“We have drones that can reach mach 8,” Marshal Sinclare said. “That isn’t fast enough?”
“I’m afraid I miscommunicated,” Sozu said. She was Japanese American, and spoke English fluently without an accent, yet she often found verbal communication difficult. “What I meant to say was that we can’t change direction fast enough. The swarm can avoid a bullet because bullets travel in a straight line. What we need is something that is unpredictable. Something that will confuse and possibly disorient the swarm’s hive mind.”
“And you have a solution I hope?” Admiral Jennings asked.
“I have developed an Assisted Rapid Combat suit that would allow us to move quickly and in unpredictable patterns. With the right pilots I’m confident the ARC suits would give us an advantage in our attacks.”
“You want to fight the swarms in mechanized suits?” Fuller asked.
“No, not fight,” Sozu said. “The ARC mech suit would merely confuse and disorient the swarms, allowing the conventional forces to be more effective.”
“And you’ve tested these ARC suits?” Admiral Jennings said. “They’re ready to deploy?”
“We have a prototype, Admiral,” Jakobson said. “We weren’t ready to allocate funds for full development without the joint chiefs’ approval.”
“You have it, Colonel. I want every option available before we lose cities on any more colony worlds. And nothing from this meeting gets out, people. The last thing we need is to start a panic on Earth about a possible alien invasion.”
“Will these new mechs be under my command, Admiral?” Commandant Fuller asked.
“Do they fly?” Jennings asked Sozu.
“No sir, they don’t fly in the conventional sense,” she said.
“Fine, they’ll be a Marine unit when they come online. We don’t have a lot of time here, people. We’ll be sending two armadas with everything we’ve got to Neo Terra and Alpha Prime. Let’s start moving people and resources ASAP. We’ve got an empire to save. Let’s get it done.”
2
Regional Gymnastic Meet
Bakersfield, California, U.S.A.
She was breathing hard, but she stuck the landing and all she had to do was wait for the judges’ scores. All the training, all the sacrifices were worth it in that moment. She had just given her best floor performance ever, and it was enough, she hoped, to make the team. There were scouts in the stands, she knew that, everyone in the building knew that. She had narrowly missed the national team last year, and she was big enough to be the base, which meant she had less competition from the younger girls.
Angela “Angel” Murphy walked quickly over to the bench where her coach was waiting. He gave her a thumbs up and a quick smile. She knew he preferred working with the younger girls, but unlike most people in gymnastics circles, he had looked beyond her body size and judged Angel on her talent. She was good, better than most, and despite her large frame, was as agile as any girl half her size. Angel was eighteen, a dinosaur in most competitions, and almost six feet tall. She weighed one hundred and fifty pounds with a body mass index of 18, which was officially considered underweight, but almost every other competitor in her sport looked at Angel as if she were a whale.
Angel had learned to deal with the looks, from sidelong glances to the flat out stares of the most snobbish people in her sport. It wasn’t just the athletes either, the judges and coaches were just as biased toward pixies, a term that had taken hold in gymnast circles to describe the undersized competitors who typically won the all-around competitions. Angel had no control over her genetics. She had to work twice as hard as everyone else in her sport, yet she loved the absolute control she demanded from her body. Too big for most of the events, she was an animal at the floor competition. She had the strength to tumble and jump as well, if not better than most pixies. And she had the body control that allowed her to bring a sense of style to her performance that most competitors lacked.
It was more than enough to land her a spot on the national team, and from there she could secure her place on the next Olympic squad. All she needed was a good score from the judges, and Angel was certain they would give her top marks. She had hit every move, never getting out of balance, and certainly not falling. Her final landing hadn’t been perfect, the nerves finally getting to her, but it had been good. This was her year, she could feel it in her big bones.
“Fantastic job,” Natalie said as she scooted closer on their team bench. “You were amazing.”
“Thanks,” Angel said, finally catching her breath.
The other girls on her team respected Angel, but Natalie was her only friend. The younger girl was only fifteen, and at an age where her body was outgrowing her strength. She was struggling with balance issues even though she was only one hundred and ten pounds. Angel thought that Natalie’s problems, which had occurred only after breaking into the triple digits with her weight, were more mental than physical.
“You’ll make it,” Natalie said. “I know it.”
“Don’t jinx it,” Angel said.
The scores came up on the oversized display that hung on the far wall of the gymnasium. Angel’s heart dropped and she felt tears stinging her eyes. No one had ever accused the gymnast community of scoring fairly, and once again the judges had failed to look past Angel’s size. The scores were well below what they should have been and Angel dropped her head in defeat.
“This isn’t fair!” Natalie shouted. “Were the judges even watching her?”
“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.”
3
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 orbit 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 F
leet 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.
4
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.
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