“Human vessels,” she said, “I speak to you now as the Queen Mother: ruler of all mantes throughout all the galaxy. Your continued attack on this mantis star system is futile. Your ships will be destroyed unless you cease and desist. Now. I will command my own forces to allow you to jump to safety, but you must cease fire and withdraw all combat troops from all mantis vessels. Signal me that you will comply.”
Moments stretched on in silence.
One of the holographic images over one of the tables changed from tactical display to real-time external image. I got a look at a very-bright sun far in the distance, followed by a large gas giant world. The mantes’ space stations appeared to be in orbit of the gas giant—probably manufactured on-site from the ores present in the loose ring of tiny asteroids. It was impossible to see distinct ships, but occasionally a sudden flash would indicate the detonation of a warhead, or the going-up of a reactor. Tiny colorful halos surrounded small dots that were moving visibly. Again, color coded for either human or mantis forces. It was pretty obvious that the Fleet force was outnumbered five to one.
The Queen Mother repeated her imperative.
Still, there was nothing.
“It’s no use,” she said.
I growled and slammed my fist several times on the deck.
“Help me back up,” I said to Thukhan.
“What for?”
“Just effing help me back up,” I said.
He hesitated, then stooped down and put his arm back under my arm on my good side.
He helped me around to where I could stand next to the Queen Mother.
“Are we on?” I asked.
The Queen Mother looked to one of the bridge staff, who said nothing, but whose antennae flexed slightly.
“You are now,” she said.
The pain was excruciating. I hoped I could enunciate well enough to be intelligible over the broadcast.
“This is Harrison Barlow of the planet Purgatory. You all know me, and I’m told you know of Captain Adanaho by now. Who is dead. By our own hands. People of the Fleet, we’re slitting our own throats. You have to trust the Queen Mother, she’s good as her word. Withdraw! Withdraw and save yourselves. This war only ends if we take the first step. The Queen Mother is going to recall her armadas. But it can’t happen until you all disengage first. I helped stop the war once—saved us all, or so Adanaho thought. Well, now it’s time for me to stop the war again. Withdraw! Before it’s too late.”
I’d almost shouted the last part, and clasped my wounded side while gasping for breath.
“Is there nothing you can do for him?” The Queen Mother asked Thukhan.
“You killed all of our medics,” Thukhan said.
“Wait,” one of the marines said. “If we could put the chief into one of our armor suits—”
“One that’s not full of holes.” Thukhan said gruffly.
“What would that accomplish?” The Queen Mother asked.
“The suits have automatic medical response systems design to staunch the flow of blood and prevent infection, if ever the suit is compromised and the wearer wounded.”
“Forget about me, what about the Fleet?” I said through clenched teeth.
Silence, for almost a full minute.
Suddenly the few remaining human ships in the real-time display began to break off and regroup, headed away from the gas giant.
“That’s it,” I said. “They’re breaking and running.”
“But we’ve received no signal—”
“Do what you have to do,” I said, “but keep your end of the bargain. Keep your people from annihilating my people.”
The Queen Mother’s antennae wove a quick, thoughtful pattern in the air, then she spun to her officers and they had a silent conversation for about ten seconds.
The sound of the ship changed, and the real-time hologram began to shift.
“What’s happening now?” Thukhan asked.
“Since I cannot give direct orders to the staging base as a whole, yet, I have ordered this vessel be put in the path of any mantis vessels which fire their engines in pursuit of your Fleet ships.”
“Will that work?” I asked.
“We shall find out,” she said. “Meanwhile, I have ordered that an armor suit be stripped from one of your dead, and brought here. So that whatever aid can be rendered for you, will be done.”
“Thank you,” was all I could manage.
The pain in my side had turned wicked, to the point I wondered if I’d pass out.
“Back down,” I wheezed.
Thukhan—my oldest enemy—complied without a word.
Sitting and leaning against a bulkhead definitely felt better than standing. I allowed myself to close my eyes and breathe shallow breaths as the minutes ticked by: our flagship maneuvering to intercede on behalf of the Fleet’s leftovers. Would our ships interpret this as a hostile act, and fire? Would the mantes themselves interpret this as a hostile act, and fire?
“Hang tough,” Thukhan said, sitting down beside me. I opened my eyes to see him with the other marines arrayed in a circle around us.
“You know, there was a time when I wanted to break your head open,” I said, a small smile creeping onto my lips.
“I know,” Thukhan said.
“How?” I asked.
“I’ve got ears, stupid. I remember that night when I was in the head. I could hear you and Capacha talking. It’s good you didn’t try anything, because I’d have almost certainly killed you.”
“You could have killed me today,” I said, putting my head back and reclosing my eyes. My mouth was getting dry and a mild lightheaded feeling had begun to grip me.
“Yeah, I could have,” he said.
“You were going to kill the Queen Mother,” I said.
“Yeah.”
“So why didn’t you? What happened?”
There was palpable silence, then I heard him swallow and lick his lips.
“I’m tired of the wars, Barlow. New, and old. Do you know how long it’s been since I set foot on Earth? How many engagements I saw, up close and personal?”
“That scar on your head says too many,” I said.
“Effing right, too many. But what else was there? For you, the war took a long holiday. But for the rest of humanity? Every single day of the armistice was spent building up for the resumption of combat. Every piece of industry on every planet was put to work manufacturing armor, weapons, ships, you name it. We didn’t know how long the ceasefire would last, and we didn’t trust the mantes to let us have any kind of edge, so we worked like bastards. Trained, and trained, and trained. For the moment when the shooting would start again.”
More silence.
“Got anyone in particular you’re anxious to get back to?” I asked.
“No,” he said.
Silence.
“But I’d like to,” he said, this time almost so quietly I wasn’t sure anyone else could have heard him.
And suddenly the picture of the man—a picture I’d had in my head for years—gradually began to dissolve away. I’d thought him a menace once. A spiteful, cruel menace. And maybe he was, at a certain time. But the war had changed all of us. Far more than any of us could have imagined at the beginning. In my heart, the little nugget of acidic resentment which had borne Thukhan’s name melted away, to be replaced by a tiny warm spot of pity, mixed with understanding. I too had not seen Earth in a very long time. I decided then and there that if the Queen Mother was actually successful, and we were able to pull things back from the brink, that I was going to go home. And see if I couldn’t rediscover what I, Thukhan, and probably a lot of other people had lost along the way.
CHAPTER 55
I PASSED OUT. NOT SURE WHEN. MAYBE BECAUSE OF THE PAIN, maybe because of the blood loss. When I came to I was back in my quarters. My upper torso encased in the top half of one of the armor suits I’d seen Thukhan wearing. There was also a human female sitting on my chair at the side of the bed, her chin on her chest while she quietl
y dozed. She didn’t have any armor on, though she wore the undersuit of someone who’d come aboard wearing armor. I didn’t recognize her as one of the squad that had been with Thukhan in the flagship’s command nexus.
My side was mercifully pain-free.
“Hello,” I croaked, suddenly realizing I was parched.
She stirred and looked over at me.
“Hey, Chief,” she said.
“How long was I out?”
“A few hours. Long enough for me to sew you up a bit and get the bleeding stopped.”
“Medic?” I asked.
“Surgeon, actually,” she said. “This ship picked me up in a lifeboat. When they demanded to know my occupation, and I told them, they brought me directly here and ordered me to fix you up.”
“Seems like you did a good job, ma’am,” I said. “I can’t feel a thing.”
“That’s the local anesthetic,” she said. “I had some in my kit I took onboard the lifeboat. And a good thing, too. Ideally we’d have you in a sterile wrap, but the armor will have to do. You won’t be able to take it off for a few days. Not until the wound has mended enough to peel the self-sealing foam away from your skin without causing more bleeding. Your rib cage . . . well, if you’ve ever cracked a rib before, you know it’s just something that takes time.”
“Thanks,” I said. “How many other survivors have we picked up?”
“Many,” she said. “Now we’re waiting to see if the Queen Mother can negotiate her way back into her own fleet’s good graces.”
“It’s the only chance we have,” I said.
I closed my eyes and let myself enjoy the comfort of my pillow.
“Can I ask a question?” the surgeon said.
“Of course, ma’am,” I said.
“The Queen Mother’s not like I expected her to be.”
“You should have seen her back when I first met her onboard the Calysta. No doubt you’re aware of how that all transpired?”
“I got a briefing,” she said. “We all did. General Sakumora’s plan—Fleet Command’s overall strategy—hasn’t been working as anticipated.”
“Can you tell me,” I said, “how bad it’s gotten? How badly are we losing?”
“It’s difficult to say,” she said. “I came directly from Earth onboard the Penultimate. Supposedly she was the toughest, most deadly ship in the inventory. We got assigned to a special deep-strike mission which was, I later learned, hot on your tail. We wanted the Queen Mother. Enough to devote ships like the Penultimate to the job. I think she lasted longer than some of her sisters, but since I’m sitting here now I think you can figure out that even our best ships aren’t cutting it against the mantes’ combined firepower.”
“More of them, less of us,” I said quietly.
“That’s about right.”
“Which is why the Queen Mother must succeed,” I said.
“Do you really think she can get them to pull back?”
“Either she can do it, or we’re finished,” I said. “All depends on the mantes recognizing her authority as their supreme leader in this situation. It’s why I knew the second we landed—I don’t even know what that stupid planet is called, if it’s called anything—that she would be the key to stopping the fighting.”
“She’s certainly not like the warriors,” the surgeon said.
“She was more like them at first,” I said, “because she wanted the war as much as we—the Fleet—did. She came prepared to die so that her side would be fully committed.”
“What changed?”
I opened my eyes and stared up at the ceiling. Took an experimental deep breath, felt my side twinge just slightly, and settled for a medium breath or two. Then licked my lips.
“Water, please,” I said. “Before I become a shriveled apple.”
A plastic straw was put to my lips and a hand lifted the back of my head up off the pillow.
I swallowed greedily.
Then my head was let back down, and the cool bottle of water was pressed into my left hand.
“May I ask your name, ma’am?”
“Shelby,” she said. “Major Shelby.”
“Thanks for patching me up,” I said.
“It’s my job. I’m just glad I didn’t get blown to smithereens. When the Penultimate was breaking apart, I figured the mantes would begin picking off the survivors. I floated through space for hours before the Queen Mother’s flagship snagged me. And a whole bunch of others. They’re keeping us all down in one of their big hangars, as a group.”
“Prisoners?” I asked.
“Not precisely. The Queen Mother addressed us all as guests, which is probably better than any of us could have hoped for. We destroyed a number of their ships before the Penultimate went up. I’d have expected them to be raging for blood at this point. So far . . . I can’t even tell if they’re annoyed. How do you read these aliens?”
“It’s a learned skill,” I said. “Spend enough time around them, and you figure it out.”
She laughed a bitter laugh.
“I’d rather go back home, and not see another one of these scary mothers ever again.”
I grunted my understanding.
A day later, the Queen Mother appeared in my doorway.
“I have good news,” she said.
I was propped up in my bed, nibbling on a ration bar Doctor Shelby had given me. The doctor watched the Queen Mother—and the technician who’d survived with her, from the trio originally assigned to my service—with a mixture of revulsion and nervousness.
I immediately noticed that the Queen Mother’s wounded arm was missing.
“They amputated?” I said, startled.
“The damage was too severe,” she said. “So the decision was made to remove the damaged limb.”
There was not even a stump where the shoulder had been. The chitin appeared to have been patched and fused.
“Did it hurt?”
“Yes,” she said. “But it’s a small thing. A replacement will grow back, in time.”
“You can do that?”
“We’ve always been able to do it. Our biology is very resilient. A lost limb is only a temporary inconvenience.”
“Wow,” I said, thinking about what it would be like if humans possessed the same innate ability.
“Anyway, what’s the news?” I asked.
“After a good deal of discussion, I have convinced the officers in charge of this staging base to accept my directives.”
“Will the other staging bases do the same?” I asked.
“We shall see. I will shortly be transferring my flag to a fast courier, which will depart—under escort—for the next larger staging base, deeper into our space.”
“You have to go around convincing your base commanders one at a time?” I said. “That will take . . . too long! Lives will be lost.”
“I know,” she said. “Those mantis ships under direct supervision of this specific staging base will withdraw—once couriers have reached them. But there are protocols which even I must follow, and there will be a great many of my officers who will not want to trust my motives. At first. It certainly took all my persuasive effort to achieve the results I wanted here.”
“Why can’t you just order them to stand down?” Shelby asked.
“I tried that at first,” the Queen Mother said. “And when I was rebuffed, it made me extremely angry. Enough so that I wanted to order this ship to attack the staging base’s own command nexus. But I knew that would be a pointless and suicidal gesture, so I opted for a prolonged dialogue. They didn’t want to trust me at first, but I am still the Queen Mother whether they like it or not. So they listened. And I argued. And argued. And argued. Until they finally accepted what I had to say.”
“Can you trust that their allegiance will stick?” I asked.
“What does that mean, in this context? Stick?”
“Will they follow your commands without question from this point forward?”
“These par
ticular officers? Yes. I believe I have convinced them of the moral necessity for cessation of hostilities.”
I raised an eyebrow.
“That must have taken a lot of fancy talk,” I said.
“Talk, yes. A significant amount. But I am encouraged. That these mantes can be swayed, tells me that others will be as well. My successor chief among them. Because it’s vital that she have the same conviction I now do—that the eradication of the human species is not essential to the progress and health of our dominion in the galaxy. Otherwise, the possibility of war will always exist between our species. I do not think there will be a third opportunity to avoid the genocide of the human people. Already, I am told, much damage has been inflicted on your space—your colonies. This grieves me deeply. I would not have given it a second thought before. But now? Now . . . I do not want to be known as the Queen Mother who eradicated humanity. Not after Captain Adanaho gave herself up for my sake. Not after everything I’ve learned. I could not live with myself if I did not try to undo what I had done. I must make sure that no others in my wake make the same mistakes that I have.”
I nodded my understanding. The manifestation of the Queen Mother’s conscience was complete.
“What happens to the humans on this ship?” Shelby asked.
“Once the remainder of your survivors have been picked up—we are still finding more lifeboats, even at this moment—we will aim to negotiate for your exchange.”
“We’ve taken mantis prisoners?” I said, surprised.
“My officers and I assume so, until proven otherwise. Regardless, all of the humans on this ship will be returned to a human colony world as quickly as we’re able to effect negotiations for their safe release.”
“Good,” I said. It would be nice to be back with humans again.
The Queen Mother hovered over the deck, expectantly.
“There is something else,” she said to me.
“Yes?”
The Queen Mother faced Shelby.
“How long before Padre is healthy enough to function without your supervision?”
Shelby pursed her lips.
“Assuming he doesn’t bang that broken rib around, a couple more days. But the real question now is infection. I’ve dosed him heavily with a spectrum antibiotic, but without knowing what kind of microbes and bacteria he’s been exposed to on this ship, or on that planet you were both stranded on, it’s impossible to say whether or not he’s out of danger.”
The Chaplain's War Page 35
