Columbus Day (Expeditionary Force Book 1)

by Craig Alanson

  "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 ge
t 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.