There was an instant of hostile recognition between the Queen Mother’s guards and the marines. Then the shooting started.
I flattened to the deck as weaponry belched instant death over my head.
Mantis warriors died. Human warriors died.
When it was over, the marine squad had been obliterated. But only two of the Queen Mother’s guards remained, the others having been perforated by the automatic moose-caliber antipersonnel fire from the marines’ rifles. Mantis gore and human gore was spread sickly on the bulkheads and across the deck. So much so that I wrinkled my nose and averted my eyes.
“Come,” said the Queen Mother, and we were off again.
I lost complete track of which way we twisted or turned, as the imagery of the dead marines and mantes replayed over and over across my imagination. I’d seen it all before, of course. But somehow I never quite got used to it—the instant and graphic taking of life. Those marines had had families. The mantes? Probably young. And while obviously slotted for their roles, at least entitled to some kind of future. I permitted myself to feel a moment of pity for them, before we were again confronted by a squad of marines.
Just how many men and women had been tasked with taking our ship? Surely, this was not an accident. There had to be many ships at the staging base. Not all of them could be enduring simultaneous boarding actions. Could they?
I hit the deck again. Only, this time I wasn’t so lucky. One of the rounds from one of the marines grazed a rib. I screamed and rolled onto my side, clutching at the sudden wound. The blood felt hot and slick on my fingers, and for an instant I panicked, imagining a quick bleed-out.
But when both the marines and our royal guard had mutually annihilated each other, I slowly sat up and realized that nothing vital had been hit. Just the rib had been cracked, and I’d need a hell of a lot of stitches to sew the skin back together.
The Queen Mother had been hurt too. One of her forelimbs had three bleeding bullet holes in it. It dangled uselessly across the top of her disc, which appeared to have taken a couple of rounds itself, though it still functioned.
One of the technicians had also been killed.
The marines were a smashed mess of bodies.
Looking around dumbly, I vaguely heard the echoes of other rifle reports much further down the corridor from us. The marines were attacking in force. Which way was safe? Could I protect the Queen Mother long enough for her to complete her task, or would the marines put a magazine of bullets through her, thinking she was nothing more than a common mantis shock troop?
I pushed myself into a standing position—ignoring the severe pain in my side—and went to pick up one of the human rifles that lay on the deck. A quick visual inspection confirmed for me that there were still rounds available, and also that the rifle’s function wasn’t too different from what I’d trained on many years before.
“What’s the plan now?” I asked, gingerly stepping back to the Queen Mother. Our two remaining technicians fretted over her wounded forelimb.
“I do not know,” she admitted—if the pain was as bad for her as it was for me, her speaker wasn’t making it apparent. “It would seem your human troops have been far more efficient at penetrating the interior of this ship than I would have thought possible. The ship’s crew will be sealing off every sector now, trying to bottle the humans up, at which point tactical counterstrikes will begin—in an effort to drive the marines off our vessel, or exterminate them where they stand.”
“If my people find us before that, you’re all dead,” I said to the Queen Mother and the technicians. “I suggest you let me stay out in front. They might be hesitant to fire if they see me coming first.”
“Your injury—” one of the technicians said, pointing with a forelimb at my bleeding side and ripped uniform.
“I’d do something about it if I had access to a med pack,” I said. “But that’s back in my room, and we’re obviously not going to make it there any time soon. I’ll just have to hope the bleeding doesn’t get any worse. Sure hurts like a sunuvabitch, though.”
If the technician wondered what I meant by that, he didn’t ask.
“There is a maintenance passageway near here,” the other technician said. “If we can reach it, I suspect we may be able to find a way to hide. Until either one side or the other is successful.”
“Let’s do it,” I said.
The technician guided me with words as I walked, my eyes scanning ahead of me and the rifle in my hands at the low ready.
We occasionally passed dead marines and dead mantes.
The battle for the flagship quickly took on a surreal quality.
Assuming the marines weren’t going to take my word for an answer, was I really prepared to fire on another human being? I’d come close to trying to hurt someone badly once. Maybe even kill him. I’d been talked out of it at the last second. For which I was quite thankful. Now, things were coming to a head. I really couldn’t see any way around it: if the Queen Mother died, any hope for peace would die with her. Would it be wrong of me to fire on my own kind? Cause casualties? Even if it meant saving lives in the end? Long after the fact?
I wasn’t sure I had the nerve. I hoped to hell I wouldn’t have to find out.
Of course, any armed mantis that discovered us would just blow me to pieces. The rifle in my hands would guarantee it, whether I fired first or not.
Just short of a closed pressure door, the technician indicated a circular panel in the deck. He seemed to signal to the panel’s motors with his disc, then the panel slid downwards and slipped away to the side, revealing a somewhat tall shaft that dropped for several decks.
It was mercifully empty.
I peered down.
“No good,” I said.
“Why?” the Queen Mother asked.
“No ladder,” I said. “I’ll fall.”
The mantes looked at each other, then at me.
“You must ride,” the Queen Mother said.
I cursed, then walked to the rear of her disc and tried to climb up, growling at the pain it caused me. One of the technicians helped me up, while the other floated over and vanished down into the hole. Followed by the Queen Mother herself—with me riding shotgun—and then the second technician behind us. The deck hatch slid out and sealed shut over our heads.
And we were left with only the mechanical hiss and hum of the ship.
We weren’t alone for long.
After maybe five minutes, a new threat presented itself. This time, from below. A trio of armed mantes floated into view, and challenged our presence in the shaft. I could hear none of it, of course, but I could see them peering up at us—up at me—and arming the weapons that projected out of slots on the front of their discs.
Neither the Queen Mother nor the technicians were so armed.
“Will they fire?” I asked.
“They would be insane to do it!” the Queen Mother replied.
“What do they want?”
“They say that as long as you are present with a weapon, they cannot trust that I am not under your control.”
“They think you’re my hostage?”
“Something like that,” she said.
“Tell them I am just trying to keep you safe.”
“I did. They refuse to believe me.”
Just then the technician below us made a fatal decision—he rushed the soldiers.
To this day, I am not sure why. Maybe he thought it was the only way to distract the troops before they went after me—and the Queen Mother became a collateral casualty?
When the shooting started, I shouted a choice profanity, then leaned over the edge of the Queen Mother’s disc—my wounded rib hurting me terribly—and began to empty the contents of my rifle’s magazine. It was the first time in all my many years I’d been at war that I actually fired a weapon at the enemy.
While their rounds ripped into the technician, mine went into the soldiers. Sparks flew, and the shaft became a deafening funnel of sound. Within seconds, t
he three mantis soldiers were lying at the tunnel’s bottom, their destroyed carriages and mangled bodies slowly smoldering. A familiar, acrid, gag-inducing aroma rushed up at us. The dead technician lay on top of the soldiers, his upper thorax blasted open and his fluids spilling out across the lot, making a hideous pattern.
“I’m sorry,” I said to the Queen Mother, barely able to hear myself over the ringing in my ears.
“No,” she said. “It was necessary. I am now afraid that we face enemies on every side. With my official guards gone, and the ship’s watch suspecting that you are compelling me through force, the ship’s command may have concluded that it’s better to ignore or kill me.”
“I promise I won’t let anyone hurt you,” I said.
“I believe that, Padre. But unless you can summon an army in our defense, you may not be able to keep your promise.”
“Is there any way for us to get off this ship?” I asked.
“Yes,” said the technician above us. “If we pass down two more decks, we can re-enter a secondary corridor that will lead us to one of the hangar decks. We could take an ancillary craft from there.”
“It might be worth the risk,” I said. “Anything is better than waiting here. If the marines find us, we’re dead. If the mantis soldiers find us—especially with the bodies of their comrades heaped at the bottom of this tunnel—we’re also dead.”
“Right,” the Queen Mother said.
We dropped silently to the deck indicated by the technician, reentered the ship proper through a side hatch, and began flying down the corridor outside. With the technician in the lead, we took two right turns, then a left turn—zooming past hurried crews of other technicians—and found our way out into a mammoth hangar even bigger than the one I’d seen when I first came aboard. For an instant I allowed myself to gawk, then I noticed the platoon of armed mantes bursting out of one of the far hatches—followed by what seemed to be a steady flow of humans in armor. All of them shooting at will. Rounds flying every which way.
“Go!” our technician said.
There was a small, slim craft perched on tripod legs. Perhaps big enough for half a dozen mantes. We cruised up and into the open hatch in the craft’s belly.
“I sure hope to hell you’re a pilot,” I said to the technician.
“No,” he said, “but the computer can fly for us.”
“Make it happen,” I said, hearing a little bit better each second as the ringing in my ears diminished. Which just meant that the violence outside in the hangar was all too conspicuous.
The Queen Mother settled to the deck, and I climbed off.
My side still hurt like shit, but there didn’t seem to be much additional bleeding. I permitted myself to place my rifle on the deck, and sat down against one of the bulkheads—a hand clamped over my wound.
“Your face is wet,” the Queen Mother said.
“I’m sweating,” I said.
“Why?”
“Exertion, shock, adrenaline, whatever,” I said, breathing deeply.
“Will you survive?”
“Probably,” I said. “Had the bullet hit any closer to my center of mass, it would have punctured a lung. As things are, I will just need some superficial sewing up. Presuming any of us make it out of this.”
“By leaving, we are abandoning the body of your captain, of course.”
Damn. I hadn’t thought of that. But what else could we do?
“There is a problem,” the technician said as he floated back out of the cockpit.
“What?” I asked.
“All automated functions have been locked down. We cannot order this vessel to depart, nor can we signal the hangar airlock to give us passage.”
“Let me try,” the Queen Mother said.
I stared at the technician while we waited for the Queen Mother, who went into the cockpit to work her royal magic.
“I’m sorry about the two others,” I said to the technician.
“They gave their lives in the Queen Mother’s service. There is perhaps no more noble way for a mantis to die.”
“Would your people really kill the Queen Mother? Rather than let her be taken by humans?”
“Quite possibly,” the technician said. “It would be assumed that she was compromised—such that she could no longer function in her official capacity as the nominal leader of the Quorum of the Select. Even if she were captured alive, her authority would most likely be nullified.”
“Meaning she could give no orders to any other mantes while she was in human custody?”
“That is correct.”
I considered.
“Then I’m a liability,” I said.
“Yes, and also no. You are an insurance token—that armed humans will be less likely to kill the Queen Mother while you remain alive to stand in their way. Yet my own people will consider you a threat. Someone not to be trusted. You saw manifestations of this when you were foolishly left alone to wander the ship unguarded.”
I remembered the look of the soldier who’d had his serrated forelimb to my throat. How much he’d wanted to take my life—yet he’d not be able to do it.
“So it’s a Catch-22,” I said.
“I do not know what that means,” the technician said.
“Old human phrase. It means we’re damned if we do and we’re damned if we don’t. There is no correct option. We just have to pick a path and hope for the best.”
The Queen Mother floated back to us.
“All of my command codes have been locked out,” she said. “Nothing like this has ever happened to me before. I should have full mastery of every system on this vessel. Yet I am denied!”
If she’d been a human woman, she’d have been shouting in apoplexy.
Several extremely loud blasts shook the little craft on its landing legs—grenades.
How long before the fighting ruptured the outer hull? I suddenly longed for a combat suit—with a helmet. Vacuum would kill me as surely as bullets.
Another grenade exploded, this one so close it shook the craft and caused its emergency alarms to begin chirping.
“Well, we’re not safe here,” I said, looking from the Queen Mother to the technician, and back again. “Where else can we go?”
“I do not know,” the technician said.
I remembered our exit from the Calysta.
“Don’t mantis vessels have lifeboats?”
“What is a lifeboat?” the technician asked me.
“Small emergency vehicles. They’re placed throughout the vessel. Spaceworthy. Can stand up to reentry if necessary.”
“No,” the technician said.
“No?” I said incredulously.
“They would be considered superfluous.”
“What happens if one of your ships is disabled?”
“Our large vessels are constructed such that they always carry sufficient ancillary craft to effect an escape.”
“But not in our case,” I said, exasperated.
The technician simply looked at me.
The sound of human boots slamming across the deck began to echo up through the open belly hatch of our ship.
“Looks like we’re in for it now,” I said. “You two get back into the cockpit. I’ll try to talk to these marines.”
The technician and the Queen Mother did as they were told.
I kept my rifle at the low ready as a trio of space-armored figures pulled themselves up through the hatch.
We all stared at each other for a second.
“I’m Chief Warrant Officer Barlow,” I said. “Fleet Chaplains Corps.”
They continued to stare at me, their face plates still silvered against blast flashes.
“Who’s your NCOIC?” I asked. “I’m here on a vital mission that can potentially end the war. I need to talk to whoever is in charge.”
The three armed and armored marines looked back and forth between them, no doubt communicating via wireless. Then one of them dropped back down out of the hatch. When he
returned, there were three other marines with him. They scrambled up into the ship and formed a horseshoe around me, weapons also at the low ready.
One of them had the chevrons and rockers of a platoon sergeant stamped onto his chest.
He walked up to me—confident in his strides.
When we were almost face-to-face, he carefully reached up to his collar and hit the release for his helmet. There was a small hiss, then he one-handed the helmet off his head.
“Oh my God,” I said.
CHAPTER 53
“LONG TIME NO SEE,” THUKHAN SAID.
“Batbayar?” I said, not quite believing my eyes. Like a ghost, someone I’d not seen since the end of IST was suddenly standing before me. I forgot all about the sounds of fighting and weapons fire outside the ship. For that instant, there was only me—and him. How long had it been? The better part of two Earth decades?
His face was sweaty, and there was an old, ugly scar that ran from his left ear, across his forehead, and up into his much-receded hairline.
“So they made you a chief,” he said, looking me up and down. “I guess life in exile wasn’t all bad for you.”
“Nor you,” I said, pointing to his rank emblem on his chest.
“I earned everything I got,” he said defensively, face stern.
Shit, I thought. Really? Were we going to go right back at it again? Like teenagers?
“No doubt,” I said. “Look, I meant what I told your squad. I’m on a mission that can end the war. I don’t know how Fleet’s managed to spare the manpower for this assault, much less boarding and seizing ships, but we can—”
“We know about the Queen Mother,” he said flatly.
I stopped short.
“How?”
“That escape pod you came down in? From the Calysta? Captain Adanaho left an encrypted text message inside. We spent days combing the planet for you as a result. You’d have been in safe custody except for the fact that a mantis counter-patrol found you in that canyon shortly after Fleet marines found you first. Our response force didn’t get there in time to do much more than pick up the pieces, but when we didn’t find either you or Captain Adanaho, we knew you’d been taken offworld. Based on Adanaho’s information, we used our stealth intel to figure out the closest mantis staging system.”
The Chaplain's War Page 33
