Columbus Day (Expeditionary Force Book 1)

by Craig Alanson

  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 equipm
ent 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.