This was only just written last night and going into midnight. I had to add some last minute items to find a good stopping place. I'll also give you some context in a scene you may have already seen before, just to make things flow better.
“Tiger, Blue Lynx,” William’s voice inquired through the walkie talkie a couple vehicles back. “Any idea how much further it is to HQ?”
Ashley was just picking up the walkie from the cupholder and checking the Colorado pickup’s GPS when the device buzzed awkwardly. When the Major attempted to adjust the frequency to remove the interference, it only got worse and then garbled deeply before a voice started speaking. Twisting the dial a little more, Ashley gasped with surprised recognition.
“You’re almost there, kids,” a moderately young female voice replied. She sounded calm and reassuring, but a sense of firm authority had worked its way into her vocals after all these years.
“Oh my God.” Sophia quietly expressed this, then grabbed her own walkie and scrunched it hard before demanding, “Cassy?”
“Been a long time, little sister,” the Nebraska-born, ex-Air Force, A.T.X.D. Lead Wingman’s voice proudly replied. “As they say in the Ufologist comic books, follow the lights.” Shortly, a thunderous mechanical roar ripped its way through the darkness above as the vaguely visible, stealthy black body of a TAV-60 Falcon dropship helicopter flew in low over the convoy.
Having never heard the sound of a Falcon’s rotors before, Alexis briefly screamed and covered her ears. William looked over and quickly reassured their pre-teen daughter.
“It’s okay, Goldie. That’s Aunt Cassy up there. It’s just her helicopter.”
“Whoa,” Jacob responded from the back seat, watching alongside the Lopezine Kids with awe as the Falcon pivoted to their right, then flicked on both its collision lights and its cab front headlights to illuminate the path ahead.
As Cassy’s bird began to pivot right and speed on ahead, the headlights of her Falcon briefly washed over something blocky far in the distance and just around the next hill. But it was the communications array posing as an old abandoned cell tower that gave it away for Ashley as she spotted the slowly pulsating red lights in the distance. And right as these came into view and the headlights of Cassy’s Falcon got further away to the north-northwest, the tower flicked on its bright white daytime flasher: a rather abrupt but even more reassuring sign that somebody was home and beckoning the convoy to come this way.
“There. Richard. The driveway,” Ashley pointed out with just seconds to spare.
Cranking the steering wheel slightly to the right, Richard drove off the paved road onto the dirt drive leading to the main gate. In another few minutes, they had pulled up alongside the trailer posing as the lease manager’s office, where the guard came out to inspect the pickup and the four other vehicles that followed.
He had aged quite a bit, but the icy and unimpressed glare he gave Richard reassured him that this was the same guard who had inspected him when he first arrived at HQ for training over a decade ago.
Holy cow. Has it really been that long? Richard thought after the guard retreated and the gate was opening up to let them in. Approaching the large, linear pile of rocks and debris covering the entry tunnel towards the mid-rear of the abandoned campground, Richard looked up in the rearview mirror at his son. “You want to see something cool, Jacob? Take a look at what’s in this mountain up ahead.”
Carefully, Richard made the usual sharp left turn then did the full u-turn. Shortly, the cover doors at the edge of the tunnel slid open, and the familiar blueish-white lighting of HQ’s interior began to show. Jacob and the Lopezine kids barely had enough time to catch a glimpse of the majestic star-covered sky above before their view was blocked out by the bright lighting of this tunnel.
--
“And there she is,” a familiarly sweet and firm voice called out, accompanied by the rock hard striking of cowboy boot heels on the laminated stone floor. “Our lady in blue, rockin’ her authoritative kicks and back on base.”
Spinning on her toe, Ashley felt her heart soften to a cushion and her stomach burst with the wings of a swallowtail: the charcoal black hair, the sharp assassin-like eyes, and a light pinkish lip similar to hers were all Ashley needed to recognize the tall and lean woman in the outdoor jacket, baseball cap, and Guadalupes.
“I should’ve known you…” Ashley paused and emitted a mix of a squeal and a grunt as she and Jordan squeezed each other in an almost deadly hug for the first time in six years. In fact, it took Richard having to cautiously but playfully tap Ashley on the shoulder for she and Jordan to stop trying to squish the guts and crush their bones in their happy embrace. “I should’ve known you’d be here, coordinating the reunion ol’ girl.”
Jacob watched with interest as his mom and this other equally-aged woman shared a backwards clap of the right hands, swung them back and gripped them hard before kicking each other's cowboy boots together at the shins. Even with the growing activity surrounding them, the Motorpool was still large enough for Ashley and Jordan’s exuberant, “Ooh-rah!” to echo with a thrum for all to hear.
--
The motion sensors registering her presence alone seem to bring the entire gym back to life as Ashley strolled along the entry catwalk. And for a place that supposedly hadn’t seen much use in six years, the gym was as tidy as she always remembered it: fresh athletic pads, shined fitness machines, bright lighting, and not a cobweb or extraterrestrial-equivalent sign of abandonment in sight.
But while looking at her favorite leg press, stairlift, and treadmill stations filled her with relief, it was what lay ahead of her at the very center of the wide low-ceiling room that brought the butterflies back to Ashley’s stomach. Glowing with a reflection of the white panel light above it was the big and blue-padded, cushioned surface of the Training Fight Mat. Ashley took a moment to look down at the blue pad, then gently took a step forward onto the cushioned fabric. Even in the heels and leather padding of her Caseys, Ashley’s thighs seemed to turn to butter as her feet took in the soft texture of the mat below and her body lightened up with a nostalgic surge as she longed for those days: kicking off the tacticals and lacing up one of her favorite sneaker pairs for light-hearted battle with friends and teammates.
To a point, the soft feeling of her cowboy boots sinking into the fabric was too much to bear, and Ashley gently fell forward onto her knees and gently caressed the blue leather below. It was here—on this very Training Mat—that Ashley had made some of the closest friends in her life, tangoed aggressively with the man who would many years later become her husband, proved her strength and willpower to all who tried to push her under, and trained a recruit or two.
Is that…naw, they would’ve faded by now. Ashley thought she saw a small diamond marking in the mat; the kind which a sneaker geek like her was sure would only be left behind by a Converse shoe. And she could think of very few teammates of hers back then who wore Converse to the gym, especially as often as she did. Six years, and not a soul has walked on this mat since then? Or has my mark really been left here all this time? Like an astronaut’s footprint on the Moon? Finding the strength to stand back up to full height, the previously soft feeling in her triceps flowed gently up through Ashley’s torso and toyed with her brain.
“Hey, Captain,” her voice joyfully echoed in a memory. “You ready to rock some kicks?”
“Hmph, if you’re ready to get all softened up with a few kicks to the stomach yourself, Captain,” Jordan playfully scoffed back.
Closing her eyes briefly, Ashley recalled kneeling down to lace up her Chucks while Jordan balanced on one Blazer and got herself into her Hapkido wait pose. Shortly, Vanessa Campbell—Major General Russell Campbell’s daughter and another one of Ashley’s biggest friendly rivals on the mat—stepped into place in her own shiny white Chucks. In a ballet of mock fatal grace, Ashley’s past self traded blows with her fellow officers, shot her toes out, and blocked strikes from every possible angle. As she danced the close-quarters combat allegro she’d worked up from years of Savate, Taekwondo, Ballet, Boxing, Capoeira, and more. Every time she took a kick to the stomach or a light punch to the shoulder, Ashley’s present self could feel the soreness. But that feeling of sore defeat was often followed by her getting back at the belligerent party.
And when they mixed extraterrestrial tech in with their best fight shoes, Ashley remembered how interesting and fun those fights could get. One memory whizzed into view: Vanessa trying to zap her with a playful electric pulse from a pair of one of her shiny blue running shoes, only to get Ashley’s light suction-enhanced Chuck Taylor treads stuck to her stomach as the Captain hauled her up and over onto her back. But as always, it was only a matter of time before one of her other girlfriends got the higher ground: failing at a simple whip kick to the ribs, Jordan kicked on her own magnetically-enhanced Blazers, jumped up onto the wall and stuck to the metal framing inside. She then grabbed Ashley from behind and launched herself off.
“Augh, come on, no fair,” Ashley’s past self whined playfully after she crashed hands and face first light into the mat with Jordan still holding her from above.
“Did you forget the number one rule here in the force, Ash?” Jordan sarcastically inquired, getting off and helping her friend to her still suction-enhanced feet. “If you want a fair fight…”
“Then get out,” Ashley’s now present self muttered gently to the emptiness of the gym. “‘Cause most hostiles in the field just aren’t going to show you that courtesy.”
“This bring back memories?” yet another mature and smooth voice from her past inquired from behind.
The long flowing black hair, those gentle eyes, and that delicately pliable body. The rival of all the friendly rivals which Ashley had fought to a tangled-up tie repeatedly.
“You have no idea, Vanessa,” Ashley replied with a soft smile and shake of the head, opening her arms out to welcome General Campbell’s daughter into another embrace.
And she wasn’t alone: sporting a braided ponytail, a biker jacket and pants, some desert combat boots, and a patch over her wounded right eye from the Battle of Ravens Pass was Andrea Baxter.
“Hey, girl. Been too long, I hear,” the former Coast Guardswoman and Alpha Team’s white-knuckled boxer cracked with a sly tone. As if she hadn’t engaged in enough hugs already, Ashley’s lungs were on the verge of bursting as they were squeezed to the point of suffocation by Andrea’s mid-torso embrace.