ARC Angel (ARC Angel Series Book 1)

by Toby Neighbors

  The door to the admiral’s office opened and an older man with a round stomach that stretched the front of his uniform looked down at them. Cash recognized the type. The admiral was CSF Navy, but the staff sergeant doubted the senior officer had ever served off world. Admin was necessary, and could take a heavy toll on a person. Cash didn’t have any less respect for his superior, but it was rare to see off-world personnel out of shape. The marine special forces team jumped to their feet and saluted the superior officer.

  “Staff Sergeant Cash,” the admiral said in accented English that pointed back to his Russian heritage. He returned the salute, his face stiff, his movements on the verge of lethargy. “May I have a moment of your time?”

  “Yes, sir,” Cash said.

  He followed the admiral back into the office. There was only one seat other than the admiral’s big office chair, and it was piled high with reports, so Cash stood at attention beside it.

  “How was your trip down?” Admiral Techovic asked.

  “Fine sir. No complaints.”

  “Very good. I have your fire team berthed in barracks L. You’ll have the rest of the afternoon to settle in, but I’d like you to report to Lieutenant Commander Hikari Sozu. Her office is in the Arthur Compton building. She’ll be running your team during your time here.”

  “Sir, may I ask the scope of this assignment?” Cash said.

  “Sozu will explain the details. Suffice it to say you’ll be testing out some new gear. I’m not up to speed on the exact details. I’m the personnel officer, and we have a lot of advanced scientific research going on that I don’t even try to understand. The lieutenant commander needed a fire team and I got her one.”

  “Well, thank you sir. We’re glad to serve,” Cash said, hoping he sounded convincing even though he felt as if Admiral Techovic was wasting his special forces team on research.

  He saluted again, but the admiral didn’t stand. His return salute looked more like he was shooing the staff sergeant away. Cash left the office and found a woman waiting with his squad. She had two silver bars on the collar of her light duty uniform, and Cash shouted at his fire team.

  “Ten hut! Officer on the deck.”

  Once more the six-man team jumped to their feet, their bodies as rigid as marble statues as they snapped to attention and saluted.

  “As you were, Staff Sergeant,” Wendy McManus said with a mischievous smile. “Welcome to Camp Oppenheimer. I’ll take you to your barracks and then over to meet the scientist who is heading up this project.”

  “Yes ma’am. Thank you,” Cash said.

  Captain McManus led the way back out of the air conditioned office building and into the heat of the late afternoon.

  “Scientist?” Gunny Bolton asked, whispering.

  Cash nodded. “Looks like we’re testing some equipment.”

  “They need veterans for that?” Ruiz asked.

  “You guys know as much as I do,” Cash whispered.

  Barracks L was more of a dormitory than an actual barracks. Each member of the fire team had their own small room, with a twin sized bed, a desk with a computer node, rolling chair, and universal charger for CSF electronic devices. There was also a narrow closet and a large panel video screen. One small bathroom serviced two berths, but otherwise the team had privacy. None of them were used to full sized beds, or private quarters. Off-world bases were much smaller than Camp Oppenheimer, and those on space stations or interstellar ships were even smaller still.

  “No complaints on the housing,” Cash said after dropping his rucksack in his room and following Captain McManus back out of the barracks.

  “Oppenheimer is mostly an R&D facility. A majority of the officers here have never been off world.”

  “Seems a bit strange, doesn’t it? I mean, the people crafting the future of the service having never actually utilized it?”

  “Earth is still the center of theoretical research, Staff Sergeant. It doesn’t make much sense to remove our developers from the network of universities and tech companies doing the latest cutting-edge research. When the eggheads want to find out if their toys work in outer space or colony environments, they call in you guys.”

  “And that’s what we’re here for?” Cash asked. “To test some equipment?”

  “The lieutenant commander will give you a full overview, but it isn’t just any equipment. It’s a new mech suit designed specifically for the swarm.”

  “Damn, that puts a new light on things,” Cash said.

  “I thought you might feel that way,” Captain McManus said.

  “Doesn’t the Air Force pilot the mechs?”

  “Most of them,” McManus said. “They can get pretty complicated for a trigger puller. The new suits are different.”

  “In what way?”

  “They aren’t made for traditional combat. The swarm has us all rethinking warfare. So far they’ve evaded and overcome everything we’ve thrown at them. If these new suits don’t work, we’ll be looking at full scale deployment.”

  “Maybe that’s what’s needed,” Cash said. “From what I hear, the real problem is guns on the ground.”

  “That’s a short-sighted eval, Staff Sergeant,” Captain McManus said as she pulled open the glass door to one of the high rise buildings. She led the way to a bank of elevators. “The problem isn’t that we don’t have enough fire power. It’s the way our weapons work. We’ve only ever fought each other before. The swarm is forcing us to think and act differently.”

  Cash let the idea of fighting differently bounce around his head as they rode up to the seventh floor. Throughout history, advances in weapons and/or tactics had forced armies to change. Why should the swarm be any different. Cash had yet to lay eyes on the aliens, but he’d heard about them, even seen some reports from Cannis One. They were bugs, but much larger. They moved in fast, coordinated patterns. Still, Cash couldn’t help but feel the real problem had been the lack of personnel on the ground.

  They left the elevator and walked down a carpeted hallway to an office with an open door. As soon as they stepped inside Cash found himself face to face with a female officer that looked as if she had just graduated basic training. Her hair was buzzed almost to her well-tanned scalp. She wore a uniform a lot like the captain’s, only she had a single silver bar denoting her rank as second lieutenant.

  “Staff Sergeant Jonathan Cashman,” McManus said. “Let me introduce you to Second Lieutenant Angela Murphy. You’ll be working together to test the ARC suit.”

  “ARC?” Cash asked.

  “Assisted Rapid Combat,” said a short, Asian woman who stepped into the office from the lab that lay on the far side of the room. It was enclosed with frosted glass. The woman wore a white lab coat and had chin-length black hair and thick glasses that looked as if they had slid down on her nose.

  “This is Lieutenant Commander Hikari Sozu,” McManus said. “She’s the scientist in charge of the ARC program.”

  “It’s good to have you with us, Staff Sergeant. Let me show you what I’ve been working on.”

  12

  Camp Oppenheimer, CSF Research & Development Center 80 miles east of Stillwater, Nevada, U.S.A.

  “It looks like a wetsuit,” Cash said.

  “Or a superhero costume,” Angel added.

  “In many ways it is,” Sozu replied.

  “This is nothing like I was expecting,” Cash said.

  “Hopefully, it will surprise the enemy,” Sozu said. “That is the point. At this stage, the suit is built for rapid movement and evasion, not direct confrontation.”

  “This thing makes you fast?” Cash asked, feeling the fabric of the ARC suit with his fingers. “It looks light and flexible. You can carry a rifle or whatever you need.”

  “Actually, the ARC suit will have built-in weapons before being deployed. But that isn’t really the purpose of the suit.”

  “What is the purpose?” Angel asked. She felt more than a little out of place. An admiral had pinned her silver bar
to her collar when she arrived at Camp Oppenheimer that morning. She had then spent the rest of the morning filling out paperwork regarding her role in testing the ARC suit, along with personnel reports on everything from taxes to a will. Lunch had been in a cafeteria that served a variety of entrees, from pasta to baked fish, along with a massive salad bar and two dessert options. Wendy had stayed with her most of the day, introducing Angel to Lieutenant Commander Sozu shortly before hurrying off to fetch Staff Sergeant Cashman.

  The special forces team leader was exactly what Angel had imagined someone with his job to look like. He was about the same height as Angel, but thick through the chest, shoulders, and neck. It looked as though he hadn’t shaved in at least a day, but the stubble on his jaw only served to make him look more dangerous. He wore a black tee-shirt and cargo pants with the same type of lace-up boots she had worn in basic training. There were military tattoos on his thick, powerful forearms, and his eyes seemed to take in everything around him at a glance.

  “Sit down,” Sozu ordered. “I’m going to show you some footage of the swarm on Cannis One.”

  “What’s the swarm?” Angel asked.

  Cashman looked at her as if she were an idiot, but McManus put a hand on her shoulder and explained.

  “The swarm is an alien species. We don’t know much about them, other than they are hostile.”

  “After a fashion,” Sozu said, without looking up from the computer terminal where Angel guessed she was pulling up the video footage.

  “They’re like locusts, only much larger. They consume everything in their path, including all botanical life, water, and even minerals in the soil. So far they’ve evaded our efforts to stop them. It appears that they operate from a central hive mind, which makes them very coordinated.”

  “Are they native to Cannis One?” Angel asked.

  “Nope,” Cashman replied. “They’ve already spread to other worlds. Aren’t you going to tell her about Cannis?”

  “I believe that’s what the lieutenant commander is going to demonstrate,” McManus said.

  “They wiped out the colony on Cannis One,” he went on. “Killed every human on the planet.”

  “That’s unconfirmed,” McManus said.

  “Only because we don’t have any boots on the ground, and the swarm destroyed all the communications gear,” Cashman said. “I lost friends on Cannis One.”

  “I’m sorry,” McManus said.

  “Here we are,” Sozu said, seeming oblivious to the conversation taking place in the room with her.

  A video screen showed an aerial view of a vast plain. The square sections of cultivated ground were easy to see, as was a small city, and in the distance a brown blob seemed to be growing.

  “This,” Sozu said, pointing at the blob, “is the swarm. They range in size from large dogs to small cattle. They have amazing leaping capabilities, but they generally travel along the ground, scooping up the planet’s resources as they go.”

  It became clear after only a few seconds that the creatures were destroying the plant life as they raced toward the city.

  “The problem we’ve had in facing the swarm is twofold. First, our drones come under interference as they approach the swarm, probably due to the queen’s broadcasting ability as she controls her hive.”

  “That’s how they communicate?” Cash asked. “Some sort of radio signal?”

  “It isn’t radio,” Sozu said. “We haven’t been able to pick the signal up, but we believe it to be similar because it does interfere with our drones.”

  Angel saw what looked like a small fighter jet racing into the video. It had three missiles under each wing and on the first pass the weapons shot out in regular intervals. The swarming creatures on the ground seemed unconcerned, merely moving out of the path of the missiles, which impacted the ground and exploded. Angel could see the economy of movement from the swarm. They flowed over the ground like water, avoiding the attack, then reforming in flawless coordination.

  “Notice the drone’s failure to turn back,” Sozu said.

  Two more drones raced in, but their attacks were no more effective than the first’s. And after their initial attack run, the unmanned aerial vehicles circled as if on autopilot far out beyond the swarm. In fact it was hard to see the attack craft on the video.

  “Here,” Sozu pointed at the bottom of the screen, “our ground forces began to maneuver.”

  Angel saw six fast-moving vehicles. Each one had a machine gun mounted on the roof.

  “Those are Zips,” Cashman said. “Fifty caliber belt fed machine guns mounted on the roof. Each one carries two fire teams in back, with two drivers and one gunner.”

  Angel leaned toward McManus without taking her eyes off the video.

  “Zephyr class all-terrain vehicles,” Wendy whispered.

  The belt fed guns began to fire as soon as the Zips slid to a halt.

  “They’re firing from one hundred meters,” Sozu said. “Using tracer ammunition to help dial in their aim. Notice how the swarm responds.”

  Angel couldn’t help but think of an antique video game she had once played at the Pop Culture museum on a gymnastics trip to Seattle. A large bank of aliens moved back and forth at the top of the screen, while a weapon of some type fired blips up toward the enemy. She would blast an entire row of alien invaders while evading their return fire. The more she killed, the faster the aliens moved, side to side and ever closer to reaching her down on the bottom of the screen.

  The swarm moved like water flowing around stones in a river bed. There was no confusion, no disruption in their movement. Angel expected to see them stumble into one another as they struggled to evade the bullets but instead there was a gracefulness to their movements.

  Out of the Zips troops deployed, forming up in rows in front of the vehicles as the swarm closed in on them. The gunners with the big .50 caliber machine guns began to swing their weapons from side to side, finally hitting the insectile creatures. Dozens fell, but their fellows simply ran over them, or bounded several meters into the air as they rushed toward the soldiers. Angel could see that the attack was doomed to failure, but the warriors didn’t retreat. They kept firing. The swarm continued evading. If a shot didn’t take out a creature in the first rank, those behind it dodged the bullet easily.

  Angel looked away as the soldiers were overrun by the swarm. Two more Zips came racing out of the town, their roof-mounted machine guns firing, but it was a futile effort. The armored vehicles raced into the swarm, which dodged the vehicles at first. But as the drivers slowed to turn, the swarm slammed into the Zips, knocking them over, before converging on the vehicles’ occupants.

  Sozu brought up another video feed. It showed soldiers wielding old-fashioned flame throwers, but once again the swarm seemed undeterred. Bombs were dropped, but the swarm either evaded the heavy ordinance or rose up into the air, dismantling many of the warheads before they could detonate. On every video the swarm consumed everything in their path — flesh, the fabric of the soldiers’ uniforms, even the metal of their weapons. They left nothing in their wake, not even their own dead were left behind to be dissected and studied.

  “That is the sum total of our knowledge about these creatures,” Sozu said. “We don’t know how they communicate or what their bodies are made of. We have pictures taken from space or surveillance aircraft, but nothing more. They don’t show up on thermal scans or infrared. We have seen them swarming and assume they move underground, but we have no solid proof. Even returning to an area where a swarm took place has provided no concrete data as of yet. We assume they go to ground because they appear in such large numbers. We know they multiply quickly, although we’ve never seen them mate or replicate in any fashion. Nor have we seen anything that would be considered an adolescent.”

  “They have to have a weakness,” Cashman said. “We had people on the ground outside Doberman City on Cannis. I heard reports that we turned them.”

  “Yes, that is true,” Sozu said. “T
he Marine garrison was able to fend off the swarm for a short time. But when the surrounding settlements were attacked the marines were sent to help. When the swarm returned to Doberman City, what was left of the garrison wasn’t strong enough to stop them.”

  “Why can’t we just lure them into a trap,” Cashman argued. “Prepare enough covert ordinance, draw them in, and blast them all to hell.”

  “It’s been tried,” Sozu said. “The swarm consumed most of the demolition ordinance before it could be detonated. Old-fashioned land mines worked at first, but surrounding a settlement with them is dangerous for a number of reasons, and the swarm always managed to find a way through the maze of land mines. Not to mention there simply isn’t enough weight triggered ordinance to do a thorough job protecting the colonies.”

  “So where does that leave us, Commander?” McManus asked.

  “It is difficult to adequately respond to a threat we don’t fully understand. The closest creature on Earth we can compare the swarm to are locusts. But the swarm also seems to operate in coordinated patterns that lead us to believe they are controlled by a central figure, much like bees. The only real difference being that to our knowledge bees don’t pass along information via any kind of broadcast signal or extrasensory perception. The entire swarm reacts to something that just one of them sees or encounters, such as a bullet or missile being fired at them.”

  “How do bees communicate?” Angel asked.

  “They use pheromones,” Sozu replied. “Different scents for different things. But we believe the swarm have a much more advanced form of communication. One that in some fashion interferes with our radio signals that control our attack drones.”