The Chaplain's War

by Brad R Torgersen

  “Damned shame to see a recruit wash out because he can’t hit his twenty required targets on the silhouette range,” Davis said to my partner, a now beleaguered and nervous Recruit Sanchala.

  Like all of us recruits on the range, the DSs wore their body armor jackets and helmets, though each helmet had a bright band of orange reflector tape around the brim. Snap-down eye protection, from inside the helmet itself, kept any dust or kickback particles from causing us grief. And the lenses themselves were light-activated such that the glare of the afternoon sun wasn’t overly bothersome.

  Sanchala simply couldn’t swing his rifle back and forth in time to hit more than twelve or thirteen of the moving silhouettes, regardless of how well he’d re-zeroed his weapon.

  Davis continued to shake his head.

  I didn’t want to think about the expressions on the faces of the range cadre to our rear. Three different NCOs had been called down from the tower to help Sanchala specifically, and in each case I’d done my best to be a cheerleader and fellow troop, assisting Sanchala to implement the advice given. But what sounded like easy work during bull sessions with the cadre, proved to be entirely more difficult once it was just Sanchala out there on the silhouette range, four sandbags at his disposal for support, and two fifteen-round magazines slipped into the pouches on his vest.

  Pang, pang, pang, pang.

  Sanchala slipped the empty magazine out of the shoulder stock of the rifle—the R77A5 having been configured in what one of the range cadre had called bullpup style—and stood up, to walk down to his target with Drill Sergeant Davis in the lead. I followed obediently. When we got there Davis examined Sanchala’s shot group—four holes neatly contained within a constricted circular space the range cadre had already deemed adequate—and tsked at Sanchala.

  “Boy, if the mantes stood still and didn’t move, you’d be a crack troop. Unfortunately for you those sumbitches move, and move fast. I hate to say it, but because Fleet needs all the able hands it can get, we’ve been dumbing these ranges down about as far as we dare. So that even someone as clumsy as you can pass, Sanchala. But there’s no doubt about it: you can’t shoot for shit, son.”

  “Drill Sergeant,” Sanchala said, “what happens to me if I can’t pass the range, Drill Sergeant?”

  “What happens if you can’t pass any other test in IST: you’re a no-go, Recruit,” he said, matter-of-fact. “Doesn’t matter what Fleet job they select you for, in the end, if you can’t shoot, you can’t shoot. You’ll be dumped back out into the civilian world with a section forty-six-dash-bee in your file. Failure to achieve minimal military competency. You seem to get the fundamentals of most everything else we’ve shown you so far. What the eff is your problem now?”

  Sanchala didn’t have an answer to that.

  Again, sniping at aluminum with a relative’s .22 was a lot different from trying to place head shots on simulated aliens as they bore down on your hasty fighting position—at ranges anywhere between twenty-five meters, all the way out to four hundred fifty meters.

  Always, Sanchala was just a touch too slow. And the bullet would go high, or wide, or spit up dirt and grass as it ate the turf where the motorized silhouette had just been a split second earlier. I looked at Sanchala’s despairing expression, and tried to figure out how I could possibly help. I’d more or less been telling Sanchala the same things the cadre had been telling him, and it wasn’t doing much good.

  We trudged back to where we’d been laying on the ground, and as Sanchala readied himself to make another go at the next shot group, Davis stared down at us. I looked at the target, then at Sanchala, and back at the target, then held a palm up for Davis to see.

  “Hold up,” Davis said, raising a paddle into the air. One side was red and the other white. The red side, when waived at the tower, indicated that the NCO on the ground had noticed a problem.

  The tower acknowledged, and waited for the paddle to be white.

  “What’s the issue, Recruit Barlow?” Davis asked.

  “Drill Sergeant, I want to try something, Drill Sergeant,” I said. Then I snuggled right up against Sanchala and spoke low and clear.

  “You right-handed?” I asked.

  “Yes.”

  “You ever shoot with your left?”

  “I don’t think so.”

  “Without corrective lenses, it shouldn’t really matter, but at this point anything’s worth trying. Swap over to left shoulder and let’s re-zero your scope.”

  “But that will just take more time.”

  “As if you’ve got anything to lose now? Just try it.”

  “Okay,” Sanchala said.

  And I explained the plan to Davis, who simply nodded his approval.

  Sanchala did as instructed, with Davis leaning down and fiddling with the manual studs on Sanchala’s weapon’s scope as I awkwardly helped Sanchala move the rifle butt to his left shoulder.

  Of course, the first two groupings were way off.

  But the third grouping was better and, with a bit more tweaking of the scope, Sanchala achieved two final groupings that were tighter than any he had done at any earlier time in the day.

  “Alright,” Davis said, slapping the back of Sanchala’s vest as he pulled down Sanchala’s static target and handed it to me to go present to the range cadre. “Let’s get your clumsy ass back to the silhouette range and do this thing.”

  If Davis had been ferocious at other times, strangely, he was practically human now. Not that either myself or Sanchala made the mistake of getting lax in our formality. But for once, the senior drill sergeant wasn’t half scaring the piss out of us. He was almost friendly.

  With muzzle aimed at the dirt and no magazine in the breach, Sanchala walked with Davis and me back three hundred meters to the silhouette range, where a few strugglers like Sanchala were still going through their next iteration. The muffled popping of the rifles was dampened by my helmet’s ear protection; which also contained speakers for the wireless communication network that tied us together by squads or platoons for group battle-rush exercises. Of which we’d done several, while waiting for rotation through the silhouette range.

  I waited with Sanchala for his turn in line, then proceeded with him up to the base of the tower where two recruits—sharpshooting early range grads, who’d been rewarded for their steely prowess by being assigned the inglorious task of ammo detail—slapped fresh magazines into Sanchala’s hands.

  One of Sanchala’s other problems, besides having trouble getting his rifle on-target in time to make his shots, had been ammunition depletion. The rules of the range were simple: thirty mantis enemies, and thirty rounds with which to hit and take out no less than twenty of the enemy. On paper, back in the simulator, it had seemed like cake. Who didn’t love a good first-person shooter VR game? But on the live-fire range, once your magazine was empty, it was empty, and you had only so much time in which to load a new magazine. To say nothing of trying to conserve your shots for those moments when you might stand the best chance of hitting.

  I took the magazines for Sanchala as we both began walking to our assigned lane, and noted the weight of the fifteen rounds in each container, testing the top round with my thumb, so that the rounds slid up and down easily on the spring inside. Then we reached Sanchala’s designated fighting position where he placed the barrel of his rifle into a vee-notch cut in the top of a colored yellow stake driven into the earth.

  I stood there, half-zoning while the tower called out requisite and familiar safety guidance, then I got down into the prone position next to Sanchala. Securing his weapon from the stake, he loaded his first magazine and charged his rifle: a sliding handle on the top of the stock snapping back and forth so that a round was taken off the top of the magazine and chambered for firing.

  The tower announced that the mantis invasion of the range had begun, and I put my binoculars to my eyes, scanning the space in front of us.

  There, a mantis appeared from behind a berm.

  Pan
g. Dead on. Sanchala got that one. A good start. But only two or three would be that easy.

  I kept scanning.

  There, a mantis far off, zipping across the lane from one berm to the next.

  Pang. Miss. Pang. The target was gone. And I could feel Sanchala begin to deflate. Two misses and one hit out of three rounds so far, and still eighteen total targets to go.

  Three more mantis shock troops hit the lane simultaneously.

  Sanchala got one of them. Out of five tries. The odds weren’t looking good.

  There, another close one. Pang.

  Got it.

  There, about middle distance. Moving slow. Pang.

  Four down. But I could tell Sanchala had lost count of how many rounds he had left, and there was no getting around the fact that he’d yet to see the very-far-distance silhouettes make an appearance.

  Pang . . . Pang . . . Pang . . . Pang . . . Pang.

  Per instruction, Sanchala tried to be methodical in selection and rate of fire. But some of the last few targets had been moving so quickly, I wondered if he should not have just let them go and saved ammo for something a little easier to hit?

  There, coming right up the middle. Full charge.

  Click, click.

  Sanchala was out of rounds.

  He grasped the shrouded rifle barrel in his left hand and flipped it over, depressing the magazine ejection button with his right thumb. The empty magazine came free and I handed him his second magazine, which he slapped into place, feeling it click, then worked the charging mechanism and got back down in the prone just in time to see a mantis silhouette flee out of sight, unharmed.

  There was no way. He’d missed too many.

  Emptying his second magazine went quickly.

  Sanchala cursed in Spanish, then flipped the selector lever to SAFE mode, removed the second magazine and slipped it back into my hands next to its empty brother. He put his rifle into the vee-notch stake, and stood up. The tower waited until exactly two minutes had passed—and all sixteen of us on the line, eight shooters and eight helpers, had cleared and safed our weapons—before ordering us to retrieve our rifles and report back behind the range line for review of our scores.

  Drill Sergeant Davis waited. He was not smiling.

  “Fifteen,” was all he said to us we walked up to him, Sanchala’s barrel aimed at the dirt.

  Sanchala’s cheeks reddened.

  “But you’re already better than you were on the right shoulder. Go back in line, Recruit Sanchala. All you need to do is execute to standard. Give it another go. Copy?”

  “Yes, Drill Sergeant,” Sanchala said, and walked slowly back to where a final six shooters now stood, waiting for the next iteration. I went with him, not saying much. With the sun waning in the sky, I feared that we might not get too many more chances to qualify. And if we couldn’t make it, even with all the corrective training and counseling and the many, many chances he’d had to get it right, would it even matter if they gave Sanchala a second day? Or a third?

  I felt a touch of despair on my heart as I proceeded with my buddy to the base of the tower, we collected his magazines, and went to his fighting position like before. This time it was one of the spots closer to the tower, where more recruits had been firing more often all day.

  As I got down on my knees I noticed several unspent rounds laying in the dirt.

  That was against protocol. Any whole rounds cleared out of rifles during misfires were to be picked up directly and given back to the ammo detail at the tower—for turn in to the range cadre. And the rules specifically called for no more than thirty rounds per recruit, per iteration.

  I opened my mouth to shout something to one of the NCOs who stood behind us with their paddles in their hands, then shut my mouth.

  Were those rounds really defective?

  I stared at them for a moment. They seemed fine.

  Looking to my left and right I saw the other recruits positioning their sandbags and checking their rifles, their helpers offering whatever lame duck advice could be given. They were oblivious to me, though Sanchala seemed to have detected that something was up, and watched me closely.

  Then I looked up at the tower itself. And considered.

  Eff it.

  I scooped up the unspent rounds, wiped dust from them with my thumb and forefinger, and guided them into the top of the first magazine. At only fifteen rounds per box, there was room to spare. Three unspent rounds went into the first magazine, and two went into the second.

  “What are you doing?” Sanchala hissed.

  “Giving you an edge,” I said quietly.

  “But it’s against the rules,” he said.

  “You think when it’s us against the mantis aliens there will be rules? You shoot everything you have. I’ve noticed something about your tendency to hesitate, Sanchala. I think you’re spending too much time worried about conserving rounds, but you end up wasting them when you try to keep your attention on a number, and not on finding and hitting targets. Now you’ve got a little breathing room. And I don’t think anybody’s going to give a crap or notice if you actually shoot more than thirty shots. Not with eight of you all popping at targets simultaneously. So don’t worry about it. Okay?”

  Sanchala smiled slightly.

  I reached out my fist. He bumped it with enthusiasm. Then we both got down in the prone and he went to work when the tower called its instructions.

  Pang . . . Pang . . . Pang . . . Pang . . .

  Good. He was slow-breathing. Nothing hurried.

  “Ignore the very-far targets,” I said between shots. “And ignore the ones moving too quickly over too short of a distance. Don’t worry about ammo. Just shoot what you know you can hit.”

  I watched every shot through the binoculars.

  When his first magazine was empty, I handed him the second, which he quick-snapped into place, and kept going.

  Two minutes elapsed, and we stood up. Having no idea how he’d done. Because I’d lost count of how many targets he’d knocked down. It had seemed like enough. But would it be?

  Myself and the other helpers waited while our charges collected their weapons and filed back past the tower, dropping empty magazines into the hands of the recruits on the ammo detail.

  Davis waited for us as we walked up to him.

  “Twenty-four,” he said, still not smiling.

  Sanchala blinked in astonishment.

  “Twenty-four, Drill Sergeant?”

  “Yup,” Davis said. “You made it. Good work. Now get off the firing line.”

  Sanchala almost ran, his teeth bared in a bona-fide grin, pumping his weapon over his head several times before one of the cadre yelled at Sanchala to face the muzzle back into the dirt.

  I smiled, and started to follow.

  “Hold it,” Davis said, sticking a hand out to block me.

  I waited, my heart suddenly sinking.

  “Funny how Sanchala suddenly did so much better. And not just because of switching shoulders. I wonder why that was? Seemed like he only had his usual thirty rounds. Or was it more?”

  Davis waited, staring at me.

  “Drill Sergeant,” I said, “he used the magazines the ammo detail gave to us, Drill Sergeant. Maybe they lost count and Sanchala got an extra round or two.”

  “Yeah,” Davis said, still staring at me. “That must have been it.”

  But his hand still blocked my way.

  I said nothing, and just looked into his eyes, as he looked into mine.

  Finally he said, “You’ll clear your ass off the range before I decide to report your little trick to the tower. I see everything you think I don’t see, Recruit Barlow. Believe it.”

  I swallowed hard and said. “Yes, Drill Sergeant.”

  His hand dropped out of my way.

  As I moved to shuffle past him, his opposite hand slapped me on the back. Not hard. But friendly-like. Enough to send an altogether different message than his mouth had been sending in the moment before.
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  And from that point forward, I decided that Davis wasn’t nearly the ogre most of us had assumed him to be.

  CHAPTER 29

  ON THE THIRD DAY AFTER LANDING, A RAINSTORM BLEW IN.

  I wasn’t sure whether to be happy or scared. The wind was ferocious, whipping my poncho about and driving the water into me sideways. It was cold water too, and before long the captain and I realized we’d be in danger of hypothermia. Unlike when the sandstorm hit, there were no hills or outcroppings of rock to hide behind. We simply had to sit down on a raised mound of half-buried boulders and do the best we could.

  If the storm bothered the Professor, he didn’t show it. The Queen Mother looked perfectly miserable.

  After an hour, things calmed down enough for me to get up and walk over to where the Professor was hovering over the Queen Mother, doing his best to protect her from the elements. My hands were shaking and my teeth chattered as I spoke.

  “Is she in danger?”

  “Yes,” the Professor said, matter-of-factly.

  “She can have my poncho if it will help,” I said. “Though I can’t say it’s done me much good. The captain and I are both soaked to the bone.”

  I removed my poncho and went to place it over the Queen Mother, who had curled up tightly on the rock, when I felt a sudden wave of delicious warmth on the top of my hand.

  It was coming from the bottom of the Professor’s disc.

  The mantes may have been insectlike, but they were as warm-blooded as humans, varying only by a few degrees. I realized that the Professor had to be burning a lot of power to keep both himself and the Queen Mother warm.

  “How long can you keep it up?” I asked.

  “I do not know for certain,” he said. “I can shut down various functions to compensate for the raw energy expenditure, but if these sorts of storms are the norm for this planet, and not the exception, it will dramatically reduce my carriage’s longevity.”

  “Do you mind if the captain and I try to share the heat? We can’t make a fire, and our uniforms aren’t designed for warmth when wet.”