. Around her she heard girls gasping for breath and she thanked her gymnast instructors who forced her to run every day. She had no illusions about basic training. It was supposed to exhaust them, to push them to their limits, and ensure that they entered the service in the best possible shape.

  After a few kilometers some of the girls were starting to fall behind. Both Green and O’Neal were moving at the same pace, as if an invisible tandem line was linking the two men. The boys were not in well-spaced ranks, more of a jumbled crowd, but none of them had fallen out of the pack. The girls on the other hand were very spaced out. Half of the group seemed to be in good shape, but the other half were in various stages of exhaustion and Angel had an inkling that they were only getting started.

  She was a competitive person by nature, and that trait had been reinforced by years of gymnastics training. She slowed her jog, letting the rest of the recruits pass her until she was side by side with a pale-skinned girl who looked slightly overweight. They all looked a little strange, their faces seemed almost pudgy with their hair shaved off, but the pale girl looked to have at least twenty pounds of extra weight on an otherwise petite frame.

  “I’m Angel, what’s your name,” she said, barely even breathing hard.

  “Wendy… McManus,” the girl gasped.

  “Looks like you’re struggling to keep up, Wendy. I can help.”

  “Oh, please,” she begged. “I’m… dying.”

  “Alright, we’ve got to slow your breathing,” Angel said. “Huffing and puffing like that will make you pass out. Try taking deeper breaths. Long and slow, in through your nose.”

  “My nose burns when I do that,” Wendy said.

  Angel could see that she was improving already. Just connecting with another person could make the physical strain less intense.

  “You’ll get used to it,” Angel said. “Breathe in four steps, then out through your mouth. You’ve got to feed those muscles with oxygen.”

  Wendy nodded, concentrating on breathing. It was difficult, but they focused on running and breathing. Soon another girl fell back beside Angel. They ran together, Angel keeping up a steady stream of encouragement. She began to push them forward, increasing the pace so that they gained on the rest of the recruits. They were encouraged when the boys began to fall back, some looked worse than Wendy, who was red faced and sweating profusely, but still running in step with the others.

  After nearly half an hour, Angel saw a figure in the distance. She was getting tired and the girls around her were exhausted, but she knew they couldn’t force the recruits to run forever. The boys were spread out in a long, scraggly line, but the girls were in two groups. Angel hadn’t quite caught up to the leaders, but they were close.

  “I think we’re almost done,” Angel told her group.

  “Oh… thank… god…” Wendy said, one hand gripping her side.

  “I’m… dying…” said another girl.

  “Let’s catch up with the others,” Angel said. “We can make it just a little farther.”

  “You’re crazy!” Wendy said, but she ran a little faster.

  The group pushed hard for thirty seconds and caught up with the main group where they slowed down again. Angel could see Staff Sergeant Green in the middle of the road. She glanced back over her shoulder to see most of the boys had fallen behind. To Angel, being able to help others had always motivated her. She didn’t want to teach children how to tumble, and do saltos, aerials, and handsprings, but she had learned long ago that encouraging her teammates motivated her to do her best.

  “Platoon!” Staff Sergeant Green shouted. “Halt!”

  They all stopped running, bending over and propping their weight on their knees as they tried to catch their breath. Their instructors were huddled together talking. The sun, relentless as ever, was angling down toward the horizon and a soft breeze cooled their sweat-soaked jogging suits.

  “Good job,” Staff Sergeant Gordon said as she walked down the row of recruits, her head facing the girls. The last of the stragglers on the boys’ side were just then reaching the group. “Time to go home. Try to keep up.”

  She started jogging and all around her the recruits were grumbling, but Angel didn’t say a word. She just nodded to the girls and started jogging. To her surprise, the others fell in around her, even Wendy. They were exhausted, but refused to quit and Angel was impressed. She was tired too, but accustomed to pushing herself. And with the sun at their backs, the cool breeze, and just a little encouragement, she knew they could make it back to the base.

  CSF Emergency Alert Station

  Close Orbit, Neo Terra, Tau Ceti System

  “Sir, I believe I have swarm activity,” the naval satellite operator said into a small microphone that ran alongside his freshly shaven jaw.

  The watch officer, Lieutenant Commander Paula Mercer, sat at her station on the high platform behind the row of satellite operators. Their job was to monitor the planet. Neo Terra was the first world colonized by humans after a working hyperdrive had been successfully tested nearly a century before. Over half of the colonists on Neo Terra were natives that had been born and raised in the colony. It was primarily an agricultural world. More than half of the crops grown in the rich soil of the new earth were exported off world.

  Many of the initial colonists had gone to the planet in hopes of striking it rich, but most of the new immigrants were simply looking for a place to escape the rising cost of living and strict governmental controls of Earth. Nearly a billion people had made Neo Terra their home, and many lived in one of six primary cities with all the technological advances of Earth. But there were dozens of smaller villages and independent farms and ranches spread across the massive twin continents. The Emergency Alert Station kept an eye on weather patterns and planetary conditions, as well as monitoring the space system. It was part of the CSF cluster of stations in orbit around the planet.

  “Show me,” Mercer ordered.

  A screen above the satellite operators changed to an image of a dull, brown canyon. The strange-looking alien creatures were just visible as dark splotches moving in a cluster. They looked like bees swarming around a new queen. The creatures crawled over and around one another, the group building up from some unseen burrow deep underground.

  “No heat signature, but what else could that be?” the satellite operator said.

  “Patch me through to the C.S.F. Ramses,” Mercer said.

  “I have the Ramses,” the communications officer said.

  “Ramses actual, this is the Emergency Alert Station duty officer Lieutenant Commander Mercer. We have a possible swarm sighting on Neo Terra.”

  “E.A. Station actual, this is Commander Beauregard. Give us coordinates and standby.”

  “Send the coordinates,” Mercer said.

  “Already sent,” the satellite operator announced.

  There was a pause that lasted almost two minutes. Mercer wanted to find out what the holdup was, but held her tongue. She knew the crew was confirming what she had already seen and discussing the possible outcome. She also knew that every second they waited the swarm grew larger.

  “E.A. Station actual, this is Beauregard. We confirm your sighting.”

  “May I suggest that an orbital strike could end the threat,” Mercer said.

  “It will hav
e to be approved by ground control,” Beauregard stated.

  “Establishing contact now,” Mercer said, silently cursing the sluggish inefficiency of civilian bureaucracy. “Standby, Ramses.”

  It took several minutes to get a planetary official online, and almost half an hour before a decision maker was located. They had to resend updated information. Mercer couldn’t be sure, but it looked like well over a thousand of the creatures were congregating in the canyon. There were no settlements nearby, and once surveillance planes were launched from the Ramses the local government finally came to a decision.

  “Commander Beauregard, are you certain that these bombs have no radioactive side effects?” the planetary governor asked.

  “Sir, we recommend kinetic weapons. They have no warheads. They’re just mass heavy slugs fired from orbit and utilizing gravity. They will have no fallout whatsoever.”

  “You can guarantee that?”

  “Absolutely, Governor. These are mid-range weapons, big enough to take down a building, but not large enough to destroy a city. We’ll crush the swarm and cave in their underground hive.”

  “Alright then, do it,” the governor said, loath to make the call.

  Mercer could hear the stress in his voice, but she had read the reports from Cannis One. She had no doubt that he would be more distraught over the swarm wiping out a village, or worse yet one of the major cities on his planet, because he did nothing to stop it.

  A new video feed popped up on the large view screen. Mercer saw at once that it was camera footage from the surveillance plane circling above the swarm. The radio chatter between the plane and the Ramses was standard procedure. The area was cleared of civilians and the plane was pointing a laser at the target that would allow the kinetic missile to strike true.

  The missile, nothing more than a ten-foot-long tungsten steel pole, roughly the shape of a giant bullet with a small tracing device adhered to the rear of the bomb, was launched from one of the ship’s torpedo tubes. It took the weapon nearly ten minutes to approach the target. A large timer counted down to impact. With only thirty seconds until the bomb was to strike, the swarm began to move.