The Chaplain's War - eARC Page 6

  “Look,” I said, “it was just a thing, okay? I was curious. I didn’t put my signature on any dotted lines.”

  “Good,” my mother said. “See that you don’t. You’re not even out of school yet. You have to focus on these last few weeks. Now help me set the table, because dinner’s going to be ready very soon.”

  I did as I was told, and went to bed after the late meal still wondering about what I might do.

  The next morning, during first period, class was interrupted for a breaking news bulletin. The president and the secretary of defense were both shown at the White House podium, somberly reporting that the colony of New America had also been attacked. Again, by the mantis aliens. It was unknown whether there were any human survivors. Plans for a counteroffensive in the wake of the attack on Marvelous were now being redoubled, because it was clear the entirety of human space might be under imminent threat. The secretary of defense made a plea to the people of the United States for volunteers. The Fleet needed everyone it could get. Before any more of Earth’s colonies fell.

  That afternoon, myself, Tia, David, Kaffy, and even Ben, stood in a long line of students at the Fleet recruiter’s table. One by one, we put our names and our thumbprints on the enlistment documents. As a mass group, we took an oath in front of the U.S. flag and a Fleet flag both. None of us had much of an idea what we wanted to do, once we were in. We just knew that this was one of those moments in human history when caution was not the better part of valor.

  Something had to be done. And we were the ones who were going to do it.

  Chapter 13

  It had been a long time since I’d ridden a shuttle. I forgot they don’t come with gravity. I almost threw up my breakfast when we hit space. I spent the ride—to the awaiting frigate—turning several shades of green. Once onboard the mothercraft I breathed a great breath of relief, then gratefully took a small hand towel from the captain and mopped the perspiration from my face.

  The young marines who’d ridden up with us, they seemed to find me funny. Until they saw my expression, and rank. They snapped to as I walked past.

  I guess being Chief is good for a few things after all?

  The captain—whom I’d learned to address by the last name of Adanaho—gave me twenty minutes to clean up in the frigate’s cramped guest officers’ quarters.

  As an enlisted man, I’d only ever gotten bay accommodations. Zero privacy. My little single-man compartment seemed palatial by comparison.

  The hair on my cheeks and neck came off, and a fresh undershirt and topcoat came on. Then I used the tiny computer guide in my newly-issued PDA to walk me through the frigate’s innards—to the command deck, where I was to meet Adanaho’s boss.

  Sakumora was a short, muscular, stern-faced flag officer who neither smiled nor offered any pleasantries as I entered the room. Two lieutenants attended to his needs, while Captain Adanaho sat at his side, and two marines guarded opposite corners of the space. Against what, I had no idea. But protocol was protocol, and some things never change.

  “Sir,” I said, approaching his desk and saluting, “Serg-ahhh, I mean, Chief Warrant Officer Barlow, reporting as ordered.”

  “Sit down,” was all he said.

  I took a chair which had been offered to me by one of the general’s attaches. For the first time, I noticed the captain’s expression. Her eyes were turned down and staring at the space in front of my knees.

  “I’ll get to the point,” said Sakumora gruffly. “We’ve got compelling evidence that the mantes are building strength for a renewed offensive. Everybody knows the generalities of what you did here, on this little dustball of a world. I’ve reviewed the records, your own file, and the reports given to me by my officers who’ve been to Purgatory. There was never any guarantee that the mantes would hold off on their so-called Fourth Expansion indefinitely. I’m afraid time’s up.”

  My feet and hands went cold.

  So far as I knew, we were as defenseless as ever. The mantes were a much older and technologically superior race. Human ships and weapons amounted to little against mantis shields. For the sake of morale, when the war had been hot, the Fleet hadn’t broadly revealed its numerous and inevitable defeats—human colonies seized by the mantes and cleansed of all “competitive” life. Only after the armistice and the Fleet’s slow return did anyone come clean about the truth.

  I cleared my throat.

  “What do you expect me to do about it, sir?”

  “Do what you did before,” he said matter-of-fact. “Get this collective of…scholars, or whatever they are, to talk to their political leadership. Stage protests. Sit-ins. Anything that can hold the mantes off for a few more years.”

  “Assuming I could do it,” I said carefully, “would it make that much of a difference? I don’t think we’re any closer to fending them off than we were before.”

  The general looked over to Captain Adanaho. She raised her eyes to me. “Few people have been told this, so I’m ordering you to keep it secret, but we’ve managed to develop a working copy of their shielding technology—what I think you referred to in your notes as The Wall. In the process we think we’ve found a way to penetrate those same shields.”

  “Is that so?” I said, startled. “How exactly did we make this extraordinary breakthrough?”

  “That’s none of your concern,” the general snapped, “all you’re here to do is get the damned mantes to delay their attack. Until we’re ready.”

  “Sir, what makes you think I have any more influence on the mantes than the Fleet’s team of expert diplomats?” I said, throwing my hands out in exasperation. “It’s not like I’m some kind of genius about this stuff. The Professor—the first mantis I dealt with, ten years ago—just happened to reveal certain information that wound up being important. And I had nothing to lose. That my bargain convinced him, and that his compatriots had the leverage and coordination to affect Mantis Quorum policy, were flukes.”

  “Nevertheless,” said the general, “you will try.”

  “We depart in one hour,” Adanaho said. “You’ll have a few days to prepare, before we meet the mantis delegation.”

  Chapter 14

  Earth, 2153 A.D.

  They called it Reception.

  As if I’d been invited to something you do after a wedding.

  Only there was no cake.

  And certainly no ice cream.

  Sweat gradually trickled down into the small of my back, underneath my t-shirt. My arms and shoulders were on fire from being made to hold both of my stuffed-to-the-gills travel bags, while myself and five hundred other Fleet recruits stood at the position of attention outside the main processing hall of Armstrong Field.

  If there was a hottest, most-humid, least agreeable spot in North America, Armstrong Field seemed to have been built right in the middle of it. Sol’s yellow-white rays quietly baked the acres of concrete in front of the hall, and I had to grit my teeth against the heat on my brow and the agony of having stood completely still—in the exact same place—for what had seemed like thirty pointless minutes.

  People patrolled the edges of the formation—each wearing green and brown pixilated camouflage uniforms and high-topped simulated brown leather boots. They answered to names like Corporal and Sergeant and they screamed at anyone who dared to address them in any other way. Literally screamed. Loud enough I was sure none of them would have a working larynx at the end of the day.

  The victims—all of us gathered from across the globe—had all been rooted to the spot, immediately following our disembarkation from a flotilla of busses which had come from Armstrong’s busy aerospace field.

  There had been no warning. One moment we’d all been on the busses, chattering and grab-assing, the next we’d been herded off and funneled into one of several gauntlets of very angry Fleet soldiers—men and women who seemed to have raised cursing to a high art. Men and women who looked as if they might literally burn a person to the ground, just from the raw hate in their steely
eyea.

  We recruits were demeaned, hollered at, cuffed, slapped, and even punched until everyone was arrayed in a huge rectangle, one hundred columns wide and five rows deep. We were not allowed to drop our bags. Anyone unfortunate enough to drop his or her bags—or anything else on his or her person—was promptly surrounded by several blister-tongued Fleet soldiers who verbally pummeled the perpetrator until he or she had secured his or her things, and returned to the proper state of being scared shitless.

  For the first time, I wondered if I’d made a very serious mistake.

  One of the main doors to the hall popped open, and a gorilla of a man walked out. He took his time, carefully walking down the steps, the tops of his boots gleaming like mirrors in the sun, and his hat—which I would later learn was technically called a soft cap—perched at a crisp forward angle on top of his nearly-shaved head.

  A small brim shaded his Neanderthal brow from the sun, and in the center of the hat were three chevrons perched atop three concave half-circles, with a diamond in the middle. This insignia was replicated over the man’s name on his breast—KLAUSKI—and all of the other soldiers became immediately aware of his presence as he approached the mass formation.

  The sergeants and corporals ceased movement, and ran to what seemed to be pre-designated positions around the outside of the rectangle of recruits.

  The one named Klauski stopped dead-center before the rectangle, slowly scanned his head and eyes from left to right and back again, then clicked his heels together, raised his chin to the sky, and bellowed, “KUHMPAHNAAAAAYYY!”

  At once, all the other soldiers flicked their heads towards the recruits and repeated the same yell.

  “AHHTEN-SHUN!” Klauski bawled.

  The sergeants and corporals snapped rigid.

  Since I and the other recruits had already been standing at the position of attention for far too long, we did nothing.

  “Good morning, recruits,” said the gorilla-man.

  “GOOD MORNING FIRST SERGEANT,” shouted the soldiers in unison.

  When we recruits said nothing—heads and eyes looking frantically up and down the rows to determine what the eff it was we were supposed to do now—Klauski cleared his throat and tried again.

  “I SAID, GOOD MORNING RECRUITS!”

  As a gaggle, our rectangle blurted, “GOOSHMOURNINFUSAGINT…”

  Several disapproving whistles and tsk-tsks came from the sergeants and corporals around the formation—their heads shaking knowingly.

  The First Sergeant’s razor-straight, thin-lipped mouth curled up slightly at the corners.

  “Now, recruits, that was just piss-poor. And I do mean piss, piss, piss-poor. Y’all gonna have to git’ with the program around here real fast, before I have to go and dirty my nice bright boots on your stinky little asses. Now effin’ sound the eff off like you mean it. Good morning, recruits!”

  “GOOD MORNING FIRST SERGEANT!”

  “Okay, better. Can y’all hear me?”

  “YESFUSAGINT…”

  “Bull, try again. I said, can you all hear me?”

  “YES FIRST SERGEANT!”

  “Right. Now that’s the kind of volume I should hear coming out of your effin’ mouths any time any noncommissioned officer is standing up in front of you like this. Doesn’t matter if she’s got two stripes or six. You render respect and you clear your skinny little throats with some gawtdamned articulation and uniformity. Is that understood, recruits?”

  “YES FIRST SERGEANT!”

  “Good. Now, welcome to 69th Reception Battalion, Armstrong Field. Otherwise known as The Big Sixty-Nine. You all are gonna be here for the next six to eight days as we fill up in preparation for Pickup Day. During that time my NCOs and I will do everything in our power to properly prepare you for your entry into Induction Service Training, also known as Basic. But before we start I want to make something abundantly clear to you people.

  “The moment you stepped on this installation, you ceased to be civilians. All those e-documents you signed with your recruiter? All that crap about standing in front of the flag before you left to come here? Well now the rubber meets the road. You’re here for a specific purpose, and there is no time for second thoughts. You are committed. Most of you should have already realized that. But if you didn’t before, start thinking about that now. It will save you—and me—a lot of heartache and assache. Do I make myself clear, recruits?”

  “YES FIRST SERGEANT!”

  “Your mamas and your daddies and your aunties and uncles and grampies and grannies ain’t here to rescue you anymore. And I don’t care if you’re eighteen or thirty eight, it’s time to grow the eff up, grow an effin’ pair between your legs—females too—and learn how to walk, talk, act, shoot, fight, and be a soldier in the Fleet.”

  “YES FIRST SERGEANT!”

  “Good. You’re starting to get the beat of things, a little. And believe me, there is a beat. And a rhythm. You’re gonna find that in virtually everything you do in the Fleet. Look for it. Use it. The harder you try to cling to the old you that showed up here today, the harder it’s going to be. But the more you let the rhythm take you—the more you let yourself mold to and grow with the change—the easier it will become and the less stressful this is all going to seem.

  “Because make no mistake, recruits, stress is what Induction Service Training is all about. I can see it in your faces right now. It’s effin’ hot. Your arms are about to fall off. Your feet and legs are starting to get numb. You’re wondering why the hell you had to wait out here for so long just to listen to me jaw-jack. It’s part of the program, people. Part of the program. And you can either resist the program, or git’ with the program. Now what do you want to do, recruits?”

  “GET WITH THE PROGRAM, FIRST SERGEANT!”

  “Gawtdamn, now that’s what I want to hear! Okay, enough of me running my mouth. In front of you is the building you will call home until Pickup Day. As soon as you enter that building, at no time will you leave it unless told to do so by an NCO or an officer, is that understood?”

  “YES FIRST SERGEANT!”

  “You will obey every command given to you, and if you do not understand the command given to you, you will request clarification in a proper and respectful manner, is that understood?”

  “YES FIRST SERGEANT!”

  “Are there any questions for me at this time?”

  The rectangle remained silent.

  “No questions then? Alright. Time to whip a little training on your asses. You are now standing in what is called a mass formation. Most of the time you’ll be broken down by platoons, but once in a while it’s convenient for us to line you up like this as a large group. There are certain commands you will be given—whether in mass, or in platoon—and you must follow those commands in unison. Do you understand?”

  “YES FIRST SERGEANT,” shouted the formation.

  The First Sergeant laughed, and the other NCOs laughed with him.

  “Ch’yeah right, we’ll see about that. Okay here it comes…Companaaaayyyy”

  The NCOs surrounding the formation snapped their heads towards the recruits and repeated the preparatory command.

  “Right-FACE!”

  I did my best to mechanically rotate ninety degrees to starboard, bringing me face-to-face with another Recruit who had turned the wrong way. An immediate chorus of hoots, catcalls, and profanity issued from the surrounding pack of NCOs, as recruits who had turned left—or not turned at all—blushed and shuffled their feet until everyone was facing in the same direction.”

  “Jesus H,” said the first sergeant, shaking his head and smiling. “It’s gonna be a real fun group. Real fun. File from the left…column left…MARCH!”

  None of the recruits moved.

  “I said march gawtdammit!”

  Suddenly people were bumping into people as half the formation lurched forward and the other half stayed where it was. Like buzzsaws, the surrounding NCOs descended into the throng, screaming, insulting, ki
cking, hitting, and knocking bags to the ground. The Recruit behind me barged into my back full-force and I dropped both bags, suddenly relieved to be rid of them but then regretting it as a female corporal appeared and slapped the back of my head.

  “PICK UP THOSE EFFING BAGS RIGHT NOW, RECRUIT!”

  “Okay, okay, I only dropped them because—” (slap)

  “SHUT YOUR HOLE, RECRUIT, IS THAT HOW YOU SPEAK TO A NONCOMMISSIONED OFFICER?”

  “No ma’am, I—” (slap)

  “MA’AM? MY HELL, RECRUIT, YOU’VE BEEN HERE LESS THAN ONE EARTH HOUR AND YOU’RE ALREADY EFFED UP BEYOND BELIEF!”

  “Yes ma-errr, yes Corporal. I mean, no Corporal!”

  “I’M WAITING, RECRUIT! PICK UP YOUR BAGS AND GET BACK IN FORMATION!”

  I quickly retrieved my bags—happy to not receive a fourth whack on the back of the head, and got back in line while others did likewise. In two minutes the entire mass formation was once again standing at attention, facing the first sergeant, who no longer seemed to be smiling.

  “Wow,” he said. “That was just effin’ ugly. Y’all act like you just got out of the nursery. Am I gonna have to come around every day and wipe ass on y’all? Am I?”

  “NO FIRST SERGEANT!”

  “I hope not, because from what I’ve seen in the last five minutes none of you has what it takes to ship out on Pickup Day. To be Fleet you have to think. And right now I can tell that not a gawtdamned single one of you is doing any thinking. You’re all just going along and pretending to do whatever the eff it seems like you’re supposed to do, and hoping nobody gets up in your ass about it. Listen, Fleet doesn’t want dummies in its ranks. I’m not a dummy, and none of these other NCOs is a dummy. Dummies get people killed, even in training. Or should I say, especially in training. We don’t need dummies. So I might as well just outprocess the whole effin’ five hundred of yah and put your butts back on the runway, right?”

  “NO FIRST SERGEANT!”

  “Prove it. Someone raise their gawtdamned hand and tell me what was the first thing you all did wrong just now.”