Then I put my head down as a concentrated series of bursts from the advancing marines shredded the Professor’s disc completely.
It split in two and burst into flame, sparks and electrical arcing lighting up the horrific scene of the Professor’s dismantled body.
The sky roared. Mantis fighters overhead. Making a third sweep of the canyon. The marines in the shallows vanished in a blinding display of pinpoint antipersonnel rocketry.
I flattened across Adanaho’s body. Long moments of silence followed.
The Professor’s disc slowly smoldered, so close I could smell the cooking flesh. I turned my eyes back to Adanaho’s face. She stared up at me unblinking, her mouth half open but not drawing breath.
I began to hurl obscenities at the cosmos. Towards any deity or deities that would listen. I damned the Professor. I damned the Queen Mother, and the mantes, and the marines, and the awful stupidity of precious lives cut short. I damned Earth. I damned the Fleet. I even damned Adanaho for being young and idealistic and coming to me as if I had some power over circumstances; enough to alter the course of history. Such idealism had gotten her killed, and all I could do was sit there, soaked and cold and clutching the captain’s lifeless hand in my own.
A slow build of tortured sobs burst out of me as I lowered my forehead to Adanaho’s chest and shook with grief. For her. For my alien friend. For the fate of two species apparently committed to annihilation.
After a few moments I heard the Queen Mother suddenly rise up, her wings unfolding and extending to maximum width. I opened my eyes and looked. Enough light was coming down into the Canyon now that I could see her clearly. She watched the sky.
A loud, thunderous, mechanized whining to my rear me told me that the drop pods had finally come. Multiple buzzing sounds told me the shock troops—their armored discs studded with a variety of lethal weapons—were on top of us.
Perhaps it was for the best. To end things in this manner. I wasn’t sure I wanted to live to see the mantis war machine slowly grind the planets of human space to powder. Instead of a quick termination, now there would be a long, drawn-out, dreadful fistfight as the Fleet contracted and toughened its defensive circle. World after world would be cleansed of humanity. Until at last Earth would fall under mantis crosshairs.
The final stand.
And then . . . humanity would join the handful of other extinct races in the mantis archives. A dead people, wiped from the face of the galaxy by a species determined to have the stars to itself.
I kept my eyes closed and held the captain’s hand tight.
The buzzing was loud now. They had to be just meters away.
A sharp hissing cut through the mechanized sound. It was a shrill, painful sound, almost like fingernails on a chalkboard. I reflexively looked up to see the source, and saw the Queen Mother hovering over myself and Adanaho, her wings fluttering and beating the air ferociously. Her mouth was open as wide as possible and her tractor teeth were vibrating so quickly they were a blur. It must have taken an astounding effort for her manage the display, but it had gotten the attention of her subordinates.
Several dozen mantis soldiers surrounded us, looking unsure of what to do. Those in the front rank were recoiling at the sight of the Queen Mother: a mantis without her carriage, unchained, feral, her insect eyes adamant.
Her hiss slowly died in her throat, followed by a rapid series of clicks and clacks as she spoke to her people in their own language. I couldn’t be sure what she was saying, but their reaction was immediate. A path opened through the mass of soldiers allowing four other mantes to maneuver forward. I didn’t see weapons on their discs. In fact, their discs seemed like the Professor’s.
Were these medics? I could only guess.
Two of them converged on the remains of the Professor. The other two on the Queen Mother herself, who settled onto her small lower legs and began to instruct the lot of them, her forelimbs waving and pointing with the distinct authority of one bred to rule.
None of them touched me. Nor the body of the captain. The troops moved back, then began to disperse. Securing the area, no doubt.
I slowly sat up, tears and mucus down the front of my wet uniform, and glared at the Queen Mother. She sat on the sand, her wings folded tightly and her beak shut. She glared right back, her eyes alien but her posture erect and dignified.
Eventually the medics returned with what appeared to be a small disc—a carriage without an owner. Though I guessed by size that it was only temporary, for the Queen Mother’s benefit. She looked at me for a long while, not saying anything, and me not saying anything to her. Then she slowly climbed aboard the disc and settled into the saddle. A series of squeaking and mechanical snapping sounds told me she was being re-integrated. She shuddered once and her mouth opened in irritation, then the disc rose off the ground.
Hovering over to myself and the body of the captain, the Queen Mother announced, “Pick up your captain. There is a transport waiting for us. I have a truce to call!”
CHAPTER 38
Earth (the Moon), 2153 A.D.
WE DIDN’T TAKE THE ENTIRE MOUNTAIN UNTIL THE MIDDLE OF the following day. At which point none of us had gotten any sleep, and Charlie Company had amassed sixty-three percent casualties. Positive devastation, for any line unit. At least according to Fleet doctrine. But lucky for us we were “reinforced” by a second “company” which had extracted from an imaginary nearby objective. In other words, the wounded and the dead were magically resurrected, putting us back at full strength for the remainder of the LCX.
Inside the mountain we found vacuum-tight compartments and quarters, hideously painted and festooned with alien-looking props. Almost like the set of a horror movie.
“The hive,” Malvino called it, looking proud.
I guessed that he and the other DSs had put in a lot of labor on the thing. Again, without knowing what the inside of a mantis installation really looked like, they were guessing—and channeling a lot of Hollywood in the process. Right down to the smell. Which seemed to be a vague mixture of rotting pig carcass and dog dung.
“Ya ain’t gotta like it,” said Schmetkin when she noticed my wrinkled nose the first time I pulled off my helmet. “But as long as your suit says it’s safe to breathe, it’s safe to breathe. You’ll be lucky if things are this posh out on one of the mantis worlds. Be happy you get to lie down for a couple of hours.”
And I was. Oh yes, I was.
Since the former wounded and dead had been more or less lying about for the past thirty-six hours, they were immediately put on task reworking the defenses of the objective and prepping for a presumed immediate counterstrike by the simulated mantes. The rest of us were allowed to use the heads—plenty of those in this supposedly alien warren—and grab a quick bite of food. Cold rations. The kind you wouldn’t touch under normal circumstances, but will wolf down with delight when it’s been at least a day since you had anything proper to eat.
We couldn’t exactly take our armor off. But we dressed down as far as we dared, with only an occasional growl from a DS, and tried to find quiet corners in which to curl up and grab a few winks.
One thing about the many weeks of training: they had forced me to learn the trick of falling asleep quickly, at any time, anywhere. I was reasonably certain my brain was off before my skull touched the rolled-up rations sack I’d elected to use as a pillow. My brain stayed off when the various jostlings and mutterings of the similarly-incapacitated souls around me formed a dull, monotonous background noise for dreams.
Strange dreams. Of never being in the Fleet. Of going back to my civilian life as if I’d never walked over to that recruiter’s table with my friends. As if there was no war presently happening, far out on the frontiers of human settlement in the galaxy.
Wishful thinking, I suppose?
I eventually came around when a persistent hand kept nudging me.
“Barlow, Barlow,” said the female voice.
I groaned and sat up.
/> Cortez looked at me, a small smile on her face.
“You’re back on-line in thirty minutes,” she said.
“How long was I out? And where the hell have you been all this time?”
“Four hours, give or take. Me? I was lucky in that I got shot within the first ten minutes of the offensive. Had a nice, leisurely nap out there on the surface. Regolith is soft as a pillow, did you notice? Anyway, we’re nearing the end of LCX Day Two and the cadre wants every recruit on the line at dusk.”
“Does the Moon even have dusk?” I said.
“Stand to,” she said.
“Oh, right.”
Another remnant of infantry eras past. In theory, the brief periods of semi-light right before true dawn and right before actual night were the best periods to attack. When would-be defenders would be hardest pressed to notice bad guys slithering up to the line and/or would be most disoriented in the event of a counterattack. Not that anyone had consulted the mantis playbook. Especially not here on the Moon, where conventional Earth notions of day and night were on holiday.
But some traditions never die.
I collected myself, got to my feet, ran for the nearest head, then returned presently and allowed myself to be lead away to the windows. How or why mantes would install square windows in an underground installation was beyond me. But there they were. Row after row of them. Recruits clustered closely together while DSs roamed around behind, like sharks. Watching, listening, and waiting.
I found my command group, but no Chaplain J. Odd, that. Was I going to be flying solo for the second round?
The chatter indicated that enemy action was expected any minute. The recruit captain and lieutenants were poring over a digital projection map displayed on one wall, which had been cleared of “eggs” and other pseudo-alien debris. Half the weapons squads had been hunkered down in fighting positions equidistant around the mountain, while the other half were detailed to a single mobile body being held in reserve: for instant reaction towards whichever side of the mountain got hit.
Standard squads had been placed out at listening posts far down on the plains, at least one to two kilometers from the mountain’s base. Supposedly satellite and Fleet orbital watch were being “jammed,” so it was up to human eyes to do what machines would normally be useful for. Which made me wonder for the umpteenth time why Charlie Company was not working alongside or in support of heavier armor elements. The Fleet arsenal included an array of tanks and fighting personnel movers, in addition to different kinds of gunships and other air-to-ground support vehicles that could effectively eliminate the need for a foot fight.
“If you make it to marine training,” one DS snarled at me as I dared to voice these questions aloud, “you’ll get to play with the heavy stuff. For now, shut up and run the defense of this position like you’ve been taught. You’ll notice that none of the mantis troops you’ve faced have had tanks or gunships either. So why are you bitching?”
Which was good enough for me—point taken.
With recruit command relying on wireless communications for all relevant updates, they were glued to the map, making constant, fidgeting changes—with occasional input from this or that cadre member who just happened to walk by when the recruit captain and recruit lieutenants were hashing things out with the recruit first sergeant and the recruit platoon sergeants.
I specifically avoided Thukhan’s gaze. I didn’t have the will or the energy to deal with him at the moment. Mostly I was hoping that the talk of an imminent counterstrike was bogus, so that maybe we could back off the line a bit—and I could go steal a few more minutes of sleep.
My hope was short-lived as the command wireless began to light up with reports of mantis troops closing in on several of the furthest scout squads, lying in wait for just such contact with enemy forces.
“Here we go,” the recruit captain said.
People began to scatter. Squads and platoons formed up near the airlocks and began to cycle through. Without Chaplain J to lead the way, I cast about until I located the medic team, and hung with them. Most of whom had been rotated out of their jobs in favor of fresh blood—no pun—who hadn’t had to carry the load during the first assault. So that it was me who wound up explaining to them how things would more or less work, once the casualties began to stack up.
And stack up they did.
Once it became apparent that the simulated mantes were attacking the mountain with an even larger force than the one which had first defended it, I guessed that Charlie Company was in for its George Armstrong Custer moment. No doubt this was some kind of object lesson to all of us about the need to stand fast and hold our ground despite overwhelming odds.
Bounding up and down the mountain chasing wounded proved to be even more of a workout than it had on the first day.
This time, however, there was literally no possible way of keeping up. There were just too many. All of the forward elements were wiped out simultaneously, indicating that a “noose” of mantes was constricting around the mountain. I helped gather wounded back to the aid area, went back for more, and each time found our perimeter foreshortened by at least a quarter of a kilometer.
The cooling system in my armor suit was working overtime, trying to keep pace with the tremendous amount of exertion I was making. I had put my actions on autopilot. Almost relishing the idea of getting lasered into inactivity, such that I could make myself a bed in the regolith and catch my breath.
That’s when the call came in. Not a standard training casualty call. But a frantic, desperate-sounding cry of alarm.
Somebody had actually been hurt.
I was pouncing across the Moon’s surface with three other medics—hearts thudding in our chests—when I saw a moon car with Fleet colors zoom over the tops of our heads. Presently, I arrived to find several cadre working over the prone body of a recruit who was covered in regolith dust up to his helmet. They’d slapped an inflatable bandage around one leg and were trying to get a hole patch sealed over the lower left side of the recruit’s stomach.
The cadre picked the recruit up and gently carried him to the bed of the lunar car, then one of them turned and looked at me and said, “You, into the back. Put your hands here and don’t move. He’s bleeding heavily.”
I spared only a momentary glance for the recruit hunched at the car’s side, her R77A5 hanging limply from one hand. I couldn’t see her face due to her sun shield being down, but I intuited that whatever had happened to the poor fool in the car’s bed, it had been her fault.
The car lifted and was suddenly zooming back towards the mountain. I kept my wits about me and pressed both hands over the patch on the recruit’s stomach. He lay limply, and I suddenly realized I knew him.
CAPACHA was stenciled along the collar of his helmet.
“Christ,” I muttered to no one in particular. “What happened?”
“Friendly fire,” one of the two cadre said. “You’re a recruit medic?”
“Recruit chaplain,” I said.
That I hadn’t added the requisite Drill Sergeant, and that the cadre person hadn’t chewed me out for failing to properly address her, told me all I needed to know about the seriousness of the situation. We overshot the entrances to the mock mantis base and flew to the very crown of the mountain, where a large set of double doors were hanging open, and the car glided in.
The cadre hopped out and suddenly I found that they and two other cadre were bodily lifting both myself and Capacha out of the car—the stretcher below us having been invisible to me as I’d clambered aboard and focused all of my attention on the wounded recruit. We were hustled into an airlock, which cycled quickly, then rushed into a larger interior room—no mock mantis paraphernalia this time—which was home to a pair of real Fleet medics and what appeared to be a real fleet physician to boot.
My suit told me that pressure was green safe, but I kept my hands on the patch until one of the medics shooed me off, and I stood up and backed away, dumbly looking down at Capa
cha as they pulled his helmet and gloves off with the emergency-release toggles.
He looked pale.
But his eyes fluttered and came to focus on me.
He raised an arm weakly in my direction as the medics began to split the top of his suit off of him, exposing the pink-and-red lumpy foam that had discharged into the suit the second the bullet had struck Capacha’s stomach.
I pulled my helmet off and threw it down as the medics continued to work.
“The torso’s fine,” one of them said, “it’s the leg artery that’s the problem.”
Capacha kept his arm stretched out to me. I knelt down next to him, trying to stay out of the way. If the cadre or medics were upset with me, they didn’t show it.
Pulling my gauntlets off, I grabbed Capacha’s hand in mine, my knees at his left ear as we looked at each other.
“Barlow,” he said in a whisper.
“The pros have got you now,” I said, forcing a smile. “Must hurt like a sunuvabitch, but you’re gonna be okay.”
“You’re a bad liar,” Capacha said, forcing a smile of his own. Then he began to cough, which appeared to agonize him as the medics and, now, the doctor, worked furiously on his leg.
“Almost time to graduate,” Capacha said. “Aren’t you glad you took my advice?”
I must have looked baffled because he began to laugh, and wound up coughing again for his trouble.
“You don’t remember, do you?”
“Remember what?” I asked.
“Back in reception, I was one of the holdovers. I was also the guy who caught you that night, walking towards the head with your weapon, ready to butt-stroke Thukhan. Remember what I said to you then? You took my advice.”
Suddenly it dawned on me.
And suddenly I had to know.
The Chaplain's War Page 24
