Suddenly the program prematurely terminated, and the hatch to the TES popped open.
I was so jarred, I gave off a little yelp.
My dad leaned his head in.
“You know you’re not supposed to be using this thing when your mother and I aren’t home, right?”
“Yeah,” I said. “But there’s a good reason.”
“I already know the reason,” my dad said, tapping the silver recruiter’s card on the edge of the hatch.
“Out,” he said. “Let’s talk about this.”
I climbed through the hatch, suddenly grateful to be free of the small space. I’d been in there much longer than I’d initially thought. I stretched and bent my back from side to side, yawning.
“Come on,” my dad said.
I followed him into the kitchen where my mom had already started up the dining computer station which was rapidly taking the raw contents of that day’s grocery shopping and whipping them into something edible. I wasn’t sure what menu choice my mom had selected. I could only see the little robotic waldos inside the machine moving about rapidly, making shadow-box silhouettes on the unit’s frosted glass window.
“Recruiters are really pressing hard these days,” my mom said. “Frankly, Harrison, I was surprised to see that you’d actually talked to one of them. You never told your father or I that you had any interest in the military.”
“It’s just a recruiting thing,” I told them. “Me and my friends all got a card today. I figured it couldn’t hurt to examine my options. I mean, I am going to graduate next month.”
“And your grades are good enough to get you into a college,” my dad said firmly. “This whole Fleet thing . . . it seems like a good option for kids who don’t really have a lot of options. But you, Harry? You’ve got to think bigger than this.”
I felt my back starting to go up. Here it came again. The grand lecture.
“Dad—” I started, perhaps a bit more petulantly than I’d intended.
“Don’t,” he said, putting a hand firmly on my arm. “We’ve been over this and over this, and we’ll keep going over this until we’re clear. You’re only going to be eighteen once. The decisions you make in the next few months are going to resonate throughout your entire life. Don’t be impulsive. Think about the path you want to take. Think about the kind of life you want to live.”
“You mean, the life you want me to live,” I said to him.
“Now, Harry,” my mom said, “that’s not fair to your father, or to me either. We’re still your parents. We want you to be happy.”
“Do you really?” I said, my irritation growing every second that this too-familiar conversation carried on. “Because what it often seems like to me is that you’re more interested in me living the kind of life that will make you happy. Something nice, and plain, and ordinary.”
Dad’s grip on my arm tightened.
“Do you have any idea how much hard work it takes to build and maintain the sort of life we all enjoy here, in this house? Do you? No, of course you don’t. Which is really my fault. I should have made you get a job when you were old enough to work and still carry a class load. But your mother was afraid it would interfere with your studies. Now you listen to me, Harry. In this life, everything takes effort. Nothing is given to you. You look around at our life here and you think it’s boring. Well, that’s the opinion of a teenager. Your mother and I? We put in long hours every week to make sure it stays that way. Because you don’t want to find out what a not-boring life looks like. Trust me.”
I’d heard it before—just variations on a tired theme. My dad had grown up poor, the child of a single mother struggling with addiction demons. My grandmother had died before I was old enough to really remember her, but my dad always talked about his childhood being a rather barren thing, compared to mine.
“You think the only alternative to boring is recklessness,” I said to him. “I don’t want to be reckless. I just want . . . I want to find out what more is there in the world than here. Why is that so bad?”
His grip slowly released. His eyes—with bags under them—grew soft.
“No, that’s not bad, son. I remember feeling that way when I was your age. Just . . . this Fleet thing, you don’t really know what you’d be getting into. Nobody does.”
“The mantis aliens are real,” I said. “Fleet seems to be the only thing capable of doing anything about them.”
“True,” my mother said. “But like your father just told you, a military career is one of those choices best suited for people who don’t have many options. You do have options.”
“If I had the option I wanted,” I said, “I’d sign up for one of the colony expeditions. Go to the stars.”
“If you work hard and get an advanced degree,” my dad said, “maybe that will be something you can look into. In time. Seems to me Fleet’s just a shortcut to that goal. You’ve lived an easy life so far, Harry. You won’t like the military. Trust me.”
“How do you know, Dad? You never served.”
“I know,” he said, staring intently at me. “You’ll hate it.”
I stared right back at him, quietly fuming. Part of me wanted to go back to the cafeteria and sign up with the Fleet tomorrow, just to lock myself in and make it so that Dad couldn’t say another word otherwise. I was already of age. I could make the choice for myself.
But then, a little lingering voice in the back of my mind wondered if Dad wasn’t right? Maybe I would hate it? Worse yet, what if I hated it so much that I just couldn’t take it, and I washed out? What kind of face would I be seeing in the mirror then?
I looked at the recruiter’s card, still clutched in Dad’s other hand.
“Look,” I said, “it was just a thing, okay? I was curious. I didn’t put my signature on any dotted lines.”
“Good,” my mother said. “See that you don’t. You’re not even out of school yet. You have to focus on these last few weeks. Now help me set the table, because dinner’s going to be ready very soon.”
I did as I was told, and went to bed after the late meal—still wondering about what I might do.
The next morning, during first period, class was interrupted for a breaking news bulletin. The president and the secretary of defense were both shown at the White House podium, somberly reporting that the colony of New America had also been attacked. Again, by the mantis aliens. It was unknown whether there were any human survivors. Plans for a counteroffensive in the wake of the attack on Marvelous were now being redoubled, because it was clear the entirety of human space might be under imminent threat. The secretary of defense made a plea to the people of the United States for volunteers. The Fleet needed everyone it could get. Before any more of Earth’s colonies fell.
That afternoon, myself, Tia, David, Kaffy, and even Ben, stood in a long line of students at the Fleet recruiter’s table. One by one, we put our names and our thumbprints on the enlistment documents. As a mass group, we took an oath in front of the U.S. flag and a Fleet flag both. None of us had much of an idea what we wanted to do, once we were in. We just knew that this was one of those moments in human history when caution was not the better part of valor.
Something had to be done. And we were the ones who were going to do it.
CHAPTER 13
IT HAD BEEN A LONG TIME SINCE I’D RIDDEN A SHUTTLE. I FORGOT they don’t come with gravity. I almost threw up my breakfast when we hit space. I spent the ride—to the awaiting frigate—turning several shades of green. Once on board the mothercraft I breathed a great breath of relief, then gratefully took a small hand towel from the captain and mopped the perspiration from my face.
The young marines who’d ridden up with us, they seemed to find me funny. Until they saw my expression, and my rank. They snapped to as I walked past.
I guess being Chief is good for a few things after all?
The captain—whom I’d learned to address by the last name of Adanaho—gave me twenty minutes to clean up in the frigate’s
cramped guest officers’ quarters.
As an enlisted man, I’d only ever gotten bay accommodations. Zero privacy. My little single-man compartment seemed palatial by comparison.
The hair on my cheeks and neck came off, and a fresh undershirt and topcoat came on. Then I used the tiny computer guide in my newly-issued PDA to walk me through the frigate’s innards—to the command deck, where I was to meet Adanaho’s boss.
Sakumora was a short, muscular, stern-faced flag officer who neither smiled nor offered any pleasantries as I entered the room. Two lieutenants attended to his needs, while Captain Adanaho sat at his side, and two marines guarded opposite corners of the space. Against what, I had no idea. But protocol was protocol, and some things never change.
“Sir,” I said, approaching his desk and saluting, “Serg-ahhh, I mean, Chief Warrant Officer Barlow, reporting as ordered.”
“Sit down,” was all he said.
I took a chair which had been offered to me by one of the general’s attaches. For the first time, I noticed the captain’s expression. Her eyes were turned down and staring at the space in front of my knees.
“I’ll get to the point,” said Sakumora gruffly. “We’ve got compelling evidence that the mantes are building strength for a renewed offensive. Everybody knows the generalities of what you did here, on this little dustball of a world. I’ve reviewed the records, your own file, and the reports given to me by my officers who’ve been to Purgatory. There was never any guarantee that the mantes would hold off on their so-called Fourth Expansion indefinitely. I’m afraid time’s up.”
My feet and hands went cold.
So far as I knew, we were as defenseless as ever. The mantes were a much older and technologically superior race. Human ships and weapons amounted to little against mantis shields. For the sake of morale, when the war had been hot, the Fleet hadn’t broadly revealed its numerous and inevitable defeats—human colonies seized by the mantes and cleansed of all “competitive” life. Only after the armistice and the Fleet’s slow return did anyone come clean about the truth.
I cleared my throat.
“What do you expect me to do about it, sir?”
“Do what you did before,” he said matter-of-factly. “Get this collective of . . . scholars, or whatever they are, to talk to their political leadership. Stage protests. Sit-ins. Anything that can hold the mantes off for a few more years.”
“Assuming I could do it,” I said carefully, “would it make that much of a difference? I don’t think we’re any closer to fending them off than we were before.”
The general looked over to Captain Adanaho. She raised her eyes to me. “Few people have been told this, so I’m ordering you to keep it secret, but we’ve managed to develop a working copy of their shielding technology—what I think you referred to in your notes as The Wall. In the process we think we’ve found a way to penetrate those same shields.”
“Is that so?” I said, startled. “How exactly did we make this extraordinary breakthrough?”
“That’s none of your concern,” the general snapped, “all you’re here to do is get the damned mantes to delay their attack. Until we’re ready.”
“Sir, what makes you think I have any more influence on the mantes than the Fleet’s team of expert diplomats?” I said, throwing my hands out in exasperation. “It’s not like I’m some kind of genius about this stuff. The Professor—the first mantis I dealt with, ten years ago—just happened to reveal certain information that wound up being important. And I had nothing to lose. That my bargain convinced him, and that his compatriots had the leverage and coordination to affect Mantis Quorum policy, were flukes.”
“Nevertheless,” said the general, “you will try.”
“We depart in one hour,” Adanaho said. “You’ll have a few days to prepare, before we meet the mantis delegation.”
CHAPTER 14
Earth, 2153 A.D.
THEY CALLED IT RECEPTION.
As if I’d been invited to something you do after a wedding.
Only there was no cake.
And certainly no ice cream.
Sweat gradually trickled down into the small of my back, underneath my t-shirt. My arms and shoulders were on fire from being made to hold both of my stuffed-to-the-gills travel bags, while myself and five hundred other Fleet recruits stood at the position of attention outside the main processing hall of Armstrong Field.
If there was a hottest, most-humid, least-agreeable spot in North America, Armstrong Field seemed to have been built right in the middle of it. Sol’s yellow-white rays quietly baked the acres of concrete in front of the hall, and I had to grit my teeth against the heat on my brow and the agony of having stood completely still—in the exact same place—for what had seemed like thirty pointless minutes.
People patrolled the edges of the formation—each wearing green and brown pixelated camouflage uniforms and high-topped simulated brown leather boots. They answered to names like Corporal and Sergeant and they screamed at anyone who dared to address them in any other way. Literally screamed. Loud enough I was sure none of them would have a working larynx at the end of the day.
The victims—all of us gathered from across the globe—had all been rooted to the spot, immediately following our disembarkation from a flotilla of buses which had come from Armstrong’s busy aerospace field.
There had been no warning. One moment we’d all been on the buses, chattering and grab-assing, the next we’d been herded off and funneled into one of several gauntlets of very angry Fleet soldiers—men and women who seemed to have raised cursing to a high art. Men and women who looked as if they might literally burn a person to the ground, just from the raw hate in their steely eyes.
We recruits were demeaned, hollered at, cuffed, slapped, and even punched until everyone was arrayed in a huge rectangle, one hundred columns wide and five rows deep. We were not allowed to drop our bags. Anyone unfortunate enough to drop his or her bags—or anything else on his or her person—was promptly surrounded by several blister-tongued Fleet soldiers who verbally pummeled the perpetrator until he or she had secured his or her things, and returned to the proper state of being scared shitless.
For the first time, I wondered if I’d made a very serious mistake.
One of the main doors to the hall popped open, and a gorilla of a man walked out. He took his time, carefully walking down the steps, the tops of his boots gleaming like mirrors in the sun, and his hat—which I would later learn was technically called a soft cap—perched at a crisp forward angle on top of his nearly-shaved head.
A small brim shaded his Neanderthal brow from the sun, and in the center of the hat were three chevrons perched atop three concave half-circles, with a diamond in the middle. This insignia was replicated over the man’s name on his breast—KLAUSKI—and all of the other soldiers became immediately aware of his presence as he approached the mass formation.
The sergeants and corporals ceased movement, and ran to what seemed to be pre-designated positions around the outside of the rectangle of recruits.
The one named Klauski stopped dead-center before the rectangle, slowly scanned his head and eyes from left to right and back again, then clicked his heels together, raised his chin to the sky, and bellowed, “KUHMPAHNAAAAAYYY!”
At once, all the other soldiers flicked their heads towards the recruits and repeated the same yell.
“AHHTEN-SHUN!” Klauski bawled.
The sergeants and corporals snapped rigid.
Since I and the other recruits had already been standing at the position of attention for far too long, we did nothing.
“Good morning, recruits,” said the gorilla-man.
“GOOD MORNING, FIRST SERGEANT,” shouted the soldiers in unison.
When we recruits said nothing—heads and eyes looking frantically up and down the rows to determine what the eff it was we were supposed to do now—Klauski cleared his throat and tried again.
“I SAID, GOOD MORNING, RECRUITS!”
/> As a gaggle, our rectangle blurted, “GOOSHMOURNINFUSAGNT . . .”
Several disapproving whistles and tsk-tsks came from the sergeants and corporals around the formation—their heads shaking knowingly.
The first sergeant’s razor-straight, thin-lipped mouth curled up slightly at the corners.
“Now, recruits, that was just piss-poor. And I do mean piss, piss, piss-poor. Y’all gonna have to git’ with the program around here real fast, before I have to go and dirty my nice bright boots on your stinky little asses. Now effin’ sound the eff off like you mean it. Good morning, recruits!”
“GOOD MORNING, FIRST SERGEANT!”
“Okay, better. Can y’all hear me?”
“YESFUSAGINT . . .”
“Bull, try again. I said, can you all hear me?”
“YES, FIRST SERGEANT!”
“Right. Now that’s the kind of volume I should hear coming out of your effin’ mouths any time any noncommissioned officer is standing up in front of you like this. Doesn’t matter if she’s got two stripes or six. You render respect and you clear your skinny little throats with some gawtdamned articulation and uniformity. Is that understood, recruits?”
“YES, FIRST SERGEANT!”
“Good. Now, welcome to 69th Reception Battalion, Armstrong Field. Otherwise known as The Big Sixty-Nine. You all are gonna be here for the next six to eight days as we fill up in preparation for Pickup Day. During that time my NCOs and I will do everything in our power to properly prepare you for your entry into Induction Service Training, also known as Basic. But before we start I want to make something abundantly clear to you people.
“The moment you stepped on this installation, you ceased to be civilians. All those e-documents you signed with your recruiter? All that crap about standing in front of the flag before you left to come here? Well, now the rubber meets the road. You’re here for a specific purpose, and there is no time for second thoughts. You are committed. Most of you should have already realized that. But if you didn’t before, start thinking about that now. It will save you—and me—a lot of heartache and assache. Do I make myself clear, recruits?”
The Chaplain's War Page 6
