by F. E. Arliss
ORBIT GUARD ASSIGNED
F.E. ARLISS
Book 3 in the Orbit Guard Sci-Fi Romance Series
TABLE OF CONTENTS
1) Looking Back
2) Meeting Joseph Abay
3) Wrench Girl
4) Turn of Fortune
5) MINES and Americans
6) Future Forward
7) Station
8) Duty Calls
9) Dropped
10) Explosions
11) The Major
12) Meeting
13) Nailed, And Not in A Good Way
14) Flying in Tandem
15) Katyia’s Wedding
16) Mission to UZ238
17) Meet the Bergstroms
Many thanks to my editor, Andrew – I couldn’t do any of it without you!
All people, places, things, and situations are pure fiction.
Chapter One
Looking Back
Johanna Van Heusen lay flat on her back staring out into the dark void of space. Its beauty never ceased to inspire awe in her. As a child in the South African slum of Diepsloot, she’d sneak up at night and lay on the tin roof of their house -- it would still be warm from the broiling southern hemisphere days -- and gaze up at the twinkling stars. She would wish she could be among them, far away from that place, and now she was!
Johanna was in the darkened, observatory room aboard the Orbit Guard frontier space station. She’d been on the station almost a year and her life had changed so inconceivably that at times she felt tears flood her eyes and emotion clog her throat as gratitude swept through her.
The number of ways her life had changed for the better was profound. She had a fascinating career. Her work and person were respected completely. Her love life had certainly taken off for the better and she had friends. Good friends. Life was an adventure in Orbit Guard and she loved it. She did miss her friend Sophie though, and hoped she’d arrive on the station soon to take up her diplomatic post liaising with alien species.
She kept thinking back to the events that led up to her signing on for Orbit Guard. At the time, they seemed like terrible things. Now, she could only be grateful for everything that led up to her joining the Women’s Corp for Orbit Guard. Looking back, it had been Joseph Abay that tipped the scales in her early life, and then again, just a year ago.
Chapter Two
Meeting Joseph Abay
Johanna Van Heusen glanced over her shoulder for the fifteenth time in about forty seconds. Her ears strained to pick up any movement in the dark, smoke-filled lane. So far, nothing. The looters probably thought they’d already taken everything of value. They hadn’t gotten the most important thing. Her friend, Joseph Abay. He’d hidden in a damp hole he’d dug out on one side of the old mechanic’s garage. A smart, old guy was Joseph Abay.
As she stepped inside the armored vehicle and the security team got them moving, she was glad to be leaving Diepsloot, the slum she’d been raised in. She was glad that in under an hour, she’d be leaving South Africa.
She was sick of worrying about being raped and robbed there. She was sick of the filth and squalor, and she was sick of everyone she loved being easy prey for anyone who thought they were bigger, stronger, or more powerful.
Much of the natural landscape of her birth country was beautiful. Incredibly beautiful. The human parts, not so much. At least, if you were like Johanna that is, and born into a poor family in Diepsloot, one of the worst slums around Pretoria and Johannesburg. To top it off, she’d been part white, part black, with no secure place in either culture.
Diepsloot was closer to Pretoria, a sort of no-man’s-land between Pretoria and Johannesburg, but was claimed by Johannesburg.
No one really wanted to claim it at all. The closest police station was ten miles away and staffed only by traffic enforcement. The only policing done in Diepsloot was the vigilante kind, and that often went horribly wrong.
Her mother, Precious Van Heusen, had been a cleaner at a prestigious girl’s school in Pretoria. Precious got up every morning and caught an overfilled, dilapidated bus towards the school, then walked the last mile.
They were good to Precious Van Heusen at St. Mary’s School for Girls. Someday, she hoped to send Johanna there for a better education. But so far, the nest egg she kept putting away kept getting taken from her. She’d been robbed several times. Twice on the way home after work with her pay clutched grimly in her handbag, and once in their own home. They’d just broken down the flimsy door and taken anything worth selling. It had practically sent her to the edge of suicide. But seeing Johanna’s terrified young face had calmed her and she’d scooped the little girl into her arms and tried to smooth the wild tangle of kinky, black curls that adorned the trembling child’s head. They’d manage, she whispered to Johanna. They’d carry on. They always did. It would be alright.
Her father, Uglu Van Heusen, was dead. He’d been killed in a brawl over available work at one of the local places where farmers and plantation owners picked up day laborers for manual chores. He’d been a popular choice for the plantation owners. Uglu was a large, strong, educated, half-Afrikaans man. That made him stand out in the laborer crowd and owners often picked him for his polite manners and nice turn of phrase. All those same things made him a target for other workers. They were angry that he was part-white, they were angry that he spoke well, and they were angry that these attributes gave him an advantage when the white owners came to select workers. Johanna couldn’t remember much about him. They never spoke of his parents, and Precious said she didn’t know anything about them either. He was just a fuzzy recollection of a loud voice and overwhelming physicality.
Johanna attended the local mission school and was a star pupil. She left the house for school as soon as Precious left to go to work, and she stayed at school as long as they’d let her. It was safe there. She could read books on all manner of things, and no one tried to hurt her.
Hanging around after school, she often helped with cleaning the building and helped the handyman, Lalo, with repairs. He often joked that she was better at it than he was. Johanna secretly agreed. As she got older, she started helping at a garage two blocks over. She’d often stared into the cavernous work bays on the way home and been fascinated by the mechanics busy working on all manner of dilapidated vehicles.
When an older mechanic had been trying to jack up a heavy, ancient Land Rover, and was having trouble getting the rusty lift-plate lined up, she’d slid in next to him and helped straighten the jack. With a heavy sigh, he’d let the old car down onto the equally ancient jack, and turned to look at her. “Thank you for your help, young lady,” he said quietly. “Do you like cars?”
“Uhmmm, no, not really. I just like to know how things work,” muttered Johanna, digging one small-toed shoe into the red clay at the side of the road. “Not cars in particular. Just stuff,” she added shyly.
“My name is Joseph,” the older man smiled at her, and held out a hand for her to shake.
Johanna stared at the lined, calloused hand. Did he mean to shake her hand, she wondered? No one bothered with that for little girls. Little boys maybe, but never little girls. Slowly, Johanna reached out to take the grease ingrained hand. Putting her small one into his, Johanna allowed him to gently squeeze her palm, then pulled hastily away, suddenly wary. Was this one of the male predators that her mother had warned her about?
Joseph laughed at her. “You’re a skittish little thing, aren’t you?” then he sobered. “I suppose with good reason,” he added with a sad sigh. “Things are worse in some ways than they were before.”
Johanna knew that he meant, ‘before apartheid supposedly was destroyed’. That was many decades before she was born, but Precious said that it hadn’
t taken long for those who lived in Diepsloot to realize that nothing had really changed. Or maybe, even gotten worse for the masses of poor. Help would come, then leave again. Hate crimes against the black majority still happened with little repercussion. Rage made men angry and their wives and girlfriends were easy targets. Poverty drove desperation. It was a vicious cycle that hadn’t really changed. It was much worse now. The divide between wealthy and impoverished even wider. Or, at least, that was what Precious told her.
Looking at Johanna pensively, the old man asked, “Do you want to help me after school for a couple of hours each day and see what you can learn? I can’t pay you. But I could use a hand with the low work. It’s getting hard for me to get on my knees, like the jack today. The young boys all want to work with computers, not grease and outdated cars.”
Johanna stared at him. Then shyly nodded her head in agreement. “I’ll ask my mom,” she said firmly, looking Joseph in the eyes.
This brought on a grunting laugh from the old man. “You do that, young lady. I’ll look forward to a chat with your mother sometime soon.” Then he turned away and began working on the tire. Johanna sat quietly for the next two hours, and handed him tools as he pointed them out. It was fascinating. She’d learned all about several different tools today and she knew how to change a tire now. A useful skill, she thought with satisfaction.
Precious Van Heusen did go and talk with Joseph Abay. Some of her friends knew the old man. He was a good person, they told her. His wife was dead, taken by the flu. Precious thought it was atrocious that people still died of the flu. At St. Mary’s School, they had a vaccine for it. She got it every year for free. She worried about Johanna not having it. Then sighed. Sometimes the aid agencies sent some out, but it always seemed to go before they could get there for Johanna to have it.
Maybe when she’d saved enough to send her daughter to a good school, Jo would get it for free then too. Though that didn’t look like it was going to happen anytime soon. Precious’ shoulders slumped at that thought. Then she straightened them again. Johanna was enjoying the work at the garage. Her daughter was young, strong, and smart. They would figure out a way.
Chapter Three
Wrench Girl
Johanna sat quietly at the corner of the long drive leading up to St. Mary’s School for Girls. She was waiting on her mother who was taking longer and longer to reach home these days. It was pay day, so Johanna had made the journey to accompany her mother home. Everyone in their dilapidated village knew that today was Precious Van Heusen’s pay day. She was older and getting to be easy pickings, as Joseph Abay called it. The elderly were prey, he said. Then he’d add, “Disgusting,” and spit on the ground angrily.
Over the last three years Joseph had taught her a few tricks of self-defense using the wrenches from the garage. At first, the moves had caused such pain up her arms when the metal surfaces met resistance, that she’d dropped them time after time. Joseph made her pick them up and continue. He’d reminded her that if she actually had to hit someone with the wrenches it wouldn’t be such a hard recoil. Human flesh was softer. On the other hand, if someone was attacking her and knew how to return or deflect a blow, he didn’t want her dropping her only means of defense because she was too stunned or too surprised to keep her grip.
Johanna had never asked Joseph how he knew these moves. She figured if he wanted her to know, he’d tell her. Otherwise, she was just grateful for the instruction.
He’d helped her fabricate a sort of elastic tool belt for the wrenches. They’d found a cast-off body-shaper at the clothing exchange and cut the midriff elastic out of it. Using those pieces of extra elastic, they’d sewn holsters for the wrenches onto each thigh of the shaper. She wore it now under her school uniform each day. Rinsing it gently each night and hanging it to dry.
It was a gift of the greatest value to feel the heavy presence of the wrenches against her thighs and know she had a means of self-defense. Or in this case, defense against people who would steal her mother’s hard-earned paycheck.
Raising to her feet, she walked towards her mother and kissed her on one cheek. “Let’s go home, mom,” Johanna smiled reassuringly at her progressively more and more frightened mother. Johanna couldn’t blame her, you could only get robbed so many times before your psyche just shut down. ‘Psyche’ was one of the words they were discussing at school this week. Johanna was taking extra reading work from her teacher, and then discussing it with Joseph as they worked on different machines for repair. It kept her mind busy and Joseph usually had some good points. He could be a very lively debater.
Turning into the gathering dusk they walked down the dusty road towards the bus-stop a mile down the road. St. Mary’s was a private school, so students arrived mostly by car. Most of the teachers had accommodation on the premises. It was only the staff workers that had to make the long walk to the bus-stop each morning and evening.
Precious and Johanna had just rounded a bend about half-way to the bus-stop when they both halted. Precious automatically cowered to the side of the road and ran into the brush trying to hide. She gestured frantically for Johanna to follow her, but Johanna waited a few more seconds trying to assess the situation.
Since it was late enough for the staff to be heading home and most of the students were boarders, the road was usually deserted this time of evening.
A dusty Mercedes Benz had ground to a halt in the middle of the road. It listed to one side and Johanna could see that it had a flat tire on the driver’s side front.
What it also had were thugs. Two thugs on the passenger side were trying to get the doors open. The frantic white businessman in the driver’s seat was yelling at them to go away. Johanna wondered why he didn’t have a gun, the way most wealthy people in South Africa did. It just seemed a stupid thing to do, to drive an expensive car on an isolated road at dusk. Stupid. Very stupid. Or naïve. Either way, very dangerous.
Heaving a sigh, Johanna hissed at her mother, “Stay hidden. Stay quiet. I’ll be back in a minute.” Then walked calmly down the road towards the Mercedes. “Hey, whatcha’ doin’,” she asked the two marauders conversationally.
Both looked up, open mouthed. No little tween girls would ever be stupid enough to approach two men intent on robbing a white guy in a Mercedes unless they were just plain suicidal! The men didn’t know whether to laugh or ignore her. They decided on anger. “Get lost, little girl,” the largest one snarled at her. “You don’t know what you’re getting into. Leave now, or get hurt.”
Johanna shrugged, still calm, for some reason. “Looks like the gentleman needs some help,” she said quietly. “Were you going to help him change his tire?” The man in the car had gone into a stunned silence. “If you don’t know how to change a tire, I can do it,” she suggested conversationally. Working in a garage with a bunch of men who worked with their hands had some benefits when it came to bluffing bullies. Joseph had taught her that too.
“You are unbelievable, little girl,” stated the smaller one with a snarl. “Go away. Can you not see that we are in the middle of relieving this miserable money bag of his vehicle?”
“I see that, and I think you are the ones who should leave,” Johanna said evenly, not backing down even as they both advanced towards her. As they got within a few feet of her, Johanna danced back, and pulled both long wrenches from her makeshift thigh holsters. Holding both heavy tools downwards, she began to swing them slowly back and forth, getting the feel of them, and warming up her arm muscles. Both thugs came to an abrupt halt.
“What do you think you’re doing, bitch?” the larger one snarled.
“Just making sure I have the feel of my weapons,” Johanna said straight at him. “You know, in case you’re stupid enough to stay and get hit with one, or both,” she added nonchalantly, trying to keep her breathing even.
The two men looked at each other, and shifted a bit uncertainly. “What the fuck are you, some sort of child actor?” one snorted derisively. “You couldn’t s
wing those things over your head if you had to.”
Johanna executed a graceful pirouette while at the same time twirling the two heavy wrenches as though they were light-weight marching band batons. She’d practiced that endlessly, her fingers much too weak at first to be able to even get one of them to slip over the top of her small hand without either paining her too much or her weakness allowing it to drop. It worked beautifully this time. “Oh, thank you Lord,” she thought. She knew she’d grown a lot in strength over the last three years, and that knowledge gave her confidence.
“I’m going to change this gentleman’s tire. If you wish to help, you may do so. Or you can just leave me to it. I’m fine on my own,” she added emphatically.
The two men backed slowly away. Shared an astonished glance, and then both ran at her at the same time. Allowing her weight to hover evenly over her widened stance, Johanna met the rush with a graceful side turn and an overhead swing with one wrench and a low sweeping arc with the other. The larger man got a glancing blow across the shoulder, and the smaller man fell writhing to the ground, as a crunching snap echoed across the dusty air.
The small man continued to groan and clutch his leg. The large man turned towards her, an ugly sneer marring his features. His left hand gripped his upper right shoulder and massaged frantically. “You’re going to pay for that you stupid child,” he roared at her and lunged forward.
Johanna dropped to the ground, rolled forward in a somersault and swung with all her might at the back of his calf, as she flew by. He fell like a downed tree. Cussing and swearing he crawled towards his friend, helped him to his feet, and then both turned and fled into the night.
Johanna sat up in the dirty road. Perspiration ran in rivulets down her face and stained her school uniform. Mistress would be very upset about that if she didn’t get it clean by tomorrow. Tears sprang to her eyes. She was tired and she still needed to get Precious home. Slowly, she started to pull herself to her feet. A slim, well-manicured, white hand, appeared in front of her face. “Let me help you up, young lady. You’ve certainly earned my help and respect,” continued a cultured voice.
