ARC Angel (ARC Angel Series Book 1)

by Toby Neighbors

  Wendy understood why her subject was already asleep. She hadn’t been in the Marines long, but Angel had learned to sleep when she could. A full night’s rest would be needed before sitting in a classroom for twelve hours the following day. Wendy would be able to monitor it all. She had video and audio devices implanted in Angel’s fatigue shirts. Not that anyone expected to find anything about the young gymnast that was out of place, but before they exposed the CSF’s secrets to their newest recruit, they would make damn sure she wasn’t loyal to anyone but the service. It would be a boring duty, sitting in her observation suite, watching the surveillance footage in real time, but it beat the hell out of running twelve hours a day and being screamed at by NCOs who thought she was just another recruit. She set the motion sensor to beep if it detected any movement in Angel’s small room. Then she pulled off her clothes and fell into her own bed, grateful for three days of boring work ahead of her for the first time in her life.

  10

  Salt Lake City, Utah, U.S.A.

  “I cannot believe this,” Angel said. “A captain? I had no idea.”

  “That’s the point,” Wendy said as she drove the CSF-issued jeep down through the old downtown of Salt Lake. “It’s not that Colonel Jakobson doesn’t trust you, but we had to know if you could keep a secret before taking you out to the R&D facility. I’m glad you aren’t mad?”

  “Why would I be mad?” Angel said. “You didn’t keep me from passing the exercises. We’re friends.”

  Angel was shocked and had been for the last hour since Wendy had picked her up after three grueling days in officer training. She had learned about ranks and how the different branches of service in the CSF interacted. Each branch, navy, marines, and air force, was autonomous but also reliant on the other branches. It was similar to how the different disciplines of gymnastics functioned together. Many gymnasts competed in multiple events, but there were some specialists who devoted themselves to just one discipline. They were vital parts of the team, while usually keeping to themselves.

  Wendy looked completely different. Their hair was still very short, but while Angel had kept the buzz cut maintained with weekly visits to the barber that was available to all basic trainees, Wendy had let hers grow. It was nearly half an inch in length and styled with some type of gel product. She even had on make-up and looked ten years older, with a sun dress that showed off her figure. Wendy was still full figured, but the grueling PT during their month of basic training together had whittled away nearly twenty pounds of excess weight.

  Angel on the other hand had no make-up. The only civilian attire she had were track pants and a hoodie, which is what she was wearing at the moment. The service had supplied her toiletries and clothes during basic, but Wendy had volunteered to help her access her CSF financial account, get some new civvies as she called the non-military clothing, and even help her with make-up. It was exciting. After a solid month of constant business and activity, they were finally doing something just for fun.

  “First stop,” Wendy announced as they pulled into an old-fashioned diner, “lunch!”

  They had club sandwiches with sweet potato fries and soft drinks in a building that looked as if it were at least a hundred years old. The view of Great Salt Lake from the covered back patio was breathtaking. As they ate Angel learned that Wendy had been in the CSF for over ten years. She said she was an analyst in the intelligence division, but something about the way she said it made Angel doubt her.

  “So what was life like as a gymnast?” Wendy asked.

  “Sort of like basic, but with more pressure.”

  “You’ve got to be kidding me!”

  “No,” Angel admitted. “I started when I was four. Tumbling, just learning basic stuff. By six I was learning to salto and do handsprings.”

  “Salto?” Wendy asked.

  “A salto is a somersault,” Angel said, munching on a french fry. “A front salto, a back salto, basically doing flips in the air.”

  “When you were six?”

  “Yes, my instructor said I had potential and passed me along to my first coach. I spent six hours a day practicing. Two hours before school, four hours after. Went to my first competition at eight. By twelve I was on a reduced schedule at school so I could practice eight hours a day at the gym. At night I met with a tutor who helped me keep my academics up. That same year my mom was diagnosed with primary progressive multiple sclerosis.”

  “That sounds bad,” Wendy said.

  “It is bad. No cure, just a steady decay. She can hardly get out of bed. My dad couldn’t handle it and started drinking heavily. I didn’t know what else to do so I focused on gymnastics. I missed the national team when I was fourteen by three tenths of a point. But by that time I was already growing too big to be considered an effective gymnast.”

  “You’re kidding me.”

  “No, most competitors are between the ages of twelve to sixteen, are less than five feet tall, and weigh less than a hundred pounds. Most of the girls I knew had major eating disorders. I guess I was lucky in some ways. Seeing my mom in almost constant pain made me realize how important it was to take care of my body. I learned all I could about nutrition and self-care for athletes. I was never overweight for my body type, but I was too big for most events. Eventually all I could compete in was the floor exercise.”

  “That’s how you landed that double somersault over Zach at the end of the obstacle course. That was the most amazing thing I think I’ve ever seen. You should have seen that blow hard after you passed the course. He looked like someone had compared his manhood to a toothpick.”

  Angel laughed so hard she nearly choked on her french fry.

  They finished lunch and went to the CSF Credit Union, a bank owned and operated by the CSF to keep up with the accrued salaries of off-world service members. Angel was signed into her account and delighted to discover that she already had a month’s pay available to her. She considered sending a portion of her income home to help her mother, but decided against it knowing her father would use the money to buy booze.

  After stopping at the bank, they went shopping. Angel didn’t need a lot of clothes, just a couple items to wear when she was off duty. She bought designer jeans and a crisp white button up shirt with three-quarter sleeves. She also found some cowboy boots, and a tiny purse to keep her I.D. and bank info in. They got makeovers at a department store make-up counter, and when night fell, they rented a parking spot in a public lot for the jeep and walked the busy downtown streets.

  “So I take it with your father being a heavy drinker, you don’t like to party?” Wendy asked.

  “Well, I’m only eighteen. I’m not old enough to drink.”

  “You’re an officer in the CSF. You’re old enough. Come on.”

  “I’m not sure that’s a good idea.”

  “Look, you’ll only get into trouble if you get hammered and start acting a fool. My job is to keep you out of trouble. But a cocktail or two won’t hurt. Do you like rum?”

  “I’ve never had it,” Angel admitted.

  “We’ll start with a little rum and coke, then have dinner. The food will diminish the effect of the alcohol, so don’t worry. We’re here to have a good time.”

  They went into a very crowded bar. There was music playing and flashing lights lit the bar. Wendy ordered their drinks from a waitress while they stood near a tall bistro table in the corner. Angel watched the crowd and Wendy watched her. Their drinks came and Angel tasted the cocktail through the little back straw in her tumbler. The rum was potent and tasted foul, but it wasn’t undrinkable. She sipped her beverage and watched the other patrons. It was clear who had already had too much to drink in the crowded bar. Angel’s father was a lonely drunk, sitting in front of the television for hours without saying or doing anything other than refilling his glass with whatever alcohol was the cheapest at their nearby liquor store. Seeing the drunken patrons made Angel worry about her mother. What had she been forced to do with Angel gone from home.
It took a force of will to push the depressing thought away.

  “I can’t believe anyone would act like that,” Angel said, as a young man screamed at the girl he was with, and went stumbling from the bar.

  “Good to know you can recognize a fool when you see one,” Wendy said. “Ready to grab some dinner?”

  “Absolutely.”

  They had Italian food with wine, which Angel didn’t enjoy. Then they walked the busy street, people watching, until they arrived at a dance club where the bouncer told them CSF personnel get in with no cover.

  “What do you say?” Wendy asked. “Want to dance a little?”

  “Sounds like fun,” Angel said.

  The club was full of people. It was dark inside, with flashing strobe lights and colored spotlights that rotated around on mechanized stands, the beams of light catching in the fog generated by a machine near the DJ. The music was so loud they had to shout to be heard. Many of the people dancing weren’t with partners, so the two women joined in. Angel enjoyed the physical release of her pent-up tension. She didn’t mind sweating a little. And before long a man with a tight shirt and shoulder-length hair approached her.

  “Want a drink?” he asked.

  “I want to dance,” Angel said trying to ignore him.

  “Come on, let me get you something,” he said.

  “Let her dance,” Wendy shouted in the stranger’s face.

  “Your friend’s jealous,” he said with a smirk.

  “We’re not looking to hook up,” Wendy shouted at the man. “Move along.”

  “Bitch! Was I talking to you?” the man snarled.

  Angel was shocked, but Wendy was smiling. In perfect timing with the music she spun around. It looked like a dance move, but her foot rammed into the back of the stranger’s knee, and it buckled. The man dropped onto his butt and soon everyone around him was laughing, assuming he was drunk. Angel was afraid he would try to fight Wendy, but instead he stalked away.

  “That was some dance move,” Angel said.

  “We’re having a good time, right? No sense letting some jackass come and spoil it all.”

  They danced for nearly two hours. Angel tried a strawberry daiquiri but the rum made her feel mellow and she stuck with water after that. By midnight they were both tired. The drive back to the base with the windows down and the cool wind flooding the jeep was invigorating. They turned up the radio and sang along, laughing and cheering one another on when they forgot the lyrics. By the time they got back to the base, Angel was convinced she had made the right decision. She had more fun in one night with Wendy than her entire high school experience.

  “Thank you,” she said as they walked back to the officers’ quarters.

  “For what?” Wendy said.

  “I had a really good time,” Angel said.

  “It’s good to relax and cut loose every once in a while. We have stressful careers. Don’t be fooled by what people outside the service say. Hell, don’t be fooled by those Navy or Air Force pukes who think they’re god’s gift to the service. I had fun too, Murphy. Tomorrow we go back to work, but tonight was a good time.”

  “I hope we can do it again.”

  “Me too,” Wendy said. “See you at 0700.”

  “Yes, Captain!” Angel said.

  11

  Fort Matthis, Special Forces Staging Area

  Bezos City, Mars

  “What the hell, Major?” Cash said. “Are you benching me?”

  “Drop the attitude, Staff Sergeant,” Major Kahasi replied. “We all follow orders around here. You know that. This is coming down from the Commandant. He wants our best available team earthside ASAP.”

  “Well I’m calling bullshit,” Cash said. “We’re a combat team, not recruiters.”

  “I don’t think the Commandant would waste capable marines on a recruiting drive. This is something else.”

  “What exactly?”

  “I don’t know. I got the order, I passed it on to you. Shuttle leaves atmo in fifteen minutes. Get your gear and your people out to the flight line.”

  “Secret orders are usually shit jobs, sir. Send Pendleton. He’s clueless.”

  “Staff Sergeant, stop your complaining and report to the shuttle. You keep this up and I’ll toss you into the brig for insubordination.”

  “Just seems like a waste to me. We’re well trained and highly motivated. We’ll lose our edge if we’re polishing a seat with our—”

  “Keeping your team in shape is your responsibility,” the major said. “I don’t know what duty they’ll have you doing on Earth, but whatever it is you will execute that shit with excellence and efficiency, while keeping your team ready for any assignment that may come along. Am I making myself clear?”

  “Crystal,” Cash said, stooping down to snatch up his rucksack.

  His team was already on the flight line, which was outside the atmo bubble and required breathers. Cash always felt like an old man with emphysema whenever he was forced to breathe through the transparent face masks that covered his nose and mouth. He hated pulling the green oxygen tank that fed the breathing apparatus on its little caddy, as if he were weak and infirm.

  He passed through the airlock that led out of the huge plexiglass dome that covered Fort Matthis. Mars had nearly a billion people living in bubble cities, tapping into the natural gas and water pockets under the surface of the red planet as the century-long terra forming process slowly melted the polar ice caps and altered the atmosphere.

  The flight line was a simple landing strip for atmospheric ships, a few hangars, and the flight tower. The civilian ports were much larger and stayed busy twenty-four hours a day. The military flight line was a much calmer place. The Regetti 207 was waiting. It was a standard dual purpose aircraft, with jet engines for atmospheric flights and fusion thrusters for hard vacuum. Their primary purpose was shuttling people up to the various space stations, but in their case Cash knew the shuttle would link up with a fast mover transport which would sling shot around the planet and hurl them toward Earth. The entire trip would take eighteen hours, if they didn’t get stuck waiting for a shuttle to take them down to Earth.

  “No luck, Staff Sergeant?” Corporal Ruiz asked.

  “No, the major doesn’t even know what we’re being recalled for. The only positive news is that our platoon wasn’t specifically named for this assignment. It was a ‘best available’ kind of thing.”

  “So we aren’t in trouble,” Gunnery Sergeant Bolton said. “I thought they might have heard about our exploits on Alpha Prime.”

  “We were off duty, Gunny,” said Ruiz. “No harm, no foul.”

  “There were some farmers who felt like we took advantage of their hospitality,” Bolton replied.

  “Just keeping the gene pool fresh,” Ruiz replied. “They’re on the verge of inbreeding on some of those farmsteads.”

  “This isn’t about extracurricular activities,” Cash said. “Whatever it is, they’re playing it close to the vest. We won’t find out what kind of shit we land in until we reach Earth.”

  The special forces fire team consisted of six members, including the staff sergeant. They were all hard-charging tough guys, deadly with a variety of weapons as well as unarmed combat. Staff Sergeant Jonathan “Cash” Cashman kept his fire team in top shape at all times.

  He thought about their last mission as he followed his fellow marines onto the shuttle. They had been deployed undercover on Alpha Prime in the Centauri system. They posed as farm hands to stop a band of outlaws that was attacking and pillaging homesteads on the outskirts of the colony. His fire team had gotten more than a little friendly with the farmer’s four daughters, but they were all of age and his team had saved the farm. The outlaws had been slaughtered. Colony justice was severe and the roving band of killers had been merciless in their attacks on the other homesteads. Cash didn’t feel guilty about any of it. Killing was second nature to him, no different than exterminating pests. And if his fire team had taken liberties with the
farmer’s daughters it was only natural.

  They were special forces, natural badasses, men who exuded confidence and strength. Women were naturally drawn to them, like moths to the flame. And visitors were rare on the colony farms. Virtue was too expensive a commodity when his marines were probably the only men outside their family the girls had seen in nearly a year.

  Once they were onboard, the aircraft the ride up through Mars’ thin atmosphere was simple. The shuttle took exactly an hour to reach orbit and dock with the fast mover. Most military transports were sparse, with little more than metal bench seats, but the fast mover had comfortable captain’s chairs that fully reclined. There were media nodes that allowed the marines to plug their flex pad data links into the larger craft’s internet connection. The CSF had their own servers which weren’t as crowded as the planet-based systems. The fire team could send and receive messages, or download media content. But most chose to sleep.

  It was nearly twenty-four hours before they were able to catch a shuttle down to North America. Cash was tired, wrinkled, and in need of a shower when they finally set down at CSF’s central hub outside St. Louis, Missouri. From there, the special forces team was flown out to Camp Oppenheimer in the desert of northern Nevada. Cash stretched as he stepped out onto the hot runway, dropping his rucksack on the solar panels that were standard for roads and runways on Earth.

  “What now, Staff Sergeant?” Gunny Bolton said.

  “I’m not sure,” Cash said. “I guess we need to find the duty officer and check in.

  It took half an hour to get to the right office in the expansive base. Not only was there a full flight line, with huge hangars and multiple runways, but there were large high rise buildings full of offices and warehouse-type structures, which Cash could only guess were for the development of new weapons, gear, and vehicles. As they walked across the expansive base, they saw what looked like several working garages. Eventually, they were shown to an air conditioned office building that housed the administrative staff. They were told to wait outside Admiral Ivan Techovic’s office. The weary marines dropped into the chairs of the admiral’s waiting room and relaxed in the cool air, thankful to be out of the hot sun and dusty air of the desert.