The Chaplain's War - eARC

by Brad R Torgersen

  I’d grown to like the canyon, despite the gnawing in my belly. Sleep came easily with the sound of the river droning in my ears.

  Tonight, my rest was interrupted. Or was it morning? The faintest hint of light was growing above the canyon rim to the east.

  “A vehicle has landed. Not far from here. The Professor says it’s not a mantis craft. They will be searching for us, and they will have marines with them.”

  She already had her pack snuggly slung over both shoulders.

  The Professor held the Queen Mother securely aboard his disc.

  “We can’t move quickly on foot,” I said.

  “This I know,” said the Professor. “Which is why you must ride with me.”

  “Can the disc—your carriage—handle all three passengers?”

  “I do not know. But we must try.”

  The Professor offered a forelimb.

  I helped the captain climb up onto the back of the disc. She hugged her arms around the Professor’s upper thorax, then I climbed aboard too. The disc’s motors whined with additional strain, and for a moment we were all deathly still—waiting for any sound to tell us we’d been noticed. When none came, we began to slowly float forward.

  “How did our people find us?” I asked Adanaho in her ear.

  She leaned over and spoke into mine.

  “Fleet’s been quietly reverse-engineering a lot of different stuff during the years of the cease-fire. I’ve only been involved in some of that. It’s probable they’ve discovered a way to home in on the signals from the Professor’s disc, even if they can’t reverse-engineer the disc itself.”

  “Please tell me you can switch off whatever it is that’s not been switched off?” I said to the Professor.

  “We are now running silent,” he said, not looking at me.

  The Professor scooted along, his disc become sluggish—this time not nearly as high off the ground as before, and complaining in an audible fashion.

  The dark landscape of the canyon passed by us in a blur. There were no moons. Only stars in the purpled sky. The Professor could see though, if one could call his mechanical-cyborg senses sight. What was it like to “look” with Doppler sonar or radar? What images or pictures were in the Professor’s head as he steered us through the canyon?

  Suddenly the Professor halted.

  A trio of spotlights illuminated us from overhead. The loud purring of VTOL fans told me the gig was up. Those were human machines in the air, not mantis.

  I suddenly had the desire to lie on the ground, face-down, and put my hands behind my head.

  Busted!

  “MANTIS SOLDIER,” a booming human’s voice commanded through an electronic bullhorn, “RELEASE YOUR HUMAN PRISONERS OR WE WILL DESTROY YOU.”

  Frantic skitter-scratching from the Queen Mother.

  “We cannot allow ourselves to be taken,” the Professor translated.

  But what could we do? The captain and I both put our hands up to shield our eyes against the harsh light. I felt my heart begin to beat double-time. On the one hand, being discovered by Fleet meant our famished sojourn in the alien wilderness had been cut short. On the other hand, it was probable my friend was going to wind up as a hors d’ oeuvre on some Fleet Intelligence geek’s interrogation menu.

  “Ma’am,” I said. “You’d better be damned right about being able to push the POW angle.”

  “Set us down, Professor,” she said. “I swear on my honor as a Fleet officer that I won’t let them hurt you, or the Queen Mother.”

  There was a moment of agonizing hesitation as the Professor’s head tilted this way and that, his antennae waving frantically as he tried to quickly deduce the best course of action: were there any escape routes, and if escape was impossible, could Adanaho be trusted to fulfill her promise?

  The canyon suddenly took on an air of claustrophobia.

  Slowly, the disc settled to the ground.

  The Queen Mother shoved herself off of the disc and began to skitter away—her stubby lower legs moving rapidly on the rock and sand. The Professor’s mandibles clacked and chattered violently. I guessed that he was yelling at her? But it did no good.

  More spotlights appeared, this time from the ground.

  Wheeled trucks roared around a bend in the canyon ahead and squads of human troops began to pile out, quickly surrounding us.

  The captain and I both stepped off the Professor’s disc, our hands held up.

  “I claim these creatures as prisoners of war!” Adanaho shouted at the top of her vocal range. The marines approached us hesitantly, rifles at their shoulders.

  “Don’t hurt them,” I yelled. “They’re under our protection.”

  One of the marines lowered her rifle and walked out of the pack. It was difficult to see her rank in the blinding glare of the spotlights, and the blowing dust from the VTOL fans that kept the gunships aloft.

  “Ma’am,” the female marine said as she approached us, saluting Adanaho. Then she saw me, and added a quick, “Sir.”

  The captain and I both reflexively saluted, then dropped our arms.

  “Sergeant,” the captain said in a trained tone of authority, “I’m giving you a direct order to stand down. Neither of these mantes are armed. They’re not a threat to you or your marines. As an officer in Fleet Intelligence, I claim them as POWs.”

  “Mantis prisoners?” the NCO said, sounding doubtful. She watched as the Queen Mother continued to scramble, and the Professor’s antennae drooped, his body language expressing utter defeat.

  “Yes,” Adanaho said. “We took them from the Calysta before she was destroyed. It’s essential that we get these POWs off this planet and into safe keeping. They are vital to the war effort.”

  “We’ve got orders to frag every mantis we come across,” said the marine. “No exceptions. Hundreds of lifeboats came down all across this world. It’s been a hell of a job policing up survivors. Especially with so many mantis patrols running interception.”

  “Who has orbital space superiority?” the captain asked.

  “We do, for the moment,” said the NCO. “But that may not last. There’s no time to waste, ma’am, sir, we have to get you out of here. And I’m not authorized to bring back any mantis carcasses.”

  The NCO signaled with a gloved hand and the marines moved in, separating us from the Professor and the Queen Mother—who’d given up escaping, and simply lay prone on the dirt at the Professor’s side, exhausted as well as defeated.

  A dozen muzzles were trained on them both, and I distinctly heard safeties clicking off.

  “NO!” the captain and I both shouted together. We pushed our way through the marines to stand in front of the Professor and the Queen Mother.

  “How much more clearly do I have to give a direct order, Sergeant?” Adanaho commanded sternly. “In fact, if I don’t see people standing down by the time I get to three, there’s going to be hell to pay. One…Two…”

  The squad looked confused. Eyes—covered by goggles—darted from Adanaho’s young but determined face, to their squad leader’s. The female NCO looked angry, but she wasn’t about to ignore the captain.

  “At ease,” the NCO finally said, slowly pushing a palm down towards the ground. “If she’s Fleet Intel like she says she is, we’ll let her bosses figure it out. Get the heavy-lift transport in here and we’ll evac the lot of them to orbit.”

  Several roger thats echoed around the group, then some of the marines trotted back to their trucks while others remained to guard the mantes. The troops stood close enough to keep the mantes under watchful eyes, but not so close as to be within reach of a swiping forelimb. As I watched their young faces I realized that none of them—save for the squad leader herself—were old enough to have fought in the first war. All they’d ever heard about mantes had come to them from training VR. They stared at the Professor and the Queen Mother the way children might stare at a pair of freshly-landed sharks.

  Dangerous monsters.

  There was a dea
fening shriek in the air, and the landscape around us instantly lit as one of the gunships overhead burst into flame.

  Other shrieks announced themselves, and suddenly all three of the gunships were coming down in pieces, the wreckage scattering while it burned brightly.

  “INCOMING!” the marines yelled collectively.

  I scanned the constricted strip of orange-to-purple sky over our heads.

  Several swift, lethal-looking shapes swooped over us, their engines sounding distinctly different from those used by humans.

  The mantis cavalry had arrived.

  PART THREE:

  The Chaplain’s War

  Chapter 36

  Earth (the Moon), 2153 A.D.

  We boiled from the assault carrier like a swarm of ants, all of us bounding across the regolith in carefully orchestrated formations that were broken down by platoon and squad. As part of the rear detachment of the command party that was officially detailed to “support” the mock offensive, I hung back with a few other recruit officers and observed the lot of us leapfrogging over the lunar surface: weapons at the ready, arms pantomiming signals as the Charlie Company wireless came alive with the excited but controlled chatter of recruit leadership directing their different elements forward.

  In the far distance was a lumpy white and gray mountain. Supposedly that mountain was crawling with mantes. Why we’d not landed closer—or even right smack on top of it—was a mystery to me. Why waste time and potential lives crossing the distance when we could have just pancaked down on them, and gone for the throat?

  Chaplain J informed me that simulated anti-ship missile fire from the mountain had necessitated our grounding well short of the objective. Now it would be up to the recruits to go in “old school,” using infantry tactics and techniques which had not changed much in hundreds of years. I loped quietly forward with my little group and looked on as our overwatch elements suddenly become pinned down by hostile fire.

  In the middle distance, the silhouettes of mantis warriors—not too different from the ones we’d shot at on the qualification ranges—were maneuvering against us in defensive bundles that were not unlike Charlie Company’s groups. It occurred to me that we were training against human-controlled, simulated aliens—which were going to fight us like humans would. Didn’t anybody think that was a bad idea? Wasn’t there any record of prior Fleet battles with the mantes, from which to draw sufficient analysis?

  Again, Chaplain J filled me in: nobody was entirely sure how the mantis infantry fought. But training against something was better than training against nothing.

  I voiced my hesitant agreement as Charlie Company began to take casualties.

  Recruits tagged by the enemy training lasers were given a warning gong in their speakers, followed by red lights on their helmets coming alive, at which point said recruits were expected to fall in place. Those few who did not fall in place and kept maneuvering were screamed at over the wireless by the DSes, and threatened with punishment detail when we got back to Earth. Presently, everyone with red lights on his or her helmet, flopped immediately into the lunar dust.

  “Okay, here we go,” Chaplain J said.

  I followed her as we broke from the rear and began our own bounding maneuver, with four armed guards as our guides. Occasionally one of them raised a weapon and popped off a shot down range: towards the mantes and their mountain fortress. It occurred to me that our own people were shooting over the heads of our own people, and I remembered how Chaplain J had said Fleet occasionally lost recruits during live-fire exercises.

  Once in a while, a mantis silhouette flipped over. Simulated dead. One less bad guy to molest us during the fight.

  Chaplain J and I arrived at a squad of recruits from sixth platoon. They’d bunched up behind a small boulder just big enough to protect them from the enemy lasers. Two of the squad had red lights illuminated.

  “Dead, or hurt?” I asked.

  “Dead,” one of them said, while the other said, “hurt.”

  One of the DSes cut in over the wireless, “Badly wounded, both.”

  My instinct was to call for the medic and an evac, but then I realized there would be no medic nor any evac. The assault carrier had lifted into the blackness of the sky and was slowly maneuvering away from us, out of the fight. We’d been summarily dumped into the situational meatgrinder, and there would be no do-overs now.

  I looked at Chaplain J.

  “I can’t give aid through the suit,” I said.

  “No you can’t,” she said. “If these were real hits, the suit would be doing that automatically. You have to assume these two are severely hurt and your job is to offer comfort.”

  I looked at the unlucky victims, who merely looked back at me. Their faces were vaguely familiar. People I’d passed in the chow line or on one of the endless number of details to which I’d been assigned.

  “Uh, how do I tell their affiliation? I can’t even see their ID tags.”

  “Ask,” she said firmly.

  “Uhh, right. Guys, do either of you, uhhh, you know, belong to a church?”

  They each cracked grins and seemed to find me supremely funny.

  “Eff this,” I said under my breath. “It’s stupid.”

  Chaplain J cuffed the side of my helmet.

  “Nothing stupid about it, recruits,” she said to all of us on the squad wireless. “You two wouldn’t be laughing if you had holes in your torsos and were slowly bleeding out. Now answer the Recruit Chaplain’s question before I put all of you on the detail list.”

  Their smiles disappeared.

  “Catholic,” one of them said.

  “Nothing,” said the other.

  “Atheist?” I said.

  “Uhhh, no, just, well, hell, Rastafarian.”

  “I didn’t bring you any weed,” I said.

  “Eff you,” the joker replied.

  I turned to the Catholic. At least here there was something I could work with. I’d done enough reading to understand that for Catholics, there was a last rite involved. I tapped a couple of small keys on the left wrist of my suit and called up the block of text I’d preloaded into the suit’s memory. The text hovered in my helmet display: a glowing sequence of words preserved in my field of vision.

  Mumbling my way through it, I felt fantastically uncomfortable. When I was done, the recruit—Jones—had a surprised look on his face.

  “That’s not in the reading I gave you,” Chaplain J said.

  “I looked it up on-line while we were en route,” I replied.

  “Problem is, you’re not an ordained priest in the Catholic church.”

  “Does it matter?” I asked.

  “It might matter to him,” she said, pointing at Jones.

  He smiled at me. “Thanks anyway, bro. My mom would have liked that. Priest or no priest.”

  I chanced a look around me—at the tense faces of those squad members who were still fighting—and wondered why God would even care whether or not I was a Catholic, assuming Jones were in fact dying. I decided for the purposes of the LCX any kind of effort on my part was better than no effort at all. So I refocused my attention on the joker.

  “Seriously,” I said. “No affiliation?”

  “Nothing,” he replied.

  “Nothing at all?”

  “Nope.”

  “Okay then. Well, you and, uhhh, Jones here, are both hurt plenty bad. And I don’t know if you’re gonna make it. But I’ll stay right here until we either get an evac, or until, uhhh, well, you know, uh—”

  “Right,” he said.

  I reflexively grabbed his hand through his suit’s gauntlet.

  We each squeezed tightly.

  And we stayed that way, just looking at each other, until forty-five seconds later the lights on his helmet went from red to blue.

  “Recruit Sungh, KIA,” said a DS over the wireless. “Don’t move a muscle, and enjoy the rest of the show.”

  Sungh let his hand fall to his side.

 
; He smiled up at me and tried to speak, but I suddenly discovered I couldn’t hear him.

  Oh yes, I’d forgotten. Killed-In-Action troops were cut out of the wireless entirely—so as to make them as dead as could be to those of us around them.

  I tipped my finger to my helmet and dropped it in his direction. Sungh nodded at me and laid back calmly, staring up into space.

  Jones was still red.

  I held his hand for a good three minutes before his lights went blue.

  “Recruit Jones, KIA,” said the same DS.

  I imagined that the DSes were keeping tabs on all the Charlie Company casualties via computer roster. I wondered how many we’d lost, or were losing. Were things going well? Since arriving at this particular squad’s position I’d dropped out of the recruit command wireless entirely.

  Tapping more keys on my suit’s wrist, I plugged back in.

  Recruit command wireless was frazzled. People were dropping orders over the top of other people. Frago this and frago that. So many fragmentary orders at once, I couldn’t tell what the hell was going on. Suddenly a couple of mantis dummies appeared over the top of the rock I was crouched behind.

  The entire squad screamed in unison—a very real sound—and opened up with their rifles. Rounds—also very real—chewed into the steel mantis silhouettes, which flipped backwards and drifted to the soil. Their maneuvering units automatically grounded.

  In prep for the LCX we’d all done practice maneuvers using “rubber duck” weapons equipped with CO2 canisters and firing semi-hard pellets filled with red jelly. Those pellets had hurt like the dickens. So that we’d all learned fairly quickly that carelessness with friendly fire was a good way to bruise up your buddies. Which might lead to a bruising of a different kind if certain people didn’t watch their sectors of fire, and use discretion.

  Now, things had gotten serious. About as serious as they were liable to get, short of an actual combat action.