said the female voice through the wooden door. Lost in thought, I didn’t answer right away. She cleared her throat, and tried again. “Warrant Officer Harrison Barlow?” I sighed, and slowly got up from my seat at my desk in the tiny pastor’s quarters of my chapel. She’d called me chief. I wasn’t used to the new rank. There had been a time when I’d happily watched my military days fade into memory. But the recent return of Earth ships to Purgatory orbit meant that many of us former prisoners of war had again been pressed into service—whether we wanted our old jobs back, or not. I was a prior enlisted man. They could have just slapped my stripes back on me. But my apparently pivotal role—as interlocutor between humanity, and our former enemies, the mantes aliens—had necessitated something a bit more lofty. Not like I needed the shiny silver bar on my collar.
