“Come,” he said through the speaker at his cabin door.
It opened, and I walked in, presented a salute, and said, “Specialist Barlow reporting as ordered, sir.”
“Ah good,” Thomas said. He had a jolly mustache that was just on the edge of being too bushy for regulation, and he wore a tiny silver cross on his uniform—something Chaplain J had not done. The rules for this weren’t precisely clear. It seemed to be a matter of taste among the individual chaplains in the Chaplains’ Corps.
When I didn’t relax right away, Thomas waved a hand at me.
“Relax, young man, relax. Three weeks out of school and they’ve still got you scared stiff, eh? That’s no way to approach the world. From this point forward you can all me Chaplain Tom. Or Major Tom, if you like.”
“Major Tom,” I said, testing it out.
“It’s a joke from my grad school days,” he said. “Something to do with an old pop song from a long time ago. Anyway, the point is, I expect no formality of the sort drummed into you up to this point. Respect, absolutely. But as you’ve no doubt discovered in your brief time in the Fleet, plenty of people render formalities without giving an inch of respect. Yes?”
I raised an eyebrow, and nodded my agreement. Chaplain Tom was an astute fellow. I let my saluting hand fall to my side, then settled into a very relaxed at-ease.
“Is there anything I can do to help?” I asked, noting that Chaplain Tom still had an unpacked duffel on his bunk.
“No, I’m fine, thanks. This is my fourth ship in as many months. They’re moving a lot of us around as Fleet gears up for the big offensives. I’ve learned to travel light, and pack and unpack quickly.”
“Have you heard anything more about that?” I asked.
“About what?”
“The missions.”
“Just that Fleet has identified five different systems it wants to evict the mantes from. Places of some strategic importance, I gather. Probably because they’ve each got Earth-similar worlds in them, and Fleet can do much more with an Earth-type planet than it can with any other sort. We’ll know more when we’ll know more, you know? So, for now, try to put that worry out of your head, son. Or shall I call you Harry?”
He shocked me with my first name. Not even Chaplain J had used it.
“Uhh,” I said, “Specialist Barlow is fine, sir.”
He looked at me, broke into a grin, and shook his head.
“Right,” was all he said.
I looked around his quarters—somewhat larger than a breadbox. But because he was solitary, whereas I shared an eight-man room, his quarters seemed positively decadent.
“Church much?” he asked me as he sat on the edge of his bunk.
“Not before—uh, no, sir.” I said.
“No problem. You could be a thoroughgoing atheist for all I care. Tammy said in her e-mail to me that you were a hard worker and that you like to help people. And that’s good enough for me. Because helping people is the name of the game. Fleet poses one of the most rigid, uncompromising, otherwise inhospitable environments a working man or woman can know. My job—and now your job, too—is to help these men and women cope. Officers. Enlisted. Doesn’t matter. Everybody has a snapping point. And if you’ve just come from school, on the heels of IST, you know what I mean when I say snap.”
“Yes sir,” I said.
“Good. So, I want you glued to me whenever you’re not required to be partaking in priority training. It’ll be weeks or months to get anywhere, even after this ship gets specific orders for a specific destination. Lots of time during which Fleet’s going to try to keep everyone on board as busy as possible. So that we stay sharp. Motivated. Ready. Problem is, this puts us at or near ‘snap point’ and our job—yours and mine—is to see if we can’t help the rest of these people see past the grind of their schedule. And the worry about combat to come—which nobody on this boat has seen, I might add. Not even the woman commanding it. We’re all ‘green’ as far as that goes. Which means there’s no reason not to have a mutual sense of humility and understanding. Right?”
“Right, sir.”
He looked at me, still smiling, and sighed.
“Well, you take your time getting into the flow of things. I’m counting on the fact that Tammy didn’t sell me a lemon—and it would shock me to death, if she did. The rest is up to the Lord.”
“Yessir, thank you. I do have one question, sir.”
“Okay, shoot.”
“Do you mind if I, ummm, ask you about that from time to time?”
“About what?”
“The Lord. God. Church. Things like that.”
“I’d be delighted,” he said.
“Just please don’t turn me into a project,” I said, noting his sudden enthusiasm.
“I wouldn’t think of it, Specialist Barlow. A chaplain’s job is not to go around pushing faith down peoples’ throats. A chaplain’s job is to help foster what faith may already be there—in whatever supply or form it happens to exist. Beyond that, I try to keep my views and opinions close to my vest. Understand?”
“Yessir,” I said.
“Now, if we’re done here, I think I need a quick nap before I walk up a few decks and join the muckety-muck meeting with all the other ship’s officers. Can you come beep my door again at 1445 hours?”
“Yessir, I can do that.”
“Good. Thanks. Sounds like we’re going to get along just fine.”
I snapped my heels together, and began to offer a salute, when he waved me off for the second time in ten minutes.
“Specialist, you’re dismissed. Go get some lunch or something. Just knock off all that spit-and-polish crap. It scares me. Jeez.”
I smiled despite myself, turned, and went back out the way I’d come in.
Chapter 41
The compartment was barren, but they’d moved in a section of pliable material not too different from memory foam. I tested it with my hands and was delighted at its softness. After spending so many days sleeping on sand and gravel, the thought of lying on an actual bed suddenly became irresistible.
Blankets and sheets there were none, though the mantis engineers quickly fashioned a smaller piece of the foam for a man-sized pillow. They also produced both my pack and the captain’s pack, along with all of the contents thereof.
I pulled out the captain’s emergency sleeping bag and fluffed it out over the bed, noticing the dust that came off—laundry concerns could wait.
My bladder and colon could not.
The three technicians conferred at length.
“We are unfamiliar with this biological function,” one of them said. “But we realize that humans are too primitive to have carriages. We will bring a storage container into which you may deposit your waste. We will also bring a different storage container with fresh water for your consumption and hygiene.”
“Heated?” I asked.
They conferred at length again.
“This should be feasible.”
They left the compartment to retrieve what they needed, and I slumped onto the foam.
It molded deliciously to my body.
Sleep tugged at my brain like the suction of a whirlpool.
The technicians returned more quickly than expected. They had several sleds similar to the ones used to remove the body of Captain Adanaho. On each sled had been stacked numerous pieces of equipment, tools, raw parts, as well as the bulk containers they’d spoken of earlier. For several minutes I went back and forth with them explaining the rudimentary basics of what a toilet looked like and how it worked, as well as a wash basin. I also told them I’d eventually like to have a shower stall built or even—Lord, please—a bathtub. Though that would wait until I wasn’t semi-dead from lack of proper sleep and nourishment.
“Food,” said one of the technicians, “may prove to be the biggest problem. We do not know which of our foodstuffs will be palatable to you, and there is no way for us to procure foodstuffs from a human vessel at this time. Do
you have anything you could give to us which we might take to our refectory and examine in detail? So that we might learn your basic nutritional requirements?”
I rummaged through the captain’s pack.
She still had a ration bar.
“Here,” I said. “These will keep a human alive. They’ve got everything I need. Except variety.”
The lead technician’s antennae made a questioning expression.
“Humans cannot eat the same exact food over and over again before it becomes sickening to them. We require variety. At least as much as can be provided.”
“It will be a process,” said the lead technician. “We may have to go through many iterations before we present you with something tolerable.”
I supposed that would just have to be good enough, so I thanked them for making the effort and sat on my mantis foam mattress while the technicians went to work fashioning my toilet and sink. They did it all mechanically. Each of their discs had slots from which manipulator arms and tools extended. The air smelled of adhesive and welded metal as they worked. Occasionally they asked me a question. I found myself tapping my teeth together impatiently. It had been hours since I’d been able to relieve myself.
Finally, they had the job done.
I tested the two spigots on the hexagonal wash basin—hot and cold water—and the circular toilet seat was the right size, with a sealable cover so that I wouldn’t have to smell my own piss and shit all night and day.
“Close enough for government work,” I said, slapping my hands together and rubbing them eagerly.
“Then it is…sufficient?” said the lead technician.
“It is,” I said. “And now I would ask for some extended privacy.”
“We understand,” they said.
I ushered them out.
Ten minutes later I was stripped to my skin, my bowels happily empty. Using the water from the basin and sanitary wipes from the emergency packs, I gave myself an overlong version of a soldier’s bath. Occasionally rinsing the wipes in the basin, I noted the sound of the waste water tumbling into the container beneath it. I estimated I had about twohundred liters before the waste water tank would need to be dumped. Roughly as much for the loo, too. Though I’d be wanting to get both of them emptied well before hitting the limit.
With skin tingling—the compartment’s ventilation blew gently across my face—I lay on the mattress and pulled the sleeping bag up around my waist. They’d put in a small control box near the bed’s head, with touch displays on it for temperature and light control. I dialed the temp down a few degrees, and turned the light off.
For a moment, I missed seeing the stars.
But the ship had a low mechanical hum that was as pleasantly hypnotic as the river in the canyon had been, and I quickly faded into deep sleep.
My dreams were violently lurid.
Over and over again, I pressed my hand to the gushing wound in Captain Adanaho’s torso. Which suddenly became Capacha’s torso, back during LCX at the end of IST.
Over and over again, they both died.
At one point the repetition became so horrible I swam up out of sleep with a start. Fumbling for the control box, I dialed up the light and kicked off the sleeping bag. I rinsed my face and head in the basin—cold water this time—then used the toilet again, prior to getting back on the mattress. Which was still delightfully soft.
I was hesitant to let myself go back to sleep if that’s the kind of nightmare I was going to be greeted with.
To distract myself I remembered the interior of my chapel back on Purgatory. I mentally took myself through my old routine: lighting the oil lamps, going up and down the rows of roughly-cut stone pews, collecting bits of debris and making sure everything was neat and orderly. In my imaginary version of the chapel, I sat on the stool to the left of the altar where the symbols of human faith were normally displayed. It occurred to me that the chapel—indeed, everything in the entire mountain valley—might have been razed to the ground in the Forth Expansion.
Memories might be all I had from now on. It had not been a comfortable life, living in that little place. But it had been a life of purpose. I vowed to myself that if ever I made it back, I would rebuild.
Chapter 42
Interstellar space, 2155 A.D.
We didn’t have to wait long. Within two Earth weeks, our ship—Chaplain Tom’s and mine—was part of a 25-vessel flotilla bound for a world I could not name, nor could I readily identify it on a 3D star map.
Over half the ship’s complement were marines. The kind of men and women I’d done a bit of training alongside during my final phase at the chaplain’s assistant school. And since Chaplain Thomas was technically detailed to the infantry for this trip, we spent way more time tending to the needs of the ground forces than we did to anyone else.
Which meant I spent almost as much time as the marines doing weapons drills, close combat rush and support actions, assault carrier egress training, and so on and so forth. I was, after all, going to be carrying an R77A5 right alongside them—in defense of the chaplain, who would carry no weaponry at all.
The marines were initially standoffish with me.
Not jerks per se, as I’d seen them treat some of the enlisted who were explicitly assigned to the ship proper. But not friendly, either. I was every bit the oddball to them as I’d been to some of my compatriots back at Armstrong Field. But because everybody liked Chaplain Tom, and I was Thomas’s gofer, that good will slowly began to slop over onto to me as well.
One day I happened to be hanging around in the ship’s gargantuan staging hangar—large enough to hold four assault carriers!—when I noticed a cluster of marines standing off on their own, and examining the contents of a small book.
I walked up to them.
“Mornin’,” I said.
A few of them nodded at me.
“May I ask what’s got your interest today?”
They exchanged glances, then the one holding the book closed it and showed me the cover. There was a silhouette in gold leaf on the front that looked a bit like a man in a Greek robe holding a clarion to his mouth.
“What is it?” I asked.
“You’re the Chaplain’s Assistant, you ought to know.”
I let the speaker’s annoyance pass, and asked if I could see the book.
They gave it to me willingly.
“Someone was handing these out at mess,” the book’s original owner said over her shoulder. “We were going to make fun of it. But it’s actually better for you to have it. Your job, and all that.”
I took the book immediately to Chaplain Thomas.
“Mormons,” he said matter-of-fact, handling the book.
“Ah,” I said.
“See?” he said, pointing to the spine. “It says it right there.”
“Sorry, I should have checked. It’s just so rare to see an actual paper book, especially one out here in space.”
“Where did you say they said they got this?” he asked.
“Galley.”
“Hmmm, I wasn’t aware we had a missionary onboard.”
“We do?” I asked.
“All of the Mormons consider themselves to be missionaries, all of the time. God bless ’em. I wish I knew more Christians who were like that.”
“So what makes Mormons different from Christians?”
Chaplain Thomas set the book lightly on the tiny desk in his quarters and rubbed a finger along his brow, thinking.
“You know the basic concept of the Trinity.”
“Yes,” I said.
“Well, the Mormons don’t believe in the Trinity. They think God and Jesus are separate people.”
“Aren’t they?” I asked.
Chaplain Thomas raised an eyebrow at me.
“Sir,” I said.
He laughed at me.
“No, it’s not that, Specialist. See, a few hundred years ago there was this kid—not much younger than you are—named Joseph Smith. He thought he could talk
to God, and he thought God told him to go start a new church. Which he did. The poor fool. He got killed for it. But the church is what we now call the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints. It’s outlived its founder by centuries.”
“If that’s their name, sir,” I said, “then how come they’re not Christian?”
“It’s complicated, son,” he said.
From my standpoint, the only complication appeared to exist in Chaplain Thomas’s mind. But I let it pass. The man was old enough to be my father, and I’d already learned from cross-examining some of his statements that if I pushed too hard on any given point, he got frustrated with me and sent me away to work on something for him.
“Are they a good church?” I asked.
Chaplain Tom just stared at me.
“How do you define ‘good’ in this context, Specialist?”
“Oh, I dunno, what do you think of them?”
“Absolutely fine men and women,” he said, slapping a hand on his thigh. “Whatever their doctrinal differences are with true Christianity, I can’t fault the folk. Least ways not the ones I know. They work hard, they tithe, they tend to be honest, and they do seem to love the Lord.”
“So what’s the issue, if you don’t mind my asking, sir? The marines down in the hangar, they said they were going to make fun of the book.”
“And that I can’t countenance,” he said with a sour frown. “Mormons have been getting run off and run out of everywhere for a long time. Some of it maybe they deserved, but most of it? Hell no. Excuse my language. That’s no way to treat people, even if they do have some odd ideas about things. I’ll say this, they stick to their guns. Find me a devout Mormon and I will show you a man who has absolute faith in his doctrine. Enough to outlast most arguers. Even me.”
His face had flushed, but just slightly.
I gathered that in his civilian ministry days, he’d gone around the barn a time or two with his Mormon peers.
“Anyway,” Chaplain Tom said, handing the book back to me, “if you want to know what makes a Mormon tick, it’s all in there. Like I said, I wasn’t aware we had any aboard, but then we’ve got so many people crammed together from all over creation, I’ve not had time to work with the ship’s chaplaincy to figure out percentages and statistics. Like everyone else in the world, the Mormons are signing up with Fleet to defend the human race. As is proper. And the Jews, and the Hindus, and the Muslims too. Now, those Muslims, they’re a double-edged sword. Many of them joined Fleet to kill mantes, only because some mullah or other told them that the only thing God loves more than a dead Jew or a dead Christian is a dead mantis. Seems the more militant Muslims have decided to call a truce with the rest of us. At least until we’ve beat off the mantis horde, and can go back to hating each other like men again.”
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