I kept looking at the slowly-vanishing bruises on my thighs where the injector guns had struck, and wondered if there wasn’t a correlation between whatever inoculations we’d been given, and half the bunch of us winding up dead-dog sick.
Still, the air on Pickup Day was somewhat electric. Everyone had secured their gear in their duffels, turned in their linen, and given the bay one final, superb cleaning before shuffling out onto the cement in front of the reception hall—just as the sun was starting to peek up over the horizon. Those who would be held over had already been sorted from the press—and sent sulkily and sometimes indignantly—back to the building, while everyone else—including Thukhan—was outside.
There were three thousand of us now, a number which I couldn’t believe had been crammed into the reception center—and we had been lined up alphabetically by last name in a gargantuan mass formation one hundred columns wide and thirty ranks deep. Each of us stood at attention in front of our duffels, the bottom of the duffel facing upward while we each secured the duffel by its shoulder straps—to keep it from falling.
Corporals and sergeants with e-pads and huge wax pencils walked down each of the ranks, double checking the name on the breast of the recruit in question before tapping on the e-pad a few times and quickly marking a cryptic series of letters and numbers on the bottom of each of the duffels.
When the sergeant for my column got to me, he wrote the letter C and the numbers 414 on my duffel, then moved on without a word. I looked to my left and right, and didn’t see anyone with the same letter or numbers. Which was fine. During my time as bay sergeant I’d not been able to really get to know anybody, mostly because I was so busy acting as abuse-interlocutor between the corporals and the rest of the bay. So I was glad to have been relieved of duty, during a ceremony which amounted to nothing more than someone with stripes saying to me the words, “You’re fired.”
Now I could try to—hopefully—find out how the blissfully anonymous half lived.
Droves of familiar busses—which we’d not seen since coming to Armstrong Field the first day—rolled up.
Men and women stepped off the busses. Unlike the reception NCOs, these men and women all wore sunglasses and were dressed in the ultra-sharp looking uniform known as Dress, Type 2. Their black shoes were similar to flat business loafers, but shined like patent leather. Gray slacks were pressed, with the seams razor sharp. Similarly pressed, white, short-sleeved shirts all had closed collars. Over the obligatory Fleet emblem on each soldier’s chest—the emblem now reduced to a smaller brooch-type color pin, instead of the subdued, sewn-in version on the GFF—there was a crazy pastiche of badges and rectangular ribbons.
Each of the NCOs was at least a sergeant and several were staff sergeants or sergeants first class. Instead of soft caps on their heads—like reception NCOs—they wore a curious sort of black, round-brimmed and bevel-topped hat that leaned at a ferocious angle over their eyes; the hat’s rear strap seeming to be the only thing that kept the odd headgear from blowing away in the light morning breeze.
First Sergeant Klauski appeared and went out to shake some of the staff sergeants’ and sergeants first class’s hands. Then he went to stand up in front of the mass formation, and—this time with megaphone to his lips—hollered, “BRIGADE, AHTEN-SHUN!”
All three thousand of us snapped rigid.
“Okay, recruits,” Klauski said, the megaphone blasting his already massive voice across the formation, “I am happy to say that each and every one of you standing here today proved me wrong. I said that none of you—not a single damned one of you—had what it took to be in the Fleet. Well, look at you now. You’re standing tall, and looking good. You’re alert, and a titch leaner than when you first got to Armstrong Field. Doesn’t take long, does it recruits? I look in some of your eyes and I can already see the change happening.
“Today is Pickup Day, when you pass out of my old hands and into the care of these fine drill sergeants from some of Armstrong Field’s finest IST battalions. These men and women are unlike any human beings you have ever known in your lives. They are harder than steel, sharper than razors, and they will not quit, nor will they compromise. Nor will they—I should add—expect anything less from all of you.”
Klauski stuck out a paw and swept his thick, pointed index finger across the mass formation for emphasis.
“Everything up until now has been rehearsal. An attempt to prepare you for your journey ahead. Induction Service Training is the crucible through which you will be taken and hardened into a new kind of being. The kind of being that is capable of defending our planets and our race. If you survive IST you will be passing into a new fighting community with new history. Fleet doesn’t just defend a single country. Fleet is truly international. Fleet defends both the Earth and her colonies, and is peopled by the finest soldiers you could ask for. From every walk of life, every ethnic background, every belief and creed.
“Good luck, recruits. As your First Sergeant I wish each and every one of you the best possible outcome. It’s all up to you now.”
One of the round-brimmed sergeants first class stepped over to Klauski, the two saluted, and Klauski handed him the megaphone before stepping away. The sergeant first class spun and put the megaphone to his mouth.
“It begins now, recruits,” the sergeant first class said.
“Each of these busses out here has a letter and a number on it, and each of these busses has a team of Fleet’s finest NCOs waiting to take you aboard. When I give you a right-face you will conduct a right-face and you will wait for the Drill Sergeant at the head of your column to give you the signal. When you have been given the signal you will run—not walk, run—to one of the designated busses. Show some motivation, recruits, otherwise it’s gonna be a long damned day.”
The sergeant first class scanned down to the right of the mass formation and waited until other NCOs with round-brimmed hats, e-pads and megaphones had taken their places.
I suddenly felt like a racehorse in the starting gate. I itched to move.
The sergeant first class, satisfied that his people were where they needed to be, went rigid and put the megaphone back to his mouth.
“BRIGADE…RIGHT-FACE!”
Then he looked down to the heads of the columns.
“Drill sergeants, take charge of your columns and move ’em out.”
Immediately, each of the thirty drill sergeants—one at the head of each column—began to bark names. As a name was barked, the drill sergeants would point to one of the many, many busses, and the Recruit at the head of the column would bolt off towards the vehicle.
Some people were a little too amped up, and tripped somewhere along the way, or dropped their very heavy duffels. They got back up, however, scrapes and bruises aside, and charged onward. As each column moved forward, I could feel the familiar sweat moving down into the small of my back, the sun gaining in the blue sky and the heat beginning to build. It didn’t matter, though, because I felt like I’d survived the first test. For one whole week—seemingly the longest I’d yet experienced in my young life—I’d managed to hang on to my sanity, and was now being ushered off to the next, toughest challenge.
By the time I was at the front, I was practically jumping up and down with anxious tension. The drill sergeant looked at me, the number on my bag, and punched something on his e-pad, then pointed to one of the busses with a line of recruits filing on, and shouted, “BARLOW, CHARLIE FOUR-ONE-FOUR, BUS NUMBER TWENTY-EIGHT, GO!”
I took off.
Ten steps out, I tripped and did a faceplant as my duffel swung wildly.
I was up in an instant—ignoring the pain in both hands—grabbing the shoulder straps of the duffel and hefting it onto place on my back, then running—well, slow jogging really—over to the bus with the large orange 28 on it. I was soaked with sweat when I got there, and felt it sting my raw palms. Two drill sergeants flanked the doors the bus and were screaming at each recruit as he or she approached.
“DUFFELS ON THE FRONT, RECRUITS! DUFFELS ON THE FRONT!”
One of the drill sergeants had to yank a small female out of line and manhandle her duffel off her back and put it on her front-wise, so that it stuck up so far she had to crane her head around the side in order to see. She shakily grabbed the handrails on the bus and started up the stairs to where rowed seating awaited. I promptly took my duffel off and slung it around front, straps over the backs of my shoulders in the same fashion, eyes just able to peek over the duffel’s top. One of the drill sergeants yelled, “THERE YOU GO, GOOD JOB, RECRUIT,” as I stepped onto the stairs and began to go up.
For some reason, I felt a tiny spark of pride. Compliments from the NCOs had been practically nonexistent until now.
More drill sergeants hollered for the oncoming recruits to move to the back and take a seat. I did as ordered, not seeing the faces or identities of any of the others, stopping only when I noticed that I was the last one at the middle of the aisle, standing. I turned and slumped into the bench seat, huffing and breathing heavily.
When enough recruits had boarded and sat, one of the two drill sergeants onboard stepped over to the pilot’s chair and began warming up the engine. The bus was a multi-wheeled, multi-axled affair with an enormous motor, and I felt the hum and rumble through the seat of my GFF trousers while the drill sergeant who was still standing ordered us to observe absolute silence.
“Noise discipline,” she had called it.
No problem, I thought. I had no idea what I’d say anyway.
Then I turned to my right, to examine the face of the person sitting next to me.
The corner of Thukhan’s mouth curled upward ever so slightly.
“Eff me,” I breathed.
Chapter 21
This far north of the equator, the nameless planet was arid and unremarkable—with barely enough oxygen and nitrogen to support a grown man.
A heck of a lot like home, I thought bitterly.
Hours after our ejection from the dying Calysta, our lifeboat had plummeted into the atmosphere. There’d been no sense trying to figure out who was winning or who was losing. The lifeboat had no tactical data nor any theater sensors with which to ascertain the progress of the battle. Every once in a while lights in the sky would sparkle and flash—ships exploding in the emptiness of space, their fantastic vanishings observable even in the daylight. Human. Mantis. All perishing together in one, pent-up orgasm of long-delayed, hateful fury.
Death.
That was the thought that most concerned me as I trudged back up the broken-scree slope upon which the lifeboat had come to rest. The lifeboat’s yellow and orange striped parachutes drifted and fluttered on a cold breeze, their cords stretched out across the crumbled and rocky bluff. My old survival training told me I’d best collect the chutes and tuck them away. But now it didn’t much matter. Human or mantis, whoever found us, there’d be hell to pay.
I climbed up the side of the lifeboat and dropped in through the top hatch, closing it behind me so as to preserve the batteries that were keeping the interior warm. The captain sat with her arms folded tightly across her stomach—back hunched and head down.
The Queen Mother was still helpless, her disc a dead weight while the Professor attended her with the gentleness and focus of a lover. Had they, I wondered, ever mixed seed? He the drone and she the recipient of his genetic lineage? There was still so much about the mantes culture and society of which I could only guess.
The Professor and the Queen Mother were engaged in gentle conversation, her mandibles clicking and chittering while he held one of her forelimbs in both of his. I’d once asked him to try to teach me their alien tongue. It had proven to be an almost impossible task.
“How is she?” I asked.
“Not good,” the Professor said, his disc rotating so that he could face me. “The internal systems of her carriage have all failed. If we do not get her to a mantis physician soon, it’s probable that she will pass from life.”
“She’s not bleeding,” I said. “Internal injuries?”
“I do not think you understand,” the Professor said, his mechanized voice only hinting at the emotion that seemed to hover beneath the surface of his chitinous skin. I’d spent enough time around mantes—and this mantis in particular—to know his body language. The Professor’s agitation was plainly spoken in the way he moved his forelimbs and rapidly swiveled his wedge-like head from side to side.
“No,” I said, “I guess I don’t. Unless she’s been hit somewhere I can’t see, I don’t understand what’s the matter with her.”
“Our carriages, or discs as you commonly call them, are integral to us from the moment we achieve consciousness. No mantis lives without one. They protect us and provide us with mobility, allow us to work and manipulate the world around us, they expand our senses as well as our consciousness, and without them we are worse than helpless. The mantis and the carriage are one.”
“Okay,” I said carefully. “But this can’t be the first time an adult has had her disc—her carriage—shot out from under her, right?”
“Of course not,” said the Professor. “But in those instances, death has either come quickly or medical aid has always been ready at hand.”
“So we can’t just pull her out of it?” I asked.
The Professor’s antennae shot upward, waved a bit, then curled into an expression of pronounced shock.
“That would surely prove lethal,” he said, acting as if I’d suggested the worst sort of obscenity.
“But you just told me leaving her in the dead disc is bad too,” I said, growing frustrated.
The Professor seemed to want to respond, but let his antennae fall to either side of his head, and turned back to speak to the Queen Mother in the indecipherable native language of the mantes. A language no human had ever learned, because no mantis had ever thought to teach it to us. Easier to use the translator and speaker in every disc.
Now it was the Queen Mother whose antennae gave a sign of shock. She stared intently at me—multi-faceted eyes cold and alien without the vocoder of her disc to give words to her thoughts—then she yammered something at the Professor in a rather rushed fashioned, and slumped back into the center of her ruined disc.
“She says that while she was prepared to die in battle for our people, to commit helpless suicide in front of you humans is not to her liking.”
“If the Fleet finds us,” said Adanaho, surprising everyone as she finally looked up at us—her eyes puffy and red, “then the Queen Mother faces much worse than suicide. I’m with Intelligence and you can be certain that, with hostilities renewed, my comrades will spare no effort picking both of you apart in their quest for tactical and strategic information.”
“You assume humans will outlast the Queen Mother’s armada and reach our lifeboat first,” said the Professor, his wings rustling slightly with grim amusement. “Did not your warship fall before our own, despite your best attempt to replicate our defensive technology?”
“The flashes we’ve been seeing in the sky since planetfall tell me not everything has gone your way,” the captain said, also grimly. “The fighting continues. General Sakumora was rash and quick to shed blood, but he was also well-prepared. Our dreadnoughts are the finest in all of human space. Built using every lesson taught to us during the first war.”
I waved a finger in front of me, not looking at anyone in particular.
“The new war’s a nonstarter if the Queen Mother can convince the mantes to cease offensive operations,” I said.
More fluttering of wings.
“And why would she do that,” asked the Professor, “assuming she could regain contact with our forces?”
“Because Captain Adanaho saved both your lives when it would have been more expedient to let our marines fill you each full of bullets.”
The Professor had no answer to that. The Queen mother snapped and chattered at him. He relayed to her what he’d heard. They proceeded to engage in a quick
series of mantis exchanges.
“She says,” the Professor said delicately, “that the mercy shown by a single human does not translate to good will on the part of all humans. In fact, while we remain stranded here, events are doubtless in motion that are beyond recall for either side. If what the Queen Mother has told me is correct, her return to the armada was not expected—all they awaited was her signal, at which point the war plans would be put into effect. She is officially considered a casualty. And a successor has already been prepared to lead in her place. Doubtless our couriers are speeding back to join the rest of our ships, eager to relay news of this—and of the renewed offensive. Human planets will be under siege in a matter of weeks, if not days.”
“I don’t doubt it,” I said. “But assuming we could contact the mantis hierarchy—prove that the Queen Mother, our Queen Mother, was alive—could she broker a cease-fire on your side of the battle lines?”
The Professor communicated my question to the Queen Mother, who stared at me a moment, then replied.
“Yes,” said the Professor. “It might be possible.”
“Then what are we waiting for?” I said. “We’ve got to find a way to get her back in touch with your people.”
“Chief Barlow,” Captain Adanaho said, “I appreciate that you might still feel obligated to accomplish the mission, as originally assigned. But events have clearly wiped all previous considerations off the table. Our first objective is to alert Fleet to our presence. Intelligence will want otherwise, but I can argue from historical precedent that the Professor and the Queen Mother should be processed as prisoners of war. As such, they’d each be entitled to certain rights. Perhaps with her safely in our custody—unharmed and unmolested—we can bargain our way to a new armistice?”
“You sound too much like your old boss,” I said. Then thought better of my tone and added a respectful, “ma’am.”
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