I looked away from him as he started coughing again. It wasn’t fair. The whole thing. The decimation of the flotilla. Getting rounded up in this valley like pigs in a pen. Having everything I’d once considered dear ripped away from me and placed light-years distant. But most of all, it wasn’t fair that a dying man was making me carry out his last wish.
“You know what you have to do,” Chaplain Thomas said.
“Alright, dammit,” I said. “You win. I promise I’ll build it.”
“And keep it clean, and make sure people feel welcome.”
“Yes, yes.”
“No one will be turned away.”
“I’ll see to it.”
“Make it a house where the spirit can dwell.”
“I don’t know how.”
“You will learn how.”
And with that, he laid his head back on the stretcher, took one final, shuddering breath, and died. As if he’d chosen that moment to depart. I wanted to call him a few choice names for making me promise to do something I had no desire nor intention of doing. Instead, I simply laid a towel across his face and set about seeking the best place to bury him.
That night I found the spot. It was away from the mass grave—where most of those who’d died since our being deposited in the valley were being put. I didn’t want Chaplain Thomas’s remains moldering with everyone else’s. He’d been a nice officer and an affectionate clergyman. It seemed wrong to just carry him to the hole and up-end him into it, with all the others. So I strapped Chaplain Thomas’s body to the stretcher and began the painstaking task of hauling him towards a high, flat spot perhaps five hundred meters from where the bulk of the Fleet refugees had assembled themselves. The grumbling din of conversation fell behind me as I trudged.
Every ten minutes or so, I set the body down and let my arms rest.
To my surprise, I heard a voice call to me out of the dusk.
“Need a hand?” asked the woman.
“No,” I lied.
“Seems like a big job for one specialist,” she said. As she approached me I noticed she had on a somewhat grimy flight suit. Her name tape said FULBRIGHT, and the patches on her chest and shoulders indicated she’d been a gunner.
I relented, and let her pick up the other end of the stretcher.
“Someone special to you?” she asked as we walked: me in front, her in the rear.
“His name was Chaplain Thomas, and he was a good man.”
“Too good to be put with the rest of the dead?”
“Look, it doesn’t matter, okay? If you’re going to help me, can you do it in peace?”
“Sorry. I haven’t had much of a chance to talk to anyone. I came down in an escape pod after the Seahawk began to break up in orbit. The mantes found and picked me up earlier today.”
“Did any of our ships make it?”
“Not sure. I was blazing away like there was no tomorrow, and none of my shells nor any of the missiles made so much as a dent in the mantis destroyers. They’ve got this kind of shielding that glows when you hit it. Our weapons couldn’t touch them. Would have been nice to know in advance that they had that little trick up their buggy sleeves.”
I grunted my agreement. What we hadn’t known, had indeed hurt us.
When we reached the spot I’d picked—the light now all but gone from the valley—I set to work with my small hand shovel.
Gunner Fulbright got down beside me and went to work with a folding spade she’d saved from her escape pod’s emergency supplies.
“Why are you helping me?” I asked.
“Because I need a friend,” she said. “And there’s no better way to make friends than to pick the guy who seems to be doing the most thankless work, and pitch in.”
“Your attitude is far more positive than it deserves to be,” I said.
She laughed at me.
“Maybe,” she said. “But my mama always told me the Lord hates a coward, so I’d rather apply myself to something positive, than run around being afraid of my shadow the way a lot of these other survivors seem to be doing.”
Again, I grunted my agreement.
We dug for hours. By feel. Until we were exhausted. When we slept, we slept on the dirt—something every survivor had rapidly learned to do in the wake of the Fleet’s destruction on-planet.
When light peaked over the tops of the mountains that ringed the valley, we got up and carefully lowered Chaplain Thomas’s remains down into the grave. Neither of us had anything particularly special or meaningful to say, so we said nothing. We simply pushed the soil and sand back over the top of the body, tenderly tamped the layer down, then levered a large oblong boulder into place as a marker.
In fact, the entire area was strewn with stone.
I considered the promise I’d made to my now-deceased boss. What passed for trees on this world wouldn’t be much good for cutting timber. If anything was going to be built, it would be built out of rock and mud.
I used my heel to mark off a largish rectangle in the ground not far from where the chaplain had been buried.
“I’m hungry, and we’d better get back,” Fulbright said.
“You go ahead,” I said. “I want to finish this first.”
“What for?” she asked.
“I made a promise,” I said. “And I don’t want to leave until I’ve left behind something permanent—which I can come back to and build on later.”
“Okay then, I’ll see you back down with the others.”
“Hey gunner,” I said to her as she walked away.
“Yeah?” she said over her shoulder.
“You were right,” I said.
“About what?”
“About making friends. Thanks. For being mine.”
She stopped. Then turned and smiled at me.
“Any time, Barlow. Any time.”
Chapter 49
Not knowing the mantis ship’s layout, and not having paid attention to the way I’d come when the Queen Mother had been in the lead, I quickly got lost. Unlike before, the mantes I passed did notice me—which seemed to confirm my theory about underlings not meeting the eyes of their sovereign.
The longer I passed aimlessly through corridor after corridor, the more acute my disorientation became. Not to mention my sense of paranoia. The mantes weren’t merely looking at me now. A solid dozen of them had stopped what they were doing so that they could follow me. At a distance, yes, but still following me. Not saying anything.
I walked faster; they simply kept pace. Until I finally turned and confronted them.
“May I help you?” I asked, trying to remain calm.
“Tell us, human,” said a soldier in the lead, “by what power is it that you’re able to bend the greatest among us to your will?”
“I don’t understand,” I said.
“The Queen Mother is dependent on you,” said another soldier. “We are constrained from criticizing her openly, but amongst ourselves we note this unpleasant deference to an inferior life form, and we do not like it.”
I felt a sudden chill in my chest.
The mantes slowly circled me until I was surrounded.
“I am sure the Queen Mother would be willing to assuage any misgivings you might have,” I said, the sweat springing out across my body as my heart rate began to climb. Back on the planet where the lifeboat had come to rest, we’d been fleeing human troops—humans I’d at least have had a shot at dealing with. Here? On this ship? I suddenly realized that beyond the Queen Mother herself and perhaps the three technicians specifically tasked with helping me, I had no friends. To these mantes, I was not much better than vermin.
I swallowed hard.
“We are not permitted to redress such concerns directly,” said the first soldier. He floated forward until he was practically on top of me.
“I have seen humans in battle. I have killed humans. I have seen mantes killed by humans. I want to know how it is that you have managed to force a conciliatory course on my people when we a
re in fact on the brink of total victory. Our scholars were befuddled by you once in the same manner. I know of the fool you called the Professor. I am pleased to learn he is no longer alive to spread his particular brand of pacifist idiocy.”
“So now you intend to rid the universe of me as well?” I said.
“I desire this greatly, yes,” the soldier said.
“Then why don’t you do it?” I said.
Feeling the sudden courage of action that comes with disregarding all personal safety, I reached out and pulled the soldier’s forelimb right up to my neck, the serrations just millimeters from my skin. In one raw stroke he could have my throat open down to the spine. It would be over. It would be quick.
I waited, almost breathless.
“You taunt me,” the soldier said.
“Not at all. I am defenseless. I have no firearms nor grenades nor other killing devices with which to harm any of you. If you believe I am a threat, you must take action.”
The soldier’s insect eyes stared down at me. I could almost feel the longing in him—to shed my blood.
A sudden klaxon blared and the soldier dropped to the deck. Or, rather, his disc dropped to the deck. I jumped back, watching him and all the mantes around me drop in a similar fashion.
“What the hell—?”
Three shapes zoomed down the corridor and surrounded me: the technicians who’d been setting up my quarters next to the Queen Mother’s.
“What’s happened?” I asked—panting—with a finger pointed at the lead soldier, who now flopped and flailed harmlessly.
“Disciplinary override,” said one of the mantes. “When the Queen Mother came to us to discuss her project for the slow dismantling of her carriage, we asked her where you were. Realizing her error, she dispatched us to find you—with her command override code at our discretion.”
“What does that mean?”
“It means, assistant-to-the-chaplain, that so long as any mantis is aboard this vessel, its disc can be ordered to commit a partial shutdown. We have known since your arrival that not all mantes welcome your presence. Or your relationship with the Queen Mother. We are only fortunate that we found you in time to stop something unpleasant from happening.”
I was almost delirious with adrenaline as I realized I’d been moments from certain death. How or why I’d thought it a good idea to place my head in the proverbial guillotine and shout, bring it on, was something I would have to ponder later.
“Thank you,” I managed to say to the three technicians as they began escorting me away from the scene.
“Thank the Queen Mother,” they said in unison. “Only her code has the power to do what we just did. Without it, we’d have merely been spectators.”
“What will happen to them?” I asked.
“In a few more moments their discs will all come back up to full operational capability. At which point we will be far out of reach.”
“Is this how the mantes maintain order in the ranks?”
“An extreme example, yes,” said one of the technicians. “I am afraid your presence here has greatly disturbed the harmony that normally exists aboard a mantis vessel. We must ensure that you are never again allowed to wander unprotected.”
“Yeah,” I said, walking so fast I was almost running, “that’s a pretty good idea.”
By the time we got me back to my compartment I was shaking like a leaf.
I bade them another thankful farewell, then went to the wash basin and braced my arms on either side—muscles quivering. I splashed so much water on myself there was a huge puddle on the deck around me, and my uniform was soaked. I stripped and threw the uniform into the washer-dryer, then flopped out onto my bed and turned the lights back off.
The universe had suddenly reminded me just how hostile and unforgiving it really is. My little philosophical conversation with the Queen Mother had made me complacent. Of course these mantes were still hostile. Just because they were following orders didn’t mean they wouldn’t seize an opportunity to act.
I told myself I’d get my technician friends to provide me with a way to lock my compartment against outside intrusion. I suddenly felt very, very vulnerable without it.
Chapter 50
Target planet (Purgatory), 2155 A.D.
The walls of the chapel were about a meter high when I first noticed it: a translucent curtain that seemed to shimmer in the air right at the crests of the mountains around the valley’s edge. Where once the enemy had kept companies of troops endlessly patrolling the rim, now there was simply the energy barrier.
“Remember the shields I told you about?” Fulbright said to me during one of her routine visits to the gradually-growing chapel.
“Yeah,” I said, hefting another stone into place. My mortar wasn’t construction-grade by any Earth standard. But it was the best I could do under the circumstances. I’d helped my father build a river rock wall along the back edge of our property once. This kind of work wasn’t much different. Each day I brought several buckets of silt-laden water from the shallow creek that ran about a kilometer away, dumped pieces of clay and other appropriate-seeming soil into the buckets, then mixed until I felt I had the right consistency. Onto the existing walls went the mortar, then the new batch of rocks, and though it had taken me almost six local months, I had to admit I was proud of what I’d accomplished. Little by little, the chapel was taking shape.
With occasional help from friends like Fulbright, of course.
I stopped what I was doing and looked at the valley rim.
“Not to protect us,” I said, speculating.
“No,” she said. “To keep us in.”
I thought about it for a moment.
“Makes sense from their point of view. Since it’s obvious they’ve not got much interest in us, other than to keep us here. Why have troops on guard round the clock when you can just tighten the cap on the bottle, and call it good?”
Fulbright’s expression was dour.
“It bothers you,” I said.
“Yes,” she said. “Only because of what I’ve seen that energy barrier do. I wonder how it works?”
“I wonder how a lot of their shit works,” I said. “Do you ever get the feeling that we came here with sticks and bones, and found the bad guys using automatic cannon?”
“All the time,” she said.
“Well, try not to let it bother you too much. Where’s that enthusiasm from the first day we met?”
“Even I get tired,” she said, and sat down, her head resting against one of the dry parts of the chapel wall.
I kept working for a little while, slapping on gobs of mortar, then piecing rocks together as they seemed to fit, followed by more mortar. Once I was done with that day’s section, I’d go out and help forage in the foothills for food. All of us had lost an average of five to seven kilograms since our incarceration in the valley. Local food sources were few and far between, and we had no Earth seeds with which to plant gardens. What little wildlife there was, had proven small, and horribly gamey when eaten. Enough so that I was seriously considering becoming a vegetarian for the first time in my life. Except there weren’t many veggies on hand, either.
“How’s it going around the rest of the valley?” I asked.
“It’s going,” she said. “You’re not the only one building. People are busy. It’s the only thing they have right now, to distract them from our mutual predicament. You should know that there are other chapels going up.”
“Good,” I said. “Because there’s no way this one would be able to accommodate the thousands of people who’d potentially come. Assuming anyone does come.”
“Oh, you’ll get people,” she said. “Word’s out that you’re carrying on in Chaplain Tom’s name. A lot of the marines liked him. His good reputation is doing you favors. Enough so that a small bunch of them have even started talking about coming out to help you. Once there’s time.”
I laughed softly.
With no infrastructure and no
guarantee that we’d be able to scrape up enough food for us to last the cold season that seemed to be creeping over this hemisphere of the planet, time suddenly seemed to be the one thing that was in short supply. All of us were working hard on our separate tasks. And not always with the blessing of the Fleet leadership that was trying—and, daily, failing—to maintain control in the valley. Apparently I wasn’t the only one who’d allowed his military bearing to lapse in the wake of being captured. If I was going to be stuck here for long duration, I damned well wasn’t going to let myself stay locked into a military regimen. There just didn’t seem to be much of a point. We had no more weapons nor any ability to fight. Nor, apparently—now that the mantes had put up the barrier at the valley rim—anyone to fight against.
We were an island colony, unto ourselves.
And I sure as hell wasn’t going to worry about showing up for accountability formations. Nor did I have any interest in any of the other claptrap the Fleet had drilled into me since joining. Maybe aboard ship it had become easy to lapse into the routine. But here, now, all routine had been thrown out the window. There was simply survival. Scratch life out of the dirt—every day, all day.
I looked at Fulbright as her chin sat on her chest.
“Try not to get too down about it,” I said.
She stayed silent, staring at the dirt.
A small gust of wind swept over us, tossing up dust.
“Do you think they’ll send a rescue mission?” she asked.
“Fleet?” I said.
“Yes.”
“I guess it all depends on whether or not they think there is anyone left alive worth rescuing, and whether or not a rescue squadron could have any better chance against the mantis defenders than we did. For all we know a rescue squadron did come, and got blown out of space without our even noticing.”
She put her fists to her eyes and rubbed. Suddenly, I felt bad for speaking my mind.
“Sorry,” I said.
“It’s not your fault. I agree. But now I’m wondering, what are we being saved for?”
“The mantes, you mean?”
“Yes,” she said, looking up at me with red, tear-soaked eyes. “Are they keeping us alive just because they think it’s fun?”
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