The Chaplain's War - eARC

by Brad R Torgersen

  I waited with Sanchala for his turn in line, then proceeded with him up to the base of the tower where two recruits—sharpshooting early range grads, who’d been rewarded for their steely prowess by being assigned the inglorious task of ammo detail—slapped fresh magazines into Sanchala’s hands.

  One of Sanchala’s other problems, besides having trouble getting his rifle on-target in time to make his shots, had been ammunition depletion. The rules of the range were simple: 30 mantes enemies, and 30 rounds with which to hit and take out no less than twenty of the enemy. On paper, back in the simulator, it had seemed like cake. Who didn’t love a good first-person shooter VR game? But on the live-fire range, once your magazine was empty, it was empty, and you had only so much time in which to load a new magazine. To say nothing of trying to conserve your shots for those moments when you might stand the best chance of hitting.

  I took the magazines for Sanchala as we both began walking to our assigned lane, and noted the weight of the 15 rounds in each container, testing the top round with my thumb, so that the rounds slid up and down easily on the spring inside. Then we reached Sanchala’s designated fighting position where he placed the barrel of his rifle into a vee-notch cut in the top of a colored yellow stake driven into the earth.

  I stood there, half-zoning while the tower called out requisite and familiar safety guidance, then I got down into the prone position next to Sanchala. Securing his weapon from the stake, he loaded his first magazine and charged his rifle: a sliding handle on the top of the stock snapping back and forth so that a round was taken off the top of the magazine and chambered for firing.

  The tower announced that the mantis invasion of the range had begun, and I put my binoculars to my eyes, scanning the space in front of us.

  There, a mantis appeared from behind a berm.

  Pang. Dead on. Sanchala got that one. A good start. But only two or three would be that easy.

  I kept scanning.

  There, a mantis far off, zipping across the lane from one berm to the next.

  Pang. Miss. Pang. The target was gone. And I could feel Sanchala begin to deflate. Two misses and one hit out of three rounds so far, and still 18 total targets to go.

  Three more mantis shock troops hit the lane simultaneously.

  Sanchala got one of them. Out of five tries. The odds weren’t looking good.

  There, another close one. Pang.

  Got it.

  There, about middle distance. Moving slow. Pang.

  Four down. But I could tell Sanchala had lost count of how many rounds he had left, and there was no getting around the fact that he’d yet to see the very-far-distance silhouettes make an appearance.

  Pang…Pang…Pang…Pang…Pang.

  Per instruction, Sanchala tried to be methodical in selection and rate of fire. But some of the last few targets had been moving so quickly, I wondered if he should not have just let them go and saved ammo for something a little easier to hit?

  There, coming right up the middle. Full charge.

  Click, click.

  Sanchala was out of rounds.

  He grasped the shrouded rifle barrel in his left hand and flipped it over, depressing the magazine ejection button with his right thumb. The empty magazine came free and I handed him his second magazine, which he slapped into place, feeling it click, then worked the charging mechanism and got back down in the prone just in time to see a mantis silhouette flee out of sight, unharmed.

  There was no way. He’d missed too many.

  Emptying his second magazine went quickly.

  Sanchala cursed in Spanish, then flipped the selector lever to SAFE mode, removed the second magazine and slipped it back into my hands next to its empty brother. He put his rifle into the vee-notch stake, and stood up. The tower waited until exactly two minutes had passed—and all sixteen of us on the line, eight shooters and eight helpers, had cleared and safed our weapons—before ordering us to retrieve our rifles and report back behind the range line for review of our scores.

  Drill Sergeant Davis waited. He was not smiling.

  “Fifteen,” was all he said to us we walked up to him, Sanchala’s barrel aimed at the dirt.

  Sanchala’s cheeks reddened.

  “But you’re already better than you were on the right shoulder. Go back in line, Recruit Sanchala. All you need to do is execute to standard. Give it another go. Copy?”

  “Yes, Drill Sergeant,” Sanchala said, and walked slowly back to where a final six shooters now stood, waiting for the next iteration. I went with him, not saying much. With the sun waning in the sky, I feared that we might not get too many more chances to qualify. And if we couldn’t make it, even with all the corrective training and counseling and the many, many chances he’d had to get it right, would it even matter if they gave Sanchala a second day? Or a third?

  I felt a touch of despair on my heart as I proceeded with my buddy to the base of the tower, we collected his magazines, and went to his fighting position like before. This time it was one of the spots closer to the tower, where more recruits had been firing more often all day.

  As I got down on my knees I noticed several unspent rounds laying in the dirt.

  That was against protocol. Any whole rounds cleared out of rifles during misfires were to be picked up directly and given back to the ammo detail at the tower—for turn in to the range cadre. And the rules specifically called for no more than 30 rounds per recruit, per iteration.

  I opened my mouth to shout something to one of the NCOs who stood behind us with their paddles in their hands, then shut my mouth.

  Were those rounds really defective?

  I stared at them for a moment. They seemed fine.

  Looking to my left and right I saw the other recruits positioning their sandbags and checking their rifles, their helpers offering whatever lame duck advice could be given. They were oblivious to me, though Sanchala seemed to have detected that something was up, and watched me closely.

  Then I looked up at the tower itself. And considered.

  Eff it.

  I scooped up the unspent runts, wiped dust from them with my thumb and forefinger, and guided them into the top of the first magazine. At only 15 rounds per box, there was room to spare. Three unspent rounds went into the first magazine, and two went into the second.

  “What are you doing?” Sanchala hissed.

  “Giving you an edge,” I said quietly.

  “But it’s against the rules,” he said.

  “You think when it’s us against the mantis aliens there will be rules? You shoot everything you have. I’ve noticed something about your tendency to hesitate, Sanchala. I think you’re spending too much time worried about conserving rounds, but you end up wasting them when you try to keep you attention on a number, and not on finding and hitting targets. Now you’ve got a little breathing room. And I don’t think anybody’s going to give a crap or notice if you actually shoot more than 30 shots. Not with eight of you all popping at targets simultaneously. So don’t worry about it. Okay?”

  Sanchala smiled slightly.

  I reached out my fist. He bumped it with enthusiasm. Then we both got down in the prone and he went to work when the tower called its instructions.

  Pang…Pang…Pang…Pang…

  Good. He was slow-breathing. Nothing hurried.

  “Ignore the very-far targets,” I said between shots. “And ignore the ones moving too quickly over too short of a distance. Don’t worry about ammo. Just shoot what you know you can hit.”

  I watched every shot through the binoculars.

  When his first magazine was empty, I handed him the second, which he quick-snapped into place, and kept going.

  Two minutes elapsed, and we stood up. Having no idea how he’d done. Because I’d lost count of how many targets he’d knocked down. It had seemed like enough. But would it be?

  Myself and the other helpers waited while our charges collected their weapons and filed back past the tower, dropping empty magazin
es into the hands of the recruits on the ammo detail.

  Davis waited for us as we walked up to him.

  “Twenty-four,” he said, still not smiling.

  Sanchala blinked in astonishment.

  “Twenty-four, Drill Sergeant?”

  “Yup,” Davis said. “You made it. Good work. Now get off the firing line.”

  Sanchala almost ran, his teeth bared in a bona-fide grin, pumping his weapon over his head several times before one of the cadre yelled at Sanchala to face the muzzle back into the dirt.

  I smiled, and started to follow.

  “Hold it,” Davis said, sticking a hand out to block me.

  I waited, my heart suddenly sinking.

  “Funny how Sanchala suddenly did so much better. And not just because of switching shoulders. I wonder why that was? Seemed like he only had his usual thirty rounds. Or was it more?”

  Davis waited, staring at me.

  “Drill Sergeant,” I said, “he used the magazines the ammo detail gave to us, Drill Sergeant. Maybe they lost count and Sanchala got an extra round or two.”

  “Yeah,” Davis said, still staring at me. “That must have been it.”

  But his hand still blocked my way.

  I said nothing, and just looked into his eyes, as he looked into mine.

  Finally he said, “You’ll clear your ass off the range before I decide to report your little trick to the tower. I see everything you think I don’t see, Recruit Barlow. Believe it.”

  I swallowed hard and said. “Yes, Drill Sergeant.”

  His hand dropped out of my way.

  As I moved to shuffle past him, his opposite hand slapped me on the back. Not hard. But friendly-like. Enough to send an altogether different message than his mouth had been sending in the moment before.

  And from that point forward, I decided that Davis wasn’t nearly the ogre most of us had assumed him to be.

  Chapter 29

  On the third day after landing, a rainstorm blew in.

  I wasn’t sure whether to be happy or scared. The wind was ferocious, whipping my poncho about and driving the water into me sideways. It was cold water too, and before long the captain and I realized we’d be in danger of hypothermia. Unlike when the sandstorm hit, there were no hills nor outcroppings of rock to hide behind. We simply had to sit down on a raised mound of half-buried boulders and do the best we could.

  If the storm bothered the Professor, he didn’t show it. The Queen Mother looked perfectly miserable.

  After an hour, things calmed down enough for me to get up and walk over to where the Professor was hovering over the Queen Mother, doing his best to protect her from the elements. My hands were shaking and my teeth chattered as I spoke.

  “Is she in danger?”

  “Yes,” the Professor said, matter-of-factly.

  “She can have my poncho if it will help,” I said. “Though I can’t say it’s done me much good. The captain and I are both soaked to the bone.”

  I removed my poncho and went to place it over the Queen Mother, who had curled up tightly on the rock, when I felt a sudden wave of delicious warmth on the top of my hand.

  It was coming from the bottom of the Professor’s disc.

  The mantes may have been insect-like, but they were as warm-blooded as humans, varying only by a few degrees. I realized that the Professor had to be burning a lot of power to keep both himself and the Queen Mother warm.

  “How long can you keep it up?” I asked.

  “I do not know for certain,” he said. “I can shut down various functions to compensate for the raw energy expenditure, but if these sorts of storms are the norm for this planet, and not the exception, it will dramatically reduce my carriage’s longevity.”

  “Do you mind if the captain and I try to share the heat? We can’t make a fire, and our uniforms aren’t designed for warmth when wet.”

  “Proceed,” he said.

  I beckoned the captain over, and her face went from an expression of utter misery to utter amazement as she put her hands into the zone of pleasant heat directly below the Professor’s disc.

  We quickly huddled up close and stuck both arms and legs under the shadow of the disc, our ponchos over our heads and backs while our rear ends remained cold and soggy on the damp stone.

  For a while, I dozed. Between the lack of adequate food and walking many kilometers every day, I was definitely feeling the physical toll. Eventually I felt the captain slump against me, and I allowed myself to do likewise, my head balanced on top of hers, a little patch of protected warmth growing between us. I closed my eyes.

  They didn’t come open again until hours later.

  The storm had passed, the sun was out again: still brighter and cooler than either Purgatory’s star, or Earth’s own Sol, but a welcome sight just the same. It was midday, and there was a bit of a breeze, which meant the captain and I might be able to dry our clothes out—essential, if we were going to survive the night without further draining the Professor’s energy reserves.

  The Queen Mother had drawn herself out from under the Professor’s disc and was perched on a boulder a few meters away. Her wings were spread widely and she appeared almost frozen in place, forelimbs outstretched and her head tilted back. She seemed to be soaking in every last ray she could get.

  The sound of running water nearby reminded me that we’d best replenish our own water supply while we had the opportunity. I regretfully roused the captain, who jumped at the chance to refill our bottles. We located a formerly dry creek bed—now swollen with slowly running, very soiled water—and began to fill up. The mouth of each bottle had a micro filter on it that screened out the bulk of the soil. Leaving only the thinnest of hazes. Unsure of the bacterial hazard, we unscrewed the filters and dropped survival tabs into each bottle—the tabs made the water taste chemically nasty, but it would be safe to drink.

  Returning to where the Professor kept watch on the Queen Mother, the captain and I each did an about-face and stripped to the skin. Our emergency packs had one-piece smocks in them, which we quickly donned, then we laid our uniforms, underwear, boots, and socks out on the rocks as best we could, hoping that the strong daylight and fresh breeze would be enough to dry things out. The smocks weren’t nearly as sturdy as we needed them to be, and the slip-on shoes that came with them would quickly disintegrate on this planet’s rough, unforgiving terrain.

  With nothing better to do, Adanaho and I ate a little, drank a little more, went and did our business as far away from each other as possible, then returned and stared at the Queen Mother—who’d remained motionless as a statue the whole time.

  I did notice that her lower limbs—which had seemed almost useless when the Professor had first removed her from her disc—appeared to be getting stronger. She was balanced on them now, with just a hand’s width of space between her belly and the stone on which she perched.

  “How is she doing?” I asked the Professor.

  “I do not know,” he said. “She has not spoken to me since the storm passed. I am suspecting that she is manifesting an instinctual behavior of our species, from the time before we had carriages to provide for our needs.”

  “What about food?” I said.

  “The carriage provides that too, though we can ingest nourishment with our mouths for the pleasure of it.”

  I shuddered a bit, remembering mantis warriors devouring human flesh during the initial fighting on Purgatory.

  “Can the Queen Mother eat our food?” the captain asked.

  “I do not think it wise,” the Professor said. “Our nutritional requirements are not the same as yours. Besides, we have the ability to store a reserve—naturally—which should suffice for the Queen Mother’s needs for some time yet. Assuming she gets water.”

  “She should go drink while the drinking’s good,” I said, pointing back to the creek bed, the water in which had begun to wane as the sun gradually began to drop towards the western horizon.

  “I have already purifie
d a supply for her,” the Professor said. “For now, I simply watch, and wait. The Queen Mother’s behavior is unusual and fascinating. I have never seen any of my people forced to live without a carriage. The Queen Mother’s actions speak to me of how my people must have lived, eons ago in the distant past, before we ourselves even had fire, or tools. Before we took to the stars.”

  As the angle of the sun’s light shifted, so did the Queen Mother. Like a solar panel, she made sure her wings caught the maximum amount of direct light.

  Occasionally the captain or I would get up to go check on our clothes, flapping them vigorously to try and get out every drop of remaining moisture. When evening came and the sun began to dip into the far horizon, we pulled out our emergency sleeping bags and prepared to make do on the hard stone.

  “I’ll be back,” Adanaho said.

  “Nature calls?” I replied.

  “No.”

  “Oh…well, find privacy and peace then.”

  To my surprise, she went to join the Queen Mother, who’d folded up her wings, but remained staring in the direction of the setting sun.

  Adanaho sat cross-legged and appeared to hold something in her hands as she bowed her head. The Queen Mother’s own head tilted just a little, her antennae moving ever so slowly, as if entranced by the captain’s soft, slow words of supplication. The Professor was listening too—I could see him alert. Like before, I was too far away to make out what was being said. And, I suddenly realized, I was a little bit jealous that the captain felt perfectly fine sharing her prayer with the mantes, but not with me. A tiny spark of anger flared, and quickly died as I realized that maybe she was just doing what I’d done with the Professor many times: giving the mantes a demonstration, so that maybe the Queen Mother might enjoy a degree of understanding.

  Though I couldn’t be sure what progress Adanaho hoped to make, which I hadn’t been able to make with the Professor or his students in all the years of trying back on Purgatory.