“Seems sometimes like it’s not on anybody’s priority list these days,” Chaplain J said. “But the war’s changing this, I think. People are remembering the value of spirituality—at a time when so much else seems uncertain. And frightening. Tell me, Barlow, why did you sign up with the Fleet?”
“My friends and I, we sort of had this deal between us. That, and I really wanted to go to space. Plus when New America got attacked, well . . . I didn’t want to be the only guy I knew who wasn’t doing his part for the war effort. Even though my parents thought it was a big mistake.”
“You’ve done a brave thing, Barlow. I hope your parents realize that some day. What do you hope they slot you for when you graduate IST?”
“I didn’t pick anything in particular. I left the lines blank. I figured the Fleet would find a job for me, in whatever capacity I was needed. Beyond that, I didn’t have much preference. I just want to see the stars, and to serve.”
“Not a bad way to go, son, but now I’m going to ask you to get a little more serious, okay? Being the chaplain, for any unit of any size, is a pretty serious responsibility. You’re sort of expected to be part pastor, part counselor, and part bartender.”
“Bartender?” I said, startled.
“A soldier will tell the barkeep stuff she’d never tell her priest,” Chaplain J said. “And let me tell you, when you’re a chaplain, you get to hear it all. The good, the bad, and the ugly.”
“I’m going to have to listen to the other recruits tell me their woes?” I asked.
“No, hopefully not,” she said, chuckling. “I’m just trying to let you know what your job is. There are numerous ways to soldier in the Fleet. Everyone has a role, and everyone has to know that role and execute to standard. Some people make great marines. Some people make great pilots. Some people make great technicians, or great administrators. And once in a while, some people make good clergy.”
“What will I be doing throughout the LCX?” I asked.
“I’ll nurse you through it,” she said.
“You’re coming along?”
“I have to. It’s required by regulation.”
“Why?”
She looked around pensively, then leaned in closely.
“Recruits occasionally die during LCX. Not often. Not many. But it does happen. This will be a live-fire exercise on the Moon, after all. Not exactly the safest thing a person can be doing. In the event that someone gets hurt or killed, they like to have at least one chaplain around.”
“So why do they assign a recruit to do it, when one of you comes up on the LCX anyway?”
“The LCX regulations require that all trainee officer and NCO positions be filled with recruits. And in the case of the chaplain, that’s you. Don’t sweat it, Barlow, you and I are going to make this the quickest twelve days of your entire IST. Drill Sergeant Davis said you’re a mature troop who tries hard. He also said something else that I thought was important.”
“What’s that, ma’am?”
“He said you like to help.”
“Ma’am?”
“He said he’s noticed you’re usually helping people. Other recruits. In big ways, and small.”
“Isn’t that the whole point?” I said. “For us to all work as a team?”
“Some people work as a team better than others,” she replied. “Malvino and Davis both think you’re easier-going than most. And I like that. It tells me you’re a people person. Someone who can go along to get along. That too is essential for a chaplain. We carry officer rank, but we don’t boss people the way your company captain or battalion colonel boss people.”
I nodded my head, genuinely intrigued. “Sounds cool.”
“It can be,” she said. Then her gaze went far away. “And then there are times when it’s not.”
She came back to the present when she noticed me silently staring at her.
“Sorry,” she said. “Just stick with me, Barlow, and it’ll be a snap.”
She held out a hand—which I hesitantly took, and shook.
Smiling, she pointed to my e-reader.
“Open the files,” she said. “Let’s use the time on the ground while we have it.”
Chaplain J was right. The time in transit to the Moon passed much more quickly than I’d anticipated it would. I followed her around in “no recruit country” up on the assault carrier’s crew decks, and she gave me the low-down on what the chaplain’s job entailed. And while I was a little reluctant to dive deeply into the nature and meaning of some of the religious rituals—it turned out that Chaplain J had a masters degree, and was a former instructor at a religious college—I warmed to the idea of the chaplain serving as a shoulder for Fleet troops to cry on.
Lord knows I’d already seen a hot mess of troubled souls during IST. Many people barely holding it together under duress. Their carefully-crafted shells of control occasionally leaking bits and pieces of truer vulnerability when they hit their max stress points.
Sometimes talking was the best medicine. A friendly conversation, about something other than the immediate task thrust in front of your face.
When we reached lunar orbit and I was ordered back down to the troop deck to suit up and prepare for vacuum-pressure operations, I was feeling so good about things that I almost dropped my formality in front of DS Schmetkin, who coldly reminded me in no uncertain terms that I’d not gawtdamned graduated yet, so I’d better get myself right and stay right for the rest of the LCX, otherwise she was going to wash me out.
With the assault carrier going in “simulated hot” I sat on the bench next to the other recruit officers—our helmets on and our suits gradually reducing the internal pressure while elevating the oxygen percentage in our air—and contemplated dealing with simulated casualties. Could I give simulated Last Rites? Offer a simulated prayer? Chaplain J hadn’t yet covered it, but as the assault carrier began to jink and swerve, throwing us this way and that as it “dodged” simulated missiles, I felt a little tickle of excitement in my stomach.
LCX might actually be fun.
CHAPTER 35
“WE HAVE TO GET UP AND GO. NOW.” IT WAS ADANAHO’S VOICE.
“Why?” I said, suddenly coming up off the sand, despite the aching stiffness in my joints. We were two weeks from landing, our food stores almost gone, but still no closer to finding a mantis base than we’d been before. We’d stayed in the canyon for the water supply, yes, but also to give us shelter from the sand storms that hit every third or fourth day.
I’d grown to like the canyon, despite the gnawing in my belly. Sleep came easily with the sound of the river droning in my ears.
Tonight, my rest was interrupted. Or was it morning? The faintest hint of light was growing above the canyon rim to the east.
“A vehicle has landed. Not far from here. The Professor says it’s not a mantis craft. They will be searching for us, and they will have marines with them.”
She already had her pack snugly slung over both shoulders.
The Professor held the Queen Mother securely aboard his disc.
“We can’t move quickly on foot,” I said.
“This I know,” said the Professor. “Which is why you must ride with me.”
“Can the disc—your carriage—handle all three passengers?”
“I do not know. But we must try.”
The Professor offered a forelimb.
I helped the captain climb up onto the back of the disc. She hugged her arms around the Professor’s upper thorax, then I climbed aboard too. The disc’s motors whined with additional strain, and for a moment we were all deathly still—waiting for any sound to tell us we’d been noticed. When none came, we began to slowly float forward.
“How did our people find us?” I asked Adanaho in her ear.
She leaned over and spoke into mine.
“Fleet’s been quietly reverse-engineering a lot of different stuff during the years of the cease-fire. I’ve only been involved in some of that. It’s probable they’ve
discovered a way to home in on the signals from the Professor’s disc, even if they can’t reverse-engineer the disc itself.”
“Please tell me you can switch off whatever it is that’s not been switched off?” I said to the Professor.
“We are now running silent,” he said, not looking at me.
The Professor scooted along, his disc become sluggish—this time not nearly as high off the ground as before, and complaining in an audible fashion.
The dark landscape of the canyon passed by us in a blur. There were no moons. Only stars in the purpled sky. The Professor could see, though, if one could call his mechanical-cyborg senses sight. What was it like to “look” with Doppler sonar or radar? What images or pictures were in the Professor’s head as he steered us through the canyon?
Suddenly the Professor halted.
A trio of spotlights illuminated us from overhead. The loud purring of VTOL fans told me the gig was up. Those were human machines in the air, not mantis.
I suddenly had the desire to lie on the ground, face-down, and put my hands behind my head.
Busted!
“MANTIS SOLDIER,” a booming human’s voice commanded through an electronic bullhorn, “RELEASE YOUR HUMAN PRISONERS OR WE WILL DESTROY YOU.”
Frantic skitter-scratching from the Queen Mother.
“We cannot allow ourselves to be taken,” the Professor translated.
But what could we do? The captain and I both put our hands up to shield our eyes against the harsh light. I felt my heart begin to beat double-time. On the one hand, being discovered by Fleet meant our famished sojourn in the alien wilderness had been cut short. On the other hand, it was probable my friend was going to wind up as an hors d’ oeuvre on some Fleet Intelligence geek’s interrogation menu.
“Ma’am,” I said. “You’d better be damned right about being able to push the POW angle.”
“Set us down, Professor,” she said. “I swear on my honor as a Fleet officer that I won’t let them hurt you, or the Queen Mother.”
There was a moment of agonizing hesitation as the Professor’s head tilted this way and that, his antennae waving frantically as he tried to quickly deduce the best course of action: were there any escape routes, and if escape was impossible, could Adanaho be trusted to fulfill her promise?
The canyon suddenly took on an air of claustrophobia.
Slowly, the disc settled to the ground.
The Queen Mother shoved herself off of the disc and began to skitter away—her stubby lower legs moving rapidly on the rock and sand. The Professor’s mandibles clacked and chattered violently. I guessed that he was yelling at her? But it did no good.
More spotlights appeared, this time from the ground.
Wheeled trucks roared around a bend in the canyon ahead and squads of human troops began to pile out, quickly surrounding us.
The captain and I both stepped off the Professor’s disc, our hands held up.
“I claim these creatures as prisoners of war!” Adanaho shouted at the top of her vocal range. The marines approached us hesitantly, rifles at their shoulders.
“Don’t hurt them,” I yelled. “They’re under our protection.”
One of the marines lowered her rifle and walked out of the pack. It was difficult to see her rank in the blinding glare of the spotlights, and the blowing dust from the VTOL fans that kept the gunships aloft.
“Ma’am,” the female marine said as she approached us, saluting Adanaho. Then she saw me, and added a quick, “Sir.”
The captain and I both reflexively saluted, then dropped our arms.
“Sergeant,” the captain said in a trained tone of authority, “I’m giving you a direct order to stand down. Neither of these mantes are armed. They’re not a threat to you or your marines. As an officer in Fleet Intelligence, I claim them as POWs.”
“Mantis prisoners?” the NCO said, sounding doubtful. She watched as the Queen Mother continued to scramble, and the Professor’s antennae drooped, his body language expressing utter defeat.
“Yes,” Adanaho said. “We took them from the Calysta before she was destroyed. It’s essential that we get these POWs off this planet and into safe keeping. They are vital to the war effort.”
“We’ve got orders to frag every mantis we come across,” said the marine. “No exceptions. Hundreds of lifeboats came down all across this world. It’s been a hell of a job policing up survivors. Especially with so many mantis patrols running interception.”
“Who has orbital space superiority?” the captain asked.
“We do, for the moment,” said the NCO. “But that may not last. There’s no time to waste, ma’am, sir, we have to get you out of here. And I’m not authorized to bring back any mantis carcasses.”
The NCO signaled with a gloved hand and the marines moved in, separating us from the Professor and the Queen Mother—who’d given up escaping, and simply lay prone on the dirt at the Professor’s side, exhausted as well as defeated.
A dozen muzzles were trained on them both, and I distinctly heard safeties clicking off.
“NO!” the captain and I both shouted together. We pushed our way through the marines to stand in front of the Professor and the Queen Mother.
“How much more clearly do I have to give a direct order, Sergeant?” Adanaho commanded sternly. “In fact, if I don’t see people standing down by the time I get to three, there’s going to be hell to pay. One . . . Two . . .”
The squad looked confused. Eyes—covered by goggles—darted from Adanaho’s young but determined face, to their squad leader’s. The female NCO looked angry, but she wasn’t about to ignore the captain.
“At ease,” the NCO finally said, slowly pushing a palm down towards the ground. “If she’s Fleet Intel like she says she is, we’ll let her bosses figure it out. Get the heavy-lift transport in here and we’ll evac the lot of them to orbit.”
Several roger thats echoed around the group, then some of the marines trotted back to their trucks while others remained to guard the mantes. The troops stood close enough to keep the mantes under watchful eyes, but not so close as to be within reach of a swiping forelimb. As I watched their young faces I realized that none of them—save for the squad leader herself—were old enough to have fought in the first war. All they’d ever heard about mantes had come to them from training VR. They stared at the Professor and the Queen Mother the way children might stare at a pair of freshly-landed sharks.
Dangerous monsters.
There was a deafening shriek in the air, and the landscape around us instantly lit as one of the gunships overhead burst into flame.
Other shrieks announced themselves, and suddenly all three of the gunships were coming down in pieces, the wreckage scattering while it burned brightly.
“INCOMING!” the marines yelled collectively.
I scanned the constricted strip of orange-to-purple sky over our heads.
Several swift, lethal-looking shapes swooped over us, their engines sounding distinctly different from those used by humans.
The mantis cavalry had arrived.
PART THREE
THE CHAPLAIN’S WAR
CHAPTER 36
Earth (the Moon), 2153 A.D.
WE BOILED FROM THE ASSAULT CARRIER LIKE A SWARM OF ANTS, all of us bounding across the regolith in carefully orchestrated formations that were broken down by platoon and squad. As part of the rear detachment of the command party that was officially detailed to “support” the mock offensive, I hung back with a few other recruit officers and observed the lot of us leapfrogging over the lunar surface: weapons at the ready, arms pantomiming signals as the Charlie Company wireless came alive with the excited but controlled chatter of recruit leadership directing their different elements forward.
In the far distance was a lumpy white and gray mountain. Supposedly that mountain was crawling with mantes. Why we’d not landed closer—or even right smack on top of it—was a mystery to me. Why waste time and potential lives crossing the distance
when we could have just pancaked down on them, and gone for the throat?
Chaplain J informed me that simulated anti-ship missile fire from the mountain had necessitated our grounding well short of the objective. Now it would be up to the recruits to go in “old school,” using infantry tactics and techniques which had not changed much in hundreds of years. I loped quietly forward with my little group and looked on as our overwatch elements suddenly became pinned down by hostile fire.
In the middle distance, the silhouettes of mantis warriors—not too different from the ones we’d shot at on the qualification ranges—were maneuvering against us in defensive bundles that were not unlike Charlie Company’s groups. It occurred to me that we were training against human-controlled, simulated aliens—which were going to fight us like humans would. Didn’t anybody think that was a bad idea? Wasn’t there any record of prior Fleet battles with the mantes, from which to draw sufficient analysis?
Again, Chaplain J filled me in: nobody was entirely sure how the mantis infantry fought. But training against something was better than training against nothing.
I voiced my hesitant agreement as Charlie Company began to take casualties.
Recruits tagged by the enemy training lasers were given a warning gong in their speakers, followed by red lights on their helmets coming alive, at which point said recruits were expected to fall in place. Those few who did not fall in place and kept maneuvering were screamed at over the wireless by the DSs, and threatened with punishment detail when we got back to Earth. Presently, everyone with red lights on his or her helmet, flopped immediately into the lunar dust.
“Okay, here we go,” Chaplain J said.
I followed her as we broke from the rear and began our own bounding maneuver, with four armed guards as our guides. Occasionally one of them raised a weapon and popped off a shot down range: towards the mantes and their mountain fortress. It occurred to me that our own people were shooting over the heads of our own people, and I remembered how Chaplain J had said Fleet occasionally lost recruits during live-fire exercises.
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