Columbus Day (Expeditionary Force Book 1)

by Craig Alanson

  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 h
er 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 w
anted 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."