The Chaplain's War by Brad R. Torgersen Page A

upper halves were insectoid—complete with bug eyes, fearsome beaks, antennae, wings, and serrated-chitin forelimbs. Their lower halves were integrated into their mobile, floating saucers. It was the saucers—the computers and equipment in them—which allowed the mantes to speak to humans, and have our own speech translated back into their language, among many other things.
    The mantis guards all raised forelimbs in my direction as we approached, though they seemed to be ignoring the captain.
    I blushed in spite of myself, and raised a hand in return.
    Was I that well known among the aliens?
    We entered the conference room, and I stopped short.
    There was the Professor—whom I considered a friend, and whom I’d not seen in a long time—and a larger, much older-looking mantis on whom all human eyes were focused.
    The human contingent was arrayed around a half-moon table with chairs and computers and various recording devices.
    The two mantes merely floated in the air, about waist high.
    I smiled, and in spite of protocol, walked quickly up to the Professor.
    “Hello,” I said. “I wasn’t sure if I’d ever get to see you again.”
    “You would have not, Harry,” said the Professor, “had circumstances evolved differently.”
    If the Professor had a name, it was unpronounceable for humans. The skitter-scratch mandible-against-mandible language of the aliens was incomprehensible for us. And he’d always been addressed by title, even though he’d asked permission to be on a first-name basis with me.
    A familiar throat was cleared to my rear.
    I turned to Adanaho, whose expression told me I was erring without knowing it. Behind her sat the general—staring hard.
    “Sorry, sir,” I said, then nodded knowingly to the Professor, and walked quickly to a seat that was offered to me. The captain sat down at my side, and after the general gave me one last lingering look, he ordered the doors closed, leaving us alone with our guests.
    I checked my PDA. The captain and I were as early as we’d planned to be. Yet it appeared things were already well in motion.
    Not good.
    “Well,” the general said, “he’s here now. Since nothing I or my staff say seems to be worth anything to you, maybe you’ll listen to him. ”
    The old mantis behind the Professor floated forward.
    “Padre,” it said to me, its vocoded speaker-box voice coming from the grill on the front of its disc. The creature’s beak did not move. The translator was tied directly into the mantis’s nervous system.
    “That is what some call me,” I said. “May I ask who you are?”
    “This is the Queen Mother,” said the Professor, his manner deferential as he introduced her. “She is the highest of the Select who rule our people. Her voice carries supreme authority within the Quorum of the Select.”
    “She is your sovereign,” I said.
    “Yes and no,” said the Professor. “She is elected, but she also shares a tremendous lineage, biologically. Her genetics run through countless mantes, over many of your generations.”
    In other words, she was fecund, in addition to being old.
    I sat up a little straighter.
    “Ma’am,” I said to the Queen Mother, “of what service can I be to you?”
    The Queen Mother floated forward a bit more, while the Professor floated back.
    “Your name is spoken in my Quorum,” she said. “It is the only human name that has ever reached such height. When the one you call the Professor first came before me, many of our cycles ago, and petitioned for us to halt our Fourth Expansion, I considered him obtuse. Your superstition is of no consequence to me, nor do I have any use for it. And yet, the Professor had convinced a good many of his contemporaries that the elimination of your species—of your numerous modes of religion—would be detrimental to the advancement of mantis knowledge. And his colleagues had convinced many on the Quorum. Rather than force a contentious vote on the issue, I acquiesced, believing