“Why did you help me?” I asked. “We haven’t said more than four sentences to each other this whole time.”
“Because you helped me,” he said.
“How?”
“Little things . . . here and there. Mainly you were the first person I ever saw in Reception who wanted to take this shit seriously. And after the way Thukhan . . . got himself out of work, I . . . started to think. That . . . maybe it was time to straighten my act out.”
Capacha’s armor was now entirely off his body and the foam that had encased his wounded leg looked dangerously soaked with thick, dark blood.
I could tell in his eyes—he was losing the battle.
One of the medics checked Capacha’s tags and then rushed to a nearby cart for two bags: one clear saline, the other filled with bright red, oxygenated blood. An IV went into each arm and the volume drip spigots were opened all the way. One of the medics began to massage the blood bag, seeing as how the Moon’s gravity made the flow sluggish. I offered to take over that chore, which the medic gratefully let me do so that she and the other medic, and the doc, could try to hit the leg wound.
“Hell of a way to earn your first medal,” I half-joked as I gently ran my hands along the sides of the blood pouch, pushing the red fluid down through the IV tube with as much force as I dared.
“As if they give . . . medals for dying . . . while being stupid.”
“Not your fault, man,” I said. “You can’t help it if someone else got careless.”
“No,” Capacha said. “It was . . . me. I was careless. Didn’t break contact when I was . . . ordered to do it. Got left . . . behind. Tried to . . . catch up. Made it through a bunch of . . . mantes. Wound up in the middle. Tried to wave my arms. But it was . . . too late. When the . . . mantes got hit, I . . . got hit too.”
Capacha craned his head back to look at one of the cadre.
“My fault,” Capacha said, gritting his teeth.
“Mine . . .” he said.
Then his eyes dropped closed.
I stopped massaging the bag and took up Capacha’s hand as it lay on the floor. I explored his wrist and felt his pulse—weak, tenuous—gradually slow, and stop.
“Shit,” I said, and instinctively dropped his hand, putting my legs over his torso and bracing myself on his sternum with my fingers laced together to form a double fist on his sternum. I shoved down as hard as I could five times, then leaned down and put a cheek to Capacha’s mouth, which hung half open.
There was no reassuring warmth nor moisture of breath.
I put my mouth fully over his and blew hard, feeling my own ribs complain. Five more quick compressions on his chest. A breath. Five more quick compressions on his chest. A breath. Just like they’d taught us. Just like I’d memorized.
And after ten iterations, there was nothing. No response.
I kept going.
After twenty iterations, I was shaking badly, and still nothing.
One of the medics put his hand gently on my quivering shoulder.
“You can stop now, kid,” the sergeant said gently. “Bullet tore right through the femoral. Once we opened the foam around the wound there was no way to stop the bleeding in time. Maybe if he’d not already lost so much, in getting to us . . . but it’s over.”
I wanted to scream at the medic, but held my tongue.
I sat up—lungs heaving—and stared down at the slack, pale face of the man who had quite probably done me one of the biggest favors anyone had ever done me in my short life. He’d been right, about me wanting to take out Thukhan. About me not having the lethal edge it took to go in and cut a man down in cold blood. I’d turned a decisive corner that night, and all because a stranger had been kind enough to talk me out of a stupid choice.
And now he was dead.
The two medics helped me to my feet, which almost came out from under me. I stumbled away from Capacha’s body and thumped my left shoulder against a wall, and slowly slid down to a sitting position, my knees curled up to my chin. I hugged my lower legs and clenched my eyes closed, willing the tears to retreat. Which they did not. I could feel them sprouting from the edges of my eyelids and running scalding-hot down my face.
The mantis threat was light-years away, and already, people were dying.
I remotely heard the medics take Capacha away, as well as a detail that came to clean up the blood. If the cadre cared that I was ignoring everyone and everything around me, they didn’t say anything. They simply went back through the airlock, took the moon car, and left.
I let my forehead rest on my knees.
Exhaustion seemed to sweep me back to the same place I’d been before: to the vision of myself and my former life, free of the Fleet and free of the training hell of IST. It seemed an altogether surreal life, where a man could eat as he pleased, drink as he pleased, wake up and go to sleep when he pleased . . .
“Barlow, Barlow,” said a female voice.
Only this time it wasn’t Cortez.
I picked my head up and looked into the eyes of Chaplain J.
“Are you okay?” she asked.
I simply shook my head from side to side.
“Come on, kid,” she said, getting up off one knee and offering me both hands. Like me, she was still in her armor suit, but with helmet and gauntlets off. Her legs were coated in lunar dust. She’d been traipsing about somewhere, even if it hadn’t been in the immediate AO.
I weakly put my hands out, grasped her hands, and let her pull me up to a standing position. She pressed a thermos mug of something warm into my hands. I put the spigot to my lips and sucked. Deliciously hot chocolate flowed across my tongue. I swallowed hard, took another mouthful, and swallowed hard again.
“What’s happening with the others?” I asked.
“The battle is over. The mantes retook their mountain,” she said.
“I figured as much. The odds were badly against us.”
“On purpose.”
“Yup, I figured that too. Did anyone else get hurt?”
“A few sprains and strains, and a few bumps and bruises, but no, nobody else got shot.”
“What happens to the recruit who gunned down Capacha?”
“Cadre say that the victim says it was his fault. There will be an official investigation. They’ll gather audio and video and eyewitness accounts. To determine if anyone should be punished. Meanwhile Charlie Company’s actual commander and actual first sergeant are going to have to write Private Capacha’s family a couple of very sorry letters.”
“Private Capacha?”
“Worst way I know of getting promoted. But Fleet figures that any recruit who dies on the job ought to deserve full membership honors. To include burial at a Fleet cemetery back on Earth if the Capacha family so desires it. Did you know him well?”
“Not hardly,” I said. “But he was the best friend I had.”
She gave me an ironic look.
At which point she guided me to a bench along one of the walls, and I told her the whole story—in between gulps of near-scalding cocoa.
“I guess I ought to be getting back,” I finally said.
“Don’t worry about it, kid,” Chaplain J said. “You were with me on the way up, you’ll be with me on the way back. At this point nobody from cadre is going to question it if I keep you under my wing. Besides, I want to talk to you about something.”
I looked at her.
“What’s that, ma’am?”
“You’ve got heart, Barlow. A good one. The Fleet needs that. Unless you’re dramatically opposed, I’m going to send some e-mails when we get back to Earth and have you put directly into Chaplain’s Assistant training.”
“Just like that? What about graduation?”
“Oh, you’ll still do the parade field routine like everyone else. Clean out your locker and kick off a final, high salute to your drill sergeants. But the Fleet needs you. You haven’t been told this, but things on the frontier may not be going exactly as well as everyone believes
. Some big offensive missions are being put together. World-walloping stuff. I’ve got friends in the Chaplains Corps going out on some of those missions. They will need a smart, sensitive guy like you. You game?”
I numbly thought about the offer. I’d made a pretty piss-poor chaplain. But as I sat there staring at the floor, one of Chaplain J’s kind arms draped comfortingly around my shoulder, I suddenly realized that I probably didn’t have anything to lose.
“Sure thing,” I finally said. “Sounds like a plan.”
CHAPTER 39
THE MANTIS DROP POD CARRIER WAS VOLUMINOUS BY FLEET standards.
With no benches, seats, nor chairs of human description, I simply sat on the carrier’s bare deck with Captain Adanaho’s head resting in my lap. I’d retrieved my pack and spread my emergency sleeping bag over her body. Disinfectant wipes from the med kit had allowed me to clean away the water, sand, and blood from her face. I’d closed her eyelids and given her as much dignity as I was able at the moment. Having no idea where my final destination might be, I was hoping there would be better means with which to properly care for the body.
There were four mantis troops in the compartment with me. Once upon a time I’d have been mortally afraid of them. Now?
I wasn’t terribly sure I cared what would happen. If the Queen Mother was as good as her word, she’d attempt to stop the fighting. Assuming she could regain control of her own forces first. For myself I felt only guilt over the passing of the officer—the young woman—in front of me. She’d come to me on Purgatory, filled with hope. She’d believed I was special. That I could make a difference. And it had ultimately cost her her life.
I’d also lost a good friend. The Professor had given his life for the Queen Mother—primarily—but I believed he’d given it for the captain and me as well. He’d wanted to preserve the peace—just like Adanaho—and he’d been willing to risk and lose his life in the process. When he’d first appeared in my chapel those many years ago, I’d thought him no different than the warriors who guarded the carrier deck on which I now sat. I’d learned otherwise. The mantes could be as individual as any human. And he had been exceptional in so many ways. With him gone, would the Queen Mother be the single voice of peace among her people?
A slight rumble told me we’d gone transonic prior to boosting into orbit. I readied myself for the sickening sensation of microgravity. When it never came I was both confused and relieved. But then it occurred to me that the mantes had had much more time than humanity to refine their engineering—that they could build artificial gravity cells small enough to fit on a craft the size of the carrier was not that much of a surprise.
I waited and wondered what life might be like on one of their bigger ships. So far as I knew I was going to be the first human to ever board one. At least of my own free will. During the first war there had been rumors of mantis ships ramming human vessels, the mantis shock troops storming into the besieged human ships and “harvesting” human crews. Whether or not those rumors were actually true had never been determined. After I met the Professor, and the armistice was secured, I chalked those rumors up to creative propaganda.
Now, though, I felt a tickle of cold unease—as the minutes went by before docking.
A few more rumbles, followed by occasional mild lurches, and suddenly the main deck ramp was unsealing with a hiss. My ears felt the pressure differential. I forced a yawn and worked my jaw side to side in an attempt to pop my ears while I watched the ramp lower down to a different, much larger deck entirely. Six mantis soldiers floated up the ramp to where I held the captain’s body. One of them towed a flat sled which appeared to function in the same manner as the discs themselves.
“You will place the female on the transport,” one of them ordered.
“No,” said another mantis voice.
The Queen Mother hovered up behind them on her temporary disc.
“He is a guest,” she said. “Not a prisoner. We will show respect.”
The six troops said nothing, though they retreated from me by half a meter or so. I looked at them—each in turn—then slowly bent to the deck. It took considerable strength to get her up onto the sled. I moved as carefully as I could, treating her gently. Anything less would have seemed unkind. I’d had to help with the wounded and the dead before. We’d buried countless people on Purgatory—after our failed invasion.
As I looked at Adanaho’s slack features, I remembered Capacha’s face too.
“What are your wishes for the captain’s remains?” the Queen Mother asked.
“On a human ship she’d be taken to the morgue,” I said.
“Cold storage?”
“More or less.”
“For what purpose?”
“Depending on the circumstances, she might be transported home for burial according to the wishes of her next of kin. Under combat conditions she’d be given Fleet rites in accordance with protocol, and the body jettisoned into the nearest available star.”
“It would seem there is no precedent in our case.”
“Then cold storage is fine for now.”
“We have something better. We use stasis technology to preserve various foods and other organic materials without resorting to reduced temperatures. This will keep her body in the condition it is now until a permanent choice can be made.”
“Okay,” I said. “Do that.”
The Queen Mother relayed her instructions in mantis speech to the six troops, who quickly maneuvered down the ramp again. I watched Adanaho go—with a unique and dreadful hollowness in my chest. She might have lived to have a husband, children, grandchildren . . .
“Come,” said the Queen Mother. “There is much we must discuss.”
I slowly walked down the ramp.
The docking bay of the mantis ship wasn’t all that different from that of an Earth-built craft. Contrary to the many imaginings of us humans, the interior of the mantis craft was not a nest nor a lair of any sort. No goo dripping from ceilings. No webs nor cocoons nor other organic grotesqueness. It was made of metal, plastic, and other materials which seemed familiar. Labels and signage were in the fascinatingly different script of the mantes—a semi-spiraling assortment of slashes and dots in an endless number of configurations. A linguist might have understood it. Maybe even Adanaho, who’d doubtless had some exposure during her training. I’d had some too, thanks to the Professor’s teaching during our years shared on Purgatory. But he’d been primarily interested in what I had to teach him, so the cross-transfer of knowledge had been limited. He could read the human script far more easily than I could write in the mantis version, just as he could speak my language whereas I would never speak his.
I saw several other drop pod carriers arrayed in neat patterns, with hundreds of mantes—soldiers and unarmed workers alike—moving to and fro. They were conducting inspections, performing maintenance, loading and unloading equipment and munitions . . . all as would be expected with a human warship of similar size and function. Which somehow comforted me in a way I’d not expected. I’d been bracing for a scene that might be utterly alien. That it was in fact rather mundane spoke to me again of human-mantis similarity versus difference.
“What’s going to happen now?” I asked the Queen Mother.
“I have ordered a conference with the ship’s top officer, who I have learned is in fact the flotilla commander for this particular star system. We have lost many vessels, as it appears your Fleet has too. The planet we were formerly on is still contested territory. I will order all mantis vessels, troops, and craft to reassemble and withdraw. At which time we will depart for one of the many star systems serving as staging areas for the Fourth Expansion. From there I will dispatch couriers to the various fleets tasked with engaging human space. Hopefully the Fourth Expansion can be recalled before the damage is irreparable.”
“Purgatory?” I said. “What’s happened there?”
“I was not privy to every detail of the Expansion plan. I left much to the individua
l creativity and initiative of my top warriors.”
“And what about Earth? Surely you must know if Earth is under attack?”
“That I think unlikely. There has not been enough time. The overall battle strategy was to engage your colonies closest to mantis space first—siphoning away as much of your Fleet strength as possible to the front—then decimating your Fleet prior to fanning out into human space proper.”
“Will your top warriors be willing to disengage?” I asked.
“Much depends on whether or not they accept my authority according to my former rank. Now that I am not dead, my successor and the Quorum have a conundrum to solve. It’s been rare in our history for any Queen Mother, once departed, to then attempt a return to office. If my successor does not demur, and demands that the war effort continue, then I will be more or less stripped of authority. Unless or until that happens, though, on this ship at least I am still the Queen Mother. No mantis here would dare oppose me. We will know more when we reach the first staging system.”
I looked around at the docking bay and its busy goings-on, and I suddenly realized I was going to have a lot of time on my hands in a very unfamiliar and not necessarily hospitable environment.
“What will you do with me?” I asked.
“As I told my soldiers,” she said. “You are our guest.”
“Do you have shipboard accommodations friendly to humans? A bed, a sink, a toilet?”
“Such things can be created. I will summon the ship’s engineers to work with you on this. It will take time, but they will do their utmost to see that you are made comfortable.”
“Thank you,” I said.
We waited silently as a score of mantis troops glided up on their discs. One of them hailed the Queen Mother with a raised forelimb. They did not speak. I sensed that whatever information was being relayed was being done disc-to-disc. On Purgatory the Professor had instructed his students to avoid this practice when possible. He’d considered it a matter of transparency; a way to earn human trust. I suddenly felt wary of being excluded from the conversation, and looked to the Queen Mother as my only source of protection in this environment.
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