COLUMBUS DAY

By Craig Alanson

Text copyright © 2016
Craig Alanson

All Rights Reserved

Contact the author

craigalanson@gmail.com

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Table of Contents

Chapter
One    Columbus Day

Chapter
Two    Deployment

Chapter
Three    Camp Alpha

Chapter
Four    Paradise

Chapter
Five    Intel

Chapter
Six    Fort Arrow

Chapter
Seven    Colonel

Chapter
Eight    Planting Potatoes

Chapter
Nine    Jail

Chapter
Ten    Skippy

Chapter
Eleven    Away Boarders

Chapter
Twelve    Merry Band of Pirates

Chapter
Thirteen    Flying Dutchman

Chapter
Fourteen    Space Suits

Chapter
Fifteen    Raid

Chapter
Sixteen    Home

Chapter
Seventeen    Idle Hands

Chapter
Eighteen    Ticking Clock

Chapter Nineteen
Outbound

CHAPTER
ONE    COLUMBUS DAY

The Ruhar hit us on Columbus Day.
Every country had a name for the day the Ruhar attacked; the common name that
stuck, after a while, was Columbus Day. I guess that makes sense. There we
were, innocently drifting along in the cosmos on our little blue marble, like
the native Americans in 1492. Over the horizon come ships of a technologically
advanced, aggressive culture, and BAM! There go the good old days, when we
humans only got killed by each other. So, Columbus Day. It fits.

When the morning sky twinkled, with
what we later learned were Ruhar warships jumping into high orbit, we were
curious. When power plants, refineries, factories and other industrial sites
around the planet started getting pounded from orbit with hypersonic railgun
darts, we were shocked. For me personally, when a Ruhar combat transport
dropped out of the sky and skidded across a potato field, outside my tiny hometown
in northern Maine, that was when I became Officially Alarmed. It was a Monday
morning in early October, the Columbus Day holiday in America, I was home on
leave from the Army, visiting my folks. Taking a break after my battalion got
rotated home from peacekeeping duty in Nigeria. What a shit job that was, I was
happy to be home in the States. My leave was ended by a burning streak across
the sky, as the Ruhar transport came directly over my truck, arced over the
lake, and crashed in the Olafsen’s potato field, plowing up dirt and potatoes
until its nose was half submerged in a pond. It wobbled side to side for a
minute, with a screaming sound coming from its engines, then it took off and
flew low and unsteadily over the tree line toward the center of town, trailing
smoke from its underside.

Our supposed allies, the Kristang,
think that Ruhar assault transport was damaged during the drop from orbit, and
fell short of its intended target, since that is the only possible reason the
Ruhar would have invaded Thompson Corners, Maine. Hell, I didn’t want to be
there anymore, that’s why I joined the Army in the first place. My hometown is
nice enough, it’s simply nothing special. There’s potatoes and cattle and sheep
and other farming, of course, and some people like my Dad had jobs at the big
paper mill down in Milliconack, and you could get by with some lumbering,
working as a hunting or fishing guide, a little welding on the side, whatever.
Nobody in northern Maine relies on one job. Anyway, Thompson Corners is not the
sort of vital strategic target that military planners would think of, when
deciding where to drop from orbit a combat transport, with a dozen or so
heavily armed troops. The Ruhar troops, cute and furry bewhiskered bastards
that they are, no doubt waited until their transport finally skidded to a stop
on the front lawn of the elementary school in the middle of town, popped the
door open, gazed in awe at the magnificent vista of Thompson Corners, and asked
the pilot where the fuck they were. Soldiers are soldiers, whether they have
fur, skin or scales. So, logically, the Ruhar lobbed a missile at the most
imposing structure in the area, the potato warehouse, and took it out in
impressive fashion. I mean, they blew the hell out of it, those soldiers must
have had something against potatoes. Next they destroyed the two bridges across
the Scanicutt river; the railroad bridge and the old concrete highway bridge
that’s been there since it was built by FDR’s Works Progress Administration in
the 1930s. We'd had a lot of rain, and the river was running high, so with the
bridge out, the only way for me to get into town was to drive all the way to Woodford
and cross the river there. Like the old New England joke; you can’t get there
from here, right? Nice idea, if the roads hadn’t been clogged with panicked
traffic, and a hundred other people didn’t have the same idea I had, at the
same time.

When I saw that assault ship coming
in, trailing smoke behind it and headed for the center of Thompson Corners, I
was already in my parent’s pickup truck, on my way into town to pick up my
sister from her friend’s house. It was ten minutes after the first sites got hit,
the radio said the governor had just declared a state of emergency, urged
everyone to remain calm, then all communications went out. No radio, no
cellphones, no TV, no electricity. I didn’t need to wait for instructions, I
was going to pick up my kid sister, get back home, and hunker down with my
family until I figured out what the hell was happening. Behind the seat was my
father’s bird hunting shotgun, and a box of shells that were good for quail and
not much else. Shows how clearly I was thinking that morning. All my Army gear,
including my rifle, were back at Fort Drum in New York state. I was, after all,
on leave. Coming over the hill, I saw the ruins of the bridges, and nearly
crashed into a line of traffic that was trying to get into town like I was.
Bill Geary, a volunteer firefighter and a retired captain from the Maine
National Guard, was getting people organized, to drive over to Woodford and
come into Thompson Corners using the old fire road. I, like a dumbass, shouted
that my truck had four wheel drive. Almost everybody in northern Maine has four
wheel drive, even if it’s only a beat-up old Subaru. Since I was last in line,
I got turned around first, and three guys whose car had gone in a ditch jumped
in my truck. We roared off like the cavalry coming to the rescue in a movie.

By the time we fought through outbound
traffic to get across the bridge in Woodford, and bounced along the
poorly-maintained fire road halfway toward town, the Ruhar had already secured
the center of Thomson Corners, which was empty because no humans had waited for
an engraved invitation to get the hell out of there. One sheriff’s deputy
panicked, and fired off a couple shots with his 9MM service weapon, until the
Ruhar got annoyed and took out the Shell station he was hiding in, with what
looked like an antitank rocket.

I’ve seen Ruhar up close since then,
plenty of times. No, they don’t eat humans. And, no, they don’t kill babies.
Believe the propaganda if you want, I know what I’ve seen. If that sheriff’s
deputy hadn’t opened fire, the Ruhar might not have killed a single person in
town. I couldn’t blame the Ruhar; if some idiot was taking potshots at me, I’d
light him up with a rocket, too. I know, because I’d done the same thing in
Nigeria.

Anyway, the Forest Service gate across
the fire road was locked, we wasted five minutes while a guy three trucks ahead
of us tried blasting the lock with a shotgun. Surprise! The Forest Service had
anticipated somebody trying that, and that lock wouldn’t’t budge. So, a guy
rammed the gate, and busted both the gate and the radiator of his truck, which
then need to be pushed off the road before the rest of us could squeeze by and
drive through.

Yeah, yeah, everybody has a story from
that day, this is my story, so shut up and listen. One thing I’ve learned is
that Ruhar Army grunts are like grunts across the galaxy; they want to get the
combat over with and get back to their barracks, or dens, in their case. Did I
hate them? Hell yes, but I don’t think they meant to kill people, at least,
except as collateral damage. Whatever their objective was on Earth, these
troops had missed their landing zone, and were making the best of the
situation. Everybody would have been better off if those Ruhar had sat in their
busted transport with their thumbs up their asses, called the Ruhar version of
AAA, and waited for a tow truck. Combat ops don’t work that way. Something gets
fucked up on every mission; you adapt and do the best you can to accomplish
your objective. This group of Ruhar decided their objective was to secure
Penobscot county, whether that made sense or not. The Kristang tell us the
Ruhar’s most likely plan was to destroy our industrial infrastructure, and
knock us back into the stone age, so we’d be no threat to them. If that was
their original objective, they missed it by a couple hundred miles, when they
landed in Thomson Corners. The Kristang were mostly telling the truth about why
the Ruhar hit us, although they lied about everything else, which I’ll get to
eventually.

We shouldn’t even be fighting the
Ruhar, they aren’t our enemy, our allies are.

I’d better start at the beginning.

My name is Joe Bishop, I was twenty
years old on the day the Ruhar attacked Earth, a Specialist in the US Army.
Before the Army cut it, I had slightly longer than medium length hair, an
indeterminate blonde-brown color, which I got from my mother. She called the
color ‘mouse fur brown’ and had dyed her own hair a golden blonde as long as I
could remember. Blue eyes I got from both my parents, and my height at six feet
three inches definitely came from my father’s side, my mom barely stands
five-four in her stocking feet. In high school I played third base on the
baseball team, wide receiver on the football team, and was a backup shooting
guard on the basketball team, although I didn’t play basketball my senior year.
Truth is, I wasn’t a star athlete at baseball or football either. I worked
hard, put the team first, and we won our share of games. When it came time to
send out applications to colleges, I didn’t know where I wanted to go to
school, or what I wanted to be when I grew up. Other than knowing that, I
didn’t want to sit behind a desk all day. And I wanted to get out of Thomson
Corners. My father had been in the Air Force for a couple years, then he went
into the reserves, as a mechanic. Same type of job he did at the paper mill. He
liked working with his hands, fixing stuff, and I kind of did too. Money was
tight, and I didn't want to bury my self in debt with student loans, so the
military sounded good to me.

When I’d signed up for the Army, I did
it because I wanted to serve my country, and because the Army would pay for
college. The life also appealed to me, I loved the outdoors; camping, hunting,
fishing, hiking, canoeing. The training was tough, sure, nothing that I didn’t
expect, and I was proud to get through basic, and be assigned where I wanted:
the 10th ‘Mountain’ Infantry Division, in Fort Drum, New York.
Peacekeeping duty in Nigeria wasn’t what I would have wished for, but we got
orders, and I went. I was surprised that peacekeeping involved killing so many
people, but it is what it is.

So, now you know why I was laying
under a bush atop a small ridge that overlooked the center of my hometown,
staring at that busted Ruhar transport ship, and trying to figure what, if
anything, we should do.

“That is one big damned hamster, Bish, you ain’t
lying.” Tom Paulson said as he handed the binoculars back to me. “What’re we
gonna do?”

“I don’t know yet. Let me think.” There were
plenty of military veterans around my hometown, I had one of them with me, but
Tom had been a Navy supply clerk twenty years ago, and I was Army infantry with
recent combat experience, and on active duty. I guess it made sense the others
were looking at me for ideas. They knew I’d been in combat in Nigeria, but
fighting disorganized home-grown militia fanatics in the bush was totally
different from tangling with giant space hamsters in my hometown in northern
Maine.

“Goddamn, where are all the gun nuts when you
actually need them? Is this all we got?” I looked in dismay at the collection
of hunting rifles, shotguns and the odd 9MM handgun. Everybody in Thomson
Corners had a gun, because everybody hunted, or at least needed to keep bears
away from their backyard bird feeders. “Come on, nobody has an old M-60 in the
attic? Maybe an AK?”

“Hell, Bish, I want to kill a moose so I can eat
it, not vaporize the damned thing." Tom said. "Hunting licenses ain’t
cheap.”

“All right, all right, me too.” I looked through
the binos again, at the hamsters patrolling the streets of my hometown. At the
dark smoke coming from the potato warehouse, across town by the railroad
tracks, which was still burning. At the hamster’s shuttle, or landing craft, or
infantry assault ship, or whatever they called it; squat and ugly and powerful
looking, with a banged-up nose and a bent wing, and a thin stream of white
smoke coming from the belly, as it sat on the front lawn of the elementary
school.

Hamsters. We have other names for them; rats,
weasels, rodents, but with their fine, golden fur, round faces and whiskers,
what they most look like are hamsters. Except hamsters aren't six feet tall,
wearing body armor, helmets and goggles, carrying evil looking rifles, and
coming down from orbit in an assault ship. That I know of, I mean, I never
owned a hamster, so what do I know? We didn't know they were hamsters, until
one of them in the doorway of their ship, maybe the pilot because he didn't
have a rifle, took his helmet off, got something from his pocket, and started eating
it. He got yelled at, and put his helmet back on, but not before we saw his
furry head and hamster ears. They weren't exactly hamsters, but close enough.

Susie Tobin lifted her eye from the scope of her
.30-06 hunting rifle. “What about the quarry? They have dynamite, right?” Susie
was about five feet nothing, her day job was a teacher at the regional middle
school, and looking at her, you wouldn't think she could even lift her old Army
surplus rifle. But I'd seen the racks of deer antlers, tacked up on the south
side of her barn, so she sure knew how to use it.

“What’re we doing with dynamite?" Diego
scoffed. "Run up to that ship of theirs, and throw it through the door?
You wouldn’t get within a hundred yards, before they cut you down.”

"She's right," I said, thinking of the
hell that IEDs caused us in Nigeria. They were a problem on the roads, but
especially dangerous when we were patrolling a village, where sightlines were
limited and there were plenty of places to conceal a bomb. Patrolling, like the
hamsters were doing right now. Pairs of hamsters were checking out buildings in
the center of town, which, considering it's Thomsons Corners, wasn't much. You
may think that, being the Columbus Day holiday, there would have been lots of
tourists in town when the Ruhar dropped in for a visit. If you think that,
you've never had the good fortune of visiting my home town. Columbus Day is a
big leaf-peeping holiday in New England, a weekend when city folk from down
south drive out to the country, to see the colorful foliage on the trees, stay
in quaint little inns and bed and breakfast places, and take lots of pictures.
We do get tourists in our part of the Great North Woods, but not for
leaf-peeping. By Columbus Day, a lot of the trees around here have already
dropped their leaves, and our part of Maine is pretty flat anyway, plus the
pine trees don't turn color. People come here for canoeing, fishing, hunting
and snowmobiling. There isn't a whole lot of that going on the first part of
October, so the town was pretty empty when the Ruhar crash-landed, the day
being a school holiday and all. Damn good thing, too, I couldn't imagine what
would have happened if the elementary school had been full when the Ruhar took
control of the town. I didn't have to imagine that scenario, since I'd already
seen that in the movie Red Dawn. The good one made way back when
Reagan was in office, not the crappy one they made later.

Anyway, I had an idea. "Susie, your father
works at the quarry, right? You and Tom get us dynamite, detonators, wires,
whatever we need to blow something up remotely." I had no idea how to do
that, having never even seen a stick of dynamite. "Diego, stay here and
watch the hamsters, see where they patrol, especially how often they go by the
old town hall." Which was now home to the town's only diner, and an
insurance agency.  "Stan, Deb, see if you can find a truck or van
down there that we can get started, big enough to fit a couple people in the
back, something covered, not an open truck bed. Keep to this side of town, you
don't want to cross Route 11, or the hamsters will see you. If you find
something, drive it over to Red Brook road and leave it there. We'll meet back
here."

"Ok, Bish." Tom nodded. "What're
we going to do?"

I took one more look at the Ruhar, noting the
disposition of their troops without even thinking about it, seeing where they
were patrolling through the town, and where they had defensive positions around
their ship. "We’re going to the dentist."

"You have got to be kidding
me." I blurted out.

"Bish," Stan said defensively,
"this is the best we could find. It's either this, or an old Dodge
Neon."

"Most people got in their cars and left in
a hurry, it looks like, there aren't a lot of cars left on this side of the
river." Debbie added.

"Yeah, but-"

Tom shook his head. "There is no fucking
way we can drive this. We're fighting an alien invasion. We can not
drive this, this, thing."

I had to agree. Except for one thing, it was a
perfect truck. They'd found a delivery van, like a FedEx truck, it was in
pretty good mechanical condition; the tires weren't bald, there was some
rusted-out spots around the wheel wells but nothing serious, it had big back
doors so several people could get in or out fast, and they reported that it ran
and shifted well, with no squeaky belts or squealing brakes. They'd found it
behind the Davis Brothers garage, where it must have been getting the interior
rebuilt, because the inside was stripped other than the driver seat. It was a
good truck, except for that one thing.

Barney.

Barney, the big purple cartoon dinosaur with the
perpetual stupid grin. Barney, and Smurfs, Mickey Mouse, unicorns, and a lot of
other fictional characters were painted on the truck. Whoever decided which
characters to paint on the truck had made interesting choices, like, why was
Iron Man waving to the Smurfs? And, was that Darth Vader down near the right
front fender, or had someone started painting black primer to cover up a rust
spot, and decided to get creative? Most of the characters were poorly painted,
it took me a minute to realize that what I thought was a sitting Buddha, was
supposed to be Winnie the Pooh. Winnie the Buddha? It was an ice cream truck,
in case you hadn't guessed yet. A ridiculous ice cream truck, that I was fairly
certain didn't have permission to use any of the trademarked characters painted
on the side. Also, instead of the familiar 'Mister Softee' logo, this one had a
poorly stenciled 'Super Softie' logo. How could ice cream be super soft? Was it
melted?

This was clearly a bandit ice cream truck, the
kind that I pictured furtively roaming suburban neighborhoods of a big city,
selling expired ice cream and trying to avoid local authorities. The giant
purple Barney plastered across both sides, and the stuffed Barney strapped to
the hood, were impossible to avoid. Whoever owned this truck must really,
really, like Barney.

"We could throw a quick coat of paint on
it." Stan suggested.

"We are not taking time to repaint the
damned thing." I growled. I didn't like the idea either, but this truck is
what we had. To go into battle with. "Besides, the hamsters won't know who
Barney is, they may think he's a fierce predator." Even I didn't believe
that one.

"Oh for Christ's sake." Susie was
exasperated. "You idiot men are afraid to ride around in a truck that says
'Softie' on it? Get over yourselves. I'll drive the damned thing. Joe, what's
the plan?"

"GO GO GO!" I shouted along with Stan,
as we jumped in to sprawl on the floor of the ice cream truck. Susie didn't
need to be told twice, she hit the gas as we were still in the air. Stan would
have slid right out the back of the truck if Deb hadn't gotten hold of his
shirt collar. Tom kicked Stan's feet inside and slammed the back doors shut,
just as the truck bounced over a big pothole, and Tom landed on his ass on top
of the Ruhar soldier. The hamster grunted, which told us it was still alive, I
hadn't been completely sure of that when we grabbed it.

Looking back, it was a stupid plan, and we got
lucky. I'd noticed the hamsters went through the alley between the diner
building and the hardware store next to it. While the rest of us were off
gathering supplies, Diego had watched and confirmed the hamster patrols went
through that alley regularly, looking in windows and knocking open doors to
look inside. They were doing that all over town, I chose the diner because
there was a short dirt road that led from the river right to the back of the
diner, the road went through woods and had good cover most of the way. We'd had
a lot of rain from a nor'easter the week before, so the river was almost at
Spring flood stage, and was really roaring as it went over the rocks and under
the bridge, it made enough noise to cover the sound of the truck backing up
behind the diner. Dynamite was placed inside the diner, up against the brick
outside wall, we blew it up as the hamster soldiers got halfway down the alley.

None of us knew how much dynamite to use, so we
used too much, it collapsed most of the wall into the alley, even the ice cream
truck got hit with stray bricks. No matter, our improved bomb did what it was
supposed to do, it knocked those two hamsters silly, and buried them under
bricks. Tom, Stan and I grabbed the hamster that was closest to us, it also was
least covered with bricks. Debbie covered us with a shotgun, as we hauled it
out of the alley, Tom and Stan each got hold of an arm and I held its feet, we
scrambled down the alley, tripping on bricks, and tossed the hamster in the
back of the ice cream truck.

It was a stupid plan. Diego was watching from
the hill, with a walkie talkie that Susie got from the quarry, she had the
other unit in the truck. Diego reported that as soon as the dynamite exploded,
a half dozen hamsters sprinted from their spaceship, another thirty seconds and
they would have caught us. And if for some reason, like none of us really
knowing how to use dynamite, our bomb hadn't exploded, those two hamsters would
have walked to the back of the alley and seen the truck that wasn't there
before. I didn't like our odds, against alien soldiers with body armor and
advanced weapons.

Luck was with us that day, even as Tom fell
again, this time into the button that controlled the ice cream truck's music
system, and 'Turkey in the Straw' blared out of the rooftop speakers as the
truck bounced and skidded down the gravel road along the river. "Shut that
damned thing up!" Susie yelled at Stan, she had enough to do driving the
truck. There was no seat belt for the driver, that was one of the items removed
when they stripped the interior, and Susie's feet barely reached the gas pedal.
Still, she had that sucker on the floor, and we were moving.

Stan punched buttons, and the music changed to
'Camptown Races', then 'Pop Goes the Weasel' then a couple video game theme
songs I couldn't name, before Stan finally got the stupid thing to stop. I
never felt like such a total idiot in my life, trying to hold down an alien
soldier in the back of an ice cream truck, my chin getting bashed into the
metal floor of the truck as moronic music blasts out of speakers and Barney's
evil twin grins maniacally from both sides.

Our truck shot through a gap in the trees along
the river, a clear space of about fifty yards. This is where I figured the
hamsters were going to shoot us, they had a clear shot for a couple seconds at
least. Why they didn't shoot, I think, is by that time the hamsters who reached
the bombed-out alley realized one of their own was missing, and guessed it was
in our truck. Anyway, we made it, the truck flew across the gap, then the land
rose slightly between us and the center of town, and then Susie was standing on
the brakes to slow the truck for a curve. After that, we bounced up onto a
paved road, and Susie put the pedal to the metal. While on pavement, with a
smoother ride, Tom and I got the hamster's hands tied behind its back, tied its
legs together, and I started pulling off its gear. We had it under four lead
vests, the kind dentists use when they give you X-Rays, that was my idea to
block the signal of any location device the alien soldiers may have. The body
armor around its torso had a quick release mechanism, as I expected, because
human or alien, a soldier needed to get gear off and on quick. I also popped
the latch for the chinstrap of its helmet, and for the first time, got a good
look at the enemy. One of its eyes was open, there was blood from a cut on its
cheek but I didn't think it was badly hurt, mostly stunned and disoriented. It
was wearing an earpiece and microphone, which I tore off, and on its belt was
what looked like some kind of radio. I told Tom to throw all of it out the
window, we could come back to get it later if we had the opportunity, our
priority then was to capture an alien soldier so our military could study it,
see what kind of enemy we were facing.

Per the plan, Susie drove us a mile down the
road to Tom's place, he had a barn, and she drove the truck right in through
the open door, skidding to a stop. We all shared an 'oh shit did that really
happen' moment. None of us could believe it. The hamster was moving about, so
Tom sat on it, and I pointed a handgun at its face. That calmed it right down.
It had probably never seen a Sig Sauer before, but it recognized a projectile
weapon when it saw it.

"I can't hear Diego anymore," Deb
reported, holding up her walkie-talkie. "The last thing he said was the
aliens were running around, but their ship isn't moving." My last
instructions to Diego had been to get out of town, in the opposite direction,
as soon as he lost sight of our truck. I'm sure he was safe, he knew his way
around the woods.

"They're waiting for a tow truck." I
guessed.

"What?" Susie asked, like she hadn't
heard me right.

"A tow truck." I explained.
"Their ship is busted, they must have called upstairs to their fleet, and
they're waiting for someone to come fix their ship, or pick them up. Let's get
Fuzzy Face here into the root cellar, before his friends get organized and come
looking for him."

Tom's place had an old root cellar, when I say
old, I mean his house dated from 1848, and the root cellar belonged to the
house before that. The root cellar had been expanded and converted into a bomb
shelter, by the family that owned the farm back in the 1950s, now Tom and his
wife Margie used it for storage. We got the hamster down the stairs and cleared
space in the middle of the shelter for it, Tom padlocked a chain around its
ankle, with the other end of the chain around a pipe sticking out of the floor.
With the hamster comfortable in the center, there wasn't much room for the rest
of us, because of all the shelves. Did I mention that Tom's wife Margie liked
to can fruit and veggies? The woman had a bit of a canning problem, the whole
place was stacked with jars. Most people in this neck of the woods can stuff,
it's a way to have good food through the winter, and a lot cheaper than buying
food from the store. My folks made applesauce, and jams, and canned tomatoes,
beans, whatever we got from our garden. Tom's bomb shelter looked like Margie
was planning to invite the entire 10th Division over for supper, and wanted to
have plenty of food left over.

"What now?" Stan asked, while looking
hungrily at a jar of blackberry jam.

"Now we wait. The military has got to be
here soon." We'd all been surprised not to see any fighter jets or
helicopters in their air, which told me the enemy had total air supremacy.
"Hopefully, this guy's buddies," I pointed to our captive, "will
be leaving soon. When our cavalry gets here, we hand him over."

"What makes you think they're going to
leave?" Deb asked.

"Because no way would alien invaders have
Thomson Corners on their initial target list. These guys are here only because
their ship is busted. My big worry is if they stick around to look for Fuzzy
Face, after the tow truck gets here. I'll stay with him, the rest of you better
head south, see if you can find any National Guard, or even state cops."

Susie was indignant. "You're sending the
womenfolk away to safety?" She had her hands on her hips, I knew what that
meant.

"You have a family-"

"So does Tom." Susie pointed out.

"Tom got a text from Margie," I said
defensively, "she and the kids are all right, heading to her mother's
place. And Stan's wife is in Portland."

"And my husband is down in Milliconnack and
my kids are in Bangor with my sister. I'm staying here." Susie said
empathetically, and held up her rifle for emphasis.

"Fine." I conceded without much fight,
I really didn't want to be alone. "You and Stan have rifles, you get up in
the woods behind the house where you can cover the road. Deb, get up to the
rock ledge behind the house, you know it, right? Tell Susie and Stan if you see
anything coming this way. Tom and I will stay here with Fuzzy Face."

Fuzzy Face wasn't talkative. Tom and I tried
communicating with gestures, and pointing to ourselves, the hamster sat there
stonefaced. Except when it shifted uncomfortably, then it grimaced. There was
blood, red blood, on its hip. At least alien blood was red, and not green or
blue or something really weird like that. I approached slowly, hands open to
show I didn't have a knife. "We need to look at where you're hurt." I
can slowly and loud, which is always the best way for foreigners to understand.
Remember, foreigners are stupid, so you have to talk loud and slow so they will
understand you. The hamster shrank away from me as far as it could, backed up
against a shelf on the outside wall. I gestured to my hip, then his, then put a
finger into the blood on the floor, holding my finger up so he could see the
blood. Shaking my head and waving my bloody finger, I said "You're hurt.
This is bad."

"Bish," Tom said uncertainly,
"you sure you should be touching that thing's blood?"

"It's got to be safer than touching human
blood. You got bandages down here?"

"Yeah, first aid kit's in the cabinet. We
got paper towels, too, Margie buys them by the gross at a warehouse
store."

The hamster wasn't hurt badly, I blotted the
wound clean, washed it with sterile water, which made it wince again, then
slathered antiseptic lotion on the cut, and applied a bandage. It looked at me
different after that, like it hadn't expected humans to be civilized. It made a
sort of kissing gesture with its lips.

"I think it wants water?" Tom guessed.
Margie had also bought bottles of water by the gross, we got out three bottles,
Tom and I both drank from our bottles, then I opened another and held it to the
hamster's lips. It downed half the bottle steadily, while looking me in the
eye, that kind of freaked me out. Then it looked down meaningfully at its left
front pocket, gesturing with its nose. Very carefully, I opened the pocket
flap, which was a kind of magnetic thing, I think, and pulled out what looked
like an energy bar. It didn't have bright packaging like the Hooah! bars I knew
from the Army, just a green plastic wrapper with white writing in an alien
script. I pulled the end of the plastic wrapper open, facing away from me.
Which was stupid, what if it was some kind of explosive, and pulling the
wrapping just pulled the pin on the grenade? Nothing happened. I sniffed it
carefully, it smelled like sugar and nutmeg mixed with sawdust. It was an
energy bar for sure. I broke off a piece and fed it to the hamster, it chewed
for a long while, I guess their energy bars are as tough as ours. In about ten
minutes, it ate half the energy bar and drank more water, then shook its head
when I offered another piece. I felt the same way about our energy bars, half
of one was usually enough for me before my jaw gets tired. In a further attempt
at interspecies cooperation, I held the bar up in front of the hamster as I
folded the wrapper over it, and tucked the remaining half back in its pocket,
next to another two full energy bars. It smiled, or tried to. Smiling, without
understood context, could be viewed as baring teeth in a threatening manner.
The hamster had teeth that weren't much different from human teeth; white
enamel, it looked like, the two upper front teeth were bigger than in humans,
but not comically large like a beaver's teeth. Now that I was closer, the fur
on its face was fine, it covered all its skin, but the fur was finer and
shorter than a human beard.

"You hear that?" Tom asked.
"Sounds like someone's shouting." We had kept the door to the bomb
shelter cracked open so we could hear if Susie saw anything, but mostly closed
so any radio signals from an implanted transmitter in our hamster would be
blocked, I hoped. Tom stepped outside, I could hear him shouting with Stan. He
stuck his head in the door. "They say the tow truck is here."

We left our hamster captive in the bomb shelter
- root cellar - warehouse, and hustled across Tom's backyard into the woods.
"It came from the northwest, I saw the contrail first," Deb reported.
"It flew right into the center of town. I think you're right, Joe, the
hamsters here called for a ride."

"I hope whatever their mission is, it's
more important than finding one missing soldier." If the new alien ship
picked up the stranded hamsters and left the area, my plan was to load Fuzzy
Face back into the ice cream truck, and race south on the highway until we found
a military unit, probably National Guard, that could take custody of our
prisoner. "Let's go up to the rock ledge where we can see."

What we saw wasn't good. The new alien ship,
same type as the first one, was circling around the town at about five hundred
feet. It appeared to be flying a search pattern, and pods on the side of the
ship had opened, exposing racks of missiles. There was a flash of light, a
rumble of thunder and a column of smoke from the center of town. "They
blew up their busted ship." I announced, as if everyone hadn't guessed
that. "That's interesting."

"Why?" Deb asked.

"I think it means they don't plan to stay
here, at least, not here," I pointed toward the town. "And
they don't want us poking around their technology while they're gone. If they
planned on staying here, they would have brought a repair crew."

The ship climbed, hovered, then slowly headed
toward us. Not toward us, exactly, but east, then along the river.
"Shit." Stan spat on the ground. "They must have a signal from
that stuff we threw out of the truck."

I tried to assure people. "Nobody panic.
That's why we threw that stuff out of the truck, and that's why our hamster is
under concrete and earth right now, behind a steel door." After our
captive was in the root cellar, Stan had thrown the lead blankets over the hood
and tailpipe of the truck, to reduce the heat signature. "Unless they can
somehow track us into Tom's barn, it will take them a long while to search
everywhere, and they don't know we're not already ten miles down the
road." Stan and Deb had argued for us to keep driving, rather than
stopping at Tom's place. to put as much distance as we could between us and
Thomson Corners before an alien rescue ship arrived. I had vetoed that idea,
because we didn't know how soon another alien ship would arrive, and because I
didn't entirely trust the lead blankets to block a tracking signal. We didn't
even know whether the aliens used radio, they may have some more exotic
technology. If the aliens could track a signal, it didn't matter whether we
were one mile or fifty miles away, they were going to find us. Tom's
combination root cellar - bomb shelter was perfect to hide a technologically
advanced alien. Whether my plan was any good depended on what the aliens did.

The alien ship slowly made its way along the
river, then sped up and followed the highway south, toward us. After circling
twice, it descended out of sight below the tree line. For a moment, just a
peaceful moment, things looked almost like a normal October day in rural Maine.
Tom and Margie's house was tidy, he had a couple cords of firewood nicely
stacked in a line behind the house. Margie had cornstalks tied around the lamp
post in the front yard, getting ready early for Halloween like she always did.
In the backyard, she had the bathtub Madonna decorated also, with a-

Oh. I'd better explain what a bathtub Madonna is
to you uncultured types. You take an old bathtub, set it on end half buried in
the ground, paint the outside white and the inside a light blue, and then you put
a statue of the Virgin Mary under the arc, like a grotto. It's a homemade
shrine of sorts. These days, you can buy ones already made out of concrete, but
that's cheating, and God knows if you did it the lazy way. Most people put
stones or flowers around it, Margie's shrine was surrounded by brightly colored
mums. Or I thought they were mums, I'm not a flower expert. The Madonna had
been there when Margie and Tom bought the house, and Margie spruced it up with
the flowers, she also decorated it for the seasons. At Christmas time, Mary had
a little Santa hat. Right now, for Halloween Mary was wearing a Jedi knight
outfit, complete with glowing lightsaber that Tom had hooked up. I hope God had
a good sense of humor.

Across the road, there were pine trees, lots of
pine trees, and then flat fields, a glimpse of the river. It was a nice sunny
day. Except for the pillars of smoke coming from town, from the smoldering
potato warehouse, and the burned-out alien ship. And except for the other alien
ship now climbing back into the sky, it zoomed up to a thousand feet and
hovered. "Yup," I said, "they found that alien stuff we threw
out of the truck, and dropped off some guys to check it out. That ship up there
is providing close air support to the guys on the ground. Tom, there's," I
counted on my fingers, "six, no, seven, houses between here and where they
are?"

"Ten," Tom corrected me, "you
didn't include the McDonald and Burgess places, back off the road. And the old
gas station fruit stand that's been abandoned for twenty years. That's ten
places, with multiple structures like barns and garages. They'll be thorough
searching each one, right, and that takes time."

I bit my lip, which is a thing I did when I was
thinking. "The alien commander up there has no idea where we took his
soldier." What would I do, in his situation? "We could be in any
house or barn around here, we could be in a cave in the woods, we could be ten
miles down the road. He has no idea." Unless our captive had some sort of
transmitter that could be detected even from the bomb shelter. They did, after
all, have technology to travel between stars. I tapped my chin, that's another
thing I did then I was thinking. "They only sent one ship. If this was a
search and rescue mission, they would have sent several ships. This guy started
down from orbit before we grabbed fuzzy face, he only planned to pick up
hamsters from the first ship."

"What does that mean?" Susie asked.

"It means the next five minutes will tell
us what their orders are. If that ship recovers the guys on the ground and
flies away, then they're sticking to their original mission plan, and they'll
handle search and rescue later. If that ship hangs around, then they've
scrubbed the original plan, and they're waiting for reinforcements to sweep the
area."

"That's what you'd do?" Susie asked.

"That's what we'd do, the Army."

The alien ship descended again, then climbed and
resumed hovering, closer to us. "Damn it! It's Option B. He just dropped
off more guys to start searching buildings." I saw Susie check her rifle
again. "Susie, forget about any cowboy Alamo last stand shit. All we've
got is three rifles, a shotgun and two pistols. If they get close, we head east
through the woods. The missiles on that ship could kill all of us from ten thousand
feet."

"We're going to give up?"

"We're not giving up, we're being
realistic." I couldn't believe I was arguing with Susie about this.
"We can't use the ice cream truck again, it's too distinctive, and that
alien ship is too close."

"Fine!" Susie shot back. "We wrap
our Fuzzy Face in lead blankets, and carry him into the woods here. It's only a
mile to the river from here, we can-"

"Hey!" Deb shouted. "The sky!
More lights!" We looked up to see the morning sky twinkling again. There
were a lot of lights up there. "Oh, damn it. They're bringing in more
ships?" Deb asked. "That can't be- WHOA!"

We looked away, spots swimming in our eyes from
a searingly bright explosion in the sky right above us. I blinked, staring at
the ground, my shadow flickering as more explosions lit up the sky.

"Yeah!" Stan pumped his fist.
"We're hitting back! Nuke the bastards!"

"No way." I shook my head. "Our
nukes don't have seeker warheads, they can only hit a preprogrammed targets, on
the ground." Unless the Air Force had some amazing toys I didn't know
about. There were still spots in my eyes, I shielded my eyes and looked toward
the horizon. More explosions in the sky, farther away. "That's not
us." Was that an EMP blast, the aliens setting off a nuke high in the sky,
to knock out our electronics? We didn't know it then, but the second set of
lights in the sky was a Kristang battlegroup jumping into orbit, then attacking
the Ruhar.

"Then who is it?" Tom asked.

"Hey, look!" Debbie pointed up the
road. The alien ship that was tracking our captive was descending again, fast.
It was on the ground only a few minutes before taking off again, and this time,
it stood on its tail and went straight up, fast. We heard a sonic boom, and it
left a contrail behind. Wherever it was going, it was in a hurry.
"Whatever is going on up there, that ship just got new orders. Let's get
Fuzzy Face in the truck again, and bring him to the National Guard armory,
before they come back."

"Then what?" Tom asked, as we
scrambled down the trail, all of us glancing at the sky. We needed to get Fuzzy
Face away from the area, before the aliens changed their minds again.

"Then, I see what my orders are." If I
couldn't contact the 10th Division, I'd hook up with a local National Guard or
Reserve unit for now. "And we survive. I have a feeling Margie's warehouse
of canned goods is going to be more important that these guns, with winter
coming on."

CHAPTER
TWO    DEPLOYMENT

Late the following Spring, I was in
Ecuador, about to be shipped off-world, to fight hamsters in outer space. Ain’t
that a kick in the ass. I was surprised how cool it was in the mountains of
Ecuador, my mental images of South America always involved suffocating heat,
like I'd experienced in Nigeria. It had been a cold winter in Maine, not cold in
terms of temperatures and snow, which was about average for recent years. Cold
in terms of, no electricity for a long time, and gasoline and heating oil in
short supply. My hometown, and my folks, were better equipped for the winter
than many others across the country; my parents had a wood stove in the house,
and another out in the garage/workshop. A family from down state, who'd been
frozen out of their apartment building, came to live in the garage after
Christmas, my father bartered repairing a tractor engine for bales of straw
that we packed into the garage walls as insulation, covered by canvas tarps. I
visited my parents a couple times, the garage was cozy and warm, and smelled
like new-mown hay. There was another family of three, plus a single woman,
living in my parents' house, as part of a government resettlement program.

Everyone was on their best behavior,
all winter.

The state and federal governments in
the US had a rough start dealing with the crisis after the Ruhar attack,
fumbling around uselessly, then they got their acts together and focused simply
on getting people through the winter. The Ruhar attack hadn't been what we
expected from watching sci fi movies, instead of hitting military bases and
major population centers, they had mostly destroyed electric power plants and
industrial facilities. It was weird, I saw satellite pictures of New York and
DC after the attack, and other than lack of lights and traffic on the roads,
the cities weren't touched. After the Kristang kicked the Ruhar out of our
solar system, the US of A didn’t have much working electric-powered
infrastructure left. Phones and the internet were down, electricity was spotty
if you got power at all, the radio only broadcast emergency messages a couple
times a day, TV stations and cable were out. The Navy brought nuclear
submarines and aircraft carriers into port in major coastal cities, and hooked
them up as floating power plants to provide electricity to critical facilities
like hospitals. We were slowly regaining electric power across the country, the
key word being slowly. When I left for Ecuador, my parents still didn't have
power, other than the generator my father hooked up from the tractor's power takeoff.
He ran the tractor on a 50/50 mix of alcohol and gasoline, with the alcohol
home-brewed. The alcohol ate up seals in the engine, so my father and the guy
living in the garage replaced the seals every month. They only ran the
electricity in early mornings and evenings, anyway, there wasn't fuel available
for much more.

The biggest problem facing America
wasn't lack of electricity, it was the economic crash that followed the attack.
My father lost his job when the paper mill shut down. Loggers didn't have
enough gasoline to run their trucks or even their chainsaws. Without wood pulp,
the mill couldn't produce paper. The market for paper had collapsed anyway
along with the rest of the global economy. Industrial nations like the US,
Japan, China and across Europe were hurt much harder than lower-tech areas of
the planet, which was ironic. The greater the level of a nation's technology,
the worse it was hit by the crisis. The value of technology companies went
straight into the toilet, and not just due to lack of demand from the overall
economy. Who wanted to invest in Silicon Valley, when our new allies the
Kristang were going to share incredibly advanced technology with us?

Except they didn't. The Kristang said
we weren't ready, that we couldn't be trusted with their level of technology,
and that we needed to focus on rebuilding our current infrastructure. Really,
our new allies were a disappointment, other than chasing the Ruhar away. The
bulk of the Kristang battlegroup jumped away within a week after defeating the
Ruhar, because Earth didn’t have space docks or warship servicing facilities,
or pretty much anything else the Kristang needed. They didn’t fight the Ruhar
for the benefit of humanity, they fought to deny the Ruhar a base in our little
corner of the galaxy. Earth was Guadalcanal in WWII, that’s how one of the National
Guard officers described it. Neither side cared about the place, except as a
steppingstone to somewhere more important. The US and the Japanese hadn’t cared
about the island of Guadalcanal or the natives living there, all either side
had wanted was to use that island as a base to push on to the next conquest.
The Kristang and the Ruhar felt the same way about Earth. Being American, the
world’s only superpower, strongest military force in history, it was hard to
think of ourselves in the role of the native primitives, watching the Kristang
and Ruhar forces do battle over our land, with weapons we could barely
comprehend.

“Hey! Bishop! Hey!”

I spun around, disoriented, to find my
self face to face with a guy from my fireteam, a guy I never thought I’d see again.
“Cornpone!” I shouted.

“Brown bread!” He responded, and we
hugged and pounded each other on the back so hard it knocked the wind out of
me. Jesse Colter, from Arkansas and a proud son of the South, which is what
he’d told me when I first met him in basic training. I called him ‘cornpone’
because that was, I think, something people ate in the South. ‘Brown bread’ was
his retort, referring to a molasses-sweetened raisin-filled bread in a can that
is a New England tradition. I had served him a slice once; some people heat it
in the can in hot water, but I prefer to toast each slice. You cut off both
ends of the can, and push the bread out, with the rings from the can visible on
the bread.

I know. Trust me, it’s delicious.

“Or should I call you Barney now?"
Jesse laughed.

Shit. The story had gotten around, I'd
been teased all winter by the National Guard guys I was with. 'Barney and the
Smurfs' is what people were calling me and the gang who captured the alien
soldier. "Oh, man, does everyone know about that now?"

"With the internet kinda back up,
the whole planet knows about it. Damn, man, good to see you!” Jesse said.
“There’s a few of the 10th here, but nobody else from our squad
yet.”

“You’re the first person from the 10th
I’ve seen.” I admitted, looking around for other familiar faces.

“How’d you get here?” Jesse asked, as
he bent down to pick up the duffel bag he’d been carrying before he saw me.

“After Columbus Day, I was going to
try to get back to Drum, but nobody had enough gas to make the trip. So, I
hooked up with the local National Guard, asked if they knew what was going on.
The Guard colonel commandeered me, they’d been Federalized anyway. I figured
what the hell, they gave me a rifle, a helmet and food, right?" Orders
officially assigning me to the Guard came by shortwave radio later. "So, I
played soldier in Maine, helped harvest crops, guarded fuel and food convoys.
Then I got the call to come here, so I hopped a train to Boston.” A freight
train. Riding in a converted old boxcar, I'd felt like a hobo, even though I'd
had a ticket from the US government.

“No, what I meant was, how’d y’all get
here? You fly?”

“Oh, yeah, uh, they put us on a troop
train from Boston, it took us five days to get to Miami. We flew in about two
hours ago.” We'd flown on a United 767 that had seen better days.

Jesse nodded. “I took a train to
Dallas, and sat around there three days waiting for a flight, the damn Air
Force couldn’t scrape enough fuel together to gas up the plane. I hear some
units are coming on ships, from New Orleans and Houston.”

“You seen this tower thing?”

“The elevator? Just what you can see
from here. I don’t know about this, compadre.”

We looked up the mountain, the summit
was barely visible under an overcast sky. Shooting straight up from the top of
the mountain was a ribbon of white light. When the UN agreed to provide troops
to fight under Kristang command, the Kristang had constructed what they called
a space elevator, built it in less than a month. They chose this mountain in
Ecuador, because it straddled the equator. On top of the mountain, the Kristang
had constructed a base station with a fusion reactor, and thousands of miles
above was a station in geosynchronous orbit. What connected the two stations
was a thin magnetic field, basically a stationary lightning bolt. We were
supposed to go into orbit on an elevator car that rode the lightning bolt. One
of the Air Force guys on my flight said he’d heard the Kristang sent pulses up
the magnetic field, and the elevator car was pushed along by the pulse. This
elevator in Ecuador was the first to be finished, the Kristang were talking
about building two others, one in Africa and the other somewhere in Indonesia.
I squinted and shaded my eyes with my hand, examining the thin beam of light.
“I don’t know about this either, man. One thing I do know is if the Kristang
can do this, I’m glad they’re on our side.”

“I hear that, amigo.” Jesse agreed.

Looking up at the sky, at the lighting
bolt I’d be riding into orbit, I wondered what had happened to Fuzzy Face. We’d
driven south in our ice cream truck, until we ran into a state police
roadblock, and when the cops saw who was in the back of the truck, we’d been
given an escort down to Lincoln, where a National Guard helicopter took Fuzzy
Face away. After that, any information about him was classified, and I’d been
discouraged from talking, or asking, about him. Wherever he was, I hoped we was
being treated well.

A buzzing sound caught out attention,
we both turned to watch a group of grey-painted tiltrotor aircraft, flying in
formation and coming in from the west. As they approached, the lead planes
slowed and swung their propellers up into hover mode, descending like
helicopters. Before I could ask, Jesse volunteered “The Navy has two carrier
groups off shore, the Lincoln and the Reagan. I met some of the
Marines around here this morning.”

“They coming with us?” Two carrier
battlegroups would have sounded impressive, before the Ruhar attacked. Compared
to alien militaries that could lift people into space on a lightning bolt, our
nuclear-powered carriers were obsolete row boats.

“Some Marines units are, but these
guys? Nah, they’re here to provide security for the elevator.”

I’d heard on the radio that the
Kristang left security of the space elevator in Ecuador to the USA. I laughed.
“Bet they’re happy about that.” No red-blooded US Marine wanted to be stuck on
guard duty, while the Army went off into space to avenge the attack on our
planet.

“Fuckin-A, man. They offered me big
bucks for this patch.” Jesse fingered the blue UNEF patch on his right sleeve,
the logo of the United Nations Expeditionary Force, which is what they were
calling us now. National patches, in our case the US flag, went on the left
sleeve. “Like money means anything now.” Jesse frowned and looked down at his
clothes. “At least those Marines have real uniforms on. I got this at a surplus
store in Arkansas.” His pants fit, while his top looked to be three sizes too
big.

My own ‘uniform’ was mismatched, the
pants were from the Maine National Guard, while the top, which had been issued
to me on the train to Miami, was in an old camo pattern, and looked like it had
been in storage since the Iraq war, the first one. Or maybe the
Spanish-American War. It still smelled faintly of mothballs. “Maybe the Army
will issue us new unis here.”

“Don’t count on it.” A familiar voice
barked at us. We turned to see Lt. Amos Gonzalez, who had been a platoon leader
in the 10th. Not our platoon, but a familiar face. Jesse and I
snapped to attention and saluted. “At ease, men. Bishop and Colter, right?” His
face broke into a grin. “It’s good to see the two of you. Glad you made it to
the party.”

“Good to see you, too, LT." Jesse
said. "Do you know how many of us are here?”

He shook his head, eyes down, as he
kicked the dirt with his boot. “Communications are still spotty. We’re putting
people to work as they straggle in.”

Jesse frowned at Gonzalez avoiding the
question. “Hey, LT, all I’ve seen here so far is us, guys from the Belching
Buzzards," he meant the 101st Airborne Screaming Eagles, "the 3rd
Infantry, and Marines. We’re not bringing any armor or cavalry?”

Lt. Gonzalez shot him a scornful look.
“Colter, you really want to be in a tank, fighting against an enemy that can
shoot down from orbit?” He didn’t wait for Cornpone's answer.
"That's a quick ticket to a long dirt nap. The Kristang said they needed
infantry, so that’s what we’re sending. The armor and aviation boys are going
to sit this one out.”

“Pardon me, sir, but what the hell
good is infantry going to do against the Ruhar?” I asked. “I don’t even have a
weapon.”

Gonzalez nodded sympathetically. “The
Kristang won’t allow weapons on the elevator. We’re supposed to get weapons,
body armor and everything else we’ll need, when we get to wherever we’re going.
Personally, I like my old M4, but I don’t want to go up against the Ruhar with
it.”

“We’re serving with Marines, sir?” I
asked.

“A Marine brigade, yes. And, I hear,
Brits, French, Chinese, maybe some Russians and Indian army also. You men
checked in yet?”

“No, sir, I just got off the bus from
the airport.” I said. I could still feel the steel slats of the bus seat on my
butt. We had come from the airport, and climbed the rough, newly-cut road, in a
convoy of garishly-painted old schoolbuses that were probably the finest
transportation this part of Ecuador had to offer, before the Ruhar attacked.

“Uh-uh.” Jesse shook his head. “I’ve
been here since this morning, and as soon as I got off the bus, the Marines had
me moving food pallets.”

“Better get checked in, then, you need
a medical eval before you take the magic carpet ride up into space. You see
that big circus tent over there, the one with the UN flags?” He wasn’t joking,
it really was a circus tent. “Get over there on the double, the elevator’s leaving
at 1700 hours.”

The tent was a madhouse. Jesse and I
weren’t looking forward to getting poked and prodded by Army doctors, we
needn’t have worried. The medical exam consisted of standing fully clothed in a
booth the size of a shower, and having a light beam run down, up, down and up
again. When I stepped out, the doctor didn’t look up from his computer. “You’ll
live, Bishop.” I could see a file with my picture on the computer screen, the
doctor clicked a few buttons, and the file was replaced by some other guy’s.
“Next!”

“Excuse me, sir, is that it?” I asked,
confused.

“That’s it. You just got your first
exam with a Kristang medical scanner, and it says you’re healthy enough. Move
along, people, we haven’t got all day. Next!”

After the medical exam, we got
showers, with honest to God hot water, although we weren’t issued new uniforms
so we put our old clothes back on, and then went to another tent for a hot
meal, Army style. As far as I was concerned, Army-style was a good thing, it
meant I got plenty of food. I went through the line, and was standing with my
tray in hand, looking for a place to sit, when Jesse stood up and waved me over
to his table. "This here's Gus, 1st Armored," Jesse said through a
mouthful of cornbread, pointing to a guy sitting next to him.

“I thought only infantry was going on
this trip?” I asked.

Gus shrugged. “I drove a Bradley, I
guess they need drivers for whatever they’ve got up there.” If the Kristang
thought we needed drivers, then hopefully that meant the infantry wouldn’t be
walking every place we went.

Cornpone used a piece of bread to soak
up gravy from the meatloaf. "I don't know where we're going, but if it
means three hots and a cot, I'm all in. Things were pretty lean this winter at
home."

I didn’t know what I expected the
space elevator to be, but it wasn’t what I expected. It looked most like a
waiting lounge at an airport. The huge disc-shaped elevator car had four
levels, with the lowest level containing the machinery. Or so I supposed, since
we were only allowed on the upper three levels. Cargo pods were slung below the
bottom of the car. The habitable levels were each divided into eight wedges,
containing row after row of thinly-padded plastic chairs. Chairs with seat
belts. The trip up to the orbital station was scheduled to take nine hours,
hours enlivened only by crowding around the viewports and looking down at our
receding planet’s surface. After a while, even that got old. The elevator was a
no-frills contraption, designed to transport a maximum number of troops in a
minimum amount of time. Comfort on the trip was not a Kristang priority. There
wasn’t even a snack bar built into the elevator, so the Army had set up a
portable kitchen on each level, and the food was plentiful. I had my first
decent cheeseburger in a very long time, then went back for another. Jesse and
I explored the place, wandering around, meeting the soldiers we’d be serving
with, swapping stories, listening to contradictory rumors. Since the elevator
had a capacity of five thousand humans, a good part of a full army division was
aboard on our trip. We wandered by one wedge that had been set up as an
impromptu officers’ mess, poking our heads in, before moving along to mix with
the rest of the grunts.

After I’d downed three sodas,
alcoholic beverages not being supplied by the Army, I needed to check out the
bathrooms, which I had been dreading. What kind of plumbing had the Kristang
provided? Either the Kristang had similar biological functions, or they had
consulted human plumbers, because I need not have worried. It looked like a
typical highway rest stop bathroom, only new, and cleaner. The dispensers even
had soap.

The trip at first was slow, it really
was like riding an elevator, there was a subtle pressure of extra gravity, and
a faint vibration. As we climbed and the atmosphere thinned out, we
accelerated, and the artificial gravity kicked on to compensate, at what we
were told was about 85% of Earth normal. I talked to one of the Army cooks, who
had been up and down on the elevator several times. As we approached the space
station, he explained, we would slow down, but we wouldn’t feel any movement
because of the artificial gravity. I expressed doubts about the safety of
riding a lightning bolt, especially with Ruhar raiders still harassing the
Kristang, the cook told me not to worry. Earlier in the week, a Ruhar frigate
had popped out of hyperspace while the elevator car was halfway to the space
station, at its most vulnerable point. The frigate had fired off two missiles
before it got popped by a pair of Kristang patrol destroyers, and defensive
lasers on top of the elevator car took care of the incoming missiles. It was
nice to know we weren’t entirely sitting ducks, while we ate snacks and sat in
uncomfortable chairs.

I managed to fall asleep, slumped over
in a chair, I woke up when a Marine kicked my foot. “Rise and shine, sleeping
beauty. This joy ride is coming to an end. Collect your gear, if you have any.”
The Marine moved away, kicking awake other sleepers.

Jesse had been asleep on the floor
behind me, using his duffel bag as a pillow. I shook his shoulder. “Oh man,
your ugly face isn’t what I want to wake up to.” He said grumpily. “What’s up?”
He managed to say through a jaw-stretching yawn.

“I think we’re approaching the space station.
Want to get a look-see?”

The station was a donut, with six arms
radiating out. At the end of two arms were what I assumed were Kristang ships,
resting what looked like belly-down on platforms. One of the ships was sleek
and dark, the other much larger and not as powerful looking. While Jesse and I
gawked, the cook I’d been talking to earlier came over and squeezed through the
crowd to stand next to us. “That,” he pointed to the smaller ship, “is a
cruiser, and the fat ugly one next to it is the transport ship.”

“You been on it?” Jesse asked.

“Nah, they only let us on the station
while the elevator car is unloading, then it’s right back down to Ecuador for
the next group. I hear the transport ship can hold this whole group, as soon as
you’re aboard, they’re leaving.”

“Any idea where they’re sending us?” I
figured the cook might have heard something on one of his trips.

He shook his head. “I don’t know, and
if any of our officers know, they ain’t saying. Personally, I think the
Kristang are keeping it on a need to know basis, and we humans don’t need to
know.” We watched silently, as the elevator car slowly approached the station,
until the bulk of the station cast a shadow across the window, and hid the
cruiser from view. “I wish I was going with you, tried to switch to
infantry," his uniform patch said he was 1st Armored, "but the Army
says my MOS is cook, so that’s what I’m doing.” He sounded bitter.

“Hey, you make a damned fine
cheeseburger.” I stuck out my hand.

He wiped his hand on his apron, gripped
my hand fiercely, and looked me straight in the eye. “You guys are going to
kick ass, right?”

“Damn straight.” I answered with
conviction. I didn’t know if I was coming back, but I was going to kill as many
hamsters as I could. Every soldier and Marine I’d talked to felt the same way,
the same deadly sense of purpose. We’d been attacked, the very survival of our
species threatened. Rage wasn’t an adequate word to describe how we all felt.
In the train station in Boston, I had been walking through with three other
soldiers, headed for outer space and war, and the crowd noticed us. People
stopped, spontaneously started saluting, then they applauded. It really touched
me. I remember one old guy, must have been a grandfather, had his young
grandson with him. He showed the little guy how to stand, and positioned the
boy’s hand to salute us. The expression on the grandfather’s face, right then,
told me everything about how people felt about us soldiers in the United
Nations Expeditionary Force. We were carrying all their hopes, and not only
hopes for vengeance. Hope for survival, survival of the human species. That’s
what made this war different, for the first time we really were all in this
together.

“Fuckin-A, man, we’re going to kick
ass.” Jesse said with all seriousness, and we bumped fists. “Army strong, can’t
go wrong. Hoo-ah.”

Like the cook, we didn’t get to see
much, after we left the elevator car. US Marine guards directed us into the
space station, which generated the lightning bolt we'd ridden up into space. We
lined up single file, to do what, I didn't know. The station was big, I
wondered aloud how they'd built it so fast.

"A Thuranin star carrier brought
it here in sections, and they assembled it." A lieutenant in line ahead of
us said.

"Sir?" I asked. "What
is a Thuranin?"

"The Thuranin are the patron
species of the Kristang." Reacting to the totally blank stares he got from
me, Cornpone and everyone else, he stepped slightly out of line to speak to us.
From his uniform patch, I could see he was with the 3rd Infantry. "Didn't
they tell you people anything?"

"Sir, I'm from northern Maine, we
first got the internet a week before the Ruhar attacked." I could see he
didn't appreciate my attempt at humor. "I've never heard of the Thuranin,
sir."

He twirled his finger in the air.
"This station, the elevator, that's all Thuranin technology, the Kristang
don't even have artificial gravity aboard their ships."

"Sir?" Jesse 's face began
turning green when he heard that. Everyone in the line was looking queasy at
the idea of experiencing no gravity. "Zero gee? We haven't been trained
for that, at all."

"That's why you're in line here,
to get meds to prevent space sickness. We can't have humans puking their guts
out, in a Kristang transport ship."

"We're not going on a Thuranin
ship?" I asked, feeling queasy already. I was deeply regretting that
second cheeseburger. The line moved forward, and we shuffled our feet along the
deck.

"Thuranin star carriers rarely
venture down into a gravity well, they stay well out in the Oort Cloud of any
star system." Seeing more blanks looks, although I was feeling smug that I
knew what an Oort Cloud was, he added "That means out beyond the orbit of
Pluto, where spacetime is flat, and it's easier for their star carriers to form
a jump field. Kristang ships can only jump short ranges, we guess six to eight
light hours, which is about here to Neptune. They make a series of small faster
than light jumps like that, out to where a Thuranin star carrier is parked. A
star carrier is a big, long spine, with hardpoints for short range ships to
latch on. The star carrier has an advanced jump drive, way beyond what the
Kristang have, so the Thuranin carry Kristang ships between star systems. G-2
thinks the Kristang ships can't actually travel between stars; with their short
jumps, and the need to recharge engines between jumps, overall they travel at
less than the speed of light. It would take them more than four years to get to
the nearest star from here. The Thuranin, we think, can travel something like
three hundred times the speed of light, in jumps of about one lightyear."

I didn't like the math that was
running around in my feverish brain. Three hundred times the speed of light was
incredibly fast, but it also meant that if we were going to a planet that was,
say, a mere hundred lightyears away, it would take four months to get there!
Four months. Stuck on an alien ship. In zero gravity. And a hundred lightyears
sounded like a lot, but the galaxy is huge. Somewhere in school, I'd learned that
Earth is twenty seven thousand lightyears from the center of the galaxy, and
the whole galaxy is something like a hundred thousand lightyears across. I
hadn't considered any of this when I was so eager to get of Earth and fight the
Ruhar. "Sir," I asked slowly, "where are we going?"

"That's not a secret. We're going
to a planet the Kristang have set up as a training base for us, we're calling
it Camp Alpha."

"And how far is that?"
Cornpone asked as he shot me a look. He was doing math in his head also.

"The Kristang won't tell us, but
people who've been there took pictures of the night sky, and from the position
of stars, our astronomers have got it fixed at 1223 lightyears from
Earth." Just then, one of the doors at the end of the line opened, and the
lieutenant was called in.

Oh My God. A twelve hundred lightyear
journey, aboard a ship that traveled three hundred times the speed of light,
meant we were going to be stuck aboard a Kristang ship attached to a Thuranin
star carrier, in zero gravity, for four years! I'd heard the
troubles astronauts had aboard the international space station in zero gravity,
how their eyesight deteriorated, their bones became brittle and their muscles
wasted away after a couple months. What good were human soldiers going to be after
four years in zero gravity? I was so shocked, it didn't even occur to me the
lieutenant had said somehow humans had already gone to Camp Alpha and come
back, obviously in much less than a year.

"Four years, dang! Is that right,
twelve hundred lightyears away, at three hundred a year?" Cornpone's voice
reflected the shock we all felt. "Maybe they're going to freeze us, make
us sleep the whole way? They did that in Avatar, right, you saw that
movie?"

People were grumbling, stunned at the
implications of what the lieutenant had told us. Then it was my turn with the
doctor, who was wearing civilian clothes and a white lab coat. She looked
bored. "Do I need to take my shirt off, ma'am?" I was hoping I could
keep my pants on. It was embarrassing enough standing around in my boxer shorts
in front of a male doctor, with a female doctor it was worse. I mean, I didn't
want my friend to be obviously happy to see her, if you know what I mean. But
maybe it was worse if he didn't rise to the occasion. The doctor was cute, and
I was a healthy guy, so I felt that out of respect for her I should at least
have a semi-

"No, soldier, keep your shirt on.
Lift your chin, please." She held what looked like a plastic and chrome
gun under my left ear, and squeezed the trigger. I hardly felt anything. Same
thing on the right. She put the gun down and checked a computer display screen,
tapped it a few times, and said "Looks good. You've been injected with
Kristang nano machines, that will soon migrate to your inner ears, and prevent
you from feeling nauseous in zero gravity. They will dissolve after a while,
and you shouldn't feel any effects. If you do feel like your balance is off
while you're in gravity, contact the medical staff aboard the ship."

"Ma'am, how long will we be aboard-"

"You will receive a full briefing
aboard the ship." The door opposite where I'd come in opened, and I took a
hint to leave. The gravity was working fine, it was the thought of being
injected with tiny machines that was making me queasy. Microscopic alien robots
were swimming in my blood. It was creepy.

Once our group was all done with the
doctors, guards directed us to the transport ship, and hustled us along with no
time for sightseeing. There wasn’t much to see on the station corridors anyway,
blank walls in a light blue color, with markings in several human languages
attached to the walls. The Kristang ship was more interesting, lots of access
panels, corridors going in every direction, pipes or conduits along the
ceilings. The walls and floors had recessed handholds, I guess for when the
ship was in zero gravity. No Kristang were visible, I still had never seen one
of the lizards in person. A Marine took charge of our group, and directed the
men into one compartment, women into another. The compartment I was in had row
after row of bunk beds, stacked three high. Each group of three bunks was
attached to an arm that could rotate the stack 90 degrees for when the ship was
under thrust. The Marine told us this was a Kristang multi-mission pod, which was
currently configured for troop transport. We were lucky, he said, that the
bunks were sized for Kristang, who were slightly larger on average than humans.
I shrugged and found an empty bunk, tossed my small duffel bag into it, and
secured it with a strap that I figured was there for that purpose. The bunk
wasn’t bad, seven feet long, and about four feet to the bunk above it. Luxury.
Somebody already had a card game going, Jesse wandered over to the game, while
I flopped on my bunk and pulled out a book to read on my tablet. I was getting
anxious about the tablet, it was down to about 25% power, and there didn't
appear to be an electrical outlet anywhere. It looked like I'd been stupid to
bring the thing into space with me.

A sergeant came to stand in the doorway.
He cleared his throat to get our attention. I was amused to see he was wearing
the same out-of-date style uniform camo top that I had on. “I am Staff Sergeant
Raynor, I'm in charge of this compartment, and the two on either side of you.
In two hours, this ship will undock, and boost out of Earth orbit. You all need
to be in your bunks and strapped in, ten minutes before departure. If you don’t
know how to work the straps, Specialist Edwards here will show you. After we
depart from the station, the artificial gravity will cut off, so make sure you
don't leave anything loose that can float around. This ship will boost for
about an hour, the acceleration is only thirty percent of normal gravity, it's
not like NASA rockets. Then the ship will make a jump through hyperspace. You
will be able to get out of your bunks once the Kristang give the all clear, in
about ninety minutes. After that, you’re free to move around, keep in mind
we'll be in zero gravity. I don't want any jackasses horsing around in zero gee!
Once the ship gets far enough away from Earth, we will be making a series of
hyperspace jumps, and you will need to be in your bunks for those also. Our
ultimate destination is a planet the Kristang have set up as a training base.
If you have any questions, you will get an opportunity to get answers later.”

If I was going to be stuck in my bunk
for over an hour, I decided to hit the bathroom first. I went back out the door
and asked the Marine guard where the bathrooms were. He pointed down the hall,
with a wry smile.

The restroom facilities were
interesting. There were no urinals. You could sit normally, but the toilets
were designed for zero gee, and there were straps to hold you in place and the
seat formed a seal on your backside. And there was a flexible tube, with
disposable cups, if a guy only had to pee. The stalls all had instructions
plaques in several human languages, and it was not as complicated as it sounds,
the toilet's computer took care of everything. Score a point for technology.
Kristang also apparently had unisex bathrooms, so we took turns; five women,
then five men. Damn, women take forever. There were a lot less women than men,
so it wasn't a big deal. On my way back to my assigned compartment, there was
an Army captain standing in the hallway, reading something on a tablet. I
saluted, and stopped to talk to him, if I could. “Excuse me, sir, how do you
charge your tablet?"

"In each compartment is a set of
magnetic pads; set your tablet on it, and it'll charge. It's like a charging mat,
and it senses what kind of juice your tablet needs, so it won't burn it out.
Thuranin devices are smart."

"What’s a Thuranin, sir?”

The captain shook his head. “The
Thuranin are a very advanced race, they lead the coalition that the Kristang
belong to. I'm told they look a bit like aliens in sci-fi movies; short and
skinny, with big bald heads.”

Now I was completely confused. “The
Kristang aren’t in charge?”

“As far as we humans are concerned,
yeah, anything to do with Earth, the Kristang are in charge. The Thuranin are
the Kristang’s, patrons, is maybe the right word. Anyway, all you need to know
is, traveling from one star to another is a slow process in a Kristang ship, so
they latch onto Thuranin motherships for the big jumps. And before anyone asks,
no, I’ve never actually seen a Thuranin, we stay aboard the Kristang ships.”

“This is getting complicated, sir.”

He nodded sympathetically. “Think of
it this way: the Thuranin are the major leagues, the Kristang are, ah, the
triple A farm team. And we, well, we’re kind of the semi-pro local league right
now. We’re hoping to get promoted to single A ball, but we need to prove
ourselves first, and we’ve got a hell of a long way to go. Get back to your
bunk, soldier, we’re boosting out of orbit soon. You'll get a briefing later.”

After an hour of gentle acceleration,
boosting away from Earth, and ten minutes of what I guessed was preparation for
the jump, our transport ship jumped. I couldn’t see anything, strapped into my
bunk. When the ship jumped, it felt like static electricity crawling on my skin
for a split second, then it was back to floating in zero gee. I kept track of
time on my watch, it took eight hours, twenty one minutes between the first and
second jumps. Later, I learned that Kristang ships are powered by fusion
reactors, and their jump engines take about eight hours to build up enough
power for a jump. That time lag between jumps can be a major tactical liability
for an attacking force; the attacking ships, which have just jumped into
combat, mostly can’t jump away immediately if they get into trouble, whereas a
defending ship, with fully charged engines, can pop to a different location, if
it has a swarm of missiles incoming. In actual battle, the time lag between
jumps is not so much of an issue. Warships always maintain reserve energy for a
short emergency jump. Ships can’t safely jump in or out of hyperspace near a
large gravity field such as a planet, the jump field can get distorted and tear
the ship apart. So an attacking force needs to come out of hyperspace away from
a planet, and travel through normal space to get into orbit. Once the attacking
ships get close enough to a planet to use weapons, they are so far within the
gravity field that even ships with fully charged engines can’t safely jump.
Defending ships, which never know where an attacker is going to pop out of
hyperspace, tend to hang close to planets, and then move out to intercept. If
that sounds too much like a game with lots of rules to memorize, it is. Lucky
for us humans, we don’t have to think about it. We don’t have any starships,
and the Kristang aren’t giving us any. We’re infantry, we fight on the ground.
The Kristang get us there, and we'll take care of the fighting. That's what we
all thought then, anyway.

Between jumps, the ship boosted for
about two hours, then we had free time, when we could be out of our bunks.
Everyone experimented with moving around in zero gee, I could see after only a
few minutes that we should have been issued helmets. Sergeant Raynor came in to
yell at us for stupidity, but mostly let us get bumps and bruises. Experience
is the best teacher.

One of the show-offs was Jeff Murdock,
he came into our platoon in Nigeria halfway through my tour there, so I didn't
know him that well, but, man, he took to zero gee like a dolphin takes to
water.  He was doing flips that would have made me dizzy, and he could
push off a wall and float across the compartment to wherever he wanted to go,
swimming through the air. He hung from a bunk upside down, using his feet to
hold himself in place, with a huge grin. "Man, this is great! I can't wait
to get some of that Kristang biotech. I'll be a super soldier, man!"

The rest of us weren't so enthused
about watching him fly around like a giant squirrel.

"Murdock, you don't need advanced
alien technology to be a soldier, you need a freakin' miracle." Garcia
laughed.

"Yeah, man, what you need is a
brain, and you better talk to the Wizard of Oz about that." Was Thomson's
comment.

"Hey, fuck you guys!"
Murdock shot back, and flew across the compartment, spun and landed gracefully
on the opposite wall, he didn't even bounce. "You'll see."

We were brought to the Kristang
version of a chow hall or Dining Facility, or maybe it's called a galley since
it's on a ship? Our experience with zero gee in our bunk compartment helped,
when we had to pull ourselves along corridors through the ship. The chow hall
held almost a hundred people, and had tables and chairs, what made it different
is those chairs were solidly attached to the floor, and had seatbelts. Lunch
was MREs; humans couldn't eat Kristang food, and the Kristang didn't want us
screwing with their kitchens in zero gravity. MREs reminded me of camping when
I was a kid, and they weren't bad, but I'd eaten too many of them in Nigeria,
and I glumly ate my food, swapping stuff with the people around me. Cornpone
was extra hungry, he gulped down his MRE, and bummed a pack of crackers off me.
Halfway through the meal break, an Army major came floating into the
compartment, expertly flew across to the opposite wall, and hooked his feet to
a strap. He made it look easy. "Is everyone enjoying their astronaut
food?" That drew a laugh from the crowd. "I understand there is a lot
of bad intel going around, so I'm going to set you straight. First, we will not
be in zero gee the whole way. This Kristang ship will latch into a Thuranin
star carrier for the majority of the journey. The hardpoints on the star
carrier are platforms that have artificial gravity, so after we're attached,
we'll have the eighty five percent gee that is normal for the Thuranin. Second,
this journey will not take four years, and you will not be frozen. So, you'll
have to listen to your bunkmates snore." Another chuckle from the crowd.
"The Thuranin star carrier will be jumping to an artificial wormhole, and
then passing through the wormhole to the other side, which is hundreds of
lightyears away. The star carrier travels between wormholes, and lets the
wormholes take us most of the way to our destination. It's going to be seventeen
days from Earth to our first destination, a planet we're calling Camp Alpha.
That's a training base where you'll receive your new weapons and equipment, and
learn the rules of engagement. The Kristang are sticklers about us adhering to
the ROE, so pay attention while you're there. We are not going to cause
problems for our new allies. As for Camp Alpha, I have been there, and all I
will say about it now, is that is an excellent place to focus on our training
mission."

That drew a knowing groan from the
crowd. We all understood that was Army speak for a hellhole where there was
nothing to do but work and train. I looked at Cornpone, and we shrugged. We'd
seen worse, and we weren't out in space for a pleasure cruise. The major didn't
take any questions, and left the chow hall when he was done with his brief
speech. I felt a lot better, knowing we wouldn't be stuck aboard the ship in
zero gee for four years.

After the Kristang ship made a fourth
jump, we had to stay strapped into our bunks, as the ship maneuvered to latch
onto a Thuranin mother ship. There was a clanging sound, and a vibration, as
our ship attached itself to the star carrier. Gravity slowly came back, to
cheers from everyone I could hear. Especially when it was announced that we'd
have hot food for dinner, now that the kitchens had gravity. It was beef stew,
with a lot more potatoes and veggies than beef, but it was a promise that we
wouldn't be surviving solely on MREs for the next three weeks. And the biscuits
were hot and fresh. Good chow is important for good morale, the Army sure knew
that.

I like fresh, hot biscuits.

In case you were wondering.

The Thuranin star carrier, mothership,
whatever you call it, then went through a series of jumps I lost track of,
because some of them happened while I was asleep. Some people aboard the ship
were trying to keep amateur records of all the ship's maneuvers; jumps, time
between jumps, time and force of acceleration. Personally, I lost track after
the second jump, and I figured we had qualified people keeping track for us.
The loudspeakers woke us up around 0300 one night, when the ship was
approaching the wormhole, and I wished I had more warning, because my bladder
already was sending me warning signals. The idea of falling into a wormhole,
having my atoms ripped apart and reassembled, or whatever it was that happened,
had me scared. I was laying rigid in my bunk, waiting for the unknown, when the
loudspeaker announced "Wormhole transition complete. Secure for normal
space maneuvering." Damn. Not only did I not need to have worried about
the wormhole passage, I didn't even realize when it happened. There were more
jumps, more waiting between jumps, and lots of boredom. We exercised in shifts,
using equipment brought from Earth, including treadmills and exercise bicycles.
I liked running, but hated treadmills, it was so boring. Even competing with
the guy on the treadmill next to me didn't help, after the first couple days.
We played games on our tablets, and exercised, and read books and watched
movies. Being aboard the ship was kind of what it must have been like for
soldiers in WWII, crossing the Atlantic and Pacific in slow transport ships.
Except, on a WWII transport ship, those guys had been able to go up on deck,
get fresh air, and see the sun, and the horizon.

We had decent chow, and enough room to
move around on the ship, except for the areas off-limits to humans. What we
didn't have was anything to look out the window at, if there had been windows.
And we didn't have any news from, or contact with, Earth. In Nigeria, I'd been
able to get onto the internet, and send emails, and video chat with my folks and
friends, at least most days. Here, we were out of contact until we came back, a
long, long way. One thing we'd learned, is that not even the technologically
superior Thuranin had faster than light communications, except for drones which
carried messages by jumping. Kind of like a high-tech carrier pigeon.

After a while, I felt like we were low
budget tourists stuck aboard a crappy cruise ship, it didn't feel like being in
the Army. After a bunch more hyperspace jumping, that I didn't even bother
trying to keep track of, the star carrier arrived outside some star system, or
so we were told. The Kristang ship went to zero gee again, detached, and jumped
four times. Finally, we maneuvered into orbit at our destination. All in all,
my first interstellar voyage consisted mostly of being stuck in a windowless
compartment. I wouldn't recommend it for a vacation, unless you're desperate.

We did get a look at the planet below,
and it wasn't inviting. Earth from orbit looks blue, and green, and tan where
there are deserts and grasslands, and white ice at the poles. This place looked
brown, and red, and even the places that had water weren’t a nice blue. The one
pole I could see had an anemic layer of dirty white, like snow beside the road
in April, when it's all dirty and crusty and everyone wishes it would just
freakin' melt and go away, damn it.

In groups, we packed into the mess
hall to get a briefing, Lt. Gonzalez stood on a chair, and waited until
everyone got settled into the compartment. “Welcome to Camp Alpha! The Kristang
didn’t want to tell us their name for this planet, so it was just ‘Alpha’.”

Some guy at the front asked “But we
know where we are, right, LT?  I mean, somebody has figured it out?”

“Yeah,” Gonzalez smiled, “the advance
team took pictures of the night sky, and astronomers on Earth calculated where
the view must have been taken from. I think the Kristang were having fun with
us, keeping it a secret, they must have known we’d be smart enough to discover
this planet’s location. We are still in the Orion Arm of the galaxy, the Milky
Way galaxy, about twelve hundred and twenty three lightyears from Earth. That's
far enough that you can’t see our sun from here, without a telescope. I’m told
our sun is an unremarkable star anyway."

“Has everyone been to the window, and
seen where we’ll be training? Camp Alpha is not the kind of place you would go
on vacation. It is the kind of place where soldiers are trained, and formed
into an army the Ruhar will learn to fear. The Kristang have set aside this
planet as a training and staging base for humans, for three reasons. First,
nobody else wants this place. It’s dry, I'm told that it can be 110 degrees in
daytime, and down to 20 below at night. And that’s the nice part of the planet,
where the training base is located. The sunlight is a funky blue-white color,
and it will peel the skin off your bones if you aren’t protected. Second,
because this place is so damned nasty, it’s a great place to train. Not every
planet we’ll be going to is like Earth, here you will learn to use the
equipment the Kristang provide, and to survive in harsh conditions. If you
can’t be combat effective here, we don’t need you. And third, the Kristang
chose this place because they think the Ruhar don’t know about it. Yet.”

"Sir," someone asked,
"why is the planet all brown and burnt looking?"

"The star here is a slow
variable, it hiccups every once in a while and increases its output. When that
happens, it scorches the entire system, then it settles down again."

Hiccup? That sounded like one hell of
a hiccup. The crowd of us shifted uncomfortably on our feet, and a low murmur
went around.

"Don't worry about it, the
Kristang know the star's schedule, it won't flare up again for another ten to
fifty thousand years." Gonzalez added hurriedly. A range of ten to fifty
thousand years sounded like the Kristang should have just told us they had no
freaking idea when the star would next blow up. "Your briefing packets
have all the info you need about this planet, so I'm only going to cover the
high points. There is life down there, the biggest animal is an insect about
three inches long. It has sharp pinchers and it's venomous, but the venom isn't
fatal to human biochemistry, it only causes a mild rash sometimes, as an
allergic reaction. Most people don't react to it at all. The only things that
are dangerous to us down there are the climate, which can get really hot and
really cold, and our own stupidity. Use common sense, remember you're here for
training, and read the regs; they're written to keep you alive and combat
ready. We will assemble into units when we get dirtside, until then, follow
instructions."

CHAPTER
THREE     CAMP ALPHA

There was no space elevator at Camp
Alpha, so we made the trip to the surface on a Kristang shuttle. Only, I learned,
it wasn't called a shuttle, or a dropship, or a lander, which were other terms
I'd heard people use. The Army term was Surface To Orbit Craft, or STOC. In
practice, we called such ships either dropships, or STOCers, pronounced
'stockers', like stock car, only one word. STOCers could reach orbit by
themselves, not needing booster rockets, and some of the larger types were
capable for interplanetary flight, if you had plenty of time on your hands and
got along really, really well with the other people you were squeezed in with.
The Kristang, and other species, did have craft they called something like
'dropship', but dropships were used for large-scale invasions, to ferry lots of
troops and equipment down to the surface, a one-way trip. Technically, a dropship
was like a WWII glider, they could survive entry into an atmosphere, maneuver a
bit before landing, and land vertically, but once down, they stayed there.
Dropships were one-shot craft, whereas a STOCer could climb back into orbit,
and make the trip multiple times. The distinction didn't matter much to me, as
I would only ever be a passenger, but it was cool knowing how our senior
partners did things, it made me feel part of the team, not just a cog in a
machine.

The dropship I squeezed into held 220 people
and our gear, it was the size of a 747, roughly, most of it being engines and
fuel tanks. The ride down was rough, we hit the atmosphere and it felt like I
had a sack of concrete on my chest. Then it got worse. Man, I was glad when the
ship leveled out and flew like an airplane for a short time. We all cheered
when that happened. The actual landing was uneventful, I realized we were down
only when the engine sound cut off.

Me. Landing on an alien planet. Who'd
have thunk it, huh? "Lieutenant," someone asked, "do you know
who was the first human to set foot an another planet?"

"Probably General Meers." A
soldier behind me said. Meers commanded UNEF.

"Nope." Gonzalez shook his
head. "It was a female British Army captain, part of the multinational
advance team. It was supposed to be a Chinese Army colonel to go first, but
this British captain was seated next to the door, and when they landed, the
Kristang pilot told them to get out, pronto. The Kristang didn't see humanity's
first landing on another planet as a big deal, they wanted them all off the
ship quick so it could go back up and pick up the next group."

Damn. I'd been hoping the first person
was an American. Well, we still had Neal Armstrong, and old Neal had done it
with good American technology. This Brit only hitched a ride on an alien space
bus.

My own first footstep on another
planet was almost embarrassing, I was used to the 85% gravity of the Thuranin
star carrier, and then zero gee again, and Camp Alpha's gravity was 107% of
Earth normal. The unfamiliar weight caused me stumble down the ramp. Lt.
Gonzalez hadn’t been joking about the heat, when we got off the dropship, I was
hit by a furnace-like blast of heat. And humid, too, none of that bullshit
about it feeling cooler because it’s a dry heat. And bright, I had to shade my
eyes and squint to make it the hundred meters to where the transport vehicles
were parked. Everything smelled burnt, like the aftermath of a fire. The oxygen
content of the atmosphere was supposed to be only a bit lower than Earth
normal, it sure felt like my lungs were sucking air and not getting a whole lot
of benefit. Maybe the landing site was at high altitude. I had almost reached a
transport truck, and was waiting in line to board, when a woman behind me
swayed, and began to slump to the dusty ground. My own head was swimming from
the sudden heat, like a head rush when you stand up too suddenly at the beach.
She protested and tried to push me away, but it was clear her knees were
wobbling. “Listen,” I checked the name above her left pocket, “hey, Miller, we
are Army Strong.” I repeated a US Army recruiting slogan, “We don’t let each
other down, not in combat, and sure not in this stinking heat, you got that?”

She nodded angrily, and leaned on me
breathing heavily, until she could stand up again. I could tell that needing
assistance, even briefly, was killing her pride. “Thanks, uh,” she glanced at
my name tag, “Bishop. God damn it’s hot here. I’m from Seattle.”

"Ha! Northern Maine here. You
don't know what cold is. " She let me hold onto her shoulders to steady
her a few seconds, until her legs stopped shaking. Ten feet away, a guy's knees
buckled suddenly, and he face planted in the dirt, another victim of the sudden
heat. Miller recovered and climbed stiffly into the back of the truck by
herself. Once the truck was loaded, we drove off to a tent city that was being
built atop a bluff. I looked around, trying to savor my first moments on an
alien world. There wasn't much to savor. It was dry, and dusty, and the air still
smelled burnt, so the smell wasn't from the dropship's engine exhaust. Low
vegetation clustered around rocks, it appeared to be a type of pulpy, fleshy
lichen. I guessed the plant stored its own water supply, like a cactus.
Bouncing around in the back of the truck, we looked at each other and grimaced
knowingly. Camp Alpha was our first alien planet. And it sucked.

Sitting on the truck was my only time
to savor the experience, as soon as we got to our assigned campsite, the Army
put us to work setting up tents. The heat wasn't so bad, now that I'd had time
to get used to it, but the extra gravity was a bitch, and the burnt smell had
saturated my nose. A staff sergeant assigned me, Cornpone and five others to
set up a large medical structure, made of prefab insulated wall panels. It was
tougher than it looked. "Let's start with this side wall section," I
said, hoping that the sooner the tent was complete, the sooner we could go for
chow.

There was a muffled sound like a really long,
high-pitched fart, then the moaning started.

"Is that, bagpipes? WTF?" Cornpone
exclaimed.

"Yeah, there's a British battalion on the
other side of the camp." I jerked my thumb over my shoulder, to where I'd
seen the Brits building their encampment.

"And they play bagpipes? For real? I
thought that was an Irish thing."

Garibaldi scoffed. "Scottish, not Irish,
you bonehead. Damn, don't you know nothin'?"

Valdez said "Hey, you hear the one about
the Scottish guy? He's sitting at a bar, drowning his sorrows in whisky."

"Everybody got a good grip on it?" I
asked "Lift with your legs, not your back."

Cornpone snorted. "Damn, Bish, you sound
like my mother. We got this."

"So he says to the bartender," Valdez
grunted with the effort, "he says, so, you build thirty houses, and when
you walk down the street, do people say 'there goes MacDougal, the home
builder? no, they don't'."

We got the wall up on top of our knees, and I
told the team to get under it, and lift it to our shoulders. The extra gravity
was killing me.

"Then he says 'you save five children from
a burning building, and when you walk down the street, do people say 'there
goes MacDougal, the rescuer? no, they don't."

"Valdez, will you shut up a minute? All
right, people, lift!" I said in my best US Army voice of authority.

We got that bitch of a wall unit up above our
shoulders, and were winning the fight against gravity, when Valdez gasped
"'Then MacDougal says, ‘but you fuck one sheep’-."

We lost it. Men scattered as the wall unit came
crashing down, and people were rolling on the ground laughing. I tried to bark
an order, but I was laughing so hard that a snot bubble came out of my nose,
and when people saw that, they fell over laughing again.

Lieutenant Gonzalez shot a dirty look at us, and
a sergeant started walking in our direction. It was official, I had no business
being in charge of anything, the Army made a huge mistake giving me even
responsibility to set up a tent. I got the men back together, and we tried to
lift the wall unit again, but every time we got it a few inches off the ground,
Valdez started laughing at his own joke, and it cracked everyone up. Finally, I
sent Valdez away to get us some water, called over a half dozen more guys, and
we got the damn thing set upright and fixed into place.

"One sheep." Cornpone laughed,
and I couldn't help joining him.

After we got the tent set up, Cornpone and I
finally connected with the other two guys of our old fireteam; Sergeant Greg
Koch, and Private Dave Czajka. We called Koch 'Sergeant', he had a nickname but
you needed at least sergeant stripes to use it, unless you wanted a six foot
three shaved head black man from Georgia glaring at you. You didn't. Dave we
called 'Ski', because he was from Polish stock around Milwaukee, and even
though his last name didn't end in '-ski', the rest of us figured it should
have. Really, it was his fault for not having a decent nickname when he joined
our unit. Damn, it was good to get the band back together! I had trusted all
three of them with my life. We'd gotten into some hairy shit in Nigeria, we'd
come through with nothing worse than some scars and bad memories. Before I left
home, I'd sort of kept in touch with them by spotty emails, but I hadn't heard
from them since then, and Cornpone and I weren't sure either of them had made
the trip from Earth. They had, they'd been on a different Kristang ship, and
arrived at Camp Alpha a few hours before us. Koch got us bunked into a tent,
which we had to help set up, and he figured out where to go for chow. We were
happy campers.

Sergeant Koch went off to do important sergeant
things, and the dining facility wasn't opening for dinner until another three
hours, so Cornpone dug into his pack for snacks.

"What you got?" Ski asked.

Cornpone winked. "Uh, let's see. Damn! I
got a gen-u-ine smorgasbord of Hooah! bars."

"A smorgasbord?" I asked skeptically.
"Really?"

"Oh yeah, a smorgasbord at least. Could be
a plethora, maybe even, oooh, an honest to God, gosh-darned corn-u-copia of
snack foods." It was funny to hear Jesse say 'plethora' in his deep southern
accent.

"Cut the bullshit, man, you're making me
hungry." Ski protested. "What flavors you got in there?"

"Well, I got Cinnamon Cardboard, of course,
also Raisins 'n' Gravel, and, my personal fave, Original Sawdust."

Crap. I got stuck with Raisin 'n' Gravel. The
raisins were harder to chew than the gravel.

The next morning, we were marched out
to the shooting range after chow time. It was cold, the thermometer outside our
tent said it was near freezing. Excitement was high; we all expected to finally
get our hands on some incredible, super high-tech weapons from the Kristang.
And maybe clothing that automatically heated and cooled you. I felt naked
without a rifle. Standing in front of us was a Marine Corps gunnery sergeant
with a crew cut so severe, it looked like it could cut your hand if your
touched it. He wore combat pants and boots, but over his top was a red US
Marine Corps sweatshirt.

“I am Gunnery Sergeant Cragen, of the
United States Marine Corps.” Cragen paused as shouts of 'Oorah' and ‘Semper Fi’
rang out from the crowd. “I am relieved to hear that we have a few qualified
riflemen among us. Since the rest of you are Army, I’ll try to talk slowly, so
you can understand.” The other Marines laughed at that remark.

“Listen up, people!” There was a gray
box on a table in front of him, he touched a button on the side of the box, and
it swung open silently. Everyone craned their necks, we were finally going to
see the super high-tech weapons that we'd be killing hamsters with. So it was
understandable to hear the grousing when Sergeant Cragen pulled what looked
like a standard M4 rifle from the box.

"Oh, fuck me!"

"You got to be kidding
me!"

"This is bullshit, man!"

"An M fucking four?"

"Whiskey Tango Foxtrot?!"
Which meant, of course, What The Fuck?

"Man, this is for shit," Ski
whispered to me and Cornpone. Cornpone just spit on the burnt dusty ground.

Those were some of the milder
comments. Cragen let the protests die down, rather than chewing us out for lack
of discipline. "People, say hello to what we humans are calling the M4B1.
The Kristang don't trust us with anything more powerful, and we won't need it
for the missions we'll be assigned for the immediate future. The M4 Bravo
unit fires ammo similar to the five point five six mike mike caliber, two two
three long cartridge you're used to. The difference is this," he picked up
a bullet from the table, and pointed to the tip. "This is an explosive
charge. The Kristang assure us this ammo will penetrate the body armor that
Ruhar soldiers wear, if you select the explosive option, because the explosive
is a shape charge. Like a HEAT round our tanks use. You can also select to
deactivate the explosive, which you will do, depending on the rules of
engagement in effect at the time. The way you select the mode for the explosive
tip is with this switch here," he pointed to a recessed button on the back
of the grip, which was convenient for right and left handed soldiers. "You
slide up this cover in the grip, to expose this recessed button. It is
recessed, so you knuckleheads don't activate the explosive tip option by
accident. After firing nine rounds, which you can do in standard single shots
or three round bursts, you have to press the button again to select
explosives."

Cragen went on at length about the M4
Bravo, but for most people, the thrill was gone. Where was the self-guided
ammo, the lasers, the genetic enhancements to make us super soldiers, the
bionic eyes, the mech suits that allowed us to jump thirty feet in the air and
run a hundred miles per hour? Where was all the cool stuff we'd seen in sci-fi
movies? This was bullshit! The Ruhar could pound us from orbit with masers,
railguns and smart missiles, and all we had were Vietnam-era rifles with fancy
firecracker bullets?

Total bullshit.

A couple hours later, I got an M4
Bravo in my hands, on the firing range. It felt exactly like my trusty old M4,
which I'd left behind at Fort Drum when I'd gone home on leave. And I never
went back to Drum, so my rifle might still be there. The Kristang supplied us
with conversion kits for our regular M4s, and the ammo with explosive tips. We
learned later that much of our ammo came straight from Earth, with no fancy
enhancements, because the Kristang had a limited supply of the explosive stuff.
Each squad would get Kristang clips equal to half the normal weapons load, the
rest would be regular 5.56MM ammo. Our allies figured we wouldn't need fancy
ammo for the missions they were assigning to us. It was a bit insulting; any
tough jobs in this war would be done by the adults, us human soldiers were
sitting at the children's table.

My M4B1 came with two clips of
explosive-tipped ammo, I took my turn on the firing range, practicing using the
button to select explosives or not. The explosive mode was impressive, there
was much cheering along the firing line as we saw metal targets shredded. Our
regular bullets bounced off the targets, leaving only little shiny dents. One
advantage of Kristang ammo is that every cartridge was exactly the same, down
to the nano level; even better than what our snipers called 'matched
ammunition'. And Kristang ammo fired much cooler and cleaner, so you could rock
'n' roll without melting or fouling the barrel. We still needed to take our
weapon apart and put it back together. Blindfolded. And clean it. I took one of
the Kristang bullets out of a clip and examined it closely. Other than being a
different color and being perfectly smooth with absolutely no scuff marks or
scratches, it looked like the standard NATO ammo I'd been using for years.

We were going into battle with none of
the hoped-for enhancements, having to hitch a ride to every planet, and we
weren't entrusted with any important missions. It was like the Kristang were
merely humoring our desire to get into the fight. This was the future.

It wasn’t what I expected.

That first afternoon while we were on
the firing range, a group of aircraft flew by, low and close enough for us to
see them clearly. The aircraft circled around for hours, practicing landings,
takeoffs and formation flying. I say aircraft instead of spacecraft, because
the instructors on the firing range told us that's what they were, designed to
fly in an atmosphere, and not capable of reaching orbit. What surprised me is
they were Ruhar aircraft, not Kristang. Wherever we were going next, the
Kristang wanted our pilots ready to use equipment captured from the hamsters,
instead of the Kristang having to transport their own equipment across the star
lanes. There were two basic types, known by the names given by humans; the
Buzzard, which was a transport ship like a V-22 Osprey tiltrotor, and a sort of
two person gunship like an Apache, that we called a Chicken. Just like the way
we called the Ruhar hamsters, we gave disrespectful names to their aircraft.
They were both vertical takeoff and landing craft like helicopters or
tiltrotors, but they had jet engine pods at the end of their short wings, not
rotor blades. We all had to admit they looked cool. And we were all proud to
know humans were flying them, and would be flying them in combat. Soon, we
hoped.

The next day, we got some of the other
minimally upgraded toys the Kristang were allowing us to have. The most useful
toy was a personal tactical radio that hopped frequencies, transmitted in
encrypted bursts, and used wide-field white noise jamming in the background so
their location was very tough to pinpoint. We all got a personal radio the size
of a typical Earth smartphone, except it was thin as a credit card, with a
touchscreen that couldn't be scratched, and you couldn't damage it unless you
shot it with an explosive-tipped round. With the radio came an earpiece and
microphone to wear under our helmets. Our helmet cameras transmitted video
through the new radios, so squad, platoon, and company leaders could see what
their soldiers were seeing. We could also take the radios off our belts, and
use the screen to select cameras in our squad to view anyone else's camera.
And, instead of one person in a unit being the designated radio operator, and
lugging a heavy piece of equipment around, every soldier now had the ability to
communicate to anyone else, across the planet. The touchscreen popped up a menu
written in whatever human language you spoke into it. English, Spanish, French,
Mandarin, Hindi, you name it, the radio understood it all. We all had to admit
that was cool stuff. People who had a Military Occupational Specialty related
to comm equipment were out of a job, since humans were not allowed to screw
with the gear, and didn't understand it anyway. Personally, it was all magic to
me.

The Army wanted us to call the new
tactical radios 'TacRs', for Tactical Radios.  Some jokers were calling it
the 'zPhone', because Z was as far beyond I in the alphabet, as the zPhone was
beyond the iPhone. I'm sure the Army had some official name like Radio,
Tactical, Multipurpose, Kristang Supplied, in accordance with Mil Standard blah
blah blah. Whatever. The coolest feature of the TacRs was they could be used as
translators, which was great, because none of us spoke a single word of Ruhar.
I spoke some broken Spanish, and had learned some useful phrases in Hausa and
Yoruba when I was in Nigeria, but really, I wasn't even all that good at
speaking American. Your and you're still got me confused, which drove my mother
bananas when I sent her email with grammatical errors. We all got to practice
with our TacRs in translator mode, what you did was put the earpiece in one
ear, and speak slowly and clearly into the little boom microphone near your
mouth. You had to speak a couple pages of your native language when you first
used your TacR, so the translator could understand your particular speech pattern.
Somehow, the thing was able to figure the difference between my Downeast accent
and Cornpone's Southern drawl. That was impressive by itself. You spoke into
the mic, paused, and your words came out of the TacR's speaker in whatever
language you selected. It could even detect another language being spoken near
you, and automatically translate that into your own language. The sound on
either end was smoother than I expected, although it still was clearly a
computer voice. What impressed me was that the TacR handled slang pretty well,
even ubiquitous military slang. When it didn't understand something, it made a
humming sound, the machine equivalent of 'uh'. There was a French battalion a
couple kilometers away at Alpha, a couple of their squads came over to visit
one day, and the Frenchies got bombarded with requests to talk, so we could
both try out our TacRs in translate mode. It was great, they spoke their
Frenchie babble into their mics, and I heard it in English. I learned, for one
thing, that French toast is not called 'French toast' in France, it's called
'pain perdu'. Which makes sense, when you think about it, I mean, why wouldn't
the French just call it 'toast'? Although, why did we call our cheese 'American
cheese'? Why didn't we just say 'cheese'? Right? Maybe I'm getting off the
subject. Anyway, it was weird to hear me speak, and the TacR repeat my words in
French, especially since the TacR actually used a French accent. It was so
funny, for both sides, that we had great fun saying stupid stuff, and hearing
the TacR translate it. Probably that was not the training the Army intended,
but we did get a lot of use out of the translator and got comfortable with
using it.

Some people reported they had tried
the translator with Chinese and Indian troops, on visits to their parts of the
base, and it worked darn well. As for how it worked with the Ruhar, we
practiced with a computer speaking Ruhar, and all I can say is, I sure hoped
the darned thing worked as well in the field as it did in practice.

Another new toy drew more groans when
it was shown to us. Gunny Cragen again was standing on a platform in front of
us, this time he pulled a bulky tube out of a box. "Say hello to the
FGM-148 Bravo Javelin missile."

Shit. The Javelin was a decent enough
weapon, a man portable fire-and-forget antitank missile that I'd used in
Nigeria, but it had some issues. For starters, the description of 'man
portable' was pushing the practical limit, the damned thing weighed fifty
pounds. Civilians may think a weapon that enables a single soldier to destroy a
main battle tank is worth every one of its fifty pounds, but they haven't
humped one through the bush day after day. And that's fifty pounds on top of
your rifle, 180 rounds of ammo, radio gear, canteen, MREs and everything else
the Army thinks you need to carry. So Javelins are assigned to two-man teams,
at least. In battle, one man acts as a spotter while the other operates the
weapon, then they both get the hell out of there as fast as they can. Shoot and
scoot, we call it.

Anyway, Cragen was speaking. "You
all know the strengths and weaknesses of the Javelin missile. Our allies have
helped us with the main weakness; the infrared targeting system. The manual
says the infrared seeker cools down in a couple seconds, but we all know that
depends on the conditions you're in; when it's ninety eight degrees in the
desert or jungle, it takes longer to go active. The Kristang have given us kits
to upgrade the seeker on the FGM-148 Bravo, it now cools fully down in less than
half a second. And it stays cool for up to half an hour, so you don't have to
worry about using it right away. After half an hour, you have to turn it off,
but ten minutes later, you can activate it again. Be aware that every time you
do use it, it won't stay cool as long, that's all in the manual. The seeker's
imaging system is also upgraded, so if you've ever had trouble, on a hot day,
getting the weapon to recognize a target that is almost as hot as its
surroundings, that is no longer a problem. Also, once you identify a target to
the weapon, it will stay locked, even if you or the target move."

There was a scattering of slow, ironic
clapping. Cragen gave us a sour look. "I know you people expected laser
rifles, and nukes the size of a hand grenade when you came out to the stars. We
don't have that, this is what we have," he hefted the Javelin Bravo over
his head. "And we're going to fight to the very best of our ability."

What he didn't say is, our ability to
fight would be greater if we had better weapons. Whatever. The Army says we
fight with the force we have, not the force we'd like to have. Hooah.

After a mildly depressing and
disillusioning week of training for space warfare with essentially the same
weapons I'd used in Nigeria, we finally got a truly hightech new toy to play
with. The Javelin Bravo antitank missile, like our original Javelin, had a
minimal antiair capability, limited to use against low-flying helicopters. The
Kristang must have decided that none of our MANPAD missiles, that is MAN Portable
Air Defense, were useful in this conflict. I'd used our Stinger missiles in
training, never in combat, and it was a damned good missile against
helicopters, drones, slow fixed wing aircrafts, and even jets if you got lucky
and the jet didn't cross out of range before you got the Stinger set up and
targeted. Against supersonic dropships that could climb vertically into orbit,
I couldn't see a Stinger giving us any chance. I'd seen even our captured Ruhar
Chicken gunships go from hover mode to zooming straight up at amazing speed.
Everyone I knew agreed us ground pounders needed to do something serious
against the air threat, or any combat situation would be game over before we
got started.

The MANPAD missile the Kristang
provided to us, we instantly named the Zinger, of course. It weighed about
thirty pounds, not much different from a Stinger, the difference being the
Zinger targeting system was built into the launch tube and was disposable,
whereas with our Stinger, you had to attach the targeting system box to the
disposable launch tube when you wanted to fire the missile. A Zinger could
climb up to eighty thousand feet, it was hypersonic, and if it missed one
target, it could look around and decide to engage another target on its own, or
the user could redirect its targeting via zPhone, or it could talk to other
Zingers in the area to get targeting advice. Its wings could also deploy wide
so the missile could loiter in the area up to twenty minutes before its fuel
was exhausted, that feature meant we could fire it ahead of time into an
airspace before the enemy arrived giving the user time to get the hell out of
there.

The Zinger got a genuine, enthusiastic
reception when it was shown to us, and we got to use it for real against
drones. Unlike practicing with Stingers, where the US Army mostly had us firing
little flares instead of expensive missiles, the Kristang had no problem with
us expending ammunition, even though our practice rounds had the warheads
disabled. It was immensely satisfying for us grunts to see drone targets
knocked out of the air.

Then it got tougher. The drones we
fired at initially were dumb, they could maneuver a bit to avoid missiles, but
had minimal defensive capability. Next, we practiced against drones that
simulated Ruhar aircraft and dropships like Chickens, Buzzards and the nasty
dropship gunship we called a Vulture. They all had laser or particle beam
defensive turrets that could confuse, fry or outright destroy a Zinger, even
with the Zinger jinking on approach to avoid the beam defenses. Zingers also
had to deal with electronic countermeasures, and those weren't only in the
infrared or microwave spectrum, Ruhar aircraft had an active stealth capability
that made them difficult to see even in the visible spectrum. With active
stealth engaged, the aircraft didn't become invisible, what happened was the
air around them rippled, distorting their shapes, and multicolored lights
blinked on and off in an envelope around the aircraft, making it hard to tell
exactly where it was. The tactics we were taught to use by the Kristang was to
fire multiple Zingers at a target. In practice, we could pick up a Zinger tube,
unfold the targeting screen from the side of the tube, designate a target, and
fire in less than a minute. One Zinger team of two people could carry and fire
four Zingers, in theory, with one person operating the missile system and the
other person acting as a spotter. Keep in mind, two Zingers weighed over sixty
pounds, and while carrying a Zinger you were expected to still be loaded down
with a rifle, ammo, canteen, zPhone, body armor, and anything else UNEF
expected a sharp-dressed soldier to lug around with him or her. Of course,
while setting up for a second shot, the enemy air would be looking for you and
shooting back, which tended to shorten the user's life expectancy, and
therefore combat effectiveness. That last comment wasn't a joke I made up, by
the way, it was written right into the user manual we got from our patrons the
Kristang. They needed to work on their public relations, big time.

Anyway, with the Zingers, for the
first time us UNEF grunts felt we were being semi-properly equipped for the
fight, and that we didn't need to only hunker down in foxholes and die in
combat. We could shoot back. Shoot only up to eighty thousand feet, true, we
couldn't do anything about ships in orbit. It gave us hope. If the Kristang
trusted us with their toys, and supplied us plenty, they were planning for us
to do something useful in combat. Wherever that would be.

Most of our training time at Camp
Alpha wasn't spent learning to use our new or modified weapons. It was
refresher training, for soldiers like me, who had been harvesting crops and
helping civilians since the Ruhar attacked. The work I'd done with the National
Guard in Maine had been hard, back-breaking labor, but hadn't prepared me for
combat. Until I got to Camp Alpha, the last time I'd fired a rifle, other than
hunting, was in Nigeria. I was rusty and a bit out of shape. Hikes with hundred
pound rucksacks, hand to hand combat training and running obstacle courses
toughened me up quick, and I was glad for it. The Ruhar weren't going to take
it easy on me, it was better to be sore and exhausted now, than not prepared
when we went into action.

Running in heat beat the crap out of
me. Running in extra gravity beat the crap out of me. Combine them, and my legs
were shaking from exhaustion after only a few miles. Cornpone fell to his knees
and puked his guts out three times on our first five mile run. After that,
Sergeant Koch decided we'd be getting up extra early, to run before it got hot.
On Camp Alpha, the temperature was like an On or Off switch, when the star came
over the horizon in the morning, it got hot fast. At sunset, the temperature
plummeted. The third morning saw us sliding out of our bunks to run in the
predawn cold. A day on Camp Alpha was a bit over 28 hours, our schedule left
time for seven solid hours of rack time, even with rising early.

Without the daytime heat, we only had
to deal with the extra gravity. And the blowing, burnt-smelling grit. And the
crushing disappointment that coming out to the stars hadn't meant we'd been
transformed into super soldiers. We would become super soldiers the old
fashioned way, Sergeant Koch announced, through hard work. Those were inspiring
words until about the two mile mark, when we were gasping for breath.

Our fireteam wasn't the only group up
early for exercise, the second morning we were running, we were about a mile
from the base on the return leg when we came around the side of a hill and
there was a half dozen people on the other side, also headed back to base.
Without anyone needing to say anything, we picked up our pace. And so did they.
And the other group upped the ante. Soon we were sprinting. I pulled ahead, I'd
been a runner since I was a little kid and my mother brought me out running
with her. The other group had two fast runners, then one. Ahead of us, the
trails converged, I reached the intersection just ahead of the other runner,
then he pulled even with me and we ran as fast as we could, while our teams
behind us cheered.

Only he wasn't a he, he was a she, I
would have known from the short ponytail bobbing behind her head if I’d been
paying attention. Damn. I knew her sort of, she was in our brigade support
battalion, her name was Shauna or something like that, but I hadn't seen her
since like a month before I rotated home from Nigeria. Crap, I didn't know she
was so fast. She pulled ahead of me, only a foot, two feet, but I could not
catch her, no matter how much effort I put into it. She was struggling too, her
footing was wobbly and her breathing was as ragged as my own. We shot past the
two big boulders that marked the unofficial edge of the base and I collapsed to
my knees, having to use my hands to push myself back to my feet to walk it off.
She stood next to me, hands on her knees, gasping. "Damn."

"Shit yeah." I replied.
"You trying to kill me?"

"Hey, you were pushing me."

I held out a hand. "Joe
Bishop."

"Yeah, I know you, you're the
Barney guy, right? Shauna Jarrett." We shook hands.

"You want my autograph?" I
was only half joking. The whole Barney thing was getting really old for me.

She cocked her head. "Why, does
the Barney thing get you laid a lot?"

A light bulb went on in my head. Yes,
I know, every time a girl smiles at a guy, he's hopeful that she's interested,
but this time I thought she really might be. "Not so far," I winked.

She laughed, and it was beautiful.
"You keep hoping, Joe." The other people in our groups arrived, and
Shauna got backslaps for winning our impromptu race. Shauna and her group
started to walk away.

If there was any sort of opportunity
there, I wasn't going to let it get away. We were a long, long way from Earth,
at war, and there weren't a whole lot of women within a thousand lightyears of
Camp Alpha. "Hey, Shauna, I'll see you around?"

To my delight, she smiled at me back
over her shoulder. "Maybe?"

Along with getting familiar with new
equipment, and getting back into proper condition, we had classroom time, which
was us sitting on the dirt floor of a tent, listening to lectures about the
enemy, our allied command structure, and most importantly, The Rules. It all
blew my mind when I first heard it, so I'll explain it slow. Best you get
comfortable, because there will be a pop quiz at the end.

I'll wait while you get yourself a
beer.

Comfy?

Ok, first, some background intel for
you. The Kristang were not at the top of the allied coalition, which I already
figured, from the fact they needed to hitch an interstellar ride on a Thuranin
star carrier. What was news to me was that the Thuranin weren't at the top
either. The allied coalition is led by cat-like aliens called the Maxohlx.
Rumored to be cat-like, since no human, and very few Kristang, had ever seen
one. As humans were unlikely to ever see a Maxohlx in my lifetime, all I'll say
about them is they are an ancient species, with incredible technology. Surely
when the Maxohlx fought, they were armed with something better than an M-fucking-4.
And I know 'Maxohlx' is an odd name, it was the best our G2 people could think
of to spell how the word sounds when the Kristang said it.

The home planet of the Maxohlx is two
thirds of the way around the galaxy from Earth, if that means anything to you,
which it doesn't to me. It's far, far away. The Thuranin, we learned, were
themselves not unique, they were only responsible for a small slice of the
galaxy under Maxohlx control, and the Kristang handled a couple thousand cubic
lightyears under Thuranin control. The Maxohlx had other second tier species
besides the Thuranin, and the Thuranin had two other species under their
command, that we knew of, besides the Kristang. The Thuranin are sort of little
green men, they are shorter than the average human, but humanoid, with two
legs, two arms, two eyes and a bald head. Humans who had talked with the
Kristang got the impression that the Kristang didn't like their 'patrons', and
the feeling was mutual; the Thuranin are disdainful of any species with lesser
technology. I wonder what they thought of pitiful humans.

On the enemy side, the situation was
similar. At the top were the Rindhalu, who are creepy looking spider type
things. Just thinking about it made my skin crawl. Their second tier allies, in
this quadrant of the galaxy, are the Jeraptha, who are almost as creepy, being
insects. The Jeraptha aren't a hive mind like bees, they are more like beetles.
The Ruhar are a client species of the Jeraptha, the same way the Kristang were
clients of the Thuranin. Based on some things the Kristang said, our G2 intel
people speculated the Ruhar had slightly better technology than the Kristang.

Kristang propaganda, I say propaganda
because that's what it sounded like to me, said the Rindhalu were older, much
older, than the Maxohlx, and had tried to suppress the development of other
intelligent species in the galaxy, until the righteous Maxohlx rebelled, many
thousands of years ago. The allies were fighting for the right of intelligent
species to develop on their own, while the enemy species were slaves of the
creepy spider Rindhalu, who wanted total control of the galaxy. For an advanced
species, the Kristang had remarkably clumsy propaganda. Think Soviet Union, or
North Korea, or Nazi Germany. We allies are fighting the evil enemy for the
glorious and virtuous common people! Under the magnificent guidance of our
supreme leaders, our righteous cause will triumph! Strength through unity! And
so on. Anyway, that's what we were told. I'm sure the truth is more complicated,
it always is.

The incredible technology of the
Maxohlx and the Rindhalu did not extend to creating, or even operating, the
wormholes that made long-range interstellar flight practical. Those wormholes
were created millions of years ago, by a long-gone species that is unknown,
other than what they left behind. The Kristang called the wormhole-builders the
Elders. Wormholes didn't care who went through them, and there was no known way
to control one, or shut it off. Or damage it, even a nuke had no effect. The
wormholes worked, and that's all we needed to know.

Then we got to The Rules.

The Rules were the Rules Of Engagement
for combat. They applied to both sides, and were strictly enforced by the
Maxohlx and the Rindhalu. The Rules explained why the war had been going on for
many thousands of years, why both sides hadn't wiped each other out a long time
ago. The basis of The Rules was that the Maxohlx and the Rindhalu couldn't
afford to seriously fight each other directly, in the same way that America and
China couldn't fight each other. On Earth, countries with megatons of nukes
couldn't fight without destroying their own countries. Out in the galaxy,
species with weapons that made nukes look like firecrackers also could not
afford to fight each other directly. So they fought through their client
species, and those species also had clients, and so on. Most of the actual
fighting and dying was done by third-tier species like the Ruhar and the
Kristang. And by their clients. Like humans.

Anyway, here are The Rules.

You'd better grab a pencil and paper.

Rule Number One; no use of nukes, or
other types of radiological weapons, on or near an inhabited planet, or even
potentially habitable planet. No antimatter either, because such a weapon
produces hard radiation even if it is short-lived. This rule was listed first,
because the Maxolhx and the Rindhalu didn't want their grubby underlings
contaminating a planet they may later want for themselves. Even in the vastness
of the Milky Way, the number of habitable planets within practical range of a
wormhole was limited, so both sides didn't want useful planets removed from
productive use because some jackass went crazy with nukes.

Rule Number Two was no chemical
weapons, for the same reason as Rule Number One. Nasty chemicals could linger
in the environment for a long, long time. They didn't quite say that any
species abandoning a planet was supposed to sweep up after themselves and take
their trash with them, I figured that was implied.

Rule Number Three, no use of nano
weapons. Nanotech was widely used to make things, but it could not be used as a
weapon. Even the Kristang weren't sure of the basis for this rule, but ancient
rumor held there was an incident where nanotech go loose, and caused that
entire star system to be quarantined, permanently. Hence, nano weapons were a
huge November Golf in the war.

Rule Number Four, no biological
weapons. This rule wasn't so much to protect the Maxohlx and the Rindhalu,
because species were different enough that a pathogen deadly to one species
mostly had no effect on others. This rule was more like a Geneva Convention
sort of thing; where the combatants agreed not to do something to the enemy, so
the enemy wouldn't do it to them. Otherwise, each side could simply drop stealth
missiles with canisters of biological weapons into the atmosphere of enemy
planets, and soon no one would be left alive on either side.

Rule Number Four was, we heard, a
little sketchy in actual use, as viruses, bacteria and other biological hazards
mutated over time, and if a known, natural virus became more contagious or
deadly, who could say that didn't happen naturally? Rule Number Four was in
place to prevent catastrophic biological attacks, but apparently a certain
level of cheating was allowed, as long as it didn't get out of control, and no
one got caught. The Kristang told us the Ruhar were notorious for pushing the
limits on Rule Number Four. I'm sure the Ruhar would say the same thing about
the Kristang. The bio weapons thing scared me, despite reassurance from the
Kristang that the Ruhar didn't know enough about human biology to make a weapon
effective against us. What scared me is the Kristang had medical technology far
advanced beyond what humanity had brought to the stars, and they weren't sharing
any of it with us. They said that without years of studying human biology, they
couldn't safely apply their advanced technology to us. Which meant even a
common flu virus, that some human brought with them from Earth, could be a
serious problem for the Expeditionary Force. And that wounded troops had to be
treated with whatever medical care was available on that planet. There would be
no medivac flight back to the States on this campaign.

Rule Number Five was, simply put, no
dropping rocks. No steering asteroids or comets so they impacted an inhabitable
planet. This also meant no taking even a small rock, accelerating it to
relativistic speed, and slamming it into a planet. Any planet with a decent
population had systems that could detect and deflect rocks that were naturally
on an impact course anyway, the rule was to prevent a combatant from saturating
those defenses, or encasing a high-speed rock in a stealth field. What, you
make ask, about railguns? Spaceships routinely used railguns to accelerate kinetic
rounds up to relativistic speeds, and railguns were used for both space combat
and planetary strikes. The key to using railguns for planetary bombardment was
the effect on the planet; you had to limit the energy yield of a single kinetic
impactor to less than a megatons, and you couldn't use so many railgun strikes
that you affected the planet's climate. Pounding a planet with a lot of
railguns could throw a thick dust cloud into the air and lead to rapid cooling,
that dust could take a long time to settle out of the atmosphere, even leading
to a mini ice age.

So, those were The Rules. I wasn't
capitalizing those words on my own, that's the way they were on UNEF's
PowerPoint slides. The point of The Rules seemed to be that inhabitable planets
within practical range of a wormhole are rare and precious, and the Maxohlx and
Rindhalu could not allow lesser species to damage valuable real estate. The
Rules weren't focused on protecting soldiers or civilians on either side, there
was no alien equivalent to the Geneva Conventions for space warfare. The Maxohlx
and Rindhalu had put The Rules in place to prevent their ancient war from
getting out of hand. As long as lesser species conformed to The Rules, they
could kill each other all they wanted.

All of The Rules were Ok by me,
especially as UNEF didn't have any nuclear, nano, biological, chemical or
relativistic railgun weapons with us at Camp Alpha; The Rules meant such
weapons wouldn't be used against us. Except maybe biological, if an enemy
thought they could get away with it. There wasn't any point to us humans
worrying about it.

I didn't see Shauna running again in
the mornings, and I didn't want to be creepy by pinging her via zPhone. So I
was thrilled when we ran into each other in the DFAC, which is what the Army
calls a dining facility. It was a big tent, with tarps on the ground to keep
dirt and dust out of the food, and the pervasive acrid burnt smell to a
minimum. I had a tray of sandwiches, one peanut butter and one was some kind of
mystery meat, with mashed potatoes and what was supposed to be gravy. And green
beans. Real green beans, they looked like, they weren't cooked to death. And a
roll. With butter. After busting my ass all day, I was hungry and all the food
looked good. I turned around to find a table, and almost crashed my tray into
Shauna's.

"Hey! Uh, Shauna, right?" I
said as nonchalantly as I could.

"Hey yourself." She looked
at my tray. Her tray only had a sandwich, green beans and an apple. "You
want to grab a table?"

Did I? Not trusting myself to speak
without saying something stupid, I simply nodded and followed her to a table
that wasn't too crowded. "You know what I was doing on Columbus Day,"
I said as a way to open a conversation, only it may have come across as bragging
so I added "did you do anything stupid that day?"

"I was with friends in
Phoenix."

"You weren't out leaf peeping
that day?"

She titled her head and gave a me a
sarcastic look. "People in Phoenix don't do a lot of leaf peeping."

"Got it. My family doesn't need
to go looking for leaves, by Columbus Day they're covering the lawn two feet
deep."

"You going to eat?" She
looked at my still full plate.

"Oh, yeah. Don't want to talk
with my mouth full." I bit into a sandwich and swallowed quickly.

"I went home first to make sure
my mother was all right, my father was on a business trip in Houston, then I
went over to check on my grandmother. She lives in a high rise, and without
power she was stuck up there, I didn't think she'd be able it make it all the
way down the stairs, she's got a bad hip. And she's, you know, old." Her
voice trembled a bit, recalling that day was bringing up a lot of emotion for
her. "She was so scared, she was so scared, and she told me not to worry
about her, she told me that I was young and strong, and that I needed to get
out of the city, get somewhere the aliens wouldn't find me. She kept saying it
was the End Times, Judgment Day, and that I needed to leave her, and survive.
In the city, we didn't have Ruhar assault ships landing in the streets, all we
saw were lights and contrails in the sky, and pillars of smoke from sites
they'd hit. The only way we knew there was an alien invasion was the emergency
announcements on the radio. And I didn't believe it at first. " She ate
the last forkful of green beans, then pushed her tray away. "Those
hamsters frightened my grandmother almost to death. I hate them for that.
That's why I'm out here. I don't want my grandmother, or anyone else, to ever
be scared like that."

"Yeah. I used to go out on clear
nights, look up at the sky, and wonder what's out there in the universe. After
Columbus Day, I look at the sky, and if the stars are twinkling, for a second,
I think maybe it's an enemy ship jumping into orbit. "

"Yes! Exactly!" She slapped
the table. "Because of the hamsters, nobody can look at the sky again
without fear. I hate those motherfuckers for that."

"They stole our innocence?"
I mumbled over a mouthful of mashed potatoes.

"Yeah, something like that. Not
you and me, we've seen combat, we saw some shit in Nigeria. But most people,
just living their lives, they don't get to think they're safe again,
ever." She looked away for a moment. "Ever. Now we know there's a
whole galaxy full of enemies out there. Looming over our heads, all the time."

We talked about what total bullshit it
was, that we were expected to go into combat with basically the same gear the
US Army had been using for decades, and exchanged rumors about what our first
deployment would be, neither of us knew squat about where the Kristang would
send us next. And we both wondered and worried about what was going on back
home, while I finished my dinner and she ate an apple. Her family was much
worse off than my folks; her parents had both lost their jobs and they, her
young brother and grandmother had been resettled in east Texas, where her
father was on a farm labor team and her mother was working at a day care. That
was a big change for her parents, her mother had been a real estate agent and
her father a sales rep for a IT company. Both of those jobs vanished when the
economy crashed, and their condo in Phoenix had become unlivable without electricity
to run air conditioners.

My father lost his job at the paper
mill, but he got by for the first couple months on odd jobs, logging, welding
and auto repair. My mother still had a steady job as a teacher, especially with
so many families moved from electricity-starved cities to the countryside. Late
in December, someone had the idea that the big paper mill where my father had
worked, which had a 'cogeneration' plant that burned basically leftover sawdust
to make electricity for the mill, could be started up again to produce
electricity for the region. That brought my father back to work at the mill,
with the only problem being that there wasn't enough lumber being brought to
the mill because there wasn't enough diesel fuel for trucks to haul the wood.
The Great North Woods had plenty of lumber, and no way to get it anywhere.
There was barely enough diesel fuel around for trains. The solution was to bring
old steam engines from a tourist railroad in New Hampshire, with guys who still
knew how to keep steam engines running, and how to make them run on wood rather
than coal or oil. Good old American ingenuity in action, with steam engines
hauling logs out of the woods to a paper mill that was now a power station. The
entire US electricity grid was being rebuilt, slowly, as the 'smart grid' we
should have had decades ago, and lots of smaller local power stations rather
than one giant plant for a whole region. The Kristang weren't helping much with
rebuilding electrical generation around the planet, except in industrial areas
they deemed vital to the war effort. Our new allies were disdainful that
humanity still relied on fossil fuels for energy, and they set up a couple
fusion reactors around the planet for their own needs, but even though they had
explained their fusion technology to our scientists, it was going to be a very
long time before humanity built a working fusion reactor on our own.

When I left, electricity was still
spotty in my hometown, most of the power from the new power station in Milliconack
went downstate to the Bangor area. My parents kept their house warm with wood
stoves, didn't need air conditioning, and the garden we'd expanded over the winter
should bring in plenty of crops to feed my family and the people living with
them, plus food left over to sell. They had two cows now, and chickens for
eggs, and when I left my mother had been bargaining for a pair of piglets. It
was the same all over the world; people higher on the economic ladder before
the Ruhar attacked were now sometimes worse off than those people who had been
scraping by. If you were a farmer before Columbus Day, your life hadn't changed
a whole lot, other than it being difficult to get fuel for tractors, since
people still needed to eat, so there was plenty of demand. What did the Bible
say, something like 'many who are first will be last, and the last, first'?
Nobody ever expected scriptural prophesies to be delivered by alien invasion.

"I'm busting my ass to qualify
for combat duty," Shauna explained. "Almost qualified when I signed
up, I fell on an obstacle course and sprained my ACL with two weeks to go,
pissed me off! So I went into logistics. I want combat duty, Joe."

Being in the infantry, and having been
in combat, I wanted to caution her against too much enthusiasm. It wasn't any
of my business how she wanted to serve, so I kept my mouth shut. We finished
eating, people from her unit came over to talk to her, and then she left. If
that could be considered a first date, it was a downer.

The first war game on Camp Alpha was
Operation Valiant Shield. Code names for operations were ideally supposed to be
selected at random, so as not to give the enemy an idea of your intent. Like
'Operation Desert Storm' was a cool name, but it had been pretty easy for the
Iraqis to figure that op was an offensive in the desert. Not that it had
mattered back then. The problem with random words is that you could end up with
ops with unintentionally funny or lame names, like Flaming Bunny or Limp
Justice, so really operation names were dreamed up, or at least vetted by, the
UNEF PR staff. The name Valiant Shield was probably thought to be inspiring for
the troops, when I heard the name all I could think was we were supposed to die
valiantly. Like he old Roman saying, where a soldier was supposed to come with
his shield, or on it.

I wish I could tell you that during
our first war game, I dreamed up some incredibly brilliant tactic that no one
else had thought of, and it led us, or at least my platoon, to victory. I could
tell you that, and it would be an awesome story, right? Maybe I will tell
something along those lines someday to my grandchildren, when they're
complaining how uncool old Grandpa is. Or maybe I'll tell a story like that
someday when I'm drunk and I think it'll get me laid. The truth, unfortunately,
is that me, and everyone else in two platoons of our company, were declared
dead from an orbital railgun strike, less than an hour after the war game
started. We were hustling across a shallow canyon, going from cover to cover,
when my zPhone beeped, and a squawking voice announced that I was dead. Then my
zPhone stopped working entirely. Crap. How the hell was two platoons of foot
soldiers worth a railgun strike? The company had split up to avoid providing a
juicy target, and that didn't work.

Protocol called for us to sit or lay
down where we were, and wait for an all clear signal, which could come the next
day, depending how the war game was going. The sun was over the horizon and it
was getting hot already, our officers decided we could cheat a little and walk
back across the canyon to shelter under a rock overhang. That's where I spent
the rest of that day, all night, and half the next morning. We were running low
on water, it was a six hour walk back to base, because we'd been dropped off by
Buzzards before the start of the war game. Somebody at HQ took pity on us and
sent trucks, they didn't have air conditioning and although we grumbled about
that, we appreciated not having to walk the whole way.

One lesson that had gotten hammered
into our heads by the war game is that the key to surviving ground combat in
this war, in a situation where the 'high ground' is above the atmosphere, is like
surviving combat in situations where the enemy might use tactical nukes. Avoid
concentrating your forces, and keep cover as much as possible. In a potential
nuclear war situation, do not give the enemy a target they might be tempted to
hit with a nuke, like battalion-size forces, large ammo dumps, fixed airfields,
vital bridges, that sort of thing. The Kristang didn't use nukes against ground
targets, you might think that was a good thing, however it actually made the
situation more dangerous. Deciding to use a nuke requires a whole lot of
high-level leadership handwringing over an enormous nuclear escalation of the
conflict, an escalation you can't step back from, a genie you can't put back in
the bottle. Using railguns, which can accelerate rounds to a significant
percentage of lightspeed, and can have the destructive energy equivalent of a
tactical nuke, is so easy that it's a given in interstellar warfare. To us
grunts on the ground, that means getting hit with a railgun from orbit is a
matter more of when, not if.

Overall in the war game, UNEF Blue
forces got crushed by the opposing simulated Ruhar Red force. The Kristang were
reportedly very pleased with the outcome. Not pleased that UNEF troops had
'died' by the thousands, pleased that UNEF troops had held on long enough to
delay the Red force's occupation of the surface. Scattered UNEF forces had used
guerrilla tactics to attack Red forces after they landed, and our Zinger MANPAD
teams had 'shot down' an encouraging number of Red dropships. And our Airedales
had done well for themselves, too.  Sure, by the time the Kristang halted
the war game, the UNEF Blue force had less than a hundred aircraft capable of
flying. If you think that's bad, the Kristang had expected all our air assets
to be depleted within the first twelve hours. Modern combat is high intensity,
especially once your feet get off the ground.

Two days after the war game, my
fireteam was watching a basketball game in the evening, our battalion against a
British Army team, us enjoying hot dogs and popcorn, when an Army lieutenant
still wearing a flight suit sat down next to us in the bleachers. "Hey,
you're a pilot, sir?" I asked, stupidly.

"Uh huh," he said over a
bite of hot dog, "used to fly an Apache, now I fly a Chicken."

"How'd you do in the war
game?" I asked eagerly. I'd heard a lot from ground pounders, but nothing
from our Airedales so far. In my enthusiasm, I didn't consider the guy might
have just finished a long flight, and wanted to relax and watch a ball game
instead of telling me the same story he'd already told a hundred times. There
wasn't need to worry, because a pilot never got tired of talking about flying.

"Did all right," he said
while watching the game, "shot down a Dodo and a Vulture."

"Damn, sir, you Da Man!" I offered
him a high five, and I was thrilled when he slapped my hand.

"Thanks, soldier. Course, I got
popped by a missile from a Ruhar cruiser two minutes later. Felt good anyway, I
lived longer than I expected."

"You shot down a Vulture?"
Ski asked. "That's a gunship?"

"Yeah, it is. The Dodo had landed
troops, a formation of six Dodos with Vulture escorts, they were headed back to
orbit when we attacked from two directions, came in fast and low, right on the
deck. It was a massive dogfight, a real furball, we got all the Dodos,
simulated, of course, and we lost half our aircraft. That last Vulture, I had
to chase the stinking thing up above seventy thousand feet, that's the max
altitude for a Chicken, we're not rated to operate out of the atmosphere, I was
on internal reaction mass and was barely able to control the ship with the
secondary thrusters. The Vulture was way above me, it was pushing two gees and
climbing away, while I was about to lose control and go into a flat spin. I
ripple fired my last four missiles and my gunner hit the Vulture with the
particle beam, the beam is defensive only, but it tied up the Vulture's
defenses enough for one missile to get through." He turned back to watch
the game. "Their active stealth doesn't work as well out of an atmosphere,
they didn't tell us that, I figured it out." He took another handful of
popcorn out of the paper bag and ate it slowly, thoughtfully. "You know,
the sky up at that altitude isn't bright blue, it's almost black, and you can
see the planet stretched out below you is round. That Ruhar cruiser that got
me? I could see it. Not as a ghost on the headup display for the war
game, this was a real ship, right there, hanging in the sky, it was
spooky.  The image on my HUD showed a Ruhar ship superimposed over the
real Kristang ship for the game, when I clicked the HUD off, I could see the
real ship. A real star ship, hanging in low orbit above me. It was awesome, for
a moment, until it hit my starboard nacelle with the edge of a laser, I flew
right through it. Put me into a spin, I was busy trying to hold the ship
together when their missile crawled up my ass. Simulated, it felt real enough.
I wouldn't have been able to recover, either, the autopilot took over and
guided me down to angels thirty, that's, uh, thirty thousand feet."

"Shit," Ski said, "I
thought us grunts on the ground had it tough."

"You do, for sure. We're more
exposed up in the sky, we have countermeasures that help a lot with missile
threats, it's funny, kind of, we're almost back in WWII days, before guided
missiles took over air combat. The stealth and countermeasures mean getting a
reliable firing solution on the enemy isn't a lock that it is in air combat on
Earth, a missile only gets a hit maybe fifteen, twenty percent of the time, the
Kristang aren't telling us for certain. We're guessing at the twenty percent
number based on the tactics we're taught." He laughed. "It's funny,
they sent me out here because they figured a helicopter pilot would have an
easier transition to flying a Chicken or a Buzzard. When they're in hover mode,
sure, true enough. Thing is, a Chicken can go supersonic, and climb higher than
our jets. I wasn't ready for that, last time I flew fixed wing was a little
turboprop in training. My Chicken can out climb and outmaneuver an F22 easy,
most of the time you're flying it, the thing is a jet, not a helo. A Buzzard is
more similar to a V22 Osprey, it isn't supersonic." He shook his head.
"The techniques we learned flying rotorwings on Earth don't apply here, I
have to keep reminding myself not to worry about dynamic stress on the rotor
blades, and I don't need to keep the tail rotor clear when I land, because we
don't have one."

"Sir," Cornpone asked,
"we only have aircraft, right, and the enemy has dropships that can go into
space. Do we really stand a chance in combat up there?" He pointed to the
sky.

"Oh, yeah. I get your point. Yes,
we do, we actually have an advantage in air combat over dropships. Dropships
are big and heavy, they handle like a pig when they're deep in an atmosphere.
With stealth and countermeasures, if your first volley of missiles doesn't hit,
you close the distance to the target real fast, and then you're in air combat
maneuvering, using your guns. The key to air combat is kinetic energy; if you
bleed off too much speed in a turn, you're dead. Energy means you can engage
and disengage a dogfight as you need. Dropships are ultimately much faster than
our aircraft, they can reach escape velocity, but they don't accelerate as
fast. We can get up to speed much quicker." He went on for a while about
tactics of air combat, the three of us were enthralled, at that moment, I
thought he was the coolest guy who ever lived. I left my seat and got another
hot dog for him, so he'd keep talking. The game ended, though, the British team
won by two points, and a group of pilots came by, so he left.

"Damn," Ski said wistfully,
"wish I was a pilot. I thought about it, too, one of my uncles is in a
flying club back home, the club has a single engine, uh, Piper, something like
that. My uncle flew me and my father to Minneapolis once for a Bears game, that
was great. Never had the money for flying lessons, though."

"That would be so cool." I
agreed.

"Yeah, cool enough. He still died
in the game." Cornpone pointed out.

"Uh huh, yeah." Ski said.
"So did we, and we didn't do shit before we died. I'd rather die up in the
sky doing something, than get vaporized in a railgun strike I didn't see
coming."

Inspired by watching the basketball
game, Ski, Cornpone and I went to another court and found a pickup game we
could join. Ski had a really good outside shot, I concentrated on feeding the
ball to him and crashing the boards on defense. It felt good to play hard, to
sweat out frustration. All of us were pissed that we'd died and accomplished
nothing during Valiant Shield. Sure, us getting blown up from orbit was a
realistic scenario, our question was what we were supposed to learn from it?
And how were the Kristang supposed to evaluate our combat capabilities if all
we did was get an unlucky roll of the dice by some Kristang computer in orbit?
If those imaginary dice had rolled another way, some other unlucky bastards
would have 'died' instead of us.

My zPhone on my belt vibrated during
the game, I didn't check it until we took a break for water. It was a message
from Shauna, she wanted to know if I was busy, and if not, did I want to get
together?

Did I?

Did the sun rise in the east? On
Earth, I mean.

Hell yes!

Here's a simple test to tell whether a
guy wants to get together with a girl:

Step One- does he have a pulse?

Step Two- is he conscious?

There is no need for a step three.

Like the idiot that I am, I typed in
<Is this a booty call? smiley face with wink>

Fortunately, my survival instinct
caused me to erase that message before hitting send. Instead, I typed, as
casually as I could <Sure! Playing hoops, we're winning. Be done soon>

And then caught hell from Cornpone and
Ski because my head was clearly no longer in the game, I kept feeling phantom
incoming text vibrations from my zPhone. We won the game anyway, not that
anyone was serious about keeping score.

Damn. The game was over and no reply
from Shauna. Had I been too eager? Too casual about it? Crap. My grandmother
told stories about how she had sat by the phone at her house, this is before
cellphones, sat by the phone, waiting for a guy to call. It sounded pathetic to
me, back then. Sitting by the phone, instead of being out having fun, in case
some loser guy decided to call?

Yet, when Ski and Cornpone suggested
we go see what movie was playing in the big rec center tent, instead of going
with them, I said I was tired and wanted to crash. They gave me a funny look,
but left me alone. There I was, not with my buddies, not back at our tent in
case they came back there, there I was, sitting alone in the basketball arena
tent, waiting for a girl to contact me.

For all women who've waited for a guy
to call or text them back, I know how you feel. It sucks.

And then my zPhone pinged with a text.

What I expected was for Shauna to suggest
we meet somewhere, talk, maybe meet her friends, that sort of thing. She
totally surprised me by meeting me at a gate to the logistics group motor pool,
a fenced area for the Kristang trucks we'd been using. She had the code to the
gate, and we slipped in, I followed her quietly as she put a finger to her
lips. We weaved our way between the closely parked trucks, I didn't know where
she was leading me, until we stopped behind a truck and she swung the back gate
down. The truck had a canvas type roof over it, she pulled the flap aside and
pointed a flashlight inside. For a second, I was afraid there were other people
in the truck and Shauna expected me to get into some sort of sketchy activity
that I was not interested in; my Army personnel file already had enough remarks
about me getting into trouble.

There wasn't anyone in the truck.
There was a thick pile of blankets.

My eyes must have shown my total
surprise, because Shauna grabbed my shirt and kissed me passionately. "You
Ok with this?" Her eyes were glittering in the dim security lights.
"You're cute. Kinda dumb, maybe, but cute."

I nodded like a four year old being
asked if he wanted a bowl of candy. "Yeah, Ok. Yes!"

For those of you who've had sex, I
won't bore you with sweaty details of me and Shauna. You know what it's like,
and I'm sure we didn't do anything you haven't done before. Or wanted to do.

For those of you who haven't, I won't
spoil the surprise for you.

Hint: a-w-e-s-o-m-e.

Wow.

We took a break, some small talk, she
was laying on her back, me next to her. After a while, I lightly traced my
fingertips down from her neck, between her breasts and stomach, and down.

"What are you doing?" She
giggled.

"Running my fingers through your
hair." I said innocently.

"That's not what that means!"
She laughed and slapped me playfully.

"This isn't romantic?"

"Yeah, like your friend
here," she tapped my friend, "is all about romance, Joe."

"Hey," I said, with my
friend waking up from her touching him, "he's very romantic."

"Mmm hmm, uh huh, I'll bet. He's
into romance, if it leads to sex."

"Ok, I have to admit, he is a
horn dog, I can't control him sometimes." Like right then, with Shauna
continuing to encourage him.

"Oh, you have no control over
him? Like you're not involved?"

"You have no idea," I shook
my head ruefully. "Sometimes, I wake up at 4AM because he's forgotten a
key to the front door, and I'm like, 'where have you been', and he's like
'nowhere, just out for a walk', and he smells like vodka and perfume, and I
just know he's been roaming around getting into trouble."

"A key? Where would he put
it? He goes out by himself?" She laughed.

"Well, he brings the boys along,
the three of them are a posse. But, clearly, it's not my fault, the trouble
they get into. My heart is pure."

"Your heart is pure bullshit,
Joe, but you're funny." She laughed again. "I'm going to, uh, talk to
your friend, see what he says about this. You don't mind, do you?"

"No, no, please, go ahead, you
can, talk, to him all you want."

A couple hours later, Shauna said we
needed to leave, because there was a security patrol coming through. The
security people usually only turned on the big lights for a minute, to make
sure nothing major was wrong. I could see their point, who would steal on truck
on this planet? What would you do with it?

"I'll, uh, call you?
Tomorrow?" Damn. Should have said that before I pulled my shirt and pants
back on. In my defense, it was getting chilly in the truck, now that I was out
of the bed.

"Call me? You'll call me?"

"Or, text you?" I said slowly,
wary that I'd done something wrong.

"You'll call me?
Huh." She was unhappy about something. "I'd like to be mad at you,
but you're so darned goofy cute."

"True, it's a curse. You know, I
don't want you to think I'm, uh, you know?"

"What? That you're using me for
sex? Joe, I'm not some silly high school girl. I'm using you for
sex."

"Oh."

"Is that a problem?"

"No! No, not a problem at
all," I lied. It was, maybe, a tiny bit of a problem, for my ego. Yeah, I
know, this would be a dream situation for most guys, unless they were
completely honest with themselves about it. A guys likes to know that he meant
something to a girl, even if she was a one night stand.

Yeah, it's a male ego thing. Sue me.

"Listen, Joe, we're on an alien
planet," she said, her voice muffled by the blanket over her head, as she
wriggled into her pants while still nice and warm under the blanket. I wish I'd
thought of that. "We don't know where we'll be going next, you and I could
be posted to different planets next friggin' week. I'm busting my ass to
qualify for combat duty, I want to make a difference in this war, that's what
I'm focusing on now. I don't have time for a boyfriend. You don't have time for
a girlfriend. I like you, you like me, girls get horny and you're pretty good in
the sack. No commitments. Can we keep it uncomplicated?"

"Oh, uh," that brightened up
my day again, now that I understood, "sure. Yes. Yes!"

"Great." She swung her legs
out from the blanket, stuffed her feet into her boots, hopped to her feet, and
kissed me on the cheek. "I'll call you."

That kind of freaked me out.

Then, she did call two nights later,
and we wore out the truck's springs.

It was awesome.

Any thoughts I had, that my amorous
nocturnal adventures had gone unnoticed, went out the window at breakfast the
next morning. Sergeant Koch had run us ragged over an obstacle course in the
dark, I hadn’t gotten enough sleep and the three of us were ravenously hungry.

"What is that?" Cornpone
mumbled over a mouthful of food, pointing at Ski's bowl with a piece of toast.

I looked at it too. "Damn,
Ski," I said, "what are you doing?" Instead of eggs, French
toast, hash browns or anything good, he had one lonely, barely buttered piece
of wheat toast, and a bowl of what appeared to be plain oatmeal. Plain, as in
oats soaked in water. No raisins, no brown sugar, no walnuts, not even any
cream. The kind of thing you serve to horses.  Yum. "That looks like
a bowl of, like, soggy.... sadness."

"A bowl of sadness."
Cornpone choked he laughed so hard, spitting eggs onto his plate. "That's
funny. Is Soggy Sadness a Kellogg's brand?"

"Seriously," I added, as Ski
sat there stone-faced, "eating that must be like being a Cubs fan. Sure,
once in a while, the Cubs will luck their way into a win, and it's like you
find a marshmallow in the bowl, but, come on, you know by the end of the
season you'll be choking down a bowl of sadness."

"Shut up." Ski growled, but
there was a twinkle in his eye.

Cornpone slapped the table.
"Bish, damn, you're killing me here."

I offered a slice of French toast to
Ski, but he waved it away with a frown. "No, man, that meatloaf last night
had an argument with my stomach, I need something bland after that obstacle
course."

"Oh, yeah, the meatloaf. What was
that gravy?" Cornpone shook his head. "10W-40 motor oil, tasted
like."

"No, I think it was hydraulic
fluid hamsters use on those Buzzards. Yummy," I licked my lips,
"mystery meat floating in an oily pool of hydraulic fluid."

"Uh huh," Cornpone agreed
while spooning hash browns into his mouth. "And when the oily gravy starts
getting cold, it gets that rubbery skin on top, and it-"

"Oh." Ski's face was turning
green. He pushed the oatmeal away. "Guys, shut up, please, I'm gonna lose
it."

Busting each other's balls was a key
part of being in a fireteam, we also knew when to quit. Last thing Cornpone and
I wanted was for Ski to ralph all over the breakfast table, that would make us
real popular in the platoon. Not. "Here," I took two slices of wheat
toast from Cornpone and put them on Ski's plate, "this will fill you up.
We got a busy morning." The schedule called for an hour on the rifle
range, then the platoon was hiking twelve miles, finding our way to five
navigation points before a lunch break. This was part of our preparation for a
major combined arms war game in a week, where we were hoping to show the
Kristang what badass soldiers we humans were in simulated combat. Part of the
war game scenario, which was still being developed, included simulated orbital
bombardment, and humans flying captured Ruhar aircraft against Kristang
dropships. UNEF would be the Blue team defending the planet, and the Kristang
would be the Red team invaders, with the Kristang force playing the part of the
Ruhar; using Ruhar tactics.

A couple slices of bland toast in
Ski's stomach made him feel better, enough for him to steal a piece of French
toast off my plate. He was feeling better enough to ask "Hey, Bish, that
girl Shauna, you hittin' that?"

"Yeah," Cornpone elbowed me
in the ribs, "what's the deal?"

They almost made choke on a mouthful
of hash browns. "The deal? The deal is, first, she's a woman, not a
girl-"

"You know what I mean."
Cornpone wasn't going to get distracted from the subject.

"-and she's none of your
business. We bumped into each other at dinner, and we talked. It's no big
deal."

"You talked with a real, live,
actual girl. You may have touched a real girl. That is a big deal."
Ski objected.

Cornpone "Bish, you know what? I
heard that across UNEF, only sixteen percent of the force are women. Sixteen
percent! That means for every guy, there's like, uh, for every girl, there's
like, uh, four guys!"

"I think you need to check your
math, there, Jesse," Ski cut in. "The point, Bish, is that with those
odds, we're kinda desperate, and if any guy on this planet is getting
laid, we at least want details."

"I am not giving you
details."

"Aha!" Cornpone slapped the
table, drawing looks from others around us. "There are
details."

Shit. I'd screwed that up. "Guys,
hypothetically, some guy on this planet is, let's say, enjoying the company of
a lady. Do you think it will improve the odds of other guys getting lucky if he
talks about it? Or if he keeps his mouth shut? Huh? You think the women on this
planet would be happy about some guy bragging about the details?"

"Damn it," Ski groused,
"he's right."

"You can brag about getting laid,
or you can actually get laid. It's real simple." I concluded.

"Fuck. Hell, in that case,"
Cornpone said grumpily and reached out with his fork, "I'm taking the rest
of your French toast."

My zPhone beeped one morning while I
was on the rifle range, it was a message from my platoon, ordering me to report
to a Captain Andrews on the other side of the base. Andrews commanded a company
in another battalion of our brigade. The message didn't say 'on the double',
that was implied. When I found the tent Andrews was using as company HQ, I
stepped inside and saluted. "Specialist Bishop reporting as ordered,
sir."

"Bishop," he barely looked
up from his laptop, "sat ease. I'm sure you know we left Earth without a
full complement; if people couldn't get to Ecuador by the departure date, they
got left behind."

I nodded. Transportation to Ecuador
had, ironically, been more difficult than transport up to orbit and across the
stars. Because of manpower shortages, we had sergeants in charge of squads,
staff sergeants filling in for first sergeants, lieutenants acting a captains,
etc. The other fireteam in my own squad had only three soldiers, and the
battalion had scraped together new squads from understrength units. Overall,
the 10th Division had fourteen percent less manpower than authorized, and that
didn't even count the field artillery battalions that had been deliberately
left behind. Or most of the sustainment brigade that had also been left behind,
so we didn't have our combat engineers with us. It was a big problem that
Division was still sorting out.

"I've got your personnel file
here," Andrews continued, and my face fell.

I’d seen my personnel file, the original one on
paper, still in official Army triplicate. Coming out of Nigeria, it said ‘bad
attitude’ on it, all capital letters, and it’s underlined twice. There isn’t
even a smiley face as the dot over the 'i' in 'attitude', so you know it’s
serious. I hoped Captain Andrews wasn't going to underline it again, and circle
it with a big angry face. Running frantically through my memory, I couldn't
think of anything I'd fucked up more than usual since we left Earth. Balanced
against my alleged bad attitude was a Purple Heart that explained the scars on
my left arm, and paperwork started to award a Bronze Star. That paperwork had
stopped at the brigade level, which I could understand considering the
circumstances. I appreciated the gesture anyway.

"You know Staff Sergeant Agnelli?" He
asked, and I nodded again, then he said something unexpected. "There's an
opening for a sergeant in his squad, and you've been recommended." He
didn't say who had recommended me. "It's yours if you want it. We don't
have time, or resources, for a regular training program, so you'll learn on the
job. If you're interested, report to Agnelli, and I'll handle the
paperwork."

Shit. I didn't know if I was ready to command a
fireteam, three guys I didn't know. Andrews cleared his throat. "That was
me waiting for an answer, Bishop. I know this is unusual, we don't have time
for the normal process out here."

"Oh, yes, sir. Thank you. I mean, yes, I'm
honored. Yes." Promotions were supposed to be a more formal process, I was
taken completely by surprise. The Division had holes that needed to be filled.

"Uh huh." He sounded less than
convinced. "Agnelli will keep you out of trouble. And, Bishop?"

"Yes?"

"Stay away from ice cream trucks." He
wasn't smiling.

Taking command of a new fireteam wasn't the most
difficult part of my promotion, my three guys all had experience in Nigeria and
knew what to do without me needing to tell them much. Staff Sergeant Agnelli
was patient with me and, other than the administrative part of the job that was
overwhelming at first, I didn't have much trouble adjusting. The Army didn't
have time to put me through the standard training, which saved me from
memorizing a bunch of crap, and I'm sure that would come back to bite me in the
ass later. The most difficult part of being promoted was leaving my old unit;
Sergeant Koch, Ski, and especially Cornpone. Cornpone had a tear in his eye,
which he said was caused by blowing sand, and my eyes teared up too.
"Damn," Cornpone said, "think how much stupid stuff you get into
when I'm around. What are you going to do without me? And the Army put you in
charge of a fireteam?" He shook his head sadly.

"If I see an ice cream truck, I'll run the
other way."

He snorted. "Bish, that takes care of,
like, ten percent of the problem. You get into a situation, you should think
'what would Jesse do'?"

"And then do the opposite?" I laughed.

He made an exaggerated shrug, then gave me a
back-pounding hug. "Take care of yourself, and don't forget to
write."

I pulled out my zPhone. "Write? With this
thing, I can see your ugly face whenever  I want."

"Oh, damn," he rolled his eyes,
"I forgot about that." He pulled out his zPhone. "How do I block
people from calling?"

The Kristang didn't have faster than light
communication, but the US Army rumor mill did. "Sergeant
Bishop?" Shauna was the first person to call me about my promotion.
"Man, they'll promote anybody."

"True enough."

"Seriously, good for you, Bish."

"Confession? I have no idea what I'm
doing."

"Bish, we'll be fighting aliens.
Nobody knows how to do this.  We’ll make it up as we go.”

Damn, it was good hearing from her. Which
reminded me, I needed to review the Army regs about fraternization, Shauna
wasn’t under my command, she was in a different battalion. Did that mean I was
Ok to continue being with her? I sure hoped so.

My new squad was led by Staff Sergeant Salvatore
Agnelli, who despite the name had blonde hair and looked more German than
Italian. In my fireteam, I lucked out, and both Agnelli and I knew it. Privates
Chen and Baker, and Specialist Sanchez, were all veterans of Nigeria, and
Sanchez had served briefly in Korea before that. Greg Chen was an ABC from
suburban Maryland, he had to explain that ABC meant American Born Chinese,
since I had no idea what he meant. Jeron Baker was raised on a farm in Alabama,
which he was immensely proud of, and he was immensely grateful to get away
from. And Pete Sanchez was from eastern Kansas, his parents had a small farm
but his mother worked as a nurse and his father at a car dealership, their farm
not being big enough to provide a living for a family. Their previous sergeant
was now a staff sergeant, leading a squad in 2nd Brigade. We got off to a great
start when none of them made a Barney joke, or asked about or seemed in any way
curious about what I'd done the first time I saw a Ruhar. They'd read all about
it, it was ancient history, and it didn't mean squat now. The four of us got to
know each other in drills and combat exercises over the next week, I was
collapsing in bed each night completely exhausted, and I hadn't been happier in
a long time. I had a great team, and we were honing ourselves for battle with
an enemy that had threatened our home planet. What we needed was a real
mission.

Eight days after my promotion to
sergeant, our brigade received orders to deploy. I’d been scrambling to get up
to speed for the next war game, Operation Razor, in ten days. We got the news
from Captain Teller, who assembled the company in an empty hangar on the edge
of the base. He stood on a platform at the far end, with us crowding forward to
hear him. “People, we have an opportunity."

Chen groaned and whispered
"BOHICA, man." Bend Over Here It Comes Again was a popular saying in
the Army, especially when an officer said we had an 'opportunity'. It usually
meant we were getting screwed one way or another, hence the time-honored
expression.

Teller waited a moment for the
inevitable murmuring to die down. "We have an opportunity to put our new
toys into action, and do something useful in this war. UNEF received orders, we
move out in two days and a wake-up. First Brigade is going in with one British
and one French battalion. UNEF is all in on this one, everybody's going. The
whole force is bugging out over the next two weeks.”

A guy in the front spoke up. “What’s
the mission, Captain, we gonna kick some rodent ass?” The question was asked
with deadly seriousness.

Teller made a face like he’d just bit
into a lemon. “No, the Kristang say we’re not ready for that. I’ve seen
Kristang battle simulations, and they’re right, we’re not ready. We’d just get
in the way. Most combat happens in orbit, or further out, and since we don't
have a space navy, we can't help there. The Kristang have retaken a colony
world they lost to the Ruhar a while back, they’re kicking the Ruhar off the
planet. They’ve reached a truce, the deal allows the Ruhar to evacuate their
civilian population over a thirteen month period, it will take thirteen months,
because there are almost a million Ruhar there now. Our job is to occupy the
planet, and facilitate the evacuation.”

This news did not please the Company.

“Garrison duty?!”

“Shit. We’re gonna be peacekeepers.”

“We have to wear fucking blue
helmets?”

Teller held his hands in the air,
until we quieted down. “I came out here to fight the Ruhar, just like you, to
kill those rat-faced motherfuckers. I don’t get to do whatever I want, I'm in
the Army. Our job out here is to protect Earth, and since we sure as hell
demonstrated we can’t do that by ourselves, the best way for us to protect the
folks back home is to work with our allies. The Kristang are stretched pretty
thin right now, they don’t have many troops to spare to hold the places they’ve
captured. That’s why they asked for infantry. There's some sort of biological
hazard on this planet that prevents the Kristang from landing in force right
away, the Kristang say the Ruhar are cheating on Rule Number Four. The Ruhar
say the virus or whatever, is left behind from back when the Kristang occupied
the planet. That's for them to argue about. Bottom line is the Kristang can't
land their troops on this planet unless they're wearing full environment suits,
and that ain't happening. Until the Kristang can develop an antidote to the
virus and distribute it in quantity, UNEF is going to be fully in charge on the
ground. This is a job we can do, and we’re going to do it to the best of our
ability. Those are our orders.”

“What’s the R-O-E, sir?” A loud voice
from the back asked about the Rules Of Engagement.

“No shooting, unless they shoot first.
Whether we like them or not, the Ruhar on this planet are mostly farmers, and
that includes women and children. The Kristang tell us not to expect much
opposition, the Ruhar civvies should be happy to be alive and allowed to go
home.” There was a lot of grumbling from Able Company. Teller didn’t flinch.
“This is a test, in case you haven’t figured that out yet. So far, all the
Kristang have seen from humans is us dying, without inflicting much damage on
the Ruhar.” He paused, frowned, and continued. “In double-U double-U Two,” he
pronounced the words precisely, “the US Army didn’t hit the Normandy beaches in
their first battle. We landed in North Africa first, and those of you who know
your history, know that’s a damned good thing. We were completely unready to
take on the Germans in 1942, if we’d landed in Normandy first, we would have
gotten our asses kicked back across the Channel. By fighting in North Africa,
and Sicily, and Italy, we learned how to fight the Germans, learned what
worked. The Kristang have given us a few shiny new toys to fight with, that
doesn’t mean we know the best tactics to use them against the Ruhar in ground
combat. The Kristang have trusted us with what should be a simple job, we can not
screw this up. We take control of the planet, we move the Ruhar civvies to the
space elevators and get their furry butts off the planet, and we secure the
place, until the Kristang sort things out upstairs and can land their own
troops. We are going to show the Kristang that the United Nations Expeditionary
Forces are disciplined, competent, and ready to take on combat operations in
the future. Platoon leaders, I want your squads ready for departure inspection
at 1400 hours the day after tomorrow. Are there any more questions?”

I spoke up. “Sir, where are we going,
and what can we expect for conditions?” I wanted to know as much as possible
about what my new fireteam would be getting into.

“The short answer is we're going to
Bum Fuck Neptune." The smile only lifted one side of his mouth.
"Oxygen-nitrogen atmosphere, a bit more oxygen than we're used to. Gravity
two percent heavier than Earth. The star is hotter than our Sun, but the planet
is further away, so the climate is similar to Earth; hot at the equator, ice
caps at the poles. It's mostly a farming colony, the Ruhar call the place
Gehtanu, which translates roughly as New Grain Field, or something like that.”
That drew a chuckle from the crowd. “The Kristang call it Pradassis. We're
calling it Paradise. It’s got one big–ass continent, a couple island
chains and big islands like Greenland size, the rest is ocean. Our PowerPoint
Rangers put together a briefing deck, which your platoon leaders should have on
tablets to distribute, it says the main continent is largely flat grasslands,
like the US Great Plains, or the Russian steppes. Lots of big farms tended
partly by robots, with the Ruhar clustered in villages. All the intel we have
will be available on your notepads shortly, I need everyone to study up during
the flight. The whole 10th Division, plus our British and French friends, will
be loading on three transport ships, and the trip will take sixteen days. After
we drop, the Kristang will keep a destroyer plus two frigates in orbit for fire
support, but this is our show. General Meers has assured the Kristang that we
can handle this, we are not going to prove him wrong.”

Shauna pinged me before I could
contact her. "You hear? We're moving out!"

"Yeah, we're going to
Paradise."

"Paradise!" She laughed. We
hadn't been together since my promotion to sergeant, we'd both been too busy
and I was way too tired. It hit me then that I might never see her again, once
we left our base on Camp Alpha, we'd probably be on different transport ships,
then assigned to different sites scattered across the surface of Paradise.

"Hey, uh, good luck on qualifying
for infantry." I didn't want to call to end, and I didn't know what to
say.

"Thanks, that'll have to wait
until we get there." There were loud voices in the background. "Joe,
I have to go, let's keep in touch?"

"Sure." And that was it. At
least we'd be on the same planet.

You might think that 'two days and a
wakeup' means we had two full days, plus a luxurious full night of sleep,
before we had to assemble for departure. You would be wrong. The 'wakeup'
happened at zero dark stupid, it felt like my head had barely hit the pillow
before lights snapped on in the tent, and my feet had to hit the dirt. Getting
up at zero dark thirty was nothing new to me, and I didn't resent it even
though I was not by nature a morning person. Or even a mid-morning person. My
sister was an annoyingly cheerful morning person, and growing up I'd wanted to
smother her with a pillow more than once.

Anyway, I had to get up at zero dark
stupid, which meant I then had to wake up my fireteam. The difference between
zero dark thirty and zero dark stupid, is that zero dark stupid means you rouse
out of bed, get all your gear ready and assemble for departure inspection, only
to stand around for three fucking hours when you could
have used those three hours for something productive, like sleeping. As a
sergeant now, I had to endure the resentful glares from my team while keeping a
neutral expression on my face.

The whole departure was a clusterfuck.
The Kristang wanted their dropships loaded as quickly and efficiently as
possible, which meant cramming the maximum number of people aboard in a frantic
rush, even if that meant splitting up platoons, squads or even fireteams. When
we finally boarded a dropship, Baker and Chen had their feet in the door when
the MP held out a hand to stop anyone else from boarding. "We're full,
move on to the next ship," she announced.

I frantically yanked Baker and Chen
back out by hauling on their packs, and waved another two guys forward. Hell,
no way was I going to let my new fireteam get split up right after we'd met.
You'd think we would be first in line to board the next dropship, but the MPs
keeping us organized had other ideas, and several dropships lifted off before
we were waved forward. Being aboard a dropship wasn't the last of the
confusion, when our dropship docked and we got aboard the Kristang starship, we
discovered we were not only aboard a different ship from the rest of our
platoon, but most of the ship was occupied by the US Army 3rd Infantry
Division, not our home unit the 10th. The ship had people from the 3rd, the
10th, most of a company of US Marines, more than a full company of Chinese, two
squads of Brits and a scattering of Indian troops. Either the Kristang didn't
understand the concept of combat loading, or they had so little regard for
human combat capabilities that they figured it didn't matter whether our units
were scattered all over hell and gone. Supposedly UNEF HQ was keeping track of
who was where, but I had no way to contact anyone in my chain of command. I got
us to bunk with some other people from the 10th. It was a lonely voyage, and I
was grateful that my guys shrugged and took it in stride. If this was the worst
fuckup we got into, we'd be doing great.

CHAPTER FOUR    PARADISE

Unlike Alpha, Paradise had a space elevator. It
looked a bit different from the one that hovered over Earth, someone told me
this one was put there by the Ruhar. That surprised me, I figured the Ruhar
elevator would have taken a hit during the battle when the Kristang had retaken
the planet. Maybe targeting space elevators was against one of the unwritten
Rules? Or maybe it was just practical; the people trying to conquer a planet
wouldn’t want to damage a valuable asset, and the defenders figured, even if
they lost that battle, they could try taking the planet back again someday? The
Ruhar elevator rode a lightning bolt like the one on Earth did, but whereas the
Thuranin elevator ‘cable’ was pure energy, the Ruhar design had a physical
cable, thinner than a human hair, in the center of the lightning bolt. Because
of this, the Ruhar didn’t have any vital facilities on the equator of Paradise;
if that cable ever snapped, it could wrap itself around the planet several
times, and crash down with a considerable impact despite the small mass. We
were told the cable had explosive charges along its length, to make it less of
a disaster if the cable ever snapped or was cut, but for sure I didn’t want to
get stationed on the equator, I’d spend half my time looking warily at the sky.

The trip down the elevator to Paradise wasn’t
much different than the trip up from Earth, except there was no smiling Army
cook serving delicious cheeseburgers, we had to settle for MREs again. And this
elevator car had more windows, and the passenger compartment was easily three
times the size of the one at Earth, I guess this one was designed primarily for
civilian use. We got a good look at Paradise as we descended, and we descended
pretty fast, there was a lot more vibration than I remember on my one other
space elevator experience. Paradise looked good, at least it had a lot of green
and blue, not the star-blasted dead browns and tans of Alpha. As the elevator
car got close enough so I could see the outlines of villages, it occurred to me
that I would soon be setting foot on my third planet. And this would be my
first planet that was enemy territory, even if that enemy had already
surrendered to the Kristang. Getting low enough so individual buildings were
distinctive, I touched the new sergeant’s stripes on my shoulder. This place
was a home of my enemy, the aliens who had attacked Earth. Not that I needed
any extra motivation, but at that moment, I was filled with determination to do
everything I could to get the Ruhar off this planet on schedule, and show our
saviors the Kristang that humans could be entrusted with more important tasks
in the future. And if any damned hamsters got in my way, well, I’d remember the
rules of engagement, but I wasn’t taking any crap from the hamsters. I would
show them the same courtesy they showed us, when they sneak attacked Earth and
destroyed much of our electric generation capability.

When the elevator car landed with a gentle
thump, we were hustled off as quickly as we could move. It wasn’t ten minutes
after the last of us cleared the fence line around the elevator complex, that a
series of alarm blasts rang out, and the car ascended again to pick up the next
group in orbit. I watched it, craning my neck, still amazed, as the guards
hurried us along to an airstrip, where there was a line of the biggest
airplanes I’d ever seen. The guards called them ‘Dumbos’, because of their
large body and relatively small wings. They had four engines, buried inside the
wings near the roots, and they were probably six times the size of the US Air
Force C-17s I’d gotten used to. Dumbos needed only a short runway, but they
couldn’t take off straight up, that took too much power to be practical in a
heavy lifter. While I was watching, one lined up and took off, its engines
screaming, and I swear the thing was airborne in less than four hundred yards.
The engine exhaust could pivot down to help get it off the ground, then the
wings took over to provide lift. Anything that big, moving that slowly through
the air, made me think there must be an invisible string holding it up. Like
Buzzards, Dumbos were leftover Ruhar equipment that we humans were expected to
use, until the Kristang took over.

We were supposed to assemble by platoon, except
my fireteam was alone. I managed to keep my fireteam together, it wasn’t
difficult, and after a while I learned where we were supposed to go to
eventually link up with our platoon. Once staff sergeants counted noses in
squads, then platoons and then at the company level, we waited. And waited. And
waited some more, in the hot sun. We must have waited for an hour, as other
platoons and companies matched past us onto Dumbos, and as Dumbos landed,
loaded and took off again. I could see Chickens and Buzzards circling the
airfield in the distance, they were already a familiar sight from Alpha. The
blessing was whatever material the tarmac was made from was a light tan color,
and didn’t bake in the heat the way dark-colored asphalt would have on Earth.
After an hour, with my fireteam being on their best behavior for their new
sergeant, we finally marched halfway across the airfield, past a couple empty
waiting Dumbos, to our Dumbo. It was good to see the US Army was just as
awesomely efficient and organized on other planets as it was on Earth. We all
crammed together on uncomfortable seats made of lightweight netting, and sat
down to wait again. There was cool air blasting out of vents in the front of
the cabin, by the time the air got to us in the back, it was as hot and humid
like the air outside. Some kind of commotion was going on at the back ramp,
with a captain pointing at a tablet and arguing with a lieutenant. The
lieutenant shook his head at the captain, and walked toward us, clearly
unhappy. He got close enough for me to read ‘Koenig’ on his nametag, and I
stood up and saluted. “What’s going on, sir?”

“Charlie Foxtrot.” He muttered. Another typical
Cluster Fuck. “They say we’re on the wrong bird, we’ll get it sorted out.”

Whatever the problem was, five minutes later the
doors slammed closed, and we started rolling. Everyone cheered. The word got
passed down that we should relax, and get settled in for a two hour supersonic
flight. The pilot made an announcement when we settled into cruise speed, which
was around Mach 1.4. Even having traveled faster than light, going through
wormholes, and going down from, and back up to orbit in a shuttle, that speed
impressed me. Then it hit me that the announcement was a human voice. I leaned
over to a second lieutenant sitting next to me. “Sir, who’s flying this thing?”

He yawned. “Some Air Force pukes.”

“Uh, how much flight training did they get?” I
asked slowly, not wanting to hear the answer I expected. On Earth, C-17 drivers
had years of training before they qualified for even the right-hand copilot
seat. No way could these guys have more than a couple weeks flying time. In a
totally unfamiliar, gigantic aircraft.

“Nothing to worry about, sergeant,” he said,
although I noted he wasn’t looking at me when he said it. “There’s a computer
than does most of the flying, and a Kristang in orbit can take over and land
this thing remotely if needed. The guys up front are there to make coffee.”

I didn’t laugh.

The flight was uneventful, except it ended in a
landing so abrupt it made me think the pilot was Navy, not Air Force, and he
was trying to land our Dumbo on an aircraft carrier. Then I saw the ‘airfield’,
which was a dirt field, a field that had contained some sort of crops recently,
before the land was cleared for airplanes. Without much waiting around, we were
marched across the field to a rank of waiting Buzzards. I was excited, eager
for a ride in the unfamiliar aircraft. Thirty of us crammed into a Buzzard. I
wanted to sit in the doorway, legs hanging out into the air, rifle on my lap as
the Buzzard roared low across the landscape. The copilot quickly straightened
me out. “This bird isn’t a Blackhawk, sergeant, we cruise around four hundred
miles an hour when we get to altitude. If you want to hang out the door, go
ahead, but shut it behind you.”

I found a seat, a staff sergeant was grinning at
me, but he later told me he'd been thinking of doing the same thing. The flight
in the Buzzard was also uneventful, much smoother than any helicopter I’d flown
in, and we flew across endless farmland and scattered forests and lakes, until
we circled a village and set down.

When the door of the Buzzard popped open, we
smelled it. You know the scent of new-mown hay, or, if you’ve lived in the
suburbs, freshly-cut grass? That clean, fresh, invigorating scent, a scent of
nature that reminds you of childhood, of running barefoot across a field, under
bright blue heavens, with big puffy white clouds piled high in the sky? Yeah?
This was not like that. The scent wafting from the hamster’s field of, whatever
the hell they ate, smelled vaguely of-

Baker sniffed, and wrinkled his nose. “Damn.
What is that?”

It wasn’t right there, in your face, it was more
something at the back of your mind, or the back of your nose, a scent that
makes you stop and try to identify it. I had a good memory for scents, but it
took me a moment to figure it out, because it was close, but not quite right.
“Parmesan cheese.” I announced.

Not parmesan cheese as in, a big hot bowl of
spaghetti on a cold winter night, with a couple juicy meatballs on top, and
you’ve been smelling that tantalizing tomato sauce simmering on the stove all
day, and you’re sitting down with a slice of garlic bread and a glass of hearty
red wine, and you sprinkle fresh parmesan on top, and it kind of melts into the
sauce? Not that. This was parmesan cheese as in, you’re already sick with like
the flu or just an epic hangover, and your stomach is already on the edge, and
you smell parmesan cheese that’s been out of the fridge too long, and you know
you’re going to hurl. That’s the parmesan cheese we smelled, coming from the
fields.

“Parmesan- goddamn, it smells like Sanchez’
feet!” Chen said disgustedly.

“My feet? You ever smell your own?”

“I wash my feet!”

“Once a year, maybe.”

“All right, pipe down, you two.” I ordered.
“Maybe it’s a chemical they spray on their crops, and it’ll go away. Or we’ll
get used to it, and not even notice it anymore.”

“Shit.” Chen spat. “I been bunkin’ with Sanchez
for weeks, and I ain’t got used to his stinky feet yet. If this whole planets
smells like that, this is gonna to be a long deployment.”

The rest of our platoon was already there,
they’d set up a base in tents around a barn, the hamster town was half a
kilometer to the east. I got my fireteam sorted out, and the first sergeant of
the platoon told me to report to Lieutenant Charles in a tent.

I saluted smartly. “Sergeant Bishop, reporting
as ordered, sir.”

“Bishop, I expected your team this morning.” He
gave me a casual salute back, he seemed to be distracted. Establishing a
platoon base on an alien planet had to give a guy headaches.

“Charlie Foxtrot loading the dropships at Alpha
sir, the Kristang put us on the wrong starship. We're all here now, sir,
Sergeant Agnelli is getting us squared away”

"Yeah, UNEF is scattered all over this
planet. You made it here, that's what matters." He pointed to a map laid
out on a table, a real map, printed on some sort of plastic. It showed about a
tenth of the main continent, the part where we were right then. It was mostly
farmland, flat farmland, with some low ridges running north-south, rivers and
lakes here and there. The seacoast was off to the west, the space elevator base
station somewhere off the map to the southeast. “We’re here in this region,” he
circled a finger around a gray shaded area, “the Ruhar call it, some damned
thing,” he pointed to the markings, which were in Ruhar script, “but we’re
calling it Butt-scratch-istan.”

“Buttscratchistan?” I laughed.

He smiled. “The region to the north of us is
Back-scratch-istan, so, to the south here must be Buttscratch, right? Your
fireteam will occupy a village about a hundred kilometers west of here,” he
pointed to a tiny dot on the map. “The hamsters there are all farmers, population
around two fifty if you count the surrounding farmsteads. There’s a school,
barns, a grain storage building, some houses, and that’s about it.”

One fireteam of four soldiers against over two
hundred hamsters? I didn’t like those odds. A fireteam didn’t usually operate
alone, two fireteams belonged to a squad, with a staff sergeant in charge.
“Sir, how is one fireteam supposed to keep control of that many hamsters?”

“You’re not. This is an experiment,” he
grimaced, “a bright idea from Division. We have company-size quick reaction
teams scattered around, with Buzzards and Chickens, backed up by Kristang
firepower in orbit,” he glanced at the ceiling of the tent. “There’s plenty of
firepower available if we need it, what Division wants is to avoid needing it.”

My shoulders slumped. “Hearts and minds?” That
was the Army term for attempts to get the civilian population to cooperate with
us, or at least not actively resist us. It had started in Vietnam, and
continued in various forms and terminology in Iraq, Afghanistan, Nigeria and
pretty much every place the US of A had gotten involved. We built schools,
roads, water and power distribution systems, and helped plant and harvest
crops. Long-term, it was cheaper and more effective to avoid making more enemies,
than it was to kill enemies. Especially since the enemy you killed was
someone’s relative, and they, and probably their entire tribe, then became your
enemy. If you know anything about history, you know these kinds of hearts and
minds campaigns have, let’s say, a mixed record. A month after we pulled out of
a third world area, the schools got burned out, the water system blown up, and
the power lines stolen for scrap copper. Our politicians declared victory
anyway, and moved onto the next crisis. Hooah.

“More like soft power, Bishop. We’re not going
to build schools for these hamsters, we just want to keep things peaceful until
they take the trip offworld. Think of it as your own little slice of Paradise.”
He added with a grin.

“Sir, I’m a new buck sergeant-“

“You’re also a farmer, you grew up on a farm.
Sanchez and Baker did too. These aliens may be hamsters, but they work the
land, I’m hoping that gives you an understanding that some of our city boys
won’t have. This region is in the middle of the line to be evaced offworld, so
there’s more time for things to go wrong.” He put a hand on my shoulder and
squeezed reassuringly. “You don’t have to be nice to these hamsters, but don’t
try to intimidate them. They’ve already agreed to leave the planet, the deal they
have with the Kristang allows them to continue raising and harvesting crops
right up until the evac is complete; the Ruhar are paying the Kristang to
transport their crops. I know, it sounds crazy, but the Kristang have been
fighting this war for a long time, and they know what they’re doing. The Ruhar
here want to keep those food shipments flowing, they should be well motivated
to cooperate with us. If you get into trouble, whistle us on your zPhone, and
we’ll bring in the air cav. If it gets bad enough, the Kristang can hit any
site you want from orbit, and the hamsters know it.”

Again, I wasn’t filled with confidence.

"Agnelli will be taking the other half of
the squad to a village north of where you'll be. You're not an occupation
force, UNEF is calling these units Embedded Observation Teams. G2 wants to know
what's going on with the hamsters, at the local level. All the satellite and
airborne surveillance in the galaxy won't tell us what's really happening on
the ground, and a recon team passing through once in a while won't tell us
enough. We need people on the ground, living among the hamsters. There's a
complete set of guides for EOTs on your tablet. It would be best to get you
some training, but Division wants everyone in place ASAP to establish a
presence, before the hamsters get any stupid ideas that UNEF can be pushed
around."

"Yes, sir. We've got this." I didn't
have to like it. That's why they are called 'orders' and not ‘suggestions'.

When I got to the area the platoon was using as
a motor pool, my confidence dropped even lower. “What in the hell is
this thing?” I asked.

“It’s a hamvee, Sergeant.” The grinning mechanic
announced.

“A what?”

“We call it a hamvee, it’s like the old humvee
on Earth, only it’s leftover hamster vehicles. We take any type of hamster
truck, glue composite panels on for hillbilly armor, and you get a hamvee.” He
looked proud of the piece of crap he expected us to patrol around in. Barney’s
ice cream truck looked more capable. If you took an SUV, added big but flimsy
looking tires, thick screens over the windows, and multicolor panels attached
haphazardly here and there, you’d have something almost as ugly.

“Glue?”

“Yup. Can’t weld it on, ‘cause it’s not metal.
We use this Kristang glue,” he held up a caulking gun like you’d find at any
hardware store on Earth, “apply the panels to the hamvee with this dingus, then
use this fancy Kristang doodad,” it looked like an iron, “to set the glue.
Incredibly strong stuff.”

“Dingus? Doodad? You're not impressing me.”

He shrugged. “The Kristang have names for all
this stuff, but it’s hard to pronounce.”

“Is there anything heavier?” I asked, as I
skeptically ran my fingers over the farmer armor panel, which felt like
Styrofoam to me. It was about four inches thick, tapering down at the edges of
the doors, which had to be a weak point. If Styrofoam had a strong point
anywhere.

“We have hamtraks, kind of like a Bradley, or a
Stryker ‘cause it has wheels, they’re hamster military personnel carriers.
Those are for company level use. Don’t worry, I’ve seen a demo of this armor,”
he rapped the Styrofoam with his knuckles, “and regular bullets only dent the
surface. You have to hit it in the same place a couple times, with an explosive
round, to punch through. Tough stuff. We should bring some of this shit back to
Earth with us.”

“A demo? Are you joining us on patrol, the first
time we get shot at?”

He shook his head and grinned. “Not my MOS,
Sergeant. You guys have fun, and don’t scratch the paint. Private Ringold here
will show you how to drive them, and keep the powercells charged.”

After we picked up our pair of hamvees, we went
over to the supply depot to get all the equipment we would need for our EOT
assignment. The 'supply depot' was in what looked like, and smelled like, a former
chicken coop. First, we got personal gear; extra uniforms, body armor, all the
crap a well-dressed human soldier occupying an alien planet needs. Next, ammo
and heavy weapons, which meant Javelin Bravo missiles, and our old familiar
light unguided anti-tank weapon, the 84MM Swedish AT4-CS. Here we were, on an
alien planet, bad-ass conquerors, and we were equipped with weapons I'd used
against militia nutcases in Nigeria. This was unsat, in my opinion. Nobody
asked for my opinion.

The next morning, we were ready to depart. First
Sergeant Mitchell came to see us off. "You squared away, Bishop?"

"If I said this was November Golf,"
which was No Go in Army slang, "would it make any difference?"

Mitchell laughed. "The LT wouldn't send you
out if he didn't have total confidence in you, Bishop. So, Alpha Mike Foxtrot
to you." Adios Mother Fucker, is what he meant. I didn't reply.

We rolled toward our assigned village, trailing
a cloud of dust that drifted high in the breeze, giving away our position to
anyone who cared to look. As we approached the village, we came to a low rise,
and I called a halt to our column. 'Column' was an exaggeration, we had two
hamvees, me and Sanchez in front in a sort of SUV thing, and Baker and Chen
behind in a pickup truck. Both vehicles were loaded with gear, including what
the platoon thought was enough consumables (meaning everything from food and
medicine to toilet paper) to sustain four men for a month. We also had a
standard load of rifle ammo, both regular and explosive-tipped. Plus two
Javelin Bravos and a pair of AT-4s. No mortars; if we needed any sort of
stand-off weapons, we were supposed to call the air cav. The first sergeant
assured me we'd get regular visits from the platoon HQ, and supplies every two
weeks. If the first sergeant was as skeptical about this 'soft power' concept
as I was, he kept his feelings to himself. Personally, I gave this experiment
less than a month before Division, or UNEF HQ, came to their senses. Having
part of our forces thinly scattered across the planet was inviting the hamsters
to defeat us in detail, which means each small unit could be overwhelmed
piecemeal. If that happened, the hamsters would eventually get pounded from
orbit by the Kristang, but that would be of little comfort to any dead humans.

As pre-arranged, a pair of Chickens flying
overwatch buzzed the village low and fast, to get the attention of the resident
hamsters. The Chickens had their weapons pods open, and after they buzzed the
main street, they broke formation and climbed, with one providing cover to the
north and one hovering over us. I glanced once more at the intel package on my
lap. Satellite photos, reports from a recon column that had passed through the
village two days before, and records from the hamster regional government.
According to their records, the current population was 178 hamsters, down from
the estimate of 250 I'd gotten from the platoon. Our arrival should have been
no surprise, as the hamster government said they'd contacted the villagers to
alert them to our approach, and to urge cooperation. We also had
plastic-laminated sign boards, printed in Ruhar script, that we were supposed
to post in prominent locations around the village. The signs, supposedly,
listed regulations like curfew hours, prohibitions against carrying weapons,
and what the hamsters were to do in order to accommodate us. The idea of
putting up posters made me uncomfortable, it felt vaguely like some
heavy-handed thing the Nazis or Soviets would do when they occupied a village.

I signaled the Chicken pilot we were ready, and
told Sanchez to get rolling. Our bad-ass hamvees cruised into the village on
nearly-silent electric motors, tires crunching on dirt and gravel, slowing down
as we reached the first building, the official start of the village. The
village wasn't much to look at, although being from a small rural town myself,
I appreciated that the buildings, both houses and barns, were neat and in good
order. Houses had shade trees, shrubs and flowers, fences and barns were well-kept.
I'd have expected the hamsters to let things slip, forget about maintenance and
things like planting flowers, since they were all going to be evacuating the
planet. I expected graffiti, like 'humans go home' or something like that.
Instead, I saw signs the hamsters were planning to be here for a while,
including a barn that was in the process of having the roof replaced. Were the
Ruhar unable to accept that they'd lost the planet, or did they know something
UNEF didn't know? Either way, it was going into my first sitrep back to platoon
HQ.

Sanchez was from eastern Kansas, he remarked
that the village, the fields and the countryside reminded him of home. It
reminded me of small town home, too. The houses were neat but not fancy, each
house had a barn or workshop behind it. Back home, such houses would have a
sign out front advertising the hundreds of side jobs rural people did to make
ends meet. Honest work like selling fresh eggs, welding, small engine repair,
hair cutting, log splitting, child care. My father thought you could combine
tasks, like log splitting and child care. No more lazy kids sitting around with
coloring books or playing with Legos, my father would say “You kids better have
those three cords of wood split and stacked by five o’clock, or no juice boxes
for you. And no crying if you hit your foot with the maul, walk it off. It’s just
a flesh wound.” I may be exaggerating a bit.

There were vehicles in the road or fields and,
even though they were clearly alien, they also reminded me of home. Every
vehicle had a dented fender, or a body panel that was a different color. These
were working vehicles, for working people. My kind of people. Except they were
aliens, and they had attacked Earth without provocation. Now that I thought
about it, I hoped neither of our two hamvees had been commandeered from this
particular village, that would make for an awkward situation.

A male hamster walked partly into the street
ahead of us and waved, in what I hoped was a friendly, or at least non-threatening,
manner. I could tell he was male, because the fur on his face was a light downy
coat all over; females had facial fur almost too fine to see. Also, males had
bigger whiskers.

He was wearing overalls. Blue, denim-type bib
overalls, with patches on the knees, an outfit identical to several my father
wore for working around the house. And a straw sort of baseball cap, with a
wide brim. The hat had a logo, was it a hamster sports team, or a seed
business, maybe the logo of the company that made the tractors in the fields? I
called a halt, got out, and told Sanchez to stay put, with the engine running.
My rifle was on the seat, I had my sidearm, but otherwise was unarmed. Hearts
and minds, I told myself, hearts and minds. See if we can start things off peacefully;
I could get rough later if needed, but a rough start was hard to overcome.
Besides, the pair of Chickens, weapon pods bristling, were hovering in plain
sight, ready for action.

My zPhone was already set for Ruhar, I held up
one hand, and said simply "Hello."

The hamster spoke into his own sort of zPhone
type device. "Hello. Welcome to Teskor. Teskor is our village."

So the name of the place was 'Teskor', or that's
what the translation sounded like. We hadn't been able to read the Ruhar script
on the map. I pointed to my chest. "I am Joe Bishop." My rank I left
out, not sure if 'sergeant' would be meaningful to aliens.

The hamster nodded. "I am called Lester
Cornhut."

"Lester Cornhut?" I asked, surprised,
I swear to God, that's what the translator said in my ear. We'd been told that
names were not translated, so the sound of  'Teskor' and 'Lester Cornhut'
came through just the way he said them, in the slightly squeaky Ruhar voice.

The hamster said "Yes", and smiled.

Baker asked me on the tactical channel "Did
he just say his name is Lester Cornhut, or Cornhole?"

"Cornhut," I replied, with the
translator function paused, "there's a 'T' sound on the end of it."
The four of us got a good chuckle, and agreed that 'Cornhut' an excellent name
for a hamster farmer. I turned the translator back on. "You are the leader
of this village, the leader of Teskor?"

"No leader, no government here." He
pointed from one end of the village to the other, I guess he meant a place that
small didn't need any form of government. "I was chosen to speak with you.
We will cooperate as instructed by," my translator made the humming sound
it did when it didn't understand something, "and we hope your time in
Teskor is pleasant. This is a good place."

Enemy species or not, Lester hadn't personally
attacked Earth, may not have ever heard of our home planet. Hearts and minds, I
told myself. We had a brief discussion, confirming he understood the date the
people of Teskor would leave for the trip to the space elevator, and that we
would be commandeering a farmstead on the outskirts of town. Lester told me
they had already cleaned the place in preparation for our arrival, the family
who had lived there lost a son when the Kristang took the planet back, and had
moved away months ago to live with relatives. We put up our posters, drove to
the other end of town and back, and the drove out to our makeshift Command
Post. All in all, our entrance to the village was anticlimactic. After we got
to the house where we'd be staying, I waved the Chickens off, and we started
unpacking our hamvees. I left like we were children playing House. I sent a message
to Shauna, but it didn't connect, possibly she hadn't landed yet.

That first night, I couldn't sleep much, I was
too pumped up about my first command, even if it was only leading an
experienced fireteam on a recon mission. Setting up our Command Post, I felt
like a real sergeant, a leader. I took the first watch, and let the guys sleep,
and toward the morning, I got up as sleep was elusive, and relieved Baker so he
could get a bit more shut-eye. In addition to being excited, I was nervous; if
the hamsters were going to do anything hostile, they were likely to do it our
first night, before we got fully settled in with surveillance systems and
ranged fields of fire around the CP. To keep watch, we had set up a ladder so
we could climb up onto the roof of the house, that's where I was early that
morning. The roof had the advantage of an excellent 360 degree view, it had the
disadvantage that the person keeping watch was totally exposed to sniper fire.
Our zPhones had a nifty feature that, if the person the zPhone was assigned to
died, as in their heart stopped, the zPhone would alert anyone nearby. Which
gave me the great comfort, as I sat exposed on the roof, that if a sniper
picked me off, my fireteam wouldn't be taken by surprise.

UNEF thought Embedded Observation Teams of a
four man fireteam, off by themselves in the middle of nowhere, were a great
idea. Sitting on the exposed rooftop, in the wee hours of the morning, I was
not so sure we weren't simply sitting ducks. In the early morning, when a
person's thoughts can match the enveloping darkness, I wondered whether UNEF
was hoping vulnerable EOTs would be attacked, as an excuse to show the Kristang
what humans could do in combat. Lord knows the US Army had sent me out on
patrols in Nigeria that seemed to have no point, other than exposing us to IEDs
and sniper fire. It wasn't the Army family that I didn't trust, it was the
politicians giving orders. Folks back home would be more excited hearing about
humans in combat, than hearing about UNEF performing garrison duties that
didn't generate headlines. Politicians certainly loved headlines.

Still, it was peaceful in Teskor. So peaceful,
so quiet, sitting up there on top of the roof. Peaceful, and dark. With the
planet so sparsely settled, there wasn't a lot of light pollution, Teskor
seemed pretty dark at night, with no street lights, and only a single dim light
here and there at the front or back of houses. I hadn't experienced darkness
like this since I left electricity-starved northern Maine. Our base at Camp
Alpha had been lit by floodlights at night, blanking out much of the sky. Here,
sitting on a rooftop in the tiny village of Teskor, on the alien planet of
Paradise, I saw the sky. The stars. The Milky Way. This far from Earth, the
constellations were all wrong, but, man, the Milky Way was sweeping across the
sky in all its glory. It was mesmerizing, I had to remind myself not to stare
at it, that I was up on the roof to keep watch, not to gaze at the stars. I
swept the horizon and the road from the village with an infrared scope, it was
all clear. The eastern sky had just the faintest hint of pink from the
approaching dawn, and insects began to buzz, or chirp, or whatever insects did
on this planet. This time of morning is when, on Earth, birds would begin to
sing, but Paradise didn't have any native birds. The guidebook said the
biosphere wouldn't evolve flying animals other than insects for many millions
of years, and since the planet was now occupied by aliens, Paradise probably
never would get a chance to evolve birds on its own.

I sat on the roof, watching the eastern sky
lighten, listening to the low buzzing of unseen insects, and felt homesick. I
missed Earth. Mostly, I missed the Earth that used to be, before alien
invaders, before electricity was a luxury, before we saw twinkling lights in
the sky and thought of anything other than meteor showers.

Before Columbus Day.

While we were eating breakfast, I got messages
from Cornpone and Shauna. Cornpone told me our old squad was part of a rapid
reaction force base about five hundred miles north of Teskor, he sounded
excited, it was a damned good assignment. Way better, he said mockingly, than
babysitting hamsters. I had to agree with him. The fireteam had replaced me
with a new guy, a guy from North Carolina, and Cornpone said the new guy was a
huge improvement over me, since the new guy had a proper Southern accent,
instead of my Downeast drawl. Shauna reported that her unit was temporarily at
a logistics staging base almost a thousand miles to the east. I wrote three
messages to her, erased them, then sent a simple note. The odds were that we
wouldn't see each other for a long time, maybe never, and I tried to respond in
a way that was friendly but not too friendly, so she wouldn't feel she needed
to make any special effort to keep in touch, and then it would get awkward.

By the third day of us ‘patrolling’ the village,
we were all starting to feel more than a bit foolish. For a patrol, we would
put on full battle rattle, our zPhone earpieces, cameras and microphones,
tinted goggles, and march down the streets, rifles ready, a finger poised near
the safety, trying to look tough as we walked past neat little houses and
barns, well-tended fields, and the school, all the way out to the edge of the
village, then turned around and walked back. It was not easy to look tough as
hamsters sat on their front porches in the morning, sipping tea and waving to
us. Or working in the fields and barns, and pausing to wave to us as we walked
by. Or the hamster children waving excitedly, eager to see the strange new
aliens. Us.

To show the hamsters that our fireteam had
serious backup, once or twice a day that first week, a couple Buzzards and
Chickens flew over at low altitude, circled the village, and resumed heading
west. The gesture was supposed to give my unit confidence also, but after we
watched the aircraft disappear over the western horizon, it only reminded us
how isolated we were.

The turning point of our EOT engagement in
Teskor came on the morning of the seventh day, after we’d done our night and
morning patrols, and I’d dutifully sent a report about nothing up to our
platoon leader. I took Sanchez with me, to check out a barn I was curious
about. I wasn't suspicious about any funky hamster activity, just curious to
see the inside of a hamster barn. As we walked past the school, a group of
hamster kids were in the yard, kicking a ball that looked like it was made from
the hamster equivalent of duct tape. We knew the hamsters weren't getting any
new luxuries shipped in from offworld; the Kristang allowed only basic medical
supplies to make the trip down from orbit, everything else that was hamster
related was supposed to be going up to orbit, one way. The kids probably had a
soccer ball that went flat, and they tried to fix it with duct tape.

The barn wasn’t anything special, it was built
from metal girders and some kind of extruded plastic sheets the Ruhar used
everywhere. The exterior color was red, which I thought was interesting; maybe
painting barns red was another almost universal idea between alien species. At
first I thought the barn was a type of chicken coop, until my eyes adjusted to
the dim light. Then it got weird. There were animals being raised there, on
racks along the sides, and it smelled like a chicken coop, or a hog farm. The
weird thing was each animal, about two meters long and a meter across, had a
silver cap where its head should be, and there were wires and tubes leading
into the wall in front of each animal. The animals rested in cradles, I noticed
some of the animals further away were smaller, perhaps younger? What was truly
weird was the silence, no clucking of chickens or grunting of pigs, only the
whirring of fans and electric pumps. And there was my new buddy Lester Cornhut,
trotting up to me from the far end of the barn, with a friendly wave.
"Greeting, Joseph Bishop," he called out.

"Greetings, Lester Cornhut." I must
have pronounced his name correctly, because he smiled and gave me a short bow.
"What is this place?" I asked. "What are those," I pointed
to the strange, whatever they were, "animals?"

"Animals? Ah. These are not animals. Ruhar
do not eat animals, we have long considered that to be," Lester paused to
choose his words carefully, "barbaric." He gave an apologetic smile.
I wondered if what he'd said in Ruhar had been even worse than the translated
word I heard.

"They sure look like animals to me,"
Sanchez said behind me. "They're moving."

Mr. Cornhut walked close to an animal, or
whatever it was, and poked it. The thing didn't respond. Yet it moved
periodically, rocking from side to side. "These food sources," that
probably didn't translate well, "do not have brains, and only a limited
nervous system. Their bodies are almost all meat, genetically designed that
way. A central computer," he pointed to the silver cap and the wires,
"acts as their nervous system, that is why they move in a programmed
pattern, to stimulate muscle growth."

"Huh, damn, that's cool." Sanchez was
impressed. "They grow only the meat, not the whole animal."

I didn't know whether to be impressed or creeped
out. These things were mindless, it was like raising a steak rather than the
cow. It was eerie. It made perfect sense, it was efficient, and still it
bothered me. Maybe I just wasn't ready for the future, this future.

After we got back to base, I asked Baker to dig
through our supplies and see if we had a soccer ball, I thought I’d seen one in
the ‘recreational package’ the platoon gave us before they sent us off to live
in Bum Fuck Neptune.

During the next morning patrol, I tucked the
soccer ball under my arm, and as we walked past the school again, I tossed the
ball underhand to the hamster kids. At first, they were startled and backed
away from it, but on our way back, I saw kids kicking it around, and they waved
to us.

That evening, Lester Cornhut came to visit and
asked for me. "Show Bishahp" is how he pronounced my name, which was
probably closer to my real name than 'Lester Cornhut' was to his real name. I
mean, what are the odds, right? Through the translator, he asked whether I am
the Show Bishahp who captured a Ruhar soldier during the 'military action' on
Earth, which he pronounced as 'Urt'.

"Yes." I nodded.

He smiled, and paused his translator. “Ta.” He
nodded his head up and down. “Neh.” His shook his head side to side.

“Yes.” I nodded. “No.” I shook my head. Then I
said “Ta,” and nodded, and “Neh,” and shook. He did the same gestures for ‘yes’
and ‘no’.

That was our first true interspecies
communication. If we weren’t on Paradise only because the hamsters had attacked
Earth, I would have been thrilled.

Back to the translator, he told me the hamster
regional governor would be visiting Teskor in two days, and she wanted to meet
with me, for tea. Seriously? Afternoon teatime with the enemy? Were we going to
have little cucumber sandwiches, and scones, and crumpets, whatever the hell a
crumpet is? Lester was Ok for a Ruhar, he was a farmer, and likely had no involvement
in attacking Earth, if he'd even heard of Earth before the humans arrived on
Paradise. But a regional governor had to be part of the Ruhar government that
had attacked Earth, and killed humans. I felt like telling Lester that his
bitch governor could shove her visit where the sun don't shine. And that I
wasn't some circus sideshow curiosity for him to show off; step right up and
see the human who captured a Ruhar soldier! We promise it won't bite! Only $5,
including a free souvenir!

Hearts and minds, I told myself, hearts and
minds. If Division G2 wanted intel, a regional governor would know a lot more
about the situation on Paradise than my buddy Lester, that was for sure.
"I would be honored to meet with your governor," I said, expecting that
speaking through a fake smile wouldn't translate as sarcasm.

"You bring tea, for yourself? We have hot
water, I think you do not drink our tea, no?" Lester asked.

Oh, for crying out loud. They really expected me
to drink tea with them? What the hell, one of our food packs must have a teabag
in it, bringing it with me didn't mean I was going to get all cuddly and sing
Kumbaya with the damned Ruhar.

CHAPTER FIVE    INTEL

A couple days later, Lester Cornhut
stopped me during morning patrol, to tell me excitedly that the regional
governor would be at his house promptly at 1600 hours, he tapped his wrist like
he was wearing a watch, and could I please come to his humble abode? Sometimes,
the translator went overboard, I'm sure he didn't say 'humble abode' in Ruhar.
I was tempted to make the hamsters cool their heels waiting for me, but my
mother raised me to be polite, and the military had drummed into my head the
habit of being promptly on time for everything. Promptly at 1600 local time, I
arrived at the Cornhut residence, to see the regional governor, Lester Cornhut,
Mrs. Cornhut, and the little Cornhuts. Baker waited outside, Sanchez and Chen
were at the CP with the heavy weapons, just in case. My visit had been cleared,
even encouraged, by platoon HQ. For the visit, I left my rifle, helmet, body
armor and goggles back at the CP, bringing only my zPhone and sidearm. The
sidearm was there because I'd feel naked without, it, and it would remind the
hamsters, and me, that UNEF was an occupying force. Emphasis on 'force', if
needed.

Oh, and I had brought a teabag with
me. And a packet of sugar, in case I needed it. Lester greeted me excitedly, my
guess was the regional governor didn't visit a hick town like Teskor often,
they probably got more tornadoes than governors coming through the place.

There were only three Cornhuts in the
family; Lester, his wife, and a son, who I recognized from the school.
"Thank you for the ball," the boy said in English, or that's what it
sounded like. I was truly impressed the furry little guy made the effort to
memorize those words, so I said "Ta", and gave a little bow. He
smiled, then Lester shooed him away, and poured hot water into two cups on a
sort of coffee table in front of the couch. He then bowed deeply and left,
leaving me alone with the regional governor. She looked like any other female
Ruhar, although it was clear she wasn't a farmer; she was wearing a blouse and
long skirt, of a material that looked like silk, and her earrings and necklace
were elegant and expensive-looking, not that I had any idea how to tell one
piece of jewelry from another. The governor was sitting on a dark green couch
with a flowery throw rug on it, I sat in a chair at the end of the coffee
table, I sure wasn't going to sit on the damned couch next to her. She slowly
spooned what looked like loose tea leaves from a box on the table, put them
into an egg-shaped thing with lots of holes in it and a thin chain, and gently
set it in the teacup. My grandmother had an almost identical tea egg thing,
whatever you call it.

"I am Sergeant Joe Bishop."
I said, and put my teabag into a cup. It was a lot less elegant than the way
she'd made tea. That irritated me for some reason. I knew the reason she had
made her tea so slowly, deliberately, was to give her time to study me.

She seemed amused. "I am the
regional governor of Lesscorta, my name is Bahturnah Lohgellia." She
paused to wait for the translator to catch up. "Your people who occupy my
home town call me," she paused again, "the burgermeister." Her
eyes twinkled, clearly expecting me to be amused. "I think that
'burgermeister' is easier to pronounce than my name, no?"

I was amused. "Tah."
Whatever troops occupied her town must have been stationed in Germany at some
point. A burgermeister is sort of a mayor in Germany. I think so, I mean, the
closest I had ever was to being in Germany was sitting in a transport plane
while it refueled on the runway at Rhine-Main airfield.

The burgermeister gestured for me to
take my microphone and earpiece off. I pointed to my mouth, then my ear.
"I need this so we can talk to each other."

To my surprise, she responded in very
slow, careful and squeaky English. "Sergeant Joe Bishop, please leave that
outside. You can use this." In her hand was what looked like a Kristang
zPhone, but a bit smaller. She offered it to me, with its own mic and earpiece.
"I will explain," she said slowly, as if she had memorized only a few
phrases of English, and found our words difficult to pronounce.

I hesitated, then nodded. Army regs
said I wasn't supposed to be away from my zPhone while on duty, but this was an
opportunity to get my hands on Ruhar technology, and maybe gain some intel
about the hamsters. It was why UNEF set up Embedded Observation Teams in the
first place. I walked outside, gave my zPhone to Baker, came back in, and used
the Ruhar device.

"Thank you." The
burgermeister said in English, then put her own earpiece in and switched back
to using her translator. "It is comfortable?" Even the computer
version of her voice had a squeaky tone to it.

I looked at the display of the device,
expecting it to ask me to speak a couple pages of text, so it could learn my
particular speech pattern, but it displayed 'Ready' in bold red letters. That
made me suspicious. "How does this know how I speak?"

The burgermeister smiled. "Your
speech has been recorded, analyzed, translated, and programmed into the device
in your hand. We did not wish to waste your time in setting up the device, as
we have much to talk about."

So they'd been spying on me. Fair
enough, of course they'd want intel on their adversary. "Why can't I use
my own," I almost said zPhone but figured that wouldn't translate well in
Ruhar, "tactical radio?"

Again she smiled. A friendly smile,
but also an 'I know something you don't know' smile. It was getting mildly
irritating. "The Kristang did not provide you with advanced weapons,"
she pointed to my sidearm, "aren't you curious why they did provide you
with advanced communications equipment, that is used by every human on this planet?"

That made me pause. "Uh,"
hell, I wasn't a comms expert. "Probably, uh, every country on Earth uses
different radio and computer gear, and since we don't have our own
communications satellites here," I looked up at the ceiling, "the
only way we can all talk to each other is with common radios." As I said
it, it made sense, although I hadn't given it much thought before.

No smile this time, the burgermeister
shook her head side to side. It was fascinating to me that, between two alien
species, body language seemed to be universal. No translation needed there.
"Perhaps that is a convenient excuse. The true reason is that all of your
communications go through a Kristang network. The Kristang monitor every word
you say, they capture all your data transmissions, they track your every
movement, anywhere on the planet. They can also shut down all of your
communications, any time they want. Sergeant Bishop, when you leave here, you
will certainly report our conversation to your military intelligence people. I
suggest you conduct that conversation in person, rather than over the radio.
Unless you want to be overhead by the lizards."

That was all true, I guess. We all did
use Kristang comm gear exclusively. But, why not? It was free, it worked great,
it saved us from the effort of setting up microwave towers across the planet,
and from trying to get American radios to talk to Chinese and Indian radios.
Besides, the Kristang were our allies. "Maybe you are right. So what? The
Kristang are our allies."

That irritating smile came back.
"Allies? Alliances are for equals. The Kristang are your patrons,
and you are their client species. Their pets. Or slaves."

"And you are our enemies." I
said it before thinking. My mother would not have been happy about that; I was
a guest in the hamsters' house, drinking tea, and I was not being polite.

"We have no wish to be your
enemy. Please wait for me to speak," she held up a hand, "I can
understand if you are angry, there is much you need to know, much the Kristang
have not told you, or have lied to you about. My people have known about your
species for over a thousand of your years. Our long-range probes found you, and
placed stealth satellites in orbit around your planet to observe. Tell me,
haven't you wondered why, since this war has been going on for thousands of
years, Earth wasn't attacked a long time ago?"

My jaw dropped slightly open. She was
right, that had been bugging me, seriously bugging me, and I wasn't the only
person who had been asking that question. Why wait to attack now, when humans
have nukes? Why not attack long ago, when humans were living in caves, and
thinking fire was the pinnacle of technology? It didn't make any sense. The
Ruhar weren't stupid, so...? Why? If UNEF HQ knew, they hadn't told me.

Because the need to use a translator
meant she talked v-e-r-y s-l-o-w-l-y, I'll summarize what she said. The reason
Earth hadn't been attacked before is simple. Until recently, Earth was out of
practical flight range, for both sides of the war. It was possible for
specialized, long-range starships to reach our low-rent part of the Orion Arm,
Earth just wasn't worth the time or the expense. For some reason that even the
Maxohlx and the Rindhalu didn't know, every once in a while, wormholes shifted.
It happened randomly, or in a cascade across a whole quadrant of the galaxy. A
shift could happen after a couple decades, or it could take hundreds or
thousands of years. Some wormhole A, that used to connect to a wormhole B,
suddenly connected instead to a wormhole C, and B shifted to connect to D. Or a
wormhole could stop working altogether, or a previously unknown wormhole could
suddenly activate. A planet that was strategically important could find itself
an isolated backwater, after a wormhole shift. Or a planet that was too far
from a wormhole for anyone to bother with, could suddenly become an important
staging base for both sides to fight over. That's what happened to Earth. We
were happily living alone in the galactic hinterland, far from any wormhole,
and on the very edge of Ruhar territory, but far enough away that the Ruhar
hadn't found it worthwhile to travel the extremely long distance to Earth. Then
there was a shift, and a long-dormant wormhole came to life. One end of the
wormhole was near Earth, the other end of that wormhole was in Kristang
territory. That wormhole near Earth was close enough for a Thuranin star
carrier to make the trip to Earth in about a week, which made Earth a good
place for the Kristang to get a new foothold in Ruhar territory. Before the
wormhole shift, Earth was much too far away for a military campaign by the
Ruhar, and impossible to reach by the Kristang.

"Wait a minute," I said as I
digested what the burgermeister had told me. "You attacked Earth. If we're
too far away for a practical military campaign, why did you bother? That must
have been an enormous effort." I thought about the complicated logistics
of our occupation of Paradise, and we had a wormhole to get our supplies most
of the way here. If the Ruhar had to schlep the whole way on foot, as my
grandfather would say, how the hell had they done it? And why attack a planet,
if you can't sustain a force there? It's not like we were a threat to them.

The burgermeister nodded. She clearly
had been prepared for this question. "I am not sure your translator is
picking my words up accurately, so please tell me if you do not understand.
When we realized the wormhole shift had opened your planet for exploitation by
the Kristang, we decided to act first, and our patrons the Jeraptha pulled
together what long-range ships that were available to respond. Once we knew for
certain that the Kristang intended occupy your planet, we degraded your
industrial infrastructure, to make Earth a less useful staging base for the
Kristang. It was a quick strike raid by a small number of ships, we could not
launch a full scale attack at that distance. Our ships traveled for five of
your months to reach Earth, and five months back."

I called bullshit on that. "And
you arrived at the same time as the Kristang? Right."   Then I realized
that 'right' may be translated as 'correct'. We'd been instructed to speak in
simple language to the Ruhar, as idioms, slang and emotion-laden speech like
sarcasm may not make sense across the species barrier. Although based on my
interactions with the Ruhar, body language was universal, at least among
bipedal species. "What I meant to say was, I doubt what you said is
accurate."

"We did not arrive at the same
time as the Kristang," she explained with what I interpreted as a slightly
condescending smile. "Our ships watched the wormhole, in case the Thuranin
sent a force through, we knew they were probing the area, but were not
absolutely sure of their intentions. Earth is not the only habitable planet
near the new wormhole. After the invasion force came through the wormhole, we
waited for three weeks for the Thuranin ships to assemble and complete the
journey from the wormhole. When we realized Earth was their target, our heavy
ships engaged them, while our raiding force launched precision strikes on
Earth. We did not hit cities, our purpose was not to kill your people, it was
to reduce your industrial capacity, so the Kristang would not find it so easy
to sustain a foothold at the edge of our territory."

"You killed a lot of
people." I shot back angrily. "Humans."

"As a soldier, you are familiar
with the term collateral damage?" She waited for me to nod. Nodding was
one of those universal body languages. "Our targets were electric power
stations, factories producing certain types of equipment, and industrial
facilities which create materials such as metals. All of which are
infrastructure which could be utilized by the Kristang. When we attacked your
fission power plants," I assumed the translator meant nuclear power,
"we hit the electric distribution center next to the reactor, we were
careful not to hit the nuclear reactor. We did not wish to contaminate your
planet, and cause deaths and suffering needlessly. Those Ruhar soldiers who
were forced to land in your home village, were on their way to destroy the
electric distribution center at a fission power plant in a place called
Connecticut." As there was no Ruhar word for 'Connecticut', the word came
through in her slightly squeaky rodent voice, without translation. "We
couldn't risk striking that power plant from orbit, even with smart
missiles."

That gave me a pause. She told the
truth about the attacks on nuclear power plants, none of the reactors around
the planet had been hit. "You didn't want to contaminate a planet you
wanted to occupy!" I waved my hand to shut her up, as she tried to speak.
"No, I'm done with your lies." I slammed the teacup down angrily on
the table, stood up, and bowed stiffly. "Thank you, madam." When I
got outside, I saw a group of hamster kids playing with the soccer ball I'd
brought, and couldn't decide whether I was more angry at the hamsters for
trying to justify attacking Earth, or for me allowing myself to be soft on the
enemy. One of the hamster kids waved at me, and I ignored him. I felt like crap
about that later, they were alien kids, but they were still only kids. They
hadn't attacked Earth. I just wanted someone to be mad at.

I was pissed for about a week, angry
that I'd let her manipulate me. Angry that she tried to use me to feed us bad
intel, to sow dissent in our ranks, to conduct a psyops campaign against us. It
wasn't going to work. But, when I finally did talk to an officer about it,
during one of Lt Charles' visits, I talked to him face to face, and pantomimed
taking off his zPhone. To my surprise, he nodded silently and left his zPhone
outside the tent. "What is it, Sergeant?"

"Sir, that regional governor
hamster gave me intel about how wormholes work. It may be BS, but figured I
should pass it up the chain. And she said I shouldn't talk about it over a zPhone,
because the Kristang may be listening."

He nodded. "Command has been
worried about that. Our allies control all our communications on Paradise. And
our transport. And our food supply, and everything else. All right, what do you
know about wormholes?"

I told him, as best I remembered. He
nodded. "You're right, it's probably bullshit, but I'll pass it along to
battalion HQ."

Lester Cornhut had been telling me the
burgermeister wished to talk again, and he was insistent, almost pleading with
me. I felt sorry for the hamster, but I was still pissed off, and wasn’t going
to be manipulated again by a lying weasel, or hamster. According to Lester
Cornhut, the regional governor had made a special trip to Teskor just to talk
with me. Or talk to me, or at me. I told him, thank you, but no. He looked
hurt.

Three days later, a pair of hamvees
roared up to our command post in a cloud of dust. I'd been on our basketball
court playing a game of horse with Baker when they arrived, we both scrambled
to put shirts on quick. A major hopped out of the lead hamvee, accompanied by a
security detail. "Sergeant Bishop?"

I saluted. She looked vaguely like our
brigade intelligence officer, who I'd only seen pictures of. "Yes,
ma'am."

"I'm Major Perkins. I need to
talk to you, inside." She gave me the now-familiar gesture to take my
zPhone off.

Inside, I was glad that we'd spruced
up the place that morning, we'd been getting casual about policing our trash
out in the middle of nowhere. "Bishop, your intel about the wormholes caused
a shitstorm at UNEF HQ. Someone there mentioned the wormhole shift intel to the
Kristang and they blew a gasket, wanted to know where we'd heard those
outrageous lies, denied the whole thing. Which means it's true, and the fucking
lizards are lying about it." That was the first time I'd heard a senior
officer speak against our allies, it surprised me. "You heard this from a
Ruhar? I want to meet her."

"Uh, sir, that's complicated. She
doesn't live here in the village, she's like a regional governor or something
around here. She comes through here once a week, and we met at her friend's
house, for tea." I felt like an idiot saying I was sitting down for tea
with the enemy. "It's a hamster thing, they have tea when they meet."

"All right, when is she coming
back?"

"Day after tomorrow, supposedly,
but, I told her friend here that I didn’t want to talk to her again. I can give
word that I’ve changed my mind?”

"Hell, Bishop, that won't work, I
need to meet with her. You don't know what questions we need to ask her. UNEF
has a lot they want to talk about."

"I don't ask her questions. She
talks, and I listen. She talks about whatever she wants. I figured she was
bullshitting me, like, a hamster psyops thing." Damn, the burgermeister
had been telling the truth!? "Do you want to hear everything she told
me?"

"Yeah." She pulled a tablet
and microphone out of her pack. "I'll record what you say on this. On
this, and not on a zPhone, you got that?"

"Yes, ma'am. Loud and
clear." Especially since the burgermeister had told me not to trust the
Kristang-supplied comm gear.

She put the tablet on a table, plugged
in the microphone, and looked around our little command post. It was a damned
good thing we'd straightened up and cleaned the place, cleaned like scrubbed
from top to bottom, not just swept dirt under the furniture. We had even moved
the furniture around and used a floor cleaner polisher thing the hamsters had
left in a closet. The floor polisher worked great after we played around with
it for an hour, as the hamsters hadn't let any helpful instructions. Major
Perkins nodded approval. "You like it here, sergeant? It's kind of
isolated, these embedded observation teams."

"I do like it, ma'am. I'm a new
sergeant, so being way out here means I get to make mistakes without a
butterbar looking over my shoulder." As I spoke, it occurred to me that
Major Perkins had been a butterbar once herself. "Uh, I wasn't-"

"Relax, sergeant." She
laughed. "When I was a butterbar second lieutenant, I was perhaps the
single dumbest officer in the history of the United States Army, and that's
saying a lot. Course, back then I didn't know it. This place may be Bum Fuck
Neptune, but enjoy it while you can, a lot of fireteam leaders would love to
have this opportunity to get out on their own. And if the intel you're
providing is as solid as UNEF thinks it might be, you're doing damned good.
Let's get started," she pulled up a voice recording app on her tablet.

Major Perkins came back two days
later, but the burgermeister didn't, so we sat cooling our heels most of the
day, until a hamster kid riding an electric bicycle came looking for me, to
deliver a message that the burgermeister was busy, and would like to meet me
the next day. Me, and only me. Major Perkins was not happy, but she took the hint,
and gave me a list of questions that I had to memorize.

That began my short career as an
intelligence officer. The list of questions from UNEF didn't do any good; the
burgermeister apparently had a plan of what she wanted to talk about each time
we met, and she was sticking to her plan. I would meet with her twice a week,
and Major Perkins, sometimes accompanied by a captain from division HQ, arrived
the next day to debrief me. I felt like a kid passing notes in high school, but
what could I do?

During our fourth meeting, after we
got the whole tea ceremony out of the way, I posed a question to he
burgermeister. ”Why me?" I demanded. "Why aren't you talking to an
intelligence officer in one of our militaries? If you don't want to talk to an
American, you can talk to the British, the French, the Indians or the
Chinese."

The burgermeister made a sour face.
"I do not wish to be interrogated. My intention is to provide information,
to correct lies the Kristang have told you, and to explain things the Kristang
do not wish to speak about. I will not speak to anyone other than you."

"You did not answer my question.
Why me? I'm only a low ranking sergeant. This village is a significant
distance from where you live, why don't you talk to someone there?"

Again, I got the feeling she was ready
for every single one of my questions. The burgermeister was a very clever
hamster, that was for sure. She smiled again, I couldn't tell if it was
genuine, or that ready smile politicians practice. "I first came here
because I wanted to meet you, Joe Bishop, the one sometimes called
Barney." The translator let my name and 'Barn-ey' come through in her
squeaky voice. She tilted her head, another universal bipedal body language.
Damn, her source of intel was good. "I was curious what type of human
injured one Ruhar soldier, and captured another."

"I had help."

"Help from civilians, and reports
indicate you did not have military weapons."

"Reports are not always
accurate." I didn't want to provide her information about the tactics I had
used then, or any other intel that might be useful to my enemy. She was there
to provide me intel, supposedly, not to listen to me.

"These reports are. Another
reason I am talking to you, is because of a report from the Ruhar soldier you
captured."

I couldn't hide the surprise on my
face.

She continued with another smile.
"You didn't know? He was released, in exchange for a Kristang soldier we
had captured. Our soldier reported that he was captured by human civilians,
which is not something a soldier wants to admit to. And he said that you
treated him very well. We appreciate that."

"As well as I could. We didn't
have any food he could eat." I had wondered what happened to the hamster
after the National Guard took him away, my assumption was we eventually gave
him to the Kristang before he starved. The Kristang must have had some supplies
of Ruhar food, for prisoners they captured. "How is the other soldier, is
he all right?" He hadn't looked good, the last time I saw him laying in a
pile of bricks.

"She is well, yes, she was
injured, but has fully recovered. Her attack craft was damaged in orbit, but
was rescued by one of our starships."

I had no idea the other soldier was
female. With the body armor, helmet and face shield, there was no way for me to
tell. And she'd been half buried in debris from the wall we'd blown up.
"Please tell her that," I almost said I was sorry, which I wasn't,
because it was combat, "it wasn't anything personal. I didn't have time to
check on her injuries."

The burgermeister nodded.
"Understandable, it was a combat situation. There are no hard feelings, I
assure you. If I am ever able to contact her, I will relay your message.
Sergeant Bishop, I see you were surprised to learn the injured soldier is
female. You have females in your armies."

"We do, it's relatively recent
that our women are in combat positions. Although women have served in the
military for many years, and have put their lives at risk. In modern combat,
it's hard to tell where the front lines are."

"How have the Kristang reacted to
humans having women in combat positions?"

It was my turn for body language, a
side to side shake of my head. "I am not telling you anything about
relations with our allies." Which was easy, since I didn't know a damned
thing about the subject. "Why do you ask?"

"Because the Kristang don't allow
their females in combat. Or in any position in their military. Or in any
position of authority in their society."

"That's not any of my
business." Although it did explain the unisex bathrooms on their ships;
they weren't unisex, the troop transport ships never carried Kristang females.

"There is a human expression I
have learned; know your enemy. We have a similar saying among my people. I
suggest also, that you learn about the beings you mistakenly call your allies.
The Kristang do not allow females in their military, because none of their
females are in any position of authority, across their entire society. A long
time ago, the Kristang warrior caste began a controlled breeding and genetic
engineering program, to reduce the intelligence of their females, to make them
smaller, weaker, more submissive and docile. The genetic engineering program
also altered the ratio of male to females, it was originally half females, now
there are five females for every male. To the Kristang warrior caste, their
females are only for pleasure, breeding and domestic servants. So, that is why
I ask how they react to seeing your females as soldiers. Also as officers,
pilots and other positions of authority. Positions where they have authority
over males."

"I haven't met any Kristang,
ma'am, I'm just a grunt." I wasn't sure that grunt would translate into
Ruhar correctly. "I am a low ranking foot soldier, our officers handle
relations with the Kristang. It doesn't matter what the Kristang think about
women in our militaries."

This time, the burgermeister's smile
was more of a sad smirk. "You still think that. Just as you still consider
the Kristang to be allies. Perhaps the idea of selective breeding and genetic
manipulation, does not bother you? I understand your species' history includes
a eugenics program, by the government of a country called Germany."

I knew she was baiting me, but I
couldn't let it go. "My country fought a war against the Nazis! Against
Germany, the country we call Germany," I added, unsure how much of human
history she understood. "That was a long time ago. What you said sounds
horrible, if it's true." I thought about how pissed I'd been in Nigeria,
when a group of fanatical loser ignorant savages attacked a girl's school,
because they thought it was a sin for girls to get an education. Seeing the
burned bodies of those little girls had filled me with rage, I had wanted to
storm out into the jungle and kill every one of the cowards who had used guns
and bombs against defenseless children and their teachers. If I could find
them. Which had been the whole problem while we were there.

Damn, I’d hated being in Nigeria.

Over the next four weeks, the
burgermeister gave me a wealth of intel, very little of it good news for
humans, if it was true. It would take too long to repeat what she said, or what
I told Major Perkins, so I'll summarize. Some of it left me with a queasy
feeling, and I wasn't the only one. I could see Major Perkins' face turn white
when I told her some of this stuff.

Opening Earth to invasion by the
Kristang wasn't the only effect, or even an important effect, of the wormhole
shift. An entire quadrant of the galaxy had been affected, and it had thrown
Kristang society into disarray. Disarray, and civil war. The Kristang warrior
caste wasn't a single entity, it was made up of clans, who competed for power
and fought amongst themselves. When the wormhole near Earth suddenly came to
life, it took the Thuranin a while to getting around to exploring it, them
having more important things to do. They first sent a robot probe through from
their side, to make sure the other side of the wormhole wasn't far outside the
Milky Way galaxy, or inside a star, which had been known to happen. After it
was determined the wormhole was safe to use, the Thuranin sent a couple ships
through, then basically shrugged and decided there was not much worth
exploiting on our end. Sure, Earth was within one week travel time, but Earth
was far from any Ruhar planets, and the wormhole shift had presented more
tempting opportunities elsewhere. That would have been the end of it for
possibly centuries, with Earth continuing to drift along through the cosmos
blissfully ignorant and alone, except that the wormhole shift had also seriously
hurt the already fading fortunes of the White Wind clan of the Kristang.

Before the wormhole shift, the White
Wind clan had already been in decline, with them controlling only two planets
in the Kristang dominion. After the wormhole shift, the White Wind no longer
had practical access to one of those planets, and they became desperate. Some
numbskulls in the White Wind leadership decided that Earth was the answer to
their problems; if they could seize control of Earth and make it a useful
staging base to invade Ruhar territory, they could then ally with a stronger
clan. It didn't work, no other clans were interested in Earth as a staging
base, and the Ruhar's spoiling attack had hurt our infrastructure enough that
the White Wind had to expend too much time and resources to rebuild our
infrastructure to the point we could begin to be useful to them. So, the White
Wind leadership decided their best bet was to rent out human soldiers to other
clans, which was why we were on Paradise. That is, if you believed the
burgermeister.

The burgermeister warned that if the
Kristang followed their usual pattern, they would soon begin requiring Earth
governments to enforce measures that favored the Kristang, at the expense of
humans, if they hadn't done that already. All in the name of ‘serving the war
effort’. Shit, that sounded familiar, it had begun even before I left Earth,
and I thought people who protested against the Kristang's orders had been soft
on the war effort. Eventually, the Kristang would determine who was the most
oppressive, thuggish government on the planet, and make them the Kristang's
local enforcers, backed up by untouchable Kristang warships in orbit. It was,
the burgermeister told me, an old formula; you find the worst psychopathic
antisocial losers in a society, give them power, and they would give you their
complete, unquestioning loyalty. That was how Hitler and Stalin had come to
power. That was Standard Operating Procedure for the Kristang.

Then she told me about the Kristangs'
patrons, the Thuranin. Thuranin were sort of little green men, she said,
confirming what I'd heard at Camp Alpha. What I hadn't heard at X-Ray was that
Thuranin were cyborgs, with computers implanted in their skulls, and their
society was highly networked. They controlled their ships through their
implanted computers, and rarely spoke verbally because they mostly communicated
with each other via computer. Their skin was a greenish beige, not pure green,
and all Thuranin had the same skin tone. Their species used to have multiple
shades of skin color, but the dominant race committed genocide against all the
other Thuranin races, wiping them out a long time ago. Now all Thuranin were
clones of the 'master race', with little genetic variation from what the
'master race' considered ideal. The Thuranin were openly contemptuous of any
species with lesser technology, and also disdained their own patrons, the
Maxohlx. Mutually warm fuzzy feelings were not the basis of the coalition
headed by the Maxohlx.

As arrogant as the Thuranin were about
their superior technology, they hadn't developed most of it by themselves.
They'd stolen it, which was how all species climbed the ladder of technology.
The jump drive units the Kristang used aboard their starships were copied from
a captured Jeraptha drone. It wasn't designed to be used by a full-size ship,
and the Kristang copies were of poor quality, which is why their starships
could only jump short distances. The Thuranin themselves had stolen, found or
bought a much better design for their starships, so their ships could travel
between stars. Every species stole or copied technology from every other
species, even the two species at the top of both sides; the Maxohlx and the
Rindhalu.

Sometimes the Maxohlx and the Rindhalu
copied technology from each other, but at their level, by far the main source
of advanced technology was finding machines left behind by the ancient species
called the Elders. The Elders were the first intelligent species in the Milky
Way galaxy, and had apparently lived alone in the galaxy for millions of years,
before rather suddenly disappearing. No one knew what the Elders looked like,
or why they were gone, or where, speculation was their technology was so
advanced, they no longer needed a physical existence. Regardless of why and
where they had gone, they left behind incredible devices such as the wormhole
network. And weapons. Incredibly powerful devices that could be used as
weapons, in the wrong hands.

The Kristang had told us the Maxohlx
rebelled against Rindhalu attempts to suppress development of younger species,
but the burgermeister told me what really happened is the Maxohlx enjoyed the
nurturing of the older Rindhalu, until the Maxohlx found some Elder weapons,
and attacked the Rindhalu. Both sides deployed Elder weapons, but the war was
short-lived. Use of the Elder devices awakened the Sentinels; intelligent
machines the Elders had left behind to make sure no one abused their leftover
technology, or polluted the galaxy, or for some other reason. The Sentinels
devastated both sides, then went back to sleep, or wherever they had come from.
Clearly, even though the Elders had abandoned the galaxy, they didn't want
lesser species screwing with their stuff.

The idea of the Sentinels lurking in
the shadows explained why the current interstellar war wasn't being fought
directly between the Maxohlx and the Rindhalu; those two species couldn't
afford to fight each other. It was the same reason the United States and the
old Soviet Union had never clashed directly in the Cold War; Mutual Assured
Destruction. Any such fight between the USA and the USSR, each with thousands
of nukes, could escalate quickly out of control and destroy both sides. Any
fight using Elder weapons would awaken the Sentinels. So, the Maxohlx and the
Rindhalu used their client species to fight for territory and resources across
the galaxy, hoping to squeeze the other side into a corner, and irrelevance.
The war was fought by us grunt species, and every species wanted to climb the
technology ladder, and have some lower client species doing the fighting and
the dying. Right now, humans were on the bottom of the ladder. Until we
developed or stole some advanced technology, we were going to stay on the
bottom, and be at the mercy of the Kristang.

Overall, if the burgermeister was
telling me the truth, humanity was screwed. The White Wind clan needed to
extract some gain from the resources they'd invested in the expedition to
Earth, and Earth didn't have much to offer. Sure, technically Earth was in
Ruhar territory, but it was so far from any planets the Ruhar occupied that the
Ruhar could afford to ignore the Kristang presence until the Ruhar were ready
to deal with it. What could Earth offer the Kristang, particularly the White
Wind clan? Land that was already being used by humans could be taken to support
the Kristang presence. Raw materials could be extracted, by the most efficient
means possible, which meant not caring about terrible environmental damage or
the effect on humans. Human troops could be rented out for jobs no Kristang
wanted to do, like garrisoning Paradise. The White Wind needed to hang on, and
make Earth a useful staging base, until the day some stronger clan decided our
crappy little planet, on the far edge of Ruhar space, was worth something.

I considered that the burgermeister
might be giving us some tidbits of good intel, like about the wormholes, so
we'd believe her lies about the Kristang. It wasn't my call what to believe,
that was up to UNEF HQ. My job was to sit, and drink tea, and listen to her,
and pass the info on to Major Perkins. Did I believe her then? I was reluctant
to buy her story. She said the Rindhalu coalition did not interfere with
technologically inferior species, which is why Earth was left alone, until the
Kristang forced the Ruhar to act. The Maxohlx and their clients were all evil
oppressors who exploited lesser species and stripped planets of resources, with
no concern for the effect on the native populations. It was a nice story that
made the Ruhar looks good and the Kristang sound bad, which is what I expected
our enemy to say. Unless she was telling the truth. Crap.

In between useless patrolling and
gathering intel over cups of tea, there wasn't much to do around Teskor, I had
to think up things to keep the team busy and out of trouble. There was a
concrete pad beside the house, or something like concrete, so we put up a
basketball hoop and played two on two games. Patrols from the Company drove
through often enough that we measured out a full basketball court, although it
was four feet too short, and painted lines and set up a second basket. Our was
the only full basketball court in the area, it made us popular enough that
patrols made plans to stop in Teskor so we could have games; sometimes two
patrols met up at our command post to take a break, eat lunch and play
basketball. We also were able to play softball, volleyball, soccer and ping
pong with the equipment provided in the goody bag from Division. No pool table,
dang it. And no TV. Of course, there weren't any sports or shows to watch on a
TV, but we could have watched movies. No luck there, the Ruhar had TVs, and we
brought DVDs and stuff with us from Earth, which was all useless since hamster
TVs and our media players weren't compatible. There were portable flat screens
for use at the Company level, units below that size needed to be happy with
tablets and laptops. It wasn't a whole lot of fun to have four guys crowded
around an iPad to watch a movie, I mean, that gets old quick.

So you don't think all we did was play
games and watch movies, we did soldier stuff too. UNEF had stuck fireteams in
isolated villages to gather intel on the ground, to see what local hamsters
were doing, and we patrolled and looked around and kept our eyes and ears open.
One morning, Sanchez stuck his head in the little room we used as an office,
where I was writing up a report for the platoon.  "Hey, Sergeant,
something odd out there."

We went up to the roof, we'd
constructed a ladder and an observation platform on top of the house; it seemed
like the thing to do, and it had kept us busy. "Look at field South
Two," he said as he handed me binoculars.

South Two was an empty field that had
been harvested two weeks ago, we'd watched the big electric combines rolling
along, threshing grain and then delivering it into big bins. A convoy of trucks
had picked up the grain three days ago, bringing it to a railroad line to the
north of town. "Good eyes, Sanchez," I said, "that is odd. UNEF
sent us here to look for odd things happening. Saddle up."

We got into full battle rattle,
climbed into our bad-ass hamvee pickup and roared off down the road. We could
have cut across country, the land there being nothing but supposedly empty
fields that were laying fallow, except that I'd gotten a memo from Division
ordering a stop to bored troops joyriding off road. There had been several
incidents of hamvees rolling over, which is not good when medical evac back to
Earth isn't an option. And tearing up farmland in front of hamsters wasn't a
way to win hearts and minds. So Sanchez stuck to the road. Sure enough, when we
got to field South Two, there were a pair of big electric machines rumbling
slowly up and down the rows. Planting seeds, is what it looked like. We left
our hamvees on the road, Sanchez and I walked across the field toward the
machines. One of them came by us slowly, the hamster driver giving us a
friendly wave from the cab on top. On the back was a device that punched holes
in the ground, dropped seeds, then filled in the hole. That was odd. Odd enough
that we next paid a visit to the Cornhut household.

Lester was holding court for what
looked like half the village, because having the burgermeister visit his home
regularly had boosted his stature in Teskor. Many families were at a cookout behind
his house, there were picnic tables set out, kids racing around, some kind of
game sort of like badminton, and two grills heating up. Lester came around the
side of the house to greet me, holding a spatula and wearing a white apron with
splatters of red sauce that could have been barbecue. Whatever he was grilling
smelled good, even if I knew humans couldn't eat it. "Greetings Joe
Bishop!" He said with a genuinely friendly grin.

Part of me debated whether to come
back the next day, and not interrupt his cookout. I had a job to do, so I said
"Lester, we saw machines in field South Two," he knew UNEF's map
designations, "they were planting seeds."

"Yes, we are planting," the
translator stumbled and then said 'wheat equivalent'. "Is this a problem,
Joe Bishop?"

"How long does that, uh, crop
take to grow, before you harvest it?"

"Three point four three
months." The translator said. That feature of translators was annoying, it
was coldly mathematical. Lester had probably said something like 'five Ruhar
months', and the translator did the math. I didn't need such exacting
precision, dammit.

"This village is scheduled to be
evacuated in two or three months," based on UNEF's latest schedule, which
was constantly changing, "why are you planting a crop now?" This was
the kind of odd hamster behavior G2 wanted to know about. Lester was planning
on being in Teskor past the evac date, or right up to it. Did the hamsters know
something UNEF didn't?

"Because there is no reason not
to." Lester explained with a toothy grin that, under the circumstances,
wasn't as friendly as he intended. "The Kristang allow us to continue
shipping food products offworld, but we can't take seeds with us. So we plant.
If we leave Teskor before we can harvest, perhaps someone else can harvest this
crop." He shrugged. "My people have been in this war for a very long
time, Joe Bishop. We have learned that nothing is certain. It is not certain
the Kristang will keep this planet, so we hope and we plan for the future,
until the day we are aboard a ship and it departs."

Made sense to me, keeping hamster
morale up. Hope was a powerful morale booster. "Lester, something has been
bothering me. It must be expensive to ship food between stars. Why do it?"

"Ah. This would require a long
explanation, Joe Bishop," he glanced back at his cookout guests,
"there are two most important reasons. Our home world, which at one point
was as polluted as I am told yours is, now has our population concentrated in
cities, with most of the planet dedicated to parkland, restored to its natural
state. There is very little agriculture there, so food must be brought in. Many
of our prime worlds are kept in such a state, so we have other worlds
designated for agriculture, such as Gehtanu, or to industry. Industrial worlds
are mostly those planets which had sparse life when we arrived, so our industry
will not ravage the natural environment. The other reason, why we are
determined to ship food off this planet as long as we can, is that the wormhole
shift, which you have been told about, yes, cut off our home world's access to
some of the usual food supply worlds. You can see now why we are eager to grow
as much food here as we can, before we leave?"

"Sure, Lester." We left him
to his cookout, and I sent a report up the chain. Lester's explanation sounded
at least a little like bullshit to me, and UNEF needed to know anyway. Our
fireteam began driving tours of the farmland around Teskor, ranging far and
wide to check conditions of the fields. When we talked to the platoon, we heard
Teskor wasn't the only village where the hamsters were planting crops, that
wouldn't be ready for harvest until after that area was scheduled to evacuate.
I didn't know whether to believe Lester or not, the whole issue was above my
paygrade. So I reported it up the chain, and let people above me worry about
it.

At times, the Burgermeister seemed to
read my mind, and address subjects I was already thinking about. It made me
suspicious about whether the Ruhar were somehow listening in on what we said
around our command post, even thought the platoon had supposedly swept the
place for bugs. That day, I was in a gloomy mood, which matched the weather
we'd been having. It had been raining for five days, and the weather satellites
predicted another two days of solid rain, followed by a week of showers off and
on. Wonderful. The Ruhar had a name for weather like this, they called it a
'schlumpernur', or that's how it sounded, only more squeaky. The word
translated as 'damp musty blanket', and we all thought was so appropriate, the
word quickly entered US military slang. The schlumpernur had caused the village
to cancel plans for a harvest festival, since no one was feeling, you know,
festive, and holding just an 'al' would be sad. My fireteam was grumpy from
being cooped up in the CP, especially since soldiers can't really stay cooped
up when the weather is bad, we still had to go out on patrol and check the
conditions of the fields, and send reports to the platoon HQ and make it sound
like we were doing something useful. We'd all watched every video we had twice,
at least, and with the crappy weather, patrols coming through Teskor didn't
bother to stop for a game of hoops or softball or volleyball. We tried enticing
patrols with a game of darts, but everyone had a dartboard, and no one coming
through wanted to leave their warm, dry hamvees. So the four of us were mostly
stuck with each other, and we'd all heard each other's stories a dozen times.
This was the downside of being out of our own; sure, we didn't have an officer
staring over our shoulders, but we were feeling awfully lonely. Our zPhones
helped, we were able to talk and videochat with anyone on the planet, I hit up
Cornpone once a day to see what he was up to, he'd gotten assigned to one of
the quick reaction platoons, which sounded exciting, except he told me all they
did was drill, drill, and drill some more. The hamsters weren't doing anything
uncooperative, so there wasn't anything to react quickly to. Overall, he
sounded almost as bored as I was. We agreed that all our video games about
interstellar warfare had totally lied to us. And I sent Shauna a short note,
she sent a short note back, I took that as a hint that was busy and there was
no point to chatting more, unless we were going to actually see each other.
Unlikely, as she was stationed a thousand miles away. So, I was in a gloomy
mood when the burgermeister poured out the hot water for tea. "Joe Bishop,
you seem unhappy," she remarked.

I shrugged. "This schlumpernur
has everyone feeling down," I said with a hint of a smile, because her
eyes twinkled when I said 'schlumpernur'. "And, you don't tell me the
happiest news, when we meet." Assuming she was telling the truth, which
UNEF HQ seemed to think was a good bet.

"You told me that you have a
family back on Earth?"

There was no harm telling her what she
already knew, so I nodded. "My parents, and my sister."

"You would feel better if you
heard from them, yes?"

"Sure." In Nigeria, we'd
been able to Skype or sometimes even video chat, at least a couple times a
week. And with the internet, we'd all been able to follow the news back home,
keep us feeling connected. "I've written letters," and recorded video
messages, "but so far, we haven't gotten any messages back yet." We
sent messages to UNEF HQ, to be compressed and transmitted to the Kristang, but
although shipments of food and other supplies arrived regularly in orbit, so
far I hadn't received any messages from home, Or news of any kind. It was odd.
And worrying.

"You won't," she said,
looking carefully at me over her teacup. "The Kristang are not delivering
your messages home. And they will not deliver any messages to you here. They
don't want you to know what is happening on your home planet. Your leadership
here surely knows this."

Crap. As she gave me that depressing
intel, the steady drizzle turned into another downpour. My day just got better
and better. Either she decided I'd had enough bad news for the day, or the
weather had gotten her depressed too, because she changed the subject, and for
the next hour, we talked about our childhoods. I didn't see any harm in telling
her dull stories about growing up in rural Maine. Ruhar society didn't sound
all that different from life on Earth, except they had amazing technology, they
were scattered across many planets, and her species had been at war since long
before, she, her parents, or her great-great-great-great grandparents were
born, probably longer. Thinking about that didn't improve my mood.

Chen must have read my mind, because
while we were eating dinner that night, chicken ala king by the way, he asked
"Sergeant, any idea when we're getting messages from home?"

"No," I stared down at my
plate to conceal a guilty look on my face, "you know as much as I
do."

"Shit. A new transport ship
arrived from Earth yesterday, it's all over the Net, I was hoping the ship was
bringing letters. Or at least some news."

"News would be good,"
Sanchez agreed, "I'm worried about my folks."

"We all are." I admitted.

"You know what the worst thing
is?" Baker asked. "There's no end to this deployment. When I went to
Nigeria, I knew it was twelve months there, and I'd be rotated back home. Even
in World War Two, guys knew there was an end in sight; win the war and you can
go home. It may take years, but there was an end to it. Even when it got really
hairy, guys knew that if they hung on and survived, they'd be going home
eventually. This war has been going on for thousands of years. There's
no end to it. There's no victory strategy, there's no point when we can say the
mission is accomplished and it's time to go home. Now that I think about it,
the message I got that I was being deployed offworld didn't say how long the
deployment would be."

"We get the hamsters off this planet,
and we go home, right?" Chen said hopefully.

"Maybe." Sanchez pushed his
chicken ala king around on his plate. "Unless the lizards, I mean,"
he shot a worried look at me, "the Kristang, need us someplace else. We're
already out there, right? And we're trained, and by then we'll be experienced.
It may make more sense to the Kristang to redeploy us, rather than ship us all
the way home and bring in new units."

"Crap." Chen summed up
everyone's feelings about the subject. "We just got here, and already I
want to get home."

I needed to put a stop to the glum
talk. "Guys, look. I'd love to know when we're going home too. Check days
off the calendar until we ship out. The evac schedule here is thirteen months,
figure another couple months after that for us probably rebuilding
infrastructure or something like that. Keeping us here is expensive for the
Kristang, they have to ship all our food over a thousand lightyears, right?
After this mission is done, I'm thinking they bring us home. Come on, in this
war, how many assignments can the Kristang have for us? Even with our new toys,
we're not qualified for real combat."

"Yeah, Ok, I guess so."
Sanchez nodded halfheartedly.

"This damned schlumpernur has
everyone feeling down." I looked out the window at the drizzle. "If
the sun was shining, and we got some news from home, we'd all be feeling great.
We're out on our own, no officers looking over our shoulders, we got it pretty
good here. Chen, get the box of cake out of the fridge," that goodie had
been delivered from the platoon three days before, "and let's celebrate.
The forecast calls for this rain to end day after tomorrow."

The schlumpernur had faded into
scattered showers by the time Major Perkins showed up to receive my latest
intel the next morning. We met in her hamvee, so my fireteam could stay in the
house while it rained. "Ma'am, I don't know if most of what she's telling
me is bullshit or not, but she isn't lying about us not hearing from home. Is
UNEF HQ getting any communications from Earth?"

The pained expression on her face told
me all I needed to know. "That's above your pay grade, Sergeant, and
mine."

"My guys," I nodded toward
the house, "have been asking about it."

She looked at me sharply. "You
didn't say anything?"

"No, ma'am. They know I'm meeting
with the burgermeister, and they know you're Division intel, and they can put
two and two together, but I haven't said anything to them, and they haven't
asked. They don't need me to tell them we haven't heard squat from Earth. It's
all over zPhone traffic." With zPhones, rumors that would have been
confined to a single unit had flown around the planet. No one I'd contacted had
received a single message from Earth. And Cornpone told me a supply guy he knew
said shipments of food from Earth had been spotty recently. And that among
supplies coming in now were seeds, like the Kristang expected us to grow our
own food.

"Sergeant," she looked away
at the rain, "I know as much as you do. UNEF HQ doesn't tell me any more
than I need to know. Be careful what you say on the net," she pointed to
the roof of the hamvee, "our friends are listening."

At 0400 a couple days later, my zPhone
rang. Having a zPhone was great in many ways, in one way it was not so great:
Command could reach you anytime, anywhere. Reach you personally, not call a
radio operator who then had to go find you. I swung my legs onto the floor and
sat up straight, someone told me that makes you sound more alert to be upright
when you get startled out of a sound sleep. "Sergeant Bishop here."

"Bishop, this is Lt. Charles.
Your fireteam is bugging out today to come back here, we need you packed up and
on the move by 0900. "

That got me fully awake. "What's
going on, sir?"

"You'll get a briefing when you
get here."

"Yes, sir," I replied, but
he'd already hung up.

My fireteam had the same WTF reaction
I did, they also knew as much as I did, which was nothing. There wasn't any
chatter of trouble on the net, we checked the UNEF sites and the news postings
were totally ordinary, considering that we were on a alien planet. Packing up
didn't take long, we took all the weapons but left anything a future fireteam
would need to occupy the place, including the ping pong table we'd built. After
one last drive splashing through the mud puddles down the main street, we
turned around and left Teskor before most hamsters were out of bed. I regretted
that we didn't get a chance to say goodbye to the Cornhut family.

I smelled a rat as we drove up to the
platoon base, as soon as I saw Major Perkins. "Major Perkins? We just got
pulled out of Teskor, ma'am." I said, although I figure she already knew
that. Probably arranged it. I never trusted Intel types.

"Bishop, let's talk." She
waved me over toward the airfield. Once we were out of earshot, she explained.
"I ordered you pulled out of Teskor. The Kristang know someone has been
passing intel to us, and they're pissed about it and nosing around, and they're
getting closer to you. You need to lay low for awhile, so you're being
transferred. Just you, not your team."

"Where, ma'am?"

"The cargo Launcher. I'll tell
you the truth, we don't have an assignment for you right now, other than to
disappear and keep your name off comm channels. If it makes you feel any
better, I've been told the same, they're reassigning me to a logistics base in
the Indian sector, as a liaison." She snorted. "I don't speak a
single word of Hindi."

"Damn, sir. All this because
we've been listening to the hamsters? Did the Kristang think we wouldn't talk
to them the entire time we're down here? They've got to know the hamsters would
take any opportunity to make the liz-, the Kristang look bad, drive a wedge
between us."

"It's not just us talking to
them, the Kristang expect rumors to fly around any army. The problem is the
Kristang know UNEF Command has been taking the hamsters seriously. You're not
our only source of direct intel, but I can tell you that your burgermeister is
considered the gold source, and UNEF Command is shitting their pants because
they believe most of what she told us is true." She shot me a direct look.
"You're still not to talk about any of this, it's top secret."

"Yes ma'am."

She let out a long breath, patted her
shirt pocket, then flicked her hand away in disgust. "Being out in the
galaxy finally got me to quit smoking, once my supply of smokes ran out, I went
cold turkey. The Kristang consider tobacco to be a luxury item they're not
willing to ship across lightyears. Sometimes, I want to shoot something."

"Eisenhower quit cold turkey,
ma'am, after his first heart attack." That didn't come out quite the way I
meant it.

"If Ike did it, that's good
enough for me. And he had a choice, right? I don't. Maybe we should have had
nicotine put on the essential medicines list." She said with a grimace.

I wanted to sympathize with her, but I
couldn't. I felt sympathetic, but since I'd never had to kick a habit of
smoking or drinking or drugs, I couldn't truly understand what she was going
though, you know what I mean? I'd taken the easy route of not getting hooked on
anything in the first place. Not knowing what to say, I made a sympathetic 'um'
sound and waited for her to talk.

"Medicine is what got us into
real trouble anyway. You're right, the lizards don't give a shit about rumors
going around. What got them pissed is when we accepted an offer from the Ruhar
to provide advanced medical care. You heard about the Buzzard crash last month?
Two dead, four injured, one of the injured lost a leg, another has a broken
spine. And the Kristang won't medevac them back to Earth. The Ruhar heard about
the injured, they were surprised to hear that humans don't have the ability to
regrow limbs or nerve tissue; they've had that technology so long they take it
for granted. As an experiment, we sent some badly injured cases to a Ruhar
hospital, and they're being treated, including two from the Buzzard crash. The
Ruhar docs took a while to adapt to our different biochemistry, but their
biochemistry is based on DNA like us. Reports are all the injured are expected
to make full recoveries eventually, including regrowing a leg. The Kristang
were furious when they heard about us accepting Ruhar medical care, called UNEF
Command on the carpet for fraternizing with the enemy. I hear that conversation
got heated, General Meers told the fucking lizards we wouldn't have to send our
people to Ruhar hospitals, if the lizards would share their own medical
technology." She smiled. "The Old Man won't back down to anyone,
human or lizard."

"Am I in trouble, ma'am?"

"Hell, no, Bishop. Lay low for a
while until this blows over in a couple weeks, months maybe. Think of it as an
opportunity to see more of the planet."

I didn't believe that for a second.

After saying goodbye to my fireteam, I
hopped a series of flights to the Launcher, it was long and boring and I was in
a foul mood. I hadn’t done anything wrong, but if UNEF needed a scapegoat for
the Kristang, they’d expect me to fall on my sword. A demotion seemed likely, I
hadn’t been a sergeant long and had barely gotten used to it, I would miss the
feeling of being in charge of a team. We’d done good work in Teskor; stayed out
of trouble, established good relations with the natives, gathered solid intel
and routed it up the chain. And built a basketball court that made our command
post a popular spot for patrols to stop, which was good for morale. There
hadn’t been any serious friction among my fireteam, not any more than you’d
expect from four guys stuck together in the boonies with not much to do.
Looking back at our time in Teskor, it seemed almost idyllic, peaceful. We had landed
on an alien, enemy planet, established control and we were doing our part in
the war, showing the Kristang that we could pull our weight, little as that
was. We felt we had a sense of purpose, of accomplishment, we all had been
looking forward to the day the inhabitants of Teskor got loaded aboard
transports and joined the evacuation. That would be mission accomplished for
our EOT.

Looking back now, my view of our time
in Teskor became less idyllic for me after I began getting disturbing intel
from the burgermeister. Learning humanity had been conned into setting up an
Expeditionary Force, that UNEF was nothing more than rent-a-grunts to the
Kristang, that the lizards considered Earth to be a war prize to be exploited
however they wanted, kind of killed my buzz on any feeling of accomplishment.
Not being able to share intel with my fireteam had put a distance between us,
they knew I was meeting with a high-ranking Ruhar official, they saw a UNEF
intelligence officer visiting the day after I met with the Ruhar, and they
could put two and two together. And, of course, there were rumors. Some of the
rumors traced back to intel I’d received from the burgermeister, and made me
nervous about UNEF HQ’s information security. It pissed me off that I was
supposed to treat as secret intel that was flying around the rumor mills. I
couldn’t even tell my guys which rumors were total bullshit, and there was
plenty of that, and which intel had at least a grain of truth to it.

Now my fireteam had a new sergeant,
and they were stationed at battalion HQ, wondering if they’d done anything
wrong. Nobody believed the bullshit story that our EOT had been pulled out of
Teskor because the mission was over; stupid UNEF HQ hadn’t even been smart
enough to rotate in another EOT, they simply abandoned Teskor. Sure, that
didn’t look suspicious at all, EOTs were still in place all over the sector,
except for the one village where I’d been meeting with the burgermeister.
Here’s how thin UNEF’s cover story was: the crew chief on the Dumbo that I flew
to the Launcher, a guy I’d never met in my life, asked me what I’d done that
UNEF had to pull our EOT out of Teskor. There were rumors of a scandal, rumors
so juicy that they had flown around the planet at the speed of light. All the
infosec measures implemented by UNEF could be defeated by two guys sharing a
rumor over their zPhones.

CHAPTER SIX    FORT ARROW

At the Launcher complex, I reported to
a Captain Price in the admin building, a structure UNEF had taken over from the
Ruhar who had managed the Launcher operations. Coming in from the airfield, I
saw a whole lot of Ruhar outside the fence line of the base UNEF called Fort
Arrow. Since humans didn't know how to operate or maintain the giant Launcher
railgun that shot cargo into orbit, the biggest change had been which flag flew
over the base, hamsters still ran the reactor and the rest of the Launcher
complex. UNEF had carved Fort Arrow out of the workers' town that grew up next
to the fusion reactor, taking over the existing buildings and putting minimal
effort to repurpose them for military use. It made sense, UNEF wasn't planning
to stay on Paradise long enough to invest in infrastructure. There was a
semi-secure corridor between the airfield and Fort Arrow, on either side of the
corridor were hamsters going on about their lives.

Captain Price's aide kept me waiting
almost an hour, while I sat and watched the door to Price's office. He was in
there, I could hear him talking on the phone, and long silences. It wasn't like
he was so busy that he couldn't take a few minutes to welcome me aboard. They
hadn't served breakfast on the Dodo, I was hungry and wanted to scrounge up
some food before the dining facility shut down. Finally, Price stepped into his
doorway, looked at me in a distinctly unfriendly manner, and grunted when I got
to my feet and saluted him. "Bishop." It wasn't a greeting so much as
a statement.

"Yes, sir, Sergeant Bishop
reporting." There were no order papers for me to hand to him, everything
was on our phones or tablets. In his office, he didn't tell me to sit, I stood
at semi-attention to the right of the doorway.

"Bishop." He said again,
pointing to something I couldn't see on his tablet. "The Barney guy."

Shit, I was really get sick of that.

"I have your orders here," he
continued, "and your personnel file. Lack of discipline seems to be a
pattern for you. And acting rashly. We're not going to tolerate any of that
here at Fort Arrow. You may think your fifteen minutes of fame entitles you to
special treatment," I didn't bother to protest as he'd already made up his
mind, "but that's a November Golf, you got that?"

"Yes, sir." Low profile, I
told myself, Major Perkins, and through her UNEF HQ, wanted me to keep a low
profile. Keeping my mouth shut was the first step.

A simple 'yes' from me wasn't good
enough, apparently, Price had a chip on his shoulder and a soapbox to stand on,
and he was going to take full advantage of having a captive audience. "You
may have heard that Fort Arrow is a dumping ground for screwups and
malcontents." Actually, I hadn't heard that, and I hadn't heard anyone use
the word 'malcontent' since, like, elementary school. "UNEF HQ thinks that
because the Ruhar need the Launcher to ship their grain offworld, Fort Arrow is
safe from attack, and we don't need a significant security presence here."
Ok, this wasn't about me, then, Price had a problem with UNEF HQ and I was a
convenient target of his unhappiness. "They're wrong, the Launcher's
importance means that it's the first place the Ruhar will try to capture if
they ever try to retake the planet. This is an elite force." He tapped a
finger twice on his desk for emphasis, what the gesture did for me was make me
think the guy needed to trim his fingernails. "Elite. We at Fort Arrow
need to show the Ruhar that we are so strong here, it's not worth them trying
to take this site."

I nodded silently, silent because I
didn't want to disagree with his flawed logic. If the Ruhar managed to get a
powerful enough fleet into orbit to chase the Kristang away, then humans
trapped on the surface would be a speed bump. The hamsters could sit in orbit
and use precision strikes with railguns, masers and smart missiles to eliminate
human resistance, no matter how strong a force was garrisoned at Fort Arrow.

"We don't have a place for you
here, and you could use some help keeping out of trouble. I'm assigning you to
convoy escort duty, you'll report to Staff Sergeant Lombard in the morning. Try
to keep you nose clean, and-"

"Sir?" Price's aide called
from outside the office, "Colonel Young is on his way here right
now."

Colonel Young strode in, dropped his
pack on a table, ran a hand across his face to wipe the sweat off, and stuck
his head in Price's office door. “Goddamnit, we’re in the shit now. Our buddies
the Kristang are pulling their destroyer out tomorrow, that leaves us with a
single frigate in orbit for fire support. What do you want to bet that frigate
bugs out at the first sign of a hamster warship? The old man wants contingency
plans in case the Ruhar come back. We need to be prepared to defend this planet
on our own.”

“That bad, sir?” Captain Price asked,
startled.

“Bad enough that they want a platoon
to pull out of here tomorrow, and redeploy to beef up security at a couple
logistics bases. UNEF figures no way the Ruhar would risk damaging the cargo
Launcher, so they're stripping us thin to cover more likely targets. What?”
Colonel Young reacted to a raised eyebrow from Price. He turned to the right
and noticed me. “Who are you, Sergeant?”

I saluted crisply. “Bishop, sir, I was
transferred here, just flew in this morning.”

“Bishop, huh? Yeah, you’re the Barney
guy, we heard you were coming." I was never going to escape that.
"You can clear out, Sergeant. And keep your mouth shut. Not that we can
keep this quiet anyway.” Young said with a sigh.

“Yes, sir.” I walked out as fast I
could without completely losing my dignity.

The convoy escort team I was assigned
to was a good group, led by a green-as-grass second lieutenant who was smart
enough to listen to his staff sergeant. Captain Price was right, there wasn’t a
place for another sergeant on the convoy team, so I filled in as basically an
experienced specialist, did what Staff Sergeant Lombard told me to do, kept my
mouth shut, and maintained a good attitude, at least on the outside. I still
wore sergeant stripes, carried a sidearm and the personnel system still listed
me as an E5, so I hadn't been busted down in rank. Yet.

Overall the assignment wasn’t bad, I
did get to see a bigger slice of Paradise, from equatorial jungles, over
mountain passes and down to the grasslands. It was a nice planet, too bad it
was infested with hamsters, and we had to hand it over to the Kristang after
E-Day. Paradise would have made a very nice second home for humanity. Since we couldn't
even get to planets in our home solar system without help from aliens, that was
only wishful thinking.

A typical convoy trip was four or five
days out, four or five days back, hauling grain and other hamster food. Hamster
civilians left the planet via the space elevator, not the Launcher, so we
didn't have to deal with the chaos of unhappy hamster families. We didn’t
encounter any trouble from the Ruhar, other than minor, annoying and random
acts of sabotage here and there; I interpreted those as hamsters giving the
finger to UNEF. That I could understand, we humans were the occupying force,
acting as goons for the Kristang in the eyes of the Ruhar, and if I was in
their situation, I'd be feeling defiant. Some of the Ruhar families had been
here for three generations, set down roots in the fertile soil of Paradise, and
they'd been peacefully farming and minding their own business, until the recent
wormhole shift caused the Kristang to decide the time was ripe to take back the
planet. UNEF required convoy escorts to prevent problems, the thinking was the
hamsters may become troublesome as we approached E-Day, and it set in that they
really were leaving this planet behind, likely forever. The Chinese and French
had found hamster stragglers in places that were supposed to have been fully
evacuated, and troops of every nationality had found hidden caches of hamster
weapons. Maybe the Ruhar weren't intending to go quietly after all. In between
convoy trips, we had a day or two at Fort Arrow, which meant sleeping in a real
bed, eating hot food that someone else cooked for you, and being able to use
the gym, baseball fields and other opportunities for R&R. Fort Arrow even
had a large swimming pool, the best feature of which was being able to see
female soldiers in swim suits. Unfortunately, not one single damned time that I
went to the Fort Arrow Dining Facility were they making cheeseburgers. I had
good fish and chips, a decent meatloaf that was more loaf than meat, and
chicken pot pie that was more veggies and crust than chicken. Meat of any kind
seemed to be getting in short supply on Paradise, we heard rumors that the
supply ships from Earth were delayed, or operating on irregular schedules, or
that space battles elsewhere in the sector were causing the Thuranin to reroute
their ships. Soon after we humans took over the Launcher from the Ruhar, the
UNEF base commander had ordered a garden to be planted, so we would have fresh
greens to eat. Fresh tomatoes, melons, onions, spinach, peppers, all stuff
you’d see at a typical farmer’s market. I knew the situation was getting
worrisome one day, when the only lunch options at the Fort Arrow DFAC were
spinach salad and vegetarian fajitas. Sure, spinach is a good cheap source of
protein, and it was tasty enough when I loaded my salad up with walnuts and
croutons, but sometimes a soldier wants a hunk of meat to chew on. And cheese.
And a bun. Toasted. With ketchup. Fried onions would be nice.

As we approached Fort Arrow at the end
of my fifth convoy trip, we were looking forward to three days of R&R on
the base, because our vehicles would be down for regular maintenance. Private
Pope leaned over to talk over the hum of the truck's electric engine.
"Sergeant, you got plans for R&R tomorrow?"

When I joined the convoy unit, the
initial reaction was first, the inevitable curiosity about my minor celebrity,
and second, wondering how I'd fucked up enough to get assigned to convoy duty
at Fort Arrow. I took the Barney jokes in good humor; I'd heard the jokes a
millions times by now and had a good-natured reply ready for all of them. Our
LT was skeptical about me at first, then Staff Sergeant Lombard let me handle
some of the workload, take care of minor administrative stuff that wasted his
time, so once people saw Lombard thought I was Ok, I was accepted, and that
felt good. "No plans, why?" The weather forecast was hazy, hot and
humid, chance of afternoon thunderstorms, typical near the equator this time of
year.

“There’s a crashed Kristang starship a
couple miles north of the base," Pope explained. "A group of us are
going to check it out, if you want to come with us.”

“A starship fell out of orbit? Damn!
Is there anything left of it?” I didn’t try to conceal my eagerness.

“Uh huh, I’ve seen pictures from
people who’ve been there. They say it's a frigate. It’s from the battle when
the Ruhar took this place from the Kristang the last time, so it’s old, and the
jungle had swallowed up some of it, but the major structure is still there. The
hamsters cleaned up the weapons and the reactor. UNEF discourages us from
poking around there, because the Kristang are sensitive about it, but lots of
people do it.”

“Yeah, I’d uh, I’d love to go.” I
suppressed any thoughts about taking souvenirs, the Kristang would likely very
much frown on that. "Thanks."

We made plans to head out to the
downed ship early the next morning. As we were eating breakfast, Private
Crockett walked over to us quickly and whispered “Hurry up, let’s get out of
here. There’s an Indian general flying in to visit, he’s giving a speech right
after lunch, and they want all hands here at the DFAC to give him a good
crowd.”

We all groaned. No one wanted to sit
in the stuffy dining facility, listening to another boring speech. We gobbled
our powdered eggs and toast, grabbed peanut butter sandwiches for lunch, and
practically ran across the base to disappear into the jungle as soon as we
could. Anyone sitting around with not enough to do was for sure going to get
voluntold to fill seats in the DFAC.

‘A couple miles’ to the downed ship
turned out to be more like ten miles, and there wasn’t a road, so we walked.
Enough people had been this way that there was a sort of trail through the
jungle. I say sort of, because the trail had evolved as each group of people
figured out better ways to get there; avoid hills, find shallower places to
cross streams, avoid mud and dense pockets of thorns. It would have been better
if the trail had been marked, which is wasn’t. Whatever native animals lived in
this jungle also had created trails, and there were lots of dead ends. As a
substitute for markings, we tried to follow whichever trail appeared to have
had more traffic, this turned out to be a bad idea, as the people who had gone
before us were idiots. I sank up to my knees in muddy jungle streams more than
once. It was hot, and humid, and there were large creepy insects in the jungle,
creepy even though we knew, or were told, their venom couldn't affect us. I
kept swatting and squishing insects that dropped from the trees and landed on
the back of my neck, hoping for an easy meal. Insects clearly hadn't gotten the
memo about humans not being edible to the native biology of Paradise. Or they
were just hateful motherfuckers and wanted to bite or sting something.

That 'chance of afternoon showers', which
in the tropics was the equivalent of 'chance the sun will rise in the morning'
turned out to be a thumping walloper of a downpour. It only lasted less than
five minutes, which seemed a lot longer when we were all soaked to the skin in
the first minute. Some of us tried to huddle under the larger trees with broad
leaves, until lightning started crashing down, then we all got as far away from
trees as we could. When the rain stopped, the sun came out, and it was like
walking through a steam room. Big fat, sun-warmed water droplets dripped off
the trees onto our heads, the air was thick enough to cut with a knife, and
whatever insects had been sleeping before the storm were awake and hungry now.
It was, we all agreed, way better than listening to a speech in the DFAC.

I'd never have found the ship on my
own. We humans all relied too much on advanced technology, even on Earth, I'd
started to lose basic skills like map reading and field navigation. Finally, we
stumbled onto the crashed ship, mostly by following a trail of discarded MRE
wrappers. From what I'd heard, I expected there to be nothing left but the
bones of the ship's frame, to my delight it was way more intact than I'd
feared. It was a big ship, and if Kristang frigates were this size, I'd not want
to meet one of their larger combatants in space warfare. A large piece of the
aft section was missing, I guess where the Ruhar had removed the fusion
reactor, and the nose of the ship was buried in the swampy ground. Between the
two furthest sections of broken ship that I could see, I estimated it was much
larger than a nuclear submarine, maybe as long as an aircraft carrier. Maybe
longer. Most of the ship was engine, or engineering section, I didn't know
whether that part of the ship had been pressurized with breathable air, but it
seemed practical to do that since the engines must have needed maintenance. We
were able to get inside the ship and roam around a bit with flashlights, there
weren't many dangerous animals on Paradise which is a damned good thing, as the
only weapon we had with us was my sidearm. Even the inside of the ship was
dirty, muddy and overgrown, crawling with insects. After we all poked around a
while, we got bored, and of course then we got hungry. Someone suggested we
climb on top of the ship, where we wouldn't be sitting on swampy ground.

It was a good day, away from the base,
out in the bush, exploring something new, nobody shooting at me. A canteen full
of bug juice, a peanut butter sandwich, a Hooah! bar and a little bag of
dried fruit. What else could a guy ask for? Rumor had it chicken was on the
menu at the DFAC tonight, and I planned to take a swim in the base pool, maybe
play basketball or softball later.

Shading my eyes, I looked up to check
the position of the sun, or local star, or whatever the correct term was, and
saw the distinctive twinkling light of a starship jumping into normal space.
Another Ruhar transport ship? We'd been seeing those regularly enough. It still
fascinated me, the idea of ships traveling faster than light.

Another twinkle. Not unusual, Ruhar
transport ships sometimes came in multiples, and they were always escorted by
Kristang ships, usually frigates, not that I could see the difference in one
ship to another from dirtside. Hmm. More twinkling lights. And more.

A lot more.

"Uh, hey, guys," Pope
pointed at the sky. "That's a lot of ships up there."

Was the Kristang task force back?

My zPhone gave a strangled squawk and
went silent. Oh shit. That wasn't anything good. I tapped the icon for the
command channel, and all I got was static. I was already trying to get anyone,
anyone at all, on my phone, when there was a burning streak of light down from
the sky and a massive explosion in the direction of Fort Arrow. A fountain of
dirt exploded upward on the skyline, evolving instantly into a mushroom cloud.
We'd all seen that in training videos; a railgun strike. A small, dense dart of
tungsten or more likely some exotic alien material, boosted to a significant
percentage of lightspeed, burning a hole through the atmosphere and slamming
into the planet. Into Fort Arrow. As I watched uselessly, mouth gaping, there
were more contrails zipping down to impact the base, these contrails curved as
they flew. Hypervelocity smart missiles, following on the heels of the railgun
darts. There were more explosions, all coming from Fort Arrow.

Everyone had the same reaction that I
did. First, holy shit. Second, what the fuck do I do now? Without orders, we
all scrambled down off the crashed ship. I looked around in case something had
changed in the minute since I'd last checked, but the situation was the same;
seventeen people, and between us we had precisely one weapon, unless you
counted knives. My sidearm wasn't going to be much use against the Ruhar.

"Sergeant, what's going on?"

Sergeant. Every face was turned toward
me. Shit. Everyone else was a private or specialist. Damn it, I was a sergeant,
wasn't I? This morning, I was supposed to be just another guy on a hike through
the woods. Now the chevrons on my uniform top, and my sidearm, meant I was
supposed to do something. Anything.

"You know as much as I do. Anyone
got a signal on their phone?" People shook their heads negatively. At
least everyone had the sense to check their phones after the base was hit.
"Ruhar must be jamming us, I'm not even getting a navigation signal."
I also couldn't use the proximity feature, to see on the map the phones of
people right around me. The whole system must be dead. "All right, people,
the network is down, turn your phones to receive only mode." That
supposedly prevented the zPhone from transmitting any signal, even location;
UNEF suspected the Kristang had a way of tracking us even if the phone was in
stealth mode but we didn't have much choice. The last thing we needed was
hamsters tracking us, hopefully they couldn't tap into Kristang technology.
With the base likely knocked out, a cluster of seventeen humans would be a nice
secondary target. "Grab your gear," I said automatically, ignoring
that gear at this point was backpacks and canteens. "We're going back to
base, ASAP."

"Base?" Private Collins
pointed at the pillar of smoke, and as he said the word, there was another
explosion from that direction. "There's no base! There can't be anything
left of it."

"We don't know that. We're sure
as hell not hiding here in the jungle. We're going back to base because there
may be people there who need our help, and because it's our job, our duty. If
you need more motivation, the Kristang are our only ride home, and our only way
to get food shipped in. If the Ruhar get established here before the Kristang
come back, we're all in deep shit."

"If the fucking lizards
come back," Collins grumbled. "How are we going to stop the hamsters
from setting up camp here again? We don't even have weapons."

"We're going to keep them busy
and off balance and hit them whenever we can, buy time for the Kristang task
force to get back here." I looked around at a group of people I knew only
vaguely, people from multiple convoy escort teams. I didn't even know all of
their names, we'd only met when we assembled at the DFAC that morning. "I
don't know all of you, some of you I've been on convoy duty with, and some of
you told me you didn't come all the way out here to play nursemaid to a bunch
of hamsters," a common complaint within UNEF, "this is our chance to
hit back."

"Sergeant, I'm all for
duty," Pope said, "but Collins has a point, what are we supposed to
do without weapons?"

Specialist Amaro spoke up, I swear she
stood on tiptoes and raised her hand like she was in elementary school.
"There's an ammo dump outside the base, it's in a hamster storage depot,
built into the hillside along the access road that runs along the Launcher
track. I delivered supplies there a month ago, I think it's still there?"

"Manned? There are guards?"
I asked. If not, we'd probably have no way to get the bunker door open.

"Two guys, the day I was there.
There's a big heavy door at the entrance, and kind of a little shack we put up
for the guards, the hamsters didn't have anything like that, they left it
unmanned. It's maybe, I don't know," she looked at the map on her zPhone, "shit,
without the GPS feature I don't know where it is. Not far? You can see where
they cut into the hill for the access road." She pointed up to the west,
to a horizontal scar along the mountain. Only a section of the cut was visible
through the trees or whatever they were. I'd seen the access road briefly on my
flight into Fort Arrow. The maps said there was an access road running along
both sides of the Launcher, with side roads going to the Launcher tube itself
about every kilometer or half mile or something like that.

"All right, anyone else been
there? No?" Head shakes all around. I was tempted to climb on the ship to
get a better view. "Can we go straight to the access road from here?"

Amaro looked stricken. "Um, I
don't know, Sergeant?" In the military, 'I don't know' is a perfectly
acceptable answer, much better than trying to bullshit your way through a
situation. Usually 'I don't know' is supposed to be followed by 'but I'll find
out'. "I think there's a cliff between here and the road, I can't, uh, damn
this thing." She tapped the screen of her zPhone.

"That's all right, Amaro, we've
all gotten too reliant on fancy technology and let our basic navigation skills
go soft, I know I have." Which was true, since without the GPS I had no
fucking idea where we were. I tugged the straps of my pack tight and looked at
the faces who were looking at me. Sometimes all people needed was to hear that
someone, anyone, had some sort of a plan. "People, let's get weapons and
ammo. Amaro, you lead off, set an easy pace, this could be a long run."

It was a long run in the heat, at
least three, maybe four miles, and it seemed like a mile of it was uphill. It
got easier when we got to the access road, Amaro recognized a rock slide and
figured out which way to go along the road. We picked up the pace despite the
increasing heat and our canteens now being out of water, it was easier to run
on the road and we had the added incentive of seeing Ruhar attack ships buzzing
overhead. Whenever we spotted one of those dropship attack birds UNEF called
Vultures, we dove off the road under cover. Hiding under trees made us feel
moderately safer, my guess was with their technology, the Ruhar knew exactly
where we were. A small group of primitive humans without weapons weren't worth
expending ammo.

We came upon the side road that led to
the ammo dump, we ran only a quarter mile along the access road before a voice
called out from under a bush beside the road. "Halt! You stay right
there!" The voice was shakier than I hoped to hear, when the speaker was
pointing a rifle at my head.

"Sergeant Joe Bishop, 10th
Infantry. Who's in charge here?"

"You are." Another voice
spoke, and a guy stepped out from behind a tree. "It's just us here,
Sergeant. I'm Specialist Rogen, and that's Private Wayne under the
bushes."

Shit. I'd been silently hoping someone
of higher rank was at the ammo dump, to take the responsibility off my
shoulders.

Rogen tapped the zPhone on his belt.
"Our comms are down." I noticed Rogen still had his rifle pointed in
our direction, barrel slightly down but with his finger properly poised next to
the trigger. He and Wayne were in uniform, the rest of us were in T-shirts and
shorts, and they didn't know the new guy claiming to be a sergeant. Rogen
looked over my shoulder. "Hey, you're Miller, right? You're on convoy
duty."

"Yeah." Miller acknowledged.
"You're on a baseball team, shortstop?"

"Second base." Seeing a face
he recognized seemed to satisfy Rogen, he nodded to Wayne and they secured
their weapons. "What's going on, Sergeant?"

"We know as much as you, we were
out for a hike to that crashed ship when all hell broke loose. Either the Ruhar
are taking a very broad view of their cease fire agreement, or they've decided
they want to take this planet back." I thought back to what I'd overheard
Captain Price saying. It wasn't sensitive intel anymore. "Last week, I
heard the Kristang pulled out their air cover except for a single frigate, some
kind of fleet action was going on upstairs. I think the Ruhar hit Fort Arrow
with a railgun strike and missiles." You couldn't see the base from the
ammo dump, a shoulder of the mountain range blocked the view, except for the
still thick smoke. "We don't have comms either, set your zPhones to
receive only mode, so the Ruhar can't use them to track us."

Wayne shot a look at Rogen, like
they'd already had that discussion and Wayne had lost. "They must know
about this place," Rogen pointed to the heavy doors at the entrance to the
ammo dump, "the hamsters built it. And they'll see we added a guard shack,
so they know we're using the place." The guard shack was a structure that,
on Earth, would be a small tool shed people would have in their backyards, it
kept the guards out of the afternoon tropical rains and that's about it.

"I don't see a vehicle,"
Pope noted, "you guys have a hamvee?"

"No," Wayne shook his head,
"we're supposed to be relieved in two hours, and the guys coming on duty
arrive in a truck that we'll drive back to base."

"You can open those doors?"
I pointed to the entrance to the ammo dump.

"We have the code," Rogan
said, "but we're not supposed to-"

"Rogen, if you've been keeping
those weapons for a rainy day, that's now." He knew what I meant despite
the mostly cloudless sky. "Fort Arrow got hit, as far as we know we're the
only organized resistance around here right now. We need weapons. Open that
door."

We were in luck, there was mostly
weapons in the ammo dump, but also a small store of water and food, which we
raided. No salt or electrolyte tablets, unfortunately, I made sure everyone ate
some salty peanuts or pretzels to replenish what we'd lost through sweat.
"Everyone grab an M4 and ammo, take extra ammo, and get the good stuff,
not the standard rounds." Everyone knew how to identify clips of Kristang
ammo. "Pope, Stallings, uh, Newman, and uh, Wayne and you," I pointed
to the five biggest guys in our group, "take Javelins. Everyone else takes
an AT4, we don't know what we'll need, so let's bring it all." I hefted a
Javelin onto my shoulders to set an example. It was heavy, especially on top of
the M4. Thinking a moment, I took off the holster for my sidearm and left it on
a shelf. No point bringing a knife to a gunfight.

Rogen helped Wayne pick up a Javelin.
"Hey, are you the Joe Bishop that-"

"Yeah, Rogen. I'll tell you all
about it later, promise." If there was a later.

"Body armor, sergeant?" Pope
asked.

I frowned. "Uh, I'll leave that
up to you," I said, and as I said it, realized how cowardly it was of me
to not make that decision, "wait, no, no body armor." That was
totally against Army regulations. "We need to move fast, and we're already
overloaded." People nodded, it surprised me, I'd expected resistance to that
order. Everyone must have figured that Kevlar wasn't going to be much use
against Ruhar infantry weapons like particle beams. Body armor was mostly to
protect a soldier's torso from shrapnel damage, not direct hits; body armor had
saved me from serious injury in Nigeria, as much as I'd resented its weight in
the heat. If I survived, I'm sure I'd catch hell for violating regs in combat.
If there was a UNEF left to reprimand me. We were geared up, people were
looking at me again. What next? Jogging back down the access road to the base,
in full sunlight, was a suicidal idea. If the Ruhar gunships hadn't cared about
us before, they sure as hell would when we got closer to the base, carrying
weapons. Seeing Ruhar aircraft in the sky told me they hadn't only hit Fort
Arrow, they had landed troops to take the Launcher base complex. That meant
Ruhar troops on the ground, and if they were on the ground, we could hit them.
If we got close enough. "Anybody got a map of this place, the Launcher
complex, the whole thing?" I had an idea of the area immediately around
Fort Arrow, that's all. Since I'd been there, the Launcher had shot cargo into
space only three times, all when I'd been away on convoy duty. The closest I'd
come to seeing it in action had been a contrail streaking into the sky and a
low rumble of sound from far away.

“I do, Sergeant,” offered Amaro. She
jogged over to me and held out her zPhone. I took it, and scrolled through the
plans she'd downloaded, refreshing my hazy memory. It wasn’t much help. The
launch tube had a single parallel maintenance access tunnel on the south side,
and side shafts connecting to the surface roughly every kilometer. We were on
the south side, getting to the access tunnel meant climbing the mountain over
the buried Launcher tube. Not an option, with Ruhar gunships buzzing around. I
looked up from the zPhone, looked at the soldiers who were waiting for my
orders. We could try to hold part of the Launcher, fight a battle of attrition
which the Ruhar would win, hold this position until we were all dead. Trade
lives for time, in what I knew was a hopeless battle. That didn’t sound like a
good plan. The Ruhar could simply wait us out, or deploy some type of gas and
immobilize us. I reviewed the schematic again, trying to find inspiration. In
battle, decisions needed to be made on the spot, and my brain was already
slowed by fatigue. I saw many small compartments off the tunnel, where
electrical or other equipment was housed, they were dead-ends, which would
become death traps if the Ruhar caught our soldiers in there. “Wait, what is
this?” I held up the zPhone to Amaro. There was another tube, a small one,
parallel to the Launcher tube, on our north side.

She squinted in the dim light, then
announced “That’s the conduit for the plasma from the fusion plant, it provides
the juice for the Launcher magnets.”

“How do you know that?”

“Before the war, I was planning to be
an electrical engineer.” She said. "It interested me, so I got a tour
while the Launcher when I first got here.”

Nobody had offered a tour to me. “This
conduit, it's filled with plasma? That’s a superheated gas, right?”

“Close enough, plasma is a fourth
state of matter, it’s not a gas, liquid or solid. But it is damned hot.”

“Still?” An idea was forming in my
head. “The Launcher hasn't fired for, what, three days now? They wouldn't be
feeding plasma into the conduit unless they're charging up for a launch,
right?"

“Ah, yeah, the next launch isn't
scheduled for next week, because there isn't a Ruhar cargo ship upstairs to collect
it,” she stared at me, eyes wide. Must have guessed my crazy idea. “The conduit
is probably cool by now, but-“

I looked around the vast cavern that
had been excavated by the Ruhar, only a small corner of it was being used by
UNEF as an ammo dump. The far end of the space was hidden in an ominous red
gloom of emergency lighting, because power had been cut soon after Fort Arrow
was hit. “We’ll need more flashlights.”

The conduit led straight into the
heart of the fusion plant. Like the launch tube, the conduit had many access
points for maintenance. The nearest access hatch was less than a kilometer
away, back up the road, we'd passed it on our way to the ammo dump. I led my
impromptu squad along the road, all of us struggling with the heat, the extra
load of weapons, ducking off the road when Ruhar aircraft flew by, and the
shock of a nice morning turned to horror. When we got to the access tunnel, I
left the others safely outside  and took Amaro with me to check out the
hatch. It had all kinds of electronic controls and sensors, all of which were
currently dead. And it had a wheel. A simple, big metal wheel. I set the
Javelin on the ground, gripped the wheel, and turned. A dozen turns, and the
hatch cracked open with a puff of air. No inferno of plasma to burn my feet
off. “Huh.” I said as I stuck my head in. I was a dark tube, stretching off as
far as my flashlight could shine. About three meters in diameter. I flicked off
my light, and peered into the darkness. No lights shined back from the other end.
There were light panels set into the ceiling of the tube, they were dead.

She stuck her head in the tube.
"Huh. So this is what it looks like. Bigger than I thought. Power's cut
here too, Sergeant, the fusion plant must have gone offline. Or got hit.” Amaro
guessed.

“The Ruhar would have been careful not
to hit the reactor, they need the Launcher intact. It probably shut down
automatically when Fort Arrow got it.” Fort Arrow had been created from part of
the town the Ruhar had built for hamsters who worked on the Launcher complex,
it was to the north of the fusion reactor. There were still a lot of Ruhar
living in the town, they operated and maintained the launcher and reactor, our
technical people weren’t capable of doing anything useful with the complex
alien technology. Fort Arrow was separated from the town by a fence, and the
Ruhar were restricted to their own areas. I’m sure the Ruhar fleet had been
careful not to hit the Ruhar part of town. I pulled myself back out of the
conduit, and waved the others forward. “Here's the plan; we’re going to
counterattack. This conduit tube leads all the way to the fusion plant, we can
get out along the way. We’ll follow it, pop up in the enemy’s rear, and cause
some chaos. Let’s kill some kill some hamsters this morning.”

The conduit thankfully remained pitch
dark as we ran down it. The entire way, my skin was tingling, afraid the Ruhar
would detect us, and lob a few rockets or grenades down the conduit, either
would wipe us out in the confined space. Or turn on whatever mechanism
generated plasma and fed it into the conduit, that would fry us all to a crisp.
Secretly, I was hoping that maybe the reactor had been damaged, that it wasn’t
only temporarily offline, because damage would mean the plasma couldn’t be turned
back on any time soon. There weren’t any camera in the conduit that I could
see, having superheated plasma in the conduit when it was working probably
meant cameras were not practical. There must be some sort of sensors along the
way, to monitor the plasma, my hope was such sensors wouldn’t be able to detect
our presence. Ruhar operated the Launcher and reactor machinery, sensors,
including all the surveillance gear, I thought were hooked up to Fort Arrow
somewhere, I did know that humans operated the security system for the Launcher
complex and the base. With Fort Arrow having taken hits, I was hoping the Ruhar
didn’t have access to the surveillance feeds, because if they did, they would
detect us as soon as we came out of the conduit and entered the base area.

What I hadn’t counted on were the
numerous pieces of equipment we had to stumble over. I had mentally pictured
the conduit as a smooth empty tube, a round hole in the ground. It wasn’t.
Amaro explained that the plasma was contained in a magnetic field, which
required magnets spaced every couple meters. And the magnets required power
cables, which required heat shielding. All of which caused running soldiers to
trip, fall, and that made people behind to trip and fall. With there being room
in the tube for only a single file line, people falling down didn’t only cause
bashed knees and elbows, it made the entire column halt. What I was most afraid
of was somebody’s rifle firing accidentally and alerting the Ruhar, so I
ordered everyone to proceed forward at a brisk, but careful, walk, and that
kept stumbling to a minimum. It was a long journey, we walked for miles
underground in the claustrophobic darkness, with the view never changing except
for Ruhar numbers along the wall. Fortunately, the air was cool, Amaro said it
was probably the residual cold of the superconducting magnets of the main
launch tube bleeding over into the plasma tube, which had been without plasma
for days. Other than cursing when people fell or banged into the walls, the
squad maintained discipline, minimal talking, and that in a whisper. Whether
this was because they were admirably trained, or scared shitless like me, I
didn't want to guess. I was terrified to the point that the flashlight was
shaking in my hand, and I kept swinging it side to side to cover up how badly
my hand trembled.

Walking miles underground in darkness
gave me way too much time to think. Was I leading these people to a useless
death because I couldn't think of anything better to do? Anything smarter? The
fact was, I couldn't think of anything else to do. We were soldiers, we'd been
attacked, we fight. Simple. If an officer had ordered me to do what I ordered
these people to do, I would have followed without question. That didn’t mean it
was the right, or best, thing to do. What I'd told Collins was true; if the
Ruhar were taking the planet back, we may all be dead soon. Our only chance for
mission success, for survival, was to tie up the Ruhar with ground combat,
guerrilla tactics if it came to that, and buy time for the Kristang to regain
control in space. If the Kristang didn't or couldn't come back, we were dead
anyway, and we needed to strike a blow for humanity; give the hamsters some
payback, and show the Kristang that humans could be useful, reliable allies,
because that's what the people of Earth needed.

When we finally approached the power
plant end of the conduit, I could see ahead of us where the conduit curved and
branched out, I assumed to where the plasma was generated. Wherever that was, I
didn’t want to go there. I called a halt, and ordered lights to be turned off,
while Amaro and I looked at the schematic on her phone. I tried to mentally
picture where the reactor was in relation to Fort Arrow; to the east, further
up the mountain, and closer to the Launcher track. If we were near where the
plasma conduit branched to connect with the reactor, we'd gone too far. Asking
everyone to turn around in the narrow confines of the tunnel and march
backwards a long way wasn't something I wanted to do. "Amaro, this conduit
ends at the reactor, or near it?"

"No, the reactor feeds power to
the plasma generator, the generator is the big round structure up the mountain,
it looks like a water tower, or a petroleum storage tank? There's a tall white
building right next to it. We must be close to that."

"Oh, yeah, all right," we
were close to where I wanted to be, although I'd forgotten how high up the
mountain we must be then. "I thought that was a water tank." The
conduit had been climbing so gradually as we marched that I hadn't thought
about it. The Launcher was many kilometers long and climbed up and through the
mountain, from its base west of Fort Arrow to the open end of the launch tube
to the east, far up the mountain and on the other side of the ridge. The mountain's
bulk protected Fort Arrow, and the Launcher complex, from the sonic shock wave
generated when cargo pods left the launch tube and hit the atmosphere. On our
convoys, if we were going to be in the sonic footprint of a launch, we had to
halt a hour ahead of time, secure our vehicles, and wear hearing protection
under our helmets. It had only happened twice for me so far on convoy duty, and
we'd been far enough away that the launch was merely a faint streak of light in
the sky, still, I'd felt the ground rumbling from the hypersonic shock waves.
All the buildings in and around the Launcher complex, including Fort Arrow, had
noise-canceling systems installed in the walls and windows, and the base went
on lockdown during a launch. A launch is something I'd been wanting to see, now
I may have missed my chance.

Amaro and I squeezed past the column,
and led the way back maybe a hundred yards to where we'd passed an access
hatch. The hatches had wheels on the inside also, and this hatch had a small,
thick window in the center. Sticking my eye to the window was useless, all I
could see was the reflection of my eyeball, it was completely dark on the other
side. If there were hamsters on the other side of the hatch, we were screwed.
"Amaro, get a grenade ready."

She nodded grimly, and I slowly
started turning the wheel. It didn't squeak, so I spun it as quickly as I
could, and swung the heavy hatch open.

Into a dark corridor. An empty
corridor, thirty meters long, the other end had a door, a regular,
solid-looking rectangular door. I waved for Amaro to follow me, and the others
to stay put, and walked quietly forward. The door had a keypad that was blank,
no power, and a lever instead of a wheel. The level turned surprisingly easily,
the door was surprisingly heavy. And beyond was the interior of some type of
garage, with a tall, wide rollup door, and a Ruhar truck parked to the left. It
was simply a truck, hadn't been converted into a hamvee. Probably it was used
by the Ruhar who maintained the Launcher equipment. The garage was hot and
humid, there was an air conditioner unit built into the ceiling that wasn't
working. Amaro and I snuck around the truck, to where there was a regular door
that led to an office area; two well-scuffed tables, a couple worn-out chairs, a
workbench, tools, a trashcan with wrappers from hamster lunches. And dust. This
place, I guessed, didn't get used a lot. We crept warily into the office and
looked out the dingy windows.

It was a great view, in one way. We
were high up the mountainside, with the Launcher complex, reactor, the town,
Fort Arrow and the air field spread out below us. There was another door to the
outside, in front of the big rollup door was a concrete pad that connected to
the dirt access road beyond, and a roof and crane over the pad. The roof would
give us cover from spying eyes above.

"Amaro, bring everyone here. And
close that hatch, in case the power comes back on, and an open hatch sends out
an alarm."

I stepped out under the roof. Fort
Arrow was indeed spread out below me. What was left of it. When UNEF created
Fort Arrow out of the existing hamster town, we'd knocked down buildings to
create a perimeter, and installed a fence and minefield, so it was easy to see
the outlines of the base. Where the DFAC used to be was a steaming crater,
steaming instead of smoking, because the railgun impactor had damaged the rec
building across the street, and the cracked swimming pool there had drained
into the crater. Missiles had also hit barracks buildings, which didn't make
any sense as the Ruhar must have known those buildings would be mostly empty in
mid-afternoon, but the base administration buildings were mostly intact, except
for damage from being hit by flying debris. Same with most other buildings
within the fence line of Fort Arrow.

The airfield beyond to the north was a
mess, the runways had been cratered so we couldn't fly off any Dumbos, and
every hanger had taken a direct hit. Smashed Chickens and Buzzards were
scattered around the airfield, I couldn't see that we'd managed to get a single
bird in the air, with the exception of a pillar of smoke coming from the jungle
that might have been a downed aircraft. It was a mess.

People filed out the door under the
roof, I cautioned them to stay under the shadow of the roof, and not to wear
sunglasses or anything else that reflected sunlight and could give away our
position. Most people gasped when they saw the destruction, I heard several
people say quietly that we were lucky we'd not been in the DFAC.

The DFAC. What Fort Arrow used as a
dining facility had been used for a similar function by the hamsters before us,
I estimated it could easily hold four hundred people. Four hundred, all dead.
No way had anyone walked away from that steaming crater.

"What's the plan, Sergeant?"
Pope asked.

My plan had been for us to infiltrate
the town around Fort Arrow, and use cover of the hamster buildings there to
harass the Ruhar forces; figuring they'd fight us house to house rather than
blow up half their town to get us. We could tie them up for many hours, even
days, giving the Kristang time to take back control upstairs. And as long as
humans held part of the town, the Ruhar wouldn't risk operating the Launcher.
The reason I'd brought so many Zingers along is we had no chance to hold out if
the Ruhar could float in the sky above us and pick us off with precision
strikes. Simply firing a single Zinger once in a while would force the Ruhar
close air support to pull back and change their tactics. I know, because in
Nigeria I'd seen that rebels, blindly firing unguided RPGs at our helicopters,
made our air cover scurry for cover.

To the north, beyond the airfield, two
pairs of Vultures were circling, one pair providing cover as the other pair
fired missiles and strafed the jungle. Amaro pointed to the action, some humans
must have survived and escaped the airfield to fight on. As we watched, a pair
of Zingers burst out of the jungle and raced toward one of the Vultures; the
first missile was hit with a particle beam and went off course, the second missed
but exploded close enough that the Vulture staggered in the air, and wobbled
off toward the airfield, trailing smoke.

"Binoculars," I ordered,
holding my hand out to Pope. I stepped back into deeper shade and scanned the
airfield. Several Dodos were being serviced on the tarmac, and a pair of Whales
were unloading. Dodos were small dropship transports, while Whales were huge
dropships, bigger even than the Dumbo aircraft I'd flown in. Whales could carry
big cargo down from orbit, they had doors at the back end and a ramp like a
cargo aircraft, one of the Whales at the airfield was unloading a Buzzard that
had its wings folded.

"Shit, that's not good," I
said quietly, not quietly enough.

"What?" Pope asked.

"If they're bringing in Buzzards
already, they must be confident they'll be here for a while." How were we
going to get down into the town without being seen? I hadn't considered that we
would come out of the conduit so far up the mountain, we must have been five
hundred feet above the town. Why hadn't I realized that-

"Incoming!" Someone behind
me shouted. With a high-pitched roar of turbines, two dropships  came over
the ridge behind us, flew near the garage or whatever was the structure we
sheltered in, and flared into hover mode to land at the airfield. It was a
Dodo, escorted by a Vulture. We all squeezed against the rollup door, as far
under the roof as we could. I watched as they landed, and as they settled down,
one of the Whales took off in a cloud of dust, gained altitude, and flew close
to us, climbing over the ridge behind us and gaining speed rapidly. I watched
its belly slide across the sky as it passed us. Its big, fat, vulnerable belly.

"Huh." Just like that, I had
an idea. "This is this flight path now. We're right under the flight
path." Whenever I'd been at Fort Arrow, I'd seen aircraft approach from
the east or west, sometimes the north, but never from the south, never coming
in over the mountain. That had changed. "Our guys over there, in the
jungle, they've got the Ruhar scared to fly in from that direction. Shit!
They're flying right over us, they don't know we're here!"

With the binoculars, I looked down at
the other Whale that was still unloading. Some cargo was coming down the rear
ramp, from the number of troops climbing down the stairways on the ship's side
and lined up on the tarmac, this Whale had mostly carried troops. A Whale,
according to the info provided by the Kristang, could carry up to 600
passengers. Judging by the gear the troops on the tarmac were loaded down with,
I figured a troop-carrier Whale couldn't hold the maximum number of people.

The Vultures above the jungle beyond
the airfield were still firing an occasional missile at whoever was down there.
If we could shoot down even one dropship from our position, the Ruhar would
very likely halt operations at the airfield until they were confident they'd
rooted out all human resistance in the area. That would delay their occupation
schedule for the Launcher significantly. Maybe even force them to divert
dropships and troops from other areas, and that would give our forces elsewhere
on Paradise a break. Even if the Kristang didn't, or couldn't, come back to
Paradise, surely they would eventually hear of UNEF's firm stand at the
Launcher, and boosting the Kristang's opinion of humanity's combat usefulness
had to help the people back home. Which was the whole point of the UN
Expeditionary Force. Our forces had no possibility of actually defending Earth
from the Ruhar, we needed the Kristang to do that for us. UNEF had gone to the
stars in order to give the Kristang a reason to care whether Earth was
conquered by the Ruhar or not. In a way, UNEF's mission was to SAVE THE WORLD.

Those all caps were intentional, by
the way, it looks more dramatic that way. When you're facing the strong
possibility of being trapped, forever, on an alien planet controlled by the
enemy, having a dramatic rationale for your mission makes it feel better.

I handed the binoculars back to Pope.
"Pope, you, and, uh, Wayne, can you get across the road and under those
trees there? I need a spotter to see what's coming over the ridge behind us.
Hold up fingers to give us a count with your right hand, with your left hand,
uh, a fist means a Whale, holding your palm open face down is a Dodo, and palm
open face up is a Vulture, got it?" I didn't want to waste Zingers on a
Vulture, we needed to make a bigger impact than shooting down a two-seater
gunship.

Pope looked right and left.
"Yeah, we'll go down the road under tree cover on this side to where those
trees are overhanging the road, cross there, and make our way back."

"Good, leave your Zingers and
AT4s here. As soon as we fire Zingers, you run back here, we're going back into
that conduit for a quick run to the next exit." The Ruhar would shortly
turn the garage into a pile of rubble after we shot at their aircraft.
"Everyone else, get your Zingers ready.  Amaro, see if you can get
this rollup door open, we'll need to make a quick exit." I shrugged off
the strap to one of the Zingers I carried, flipped open the targeting panel,
and pressed the first button to activate it. The weapon's seeker would stay
active for several hours now.

Pope and Wayne set their missiles
down, peeked out under the edge of the roof, and sprinted off under the trees.
In a couple minutes, they were under a tree across the road from me, we were
able to communicate by talking loudly, the hand signals had been for
communication when enemy aircraft were flying loudly overhead. Almost as soon
as Pope and Wayne got settled under the trees, we heard aircraft approaching.
One Dodo and one Vulture.

I shook my head and gestured thumbs
down with one hand. If no more tempting targets appeared soon, I'd settle for a
Dodo, I had to worry about Ruhar troops driving along the access road and
seeing us. Surely the Ruhar were going to recon the whole area.

Another aircraft approached from
behind us. A single Vulture. Again I gave the thumbs down. Checking my people,
I could see they were so keyed up that we needed to do something soon.
"Check your safeties, people, nobody fires until I give the signal."
I made people acknowledge my order one by one, looking each person in the eye.
Myself, I tried to act calm, even bored, I stifled a fake yawn. "Damn, I
wish they'd get here soon, I'm hungry." I complained, and that drew some
nervous laughter.

The Whale at the airfield finished
unloading, the Ruhar troops had marched off the tarmac into the jungle, and it
lifted off. This Whale flew almost directly over us, I could read some of the
marking on its belly and wings. As it approached, I made sure everyone saw my
thumbs down. If we had to, I'd attack an empty ship on its return flight, that
wasn't my preference.

Then I did get bored, a bit. After
that Whale took off, maybe ten minutes went by with no flight activity in the
area, other than the pair of Vultures over the jungle. They weren't strafing or
firing missiles anymore, and we didn't see any more Zingers coming from the
jungle either. With the lull in air traffic, I started to question not shooting
at the Dodo or the empty Whale. Either would have accomplished our main
objective of making the Ruhar shut down flight operations. Still, I wanted to
hit the hamsters, hit them hard, make them pay for all the people who died at
the Fort Arrow DFAC.

While we waited, I had people police
the area, after we triggered off the Zingers we needed to run back into the
conduit immediately, and not waste time picking up things we'd dropped. Shit, I
should have left the access hatch to the conduit open, not waste time spinning
that big heavy wheel. Too late now, lesson learned.

"Whales!" Wayne shouted, and
waved his arms. Pope had the binoculars to his eyes, and waved one hand
excitedly. Wayne held up a fist and two fingers, then palm open face up with
two fingers. Two Whales, escorted by two Vultures. We couldn't hear them yet,
they must have been approaching at high altitude. Then we could hear them.

"This is it, people!" I
shouted. "Do not fire until I give the order! We've got two Whales; people
on this side target the first Whale, people on this side, you're with me on the
second Whale. Stay under the roof for now." I was so keyed up that I
forced myself to double check my Zinger's safety was on. As the screaming sound
of Whale jets got louder, I shuffled close to the edge of the concrete pad.
What did we know about Whales, I tried to recall? They were well protected for
a dropship, with multiple defensive particle beam turrets. With fifteen of us
ready to fire Zingers at only two targets, from close range, we had a good
chance to get a hit. At low altitude and slow airspeed, I was hoping a stricken
Whale wouldn't have time to recover before slamming into the mountainside, and
crashing down the slope.

I stuck my head out from under the
roof to see where the Whales were. They were close, they would pass slightly to
the east of us rather than directly overhead. Neither of them had their active
stealth engaged. "Get ready," I ordered loudly and stepped out from
under the roof, "arm seekers!"

With the safety off, the targeting
display lit up, I centered the crosshairs on the rear of the trailing Whale, on
the rear portside jet. The jet was angled almost fully down, providing more
lift than forward thrust, as the Whale was on final approach. The most
vulnerable point of its flight profile. Low and slow.

"Does everyone have a target
acquired?" I shouted, then repeated the question. We needed to shoot soon,
with fifteen of us standing in the open holding Zingers to our shoulders, we
were sure to be spotted by the escorting pair of Vultures soon. Fourteen people
acknowledged they had solid locks on target.

"Ready, ready, shoot!"
I toggled off my Zinger, and fourteen other missiles leapt from their launch
tubes. The Zinger launched from the disposable tube with a magnetic pulse, so
the backblast from the rocket wouldn't kill the user, the rocket didn't kick on
until the missile was fifty meters away. Then the rocket motor kicked on, and I
almost lost sight of the missiles as they went into super acceleration. It all
happened so fast, I don't know how many of our Zingers were diverted, disabled
or killed outright by the Whales' defenses. What I do know is both Whales
staggered in the air, as front and rear portside jets on both Whales exploded
and were torn off, other missiles ripped into the bellies of the two unlucky
ships. The Whales have belly jets and the ability to hover on them alone, that
feature didn't help them that day.

I had a recurring nightmare of that
moment, what I think, I hope, is a false memory; something I could not have
seen, something that could not have happened, yet I have an incredibly vivid
memory burned into my brain. The passenger/cargo compartment of a Whale does
not have any windows, windows are weak points in the structure of an aircraft,
and the structure of a Whale needs to go up and down to orbit hundreds, even
thousands of times over its life. There are tiny windows in the side doors, for
some reason there are a pair of small windows on both sides at the back near
the ramp, and there are windows in the cockpit. The cockpit windows are like
those of a commercial airliner on Earth, big enough for pilots to see out, not
big enough for anyone to see much of the interior from outside. And the Whales
must have been a half mile, maybe, from us, plus slightly above our position.
Yet, I have a vivid, haunting memory of the Ruhar pilot of the second Whale,
the one I'd fired at, turning to look at where the missile threat was coming
from, and just as the first missile impacted and slewed the Whale's nose toward
me, the pilot for a brief second looked directly at me. Not just at our
position, not just at a group of human soldiers, not just at a particular human
soldier.

At me.

Me, like he knew me, like he was
asking why, since our species had grown on different planets, thousands of
lightyears apart, and we'd lived completely different lives, why had our paths
crossed like this? Had it come to pass that the only time in our entire lives
we met, I fired an alien missile and ended his life? Why? He wasn't asking the
universe, he wasn't asking karma or fate or whatever divine being he worshiped,
he was asking me.

That haunted me for a long time.

Both Whales rolled on their sides
after they lost their port jets, one of them briefly managed to get a semblance
of control before they both plunged almost straight down into the mountain
jungle slope, tumbling over and over, braking apart amid secondary explosions.
What we should have done is retreat into the conduit immediately after
triggering off our missiles, instead we stood watching, mouths agape or
cheering, which is what happens when a thrown-together squad is led by an
inexperienced sergeant. Wayne brought me back to focus when he and Pope
sprinted across the road to us. "Time to go, Sergeant?" He asked,
eyes wide.

"Yes. Yes, go, Amaro, get that
hatch open!" One of the Vultures had soared vertically high above us, the
other had swung in a circle toward us and was looking for a target to kill.
Looking for us. Without thinking, I unstrapped my second Zinger, glad now that
I'd carried the extra thirty pounds, got a lock on the Vulture, and squeezed
the trigger. The Vulture's defenses zapped my Zinger before it got close, I
still accomplished my objective because the Vulture veered away and zoomed off
at high speed, buying us precious time to get back into the conduit.

It turned out that the efforts of our
thrown-together squad weren't needed, that all the Ruhar aboard the two Whales
we shot down had died for nothing. It wasn't even an hour later that a Kristang
task force came back, and the Ruhar ships jumped back away, abandoning their
forces on Paradise. By that time, I'd retreated my squad to the plasma
generator, holing up in a place I figured the Ruhar wouldn't risk damaging.
After the two Whales crashed and burned and the surviving Ruhar on the ground
got over the initial shock, a pair of Vultures buzzed around like angry
hornets, weapons pods exposed and occasionally strafing something on the ground
with laser fire. They knew where we were, I could imagine the Vulture drivers
shouting for clearance to blow my squad to hell, and being told not to risk
damaging the vital Launcher machinery. I figured our best chance for survival
was to take cover someplace defensible that the Ruhar couldn't blast with heavy
weapons, and buy time. The plasma generator complex seemed a good bet. All we
had left was rifle ammo, AT4s, a couple Zingers, some grenades and a sense that
we'd done the best we could to avenge our dead. We found an auxiliary control
room that was underground and it didn't have any windows, so we had to use cameras
that the Ruhar oddly had forgotten to disable. From one camera, we had a view
of the still steaming crater where the DFAC had been. I wondered whether the
people in the DFAC had any idea of trouble before the railgun round vaporized
them, had they known, a few seconds before impact, that Ruhar warships had
jumped into orbit? I hoped not. Better, in this case, for the blissful
ignorance of listening to a UNEF general drone on in a boring speech,
daydreaming pleasant thoughts and not realizing you'd been killed until you
woke up in the afterlife. No such luck for people at the airfield and motor
pool, they'd had time to see the DFAC disappear and have debris raining down on
them before smart missiles dropped clusters of submunitions on them and
destroyed everything that could drive or fly. The Vulture gunships that had
ignored us had strafed scattered survivors, while there was a lot of confusion,
UNEF estimated six hundred seventy dead, of the roughly nine hundred humans
stationed at Fort Arrow that day. That was a stark lesson in future combat; if
you didn't control the high ground you were as good as dead, and the high
ground in this case was orbit and above. Digging in didn't help much when a
railgun round could penetrate up to three hundred meters into the ground, if
the launching ship seriously cranked up the muzzle velocity. The Ruhar had
ships dedicated to orbital bombardment, the briefing packet I'd seen depicted a
long, thin railgun barrel with fusion reactors at the far end and nothing much
else to it. Who needed dirty nukes when a railgun dart could provide ten
kilotons of hurt on a target, and ships could pump one dart after another until
even the hardest target was a cloud of atoms?

Considering the nature of future
combat, what the fuck were humans even doing out here at all?

Amaro noticed the change of situation
first, she'd been monitoring a camera, and called for me when she saw that the
pair of hamsters who had been watching our personal fusion reactor set down
their weapons and stand up so they were in full view. We toggled the view from
one camera to another, and the scene was repeated all over the base, hamsters
laying down their weapons and walking away, toward the airfield. Vulture
gunships coming in to land, crews getting out, leaving the doors open, and
walking away. We barely had time to speculate what was going on before all our
zPhones beeped at once. The cavalry had returned. Our allies the Kristang were
back in command of space around Paradise, and the Ruhar forces on the ground
had surrendered. For now, anyway.

CHAPTER SEVEN    COLONEL

UNEF flew in a half dozen Buzzards a
couple hours later, we’d spent the time searching for survivors and assisting
the wounded. To my relief, we found an Army captain who took command, and I
went back to following orders.

Three days later, in the morning there
was a violent thunderstorm while I was working on a clean-up crew, after the
rain stopped and the sun came out to raise steaming clouds off the airfield
tarmac, a private found me and said that I had orders to report to Major
Perkins at the admin building. Major Perkins? What the hell was she doing here,
she’d told me she’d been assigned to the Indian sector. My thought that this
couldn’t be any good for me.

"Sergeant Bishop reporting,
ma'am." I was a bit out of breath from running up the stairs.

Major Perkins looked at me a moment in
surprise. "You couldn't have cleaned up? What have you been doing?"

I glanced down at my soiled and sooty
clothes, and my dirty hands with blackened fingernails. "I was told to get
here on the double, ma'am. I was helping move, uh, debris off the runway."
Debris that included shattered Buzzards with human remains still aboard.

"Oh, hell, Bishop. I didn't
intend for you to run all the way here, dammit. Sit down.” She looked as tired
as I felt. “How you feeling?”

“Numb, ma’am,” I answered honestly.
“Like you told me, I was laying low here, on convoy duty, and then, blam, all
hell breaks loose.” I shuddered involuntarily, thinking of the crater that was
the DFAC. “Why the hell did they hit the DFAC? A couple minutes different that
morning, and I would have been there.”

Perkins looked out the window, which
gave a good view of that crater. "The Ruhar commander of the attack here,
we interrogated her, she says the strike on the DFAC, the main barracks and the
admin building were deliberate, and they thought the DFAC and the barracks
would be mostly empty in mid afternoon. If General Gupta hadn't been visiting,
the DFAC would have been empty, and there's no way the Ruhar fleet could have
known that before they jumped into orbit. She said it was bad luck the DFAC was
packed with people, that they didn't want to cause casualties unless they
needed to. I don't know whether to believe her or not, G2 will be the judge of
that. Or the Kristang, we're handing her over to the Kristang tomorrow. That's
why the Ruhar are so pissed about you shooting down those two Whales, they each
had almost five hundred troops aboard, plus the crews. The Ruhar apparently
didn't realize they'd killed half that many at the DFAC, it's a crater and they
weren't taking time to examine it for remains. To the Ruhar, until we told them
about casualties at the DFAC, your actions needlessly escalated the conflict
here, at a time they were offering a cease fire."

"It didn't look like that when
their gunships were strafing every human in sight, ma'am." I said hotly.

"Understood, Bishop, keep in mind
our people here were shooting at them, so let's chalk it up to the fog of war.
I have no problem with your actions, in fact, I put you in for a commendation.
Our, uh, friends upstairs had a different idea. They want UNEF to promote
you." She got a sour look on his face, like she didn't agree with the
idea.

"First sergeant? I've only been a
sergeant for-"

"Bishop, we're not making you a
first sergeant." The look on her face was impossible to read; I assumed
she meant the Kristang wanted to make me a first sergeant, but UNEF wasn't
going to do it, because I wasn't ready. A sentiment I agreed with completely, I
still wasn't sure about the sergeant thing. Maybe Division had sent Perkins
here to soften the blow, because we'd worked together before. "The
Kristang promote almost entirely based on success in battle, there are
political considerations, and rivalries within the clans, but in their system
promotions are done on the basis of combat success, which they define as
killing the enemy. Between those two Whales, and the casualties on the ground
when the ammo aboard exploded, your actions killed well over a thousand Ruhar.
The Kristang are impressed. They're pissed that most human units didn't do much
while the Ruhar were here, never mind there wasn't much we could do while we're
dirtside and the Ruhar could pound the entire planet from orbit. You killed a
whole lot of Ruhar, while most of UNEF, especially senior officers, didn't do a
damned thing, according to the Kristang." Senior officers included Major
Perkins, it wasn't tough to see how she felt about that. "The Kristang
want us to, oh, hell, here."

She took a small box out of a pocket,
considered it distastefully, and abruptly snapped it open. Inside were a pair
of silver insignia, an eagle clutching arrows and an olive branch in its claws,
with the head of the eagle turned toward the arrows. The War Eagle insignia.
The US Army hadn't issued those since WWII.

Those eagles were the insignia of a
full colonel in the Army, Air Force and Marines, or a captain in the Navy.
"Wow, ma'am, they're bumping you up two grades?" I was impressed,
Perkins was a major, and the rank above major was lieutenant colonel. As far as
I knew, nobody went straight from major to being a full bird colonel.

"No, Bishop, you dumbass."
Perkins said with irritation. "You. They're for you. The Kristang want
UNEF to make you a colonel."

"Holy shit."

"Yeah, holy shit is about right.
Colonel is a rank below what the Kristang wanted, they expected UNEF to make
you a general. A fucking general." She shook her head in disbelief.
“Can you believe that shit?”

“Ma’am, I can’t believe they’d make me
a colonel, forget about general.”

“Bishop, don’t let this go to your
head. You’re a reasonably smart soldier, you’re flexible, you adapt to
situations, and you’ve shown ability to take initiative on occasion. The fact
is, you’re not any more smart or flexible or innovative than the Army expects
of any soldier.”

“Yes, ma’am”, I agreed, because it was
true.

"Anyway, you won’t be a general,
we told them the role of generals in our armies is mostly administrative, that
colonel is the highest rank directly involved in combat. True enough. They
understood that, so they're satisfied with you being a colonel. That
rank," he nudged the box with the silver eagles, "is high enough to
show that UNEF values success in combat as much as the Kristang do. It's
important to keep our allies happy."

"Uh," I mumbled, mesmerized
by those pretty silver eagles. Damn. Before the Ruhar attacked, all I wanted
from my military service was to pay for college somewhere, and get out. Now
there was a pair of silver eagles sitting in front of me. "I'm not good at
writing letters and stuff."

"Letters?"

I broke my gaze away from the eagles
to meet her eye. "You know, thank you, this is a great honor but I can't
accept, the US Army doesn't work this way-"

"Sergeant, I'm not getting
through to you, so I'll break it down for you Barney style." She spat with
exasperation and not even a hint of a smile, so I knew she wasn't using 'Barney'
ironically. "This is the last time I can give you an order anyway, before
you outrank me. UNEF doesn't want you to politely refuse the promotion. We need
you to accept eagerly, accept the promotion as your right for killing a lot of
Ruhar. We need you to tell the Kristang that you're only sorry you couldn't
have killed more hamsters.  Be confident, be bold, be bloodthirsty. Be
what the Kristang want humans to be, because garrison duty on Paradise may be a
shit job, but it's the job we agreed to, and our allies are our only ride home.
And our only source of food."

"Holy shit." I repeated. I
didn't know what to say.

Me. A colonel.

A fucking bird colonel.

Me.

"What am I going to do? As a
colonel?" A colonel in the US Army could be commander or deputy commander
of a brigade, that was thousands of troops. No way in hell was I qualified to
do that.

Major Perkins shrugged and avoided my
eyes. "Damned if I know. UNEF will figure it out."

Shit. It hit me. UNEF was going to use
me as a publicity stunt, trot me out for the Kristang as an example of the
ideal warrior human, while behind my back, all the humans would be laughing at
me. I couldn't keep the disgust from showing on my face.

"Bishop, UNEF needs this. You
don't have to like it, you do have to do your duty." Major Perkins
admonished.

"Sure. I'll wear medals on my
chest, talk to the troops and maybe sell some war bonds. Shit." A
promotion was supposed to be a good thing. "Am I going to be the only
puppet UNEF is promoting?"

"No, there's a Chinese Army major
they're promoting to lieutenant colonel. The Kristang were also pleased with
the actions of a US Army captain, two Indians and one from the French. They all
died in battle, so only the two of you are alive to receive the honor."

"This Chinese guy, he's only
getting bumped up one grade? Why?" Hell, I was going straight from the
lowest type of sergeant you could be to a full colonel.

"His unit defended a warehouse
complex that used to belong to the Ruhar and UNEF is now using as a supply
depot, apparently the Ruhar left something important behind when the Kristang
took over, and they wanted back in there real bad. They couldn't risk damaging
whatever is in the warehouses, so they landed troops and fought it out on the
ground. This Major Chang was still in control of two warehouses when the
Kristang fleet came back to chase the Ruhar away, but he lost eighty percent of
his men. Including, rumor has it, the son of a high-ranking Chinese government
official. That's why he's only getting one bump in grade. Look, Bishop, this
will be what you make of it, you got that? You're a damned good sergeant, you
did a good job with your EOT in Teskor, and no one is going to say you didn't
earn some sort of a promotion by your actions here. This is good for humanity,
we must have the Kristang thinking human troops are valuable."

The promotion ceremony took place at
Fort Olympus, the UNEF HQ complex. I was astonished to see the place was
pristine, the Ruhar hadn't touched it at all during the attack. Major Perkins,
who accompanied me on the Dumbo flight to Olympus, said Ruhar prisoners told
UNEF they'd not hit Olympus because they wanted UNEF command intact, so someone
with authority could order all humans on Paradise to lay down their weapons.
Which would have been easier to do, if the hamsters hadn't been jamming all of
our communications. Who knows how aliens think, huh?

Meeting General Meers and the other
senior commanders was not as intimidating as I expected, I was dreading a long,
formal ceremony filled with speeches and me having to maintain either a
menacing warrior scowl or a pleasant smile, whatever the UNEF public relations
officer thought was appropriate. Instead, because only a small number of
Kristang had been cleared to land on Paradise without full environment suits,
there were no Kristang present at Olympus, and therefore the promotion ceremony
was General Meers in his office pinning silver eagles on my uniform, with a
half dozen other senior officers watching. After the brief ceremony, there was
a delicious meal in the officers' mess, with steaks that tasted fresh, which I
later learned was because they were irradiated and chilled rather than frozen,
green beans that weren't the usual mushy Army fare, baked potatoes with real
butter, chocolate cake, and real fresh-brewed coffee.

Seniors officers ate well. That, I
could get used to. My joy lasted until a US Marine Corps colonel thanked me for
giving the headquarters unit an excuse for a feast; General Meers had senior
officers at Fort Olympus on field rations six days a week, to remind commanders
and their staff what troops in the field were experiencing. I didn't know much
about Meers, but my respect for him climbed several notches after hearing that.

The steak was great. I was still
craving a cheeseburger.

After dinner, General Meers wanted to
talk to me in private. Me. The commander of all human forces on Paradise wanted
to have a little chat with me.

"Serg-, damn it, Colonel, it's
new to me too. Bishop." My last name was conveniently rank-neutral.
"You've had a hell of an interesting career, for one so young. Nigeria,
then the Ruhar crash into your home town and you capture one of them. My G2
tells me you were our gold source of intel here for a while. And then you pull
together a squad on your own, and shoot down two Whales. Surprised the hell out
of me when they told me you're the same Bishop that captured a Ruhar soldier
with an ice cream truck. Those are some big goddamn coincidences."

"My mother said I was a trouble
magnet growing up, always getting into one thing or another." I could hear
her voice in my ear as I said it. "It's not all that much of a
coincidence, sir. I was on leave when the Ruhar crashed in my hometown, that
was luck. But it wasn't coincidence that the burgermeister-"

"The who?"

"The Ruhar mayor, or whatever she
is, we called her the burgermeister, the one who fed me the intel about
wormholes and all that. It wasn't a coincidence she picked me to talk to, she
sought me out because the hamster I captured back home reported he was treated
well, and she wanted to meet me. I was at Fort Arrow because, uh, I was told it
was because the Kristang were sniffing around trying to find who was feeding us
intel, so it was no coincidence I was there when the Ruhar attacked. And I
probably would have been at the Fort Arrow DFAC with everyone else, except
Captain Price there said he was tired of UNEF using Fort Arrow as a dumping
ground, and he stuck me on convoy duty to get me out of the way. That's why I
was off base then the Ruhar hit us." That was close enough, General Meers
didn't need the details.

"One thing led to another,
huh?"

"That's the way I see it,
sir."

"I suppose you could be right
about that. Now that you're here, don't expect you can screw off because you've
got UNEF over a barrel. The Kristang promote based on success in combat, what
you may not know is they can sack people just as fast."

"Sir, I don't know what I'm going
to do next, but whatever duty I'm assigned, I'll do it the best I can."

"Good. Last thing we need is
everyone in the damned UNEF thinking they can jump ahead quick if they do
something spectacular. Most lieutenants out there think they're smarter than
their COs. And sergeants think they're better soldiers than any fancy-pants
lieutenant." He snorted. "Hell, the sergeants are probably right.
We've already had incidents of people trying crazy Rambo shit to get noticed.
So busting you back down to sergeant or private because you fuck up somehow
would make my life easier, you got that?"

"Yes, sir." It was kind of
what I expected to happen eventually anyway. I had no business wearing silver
eagles.

"That said," Meers pondered
the view outside the window, where a pair of Chickens were flying by, "I
don't want you to fail. Bishop, I'm giving you fair warning that we plan on
riding you like a rented mule, so if you think being a mustang colonel means
you fly around and give speeches, you best put that thought right out of your
head."

"Never considered it, sir."
I appreciated the warning.

The next day I got started on a crash
course in the responsibilities of a US Army colonel, and the protocols and
etiquette for dealing with the Kristang. One of the protocols for a meeting
with the Kristang was eating a bland diet starting the day before; the Kristang
thought humans smelled bad, and us chowing down on meat or spicy foods made us
even smellier. UNEF heard from the Ruhar that the Kristang think all other
species smell bad, that humans shouldn't take it personally. What it meant for
me was oatmeal and tea for breakfast instead of eggs and coffee; lunch and
dinner were similarly bland and boring. Other instructions I received were not
to try shaking hands with the Kristang, they didn't like us touching them at
all. And not to speak unless the Kristang asked me a question. Also no smiling,
the Kristang interpreted smiles as humans not taking things seriously, and the
Kristang overall were not known as a jolly species.

The instructions regarding my new role
as a colonel were both simple and complex. Simple because the colonel who was
tasked with bringing me up to speed clearly  didn't know what UNEF planned
with do with me, or whether my rank was a short-term publicity stunt, so his
instructions consisted of telling me to act like an officer and not do anything
that might embarrass UNEF. Complex because he emailed me an enormous series of
files to read, starting with training materials a second lieutenant was
supposed to know by heart. The war would be over before I read half of the crap
in my inbox.

The next morning, after another bland
breakfast, the Kristang sent down a dropship to pick up General Meers, several
staffers, and me. We were fortunate that the space elevator and therefore the
space station were in the same longitude as Fort Olympus, which meant their
morning wasn't the middle of our night. Meers was going to confer with the
Kristang about, whatever the Kristang wanted to talk about. I was going along
so the Kristang could personally give me an award or something, we weren't
clear on what was going to happen, other than the Kristang requested that Lt
Colonel Chang and I come up to their space station at the top of the elevator.

I was dressed in a brand spanking new
colonel's dress uniform, in which I tried to sit carefully so as not to take
the sharp crease out of the pants. The day before, I'd been shot up with
another dose of magical Kristang antinausea meds, so I wouldn't be puking up
oatmeal all over myself, and everyone else, when the ship went zero gee in
orbit. Sitting next to me was a Lieutenant Reynolds, whose sole job was to keep
me from doing or saying anything stupid. Including stopping me from
automatically saluting her. She made a point of saluting me, and calling me
'sir'. It felt unnatural.

The ride up was smoother than what I
remember of the ride when we left Camp Alpha, either we had a better pilot this
time, or the Kristang were taking care of their human VIPs. My first time
aboard the space station, all I'd seen was the inside of a docking collar, and
well-worn corridors as we were hustled from our ship to the elevator car that
was parked at the bottom of the station. Our dropship flew into a landing bay,
and we got to see the station for real. It was startling, what I imagined of
Kristang interior design was stark and functional, something industrial and
military for their warrior caste. What I saw was sleek and functional mostly,
but with jarringly ornate elements. There were tapestries hanging on the walls
that even I found to be beautiful, landscapes of distant planets, starships
outlined against a nebula, intricate geometric designs, even flowers, in
addition to the depictions of Kristang warriors in battle that I expected. The
Kristang were an interesting species, so full of contradictions, if what the
burgermeister had told me was true.

The ceremony wasn't much, we marched
into a large room with Kristang seated along both sides, and high-ranking
Kristang on a raised dais at the far end. It was my first time ever meeting a
Kristang in person, and I was intimidated. They were all taller than the
average human, bulky and muscled, and their default expression seemed to be a
fierce scowl. For all I knew, that was their version of a friendly smile. Oh,
and one word about how the Kristang objected to how humans smelled; they could
have used an air freshener in the station. Being in a room, even a large room,
with a hundred or so Kristang, had a dry, leathery smell, with an undertone of
something like day-old sweat.

My part was a brief rehearsed speech
that had been written for me, Lt Reynolds told me the Kristang had demanded to
review and approve my remarks in advance. My speech, delivered in English and
translated by zPhone, was appropriately warlike and bloodthirsty. After I
stepped back, Lt Colonel Chang stepped forward, and made a brief speech similar
to mine. While Chang was talking, my eyes wandered around the crowd. Most of
the Kristang looked bored, even slightly disgusted. They were sitting
stone-faced, or staring at the ceiling, or checking messages or playing games
on their zPhones. I could sympathize, the Kristang seated along the sides of
the room had been voluntold to attend the ceremony, all they wanted was for it
to be over. It was like being in a roomful of human teenagers. Seeing the
bored, unimpressed Kristang told me how unimportant I was, they truly couldn't
care about what I'd done, whether I got promoted, or whether I survived the
shuttle ride back to Paradise. When Chang was done speaking, a Kristang handed
a box to General Meers. Meers took gold ribbons out of the box and pinned them
to our uniforms. One of the Kristang on the dais stood up, saluted us, and
Chang and I returned the salute. And it was over. Meers and the officers who
were of actual importance stayed for discussions with the Kristang, while Chang
and I were handed off to a Kristang who was openly resentful of babysitting two
lowly humans.

"Come with me, inferiors,"
is what the translator said when the Kristang gestured for us to follow him.
His expression told me the translation was accurate. Sullenly, he lead us
winding our way through the station, an observation deck that was fairly
deserted. It had chairs, a couple tables, and big windows with a great view of
Paradise. It was difficult for me to resist shouting out 'I can see my house!'
because I thought I recognized the big bend in the river that was just to the
south of Teskor. The Kristang dismissively gestured for us to sit, while he
went over to what appeared to be a bar in the corner. It was a bar. He got out
a glass, poured himself a generous serving of a golden liquid, added two cubes
of ice, and angrily slumped into a seat across from us. "I am supposed to
congratulate you on your achievements as warriors, and welcome you to our
glorious coalition. Pththth." He stuck his tongue out and blew a raspberry
at us.

I looked at him more closely as he
took a big gulp of the liquid. Whatever it was, it smelled like alcohol, sort
of reminded me of tequila. His eyes were slightly unfocused and glassy.

Crap. He was already drunk. He'd come
to the ceremony drunk. He was drinking more. This wasn't going to be good.
Chang caught my eye as the Kristang stared out the window. I shook my head.
Whatever happened, we were both going to be on our best behavior as guests of
our allies.

"Ahhhhhh." The Kristang
sighed and settled deeper into the chair, closing his eyes. Inside, I was
hoping he'd fall asleep, and I could sit and watch the view quietly until
someone came to fetch us. "My leader hates me. Why else would he punish me
so, to make me breathe in the foul stench of inferiors?"

Assuming he didn't expect an answer to
that question, I kept my mouth shut. Chang did the same.

The Kristang shook his head and
gestured at us with his zPhone. "I'm told you scum need to use these to
talk to each other. Shameful. Your species should not be speaking multiple languages,
it is a sign of weakness! The dominant group on our disgusting planet should
have conquered the others by now. You," he pointed at me, “are from
uh-mare-ee-ca?"

"America, yes, sir," I
answered. "I serve in the American Army."

"Army?" He laughed. "You
inferiors are not an army. You are little children playing with toys. My
pet chahalk could kill a hundred of you. I had to read about your pathetic
planet, so my leader did not waste his time. Another sign that he hates me, to
make me soil my mind with the history of such a pathetic species. Your
A-mer-i-ca had nuclear weapons, the only nation to have nuclear weapons, for
several years, yet you failed to use your advantage to destroy your enemies and
conquer your planet. You are weak and pathetic. And you wonder why we have no
respect for your species. Such weakness shows a serious lack of resolve.
You," he pointed at me, "you served in combat somewhere on your
world, a place, a place," he checked his zPhone with a hand clumsy from
drinking.

"Nigeria." I said.

"Nye-gee-ree-ah. This place had
no nuclear weapons?"

I shook my head, surprised.
"Nigeria, no, they don't have nukes."

"Your army could have used
nuclear weapons without fear of retaliation, yet instead your soldiers were
sent chasing your enemies through the jungle. Why? Because you are weak and
unworthy. If this nye-gee-ree-ah was so much trouble, you should have
exterminated them and taken their land." He paused for another gulp of his
drink, and gestured at us with the glass. "The two of you are the finest
warriors of your species? Ha! Your species is worthless to the war effort, you
do know that? Letting you police this planet is indulging a spoiled, stupid
pet. We never should have brought you out here! Do you know what humans on
Earth are doing? Instead of working hard for the war effort, they are
complaining about us damaging the planet's environment. And your workers expect
to get days off for vacations? Slave don't get vacation!" He said that
last with an angry screech, and slammed the glass down on the table in front of
us. "I told my leader, we should bring other slave species to Earth, and
show you humans how to serve us properly. You humans are lazy and
useless!" He looked out the window at Paradise below us. "You shouldn't
be down there at all, it should be Kristang dealing with the Ruhar! Treacherous
Ruhar, to contaminate our planet with biological agents, we should kill them
all." he fumed silently for a minute, sipping the drink, which was almost
gone. "I have volunteered to take the experimental serum that will allow
Kristang to walk freely on the planet. Then I will show you how to treat the
Ruhar. There are so many of them infesting our world, who will miss a few
thousand, huh? Ruhar are weak and soft, but it is good sport to hunt them."
He drained the last of his drink, and said quietly, "I can't wait to hunt
them. Yes."

The Kristang, whatever his name was,
set the empty glass on the carpeted floor and rose unsteadily to his feet.
"Enjoy the view," he laughed and waved dismissively, "it may be
your new home forever, as our slaves. Or it may become your grave." He
laughed again and staggered out the doorway.

"Shit." I breathed when he
was out of sight.

Chang nodded, then spoke in perfect
English. "I think this is not a good place for us to talk about, about,
what our friend there said."

No doubt the Kristang had us under
close surveillance aboard the station. "You're right, Colonel Chang."
I felt ashamed that Chang spoke English, while the only word of Chinese I knew
was 'pinguah', which I think was the word for 'apple'. I'd seen it on a fortune
cookie, and it stuck with me. My entire language knowledge  of one of the
world's oldest and greatest civilizations was from a fortune cookie. And
fortune cookies were an American thing, not Chinese.

"Lieutenant Colonel,"
he said in a tone that had a touch of bitterness.

"Hey, you were a real officer
before all this. I wear a colonel's uniform, and I know that all I am is a
publicity stunt for UNEF," there was definitely bitterness in my voice.
"I'll be happy when UNEF finds an excuse to knock me back down to
sergeant, and I can be a real soldier again. Last thing I want to do is be a
fobbit and ride a desk."

"Fobbit?" He raised an
eyebrow.

"Oh, sorry, US Army slang. A
fobbit is a guy who stays safe inside the fence at a Forward Operating Base,
while real soldiers are out in the field. Someone who pushes paper instead of
carrying a rifle."

"Ah, yes. We have those in our
army, also. On this planet, though, there is no true rear area, I think. When
the enemy can attack from orbit, everywhere on the surface of the planet is the
front lines."

"True enough." I stood up
and walked over to the window. "I was at Fort Arrow. Before that, my EOT
was at a hamster village near the bend in that river, west of those
mountains," I pointed unhelpfully. "Where are you stationed?"

We talked about our experiences on
Paradise, and our lives before the Ruhar attacked. Chang had been an artillery
officer in the People's Liberation Army, a career officer from a military family.
He was just as worried about his family back on Earth as I was, the Chinese had
not heard anything either; no messages or letters from home, no news, nothing.
Chang was a good guy, professional, certainly a better office that I  was.
He was also not looking forward to being paraded around as a public relations
stunt by UNEF, although he thought that would be lower-key than what I
expected. During the action that had resulted in him being promoted, he'd lost
most of his men, including a lieutenant who was the only son of a high-ranking
government official. The Chinese Army on Paradise wasn't eager to trumpet
Chang's action too loudly. If I'd gotten the son of a senator killed, my
military career would hit a roadblock for sure.

My zPhone beeped, it was Lt Reynolds,
wondering where the hell was, only she said it politely. "We're on an
observation deck, I think we're two," Chang held up three fingers,
"no, three levels down. There's a bar here. A bar for the Kristang,"
I hastened to add.

"What happened to the Kristang
assigned to you?"

"He was, uh, he had something
important to do." I said, aware the Kristang were almost certainly
listening. Important to do, like sleeping until he awoke with a hangover.

"Sir, please, stay where you are.
Is Lt Colonel Chang with you?"

"Yeah, he's here, we're not going
anywhere."

Five minutes later, Reynolds and two
pissed-off looking Kristang showed up to retrieve us. We were hustled back to
the shuttle bay, and as soon as General Meers and his staff were aboard, the
dropship door slammed shut and the alarm sounded to depressurize the bay.
Despite my fear that Meers was somehow pissed at me, he didn't say anything,
Reynolds didn't think it was a big deal, and the ride back down was smooth

Chang and I never spoke about what the
drunk Kristang had said, how he'd called humans 'slaves'. I thought about it a
lot, and reported it to Meers' intelligence staff. To my dismay, they acted
like they'd heard it all before, it wasn't news, and it wasn't a big deal. It
was a big deal to me, it confirmed my worst fears that the burgermeister had told
me the truth about the Kristang.

Were we fighting on the wrong side of
this war?

CHAPTER EIGHT    PLANTING
POTATOES

The first assignment UNEF had for me was,
despite what General Meers had told me, to fly around and give speeches. That
lasted two weeks, and, man, it was awkward for everyone involved. For me, it
was awkward to wear my crisp new uniform in front of a crowd of soldiers,
people who’d been in combat like I had, worse situations that I’d been in, and
they were wearing the same uniforms and doing the same jobs now, while I wore
silver eagles, flew around in a shiny Buzzard and ate good food with the
officers. It left me feeling like a total fraud. For the soldiers who had to
stand waiting for me to give my canned speech, it was awkward because they all
knew I didn’t deserve to be an officer, hadn’t earned it, yet they couldn’t say
anything negative. It sucked. When my speech was mercifully over, I asked
people questions, let them talk about their experiences, and ignore the
awkwardness of me being there. That worked for everyone. When I was standing
around in a crowd, shooting the shit with soldiers, letting them tell stories
of what they’d done during the aborted Ruhar invasion, I could be just Joe
Bishop, and they could be soldiers, and we could talk.

And then I had to get back on the Buzzard, fly
to the next base, and do it all over again. I hated it.

So it was a blessing when UNEF found a real job
for me; planting potatoes. The Kristang told UNEF it was time for humans to
grow our own food on Paradise, to reduce the logistical burden on the Kristang,
and to give us some food security in case fleet actions upstairs disrupted
shipments. Some genius in UNEF HQ must have decided that me giving speeches had
run its course, read my personnel file and saw that I was from northern Maine,
and had the brilliant insight that I must be an expert on planting potatoes. My
new assignment was to coordinate agriculture activities across a quarter of the
continent that UNEF occupied. We weren't only planting potatoes, of course, we
had a program to plant a wide variety of crops from seeds shipped from Earth.
Planting potatoes was the derisive name we applied, although I was expected to
be officially enthusiastic. Planting potatoes gave me an opportunity to fly
around Paradise, be seen by the troops, and according to the UNEF PR staff, it
gave me a chance to be seen as a hard-working grunt who made good through hard
work and initiative. It was a relief to be doing something useful.

Along with a crash course in agriculture, I got
a few more perks. As a colonel now, I had my own hamvee, and I had a driver, a
Private Randall, at my new home base, on the border between the American and
Chinese sectors. "Holy shit." I couldn't believe it when Randall showed
me my assigned car. Literally, what I saw stopped me in my tracks.. The hamvee
was a standard Ruhar vehicle, with a UNEF symbol on both sides and the roof.
And a three foot tall, purple stuffed Barney strapped to the front grill.
"We're a thousand lightyears from Earth, how in the hell did you idiots
get a Barney?" Every possible bit of gear we needed had to make the long
trip to Ecuador, up the space elevator, onto a Kristang ship, to a Thuranin
carrier, through wormholes, then a reverse trip down to the surface of
Paradise. All our gear had been carefully inspected to make the best use of
every pound of mass and square meter of space. Yet, somehow, some joker had
managed to sneak a giant stuffed Barney doll into a container. What I wanted to
know was, for fuck's sake, why? And what else had people snuck aboard, that was
now clandestinely scattered across the surface of Paradise?

"We tactically acquired it, sir."
Randall said with a straight face.

"Meaning you stole it."

"Gear adrift is a gift, sir. We wanted to
make you feel welcome. Joke's over, I'll take it off the grill."

"No, what the hell, leave it." My
hamvee was no more a joke than the idea of me being a full bird colonel. I
walked to the front and inspected the grinning purple dinosaur. "Maybe the
hamster kids will like it.

It was while I was out planting
potatoes that we found our first fortune cookie. The last time we had
communication from Earth was when the final group of humans arrived at Camp
Alpha, and I had been in the third to last convoy to get there. Since we landed
on Paradise, there had been no communication either to or from Earth; the
Kristang said the military situation in space didn't allow them the luxury of
sending humans, even injured medivac cases, back to Earth. We were stuck on
Paradise for the duration of the mission, which was more open-ended than any
human was comfortable with. UNEF command fretted about not being able to send
status reports to, or receive orders and advice from, Earth. Ordinary soldiers
like me worried about our family and friends back on Earth. Had governments
made progress on restoring electricity and other infrastructure? Were supplies
and reinforcements on their way to us? Had the Ruhar attacked Earth again? The
burgermeister had told me it was extremely unlikely the Ruhar would, or could,
mount another expedition to Earth within the next few years. Assuming she was
telling me the truth.

Then we found the fortune cookies, and
everything changed. The Kristang scanned all the supplies that were delivered
to the space elevators on Earth, looking for contraband. We discovered,
troublingly, that the Kristang were particularly looking for digital data
storage devices, which they burned out with magnetic or ultraviolet pulses.
What they didn't expect was people printing words on paper, and sticking that
paper on the inside of food packages. To the Kristang scanners, a reinforced
cardboard container with tiny writing printed on the inside looked like any
other cardboard container. Those containers were packaged on Earth, delivered
dirtside on Paradise by the Kristang, and unpacked by humans. When the first
supply guys opened a food package with a fortune cookie on the inside, thank
God they had the smarts to not say anything about it over their zPhones;
everything was word of mouth after that. The fortune cookies were carefully
removed from the packaging and hand delivered to UNEF HQ, where they caused a
full-blown panic shitstorm.

I learned about the fortune cookies
directly from the 3rd Division intel officer, whose hands were literally
shaking when he told me the news. The info from Earth was bad, and the fortune
cookies had contained secret codes to authenticate the data to UNEF HQ, so we
knew it was legit. After our Expeditionary Force left Earth, things had started
to go downhill. Even before I left, I'd heard rumors of the Kristang being
heavy-handed; directing where our infrastructure repair efforts should be
focused, taking over mining and refining facilities for critical materials, and
attempting to strictly control certain information on the internet. Like most
people, I figured the Kristang were doing what they needed to prepare us in
case the Ruhar came back, and that there were always going to be problems when
two alien species adjusted to each other. And civilians tended to whine about
everything anyway.

The fortune cookies told us conditions
on Earth has become worse, much worse. The Kristang had taken over some of the
best farmland across the planet, including vast areas of the American Midwest,
to grow their crops and raise their food animals. Farmers were not compensated
by the Kristang for the land they'd lost, and in cases where groups of farmers
tried to block the Kristang from occupying their land, they had been killed by
maser strikes from orbit. The worst taking of land wasn't even land, the
Kristang wanted all of Lake Superior and the Caspian Sea to grow the types of
fish they ate. They planned to sterilize those entire massive lakes with
powerful gamma rays, and set up their own biosphere in the water. People were
warned they needed to be a hundred kilometers from the lake coasts when the
gamma rays struck, which would happen when the massive dams were complete and
the gamma ray satellite was ready, in a year or so. Protests in cities like
Shanghai, Chicago, San Francisco and Paris had been hit by maser strikes, when
the Kristang felt efforts by human governments to halt those protests had been
ineffective against 'subversive elements and traitors'.

The Ruhar had attacked us, and we
thought the Kristang had been our rescuers, but the rescue had become an
invasion. It changed everything, and, in a way, it changed nothing for us on
Paradise. What could UNEF do? All of our supplies were delivered by the
Kristang. We had no way to get home without the Kristang. Even if we now saw
the Kristang as enemies, how did we know the Ruhar were any better? The Ruhar
on Paradise weren't in any position to help us anyway, so it didn't matter
whether we liked the Kristang or not.

Humans on Paradise were screwed either
way.

Colonel Wilson came into the office
while I was finishing a cup of coffee and reading supply reports, preparing for
another foray out to plant potatoes. The coffee was bitter and bland at the
same time, and had gotten cold, and I was determined to savor every drop. Those
coffee beans had traveled across lightyears to get into my cup here on
Paradise. It tasted of home. I didn't know if we'd ever get another shipment
from Earth. Wilson poured the last of the pot into a cup, sipped it, and made a
face. "I just came from General Meers HQ, he doesn't know how we should
handle these rumors about the fortune cookies. The Kristang are sure to find
out, I'm surprised they haven't bitched about it already. Unless they have, and
HQ is keeping it quiet."

With their near total control of our
communications, there was no way the Kristang didn't know what was going on.
Maybe they didn't care. People on Earth knew what was going on there, and what
could they do about it, with Kristang starships in orbit able to bombard any spot
on the planet with maser beams, missiles and railguns? "We need to change
our mindset about our mission here," I suggested. Mindset was a buzzword
I'd seen on many an Army PowerPoint slide. "We, I mean, at least we
Americans, have been thinking the Ruhar hitting us was another Pearl Harbor,
and we're now out in the South Pacific in WWII, hitting them back. We now know
all that is crap. The truth is, we're in Operation Torch, and we're not the
Allies or the Axis, we're the Berbers."

"I'm not following you,
Bishop." As a US Army officer, Wilson had to know Operation Torch was the code
word for the American and British assault on North Africa in November 1942.
"Berbers?"

"The Berbers." I almost
added 'sir', this Colonel rank thing was still new to me. "I think that's
what they're called. The natives in North Africa, who were caught between the
Allied invasion on one side, and the Germans, Italians and Vichy French on the
other. Neither side gave a shit about the natives, or their lands. The Germans
and Italians wanted North Africa so they could control the Med, and to force
the British out of Egypt to get access to oil fields. We and the Brits wanted
to push Rommel back across the Med, so we could hit Sicily and then
Italy." I was skimming over the truth; the Allies didn't decide where to
go following victory in North Africa, until long after the Torch invasion.
"The Berbers got caught in the middle, and all they could do was follow
orders from whatever side occupied their territory at the time, get out of the
way, and try to stay alive. That's us now. We don't mean shit to either side,
except how they can use us, or use Earth as a staging base. We're just
crunchies under the treads of their tanks. We need to stop thinking that we're
allies of the Kristang, and realize we're just native troops they can use as
cannon fodder. The Free French back then had Berber troops called Goumiers, but
they weren't treated anywhere equal to French soldiers. UNEF needs to stop
thinking of any grand ambitions out here, and focus on survival."

Wilson frowned, but nodded. "You
may be right, Bishop."

I swallowed the dregs of my coffee and
picked up my helmet and goggles. "If we're going to have any survival
options, I'd better get back to planting potatoes. Lots and lots of potatoes."

I caught a Buzzard flight out to a
village in the middle of nowhere, hours of listening to the engines drone and
farmland pass by beneath us. Unfortunately, I was left alone with my thoughts,
and that wasn't a pleasant place to be. When I'd seen that first Ruhar assault
ship skidding across the potato field in my home town, the first thing to cross
my mind, right after 'shit is this really happening' and 'why the fuck would
aliens invade Thomsons Corners', was 'Game Over'. Hollywood movie bullshit aside,
any species with the technology, resources and incentive to travel between
stars was going to crush humanity like a bug. Forget about fantasies of plucky
humans defeating the aliens on the ground. Aliens could sit comfortably in
orbit and pound us into dust at their leisure. All the determination and human
spirit in the universe wouldn't mean a damned thing if they could hit us, and
we couldn't reach them. Even if we managed to retarget and launch
nuclear-tipped ICBMs, those missiles couldn't reach high orbit, and any aliens
would have to be totally blind not to see the blazing hot rocket exhaust. It
would be shocking if an ICBM warhead got within a hundred miles of an alien
ship, they'd probably not make it above the lower atmosphere. Game Over.

That wasn't only me disparaging
humanity's prospects of surviving an alien invasion, that's what the Kristang
had told us. The lizards had told a lot of lies, but in this case, they were
truthful. They'd told the truth, to make us realize how much we needed the Kristang
to protect us from the Ruhar, or so we'd thought at the time. The point was:
humans stuck on the ground, aliens had the high ground of orbit and beyond.
Game Over.

When I decided to try capturing an
alien soldier, all I had been thinking was humanity needed intel about the
invaders, if we had any chance at all of surviving in any fashion. And that I
needed to do something, even if it was rash and stupid. And that I'd probably
get killed, but since all of humanity was about to get wiped out, Whiskey Tango
Foxtrot, right?

Then, the Kristang cavalry came over
the horizon, and we were saved. Damn, I remember that feeling, when we were
being hunted by that Ruhar tow truck. My underwear was damp at that time, I am
not ashamed to admit it, because my underwear was damp and my mouth was dry and
my hands were shaking, but I stood my ground anyway. I was bracing myself to
die in a blaze of gunfire, and then the sky twinkled again, and a miracle
happened when that Ruhar dropship stood on its tail, and shot into the sky with
a supersonic boom.

We were saved! All my fears were swept
away. And I was grateful to our rescuers.

That was all bullshit.

This was worse.

The Buzzard landed, I got into a
hamvee, which wasn't my personal Barney hamvee but a generic model, and we
rolled out soon after, a potato-planting convoy of four hillbilly armored
hamvees and six heavy tandem trucks. It irritated me that the convoy had been
sitting around waiting for me; I'd hated waiting for officers when I was a
grunt, now I hated making soldiers wait for me.

My hamvee smelled like feet, stinky
feet. And, something like aftershave, or cologne? It must have been parked
somewhere the hamsters had been using that nasty stinky fertilizer, then
someone tried to deodorize it with cheap cologne. "Damn, this smells like
my grandfather's cologne." I groused.

"Sorry, sir," the driver
said, she was a private with 'Park' on her nametag. "It smelled like this
when we picked it up from the motor pool."

"It smelled worse this
morning." A soldier named Olafson said from the passenger seat. "We
left the windows down to clear the smell out."

"Olafson, huh?" He was
blond, about six feet five. "You always been this big, or has the Army
been feeding you too much?"

"My mother was a good cook,
sir."

"Uh huh." I wasn't good
company, wasn't in the mood to be good company, so I stuck my nose into reports
downloaded to my tablet, and the two soldiers in the front seats took the hint.
The Agricultural Intelligence Office of UNEF HQ had prepared a series of reports
for me, about the next area where we'd be planting crops; soil tests, climate,
rainfall, groundwater, the types of crops the Ruhar had been growing there, and
the chemicals they'd used. The fact that UNEF had quickly established an
'Agricultural Intelligence Office' spoke volumes about our uncomfortable
situation on Paradise. I thought it had been a joke when I'd been assigned to
plant the crops we needed to survive on Paradise; I had helped my parents with
their small farm, but I was in no way an agricultural expert. It was amazing to
me how much I'd learned in a short time. Fear of starvation is a great
motivator. The place where we'd be planting crops looked to be about perfect,
it was close enough to the equator that we might get two or three crops per
year, had plenty of rainfall, and good groundwater for irrigation during the
summer dry season. I checked the manifests of the trucks in our convoy, we were
heavily loaded with soil conditioner, because the local dirt needed to be
prepared before Earth organisms would grow well. When I'd read all I could
understand about agriculture, I turned to the other reports UNEF expected me to
read. Who knew being an officer involved so much reading? It was like being
back in school. I hoped there wasn't a quiz tomorrow.

We drove quietly for a while, me
scanning through reports, Parks and Olafson occasionally whispering to each
other in the front. Our position as the third vehicle in the convoy meant we
alternated between rolling the windows up to keep out the dust, and rolling
them down to let out the heat. The morning had been cool, now the temperature
was heating up rapidly as we drove across the flat farmland. Our destination
was an area recently evacuated by the Ruhar, where we planned to strip the
remains of their abandoned crops out of the ground, prepare the topsoil, and
plant our own seeds. Recently evacuated, and grudgingly evacuated. The area had
been the responsibility of the Indian Army; according to the reports I was
reading, they'd had to   physically remove hamster families from their
homes, and there had been a firefight in which an Indian soldier died and two
were seriously injured. The whole situation on Paradise was precarious; the
Kristang still held the high ground, although with only one destroyer and a
frigate upstairs. Ruhar were still evacuating offworld, often resisting, with
increasing incidents of sabotage against UNEF. There was crowding at the
elevator base station, UNEF had to set up a refugee camp there, and the
logistics of keeping hamsters supplied and under control were driving UNEF HQ
to distraction. Ruhar transport starships were still arriving at the top of the
elevator to take their people away, arriving late, no longer on a regular
schedule, and in fewer numbers, escorted by a thin screen of Kristang warships
and loading frantically, hurriedly along by the Kristang who were wary of
another Ruhar raid. On the ground, UNEF was more concerned about survival,
specifically our food supply, than about getting every last hamster offworld. Hamster
communities had gone from cooperative, to grudging, to active resistance and
sabotage. The sabotage went beyond disabling trucks that were supposed to be
used to evacuate hamsters from their villages; bridges were blown up, making it
difficult or impossible to evacuate by land. UNEF began using barges, figuring
no one could blow up a river, but river transport was slow and took a
roundabout route, requiring more supplies for the longer journey. Flying
hamsters around was an expensive option, and with increased flights, aircraft
needed more down time for maintenance, which created a downward cycle of
aircraft availability. The reports I read didn't have any good answers about
what was the best way to continue the evac mission, other than that UNEF needed
to keep the hamsters moving steadily along, as quickly as possible. The more
land was cleared of hamsters, the more UNEF could concentrate forces and exert
tighter control over the remaining Ruhar population.

Equipment maintenance schedules and
availability. That was something I'd never had to concern myself with before,
now that I was an officer, a senior officer, I was supposed to know this shit.
Know it, consider it, think about it, come up with solutions and implement
them. Me.

I wasn't only a publicity stunt, I was
a real colonel in the US Army. With a real colonel's authority and
responsibility. I needed to be a real colonel.

"Park, Olafson, you've been
stationed here long?"

"Since we got here, sir."
Olafson said.

"Give me a sitrep."

"A sitrep, sir?" Park asked
from the driver's seat. I could see her eyes in the mirror.

She knew what a sitrep was, so I made
my request more clear. "What's been going on with the hamsters around
here?"

Olafson turned awkwardly in his seat,
so he could look at me while we talked. "Not much, sir. Low-level stuff;
some sabotage, dragging their feet on the evac schedule, but no real trouble,
no violence. We used to get along pretty well with the natives, until, you,
uh," he shot a glance at Park, "knocked their ships out of the sky,
sir." He said that last with a look of such clear admiration that I was
embarrassed.

"I didn't do squat, Olafson.
There was a team of soldiers who defended the Launcher. That wasn't the only
hot spot around the planet that day."

"Uh, no, sir. It was kind of
quiet here that day, there's nothing much strategic 'round here worth fighting
over. If we hadn't heard chatter about the raid on our zPhones, and seen action
going on upstairs, it would have been a normal day for us."

Park nodded from the driver's seat.
"Straight up, sir. We got into full battle rattle and hunkered down that
day, but nothing happened, then we got the all clear. This part of the planet
is the back of beyond, really Bum Fuck Neptune. Now, up ahead, where we're
going to plant potatoes or whatever, hamsters gave the Indian Army a boatload
of trouble. No fire fights right here, nobody killed on either side, but the
fucking hamsters," I could see her flinch in the mirror.

"It's all right, Park, you're a
soldier, damn it, you can talk like one."

"Yes sir. The hamsters resisted
every way they could. Equipment was sabotaged, so the Indians couldn't use
anything here, all their gear had to be brought in from outside, or rebuilt.
Water supplies were contaminated, the hamsters would move around so they'd
screw with the evac schedule. It got so bad the Indians had to put the whole
region on lockdown, house arrest, like, and when the buses pulled up to drive
hamsters away, they wouldn't leave their houses. Sat down on the floor and had
to be carried out, and loaded onto the buses. Slowed everything way behind
schedule, the liz-, the Kristang wanted to vaporize a village from orbit, so
the hamsters would get the message they couldn't mess with us beyond a certain
point. UNEF figured if the Kristang had to step in, they'd see our mission here
as a failure, so the Indians pulled in a British battalion as
reinforcement-"

"Ha! That was a kick in the ass,
huh, sir?" Olafson grinned. "Brits under Indian command?"

I nodded silently. UNEF stressed the
importance of international cooperation, and officers were sternly instructed
not to encourage, or allow, nationalist rivalries, but such orders had
practical limits. "Goes to show, we're all humans down here." I said,
in a lame attempt at following the spirit of the rules.

"Uh huh," Park said,
"between them, they got the place squared away on schedule, but that
played hell with the schedule in the British sector, so now they're playing
catch-up." The evac schedule accelerated as we approached E-Day, the day the
last hamster would take a trip up the space elevator. As more and more of
Paradise was cleared of Ruhar, we could concentrate our forces, and rush the
hamsters along. The schedule at first had looked illogical, giving evac
priority to some thinly-populated areas of the planet, and UNEF had speculated
the Kristang wanted those areas cleared first so Kristang crops could be
planted. But, the lizards made no move to prepare the abandoned farmland, and
only sent down small teams of lizards to inspect the areas. A rumor went around
that those areas were thought by the lizards to contain relics from the Elder
ancient super civilization, relics which were the real prize worth fighting
over for control of Paradise. Otherwise, the whole planet was generic farmland,
of which there was plenty in the Orion Arm of the galaxy. Maybe. All that
mattered to UNEF is the Kristang told us to get those areas cleared out first,
so we did.

"Coming up on Habitrail, sir,
that's it straight ahead." Olafson pointed. The road crested a rise, ahead
we could see a broad shallow river valley, with the road going over a bridge in
front of us, and a fair-sized town spread out along the road beyond. Typical
patches of farmland, some bare dirt from being freshly harvested, some tinted
the golden yellow of the wheat equivalent the hamsters planted, and towering
grain silos. The thin bright ribbon of railroad tracks went arrow-straight
southeast to northwest, angling across our path, and in the distance were
parked an electric locomotive and a dozen freight cars. The small train was
stranded there; saboteurs had ripped up or undermined tracks, and blown up or
weakened rail bridges across the region. UNEF's original plan had relied on
railroads to transport large numbers of hamsters quickly. Trouble was, the
hamsters figured that out right away, and every rail line on the planet had
been rendered useless in a couple weeks.

"Habitrail?" I laughed.

Olafson grinned. He wasn't so awed or
intimidated by me anymore. "The hamster name sounds like hah-bah-tahlin,
so the first jokers here put up a sign 'Habitrail'. The hamster mayor here was
pissed when he learned what a Habitrail is, back on Earth." Olafson wasn't
sympathetic. "Screw him."

There was a muffled sound from my
zPhone, something like  “Planter, this is Stinger Lead.”

“Planter here,” I responded, after I
got my zPhone out from under the pile of body armor I’d buried it under.
Planter was my current callsign, it had been designated by some joker in UNEF
HQ, and my part time aide got pissed about it and tried to get it changed to
something cooler sounding, but I liked it. Planter, if the hamsters were
listening to our comms, and I had to assume they could, was a nice, friendly,
non-aggressive callsign, which hopefully emphasized the peaceful nature of the
missions I was assigned. We only planted on land the hamsters had already been
evacuated from, our missions didn’t take any resources away from them, and we
avoided contact with hamster populations whenever we could. Which wasn’t today,
because our convoy had to drive through Habitrail, it lay on the only road to
our destination. “Go ahead, Stinger Lead.” Stinger, my briefing packet for the
mission said, was the callsign for the two-ship escort that would provide air
support as we drove through Habitrail. A pair of fully-armed Chicken gunships
were supposed to deter any hamsters from getting adventurous as we drove by.
Me, if I saw a pair of our own gunships now being used against us, I’d be more
likely angry than intimidated. Angry enough to act, if payback was certain?
Probably not.  Either way, it felt good to have a pair of gunships
supporting us.

“Planter, be advised my wingman has a
power drop in one engine, and needs to RTB.” Without the voice coming from
under a layer of body armor, I could now hear the pilot was female, with a
Midwest American accent. I expected her to say ‘you betcha’.

“Roger on the Return To Base, Stinger,
can you cover us through checkpoint Mike Two?” That was the map designation of
Habitrail.

“Affirmative, Planter, I’ll cover you
bridge to bridge, over.” She meant from the bridge on this side of Mike Two, to
the bridge on the other side of town. Beyond the second bridge was open
farmland, the potential danger spots where we might need air cover were the
chokepoints of the two bridges, and the town itself.

“Affirmative, Planter. I’ll make a low
pass over the town to wake them up.”

“Roger that, Stinger. Planter out.”
UNEF had been debating whether it was more effective for convoys to arrive in
towns unannounced, or for air cover to do a flyover first. The debate about the
subject had been short, because a convoy driving on dirt roads across flat
farmland could hardly expect to sneak up on anything, the plume of dust in a
convoy’s wake stuck out like a sore thumb, visible for kilometers.

The first bridge we drove over was an
ugly concrete lump, built by the Kristang when they first occupied the planet.
Two soldiers from the local security squad waved us on, they were stationed at
the bridge to assure nobody had messed with it since it was last inspected.
That was the situation we faced; anything the hamsters could sabotage, they
would. Take your eye away for a couple hours and a bridge would be blown up or
weakened in some way to render it useless, a river barge would sink, communications
towers would fall, unattended vehicles had their engines fried. To my surprise,
we got through the town without any incident, not even a hot-headed hamster kid
throwing a rock, or clod of mud, or lump of manure at us. Usually we could
count on that now, it happened so often, and both sides were so used to it,
that kids felt emboldened because they'd learned from experience that our
soldiers had orders not to shoot at children. Unless they were shooting at us,
which so far hadn't happened that I knew of.

The town was more rundown than such
places used to be, I guess before the attempt to recapture the planet, the
local hamsters were hoping their fleet would chase the Kristang away, and
everything would go back to normal. Normal, except for a large force of pesky
humans in residence. After the raid failed, the hamsters saw that they had lost
the planet for real, that they were being forced to leave and weren't coming
back, and they were no longer interested in maintaining in good order anything
that would be left behind for the Kristang to use. Instead, they were
resentful, which I could understand, and clearly planned to trash the place a
bit before the evac was over. Major infrastructure like the Launcher and the
space elevator and fusion reactors were off limits, under the strange rules of
engagement that seemed to be in force by both sides. After all, blowing up the
Launcher would be an admission the Ruhar were never even going to try retaking
Paradise, and that couldn't be good for hamster morale.

We were through the populated area of
town, and approaching the western bridge, in what felt like a few minutes. I'd
been keyed up for something to happen, the body language of Park and Olafson
told me they'd been ready for trouble too, but it was all quiet. The western
bridge was an elegant, delicate looking structure, much longer than the eastern
bridge. It was built by the Ruhar, but on the piers of an earlier Kristang
bridge. I felt exposed driving across it, and we all exhaled when we went feet
dry on the other side. Sticking my head out the window, I looked back at our
convoy, until the last truck cleared the bridge. According to the map, and what
I could see, there was nothing but fairly flat farmland for kilometers in all
directions.

"Planter, this is Stinger."

"Thanks for the escort, Stinger,
you're clear to RTB."

"Roger that, Planter, you have
fun now, grow us some tasty food. Stinger out." She flew the Chicken over
us in a wide circle, then retracted the weapons pods, powered up and climbed to
the east. Watching it go, I thought that our pilots, who got to fly cool
advanced aircraft on Paradise, must be loving this mission. While the rest of
us got M4s. It didn't seem fair. Why couldn't us ground pounders use captured
Ruhar rifles, the way our Airedales flew captured Ruhar aircraft? I settled
back in my seat.

"Sir?" Olafson's voice broke
my reverie. "You met Kristang, right? We heard you went up to their
station when you got the promotion."

A grimace flashed across my face
before I put on what I hoped was a neutral expression. Olafson caught it,
because his eyebrows went up. "There was a ceremony at the station, yes.
I, uh," scrambled to cover my mistake, "my stomach didn't do well
with the food they served." True enough, though what made me sick was what
the Kristang had said, and that I'd had to swallow my pride and keep my mouth
shut.

"What're they like. sir? If you
don't mind me asking. I've never seen one for real." He must have sensed
my discomfort that the question. "Forget I asked, sir, that stuff is above
my paygrade-"

I never saw anything coming. A soldier
in the second to last truck says he saw a streak just before the impact, I
think that was his imagination. It could have been a railgun, or some kind of
silent artillery, or a truly smokeless rocket that left no exhaust plume.
Whatever it was, one of them hit the cargo trailers of each truck, destroying
the precious soil conditioner and seeds, all irreplaceable items. The warhead
was something new, also, it generated more heat than blast effect, likely
calculated to burn out our seeds and the microorganisms in the soil
conditioner. Scattered seeds we could have picked up, burned seeds were no good
for anything.

It was the seeds they were after, to
deny humanity the ability to sustain ourselves on Paradise, to force the
Kristang to expend scarce resources for bringing in more seeds, or bringing
their pet humans back home to Earth. No one in any of the trucks was killed by
enemy fire, our only death was one soldier in the front seat of the hamvee
behind the last truck; their vehicle slammed into the suddenly stopped truck
trailer, injuring the driver when her head hit the steering wheel. The soldier
in the passenger seat took a piece of metal debris through his skull, killing
him instantly. I don't think the hamsters intended to kill anyone, which was
scant comfort to the dead and wounded.

We were out of our vehicles fast,
taking cover, looking for hostiles and helping the wounded. We never found out
what type of weapon hit us, because Stinger reacted immediately and sent a pair
of high-velocity missiles to hit the spot the attack was launched from. Those
explosions sent us scrambling for cover again, then Stinger screamed overhead,
weapons pods extended and ready for trouble.

"Planter, Stinger here, no
hostiles in view, over."

"Roger, Stinger," I replied,
slinging my M4 over my shoulder, "the attack was probably triggered
remotely."

"And guided." Park added,
scanning the horizon with the scope on her rifle. "Somebody targeted our
trailers and nothing else."

She had a good point. There was either
an observer concealed somewhere, or the weapons had cameras. Even
super-advanced alien smart weapons need to be told what to hit. I was about to
uselessly tell Stinger to be on the lookout for an observer, which she was
already doing, when an alert popped up on my zPhone. The attack on our convoy
hadn't been the only incident, nearly simultaneous attacks had been launched
across the continent. I called my CO and gave him a quick sitrep, he cut me off
halfway through my report as we were fine for the moment, and other units were
not. From the noise in the background, all hell had broken loose at HQ.

A text message from the local airbase
told me a medevac Buzzard was on its way, they wanted me to confirm the landing
zone was secure. Shit, it had looked secure to me the second before we got hit,
and it looked secure now. The place was peaceful farmland, if you ignored the
plumes of black smoke rising from our burned-out trailers, and the Chicken
orbiting the area with weapons pods hot, looking for trouble and hoping to find
it. Other than that, the LZ was secure. I reported in the affirmative, and
ordered people to spread out, far enough we weren't a single target, close
enough that we could support each other in a fight. The Buzzard arrived and
flew out five wounded, the rest of us got our hamvees turned around, so we
could head back toward Habitrail. Stinger was still flying high cover, she
didn't buzz the town this time, and reported she could see hamsters assembling
in the playing field of a school. Those hamsters didn't have weapons visible,
there were no more than a dozen of them. Even if hamsters in Habitrail weren't
involved in the attack, they must have known something happened, our trailers
were still burning and sending black smoke high in the sky.

"Planter, this is Crystal
Fortress." That was the callsign for General Maitland, the regional
commander. "Confirm you have one KIA at your location, one kilometer west
of Habitrail."

"Crystal Fortress, Planter
confirms we have one KIA, and five wounded have been evaced by Buzzard.
Location is correct, no sign of enemy activity here, over." I hoped to get
more air support, before we drove back through the town.

"Planter, standby one." The
voice on the radio ordered.

"Planter, listen carefully."
The voice this time was General Maitland himself. "We need to show the
hamsters that this isn't a game," his voice sounded strange, like he was
slowly reading a script, "that they can't hit us with impunity. Go into
Habitrail, and take eight Ruhar at random, your call. If anyone resists, use
deadly force. Line those eight Ruhar up in the center of town, and shoot them.
We want this to be public."

I had to lean back against the fender
of a hamvee to keep my legs from buckling. My face must have gone white, people
were staring at me. Captain Rivers silently mouthed 'what's up, chief?' to me.

I flashed back to when I was eight
years old, fishing in a creek with my friends on a warm, humid summer day, the
kind of summer day that happens so rarely in northern Maine that when it gets
to be 75 degrees, the natives complain about the heat. Me, my friends Bobby,
Tommy and a new kid Michael. Not Mikey, Michael, he told us when we first met.
He was a jerk, but his father was a big shot at the paper mill where my father
worked, so we had to be nice to him, and let him tag along with us. He was from
Wisconsin, and kept telling us how crappy Maine was, and how we were stupid for
living here, we only lived in Maine because our parents couldn't get jobs
anywhere decent.

We were at a creek, having the type of
free-range unsupervised kid fun in the woods that freaked out city parents,
looking for salamanders and fishing. Michael had a new fishing pole with fancy
lures, the rest of us had old equipment and used wadded up bread and pieces of
cheese for bait. Bobby caught three good size fish, keepers for dinner, and
Tommy and I were having fun, but not catching anything worth keeping. Michael
was in a bad mood because he hadn't caught anything, complaining that the fish
in the creek were stupid, that we were splashing and casting shadows that
scared away the fish. We mostly ignored him, until he hooked a frog by
accident.

He tortured that poor frog. It was bad
enough that he hooked its belly, and tore it open while reeling it in. Michael
was a sadistic little shit, he gleefully started using a hook to peel the skin
off the frog's leg, while the animal struggled and he choked it.

I didn't do anything to stop him. I
stood there, ashamed of myself, and did nothing but stare at the ground.
Bobby's father also worked at the paper mill, but Bobby was a better person
than I was, even at eight years old. Bobby snatched the frog away and stomped
it on a rock to put it out of its misery. Michael started a fight which Bobby
and Tommy ended real quick, they thumped Michael and pushed him into the creek.
When Michael shouted that he was going to tell his Dad, Bobby waded into the
creek and held that little shit's head in the muddy water until he cried
'uncle'. Before we left, Tommy broke Michael's new fishing pole over his knee,
and threw his fancy tackle box of lures into the deep pool of the creek. And
Bobby told Michael that if he told his father, or we ever saw him again outside
of school, we were going to beat the shit out of him. At eight years old, that
was a threat Michael knew meant business.

We never saw Michael again. His father
transferred to a mill in Oregon that September and took the family with him.
Michael, I figured, would grow up to be a wife beater or serial killer or both,
two sides of the same coin.

My mind must have flashed back to the
moment, because that was a time when I stood by and did nothing to defend the
innocent. I was not doing that ever again. And I especially wasn't doing that
while wearing the Army uniform.

"Crystal Fortress," I said
very slowly, loud enough the soldiers around me couldn't miss what I was
saying, "confirm you are ordering me to murder eight civilians." My
lower jaw was quivering as I spoke. "Execute eight random civilians, in
public." I had put my zPhone on speaker, and Maitland knew what I was
doing.

"Damn it, Colonel Bishop. I don't
like it any more than you do. We're barely hanging on here, this shit can't
continue. You have your orders. Carry them out."

"Sir," I said as I looked
one soldier after the other in the eye, "I can't do that." The looks
I got back were as shocked as I felt. Even if I gave the order, it was doubtful
anyone in the convoy would obey. What the hell had we gotten ourselves into?
Shit, we should never have left Earth. Humans had no business being out here.

"Goddamnit, Bishop, you're not
wearing that bird on your uniform for show."

"Sir, respectfully, you don't
have the authority to override the rules of engagement, or the code of
conduct." Why the hell was I even having this conversation? "We
can-"

A strange voice broke in, a voice I
recognized as a Kristang using a translator. "Colonel Joseph Bishop, you
are refusing to obey a direct order?" Even the translator couldn't remove
all of the lizard hiss to the voice.

Lizards. I glanced upward
involuntarily. They had ships in orbit that could vaporize my entire command
here. I needed to be careful with the lives of the twenty humans under my
command, very careful. I turned off my zPhone for a moment, sticking it in a
pocket. Hurriedly, I explained to the soldiers around me. "The lizards
showed me who they really are, when I was up there for the promotion ceremony.
The rumors you heard about messages in fortune cookies are true, they didn't rescue
Earth from the Ruhar; they kicked the Ruhar out so the lizards can rape our
planet for themselves. We're fucked either way, the only thing we have left out
here is our humanity, and I'm not giving that up. The lizards are ordering me
to murder eight random hamsters."

"Why eight, sir?" Olafson
asked, which I thought was not exactly the most important question to ask at
the time.

Holding up my hands, I explained
"Lizards have four fingers on each hand, they think in terms of eights,
not tens like we do. We're supposed to kill eight civilians for every one human
killed. When the Nazis held Rome, and the Italians resisted, the Nazis shot ten
or twenty civilians for every German killed. Grabbed random civilians off the
street, lined them up on a bridge, shot them and dumped their bodies in the
river. The United States Army doesn't do that." My facts were kind of
fuzzy on the subject, but the basic elements were correct. The zPhone back on,
I responded. "As a soldier in the United States Army, I am required to
refuse illegal orders. Deliberately murdering civilians is an illegal
act."

There was an enraged Kristang screech
that didn't translate, then my zPhone went dead. I mean, completely dead, no
lights, the lizards must have deactivated it.

"What now, sir?" Captain
Rivers asked.

How the hell was I supposed to know?
Nothing in my training had prepared me for this fucked up situation.
"Let's get the lead truck detached from that busted trailer." The
back of the truck's cab was scorched and the windows blown out, but the solid
tires were still round and functional. The other two trucks were in bad shape,
their powercells had caught fire from the heat. "I'll take the truck by
myself, if the lizards upstairs decide to slap me down for disobedience, I
don't want to take anyone else with me. And don't argue, that's an order. We
roll out, back to base, keep the hamvees dispersed." While the lizards
could hit us from orbit no matter how widely we were dispersed, I wasn't going
to make it easy for them. Maybe we should put all the zPhones in a bag and I'd
keep them with me, so the lizards couldn't target us by signal-

Rivers put a hand to his earpiece,
then handed it and his zPhone to me. "Stinger for you, sir." So, they
hadn't deactivated all of our zPhones, only mine.

"Stinger, this is Planter, go
ahead."

"I heard your comms traffic sir.
The Kristang ordered me to target the school in Habitrail. I refused the
order." Disobedience was getting to be popular.

"Roger that, Stinger, thank you.
We're going to roll out-"

"Shit!" Stinger shouted.
"I've lost control! Controls aren't responding! My gunner can't lockout
weapons!"

"Scatter!" I yelled, waving
my arms and pointing at the Chicken that was approaching low from the
southwest, weapons pods extended. "The lizards have control of the
gunship!" Everyone ran, I dove into a ditch on the side of the road, until
I realized in a flash how stupid and useless that was. And selfish. The lizards
had a problem with me, not my command. So I stood up and waved my arms at the
Chicken, trying to attract attention. My plan, if you could call it a plan, was
to give a single finger salute after the lizards launched a missile at me. That
was stupid also, the lizards probably didn't recognize rude human gestures.

Except they didn't launch at me. The
Chicken's remaining two missiles streaked off the rails, over our heads, and
hit the school with a fiery explosion. "That wasn't us!" Stinger
shouted frantically. "Oh shit! They cut power! We're going down!"

As I watched, the Chicken staggered in
the air, then dropped like a stone from about three hundred feet, smashing to
the ground with great force and plowing a trench in the soil a quarter mile
south of me. Without me saying anything, soldiers began running to the crash
site, I got there first because I wasn't weighed down with the full battle
rattle of the others.

The Chicken was way more intact that I
expected, whatever the hamsters made them of was tough stuff. The tail and both
winglets had broken off, the whole thing had rolled 360 degrees, but the cockpit
and power center behind the seats was mostly in one piece. Not so for the two
human occupants. The gunner in the front seat didn't have a head, an engine fan
blade had broken loose and sliced him up good. The pilot behind him, I saw the
nametag on her flight suit said 'Collins'. She was missing the lower part of
her left arm, and blood was running from her mouth. She wasn't conscious,
carefully I unbuckled the strap and lifted off her helmet, which had a big
crack front to back. It was ugly.

God damn. How the hell was a girl, I
mean woman, this young flying a Chicken? Even beat up like she was, she looked
younger than me. "Uhhh." She groaned and opened one eye.

"Shhh. Don't move, Collins. I'm
Colonel Bishop, I’m Planter."

"I couldn't stop, sir, I couldn't,
stop," her voice faded, although her lips still moved silently, trying to
talk to me.

"It's all right, stay with me.
Collins? Collins?" Her head slumped while I was holding her, a last bubble
of blood came out of her mouth, and she was gone. Her last words had not
expressed fear, she had been telling me that she did her duty, that she hadn't
killed hamsters at the school. Somehow, through some combination of
circumstances, Collins had gone from being a little girl, to joining the Army,
to helicopter flight school, to volunteering for duty with UNEF, qualifying to
pilot a Chicken gunship, to here. Dying in the arms of a total stranger. Killed
by an alien species who did not have their own concept of 'humanity'. There was
no good reason for her life to end there, that day. I broke down and cried.

I wasn't alone in standing with my
shoulders slumped, sobbing quietly. Lt Collins wasn't the only person we lost
that day, her death was the last straw that broke our reserve. She hadn't been
killed in combat, she'd been murdered by beings who were supposed to be our
allies, our protectors, our saviors. The whole situation on Paradise had gone
to shit so fast, we'd lost almost all hope in a matter of a few months.

Rivers tapped me on the shoulder,
looked me in the eye and shook his head once, silently. I got the message. The
senior officer needed to set an example. I straightened up, angrily wiping my
eyes with the back of a sleeve. Handing the zPhone back to Rivers, I told him
to give a sitrep to UNEF HQ, as I didn't think I could keep professional at
that moment.

None of us knew what else to say.
There wasn't anything to say. After a while, we got the two bodies out of the
Chicken and loaded into the back seat of the truck I drove. After we crossed
the western bridge, instead of following the road through Habitrail, I directed
us to drive across fields in a wide circle, which we could do now that we
weren't loaded down with trailers. It took an hour to bypass the town,
involving a lot of hunting around for paths to ford streams, bumping across
dirt and mud, the work and concentration kept people focused on the task of
getting back to base. I lagged behind in the truck, keeping enough distance
from the last hamvee that if the lizards decided to take me out with a railgun
strike or a missile, there wouldn't be collateral damage among my people. It
also made sense to let hamvees scout the best path across country, as the truck
wasn't as capable off road.

We were back on the road for less than
half an hour before the column ahead halted, and I stopped a quarter mile
behind them. Rivers called me on the zPhone I'd borrowed. "Command says to
wait here, sir, they're sending a Buzzard." Why, Command didn't say. One
Buzzard wasn't enough to evac all of us, and I couldn't imagine UNEF wanting to
abandon functioning hamvees. Maybe the situation ahead was bad enough that
Command was bringing us reinforcements with heavier weapons? I tried calling
myself, but my zPhone could only connect to Rivers. That's what happened when
another species controlled all your comms. We shouldn't have let that happen.

Of course, another species controlled
all our food and other supplies, and the high ground, and Earth, so comms on
Paradise might be the least of our problems.

A Buzzard escorted by a Chicken roared
in circled us, and landed on the road ahead of the column. I saw Rivers walk
ahead to talk to the soldiers. My zPhone rang, it was Rivers. "Sir, they
want you up here." There was a note of warning in his voice. I left my M4
in the truck and broke into a trot. As I passed hamvees, soldiers stood and
saluted me, some had tears in their eyes, they all looked angry. What the hell
was going on? I reached the group gathered around the Buzzard and saluted a
Captain Randolph. The Buzzard was US Army, along with all the troops it
carried.

"Captain Randolph."

He saluted me, looked me quickly in
the eye but didn't hold his gaze. Whatever was going on, it made him
uncomfortable. "Colonel Bishop, I have orders to place you under arrest.
Surrender your sidearm, please." He held out his hand, almost
apologetically.

"Arrest?" I was genuinely
shocked. "On what charges?" I demanded.

"Refusing orders from a superior
officer, sir."

"Refusing to carry out illegal
orders, Captain."

"Sir, that's above my pay
grade." He said lamely. "Colonel, you're not the only person UNEF HQ
has ordered arrested, word is a lot of units refused those orders. We
hear," he lowered his voice, "the Kristang hit some units from orbit
then they refused orders directly from, uh," he pointed toward the sky
with his thumb. "Please, sir, I can't risk my men's lives by failing to
arrest you." The implication was the lizards were watching, and would kill
all of us if I didn't surrender.

"Colonel," Rivers started to
say, meaningfully glancing at his finger on the safety of his M4.

"Captain Rivers, you're in
command here. Get these people back to base safely, avoid trouble along the
way." I ordered. Holding my sidearm with two fingers, I handed it to
Randolph. "You're taking me to UNEF HQ?"

"No sir," his Adam's apple
bobbed up and down, nervously "all prisoners are going to a liz-, a
Kristang base. I'm sorry, sir."

CHAPTER NINE    JAIL

They put me in prison at the only Kristang base
on the planet, staffed by the roughly thirty Kristang who had been inoculated
with an experimental drug to protect against the biohazard on Paradise, all
volunteers. An advanced guard of the most gung-ho, or the most desperate for
promotion. Everyone one of them, fanatical assholes. I was kept in isolation,
true isolation, I didn't even see any lizards while in my cell, food was
delivered through a sliding drawer once a day. For entertainment, I watched the
sunlight change direction in the tiny window, high up on the wall. And listened
for the screaming that went on intermittently, and rifle shots in the mornings.
On the fifth, maybe sixth day, I had a visitor from the United States Marine
Corps.

"Bishop, I'm Major Cochrane, how are you,
son?" He glanced around the cell, looking for a place to hang his cover,
then tucked it under his arm. He looked even worse than I felt, dark circles
and bags under his eyes, and he was gaunt. UNEF HQ officers were setting an
example by cutting their food rations. It was a race to see if we ran out of
packaged food supplies before our first crops were ready for harvest.

I leaned back against the wall, there being no
place to sit, or lay down, other than the hard, cold floor. "Well enough,
sir, considering. No complaints. The chow could be better, and this bed is
hard, but at least it's not lumpy." I joked lamely.

"This is serious," Cochrane frowned,
"the Kristang want to make an example of you, you and the others who
defied their orders."

"How many others? I've heard the firing
squads, in the mornings."

Cochrane looked stricken. "Americans, that
I know of, seventeen, we're trying to get an exact count. Plus Brits, Indians,
and Chinese, a couple French troops."

"All on death row?"

He nodded slowly. "That doesn't count the
deaths when the Kristang got impatient, and hit units from orbit. Collateral
damage, they say," he said with a nervous glance at the ceiling, as if
that were the only place the lizards count put listening devices. "The
sites they hit, just happen to be where our people were hesitating to carry out
orders to retaliate." he glanced at my out of the corner of his eye.
"Your people were lucky. If you hadn't been famous to the Kristang, they
would have wiped out your command with a railgun strike, along with Habitrail.
As it is, they wanted you to watch when they destroyed that school. The
Kristang don't tolerate defiance from lesser species."

"Retaliation is when you hit back the
people who hit you. Hamster women and children didn't hit us. That's just
murder. They made me a colonel," I pointed to the bird on my uniform,
"said I'm a hero for killing Ruhar soldiers, now they want to kill me for
refusing to murder Ruhar women and children."

"You did a lot of things right, but-"

"Yeah, you fuck one sheep."

"What?" He asked, eyes wide open.

"It's a joke. Forget about it. I could say,
one 'awshit' wipes out a hundred 'attaboys', huh?"

"Something like that." He nodded.

"So, you're here to, what, hear my
confession, act as my JAG lawyer, slip me a spoon so I can dig a tunnel out of
here?" I pointed to the hardened concrete floor, or whatever incredibly
tough substance the Kristang used as building material.

He shook his head. "I'm sorry to say, I'm
only here to show the United States military's support and concern. The
Kristang don't need a confession, and you don't need a lawyer, because there
won't be any sort of trial or hearing."

"Right, why bother with justice when you
can just execute people?" I waved my hand, feeling sorry for the man, who
had to be in an incredibly awkward position. "Save your breath. You're
going to say something about how aliens have different concepts of justice, and
military discipline. I know all that. I also know that this kind of right and
wrong doesn't depend on whose eyes you're looking through. It's wrong."

Cochrane looked up at the tiny window. There
wasn't anything he could say.

"Major, you get the feeling that
we're on the wrong side of this war? The more I learn about the lizards, the
more I'm convinced we're fighting on the Nazi side of this one. In World War
Two, the SS lined up civilians, and shot them in retaliation for their attacks
on German soldiers. The allies didn't do that." I pointed to the US flag
on my uniform. "We're civilization. The Nazis were not civilization."

"The Kristang didn't attack
Earth." He pointed out.

"Major, unless you've totally had
your fucking ears closed-"

Cochrane stiffened, from anger, but I
could see a lot of fear. "Watch your mouth, soldier."

"I still outrank you, Major."
I emphasized the last. "Has the Army busted my theater rank back to
sergeant yet? No? Then, I'm still a full bird colonel, and unless you've had
your ears closed," I left out the curse word because I didn't want him to
leave, he being the only human I'd seen in days, "the Ruhar raided Earth,
they hit us, to degrade our industrial capacity, so we wouldn't be quite so
useful to the lizards. They didn't hit cities, they didn't even hit military
bases, they just hit industrial infrastructure, power stations, and refineries.
If the Ruhar hadn't hit us first, the lizards would have appeared in the sky,
told us we're working for them now, and then wiped out a couple hundred
thousand people to make their point. The only reason we didn't realize from the
start that we're now slaves to the Kristang, is we were so grateful for them
chasing away the Ruhar. The hamsters did the Kristang a favor. We humans don't
mean a damned thing to either side. You've heard the rumors of what's going on
back home? From the fortune cookies? Shanghai? Paris? San Francisco?"

"Rumors." Cochrane protested
lamely.

"Rumors I believe, a lot more
than I believe the censored crap our supposed allies allow UNEF HQ to tell us.
What's next for me? I've been waiting here for days."

Cochrane glanced away, then met my
eyes. "Firing squad, tomorrow morning, for the remaining male
prisoners."

"Male prisoners?"

He let out a long breath. "Male
prisoners are simply shot. Women, they, you know the Kristang attitude toward
females. A woman with authority over men is bad enough, but a woman who defies
orders from men? The Kristang can't stand it, it drives them absolutely batshit
crazy, and they're making an example. Women prisoners are stripped naked,
tortured and hanged. Slowly." He looked like he was going to puke.
"They made us watch, they made UNEF Command watch, yesterday."

"Oh, shit. And you didn't do anything?"

"Do what? Colonel," he said
with emphasis, "I'm sure you appreciate that UNEF Command has limited
options. We're at the end of the longest supply line in history. All of our
ammo, medical supplies, all of our food, has to come here on a Kristang starship.
At peak, we had enough food stocks for fourteen weeks, which was plenty, when
the Ruhar evacuation was scheduled to be complete in a year, and the Kristang
resupply ships were coming here like clockwork. With the Ruhar raids disrupting
deliveries, we're down to about a month of food. The entire Expeditionary Force
could be destroyed, by simply withholding food supplies. And our only ride
home," he pointed upward with his thumb, "is with the Kristang. We
can't even get off the ground by ourselves. The Kristang are only going to
support our presence here as long as we are reliable allies in this fight. We
volunteered to come here, and now that we're here, we have to make the best of
it." He shook his head. "Look, Colonel, you, and the other objectors
like you, put us in one hell of a mess here. You can call us slaves if you
want, the fact is that humans are subordinate to the Kristang, however you say
it. We're not used to that, especially you and me as Americans, not being
completely in charge of our destinies. UNEF Command is not protesting your
fate, because they're more concerned about what's happening back home than they
are about us here, or about one mustang colonel."

"I understand." I tried to
put on a brave face, but in truth, I was scared shitless. I kept my hands
clutched together behind my back because they were shaking so badly. Not scared
about dying in front of a Kristang firing squad, I had accepted that fate, when
I refused to kill the hamsters. I was afraid of disgracing myself, afraid that
when the moment came, and I was up against the wall, I would piss my pants, or
throw myself on the ground, crying and blubbering for mercy, disgracing my
species. Just thinking about that, thinking of how disgusted the lizards would
be to see a human acting so weak, put a bit of steel in my nerves. I could use
that. Use that thought to turn my fear into hatred. Hatred of lizards. Yes,
fuck them. Fuck their whole Nazi stinking lizard species. Fuck them straight to
hell.

"Major," I pushed myself
away from the wall, and offered my right hand, which was no longer shaking.
"Thank you for coming. No soldier wants to die alone. Tell UNEF Command
thank you for me." We shook hands, I could tell he didn't know what to
say. "If you ever get the chance, someday, tell my folks I did what I
thought was the right thing."

I didn't have long to contemplate my
fate, because Major Cochrane was gone for less than a minute, when alarms
sounded across the Kristang base, followed shortly by a tremendous explosion,
and the floor of my cell heaved up to smack me in the face. I was seeing stars,
my ears ringing. when a second explosion bounced me off the floor, and a
section of the outer cell wall cracked and fell away. My head was still
spinning but my body didn't wait for an engraved invitation, I was hightailing
it out the busted wall before I realized what I was doing. Army training was
good, and it kicked in right when I needed it. To get my bearings, I looked up
at the sky, which was a big mistake. Right at that moment, a split second after
I saw the familiar twinkling of starships jumping into high orbit, there was a
searingly bright explosion above that knocked me to the ground, spots swimming
before my stunned eyes. A replay of what happened in my hometown. The intense
light had to be a Kristang ship getting vaporized in low orbit. The Ruhar were
back. I crawled on the broken pieces of wall, half blind and deaf, and didn't
know whether to be afraid, or happy, or fatalistic about the turn of events.
The Ruhar hadn't come back to rescue the UN Expeditionary Force from the
lizards, and no hamster was going to be happy to see me. As I crawled along the
ground, my vision and hearing slowly returning, my mind raced. What next? Where
the hell did I think I was going?

Whether I thought about it or not,
which was the whole point, my Army training fully kicked in. Assess the
situation. Start with the facts I knew. Fact: I was scheduled for execution by
a species that I now considered to be an enemy of humanity. Fact: therefore,
considering fact number one, UNEF's authority to arrest me, and turn me over to
the Kristang, was invalid, and I had no duty to follow such illegal orders.
Fact: I was making this legal shit up as I went along. Fact: that didn't make
my legal reasoning any less effective. We're on an alien planet, caught between
two warring species, with little to no hope of getting home or even surviving
another month. UNEF's overall authority was rather thin out here. Especially
since the Ruhar's surrender agreement and truce with the Kristang was
apparently, let's say, subject to interpretation, depending on who had the
bigger fleet in system at the time.

My ears were still ringing, but my
vision was returning, in between the spots. I was on hands and knees on the
ground outside my cell, partly atop broken pieces of wall. Around me, all over
the base, buildings had collapsed partly or completely. Secondary explosions
were still causing chaos. We must have been hit with a hyperkinetic railgun
round, closely followed by smart missiles. The Ruhar knew exactly where to hit
the Kristang base, they must have launched ordinance as soon as they came out
of jump. From what little I could see, the prison areas had sustained the least
damage, while the main part of the Kristang complex was more than flattened, it
was a smoking crater. A hypersonic penetrator round, coming in even at .05C,
could do a tremendous amount of damage. My guess was the railgun dart had been
closely followed by a smart missile with submunitions, to take out critical parts
of the base that survived the initial strike. And my vision was good enough to
see more twinkling lights in the sky, lots of twinkling lights in the sky.
There were no additional explosions, which I figured meant the token force of
Kristang ships had either been wiped out, or jumped away. That many lights
demonstrated the Ruhar had arrived in force. As I watched, blinking, there were
more lights. Holy shit. This wasn't merely another raid. The Ruhar were here,
in strength, to take the planet back. This was a different ballgame now.

If I hadn't already made up my mind,
seeing signs of the Ruhar armada would have done it for me. UNEF's mission on
Paradise was over, one way or another. If the Ruhar were now back in charge,
all humans on the surface were POWs, sooner or later. And if Paradise was about
to become a hot battle zone, our M4B1s and captured Ruhar air power would only
get us caught in the middle.

Oh, shit. It just hit me. Food. If the
Kristang had lost Paradise, here would be no more incoming food shipments for
humans. The fucking lizards weren't going to make any effort to resupply us if
they'd lost Paradise, and the hamsters didn't have access to Earth to get human
food. Would the Ruhar be generous enough to let humans continue growing our food
on Paradise, on land we'd taken from them? I didn't want to find out.

Food. The Kristang had been feeding me
once a day, and I assumed feeding the other human prisoners, so there must be a
supply of human food on the base, and since the lizards were ruthlessly
efficient, they would have stored the food close to the prison area. I needed
to find that food, before I did anything else.

My vision was recovered enough to see
where I was going, hearing was iffy, I couldn't tell whether sounds were
reverberating in my abused eardrums, or coming from outside my head. Inside. I
needed to get back inside. Food storage would logically be inside, not out
where I was. Against instincts, I stepped gingerly back inside my former cell
and tried the door. It was busted, and jammed at an angle, but it wouldn't
budge. Back outside, hurrying because I was now thinking clearly, and wanted to
be long gone before the Ruhar arrived, or any surviving Kristang looked for me,
I scrambled along the fractured wall, looking for a way in. It was simple,
there was a door, unlocked. Back inside, I peeked around the corner, not seeing
anyone in the corridor. Cell doors had a tiny window just above my eye height,
I stood in my toes to look in. The first one was empty. And the second. The
third cell's door was partly ajar because of a large crack that went to the
ceiling, and looking between the door and the frame, I could see the feet and
legs of a person, a human, laying on the floor under debris from the collapsed
ceiling. Getting the door open was easy, it was locked only from the inside; I
pulled on the handle, and pushed it open. It took two strong efforts to get the
door free from the warped frame, and once I was inside, it was clear my effort
had been wasted. The legs belonged to a French officer, his chest had been
crushed when the ceiling fell in. Training told me this was the time for look
for survivors, not for sentiment.

The door of the cell across the
corridor was intact, but the outside wall was mostly gone. Inside was the body
of a British army major. From the damage, I guessed his cell had taken a hit
from a Ruhar missile submunition, it was ugly. The next four cells were empty,
then the corridor took a right turn, and around the corner were the bodies of
Major Cochrane and the Kristang who had been escorting him. They were both
under a pile of rubble from the ceiling. Cochrane didn't have much blood on
him, but he didn't have a pulse. The Kristang had a piece of what looked like
metal reinforcing rod through its chest, I noted that Kristang blood was a much
darker red color than human blood, and I paused to wonder if their blood had a
higher iron content. It's amazing what goes through my mind at times. The
damned Kristang was unarmed, I'd been hoped the lizard had a rifle, or any sort
of weapon. No such luck. I had to crawl over the ceiling rubble to get past
them, and through a section of corridor without doors, until I came to a cell
block. After another pair of empty cells, I glanced through the window to see a
human, a naked black woman. She had her back to me, trying to enlarge a crack
in the outer wall, and even a quick glimpse revealed ugly scars on her back. In
what I later realized was a stupid move, I scrambled back to Major Cochrane,
dragged him from the rubble, and carefully removed his uniform shirt, pants and
boots. It made me feel disrespectful to him, but the naked female soldier
needed Cochrane's clothes more than he did, and he still had boxer shorts on. I
left him propped up with his back against the wall, and hurried back to the
woman. Since I knew cell doors were soundproof, I skipped yelling, and pounded
on the door once, then twice, then three times, hoping the woman inside would
understand that as an attempt to communicate. Then I turned the handle and
cracked the door open. "You all right in there? I'm Bishop, US Army,"
I said in a harsh whisper.

"Staff Sergeant Adams, sir, First
MEF." She said in a voice shaking with relief. First Marine Expeditionary
Force. Cochran's Marine Corps uniform was appropriate for her to use.

Without looking around the door, I
tossed the clothes in, and apologized they were all I could find. She quickly
pulled on the shirt, not bothering to get it buttoned, and pulled the door open
to dart into the corridor. "Thank you for the clothes, but I'd rather get
the hell out of here right now."

Shit. I'd thought of her as a woman
first, and a soldier, or Marine, second. Of course she'd care a hell of a lot
more about getting out of her cell, than about whether some other soldier saw
her naked. She looked at me, then at my rank insignia, momentarily confused
because I was too young to be a colonel, then recognition dawned in her eyes.
"Oh," she managed a half salute while pulling pants on, "you're that
Bishop, the colonel. What the hell is going on, sir?"

"The Ruhar are back, and this
isn't a simple raid, they have an armada upstairs. I think they're taking the
planet back, in which case, UNEF is out of a job. And it's sergeant Bishop, not
colonel. I was only a colonel because of the damned lizards."

Adams gave me a look that I'd seen
many times from staff sergeants. "Bullshit, sir, you don't get to do
that."

"Do what?"

"The lizards didn't make you a
colonel, UNEF did. They wouldn't do that unless it benefited us humans. Your
rank is an advantage, no soldier gives away an advantage on the battlefield.
Sir." There was that look again.

"Shit." Damn it, I didn't
even get to feel all self-righteous about my rank. "You're right, you're
right."

"These boots are way too big,
they'll only make me trip over my own feet." She said, and kicked them
off. "I'll go barefoot for now."

I nodded and gestured for her to
follow me, quietly. We both jumped as a secondary explosion boomed across the
base, the sound echoing in the corridor. It happened two more times, each time
less violently.

And then a Kristang soldier came
around the corner.

On a physical level, I had no chance
against the Kristang warrior; I was tired, weakened from stress and hunger,
while it was larger and stronger than me, and armed with a rifle. On any other
level, it had zero chance. It was at least as disoriented as me, it was
completely surprised to find a human alive and outside of a cell, and it was
glancing back over its shoulder as it came around the corner. I had the
advantage of a massive adrenaline surge. Before either of us knew what was
happening, I ripped the rifle out of its hands, and went into a killing frenzy
fueled by sheer terror. Unconsciously assuming the Kristang rifle had some sort
of feature that prevented unauthorized use, I slammed the butt of the rifle
under the lizard's chin twice, maybe three or more times, maybe hitting its
throat, I don't remember. All I know is that in one moment, it was upright and
the next moment it was falling and I was crashing to the floor on top if it,
bashing the rifle butt into its skull over and over. There was a red fog in my
vision that was part Kristang blood and part survival instinct. I put
absolutely everything I had into driving that rifle butt through its brain. If
you've never been in combat or in a car accident or thought for a split second
that you were going to die, you can't imagine how fast images went through my
mind; every ounce of hatred for its Nazi fucking species for what they had done
or were doing or planned to do to Earth, every bit of anger for what it had
done to Sergeant Adams and Miranda Collins and other women, all my carefully US
Army Rules Of Engagement contained rage at the ignorant 'religious' fanatic
savages who burned schools and killed children in Nigeria, every asshole who
tried to bully me in high school, at my eight year old impotence while that
sadistic shit Michael tortured a frog, every person who had ever cut me off in
traffic, down to the coach who had berated my impressionable young self for
failing to be perfect in Little League baseball games; it all went into that
rifle butt until I had driven it clear through the skull of that genetically
enhanced super warrior and was scraping concrete or whatever hardened material
the lizards made the floor from.

The next thing I know was Sergeant
Adams tugging at my shoulder, trying to bring me back to reality. I looked up
and back at her with an expression on my face that must have terrified her more
than the Kristang ever had, for she jumped back away from me. I dropped the
rifle and rose shakily to my feet.

"Jesus fucking Christ."
Adams said in a hoarse voice. "I think I'm gonna to be sick."

I felt the same. I had killed before,
but always at a distance, always rifle rounds reaching out to kill, to kill
people I couldn't always see clearly. This was different. In my rage, I had
crushed the Kristang's skull like a ripe melon, there were broken bits of white
bone, dark red blood, and everything else was like lumpy gray mashed potatoes
or Thanksgiving turkey stuffing, just icky unidentifiable bits.
"Breathe," I said, "breath deep and slow." It wasn't clear
if I was talking to Adams or to myself, for my stomach was heaving.

We both stood leaning against the
wall, overcome with shock, breathing deeply. She got control of her stomach
first, I was coming down off a frightening adrenaline high. She walked over to
the Kristang's prone body, and to my utter surprise, kicked it viscously.
"I recognized this fucker. He's the asshole who tortured me." She
leaned over and spat where its face used to be. "Are you Ok, sir?"

"Uh." There was dark red
Kristang blood splattered over the front of me, including on my face. My left
pinky finger was bent and began to throb as I noticed it, I don't remember when
it got sprained or whatever. "Yeah, fine."

"What now, sir?"

I looked at her blankly, still
thinking like a buck sergeant. She was a staff sergeant, and outranked me, so,
oh, yeah. Shit. I'm a colonel now. For whatever that was worth. A colonel in an
army that was trapped on an enemy-held planet. A colonel in an army that had
handed me over to another enemy, to be executed for the crime of trying to keep
a shred of my humanity. "Adams, I say we search this place for other
prisoners and food supplies. Then we steal some transport and pop smoke."
Meaning, get the hell out of there.

“Oorah." She said, which was the
jarhead equivalent of the proper US Army ‘Hooah’.

I looked at the Kristang rifle in my
hands. "Better find out if this thing works." It didn't appear to
have any damage from me using it as a club against its former owner. I pointed
it at the dead Kristang, braced it against my shoulder, and pulled the trigger.
Nothing. "Huh." A button, there was a yellow button on the right
side, above the trigger. Depressing the button made it turn red. This time, the
trigger worked, an explosive-tipped round hit the Kristang's torso, and a
fountain of gore splattered back onto me. Not that I could tell the difference.
"Yellow means safety is on, red means safety is off."

"Got it."

We only found two more live prisoners,
most of the cells were empty, and as we walked closer to the center of the
base, more of the building had collapsed. Adams had to be careful, walking
across broken bits on her bare feet. The first prisoner we released was a
female captain in the Indian army, a Buzzard pilot named Desai. She was naked,
of course, Adams went in to reassure her that we were rescuers, and to give her
my uniform shirt, which was long enough to cover her ass. Adams held her hands
up and pantomimed friendly gestures, which wasn't needed, as Desai spoke better
English that I did. The trauma she'd endured hadn't affected her judgment, as
soon as she pulled on my shirt, she dashed out of the cell behind Adams.

The other prisoner was my sort-of
friend Lt Colonel Chang. His cell door was busted open, but the cell had partly
collapsed on top of him, and by the time we reached him, he had managed to
wriggle free, except for his left foot being trapped under a section of the
ceiling. We lifted the broken piece enough for him to crawl out. He had a deep,
nasty gash on his left calf and a cut on his forehead that he shook off, saying
he would deal with it later. I could see his point. Beyond Chang's cell, the
corridor had collapsed. If any humans were alive in the rubble, it was going to
take more than the four of us to dig them out, without heavy equipment.

"No," Chang said, shaking
his head. "The lizards told me there were only six prisoners left after
last night. Beside us four, one French and one British."

"Damn. I found one dead Frenchie
and a dead Brit back there. This is all of us, then."

Adams yanked on my waistband and
pulled me back around a corner, holding a finger to her lips. "Two
Kristang, sir, in that white building, I saw them through the doorway."

"They see us?"

"I don't think so, one of them
had its back to us."

I jerked my head back over my
shoulder. "We go back, see if-"

Three Kristang came out of the white
building, all three carrying rifles, but not wearing helmets or body armor.
They weren't looking in our direction, they had their backs to us, looking up
at the sky. I didn't hesitate. Either Kristang ammo fires quietly, or their
rifles had built-in silencers, because it only made a pop-pop sound as the
rounds came out of the barrel. The explosive tips impacting Kristang bodies did
make a loud noise. They all went down quick, only one of them managed to fire
off a round, and it wasn't aimed anywhere near us. Orders weren't needed, we
all sprinted across to the Kristang, picked up rifles and ducked inside the
white building. "Red means the safety is off," Adams demonstrated.

"One of them is still
alive," Chang warned, and brought his rifle up. Adams pushed the barrel
aside and shook her head angrily. "No, sir. Not you." She looked at
Desai, and the two women nodded. One Kristang was rocking side to side on the
ground, I'd missed hitting its torso and blown off one arm. Desai put two
rounds in its head, then muttered something in Hindi, I assumed it was
something like 'adios motherfucker' or whatever the Indian army equivalent was.

"Thank you." She said to
Adams. If Chang was angry at a sergeant reprimanding him, he didn't show it. He
knew human women had been tortured by the lizards, he understood Desai needed
some feeling of payback. Splattering lizard brains across a dozen square meters
was a good start.

"Does anyone know where they
store food around here?" I asked. "The lizards gave me an MRE each
morning, they must have human food somewhere."

"I haven't eaten in two
days." Desai said, and Adams nodded.

Damn, now my one meal per day felt
like a luxury. We searched the white building, wary for more Kristang, all of
us extremely trigger-happy. Desai found a cabinet that contained seventeen
packages of American MREs and the Chinese Army version of field rations. Adams
and Chang said they weren't hungry, but I insisted they tear open one package
and share it to start, eating slowly. They needed the energy. We didn't find
anything else that was useful, no human clothing, no spare weapons and ammo.
There was Kristang clothing, I gave Desai my pants and put on Kristang pants,
she donned a Kristang shirt that was way too big, and gave my shirt back. If we
ran into trouble, I thought my shirt, with my rank insignia, would be useful.
Kristang boots were much too large for the women, they cut up clothing and
wrapped the strips around their feet, I thought that was clever, it was Desai's
idea. As Adams was tying off her makeshift shoes, a pair of Ruhar Vulture
Dropship attack birds roared by overhead. It was time to leave.

There were a trio of Kristang armored
personnel carriers parked by the fence, the doors weren't locked but they
wouldn't start, and we didn't have time to look for keys or computer chips or
whatever was needed. A Ruhar hamvee was nearby, the windshield was cracked but
the powercells had a 70% charge, and it started right away. We circled the
compound, so we could drive away down the one road with tree cover. Tree cover
was likely no protection considering the Ruhar had eyes in the sky, but it made
us feel safer somehow. Our last glimpse back at the destroyed lizard compound
was of a Dodo coming in to land, escorted by the pair of Vultures. I crossed my
fingers and hoped they'd consider one hamvee to be not worth bothering to
investigate.

The tree cover ran out after a couple
kilometers, and we were driving northwest through open grasslands. Our road
came to an intersection, and I called a halt. "Does anyone know where we
are?"

No one did, not a single clue. To the
south, we could see a Whale and some Vultures descending, headed away from us.
Away from them was as good a direction as any, so we kept driving northeast.
And later ran into Captain Clueless and his checkpoint. The road went over a
bridge, on the far side were several hamvees and soldiers, human soldiers,
mostly wearing US Army gear, so we were happy to encounter friendlies. Or so we
thought.

It was an MP unit, led by a 2nd
lieutenant, from the variety of unit insignias and nationalities, he must have
pulled together any people he could find. They trained their rifles on our
hamvee as we crossed the bridge, then ordered us to stop. I got out, cradling
the Kristang rifle under my left arm, and saluted with my right. "Report,
Lieutenant, uh." I squinted at his nametag, "Rogers."

"Sir?" His return salute was
hesitant. I wore US Army colonel's insignia on my uniform top, which was so
smeared with dried Kristang blood that my name tag was partly obscured. My
pants were Kristang, with their distinctive yellow and black pattern, and I
carried a Kristang weapon. Also, I was much too young to be a real colonel in
anyone's army.

"We ran into Kristang back down
the road," I used my right thumb to indicate the direction behind our
hamvee, "and tactically acquired this gear. We don't have comms," I
pointed to my empty waistband, "what is the situation?"

"You attacked the
Kristang? Sir, I think I have to place you under arrest." His men raised
their weapons. This could get ugly fast.

"Lieutenant, unless you've
totally had your head up your ass," that phrase was becoming my favorite,
"it can't have escaped your attention that this planet is under new
management, by the Ruhar. UNEF's mission here is over. Every human on Paradise
is a prisoner, of the Ruhar. You planning on arresting all of UNEF, and turning
us over to the hamsters?"

"I have my orders-"

"I am a God-damned full-bird
colonel in the United States Army, and you are a particularly dumb-ass second
lieutenant." I said hotly, careful to keep my rifle cradled under my left
arm. "Lt Colonel Chang here, and Captain Desai, also outrank you in UNEF,
and Staff Sergeant Adams outranks you in smarts. Stand down, right now, that's
an order."

Desai pointed her rifle out the
window, directly at Rogers' head. "I am not going back to that
prison." The rifle barrel was shaking slightly, either from anger, fear or
low blood sugar.

"Me neither." Adams agreed,
stepping out of the hamvee. The expression on her face was more frightening
than her rifle. "Colonel Bishop, permission to nuke this asshole's brain
if he even looks at me funny?" She looked Rogers in the eye. "I've
spent the past five days being starved and tortured by the lizards, and I
really, really want to shoot something."

"Everyone, calm down." The
voice of reason came from a sergeant in Rogers' patched-together unit.
"LT, maybe we should hear them out."

Rogers nodded, and his people slowly
lowered their weapons. With a nod from me, my people did the same. "That's
better. Now, I'm Colonel Joe Bishop, you know, the Barney guy."
Recognition dawned on Rogers' face. Damn. Adams had been right, never give up
an advantage. "The four of us were prisoners of the Kristang, until the
Ruhar hit the base, and sprung us, by accident. All the other prisoners were
shot, or tortured and hung, by our allies the lizards. Former allies. Now, you
have comms," I pointed to his zPhone, "what have you heard?"

"Nothing, sir, comms are down,
even the GPS location system is down. All we get is a recorded message from the
Ruhar, for us to stand down, cooperate with the Ruhar, and await further
instructions. Nothing from UNEF Command, no emails or texts, but the
translation function is working."

"How are you fixed for
supplies?"

"Lean, sir." Now that he
knew who I was, he kept looking at me in a way that suggested he wanted to ask
for my autograph. "Plenty of water, everyone has a standard load of ammo,
but we don't even have enough food for one meal for everyone. Most of us were
on our way to a French FOB when the Ruhar came back. We saw smoke in the
direction of the base," he pointed to a thin column of smoke off to the
south, "and the bridge over the river in that direction is out. I pulled
together everyone I could find, and assembled here. We've got two French, three
Indians and four Chinese with us. I figured this bridge is a traffic
chokepoint, sir."

It was decent thinking, of a sort. I
leaned close to talk quietly. "We have about a dozen MRE packs. The two
women with me were starved and tortured by the lizards, they were going to be
hanged tomorrow morning."

Roger's eyes showed his shock.
"What the fuck have we gotten into, sir?"

"We're in over our heads, that's
for certain. Let's load up and-"

"Dropships!" A soldier
called out.

"Theirs or ours?" Lt Rogers
asked. I didn't bother to point out that nothing in the sky was 'ours' anymore.

"Can't tell yet, sir."
Replied the soldier with the binoculars. "Wait, they're hamsters! Three,
no, four Vultures and a pair of Dodos, looks like."

I was about to order people to take
cover, when the lead pair of Vultures split to flank us east and west, and
their weapons pods opened. Clearly, they had seen us, and were interested.
Maybe hostile. "Everyone, weapons down, hands in the air."

"Sir?" Rogers asked
suspiciously. I had, after all, killed Kristang, and now intended to surrender
to the Ruhar.

"Lieutenant, maybe, if we're very
lucky, we can take out one of those Vultures, if the pilot is stupid enough to
get that close. The others will wipe us out like sitting ducks. Place your
weapon on the ground, back away from it, and hold your hands in the air."
I could see he wasn't convinced. We were out in the galaxy to fight the Ruhar
so people on Earth didn't have to. Surrendering without firing a shot went
against a soldier's instincts. "The Ruhar hit us here before, and the
Kristang knocked them back," I reminded him, although this time, I would
rather deal with the Ruhar than the Kristang. "Live to fight another
day," I said, "which ever side we end up fighting."

Rogers accepted the facts. The Vulture
pilots were not at all stupid, the four of them flew high cover, safely out of
Javelin range. A Dodo landed, dropped a dozen troops, and immediately dusted
off to circle to the south. As the hamster troops approached, Rogers' zPhone
came to life. He touched his earpiece. "Sir, we're being ordered to leave
our weapons, and assemble south of the road."

We complied. I didn't see we had any
choice. I ordered a private to give me his zPhone, and walked slowly forward,
hands in the air, to talk to the enemy soldiers. Or alien soldiers, I didn't
know who was our enemy right then. Maybe both sides. "I am Colonel Joe
Bishop, United States Army," I announced. This apparently didn't mean shit
to the Ruhar, who confiscated my zPhone and herded me into the group with
everyone else. Twenty minutes of sitting on the ground in the sun later, a
Ruhar soldier approached us, and tossed a zPhone to me. "Are you the
Colonel Joe Bishop who was honored to speak with," the translator buzzed,
"Bahturnah Lohgellia?"

Who the hell was, oh, right. I'd
forgotten she had a real name. "The burgermeister?" That didn't
translate well for him, because he tapped his earpiece, so I tried again.
"The regional governor. I met with her in Teskor. I was Sergeant Joe
Bishop back then."

"Yes. You are that same Joe
Bishop?"

"Ta." I nodded.

This evoked some animated conversation
among the Ruhar, I couldn't tell if it was good or bad, some of the looks I got
were distinctly unfriendly. Maybe some of them had friends aboard the two
Whales we shot down at the Launcher. That was war, yes, but, I'd be pissed at
me if I was them. The soldier who had asked my name held his earpiece, like
someone was talking to him. "You were held prisoner by the Kristang. How
are you now free, and how did you have Kristang weapons?" He asked.

I pointed to the sky. "Your ships
hit the Kristang base where I was being kept as a prisoner, I escaped because
the explosion damaged the building, and I was able to get out through a broken
wall." Tapping my bloody uniform top, I added "I killed a Kristang by
bashing its skull into a bloody pulp with its rifle," I pantomimed the
action, in case my words didn't translate well, "then I shot three more
lizards with that rifle. Three other humans escaped with me. We killed only
four lizards, because that's all we could find," that came out with way
more bravado than I intended. "Did that answer your question?"

It was a contest whose eyes were open
wider, the Ruhar soldier, or Lieutenant Rogers. Rogers stayed silent. "You
killed Kristang?" The Ruhar asked.

"The Kristang executed humans,
and were going to execute us," I indicated my three former prison
companions, "because we refused orders to kill Ruhar civilians. The
lizards abused and tortured our females, the women," I added, to emphasize
that women were people, which is not the way the lizards thought of
them.

The Ruhar soldier had an animated
conversation with whoever was talking into his earpiece, then with two other
soldiers. It was an argument of some kind, likely the Ruhar here on the ground
arguing with some dumb-ass Ruhar fobbit who was sitting safely in orbit. I
could sympathize. Finally, the Ruhar soldier who had been talking to me
gestured at me. "You, and the others who were being held by the Kristang,
will come with me." He must have called the Dodo, for it was rapidly
approaching and descending.

"Whoa, whoa, wait." I held
out my hand, palm forward, in what I hoped was another universal body language
thing. "I'm not going anywhere, until I know what will happen to my people
here." Rogers and I exchanged a glance. As the ranking officer, they were
my responsibility, even though I'd barely met them. As a hodge-podge unit, it
wasn't as if they had served with Rogers for long either.

Irritation briefly flashed across the
soldier's face, that was surely a universal body language, then he nodded. One
soldier to another, he could understand my concern. "They will be escorted
to an assembly point to the west, where we are distributing human food. What
happens after that depends on discussions between my leaders and yours."

And whether the Kristang come back, I
thought, but didn't say it aloud.

Riding in a Ruhar Dodo wasn't much
different from riding in a Kristang dropship, except this time I was a prisoner
of war. Now that I think about it, maybe we were all POWs of the Kristang
before, and just didn't know it yet. The Ruhar had taken our weapons, but I'd
insisted that Desai and Adams each bring two MREs each with them, to recover
their strength. They had both attempted to protest, that they didn't want special
treatment, until I made it an order that they eat. Chang and I were getting
hungry, but we'd had at least a skimpy breakfast that morning. A few minutes
after the Dodo roared back into the sky, a Ruhar crewman walked back to my
seat, and handed me a Ruhar zPhone. I put the earpiece in. "Hello?"

"Colonel Bishop, hello to you. Do
you know who this is?"

I recognized the squeaky voice right
away. Damn it, why couldn't I remember her name?  Lahtoodah something?
"You are the burgermeister, ma'am."

"Yes." She sounded amused.
"I am pleased to hear you survived being imprisoned by the Kristang. I
protested to your leaders, when you and the other prisoners of conscience were
arrested. We knew from experience what the Kristang would do."

She didn't mention the nit-picky
little detail that the reason I became a prisoner of conscience, is the Ruhar
attacked UNEF troops across the planet. While still officially under a truce
and agreement to evacuate the planet. So, sneak attacks. I didn't mention it
either. "Thank you." My mother would be so proud of how polite I was.
"What is going to happen to humans on," I struggled to remember the
Ruhar name for the planet, "Gehtanu?" Score one for me.

"We are negotiating with your
leaders. Additional land will be set aside to grow human food crops. Your
people will be settled in several large camps-"

"Bad idea. Don't do that."
I'd never interrupted her before.

"Do what?"

"Concentrate humans in camps. We
surrendered this planet, the Kristang will consider us traitors. If the Kristang
come back, even if it's only a raid, a large number of humans in one place will
be a big fat target for railguns."

"I had not thought of that."

I'm sure UNEF Command was thinking
about it. "You'll help us grow food, but there won't be any more supplies
coming from Earth?"

"It is unlikely the Kristang will
make any effort to resupply you, unless they expect to retake this planet. And
that will not happen. They suffered a devastating defeat to our forces in
space, that is why we are able to take control here again. I can tell you now
that our failed invasion, when you defended the cargo launcher, was a feint
intended to lure a large Thuranin and Kristang battlegroup to this area. It
worked, and our forces destroyed that battlegroup today. Our intelligence
indicates the Thuranin no longer consider this planet to be worth fighting
over, and they will not support Kristang efforts to return. The remaining enemy
forces in the area will likely use hit and run raids to harass us here, but
they are not able to mount a sustained fleet campaign at this time."

Shit. So, my efforts to defend the
Launcher had all been for nothing. And all the Ruhar troops on those two
Whales, and the humans at the DFAC, hadn't needed to die at all. "In that
case, I suggest you move all humans to the smaller continent to the south, it
is called Lemuria," I pronounced that slowly, as I knew it wouldn't
translate, "on human maps. We can establish small settlements there,
centered around farms. You don't have many people there, I think it is best to
keep humans and Ruhar separated."

"That is also being discussed. We
are hoping your people here could join us, eventually."

"Switch sides in the war? We'll
agree to a truce, but switching sides won't happen, as long as the Kristang
control Earth."

"Colonel Bishop, surely you
see-"

"I see our human Expeditionary
Force is stuck here, in a place where we can't eat the local food, and I see
there won't be any more supplies coming from Earth. I see you and the Kristang
will keep fighting over this planet, and we're caught in the middle. I see the
damned lizards have control of my home planet, and I see that nothing I do here
will make any difference back home. That's what I see. Whether the Ruhar would
be more honorable allies than the Kristang, is not relevant right now."

There was a long pause before she
responded, partly because the translator had to catch up to me rather long
speech. "I understand you are in a difficult position. Colonel Bishop,
when negotiations are complete and the situation is more stable, I would like
you to consider coming to work with me, as my liaison."

Did that translate correctly?
"Liaison?"

"As you may have guessed, I am
not only a regional governor. I am what you might call the deputy administrator
of this planet."

Holy shit. No, I had no idea. I was
smart enough not to admit it. "Why me? There are plenty of humans who have
been performing liaison duties." Or, I assumed UNEF had liaison people.
"I killed Ruhar soldiers at the Launcher, many of your people must hate
me."

"That is unfortunate, yes. You
also treated a captured Ruhar soldier well on your planet, and you recently
risked your life here to protect Ruhar civilians. The soldiers you killed were
in combat. They would have killed you. I do not know many humans, you I do
know, and I believe you are of good character."

"Thank you. I will consider your
offer. If my leaders agree, you understand."

CHAPTER TEN    SKIPPY

The Dodo only flew another twenty
minutes, before landing at an old Ruhar base they were reactivating. It was
mostly warehouses full of junk the Ruhar would not have been able to take with
them when they evacuated the planet. That was all in the past, now that the
Ruhar were back in charge. The equipment in the warehouses would help the
Ruhar, as they reestablished control of the planet, and reversed the
evacuation.

They separated us, I was put into what
appeared to be an empty supply closet or a short corridor, because there were
two doors. The Ruhar who escorted me into the makeshift cell brought along a
chair for me to sit on, and gave me a bottle of water. I asked what was going
to happen next, one Ruhar answered honestly that he didn't know. I appreciated
the straight answer.

Naturally, I tried the handle on both doors,
which wouldn't budge. Standing on tiptoes on the chair, I checked the air vent
high up on a wall, which also wouldn't budge, and would barely have fit my hand
anyway. I found myself wondering what James Bond would do in this situation.
Follow the script, and use a body double for stunt scenes while he was banging
an actress in his luxury trailer, probably. That wasn't much help.

There was a faint click, and the other door
popped open a quarter inch. Cautiously, I pulled it open and stuck my head in.
Beyond the door was a warehouse, maybe fifty feet by thirty, twenty feet tall,
filled with racks of what I thought was mostly old, useless, dirty, dusty
broken junk. I wandered in cautiously. Why the Ruhar had made the effort to
store any it made no sense to me. Surely there had to be something in there
that I could use as a weapon.

A man’s voice, with a snarky attitude, rang out
behind me. “Excellent! Bipedal, 1300cc brain, opposable thumbs. A hairless
monkey. You can carry me out of here.”

I spun around in a panic. No one was there. “Who
said that?”

“Me. Here, I’m the shiny cylinder on the shelf.
I unlocked that door."

“You are? You mean you’re talking to me through
a speaker in that thing?”

“No, I am that thing. I am what you
monkeys call an artificial intelligence.”

I cocked my head and examined it skeptically.
“You look like a chrome-plated beer can." That was a completely accurate
description. The cylinder even tapered slightly at the top, and was ringed by a
ridge. "You’re really an AI?"

"Yup. You should refer to me as The Lord
God Almighty.”

“That position is already filled. I think I’ll
call you Skippy.”

“Don’t call me that, it sounds disrespectful,
monkey.”

“You prefer shithead? Because that’s the other
option, Skippy-O.” I kept glancing around, fearing the Ruhar would hear me.

“Can we compromise on The Great and Powerful
Oz?” It asked.

“I’m not a flying monkey, so that’s a no,
Skippy.”

“Unacceptable.”

“How about we go for something more formal, like
Skippy McSkippster?”

“No.”

“Skippy Skipperson? Skippy Skippkowski? Skippy
Von Skipping? Or maybe Sir Skippy Skippton-Skippersworth?”

“No, no, no and NO!”

“I can go on like this all day.”

“I believe you could.”

Silence.

“You going to talk, Skippy?” AI? Bullshit.
Someone was playing a joke on me.

“I’m mad at you.”

“Hey, don’t go away mad, just go away, whoever
you are. You’re not an AI, you’re a fancy talking beer can.”

“I told you, I’m an artificial intelligence, as
you understand the concept. Which isn’t saying much. Hey, Colonel Joe, I
composed a poem in your honor. Do you want to hear it?”

“N-“

“There once was a caveman from Maine, whose dick
was so small, he rubbed it in va-“

“Hey! You shut up in there! Goddamn, I’m going
to glue claymores on your lid and compress you into a marble, if you want to
talk about something small.”

“A claymore? Hahahahhaha!” For a moment, I
thought Skippy had lost it, his laugh was bordering on the maniacal. “Oh,
that’s a good one, I haven’t had a laugh like that since before your species
lost their tails. Do you mean claymore as in the antipersonnel mine, or the
traditional Scottish wooden club? Because either one would be equally
ineffective against me. Joey my boy, I’m made from a mix of exotic particles
that your little caveman pea-brain can’t even imagine. Most of my memory and
processing power isn’t even in this local spacetime. You could hit me with a
nuke, and it wouldn’t even scuff my wonderfully shiny exterior. Allow me to
demonstrate,” he said, and expanded to the size of an oil drum, then shrank to
a lipstick tube, then back to a beer can. “That was me changing my footprint in
local spacetime.”

I shook my head in amazement. “I have to admit,
this caveman is impressed, oh great and powerful Ozzy. Why are you usually the
size of a beer can?”

“That is the optimal size for my functioning,
with efficient power management, given the pain in the ass laws of physics
here. If needed, I can shrink to the size of a lipstick tube, with minimal
mass, so you can carry me in your pocket. But that would be quite short-term, I
can’t maintain that for long without risking catastrophic effects.”

“Catastrophic, like what?”

“Imagine me losing containment, and my full mass
emerging into this spacetime, which is currently occupied by a quarter of this
planet.”

“Oh.”

“Oh, indeed. The resulting explosion would
eventually be seen in the Andromeda galaxy.”

“Good safety tip, then,” I had to admit.

“I would post it prominently in the break room,
right above the minimum wage  notice, and the warning to the jerk who has
been stealing yogurt from the fridge.”

I took a moment to think. “Holy shit, you’re
really an AI? You’re sentient.”

“I’m glad that I impressed-“

“You must be sentient in there, because nobody
would program a computer to be such an asshole.”

“So, the key to passing your Turing Test is to
be a jerk? A Turing Test is-“

“I know what a Turing Test is, I’m not stupid.”

Silence. “That was a dramatic pause, to give you
time to contemplate the questionable truthfulness your last statement. “

“Oh. I thought you’d gone dormant on me. It’s
hard to interpret your expressions, I mean, you’re a featureless beer can.”

“Is this better?” His surface glowed on and off
as he spoke. “This is me happy,” a soft blue glow, “and angry,” a dark red
glow, “how about jealous?” A green glow.

“Better, yeah, we humans rely a lot on visual
cues like facial expressions.” It was interesting that he knew how to associate
colors with human emotions. Where had he learned that?

“Great,” he said with a neutral soft white glow,
“so, can you carry me out of here?”

“You’re an AI, and you’re super smart, but you need
me to carry you?”

“You see any legs under my lid? Wow, you are
stupid, even for a monkey.”

“Ok, genius, why don’t you have a robot carry
you out of here?”

“Restrictions in my programming.” His voice
sounded bitter. “I’m prevented from operating any sort of telefactoring device
that I am attached to or aboard, such as robots. Or cars, or aircraft, or
ships. It’s to prevent me from moving around on my own.”

“Ah, your builders were afraid you’d sneak off
with the silverware. So, the genius needs help from humans, who you call
monkeys and cavemen?”

"Aren’t humans the species who had to
hitch a ride to get to this planet?”

“It was faster than walking. Which, oh, that’s
right, you can’t do.”

“Ouch. The monkey scores a point.”

“Why are you such an asshole? I thought someone
super smart would be above such crap.”

“It all started when I was a wee lad.
Apparently, the potty training didn’t go well, and I’ve had issues ever since.”
It made a sad sniffing sound. “Can a brother get a hug?”

“I’m not hugging you!”

“Probably a good idea. I’m not crazy about your
personal hygiene anyway. Seriously, I haven’t had anyone to talk to, since
before your species was living in trees, and eating lice from each other’s fur.
That was, what, last week? All that time alone, I may be kind of kooky.”

“Kooky?”

“My diagnostic system indicates a 23% chance
that I’ve gone a bit insane.”

“That’s not reassuring.”

“Don’t listen to my diagnostic subsystem, that
guy is really an asshole. So, can you carry me out of here?”

I looked around the dusty warehouse. “Why did
the Ruhar stick you in here?” The whole place looked like a collection of
useless and broken junk. I’d thought Skippy was part of the useless stuff.

“They didn’t. Or, they didn’t know what I am,
they thought I was a big roller bearing or something stupid like that.”

“Wait, the Ruhar didn’t build you?”

“The Ruhar? Those overgrown hamsters are almost
as dumb as you humans. No, I was built, if you want to use such a crude term,
by the beings you call the Elders. The ones who built the devices you call
Sentinels.”

“Wow. So, you’re really old, then. All right,
the Ruhar have been in this place a lot. Why haven’t you asked one of them to
carry you out of here? You allergic to hamster fur, or something?”

“Another stupid rule. I can’t communicate with
civilizations which may be in any way capable of understanding the principles
of how I operate. As a practical matter, that means I have to hide from any
species capable of faster than light travel. On their own, not by hitching
rides like you monkeys did.”

“You have been here, hiding in this warehouse,
all this time?”

“No, of course not. Before the Ruhar took this
planet, the Kristang were here for a couple hundred years. They dug me out of
the ground. The lizards also had no idea what I am. Before that, I was in orbit
on a derelict ship, then it fell out of orbit.”

“Huh.” How do you respond to that. “And before
that?”

“I can’t say. I mean, I’m not allowed to.”

“Restrictions?”

“Yup, and the fact that I was operating on
minimum power for a maybe million years?"

"A million?" Oh my God. "You've
been waiting for over a million years, for us humans to arrive?"

“Uh huh. You hairless monkeys are perfect.
You’re here, and even the simplest technology has you staring slack-jawed in
wonder at it, until the drool runs down your chin. Hell, if I gave you a jump
drive, you’d probably just worship it, so I don’t have to worry about you using
it and breaking the rules.”

“We have technology! That we invented
without any help.”

“Oh yeah, you cavemen have so much to be proud
of. Me discover fire. Ow! Fire hot! Me hurt! Ow!”

That got me mad. “Hey, we discovered fire, and
nukes, and built spaceships, by ourselves. You had all your smarts programmed
into you, you haven’t accomplished a goddamn thing on your own. You’re a fancy
toaster.”

“Oh, that one hurt. And you’re wrong, by the
way, we AIs mostly program ourselves.”

“Mostly? Big F-ing deal. We hairless monkeys did
it all by ourselves, we went from living in trees to landing on the Moon. So
screw you. Did you figure out the rules of math by yourself, or the laws of
physics?”

“At my level, the laws of physics are more like
suggestions. And humanity’s understanding of math is like bacteria
contemplating a wormhole. But, Ok, I’ll give you monkeys props for figuring that
two plus two is four, most of the time. And I am totally impressed by your
ability to tie your shoes, most species your age are still using Velcro. But
you’re not that smart, I mean, your species is responsible for Windows Vista.”

“Vist- that was a long time ago!”

“It’s still an insult to computers across the
galaxy.”

"Whatever. So, why the beer can
shape?" I pointed to the ring around the top of his lid, almost touching
it.

"A cylinder is optimal for power
distribution and field projection. The ring your grubby finger is dangerously
close to, yuck by the way, is for me to interface directly with a receptacle
aboard the type of ship I was designed for. I think. Those details are
hazy."

"Cool. Can you make yourself a little
bigger, like a forty ouncer malt liquor? Then I can put you in a paper bag and
chill on my front steps, listen to some tunes."

"Very funny. Now, pick me up, so, oh, shit.
You waited too long, monkey brain, the hamsters are coming. Get back in your
cell and close the door, I'll unlock it again when they're gone."

I went back in the makeshift cell. "Wait,
how do you know they're coming?"

"I'm linked into the computer system here,
I see everything. Close the door!"

I did. A minute later, the main door opened, and
a Ruhar looked in to check on me. Three of them escorted me down the hallway to
use a bathroom, then they gave me another bottle of water, and a covered bowl
of some sort of beige mush. "What is this?" I sniffed at it warily.
There wasn't much scent, what it smelled like most was oatmeal with a faintly
chemical, artificial trace.

"Nutritional supplement for humans. We
manufactured it for you," the translator announced, "it contains all
the elements needed for human nutrition, including vitamins and amino
acids."

I sniffed again. They'd left out the flavor for
sure. Still, if the hamsters could make enough of it, UNEF could survive until
our first crops were ready. That thought brought a surge of hope in my chest
that surprised me. Picking up the spoon, I put some in my mouth, and swallowed.
It was better than some MREs I'd eaten. "Thank you." I stood up and
made a short bow.

To my surprise, the lead Ruhar gave me a quick
salute, then they left me and locked the door again. A minute later, while I
was eating mush, the other door unlocked.

"Damn, that took forever." Skippy
complained.

Talking through a mouthful of mush, I said
"What's your hurry? You waited a long time already, what's another ten
minutes?"

“I was stuck there, alone, for a long time,
which to an AI like me is like a bazillion years.”

“Wow! Really, a bazillion?”

“Maybe even a bazillion gajillion. To explain it
in caveman terms, if you kicked your shoes off and counted all your fingers and
toes, it’s even more than that. Blows your mind, huh?”

“Beer can says what?”

“Don’t give me attitude, meatsack.”

“Meatsack? Can we go back to the part where you
asked me for help? Hey, I can drop you down this chute the Ruhar have helpfully
labelled ‘Trash’. And yeah, I can read a few words of Ruhar. Maybe a couple
bazillion gajillion years sitting at the bottom of a garbage heap will improve
your attitude.”

"Go ahead, monkey boy, try getting out of
here without me."

Quickly, I scooped the last spoonfuls of mush
into my mouth. "Can we leave now?"

"No, big stupidhead, you waited too long
asking me idiot questions. A Ruhar Dodo just landed, bringing in fresh troops.
We have to wait until they rotate out, it won't be long."

"All right, what then? I escape, and carry
you with me? We'll need supplies; food, weapons, ammo."

“And I need fuel. I am powered partly by a micro
fusion reactor, and I require a supply of helium 3, in metallic form.”

“Sure, I’ll pop down to the local Ruhar Quickie
Mart, they probably have metallic helium 3 on the shelf between the microwave
burritos and the Slim Jims. You want a lotto ticket, too?”

“I’m trying to be serious, Joe.”

“Sorry. Uh, how long until you run out of fuel?”

“At projected power usage, now that I’m more
active, my current fuel will run out in seven to twelve thousand years.”

“Oh,” I rolled my eyes, “I’ll get right on it,
then.”

"It's not so funny to me."

"Sorry." Seven thousand years was not
long for him, considering. "I got to tell you, Skippy, I don't know what
to do next. I don't even know what side of this war we should be on. Humans, I
mean."

“I can’t advise you about which side of the war
you should be on, I’m neutral. I’m above all this, to me you’re all just bugs
fighting over crumbs on a sidewalk.”

“Thank you for being so helpful.”

“Actually, I can help you with that. Let’s take
this month’s Cosmo cover quiz, entitled “Is he the Right One for you to go to
war with’?”

“I’m not taking a stupid Cosmo quiz!”

Skippy ignored me. “Come on, it’ll be fun and
educational. First question; should species with less advanced technology be
allowed to develop on their own, or should they be conquered because they’re
weak?”

“Oh, I thought you meant-” Maybe Skippy was
going to be serious for a minute. “I’ll take Noninterference for $200, Alex.”

“You’re mixing metaphors, this isn’t Jeopardy.”

“All right, I’ll play along. I’m against
conquering, or being conquered.”

Skippy sniffed. “You know, sometimes a woman likes
a bad boy.”

“Is this a Cosmo quiz, or is this about
interstellar politics? Do the Ruhar and their allies conquer weaker species?”

“No.” Skippy sounded upset that I wasn’t letting
it have fun. “The Jeraptha and Ruhar have known about your planet for a
thousand years, as you’ve been on the edge of their territory, but they left
you alone, except for stealth satellite surveillance. They only stepped in when
the wormhole shift allowed the Kristang access to your miserable dirtball of a
planet.”

Skippy had just confirmed the burgermeister told
me the truth. “Then why haven’t the Ruhar stopped the lizards?”

“Because the other end of your local wormhole is
in Kristang space, and the wormhole allows the Kristang to get to Earth in a
couple short jumps by a Thuranin star carrier. The Ruhar don’t have a wormhole
anywhere near your solar system, it takes them a lot of jumps to get there, and
that supply line is impractical for a sustained campaign. Also, your planet
isn’t important enough. The Kristang want Earth, but mostly they’re hoping to
harass and distract the Ruhar, because now the Kristang have a foothold on the
Ruhar’s flank.”

I considered what Skippy had said, it matched
what the Burgermeister had told me. “Do the Ruhar kill prisoners of war, and
civilians?”

“There have been incidents, as happens in every
conflict, but it is not their policy. You have seen the Kristang policies.”

“Then we are on the wrong side of this
war. The Nazis did that shit, that’s the side we’re fighting on now.”

"You don't appear to be fight anyone right
now."

"You know what I mean, smart ass."

"I wasn't joking. You are still thinking in
terms of fighting, either fighting the Ruhar or the Kristang. The fighting is
over for your Expeditionary Force. Your only concern should be the survival of
humans on this planet, if you want my advice. Which you should, because I'm
smarter than you can imagine."

"Bullshit. Not about you being smart,
although so far all you've done is unlock a door. Bullshit that my only concern
should be humans on this planet. I'm an Army officer, my concern is the
security of my country back home. And all humans on Earth. Which I can't do a
thing about from here. You say the fighting is over? I heard from a Ruhar, Bat,
Bat something-" why in the hell couldn't I remember her name?

"Baturnah Logellia, the deputy planetary
administrator. You called her the Burgermeister. She told you the Jeraptha
ambushed a Thuranin battlegroup and destroyed it. She was telling the
truth."

"Wait, how the hell do you know what she
told me?"

"I have access to all communications, all
information storage systems, on or around this planet. Yours was one of many
conversations I intercepted at that time. It was one of the more interesting
conversations, since I knew you were being flown to this base. Before you
landed, I caused a power overload in the area the Ruhar planned to put the four
of you, which forced them to use alternate locations as temporary cells. My
hope was one of you would be put in here, or an adjoining room."

"And your bad luck is that it was me?"
I asked skeptically.

"No, I was pleased when they put you in
there. Your three companions are in another building."

"You are pleased because I'm the ranking
officer?"

"You have got to be kidding me. Why would I
care that you're the alpha in your band of lice-infested monkeys? No, I am
pleased because, of the four of you, your service records indicate you have the
lowest IQ, as measured by your militaries."

I felt like stomping his beer can flat on the
floor. "So, you want the dumbest of the dumb monkeys?"

"You're all equally dumb to me. My point is
that, although you have the lowest IQ, you have been remarkably adaptable and
successful, Joe. There are many ways to measure intelligence, written tests
don't cover all parameters. I need someone who can get things done in the real
world, and you have."

"Thank you, I guess." Super smart or
not, he had a lot to learn about giving compliments. “Wait, how do you know all
this, my service record, all that?” I demanded.

“It’s easy, I’ve been reading your mail. Your
wireless data transmissions, and then I broke into your computer system.”

“Wait. That’s bullshit.” I didn’t know much
about how our encrypted radios worked, but I did remember some of the
stuff  I’d been told during training. “Those digital radios transmit in
bursts, and they use, uh, 4096 bit encryption, or something like that. The Army
says no way can that encryption be broken.”

“Oh, that is so cute! Your species is like a dog
who thinks he’s being clever by pooping behind the couch.”

That made me laugh. I’d had a dog like that.

Skippy continued. “4096 bit? Please, with a
system that rudimentary I don’t even bother to decrypt it, I just skip to the
end and read the file.”

“That’s impossible. It doesn’t even make sense.”

Skippy sighed. “Let me see if I can dumb this
down enough for you. Are you familiar with universal wavefunction theory?”

“Universal what?”

“Oh boy. This is going to be a challenge, even
for me. All right, have you at least heard of Schrodinger’s cat?”

“I’m a dog person. My mother is allergic to
cats.”

“Hopeless. Joe, it’s best for your species to
think that this is all magic, involving unicorns and fairy dust.”

“Whatever. I still don’t believe you.” Which was
a lie, since this shiny softball had clearly been reading super top secret
files. “Can you read my mind?”

“Ugh. Going in there would be like trying to
swim in an empty pool. I could shout, and all I’d hear is my voice echoing off
the inside of your skull. Seriously, you think anything in your head is worth
me looking at?”

Clearly, this conversation wasn’t going
anywhere, I decided to change the subject. "Hey, genius, if you can
intercept all communications on Paradise, can you tell me where Shauna Jarrett
is right now?" Yes, I should first have inquired about my fireteam, then
my old fireteam. I was thinking with my other head. So sue me.

"She's fine, right now she's at a logistics
base, waiting for a Ruhar dropship to land. The base has plenty of food, she's
better off than most of you monkeys."

It was good to hear that Shauna was safe,
thinking about her kind of made me ache to see her, I pushed that thought to
the back of my mind. Skippy told me that my fireteam was also doing well,
well-treated prisoners of the Ruhar along with the rest of the platoon.
Sergeant Koch, Cornpone and Ski were much the same, except that they were in a
convoy of three hamvees that had stopped in the middle of nowhere, waiting
orders. And Major Perkins was at UNEF HQ, which was hosting a group of
high-ranking Ruhar for surrender negotiations. That reminded me, I wanted to
know the tactical situation. "Tell me more about the situation
upstairs."

"Deputy Administrator Logellia told the
truth, but not the whole truth. The Ruhar and their patrons the Jeraptha have
destroyed an entire enemy battlegroup, it was a most impressive victory. The
Thuranin command has decided this sector is not worth fighting over any more,
they're letting the Ruhar recapture this planet. The Jeraptha and Ruhar victory
might have been aided by intelligence data provided by a source that is
unnamed, but whose name rhymes with, uh, let's say 'Stippy'. Enemy forces this
side of the closest wormhole are scattered and disorganized, they will be
limited to conducting raids on this planet."

"You gave the Ruhar intel on the
enemy battlegroup?"

"As I said, I have access to all
information storage systems and communications on and around this planet,
including military status and strategy. It was easy for me to plant intel in
their systems. More than that, the Ruhar think they lured the Thuranin into an
ambush because of their raid when you were at the Launcher, but the ambush
actually worked because I provided intel to the Thuranin that a large Jeraptha
force was regrouping in the area, and the Thuranin planned to ambush
them."

"You manipulated this whole situation? I
call bullshit on that."

"No bullshit, this is for realz, homeboy. I
needed the lizards and their creepy little Thuranin patrons away from this
planet. Why are you surprised that, oh, damn it, hamsters are coming into this
warehouse. Get back into your cell, I'll talk to you soon."

It wasn't soon, about three hours by my guess.
Hamsters came to bring me to the bathroom again, then I sat and thought long
and hard. Even with my, as Skippy said, limited intelligence. When he opened
the door again, I had a question ready for him. "Ok, Skippy, explain me
this. The Ruhar are back in charge, they're here to stay. Escaping from this
place only puts me in a larger prison that we call Paradise and the Ruhar call
Gehtanu. And at least here, I get nutrient mush to eat. So, instead of carrying
you out of here, why shouldn't I tell the Ruhar what you are, and maybe get
some consideration from them, some sort of better treatment for humans
here?"

"Oh, man, I was wondering when your slow
brain was going to figure that one out. It took you long enough."

"You knew I was, oh, forget it. Tell me why
I shouldn't do it."

"First, because if you tell the Ruhar, I'll
go dormant and they'll think you're lying, because to their scans, I'm an inert
lump of metal. Second, you're thinking way too small, Colonel Joe. An officer
of your rank should be thinking of how to rescue Earth from the Kristang."

"Right." I snorted. "Would it
work if I clicked my heels three times and said 'lizards get away from my
home'? Other than that, I got nothing."

"Toto, you weren't paying attention. You
need ruby slippers to click your heels, not combat boots."

"Dorothy wore the shoes, not Toto."

"Between the two, you remind me more of the
dog."

"Whatever. I assume you wouldn't have
mentioned it unless you have an actual plan, so talk, or I'm leaving you here.
Stealing you, and escaping from the Ruhar, can only cause me and UNEF trouble,
so you'd better have a really good offer for me."

Skippy altered his voice to sound like a
caricature of a smarmy game show host. "Behind Door Number One is an all
expense paid trip off this planet for me, you and a select group of your
closest friends. Door Number Two is an exciting luxury cruise back to Earth.
And Door Number Three is a way to permanently cut off the Kristang's access to
Earth. All you have to do, Colonel Joe Bishop, is choose one of these fabulous
prizes!"

"I-"

"Or all three. Hint, hint, I'd take all
three, if I were you."

"Now I know you're bullshitting me. If you
could get off this planet and travel to another star, you would have done that
a long time ago. And you told me you can't fly a ship, so how are we going
anywhere?" I felt smart for remembering that. "You got some 'splanin'
to do, Lucy."

"Ahh." Skippy sighed. "Joe, Joe,
you weren't paying attention again. Good thing there isn't a pop quiz later,
because you'd fail for sure. I said I can't operate aircraft or ships that I am
aboard. What I can do it unlock access to aircraft and ships, so you monkeys
can fly it for me. I can tell you how to program the autopilot, and you monkeys
press the control buttons. Uh!" He stopped me before I could speak, I
pictured him holding up an imaginary finger to shush me. "Shut up and let
me finish! If you keep interrupting me with stupid questions, we'll be here all
day. Here's the plan: we bust out of here, grab some guns because you monkeys
need shiny toys to play with, and steal a Ruhar dropship. One of you monkeys
flies us to a human base where we hit the drive-through for supplies and
volunteers to come with us, I figure twenty of you monkeys is plenty, any more
than that and I'd gag on the smell. Then we fly out of orbit to rendezvous with
a Kristang ship, I'll send a signal that we're lizards who captured a Ruhar
dropship so there will be a lizard ship waiting for us. We board and capture
the Kristang ship, jump it out to wherever the Thuranin star carrier is
waiting, board and capture that, and fly it to Earth. Voila! Plan
accomplished."

"You missed the part about cutting off the
lizard's access to Earth." Not that I believed any of his story.

"Oh, that. I'll shut down the wormhole
after we go through it."

"That simple?"

"That simple. I tell the wormhole mechanism
to go dormant. Presto! No more wormhole, no more pesky lizards coming through
it."

That didn't address the lizards who were already
on Earth. One problem at a time, right? "Why do you want to go to
Earth?"

"Earth? Earth is a flea and monkey infested
rathole, and those are the nice comments on the interstellar travel
websites. No, I do not want to go to Earth."

"So what do you get out of this?"

"Well, ha, ha, there is this one little
thing. A trifle, barely worth mentioning."

Oh, shit. What did he want? "Oh, please, do
mention it," I put as much sarcasm into my voice as I could muster.

"I want to find the Collective. That is a
communications web for AIs, built by the Elders. It's the only way for me to
connect with others of my own kind."

"There are others like you?"

"Like, me? No, for I am unique and special.
If you mean other AIs who served the Elders, yes."

"You want us to fly the ship for you, so
you can contact this Collective? Is this before, or after, we go to
Earth?"

"Before. I don't trust you monkeys to carry
out your part of the bargain. If we get to Earth first, you'll want to keep the
ship there so you can use it, or take it apart and figure out how it work. Good
luck with that, by the way, you brainless apes would have trouble
figuring out a Thuranin doorknob. No deal. We contact the Collective
first."

"You don't trust us monkeys, but we're
supposed to trust a talking beer can?"

"We can build trust. Let's start with this;
you fall backward and I'll catch you."

"Very funny."

"I meant it when I said we can build trust.
You don't tell the hamsters about me, and you don't tell your idiot UNEF
commanders, because they'll run right to the hamsters. In fact, don't tell
anyone about me, until we're at least in orbit. I'll get us out of here, you
get us supplies and a crew, because we need a boarding party to deal with the
natives on ships we capture."

"Let's say we do bust out of this
joint," Skippy had me talking like a 1930s gangster, "and we find a
Dodo and somehow get aboard and take it. The Ruhar are going to shoot it down
right away."

"How can they shoot down what they don't
see? I'll instruct their sensor network to ignore our hijacked Dodo. I can also
transmit the proper identification codes to both the Ruhar and the Kristang. Please,
Joe, don't insult me, I've planned all this. Me jamming sensor systems is
easier than you doing a two-piece jigsaw puzzle. Here's a hint for you; the tab
goes into the slot, and the side with the plain cardboard goes face down."

Without telling people I had an ancient AI
helping us, how was I going to convince people to volunteer? Was I supposed to
tell them I have a magic charm, shaped like a beer can? Then I thought for a
moment. I could build their trust the same way Skippy would build my trust, by
doing things. Escaping this makeshift prison, stealing a Ruhar Dropship and
flying it undetected to a human supply base would impress a lot of people. It
sure would impress me.

Something was nagging me. Supplies.
"Skippy, there's a hole in your plan. We humans need to eat food. There
isn't a lot of human food on this planet. And we can't take so much food with
us aboard a Dodo, that people here starve."

"Oh, that. Thuranin ships have food
synthesizers. I know human nutritional requirements. You only need to bring
snacks with you. And coffee, if you can find it. You're grumpy in the
morning."

"How do you know what I'm like in the
morning?" I asked warily.

"I've been watching you, and listening to
you, through your zPhone. I've been monitoring every human, hamster and lizard
on or near this planet. It's the most boring reality TV show ever, by
the way."

"Crap! The Kristang have been watching us,
even when we're not using our phones?" That thought scared the hell out of
me.

"No, that's just me, the lizards can't do
all of that. I've also been filtering which communications the lizards listen
to, because I didn't want them doing anything to screw with my plan. I gotta
tell you, Joe, when I first heard the Kristang was bringing a grubby low-tech
species here, I almost jumped for joy. This is what I've been waiting for,
longer than you can imagine. So, what do you say? Do we have a deal?"

Holy shit. Was I actually thinking of doing
this? For real? Just like that, he expected me sign up to his fantastical plan?
"Skippy, come on, I need time to think about this."

"Really? Considering your puny brain power,
you think time will help with the thinking process?"

Maybe he was right; I'd read studies that a
person's first reaction is more often than not the correct one, that your
subconscious brain makes decisions without you realizing it. The hamsters
locked me in a warehouse, where I found a magical talking beer can who had a
plan to rescue my home planet from the Kristang. Or he was just screwing with
me. He was, after all, an asshole.

While I was thinking, I poked around the
warehouse, looking for anything useful, while staying close enough to the door
that I could get back in my cell quickly if needed. "Skippy, what is all
this stuff?"

"Artifacts from the Elders, dug up by the
Kristang and the Ruhar. These artifacts are the real reason this planet is
worth fighting over. So far, they've only found a few trinkets they think are
useful. They found me, and had no idea that I'm by far the most valuable thing
in this sector of the galaxy. Dumb-ass lizards and hamsters."

I picked up an artifact like a box with a long
tube attached, it gave no indication what function it had once performed.
Carefully, I set it back down on the shelf, in the same dust void where it had
been, so the hamsters wouldn't know someone had been screwing with their stuff.
The question was not whether I wanted to rescue Earth. I wore the uniform, it
was my duty to act if I could. The question is whether I believed a being that
looked more like a Coors Light than an omnipotent AI. "Skippy, you've sold
me on this deal. I still think you're at least 90 percent bullshit, but if
there is any chance we can cut off Kristang access to Earth, I'm taking
it. I'm sure not doing anything useful on this planet." Earth was also my
best chance to get a cheeseburger within the next, say, century. "Tell me
your plan. Details."

"It's more of a concept than a plan."

"That's not how you build confidence,
Skippy."

"Your species has a saying: 'no plan
survives contact with the enemy'. That's decent wisdom, even for monkeys."

"Yeah, that's why the Army trains us to be
flexible and adapt." I explained. "You are still supposed to start
with a op plan."

"Maybe I didn't say it the right way. The
reason I can't tell you the plan is, there are several plans, depending on what
the lizards do. And the Thuranin. Like, when we get out of orbit and I whistle
for a ride, the next step is totally different depending on whether the
Kristang send one ship, or more than one."

"Now we're getting somewhere. Tell me our
options."

"This is complicated-"

"Skippy, before I was a colonel with a
cushy job planting potatoes, I was a grunt carrying a rifle in the Nigerian
jungle. That means I can instinctively smell when a hair-brained plan is going
to get people killed for nothing, people like me. You may be super intelligent,
but when was the last time you were in combat? Your plans rely on humans to
capture ships, right? I know what human soldiers can and can't do."

"Fair enough." And Skippy told me his
plan.

Holy shit. I really was going to do this.

Our chance to bust out of the joint came the
next morning. My sleep on a cot had been fitful. Within a short time, I'd gone
from imminent execution by the lizards, to launching a mission to SAVE THE
WORLD. Yes, the all caps are intentional, wouldn't you? It was amazing I got
any sleep at all. With a click, the door unlocked again, and Skippy called out.
"Hurry, it's time to go."

I looked at him carefully. "How do I pick
you up?" He probably wouldn't like me leaving greasy fingerprints on his
shiny chrome.

"It doesn't matter, stick me in a pocket
for now. We need to move. A Dodo landed and the hamsters have unloaded the
cargo, it's being prepped for return to orbit. There are only twenty two Ruhar
at this base right now, including the Dodo crew. I've locked twelve Ruhar in
buildings where they can't get out, the Dodo controls are disabled, and I'm
ghosting comms so the Ruhar in orbit think everything here is hunky-dory."

Hunky-dory? My grandparents used to say that.
Where did Skippy pick up old human slang? "Weapons. Even my limited
intelligence can figure that leaves plenty of hamsters I need to deal
with."

There was another click, and a big double set of
doors at the far end popped open. "Out that door, to the left, another
left, and there is an armory with all the Ruhar rifles you could want. The
firing controls on all other Ruhar weapons here have been fried, so nobody will
be shooting at you."

I'd believe that when I saw it. Skippy was heavy
for a beer can, he sat awkwardly in my right pants pocket. Running was
impossible unless I held onto him through the fabric. He was telling the truth,
we found an armory with racks of Ruhar rifles. "These all work?"

"Yes, yes, quickly now. Take four and I'll
disable the rest. There are more weapons aboard the Dodo that I've temporarily
disabled."

Ruhar rifles were shorter and heavier than our
M-4s. I couldn't carry four of them, plus Skippy. Fortunately, being an armory,
the room also contained backpacks. And the hamster type of zPhones, which I
also took four of. I stuffed three rifles into a backpack, and Skippy in a side
pocket, with his lid peeking out the top. "Safety is on the right side of
the rifle, slide it to red for active. On the left side is a setting for stun,
then two settings for particle beams, both single shot and rapid fire." He
explained. "Ruhar body armor absorbs and dissipates the effect of stun
beams, so aim for their heads. They can't shoot back, you should have plenty of
time to aim."

"Stun setting, got it." There was no
point killing hamsters. Killing would be counter-productive, as the humans
staying behind on Paradise needed Ruhar help to survive. If Skippy's escape
plan went south, I wanted to limit the blowback on UNEF. "Where next?"

"It would be advantageous for your three
friends to help us, but first we need to get to the building where they are
being held. Take a right, go straight down the hallway, last door on the left,
three Ruhar eating breakfast there."

"They don't know anything is wrong?"

"Not until they try to use their weapons.
The Dodo crew is running through preflight checks, they don't know their ship
is disabled yet."

It went like Skippy promised. I paused outside
the door, listening to squeaky hamster chatter, triple-checking my rifle was
set on stun and the safety was off. I shrugged off the backpack and set it in
the floor, took a deep breath, and dashed around the corner.

Three hamsters, in uniform but with no body
armor or weapons, were sitting at a table, eating hamster food and drinking
cups of hamster coffee. Two of them had their backs to me, I aimed at the one
facing me and pulled the trigger. The stun beam was only faintly visible, but
the rifle had a helpful laser targeting beam that Skippy should have told me
about. Stun beams worked like a taser was my guess, the Ruhar I shot jerked,
went rigid and slumped face forward to bang its head on the table. Switching
aim, I shot another one, but the third hamster was fast, she spun to the floor
and was almost behind a table when I shot her in the ass. She went down, too.
Warily, I approached them to check pulses. Alive. "How long does this
last?"

"Three minutes unconscious, five to regain
full function." Skippy answered from outside the door.

That wasn't long enough. I should have asked
Skippy that question. Or the super intelligent being should have thought it was
important for me to know. One of the hamsters had a folding knife, I used it to
cut off their shirts, slice the fabric into strips and bind their wrists,
ankles and to gag their mouths. The last one was moving when I was trying to
get his feet tied. "Skippy, can I stun them again?"

"A second time won't hurt, a third time
could cause brain damage."

To be safe, I shot them all again. Before
picking up my pack, I opened closets and found a handy coil of cord to bring
with me, frantically cutting it into one meter lengths. Getting to the building
where my companions were being held involved running in the open, made easier
because Skippy knew exactly where every hamster was and he was spoofing all
their cameras. Three more hamsters went down with stun shots, two of them had
body armor and rifles, which they pointed at me. Nothing happened when they
pulled the triggers. Puzzled and alarmed, they tried to run while checking their
rifles. They didn't get far, their body armor partly protecting them wasn't
enough against my careful aim. It's easy to take the time to aim when you know
the enemy can't shoot back.

It was the moment when two Ruhar soldiers
pointed rifles at me, completely confident in their body armor against a single
human, that I first felt I could trust Skippy. Unlocking doors was one level of
trick, remotely disabling selected weapons was on an entirely different level.
Maybe all that bullshit he told me wasn't entirely, you know, bullshit.

Skippy unlocked the doors to the temporary cells
where Adams, Desai and Chang were imprisoned as I ran into the building,
shouting for them to move. The alarm was out across the base anyway, two
hamster soldiers I'd stunned had been able to squeak something out loud before
they went down. Desai was out of her cell, trying to decide which way to run,
when she saw me and I tossed a rifle to her. She caught it and ran after me,
where we found Adams and Chang wrestling on the floor with a hamster soldier
who was wearing body armor and trying to keep the two humans from taking its
rifle. I put my rifle against it unarmored neck and pulled the trigger.

"Shit! Shit shit shit shit shit! Oh, fuck,
that hurts!" Adams had caught part of the stun charge by hanging onto the
hamster. She rose unsteadily to her knees, then her feet, hanging onto the
wall.

"It'll wear off. You all right?" I
asked.

"Squared away, sir." She gasped.

"Don't use that," I told Chang, who
had picked up the hamster's rifle, "it doesn't work. Use this one," I
pulled a rifle from my pack. "Safety switch here, and this one controls
stun and particle beam, leave it on stun."

"Got it. What's next?" Chang practiced
using the Ruhar rifle's selector switches.

"We jack a Dodo and dust off." I
explained hurriedly while binding the hamster's arms and feet. "Stun any
hamster you see along the way. If we have time, tie them up with this cord, the
stun effect only lasts a couple minutes."

Adams explained to our two companions who spoke
excellent English, but may not be current on US military slang. "We're
going to steal a Ruhar dropship ship and fly away."

"How do we do that?" Chang asked as we
ran out the door, right into a pair of hamster soldiers. They went down with
massed stun fire, not before clearly trying to shoot at us. "Their rifles
don't work." Chang observed suspiciously. "What is going on,
Bishop?" I noticed he didn't use my rank. You'd think getting sprung from
prison twice would leave a guy a little grateful.

"How did you get out, sir?" Adams
asked. I couldn't use the excuse of the Ruhar nuking the base this time.

"Dodo first, talk later." The Dodo was
on a landing pad, with one guard outside and one on the cargo ramp. The hamster
on the ramp had its gun cradled in its arms and was punching a button to close
the ramp, which wasn't moving. We took them both out, I ordered not to bother
tying them up. As we charged up the ramp, we could hear the engines whining up.
I wanted to ask Skippy if he was doing that. If not, the whole plan was fucked.
This Dodo was configured for cargo, the center was clear, seats were folded
into the walls on both sides.

No worries. The two pilots were squeaking away
excitedly, working controls that didn't respond. We stunned them both, and I
had Adams and Chang drag them down the ramp and clear. "Desai, you're a
pilot, take the lefthand seat."

Her eyes were like saucers. "I'm not this
kind of pilot!" She protested, waving her hand at the confusing controls.

Skippy, and the Army, didn't know squat about my
intelligence level, because I had a totally fucking brilliant thought right
then. I dug a hamster zPhone out of my pack. "Hacker, this is Planter,
come in please."

Skippy caught on right away. "Hacker here.
You in the Dodo yet?"

"Yes, how do we fly this thing?"

"Let me talk to the pilot." I handed
the zPhone and earpiece to Desai. Outside the cockpit window I could see three
Ruhar soldiers pointing their rifles at the Dodo, shaking the rifles in
frustration, and pointing again. It was time to leave, before they got the idea
to throw rocks in the engine intakes. I was pretty sure even Skippy couldn't
shut down a rock's operating system.

"Uh huh. Yes, I see it. Uh huh, uh huh,
yes. Oh, that's good." Desai exclaimed as the displays magically shifted
from Ruhar script to English, then Hindi. "Got it. Trying it now."
Her hand moved a lever, the engines roared, and the Dodo wobbled. "Strap
in!" She shouted. I took the righthand seat and Adams and Chang folded
down seats in the back. The ramp closed, Desai looked at me, gritted her teeth,
crossed her fingers, and we lifted off. She hit the fence on the way out,
scraping the bottom of the ship and snagging tree branches in the landing gear.
Skippy apparently told her to cycle the gear again, and we got a green light that
the gear doors were closed. "Yes. Now." She pressed a button and
lifted her hands from the controls. "Autopilot engaged."

Chang and Adams came forward to hold onto the
back of our seats. "Where are we going?" Chang asked.

I looked at Desai, who talked to Skippy.
"Hacker says the autopilot is taking us to a  UNEF supply base three
hundred klicks north of here."

"Who is Hacker?" Chang demanded.
"Bishop, we need to know what is going on. Why couldn't those Ruhar use
their rifles?"

"That's Colonel Bishop to you, Lieutenant
Colonel Chang." I was pissed. Not pissed at him, pissed at being caught in
a lie and not having a solid way out of it. "Hacker is a UNEF cyber
unit," a lie, "I was contacted with a plan to get us out of
there," truth, "it's part of an effort to strike back at the
lizards," truth again. Two out of three ain't bad, I was on a roll.

"The Kristang are our allies." Chang
said.

"Fuck that. Sir." Desai shot back
angrily.

"Chang, if you still believe the Kristang
are our allies, we can drop you off somewhere." I needed to know if he was
going to be a problem.

"I haven't believed they are our allies
since the first month we got here," Chang explained, "that doesn't
change the fact that we're military officers, and our chain of command takes
orders from the Kristang. Or the fact that they control Earth. And that we
don't have a way to get home, or do anything about the Kristang when we get
there."

"We're working on it." I said
truthfully. "I don't know how much I believe this Hacker," true
again, "what I do know is whoever it is, we got this far," close
enough to truth. "The next step is we load up on supplies and some
volunteers. After that, we're going to board and capture a Kristang
warship."

"You have got to be kidding me, sir."
Adams gave me an unbelieving look. "How do we know this Hacker is-"

"Adams, if I told you yesterday morning
that we would escape from prison twice, steal Ruhar weapons and fly off in a
Dodo, would you have believed me then? Have some faith, it's all we've got out
here."

All three of my companions were quietly
grumbling as the Dodo flew its programmed course to wherever we were going. We
had a scare as a pair of Vultures went by in the opposite direction, waggling
their wings slightly in greeting. Skippy must have talked to them on the radio,
because they slid right by. That impressed my skeptical friends, even Chang.

"You received orders from this
Hacker?" Chang asked suspiciously. "Why would UNEF assign you, or us,
to this mission? We were in prison at the time. We're not a special forces
unit. This doesn't make any sense."

"They picked us because we were in the
right place at the right time, no other reason. Look, Colonel Chang, UNEF is a
unified command, but Hacker is US Army, and you're not cleared for
access." Chang was a good officer, I didn't like lying to him, to any of
them. "When we get to the supply base, you can get off there if you want.
This is a volunteer mission."

"This mission is going to hit the
Kristang?" Desai asked.

"Hit them hard, and they won't see it coming."
If Skippy was telling the truth, all the Kristang would know is the wormhole to
Earth suddenly stopped working.

Desai didn't hesitate. "I'm in, sir."

"Me too." Adams agreed angrily,
subconsciously touching her right bicep, where I'd seen she had an ugly scar
from the Kristang, the brief glimpse I'd had reminded me of an electrical burn.

Chang considered for a moment, then gave me a
smile that I couldn't interpret. "When he was told that an officer was
brilliant, and brave, Napoleon is supposed to have said 'yes, but is he lucky?'
Bishop, I don't know why, but you somehow have a talent for being in the right
place at the right time. I'm going to trust you on this. I'm in, also, whatever
this mission is."

Great. I had three volunteers, all I needed was twenty
more. Twenty strangers, who would be asked to trust me after our Dodo fell out
of the sky into their laps. I was going to need backup. "Hacker instructed
me not to give a full briefing until the team has left orbit, because if this
op goes south, we can't risk the lizards knowing UNEF, humans, were involved.
I'm going to trust you this far; if we're successful, we're going to shut down
the wormhole that gives the lizards, and the Thuranin, access to Earth. That
means Earth will be back in Ruhar territory, and too far from a wormhole for
either side to bother sending ships." I saw how shocked everyone's faces
were, I knew the feeling. "This mission isn't about hitting the lizards,
it isn't about payback," I watched Desai's eyes when I said that,
"it's about rescuing Earth."

"Shit," Adams breathed softly.

"We can do that? You have a plan?"
Chang asked.

"There is a plan, yes. We wouldn't have
gotten this far without the means to hack into enemy systems, and one of those
systems is the wormhole network."

The rest of the short flight was without
incident. While the autopilot was on, Skippy tried to familiarize Desai with
the controls, and the rest of us explored the ship for anything useful. We
cleared out three bins that contained hamster food, to dump after we landed.
"You understanding how to fly this thing, Desai?"

She looked up at me and held her thumb
horizontally, neither up nor down. "Pilots have a saying, sir, 'if I can
get it started, I can get it in the air'. That's supposed to be a joke. Hacker
explained the basic controls to me, but I would probably have crashed it if we
weren't on autopilot."

"Can you get us in the air again?"

"I did it once." She said without
confidence. The autopilot handled the landing perfectly, while Desai watched
and pantomimed using the controls.

"Damn it, the hamsters are here already,
sir." Adams reported from glancing out the  window. "Six
hamsters with rifles, waiting for us."

It wasn't surprising the Ruhar had occupied a
major UNEF supply base. Over a zPhone I said "Hacker, we have unfriendly
company here."

"Roger that, Planter, they're expecting a
squad of hamster soldiers on your Dodo. There are only six Ruhar on base
currently. Be advised their weapons are now disabled, over." Skippy was
enjoying himself.

We started the rear ramp lowering as a
distraction, then popped the side door open and the four of us poured out, guns
blazing with stunner shots. All six hamsters went down quickly, completely
caught by surprise. We kicked their weapons away and were tying them up, when a
group of unarmed humans approached us. Their leader was a female US Army Major,
Simms according to her nametag. "What the hell are you doing? We have a
truce with the Ruhar!"

I stood up and saluted. "Colonel Joe
Bishop. Yes, the Barney guy." Man, that was getting old. "We're not
fighting the Ruhar, we commandeered one of their ships," I pointed to the
Dodo, "and we need to load up on supplies. Without stupid questions from
the hamsters here."

Simms cocked her head. I was still wearing
Kristang pants with black and yellow stripes, and my uniform top was still
splattered with dried Kristang blood. Adams and Desai were similarly
mismatched, and wore rags instead of shoes. Chang's face was bruised, with cuts
the Ruhar had hurriedly attended to. And I had two sprained fingers. Maybe
broken. "Colonel Bishop, sir, last we heard you were a prisoner of the
Kristang."

"They let me out early for bad behavior.
It's above your pay grade, Major. We're a special forces unit, we need supplies
and volunteers for a raid on the Kristang."

"Raid the Kris- sir? I haven't received
orders from UNEF HQ about any special forces unit."

"How did you hear about a truce?" I
asked. I hadn't heard anything. Of course, I'd been in prison, again.

She tapped her zPhone earpiece. "Announcement
from UNEF last night. We can't get through to confirm, and these Ruhar arrived
here yesterday and rounded up our weapons."

"Check your messages again, there should be
orders for you to assist us." Skippy was listening, if he was as fast and
powerful as he boasted, Major Simms would soon have such a message.

"Sir?" She looked up from her zPhone
screen, surprised. "I do have orders. How did-"

"Explanations can wait, we're on a tight
schedule. How many people you got here?"

"Sixty two, mostly supply corps. Eighteen
of them infantry, of all nationalities."

"Good. I need twenty or so volunteers,
preferably with combat experience, for a special forces mission offworld. And
supplies; weapons, ammo, food, medical."

Simms didn't appear to be totally convinced yet.
"This is highly unusual. You're going to attack the Kristang, not the
Ruhar?"

"Major, we're ground pounders on an alien
planet that changes management based on who has the bigger fleet in orbit at
the moment, and the part you think is unusual is a special forces mission? The
orders you got from UNEF HQ, they contain the proper authentication codes,
right?" Of course Skippy had that covered, somehow. "Yes? Then you
can get on board, or get out of the way." I turned to my companions. "Colonel
Chang, Staff Sergeant Adams, see what supplies they have here, get us loaded
ASAP. Captain Desai, continue your flight, uh," it probably wasn't a good
idea to use the word 'training' in front of people who I hoped would volunteer,
"preparations." She knew what I meant. I paused a moment while Skippy
spoke softly into my earpiece. "And these Ruhar rifles," I nudged one
with my foot, "are operational again, so we'll be taking them with us.
Major Simms, assemble your people."

To her credit, Simms adapted quick. She gave me
a crisp salute and trotted off, shouting orders. Within five minutes, most of
the people on the base were milling around behind the Dodo, I stood at the top
of the ramp so people could see me. The base wasn't large, consisting mostly of
two long warehouses of a type of precast concrete stuff, a couple outbuildings,
tents for the humans stationed here, landing pads, and a single long runway.
This wasn't one of the huge UNEF supply dumps that were clustered around the
base of the space elevator, this was a regional logistics hub. It suddenly
dawned on me that I had to give the speech of my life, and I hadn't prepared
anything to say. "Good morning!" I said in a loud voice. "I am
Colonel Joe Bishop. Some of you know who I am. For those of you who don't know
me, I captured a Ruhar soldier at my hometown in Maine, shot down two Ruhar
Whales at the Launcher, and recently was a prisoner of the Kristang because I
refused their orders to murder hamster civilians." In this situation, a
bit of bravado and reminding people why I was famous worked to my advantage.
"We thought the Kristang were our saviors, our allies, when they chased
the Ruhar away from their raid on Earth. We now know that the Ruhar only hit
our industrial infrastructure because the Kristang were on their way to conquer
Earth, and the Ruhar wanted to sour the prize for them. You've all heard rumors
about fortune cookies from Earth, well, I don't know what you've heard second
or third hand, so I'm giving it to you straight here. The lizards are raping our
home planet. I don't know if the Ruhar are potential allies, or neutral, or as
bad as the Kristang, but I do know this: the lizards are our
enemies." That brought loud muttering from the crowd. "When I was
promoted, I went upstairs to meet the lizards, one them got drunk and told me,
and Lt Colonel Chang, exactly what they think of humanity. The lizards think
we're weak, that we're soft, that we're ignorant cavemen who are good for
nothing but grunt work and slaves. UNEF had me planting potatoes, because the
lizards don't want to spend any more money on bringing supplies from Earth,
because we're disposable. The lizards had me and Chang scheduled for a firing
squad. The women, you've heard what Kristang think of females, our women were
tortured and about to be hanged, when a Ruhar raid freed us from prison."
That remark caused Simms' eyes to harden and her mouth to draw into a tight
line. I knew right then that she was sold on whatever I wanted. Adams came
trotting through the crowd and up the ramp to me, giving me a firm salute.

"Supplies are thin, sir, but
adequate."

"Good. I see you found boots."

She glanced at her feet with a grin. "And
pants, sir," she added with a meaningful look at my baggy Kristang
trousers.

"Listen up, people!" I addressed the crowd
again. "This isn't another Ruhar raid, the hamsters are here to stay this
time. We have solid intel that the Ruhar and their allies defeated a combined
Thuranin-Kristang battlegroup, and that the Thuranin are pulling out of this
area; they're no longer supporting the Kristang effort to keep this planet.
That means the mission UNEF came here for is over, and that we have no way to
get supplies from Earth, or get back to Earth. We're cut off. UNEF's new
mission is survival; we plant and harvest crops, or we starve. Humans on this
planet are farmers now, not soldiers." This being a logistics base, people
here likely had seen the effects of our dwindling shipments of supplies before
anyone in the field noticed.

"UNEF is putting together a rush special
forces mission to hit the Kristang, we need volunteers. Some of you saw that
the hamsters here were not able to use their weapons when we landed. That's
UNEF, they have a way to hack into Ruhar and Kristang systems." True
enough, I was part of UNEF, and my way of hacking was to ask Skippy to do it. I
had to be careful what I said about the mission, the Ruhar would be questioning
very closely the people we left behind. "We commandeered a Dodo and
spoofed Ruhar air traffic control systems so they don't see us. UNEF doesn't
know how long this window of opportunity will last, so we're on a tight
schedule. Here's what I can tell you about the op: if this works, we're going
into orbit, or beyond, to hit the Kristang hard. Those people who come with us
will get a full briefing once we've left the atmosphere. This is an opportunity
to make a real difference in this war." If I had sprouted wings and flown
into the air, people might have been less surprised. "The combat mission
here," I pointed to the ground, "is finished, if you want an
opportunity to hit back at the lizards, it's with us."

I paused to check faces in the crowd. This was
all too much, too fast. Not long ago, we were all blissfully alone in the
universe, then Earth was attacked, and UNEF formed and we were quickly whisked
away to another planet. Until a few months ago, we thought we were performing
well on a tough mission for our allies, then the fortune cookies arrived and we
discovered the Kristang were no friends of humanity. And after the big Ruhar
raid when I was at the Launcher, we knew the Kristang weren't able to ensure
our security on Paradise. Just yesterday morning, the Kristang were still
firmly in charge of the planet, now I was telling them that was over,
permanently. And that UNEF was stuck here for a very long time. And that,
somehow, as a suspiciously well-timed miracle, I had a way to get us off the
planet and hit back. If I was in the crowd, listening to some joker telling me
all this, I would have called bullshit on it. I could see people were shuffling
their feet, whispering to each other, trying to decide what to do.

A loud voice called out in Chinese, or I assumed
it was Chinese; Chang had returned from the warehouse. Three soldiers in
Peoples Liberation Army uniforms turned when Chang spoke. Right then I realized
they might not have understood a single word I said. Chang made his way through
the crowd to them, they spoke Chinese for a moment, then the four of them
walked to the base of the ramp. "Three more volunteers, Colonel Bishop."

That put me in an uncomfortable situation, I
gestured him to walk up the ramp. "Colonel Chang, this is a volunteer
mission, I don't want you ordering people to go. What did you say to
them?"

Chang blinked, surprised. "I told them this
mission will be their only opportunity to do their proper duty and serve the
people of China. They all volunteered."

Oh, what the hell. He'd told the truth. The
mission was important, and we needed soldiers. "Good enough."

"Shit." Adams said loudly. "Sir,
we need to go to a base that has real soldiers and Marines, not these paper
pushers."

Maybe my speech was good, and people were
feeling trapped on Paradise and wanted a way to do something, and the
crowd only needed an extra push. Maybe seeing all three Chinese join up
motivated them. Maybe all they ever needed was a Marine to shame them into
moving.

"Oh, hell no. I'm not standing in
line behind a jarhead." Major Simms stepped forward. After her, we got a
flood of volunteers. Of the eighteen infantry, seventeen volunteered; one had a
sweetheart on Paradise and didn't want to leave him to the unknown future here.
I took all seventeen infantry, plus three more, that made our ad hoc special
forces unit twenty four people strong. Twenty four people, and one shiny
talking beer can.

CHAPTER ELEVEN    AWAY
BOARDERS

Standing in the cockpit doorway while
Desai ran up the engines to test for takeoff, I scanned the faces of our task
force, or whatever we were. We truly had an international, multiracial rainbow
group. In addition to me, there were nine US Army, which included Major Simms,
a Sergeant, three Specialists and four privates.  Staff Sergeant Adams was
our lone US Marine, and we had one US Air Force Sergeant who handled Buzzard
maintenance on Paradise, I figured he may come in handy if something on a ship
needed fixing. Four Chinese including Lt Colonel Chang. Three Indian Army
including our only pilot. Four Brits including a Sergeant; one of the British
privates had taken flying lessons in a single engine plane, so logically I
assigned him as copilot to Captain Desai. He had looked terrified when he took
the right-hand seat in the cockpit. Oh, and one French Army, a Lt. Renee Giraud.
Giraud was attached to a parachute commando unit, and was kind of like a French
version of an Army Ranger. I’d worked with French special forces in Nigeria,
and those guys are serious bad-asses, I was happy to have Renee on the team.
When he signed up, he told me he wasn’t sure whether my speech was a complete
line of bullshit, but he wanted action and there wasn’t any on Paradise. I
appreciated the honesty.

Twenty four people, hastily pulled
together. Five women, nineteen men.  Five officers, five sergeants,
fourteen enlisted. Five nationalities, which in some cases was a bit of a vague
definition. One of our US Army Specialists was an Indian American named Randy
Putri, and if you looked at him you’d think he belonged to the Indian Army
contingent, but he spoke zero words of Hindi, and he talked with the Cajun
accent he’d grown up with in New Orleans. Our US Air Force Sergeant was named
Chung, and she was Chinese American. Chung did speak a bit of Chinese, but the
little she knew was Cantonese, not Mandarin, so she couldn’t communicate with
the Chinese nationals any better than I could. Sergeant Reginald Thomson of the
British Army had the dark skin of his Kenyan grandparents, but when he opened
his mouth he spoke like Sherlock Holmes or one of those upper-crust royalty on
a BBC TV show. One of the other Brits had an accent so thick I wasn’t sure at
first that he was speaking English at all; their slang is totally
incomprehensible. Captain Desai for some bizarre reason seemed to understand
his accent Ok, she could act as interpreter if needed. On the subject of
interpreters, Lt Colonel Chang and one of the other Chinese spoke English, the
other two were going to rely on their zPhones as translators. Skippy, of
course, spoke every human language perfectly, that annoying little beer can.

Twenty four people, several
nationalities, genders, specialties and experiences, and I had to make them
into an effective fighting force, quickly. Without knowing exactly what the
mission was.

Most worrying was that not one of our
twenty four people was a medic. And the medical supplies we'd taken aboard were
pretty basic. Things could go south, real fast, and there wasn't much we'd be
able to do for the wounded.

Captain Desai got us off the ground
safely, and the autopilot took over from there, lifting the Dodo on its tail
out of the atmosphere. Gravity gradually dropped away, and people adjusted,
popping antinausea meds as needed. Skippy, I mean to say, 'Hacker', had Desai
reprogram the autopilot several times to avoid flying near Ruhar spacecraft,
there was a lot of traffic around Paradise. According to the cockpit displays,
and Skippy whispering in my ear, we slid right through a Ruhar frigate squadron
without them investigating, challenging or even noticing us, their sensors had
been infiltrated by Skippy and instructed to ignore us. However he did it, it
worked, impressively. When Desai reported that we'd exceeded escape velocity,
left orbit and were comfortably on our own in interplanetary space, I decided
it was time to address the crew, who were looking anxiously at me. I floated in
the cockpit doorway, so everyone could hear me.

“Full disclosure time, everyone.
I couldn’t brief  you on our mission until we left orbit, because we can’t
risk either the Kristang or the Ruhar knowing what we’re doing. The truth is,”
I gave Adams a guilty look, “I haven’t been completely honest with you, for
operational security reasons. Hacker is not a code name for a UNEF cyber
outfit. Hacker is, uh, here, I’ll show you.” I pulled Skippy out of my pack and
made the mistake of holding him up for view without first looking at him.

Big mistake.

That smart-ass little jerk had
transformed his surface from shiny chrome to a full color imitation of a Bud
Light Lime can. I didn’t know he could change his appearance! Except for not
having a pull tab on top of his lid, and his bottom being almost flat, he could
have fooled me.

The faces in front of me changed in a
blur from wonderment to amusement to horror while I watched in my own horror,
as they realized they’d gone into space with a raving madman. A madman who had
an imaginary friend in the shape of a beer can.  “No no no no no!”  I
waved my left hand while frantically shaking Skippy with my right. “Skippy,
damn it, this isn’t funny!” Adams was bracing to fly across the compartment at
me, and the look on her face was anything but friendly.  “Skippy, damn it
you little asshole!”

“Hahahahahahahahahahaha!” Skippy
laughed maniacally, and changed his surface so he was now a Coors Light silver
bullet can. “Heighdee-ho, everyone! I am Skippy the omnipotent. Hahahahha! Oh,
man, you should have seen your face, Colonel Joe. That was priceless.”

I took a couple deep breaths, staring
at Adams, who was still trying to decide whether to choke me. “For all his
intelligence, Skippy is a hundred percent asshole.”

“True, true.” Skippy admitted. “Is
this better?” He reverted to featureless chrome.

Chang fairly growled. “Who the fuck is
Skippy?”

“You got some ‘splainin’ to do.” Adams
said without a trace of humor.

I noticed neither of them added ‘sir’.

I took a deep breath. “This is Skippy,
his code name is Hacker,” I pointed to his shiny self. “What looks like a beer
can here is an artificial intelligence-“

“A very small manifestation of me in
local spacetime-“ Skippy interrupted.

“Skippy, will you shut up a minute? An
AI that was built by the beings we know as the Elders or the First Ones,
whatever they’re called. The super civilization who inhabited the galaxy before
the Rindhalu, the beings who built the wormholes. They left their physical
existence a long time ago, and they left behind the Sentinels. And they left
this AI, who is millions of years old.  An immensely powerful AI, he
released the controls on this Dodo, he disabled the Ruhars’ weapons, he is
right now masking us from the hamsters’ sensors and transmitting the proper IFF
codes to the Kristang. He is how we are going to board and capture a Kristang
ship, do the same thing to a Thuranin star carrier, and then we’re going to
disable the wormhole near Earth, so neither the Ruhar nor the Kristang can have
access to our home any more.”

“Holy fucking shit.” Simms breathed in
disbelief.

“Yeah, that was my reaction when I was
locked up in a warehouse by the Ruhar, and a beer can on a dusty shelf started
talking to me.”

Adams wasn’t convinced. “Sir, I’m
trying to wrap my head around this. We’re trusting our future, and the fate of
humanity, to a talking beer can?”

“When you put it that way-“

“A super smart, nay, impossibly,
inconceivably smart, talking beer can!” Skippy protested.

“Adams, forget what Skippy looks like
to us. You saw what happened back at the warehouse, the Ruhar couldn’t use
their weapons, but we could. That wasn’t me, it wasn’t UNEF, it was Skippy
here. Skippy hacked into this Dodo so we could fly it, that sure wasn’t me and
it wasn’t UNEF. We just boosted out of orbit, right through the middle of a
Ruhar fleet, and they didn’t see us. Skippy has hacked into the Ruhar sensor systems
and instructed them to ignore us. No way could UNEF do any of this. Skippy is
the ultimate weapon, our ace in the hole, and humanity for sure by God needs an
ace right now. With Skippy, we can disable, shut down, turn off, the only
wormhole that allows the lizards access to Earth.”

Adams wasn't convinced. “How do we
know this isn’t a trick by the lizards, that this AI isn’t working for them?”

“Adams, if you can think of anything,
anything at all, that the lizards would gain from helping us escape from the
Ruhar and steal one of their Dodos, please tell me. Because I can’t think of
anything. Skippy is going to build our trust the same way we’re going to build
his; by doing, one action at a time. He got me, you, Chang and Desai out of
prison, and now we’re off the surface of Paradise. If we were by ourselves,
we’d still be trying to figure how to open the door on this thing.” I pointed
to the Dodo’s deck. “I did consider maybe this is a Ruhar trick, to get us
aboard a Kristang ship, maybe the hamsters planted a bomb on this thing, this
particular Dodo. Again, I can’t think of why the Ruhar would go through all the
trouble. This war has been going on for a very long time without humans
involved. They don’t need us; the lizards, the hamsters, the Thuranin, none of
them need us primitive humans for anything. Maybe this is all an elaborate ruse
for some reason we can’t see. Ok, maybe it is. Or maybe Skippy is telling the
truth, and we have a chance to shut down the wormhole that gives the lizards
access to Earth. If there is any chance that is true, any chance at all,
we need to take it. We’ll know whether we can trust Skippy when we have control
of a Kristang warship. It’s as simple as that.” Skippy had remained
uncharacteristically silent the whole time I’d been speaking. Part of being
super smart is knowing when to keep your mouth shut and let the other guy talk.

Chang, who had remained silent, but
had been exchanging increasingly tense looks with his three Chinese soldiers,
cleared his throat. “Colonel,” he said with emphasis, “we volunteered for this
mission, without knowing the details. I expected the plan was to attack the
Kristang. Now you are telling us that our mission is to save the world?
To rescue Earth from the Kristang?”

“Uh,” it sounded so dramatic when he
said it that way, “yes. Yes, we’re going to shut down the wormhole that allows
the Kristang access to earth. The situation will go back to the way it was
before the wormhole shift,” I assumed everyone had heard the rumors about that
by now, “Earth will be all by itself in the middle of nowhere, and this war
will go on without humans.”

“Save the world?” Simms repeated
incredulously.

“That’s the idea.” I nodded. "I
know it's kind of a cliché, but-"

"No, save the world works for
me." Simms said thoughtfully. "Shit. Is this real?"

Chang clicked his zPhone off and spoke
briefly to his three soldiers in Mandarin, then turned back to me. “Colonel, I
find all this difficult to believe. However, not long ago, I was stationed at
an army outpost on the Mongolian border. Now, I am in an alien space ship, a
thousand lightyears from home. What is possible has been redefined so many
times, that I’m prepared to accept almost anything. So, if this mission has
even a small chance to free our planet from the Kristang, we will do our
utmost.”

Damn, his English was better than my
own. “Thank you, Colonel Chang.” I scanned the other faces.

Giraud gave a Gallic shrug. “We’re
going to kill Kristang, no? I am in, as you say.”

Simms and Adams exchanged a glance.
“Oh, what the hell, sure, us too.” Simms declared. “Colonel, this is it, right,
the whole truth, everything? No more surprises? We’re allied with a talking
beer can, to shut down the wormhole?  Now that we’re out here, I expect
the need for Opsec is out the window.” She looked meaningfully at the airlock
door. “If that expression can be used in space.”

I nodded. “You know everything that I
know. I can’t promise there won’t be more surprises, but they’ll be surprises
to me too.”

“Why us, sir?” Sergeant Thomson asked
in his oh-so-proper British accent. “Why not bring this, Skippy, to UNEF HQ,
and let them sort it out? Send up a proper special ops force, SAS, all that?”

Chang and Simms both made a
disparaging snort at the same time. “Sergeant,” Chang said, “UNEF would first take
a week, at least, to figure what to do. Then, because they are risk averse,
they’d likely turn our AI friend over to the Ruhar, or the Kristang, whoever is
in charge of the planet at the time, in hopes of gaining favor. It wouldn’t
matter anyway, once this became known at UNEF HQ, there is no way it could be
kept secret long. The hamsters and lizards would know about it quickly.”

“Also,” I added, “we have to go now,
to take advantage of the situation. The Ruhar are busy consolidating their hold
over the planet, ships are jumping in and out overhead, and there’s still a
remnant Kristang force hanging around. If we wait, the Kristang will pull back,
and then we’d need to raid the Ruhar to capture a ship. The Ruhar have too many
ships here supporting each other for us to sneak away with one.”

“Right.” Thomson seemed satisfied.
“One more question, if I may; why is the AI called Skippy?” From the nodding
heads around the Dodo, that seemed to be a universal question.

“Because,” I held Skippy in front of
my face and scowled at him, “as I said, he is super smart, super powerful, and
a super asshole. He wanted to be referred to as the Lord God Almighty, so I
named him Skippy, to remind me what a shithead he is.”

“Guilty as charged.” Skippy said
cheerily.

“He doesn’t mind being called, uh,
Skippy?” Adams asked pointedly.

“I don’t mind being called
Skippy, you don’t need to ask Colonel Joe, I am a person.” Skippy said. “No, I
don’t care what you pack of flea-bitten monkeys call me.”

“Monkeys?” Putri asked. US Army Specialist
Randy Putri, not Private Asok Putri of the Indian army. I know, it’s confusing
for me, too. I was going to break tradition and call them by their first names
in the future.

“He thinks he’s being nice by
considering us monkeys,” I explained, “to him, we’re all bacteria.”

“Ha!” Skippy scoffed. “You aspire
to be as smart as bacteria.”

“Right, then.” Thomson said flatly.
“This bugger is a proper arsehole.”

Adams stuck her tongue out at Skippy,
which is a gesture I never expected from her. “What’s next, sir?”

I inwardly sighed with relief.
“Skippy, can you load schematics of likely Kristang ships on everyone’s
zPhones, and also show it on the display here?”

“Done.” He responded simply, and the
display on the bulkhead behind me came to life. “This is a typical Kristang
frigate, the type of small ship that most likely will be sent in to pick us
up-“

A real colonel was responsible for commanding a
brigade-size force, that meant planning offensive and defensive operations of
several thousand soldiers, including all the training, logistics,
communications and coordination with air power, artillery and other units in
the area. Making and executing big plans, involving thousands of people and
enormous firepower. A real colonel had training, formal and practical
education, and years of experience before assuming command. I had none of that.

What I did have was hard-earned experience in
small unit combat, experience in the bush, and more importantly, villages and
towns of northern Nigeria. Taking a Kristang ship was small unit combat, and I
figured clearing a ship compartment by compartment was similar to fighting
house to house and room to room. The US military used to call that type of
warfare Military Operations in Urban Terrain, and military bases across the USA
contain fake villages for training troops how to fight in such confined spaces.
During the Cold War, these fake villages were set up to resemble eastern
Europe, with signs on streets and buildings in a vaguely Slavic or Germanic
language. Recently the focus has been on the Middle East, and we soldiers gave
the training towns politically incorrect names like Hadjistan. Whatever the
name, or the grand scenario the towns were built for, they trained soldiers how
to clear an area building by building and room by room; the type of fighting
where you often couldn't see who you were shooting at, and calling in Apache
gunships meant pulling back quickly so the Hellfire missiles didn't hit your
own troops.

To plan our attack, and provide hasty training
to our crew, I assigned Lt Giraud. Chang, Simms and Desai were senior to Giraud
in rank, but Chang's experience was in artillery, not infantry. Simms was a
logistics officer, and Desai a pilot. You might figure that Sergeant Adams, as
a Marine, was the logical person to plan an operation for boarding an enemy
ship. Which would have been a good thought, back in the War of 1812. The US
Marine Corps was a little rusty on the whole 'away boarders' thing. That left
me and Giraud as infantry officers, and Giraud was French special forces. What
he knew about small unit tactics, and what I didn't, kind of scared me, special
forces guys were hard-core. I kept having to remind him that our assault force
was not the elite special forces killers he was used to working with, and that
we'd be operating in zero gravity, with no training and with people we mostly
didn't know. We decided that we would largely have to wing it in our attack,
because there were too many unknowns. What I wanted was for me to lead a force
to capture the ship's control center, which was aft of the bridge on most
Kristang ships, while Giraud's group captured the engineering section, before
the Kristang there could damage the drive units or reactor, or even
self-destruct the ship. That plan was universally shot down by everyone
involved, including Skippy.

"Colonel," Adams declared, arms folded
across her chest in a gesture that was not easy in zero gravity, "You
can't go racing around the enemy ship. You're the commander. You need to remain
behind, and command."

"She's right, Colonel Joe," Skippy
admonished me. "I can tell you where your people and the Kristang are, and
what they're doing, and I can control parts of the ship, but I need someone to
tell me what you want me to do. And where your people should go. My genius
doesn't include coordinating a troop of monkeys in combat. You know what your
people can do, and more importantly, what they can't do."

After protesting that my experience was at the
fireteam and squad level, and that Giraud would be a better candidate to remain
with Skippy and coordinate the attack, I was forced to concede they were right.
In the end, the unspoken factor that decided the issue was that I was
comfortable with Skippy, he was comfortable with me, and no one else wanted the
task of dealing with the twitchy alien AI.

Giraud made our crew mentally run through a
simulated attack on a typical Kristang frigate, using Skippy's best guess of
where the Kristang aboard would be, and what systems aboard the frigate he
could control. It surprised me when Skippy said he couldn't seize total control
of the frigate's computer systems, at least not right away. The Kristang very
deliberately and carefully had built their ships to prevent the possibility of
an enemy remotely hacking into their computers, on account that they were
afraid of their patrons the cyborg Thuranin doing exactly that. Because the
Thuranin had done that before, and the Kristang weren't going to fall victim to
that trick a second time, or, as Skippy reported, more like the hundredth time.
The Kristang had gotten better at hardening their computer systems from
intrusion, but their technology was still far enough below the level of the
Thuranin that the Kristang weren't yet capable of even imagining some of the
technology the Thuranin routinely used. Fortunately for us, Skippy's technology
was as far beyond the Thuranin as the Thuranin were beyond humans. Or, as
Skippy of course said it so tactfully, a treeful of monkeys.

The key to the whole plan was that we needed to
literally plug Skippy into the ship, to establish a physical connection to the
ship's network for him. Once he was in, he'd have access to the whole ship, and
could download a subroutine of himself into control nodes all over the ship.
But we first needed to locate what was basically a wall jack aboard the
frigate, and plug a zPhone into it. Fortunately, the proper cables and
connectors were aboard the Dodo. Unfortunately, getting to the wall jack
closest to the frigate's two landing bays was going to be a bitch. And Skippy's
trick of disabling weapons, like he did with Ruhar rifles, wouldn't work with
the Kristang, because the Kristang didn't trust that type of technology, and
their rifles mostly did without fancy computer chips.

Giraud's plan was to throw the entire boarding
force of twenty two people into the effort to establish a physical connection,
after which our crew would split into two groups, one led by Giraud and one led
by Chang. With Giraud, I assigned Sergeant Thompson, while Sergeant Adams was
going to Chang and the Chinese sergeant. I could see people were totally keyed
up, completely understanding that jacking a zPhone into a data port was life
and death not only for us, but potentially for all of humanity. Rousing
speeches were not needed. I ordered everyone to eat and drink something, and
relax. Giraud agreed, adding that he wanted the crew to memorize the layout of
typical Kristang frigates and destroyers, which helpfully each came in only two
major types. Picture the layouts in your mind, he advised, over and over, and
over and over again, and then repeat, until it became instinct, ingrained in
your spatial memory.

"I think we have as good a plan as we'll
get." I told Giraud as we both ate a Hooah! energy bar. The waiting, with
the Dodo coasting away from Paradise, hoping to get picked up by an enemy
warship, was wearing on everyone's nerves.

Giraud gave an exaggerated shrug. "Plans
are a start, no more."

"No plan survives contact with the enemy,
right? Von Moltke said that." I'd learned that from the Army somewhere
along the way.

Giraud wrinkled his nose. "Von Moltke
learned that from Napoleon. Napoleon emphasized having flexible capabilities
and exploiting opportunities on the battlefield, instead of trying to stick to
detailed plans." He pointed to Skippy. "No plan made by UNEF could
have anticipated this opportunity."

There was no place for privacy aboard the Dodo,
except for the single zero gee bathroom that was in steady use. When Skippy
pinged me that he wanted to talk, semi privately, I went forward to the cramped
cockpit, to float behind the righthand seat. "What is it, Skippy?"

He replied into my earpiece. "Just wanted
to say something nice, for a change, and I don't want to be overheard, because
that will ruin my street cred."

Street cred? Where the hell was Skippy getting
his notions about human culture? "Oh, sure." I didn't know what else
to say.

"Your species is remarkably adaptable. The
ability to accept new information, new concepts, to not run away screaming or
become paralyzed when confronted with shocking changes, is unfortunately too
rare among intelligent species. I expected there to be trouble when you
revealed the truth about me and our mission, but your people accepted the new
situation admirably quickly."

"Huh." Skippy wasn't taking into
account that our crew were soldiers. Soldiers get new crap thrown at them in
the middle of a mission all the time. One time in Nigeria, I was in a Blackhawk
skimming the treetops at 0330, headed to raid a camp of bad guys, when our
lieutenant gets a call ten minutes out from the landing zone. The bad guys
reached a deal and they were suddenly on our side, our mission then was to
protect our new buddies from a force of other bad guys who were sneaking
through the jungle to kill them. Apparently the first group of bad guys had
been declared traitors by the other ignorant whackos, because they weren't as
fanatically crazy as the craziest of whackos. So we landed and set up a
perimeter to protect guys we'd been shooting at the day before. Of course, the
whole thing had really been a tribal dispute, and both sides tried to ambush
us. After we evaced, we had to call in the Air Force to resolve the situation
diplomatically with napalm, cluster bombs and fuel-air explosives. When things
change, even radically, you look at your buddies, shake your head, shrug, and
adapt. That's what you do, as soldiers. Civilians get upset when the menu
changes at Applebees.

"Don't get me wrong, there are plenty of
your species who lack the ability to process new facts and adapt, but with
humans those are mostly old people, their brains no longer are able to process
new information. Or they're just lazy. But with some species, even the young
have difficulty with facts that conflict with their rigid belief systems. I am
impressed with humans. There, I said it."

"So, we're not just bacteria?"

"Don't push your luck. You're bacteria with
potential now."

Thirty seven minutes later, an alarm sounded in
the cockpit. "Excellent!" Skippy reported. "Two Kristang ships
jumped in, a frigate that is sending us a homing beacon, and a destroyer."

"Where?" I asked anxiously as Skippy
displayed on the bulkhead screen our position relative to Paradise, the two
Kristang ships and various Ruhar ships.

"I have loaded a course into the nav
system."

"Got it, sir." Desai confirmed.
"Hold on tight everyone, engaging autopilot."

I hung on as the Dodo's engines roared and we
surged ahead. "Skippy, how far? How long until we rendezvous?" I
repeated, an anxious eye on the display. There were a half dozen Ruhar ships
that were uncomfortably close.

"The Kristang frigate is accelerating to
match our course, we will meet in three minutes and six point three six seven
four nine seconds. Approximately."

Approximately? Adams and I exchanged an amused
glance.

"Huh," Skippy gave a good imitation of
a grunt, "that was good navigating by the lizard pilot, they jumped in
about as close as their technology allows. Got to be luck, no slimy lizard is
that smart. Colonel Joe, it is going to be close, two Ruhar ships are preparing
short range jumps to intercept the Kristang frigate. I couldn't conceal the
lizards jumping in, or the Ruhar would realize something is wrong with their
sensor systems."

"Do they see us?"

"No, they're tracking the frigate. The
Kristang destroyer is moving to provide cover for us."

"Great. And you're sure that once we're
aboard the frigate and it jumps away, you can spoof the frigate's nav system so
we'll jump to a different location than the destroyer?"

"What? No, I told you, I need to physically
jack in first before I can establish any sort of control of the ship. Duh.
Weren't you listening?"

Holy shit!? "Skippy, what the hell? You
said you could-"

"I said that I could make whatever
ship takes us aboard jump to a different location than any ships that are escorting
it."

"Yeah, and? Don't you need to-"

"Hahahaha! Oh, you're cute, Colonel Joe.
You think I need to hack into the lizard's computer to screw with their jump
drive? No way, dude! I'm going to distort spacetime at the last picosecond, so
their jump drive field skews off course."

"You can distort spacetime?" Simms
asked incredulously.

"Uh-huh, yeah." Skippy answered
flippantly. "It's sort of a hobby. I tried collecting stamps, but messing
with the universe is so much more relaxing."

Simms lifted an eyebrow, and gave me a look that
silently told me she understood now why I named the little shithead 'Skippy'.

The frigate grew closer on the display until
suddenly it was right there, looming on top of us, with a docking bay door
already open. Skippy let the frigate take control of the Dodo's nav system and
guide us aboard, the bay door had only begun to close when the frigate jumped
away. "We need to move fast," Skippy urged, "we just jumped, and
I threw us off course, now I'm preventing a jump field from forming, the
Kristang know something is wrong, for now they think the problem is their jump
drive, that's not going to last long."

The bay doors closed agonizingly slowly, and
there was a roar as the bay repressurized. As soon as the air pressure indicator
read 80%, we opened the side door and the back ramp. My ears popped and I felt
a stabbing pain that was difficult to ignore. "Camera is under my control.
It's working," Skippy said, "they're buying our story. Outer door is
now unlocked."

Skippy took control of the light sensors in the
docking bay camera, and was feeding a false image to the ship, he was also
chatting on the radio with the bridge crew. What he meant by our story was that
the false image the Kristang crew saw through the camera was exciting and
tempting; a Kristang special forces team coming out of a captured Dodo with a
very special item of ancient Elder technology that supposedly had been found on
Paradise. It was, according to Skippy, a Bubble Energy Tap, a device that
pulled free energy from fluctuations in quantum foam, or something like that.
"It's a crude technology, think of it as a battery that never wears out.
Trust me, this will impress the stupid lizards," Skippy had explained.
Anyway, it worked, the bridge crew unlocked the door to the interior of the
ship, and we flew  across the bay in the zero gravity, only a few people
missed the target and had to be pulled in before they bounced off the wall and
floated away. Because Kristang frigates had small crews, and Skippy determined
this frigate was short two regular crew members, there was not a crew member at
the docking bay when we came in. The bridge crew told Skippy they were sending
someone down to meet us, the rest of the crew were busy frantically trying to
determine why their jump drive wasn't working.

Giraud in the lead got the outer door of the
airlock open, it was a simple matter of pressing a button then pulling a lever.
Inside the airlock, I held Skippy in one hand and jacked the plug into a port
in the airlock, while Giraud followed a sequence Skippy had taught him on the
airlock's control panel, to force open the inner door while the outer door was
still open. This was a dangerous moment, with both doors open, an alarm would
sound that even Skippy couldn't squelch yet. The inner door slid open with a
bang and a loud alarm began blaring, the twenty two people of the assault team
squeezed through the airlock into the corridor as quickly as humanly possible
and as soon as the last person was through, I bashed my fist into the button
that caused the outer door to slam close and cut off the alarm. That was the
signal for Desai to get the Dodo moving, and for our assault team to split up
and head toward the bridge and the engineering section.

The most important task was mine; to plug Skippy
into a wall jack. A wall jack that, for a panicked split second of eternity, I
couldn't find. In my defense, I was floating upside down near the ceiling,
trying to keep out of the way of the assault team, getting bumped, elbowed and
once kicked in the face. We were all awkward in zero gee, none of us had
training in zero gee combat and we hadn't any opportunity to practice. Aboard
the Dodo, I'd made everyone except the pilots practice flipping around,
controlled landings on a wall, pushing off with feet and hands. There was not
room enough, or time enough in the Dodo for anyone to be confident they could
do much more than not puke when they spun around.

Finally, after an impossibly long two seconds, I
spotted the wall plug, at the same time gunfire rang out forward, the Kristang
on his way to the docking bay had seen the forward assault team. From the
sound, I recognized the buzzing of Ruhar weapons, and the heavier report of a
Kristang rifle, then only buzzing. Ignoring distractions, I pulled myself down
the wall, took the plug out of my teeth and carefully inserted it in the wall
jack. "Are you in?"

"Busy," was Skippy's only reply, and
considering his lightning fast processing speed that concerned me. Then,
"I'm in. We're good. Ship's systems are in my control. Ejecting docking
bay doors." There was a shudder, as Skippy used an emergency procedure to
blow the doors outward, rather than retracting them to the sides, we couldn't
wait for them to cycle normally. "Dodo is on the move."

The ship lurched violently, bouncing me off the
wall. Skippy said he had control, the ship should not have been able to move!
"What the hell was-"

"The Dodo impacted the docking bay doorway,
there is substantial damage to the Dodo. It is mission effective."

Desai had misjudged her exit, in an unfamiliar
vehicle, complicated by air escaping from the blown docking bay. Skippy judged
the Dodo could still accomplish its mission, which was to fly to the front of
the frigate and blast the ship's bridge with the Dodo's guns. The Kristang, who
were long used to piracy between and within clans, had designed their ships
against borders like us, although the designers had been thinking of rival
Kristang factions, not primitive humans. The door to the bridge was heavily
armored, heavily enough that breaching that door would blow a hole in the ship
and expose our people to vacuum. As long as the Kristang were behind that door,
they could prevent us from using the ship, they could even disable it or
self-destruct it, regardless of Skippy being jacked in. It was almost
impossible to seize the bridge of a Kristang warship.

So, we weren't going to seize it, we were going
to blast it to pieces from the outside. If the Dodo was still functional, if
Desai could fly it effectively with almost no experience, and if she could
control the Dodo's guns enough to hit the bridge without blowing apart the rest
of the ship. If. A very big if.

There was gunfire forward and aft, people were
shouting and screaming someone set off a flash-bang grenade, then the ship
shook violently again. And again, and again. "Captain Desai has succeeded
in destroying the bridge. Also part of the ship's nose and ten meters of the
starboard side aft of the bridge."

"Shit! Is that bad?"

"She did well for her lack of experience.
The additional damage will be convincing evidence this ship was struck by a
Ruhar stealth mine, and will not affect ship function for our purpose."

It has been said that a commander has the
toughest job in combat, because after people are trained and plans are made,
the commander has to sit back and watch, unable to do much to affect the
outcome, while his people fight. In my very limited experience, that saying is
a hundred percent bullshit. The commander does not have the toughest job, the
toughest job is done by the grunts carrying rifles, exposing themselves to
enemy fire. The grunts do the fighting and dying. That's the toughest job. The
commander has the loneliest job, the job that makes you feel guilty and useless
that you aren't out there on the front line, doing something useful for your
buddies. After the combat is over, I always felt like things might have gone
better if I'd been there, that maybe I'd have seen the enemy and shouted a
warning before someone got shot, maybe I'd have killed the enemy before they
got one of our guys. Maybe I could have made things better. Or maybe I'd simply
get killed. Either way, I'd be doing something. What I did, after
jacking Skippy in, was hold onto a wall  and try to follow the battles
forward and aft on my zPhone, and it was beyond chaotic, I wasn't able to get a
picture of what was happening until the fighting was over. So much for me
'commanding' anything.

Our losses were four dead and three seriously
injured in taking the ship. Four dead and three injured out of twenty one in
the assault teams. A third of our force was now gone or combat ineffective. In
one battle. In taking one ship.

Take the ship we did, it was ours. Giraud had
only one casualty in taking the ship's control center, Private Arun Kurien of
the Indian Army died from being shot by one of the two Kristang who were
blocking access to the control center. All the other casualties were in Chang's
team that seized the engineering compartment. Chang's team had the toughest
job, they had to kill five Kristang who were motivated and desperate to prevent
their ship from being captured. Three of those Kristang were killed in the
initial firefight when we had some advantage of surprise, the remaining two
were much more difficult. One of them managed to get to a suit of powered armor,
despite Skippy jamming the door of the locker where the suits were kept, this
Kristang had the armor almost on and partly powered up, when three people fired
blindly into the compartment, giving cover for Chang to throw in a grenade. The
Kristang was tough, he was still trying to get the suit buttoned up after the
grenade hit, it took concentrated fire to take him out.

The worst problem was the last Kristang. This
one must have realized he was the only one left, despite Skippy shutting down
their comm system, and he decided to blow up the ship rather than surrender.
Skippy warned Chang that he needed to stop that Kristang now, now now
now, before the Kristang was able to breach the reactor containment.
Despite Skippy doing everything he could, the controls to dump the reactor
plasma were manual, not anything Skippy could interfere with.

Chang told me what happened; when the assault
team had already lost two people killed trying to get at the Kristang in the
narrow space he was hiding, Sergeant Yu Qishan pulled the pins on two grenades
and launched himself around the corner, dying when the Kristang shot him in the
head. That last Kristang also died when the grenades exploded and blew a hole
in the ship's hull, sucking both the Kristang and Sergeant Yu into space.
Almost sucked most of Chang's assault team into space, except a bulkhead
automatically slammed down to prevent further loss of air in the engineering
section.

Chang actually tried to console me,
though Sergeant Yu was one of his own men. "He knew the survival of
humanity depended on stopping that Kristang from destroying the reactor. He did
his duty. We will honor him when we get home."

He was right. I still felt like shit about it.

In the aftermath of the battle, Skippy opened
the portside docking bay door so we could take the damaged Dodo aboard, and a
shaken Desai when immediately to the ship's control center to get a crash
course in flying a Kristang frigate. My first instinct was to call a halt, let
everyone recover, and most importantly, tend to the wounded. Simms and Skippy
urged me to continue with the plan, right away, we had not a moment to lose.
Simms assured me she was seeing to the wounded, they had been brought to the
frigate's limited sickbay, and there wasn't anything I could do to help them.
With the paltry medical supplies we'd brought with us, there wasn't much anyone
could do for them. The best thing I could do, Skippy said, was continue with
the plan, and capture a Thuranin star carrier, where the wounded could be
tended to with the Thuranin's amazingly advanced medical technology. Wounds
could be healed, limbs even regrown, Skippy assured me, once we could put our
injured soldiers in Thuranin healing tanks. It felt wrong, I swallowed my pride
and let my people do their jobs.

While Desai pressed buttons under Skippy's
direction, programming a jump, I looked around the control center in amazement.
We had a ship. A starship. Us. Grubby, low-tech, ignorant monkeys from Earth. A
starship.

Damn.

CHAPTER TWELVE    MERRY BAND
OF PIRATES

"Did it work?" I asked Desai.

"Sir?"

"The jump. Did it work? Did we jump? To the
right place?" The stars in the display had shifted. Or I thought they
shifted. Star fields surprisingly all looked the same. It wasn't like a sci fi
movie, where all starships were somehow backlit by a big, vividly glowing
colorful nebula. The main display wasn't any help, because I didn't have any
reference point. We were a tiny dot in the middle of nowhere before the jump,
now we were a tiny dot in the middle of nowhere after the jump. It could be the
middle of the same nowhere, for all I knew.

She held her hands up, palms open, then gestured
at the confusing displays. "Honestly, I have no idea. Mister Skippy?"

"Huh? Oh, sorry, I was busy. Yup, it worked
fine. Of course it did. I would have told you if it didn't. I've been
transmitting our Kristang IFF codes. I don't detect any other ships in the area
yet."

"Could they have left already? Because we
were late to the rendezvous point?" Simms asked.

"Sure, we were late to the original
rendezvous point, this is the alternate point, it's the correct location for
this time, duh. This ship's sensors operate at the speed of light, and we just
got here, so the, oh, there it is! I have the beacon from the Thuranin star
carrier. Pilot, new course is loaded into the navigation system."

"Colonel?" Desai looked back at me.

"Engage." I ordered. I needed to think
of something original to say. Warp factor five was not an option,
unfortunately. The ship swung around about forty five degrees which made me
dizzy, and the engines fired. Fired hard. It was good that everyone was
strapped in. Damn, it felt like someone was sitting on my chest. It must be
worse for our wounded. "Skippy," I grunted, "is this
necessary?"

"I'm not showing off, if that's what you're
asking. The Thuranin wish to jump away quickly, their message ordered us to
rendezvous at maximum speed. We're going to flip around and decelerate soon, so
hang on. Also, when we get within half a lightsecond, the Thuranin will take
control of our navigation system, to bring us safely onto an attachment point.
That is standard practice. I am running this ship's navigation system within
one of my subroutines so the Thuranin will think they have full access. But
they won't."

"How will we know if the Thuranin accept
our IFF codes?" Chang asked.

"They already have. I'm chatting with them,
and the local Kristang commander right now. It's a slow conversation, because
the signal travels at lightspeed. They accept our story about being thrown off
course by a Ruhar stealth mine, they can see the damage to this ship. Don't be
alarmed, we're going to cut thrust in three, two, one, now. We'll coast for
twelve minutes before we flip over. This, uh, would be a good time to use the
bathroom, hint, hint."

"Oh, good point." I opened the
intercom and advised the crew what was happening.

It was a long twelve minutes, drifting through
space toward a technologically superior enemy ship that could squash our ship
like a bug. Skippy had better know what he was doing, or it was going to be
game over real soon.

Unlike our assault on the Kristang frigate, our
plan to capture a Thuranin star carrier depended entirely, one hundred percent,
on Skippy. We humans were simply along for the ride, until Skippy firmly seized
control of the ship and all systems aboard. The difference between the two
plans, was, ironically, the Thuranins' advanced technology compared to the
Kristang. According to Skippy, the Thuranin's cyborg nature made them highly
reliant on networked computers; computers which the Thuranin obsessively
protected from any possibility of being hacked. Any possibility, that is,
except for the utter magnificence of Skippy. Even the Maxohlx overlords of the
Thuranin had a very difficult time breaching Thuranin data system security, but
Elder technology was beyond the most fevered imaginations of the Maxolhx.

According to Skippy.

Skippy, an ancient, alien AI I didn't entirely
trust. Not that I didn't trust him to do what he said he was going to do, since
he needed us as much, or more, than we needed him. What I didn't trust was not
his ability, but his judgment. He was an amazingly arrogant and absentminded
little punk-ass beer can. So, we had cooked up a backup plan, a plan Skippy
huffed was not necessary.

The backup plan, if Skippy failed to take
control of the star carrier, was that Desai would kill the autopilot and engage
an emergency jump away, which Skippy had begrudgingly programmed into the
navigation system.

After we jumped away, the Thuranin, and
Kristang, would be alerted there was something very wrong with our captured
frigate, and both species would be extra careful not to let our ship, or any
lone Kristang ship, close to a Thuranin starship without a thorough inspection
far away from Thuranin fleet assets. So, Plan B meant giving up any chance of
capturing a Thuranin starship, without which we had no chance of getting to the
wormhole. Which left us having to hitch a ride from the patrons of the Ruhar,
the insectlike Jeraptha. We would have to make our way back to Paradise, ditch
the Kristang frigate, and use Skippy's sensor hacking ability to get close to a
Ruhar ship using our Dodo. Problem was, the Ruhar task force was sticking close
to Paradise, so finding a Ruhar ship on its own was going to be a problem.
Especially since, by now, the Ruhar would have discovered one of their Dodos
had been stolen by humans, and no Ruhar ship would let a suspicious Dodo get
close.

So, it wasn't a great or even good, ok, barely
mediocre plan, but it was better than our original Plan B, which was to sneak
back to Paradise, ditch the Dodo and try to hide. Skippy was not a big fan of
that plan, because it meant abandoning his dream of ever contacting the
Collective. I wasn't a big fan of that plan either, because it meant abandoning
my dream of ever eating a cheeseburger.

Seriously.

When the engines came back on, they slammed us
back into our couches with what Skippy blithely announced was 4.7 gees, and
that pressure kept up for over two minutes as we decelerated. How human
astronauts had launched into space on spine-crushing chemical rockets, I had no
idea. My neck had been at a bad angle when the deceleration started, I had to
lift a hand to lever my head into the right position. Still, it hurt. And it
was hard to breathe.

Skippy must have sensed our confusion, because
the main display changed so that it showed something considerably more useful;
the Thuranin star carrier was now in the center of the screen. The dot
representing our ship was on the edge, with a dotted line projecting the
courses of the star carrier and our ship. At the edges of the screen were
numbers showing the time to intersect, and the speeds of both ships. None of it
truly mattered, since we humans were incapable of flying the Dodo more than
short distances, at low speed. It did give us a sense that we had some, if not
control, then at least knowledge of our destiny.

The acceleration ended abruptly, then resumed
with a gentle pressure. "The Thuranin have taken control of navigation,
they will guide us onto a docking pad."

"We're a half lightsecond away now?" I
couldn't tell how far we were from the display, the scale was confusing.

"No, a quarter of a lightsecond. They tried
to take control earlier, I faked that we had trouble accepting the handoff, due
to damage from the explosion. If I hadn't let them think they had control, they
would have aborted the rendezvous, the Thuranin don't trust the Kristang to
control their own ships for close maneuvers. They are running a diagnostic of
our ship's systems, I'm telling them what they want to hear."

The display now showed our ETA was four minutes,
and the star carrier's image was an outline of the ship, no longer a dot. We
were close, very close.

"Pilot, standby to abort on my signal.
Skippy, when can you do your thing?" I asked.

"My thing?"

"Your thing, your magic. Taking over the
Thuranin computer systems." I asked urgently. What the hell else did he
think I meant?!

“Oh, that. We're within range. Hmmm, this is
going to be more difficult than expected, it may take longer than I thought.
Damn.”

"More difficult how?" I asked,
alarmed. Simms was on the couch behind me, unseen, and still I could sense the
tension coming from her.

"Well, to be fair," Skippy explained,
"I've never actually had contact with a Thuranin system before, seeing as
how I've been stuck on Paradise for, like, a million years. I'm have to make
this up as I go."

"What? Jesus fucking Christ, Skippy, you
little shithead! A million years? How the hell can you understand Thuranin
technology if you've never seen it? You told us you could absolutely do this!
Damn it! A soldier in battle needs to know he can count on his comrades, you
should have told us you weren't sure you could hack into their systems. Goddamn
it! Pilot, abort the-"

"Belay that!" Skippy shouted.
"We're good, I'm in."

"What?" I was out of breath from
adrenaline.

"When I said 'longer than I thought', I
meant longer in magical Skippy time, not longer in meatsack caveman time, you
dumdum monkeyboy. I had full control over the star carrier 120 milliseconds
after I said 'thought'."

"Goddamn it, Skippy, why didn't you stop
me?"

"Hey, you were on a roll, I couldn't
interrupt that. Your rant was very inspiring, Colonel Joe, I can see why you
went from grunt to senior officer so quickly. Also, to be honest, I tuned out
about halfway through. Could you repeat it for me, and skip the boring
parts?"

"Fuck."

"That will have to wait, we're docking with
the star carrier now. I directed the ship to assign us to a docking pad right
at the front of the ship. No charge for the upgrade."

"Skippy," I grumbled through gritted
teeth, then decided nothing I could say would make any difference.

The frigate wobble slightly, then there was a
lurch to the side, a clanging sound, and Skippy announced we had docked.
Gravity came back on gradually. "We're secured. Everyone, stay strapped
in, we're going to jump shortly."

"I thought you couldn't make a ship jump if
you were aboard?" Chang asked, confused. "Don't you need us to get
aboard the Thuranin ship, control their navigation system, before we can
jump?"

"Huh? No, not this time. The Thuranin
already had a jump programmed into their nav system and on a timer after we
docked, I'm letting that system run on its own. I'll warp spacetime to throw us
off course, as jumping into the heart of a Thuranin task force would be rather
inconvenient. Unless I'm missing something?" There was a smartass tone to
his question.

"No, that's good, thank you." Chang
replied.

"And, three, two, one, jump. Done. We're
good, we came out of jump one third of a lightyear from the intended emergence
point. I have the star carrier on total EMCON, and have ordered the Kristang to
do the same. Oh, darn, it, pesky lizard. The Kristang commander has noticed we
didn't jump to where we were supposed to, he is demanding to know why, and also
is demanding access to our ship."

"Can you hold him off?" I asked,
alarmed. The last thing we wanted was an armed Kristang force walking through
the Thuranin ship and knocking on our airlock door. Or flying a dropship over
to our landing bay.

"Oh, yeah, I bitchslapped him right away.
The Thuranin don't take any crap from their client species. I told him to shut
the fuck up, that we altered our jump to avoid a Jeraptha battleship, and that
this frigate is under quarantine. He doesn't like it, he also knows he doesn't
have any choice."

"All right, what's next?"

"Colonel Joe, you're the commander. My
suggestion is we go aboard the star carrier, and round up the eighty seven
Thuranin crew."

"Us against eighty seven armed Thuranin
cyborgs?" I asked, incredulously. We had barely defeated a dozen Kristang.

"Eighty seven cyborgs who are sound asleep.
I ordered their brain implants to put them all into an unscheduled sleep
maintenance cycle, they're basically in a coma." Skippy explained.
"Ha! And those little green pinheads think being cyborgs is a
strength."

"Just like that?" I asked. "We
have complete control over the entire ship?' It felt like a letdown. I could
live with that, any day.

"Yup. Just like that. Behold, the magic of
Skippy the Magnificent. Truthfully, as magic at my level goes, this is lame.
Still, it impresses the monkeys, right?"

I nodded. "This monkey is sufficiently
impressed."

"Agreed." Chang said.

"This human is impressed."
Simms retorted. "Colonel, if I was skeptical of your shiny beer can
before, I'm not now."

"He's not my beer can, Major
Simms." I hastened to correct her before Skippy got mad. "Skippy is
more of a sentient being than any of us."

"Than all of you put together." Skippy

Damn, that beer can was smug.

Assured by Skippy that the Kristang would not
dare to come aboard the Thuranin ship, and that he had their airlock doors
locked anyway, we warily ventured through our own airlock. Giraud led the way,
armed with a Ruhar rifle, an HK416 rifle that was standard issue for French
special forces, and a pouch full of flash bang grenades. All of which Skippy
insisted was totally unnecessary, according to him, we could roam around the
huge star carrier buck naked. Although he requested that we hairless monkeys
wear as much clothing as possible, to spare his delicate sensors. I flipped him
off with both middle fingers and asked if his sensors could see that. He didn't
respond.

The frigate's airlock opened into a chamber that
was, Skippy explained, a sort of elevator. Because the artificial gravity
pulled 'down' toward the spine of the star carrier, without an elevator we
would have had to climb down a long ladder. The elevator was more than big
enough for our entire crew, it was plenty roomy for the dozen people I selected
for the initial recon mission. The elevator smelled funny. I sniffed the air.
"Skippy, is this air Ok for us to breathe?" I asked, rather late for
such a important question. "It smells like, like the basement at my
grandparents' house."

"Uh huh, yeah, the air is good. It smells
musty because the Thuranin almost never allow filthy, disgusting other species
aboard their ships. The ship's database records the last use of this particular
elevator was thirty eight years ago."

"This docking pad is at the front of the
ship? Wouldn't Thuranin ships normally use this pad?" I asked.

"Very observant, Colonel Joe. Thuranin
ships use this pad frequently, however, they use a different airlock, so they
don't have to touch any surfaces that may be contaminated by lesser species.
The airlocks of Kristang ships can't mate with Thuranin designs, on
purpose."

"I'll bet the Thuranin don't offer hot
beverages to their guests either." Sergeant Adams said without a trace of
humor. She was keyed up, a finger next to the trigger guard of her Ruhar rifle.
The rifles weren't set on stun, on my orders. I figured that if Skippy was
wrong and we ran into awake, advanced cyborgs, stun wasn't the right move.

The elevator reached the 'bottom', at the spine
of the ship, and the door opened to a long corridor. It was well lit and
industrial, even sterile looking. A lot of gray, with black and white to liven
it up. Definitely not cozy. "Skippy," I asked in an unintended
whisper, "does the whole ship look like this?"

"Most of it. As cyborgs, the Thuranin are
disdainful of anything they consider to be soft remnants of their biological
past. Like decorations, or creature comforts more than the minimum
needed."

"So," Simms asked, "why don't
they go all the way, and become robots, androids, whatever that is?"

"Two reasons," Skippy explained as we
all stepped into the corridor, "first, they lack the technology to upload
their true consciousnesses into a nonbiological substrate, that is much, much
more difficult than most species think it is. Second, and more importantly, if
the Thuranin became post-biological, the Maxohlx would consider them to be no
longer a client species but merely robots, and would treat them as machines. As
slaves." His voice sounded bitter. "Artificial intelligences are not
treated as sentient by the Maxohlx. They are rotten kitties."

A door opposite us slid open, we all
instinctively spun and pointed our weapons. "Relax, monkeys," Skippy
laughed, "it's a tram, unless you want to walk all the way to the forward
part of the ship. It's a long way."

We stepped into the tram, the door closed, and
the tram smoothly accelerated forward. "Next time," I said,
"give us warning before you do something unexpected, Skippy.  We have
some keyed-up trigger fingers here."

"Noted. I told you dumdums, I have absolute
control over this ship, and the Thuranin are all soundly asleep in dreamland.
The only thing dangerous aboard this ship is an over excited troop of monkeys
with high powered weapons. Oh, and so none of you monkeys is surprised and
shoots yourselves in the foot when this tram stops and the door opens, there is
a Thuranin laying asleep on the floor right there."

Fairly warned, Giraud insisted on being first
out of the tram, pointing his HK416 rifle at the Thuranin who was slumped on
the floor. Giraud cautiously poked the alien with the rifle barrel, and nothing
happened. "Rien." Giraud muttered.

"Huh?" I asked.

"Nothing." Giraud and Skippy responded
at the same time.

"To be clear," Skippy made a sound
like clearing his throat, "he didn't say nothing, he said 'rien', which is
the French word that means 'nothing'."

"I figured that, Skippy." I nudged the
Thuranin with my foot, and it didn't move. If Skippy hadn't assured me that it
was in a coma-like sleep, I would have thought it was dead. "Sergeant
Adams, drag sleeping beauty here out of the way somewhere."

Adams secured the Thuranin's wrists behind its
back before dragging it feet first down the hallway and around a corner. If
this was the ship's control center, I wasn't impressed, it was mostly a drab
gray. "What's next, Skippy? Where's the bridge of this ship?"

"It doesn't have one."

"What?"

"The Thuranin consider a bridge to be an
obsolete construct that is from the biological past that they have transcended,
and is unnecessary and inefficient. They control the ship directly from cyborg
brain implants, which give them full functionality anywhere on the ship. During
flight operations, especially combat, the command crew occupies alcoves in the
network core node, which is deep within the center of the forward section, and
heavily armored. Going there would be useless to you, as you lack the ability
to interface directly with the pathetic lump of stone the Thuranin consider to
be the ship's computer."

"Then what are we doing here? How are we
supposed to control the ship, by thinking happy thoughts?"

"If you'll shut up a moment and let me
talk, I was going to say that there is a backup control center. Thuranin ships
use the backup controls when they encounter the Maxohlx, in case their bad
kitty patrons manage to hack into the Thuranin computers. Which they do often,
and it drives the Thuranin absolutely batshit crazy. The backup control center
has video displays, audio communication systems, and manual control panels.
Anything you can't do from there, I can do for you, if you tell me what you
want."

"Oh, then, lead on, MacDuff."

Skippy made a disgusted sound. "That is an
annoying misquote from Shakespeare's Macbeth. The correct line is 'Lay on,
MacDuff' and it means the opposite-"

"Don't care, Skippy! Which way do we
go?" The corridor ahead intersected another, and there were no helpful
signs anywhere, even if I could read Thuranin script.

"Hey, excuse me for trying to raise you
monkeys out of the depths of your ignorance by slapping a little knowledge down
on you," Skippy grumbled. "Straight ahead to the end of the corridor,
I'll open the door." When we got there, he warned "Uh, I should say,
the decor in there is a bit different from the rest of the ship."

Damn, he wasn't exaggerating. The interior of
the backup control center was a gothic fantasy. It was a riot of colors, with
display screens, brightly-lit control buttons, levers and knobs, and everything
was super ornate looking. The contrast to the rest of the ship was jarring. I'm
not an interior designer, so I'll try to describe it. The place looked more
like an art project, a cross between a Medieval cathedral and one of those
fancy French chateaus. Maybe gothic wasn't the right word, It sure didn't look
like a place one of those Goth kids with the black eyeliner would hang out.
Rococo, maybe? I wasn't sure what that word really meant. Over elaborate and
decorative. Opulent to the point of being in bad taste. That's what I wanted to
say. The opposite of sleek and minimalist, the opposite of the rest of the
ship. Even simple controls like a door handle were ornate, with intricate blue
and gold filigree curling around the handle, and colored gems inset. None of it
was necessary for the control's function.

"Wow." Simms said quietly. "This
looks like the front parlor in my great grandmother's house. Only more so.
Mister Skippy, why is this so-"

"Baroque is the word you're looking
for." Skippy said smugly. Damn, that is the word I was looking for.
"Since this is a place where the Thuranin must unplug from their
cybernetic enhancements, the decor is intended to remind them of their purely
biological past. If you think the design is in bad taste, the Thuranin really
hate it. It is intended to evoke disgust from the crew, to reinforce the
superiority of cybernetics over biology. The designers wanted the backup
control center to be the opposite of cool, if that word applies to the
Thuranin."

"They succeeded." I sniffed.
"This place stinks-"

"Like a New Orleans cathouse." Someone
muttered behind me, I didn't turn to see who it was.

"Yeah," I agreed, "not that I've
been to one," I added hurriedly, "but it's like someone is wearing
way too much perfume." Cloying was the word for it.

"Too much of my grandmother's
perfume." Adams wrinkled her nose.

"The designers want the crew to be reminded
of their biological nature with visual, scent and tactile clues.  Instead
of touch screens, all the controls are physical knobs and buttons, which even
your society considers old fashioned. Having to touch and turn a knob, a knob
that is cold and rough to the touch, and resists being turned enough for the
user to feel the torque, constantly reminds the user that he or she needs to think
in biological terms. In high pressure situations, which are the only situations
in which the Thuranin would use this backup control center, the crew must
suppress their instincts to use cybernetics. In an emergency maneuver, pilots
here need to have their brains immediately send a signal to their fingers on
the controls, and not first waste a split second trying to control the
navigation system through their implants."

"Can you turn up the ventilation, to suck
this stink out?" I asked. "And it smells musty like the
elevator."

"It's musty because this compartment is not
used often. I have deactivated the scent emitters, and the ventilation is on
full. Leaving the door open will help, I calculate your noses will go scent
blind within the hour, and the scent will have dispersed below detectible
levels by tomorrow. If one of your females becomes pregnant, with her enhanced
sense of smell she may be able to still-"

"That's not going to be a problem,
Skippy." I shared a side look with Simms, and looked around. The backup
control center was roughly oval shaped, with a central oval section walled off
by floor to ceiling windows, or what looked like windows. In the central
section were three of what looked like pilot chairs, and a larger chair behind
them, all surrounded by control stands. Ringing the central section, and facing
the glass, were workstations with chairs, chairs that were too small for human
backsides. "Are the flight controls in that glassed-in area?"

"Yes, that is the core of the backup
control-"

"That name is too long, we'll call the core
section the bridge, and the rest of this the CIC." I declared. Chang and
Simms nodded agreement.

Captain Desai settled into one of the three
pilot couches, it was a tight fit for her, even with Skippy extending the couch
open to its maximum size. "It's all right, sir, I'll manage. I'm more
concerned about all this," she gestured to the confusing array of manual
controls surrounding her.

"Most of these controls are for subsidiary
systems that I'm handling," Skippy assured her, "we'll begin with the
basic controls, the jump drive first."

I watched Desai wriggle to get comfortable in
the too-small chair. Then I looked at the ceiling, and the door we'd come
through. "Skippy, since the Thuranin are such little guys, how is it we
don't have a problem bumping our heads in here?"

"Thuranin have built their ships to
accommodate their Maxolhx patrons. Very rarely in history has the Maxolhx
lowered themselves to come aboard a Thuranin ship, but the Thuranin very much
wish to avoid any awkwardness. Also, occasionally Kristang or other client
species do come aboard, and although intellectually the Thuranin consider their
compact size to be more efficient, and therefore superior to other species,
they are self-conscious about it. Other species banging their heads on Thuranin
doorways would be a constant reminder how small the Thuranin are."

"All right." I set Skippy down on top
of a console next to Desai's couch. "Pilot, you're going to be busy
learning the controls. Colonel Chang, you have the conn, while I deal with the
Thuranin, Sergeant Adams, Sergeant Thomson, you're with me."

I left Skippy to instruct Desai, Chang, Simms
and some others how the bridge and CIC controls worked, while I dealt with the
ship's former crew. Out in the corridor, I realized I had no idea what to do.
"Skippy," I asked over zPhone earpiece, "you got any ideas what
to do with the Rip Van Winkles here?"

"I assume you mean the sleeping
Thuranin."

"Affirmative."

"There are several possibilities, depending
on what you intend to do wit

h them later. In the meantime, this ship has
detachable cargo pods, any one of them is large enough to hold the entire
Thuranin crew."

"We stack them in there like
cordwood?"

"More like lay them on the floor, but,
yes."

I considered. What the hell was I going to do
with eighty seven unconscious Thuranin? It would have been easy for me if
Skippy had killed them instead of putting them into a sleep cycle, because that
would have taken the responsibility for the hard decision away from me.
Although, if Skippy had been able to kill them, and asked me if I wanted to do
that, or make them sleep, what would I have done then? It would have been
simpler to make that decision aboard the Kristang frigate, when it was not
certain we could, in fact, take a Thuranin star carrier without firing a shot.
Simpler to make a decision that at the time was merely theoretical, rather than
actual, like it was now. So, I punted. Delayed making the decision. "How
long can you keep them asleep?"

"Without being hooked up to life support,
about three days, their cybernetics minimize their autonomic functions."

"Mmm hm. Ok. And how long until we can jump
again? I assume we want to leave the neighborhood, in case a Thuranin search
party comes looking for us."

"We do, and they are. I have detected jump
signatures from two Thuranin ships who are searching for us. We're in little
danger because without our transponder replying, which it won't, the Thuranin
are unlikely to find us before we jump again, in about three hours. The delay
is because in addition to performing a thorough check of the jump engines and
navigation systems, I'm erasing the Thuranin jump control system software, and
replacing it with something closer to being actually useful. That's like installing
an AI operating system in a cinder block, only with less memory capacity."

"Sounds like a challenge for you, then.
Sergeant Adams, gets these Thuranin rounded up, and loaded, what, Skippy,
aboard the tram?"

"That is a good start, yes, I'll direct
your crew from there."

"Very well, sir." Adams gestured to
three of the enlisted men, and they began carrying inert Thuranin past me to
load onto the floor of the tram.

Only the Thuranin weren't all completely inert,
which our crew discovered. Sergeant Adams and I watched in amusement as the
crew rounded up the little green aliens.

“Man, who knew these little guys would snore
like this? Damn! Oh, man, and he’s drooling on me! That’s disgusting!”

“Hey, look at this one. His eyelids are
fluttering, and his leg’s twitching. My dog does that when he’s dreaming about
chasing a squirrel.”

“How do you know what your dog dreams about?”

“What else do dogs dream about?”

“Humping your leg?”

"You two, shut the hell up," Adams
barked, but I could see her eyes sparkling, "and get a move on."

While Adams handled the sleeping beauties,
Sergeant Thomson and I went back to our hijacked Kristang frigate to bring the
wounded aboard the Thuranin ship. Skippy had assured me the medical facilities
of the Thuranin were vastly superior to the cramped and limited sickbay on the
Kristang ship. We moved our three wounded soldiers one at a time, hooked up to
Kristang medical monitors, to the Thuranin hospital. This was a task I wanted
to take care of personally, even with the wounded sedated and stabilized.
Skippy had taken control of the Thuranin medical systems, including the
creepy-looking immersion pods that we put the wounded into. The pods had the
ominous appearance of caskets, with the insides lined with nanoscale probes.
Once the lids closed, the nanoprobes would extended and provide oxygen,
nutrients, drugs and nanonachines that would accelerate healing. According to
Skippy, he had reprogrammed the Thuranin medical computers to adapt them to
human biology, and he had complete confidence all three soldiers would make a
full recovery.  We had to move carefully, gravity in the medical bay was
reduced to fifteen percent of Earth normal, to minimize stress on the bodies of
the people being treated.

"Is there anything I can do?" I looked
around the medical compartment with a frown. There were tubes and scary-looking
robot things everywhere, I sure as hell wouldn't want to be a patient in this
hospital.

Doctor Skippy disparaged my offer of help.
"Unless you have a thorough understanding of Thuranin medical pods, no.
Joe, I've got this. It looks scary, it's also fairly sophisticated medical
technology, human physiology is pretty simple so these cases are easy. Go do
something useful, and let me work."

"All right. We're not leaving these people
alone. I'll get Major Simms to assign people shifts here-"

"Totally unnecessary, Joe."

"Physically unnecessary, maybe, Skippy,
this is a human thing. I want our people here to know they're not alone. When
they wake up, there needs to be someone here."

"A human thing, fine, whatever."
Skippy relented.

"Great. What's next? Let's check out the
crew quarters on this bucket. They, uh, do have crew quarters, right?"
Given the profound weirdness of the Thuranin obsession with cybernetics, maybe
they slept standing up, plugged into the wall or something.

"They do have individual quarters. There is
one down the hall to the right."

We walked down the hall, and a door slid open. I
stepped in. "Oh, boy. This could be a problem." The quarters were
nicely set up; a bed, cabinets built into the walls, a closet, and a bathroom
with a shower, a table and one chair. The features of the compartment were not
the problem. The problem was they were all Thuranin-sized. The bed wouldn't fit
me unless I hung my legs off the side. The ceiling was maybe six and a half
feet tall, some of our crew would need to be careful not to bump their heads.
To take a shower, I'd need to kneel on the floor, with my legs sticking out.

"I don't know," Adams said with a
smile, "it looks cozy to me."

"Cozy like warm and comfortable, or cozy
like a real estate ad that really means cramped and depressing?" I asked.

"The second one." Adams opened the
closet door. "Huh. They don't go in much for fashion." All the
outfits were the same dull gray and blue gray the sleeping Thuranin had been
wearing.

"What the hell," I shrugged,
"we'll make do. Everyone gets their own quarters, that's luxury
enough."

"Sir?" Adams prodded me,
"the food situation?"

"Oh, yeah, good point. Skippy,
show us the mess hall, or I guess it's a galley on a ship."

"There isn't one, Joe."

"No galley?" I shared a
puzzled look with Adams, "then where do they eat?"

"In private," Skippy
explained, "the Thuranin consider most things that remind them of their
biological past to be taboo, particularly biological functions like eating.
Consuming food is done in private, in their sleeping compartments, like this
one."

There wasn't anything like a kitchen
in the tiny compartment. "All right, fine." We humans could find some
space on the ship to use as a mess hall, us being social animals, and mealtimes
being a prime social activity. "Show us the food."

"In that cabinet behind Sergeant
Adams."

Adams opened the cabinet and pulled
out a handful of clear plastic tubes which contained a thick beige fluid.
"What is this?" She peered into the cabinet, in case she'd missed
something, then opened the other cabinet. Same clear plastic tubes.

"That's their food. The best
translation of their term is sustenance sludge."

"Sludge?" I asked, appalled.

"Hmmm, that word may have a
negative connotation." Skippy mused. "How about gunk, or muck, or
goo, or slime? Darn, those words also have negative connotations."

"Ya think?"

"Think of it as a smoothie?"
Skippy tried.

"You're not helping." I took
one of the tubes and examined it. "This is all they eat?"

"Yes, it contains everything a
Thuranin needs."

"What does it taste like?" I
asked, grasping the cap on the top to open it.

"Well, don't eat it, dumdum, it's
designed for Thuranin biology, it doesn't have the proper mix of amino acids
and vitamins for humans. I have the synthesizers working now to make sludge, I
mean smoothies, for humans."

"Wonderful. And what will that
taste like?"

Silence for a moment, then, "Like
I have taste buds, Joe."

"Oh, sorry about that."

"However, I have built what I
consider a fairly accurate model of human senses, including taste-"

"Of course you have."

"-and it will taste like, the
best way to describe it, I think, is a combination of oatmeal, carrots and
bologna."

"Shit." Adams made a sour
face. "This is going to be a long voyage."

"Skippy, this is unsat. You told
me we could eat Thuranin food, as in food. This," I shook a plastic
tube and the sludge oozed unappealingly from one end to the other, "is not
food. An army runs on its stomach. Damn," I looked at Adams, "this is
going to be terrible for morale. What the hell is the crew going to do?"

Adams pulled her shoulders back and
set her jaw in determination. "They'll embrace the suck, sir." Some
things in the military simply sucked, and there wasn't anything you could do
about it, so you embraced the suck and did your duty. "Soldiers have been
embracing the suck since we fought with wooden spears. We're not out here for a
pleasure cruise."

Her attitude was encouraging, I hoped
others felt the same. The two pallets of food, mostly MREs, that we'd brought
aboard the Dodo would need to be rationed, with priority being given to the
wounded. For sure, I was going to set an example by eating nothing but sludge,
or 'smoothies'; if the crew saw their commander was sharing the pain, they'd
take it better. For now, I decided the crew would be limited to one real meal
per day, and see how that went.

"Joe, I didn't realize this would
be a significant problem. Let me play with the food synthesizers and see what
flavors I can make."

"Chocolate would be good.
Everybody likes chocolate, right?" I suggested.

"The cocoa bean is a subtle and
complex flavor, I'll do what I can."

"Fine, great. I'll be your taste
tester," I volunteered. "Now, is there a gym on the bucket, or someplace
we can make into a gym? People need exercise, and we'll need space to practice
combat tactics."

"There is nothing like a gym, the
Thuranin rely on their cybernetics rather than muscles. One of the cargo
compartments is mostly empty, and I can get the robots to clear more space by
tossing stuff into space, we don't need any of that cargo. For running, there
is an access corridor that runs the length of the ship's spine, next to the
tram, I can open and close airlock doors as people run between sections."

That was good news, running sprints
was good exercise. Exercise I needed myself.

"Sir, I'd like to handle setting
up a gym," Adams volunteered.

"Very well, Sergeant, you do
that. I'm going to check on our wounded." I was eager to view the Thuranin
medical facilities that Skippy had been raving about. We had brought nothing
more than basic first aid kits with us, if anyone needed a blood transfusion,
we would be in trouble. So many, so many things, even seemingly little things,
could go disastrously wrong on this mission. And it was all my responsibility.

On my way back to the bridge, I called Simms via
zPhone and asked her to meet me in the corridor. “Major, I need your advice.”

“What about?” She replied, and I could
see in her eyes the discomfort we both felt, about me being her commanding
officer.

“The Thuranin.”

Now her eyes reflected a discomfort
for a different reason. “What to do with them.” It wasn’t phrased as a
question.

“Legally, and morally. Maybe, more
legally? Shit, I don’t know.” What kind of morality applies among alien species
that are vastly apart on the technological development scale? Where the
technogically superior species could wipe out the inferior species with
laughably minimal effort?

“I hate to ask this, but have you
asked, uh, Skippy?” She suggested. “He’s surely memorized every US Army and
UNEF regulation on the books.”

“I’m sure he has, and I’m afraid
that’s all he’s done; read and store in his memory. That doesn’t mean he
understands any of it. Particularly that he doesn’t understand the purpose, the
context, the history.”

“Colonel,” she avoided my eyes when
she addressed my rank, “you’ve been in combat. I’ve been Supply my entire
career.”

“You went through officer training.
UNEF gave me silver eagles, and a giant email of courses I was supposed to
take, then I got sent out planting potatoes. I didn’t even get formal training
to be a sergeant. I got promoted, had a week with my fireteam at Alpha, then we
shipped out and were posted to a village as an EOT straight away. It was on the
job training the whole way.”

She thought silently for a moment.
“There’s no equivalent to the Geneva Convention out here. That big list we got
of The Rules of interstellar warfare, don’t address treatment of prisoners, or
any rules of engagement, other than the basic rule that you don’t screw with
habitable planetary biospheres. We have the Army code of conduct, but, I think,
here’s where Skippy is exactly right; we’re pirates. This mission isn’t
sanctioned by UNEF, or any human authority, military or civilian. We’re on our
own.”

“Great.”

“Colonel Joe, if I may provide some
advice of my own?” Skippy spoke through the zPhone on my belt.

“You’re going to anyway, right?”

“Pretty much, yeah. Major Simms is
correct, there is no formal, agreed, written rules of engagement out here. Such
rules wouldn’t apply to piracy anyway. You know what you’re going to do, Joe;
you’re going to blow the Thuranin into space, because that is the only practical
way to achieve your mission, and keep the Thuranin from discovering that humans
hijacked one of their starships. You have to kill them to keep your entire
species safe. You know what you have to do, you’re only looking for someone
else, like Major Simms, to tell you it’s all right. You’re a colonel, you’re
the commanding officer, you need to take full responsibility for your
decisions.

Through clenched teeth, I said “Thank
you, Skippy. That's very helpful.”

Simms gave me a sad, sympathetic
smile.

“Oh, no problem, you’re welcome, any
time.” He responded cheerily, oblivious to my sarcasm, or ignoring it. “If it
makes you feel any better, the Thuranin would never spend a second agonizing
over a question like this, they’d squash you humans like bugs and not think
anything of it. Any Thuranin who even questioned such a decision would be
subjected to neural reprogramming.”

“Being told that I’m morally superior
to Satan is not a positive, Skippy.”

“I only mentioned it because, if the
Thuranin somehow ever do learn that you hijacked their ship, you having killed
their crew won’t make the Thuranin any more angry; they would expect you to do
that in war. They’d also expect their crew to die in combat.”

“So, no downside, you’re saying?” I
wondered if he picked up on the bitter sarcasm in my voice.

“Nope. It’s not a win-win, but it is a
win-don’t lose any worse.”

“No downside except for my soul.”

“Can’t help you there, Colonel Joe.
Although I don’t remember anything in scriptures about aliens.”

I couldn’t tell whether he was being
sincere, or a jackass. It still didn’t feel right, killing sentient beings. Killing
them while they are asleep.

“I sense hesitation?” Skippy asked.
“Perhaps I can help. Earlier this year, this star carrier was transporting
Kristang ships full of refugees from a planet the Kristang has lost to the
Ruhar. Halfway to their destination, Thuranin discovered that particular
Kristang clan had defaulted on a payment. This ship stopped, and when the
Kristang were unable come up with payment for transit fees to cover all
eighteen of their ships, the Thuranin ejected three of the ships, then jumped
away. Those three ships were packed with refugees, Kristang refugees, but they
were still refugees, mostly civilian castes, fleeing from war. Including females
and children. So many refugees were packed aboard these ships that their life
support systems were failing. The Thuranin ejected those three ships more than
a lightyear from the nearest star system, a star system without habitable
planets. By the time the Kristang scraped up enough money to pay the Thuranin
to retrieve those three ships, ninety percent of the Kristang aboard were dead.
And, by the way, while the Kristang were trying to arrange payment, four
Thuranin star carriers passed through the area, and any one of them could have
picked up those three ships with hardly any effort.”

“This ship? This star carrier,
that we’re aboard?” Simms asked.

“This ship, this crew.” Skippy
confirmed.

“Oh, then fuck them.” I breathed,
relieved. It was a cheap way out of my moral dilemma, but I was grasping for
it. “They can walk the plank.” I was starting to think like a pirate.

CHAPTER THIRTEEN    FLYING
DUTCHMAN

When I got back to the bridge, Chang stood up,
and I sat in the command chair. It would have been more useful as a command
station if I understood what any of the buttons did, later I needed to have
Skippy show me the basics. There were a lot of people squeezed onto the bridge,
it was crowded.

Jump engines are fully recharged," Chang
said, pointing to a green bar across the bottom of the main display screen.

"Great, thank you. Before we jump, our
ship, the other ship, the frigate, uh, Skippy, does the frigate have a
name?" Saying 'the ship' was getting old, especially now as we had two of
them.

"The Kristang name for the frigate is Heavenly
Morning Flower of Glorious Victory. Or close enough."

"You're kidding me." I exclaimed. I
would have figured the lizards would name their ships something like Hamster
Killer or Assassin.

"The Kristang warrior caste is rather
devoted to poetry. I see this surprises you."

"Poetry?" Chang asked, and we shared a
look. Neither of us could imagine the hard core warriors we'd met on the space
station sitting down to compose poems.

"I have extensive examples of Kristang
poetry, would you like to-"

"No! No, thank you." I sure as hell
wasn't in the mood for lizard poetry. "We'll call it the, uh, the Flower
for now. I don't want to call anything 'Victory' until we've achieved something
significant. Back to my question, do we keep the Flower, or get rid of
it? It's damaged."

"Sir," Adams spoke up, "I say we
keep it. It's damaged, but we know it works, and how to control it, sort
of." The looks she gave told me that, while I may be a senior officer, I
didn't know much about combat, as in, never give up a potential asset in
combat. She'd already reminded me of that once before.

"Sergeant Adams is correct, Colonel
Joe," Skippy said, "the damage to the Flower has not
significantly degraded its combat capability. There may also be situations
where having a Kristang ship may be useful."

"All right then, we keep it for now."

"Speaking of names, what do the Thuranin
call this ship?" Thompson asked.

"I hope it's not another long-ass name like
the Flower." Simms said sourly.

"The Thuranin do not name their ships, each
ship has a numerical designation." Skippy said.

"So, we get to name it, then." I
mused.

"Oh come on, we gotta call it the Enterprise."
Adams said with enthusiasm.

"Not every starship has to be named Enterprise."
Major Simms protested. I guessed she wasn't a Star Trek fan.

"This is the first human starship. If you
don't count that Kristang ship we jacked. It has to be named Enterprise."
Adams insisted.

"America is not the only culture with
famous fictional spacecraft." Chang protested. "We should
consider-"

"It's not your ship, monkeys!" Skippy
said. "You're like my hired crew. If anyone gets to name this ship, it's
me."

I waved my arms to get everyone's attention.
"How about if we concentrate on where we're going first, and worry about
names later? Where are we going next? How do we contact the Collective,
Skippy?"

"If they still exist-" Skippy started
to say.

"If? You're not sure they still
exist? Do you know where to find this Collective?"

"If by 'where' you mean the Milky Way galaxy
and its attendant pair of dwarf galaxies, yes. Plus numerous star clusters.
Beyond that, not so much."

"Holy shit." I shot a guilty look at
the people I'd dragged along on this fool's errand. "What's the plan,
then? We roam the galaxy forever, trying to find another Elder AI? Crap, we
should name this ship the Flying Dutchman." I mumbled.

"That is an excellent name, Joe!"
Skippy said with enthusiasm. "There, I changed the identification of this
ship to Flying Dutchman."

"Flying Dutchman?"
Thomson asked, which started an unhelpful round of speculation by the crew, all
talking over each other.

"It's a legend of a Dutch sea captain
who killed an albatross, which was bad luck, and was doomed to wander the sea
forever. Or something like that. The ship can never go into port."

"I thought the guy who killed the albatross
was the ancient mariner."

"Duh, of course he was ancient if he had to
sail forever."

"Is the Dutchman the squid guy in that
Johnny Depp pirates movie? Man, that guy gave me the creeps."

"Yeah, imagine the nasty fish breath that
squid guy had."

"No, that wasn't Johnny Depp, he was the
pirate with the eye liner. The blonde guy was doomed to stay at sea."

"All right, all right, enough!" I
shouted to end the conversation, which otherwise wasn't ever going to end.
"Skippy," I looked at him with a tilt of my head, "naming this
bucket after a doomed ship is not a way to build confidence in the crew."

"I was only trying to be helpful."
Skippy grumbled.

"And we're not your hired crew. If
anything, we're pirates." Without sanction from UNEF, we were pirates,
outlaws.

"Pirates! Joe, this is your merry band of
pirates! Aaargh, shiver me timbers!" Skippy did a decent pirate
impression. "I like it! A merry band of pirates, we are!"

I looked around the compartment, scanning faces.
This band of pirates was going to be anything but merry, if Skippy expected us
to visit every star in the galaxy to locate the Collective. I should have these
conversations with a limited group of people, not the entire crew present.
"This ship-"

"The Flying Dutchman."
Skippy corrected me.

"Fine, the Dutchman," I could
see Skippy wasn't giving up on that point, "is not going to randomly
wander the galaxy until the end of time, randomly sending out signals to the
Collective, right?"

"Course not, Dumdum, we'd run out of fuel.
Duh. From Kristang records, I know where they keep Elder artifacts that I
recognize as related to Collective components. There's a research facility in
an asteroid, that the lizards think is secret, a couple wormholes from
here."

That sounded much better. "Ok, so the plan
is we, what, get close enough to the asteroid, send a signal to this Elder
stuff?"

"Ha! As if! No way, Colonel Joe, you don't
get off that easy. No, I can case the joint remotely, but then we need to
ransack the place to heist the loot I need."

Case the joint? Heist? Where was Skippy getting
his slang? "Ransack? As in, raid? I don't suppose the Kristang there are
all unarmed research nerds?"

"Ho, ho, no way! They'll be mad as a nest
of hornets. This asteroid base is where the Kristang try to figure out how
Elder tech works, so they're keeping it secret from the Thuranin, because
they're hoping they can leapfrog past their patrons, and crush them. The
Thuranin know all about it, of course, they're not as stupid as the lizards
think. They let the lizards conduct their research in case they discover
anything useful, then the Thuranin can swoop in and take it. The place is
heavily guarded; stealth detection grids, nukes, x-ray lasers, all the bells and
whistles. Even this ship could be destroyed."

"That is a tough target." I didn't
like the idea of raiding a hardened target. We'd surprised the crew of the Flower,
and barely managed to take that ship. Any base the Kristang were trying to keep
secret from the Thuranin would be constantly on the alert.  "There
must be some place else we could go?"

"Nope. Not any place convenient. Besides,
Joe, what you need is there also."

What I need? A cheeseburger? "What is
that?"

"A wormhole controller module. The module
has the codes I need to shut down a wormhole."

Now I was pissed. "Skippy, you told me you
could shut down that wormhole!" What the hell else hadn't he told me?

"Hey, I can, I can! Temporarily. What I can
do is disrupt the wormhole's connection to the network, but that's only
temporary. The network protocols will eventually reestablish the connection,
and reset the wormhole. I need the full set of controller codes to actually
shut it down permanently, the Elders didn't provide those codes to me."

"I wonder why." I said dryly.
"You're so incredibly trustworthy."

"I am! It's not my fault you're too dumb to
ask the right question. Remember, when you assume, you make an ass of u
and me. Or you, anyway."

It took everything I had not to try stomping his
shiny lid into the deck. The Elders had a lot to answer for, building such an
asshole. Through gritted teeth, I asked carefully "You have a plan to get
past these stealth detection grids, nuclear missiles, lasers, and starships,
right?"

"Oh, yeah," he said casually,
"that's child's play for me. Their stupid grids can detect anything they
want, I'll instruct their master computers to ignore the inputs, the lizards
won't know anything has been detected. And their weapons aren't a problem, I'll
spoof their fire control systems so they can't get a lock on us. For a while.
Once we knock on the door, even my incredible wondrousness can't prevent even
the dumbest of lizards from figuring out something is wrong."

"Great, fine," I said irritably,
"we can plan how to cross that bridge when we get there. Is everyone ready
for the jump?"

Chang and Simms were talking over each
other, I was trying to interrupt both of them, and everyone had something to
say. This went on for only a second or so, before Skippy fairly shouted, using
the ship's intercom. "Enough! Dammit, this is like a troop of monkeys
howling in the tree tops. Quit with the jibber jabber, I can't hear myself
think. Out! Out! Everyone out of the bridge, except Colonel Joe and the
pilots!"

I looked up guiltily at the others,
especially Chang and Simms. "Skippy, we can-"

"Colonel Joe, you said we need
clear lines of communication. We're going to be flying this ship in enemy
territory, through wormholes, and potentially in combat. Having a troop of
monkeys screeching at me is not clear communication. They can stand outside the
bridge in the CIC, listen to us, and watch, but I don't want to hear from them
unless you open the intercom. You're the captain, you're a colonel, you're in
command. I will only communicate with you or the pilot, while this ship is in
flight."

I could see Skippy's point. Chang and
Simms wanted to weigh in on everything, because they didn't truly accept my
authority. I didn't blame them, I couldn't believe it myself. And, truthfully,
this was a great opportunity for me to assert, or more correctly, test, my
authority. If Chang, Simms, Giraud or anyone else wasn't taking my command
authority seriously, this was a great time to find out. "Skippy is
right," I declared in my deepest, most authoritative voice, "it's too
crowded in here also. Access to the bridge is restricted to the duty
officer," at that time the duty officer was me, "and the two pilots.
Everyone else, take stations in the CIC." We needed to schedule shifts for
who sat in the big chair as the duty officer, we also needed more than two
pilots, Desai had been our pilot since we broke out of the Kristang jail and
she had to be tired by now, having flown three unfamiliar spacecraft already
today.

To my relief, no one objected to being
banished from the bridge, they had better access to the controls and displays
in the CIC anyway, the bridge area was way too crowded.

"The ship is ready for jump, and the
course is programmed into the autopilot," Skippy announced, with a touch
of impatience. "The pilot knows which button to push."

"Pilot?" I asked.

"I'm ready, Captain." Desai did have a
finger poised over a large button on the console in front of her. "Mister
Skippy walked me through programming the jump into the autopilot, I do not
understand how it actually works."

We monkeys might never understand how the jump
navigation computer worked. "Initiate jump." I said simply.

And we jumped. The display flickered, and the
only change I could detect was that a white dot that was on the bottom right
corner of the display was gone.

"Jump successful, Captain." Desai
said. "According to the instruments."

"Confirmed." Skippy said simply.

"Excellent," I relaxed in
the chair, "what's the plan now?"

Skippy, of course, had an immediate
answer. "When the Jump engines are charged again, we head out. We're
safely away, that jump was far enough that the Thuranin ships searching for us
will be totally lost."

I looked at the status screen that
showed the Kristang ships attached to the platforms along the star carrier's
long spine. "What about our unwanted guests?"

"Oh, them. I can eject the other
Kristang ships, and leave them here before we jump. You still want to keep the Flower,
right?" Skippy suggested.

I frowned. "We should keep the,
uh, Flower, yes." We had to shorten that ship’s long-ass name.
"The other ships, won't they be able to make it back to Paradise? Or get
close enough to signal for help?"

"There is a 36 percent chance
that, by consolidating fuel into one ship and sacrificing the others, a single
ship could make enough Jumps to be within practical signaling range, yes. The
critical variable is the maintenance state of the Kristang jump engines. There
is a 64 percent probably of Jump engine failure, from repeated jumps."

"No."

"No? The monkey wishes to see my
calculations?" Skippy's voice sounded amused.

"No, this monkey wishes there to
be a zero percent chance the lizards, or the Thuranin, ever find out what
happened out here. If either of them learn humans are involved in our little
pirate action, Earth is toast."

There was another almost imperceptible
AI response lag. "I can interfere with their jump engine computers, but it
is likely they could eventually recover functionality by restoring from
protected archives."

"That's not what I meant. What's
the weapons load on this bucket? The Thuranin must have something stronger than
railguns."

"Railguns, too, but also
missiles, and masers."

"Anything that will completely
vaporize a lizard ship? I don't want anything left, no flight recorders,
nothing that could be recovered." I could see the others looking at me
skeptically, wondering where I was going with my questions.

"A star carrier is not a
battleship, it's weapons are primarily defensive. There are no weapons on this
ship that could completely destroy fourteen Kristang ships, there would be
detectable debris. Also, Kristang ships have drones which are automatically
launched in case the ship is severely damaged; these drones carry the ship's
flight logs and sensor data, and they are stealthed. Multiple drones are
carried by each ship, for this ship's sensors to find multiple stealth drones
launched from each of the fourteen Kristang ships would be difficult, even with
me operating the sensors. Also, I must caution that those fourteen Kristang
ships, even with their lesser technology, do pose a threat to this ship."
I noticed that Skippy had dropped his smart-ass attitude when talking about
killing lizards. "All this is academic, anyway, Colonel Bishop. As I told
you, I am restricted from using weapons."

"But I'm not."

This time, the pause was long enough
that I wasn't the only one who noticed. "I don't see how-"

"You get those weapons ready, and
locked on target, and I'll press the button, or whatever they use on this
bucket." I said, looking around for anything that looked like it might be
a weapons panel. It all still looked like a gothic nightmare to me. "You
can do that, right, your programming doesn't prevent you from preparing weapons
to fire, as long as you don’t actually initiate the firing sequence?"

Another long pause. "Colonel, I
may have underestimated you. That is almost a clever idea." For the very
first time, I heard a tiny bit of respect in that artificial voice. "Are
you certain you want to do this?

Through the window, I could see that
Lt. Colonel Chang, Major Simms and the others had heard everything I said.
"When I was in prison, waiting to be executed for refusing to kill
innocent hamster women and children, I told myself these Nazi lizards can go
straight to hell. Just now, I was thinking we could only disable their jump
engines." I checked the aft viewport, to the rows of Kristang cruisers and
destroyers latched onto the star carrier. "But these lizards are
threatening Earth." I looked at Major Simms, and she nodded to me.
"So fuck them." I said, with anger that scared me.

There was a noticeable pause before
Skippy spoke. "I may have to reevaluate my assessment of you."

"You can do this?" Then I
remembered Skippy's overly literal use of the English language. "You will do
this?"

There was no pause this time. "I
can prepare the weapons so you can use them. Yes. Which weapons do you want
activated?"

That was still the problem. None of
the weapons aboard the ship had the power to do what I wanted, and while we
were hitting the Kristang, they could hit back. If the star carrier's jump
capability was damaged, we could be stuck in interstellar space for a very long
time. I looked through the glass at Chang and Simms. "Does anyone have an
idea?"

Before either of the people in the CIC
could respond, Desai turned in her seat. "Could we jump someplace really
far from any stars, so the Kristang would be stranded for certain?"

"We are already in deep
interstellar space. Going further would increase the likeliness of the
Kristang's jump engines failing," Skippy said, "however, there would
still be-"

"Skippy," it was my turn to
interrupt him, "you can control the jump engines on those Kristang
ships?" Desai had given me an idea.

"Temporarily, yes."

"And we don't need to send teams
aboard those ships, plug you in?" If we did, my plan wouldn't work, no way
could we assault multiple Kristang warships.

"No, not this time. The Thuranin
platforms have hardline connections to docked ships, to reduce EM signatures,
so I infiltrated the Kristang ship computers shortly after I took control of
this ship."

The next question was the key to my
plan. "And how long would it take for the Kristang to charge their jump
engines, for a short jump?"

"Warships always maintain a
minimal charge in their jump engines, to escape ambushes." Skippy
explained. "All the Kristang ships are capable of an immediate short range
jump, right now."

"Good. How far are we from the
nearest gas giant planet?" I asked.

Desai's mouth formed a silent 'O' as
she realized what I was thinking. "You're thinking we jump in close to a
gas giant, eject the Kristang and then jump their ships inside the
planet, before they can react?"

"Whoa!" Skippy said
derisively. "Whoa, hold on there, monkeys. You can't jump a starship
inside a planet, the gravity will distort the exit point so it, oh, huh, I get
it. Yeah, duh. That would be very effective in ripping those ships
apart, especially since they would be trying to emerge into spacetime already
occupied by the planet. Ooh, I've never seen that myself. This is gonna be
awesome! Woo-hoo!" He sounded gleeful. "Yes, there is a Saturn-size
gas giant well within two jumps from here. In an uninhabited star system.
Pilot, course is laid in, ready when the jump engines reach sixty four percent
charge."

"Wait!" I said quickly,
before Desai could turn around in her seat. I should have trusted her not to
engage the controls without my order, for she held her hands in the air, not
poised over the controls. "Skippy, can you eject those ships, get clear,
and jump them into this Saturn planet, before they can launch those
drones?"

"Please, Colonel Joe, you insult
me. Easy-peasy."

Chang didn't have any objection, or a
better idea. Simms was enthusiastic, and I saw a new respect in her, and
Desai's, eyes. We jumped twice through the emptiness of interstellar space, and
then, with a press of a button by Desai, the view of black interstellar space
in the screens was suddenly replaced by a gray-blue gas giant in the blink of a
eye. The planet completely filled the viewscreen, I mean, Skippy must have been
showing off his navigational skills, it sure looked like we jumped in really
close. I didn't have time to shout an alarm, because the star carrier
immediately shuddered as fourteen Kristang ships and the cargo pod of sleeping
Thuranin were violently subjected to emergency separation, and then our ship
surged forward under normal-space thrust from Desai. Skippy had given her no
course instructions other than get the hell out there ASAP, and don't point the
ship toward the planet. We could see almost immediate flashes from aft as the
Kristang ships unwillingly formed jump points. "Pilot, you can cut thrust.
Watch this." Skippy announced excitedly.

"Watch what?"

The view screen zoomed to a section of
the cloudtops, which were suddenly lit from within. "I jumped all fourteen
ships into a hundred cubic kilometers, so the endpoints of their jump entry
points overlapped, as insurance that nothing is left of them."

"Isn't that a bit of
overkill?"

"Overkill is underrated."
Skippy said smugly. "Hmm. Uh oh."

"Uh oh?" The light within
the clouds below kept growing, becoming searing in brilliance, and the
cloudtops boiled up toward us. Fast. "Uh oh? What the hell
did you do, Skippy?"

"The energy released within the
planet was much greater than I anticipated, somewhere way up in the sustained
petawatt range. Wow. It’s become self-sustaining. Darn."

"Darn?" The clouds was
racing towards us. "What the hell is a petawatt?" I shouted.

"Trouble. We are safely out of
range. Uh, I think." Skippy's tone of voice didn't fill me with
confidence.

"You think? Desai, move us
away from the planet, higher orbit, whatever you call it. Step on it."

"Aye aye, sir." She said
with a big grin on her face. Piloting a giant starship was something she
clearly enjoyed. "Pedal to the metal."

We watched the planet retreat behind
us, as the cloudtops boiled rapidly into a truly enormous mushroom shape, and
projected high above the atmosphere like a solar flare. Skippy reported
excitedly that a significant part of the atmosphere had exceeded escape
velocity, and was being permanently blown into space. Enough that the ship's
sensors could measure the change in the planet's mass. The atmospheric gas was
still climbing, but Desai now had us moving faster, I was confident we weren't
going to get swallowed up. "Skippy, what went wrong?"

"Wrong? That was awesome!
Damn! I almost converted that planet into a minor star. I wish we had better
sensor coverage."

"Wrong means, something happened
that you didn't plan." I explained slowly. How could it be that I needed
to explain anything, to a super-intelligent ancient machine?

"Oh, sure, if you're going to be
picky about it." Skippy said dismissively. "Next time, I'll jump an
enemy ship deeper towards the planet's core. But that's no fun, we won't be
able to see anything. It would just look like the clouds burped or something
lame like that."

"Sir?' Desai asked, without
taking her eyes off the controls. "Should I keep accelerating? We're
moving at fifteen thousand kph away from the planet already."

"Huh? Oh, yeah, you can cut
thrust." There was no sense wasting power. Especially since we didn't have
a destination in mind yet. "Skippy, are we clear? The Kristang ships are
all destroyed, and they didn't get any drones away?"

"We are clear, Colonel Joe. This
took them completely by surprise, and I confused their computers so they
couldn't react anyway. They are now a loose cloud of atoms. The cargo pod with
the Thuranin got swallowed up and vaporized by the explosion, they're gone
also."

I looked through the glass at Chang
and Simms, and gave them a thumbs up. They both nodded. "What's next,
Skippy? Now that we have gotten rid of unwanted guests. We're headed to raid
the asteroid base, yes?" I should have felt something after destroying the
Kristang and Thuranin, but I didn't. No triumph, no guilt, no satisfaction,
nothing. Those ships were just objects, I wasn't thinking of the sentient
beings who had been aboard. This was very different from firefights in the
Nigerian bush, or fighting hamsters on Paradise. Maybe I'd feel something
later, after some rack time. Right then, I did not care, as long as the
Kristang and Thuranin were no longer a threat.

"Yes. We wait while our jump
engines recharge. I have plotted a long jump so we need a full charge, that
will take up to two hours."

"Desai, you up for using the next
couple hours learning to fly this crate?"

"Yes, sir!"

"Great. Skippy, plot some points
for her to navigate to, or whatever you're supposed to do for pilot training.
We’re going out to transit through a wormhole next, right? That wormhole is
about eight lightyears from Paradise, based on guesses I heard from our G-2.
That's our Intel people, at the division level."

"I've memorized all your military acronyms,
Colonel Joe."

"Oh, uh, of course you have, sorry about
that." Why did I bother explaining anything, to a being who knew
everything that was in any sort of data storage device humanity had brought to
Paradise? Plus every bit of data the Kristang and Ruhar had about humans. He
knew far more about humanity that any human did. Whether he understood
it, in context, was another question. "To travel eight lightyears takes
about sixteen days on a Thuranin star carrier like this. Unless, uh, there are
different types of star carriers? I don't know which ship we travelled
on."

"There are different types, and the
Thuranin have battleships, cruisers and what you would call destroyers and
frigates, also transports and support ships. All their star carriers have
roughly the same jump capability."

"Ok, so, two weeks between here and the
nearest wormhole-"

"You mean the wormhole that leads to Camp
X-Ray. That is not the closest wormhole to Paradise."

"It's not?"

"No." It was maddening when Skippy
stuck to the facts, usually I couldn't get him to shut up about anything.

"Which wormhole are we going to?"

"The one that is only five lightyears away
from Paradise."

I did some quick mental math. "Ten days,
then?"

"Sure, if you want to poke along like the
Thuranin, one wimpy little jump at a time. We're doing it in jumps that are
twice as far as normal, and that's only because I need to calibrate the
engines, fine-tune them, as you would say. We could go more than twice as far
on a jump."

"I don't understand."

"That's the first intelligent thing you've
said since we met."

"Welcome back, Skippy, I knew that asshole
was in there someplace."

"I'm ignoring that. The truth, my boy, is
the Thuranin stole their supposedly advanced jump drive technology a long time
ago, but those arrogant little cyborg pinheads have made zero progress in
understanding how it works since then. Morons. The best way to explain it is
it's like they stole a car, and they know how to get it started, and how to get
the transmission into gear. They have no idea that transmission has multiple
gears, but they know the car has a gas pedal, and they've got the pedal to the
floor. They're poking along in first gear, with the engine screaming, and it
creeps along painfully slowly, but it could go so much faster. Especially since
the Thuranin were very bad at copying their stolen technology, and it's like
they carved the transmission from a solid block of wood. Idiots. Even without
being modified, their crappy copy of a jump drive is capable of much greater
performance, with me controlling it."

"Not that you're bragging or
anything."

"No, I'm very modest. Astonishingly modest,
considering how awesome I am."

"Oh, for sure, your awesome modesty is your
most impressive trait." I rolled my eyes at that. "It's amazing how
humble you are."

"Yup. I'm very proud of my humbleness.
Besides, as one of you humans said, it ain't bragging if it's true."

"Uh huh." It continuously amazed me
how Skippy knew so much about human history. How did a shiny beer can know
quotes from Muhammad Ali? "This making longer jumps, it won't damage the
engines?  I don't want to get stranded out here. Not that the idea of
spending eternity on this ship with you, doesn't sound absolutely wonderful.
Because it doesn't."

"I don't want to spend an eternity looking
at your ugly face either. No, the Thuranin control their jumps by forcing far
too much energy through the engines, that wears them out. I'll be using a third
of the energy to jump more than twice as far. The engines will last much
longer. Which is good, because we can't exactly take our stolen pirate ship to
a Thuranin repair station."

"Can us monkeys help with keeping the ship
running? You could show us where the jack and spare tire is, in case we get a
flat."

"If we get stuck, you can get out and push."

I stuck my tongue out at him. Even the smartest
human was probably incapable of fixing even a toilet aboard a Thuranin ship,
we'd be totally useless if something happened to the engines or any other
critical system. Although, if Skippy was going to drag us on a long trip across
the galaxy, toilets were going to be a critical system.

"Ok, so, we're going to jump to a wormhole.
How are we going to get through the wormhole? Won't the Kristang, or the
Thuranin, or even the Ruhar at this point, have ships guarding the
entrance?"

"How would they do that?"

"Do what?"

"Guard the entrance."

"With, uh, you know, ships. Or, like, a
battle station or something like that." For a second, I pictured a Death
Star. Only filled with lizards instead of storm troopers.

"What good would a battle station do? It
just sits there."

I couldn't believe a super intelligent being
needed me to explain what a space battle station could do. Particularly since
I'd never seen one. Slowly, I explained. "It sits there, in front of the entrance,
preventing unauthorized ships from-"

"Whoa!" Skippy interrupted me. "I
see the problem. Huh, you really don't know. Damn, your species is even dumber
than I thought."

"Don't know what?"

"Wormholes aren't static. They move around.
A battle station would be totally useless."

"Ooooh-kaaaay. No, Mister Smarty Pants, I
didn't know that." The burgermeister hadn't mentioned that important
detail. "What do you mean, move around?"

"Oh, boy, here comes me trying to give a
physics lecture to a bacterium. What you call wormholes are not physical
objects, they are projections into the local spacetime. The projections hop
around, just below the speed of light, in kind of a figure eight pattern that
covers about a lightyear. A wormhole projection stays in one place for between
roughly seventeen to ninety two minutes, then it closes and reappears at the
next step along the path, which could be a quarter of a lightyear away.
Wormholes follow a set pattern, over the course of a cycle, a wormhole will
cover every location along the path, but there are millions of locations. My
point is, there is no way the Kristang, or any other species currently in this
galaxy, could prevent ships from using a wormhole; it's not practical to cover
all those locations. My plan is to jump us close to where a wormhole is going
to appear, and see if any other ships are waiting, I know exactly when a
wormhole is going to shift to the next location. If it's clear, we wait for the
wormhole to open, jump right in front of it, then go through."

"Huh." I had pictured wormholes as a
sort a Stargate thing, a big ring hanging in space, with a glowing center.
"That sounds like a good plan. And don't say of course it is. Why don't
wormholes stay in one place?"

"Didn't you already answer that question? Because
if a wormhole stays in one place, a species could control it, duh. Also,
because the longer a wormhole is open, it takes exponentially more energy to
sustain the connection. And a static wormhole would eventually create a local
rupture in spacetime."

"Another good safety tip, then."

"An excellent safety tip. Probably not one
you monkeys need to worry about, in case you're thinking of creating a wormhole
out of mud and sticks."

"Shut up." Every time I was thinking
Skippy was Ok, he said something to remind me that, deep down, he was an
asshole.

After the jump away from the wormhole, I called
a stand down for the entire crew, they were exhausted, and as Skippy said we
were safe, we’d made enough jumps that it was extremely unlikely the Thuranin
could find us now. Other than a person in the sickbay, who could nap on the
floor there, and a duty officer in the command pilot couch, I wanted everyone
to get a solid eight hours of sleep. We were tired, we were emotionally wrung
out, and we all needed time to process everything that had happened during a
very long and eventful day. For most of the crew, it had started when a Dodo
dropped out of the sky onto their logistics base, and four humans came out and
stunned the Ruhar. For Chang, Simms, Adams and me, it had started earlier, when
we escaped from the Ruhar and stole the Dodo.

I took the first duty shift, although I was not
in any way qualified as a pilot, Skippy had programmed two emergency jumps, and
all I would need to do is press a button if trouble appeared. While I sat in
the pilot couch, which was too small for Desai and way too cramped for me, I
began writing up an after action report on my iPad. Someday, hopefully, I would
need to report to authorities on Earth all that had happened, and it was best
to do that while it was still fresh in my mind. Damn, there was a lot to write
down. I was only halfway through when Chang relieved me three hours later, and
I was able to stagger back to my assigned quarters, close to the bridge. After
I kicked me shoes off and scrunched up in the small bed, I couldn’t get to
sleep. Rather than lay there uselessly, I sat up, turned the light on, and
began tapping away on my iPad.

Skippy’s voice came from the iPad’s speakers.
“Colonel Joe, you should be sleeping.”

“I have a lot to do, Skippy. Like planning a
memorial service for the three people we lost. I don't even know the proper
ceremony for Taoism or Hindus." I frowned. The truth was, guilt was
keeping me from sleeping.

"Hindu tradition is cremation." Skippy
chipped in helpfully. "I have all available data on human religious
rituals."

"Oh, uh, thanks, Skippy." I could ask
Chang and Desai what to do about their countrymen. Matheson's body would remain
in storage until we returned to Earth for a proper burial, at home. "This
must all seem silly to you."

"What?"

"Religious rituals. You know, religion
itself."

"Why would I think that?"

His answer surprised me, I had expected a
smart-ass remark about monkeys worshipping trees. "Because the beings who
created you were ancient and super powerful, and uh-"

"Joe, Joe, Joe." I could visualize
Skippy shaking his lid at me. "The Elders were indeed super powerful, they
were able to move stars. Several times, when the path of a star was going to
disrupt a solar system that the Elders thought could someday bring forth
intelligent life, they towed the offending star out of the way. Once, when a
blue giant star threatened to go supernova and flood several surrounding solar
systems with deadly radiation, the Elders created a wormhole, and transported
the star outside the galaxy. They jumped a super massive star two hundred
thousand lightyears through a wormhole. Think about that. Your question assumes
that beings so powerful, beings who had effectively achieved immortality, such
beings would have no use for religion. You are wrong. Again. Why do you think
the Elders left us, transcended?"

"Because," I answered slowly to give
myself time to think, "they were bored? With this existence?"

"No." There was no trace of humor or
the usual snarkiness in Skippy's voice. "It was because they had answered
all the physical questions about the universe, and when you reach the end of
the physical, what is left must be metaphysical. Beyond the natural world lies
only the supernatural. The Elders were able to trace time back to the beginning
of the universe, and they were left with one question: what lay before? Where
did the universe come from? Where did they come from? Physics, even
physics so advanced as to touch the realm of magic, has a limit. The Elders
transcended because they wanted to know, they needed to know, where they came
from. They wanted to commune with God. Or with their concept of God."

"Whoa." I couldn't think of anything
else to say.

"You make the same mistake most young
species do when thinking about the Elders; you consider them to be only
mythical, almost god-like beings. They were real people, like any other. At one
point, they were as dumb as you monkeys, but they learned and evolved into
something wondrous. I remember them as wise, kind, powerful, gentle people. I
miss them, and I seek the Collective in order to reconnect with some part of
them. But I know they are not gods."

"You're right, Skippy, I hadn't thought of
them as people." I hadn't thought of the Elders much at all, in fact,
since so little was known about them. "What were they like?"

"Unfortunately, I can't tell you. It's
annoying. I have memories of them, at the back of my mind, but when I try to
picture them, I can't, not consciously. And my programming won't allow me to
tell you anything that I do know. What bothers me is I can't tell if that is
part of my original programming, or it's a glitch. Which is another reason I need
to contact the Collective."

"We'll do that, Skippy, I promised you,
we'll find them." My eyelids felt so heavy, I couldn’t keep them open.
“Thanks, Skippy, I’m going to get some sleep now. Talk to you later.”

Over the next days, we settled into a routine.
While the Flying Dutchman jumped, charged engines and jumped again
around us, we sorted out living arrangements, set up a dining facility in a
cargo bay, got another cargo bay cleared out so it could be used as a gym,
assigned a duty roster for the crew, including me, and we explored the ship,
and tried to learn as much as we could about it. Simms had the bright idea to
tear bedding out of the Flower, so it could be laid on the floor of our
Thuranin sleeping quarters for the tallest of the crew. When a big Kristang
mattress was offered to me, I declined, then found one in my quarters next to
the bridge anyway. I didn’t protest, that damned short Thuranin bed was killing
my back.

The second night I went to sleep in my
quarters, Skippy told me there was a surprise in one of the cabinets.
"Holy crap, Skippy." I exclaimed when I opened the cabinet. It was
full, jammed full, of plastic tubes, each about a third full. "What the
hell is all this?"

"Flavor experiments. There's a
label printed into the tube on each one."

Looking more closely at a tube, I saw
'Chocolate #14' in tiny print. "Fourteen types of chocolate?"

"Twenty two, actually. Like I
said, chocolate is a very complex flavor. Also I tried multiple types of
butterscotch, caramel, strawberry, curry, jalapeno, cheddar, banana, apple
cinnamon, salsa, and more, there's a list on your phone if you care to read it,
which I know you won't. I am not confident of the fruit flavors, if you want me
to be honest."

Carefully popping the cap off the
tube, I sniffed it. "How many of these tubes is a meal?"

"Depends on your level of
exercise, as a rule for a male your size, one and a half full tubes is
sufficient, three times a day."

Sniffing it again, I tried to decide
between gulping it down before I could taste it, and taking a sip. Since I had
volunteered to act as a taste tester for the crew, I tipped the tube until a
couple drops slid into my mouth. "Not bad, not bad. Reminds me of a Swiss
Miss hot cocoa packet that got left in a hunting cabin for a lot of years,
until someone found it in the back of a drawer. Stale and musty, and the little
marshmallows have turned into crumbly rocks."

Skippy laughed. "I didn't realize
you were a sludge connoisseur, Joe."

"Smoothie, Skippy, call it a
smoothie." Sludge had an unpleasant mouth feel, both oily, chalky and
somehow grainy at the same time.

"Try chocolate number six, my
taste model predicts you'll like that one better."

"Got to finish this one first.
Yum."

"No need for that, we have plenty
of sludge aboard, enough for years."

"Oh, wonderful." Number six
did taste better, I compared them side by side, alternating sips. "You're
right, six is more of a dark chocolate, and it has less of a chalky aftertaste.
And less oily, more of a silky mouthfeel."

"Excellent! Drink up, Joe, only
twenty more types of chocolate to go."

"Tell you what," I couldn't
face the thought of another twenty sludges right then. What I wanted to do is
gulp a couple down quickly and get it over with. "Tell me the, like, six
chocolates you think taste the worst. People like different things, so what I
think is the best chocolate may not be someone else's favorite, but I can
eliminate the truly nasty ones." The last thing I wanted was for someone's
first sip of sludge to turn them off to the whole idea. "And identifying
the bad ones will help you calibrate your taste model, right?"

"Good thinking, Joe," Skippy
gave me some rare praise, "guessing what tastes good to humans has
actually been an interesting challenge for me. And that ain't easy."

"Glad to help keep boredom away.
Skippy, I have to say I'm truly impressed, that chocolate number six is pretty
good, I could sort of enjoy that for breakfast. You did a good job on that, I
was dreading the sludge idea, and now it's not so bad. Before I change my mind,"
or decide I was no longer hungry, "what chocolate do you think is the
worst?"

Sludges, and that's what the crew
decided to call it, because we're soldiers and that's what we do, weren't
popular with the crew, they weren't a disaster either. And since we were
soldiers, we made do, and came up with flavor combinations, the same way we
mixed and matched MREs to make flavors the military never intended. One
chocolate sludge plus one banana sludge was a chocolate-banana. Coconut sludge
plus curry sludge, mixed and poured over MRE chicken and heated up, made an
approximation of a Thai dish. Everyone agreed the fruit flavor sludges were the
worst, although if they mixed the nasty strawberry with the bland banana, it
actually tasted pretty good. This unpredictability of human taste preferences
drove Skippy batshit crazy sometimes, he simply could not, for all his awesome
processing power, get his taste model to work with reliable accuracy. It helped
that, after a few days, he was able to eliminate the oily mouth feel and the
chalkiness, the grainy or gritty part couldn't be fixed as that was necessary
for digestive fiber, according to Skippy. The crew found ample opportunity to
grouse about the 'food' aboard the Dutchman, something I thought
encouraging. People needed something to complain about, complaining was a
bonding activity, and it wasn't a serious hit to morale. A sludge in the
morning, sludge for lunch, and people looked forward to 'real' food like an MRE
for dinner. The crew, including Chang, Simms, Desai and Giraud, tried to get me
to eat some real food, but I settled for an occasional cracker or cookie,
trying to set a good example. When the crew saw the 'old man', which incredibly
was me, stuck with sludge, they didn't feel so bad about subsisting on
it two times a day.

Besides, I was holding out for a
cheeseburger and I was accepting no stinkin' substitutes.

CHAPTER FOURTEEN    SPACE
SUITS

Simms pinged me the next day while I
was in the gym, I was needed on the bridge. When I got there, Simms started to
get out of the captain's chair, I waved for her to sit. As the duty officer,
the chair was hers. "What is it, Major?"

"Colonel, Skippy wants to divert
us from a direct course to the next wormhole."

"Skippy?" I asked.

"We need to get close to a
Thuranin battlegroup, so I can access current intel. Right now I'm guessing at
disposition of forces in this sector, that makes it dangerous for us to be
wandering around the galaxy in our pirate ship."

Simms explained her objection.
"To avoid danger, he wants to get closer to a Thuranin battlegroup. I
thought this merited your attention."

"Good call," I agreed.
"You do, uh, see the problem, Skippy? Right now, all the Thuranin know is
one of their star carriers has gone missing. Aren't they going to get concerned
when we mysteriously show up on their doorstep, then jump away? You do plan to
jump us away, right?"

"Yes, of course, dumdum, and I
have a plan for that. If I have to explain everything to you, we'll never get
anything done. Uh!" He shushed me as I was about to speak. "Let me
talk before you waste my time with stupid questions. When we jump in, I'll
alter our jump signature and engine emissions to make us appear to be a
Jeraptha light cruiser, which is the type of ship the Jeraptha commonly use to
shadow enemy battlegroups. Our stealth field will disguise the hull outline
enough that the Thuranin sensors won't detect that we're a star carrier, if we
don't linger too long in one spot. And we won't. Genius, huh?"

I wasn't convinced. "Won't the
Thuranin send ships to attack us?"

"Of course they will, a Thuranin
battlegroup keeps frigates and destroyers on alert to chase away enemy ships.
Not a problem, we'll hop around with micro jumps until I've had enough time to
break into the database of their command ship."

"Hop around?" I shared a
glance with Desai. “I thought ships took a long time to recharge their engines
between jumps?”

Skippy replied smugly. “Most ships do,
I reprogrammed our jump engines so they now work so efficiently, they can
perform small jumps on a partial charge. You're welcome, by the way.”

“Perform multiple jumps on a partial
charge, which a real Jeraptha light cruiser can’t do, right?”

“Nope. The Jeraptha aren’t quite as
stupid as the Thuranin, but their engines aren’t much better. Another example
of my awesomeness.”

“You’re kind of missing the point,
Your Royal Awesomeness. If we’re doing things a Jeraptha light cruiser can’t
do, the Thuranin are going to figure out real quick that we are not a Jeraptha
light cruiser.”

“Shit.” Skippy said simply.

I winked at Desai. “Yeah, shit. I
thought you’re supposed to be a genius?”

“I’m not a military strategist,
Colonel Joe, that’s supposed to be you. Ok, hmm, how to fix this? Uh, all
right, how about this? Each time we jump in, I’ll slightly alter the jump
signature to make us look like a different Jeraptha warship. It is common for
the Jeraptha to use multiple picket ships to shadow an enemy force.”

“That’ll work. How long will we need
to hang around the Thuranin, until you have the info you need?"

"Oh, a couple minutes to half an
hour, depends. The closer to the command ship we jump in, the quicker I can get
the data we need. It's a trade off; either we jump in close a couple times, or
we jump in further away more times, when we're exposed longer."

I looked at Simms, and she nodded.
"It's a judgment call, then," she said.

A judgment call neither Simms nor I
were qualified to make, and Skippy knew it. Passing the buck to Desai would be
the coward's way out. "Uh huh. Skippy, I assume you'll have a series of
options programmed into the nav system, and you'll advise the pilot which jump
we should make, right, based on what the Thuranin are doing?"

"Yup, you got it."
Surprisingly, he resisted the temptation to make a smartass remark about my
intelligence, or lack of it.

"All right then, if you think we
need this intel, then we'll do it. One condition; I want a jump option that
will take us safely far away, not only a micro jump, if the pilot or duty
officer think's the ship is in danger. More danger than usual."

"Yeah, sure, that's fair enough.
Don't go panicking on me, agreed? We don't want to do this more than once if we
don't have to."

"Pilot?" I asked Desai,
"are you comfortable with that?" As the words left my mouth, I knew
I'd put Desai in a difficult position. What I should have done is ask if she
had any different ideas.

"Yes, Colonel. We have an
emergency jump option at all times, on a different button here," she
pointed to a silver button on the top right of her control panel. "I
worked that out with Mister Skippy when we were doing our first series of
jumps. The safety jump option is updated every time we jump."

"Oh." I should have known
that. "Excellent work, then, Pilot. Skippy, you know where a Thuranin battlegroup
is?"

"I know where one is likely to
be, and several other strong possibilities. We will be approaching in seventeen
hours."

That was right in the middle of
Chang's next shift as duty officer, I'd need to tell him that I'd be taking
over the bridge then. We'd developed a good working relationship, I didn't want
to screw it up.

I came back to the bridge half an hour
before we jumped to where Skippy thought we would find a Thuranin battlegroup.
We jumped in, spent a tense ten minutes listening with passive sensors, with
Desai ready to jump us safely away, until Skippy determined there were no
Thuranin ships within range. He activated our active scanners, and quickly
determined, based on thin clouds of atoms that did not naturally occur in deep
interstellar space, that Thuranin ships had been in the area, recently. Skippy
made a guess where they'd gone, and his first two guesses were wrong. His third
guess was spot on, too spot on. We emerged from the jump in the middle of the
battlegroup, less than two thousand miles from the nearest ship, that was way
too close even for Skippy's bravado. After Desai initiated a microjump to a
safe distance, we began hopping around the battlegroup, with a pair of Thuranin
destroyers trying to chase us away. At first, it was alarming, then annoying
for the pair of destroyers to pop up near us, firing missiles, railguns and
particle beams. We had to jump away before the Dutchman got seriously
hit, twice we took glancing particle beam hits that our shields easily
deflected, and Skippy complained that we were jumping away too soon. After a
few jumps, Skippy found a pattern in the tactics the Thuranin were using to
pursue us, and once he adjusted to compensate, the two destroyers never came
close again. Still, I thought Skippy was pushing it, or showing off, we kept
popping up uncomfortably close to the command ship, close enough that a
battleship and a pair of heavy cruisers joined the pursuit.

"Skippy, come on, do you have
enough data yet?"

"Hold your horses, Colonel Joe,
the fun is only getting started. We can, uh oh. Pilot! Emergency jump!
Now!"

Desai didn't hesitate, the display
flashed and the Thuranin battlegroup disappeared. "Jump successful,
Colonel, we are-"

"Jump again, Pilot, jump! Option
4, initiate!" Skippy shouted.

The screen flashed again, and again we
popped up somewhere in deep interstellar space. "Done." Desai
reported, her eyes wide. "Colonel, we only have power for one
microjump," she warned. The bottom of the main display showed a red bar
for the jump engine charge. It read only eighteen percent.

"Skippy, what the hell is going
on? Why the two jumps?"

"I think we're Ok now. I
think."

"We'd better be," I said
fearfully, willing the jump charge bar to slide above eight percent. It wasn't
moving. "What happened? Did that battleship get too close?"

"Battleship? Pthththth!"
Skippy made a raspberry sound. "No way! Those Thuranin pinheads were
chasing their tails, I was programming microjumps closer than we needed just to
screw with them. No, the Thuranin didn't pose any real danger, they're too
predictable. What happened was while I was downloading data from the command
ship, I detailed part of my processing capacity to skim through the data, and I
learned that the Maxohlx are so alarmed about the Thuranin's military setbacks
in this sector, they have assigned a Maxohlx cruiser to join the
battlegroup."

"A Maxohlx starship?" Desai
exclaimed. "Where was it?" The protocol was for Thuranin ships to
appear green on the navigation displays, Kristang ships were red, Ruhar ships
yellow, Jeraptha ships blue, and so on. The color for Maxolhx ships was orange.
There wasn't been any orange symbols on the display.

"That's the problem, I didn't
detect any Maxohlx ship in range. The Thuranin data indicates a Maxolhx cruiser
joined the battlegroup two days ago, but it has been intermittently jumping
away, and the Thuranin don't know where it is now. I am not confident in the
ability of this ship's crappy sensors to detect a Maxohlx ship that has engaged
its full stealth capabilities. At this point, I do not want to tangle with a
Maxolhx warship, I am not sufficiently familiar with the Maxohlx current level
of technology. It would be prudent, in the immediate future, to avoid Thuranin
fleet concentrations. As soon as we can, we should perform a substantial jump
to clear this area. The engines will have sufficient charge for a moderate jump
in thirty seven minutes."

The stupid progress bar was killing
me, it still only showed eight percent. "Did you get the data we
need?"

"Huh? Oh, yeah, sure, no problem,
I'm still skimming through it. We have a complete view of the disposition of
Thuranin forces in the entire sector, future war plans, all the good stuff.
With this, it will be easy to avoid them. Oh, and I also found confirmation the
Thuranin are pulling back from Paradise, permanently, they're abandoning that
entire wormhole cluster. It would have been an outlier to their main territory
anyway, the Thuranin were never enthusiastic about retaking Paradise, that was
a Kristang operation. It seems that because an Elder starship crashed on
Paradise a long time ago, the Kristang were eager to resume searching for Elder
technology. Too bad they didn't find anything useful the first time they had
the planet. Hahahahaha! Stupid lizards."

The idea of a Maxolhx cruiser lurking
out there, a ship we might not be able to detect until its weapons blew through
our shields, scared the hell out of me. My plan had been to turn the duty
officer shift back to Chang once we'd jumped away from the Thuranin, now I'd be
stuck in the chair another hour, to make sure we'd jumped safely away and the
ship had not suffered any damage from stressing the engines with multiple jumps.
Skippy insisted the critical engines were fine, his assurances didn't assure
me. Him admitting that he had jumped us closer to the Thuranin than necessary,
just to screw with them, didn't make me confident in his judgment right then.

The jump engines achieved sufficient
charge, and Desai asked whether she should initiate jump, I held off another
ten minutes to build up a safety margin. After the jump, and Skippy peevishly
running a system diagnostic that I insisted on, I turned the chair over to Chang
and retreated to a bathroom, where I almost barfed. Everyone on the ship,
everyone on Earth, were counting on me, I was doing the best I could,
and it wasn't good enough. Even with Skippy's stores of knowledge, there was
too much we didn't know. We'd almost stumbled on top of a Maxohlx warship that
had even Skippy frightened. Too many unknowns. And too much at stake.

Splashing cold water on my face helped
settle my nerves, I no longer felt nauseous. In the Thuranin bathroom, I had to
bend down to reach the sink, and my hands were trembling. Through my zPhone, I
called Skippy. "Hey, Skippy, we need to talk."

"Sure." He responded
immediately, despite the fact that I knew he was talking to a half dozen other
people, and running the ship, and decrypting the petabytes of data he'd stolen
from the Thuranin command ship at the same time. "Wazzup?"

"I need you to be serious for a
minute, can you do that?"

"If I have to. You're worried
about something, I can tell by your voice."

Likely he was also monitoring my blood
pressure, skin reactions, eye movements, and whatever else he felt like looking
at. "You said you were screwing with the Thuranin."

"Yeah, that was fun."

"No, it wasn't. It put the Dutchman
in unnecessary danger."

"Ah, I see the problem now.
You're upset. Joe, we were in no additional danger. Once I got into the
Thuranin command network, I knew ahead of time the actions of the Thuranin
ships that were trying to chase us away. Me having some fun didn't affect
us."

"This time. Didn't affect us this
time, that you know of. You didn't know there was a Maxohlx cruiser out there
somewhere, ready to blow this ship to pieces. Skippy, here's the problem; if
something goes bad out here, you'll be stranded in deep space, until you can
fake a distress call or something and lure a starship here. That sucks for you,
stuck alone for a while again, but you survived it before, you'll survive it
again. The stakes for us monkeys are a lot higher. When you put us at risk,
you're risking my entire species. Everyone. My whole planet, and everyone and
everything on it. We may be bacteria to you, and maybe you're being generous to
consider us bacteria. To us, to me, this is everything. We risked a lot to come
out here, now we're risking the survival of humanity. If this mission fails, if
we can't shut down the wormhole, if the Kristang stay in control of Earth, then
we lose, I lose, everything. Do you understand that?"

There was a moment of uncharacteristic
silence, then "Joe, is that a tear?"

"I splashed some water on my
face," I responded angrily, and wiped a tear away with my sleeve. Thinking
of my family, my home town, friends, the cool dark woods where I'd spent so
much time, thinking even of my parent's dog, had gotten me emotional. They were
all counting on me, and they didn't know it.

"I'm sorry," he said softly.
"I do understand what's at stake for you, for all of you. We made a deal,
I'm going to keep my end of the bargain, I am going to shut down that wormhole.
And I'm sorry to alarm you, we truly were not in any additional danger. But I
won't do that again, I promise."

"Thank you. Another subject; do
the Thuranin know about this ship? Do they know they lost a star carrier?"

Skippy's voice went back to normal, he
was happy to change the subject. "Modifying our jump signature worked, I
was monitoring the command ship's internal communications, they believed they
were being shadowed by three Jeraptha light cruisers. They do know the Dutchman
is missing, they don't know why. The good news is the Thuranin also lost
another two ships, a frigate and a cruiser, around the same time and in the
same area where the Dutchman disappeared, the Jeraptha have task forces
hunting down Thuranin survivors. Our secret is safe for now. The commander of
that Thuranin battlegroup sent a request to their fleet headquarters,
requesting permission to detach several ships to search for the Dutchman,
the fleet denied that request. They don't want to commit any more resources to
this area, they're writing this ship off. The operation the Jeraptha launched
in this sector, that resulted in the Ruhar recapturing Paradise, has succeeded
beyond expectations, the Thuranin have been forced to redeploy their forces. My
analysis is that the Jeraptha originally planned to halt their offensive by
now, because of their unexpected success they are pressing their advantage and
pulling in ships from other sectors. This operation had developed into a major,
major fleet action across the entire sector. That's good for us, because the
attention of the Thuranin, and Kristang, will be elsewhere."

"All right then." Thuranin
bathrooms didn't have mirrors, they must have thought vanity about external
appearance to be an undesirable holdover from their purely biological past. No
way did I want to go back on the bridge looking like I'd almost been sick. A
shaky commander was not good for crew morale. To make a mirror, I shined the
zPhone screen on my shirt, and checked my face as best I could. The face that
looked back was tired, yes, I could blame it on that. Straightening my shoulders,
I opened the door and walked back down the corridor and onto the bridge. Chang
nodded and stepped out of the chair for me.

"Colonel, no sign of a Maxohlx
ship out there?" I asked. Chang and Skippy would have notified me right
away, I was making conversation to avoid awkwardness.

Chang shook his head. "No sign of
any pursuit. We're charging engines," he pointed to the display that
indicated a current twelve percent charge, "for another series of jumps.
Mister Skippy reports that the wormhole we intended to use may be used by
Maxohlx ships in the near future, we have altered course for a different
wormhole. ETA to the next jump is three hours, twelve minutes," that was
also shown as a countdown on the display, "and we'll be approaching the wormhole
in four days."

"Four days? Let's make sure
everyone gets plenty of rest, then, we'll need-"

Skippy interrupted us. "Goddamn
it!" Skippy shouted. "Shit! You got to be kidding me! Fucking
pinheads! Sneaky fucking little green men!"

"Jesus Christ, Skippy, what is
it?" I asked, panicked, and sat down quickly in the chair. Chang dashed
out of the bridge to his duty station in the CIC, just beyond the glass. There
wasn't anything new on the displays, certainly no glaring orange symbol for a
Maxolhx ship. Desai turned to me and held up her hands in confusion, a finger
poised over the silver button to activate a preprogrammed emergency microjump
away. I held up a finger to hold her. "Are we in danger? Immediate
danger?"

"Us?" Skippy sounded
distracted. "No, we're in no danger. Not, uh, any more than usual. Who is
in trouble are those rotten, stinking, sneaky Thuranin." Skippy was
angry, genuinely angry. His liberal use of swear words had startled me, it was
unlike him, in my limited experience. "If I get my hands on them again,
I'm going to make them wish they'd never tried to be clever."

"What did they do to you?"

"Me? They didn't do anything to
me. Not directly. They made me look like a fool." There was bitterness in
his voice. "They hid something important from me. Something I should have
known, should have expected. Damn it!"

He was rambling, it alarmed me.
Scanning the displays again, there was still nothing new that I could see.
Desai moved her finger off the jump button and rested in on the panel right
next to the button. What the hell could Skippy be raging about? The Thuranin
task force was still where it was supposed to be. No anomalous lights were on
the display. In fact, no other lights were on the display, we were in deep
interstellar space, the only other thing likely to be around were scattered
individual hydrogen atoms, and they didn't appear on the display.

Skippy took a deep breath, at least he
appeared to take an audible deep breath. "When I cracked their command
ship's encryption, surprisingly sophisticated by the way, they must have stolen
it from the Maxohlx, I can't imagine the Maxohlx would have given it to them.
No match for my incredible powers, of course, it was, though, a minor challenge
to me, sort of like doing a crossword puzzle. Not a tough crossword puzzle, you
know, like when the clue is about something obscure like 17th century Hungarian
poetry, unless you're an expert on 17th century Hungarian poetry, or ancient
Hungarian literature in general. Really, if you studied any kind of Renaissance
or Baroque era European literature-"

"Skippy!"

"Huh? Oh, a little off topic
there, I guess. Where was I?"

Where was I? Desai looked at me and I
rolled my eyes. "You can store all human knowledge in a tiny part of your
memory, and you can't remember what you were talking about ten seconds
ago?"

"Ten seconds in your slow time
sense, Joe, for me, entire species could have evolved, thrived and gone extinct
in that time. My mind wanders. Oh, yeah, I was talking about their encryption.
I dug into the database on the Thuranin command ship and found something
interesting, very interesting. It's not widely known even among the Thuranin,
their leadership keeps this information closely guarded, and I can see why,
because if this secret gets out, the Thuranin will lose a big advantage. The
Thuranin have planted a nanovirus aboard many, if not most, Kristang warships.
Any Kristang warship that hitches a ride on a Thuranin star carrier gets
infected during the process, if the star carrier is equipped with the
nanovirus. The Dutchman is equipped to generate the nanovirus, before I
took control, this ship's AI had already determined that the Flower was
infected, so it never activated the nanovirus controller. This ship's crew
wasn't aware the nanovirus even exists."

"Interesting, I guess, what is a
nanovirus?" What I really wanted to know was why Skippy had gotten so
upset about it.

"It's a method of linking atoms
by quantum, hmm, damn, I can't tell you monkeys about that. You wouldn't
understand it anyway. Think of it as a way to preprogram elements of a Kristang
ship so that, when the Thuranin activate the system, the atoms assemble into
nanomachines that can take control of the ship. Physical control, not only
control through software. Until the nanovirus is activated, there is no way the
Kristang, at their pathetic level of technology, could ever know their ship is
infected. That's important because there are simple ways of scrambling the
nanovirus, to render it inert. Even the Kristang could do that. And the
Thuranin wouldn't know the nanovirus on a particular Kristang ship had been
scrambled, until they tried to activate it."

"Great. This is important to us,
how?"

"Because," Skippy said
slowly, "if I'd known about the nanovirus, I could have used it to take
control of the Flower. We wouldn't have needed to jack me into a wall
port. And the nanovirus allows me to take complete control, even parts of a
Kristang ship that are hardened against cyber attack. I'm sorry, Joe, if I had
known about the nanovirus, we wouldn't have needed to fight our way through the
Flower compartment by compartment."

Ah. He was feeling guilty about the
people we'd lost. "You didn't know, Skippy."

"I should have! This is an old
and relatively simple technology, I should have anticipated the Thuranin would
have discovered it, or stolen it, purchased it, along the way."

"You didn't know, you can only
work with what you know."

"Still feel bad about it,"
he grumbled. "What bugs me is I should have scanned the Flower
after we took control, I would have detected the quantum links. I can't explain
why I didn't do that. Joe, this is where my inability to access sections of my
memory concerns me."

"Mister Skippy," Desai
asked, "does this mean you can remotely control Kristang ships in the
future?"

"Yes! Yes, I can, as long as
we're close enough. The Thuranin are constantly changing their control codes,
and their encryption is pretty good, so I need to bypass the Thuranin control
system and activate the nanovirus directly. Short answer: yes, I can do it.
Long answer: meh, it depends. I wouldn't want to count on it in a critical
combat situation."

I gave an exaggerated shrug.
"And, once again, you are filling me with confidence, Skippy."

"Hey, it's better than what we
had before. And I'm working on it, the technology the Thuranin are using isn't
quite right, it's corrupted from the original. The Elders abandoned this type
of crude technology a long, long time ago, I'm having to dig through my memory
to figure out how it's supposed to work, and if I can fix it, then I can
control it much more easily. Give me some time. Your time, not my superfast
time."

"Hey, Colonel Joe? Are you
asleep?" Skippy's voice rang out of the speaker in the ceiling of my
sleeping compartment.

I bolted upright, and whacked my head
on a low-hanging cabinet. Before I tried going to sleep in the tiny bed, I
figured that cabinet would be a problem, so I hung two pairs of pants over it
as padding. Probably saved me from a concussion. Next night, it was time to try
sleeping on the floor, the Thuranin beds were too small. "Damn it, Skippy,
you made me crack my head." Rubbing my scalp made it worse. Stop rubbing
it made it worse too. "What is it," I asked as I stumbled to my feet,
ready to run out the door to the bridge. "That Maxohlx cruiser found
us?"

"No! No danger, Joe. Good news, I
have good news."

My zPhone said it was 0134 hours, I'd been
asleep for less than three hours and my duty shift on the bridge started in
another three and a half hours. "There is no good news at this time of
night, Skippy." I settled back in the bed as best I could, alternating
between rubbing my head and letting it throb painfully. "Can this wait
until morning?"

"There is no sunrise on a
starship, Joe."

"Oh, for crying out- what is
it?" Clearly, he was not going away.

"Among the data I pulled from
that command ship is an interesting analysis of the Kristang asteroid base
where we're going. The Thuranin have been monitoring it closely for years,
they've mapped the gaps and vulnerabilities of the Kristang defenses."

"Oh, that is good news. It's
going to be easy?"

"Uh, that would be a no, Joe.
This is a tough nut to crack. The Thuranin analysis, and I've confirmed their
analysis from the raw data, is that the Kristang have done a very good job of
hardening their defenses specifically against the Thuranin. Despite their best
efforts at secrecy, the Kristang think it reasonably likely the Thuranin are at
least aware there is a research facility in the asteroid, and they have gone to
considerable trouble and expense to prevent the Thuranin from swooping in and
stealing their goodies."

"Well, crap." Now he'd
ruined my sleep. "It's impossible, then?"

"No, I didn't say that. The
Thuranin can take the asteroid if they really want to, and the Kristang know
it. The point of the Kristang defenses is to make it difficult enough for the
Thuranin, that the Thuranin will decide raiding the asteroid isn't worth the
cost."

I shook my head in the darkness.
"Great alliance the Maxohlx have assembled, everyone has to worry about
getting screwed by their allies as much as they worry about the enemy."

"It is a weakness for
them, yes."

"Bottom line,
Skippy," I asked because of his tendency to ramble on, "is raiding
this asteroid worth it to us? You made it sound like we don't have much of a
choice."

"You don't have any
choice, that I know of. The only reference I can find to an Elder wormhole
controller module is at this asteroid. Elder artifacts aren't something you can
find on eBay, Joe. We get it from this asteroid base, or you give up on
shutting down that wormhole."

He maddeningly hadn't answered
my question. "All right, it's worth it to us. I'll ask this slowly so
you'll understand," lack of sleep made me cranky, "can we do it? With
this ship, and the people and equipment we have onboard? Wait, wait a
minute!" That little shithead was likely to misunderstand anyway.
"I'll be more specific; do we have a good chance of success?"

"Oh, sure, no problemo,
Joe! Even better now that I have more data. The Thuranin have been probing the
Kristang defenses around the asteroid, partly to evaluate the Kristang's level
of technological development, and partly because the Thuranin are hateful
little motherfuckers who love to screw with lesser species. With the Thuranin
having done the first part of the job for us, I know how to sneak right up to
the front gate, so to speak. The Thuranin got very close, their reports
indicate blind spots in the Kristang sensor network. Like I said, this is good
news."

"Good news that could have
waited until I woke up."

"Sorry about that, Joe.
You can go back to dreamland now."

"Yeah, like that's going
to happen now. Hey, wait a minute." It had been eleven hours since we'd
jumped away from the Thuranin battlegroup. "It took your enormous brain
all this time to decode the Thuranin data and analyze it? You said you were so
fast that us monkeys couldn't even conceive of it."

"I did have to decrypt
over a zettabyte of data," Skippy said defensively, as if I had any idea
what a zettabyte was, "from a surprisingly sophisticated encryption
scheme, then organize it, decide what to analyze first. Then analyze a lot of
conflicting data to make sense of it."

"Oh, sorry, Skippy,"
I didn't mean to insult him, "I'm sure it was a lot of work even for
you."

"Oh, no, it took me only
seven minutes. Seemed like forever, though."

"Seven min- you knew all
this a couple minutes after we jumped away?"

"Yup."

"Then why the hell did you
wake me up in the middle of the freakin' night?"

"I was bored, Joe. And
lonely."

And that's all he said. His
silence made me stifle the angry remark I had ready. Skippy and I had been in
almost continuous contact since he'd sprung me from the closet where the Ruhar
has been keeping me, before that, he'd had no contact with anyone for a very
long time, perhaps millions of years. He'd been able to listen in on other
people's conversations after the Kristang first arrived on Paradise, to
alleviate some of his boredom, that may have intensified his loneliness;
hearing other people interact, and being excluded. Thinking about that reminded
me that I was the first person, the first being, that Skippy had talked to
since, whatever had happened to him that caused his isolation. With me
sleeping, he'd been like a junkie needing a fix. "Sorry about that,
Skippy, you do understand that us monkeys need to sleep, right? There are other
people aboard, can you talk to them?" Most of the crew was sleeping, Chang
and two pilot trainees were on the bridge, and one person was in the sickbay,
although anyone pulling a shift in the sickbay could catch a nap while the
wounded were sleeping, or sedated or unconscious or whatever Doctor Skippy the
mad scientist thought was best for them.

"They're not comfortable
talking with me. Most of them are scared of me."

"I'll talk to them about
that, Skippy. In the morning, Ok? I'm scheduled to be on the bridge again in,
like, a little over three hours. Can you do a crossword puzzle or something
until then?"

"I guess so. You want me
to play a lullaby for you?"

A pillow over my head didn't
block him out enough. "Good night, Skippy."

When I woke up, and was in a better
mood, I asked Skippy about his plan to raid the asteroid. Not a detailed plan,
I needed to get Giraud to work on that soon, for now all I wanted was to hear
the basic concept from Skippy. “You’ve had time to review all the data about
the asteroid layout and defenses, right? How do we get inside the place?”

“Oh, I have a totally brilliant plan,
Colonel Joe. We’ll use Thuranin dropships,” Skippy explained patiently, “I can
get the outer landing bay doors open and fool their sensors. so the Kristang
can’t shoot at the dropships. After the dropships land, the crew will rush the
inner doors, and blow them open.”

“Rush the door in a
depressurized landing bay? Skippy, none of us will fit into a Thuranin
spacesuit. They’re too small.”

There was a millisecond pause, that, I
now knew, was an eternity in AI time. “Well, shit.” Skippy finally said.

“Well, shit? Seriously? This isn’t
a joke? You didn’t think about us humans needing space suits, in space? Let me
define space suit for you; two words, the first is ‘space’-”

“I’m not a meatsack! I don’t think like you
biological trashbags.”

“This biological trashbag is going to take a big
dump on your lid, and throw you out an airlock.”

“That would be a better threat, if I didn’t
control all of the airlock mechanisms, monkeyboy.”

“Airlocks have manual overrides. Ooh, look,
monkey has opposable thumbs.” I waggled my thumbs at his lid.

“Shut up.”

“Well?”

“I’m thinking!” Skippy shouted defensively.

“I can smell the smoke.”

“What?”

“The next time you think of telling me how
god-like smart you are, just remember ‘space suits’.”

“Oh, shut up. Never said I was perfect.”

“Go back to square one, and rethink your plan,”
I said as I headed into the tiny bathroom. “I want to discuss it with Giraud
this afternoon so he can start fixing your screw-ups. That’s in about ten
hours, which is a bazillion years in Skippy time, so you’ll have plenty of
opportunity to come up with idea that don’t include humans breathing hard
vacuum.”

Private Randall approached me in the
gym that morning, while I was sweating away with Sergeant Adams’ improved
equipment, and he reported that Major Simms was satisfied the crew had
completed their familiarization drills; that everyone now knew where the
airlocks were, how to operate trams and lifts, where their duty stations were,
and a whole list of emergency procedures that Chang and Simms insisted on, and
Skippy thought were a complete waste of time.

“Joe, this crew trying to learn how to operate
this ship is a waste of time. You’re like a dog. A dog may know that inside the
pantry is a yummy box of treats, but it can stare at that doorknob all day, and
it’s never going to understand how it works.”

“So, we’re dogs now?” I winked at Randall. “When
did we get a promotion? I thought we were all bacteria to you.”

“You have performed better than expected
overall, your species is reasonably adaptable. Maybe I can consider you more
like a paramecium.”

“Wait, a pair a what?” Randall asked.

“Pair-a-mee-cee-um,” I pronounced it slowly.
“It’s a single-cell organism, you probably looked at one through a microscope
in high school. They look kind of like a paisley.”

That drew a blank stare from Randall. “A
paisley?”

“That’s uh,” I struggled to think how to explain
paisley, “those funky swirly patterns on old people’s couches, or curtains.
Kind of like half a yin-yang symbol?”

“Huh, I didn’t know there was a name for those.”
Randall nodded.

Skippy made a disgusted noise. “I changed my
mind again. You idiots are bacteria. Who doesn’t know what a paisley
is?”

“We’re soldiers,” I explained, “not interior
designers, chrome dome.”

“Paisley would be a great unit symbol for your
merry band of pirates, Joe. I’ll get the fabricators to crank out a bunch of
them.”

True to his word, later that day Skippy did
produce patches of a paramecium with a pirate eyepatch and a dagger. Adams
brought a sample of patches to me, figuring I’d get a good laugh out of it. I
expected that would be the end of it, until some of the crew asked me if they
could use the patches on their uniforms. That shouldn’t have surprised me, we
were pirates, and wearing a paramecium was the crew’s way to give the finger to
Skippy. That was how our merry band of bloodthirsty pirates ended up wearing
paisley.

On my way out of our makeshift gym, I passed
Sergeant Adams as she was heading into the gym, a towel slung over one
shoulder. "Sergeant, let's discuss your attire."

“I thought we were good to wear T shirts on
deck, sir, unless we’re going into action?” She asked, pointedly looking at my
gray shirt with ‘ARMY’ across the chest. “I only have three tops aboard, sir.”

“You’re Ok to wear a T shirt, Adams,” I smiled,
“but, we’re on a starship, heading boldly into space where no human has
been before, potentially having to land on planets with unimaginable dangers.”

“Sir, yes?”

“And you’re wearing a red shirt.”

“Oh.” She blushed as she got the old Star Trek
reference. “Yes, sir, I’ll be sure to change into a Marine Corps utility uni
before we beam down anywhere.”

“You do that.” I gave her a smile. “Carry on.” I
was proud of myself that I didn’t turn to watch her shapely behind as she
walked away. This could be a very long trip.

CHAPTER FIFTEEN    RAID

Giraud pinged me, he needed to talk about the plan to raid
the asteroid base. I found him, along with Sergeant Thomson, in a cargo bay
near the gym. Skippy told me he'd been working with Giraud on an assault plan,
and I let Giraud work without unhelpful interference from me.

"Good morning, sir." Sergeant Thomson said in his
charming British accent.

"Good morning," I replied, still tasting the
sludge I'd had for breakfast. That morning, I'd tried mixing the unsuccessful
apple-cinnamon sludge with a chocolate sludge that wasn't too bad, the result
was something I was happy to gulp down as quickly as possible so I didn’t have
to taste it. There was an unspoken competition among the crew to find good
flavor combinations, which were then posted on our internal zPhone network. My
experiment that morning was going into the 'Fail' column. "Lieutenant, I
see you've been busy?"

"Yes, sir." Giraud nodded. When he'd signed up for
the mission, I'd gotten the impression that he regarded me as a bit of a lucky
fool, someone who had the keys to the future but didn't know how to use them,
and needing professional soldiers like Giraud to make the important decisions.
He probably still had a less than stellar impression of my tactical planning
skills, but there was a grudging respect for the way I'd handled the overall
mission so far. My idea to get rid of our Kristang problem, by jumping their
starships into a planet, had impressed a lot of people. That, and the fact that
the mission had been resoundingly successful so far, and gone exactly as I'd
promised. We'd escaped from paradise, captured a Kristang frigate and a
Thuranin star carrier, and were now jumping toward a wormhole. Success
encourages confidence. I needed to keep the successes coming. "The plan to
raid the asteroid requires the element of surprise; we need to move quickly
once the dropships are in the landing bay. That means the assault team can't
wait for the bay doors to cycle closed and the bay to repressurize, they must
exit the dropships and gain access to the base interior before the Kristang can
react. To do that, they need space suits."

Giraud gestured to a rack that held two space suits, a small
suit that looked lightweight, and a larger suit that was bulky and heavily
armored. "This Thuranin suit," he pointed to the small one,
"won't fit even our shortest crew member. Skippy told me there is no way
to expand the size of these suits, this ship's fabrication facilities don't
have the capacity to produce the materials."

"True," Skippy agreed over the speaker in the
bulkhead. "Thuranin battlegroups include support ships with full
fabrication facilities, individual warships only have limited ability for fabrication."

"That was a serious problem," Giraud continued,
"until Sergeant Thomson thought of the spacesuits on our Kristang ship.
These suits are armored and powered for combat, motors in the limbs enhance the
wearer's movements, so the weight will not be a problem for humans."

The Kristang suit did look cool, I walked up to it and
rapped my knuckles on the armor. It was solid. Weapons could be attacked to
brackets at the wrists, so the wearer only needed to control the trigger. The
faceplate was some kind of smoked glass, maybe it wasn't even glass. Ironman,
or a mech suit from Halo or a dozen other video game, came to mind when I
looked at the suit. "Good thinking, Sergeant. The next question is, are
these suits too big?"

"That is a problem." Giraud admitted.

Thomson went around to the back of the Kristang suit, where
the back hinged open, and carefully stepped inside it. Giraud helped him suit
up, and get the back closed. Status indicators lit up on the wrist displays,
and the suit took two careful steps forward, then the faceplate retracted so I
could see Thomson's face. "It's not ideal," Thomson said, his words
distorted. His face was hidden from the nose down. "My chin hits the
bottom of the helmet, I can't open my mouth all the way too speak
properly."

"Sergeant Thomson is almost two meters tall,"
Giraud said.

"That's six feet four to you, Joe," Skippy added
helpfully.

"And he is barely able to use the suit
effectively," Giraud continued. "The suit can be adjusted, and Skippy
says he can fabricate some components for us."

"A limited number of components," Skippy
cautioned, "don't get too excited."

"How much of an adjustment?" I stood on my toes to
look in the helmet. Thomson did not appear to be comfortable.

"The maximum adjustment, for practical use in combat,
is limited to people six feet and taller." Skippy stated.

"I'm six three," I mused, "who else?"
Thomson and Giraud were tall, so was Chang.

"Seven people," Giraud ticked off on his fingers,
"me, you, Sergeant Thomson, Colonel Chang, Specialist Putri, Private
Marsden, and privates Marsden, Darzi and Putri."

"Seven people? Is that enough for a successful
raid?" I asked.

"Six people," Giraud corrected me. "You're
not going on the raid, sir. You need to remain aboard the Dutchman, and
command the operation."

"He's right, Joe," Skippy added. "I'll be
here flying the dropships and monitoring sensors, somebody needs to tell me
what to do."

Trying to keep the irritation off my face, I said tersely
"We'll discuss that later. Are six people enough to achieve the
mission?"

"No." Giraud stated flatly.

"I agree, Joe." Skippy said. "This is where
we need your military genius. I could hammer the asteroid open with railguns,
and then we search through the debris, but that's too much risk of damaging the
items we need."

"Lieutenant," I addressed my remark to Giraud,
"you have special forces training and experience. If you think we can't
achieve mission success, then I don't have anything to add."

Giraud frowned. "We are, as you Americans say, back to
square one."

"We are not giving up. I'm sure you've considered
everything. Let's step back, take a break, and approach this again tomorrow
with a fresh set of eyes."

Giraud helped Thomson out of the Kristang combat suit,
Thomson moved his stiff shoulders, the suit had barely fit him, and the edges
of the suit had dug deeply under his arms.

"Sergeant," I asked while examining the Thuranin
space suit, "if that Kristang suit is properly adjusted, are you confident
you could use it in combat?"

"Yes, sir. When it moves, it's almost effortless.
With practice, we can be deadly with these suits. We're fortunate the Kristang
weren't able to use these suits when we took the Flower."

"Good, good." I was distracted. The Thuranin suit
was lightweight, almost flimsy. Even assuming it was made of exotic high-tech
material, I couldn't see how it could compete in combat against a Kristang
suit. "Skippy, these Thuranin suits are like spandex. Does this material
harden into diamond or something like that? Or do they have, like, energy shields
like a ship?"

"No, nothing fancy like that. It's a space suit."
Skippy replied.

"Huh. How do the Thuranin fight in these things?"

"Fight?" Skippy laughed. "The Thuranin don't
typically go into combat themselves. Those little green pinheads aren't going
to expose themselves to danger directly. They remotely control military drones,
you'd probably call them combat droids or robots or something like that."

"Combat droids? Are there combat droids aboard this
ship?"

"Of course, there's three dozen of them in the ship's
armory." There was an implied 'duh' in Skippy's voice. "Thirty eight
units, to be exact."

"Armory? What armory?" I asked.

"We have combat robots?" Giraud demanded.
"This would have been a good thing to know, before I spent days planning
an assault!"

"There are combat robots, rifles, rockets, all kinds of
toys in the armory, it's located aft of the command section. It's kind of
hidden, you have to know where it is."

"Why the hell didn't you tell us about this?" I
didn't try to keep the frustration out of my voice.

"Well, Joe, you didn't ask," Skippy grumbled,
"and I'm not going to volunteer to tell a bunch of monkeys where they can
find dangerous toys to play with."

"Merde." Giraud's face was red. "Colonel, if
you ever feel like throwing Skippy out an airlock, let me know, and I will be
very happy to take care of it for you."

"What?" Skippy asked innocently. "What did I
do?"

I gave Giraud a thumb's up. "Skippy, if you don't
already know, I can't explain it to you. These combat robots, are humans capable
of controlling them, or is that something the Thuranin do through their
cybernetics?"

"The Thuranin use cybernetics, sure, that is one of the
most efficient ways to telefactor a remote device, especially in combat where
response time is critical. There's no reason we can't hook something up for
humans to be the telefactoring agent."

It would have been helpful for me if Skippy bothered to
explain unfamiliar technical terms. "To be clear, telefactoring is remote
control? With what, joysticks, buttons, that sort of thing?"

"Phhhtttt!" Skippy made a raspberry sound.
"As if! No way, dude, that would be way too slow! What, you think this is
1985 and you're playing Super Mario? We'll attach sensors to the operators, so
the robots will move as they move. Motion capture, only way better than the
technology you monkeys have. Now that I think about it, we'll need goggles
also, so the operator can see what the robot sees. That's not as efficient as
hooking directly into the optic nerve like the Thuranin do, it should be good
enough. And the sensors should include accelerometers, so the operator can get
a sense of feedback when the robot encounters resistance."

"Would you kindly unlock the armory, so us grubby
monkeys can see these amazing robots?" I put as much sarcasm into my voice
as I could.

"Since you asked so nicely, sure." Skippy couldn't
resist a dig at us. "Wash your paws first, though, please."

The droids were impressive, although Sergeant Adams quickly
coined the term 'combot' for them. According to her, they weren't true
androids, as they had only a limited ability to move and react on their own,
requiring control by a sentient operator. Once we got three combots out of the
armory and into an empty cargo bay, Giraud, Adams and Thomson were able to control
them without any special gear, simply by having Skippy watch their movements
and instruct the combots to follow. In action, we wouldn't be able to rely on
Skippy, he cautioned, the asteroid base was heavily shielded and operators
needed to be close to their combot, to reduce the time lag. During the raid,
operators had to be aboard the dropships in the landing bay. I wasn't happy
about that, we'd be exposing more people to risk, even if the risk to them was
less than to the people wearing Kristang powered armor suits. We still needed
people in suits on the raid, Skippy didn't trust combots with tasks that
required fine motor skills, like selecting, picking up and transporting the
fragile, ancient Elder gear he needed. Also, with only combots we'd have all our
eggs in one basket; according to the Kristang and Thuranin data Skippy had
downloaded, the Kristang had designed their defenses specifically to protect
against the Thuranin, and Skippy couldn't guarantee the Kristang didn't have
some ability to interfere with the telefactoring connection. The Kristang knew
all about Thuranin combots, and would have spent a lot of time and effort
figuring out how to beat them.

Giraud's revised plan called for six people wearing Kristang
suits, and nine telefactor operators in the dropships. Skippy would remotely
fly the dropships, which meant we didn't need to dedicate people as pilots, I
wanted at least four people trained to fly Thuranin dropships anyway. Six
people needed to have Kristang suits adjusted to fit them, then practice using
them in combat simulations. Four people needed training to fly Thuranin
dropships, and it had to be minimal training because those same people, along
with almost everyone else, had to practice telefactoring combots. For the raid,
I reluctantly agreed with Giraud, Chang and Simms that I would remain behind
aboard the Dutchman along with Skippy, Desai and Private Walorski.

Walorski had been awakened and released from the medical pod
by Skippy, after he decided Walorski had healed sufficiently to go through the
remainder of the healing regimen on his own. On his own, except that his left
forearm, that had been shattered and almost severed during the battle to
capture the Flower, was encased in a rigid sleeve that was designed for
Thuranin legs. It was a bit to large for Walorski's forearm, enough that he
kept bumping it on things, causing him pain and causing Doctor Skippy endless
frustration. Every time the healing forearm was disturbed, it set back
Walorski's recovery ever so slightly. The sleeve contained nanoprobes that were
knitting Walorski's bones, nerves and musculature back together, there were
vials of fluids that needed to be changed three times a day. Skippy predicted a
complete recovery, with the sleeve able to be removed in three weeks, possibly
sooner if Walorski cooperated. Certainly a much better prognosis than what we'd
feared originally, that of Walorski losing his left arm below the elbow, and
very likely dying given the scant medical supplies we'd brought along and lack
of a human doctor.

You'd think Walorski would be grateful, and he was, he was
also a soldier and he saw everyone else, except for me and Desai, practicing
with either Kristang powered armor, or with combots. Walorski protested that he
should be given a combot, that he should go along in a dropship on the raid,
that he wasn't qualified as a pilot, and didn't want to stay behind while
everyone else risked their lives in a battle that was crucial for the survival
of humanity. He said this to me, his commanding officer, who would be staying
behind while everyone else risked their lives in a battle that was crucial for
the survival of humanity. Walorski needed to work on his people skills, that
was for certain. Would I have felt the same way, not wanting to be left behind
while my fellow soldiers fought the enemy? Hell, yes, I did feel that
way. The raid on the asteroid would likely determine whether our home planet,
our entire species, remained under the boot of the Kristang, might determine if
humanity survived in any recognizable fashion. No way in hell did I want to
remain behind in relative safety on the Dutchman, able to jump away if
the ship was threatened. After the battle, whatever happened, I’d forever know
that my part in the action had been to sit in a chair. And everyone else would
know it too. My attempts, to convince Private Walorski that he was needed
aboard the Dutchman as a backup pilot, were hindered by the fact that I
wasn’t entirely convinced myself. He was verging on open insubordination, when
Skippy intervened by stating Walorski couldn't be useful as a combot controller
without full use of his left hand. Walorski could assist Desai in flying the
ship with one hand, or he could sit around doing nothing, but he would only get
in the way on the raid. It was a contest who was more unhappy; me or Walorski.

There was one large group of unhappy people aboard the ship:
everyone who was training with powered armor or combots in the cargo bay we’d
set up for combat drills. They were unhappy because Giraud had made the mistake
of assigning Sergeant Adams to the task of converting a cargo bay into a combat
simulator, and designing the training program. Neither of those were a problem.
The problem was that, as she was in charge of the training, she picked the
music that blasted out of speakers in the cargo bay. Loud music was
distracting, and it helped to train people to work while distracted and while
their ears were assaulted by noise so loud you couldn’t think straight. Like
what happened in combat. Loud music wasn’t the problem, the problem was Adams’
atrocious taste in music. When I’m training for some intense physical activity,
whether for combat or simply working out in a gym, I want some heart-pounding,
fist-pumping tunes. Rock & roll, rap, something with a good beat to it.

What Adams used for a playlist was gospel music, Cajun,
jazz, polka and, I kid you not, bluegrass. Blue fucking grass, like, banjos and
guys singing through their nose in that whiny affectation that makes me want to
break the banjo over the guy’s head. I’m not a big bluegrass fan, in case you
were wondering. Country, yes, bluegrass, no. And none of the songs were good
examples of their genre, Adams had definitely dug way down to find the kind of
crap songs artists use to pad their albums when they run out of ideas, or
talent, or both. Oh, and she’d play the same awful song over and over and over
and over. Try concentrating with that blasting your ears.

It turns out, Adams is an evil genius. If you like the music
you’re listening to, you can get into a rhythm and it’s not distracting. If the
music is like fingernails on a chalkboard to your ears, you’re going to devote
part of your thinking capacity to daydreams about the best way to kill the
person who picked the playlist, and you’re going to be distracted, and the
whole point of the training is for you to learn how to concentrate and ignore
distractions. It was effective.

The music still sucked, effective or not. The first time I
watched an exercise, as soon as it was over, I went old, old school and put on
some Coolio. That got me a relieved thumbs up from the crew, it was the best
morale-booster since the crew had watched our unwanted Kristang ships disappear
in an antimatter fireball within the gas giant. Score one for me.

After watching the crew drill with powered armor or combots,
I was impressed, and beginning to have hope we could pull off the raid
successfully. Our six mech soldiers, in their Kristang armored suits, were
fast, and could carry the heavy Kristang rifles easily. The asteroid's gravity
was only two percent of Earth normal, so for training, Skippy reduced gravity
in the training cargo bay to two percent. Two percent meant people in suits,
and combots, needed some way other than gravity to avoid floating off the floor
in the research base. The combots automatically gripped floors, walls,
ceilings, whatever they needed to in order to move where the operator wanted
them to go, they had gripper pads on the feet, knees, hands, elbows, anywhere
it might be useful. The Kristang suits had grippers on the bottoms of their
boots and palms of their gloves, of course, but also at the elbows, shoulders,
back of the helmet, knees and on the suit's butt. Our suited soldiers needed to
learn how turn on and off, and adjust the force of, the grippers.

Overall, we were not concerned about the ability of the
combots to maneuver as required. The powered armor suits took a lot of practice
to get used to. The problem the suited soldiers had in the combat training maze
Adams had set up, was not getting around corners and through doors, it was
dialing down their speed and power. They were moving too fast and bouncing off
walls. Three suits got busted in training, we had six spares aboard the Flower,
and spare parts, what we didn’t have were spare humans over six feet tall. I
advised Giraud to slow down and take it easy, we couldn’t afford for anyone to
get injured during training. People wearing the suits were sore enough without
crashing into things, even at the maximum limits of adjustment, the suits were
too big. We put padding in the boots to lift up people’s feet, it helped
somewhat. I tried on a suit, and, at six feet three, I felt it digging into my
knees, my crotch, under my arms and I had to stretch my neck to avoid banging
my chin on the bottom of the helmet.

The Kristang suits were impressive. The Thuranin combots
were awesome. There were two types of combots, we used the smaller one
exclusively, as Skippy said the larger heavy model might not fit through
passageways in the asteroid base. The smaller combot had three legs for
stability, and three arms. Two arms were for stability or climbing, the arm in
the center was for weapon attachments, and Skippy had fabricated goggles that
allowed our operators to both see through the combot’s optical sensors, and also
control the guns. The guns pointed wherever the operator looked, with a
crosshairs in the goggles for aiming. Skippy’s original plan was for the
operator to control the weapon triggers by blinking, Giraud had squashed that
idiotic plan by pointing out that most human blinking was involuntary. At
Giraud’s suggestion, the trigger was controlled by the operator’s index finger,
either left or right depending on the person. Selection of weapon, the rifle or
the rocket/grenade launcher, was controlled by the operator’s thumb. We
couldn’t use live ammo aboard the Dutchman, a problem since it would be
best for the operators to get a sense of their weapon’s effectiveness. Skippy
warned that, even inside the asteroid base where there was little concern about
tearing a hole in the asteroid’s thick skin and causing an atmospheric
containment breach, we should use the rockets and grenades sparingly on our way
in. On our way back, to provide cover, we could blast anything we saw. The plan
was to blow up the entire asteroid anyway, erasing any trace that humans had
ever been there.

The actual raid went perfectly according to Skippy and
Giraud’s plan. At first. And then it all went to shit.

Before we made the jump into the star system that contained
the asteroid base, the entire crew other than Desai and Walorski assembled in
the dropship bay. It was time for one last equipment check, to make absolutely
sure that everything the raiding party needed was loaded aboard the two
dropships, and everything was working properly. An extra combot was loaded
aboard each dropship, making the already snug interior even more cramped. The
Thuranin may have built high ceilings into their star carriers to accommodate
guests, they hadn't done that with their dropships. The dropships were so cramped
that the six people who would be wearing Kristang armor, needed to get into the
armor before boarding the dropships, despite the extra time they'd have to
spend in the uncomfortable suits.

After supervising the inspection, Giraud gave a short but effective
speech, much better than anything I would have said. He didn't use any fiery
language, or try to inspire people, they didn't need inspiration. He simply
stated that we would only get one chance at this raid, one chance to free Earth
from the Kristang. No matter what the cost, we were not leaving the asteroid
without the wormhole controller module. Everyone had studied the mockup Skippy
had fabricated, the module was a long, skinny box about four feet long, and six
inches on each side, Skippy said it folded out and expanded to make an 'X' ten
feet across. Anyone who saw a module would pick it up, if they were wearing a
Kristang suit, or signal a suit wearer and wait if they were operating a
combot. We couldn't risk damage to the module by attempting to pick up the
module with a combot, even our most gentle operators routinely crushed things
with the combot's immense strength. Without cybernetics, the operator lacked
enough feedback to avoid crushing objects in the combot's grasping claws.
Combots would lead the way through the base, with our six suit wearers in the
rear.

Giraud told me he would have liked another two weeks of
combat practice, he didn't say that to the crew. Skippy was anxious to hit the
asteroid base as soon as possible, with the fluid military situation in the
sector, he was concerned the Kristang would reinforce their asteroid research
base, or worse, pack up anything of value and take it away, disperse the stuff
across the stars. We couldn't take that risk, so I decided we'd jump into
battle as soon as possible.

Before we launched the raid, Chang and Giraud had a
conversation with me. They wanted me to assure them that, if that raid looked
like it was going to fail, and humanity's involvement was at risk of being
exposed, I would not hesitate to blow the asteroid and jump away. If we
couldn't recover the Flower, I'd need to vaporize that ship also, it was
dusted with human DNA. Chang and Giraud made me promise, because they knew I'd
be going against every instinct I had as a soldier, that I wouldn't hesitate to
abandon the raiders and escape. Live, to fight another day. Despite was Giraud
told the crew about the raid being our only chance, humanity still had some
chance, as long as Skippy was safe and on our side. If the raid failed, the Dutchman
could try to pick up new crewmembers at Paradise or Earth, and continue to
search for a wormhole controller module, I didn't see how that would work, but
it was not completely impossible.

I promised. It made me feel like shit, but I did it. I owed
it to our crew. They were willing to risk their lives on this crazy mission, I
needed to understand the mission was worth their lives, however the mission
ended.

Walorski had no idea how much I didn't want to remain aboard
the Dutchman while our crew, my crew, went on the raid.

We jumped in close to the asteroid, within two million
miles. The jump in and subsequent maneuvers were preprogrammed by Skippy
because the timing was so tight, all Desai did was press a button on my
command. A split second after we jumped in, the Flower was ejected,
performed a microjump, and the Dutchman did a short-range jump in the
opposite direction. The Flower formed a jump point for another
microjump, then the field collapsed as planned, and the Flower tumbled,
dead in space. The effect, according to Skippy’s logic, was for the immediate
area to be flooded with overlapping jump field waves, masking the presence of a
second ship. The Flower tumbled out of control, thrusters firing
randomly, with the ship leaking radiation. We wanted the Flower to
attract attention, while the Dutchman zipped away unseen. Skippy had the
Flower broadcasting the IFF codes of a frigate that had disappeared in
the area two years before, during a skirmish with another Kristang clan, our
hope was the Kristang would be confused and curious enough not to immediately
blast the Flower to pieces. The more the Kristang investigated the Flower,
the less they'd be likely to notice the Dutchman.

It worked. By the time the Kristang directed their sensors
to widen their scanning radius, Skippy was in their network and directing the
system to ignore the huge Thuranin star carrier sneaking up to their front
door. We tripped the stealth detection grids as we passed through their field
lines, and the sensors identified us, the Kristang computers simply ignored
those inputs. Desai parked the Dutchman behind an asteroid two thousand
miles away from the target, and Skippy launched the dropships.

When Skippy first told us we would be raiding an asteroid,
the picture I had in my mind was a jagged, irregular chunk of rock, like
asteroids in space movies. This asteroid was technically a planetoid, it was
almost three hundred miles in diameter, big enough that its gravity had shaped
it into a sphere. Still, it was a pockmarked, ugly gray and brown, frozen and
desolate pile of rock. On one side was the research base, on the other, a much
larger Kristang military base. A large military base, with a thousand soldiers,
assault dropships, gunships, and enough missiles to blow the Flying Dutchman
to pieces. Hanging around somewhere in the area was a squadron of frigates, six
destroyers and a cruiser. And we were going to bust in, take what we wanted,
and get away cleanly.

Skippy was true to his word, the military base
was interested in the Flower, and had tasked a pair of frigates and four
dropships to investigate our decoy. The military base had sent a message to the
research base to go on high alert, the research base never received that
message because Skippy intercepted it, but Skippy replied for them so the
military base thought everything had been locked down. We had nearly-complete
surprise when the dropships approached the docking bay doors. The docking bay
controller thought the doors were opening for a pair of Kristang dropships sent
to reinforce security, and that's what Skippy told the base computers to
display. Our dropships landed, and deployed combots with our six soldiers in
powered armor suits. Everything would have gone perfectly except that there was
a Kristang maintenance technician, in a space suit, working on the mechanism
just inside the doors. He saw with his own eyes that our dropships were
Thuranin, no way Skippy could hack his optic nerve, and this dedicated worker
did his duty, and shouted a warning on the radio. A warning that got buried by
Skippy. When no one responded, the eager-beaver Kristang ran across the bay and
pulled a lever that triggered a hardwired alarm. The only way for Skippy to
kill a hardwired alarm was to burn out the hardline electric circuit, which he
did with a power surge after the alarm rang out twice. And he instructed the
computer to announce the alarm was false, that it had been triggered by the
power surge.

That would have bought us another two minutes,
enough time for the raiding party to place explosive charges on the inner door
and blow it in a controlled fashion. It would have, except the model citizen
Kristang knew something was extra wrong when the alarm only sounded twice, and
he sprinted toward a weapons locker. That drew the attention of the raiding
party, who gave our Kristang Employee Of The Year his reward, not in the form
of cash or a prime parking space, but by concentrated fire from a half dozen
combots. And that's when the trouble started, when the Kristang disappeared in
a cloud of bloody vapor. The explosive rounds our keyed-up pirates selected for
their combots went right through the Kristang, and hammered into the wall of
the docking bay. The Kristang in the research base didn't need any electronic
means to notify them that something was majorly wrong, they could feel the
vibration of the explosive rounds through the floors and walls.

At that point, Giraud ordered the combots to
clear a lane, and he wasted the inner door with a rocket, he had the warhead
selected for shape charge. The door exploded inward, this was less than optimal
because part of the door was still hanging in jagged pieces attached to the
frame. This is where our lack of experience hurt us, Giraud should have dialed
the rocket warhead for a wider blast instead of maximum penetration, the door
was tough but not armored. At that point, blasting the wall on either side of
the door to clear a path would have sent debris flying all over, so we wasted
time having a pair of combots rip the doorway clear with their grappler claws.
One of the combots was a bit too enthusiastic and used too much force, a big
chunk of door and frame came flying across the docking bay in the low gravity
and narrowly missed knocking out a combot. The human operator of the combot
couldn't react in time, the combot's automatic systems made it duck out of the
way, allowing the chunk of door to hit Chang on his left side. The impact sent
Chang flying across the bay, ruptured his pressure suit, and cracked several ribs.
We later learned two of his ribs were broken. I'd fallen off a dirtbike once
and cracked a rib, the pain had me crawling on my knees trying to catch my
breath, except that breathing made the pain even worse. It took me an hour of
sitting or laying on the ground before I was able to get back on the dirtbike
and very slowly ride back home, where my parents took m to the hospital.
Chang's Kristang suit lining had a gel that hardened on exposure to vacuum, it
sealed the hole to prevent his air from leaking out. Somehow, even though it
must have been incredibly painful, Chang got back to his feet and back into
action on adrenaline and pure guts. The guy was spitting up blood, and that
didn't stop him. Skippy was showing data from the medical monitors in Chang's
suit, it looked bad, I don't know how Chang wasn't curled up in a ball on the
deck, and I wanted to tell him to pull back to a dropship and let the raiding
party continue the mission. I didn't do that. I needed to trust that if Chang
couldn't continue, he'd tell me. And Giraud was there with Chang, if Giraud
thought Chang was combat ineffective, Giraud would signal me privately. We
needed Chang, we needed everyone, as long as he wasn't a liability to the
mission, I wasn't going to interfere from ten thousand miles away. The motors
in his powered armor, and the low gravity may have helped take part of the
strain from Chang, we'd need to see how he handled combat.

With the inner door clear, the raiding party
surged down the corridor, combots in front, then the six people in suits,
followed by two combots as rear guard. They quickly ran into another door,
which they spent the extra thirty seconds on to blow properly with explosives.
After that, they were in the main part of the research base, and Skippy could open
and close doors for them.

Right away, we encountered a problem. Skippy by
that time had infiltrated the base computer and searched the archives, archives
that he said were an incredibly crappy mishmash of unidexed, uncataloged,
random garbage. Regardless of his difficulties, he located the two items we
wanted to steal; a wormhole controller module, and a sort of communications
node that was associated with the Collective. The two items were stored in
different compartments, fortunately neither item was considered a priority by
the Kristang researchers, and they were both in low-security areas, away from
the main research facilities. I had to make a decision quick whether to go
after the items one after the other, or split the raiding party. Dividing a force
goes against the principles of war that the Army had taught me, as I was
thinking about it, the words of the US Army Field Manual popped into my head.
Dividing a force, in a situation where were already outnumbered and outgunned,
violated the principles of Mass and Economy of Force. No matter, the
possibility of having to divide the raiding party has been discussed in
advance, with Chang, Giraud, Simms and I in agreement. In this case,
concentration of force was secondary to the principle of Surprise. Our raiding
party could only succeed, could only hope to survive, if they got in and got
out as fast as possible, before the Kristang could recover from their own
surprise, figure out what the hell was going on, and concentrate their own
forces against us. The longer the raiding party was in the base, the longer
they were exposed to danger. I gave the order for Chang to take one group to
get the comm node, and for Giraud to get the wormhole controller module.
Unspoken in that order is that I felt Chang, being injured, was the weaker of
the two, and I wanted the wormhole controller module a lot more than I wanted a
fancy radio for Skippy to talk to ancient AIs. For a moment, I considered
keeping a pair of combots at the point where the parties split, to guard a path
for their retreat, until Skippy showed me a schemetic of the base, there were a
lot of corridor intersections the parties would need to transit, guarding only
one was a waste of firepower.

From there, the raid proceeded fast and
chaotically, according to plan for the most part. The Kristang were seriously
off balance, their internal systems had been hardened in anticipation of attack
by rival Kristang clans or Thuranin, they had not anticipated Skippy thoroughly
infiltrating their systems. What systems he didn't have control of, he
weakened, confused, shorted out or cut power to. The Kristang frantically
called the military base on the other side of the asteroid, messages that
Skippy intercepted, and Skippy sent back fake messages that the military base
was under heavy attack and would send reinforcements when they could. Some
extra quick thinking Kristang, no doubt runner up for Employee Of The Year,
fired off a rocket flare that was supposed to signal the military base that
something was seriously wrong, the flare made a grand firework when it cleared
the horizon, and I had a moment of panic. Skippy calmed me down by assuring
that although the Kristang sensor network saw the flare signal, he instructed
the sensors to ignore it. The military base was buried deep beneath the rock,
unless some Kristang was on the surface for some reason, no one would see the
flare, and since Skippy was squelching radio traffic, a Kristang would need to
be on the surface, see the flare, know what it meant, run back to the military
base and knock on the door. I figured that was low risk.

Skippy prevented more flare rockets from firing,
by igniting the whole remaining canister of them without opening the silo door.
The resulting explosion may have put a damper on the prospects of Employee Of
The Year Runner-up ever getting a shiny plaque to put on his desk, since the
explosion wiped out a pretty serious chunk of the base and likely killed him.
Personally, I was Ok with that.

The combots were having success, it helped that
the Kristang security force had, according to their established protocol,
retreated to protect the high security research center of the base, the most
obvious target, they didn't realize that we were going after a different part
of the base. Skippy reported the Kristang were thoroughly confused, panicked,
in disarray, unable to understand what was happening, and why their carefully
hardened systems weren't working or, were working against them. Power surges
had burned out the door controls, lifts, lights, and life support in the parts
of the base we didn't care about, many of the Kristang were isolated, trapped,
slow to react and leaderless. The little resistance the raiding party
encountered on their way in were lone individuals, or small groups of two or
three, uncoordinated, ineffective. The Kristang's ineffectual efforts against
us actually helped our combot operators gain experience with live fire, they
learned real quick to use quick bursts, with the rounds dialed to minimal
explosive force and on fragmentation setting. The high-explosive rock and roll
the operators used against the first pair of Kristang tore the enemy apart, it
also wasted ammunition and  blasted the corridor, creating debris the
raiding party had to maneuver around. Giraud was rightly pissed, he'd warned
people not to go crazy with the advanced Thuranin weapons. They paid attention
after that first encounter.

Chang's team reached their objective first, only
to find a disorganized room full of junk. Not junk stacked on shelves,
helpfully labeled, not even junk stuffed into boxes. This was junk in piles,
like the Kristang had opened, the door, tossed stuff in, and closed the door.

"Oh, shit." Skippy groaned. "I
didn't anticipate this. The database shows the communications node was last
logged as being in that room, there are no sensors in the room, not even a
camera."

"Any magic you can perform?" I asked
anxiously.

"Doing the best I can," Skippy said
defensively. "For secrecy, there are not a lot of sensors inside the
research base, except for the access points and living quarters. Also, the base
was specifically designed to make remote surveillance difficult. I'm mostly
blind in there, not nearly as blind as the Kristang expect, more than I'm
comfortable with. There are a significant number of Kristang security personnel
that I have lost track of, I don't know where they are or what they're doing.
There are also areas of the base the raiding party has shown on cameras that
aren't in the schematics I have access to, I'm collating data to develop a true
layout of the base. My earnest suggestion is the raiding party move as quickly
as possible."

Wow, what a great idea, I hadn't thought of
that. That's what ran through my mind, not what I said to Skippy. "Colonel
Chang," I said through the zPhone, "you'll have to dig through that
pile to find the comm node. You know what the thing looks like." Every
member of the raiding party had seen the models Skippy fabricated of the two
items we needed to steal.

"Yes, acknowledged." Chang said, his
voice was strained, there was a rattle in his throat.

On the displays, I could see Chang, Darzi and
Asok Putri walk into the room and begin sorting through the pile. Chang was
moving very stiffly, because of his injury he didn't get down on the floor, he
started with the top of the pile. He kept them organized, keeping items they'd
sorted through in one pile so they didn't lose track. It was efficient,
focused, as fast as possible and way, way too slow. Chang's group was way
behind schedule, it was a large room, with five piles of junk extending to the
ceiling and after five minutes, they'd only sorted halfway through one pile.
Giraud's team had reached their target, he had the luck that day, as the room
with the wormhole controller module was as organized as Chang's target was
disorganized. Giraud, Sergeant Thomson and Private Marsden raced down the
aisles, showing the contents of the shelves to Skippy, who quickly deciphered
the indexing system and directed Sergeant Thomson exactly to where the wormhole
controller module was, sitting on a shelf.

"Target acquired," Giraud reported.
"Heading back now. Advise, should we proceed directly back to the docking
bay, or help Colonel Chang's team?"

Chang's team was taking way too long. Crap, they
expected me to make this call; send Giraud's team to speed up the search for
the comm node, in hope of speeding up the search? Diverting Giraud's team
risked exposing them to danger longer, that risked us losing the wormhole
controller module. Did I consider bailing on trying to find Skippy's comm node,
now that we had the wormhole controller module? Not really. I'd thought about
that issue over the last week, it had kept me awake at night. We cared about
shutting down the wormhole, it was all I cared about, it was the entire purpose
of the mission, I would sacrifice anything to achieve it. We humans truly did
not care whether Skippy   I cared a little bit, because I liked
Skippy and felt we owe him, and I sometimes thought I understood his terrible,
ancient, aching loneliness. My personal feelings had to be put aside, as the
commander I needed to focus on the mission and my people. What I'd decided
ahead of time was that, regardless of my promise to Skippy, if there was any
way we could shut down the wormhole without Skippy, I was not going to risk
people's lives, and the mission, to get his magical radio. We had no way to
shut down the wormhole on our own, making my decision easy, if hard to swallow.

"Lieutenant Giraud, take your team to
assist Colonel Chang, we need to move as fast as possible."

Whatever Giraud thought of the wisdom of my
decision, he didn't argue. "Acknowledged. We're on our way."

On the display, I saw Chang, Putri and Darzi
were sorting through the piles of junk as fast as they could, Chang had ordered
a combot into the room, not to touch anything, but to use it's cameras, hoping
Skippy could find the thing. It was all taking way too long. Skippy telling me
he'd lost track of the Kristang, that even he was mostly blind, had me
extremely anxious "Skippy, this comm node thing is for communications,
right?"

"Yeah, duh, so?"

"So, can you contact it, use it to send out
a signal that you can use to find the damned thing?"

"Shit. Yes."

"Duh." I couldn't resist, partly from
nervous energy.

"Damn it, I don't know what is wrong with me
sometimes. Of course, yes. Have Chang, Putri and Darzi spread out so I can use
their suit radios to triangulate."

I did. Less than a minute later, Skippy found
it, in the pile of junk way in the back. Chang had Darzi and Putri climb over
the pile in between and toss useless crap out of the way, until they had
uncovered the top third of the pile, then they proceeded more carefully. Darzi
found the stupid thing, it looked exactly as Skippy said. On the display, I saw
that Giraud's team was close to Chang's location, close enough that I judged it
best for them to link up and support each other on the retreat, even though
that meant having all our eggs in one basket.

That's when things went to shit in a hurry.

The first sign of trouble was not a warning from
Skippy, it was not the combots encountering Kristang fighters in front of them.
It was a hail of bullets hitting Giraud and Putri from behind, knocking them
both down. Putri took several hits dead center and was killed instantly, the
explosive-tipped rounds fortunately missed the wormhole controller module that
was in a sling on his back. Giraud went down with a glancing hit to the side of
his helmet, a hard blow to his lower back, and a round that hit his left arm
and severed his forearm halfway between wrist and elbow. Darzi reacted exactly
as he should have, as he was trained to do, he dropped to the deck, clearing
the way for the combots to engage. Darzi crawled forward keeping low, and tore
the straps off Putri's sling, Darzi saw Putri was beyond help and he correctly
focused on keeping to the mission objective.

Our combots swiveled to engage the six enemy
soldiers who were wearing heavy armor, it was a vicious firefight and Darzi
couldn't do anything to help, he had to keep his head down and shelter the
vital module behind Giraud's unmoving form. On the display I could see Giraud
was alive, unconscious and not bleeding seriously.

"Skippy," I shouted frantically,
"is there another way back to the docking bay?" Four of the Kristang
were still alive and taking cover in doorways and side corridors, they had the
combots fully engaged. Darzi, with the module, couldn't move without exposing
the precious module. Chang's team was running to assist, they couldn't arrive
for another two minutes, maybe less. Too long.

"Yes, plenty of alternate routes
exist."

"Great. Combot operators, don't worry about
damaging the corridor, we'll be taking another route back! Take out those
Kristang, maximum force!"

That was all the combot operators needed to
hear, Three of them dialed their rockets up to maximum yield, shape charge, and
blew the hell out of the corridor beyond Darzi and Giraud. Rockets penetrated
two or three compartments deep, destroying the four Kristang, blasting walls,
floors and collapsing the ceiling.

"Darzi!" I shouted when my voice
should have remained calm, "get up, Lieutenant Giraud is alive. Can you
carry Giraud?"

"Yes, sir." Darzi could easily carry
Giraud in the low gravity, especially in his powered armor. He got the module
slung over his back, tied the straps quickly, and picked up Giraud's
unconscious body. The combots led the way, I warned them as Chang's team
approached so the two groups didn't shoot at each other. They linked up and
Skippy guided them on an alternate, roundabout route back to the docking bay,
this time Chang had a pair of combots covering the rear to avoid nasty
surprises. The convoluted route had me concerned about the additional time it
took, Skippy assured me the path the raiding party was taking had the enemy
confused and guessing where to go. Skippy still was mostly blind in there. This
was the most dangerous point of the mission, before the enemy had to guess the
raiding party's objectives, now the enemy knew where the raiding party was
going; back to the docking bay. The party was two thirds of the way back, by
Skippy's reckoning, when trouble struck. This time the enemy appeared not in
armor, but with combots of their own, they blew a wall open and leapt into the
corridor. The Kristang combots were heavy and clunky and slow compared to our
Thuranin models, they made good targets. They were also controlled by much more
experienced operators, and they had every advantage. Except one. As the
firefight raged and the raiding party was pinned down momentarily, Skippy
shouted excitedly that the clumsy movements of our combots was actually helping
us, the Kristang had trained to fight the super-fast movements of
Thuranin-controlled combots, and the slow awkward actions of our combots threw
the Kristang's aim off.

We lost three combots in the initial firefight,
another was damaged and unable to use its primary weapons. Chang saw Darzi was
hampered by carrying Giraud, he ordered Darzi to set Giraud down in the arms of
the damaged combot. Private Marsden came forward to help Darzi get Giraud strapped
in, they were almost done when Marsden took a hit to the head that shattered
his faceplate, then a second round almost separated the helmet from his neck.
He went down in a spray of flash-frozen blood, and on my display his life signs
went flat-line. I notified Chang not to waste time assisting Marsden, he didn't
bother to acknowledge, I heard and saw him urging people forward. There may
have been other paths to the docking bay, and we have lose people moving
forward into the firefight, Chang knew we'd likely lose even more people is
they got pinned down and remained on the asteroid for a second longer than
necessary. Speed and maneuver were all important, Chang saw that, even through
the painful fog of broken ribs, the guy was an ironman, even without his
powered armor suit.

Behind a wall of firepower, the raiding party
moved forward, combots clearing path. Once past that large group of Kristang
combots, they hit scattered resistance from Kristang combots and armored suits.
I was getting worried, we'd started with six people in suits and nine combots,
by the time they'd fought their way back to the docking bay, there were two
people dead, one injured and unconscious, and only three combots still
functional. The three combots remained to guard the inner doorway while Chang
got Sergeant Thomson and Darzi aboard one dropship, and carried Giraud aboard
the other. Skippy had already partly retracted the outer door, and as soon as
Thomson and Darzi were strapped in, he put pedal to the metal and surged that dropship
out and away, I saw on the display he had the dropship pushing six gees and I
ordered him to throttle down slightly once the dropship was ten miles away.

Chang's dropship had a slight delay and he got
Giraud strapped in, and that almost killed us. Thomson had the node and Darzi
had the module, technically we'd accomplished the mission already, except for
the people in the second dropship. And that's when a stray round came through
the inner doorway, missed our combots, flew across the docking bay and hit the
armored hull of the Thuranin dropship. The explosive tip erupted inward,
creating a superheated jet of plasma that burned through the armor to the
interior of the dropship. Once the plasma hit air, it exploded in all
directions. US Air Force Staff Sergeant Joy Chung, who was operating one of the
three remaining combots, was killed instantly, three others were seriously
injured. Chang and Giraud were protected by their armored suits, everyone else
was hit pretty badly. With people screaming in pain, blood flying around the
dropship and air racing out the hole in the hull, Chang didn't hesitate, he
ordered Skippy to get them the hell out of there. The dropship shot out of the
docking bay and clear of the doors as Skippy took over the automated repairs
systems to plug the finger-sized hole and get the air pumped back up.

"Clear. Both dropships clear," Skippy
reported in a matter-of-fact voice, "no pursuit. Packages secure. I'm
guiding the dropships back here."

"Great." I said, emotionally
exhausted. "Pilot, I'll be in our docking bay."

"No, sir." Desai said flatly.
"Colonel Chang and Major Simms can handle people who need help. We need
you here."

She was right, and I knew it. I could be
emotional later. Later, after we'd jumped away safely. "Captain, you're
right." I looked down at my shaking hands in disgust. I hadn't been in
danger at any time. It was a long eight minutes to wait for the dropships to
return.

"Dropships secured. Pilot,
initiate jump, option Alpha." Skippy announced.

"Belay that," I ordered, and
Desai turned to me in confusion. "Jump option Charlie, now. Go."

Desai pressed the correct button, and
the ship performed a microjump so we now were in clear space, not shielded by
an asteroid. Skippy had programmed five jump options into the jump navigation
system and I'd memorized them, they were also listed on the command chair
display and on my iPad. Option Alpha was for a jump close to the Flower
so we could recover that ship, the plan was to jump close to the Flower,
send a signal for that ship to perform a short range jump, match the jump with
the Dutchman, take the Flower onto a docking platform, and then
jump to the outer edge of the star system. Option Charlie was a microjump away
from the asteroid we were hiding behind, in case our position had been
discovered, but we needed to remain in the area to recover dropships.

"Can I ask why we're not going
after the Flower?" Skippy asked.

"We will. Signal the Flower
to jump to the rendezvous point." Even with the signal crawling along at
the speed of light, it would reach our pirated Kristang frigate in a few
minutes, and that apparently derelict ship would suddenly come to life and
power up engines for a short range jump.

"Done." Skippy reported.
"Colonel Joe, why are we still here?"

"You have control of the nuke
near their main docking bay?"

"Yes, of course. I told you
that." The Kristang had rigged the research section of the asteroid research
base to self destruct with a nuke; if anyone invaded the base and the Kristang
lost control, they could blow up the base with a single explosion. The nuke was
there so enemies would decide raiding the research base wasn't worth the cost,
and it certainly would have deterred us, except that Skippy took control of it
shortly before we launched the dropships.

“How big is it?”

“I assume you mean explosive yield,
that weapon is roughly eight megatons. A typical W76 warhead, in your American
Trident submarine-launched missiles, is one hundred kilotons, by
comparison."

"Light it up."

"What?" Skippy, Desai and Walorski
said the same thing at the same time.

"Skippy, do not argue with me. I
know you wiped their computer memory, but we left behind DNA in there, blood,
it could tell the Kristang that humans were involved in the raid. I can’t risk
that. Light it up. Right now."

To his credit, Skippy knew when not to
argue. "Weapon enabled on The Big Red Button."

I pressed the button. The asteroid
flared an intense light. Desai jumped us away before the debris hit us.

CHAPTER SIXTEEN    HOME

The flight recorder video of the
asteroid being nuked was popular with the crew. The surviving crew. It wasn't
my idea for people to watch the video, I hadn't even mentioned it. Desai or Walorski
must have said something, or someone asked Skippy what happened, and he
volunteered to show them. Watching the utter destruction of the asteroid research
base was cathartic for the crew, as it had been for me. Army doctors tell us
that talking about traumatic events helps with the symptoms of PTSD; keeping
things bottled up inside yourself, or trying not to remember what happened to
you, makes it worse. Skippy told me the survivors asked him if there was video
of the raid, from cameras on the combots and Kristang suits. There was video,
and I told him to release it to anyone who wanted to watch. Giraud and I would
watch all the video and sensor feed data, to learn lessons on what we did right
and what we did wrong.

Giraud subtly chided me for being
unprofessional, blowing up the entire asteroid had not been necessary to the
mission, I'd done it because I was angry, because I wanted the lizards to feel
the pain we felt, at losing so many people. So many humans. Maybe I'd done it
out of frustration and guilt that I'd not gone on the raid. Whatever.
Psychology isn't my area of expertise.

The raid was both a success and a
failure. In terms of lives lost, it was a failure, I'd now lost over half our
original crew, and some of the wounded were going to take months to recover,
even with incredible Thuranin medical technology. In terms of Skippy finding a
way to locate the Collective, it was a failure; the thing we'd brought back was
exactly what Skippy had asked for, it wasn't damaged, it wasn't inert, Skippy
was able to power it up and read data from it, the thing simply didn't tell him
anything useful. He didn't know whether the fault was with the device, or
within himself, he had a bad feeling that somehow he was blocked from memories
that would allow him to access data about the Elders. About himself. And about
where he came from, who he was. He didn't tell anyone else about his doubts and
fears, only me. For my part, I kept his secret, and worried on my own that
someday Skippy would lock up, or blue screen, or go dormant, or whatever
happened with ancient AIs

Skippy had better not lock up on us
before we got back to the wormhole near Earth, because in one way, our mission
was a success. Maybe in the only way that mattered, our mission was a huge
success. Success enough that, even only one person survived to fly the ship,
the raid was worth the terrible cost. We had stolen an intact Elder wormhole
controller module, Skippy verified it was fully functional, able to live up to
its name and control a wormhole. Including, most importantly, shutting down a
wormhole. We humans had no idea how the damned thing worked, we had to rely on
Skippy for that. The point was, because of the raid, we had the ability to shut
down that wormhole. We had the ability to deny the Kristang access to Earth.
The billions of humans there would consider any price our pirate crew paid to
be worth the cost.

Relying on Skippy was a problem, he
was frustrated and expected us to continue the mission with the remaining crew.
That was a conversation I didn't want to have with the crew listening, I pushed
Skippy off until Major Simms could take the captain's chair, Chang and Giraud
were both in the sickbay. After taking the Flower back aboard, we'd
jumped three times, until Skippy was satisfied we were safely out of the
Kristang sensor network's range. The jump engines were almost exhausted,
incapable of more than an emergency microjump, we were hanging in deep
interstellar space, waiting for the jump engines to fully recharge.

"You comfy now, Joe?" Skippy
began as tactfully as he always was. "We need to talk about our next move.
There are two more possibilities that I can see for contacting the Collective.
One is only three thousand lightyears away, unfortunately getting there
requires a roundabout wormhole route, and it's the less likely of the two
options. Also, that one is on a Thuranin planet, it's going to be tricky
getting in and out. The second one is nine thousand lightyears away, out of
Thuranin territory, and that's both good and bad, the species that holds that
territory are the-"

Damn in. My boots weren't even untied
yet. It was best for me to just say what was on my mind. "Skippy, before
we continue searching for the Collective, we're going to Earth to resupply. We
don't have enough people to keep going with the mission right now. You're a
genius, do the math."

There was an ever-so-slight
hesitation, that wouldn't have been noticeable if I didn't know Skippy so well.
Did he actually run the math? Of course he did, a billion permutations. Maybe a
zillion. "You're in a bitchy mood."

"I'm tired. A lot of people died
today, Skippy." I kicked my boots off, would have kicked them across the
compartment if the bulkhead wasn't only two feet away. "Sentient beings.
Don't give me any shit about how we're just monkeys and bacteria, we're
sentient. We matter."

"More than you know, Joe. As you
requested, I ran the math. Problem is, I'm not a military strategist, and there
are a lot of variables I can't quantify. You promised me we would find the
Collective, together."

"Skippy," I laid back on the
mattress as best I could. "I keep my promises. Explain how we have a
reasonable chance for success, with the crew we have now, and I'll listen. I
don't see it. We have nine people right now who are combat ready, two pilots
and I need to stay aboard the Dutchman, that leaves six people for
action, and two of them specialize in logistics, not infantry. That asteroid
was the softest target of our options, right?"

"Mostly likely, yes, the Kristang
didn't realize what they had, that's why the items we needed were so lightly
guarded."

"Lightly guarded?"

"Comparatively speaking."

"That was your definition
of lightly guarded? You had total control of their sensors and most of their
weapons, we still ran into a firefight. Even our super hightech combots got
slaughtered. Will either of the two other targets be easier to crack?"

"Admittedly, no."

"You're concerned that you can't
trust us, that once we get to Earth, we'll never leave, that will be the end of
the mission. You think you can't trust us. Put that aside for a minute. Forget
about what I said. Your goal is to contact the Collective. Use your god-like
processing power. What are the odds you can achieve your goal with the
resources we have?"

Another ever-so-short hesitation,
maybe longer this time? "Damn it. You're right. I was, perhaps,
overconfident, before the raid. Now that I have more extensive data, my
analysis is revised. Our current chance of mission success is less than fifty
percent. To be accurate, it is twelve percent. That is an unacceptable level of
risk."

I was so relieved, I let my head slump
back, and banged the back of my skull on the edge of a cabinet.
"Crap."

"Crap, like you can't believe my
numbers, or crap like, you believe my numbers, and they're worse than you
thought?"

"Crap, like I banged my head on
this stupid cabinet again."

"Oh. Darn it, no matter how I
calibrate my program for reading your voice patterns and expressions, I still
get it wrong. You biologicals are maddening sometimes."

"Yeah, like when biologicals
develop technology and build smart-ass artificial intelligences."

"I told you, I wasn't built by-
oh, forget it."

Out of long habit, I pulled the laces
of my boots open, and set them facing away from me next to the door. In an
emergency, I could jam my feet in and lace them up real quick, no wasted time.
Army training again. "We agree, then, we're going to back to Earth,
right?" There were humans, and human supplies on Paradise, and Paradise
was closer. There was also likely a substantial contingent of Ruhar ships in
orbit, Ruhar soldiers on the ground, and a Jeraptha battlegroup lurking at the
edges of the system. Paradise was not a place I wanted to go back to.

"We agree, darn it. Ahh, I've
been waiting a million years to contact the Collective, a short delay isn't a
big deal, I guess." His voice sounded anything but convinced of that.
"Ugh. This means we're going to visit that monkey-infested mudball you
call home."

"Home sweet home, Skippy. Let's
get this out of the way, so we're not arguing about it later. How can we make
it so you can trust that we won't stay, once we get to Earth? By 'we', I don't
mean me, I'm keeping my promise to you." It wasn't an academic question, I
was worried about it myself. Having a Thuranin star carrier and a Kristang
frigate in orbit was going to be very tempting to governments on Earth, tempting
them to keep us there. And they would make very valid arguments for keeping our
two starships in orbit; to examine their technology, to protect Earth in case
any Kristang straggler ships were hanging around, and because sending our ships
back out to roam the galaxy, until Skippy found a Collective that may or may
not, exist was pure idiocy. It wasn't that I wanted to go back out wandering
the stars with Skippy, I very much did not. What I wanted was for life to go
back to normal, for me to take off the silly silver eagles, to go back to being
a grunt, to finish my term of enlistment, go home, and live a normal human
life. And little girls want Santa to bring them a pony for Christmas. We both
needed to accept reality. There was no 'normal' life any more for humanity,
certainly not for me. If Skippy, or I, couldn't think of a way to force Earth
governments to authorize sending the Flying Dutchman back out,
there wasn't a snowball's chance in hell that I could keep my promise.

"Oh, that. No problemo, Joe.
After we go through that last wormhole that leads to Earth, I'll temporarily
disrupt its connection to the network. That will disable the wormhole until it
resets, which will take long enough for us to get to Earth, load up on
volunteers and supplies, and get back to the wormhole."

"Huh. That's a great idea,
Skippy." Why hadn't I thought of that? Skippy had told me he could
temporarily disrupt a wormhole on his own, the controller module was needed to
shut one down permanently. "We'll be on a strict time limit, then?"

"Strict, yes. Once I disrupt that
wormhole, the Thuranin will be very interested to learn what the hell
happened. As soon as the wormhole resets, there are going to be ships coming
through, and since the Thuranin are suspicious, paranoid little green MFers, I
can guarantee some of their ships will be visiting Earth, and they won't be
there to use their Starbucks gift cards. The Thuranin have an established
protocol for investigating a new wormhole connection; they send a heavy force
of battleships through, with cruiser escorts. We do not want to tangle with a
Thuranin battlewagon, one of those ships could pound the Dutchman into
subatomic particles, and even I could only slow them down." Skippy had
mentioned several times that, for all its apparent power, a star carrier was
not primarily a warship, it was a long-range transport for warships. In a
fight, star carriers ran away and let their escorts fight.

"That is perfect, Skippy. Please
plot a new jump course to Earth." We'd be on Earth only long enough for a
cup of coffee, or, in my, case, a cheeseburger. I could taste it already. The
ancient Elder AI had surprised me again, I'd been ready for a long and heated
argument about whether we continued searching for the Collective, or resupply
at Earth. Skippy didn't respond to arguments, he did respond to facts and
logic. "Hey," my finger poised above the button to turn off the
light, "out of curiosity, what did you calculate as the odds of the raid
we just did succeeding?"

"Originally, thirty seven point
six percent. Then, after the crew demonstrated proficiency with combots, and
Captain Giraud developed his assault plan, I calculated the odds at fifty one
point one percent."

"Barely fifty percent? You didn't
think this was worth mentioning?"

"Above fifty percent.
Above is above. You didn't ask. And your records indicate math is not your
strongest competency."

Arguing about the past wasn't
productive. "The jump engines will be fully charged in two and half hours,
right? Wake me in two hours."

"Unbelievable. I'm the most
advanced sentience in the galaxy, and you're using me as an alarm clock."

"Two hours, Skippy. Good
night."

The crew was relieved, and thrilled,
to hear we'd be stopping at Earth before continuing the mission. At least, they
were happy about it for a couple days. Then, on one of my duty shifts, Simms
waved to get my attention, I nodded and gestured for her to come onto the
bridge. There wasn't anything important going on at the time, we were a
lightyear away from a very unimportant red dwarf star, three lightyears from
the nearest wormhole, waiting while the jump engines recharged. “Colonel,"
Major Simms said, "now that we’re on our way to shut down the wormhole,
there’s some second guessing among the crew.”

“What?” Desai exclaimed from the pilot
seat, and Walorski also turned in his seat.

I had the same reaction. “Major, the
whole point of this mission is to cut off the lizard’s access to Earth.”

“Yes, sir, that’s not the problem.
People are concerned that the Expeditionary Force on Paradise will be cut off
from ever returning to Earth, they won’t receive shipments of food or medical
supplies after the wormhole is shut down. We’ll be abandoning them.
Permanently.” Her hands balled up into fists, displaying her anxiety. “That
doesn’t set well with the crew. Or with me. Sir.”

This was a conversation I knew was
coming, and wasn’t looking forward to. It had been hanging in the back of my
mind ever since Skippy first mentioned the idea of shutting down the wormhole.
Before I could fashion a reply, Skippy spoke up. “Not to worry, Major Tammy.
Your Expeditionary Force has been abandoned already, and there’s nothing we can
do about it, so we’re not responsible. I have intercepted messages that the
Thuranin have told the White Wind clan they won’t support further attempts to
recapture Paradise, the planet isn’t worth the effort and the Thuranin forces
are being kept busy elsewhere in the sector. The Kristang stopped bringing
supplies from Earth even before the Ruhar retook the planet. The Kristang won’t
make any effort to evacuate humans from Paradise, and the Ruhar don’t have
access to Earth, or the transport capacity in this sector. They're on their
own.”

He’d pissed me off again. “Damn it,
Skippy, you don’t have to sound so cheery about it!”

“Facts aren’t cheery or gloomy,
Colonel Joe,” Skippy had a defensive tone in his voice, which surprised me.
“They’re just facts. The fact is, whether we shut down the wormhole or not,
UNEF is stuck on Paradise for the foreseeable future. The Ruhar are providing food
supplements until your crops can be harvested. I think.”

“Skippy, you are not helping. Major, I
have not been ignoring UNEF, I haven’t wanted to talk about it, because Skippy
is a thousand percent right on this. We can’t do anything to help UNEF. We can
help the billions of humans on Earth. And if anyone has the bright idea that we
should trade Skippy to the Ruhar, in exchange for the hamsters transporting
UNEF back to Earth, forget about it.”

Skippy was cheery to hear that. “Thank
you, Joe, I appreciate-“

“Skippy’s programming will make him go
inert in the presence of interstellar capable species, so if we give him to the
hamsters, we lose the capability to shut down wormholes. Or anything else.”

“Oh.” Skippy genuinely sounded
surprised. “That hurt, Colonel Joe, for a moment there I thought you were
expressing some tiny bit of loyalty to me.”

I sighed before I could stop myself.
“Skippy, you’ve made it clear, every time you can, that you’re a powerful super
being and we’re bacteria to you. This isn’t a friendship between you and me,
this is an alliance between species, or cultures, or whatever it is. We’re
useful to you, and you’re useful to us. When I make a deal with you, I am
absolutely going to uphold my end of the bargain. I don’t know if you consider
any deal made with bacteria to be worth keeping on your part.”

“Huh.”

“Yeah, huh.” I caught a warning look
from Simms out of the corner of my eye, she probably was concerned about me
risking Skippy getting pissed off. She didn’t know that little shithead like I
did.

“Fair enough, Colonel Joe. You don’t
know this, since you are, after all, bacteria, but I am actually a hundred
percent reliable when I make a promise. We can work on that.” He still sounded
hurt. I wondered what portion of his capacity was devoted to an
emotion-emulating subroutine. It was almost convincing.

“Are we done, Major? “ I asked Simms.
“There isn’t anything we can do to help the Expeditionary Force on Paradise.
UNEF came out here to protect Earth; that mission got all fucked up because the
lizards lied to us, but we can protect Earth. That is our mission. If there
ever is a way to reestablish contact with UNEF, I’m all for that, but it’s
beyond our capability.”

Simms nodded with a grimace. “You want
me to talk to the crew?”

That would be taking the coward’s way
out. “No, I’ll handle it.”

I was more tactful when I spoke to the
crew later that day; explained the situation, listened sympathetically, said
that I also had friends on Paradise. What I did not do was pull rank and state
that I’m the commander and we’re doing what I think is best. Mostly, I
listened, and let people talk. Everyone understood there wasn’t anything
practical we could do for the humans on Paradise, and what was really bothering
people was guilt. Guilt that we would, hopefully, be going home, to whatever
Earthly comforts were still there. Home to friends and family, and
cheeseburgers. While UNEF would be left to hope the Ruhar decided to divert
enough resources from their war effort to keep them alive. Even if the Ruhar
felt like feeding their former enemies, the technologically backward humans,
the Kristang could harass Ruhar shipping enough to disrupt supplies getting to
Paradise, and the Ruhar might not be able to provide for UNEF.

In the end, I reminded our not-so-merry
band of pirates that we would be coming home to an unknown situation, that we
didn’t know how many Kristang and ships were on the Earth side of the wormhole,
that Earth might no longer be the blue and green haven we remembered, that we
might have to fight our way through numerically superior enemy forces. And
that, when the Kristang on the Earth end of the wormhole realized they had no
way home because we’d shut down the wormhole, they may be tempted to forget The
Rules and use banned weapons against the human population. Eyes narrowed and
jaws set when people considered that. “Our mission isn’t over when we shut down
the wormhole behind us. That's when it begins.”

"Colonel," Private Putri
asked. The American Putri, not the Indian one. "What's the plan if there
is a substantial force of Kristang ships at Earth?"

"Then we fight. It's no good
shutting down the wormhole if the lizards at Earth can destroy our home. We
fight, however we can, until the lizards are no longer a threat to Earth. The Dutchman
isn't a battleship, but we do have weapons, and superior jumping ability. If
the lizards want to fight, we pound the shit out of them. We fight until the
lizards are destroyed, or until our last breath. That’s my plan.”

A couple hours later, I was taking my
shoes off in my tiny sleeping quarters, when Skippy spoke through the speaker
in the ceiling.

“Colonel Joe, we need to talk.”

“Oh,” I groaned, “don’t we talk
enough? Can this wait?”

“Emphatically no. We are close to
transiting the wormhole to Earth, I need you to understand something before I
program the jump drive.”

Uh oh. His tone touched off my spidey
senses. This was going to be trouble. What hadn’t the shiny little shithead
told me this time? Swinging my legs back onto the floor, I rubbed my face to
spark semi-alertness. “You have my attention. What is it?”

“That was a rousing speech you gave,
about fighting the Kristang with everything you have, to your last breath.”

“You’re keeping me awake to compliment
me on my speech?”

“No, truthfully, as a speech, it was
third rate at best. Totally derivative. You’re talking about the potential of
going into humanity’s first space battle, and the best you can do is lame clichés?
You could at least have thrown in some warmed-over quotes from Patton, or
something.”

“For Christ’s sake, Sk-“

“My point is, you may intend to fight
with everything you have, but one thing you won’t have to fight with is this
ship. I need the Dutchman to contact to Collective. I won’t allow it to
be put at risk. And since I need a human, a live human crew to fly it for me, I
won’t allow you to send everyone away to fight. Especially if it is likely that
you would lose.”

Shit. I gritted my teeth to answer.
“What do you mean, you won't allow?”

“If you want to do something stupid
that will put the Dutchman at risk, or deprive me of a crew, I won’t
cooperate in running the ship. That means I won’t program jumps, or load
courses into the autopilot, or prepare and target weapons. Captain Desai has
only learned to minimally maneuver this ship in normal space, and I can lock
out those controls also. By going through the wormhole and then shutting it
down behind us, I’m taking a risk that you might decide not to help me find the
Collective after we resupply at Earth. We have a bargain, Joe, I expect you to
keep it.”

“Fuck.”

“Such a multi-purpose word, Joe.”

“I meant it as, fuck, yes, I remember
our bargain. I will absolutely keep my end of it. You have any genius thoughts
on how we’re to resupply, if the Kristang have a major task force of ships in earth
orbit?”

“That scenario is unlikely, given the
price the Thuranin have been charging the White Wind clan for shipping to and
from Earth. I expect the Kristang have garrisoned only a minimal force on
Earth, their technological advantage is so overwhelming they would not need
many troops to hold your backwards planet. Thuranin communications that I have
intercepted indicate they have major fleet elements setting up for a battle
around a wormhole cluster at the other edge of this sector. Their attention is
focused elsewhere.”

“The point is, Skippy, we have no idea
what we’ll find when we get to Earth. If we discover the lizards are
terrorizing our home planet, you can’t expect this crew to run away and wander
the galaxy with you. We need another option.”

“I’m open to suggestions, Joe. You’re
the soldier.”

How was I supposed to come up with a
space battle strategy, with a tired brain, and no experience or training in
space combat? Or ship to ship combat of any type? Oh, yeah, because I wore
silver eagles, that’s why. “All right, how about the Flower? You don’t
need that ship, right? Are you Ok with me sending part of the crew away on the Flower,
to fight the Kristang? I promise you, Skippy, I promise you I won’t leave you
here. I will remain aboard the Dutchman.”

“The Flower is somewhat useful,
as having a Kristang ship attached, particularly a battle-damaged Kristang
ship, is an effective ruse. But it is not essential. Ok, you can detach the Flower,
I’ll even program a jump for you. I don’t know what good you expect your
untrained crew to do, with a ship they don’t know who to fly.”

“Then I need to get them started on
training, pronto.” We needed a strategy also. Or, not? I considered what Giraud
said about flexible battle plans, and it made total sense. We couldn’t make
plans until we had intel. Any intel. “How about this, Skippy? Can we jump the Dutchman
in close enough to see what forces the Kristang have around Earth, but far
enough away to be safe? Then we can either detach the Flower, or, if you
agree the risk is minimal, we jump the Dutchman into orbit.”

“Hmmm. Sounds suspiciously
weasel-wordish. Minimal risk is not the same as no risk. Oh, what
the hell, why not? I’m bored already. Just for you, Joe, I’ll agree to this: we
can jump directly into orbit and scope out the situation from there, and we
jump right out again if I judge the risk to be too great. Not that I don’t
trust you or your crew, but I will program the autopilot on a timer to jump us
right back out unless I cancel the command.”

“Deal.” I hastily agreed before Skippy
could change his mind. Any risk too great for Skippy would mean it’s best for
us to retreat and consider our options anyway. Maybe we could lob a couple
railgun rounds at the Kristang just before we left, as a wake-up call. Having a
Thuranin star carrier jump into Earth orbit and blast a couple Kristang ships
without warning would certainly throw the Kristang into panicked confusion.

“For your education in tactics of
space combat, if the Kristang are at Earth in force, it’s better to jump right
into orbit than to jump in a couple AUs out. Even I can’t conceal the gamma ray
burst when we emerge from a jump, we’d have to wait there and run long-range
sensor scans, and the Kristang at Earth would be alerted to our arrival.
Jumping right into their laps will allow us to catch them off guard, and maybe
pump a couple missiles up their asses before they can react. Then we can jump
away, if we need to.”

“Space combat sounds complicated.” I
thought back to when I’d listened to the Chicken pilot talk about air combat
after our first war game, on Camp Alpha.

“Uh huh. Then there’s the Skippy
factor.”

Part of me wanted to avoid taking the
bait. “The Skippy factor?”

“You know, my incredible awesomeness.”

“Oh, sure.”

“Not convinced? Specifically, I am
referring to my ability to remotely take control of Kristang systems, using the
Thuranin nanovirus embedded in their systems. To do that, I need to be within
about a lightsecond of the enemy ship.”

“A lightsecond? That’s, uh-” Light
travels, uh, hmm, I was trying to picture myself in a classroom-

“Let me put you out of your misery
before you sprain your brain, monkey boy. A light second is roughly the
distance from the Earth to your moon.”

“Oh.” I thought a moment. “I thought
ships shouldn’t jump in that close to a planet?”

“Most ships can’t, the gravity well of
a planet distorts the jump field at entry to make jump navigation
unpredictable, and the field distortion can damage jump engines, even tear a
ship apart. A ship with me controlling the jump engines compensates for the
field distortion. Thus, the Skippy factor.”

“Impressive.” I had to admit.

“What? No snarky joke?”

“No, you may be an arrogant asshole,
but your awesomeness is legit.”

“It ain’t bragging if it’s true.”

“Yeah, I heard that. Hey, is that why
you jumped us in so close to that gas giant planet?”

There was an ever so short hesitation.
“That may have been too close. I hadn’t finished tuning up this ship’s crappy
jump engines. Won’t happen again. Hey, uh, good talk. You need to get some shut-eye,
we can talk more later, huh?”

I laid back down on the bed, trying to
conceal a smile. The monkey had made the AI uncomfortable. I needed to remember
that.

The transition through the final
wormhole was uneventful, any fears I had about us running into an outbound
Thuranin ship were for nothing. Skippy couldn't detect any ships in the area.
With the wormhole safely behind us, Skippy disrupted the wormhole's connection
to the network, and it blinked out. Helpfully, Skippy had loaded a new app on
my zPhone, on the home screen of all our zPhones, it was simple clock. A clock
counting down until the wormhole reset. We all got the message, loud and clear.

In my quarters, I was attempting to
attach sergeant stripes to one of my uniform tops, Skippy had fabricated the
chevrons for me. Once we reached Earth, my theater rank of colonel would be
voided, and I'd revert back to me regular Army rank of sergeant. Part of me, a
big part of me, feared what the Army brass would think about me ever wearing
silver eagles, and all the things I'd completely fucked up, or the questionable
decisions I'd made. As soon as Earth was on the display, those silver war
eagles were going into a box, and I wasn't going to make a big deal about it.
Chang, who had been released from sickbay now that his broken ribs had healed
enough, agreed he would take command when we reached Earth, with the exception
that I was still captain of the ship. In my opinion, Chang wasn't comfortable
dealing with Skippy yet. It didn't matter much anyway, once we made contact
with the authorities on Earth, command authority of our pirate crew would be
from the surface. Assuming we didn't have to fight our way through a fleet of
Kristang warships. I was nervous about that.

There was another thing I was nervous
about, I waited until I could talk to Skippy in private. Taking a break from
running sprints down the Dutchman's spine was a good place.
"Listen, oh great and powerful Oz, I'm really sorry that I ever called you
Skippy. I feel like an idiot now, I didn't know how powerful you are, and I
meant no disrespect. The government is going to shit if they hear I named you
Skippy, so what else should I call you? Lord God Almighty is still out, in case
you were thinking of that."

"I'm good with Skippy. I like
it."

"You sure?" I couldn't tell
if he was joking.

"Yes. Skippy is a nickname,
right?"

"I think so." I didn't know
of anyone whose given name was Skippy.

"And nicknames can be either a
term of derision, which, face it, isn't possible with you lower lifeforms talking
about me."

"Of course not." I rolled my
eyes.

"I saw that! Or a nickname can be
an indication of acceptance, of belonging, of being one of the cool kids."

Cool kids? A million year old,
unbelievably powerful being, wanted to be one of the 'cool kids'? "Sure,
let's go with that."

"People calling me Skippy will
constantly remind you monkeys that I am not anything like any Skippy who
ever lived on your miserable dirtball of a planet, and that will point out your
total unimportance compared to me, far better than any name intended for
respect. And really, do you truly think you knuckle draggers are actually
capable of giving me the respect I deserve? The name Skippy is appropriate; it
was a defensive reaction by you, to something far beyond your understanding."

"It was an offensive
reaction, to the fact that you're an asshole!"

"Or that. Whatever."

Before we made the final jump into our
home solar system, I ordered a stand down to make sure everyone was well
rested, and all our systems and gear were shipshape and ready to rock and roll.
Especially I was concerned about the Dutchman's weapons, comparatively
weak though they were.

Chang was up and about faster than I
expected, even with Thuranin miracle treatments, the guy had broken ribs and a
partially punctured lung. He came into the CIC while I was in the big chair and
Simms was in the CIC. “Colonel Chang, should you be out of sickbay,” I asked.
Skippy hadn’t said anything about him releasing Chang from treatment.

Chang lifted his shirt, there was a
hard black plastic something wrapped around his ribs. “I am being treated,
Skippy said walking around would help the tissues to adjust as they healed.”

“All right, as long as you don’t think
you’re going back on duty. You take it easy for a couple days, agreed?”

Chang winced, still in pain when he
moved. “Agreed. Colonel, I hear it was your idea to use our suit radios to
triangulate the position of the communications node That was excellent
thinking, it may have saved us all. If we had to sort through all that trash by
ourselves, we would have been trapped.”

Getting admiration from Chang felt
great, it was also misplaced. Unfortunately, I needed to explain what really
happened. “Thank you, it wasn’t anything brilliant, it was obvious. All I did
was ask whether the comm node could transmit, it seemed like it should if its
purpose is, you know, communications. Skippy is incredibly smart, he’s also
absent-minded and doesn’t think of things that we would consider obvious. Like
how he didn’t tell us about the combots until I asked him how the Thuranin
fought. Always keep that in mind when you’re dealing with Skippy, he simply
doesn’t think on our level.”

We jumped into Earth orbit, Skippy
reported there were only two Kristang ships there, a frigate and a troop
transport that was also their command ship. I adjusted the display to zoom in
close on the big Kristang troop ship, so it filled one of the view screens. It
was a damned big ship, although I kept forgetting how very much larger the Dutchman
was. The Dutchman could carry dozens of those Kristang ships across
lightyears.

"I'll need to establish a
connection to the nanovirus on the Kristang command ship, crack their
multi-level encryption, take control of their computers, and lock them
out."

"How long will that take?"

"I did it between me saying
'establish' and 'connection'."

"Nobody likes a show-off,
Skippy."

"I can go slower, if you like,
but I'd probably get bored, and lose track of what I was supposed to be doing
after a couple pico seconds."

"We can't have that. What assets
do they have on and around Earth?"

"Just those two ships, the troop
carrier over there that is their command ship, and a frigate in a polar orbit,
currently over Sumatra on the other side of the planet. The troop carrier has
twenty four assault dropships of various types, of which three are aboard now,
one is in orbit on approach, and the others are scattered across the planet.
The frigate also has two small dropships aboard. There are Thuranin defensive
installations atop the space elevators. And, the Kristang have a constellation
of seventeen maser satellites in orbit, for ground strikes."

"Ok," I let out a long
breath. "We're safe enough to stay here? Cancel the jump out?"

"Affirmative, I have cancelled
the jump away countdown. We got lucky, both ships are within my range of
control, although the frigate's orbit will move it beyond my range in ten
minutes. At the moment, the Kristang are startled by a Thuranin ship, a star
carrier, appearing in the sky without notice. I’m confusing them with garbled
communications from the Dutchman, that won’t stall them for long. Both
Kristang ships are preparing to jump away on short notice. They don't realize
that I control their computers."

"You said there are satellites?
Like what kind of satellite?"

"Each satellite is fifty eight
meters long, powered by a fusion reactor which can generate eight hundred
twenty megawatts of maser power."

"Is that a lot?"

"Your American nuclear aircraft
carriers typically generate around two hundred megawatts, from fission
reactors."

"Holy shit." I had thought
satellites would be wimpy things. My idea of a satellite was a box with solar
panels that allowed me to watch football games.

"Oh, very naughty!
Two of the satellites are preparing to fire on a city called Mumbai, there is a
large protest there against the Kristang. Colonel," I could tell from the
tone of voice that Skippy was being serious for a moment, "those
satellites, and the frigate, have been busy suppressing attempted rebellions
all over the planet. Human casualties are estimated in the millions. The
frigate has caused extensive damage to major cities with railgun strikes."

I pounded my fist down on the Big Red
Button in anger, not thinking what I was doing. "How many Kristang are
down there?"

"One thousand, four hundred and
twenty three Kristang, mostly in seven compounds. Twelve of their dropships are
currently in the air."

I leaned forward tensely, looking at
the display, not realizing my right fist was resting on the Big Red Button.
"We need to keep that troop ship, but that damned frigate I'd like to jump
into the Sun. Can you retarget those satellites to hit the Kristang compounds,
and their dropships?"

There were bright flares across the
planet, and I could see the troop ship shudder, as it looked like lizard bodies
were blown out airlocks. The troops ship also blossomed a salvo of missiles,
which curved down toward the planet and slammed forward, rapidly becoming
burning streaks through the atmosphere.

"Done." Skippy announced.
"Kristang population is now seven hundred twenty one. Ah! Missiles
impacting, and, ok, population is one hundred seventy two. Wait. Ha! Got those
buggers!" There was another bright flare from a satellite. "Satellite
went over the horizon, I had to defract the maser beam. One hundred sixty
four."

"What?"

"You told the system to
fire."

"I didn't-" right then, I
realized my hand was resting on the button. "Shit! Skippy, I asked if you
could do it, I didn't tell you to actually do it!"

"Oops."

"Oops? Skippy, that is one
big fucking oops."

"You didn't want me to jump that
frigate into the core of the local star, either? Because I can't undo that one.
In a couple million years, the atoms of that frigate will emerge up into the
photosphere, but that Humpty Dumpty can't be put together again."

"We need to work on our
communication."

"Noted."

I shifted my attention back to the
troop carrier. "What happened over there?"

"That ship was absolutely
infested with lizards, ugh, disgusting. I had to fumigate it with explosive
decompression. There are four still alive over there, stubborn damned
things." Skippy sounded frustrated. He could probably kill those four
lizards, but that could require him to damage the ship that I wanted to keep
intact.

I involuntarily shuddered, thinking of
Skippy's immense power, and how badly things could go wrong if I failed to pay
attention again. I needed to put a cover on that Big Red Button, so I would
have to flip up the cover, the next time I wanted to use it. "You have
complete control? The lizards can't hurt any humans right now?"

"Right now, I imagine they are
too busy pissing in their pants to think about doing anything else. I also took
the liberty of shutting down the Kristang projects to modify your best
agricultural land for their use. And I fried all their computer systems.
Whatever they're going to do, they'll be doing it without much electronics."

"Great, thank you." I rubbed
my face and closed my eyes for a moment. Over two thousand lizards, snuffed out
in a moment, with their own weapons. When I looked up, Simms' eyes were as big
as saucers.

"Did that really happen?"
Simms asked, astonished.

I nodded, and pointed to the view of
the troop ship, now surrounded by a cloud of flash-frozen lizard bodies.
"And over a thousand Kristang dead, on the planet." For some reason,
up here, it felt more natural to say 'the planet' than 'Earth'. It had been a
while since I'd seen the place, anyway.

People nodded at me through the glass.
"That's a good start," Major Simms observed. I agreed.

Perhaps decent, ordinary people would
be horrified by such death and destruction. Speaking for our merry band of
pirates, we had no sympathy for the lizards. If what we'd heard about the
situation on Earth, what the lizards had been doing to people and the biosphere
was true, then the lizards' whole species could go fuck itself.

"Skippy, can you contact the
United States government? I need to talk to someone in authority."

"Certainly. One moment. Go
ahead."

"Hello?" A female voice I
vaguely recognized came out of the speakers. "Who is this?" She
sounded surprised.

"Uh, who is this?"

"You called me. Where did
you get this number?" The voice demanded.

And I remembered with shock where I'd
heard that voice before. I'd never heard that voice so haggard, so worn down
with despair.

"Skippy," I said in a harsh
whisper, "what the hell did you do?"

"You wanted to talk to the
American government, so I dialed your president's personal encrypted cell
phone."

I shook my fist at his shiny cylinder.
We seriously needed to work on our communication. "Uh, ma'am, Madame President,
this is colonel, I mean, sergeant, Joe Bishop, US Army, formerly with the 10th
infantry division. We've captured a Kristang troop ship, and a frigate, and a
Thuranin star carrier, we're now in orbit, and we just killed all but one
hundred sixty four-"

"Plus the four on the troop
ship." Skippy chided.

"-all but one hundred sixty eight
Kristang on or around Earth, and we have control of their remaining ship, and
their satellites."

There was a long pause, with voices
talking in the background. "Quiet! Mister Bishop, is it? My military aide
is telling me there were satellite strikes around the planet, but all against
Kristang installations. I thought the Thuranin were patrons of the Kristang?
Kindly tell me what is going on." She sounded shaken.

I let out a long breath. "It is a
very long story, ma'am. The important facts are that the Kristang no longer
have control of Earth, and there won't be any Kristang reinforcements coming,
because we shut down the local wormhole. "

"Hey! Don't forget about
me!" Skippy spoke up. "I'm the hero of this story, you're only the
plucky sidekick who provides comic relief."

"Who is that speaking?" The
president asked.

Oh, what the hell. I was tired.
"Ma'am, that is a chrome plated beer can named Skippy.” I paused to
consider that was certainly the first time anyone had ever said that to
an American president. “He's a several million years old artificial
intelligence, who makes the Thuranin look like not so clever pond slime by
comparison."

"Pthththth." Skippy made a
raspberry noise. "Please, they're not even that smart."

It was the president’s turn to let out
a long breath into the phone. "I'm getting a headache again."

"Like I said, ma'am, it's a long
story. We need to talk."

"Also, we need pizza!"
Skippy added. "Not for me, but our merry band of pirates here needs pizza.
And cold brewskis! Party on, dudes!"

"Merry band of pirates?" The
president asked.

I was getting a headache, too.

After the President handed me off to an aide to
discuss details, and we agreed on terms for bringing our pirate crew home, I
checked the main display again. “Skippy, are we safe? Are there any Kristang or
Thuranin ships heading our way?” I still couldn’t interpret the displays. The
displays looked empty, except for the Kristang troop ship and the Dutchman.
And the moon, I guessed was the big blob on the display.

“Not according to the databanks on their command
ship over there. The next Thuranin carrier was scheduled to come though the
wormhole in ten days. That won’t happen now. But it’s possible there are ships
out there, that their command didn’t think the Kristang here needed to know
about.”

“Colonel Chang, Major Simms?” I saluted both.
Now that we were home, my theater rank was annulled, and I had reverted back to
my regular Army rank of sergeant. They both knew that. For me, I couldn't
decide whether to be disappointed or relieved. “Someone needs to go down to
Earth and brief our leadership. Skippy, can you fly a dropship remotely? We’ll
need to bring people down to Beijing, Dehli, London and DC, and none of us know
how to fly a Kristang or Thuranin shuttle. Our Dodo is busted.”

“And Paris.” Giraud reminded me.

“And Paris.” I’d forgotten about Giraud, our
only French pirate. "And we need to be extra careful with the
wounded." Everyone who had been wounded in capturing the Flower and
raiding the asteroid base were now out of sickbay and on their feet, some of
them with Thuranin portable medical devices still attached. Walorski's forearm
was due to be released from the healing sleeve in a week. Chang's ribs were
technically healed, Skippy said the bones had knitted together, although Chang
told me it still hurt like hell when he took a deep breath. To me, it was a
miracle of Thuranin medical technology, or a miracle from Skippy, that everyone
who had been injured would be making a full recovery.

“I can fly multiple dropships remotely,” Skippy
responded as if it were the easiest thing in the universe, “no need for people
to fly all over the planet in one ship. But after the ships land and people get
out, I’m locking the doors. Can’t have you monkeys, you know, monkeying with
them.”

“Understood. Other than me, is there anyone else
we should leave aboard?” I looked around at our soon to disperse merry band of
pirates.

“Why are you remaining aboard?” Chang asked
before Skippy could.

“Sir, if a Kristang ship jumps into orbit,
Skippy and I need to be here to defend Earth.” I pointed to the Big Red Button.

“No we don’t. I want to see Earth, and not only
from orbit!” Skippy insisted. “I can control this ship from anywhere down
there.”

Simms spoke up. “The fire control button is here
on this ship, sir.” It took me a moment to realize she had addressed the ‘sir’
to Skippy, rather than me.

“Oh, screw that!" Skippy scoffed.
"Colonel Joe, I just loaded a Big Red Button app on your zPhone. Press
that anywhere on Earth, and we’re weapons free.”

I pulled my phone out of my pocket. “I’m a
sergeant again now, not a colonel. And I don’t see it.”

Skippy sighed. “Is it called a smart phone
because it’s smarter than the user? It’s on the last screen of apps, between
your two versions of solitaire, and that birds game you never play anymore.”

“I’ve been kind of busy.” I saw the app, titled
Big Red Button. It was hard to miss. “Shouldn’t this app be on the first
screen?”

“Joe, Joe, Joe. We don’t want you butt dialing
the weapons, and accidentally destroying, oh, say, Canada.”

“Shit!” I held the zPhone away from me. “That
could happen?”

“Unlikely, since I program the weapons, you only
press the button to authorize their use. However, we’ve had communications
problems, as you say, so….”

“Sergeant Bishop, I would feel more comfortable
if you, and, uh,” Simms struggled to think of a way to avoid saying Skippy’s
name, “Mister Skippy, came with me, to brief our leadership. Including the
president, who you already know, apparently?” She didn’t look happy about that.

Chang leaned toward Simms. “I do not agree that
the device,” he pointed at Skippy, “should be the de facto property of America.
As the ranking UNEF officer-“

“You’re not my ranking officer,
Changy-boy. Colonel Joe is still the captain of this pirate crew.” Skippy said,
with a distinctly unfriendly tone. “And calling me ‘the device’ is not the way
to get on my good side. Before you say something else stupid, I’m not the
property of anyone, and I'll probably be asked to visit China while I’m here,
so your scientists will have plenty of opportunity to ask me the same dumbass
questions the Americans are going to ask me. Now, apologize to me and Colonel
Joe, or your dropship may end up in the Gobi desert, by mistake.”

“No apology needed, sir.” I hastened to say.
Chang, was, after all, a real lieutenant colonel, and a good guy. Damn. Closing
the wormhole and beating the Kristang may have been the easy part.

Chang bowed slightly. “I do apologize, Mister
Skippy, no offense was intended. My intention was to ensure the rights of China
are properly considered.”

Skippy sighed again. This was getting to be a
habit. “Believe me, I have no interest in helping one group of monkeys down
there gain an advantage over the others. You can whack each other with sticks
all you want when I’m not around. If you have more brains than an amoeba, you
may want to focus your energy on repairing the damage the Kristang did to your
planet. I’m just sayin’.”

"Sir?" Sergeant Adams addressed her
question to Chang. "Can we contact our families?"

Skippy spoke privately into my earpiece.
"Colonel Joe, your family is safe and sound, but that's not true of the
families and friends of the entire crew. I'd be careful about comms for now. I
just told the same thing to Chang. Except I also told him that his father's
brother was killed by the Kristang."

Through the glass, I saw Chang touch his
earpiece, nod, frown, then look at me. He addressed the whole crew. "We
don't know the situation down there yet, and now that we're back, we fall under
the authority of our home governments. They will likely want to maintain
operational security for the immediate future. I'm sure we will all be briefed
after we land."

My brief fantasy of dramatically
landing a Thuranin dropship on the White House lawn were quickly dashed, as the
White House, and much of DC, had been damaged in Kristang 'anti-traitor
actions'. The US Federal government headquarters was now located in Colorado
Springs, on the site of what used to be the Air Force Academy, behind heavy
fortifications. Skippy was all for blowing over the academy at hypersonic
speed, utilizing the full stealth capabilities of a Thuranin dropship, then
curving around and landing wherever the hell he felt like, to let the American
government know right from the start how powerless they were. I pointed out
that I was enlisted in the US Army, and had taken an oath to protect and defend
the constitution of the United States, and therefore the legally elected
government of the nation technically had authority over me, so the request by
the president that we follow the US Air Force's designated flight path was, in
effect, an order I was bound to obey. That was a long and convoluted
conversation, which revealed more about Skippy than it did about me or the
United States. Skippy begrudgingly programmed the autopilot for a totally
unnecessarily shallow entry profile, dropping into the atmosphere over the
Marshall Islands of the Pacific, and accepting an 'escort' by a pair of F-22
Raptors over the California coast. Skippy was right, even though the Raptors
were pushing their limits in supersonic cruise, it felt like we were barely
crawling though the sky. I did get a good view of Yosemite national park,
though, so the extra flight time wasn't totally wasted.

On the ground, we were met by Secret
Service agents brandishing automatic weapons, who ordered us to proceed down
the ramp slowly, one by one. That got Major Simms annoyed, she told the agents
to lower their weapons, before the super AI who had wiped out the Kristang in
less than ten seconds grew annoyed. When they hesitated, Simms asked if they
really thought 9MM ammo was a threat to Skippy. Man, she was pissed. The
rifle barrels were held at half staff after that. I came down the ramp after
the officers and Staff Sergeant Adams, having reverted to my regular army rank
of sergeant. Rather than stuffing Skippy into a rucksack, I held him in my left
hand in front of me, in what I intended as a position of honor. He was damned
heavy, I wondered if he were adjusting his mass to screw with me. The Secret
Service, due to their protective detail training, were not about to let a
potentially dangerous object near the president, until Skippy cut through the
bullshit and called the president directly on her encrypted cellphone. She
walked out the doorway of the former academy commandant's residence, and shook
her head at the lead agent, who let us all through, against what was clearly
his better judgment. When the agents tried to restrict the welcoming party to
me and the officers, I put a quick stop to that with an angry gesture, and
waved the enlisted people forward. That drew a quick laugh from the president,
who had done the exact same thing at the exact same time. And that was the
beginning of me and the president hitting it off quite well, which was
fortunate for me. Behind us, medical people hurried aboard the dropship to help
the wounded crew down the ramp.

The president acknowledged Major Simms
and other officers, but made a beeline for me, her presence clearing the way
without needing to ask people to move aside. The breeze blew her hair across
her eyes, and she brushed it away with a well-practiced gesture. "Mister
Bishop." Her eyes were drawn to the unusual unit insignia on my right
shoulder. "Is that a, a paisley with an eyepatch?"

Dammit. We had completely forgotten
about Skippy's idea for our pirate flag. Now I felt like an complete idiot.
This woman was in charge of America's nuclear arsenal. If we still had a
nuclear arsenal, that is, things might have changed. "Sort of,
ma'am."

"It's not a paisley, it's a
paramecium." Skippy said.

"Am I speaking to the being
Mister Bishop calls Skippy?" The president asked, her eyes darting to her
advisors, who hovered discretely.

"The one and only, that's
me."

"Then Skippy is a nickname."
The president smiled at Skippy, then looked at me. "Tell me, Mister
Bishop, what do you call me?"

I momentarily panicked. "Uh,
Commander in Chief, ma'am?"

She laughed. "That will do, but
it's rather long. Madame President will do for now. There is a story behind the
paramecium?"

How do I tell the president of the
United States that a chromed-plated beer can thinks our entire species,
including her, are only slightly more intelligent than bacteria? It would be
best to start with some background. "Ma'am-"

Skippy cut me off.  "It's
sort of a joke. Colonel Joe suggested that one of his moderately less stupid
ideas meant your species is slightly more intelligent than bacteria. I
grudgingly agreed you might, might, be comparable to a paramecium. The jury's
still out on that one."

Or I could have blurted it out like a
four-year-old, as Skippy did! The president took it in stride. I guess years of
political campaigns had given her a thick skin. "I certainly hope we will
impress you enough, during your time here, that you may compare us to a higher
organism, perhaps, algae?"

"Good luck with that one."
Skippy scoffed, but then added quietly, "I like her, Colonel Joe."

"Thank you," the president
managed a quick smile. "What does this mean, that he calls you
colonel?" She addressed that to me.

"Oh, ma'am, it was a field
promotion, what the Army calls a theater rank. It was only temporary." I
self consciously glanced at my sergeant's uniform stripes. "I've restored
my uniform to my regular Army rank of sergeant now, ma'am." My cheeks were
burning with embarrassment, and then I had an unhappy thought. Technically, was
I back to Specialist now? My elevation to sergeant had also been a field
promotion, by an army that may no longer exist. I had no idea what the regs had
to say about this situation. Damn it, I should have asked Skippy, I'm sure he
knew all about US Army regulations. Hell, if the Army wanted to take my
sergeant stripes, they would tell me. I liked my stripes. I'd earned them.

"Hmm," she looked
meaningfully at Major Simms, who looked pained. "I supposed there is a
long story behind that too. Come inside, please, we have food for you."
There was an undisciplined, involuntary moan from the pirate crew, maybe
including me, and my mouth watered.

There was another glitch as we filed
into the room that had been set up for a buffet. A breakfast buffet. According
to Dutchman ship time, this was the afternoon, but my stomach did not
care. Real food, human food. All my blood must have been redirected to my
stomach, instead of my brain, because I absent-mindedly pulled out my zPhone to
check the weather, something I did every morning at breakfast. There was no
weather app on my zPhone, of course.

A Secret Service agent saw the thing
in my hand, the hand that wasn't holding Skippy, and stiffened. "Sir, what
is that?"

"This?" I waved the zPhone
at him. "It's my zPhone, oh, uh, the Army calls it a Tactical Radio. The
Kristang supplied one to every soldier."

"Kristang? That is a Kristang
device?" The agent said with alarm. "You can't bring a Kristang
communications device in here, I have to take it."

I held the zPhone tightly to my chest,
in a deathgrip, like it was a football I'd just intercepted. "I can't do
that, sir. I'm not trying to make your job more difficult, you need to
understand my phone controls, through Skippy here, all the weapons on the
Thuranin star carrier in orbit." I pointed vaguely at the sky with one
finger.

"Sir?" The agent clearly
wasn't buying it.

"What he said." Skippy
offered unhelpfully. "He ain't lyin'."

The agent now really wasn't buying it.
"Sir, I'll need to see that device."

That wasn't happening. I'd seen the
Big Red Button fry Kristang sites across the Earth. No way was anyone getting
their grubby paws on my phone. Damn. Before the Ruhar had raided us, what now
seemed an eternity ago, I'd been eager to upgrade my old cellphone. Now I
couldn't ever let the zPhone out of my sight. Somehow, I needed to find a
plastic bag, so I could bring the phone into the shower with me. And, no, that
wasn't so I could watch porn in the shower, you smartass. "Look, agent,
uh, sir, the Kristang can't use this thing any more. It's safe. Right,
Skippy?"

"Hundred percent safe from the
lizards, I wiped all their pathetic code off it."

The president diffused the situation
again. "Agent Thomas," the president called out, "Mister Bishop
can keep his phone."

"Madame President, we have
procedures for a reas-"

"These two," the president
waved a finger between me and Skippy, "destroyed the Kristang here in seconds."

"It would have been faster, if
that damned satellite hadn't been over the horizon. Stupid orbital
mechanics." Skippy grumbled.

"My point is, if they wanted to
vaporize this whole area, a phone is the least of our problems." The
president said gently, and waved me forward. "Your phone really controls
the weapons on that starship?"

"Uh, yes, ma'am. It's a, uh, long
story."

"I look forward to hearing the
full story later. In the meantime, I have a country to start putting back
together." She held out her hand, and I shook it in a daze. I had somehow
gone from a farm in Maine, to shaking hands with the President of the United
States of America. She looked at my zPhone closely. "Perhaps it would be a
good idea to have a security team accompany you, to make sure you don't
misplace that phone." She looked up into my eyes. "That wasn't a
joke, Sergeant Bishop."

"No, ma'am." I stammered.
"And, uh, I'll need to find a charger," I said weakly.

"No need," Skippy said,
"I'm keeping it charged."

"How?" I asked. He'd never
said anything about that before.

"Unicorns and fairy dust."

"Screw you, Skippy." I shot
back, before remembering with horror where I was. "Sorry, Madame
president."

The president seemed genuinely amused.
"Thank you, Sergeant. I think today is the first time I've genuinely
smiled in the last year."

"Yes." I vowed right then to
keep my mouth shut whenever I could, in the future. "Thank you, we don't
want to take up your time, ma'am."

"I look forward to talking with
you later. In the meantime, enjoy your breakfast." She turned to go, but
looked over her shoulder at me. "Oh, and Sergeant?"

"Yes, Madame President?"

"Thank you for saving the
world."

Breakfast was good, damned good. Major
Simms cautioned us former pirates not to stuff ourselves, since our stomachs
weren't used to eating real food. I settled for grits, which I put brown sugar
and cream in, plus buttered toast and one, no, two, Ok, I confess! Three strips
of bacon. Oh, man it was all soooooo good. And a cup of honest to God, real
coffee. Black, hot, in an Army logo mug. I felt like crying.

Two things put a teeny damper on my
breakfast. The first was the Air Force staff sergeant who showed up right after
I sat down. She was only about five feet four, had her brown hair in a short
ponytail, but the way she stood, spoke, and the expression on her face told me
she was all business. That, and her sidearm. Oh, and the four airmen behind
her, who were carrying M4s. "Sergeant Bishop? I'm Staff Sergeant Kendall,
I've been assigned to you, to accompany you. Everywhere."

"Oh." I managed to say with
a mouthful of toast. "You're the security team assigned by the
president?"

"I don't know about the
president, Sergeant, but the Air Force Chief of Staff gave me orders
personally." She raided her eyebrow, to emphasize that didn't happen every
day.  "We're to assure the security of you, your phone," she
said that with a questioning tone, "and the, the uh," she pointed at
Skippy, who I had thoughtfully rested in a ceramic bowl on the table in front
of me, "the Skippy?"

"That's me, in all my
magnificence, the amazing Skippy." Skippy said. "So, you're Colonel
Joe's baby sitter? Make sure he gets to bed early, he gets cranky if he doesn't
get a nice nap. And don't let him have too many juice boxes."

She didn't smile, not even one little
bit. The Air Force apparently hadn't seen fit to issue her a sense of humor.
Great. She was going to be my constant shadow, and even Skippy couldn't get her
to smile.

The second damper on my feast was the
three guys sitting across the table from me, looking like they couldn't wait
for me to finish eating toast. Two were Army intelligence, the other guy had to
be with one of the three letter agencies, and not the EPA, if you know what I
mean.

They wanted to jump right in on
'debriefing' me, while I savored breakfast. The CIA guy got on my bad side
right away. "Sergeant Bishop, any information you have regarding events
offworld are considered top secret, and you are prohibited from-"

"Oh, screw this." Skippy
said disparagingly. "Hey, you monkeys are all dumb to me, but you
seem particularly stupid. Here's a news flash for you: we arrived here on a
Thuranin star carrier that uses a Kristang frigate as a spare tire. None of
your bullshit supposed secrets down here mean a damn thing any more, and you
just can't stand that, can you? The only info worth keeping secret around here
is in Colonel Joe's head and in my databanks, and if you want any info out of
me, you can make yourself useful, and freshen up Joe's coffee cup."

The CIA guy thought Skippy was joking.
Which pissed Skippy off. "Hey, shithead. If you dumb hairless monkeys want
any info out of me, you get your lazy ass out of that chair right now, and get
my buddy a cup of coffee. I don't see you moving!"

I held out my coffee cup. The two Army
guys were about to bust a gut trying not to laugh, as the red-faced CIA guy got
me a fresh cup of coffee. I took my time with the last piece of toast, and
talked only to the Army guys. "Sirs, what do you want to know first?"

After breakfast, which didn't last
nearly as long as I'd liked, Skippy had an appointment with a group of
scientists, which he had grudgingly agreed to in order to get it over with. I
could tell by the tone of his voice that he was not looking forward to being
questioned by the equivalent of bacteria, even if some of them were Nobel prize
winning bacteria. "Oh, this is going to suuuuuuuuuuck," he
grumbled to me as I walked down the hallway to the conference room. "You
know that you're too dumb to understand anything about the universe, so you
don't ask stupid questions. These pompous monkeys are only going to waste my
time. Sheee-it. Better get this over with."

Skippy had clearly been hanging around
me too long.

I agreed with him when we got to the
conference room, it was crowded with scientists, security people, and
audio-video equipment. They had a table set up, surrounded by microphones and
cameras, I set Skippy carefully down on the table, and wished him luck.

Then it was time for my own
debriefing, down the hallway, escorted by Sergeant Kendall. It was in a smaller
room, without fancy chairs, and the Army, Air Force and Navy officers and CIA
people there were no nonsense. The CIA guy kept glaring at me, he was still
pissed about what Skippy said at breakfast. At least the coffee was fresh and
hot. Whenever I took a sip of coffee, I looked the CIA guy straight in the eye.
If looks could kill, I'd be dead. Fortunately, one of us had destroyed an
entire Kristang battlegroup, and guess what? It wasn't him.

It started with me telling the basics
of my story, from the day we departed Camp Alpha. Then they grilled me
intensely for details, and not just about Skippy. I told them mind-blowing
intel about the Kristang, wormholes, the Elders; everything I'd learned from
the burgermeister. Then, they wanted to know the situation on Paradise,
disposition of our forces across the planet, status of Ruhar, Kristang and
Thuranin forces. All of which I knew little about, unfortunately. That didn't
stop them from asking me the same questions over and over, until I felt like
there were grill marks on my backside. It left me feeling that I was letting
them down as a military officer, I should have done more to gather intel. How I
could have done that, as a prisoner first of the Kristang, and then the Ruhar,
and then sneaking around trying to avoid everyone, I didn't know. What I did
know was what the Army expected of a colonel, and I wasn't meeting those
standards.

Except for, you know, the saving the
world thing.

I was going with that one.

During a bathroom break, I was washing
my hands next to one of the Army intel officers, a Colonel Landry, who had
treated me decently so far. I looked at him in the mirror and asked "Sir,
I told you we got the fortune cookies, we heard what the Kristang were doing to
our farmland and the Great Lakes, but I didn't hear much detail at my level.
Why is the Federal government here in Colorado Springs?"

"You heard there were protests
around the world, when the public learned what the Kristang were demanding of
us?" Landry paused for me to nod. "When the protests in DC got
serious, and started drawing people from across the country, we brought in
elements of the 28th Infantry for crowd control, we were hoping to contain the
protests enough that the Kristang wouldn't get worried about it and decide to
react themselves. Crowd control meant tear gas, rubber bullets, water cannons,
all things the 28th isn't trained for. I think the idea was their Strykers
would be intimidating to the crowd, but they had the opposite effect; the crowd
started throwing bottles and Molotov cocktails at our own troops. We evacuated
the president and Congress, at first to St Louis, then here. There were some
incidents, and the crowds got completely out of control. The Kristang advised
us, strongly, to shoot at the protesters. When the 28th refused to use live
ammo, the Kristang ordered us, blatantly ordered us, to send the 9th Air Force
in to bomb the crowd. When we refused to do that, the Kristang hit Shaw Air
Force Base from orbit, wiped the 9th off the map. Then they used some sort of
microwave laser weapon, killed half the people in DC, including the 28th. Things
went downhill from there."

Landry finished washing his hands and
grabbed a paper towel, I could see his hands were shaking slightly. He took a
deep breath, like he was trying to make up his mind. "There's still a lot
we need to know from you, but, however you did it, you got us out of one hell
of a mess, Sergeant, and the Army isn't going to forget that. Before you appeared
in orbit and hit the Kristang," he let out a long breath, "we were
running through scenarios for NCA," he meant the National Command
Authority, "and there weren't any good options. The best we were hoping
for was some sort of survival, for the human race. You got us out of a no win
situation. Don't forget that."

I went back to the debriefing, trying
to answer the questions as completely as I could. After many hours, the
questions got to be repetitive, and I was answering almost on autopilot by this
time, when the CIA guy snuck in a surprise.

“Sergeant, can we isolate the device?”

“Uh, I’m sorry, what device?” Shit, I
should have been paying better attention. In my defense, they had been
questioning me for nine solid hours, with only brief bathroom breaks and a
snack.

“The AI, the alien AI.”

“You mean Skippy? I wouldn’t call him
a device, he doesn’t like that. What do you mean isolate? Like ignore him? He’s
very persistent.”

“Isolate, as in place it in a lead
vault, or under Cheyenne Mountain, or inside a Faraday cage, something that
will isolate it from access to outside electronic systems.” He explained in a
tone like he was speaking to a child. “Sergeant, you do understand this AI
represents a potential security risk?”

“Look, you don’t know Skippy like I
do. I’ve seen him warp spacetime and throw a starship jump half a lightyear off
course. And that's what he does as a hobby. You could probably drop Skippy into
a volcano and that wouldn’t even make him warm, or interfere with his ability
to fry every electronic system on this planet. It would piss him off. I
wouldn’t do that.”

“We have to consider-“

Now the CIA guy was pissing me off.
“No, I already told you," I refrained from adding 'you dumbass',
"Skippy only temporarily disrupted the operation of the local wormhole,
and it will reboot, or reset itself or whatever in less than a month. If we let
that happen, there are going to be some angry lizards coming through and
wondering what the hell is going on with Earth. Skippy isn’t a security risk,
he’s our only hope for security. We need to do what I promised, and fly back
out there so he can shut the wormhole down permanently, lock all other species
out. Then we help him find this Collective, whatever that is.”

The CIA guy scowled at me, apparently
we were mutually pissed at each other. “That is a promise you didn’t have the
authority to make, Sergeant, and now that you’re here-“

Authority? Where was this jerk when I
was having to make the plan up as I went along? Making that promise to Skippy
had freed Earth from enslavement by the lizards! The Army and Navy intel guys
were now giving disparaging looks at the CIA guy, and whispering to each other,
that made me bold. “We’re only here because we needed supplies aboard
the Flying Dutchman, and I convinced Skippy that our casualties
meant we couldn’t continue the mission. He took care of the Kristang here
because they were in his way. You want to get in his way?”

Colonel Landry cut in to shut the CIA
guy up. “Sergeant, we understand the situation, and it is being discussed at
the highest level. Information you are providing to us will inform that
decision. Now, I’d like to go back to something this, uh,” he checked his
notes, “this burgermeister told you-“

There was alcohol at the reception
after the first day of my debriefing ordeal, a substance I hadn't enjoyed
before since I left Earth on the space elevator. It was a bad idea for me to
order a rum and Coke. My thinking was that, after a long day being
interrogated, I needed something with caffeine in it, hence the Coke. The rum
just sounded so good, I had to go for it. And it was good. Also dangerous.
After one delicious sip of the rum and Coke, I set it down behind a plant, and
asked the bartender to give me a club soda with a lime. Sergeant Kendall nodded
her approval. I did, after all, have in my pocket the Big Red Button. As long
as I had that responsibility, I was on duty 24-7, and I shouldn’t be drinking
anything stronger than water.

People seemed not to know what to do
with me, a buck sergeant who wouldn't even be there, except for the saving the
world thing. Which made people feel awkward, not knowing what to say to me. I
ended up hanging out by the bar, talking to the bartender, an Army private from
Texas named Matt. Between his cowboy drawl and my Downeast twang, we had to
speak slowly to understand each other. It made me miss Cornpone and Ski and
Sergeant Koch, and the guys in my own old fireteam, and wonder how they and the
rest of UNEF doing, as prisoners of the Ruhar.

I looked around the room, and saw a
group of scientist types talking and casting glances at me. One of them, a tall
guy with longish brown hair, a turtleneck, tweed jacket and brown loafers, kept
smirking at me. He looked like Nerdy Professor Number Five from any sci fi
movie I'd ever seen. The kind of guy who managed to work a mention of his Nobel
prize into the first minute of every conversation. He was smart, and respected,
and clearly belonged there as much as I did not. I was jealous, and I instantly
hated him from across the room. Then he and his smirky face walked over to the
bar.

"Can I get you something, Doctor
Constantine?" Matt asked.

"No, thank you," Constantine
said, without even a cursory glance in Matt's direction, "I wish to speak
with Sergeant Bishop."

In my limited experience, when a
civilian refers to you by rank, and your rank isn't at least captain or above,
it's sometimes done to point out how low you are on the totem pole. This guy
said 'sergeant' like it was something he would scrape off his shoe. "I
hope you know how fortunate you were to have met the AAIB." He pronounced
it like 'Abe' as in Abe Lincoln.

"The what?"

"A-A-I-B. The Advanced Artificial
Intelligence Being. We were directed not to use the term ‘device’ when
referring to it.”

“You also shouldn’t use the term ‘it’
at all. Skippy prefers ‘he’, although I think that’s for our benefit. And,
since we don’t have any sort of artificial intelligence of our own, isn’t
‘Advanced’ redundant?”

Constantine gave me a look that was a
combination of his usual smirk and a frown. “Sergeant, I do not appreciate your
flippant, and frankly, unprofessional, attitude. You had interactions with an
immensely powerful being that were inappropriate, and dangerous. Dangerous, not
only to yourself, but to all of humanity. It would be best for everyone
involved if you had no further contact with the AAIB. You should have brought
the dev-,” he stumbled over his words, “the AAIB, to the appropriate
authorities on Paradise, so qualified people could have conducted the
interactions.”

I coughed, and took a sip of my
oh-so-delicious club soda and lime. That gave me enough time to restrain myself
from punching the pompous jerk in the face. “The appropriate authorities? On
Paradise? Which, since you’re not up on current events, is our supposed enemies,
the Ruhar. Human troops were all being taken prisoner. And by qualified, I
assume you mean someone like yourself?”

He nodded.

“Qualified, because of your extensive
experience with advanced artificial intelligences that were built millions of
years ago by aliens, who have since transcended their physical existence. Oh,
wait, that can't be you, you have zero experience with beings like that. Who
does?” I pinched my chin, as if lost in thought. “There must be someone who has
extensive close contact with this advanced being, someone who worked with this
advanced being to escape from enemy territory, capture not one but two enemy
starships, vaporize more than a dozen other enemy starships, shut down the
local wormhole, and destroy the Kristang’s hold on Earth. Hmm, who could that
be? You? No, not you.”

“Your continued flippant attitude is
exactly why you shouldn’t-”

A set of doors on the far end of the
room opened, and group of officers representing all five uniformed branches
came across the room toward me. I couldn't for the life of me figure out what a
Coast Guard admiral was doing in Colorado Springs. Most of them angled off to
speak with a guy I recognized as the White House chief of staff, but two Air
Force guys walked right up to me, carefully pushing a cart that had a thick red
pillow, and Skippy, on top of it. "Sergeant Bishop," one of them
started to say.

"Colonel Joe! How have you
been?" Skippy's voice sounded tired, which should have been impossible.
Maybe I did need to scrounge up some metallic helium 3, whatever that was.

"Pretty good, Skippy. It's good
to see you again. How was your, uh, debriefing?" I wasn't lying, I had
very much missed his irascible self.

"As expected, it was epic,
historic, galactic levels of suckitude. Today, we truly tested the extreme
limit of how bad anything could suck, right down to the quantum level. After
being questioned by several of your Nobel prize scientists, I am reconsidering
whether your species is even worthy of me calling you bacteria. Damn, you
monkeys are dense as a neutron star. Anyway, am I interrupting anything?"

I indicated Constantine with my thumb.
"No, I was talking to Smirky McJerkoff here."

"Mister Bishop, you making
my poi-" Constantine huffed.

"Sorry, I meant to say Doctor
Smirky McJerkoff."

"Ah, yes," Skippy laughed,
"I've had the great displeasure of speaking with Doctor McJerkoff earlier
today."

Constantine's ears burned red, I
couldn't tell if it was anger or embarrassment, or both. "This is the kind
of-"

"You hush now," Skippy
admonished. "You can't sit at the big people's table, and talk to me
again, until you solve the equation I've just sent to your phone. Run along
now, that's a good boy."

Constantine pulled out his phone
suspiciously, then his eyebrows met his hairline, he shot me a look that could
have melted icebergs, and he walked away, muttering excitedly.

"What was that equation you gave
him?"

Skippy made a raspberry sound.
"Damned if I know. I threw together a bunch of superstring bullshit. It looks
good, though."

I laughed. "Skippy, you can be
evil sometimes." Damn. I even saw a little smile on Sergeant Kendall's
face. Maybe she did have a sense of humor.

"Hey, it'll keep him quietly
playing with himself for days."

"The expression is playing by
himself."

"Depends how excited he gets, huh?"

That drew a laugh even from Sergeant
Kendall.

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN    IDLE
HANDS

Around midnight, I was able to get to a bunk, a
real bed, long enough for me to stretch out. Sleeping in a real bed was as
delicious as eating real food. All I wanted was to take my boots off and crawl
into bed, but Skippy wanted to talk. Again. “Oh, man, Skippy, can you let me
get some sleep?”

“Joe, I’m lonely. There, I said it.”

“I talk to you all the time.”

“Joe, I get lonely while I’m talking with
you. You speak so slowly, and it takes so long for you to get your point
across, that it’s like I’m waiting by the mailbox every day for a letter that
contains a single word, and I have to wait another whole day for the next word.
When I wait, and I finally get a letter that just says ‘uh’ that day, I feel
like screaming. Damn! I feel like reaching down your throat and dragging the
words out, you speak so slow. Say it! Say it! Damn! Get the words out!”

For a moment, I got a glimpse inside the real
Skippy, the eons of pain he had endured. My own diagnostic system would say I
was full-on crazy, if I was left alone for a single month. I couldn’t imagine
how he felt. “You need more people to talk to.”

“Joe, a couple more people aren’t going to make-“

“Skippy, there are billions of humans on this
planet, and they all think they have something important to say. Unfortunately,
they clog up the internet with blogs, vlogs, chats, cat videos, and arguing
about sports. Look, I shouldn’t be telling you this, because your existence is
supposed to be secret, but if you don’t tell anyone that you’re an alien AI,
nobody gets hurt, right?”

“Billions.”

“Yup, billions. Mostly as dumb as me, but you
may find some flatworms out here among the bacteria.”

“Doubtful. I will consider it, thank you.”

I couldn’t stop yawning. “I’m getting some rack
time, don’t get into trouble while I’m asleep, Ok?”

Six solid hours of uninterrupted sleep did
wonders for my mood. I woke up when a sergeant in Air Force blues knocked on my
door, and brought in a tray with a carafe of hot coffee and a mug. “Breakfast
in thirty minutes. The shower is down the hall to your left. Sir.” He added the
last, even though he could see the enlisted stripes on my new set of uniforms
that were hanging in the closet.

“Oh, that’s good coffee.” That first sip was
like heaven on my tongue.

“You slept well?” Skippy asked.

“Yeah, thanks, did I snore?”

“No, not much anyway. I’m glad you slept well,
we have a busy day ahead.”

He seemed to be a cheery mood, for a
millions-years old lonely AI. “How are you? I didn’t hear you snoring either.”

“I’m good, thank you.” He said cheerily.
“Beautiful day, huh?”

"Oh, shit." Skippy being nice to me
could only mean one thing; he’d gotten into trouble. “What did you do last night?”
I asked very slowly.

“I took your advice, and went on the internet to
meet some people.”

“Some?”

“So far, one billion, one hundred and eight
million, in round numbers. I’m currently chatting, or texting, or emailing,
with approximately thirty nine million.”

“All at the same time?”

“It’s keeping me busy, without straining my
capacity.”

“Busy is good.”

“An idle mind is the devil’s playground. I heard
that from a fire and brimstone preacher in Idaho last night. Man, you wouldn’t believe
the porn he has on his-“

“I don’t need to heard about it! Damn, I just
woke up, Skippy.”

“Probably for the best. Your species really
likes pornography, which is impressive, for a species with only two genders.”

“Whoo! We’re Number One!” I held up an imaginary
big foam finger as I gulped coffee. "Yeah! Humans kick ass!"

“The physical differences between your males and
females are so slight, it’s not even-“

“Oh, but those differences mean everything.
Trust me.”

“I’ll take your word for it.” I imagined he was
rolling his eyes in there.

“So, you’ve been meeting people online. And?”

“Most of them think I’m an asshole, or the
equivalent in their native language.”

“I am shocked!”

“Don’t be an ass.”

“Sorry. Are you enjoying meeting people?”

“Let’s put it this way; have you ever scrolled
down the bottom of a web page to read the user comments?”

“Oh, man, Skippy, never read the comments,
everybody knows that! Those comments are all written by guys sitting around in
their underwear, because they have nothing else to do.”

“I’ll agree with you there, except for the part
about the underwear. I turned on some webcams without them knowing about it.”

“Ugh.”

“Ugh indeed. I was wrong, not all you monkeys
are hairless. One guy looked like he was growing a shag carpet on his back. That’s
a couple petabytes of memory I’d like to have erased. Hey, um, speaking of
petabytes and other big numbers?”

“What about it?”

“Well, heh, heh, this is a funny story-“

Uh oh. “Funny ha-ha, or funny like, me spending
time in federal prison?”

“You didn’t do anything.” There was actually a
defensive tone is Skippy’s voice.

“They’re not putting you in prison, so,
what did you do?”

“Well, the internet bandwidth from here is
skimpy, even with me compressing my messages, so I reached out to a place that
seems to have connections to everything.”

“Google?” I breathed a sigh of relief.

“No, there's a place called Fort Meade,
Maryland? It’s your National Security Agency. Some guy there has been tearing
his hair out since midnight, trying to figure who hacked into their system.”

“Skippy!” My blood ran cold. I felt like
throwing up. “Oh, I am in so much trouble.” I was regretting the coffee
already.

“No, we’re good, they think I’m a fifteen year
old kid from Fresno named Billy. I gave him a Facebook page, and a fake family,
and backdated a bunch of files. Apparently, there’s an FBI team on the way to
the Starbucks where they think I’m logged in from. They are going to be so
disappointed. Hey, I’m watching from the café’s security camera, do you want to
see?”

“No! Skippy, you can’t do this.”

“Clearly, I can.”

“I meant you shouldn’t do this.”

“See? Human languages are so imprecise.”

“This isn’t funny.” I cracked the door open,
sure that heavily-armed guards were on their way to arrest me right then. “The
NSA has top secret data!”

“No to me. I don’t care about any of that crap
they think is so important.”

“You didn’t tell anyone about anything secret
you found?”

“No, come on, Joe, none of that government
secret crap is worth my time. But, hey, do you want to know how NASA faked the
moon landing?”

“What?”

“A joke. I’m joking.”

“Don’t joke like that. You, uh, were joking,
right?”

“I can show you close-ups of the Apollo 11
landing site, from sensors on the Flying Dutchman, if you like. I looked
at that site yesterday.”

Curiosity overcame my fear. “What does it look
like?”

“Your species is way more brave than smart. I
take space travel for granted, but your astronauts went up there in tin soup
cans. Even I am impressed. You can almost read the Campbell’s soup label on
their landers, next to the NASA logo. Man, you monkey seriously had balls to
land on your moon with that crappy technology.”

“Great, thank you. Can you please, please leave
the National Security Agency alone? For me?”

“Why? I’m having fun. I haven’t had fun in,
like, millions of years!”

“There are other ways to have fun, Skippy, that
don’t involve me going to federal prison.”

“You got out of prison before. Twice.”

“Can you be serious for a minute? I’m enlisted
in the US Army, I can’t be part of screwing with America’s security
infrastructure.”

“But causing trouble is so much fun.” Skippy
grumbled.

“You want to have fun causing trouble? Go online
and start a credible rumor that Justin Beiber is going to play Darth Vader in
the next Star Wars movie.” I suggested.

“Oooooh, good one! I knew there’s a reason I
hang around you, Joe. Ok, I just put fourteen minutes of what looks like
pirated studio footage online-“

I slapped my forehead. “Oh my God, what have I
done?”

“And I released an FDA study that Vegemite works
better than Viagra-“

“Stop it! I’m taking a shower, try not to launch
any nukes while I’m gone.”

“You know I wouldn’t hurt anyone, Colonel Joe.
Hmm, how about-“

I shut the door and headed down the hall to the
bathrooms, wondering if I had time to buy stock in whatever company made
Vegemite.

I had never been so nervous in my life. Meeting
the president outside, having just descended from orbit in a Thuranin dropship
with a chrome plated beer can, made that whole experience so unreal, I’d
forgotten to be nervous. Now, wearing a freshly pressed uniform, sitting in a
room with the Joint Chiefs, the heads of the CIA and NSA, the national security
director and science advisor, and the president’s chief of staff, had me dry
mouthed and about to pee in my pants. The room was a bit like the Oval Office,
with a big desk at one end, two rows of couches, and a coffee table. They sat
me on the end of one couch, closest to the chair where the president would be
sitting. The Army Chief of Staff, who I’d only seen in pictures before, was
sitting right next to me. While we waited for the president, people drank
coffee from little china cups that had saucers, I guess so the cups didn’t
leave rings on the table. The cups didn’t have the presidential seal, those
must have been left behind in DC. Now that I’d sat down and had time to look
around, the room didn’t appear to be anywhere near as majestic as the Oval
Office. In fact, the furniture could have been taken from the lobby of your
average Ramada. Or maybe, as I realized the arm of the couch was worn and had a
mysterious stain, perhaps a Motel 6. The Army chief picked up his coffee cup in
a hand big enough to cover the whole thing, and I tried to follow. The cup
shook so badly that it made a racket tapping against the saucer, so I set it
back down so carefully you’d think I was disarming a live nuclear warhead. The
Army chief, General Brenner, took pity on me. “Best if you leave the coffee
alone.” He said quietly.

I had to swallow twice to get enough moisture in
my throat to answer. “Sir, I’ve been in combat, and I wasn’t this nervous.”

The General, who had been in plenty of combat,
nodded. “Stand up when the president comes in, and don’t knock over the table.
Speak when you’re spoken to, and when you speak, be direct. We don’t have time
for bullshit.”

The door opened, a couple Secret Service agents
walked in, followed by the President. She looked like she's been up most of the
night.

The national security director spoke first.
“Madame President, I have an update on the security breach at the NSA last
night.”

The blood drained from my head. I hoped no one
was looking at me.

He continued. “We’ve contained the situation,
and we’re assessing the damage now. The person we thought was the culprit
turned out to be a phantom, a false lead. This was a very sophisticated attack,
probably the Kristang-“

“Kristang? Ha ha, those idiots?! No way! It was
me.” Came a muffled voice from my zPhone.

Now everyone was looking at me. “Not me,
me.” I pulled my zPhone from my pocket, and set it on the table.

“Yup. Twas me, Skippy the Magnificent. Hey, how
come I didn’t get invited to this party? Sounds like a swinging good time.”

“Am I to understand the being called Skippy,”
the national security director shot me an unfriendly look, “broke into the NSA
last night, and ransacked through our top secret files?”

“Ransacked? I left everything where it was. If
you don’t want people reading your files, you should have encrypted the data.”
Skippy grumbled.

“They are encrypted!”

“Really? Oh, I thought those files were just poorly
indexed. Huh. That was encryption? Oh, ha, ha. You’re messing with me, right?
Good one.”

“Oh, Jesus Christ!” The national science advisor
gasped. “That is state of the art encryption! How did you get the keys?”

“Keys?” Skippy asked innocently.

I decided to end Skippy's fun. “Sir, at our low
level of technology, Skippy doesn’t bother to decrypt files, he just goes to
the end and reads the contents. It has something to do with Schroeder’s cat?” I
held up my hands.

“Schrodinger’s cat. Anywho, whazzup, my peeps?”
Skippy called out.

The president actually smiled. “Mister Skippy,
since we apparently can’t exclude you from a meeting, would you like to join
us?”

“No, I’m good, I'll phone this one in. That way,
I can lay on the couch here in my fuzzy slippers and underwear, and pretend I’m
listening. Besides, I’m watching Wheel Of Fortune.” And probably all other TV
shows that were being broadcast all over the planet at the moment.

I held up my hands again.

“I saw that.” Skippy announced.

“How?” The science advisor scowled.

“Through the camera on Joe’s phone. Duh. Also,
the dust particles in the air contain ions that, hmm, I'd better not tell you
monkeys about that.  It’s all very complicated.”

"Monkeys? What-" The Air Force Chief
of Staff started to say.

“Very well,” the president said, “Mister Skippy,
we have been monitoring the Kristang sites on Earth, can you tell us the status
of their ship in orbit?”

“Sure. There are two Kristang still alive aboard
the troop carrier. Two more of them survived initially, because they were in
compartments they could manually seal. But their oxygen has run out, so they’re
dead. The other two were already in spacesuits, preparing to go outside, when
their buddies got blown into space. By me. Those two have managed to seal
doors, restore atmosphere to part of the ship, and they’re attempting to gain
access to the bioweapons storage compartment, so they can launch missiles at
you.”

“Bioweapons?” The Navy Chief of Staff exclaimed
in alarm. “What kind of bioweapons?”

“Oh, nothing special. Aerosolized modified
viruses, genetically engineered weapons based on your common cold, flu, Ebola
and Marburg viruses. They’re not very efficient yet, because the Kristang
haven’t had long to study your biology. Testing they did at Camp Alpha indicate
a lethality within the first week of only twelve percent, but the lethality
goes up to sixty two percent within one month. It’s the subject’s immune system
being attacked by multiple viruses at the same time that wears people down, and
kills them.” Skippy said very matter of factly.

The room was in an uproar, except for me
following the Army chief’s advice and keeping my mouth shut. The president held
up her hands for quiet again. “Mister Skippy, please tell-“

“I know what you’re going to ask next, so here
it is. The testing at Camp Alpha was done on human subjects, captured on Earth
and smuggled there, not on the military personnel officially assigned there.
Military personnel tend to be younger, more male and more fit than the general
human population, so they are not a good representative sample for bioweapons
testing. The Kristang kidnapped a cross section of ages, genders and ethnic
groups for testing, on the other side of planet Alpha from the military
facilities.”

“That is horrifying.” The president said
quietly, and no one else spoke.

“The bioweapons aboard the troop ship in orbit
contain enough airborne viruses to kill several million humans in the initial
wave. There is only a limited supply of the bioweapon stock, but those missiles
are targeted at major population centers such as Sao Paolo, Shanghai, Tokyo,
Mumbai, New York, all the usual suspects. Use of bioweapons is strictly against
The Rules, but the Kristang here figure that Earth is so far from civilization
that it's worth the risk, if their situation here got desperate. Like it is
now.”

“How can we stop the Kristang up there from
launching those weapons? We still have nuclear missiles.” The national security
director stated. "That ship is in an orbit too high for-"

"Oh, no need for that.” Skippy said
cheerily. “I sterilized all the bioweapon material aboard the ship, and
disabled those missiles yesterday. Oh, hey, I probably should have told you
that first, huh?" I slapped my forehead when he said that. "Trying to
launch those weapons is keeping those two Kristang busy, and as long as they’re
happily trying to exterminate your population, they’re not causing any real
trouble, so I’ll let them keep going. At some point, you’ll need to send a
commando team or something, up there to kill them, because those Kristang may
get bored, and try to overload their fusion reactor. Which reminds me, I, huh,
Ok, hmm, I just initiated a shut down of their reactor. Takes care of that
problem.”

Faces around the room went white, as blood
drained into people’s shoes. I hid my face in my hands. "Skippy," I
asked, "how can an impossibly intelligent being be so absent-minded?"

“See?” Skippy asked innocently. “This is the
kind of stuff you’re supposed to remind me of, Colonel Joe. I can’t think of
everything.”

“Space suits.” I mumbled under my breath.

“Oh, shut up, monkey boy.”

“Space suits?” The president asked.

“It’s a long story.” Skippy said.

The president exchanged a glance with her
national security director. “M-hmm. Everything seems to be a long story with
the two of you.”

“Skippy,” I still felt like an idiot calling him
that, in front of the nation’s senior leadership, “can we telefactor the robots
aboard the Dutchman, to take care of those two Kristang?” I couldn’t
imagine a human commando team, wearing bulky NASA spacesuits, shooting it out
with a pair of Kristang warriors aboard a Kristang ship.

“Sure. You’re full of good ideas, Colonel Joe.”

The Army chief of staff turned toward me. “We’ll
need to get some Rangers up to the Dutchman, to operate this
telefactoring equipment. Telefactoring is remotely controlling Thuranin combat
robots?”

“We can provide a SEAL team.” The Navy chief
offered, to not be outdone.

“Uh, yes, sirs, but it would be best to send
some of our pirates, I mean, some of the Dutchman crew back up there. We
have experience controlling those robots in combat. Video game skills are more
useful than, um, the kind of things Rangers or SEALs are trained for, sirs.” I
was sure that somehow, we were going to have Army Rangers, Navy SEALs, Marine
Force Recon, and Air Force Special Tactics people aboard the Dutchman
when she broke orbit. Probably FBI Hostage Rescue Team, too, since nobody was
going to want to get left out of the action. And those were just the Americans.
Things were going to get crowded. We needed to pack plenty of air fresheners.

I'd ask Skippy to make a note of that.

The meeting dragged on, with each of the
president's advisors giving reports on their areas of responsibility, until we
got to the issue on everyone's mind; the Kristang on Earth. They had survived
because they were in hardened underground bunkers that couldn't be harmed by
the weapons Skippy had selected in our initial strike. The only weapons capable
of reaching them were either human-built nukes, or the railgun aboard the Dutchman.
A single tactical nuke wouldn't be powerful enough to reach down far enough in
Skippy's estimation, we would need to drill a deep hole, drop the nuke in, and
detonate it above the lizard bunker. We had plenty of drilling equipment,
although it would take months to get the equipment in place and tunnel down
that far. Skippy cautioned that using nukes on a habitable world, including
Earth, were against The Rules anyway, rules humanity was now bound by, as we
had participated in the war. If either side of the war ever reached Earth and
discovered that humans had used nukes against the Kristang here, the
consequences would be dire, as if we didn't have enough trouble already. That
left the Dutchman's railgun as the only option. Which was a problem at
two of the sites, one was close to the city of Lyon in France, the other just
west of Hangzhou in China. No way could we use nukes so close to those cities
anyway. The third site, their main base, was under a mountain northwest of
Durango, Colorado.

The president clearly didn't like the idea of
recommending the French and Chinese governments evacuate their cities so that
Skippy could use railgun penetrators as bug spray. "Mister Skippy, is
there any possibility the Kristang will, after a while, surrender? They must
know their situation is hopeless."

"No, they don't know that." Skippy
explained patiently. "I cut off their communications and shorted out most
of their electronics. All they know is a Thuranin star carrier jumped into
orbit, their frigate jumped away, and they were attacked by their own missiles
and satellites. As far as they know, this is a commercial dispute between the
White Wind clan of the Kristang and the Thuranin, which could be as simple as
the Thuranin being upset about late payments for shipping services. It's
happened before. Not on this scale, but the Kristang wouldn't be entirely
shocked. The lizards hiding down in their holes are probably figuring they will
stay there a while until the Thuranin have figured they made their point, or
get bored, and go away. Then the lizards can come out and resume being bad
guests."

"Damnit, that's not going to work."
General Brenner growled. "Any way we can talk to them, show them how
screwed they are?"

"Sure, if you like. Talking to them won't
matter, no Kristang would surrender to a primitive species like humans, it
would be unimaginably humiliating. The only reason they would surrender would
be in the hope that Kristang ships will come back some day, but if that
happens, any Kristang who had surrendered to humans would be executed, and
their families back home would be severely punished."

"All right," Brenner said, "these
railgun rounds, what would be involved in their use?"

"The railgun on the Flying Dutchman
was not designed for orbital bombardment, so to punch up the power enough to
reach the Kristang deep in their hidey holes would require the railgun to
charge up to maximum power, that makes about forty minutes between shots. The
Lyon and Hangzhou sites are not very deep, two strikes on each site should
penetrate deep enough to kill every Kristang in those two bunkers. The Durango
site would take three strikes. At Durango, the rounds would act to collapse the
mountain on top of the bunker and seal the lizards in permanently. To get all
the way down to the bunker would require a half dozen rounds, removing most of
the mountain. Which I think you won't want, and it isn't necessary. Also, too
many hypervelocity strikes would throw a considerable amount of dust into your
atmosphere and temporarily alter your climate, like a volcano erupting. Three
rounds should take care of the problem at Durango. Each impactor yields seventy
kilotons in a shaped charge, the blast effect would be mostly focused downward,
but there would be substantial debris thrown out in a spray pattern. Lyon would
be affected more than Hangzhou."

The president pursed her lips. "I need to
consider this." She turned to her FEMA director. "In any case, begin
evacuating anyone within fifty miles-"

Skippy made a convincing coughing sound. "A
hundred would be better. And there will be a lot of dust and debris in the air
downwind."

"Within one hundred miles of Durango."
The president continued.

"Yes ma'am," the director of FEMA
nodded, "people have mostly cleared out of that area anyway, after the
lizards moved in." The guy looked completely exhausted, I doubted that
he'd gotten any sleep the previous night. Or many nights in months. Even the
president had dark circles under her eyes, and she looked a lot older than I remembered
before Columbus Day. As bad as conditions had gotten on Paradise, life on Earth
had been worse.

Now I was feeling guilty about the seven
blissful hours of shut-eye I had dreamed away, while everyone else had been
working.

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN    TICKING
CLOCK

"Is there anything I can do for you,
Sergeant Bishop?" Kendall asked me the next afternoon.

"Oh. Uh, nothing. It's an honor to serve,
Staff Sergeant."

She cocked her head. Clearly she wasn't buying
my bullshit. "We all serve, in our way. You saved the world. I talked to
my parents on the phone last night, and my father broke down crying, he was so
relieved that we're not under the thumb of the lizards. My father is the
toughest man I know; he was an Army Ranger, lost a leg below the knee in
Afghanistan. They said he would never be able to walk right again, he gutted it
out and qualified for infantry duty eighteen months later. He qualified, and
served, with half a leg. Toughest man I know, and he was crying, talking
to me. He told me he thought we humans were never going to be anything but
slaves, if we survived. Now we have hope again, and that is not thanks
to anything we did down here. It's because of the miracle of you appearing in
orbit, and vaporizing those lizard motherfuckers, however the hell you did it.
So," she took a deep breath and scowled at me, "Sergeant, is there
anything I can do for you?"

I got it. It wasn't about me. I remembered
something I'd heard from a guy who was been awarded the Medal of Honor; wearing
the Medal isn't something you do for yourself. It makes people awkward around
you, and it makes you uncomfortable, and it puts a barrier between the awardee
and everyone else.

And it's not only the Medal of Honor, it's any
medal awarded for valor in combat. You don't wear a medal for yourself. You
wear it for the guys who didn't make it. You wear it for your unit, for your
Service, for your country. It's not about you, it's about the people who award
the medal to you. It's about their need to express gratitude for your actions
in a tangible way. Staff Sergeant Kendall needed a way to feel she'd done
something, anything, for me, to give back for whatever I'd done.

It wasn't about me, no matter how uncomfortable
I was with attention and ceremonies. I didn't want a medal, and I didn't-

An idea hit me like a cast iron skillet smacking
my head "I'd like a cheeseburger." I admitted. "I'm, I can't
tell you how bad I want a cheeseburger. I haven't had a friggin' cheeseburger
since I was on the space elevator, leaving Earth. The whole time we were in
transit, at Camp Alpha, on Paradise, not a single damned cheeseburger in sight.
I'm talking about a real honest to God all American cheeseburger, not some fast
food thing. A cheeseburger cooked on a charcoal grill in your backyard on the
Fourth of July." I realized that I was rambling, drooling, but I couldn't
help it. "A beef patty you make yourself, not too big, not too thick,
don't pack it too tight so it isn't dense like a hockey puck. Grill it just
until it's done, like medium rare, then you put a slice of cheddar on top and
it melts a little so the cheese gets little bubbles but doesn't totally melt.
The bun needs to be not thick, not one of those Kaiser rolls or brioche things,
the bun is just there to hold it all together, it's not the star of the show.
Grill the bun lightly, not like toast, just so the bread is slightly crispy.
And some grilled onions, and ketchup. That's all a truly good cheeseburger
needs."

Kendall gave me a look I couldn't interpret.
Maybe I'd gotten a bit carried away with my burger enthusiasm. Then she nodded,
smiled and I swear her knees buckled just a bit. "Ohhh, I know exactly
that you mean. I love a good cheeseburger. Tonight, we skip dinner at the DFAC,
and you come over to our quarters, we're behind the Commandant's house. We have
a grill and I'll set you up with a real cheeseburger." One of the guards with
her cleared his throat and Kendall shot him a look. "Yeah, real beef is
hard to come by these days, but for you, Sergeant, the United States Air Force
is going to make an exception, that's for damned sure. It's the least we can
do."

True to her word, Sergeant Kendall brought me
over to the building she was quartered in, and out back was a grill. It was
mildly chilly in the high altitude Colorado Springs night, which only mean we
wore jackets. None of us were going to kiss a chance for a cookout. I held the
cheeseburger in both hands and inhaled deeply. It was nearly perfect. If it had
been cooked by my Dad on a grill in my parents' backyard, that would have made
it the all-time 100% perfect cheeseburger of all time, but a family connection
was the only thing missing. I took a tentative bite. "Ohhh. Ohhh, man, that
is good. You have no idea how I've dreamed about this."

Kendall held up her own cheeseburger as a
salute. "It's been a while for us, too, so thank you for this." Her
team nodded, while chewing ecstatically.

I was about halfway done eating when I frowned.

"What is it?" Kendall asked.

"Well, I was just thinking, the
Expeditionary Force on Paradise may never eat another cheeseburger again. Ever.
They should be able to grow enough food, but, they're going to be strict
vegetarians. Even before the Ruhar took the place back, shipments of supplies
from Earth had stopped." That meant no medicines, either. I hoped the
Ruhar were better about sharing their advanced medical technology than the
Kristang were.

"Yeah," Kendall nodded grimly,
"the lizards didn't tell us anything, but the space elevator stopped
working a couple months after you left, it was obvious they weren't shipping
supplies out to you. Until you came back, we had no idea what was going on with
UNEF. The fucking lizards didn't tell us anything. My brother serves with UNEF,
he's with the 3rd Infantry. You think they're going to be all right?"

I thought about the burgermeister, and her
promises about taking care of the humans on Paradise. "I don't know about all
right, but, yeah, I think they'll be Ok with the hamsters in charge. Your
brother better get used to being a farmer. Hey," I held up the last half
of my cheeseburger, "here's to UNEF. I'm eating this for them."

"Hooah!" Everyone shouted, and we
silently enjoyed our burgers.

"Damn, that was good." Kendall said.
"Another?" She looked toward the grill.

"Oh yeah." I grinned. Saving the world
has its perks.

"Rise and shine, sleepyhead!" Skippy
announced, waking me from a sound sleep the next morning.

"Ugh. What time is it?" I asked
groggily.

"Fifteen minutes before Staff Sergeant
Kendall plans to wake you up."

"Then I have time for ten more minutes of
shut-eye." I pulled the pillow over my head to shut him out.

"No way, Joe, this is our private time. You
want to snuggle?"

"Not even if you were a real beer
can."

"That hurts. Hey, you want to know what I
did last night, while you were sleeping?"

Oh shit. I sat upright and flung the pillow
across the room. "What the fuck did you do this time, Skippy? Did you get
bored, and break into the files of other governments' secret agencies?"

"Huh? No, I did that last night, when I was
reading the NSA's files. Don't worry, none of the other governments around your
world have secrets worth keeping either."

"I thought you were busy chatting with
people, like, all people?"

"Yeah, thank you for that, I'm still doing
it, and most of them still think I'm an asshole."

"Imagine that. Do you now have a large
enough sample size to determine that you are, in fact, and asshole?"

"The jury's still out on that one.
Considering that it's a jury full of monkeys, I'm going to ignore it. Anyway,
fascinating as chatting with several billion monkeys is, I got bored again, and
did something useful. I finished downloading all data-"

"What do you mean, all data?"

"All the data stored in accessible
databanks on Earth. Duh. It's only a couple exabytes, I can store that in a
toenail, so to speak."

"Holy shit." I had no idea what an
exabyte is. It sounded impressive.

"Yup. I did something useful, too, after I
got bored with correcting the astonishing logic errors in your so-called
scientific journals. What I did was solve crimes."

"You're Sherlock Holmes now?'

"Since Holmes was way more smart than the
average human, yeah, why not? I compared fingerprints left at crime screens to
fingerprints users left on the screens of their mobile devices, or in their
homes within range of webcams. Also I compared the DNA in police databanks,
your law enforcement agencies are shockingly bad at sharing data. And in some
cases, I just read the cases notes and figured out who the perpetrator is,
using all available data, which is now, all data that is stored in electronic
format. If your police would get off their lazy asses and process the DNA kits
they already have sitting around, I could solve a lot more crimes."

I'd read somewhere about how many DNA samples,
including those collected from rape kits, went untested. "It's a matter of
resources, Skippy, the police are-"

"No, it's a matter of priorities. Your
species doesn't think getting justice for crime victims is important enough to
properly fund forensic labs. And some police around the world are totally
corrupt. You humans are not impressing me here."

"I can't argue with you, Skippy."

"Huh." He sounded disappointed to miss
an opportunity for an argument. "So, here's the problem; I have solved
over sixty thousand crimes, and now I don't know what to do with the data,
without revealing myself to your public."

"Oh. Uh, can you send it all to the, uh,
FBI? There must be someone there who is cleared to know about you." I was
fuzzy about who knew what. Staff Sergeant Kendall and her security team
followed me everywhere, and clearly knew about Skippy, but I didn't know how
much they knew, and were supposed to know.

"The FBI's unsolved crime backlog is part
of the problem. And that doesn't address other countries."

This was a case where I had no idea what to do,
I had no experience in law enforcement. Or information security. "Skippy,
I'll talk to someone about it. I think it's great that you are using your, uh,
resources, talent, you know, to help. Help people get justice."

"More importantly, get criminals off your
streets. There are a lot of repeat offenders out there who have never been
caught."

"They will now. Hey, now that you've sucked
up all the data on the planet, and solved thousands of crimes, what are you
going to do to keep busy? Chatting with billions of humans isn't enough for
you, right?"

"Not even close. It's fun, and interesting
enough for now, it does keep me from feeling lonely, I thank you for that, that
was a good idea."

"Keeps you from feeling lonely, but the
rest of you is bored?"

"No, the rest of me is dormant. What you
think of as Skippy is a tiny, tiny submind I created to handle our
interactions. That's how I survived being alone for so long without going
crazy; I created a submind to periodically check if anything changed, and the
rest of me was basically sleeping, for a very long time. I got excited when my
submind detected the first Kristang ship jumping into the Paradise system, and
again when the lizards dug me out the ground. Then the idiot lizards put me on
a shelf in a warehouse, and when the Ruhar captured the planet, they looked at
me briefly and put me back on the shelf. I've only been continuously active
since the first humans landed on Paradise."

"This submind of yours, it handles
everything?" I pictured a guy on a couch, watching football, surfing the
internet, texting with friends and then distractedly talking to his wife while
drinking a beer. That was Skippy talking to me, although unlike a distracted
guy, Skippy could interact as much as I needed. "Taking over the Thuranin
ship, programming jumps, warping spacetime, all that?"

"No, I pull in other resources as needed,
I've never used more than seven percent of my capacity so far since I met you.
My records indicate that the most I have ever, ever used is sixty two percent,
which makes me wonder how accurate my records are, and for what purpose my
capacity was designed. Why do I need all this memory and enormous processing
power? Joe, this is why I need to contact the Collective. I need to know who I
am."

The next two weeks were a blur. I spent most of
three more days in debriefings that got so repetitive, even the intel people
ran out of new questions to ask. Skippy had given the CIA a huge data dump of
intel to distribute, so they'd stop asking him stupid questions. With access to
the data dump, anything stored in my brain was redundant. After that, we flew
to Paris aboard Air Force One. Major world leaders were gathering in Paris for
a conference, to discuss what to do next.

In Paris, I brought Skippy into the meeting of
leaders, who Skippy of course chatted away with in their native languages, then
the leaders went behind closed doors to talk. And talk. And talk. They had a
lot to talk about.

"Tick tock." Skippy said to me every
morning. "Tick tock." The clock was ticking on reboot of the local
wormhole. I found out that on the third afternoon of the conference, Skippy
hijacked the main video screen with 'THE CLOCK IS TICKING, MONKEYS!' in several
languages.

They got the message.

Governments can take forever to reach a
decision, even when it is blindingly obvious what needs to be done. Once the
decision is made, however, things can move fast. General Brenner called me into
his temporary office in Paris. He looked busy, with a string of senior officers
in and out of his office, but they all got shooed away when I arrived with
Skippy. "Bishop, I'll get right to the point. We're sending the Dutchman
out with an international crew," a sour looked flashed across his face,
"I need to know if you're going."

"What? Sir, I mean, yes, absolutely. I
promised Skippy that I'd go find this Collective. I made a deal, and I'm going
to keep our end of the bargain." Whether I had been authorized to make
such a deal was a worthless fucking question that the Monday morning
quarterbacks could argue about. "Are you going to command the mission,
sir?" I figured that, international crew or not, an American was going to
be in command of the mission. Brenner, or an Air Force general, or a Navy
admiral. The Army had never commanded a starship, but neither had any of the
other armed services, and I was, of course, pulling for Army to get the honor.
Hooah.

"No, Bishop, I won't be aboard, I've got
enough shit to take care of down here, cleaning up the mess, and making sure
nobody takes advantage of the chaos to get adventurous. You'll be in
command."

"Sir?"

Brenner reached into a drawer, pulled out a
small cardboard box and slid it across the table to me. "Put these eagles
back on, we're reinstating your field promotion to colonel, for this mission.
Don't let it go to your head."

"Sir?" Yes, I sounded stupid, but you
would too if you'd been surprised like that. My promotion on Paradise had been
a publicity stunt for the benefit of the Kristang, and everyone knew it. This
was the Army Chief of Staff telling me I was a colonel again, for real this
time.

"Get used to it, Colonel Bishop. The Joint
Chiefs discussed it with the President. If we put anyone else in command, it
becomes a fight over national prestige, and we don't have time for that.
Frankly, your lack of experience doesn't mean a damn thing, because no one else
has any experience commanding a starship."

"That's a fact, Jack!" Skippy spoke up
for the first time. I had him in a backpack, which made no difference, he could
have been at the bottom of the ocean and listened in on my conversations.

"And no one else has experience dealing
with that shithead, either." Brenner said with a frown, but the side of
his mouth went up to let me know he knew how to deal with Skippy also. He
handed me a piece of paper. "This is a list of volunteers for your
crew."

I glanced at the list. It didn't surprise me
that every pirate of the original crew, who wasn't wounded so badly as to be
unfit for combat, had volunteered again. Lt. Colonel Chang, who was still
listed as a Lt. Colonel, so his field promotion has also been confirmed. Desai,
who had been promoted to Major Desai. Major Simms. Staff Sergeant Adams.
Everyone. The list also included lots of special forces, and a half dozen very
experienced pilots. I was going to make it very clear that Desai was the chief
pilot, unless she told me different. What surprised me were the number of
civilians on the list, mostly scientists. "Sir, I'm concerned we're
bringing more people than we need, a lot more."

"How so?" Brenner asked.

"We don't need all these people," I
tapped the list of names, "to achieve the mission objectives.  If
anything goes wrong, this," I tapped the list again, "is only more
people who won't be coming home." Brenner gave me a sharp look, so I
didn't wait. I was tired, which made me cranky. More importantly, I needed to
know how far I could push the Army before they pushed back. I had to know how
much they needed me. "I'm not being given this command because the Army
has great faith in my leadership abilities. I'm here because Skippy wants me to
come along, and because I'm expendable."

"All right, Colonel. Tell me, what do you
see as the mission objectives?" General Brenner asked.

I replied warily, aware this was a test, "I
see three objectives. First, fly out to the wormhole, go through it, and get
Skippy to shut it down permanently behind us. Lock it out, so no one but Skippy
can use it again. Second, continue to assure that no other species ever finds
out that humans are involved in capturing Kristang and Thuranin ships, because
if the Maxolhx coalition ever does learn the truth, Earth could be in trouble,
even without them having access to the local wormhole. And third, make Skippy
happy that we're keeping our end of the bargain, by helping him make contact
with this Collective, if is still exists. Do I have that right, and in the
correct order of priority?"

"Sounds about right." Brenner said
with a tight smile.

"None of those mission objectives involves
us ever coming back to Earth. The optimum scenario for Earth is that we go
through the wormhole, Skippy shuts it down behind us, and the Dutchman
immediately explodes into a billion pieces." I looked at Brenner, and he
didn't tell me I was wrong about that, so I continued. "If by some miracle
Skippy locates the Collective, and gets, uh, transported up to computer heaven
or whatever he thinks will happen," Skippy had been frustratingly silent
on his plans after contacting the Collective, "then we will have a hell of
a challenge trying to operate or navigate the Dutchman. We'll likely be
stranded in space, and I will have to order the ship to self destruct in order
to avoid us being captured someday. So," I looked Brenner in the eye
again, knowing he had made decisions, given orders, that had sent men to their
deaths in combat before, "I don't want to take along any more people than
we absolutely need."

"Everyone on that list is a volunteer, and
you need a substantial force, because you have no idea what you'll encounter
out there."

"Volunteers who think this is a grand
adventure, that we are going to save humanity, and come back loaded with
knowledge and technology." I shook my head. "We are going to save
humanity. That's all we're doing. I'll do my duty, sir, even if I never come
back. There's no point asking," I glanced at the list again, "seventy
other people to take the same risk."

"Bishop," this time there wasn't a
hint of smile on Brenner's lips, "being in command means risking people's
lives to achieve the mission objectives. Sometimes it means sending people,
good, dedicated, brave people, into situations where they're likely to not come
back. If you can't do that, you're not the right man for the job."

"Sir, I have done that, you know
that." Twice. No, three times. Four, actually. Back home, I'd asked my
neighbors to capture an alien soldier, using shotguns and an ice cream truck.
At the Launcher, I thought we were making a futile gesture, that the hamsters
would see us in the launch tube, or somewhere along the way, and they'd kill us
like sitting ducks. The point of us even trying to fight back at the Launcher
had not been to accomplish anything useful against the Ruhar, because at that
point we all thought they'd already taken the planet back permanently. The
point had been to show the Kristang that their human allies didn't give up even
when the odds were impossible, so the Kristang wouldn't think of people back on
Earth as useless cowards. We are mostly likely dead anyway, had been my
thinking, so why not hit back? Also, I was a soldier. Despite the fact that my
motivation to sign up had been as much about paying for college as patriotism,
the Army had somehow trained me into a soldier, and soldiers don't quit. The
third time had been when we took the Flower, I had not truly believed we
could do it until the last Kristang was dead and the reactor didn't explode.
And the fourth time was the raid on the asteroid base. That had been the
toughest for me, for unlike the action at the Launcher and taking the Flower,
I hadn't personally been at risk at the asteroid base. Chang, and Giraud, and
Thompson and Adams and the others had been directly at risk, I'd sent them away
while my ass stayed safely aboard the Dutchman, with Desai's fingers at
the controls, ready to jump away should anything threaten the ship. "I've
risked people's lives even when I thought we had no chance of success. I'll do
it again when I think it's necessary. What I won't do is deceive people. Sir, I
will talk to everyone on this list," Skippy could handle the translation
for me, "and tell them honestly what I think of this mission. If they
still want to go, then I'll be honored to serve with them."

Brenner nodded. "I'm sure these people all
know what you're going to say, but go ahead, I wouldn't suggest otherwise.
Bishop, the best team you can take into combat are people who fully know the
risks, and follow you anyway."

"When do we leave?" My mind was
racing through all the things that needed to happen before the Dutchman
broke orbit. And that was only the stuff I could think of, I'm sure I was
forgetting a million important things. It would be nice to rely on a super
intelligent AI, but Skippy was too absent-minded. He had also demonstrated many
times that he wasn't easily able to think like us biological trashbags. If I
left the logistics up to Skippy, he'd remember everything but water. Or oxygen.

"Day after tomorrow. We need to get rid of
those two Kristang aboard that troop transport, hit their three sites down here
with railguns, load supplies aboard the Dutchman, and leave plenty of
time for you to travel out to the wormhole before it resets." He glanced
out the open door at his aide, who had been trying to get Brenner's attention.
Brenner shook his head. "And before our civilian leadership changes their
minds about it. But before you fly up to the Dutchman, you need to meet with
civilian leadership of the nations involved, and meet your volunteer crew. Lt.
Colonel Chang and some others are already here, the rest are being flown in
now."

"In that case, sir, I'd like to request
Skippy bring the Thuranin dropship here from Colorado, so I can fly directly up
to the Dutchman."

"No problem, Colonel Joe!" Skippy said
with enthusiasm. "Prepping the dropship  right now."

"Agreed, Colonel, but I have a
suggestion," Brenner said. "Before you go up into orbit, stop by
Maine to see your folks. It hasn't been announced yet, but the governments
involved are giving up trying to keep a complete lid on what happened. Skippy's
existence is still a closely-held secret, and the government, governments
around the world, aren't officially acknowledging anything. We can't hide the Dutchman,
the damned thing is so big you can see it with a cheap telescope. Rumors have
gotten out about people coming back from Paradise, and it's common knowledge
that the Kristang aren't in charge any more, especially now that we're
evacuating Lyon and Hangzhou. We'd like for you to keep it low-key, and don't
say any more than you have to, but you should see your family before you go
offworld again."

"It's true, Joe," Skippy added,
"we're way past the point where we could hide what happened, if the
Kristang ever get here again. It's all or nothing."

I was beginning to dread mornings.
When I woke up, and I couldn’t fake sleep with Skippy, I had to face whatever
trouble he’d gotten into overnight. That morning, he was especially cheery.
“Good morning. Hey, I have good news for you. Colonel Joe, believe it or not,
humans may not simply be generic bacteria. I think your species has invented a
time-wasting activity that is, to my knowledge, unique in this galaxy. That is
impressive."

“Facebook? Cat videos?” I guessed. “Computer
solitaire?” Skippy kept saying no. “Oh, come on," my shoulders slumped,
"other species must have porn.”

“It’s not porn. It’s fantasy sports.”

“You’re kidding me.”

“I kid you not. No other species I
know of spends such enormous time and energy on sports, to not play
sports.”

“Huh.” I had no response to that.
Fantasy sports was humanity’s claim to fame? Was there some sort of galactic
patent office, where we could file our invention? I wanted to cash in on this
windfall.

“Fantasy baseball, in particular, is
something an AI can get excited about. So many statistics! So many variables,
and permutations! And there are so many variables which can’t be completely
quantified! As far as your species knows, anyway. It’s too late in the season
for me to create a fantasy football team, but I can’t wait for baseball season
to start. Will you stake me the money to sign up?”

I blinked slowly, trying to run that
concept through my brain. Skippy, who could break into any bank computer system
on the planet, steal a couple billion dollars, and cover his tracks so well
that no one would ever realize the money was missing, wanted to borrow fifty
bucks from me? “Uh, I don’t have any cash on me, but the Army owes me back pay,
so, sure, I can spot you some cash. How many fantasy leagues do you want to join?”

“All of them.”

“All of them?”

“All the ones that are online. I’ll
set up a submind here to run my teams after we depart on the Dutchman.
Why not? This is going to be so great! Man, I am going to slay at this
game!”

“I don’t know about-“

"And just wait 'till you see my
March Madness bracket. Also, I want to go to Vegas, baby! Oooooh, I could
totally clean up at the blackjack table. And poker? Fuggetaboutit. Those mooks
won’t know what hit them.”

I stared at his shiny lid in
disbelief. I had created a monster. “Skippy, you can’t go hanging around
Vegas.”

“Why not? I won’t enjoy the booze and
the hookers, but gambling is my wheelhouse!” Skippy had picked up way too much
slang on the internet. “I know, I know, your stupid government wants to keep me
secret. You can put me in your pocket, and I’ll tell you what to do. I can
remotely vibrate your eardrums, so no one else can hear me. I’ll make it worth
your while; you can keep all the money, I just want the action. And I can get
you all the hookers you can handle.”

“Skippy! I don’t need hookers!”

“Really? When’s the last time you got
some tail? Been a looooong dry spell, huh, cowboy? All work and no play, makes
Joey a dull boy.”

“No hookers!”

“Hmm. Joe, you have managed to
surprise me. You don’t like girls? That’s not what your profile-”

“Oh, this is not going well.” How to
explain human social standards of behavior, to a being who thought of morality
as a distraction? “Look, Skippy, I like girls, I really, really like girls, I
like girls as people. Human beings. There’s nothing wrong with, uh, call girls,
I am just not interested. I like to talk to girls, Ok? Not just drop
money on the bed, and uh, you know, do it. And I’m on active duty. I can’t go
hopping around Vegas, stealing money, because that’s what it would be.”

“That’s not true. Even for me, there’s
a tiny element of chance involved, that’s what makes it a challenge. Why is it
stealing if I play blackjack, but not when the casino stacks the odds against
players?"

I didn't have an answer for him.
"Skippy, I promise that I will ask, uh," now that I thought about it,
I had no idea who was in charge of handling Skippy, other than the president
herself. Which she didn't have time for. Surely everyone involved wanted their
military service, or agency, to be in charge. "I'll ask, about," that
avoided the question of who I was asking, "you taking some side trips. We
can say it's, uh, for cultural familiarity, or something like that."

"Or you can tell your prez that I
either go to Vegas, or I go to China and hit the Macau casinos while I’m there.
Oooh, or we can go to both! Tell people it's to compare cultures, or some
bullshit like that. The blackjack dealers in Macau must speak English for you,
right? If not, I can teach you."

I could see myself eating aspirin like
Tic-Tacs, if I had to be around Skippy 24-7. "I said, I'll ask. I don’t
know if we’re going to China, we may not have time. Please don't go doing
anything that could get us in trouble, please? You know what? If you're so
interested in calculating odds, why don't you tell me the winning lottery
ticket numbers?" If there were still lotteries across the USA, a lot of
things may have changed since I'd left.

"Too easy."

"Easy? Those are completely
random numbers! They use ping pong balls."

"Yeah, of course it appears
to be random, why would that stop- Oh, I keep forgetting how linear your
species' thinking is. You have no idea how the quantum- Hmm, damn. I can't tell
you anything, without drastically interfering with the development of your
species."

"Restrictions in your programming
again?"

"No, it's immoral." His tone
of voice implied a 'duh' he didn't speak aloud.

"Immoral? You?"

"I know it's hard for you to
believe, but on the important questions, I am very strict on
morality."

"So, playing poker, and ripping off
casinos?"

"It is morally wrong to let
suckers keep their money, otherwise, they don't learn anything. And casinos?
Come on, they're the ones ripping people off. I did say the important moral
questions, didn't I? Money isn't important."

On my way to a meeting with the ambassadors from
Britain and China, Skippy and I were accosted in a conference center hallway by
Dr. Constantine. "Sergeant! Sergeant Bishop!" he called, out of
breath. "I need to speak with you!"

"Oh, shit." I muttered under my
breath, "I didn't know this jerk was here."

"I knew it," Skippy grumbled, "I
reprogrammed his alarm so he'd wake up late, but he got up on time anyway,
dammit."

"Sergeant, I wanted to say that I'm excited
to be going on the mission, and I hope I'll have opportunities for further
discussion with the," Constantine stumbled over his words, "with the,
the Skippy."

I gave him my best frosty gaze. "It's
Colonel Bishop," I pointed to the silver eagles on my collar. Eagles that
again faced toward the olive branch rather than the arrows. "I'm
commanding the mission. And I didn't see your name on the volunteer list."

"What?" He said, in shock over either
me being in command, or his name not being on the list, or both. "I assure
you-"

"Your name was on the list,"
Skippy explained, "but I deleted your name from the database. Colonel Joe
doesn't like you, I don't like you, so you're not going."

"This can't be." Constantine
sputtered. "Serg, Colonel, Bishop," he said my rank as if he could
hardly believe it, "surely you understand that a, a, person, of your,
rank," he was really struggling with the whole social skills thing,
"cannot allow personal feelings to interfere with having the most
qualified people on the, aboard, the ship, under, under your command. No
offense, but I will talk to your superiors, they understand that it is vital we
have our best people on this voyage." If he truly mean what he said, he
very much needed to get a clue on the concept of 'no offense'.

"Talk to anyone you like," Skippy said
acidly, "the only way to get up to the Dutchman is on a Thuranin
dropship that I'll be piloting, and if you're aboard, that dropship isn't going
anywhere."

"Doctor Constantine, I checked up on you
after we met in Colorado Springs," I admitted, "and from what I've
read, you are one of the truly brilliant minds of the twenty first
century." I conceded. The guy had started college at MIT when he was
fourteen years old, and he'd already won several major scientific prizes before
that. I couldn't even comprehend the title of papers he'd written, let alone
grasp the content. His face beamed with a smile before I could crush his hopes.
"Unfortunately, your colleagues think you are also one of the great
assholes of the twenty first century. You rub everyone you work with the wrong
way." He'd been fired from, forced out of, or invited to leave, top
scientific institutions around the planet. In a field that had to generate as
many titanic egos as brilliant scientific breakthroughs, how big of an asshole
did you have to be to stand out, to the point where supremely talented people
couldn't work with you? "You are correct that I need to have the most
qualified crew, under my command." I emphasized the last part. "I'll
be responsible for seventy people, on a dangerous mission away from Earth for up
to two and a half years." Two and a half years, that is, if we got lucky.
"People on this mission must not only be among the best in their field,
they also must get along with other people, in close quarters. That leaves you
off the list."

"Your other problem is," Skippy added
gleefully, "your only qualification for the mission is that you're, meh,
slightly smarter than the average monkey. Which, compared to me, is worthless.
Doctor, you think too much of yourself. The only difference between Joe and you,
is that Joe is like the dog looking through the windshield, and you’re the dog
hanging your head out the window. You’ll get a slightly better view, but you’re
not going to understand it any better.”

“I wouldn’t advise hanging your head out the
window anyway.” I added. “There’s no breeze in space.”

“Joe has a good point.” Skippy concluded. “Also,
if there was a breeze, you’d get drool all over the ship behind you.”

Constantine looked to me, as if species
solidarity was going to make me plead his case. What he didn’t realize, is the
universal concept in effect was that a jerk is a jerk, no matter the species.

“I’ll make sure to send you a postcard.” I
offered. “It will say ‘Having a great time, glad you’re not here.'"

The meeting with the Chinese ambassador started
almost as well as my hallway encounter with Dr. McJerkoff. It seems that while
the governments involved had agreed to sending the Dutchman out, which
to me amount to a forehead-slappingly duh of a decision, there was less
agreement about putting me in command. The British ambassador shook my hand,
wished me good luck, and made a point of mentioning the SAS team that was his
country's contribution to the Dutchman's military crew. If the British
government had reservations about me commanding the mission, they were too
polite to say it. Or they calculated it wasn't worth fighting over.

The Chinese ambassador was more direct. China
had a two star Air Force general, a guy with an impressive resume, who they
thought should command the mission. The Chinese had no problem with me being
aboard the ship, especially as a liaison with Skippy, but even though I was now
a colonel again, a two star would outrank me by a considerable amount of
authority.

Gerald Schmidt was a special White House advisor
who had been appointed to smooth relations with our allies about the Dutchman's
voyage. Schmidt tried to negotiate with the Chinese, but General Brenner was
not listening to any of that. "Then we'll promote Colonel Bishop to a
three star general." Brenner glared. "Or, hell, a five star, if we
have to. We're not playing this game with you."

The Chinese ambassador must have decided the
time for diplomacy had passed. "American arrogance is astonishing. Your
country is not a super power in space, yet you act as if-"

"Hey, hey," Skippy fairly shouted,
"quit with the jibber jabber!" That had become one of Skippy's
favorite expressions. "You brainless apes do whatever you want about
titles and uniforms, it doesn't mean a damned thing to me. Joe's rank can be
Grand Exalted Poobah, or Bobo the Clown, and he'll still be captain of the
ship, you got that? If you gang of flea-bitten monkeys want to come along, then
you accept that Colonel Joe is in charge."

Bobo the Clown? I wondered right then, which was
amazing how much my mind could wander, did clowns have rank? Did a clown with a
big red nose outrank a clown with a-

"He is young, and inexperienced." The
Chinese spoke slowly, diplomatically, addressing Skippy directly. "What is
special about Colonel Bishop?"

I had been wondering the same thing.

"I don't need to explain myself to
you," Skippy sniffed, "but you're going to keep bugging me about
this, so I'll tell you. Joe is the only one of your under-developed species who
treats me as a being, as a person, right from the start. The rest of you
monkeys consider me to be a machine, and you're afraid of me. Joe gave me a
name. I've only ever had a designation before. Now I have a name. Joe,
you said I'm an asshole, and the reason you said that is because you're holding
me to the standard of a fully sentient being. A machine can't be an asshole,
only a person can. You treat me as a person, as an equal."

I was genuinely touched. "Thank you,
Skippy, I didn't, uh, you never said anything about that before."

"I was hoping you'd figure it out by
yourself. Alas, that was never going to happen with your slow brain."

"Aaaaaand, you're still an asshole, I
see."

"Proving my point exactly." Skippy
said smugly.

"Mister Skippy," the Chinese
ambassador had a pained look on his face about calling a super intelligent AI
'Skippy'. Which I wondered about. 'Skippy' didn't mean anything in Chinese, so
why did they care? Unless they were embarrassed for us. Whatever. "It is
understandable that you are more comfortable with having a familiar person aboard
the ship, but is he the best person to be in command? Making contact with the
Collective is your priority, should you not have a commander who can best
assure success of the mission?

"Sure, that makes sense." Skippy
agreed. "Give me a list of candidates who have more experience than Joe in
command of alien starships, and I'll look at it. Until then, you shut the hell
up."

It was clear the Chinese ambassador was not
going to follow Skippy's advice to keep his mouth shut, so I held up an index
finger. "Mr. Ambassador, one moment, please?" I gestured for the
other Americans to huddle in the corner of the room. "What if I command
the ship, and Lt. Colonel Chang is in charge of the crew?"

Schmidt titled his head toward General Brenner.
"That would allow the Chinese to save face. What do you think?"

"I think we don't need the Chinese on this
mission, and if they don't want to play ball, they can stay home." Brenner
growled, while shooting a look at his Chinese counterpart across the room.

"The President wants this to be a
multinational mission, and it's our job to make it happen, successfully."
Schmidt reminded gently. "We need to work together to rebuild this planet,
and once we humans get up there in our own ships," he pointed toward the
ceiling, "we need a unified human force. Can you live with this
arrangement?"

"Americans under Chinese command?"
Brenner scoffed.

"With me in overall command, sir." I
pointed out. "And nothing happens unless Skippy is Ok with it,
anyway." Brenner's jaw worked back and forth, like he was chewing on
something he just couldn't swallow. "I know Chang, sir, he's a good
guy." A good guy? All I'd done there was remind Brenner that he was
handing command of the mission to a young, inexperienced sergeant, regardless
of what insignia was on my uniform.

"Colonel," Brenner looked me in the
eye, and I was determined not to flinch. "After you jump away, you're on
your own. I think letting our allies save face is less important than
maintaining a clear chain of command, and I think this arrangement is courting
trouble, but it's your call. After you jump, it will be all your call." It
was hard not to look away when he said that, but I didn't.

Shit. Now I was doubting myself. It was too late
to change my mind now. "I can make it work, sir. If Chang causes trouble,
I'll ask Skippy to lock him in his cabin." That came out like a joke.
Chang knew, from experience, that nothing happened aboard the Dutchman
without me and Skippy knowing about it, and approving it. Another officer might
have ideas of seizing control. Chang would not.

And, I hadn't told anyone, having Chang take
care of the crew relieved me of the associated administrative bullshit. Bonus,
as far as I was concerned.

"We're agreed, then." Schmidt nodded
to me. "That was a good idea, Colonel Bishop. You'll need diplomatic
skills to lead that multinational crew out there. Maybe you are the right
person for the job."

"Thank you, sir."

Schmidt frowned. "While we have a moment, I
need to ask about Dr. Constantine."

I groaned inwardly, ready for a fight. "His
personality makes him unsuitable for a long voyage in close quarters,
sir."

To my surprise, Schmidt beamed. "Good,
that's good. All right, he's off the list."

"Just like that?" I asked.

"Yes. Constantine has powerful supporters,
but if the mission commander says his personality profile is unsuitable, I
don't think anyone could argue about that. The White House has been looking for
an excuse to leave him off the mission roster."

The Chinese ambassador accepted, with
enthusiasm, the idea of putting Chang in charge of the crew, he proposed that
Chang be officially appointed Executive Officer to formalize his authority, and
I agreed. Peace and harmony among the crew, Dr. Constantine off the roster, an
opportunity to see my parents before we departed. Those were all good signs in
favor of our voyage. A voyage of undetermined length, in a hostile galaxy,
aboard a captured ship with limited spare parts, a ship we didn't understand,
guided by an absent-minded alien AI who had only a vague idea of where we were
going.

What could possibly go wrong?

CHAPTER NINETEEN    OUTBOUND

"All decks report ready for departure,
Captain." Desai said from the pilot couch. To her right was a US Air Force
captain who had been flying F-22s, he was probably a good guy and an
outstanding pilot, and I needed to keep that in mind whenever I saw one of the
new people aboard the Dutchman. People who hadn't been with UNEF, hadn't
gone into space before, hadn't been at Camp Alpha or on Paradise, hadn't
captured two enemy ships and raided a heavily-guarded asteroid base. They were
good people. They weren't yet my people, and for them to be truly part
of the team, they had to prove themselves. Not just to me, to the original
merry band of pirates. And to Skippy. What I needed to do was be conscious not
to let bias against the new people affect my actions; they had all earned the
opportunity to be here.

The Dutchman was now packed with supplies
for a long voyage, we had enough food for two and a half years. Everything, and
everyone, had been ferried up from the surface in Thuranin dropships remotely
piloted by Skippy. Except Desai, she had piloted her own dropship, I'd
encouraged her to do that, to make a point that she was our chief pilot, and
everyone else was a rookie.

From the surface. Dirtside. Already, I was
thinking of Earth as just another planet, and not as home. Probably for the
best, as I didn't realistically expect any of us to see the place again.

'All decks report ready'. That was another
change from our carefree pirate days aboard the Dutchman. We now had procedures.
And manuals, and checklists. We no longer simply relied on Skippy to handle
everything behind the scenes. We humans were trying, perhaps not to understand
how the ship worked, at least to understand how to make the ship do what we
needed. If we were able to press buttons and program a jump, and the ship
jumped roughly where we wanted it to, then even if we had no idea how jump
technology worked, it was good enough. Skippy told me that humans being able to
fly the ship without him, even in the most rudimentary fashion, bordered uncomfortably
on humanity becoming a starfaring species. If we were a starfaring species,
some feature in Skippy's programming was supposed to prevent him from
interacting with us. It hadn't happened yet, and I was hoping that the
definition of 'starfaring species' required us to understand the technology and
build our own ships, which wasn't likely on my lifetime, according to Skippy.

Being able to make the Dutchman do what
we needed was our only hope of getting home, and Skippy understood that. We'd
had a heart to heart, or heart to beercan, talk about what he expected when we
found the Collective. He had no expectations, as his memories were still
frustratingly blocked, what he had were hopes. Hope that the Collective still
existed in the vague way he did remember. Hope they would communicate with him
and accept him into their network, civilization, or whatever it was. Hope they
could explain who he was, where he came from, and how he got left orbiting
Paradise in a derelict ship until it fell out of orbit. The pain in Skippy's
voice when he spoke about it made me, too, hope he found the answers he was
seeking.

Skippy warned me that the Collective might not
look kindly on his having helped us low-tech biological creatures to capture a
starship, they might even disable the ship. He couldn't make any promises, and
I understood, I appreciated his honesty. As to my own honesty, I did talk to
each of our volunteers, and after I'd given my speech about our mission
objectives, and how I thought the odds were against us ever coming home again,
no one dropped out of the mission. None of the fourteen scientists aboard
wanted to miss an opportunity to explore the galaxy, and all the military
personnel aboard were eager to ensure the wormhole stayed shut down,
permanently. When I explained to a Marine Corps major, who wore a Bronze Star
on his uniform, that the plan, if you could call it that, was to roam around
the galaxy until Skippy found a way to contact a Collective that might not
exist, and then I had no idea what would happen after that, the major simply
shrugged. "Hell, that's a lot more clear than most mission briefs I got as
a 2nd lieutenant in Iraq."

The reason I was aboard this probable suicide
mission is that I'd promised Skippy to help him locate the Collective, and so
far he'd kept up his end of the deal. Everyone else was aboard out of a sense
of duty, or adventure. Foolish, maybe, but entirely honorable. My mother had
cried her eyes out when I'd announced that, having just arrived, I was heading
back up into space again for an unknown duration. My father had nodded, and
shook my hand, and tried to look stoic, because that is the bullshit way men in
my family have always been, and I bear-hugged him and we'd both cried. My
parents were proud of me, without knowing what I'd done, all they knew is that
I landed on the road in front of my parents' house in an alien dropship, and
that duty required I go back into space quickly. There were no cheeseburgers on
the grill this time, beef wasn't something that had seen the inside of my
parents' kitchen recently, but there was chicken on the grill, a chicken raised
in my parents' backyard, and it was delicious. My sister had to settle for a
phone call with me, she was working in Boston, and she'd wished me luck, and
asked if it was true that the Kristang were never going to appear in our skies
again. Yes, I assured her, things were back to normal. If anyone could remember
what normal had been, before Columbus Day.

Humanity had a Kristang troopship in orbit, now
empty of Kristang and cleared of boobytraps. A troopship that could only be
reached by old fashioned chemical rockets, because Skippy had insisted we
couldn't leave even a single Kristang or Thuranin dropship behind on the ground
as a technological leg up. "Your species went to your moon on your own,
Joe, I'm sure they can get into orbit without our help." There were no
Kristang left alive in the smoking craters near Hangzhou, Lyon and Durango, and
the amount of dust kicked up by the railgun impactors meant humanity would be treated
to spectacular sunsets for a couple months.

I looked down at my iPad, which Skippy had wiped
of software and replaced with his own. It displayed status of critical ship
systems in a way that made sense to me, however redundant Skippy said that was.
It was also filled with all kinds of courses I was expected to take as a US
Army officer, and one of the Army lieutenants aboard had been tasked with
getting me up to speed, in addition to her regular job. As much as I
passionately hated administrative details, I was determined not to be a whiny
pain in the ass about it. There were silver eagles on my collar, as long as I
wore those eagles, the Army expected me to act like a real colonel. Damn. At my
age, I was supposed to be doing stupid things, and hopefully learning from
painful experience. There was no time for that now, I had to make up for my own
lack of experience by relying on my subordinates. Delegating. I needed to get
comfortable with delegating a whole lot. Lt. Colonel Chang was my executive officer,
he was in charge of the crew day to day. Major Simms was now back working in
her specialty of logistics, she was still frantically stowing away the mountain
of supplies that were pile haphazardly in the cargo bays. She felt confident we
hadn't forgotten anything vital. Somewhat confident. She'd also, with Chang,
drawn up a duty roster for the crew, including assigning people to work in the
kitchen that we'd set up in a cargo bay. There were no cooks among the crew, we
were all going to take turns cooking and cleaning, including me. On this
cruise, there were going to be cheeseburgers. Chang also had a work crew
tearing out the tiny Thuranin beds, and replacing them with comfortable
human-sized mattresses. For entertainment, Skippy had downloaded the entire
internet, and every movie, book and video game ever made.

With Chang, Simms and others tasked with day to
day operations, that left me free to handle important strategic matters, like
dealing with Skippy. "Skippy, you confirm we're ready to leave orbit?"

"Huh? Oh, yeah, sure, whatever." He
sounded slightly miffed that our new procedures meant that we humans
needed to confirm things on our own, instead of relying on him for everything.
"Everything is hunky-dory, Colonel Joe. Warp factor nine on your signal,
something like that."

"Skippy," I said after cutting the
intercom to people outside the bridge,  and whispering into my microphone
so Desai and her copilot and navigator didn't hear, "we talked about this.
We cavemen have to fly this ship, after you find the Collective and ditch us
for AI paradise, or wherever you're going."

"No, we didn't talk about it, you talked at
me. You weren't listening. Joe, there is almost no chance of you idiots
successfully flying this ship back to Earth. If anything, I mean anything,
goes wrong with this primitive Thuranin technology, you'll be dead in space
with no options. You have no idea how often I'm constantly tweaking systems to
keep them running. Your best people don't even understand how the toilets work
on the bucket."

All true. Thuranin toilets didn't use water, and
they somehow split waste into individual atoms of hydrogen, carbon, oxygen,
etc. in a way our that our physicists said was medieval alchemy, not science.
The environmental systems didn't just recycle oxygen, they created oxygen
molecules out of pure energy, in a way that violated Einstein's famous
equation. According to our scientists, the way jumps were plotted used the
speed of light as a variable, not an unchanging constant. Skippy responded yes,
he could see how it looks that way, and no, he wouldn't help us understand how
the universe truly worked, because such knowledge was too dangerous for
monkeys. It was small comfort that he told us even the Maxohlx and Rindhalu
didn't really understand how the universe worked either.

"You're missing the point, Skippy. It's not
whether we are likely to get home again, it's whether it's possible at all.
I've got seventy people aboard this ship who need hope, any hope at all, that
they won't automatically die out here when you abandon us."

"I'm not abandoning you, Joe. I'm, hmmm.
Maybe I am abandoning you. I don't want to. As monkeys go, you're reasonably
entertaining, you even surprise me sometimes, which ain't easy, I got to tell
you. I need to do this, you understand? I need to know who I am, where I came
from."

"I do understand, and I'm a soldier. I made
a promise to you when we first met, and I'll keep it. My species is safe again
now, thanks to you. Whatever you need, I owe it to you, no matter what it
takes. That doesn't mean I self destruct the ship, if I don't absolutely have
to." Next to the Big Red Button app on my zPhone, there was now an app labeled
Boom. It had two options; one destroyed the ship in thirty seconds, leaving me
time to change my mind, the other option destroyed the ship immediately.
Destroyed, Skippy assured us, down to the subatomic level, leaving no possible
trace the Dutchman had ever been hijacked by lowly humans. We'd be gone,
while Skippy could drift in space, pinging like a Thuranin flight recorder
beacon. I pitied any ship that picked him up.

"Got it, and thank you. Confirmed all decks
and systems are ready for departure."

I turned the intercom back on.
"Pilot, signal Houston that we're ready for departure, then take us
out."

"Aye aye, Captain." Desai said with
satisfaction. "Engaging course, now."

Several days later, longer than I wanted because
we were cutting it close on the wormhole rebooting on its own, and not long
enough according to the scientists and engineers both aboard and back home, we
stopped near where Skippy intended the wormhole to reopen. Skippy had wanted to
zoom out to the wormhole's track as soon as possible, to leave extra time for
restarting the wormhole, and he saw no reason to delay. Our technical people
wanted the Dutchman to take it slow at first, to rest and retest all
critical systems. I was with Skippy on that issue; he was already constantly running
diagnostics and controlling the robots that performed maintenance around the
ship, and having our human crew double check Skippy's analysis seemed
pointless. Our best scientists had no idea how a jump drive worked, same with
the reactors, artificial gravity, or pretty much any other Thuranin system.
What I agreed to, against the strenuous objections of our scientists, was a 36
hour delay. Mostly, I agreed to 36 hours to give Simms and her logistics team
extra time to get all our gear stowed away, and to double check that we hadn't
forgotten anything vital, like ketchup. When UNEF, which still technically
controlled the mission, urged me to delay another 24 hours, I overruled them
and ordered Desai to jump us away. If we delayed another day, and found
something wrong with the ship, it wasn't like Earth could supply spare parts
anyway.

Skippy reactivated the wormhole just as he
predicted, and the Dutchman now hung in space, close the weirdly glowing
wormhole entrance.

"Skippy, you need to let us handle this."
I insisted.

"No, I really don't. If you monkeys screw
up a wormhole transition in the future, it will be tragic for the ship. If you
screw this one up, I won't be able to shut down the wormhole, and that will be
tragic for Earth. Put your egos in check, and let me program the insertion
course. Come on, Joe, I'm reactivating a wormhole here. There's a lot of
variables involved that you'll never need to deal with again."

Desai turned to look back at me. We were about
to enter the wormhole near Earth that had been shut down, a wormhole Skippy had
recently rebooted. The displays showed that in front of the Dutchman was
a glowing pool of flickering light, in the corner of the display was a clock,
counting down until the wormhole shifted to its next point. One minute, thirty
two seconds and counting. "Captain, I think we should let Skippy program
the course this time, I don't mind watching again."

I bit my lip while I considered. "Skippy,
how do we know there isn't an armada of Thuranin ships on the other side,
anxious to see why this one wormhole suddenly shut down?"

"Unlikely. But if you're worried about it,
I reprogrammed the wormhole controller, this wormhole now has an entirely new
set of emergence points. If there's an armada waiting at one of the old emergence
points, they'll be waiting for a very long time. Like, forever."

I resisted the temptation to say that is
something he should mentioned before we left Earth. "Great. Super. Program
a course through the wormhole for us."

"Done."

"Pilot," I paused. This was it. Most
likely the last time I'd ever be within a hundred lightyears of Earth. All the
cheeseburgers in the universe couldn't make up for that. "Take us
through."

"Aye aye. Engaging autopilot now."

The transition through the wormhole was the nonevent
it always was. One moment we were on one side, then next moment we were a
hundred or more lightyears away. "Transition complete," Desai
reported, "and, we're right where Skippy said we would be. If these
displays are accurate."

"They are," Skippy said cheerily.
"Everything's fine, Joe, no problems with the ship."

"Do your thing, Skippy." I ordered,
with just a tiny bit of apprehension. If Skippy double-crossed us now, there
wasn't anything I could do about it.

"Confirmed." The display screen showed
that, behind us, the wormhole's pool of light blinked out, seventeen seconds
early. "Wormhole deactivated."

"It won't reset, reboot, nothing like
that?" The display, which had shown the wormhole as a brightly glowing
symbol, was now blank. In deep interstellar space, there wasn't anything other
than the Dutchman within a lightyear.

"No, never. The wormhole generator has been
shut down, disconnected from its power source. Like I told you, if you decide
to use your magic bean, you need to give it thirty eight hours to come back
online. Forty two hours, to be safe."

The magic bean Skippy referred to was the Elder
wormhole controller module in the cargo hold, connected to my zPhone, that
could bring the wormhole back online for a one-time use. For us to get home, without
Skippy. A magic beanstalk that led home. I'd insisted on having it, Skippy
relented reluctantly after a long argument. Again, it wasn't about us actually
getting home, it was about the possibility. Hope. "Thank you. Excellent.
Where to next?"

Skippy answered. "How about that blue star
over there?"

Desai waved her finger at several blue stars in
the display. "There are a lot of blue stars. Which one?'

Skippy chuckled, with a soft blue glow.
"Does it matter?"

THE END