“Lieutenant Murphy, today we’ll be testing the thrusters, which can be adjusted via computer link as you can see in your Heads Up Display.”
A small icon was blinking in the lower right hand corner of Angel’s vision.
“Do you see the two circles that are linked?”
“Yes ma’am,” Angel replied.
“Good, that means your ARC suit is linked to a control system and the automated systems can be adjusted remotely. They cannot be fired unless you disengage the suit’s safety controls. And you can unlink the system to ensure that no settings are changed unless you change them.”
“Can you still read the system if it’s unlinked?” Angel asked.
“Absolutely. We have full system readings, as well as pilot vitals. Communications are at your control, but the default setting is open communication on the command channel,” Sozu said. “Now I don’t want you to do any acrobatics on this run. Just move straight down the runway as quickly as you can, and then thrust left when you reach the yellow line.”
“Roger that,” Angel said.
She felt more nervous than she had the last time she tested the suit. She had thrusters on her shoulders, hips, and thighs, more around her ankles, and on her back. She even had secondary thrusters around her wrists. The suit felt heavier, but not cumbersome, which Angel was grateful for. The helmet felt strange, but she could see and breathe, so she did her best not to think about it.
A quick jog became a fast run and then a sprint. At the yellow line, she winked her left eye and suddenly she was thrust fifteen feet to her left. Her natural instincts kicked in and she twisted in the air, landing on her feet and continuing to run, only she was moving perpendicularly from the runway.
“Excellent!” Sozu said.
Angel could hear the marines in the flight control tower. Most of what they said was lost on her, but one thing stood out. She recognized Staff Sergeant Cashman’s voice.
“Now, that’s a game changer.”
Angel returned to the air strip and did the test again. Then she did it running the opposite direction. She learned how to anticipate the thruster jump, and was able to use her shoulders and arms to help adjust her body in mid-flight. The boost from the thruster was fast, but not excessive; it didn’t knock her off her feet, or whip her head to the side.
She ran a variety of patterns, turning left and right, jumping over obstacles. She felt as if she could fly. Eventually, an obstacle course was laid out, essentially a maze, with round hoops that she was to progress through. The ARC suit was powerful and it took time and experience to really dial in the control that it took to run through the course without knocking down the rings.
The suit’s power supply was at forty percent when the sun began to set. A group of thick target boards were set up in a circle, and Angel learned that the last test was of her suit’s emergency weapons system. She moved into the circle and a specially made dome target was placed over her head.
“Whenever you are ready, Lieutenant,” Sozu said, via the ARC suit’s communication system. “Disengage the weapon safeties and fire the emergency defense program.”
Angel worked through the menu quickly. She still felt foolish making faces to control the ARC suit, but she took solace in the fact that no one could see her. The helmet had no visor, it was completely armored and custom shaped to fit her head as comfortably as possible. Thick padding with cooling vents surrounded the top, back, and sides of her head. The space around her eyes was open, and the portion over her mouth was more of the impact sensitive fabric from the balaclava.
She winked her right eye and stuck her tongue out at the same time. The result was immediate and felt to Angel as if a loud bass note had sounded, one that she felt more than heard. All around her small flechettes had been fired, almost like a porcupine that could launch all its quills in one instant. The target boards were covered with razor-sharp flechettes that were seven and a half centimeters long.
“Damn,” came a deep voice over Angel’s communication network.
“Did you hear that?” Ruiz said. “BJ spoke!”
“That’s a nasty weapon right there,” Gunnery Sergeant Bolton said.
“It is specifically engineered to deter the swarm,” Sozu said. “Unfortunately, it can only be fired once as a last resort. Lieutenant Murphy, we are done for the day. You may power down and return to the hover cart. We’ll be going back to the base now.”
Angel pulled off the helmet. She was hot, but not as drenched in sweat as she expected to be. The ARC suit had climate controls, but the helmet was warmer than Angel would have liked. Of course, she had been running, jumping, and testing the suit’s capabilities for several hours and in the dessert heat she should have been on the verge of dehydration and heatstroke. She picked up a bottle of fruit-flavored electrolytes and drank the cool liquid down. The scientists returned with their noses pointed down toward their flex pads, already running programs to compile the data. The marines were more social, but she could tell they were ready to get off the sidelines and into their own ARC suits.
“You look like you’re in a video game when you run and jump like that,” Hays told her as he slid into the open air hovercraft that carried the entire team back to the lab. “You don’t mind me saying that, do you Lieutenant?”
“Not at all,” Angel said. “It feels like a game, but more fun. You’re going to love it when your suit is ready.”
“I don’t think we’ll ever be able to move like you,” Cash said from the seat behind Angel. “That was pretty damn impressive.”
“The suit does all the work,” she explained. “Once you get used to the movement that the thrusters create, you start to anticipate it. Sort of like the recoil of a rifle. You have to use that momentum to your advantage.”
“Hot damn, a lieutenant that can handle a weapon!” Ruiz said, pumping his fist in the air.
“Corporal,” Cashman said, “I’d say she is the weapon.”
19
CSF Emergency Alert Station
Close Orbit, Neo Terra, Tau Ceti System
“Sir, we’ve located the swarm,” a satellite operator said in a calm voice that seemed contradictory to the rings of sweat under both his arms.
Lieutenant Commander Paula Mercer was both frustrated by the aliens and happy for the distraction. Finding the swarming creatures had become the Emergency Alert Station’s top priority, but the aliens weren’t stupid and while finding several thousand creatures congregating together should have been an easy task, the aliens managed to confound the CSF satellite operators and surveillance plane pilots for days at a time.
The creatures consumed every resource they passed, yet they seemed to disappear, leaving trails on the planet’s surface that just abruptly ended. Mercer had her own theories, but they were impossible to prove. The swarm was invisible at night, and the lieutenant commander believed they had quick, powerful digging capabilities, allowing them to tunnel into the surface of the planet. The only question was whether they moved by instinct, or purposefully moved to avoid detection.
Mercer thought it more likely that the swarm could sense pockets of minerals or water under the surface of the planet. Neo Terra was not like Earth, which was covered by huge oceans. Most of the water on Neo Terra was found underground. Much of the bedrock was porous and as the planet’s moons orbited around the planet their gravity pulled the water up toward the surface. There were surface rivers and lakes, but no oceans. Wind storms and lightning strikes were very dangerous on the planet, which was why the CSF had put an Emergency Alert Station in orbit. Neo Terra had more satellites than most colony worlds, partially because of the dangerous weather systems, and partly because there was so much land mass to keep an eye on.
“Show me,” Mercer ordered, not rising up out of her chair, but nodding to the communications officer who was waiting to open a link between the EAS and the Ramses. “I want visual and GPS coordinates.”
“Roger that, Commander,” the satellite operator sai
d.
“Ramses actual, this is Lieutenant Commander Mercer, do you read?”
“Loud and clear, Commander. This is Lieutenant Iben. We have a good data link.”
“Outstanding,” Mercer said.
“Shall I wake Commander Beauregard?”
“Negative, Lieutenant. Let’s see what the bastards are up to now.”
“Commander,” the chief warrant officer in charge of civilian safety spoke up. “That location is less than two hundred kilometers from Springdale, the largest settlement in that region.”
“Are the aliens moving?”
“No, it appears they are swarming again, Commander,” the satellite operator said. “I can’t be certain but it looks like there are more of them.”
“I have a theory about that,” Lieutenant Iben from the C.S.F. Ramses said.
“Let’s hear it,” Mercer ordered.
“Well, it appears that they’re moving in random patterns, they keep moving to new locations and swarming again. What if they’ve got colonies in various places and they’re just building their forces.”
“It would explain why they move like they do,” Mercer said. “It could also be that they’re following the food supply.”
“Or establishing colonies,” the chief warrant officer said. “But that doesn’t explain how the swarms are growing.”
“I’ll note your theory in my report, Lieutenant. I sure hope you’re wrong,” Mercer said. “Cause if you’re right, that means they seeded this planet and we didn’t catch it.”
They kept tabs on the swarm for hours, watching the planet turning away from the sun. Mercer knew what would happen when it got dark. The swarm would move again and the search would begin all over.
“I’ve got forty minutes till sunset,” the chief warrant officer said.
“Last chance to engage, Commander,” Lieutenant Iben said.
Mercer had spent the day studying what they knew of the swarm and trying to come up with an idea that might let them track the creatures. She was close to a solution, she could feel it in her bones, but her mind hadn’t fully formulated the plan yet. Then suddenly it hit her out of the blue.
“Lieutenant, listen closely. We’ll only get one shot at this.”
“Roger that, Commander.”
“Get the head of your ship’s medical team on the horn, and weapons controls too.”
Mercer heard the lieutenant issuing orders. She felt a tingling sense of hope, but also fear that she was too late, or that her plan might not work.
“This is Lieutenant Commander Goins,” said a gravelly voice over the comlink.
“Commander, do you have the dye used to photograph blood flow and that sort of thing?”
“Do you mean ICCM?”
“I’m not sure.”
“Iodine containing contrast medium is what we use in angiograms and myelograms. It lets us x-ray the body and see what’s happening in the organs and soft tissue. Mainly in blood vessels, joints, around the spine, and in the bowels.”
“Is it injected or consumed orally.”
“Both, depending on the test. Why?”
“How much do you have on board?”
“I don’t know, ten, fifteen gallons I would suppose.”
“Get it to the weapons bay as fast as you can. The clock is ticking, Commander! We haven’t got much time.”
“Sir, that’s a genius idea, but even if we can get it down there we might miss the swarm.”
“I don’t want to hit the swarm,” Mercer said. “I want to release it above the ground and let it fall.”
“I still don’t think it will hit the swarm. They’ll sense the bombardment and evade. We’ve had no luck—”
“I know that lieutenant, but they are drawn to minerals and chemical compounds. They consume our explosive ordinance before we can detonate it when we set traps for them. My guess is that they’ll eat the ICCM and if they do, even if just one of them eats it, we can use x-rays to keep tabs on them through the night.”
The following fifteen minutes were the longest of Lieutenant Commander Mercer’s life. She could do nothing but wait on word from the Ramses as sunset drew near. With only twenty minutes of daylight left, the bomb was finally released. It rocketed through the atmosphere and still took seventeen minutes to reach the target location half a mile from the swarm.
Mercer watched the vile aliens anxiously as the bomb fell, worried they would flee in the opposite direction, but they didn’t. They were in constant movement, up and over one another, their horde growing as if they were multiplying before her eyes, but they didn’t flee. When the bomb impacted, the creatures seemed oblivious, and the light was so bad Mercer could barely see the creatures.
“Damn it, what are they waiting for?” Mercer complained.
“They may not go for it, Commander,” the chief warrant officer said.
“They have to,” Mercer said, as the image on the video screen faded to black. “They have to.”
20
Camp Oppenheimer, CSF Research & Development Center, 80 miles east of Stillwater, Nevada, U.S.A.
“That’s it,” Angel said. “Use your arms and then grab onto your knees as you flip.”
Ruiz was on the trampoline doing front saltos. The special forces team had always been respectful, but after seeing Angel in the ARC suit moving through the obstacle course, they were eager to learn the gymnastic moves.
“So,” Cashman said as he joined Angel by the edge of the trampoline, “what was it like?”
“The suit?” Angel asked. “It’s like being in those old kung fu movies where the fighters can defy gravity.”
“I happen to like those shows,” Cash said.
“Looks like we have that in common,” Angel said. “Ruiz, you have to learn to control the flip. Get your feet back down on the trampoline.”
“Face planting is his specialty.”
They spent an hour practicing the flips, first on the trampoline, then on the spring floor. Doing saltos was tiresome, and everyone was ready for breakfast when they hurried to the chow hall.
Angel spent the day learning to maintain her ARC suit. The battery pack could be fully charged in four hours. The thrusters needed to be checked to ensure they didn’t pull loose from the fabric. The entire suit had to be cleaned by hand, which was time consuming, but the longest task was loading the flechettes into the full body weapon system. The small projectiles were honed to a razor edge and had to be pressed into place using special gloves with ceramic plates over the finger tips. The gloves combined with the small flechettes, which were long but not much bigger around than a needle, made Angel feel clumsy.
The following day she spent the morning working with Cashman’s fire team in the ARC suits. Their newly constructed suits didn’t yet have the thrusters, but the men were like children as they ran and jumped. The ARC’s rebound bounding soles made them able to jump nearly two meters straight up, and inside the suits the gymnastic moves were much easier than they expected. The tough fighters who had joked about tumbling were suddenly eager to do cartwheels and dive rolls and saltos.
Just before lunch, the inevitable fight broke out. The men weren’t angry with each other, but they couldn’t help but test the ARC suit’s impact-resistant technology when it came to being punched. They stood trading blows and laughing.
“I’m not sure the commander intended those types of tests,” Angel said.
“When the cat’s away the mice will play,” Cash replied. “Alright, that’s enough, you two. Play patty cake on your own time.”
Lieutenant Commander Sozu wasn’t at the testing ground. Instead, she was overseeing the construction of a large and complicated course that Angel would be running in the afternoon. She had given Angel discretion in how she trained Cashman’s team. The marines were all athletic enough to perform the various gymnastic moves. They were far from perfect in their form, but they weren’t learning to flip and dive for competition, but rather for survival. And Angel was smart enough t
o let the experienced combat veterans learn from her, while making the moves work for them. Their bodies were not young and flexible like a pre-teen girl’s, but with ARC suits they could perform moves that even the most talented gymnast couldn’t achieve.
Angel ate alone again, watching the other officers who were absorbed in their work. She envied them a little. They knew what they were doing, or at least trying to do. She felt like a fish out of water. The ARC suits were amazing and she loved being part of the project, but she still felt like an outsider, just a guinea pig in Sozu’s grand experiment. And worse, she didn’t know where she would go or what she would do once the testing phase of the project was over. The last thing she wanted was to be stuck in an administrative job where she slowly died of boredom. Getting paid was nice. She was making more money than she had hoped to make at such a young age. And the CSF had great benefits. As an officer she could make a career in the service, but only if she was challenged and felt that she belonged.
After lunch, she went to the lab. Her ARC suit was checked again, and Sozu introduced Angel to a new member of the team.
“This is Petty Officer Rhonda Daniels. She’ll be in charge of maintenance on your ARC suit.”
Daniels saluted, and Angel returned the salute.
“Nice to meet you,” Angel said.
“The pleasure is all mine, Lieutenant Murphy. I’m looking forward to helping you run the test course today.”
“Help me?”
“Well, I won’t be helping, but I’ll make sure the suit is tuned up and ready.”
Angel nodded. Daniels helped her get into the form-fitting ARC suit, double checking the seals while Angel ran a diagnostics check using the smart helmet. The last people to arrive were the special forces fire team. Angel noticed that they looked tired.
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