Dirge - Alan Dean Foster [21]
Before he knew what was happening they had descended rapidly into seemingly unbroken rain forest, only to find themselves welcomed into a subterranean flight hangar by a milling mass of whistling, clicking, frantically chattering insects. No, not insects, he’d reminded himself. The exotic, visiting thranx were insectlike.
He had never received a full explanation of the proceedings, not even when he’d found himself thrust forward and carried along with the rest of the hastily organized strike team. The soldiers surrounding him had seemed to know little more than he, but gradually the word trickled back that a small but fanatical band of xenophobes had infiltrated the colony and were killing every thranx in sight as well as any visiting humans who tried to interfere with their bloodthirsty spree. A visiting diplomat and several esteemed researchers had been among the earliest casualties.
Swept into the depths, he had found himself caught in conditions that more closely resembled the traditional biblical hell than anything he had ever experienced before. A professional life that had previously been confined to conferring communion and counseling soldiers stationed at a peaceful tropical military base exploded in a succession of corridor-constricted concussions, flying body parts, the screams and shouts and whistles and clicks of the wounded and dying. Covered in blood both alien and human he had made his stunned, dazed way through the tunnels of death, bestowing what comfort he could on the injured and last rites on the deceased. This he had done in a spirit of faith and desperation regardless of the actual convictions of the departed. Atheists, agnostics, and true believers had received equal attention, there being no time to run dead soldiers’ personal identity chits through his chaplain’s scanner to ascertain the specifics of individual beliefs. Swirling, acrid smoke and the pungent stink of death had been his companions, and no angels had stepped out of the fiery gloom to assist his ministrations or ease his personal pain.
He had not run out of bodies when he suddenly realized that he had run out of companions. He was alone except for the righteous dead. Alone, and lost.
No, not quite lost. Another figure was stumbling down the fume-filled corridor toward him. It was human, male, its clothes torn and its exposed skin scarred. Dark blood smeared its face and arms, mixing with greasy camouflage paint. Against this grisly, dark smutch the whites of the man’s eyes stood out like sculpted marbles. He carried a large, battered rifle and wore camouflage gear but no uniform.
He was not a soldier.
Espying the figure of the padre kneeling beside an inert thranx and a dead corporal, the half-mad, half-dead xenophobe drew his own conclusion. “Dirty bug lover! You’re all gonna die! We’re gonna kill every one of you egg mother suckers!” The muzzle of the rifle started to come up.
“I was only…!” Pyreau began. He did not finish the thought. It would do no good. Whatever reason the raving lunatic before him might once have possessed had been abandoned on the surface prior to his homicidal entry into the hive. It flared in his eyes and resounded in his voice.
All chaplains receive basic military training as a matter of course. At Pyreau’s right hand lay a neuronic pistol. The green telltale pulsing in its handle showed that it still held a half charge. Whatever guided his fingers might have been divine intervention or simply the most basic, primitive need to survive. Picking up the pistol, he raised it as something loud and concussive echoed in his ears. A hot blade bit into the flesh of his left shoulder. Aiming more from reflex than training, he fired.
The figure of the xenophobe shuddered even as the madman got off a second shot. It missed Pyreau entirely, slamming into the corridor wall behind him and to his left. Nerves paralyzed, his assailant went down in a heap, the rifle tumbling from his fingers. Silence roared. Once again, Father Pyreau was the only one alive in the tunnel.
Mouth open in shock, he put the pistol