The Chaplain's War - eARC

by Brad R Torgersen

  “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 me, 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 quietly 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 particular 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.”

  “When will we know for sure?”

  “I’d say, give it a week. If he’s not running a fever and the wound itself appears to be mending without gangrene or other complications, then he’ll be okay.”

  “Will you consent to travel with him until that time?”

  “Wait, what?” I said.

  “Padre,” the Queen Mother said, “I would like you to stay on with me. Be my companion as I visit the other staging bases. To plead my case.”

  “I’m no good to you,” I said. “Nobody on your side cares what a lone man would say.”

  “It’s not for their benefit that I want you to remain,” she said.

  “It’s not?”

  “No. Padre—Harrison—it may sound odd, but I have come to consider you…I think of you as my friend.”

  I stared at her. The only mantis who’d ever said that to me, had been the Professor.

  Shelby’s eyes were wide, and she looked from the Queen Mother, to me, and back again.

  I swallowed hard, then said, “I’m honored.”

  “Will you consent?” the Queen Mother asked my doctor.

  “Sure,” Shelby said.

  “Thank you,” The Queen Mother said. “The sooner he can be made ready to travel, the better.”

  “Are you in too much pain to walk?” Shelby asked me.

  “I made it to the toilet and back. Hurts like hell now that the meds have worn off, but not so bad I can’t manage. It would be better if I could get the top half of this suit off.”

  “Forty-eight hours,” Shelby said.

  “Okay,” I said.

  Then I looked back at the Queen Mother.

  “It’s an agreement.”

  Chapter 56

  Thirteen weeks later, I was in orbit around Earth.

  It took a long time for the Queen Mother to convince her forces, and longer than that to convince Fleet that the Queen Mother’s overtures of peace were sincere. Several human planets had been destroyed, along with several mantis worlds too. And hundreds of ships. For the first time, the fight had not been one-way.

  Millions were dead. Mantis and human. Past a certain point, body count ceased to matter. What mattered now was that the Queen Mother and her top officers were getting ready to meet with Fleet Command and its top officers—with the intention of signing, not just a cease-fire, but a permanent treaty of nonaggression.

  My uniform had been stitched, cleaned, and prepared for the occasion by my mantis aides. They’d managed to get almost all of the blood out of the fabric—both mine and Adanaho’s. There remained just a vague discoloring of some of the lighter piping.

  Adanaho herself rested in a stasis casket. The mantes had spared no effort preparing the body. The transparent lid of the casket showed Adanaho in a flowing one-piece gown woven from traditional mantis silks. I’d told them how to go about it. They’d wanted her presented to Fleet Command with as much dignity as could be mustered—a token of their good will, and also in honor of Adanaho’s act of sacrifice in defense of the Queen Mother.

  I stood staring at Adanaho’s face while our mantis shuttle maneuvered through Earth orbit in order to dock with the Fleet space station on the far side of the world. Thankfully there was gravity. Something I hoped human engineers would replicate soon. We’d done so well with other aspects of mantis tech.

  The Queen Mother stood next to me. No disc. A small package of electronics had instead been attached to her thorax, with flexible straps: a translator box and speaker grill for communications.

  The mantis guards at the hatches did have discs, polished and bright. The guards themselves were rigid with respect.

  “She was too young,” I said sadly, not daring to touch the captain’s casket. Adanaho looked pristine now. Immaculate. I didn’t want to disrespect what she’d accomplished, by treating the casket like mere furniture. I had decided it was a kind of monument, both to the horrible bloodshed which had taken place, and to the new shoots of fresh possibility which had sprouted amidst the ashes.

  “And I am too old,” said the Queen Mother. “Age has made me cynical. I once thought the one you called Professor to be an eccentric. And now it is I who find myself transformed beyond reckoning.”

  “Do you miss your carriage?” I asked.

  “Oh yes, all the time,” sh
e said. “But after our recovery from the planet’s surface, you were right. It became apparent to me that there could be no going back. Not for me. Your captain was also correct. Our carriages have come to define us in ways we neither understand nor suspect. It took having mine ripped away from me to make me see what we mantes have lost in the long time since we first achieved sapience.”

  “And what is it you think you’re regaining?”

  The Queen Mother considered my question for a moment, then she said, “Illumination.”

  I raised my eyebrows. “Oh?”

  “If I understand the human use of the term, it means an emergence into a state of deeper understanding—of the universe, of the self, of the meaning of both.”

  “That’s one way to look at it,” I said. “What will you do now?”

  “Once the treaty is signed and reparations meted out, I will call the Quorum of the Select together and the new Queen Mother will be permanently installed. She helped me when I needed her help, to effect the new peace. She’s earned her seat.”

  “So, you’re just…quitting?” I said, surprised.

  “I must. Already I am an oddity among my people. They need someone who can lead them during this transition, and it cannot be me.”

  “But the treaty is your idea,” I said. “You said it yourself once. What if the new Queen Mother decides to throw it away and restart the war?”

  “We do not behave so rashly, despite what you may think, Padre. It took us a long time to reach the conclusion that war must be renewed. It would take an even longer time for us to reach the conclusion that the new peace must be destroyed. There is an additional human name circulating in the Quorum now. The heroism of Captain Adanaho—for my sake, and for the reclamation of the cease-fire—will live eternally in the memories of the mantes.”

  I bowed my head, eyes closed, remembering the captain’s last words to me. They’d hit me in a place so deep I’d not even known it existed. And whether she knew it or not, the captain had bound me to this alien who now stood at my side—the matriarch of all I’d once feared.

  I also remembered the Professor. The one who’d originally sought me out of curiosity, and upon whom so much had depended in the long run. That he’d died trying to protect the three of us—Adanaho, the Queen Mother, and myself—only seemed to cement the unspoken pact. Blood for blood. The life of a mantis hero for the life of a human heroine, each given freely so that there might be a future for both races.