"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 damagin
g 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 wh
en 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.
Columbus Day (Expeditionary Force Book 1) Page 16
