“Ya ain’t gotta like it,” said Schmetkin when she noticed my wrinkled nose the first time I pulled off my helmet. “But as long as your suit says it’s safe to breathe, it’s safe to breathe. You’ll be lucky if things are this posh out on one of the mantis worlds. Be happy you get to lie down for a couple of hours.”
And I was. Oh yes, I was.
Since the former wounded and dead had been more or less lying about for the past thirty six hours, they were immediately put on task reworking the defenses of the objective and prepping for a presumed immediate counterstrike by the simulated mantes. The rest of us were allowed to use the heads—plenty of those in this supposedly alien warren—and grab a quick bite of food. Cold rations. The kind you wouldn’t touch under normal circumstances, but will wolf down with delight when it’s been at least a day since you had anything proper to eat.
We couldn’t exactly take our armor off. But we dressed down as far as we dared, with only an occasional growl from a DS, and tried to find quiet corners in which to curl up and grab a few winks.
One thing about the many weeks of training: they had forced me to learn the trick of falling asleep quickly, at any time, anywhere. I was reasonably certain my brain was off before my skull touched the rolled-up rations sack I’d elected to use as a pillow. My brain stayed off when the various jostlings and mutterings of the similarly-incapacitated souls around me formed a dull, monotonous background noise for dreams.
Strange dreams. Of never being in the Fleet. Of going back to my civilian life as if I’d never walked over to that recruiter’s table with my friends. As if there was no war presently happening, far out on the frontiers of human settlement in the galaxy.
Wishful thinking, I suppose?
I eventually came around when a persistent hand kept nudging me.
“Barlow, Barlow,” said the female voice.
I groaned and sat up.
Cortez looked at me, a small smile on her face.
“You’re back on-line in thirty minutes,” she said.
“How long was I out? And where the hell have you been all this time?”
“Four hours, give or take. Me? I was lucky in that I got shot within the first ten minutes of the offensive. Had a nice, leisurely nap out there on the surface. Regolith is soft as a pillow, did you notice? Anyway, we’re nearing the end of LCX Day 2 and the cadre want every recruit on the line at dusk.”
“Does the Moon even have dusk?” I said.
“Stand-to,” she said.
“Oh, right.”
Another remnant of infantry eras past. In theory, the brief periods of semi-light right before true dawn and right before actual night were the best periods to attack. When would-be defenders would be hardest-pressed to notice bad guys slithering up to the line and/or would be most disoriented in the event of a counterattack. Not that anyone had consulted the mantis playbook. Especially not here on the Moon, where conventional Earth notions of day and night were on holiday.
But some traditions never die.
I collected myself, got to my feet, ran for the nearest head, then returned presently and allowed myself to be lead away to the windows. How or why mantes would install square windows in an underground installation was beyond me. But there they were. Row after row of them. recruits clustered closely together while DSes roamed around behind, like sharks. Watching, listening, and waiting.
I found my command group, but no Chaplain J. Odd, that. Was I going to be flying solo for the second round?
The chatter indicated that enemy action was expected any minute. The recruit captain and lieutenants were pouring over a digital projection map displayed on one wall, which had been cleared of “eggs” and other pseudo-alien debris. Half the weapons squads had been hunkered down in fighting positions equidistant around the mountain, while the other half were detailed to a single mobile body being held in reserve: for instant reaction towards whichever side of the mountain got hit.
Standard squads had been placed out at listening posts far down on the plains, at least one to two kilometers from the mountain’s base. Supposedly satellite and Fleet orbital watch was being “jammed” so it was up to human eyes to do what machines would normally be useful for. Which made me wonder for the umpteenth time why Charlie Company was not working alongside or in support of heavier armor elements. The Fleet arsenal included an array of tanks and fighting personnel movers, in addition to different kinds of gunships and other air-to-ground support vehicles that could effectively eliminate the need for a foot fight.
“If you make it to marine training,” one DS snarled at me as I dared to voice these questions aloud, “you’ll get to play with the heavy stuff. For now, shut up and run the defense of this position like you’ve been taught. You’ll notice that none of the mantis troops you’ve faced have had tanks or gunships either. So why are you bitching?”
Which was good enough for me—point taken.
With recruit command relying on wireless communications for all relevant updates, they were glued to the map, making constant, fidgeting changes—with occasional input from this or that cadre member who just happened to walk by when the recruit captain and recruit lieutenants were hashing things out with the recruit first sergeant and the recruit platoon sergeants.
I specifically avoided Thukhan’s gaze. I didn’t have the will or the energy to deal with him at the moment. Mostly I was hoping that the talk of an imminent counterstrike was bogus, so that maybe we could back off the line a bit—and I could go steal a few more minutes of sleep.
My hope was short-lived as the command wireless began to light up with reports of mantis troops closing in on several of the furthest scout squads, lying in wait for just such contact with enemy forces.
“Here we go,” the recruit captain said.
People began to scatter. Squads and platoons formed up near the airlocks and began to cycle through. Without Chaplain J to lead the way, I cast about until I located the medic team, and hung with them. Most of whom had been rotated out of their jobs in favor of fresh blood—no pun—who hadn’t had to carry the load during the first assault. So that it was me who wound up explaining to them how things would more or less work, once the casualties began to stack up.
And stack up they did.
Once it became apparent that the simulated mantes were attacking the mountain with an even larger force than the one which had first defended it, I guessed that Charlie Company was in for its George Armstrong Custer moment. No doubt this was some kind of object lesson to all of us about the need to stand fast and hold our ground despite overwhelming odds.
Bounding up and down the mountain chasing wounded proved to be even more of a workout than it had on the first day.
This time, however, there was literally no possible way of keeping up. There were just too many. All of the forward elements were wiped out simultaneously, indicating that a “noose” of mantes was constricting around the mountain. I helped gather wounded back to the aid area, went back for more, and each time found our perimeter foreshortened by at least a quarter of a kilometer.
The cooling system in my armor suit was working overtime, trying to keep pace with the tremendous amount of exertion I was making. I had put my actions on autopilot. Almost relishing the idea of getting lasered into inactivity, such that I could make myself a bed in the regolith can catch my breath.
That’s when the call came in. Not a standard training casualty call. But a frantic, desperate-sounding cry of alarm.
Somebody had actually been hurt.
I was pouncing across the moon’s surface with three other medics—hearts thudding in our chests—when I saw a moon car with Fleet colors zoom over the tops of our heads. Presently, I arrived to find several cadre working over the prone body of a recruit who was covered in regolith dust up to his helmet. They’d slapped an inflatable bandage around one leg and were trying to get a hole patch sealed over the lower left side of the recruit’s stomach.
The cadre picked the recruit up and
gently carried him to the bed of the lunar car, then one of them turned and looked at me and said, “You, into the back. Put your hands here and don’t move. He’s bleeding heavily.”
I spared only a momentary glance for the recruit hunched at the car’s side, her R77A5 hanging limply from one hand. I couldn’t see her face due to her sun shield being down, but I intuited that whatever had happened to the poor fool in the car’s bed, it had been her fault.
The car lifted and was suddenly zooming back towards the mountain. I kept my wits about me and pressed both hands over the patch on the recruit’s stomach. He lay limply, and I suddenly realized I knew him.
CAPACHA was stenciled along the collar of his helmet.
“Christ,” I muttered to no one in particular. “What happened?”
“Friendly fire,” one of the two cadre said. “You’re a recruit medic?”
“Recruit chaplain,” I said.
That I hadn’t added the requisite Drill Sergeant and that the cadre person hadn’t chewed me out for failing to properly address her, told me all I needed to know about the seriousness of the situation. We overshot the entrances to the mock mantis base and flew to the very crown of the mountain where a large set of double doors were hanging open, and the car glided in.
The cadre hopped out and suddenly I found that they and two other cadre were bodily lifting both myself and Capacha out of the car—the stretcher below us having been invisible to me as I’d clambered aboard and focused all of my attention on the wounded recruit. We were hustled into an airlock, which cycled quickly, then rushed into a larger interior room—no mock mantis paraphernalia this time—which was home to a pair of real Fleet medics and what appeared to be a real fleet physician to boot.
My suit told me that pressure was green safe, but I kept my hands on the patch until one of the medics shooed me off, and I stood up and backed away, dumbly looking down at Capacha as they pulled his helmet and gloves off with the emergency-release toggles.
He looked pale.
But his eyes fluttered, and came to focus on me.
He raised an arm weakly in my direction as the medics began to split the top of his suit off of him, exposing the pink-and-red lumpy foam that had discharged into the suit the second the bullet had struck Capacha’s stomach.
I pulled my helmet off and threw it down as the medics continued to work.
“The torso’s fine,” one of them said, “it’s the leg artery that’s the problem.”
Capacha kept his arm stretched out to me. I knelt down next to him, trying to stay out of the way. If the cadre or medics were upset with me, they didn’t show it.
Pulling my gauntlets off, I grabbed Capacha’s hand in mine, my knees at his left ear as we looked at each other.
“Barlow,” he said in a whisper.
“The pros have got you now,” I said, forcing a smile. “Must hurt like a sunuvabitch, but you’re gonna be okay.”
“You’re a bad liar,” Capacha said, forcing a smile of his own. Then he began to cough, which appeared to agonize him as the medics and, now, the doctor, worked furiously on his leg.
“Almost time to graduate,” Capacha said. “Aren’t you glad you took my advice?”
I must have looked baffled because he began to laugh, and wound up coughing again for his trouble.
“You don’t remember, do you?”
“Remember what?” I asked.
“Back in Reception. I was one of the holdovers. And that night in the dark, when you were gonna go into the head and butt-stroke Thukhan with your rifle. Remember what I said to you then? You took my advice.”
Suddenly it dawned on me.
And suddenly I had to know.
“Why did you help me?” I asked. “We haven’t said more than four sentences to each other this whole time.”
“Because you helped me,” he said.
“How?”
“Little things…here and there. Mainly you were the first person I ever saw in Reception who wanted to take this shit seriously. And after the way Thukhan…got himself out of work, I…started to think. That…maybe it was time to straighten my act out.”
Capacha’s armor was now entirely off his body and the foam that had encased his wounded leg looked dangerously soaked with thick, dark blood.
I could tell in his eyes—he was losing the battle.
One of the medics checked Capacha’s tags and then rushed to a nearby cart for two bags: one clear saline, the other filled with bright red, oxygenated blood. An IV went into each arm and the volume drip spigots were opened all the way. One of the medics began to massage the blood bag, seeing as how the moon’s gravity made the flow sluggish. I offered to take over that chore, which the medic gratefully let me do so that she and the other medic, and the doc, could try to hit the leg wound.
“Hell of a way to earn your first medal,” I half-joked as I gently ran my hands along the sides of the blood pouch, pushing the red fluid down through the IV tube with as much force as I dared.
“As if they give…medals for dying…while being stupid.”
“Not your fault, man,” I said. “You can’t help it if someone else got careless.”
“No,” Capacha said. “It was…me. I was careless. Didn’t break contact when I was…ordered to do it. Got left…behind. Tried to…catch up. Made it through a bunch of…mantes. Wound up in the middle. Tried to wave my arms. But it was…too late. When the…mantes got hit, I…got hit too.”
Capacha craned his head back to look at one of the cadre.
“My fault,” Capacha said, gritting his teeth.
“Mine…” he said.
Then his eyes dropped closed.
I stopped massaging the bag and took up Capacha’s hand as it lay on the floor. I explored his wrist and felt his pulse—weak, tenuous—gradually slow, and stop.
“Shit,” I said, and instinctively dropped his hand, putting my legs over his torso and bracing myself on his sternum with my fingers laced together to form a double fist on his sternum. I shoved down as hard as I could five times, then leaned down and put a cheek to Capacha’s mouth, which hung half open.
There was no reassuring warmth nor moisture of breath.
I put my mouth fully over his and blew hard, feeling my own ribs complain. Five more quick compressions on his chest. A breath. Five more quick compressions on his chest. A breath. Just like they’d taught us. Just like I’d memorized.
And after ten iterations, there was nothing. No response.
I kept going.
After twenty iterations, I was shaking badly, and still nothing.
One of the medics put his hand gently on my quivering shoulder.
“You can stop now, kid,” the sergeant said gently. “Bullet tore right through the femoral. Once we opened the foam around the wound there was no way to stop the bleeding in time. Maybe if he’d not already lost so much, in getting to us…but it’s over.”
I wanted to scream at the medic, but held my tongue.
I sat up—lungs heaving—and stared down at the slack, pale face of the man who had quite probably done me one of the biggest favors anyone had ever done me in my short life. He’d been right, about me wanting to take out Thukhan. About me not having the lethal edge it took to go in and cut a man down in cold blood. I’d turned a decisive corner that night, and all because a stranger had been kind enough to talk me out of a stupid choice.
And now he was dead.
The two medics helped me to my feet, which almost came out from under me. I stumbled away from Capacha’s body and thumped my left shoulder against a wall, and slowly slid down to a sitting position, my knees curled up to my chin. I hugged my lower legs and clenched my eyes closed, willing the tears to retreat. Which they did not. I could feel them sprouting from the edges of my eyelids and running scalding-hot down my face.
The mantis threat was light-years away, and already, people were dying.
I remotely heard the medics take Capacha away, as well as a detail that came to
clean up the blood. If the cadre cared that I was ignoring everyone and everything around me, they didn’t say anything. They simply went back through the airlock, took the moon car, and left.
I let my forehead rest on my knees.
Exhaustion seemed to sweep me back to the same place I’d been before: to the vision of myself and my former life, free of the Fleet and free of the training hell of IST. It seemed an altogether surreal life, where a man could eat as he pleased, drink as he pleased, wake up and go to sleep when he pleased…
“Barlow, Barlow,” said a female voice.
Only this time it wasn’t Cortez.
I picked my head up and looked into the eyes of Chaplain J.
“Are you okay?” she asked.
I simply shook my head from side to side.
“Come on, kid,” she said, getting up off one knee and offering me both hands. Like me, she was still in her armor suit, but with helmet and gauntlets off. Her legs were coated in lunar dust. She’d been traipsing about somewhere, even if it hadn’t been in the immediate AO.
I weakly put my hands out, grasped her hands, and let her pull me up to a standing position. She pressed a thermos mug of something warm into my hands. I put the spigot to my lips and sucked. Deliciously hot chocolate flowed across my tongue. I swallowed hard, took another mouthful, and swallowed hard again.
“What’s happening with the others?” I asked.
“The battle is over. The mantes retook their mountain,” she said.
“I figured as much. The odds were badly against us.”
“On purpose.”
“Yup, I figured that too. Did anyone else get hurt?”
“A few sprains and strains, and a few bumps and bruises, but no, nobody else got shot.”
“What happens to the recruit who gunned down Capacha?”
“Cadre say that the victim says it was his fault. There will be an official investigation. They’ll gather audio and video and eyewitness accounts. To determine if anyone should be punished. Meanwhile Charlie Company’s actual commander and actual first sergeant are going to have to write Private Capacha’s family a couple of very sorry letters.”
The Chaplain's War - eARC Page 24