“Specialist Czajka?” The woman asked with a bemused smile in a charming accent.
Dave was instantly, head over heels in love. “Uh, yeah,” He frantically looked around for a towel, not finding one close by. He stuck out a hand. “Dave Czajka.”
She looked at his oil-covered hand.
“Oh,” Dave caught her meaning. “Uh, give me a,” he dug around in a toolbox until he located a clean rag, and scrubbed his hands as best he could. Probably best not to offer a handshake anyway. “Sorry about that. How can I help you, Caporal,” he checked her nametag, “Bardot?”
“I was sent here to bring someone to the flight operations building, your new Ruhar liaison officer is there.”
“Oh, yeah, I mean, yes, that is great. The others, Major Perkins, will be back here in-” Dave forgot what he said after that; it was a blur of babbling nonsense. He might have complimented Bardot on her hair, or something else about her appearance, although her baggy fatigues likely prevented much opportunity for him to embarrass himself in that direction. He might have bragged that he was on the team that destroyed a Kristang battlegroup, just in case she wasn’t aware of that widely-known fact. He might have suggested they get together for lunch. It is possible that real, normal boy-girl date might have been proposed. About the only thing Dave was certain of is that he didn’t get on his knees and beg her to please, please not leave.
“Dave, you are a nice guy,” she interrupted him when he finally took a breath and let her speak, pronouncing the last word as ‘ghee’. “It is, um, I like women?” She tried to let him down gently.
“Of course you’re a lesbian,” Dave said with disgust, rolling his eyes and pounding his fists together.
“What is that supposed to mean?” She asked, her friendly expression vanishing in an instant.
“I-”
“Because I am in the military? Or because I have short hair?” She demanded as she ran a hand through her bob cut. “Many women have-”
“No, no!” Dave waved his hands frantically. “All I meant is, of course you don’t like men, because that is just the kind of rotten freakin’ luck I have. Look, there’s not many women on this entire planet. Instead of staying in Lemuria where I might meet someone, I’ve been flying around the planet in a Buzzard. We have three women on our team. Two are officers, and one of them we think is hooking up with another officer. Then there’s Shauna, and she’s with Jesse. Here we are, at a Ruhar airbase, and I finally meet a woman, and you don’t like men. My life totally sucks.”
“Your life sucks?” She said acidly. “How do you think I feel? I’m on a planet with very few women, and the women here all have their choice of men. If you think you have a tough time meeting women who might be interested in you, imagine how it is for me.”
“Oh, shit,” Dave’s face fell, stricken. “Hey, I’m sorry.” He awkwardly offered her a fist bump, and to his relief she responded. “I feel you. I mean-”
“I know what you meant that time,” she said with a reassuring smile.
“Thanks.” If he could have melted right through the floor and disappeared, he would have. “Listen, it’s just that-”
“Hey, Dave,” Shauna rescued him by popping her head in the side door. “Do you have, oh, hi. Who’s your friend?”
“Caporal Giselle Bardot. You are Shauna?” She guessed. “I am here to bring your team to meet the new liaison officer.”
“There he is,” Bardot announced, pointing to a young Ruhar walking toward them. From the right, Major Perkins was also headed toward the alien. They met at about the same time. Although young, as a Ruhar he was still tall, already as tall as Dave. His face had not filled out yet, making his incisor teeth even more prominent, giving him an awkward, even goofy look to the humans. Shauna had to remind herself that this Ruhar was an advanced, genetically-enhanced being compared to humans. “Hello, Ms. Bardot,” he waved enthusiastically at the French woman. “I am Nert Dandurf,” he said to the group in general, with a smile that displayed his large front incisors even more prominently.
“Nert Dandruff?” Dave guessed.
“Dan-durf,” Giselle corrected him.
“Oh, Dandurf. I am Dave Czajka.” He stuck out a hand before remembering most Ruhar did not like touching lowly humans.
Nert shook his hand vigorously, squeezing hard enough to make Dave wince. “You are the one your fellows call ‘Ski’?”
“Yes,” Dave agreed, taken back by the Ruhar’s knowledge.
“You must be Major Perkins,” Nert snapped a proper Ruhar salute, which was touching two fingers of the left hand to his cheek.
Perkins returned the salute in US Army fashion. “I am pleased to meet you, Cadet Dandurf.”
Nert made a slight bow. “I am honored to be part of your team, Major Perkins. Your exploits,” he paused to see if that word translated correctly,” are legendary already.”
“We simply did our duty,” Perkins said humbly.
“Your team destroyed a battlegroup,” his face reflected both awe and hero worship. “While my people were, I think the expression is, sitting around with our thumbs up our asses?”
Perkins could not help laughing at his goofy grin. “We were presented an opportunity, and we made the most of it.”
“You are too modest, Major Perkins,” Nert’s expression turned serious. “You are Specialist Jarrett?” He asked Shauna.
“Shauna Jarrett, yes. I am pleased to meet you, Cadet Dandurf.”
“Please, call me Nert,” he asked, unaware what his name sounded like to American ears.
Jesse hustled out of the flight operations building, arriving just as Nert finished speaking. “Hi,” Jesse stuck out a hand, “I am Jesse Colter.”
“Oh, Specialist Colter?” Nert’s eyes lit up with delight. “Yes, you are the male person who is knocking boots with Specialist Jarrett,” Nert smiled, pleased to know so much about the team of humans he would be working with.
Shauna gasped and shot a hurt look at Jesse. “Hey,” Jesse protested quickly, “I didn’t say anything! Listen, Shauna and I are not-” He froze. Everyone on the team knew he and Shauna had a relationship. He couldn’t deny they were involved. “We’re not doing anything with our boots,” he thought that was a safely neutral thing to say.
“Oh,” Nert was puzzled. “I understood the human term ‘knocking boots’ to be a reference to mating rituals. That did confuse me; I do not see why boots would be involved. I thought human genitals were located,” he pointed to his crotch, “rather than on your feet.”
“Yes!” Jesse cut him off, mortified at the turn the conversation had taken.
“Ah,” Nert nodded. “Boots, then, are an aid in pleasurable copulation?” He asked, his face displaying complete innocence.
“No,” Jesse’s face was beet red, and Shauna was hiding her face behind her hands in horrified shock. “We don’t, uh,” he glanced from Perkins’ bemused expression to Dave, who was trying not to choke from laughing. “We don’t use boots, it’s an express-”
“Perhaps the human male mates with the boot, rather than with the female?” Nert pointed to Jesse. “Although, your boots are large, I did not think you were so well endow-”
“Cadet Dandurf!” Major Perkins had to halt the discussion, before she burst into laughter at the social awkwardness of their new alien liaison officer. “Your knowledge of human language and social customs is impressive.” She was not lying, except that Nert’s knowledge of social customs had some major gaps. “Who taught you about these, uh, social customs?”
Nert’s face beamed. “Two very nice men from your American Third Infantry helped me. I learned much from them.”
“Uh huh,” Perkins sighed. “Colter, Czajka, give Cadet Dandurf a tour of our Buzzard, and find out what else those jokers from the Third mistaught him. Jarrett, you’re with me, I think the conversation they need is guys only.”
The Kristang special forces unit designated ‘39 Commando’, who previously had disguised themselves as the �
�134th Operational Support Company’, struggled to pull the camouflage netting off their Jawkuar stealth dropship during a driving rainstorm at night. At the end of the desperate ground battles to control the planet’s projector network, the cold-hearted commandos had lured the Ruhar in to wipe out an unwitting group of Kristang soldiers who had been used as decoys, so that the real 39 Commando could slip away undetected. Since that battle, they had huddled in the dense jungle of the southern continent, living in and around their Jawkuar, waiting for an opportunity that would be worth sacrificing the elite commando unit. A few hours earlier, the commando leader had found the opportunity they had been looking for. “We have a chance to hit the Ruhar very badly, and the timing is fortuitous,” the commando leader told his squad leaders, as they waited for the Jawkuar to complete powering up for flight. “It will be a long, slow flight.” The Jawkuar dropship had been designed for maximum stealth, intended for inserting special operation teams behind enemy lines. Exactly the sort of missions 39 Commando had been trained for. The Jawkuar could wrap itself in a sophisticated stealth field, its heat signature could be temporarily masked by dumping waste heat into an internal heat sink, and it was sleekly aerodynamic; its flight still disturbed the atmosphere it flew through. The Jawkuar had special fans at the rear of its wings and tail, fans which smoothed out the airflow to return the surrounding air to its original state, whatever that was. All those features, which significantly compromised the Jawkuar’s combat capability, could still not allow the dropship to remain undetected if it flew too fast. So, for stealth operations, the Jawkuar flew low and slowly. “Most of the flight will be over deep ocean, where the Ruhar do not have a ground sensor network; we can increase speed there.” The leader pointed to a map on the display. “This is our objective.”
One of the squad leaders, bolder than the others, sniffed in a Kristang expression of surprise. “That is our target? There is nothing there worth our time.”
“No,” the leader’s lips curled. He appreciated a certain amount of boldness in his squad leaders. “This is our objective. Our target is elsewhere.”
The squad leader perhaps regretted his earlier boldness, aware the commando leader was playing with him. “Esteemed Leader, I do not understand.”
“Our objective,” the leader adjusted the display for a closer view, “is where we will find the means to strike the enemy. We will strike a blow the enemy will remember for a very long time. And we will wipe the smug smiles off their well-satisfied, furry little faces.”
Ski lifted clothes out of his dufflebag; he needed to remove his cold weather gear and pack for a tropical climate. Looking at the battered canvas, he considered how far the dufflebag had traveled with him. To Nigeria and back. To Camp Alpha, and now Paradise. This was the third planet the bag had been on. While Dave himself had lost weight on a restricted diet, and he had picked some scars since he left Earth, he was better off than the dufflebag. If he had to stitch up another rip in a seam, he may as well use the dufflebag’s canvas for scrap and try to get a replacement.
As he removed items from the dufflebag and stacked them carefully on a jump seat, a small vacuum-packed clear plastic pouch fell to the deck. Before Ski could grab it, Jesse picked it up and examined it. “What is this?”
Dave snatched it from his friend’s hand. “It’s my lucky underwear.”
Jesse, of course, did not question there being such a thing as lucky underwear. “How are they lucky?”
“They’re not, not yet.”
“Huh?”
Ski held up the sealed plastic pouch. “This is my one clean pair of underwear, on this whole planet. If I ever think there is any chance that I might get lucky, I’m making sure to be wearing these.”
“Oh. I got you,” Jesse said, holding his fist out for a bump.
Dave returned the gesture. “The shorts I’m wearing right now have so many holes, the only reason they haven’t dissolved is the cotton molecules are holding hands.”
“So, they’re just starting to get broken in?” Jesse grinned.
“To you and me, yeah. Girls don’t understand that. If you get that far, and a girl sees you’ve got a ratty pair of shorts, she may change her mind. No way am I taking that chance.”
“I hear you,” Jesse held out a fist and Dave bumped it. “When you’re done packing, we need to educate our new friend Nert. He’s up in the cockpit, playing with the flight simulator.”
“Good! That’s good, Nert, you got it. That was perfect,” Jesse praised their new liaison officer.
“Thank you, Specialist Colter,” Nert said, beaming a buck-toothed smile with pride.
“Nert, call me Jesse,” he offered. That was less awkward than ‘Specialist Colter’ and would hopefully prevent Dave from suggesting the Ruhar refer to him as ‘Cornpone’. Jesse didn’t mind his team using that nickname, but he didn’t like it for general usage.
“Call me Dave,” Ski agreed. “Hey, Nert, now we’ll show you how to offer a gesture of praise, for people who have done a particularly good job.”
Nert tilted his head, listening intently to the translation through his earpiece. “People who have performed a task with notable effort or skill?”
“Uh, yeah,” Dave looked at Jesse. Nert sounded like a nerd partly because the translator made everyone’s language awkward. “Now, look, you hold your left arm in front of you like this, no, don’t hug it to your chest. Hold it away from you a bit. Then you bring your right arm up, with your hand outside your left forearm, right! Pump your right fist up and down, that’s it,” Dave struggled to keep a straight face as Nert happily performed an ‘up yours’ gesture. “Uh huh. Up and down like that, when you do it like that, you are showing your enthusiasm for the good job someone did.”
Jesse broke into a coughing fit, to mask the laughter he could no longer contain.
“Thank you, Dave and Jesse,” Nert said with the slight nod and bow the Ruhar used to express gratefulness. A group of three humans were crossing between hangars fifty meters away; Nert called out to them. “Hello!” He shouted without using the translator, and grinned as he used the friendly gesture he had just learned. “Good job!”
“What the hell?” One of the three guys stared at Nert. Jesse held up his hands, and Dave took a step away from Nert, twirling finger near his head to indicate Nert was crazy. “Hey!” The guy shouted back, returning the gesture. “Up yours too, buddy!”
“Thank you!” Nert kept pumping his fist up and down. “Good job!”
“Ok, Ok, that’s enough for now, Nert. You don’t want to overdo it,” Jesse advised, gently pushing the alien’s fist downward. Dave was almost doubled over, convulsed with laughter.
“I understand,” Nert said happily. “What else can I-” Just then, Perkins came around the side of the Buzzard, with Shauna right behind her. Nert’s face lit up. “Major Perkins! Good job-”
“NOOOO!” Dave and Jesse almost tackled Nert in their haste to stop him from giving his newly-learned gesture to their commanding officer.
Perkins stopped short. “What is going on here?”
“Uh, Ma’am, uh,” Dave stammered, “we were, um,” he shot a pleading look at Jesse who was of no help at all, “comparing interspecies methods of communication?” It sounded completely lame even to him.
“Uh huh,” Perkins said slowly, not convinced.
“Did I do something wrong?” Nert asked unhappily.
“No, Nert, you didn’t do anything wrong,” Jesse assured their liaison officer. “You don’t, uh, we don’t use that salute with officers.”
Shauna cocked her head, hands on her hips. “What have you two idiots been teaching him?”
Before Jesse or Dave could stop him, Nert did the ‘up yours’ gesture to Shauna. “Good job, Specialist Jarrett!” He said with grinning enthusiasm.
In spite of her better judgment, Major Perkins laughed and so did Shauna. Nert’s goofy grin was so funny they couldn’t help but laugh. “Nert,” Shauna explained, “that gesture does
not mean ‘good job’. It is a, we would call it a rude gesture.”
Nert was instantly crestfallen. “Dave and Jesse taught me wrong?
“No, Nert,” Shauna gave the two men a scathing look. “They were teasing you, that’s all. Sometimes, humans tease a new member of a team, as a way of saying that new person is accepted as part of the group? You understand?”
Nert looked at his feet, miserable. “You do not like me?” He asked in a hurt voice.
Jesse’s panic went to DEFCON 1 when he saw the look Shauna was giving him. She regarded their young alien cadet with almost motherly affection, and Jesse had made Nert feel bad about himself. “Oh, God, Nert, I am so sorry. We didn’t mean anything by it, we were just joking around, you know? Please forgive-”
“Ha!” Nert looked up, bouncing on the balls of his feet. “I got you! I got you!” He exulted, winking at Shauna.
Jesse gasped, open-mouthed. “You son of a bitch. You son of a bitch! You did get me, that was a good one!”
“We friends now?” Nert asked without the translator.
“Oh, hell, yes,” Jesse stuck out a hand to shake, and Dave did the same. “Welcome to the team, partner.”
“You are going to fit in well with us,” Dave assured the cadet.
CHAPTER SIX
“Hold it, all right, I, I got it. There.” Jesse focused the Ruhar telescope that night, and pressed the button to transit the image to the zPhones of Dave and Shauna. It was their last opportunity for a while to view the Ruhar battlegroup in orbit; the last few ships would soon be departing for an exercise outside the star system.
Trouble on Paradise: an ExForce novella (ExForce novellas Book 1) Page 9