Paradise (Expeditionary Force Book 3)

by Craig Alanson

  “Oh, hi. Hey, I’ve seen you on the base,” I said truthfully. She had been in the cafeteria several times, and I’d seen her in hallways also. She was a civilian, I guessed she worked at Wright-Patterson. Her ID card was partly sticking out of her purse.

  “You’re Joe, right?” She asked. “You’re one of the ExFor starship crew?” She added that last question quietly. When she first sat down next to me, I had half turned away, assuming she was there with friends and didn’t want to be hit on by guys that night. Now I was paying attention. She’d sat down next to me because it was one of only two seats left at the bar, it being happy hour on a Thursday night. Short thick black hair, in a cut that I think is called a ‘bob’ but I am certainly no expert on women’s hairstyles. Her hair was longer in front than the back, it framed her face nicely. Brown eyes. She had a tan from some place she’d been on vacation but not recently; it was starting to fade. Late twenties, maybe? I’m a bad judge of age. Cute. Very cute, and a nice smile. She tucked her badge in her purse and slung it over her knee, the way women do when bars aren’t smart enough to install purse hooks under the bar top. Offering a hand, she added “I’m Rachel. I work in IT support at the base network center.”

  “Sergeant Joe Bishop,” I shook her hand for what I hoped was the right amount of time, not too firm but not trying to crush her either. A handshake that hopefully said I am not a creep and please please please stay here and talk with me. Also hopefully it did not convey the desperation I was feeling either. That was asking a lot from a handshake.

  “Hello, Sergeant Joe,” said as she glanced around. I fervently wished she wasn’t looking for her friends, or worse, her boyfriend. She wasn’t wearing a wedding ring. “What brought you here? This place is out of the way.”

  “After wearing a uniform every day aboard the ship, I want to be a civilian for a while,” I pointed to the civilian shirt I was wearing.

  “I know what you mean,” she laughed, and it was a truly wonderful sound. “I was in the Air Force. Wearing a uniform makes it easy for women; you don’t have to put together an outfit every day.”

  “Guys just do a sniff test, on whatever clothes are on top of the pile of laundry on the floor,” I admitted.

  “You guys are so lucky!” She said, and lightly punched me on the shoulder. Things were looking good. “Now I have to find something Business Casual to wear five days a week. If we have a high-level meeting, then I have to dress up.” She took a sip of her lemon drop martini. “You were on that alien starship?”

  On behalf of all the men and women trapped on Paradise, I could at least entertain Rachel with UNEF’s current cover story. A cover story that had been pounded into my head, over and over. Telling her the story also gave me a reason to lean closer to her, to be heard over the noisy bar. Yes, I said, sticking to the cover story. I was on the starship. I went to space, and I had been on Paradise. It was a nice planet, nothing special. The parts of Paradise that I had seen were kind of like Kansas and the Amazon, not that I’d ever been to either of those places on Earth. We humans didn’t fly the starship that was now in orbit; we were just passengers on a Thuranin ship. The Thuranin were little green men, I had seen them but never spoken with one. That part was the truth. No, I didn’t know when the ExFor would be coming back from Paradise; I had not been on Paradise in a long time. That was the truth again. And no, I hadn’t had contact with Paradise, and I didn’t know where the Thuranin starship would be taking us next. I didn’t even know when or if I would be going into space next. Actually, there was a lot of truth mixed into UNEF’s cover story. Most of what I needed to say was that I didn’t know things that I honestly didn’t know. That made it easy to remember.

  “You are only passengers aboard the Thuranin ship?” She asked quizzically. “Why did you bring pilots? I saw people wearing Air Force flightsuits get off the dropship when you landed.”

  “Oh, yeah, uh,” UNEF had a cover story for that also. “When we were on Paradise, we flew captured Ruhar aircraft. The Kristang trained us on a planet we called Camp Alpha, before we went to Paradise,” I added nervously.

  To my relief, she nodded and seemed to buy the story. “Don’t worry, I won’t ask where you went this last time.”

  After enforced sobriety on Camp Alpha, Paradise and aboard the Flying Dutchman, I was being careful to limit myself to beer. While I talked with Rachel, I nursed the same beer I had started with. Raising the glass to drain the last of the beer, I was jostled from behind again and spilled it on the bar. Some of it splashed on my shirt. Rachel handed me a napkin and tried to catch the bartender’s attention. “It’s Ok,” I told her. “I have to watch what I’m drinking; it’s been a long time since I’ve had much alcohol.”

  Rachel had been about to order another lemon drop, she dropped her hand and looked around. “This place is crowded. It’s karaoke night,” she pointed to the stage.

  “Oh no!” A loud but muffled voice came from the zPhone in my pocket. “No karaoke for you, Joe! Your singing voice scares animals and small children!”

  “Excuse me,” I said to Rachel, and pulled out my zPhone. “Skippy,” I whispered as quietly as I could to still be heard over the noisy bar, “this is not a good time.”

  Rachel’s eyes widened, and she leaned closer to me. “Is that Skippy?”

  Now it was my turn to be surprised. UNEF Command had told us that rumors of a ‘Skippy’ had gotten out, as was inevitable, but-

  That annoying beer can didn’t know when to be quiet. “Skippy the Magnificent, at your service, Rachel my dear-”

  “Not now, Skippy, I’m serious!” I said, and sat on the phone. “Uh, look, Rachel-”

  “I’ve heard of someone called Skip-” as she spoke, the karaoke started, with some drunk guy loudly warbling a pop song off key. “Joe,” she said with her lips practically brushing my ear because the place was so loud. “Let’s go someplace else?”

  “That would be great,” I said without hesitation.

  The ‘someplace else’ was a coffee shop down the street. We got coffees, technically what she got looked like an ice cream sundae with a tiny splash of coffee somewhere in it. Lots of whipped cream and caramel sauce. And a straw. That did not qualify as ‘coffee’ in my opinion. I paid for the coffees although she used her frequent coffee buyer card, so I guessed that she got coffee there often. The shop wasn’t empty as I had hoped, that disappointed me, because I’d been hoping for it to be quieter. There was a hipster douchebag with a carefully tended scruffy beard, a bowler hat and an ironic T-shirt playing acoustic guitar in the corner. He had brought a group of enthusiastic friends, but apparently left the talent behind in his car. It actually turned out great to my delight; Rachel and I had to sit close to hear each other. The background noise meant I didn’t need to worry about being overheard. And the terrible singing of the hipster gave us something to laugh about.

  First, I told her the official UNEF cover story that I had been given, in case anyone asked about Skippy. ‘Skippy’ is the nickname humans used for the AI that ran the Thuranin ship. He is super intelligent and rightfully disdainful of lowly humans. And he tends to involve himself in our lives, even when we’re not on the ship.

  Rachel could tell that further inquiry about Skippy, the Thuranin ship or Paradise were not welcome. Being ex-military, and having a clearance to work on Air Force computers, she knew that certain subjects were on a need-to-know basis, so she was cool about changing the subject. “Joe Bishop. Is there any chance you are that Joe Bishop, the Barney guy?”

  “Yes,” I admitted sheepishly. I’d seen her checking her phone on the walk from the bar, she probably had Googled me. Talking about events in the public record was safe; anything that happened before I took the space elevator up from Ecuador. I told what I hoped was a humorous account of how I became known as Barney. Rachel laughed at my story, then I asked about her. This wasn’t me doing the guy thing of letting a woman talk so I can get into her pants. I was genuinely interested in her, and not only beca
use she is a woman. After being captain of a pirate ship, commander of everyone I saw on a daily basis, I was desperate to simply talk with someone like the normal people talk. Rachel was a good listener, and as she told me about her life, I just sat and enjoyed being a regular person. Sitting in a coffee shop in a typical American city, with a person who I could not potentially order into deadly combat, was cathartic.

  We stayed late enough at the coffee shop that we finished our coffees and I got us decafs and we split a scone. The hipster guy ran out of folk songs to mangle and finished his set about a quarter after ten; fifteen minutes before the coffee shop closed for the night. We took a hint and walked outside. “Can I walk you to your car?” I asked awkwardly. Clearly, I was out of practice.

  “No need,” she said, and even in the night, she must have seen my face fall. “I live across the street,” she pointed to an apartment building.

  “Oh,” I said with relief, “that explains the frequent coffee drinker card.”

  “Yes,” she laughed, “I spend too much money in there.”

  There was an awkward moment of silence, that most guys would typically use as an opportunity for some lame hint about going to her place. “Rachel, this has been great, thank you,” I blurted out before my testicles could stop me. No, they were shouting, NO! “I have another meeting at 8 o’clock tomorrow morning, so I’m going to head back to the base. I’ll, uh, see you around on Monday?” The truth was, I really did have a great time talking with her, and I didn’t want to spoil the pleasant buzz by her having to let me down, so I did it for her. She seemed surprised but also mildly relieved to avoid the inevitable awkwardness.

  Paradise

  Baturnah Logellia frowned as the human commander left her office. She did not like lying to, or at the very least misleading the poor humans. Although the humans had come to Gehtanu as lackeys of the hated Kristang, Baturnah felt sorry for them, and even some measure of affection for some of them. In a way, although the planet had been under the control of the occupying Kristang back then, she felt a pang of nostalgia for the time when the humans had called her the ‘Burgermeister’.

  The current human commander was from an ethnic subgroup the humans called ‘Chinese’. All humans looked pretty much the same to her, she didn’t appreciate the significance of genetic, cultural or political differences. Also she simply didn’t care; she had other more pressing issues to absorb her attention. For some reason that seemed to be important to the humans; command of their United Nations Expeditionary Force rotated regularly among the five nations who constituted the combat force. Or what had been a combat force, before the Ruhar reestablished control over the planet. Whatever it had once been, the human force was now mostly scattered across the southern continent, from which the few Ruhar residents had been evacuated. The humans could have the southern continent they called ‘Lemuria’, and hopefully within a few years the humans would be self-sufficient there. That time could not come soon enough for Baturnah, because the humans were both a constant distraction and a substantial drain on scarce resources.

  It was why those resources were so scare that was the reason she misled the human commander. And misled the Ruhar residents of Gehtanu.

  The Ruhar government, Baturnah knew, did not want to keep Gehtanu. Had not intended or wanted to recapture the planet at all. Gehtanu had only been the bait to lure a major Kristang/Thuranin task force into battle, so it could be trapped and destroyed. That Ruhar/Jeraptha force was not supposed to actually retake control of Gehtanu, but as the battle developed and spread rapidly across the sector, the situation became highly fluid. The success of the initial attack wildly exceeded the expectations of Ruhar/Jeraptha command, opening additional opportunities. When intelligence was received that two Kristang battlegroups intended to use Gehtanu as a place to make a last stand, possibly ransacking the planet in the process, the local Ruhar commander had reacted quickly and diverted his ships to jump into orbit.

  Now the Ruhar were stuck with a planet they didn’t want. The planet held two troublesome populations; humans, and native Ruhar who outlasted the Kristang evacuation effort. Those native Ruhar now expected their government to assist in rebuilding the planet and bringing the evacuees back.

  Be patient, Baturnah had to tell the natives. Those who were evacuated will be returned in due time, she lied. The military situation in the sector is still unsettled, she told them truthfully. A cease-fire has been negotiated, but there have been incidents. It is still too dangerous for civilian transport ships to make the journey to Gehtanu, she said, and that was also the truth. What the government instructed her to lie about was the intended end game; giving Gehtanu back to the Kristang.

  Before the recent wormhole shift, the planet that the Ruhar knew as Gehtanu, the Kristang claimed as Pradassis, and the humans called Paradise, had been roughly equally conveniently located for both the Ruhar and the Kristang. After the shift, the closest wormhole was substantially further away for the Ruhar than it was for the Kristang. If they had not already occupied the planet, the Ruhar would never have bothered going there. The Ruhar government did not want Gehtanu now; the wormhole shift had opened much more alluring and less expensive opportunities. Gehtanu was too sparsely populated, and too vulnerable, to bother keeping. In order to assure the planet’s safety, the Ruhar would need to permanently station a major battlegroup in the system, and Gehtanu was simply not worth that effort and expense.

  So the Ruhar were secretly negotiating with a coalition of major Kristang clans to give Gehtanu back to the Kristang, in exchange for Kristang concessions of more valuable territory elsewhere.

  That would be bad for the native Ruhar, who would be forcibly evacuated by their own government.

  It would be absolutely disastrous for the humans. There was nowhere to evacuate humans to, and the Ruhar certainly would not be taking their former oppressors with them. Humans on Gehtanu would be left under control of the cruel Kristang, who now considered their former clients as traitors.

  So when the human commander of their ‘UNEF’ came into her office to discuss his many legitimate concerns, Baturnah had to nod and smile, and assure him that they could work together. And they would, right up until the point when the Ruhar betrayed their slowly developing trust.

  Earth

  I slept great and woke up the next morning in a good mood. The worst of the debriefing had to be over, I figured. The session that day wasn’t bad; the people running the debriefing seemed to have run out of questions for the moment, and I had run out of things to say. I had accepted that UNEF and the US military were disappointed and angry with me, and my acceptance took away some of the fun for them to berate me yet again. By 1530, we ended the session for the day, and the next meeting wasn’t scheduled until Monday. I had a whole weekend free!

  So I was completely surprised when Rachel called me that afternoon.

  “Hi, Joe, this is Rachel,” she said.

  “Oh, hi. Um, how did you get my number?” I looked at my zPhone. As far as I knew, a zPhone did not have a ‘phone number’. When we got our original zPhones on Camp Alpha, they were keyed to us; to contact someone you looked them up in the UNEF directory by name or unit.

  “You texted me last night,” she answered cautiously. “I was wondering how you got my number.”

  “I did?”

  “Joe, you dumdum,” Skippy broke into the call, and I assume Rachel couldn’t hear him on her end. “I texted her with ‘Thank you for a very nice evening’. Clearly, you have no idea what you are doing with women. Damn, you are a dumbass sometimes.”

  I gestured at my zPhone with my middle finger, knowing Skippy would be watching through the camera. “Oh, yeah, I did, Rachel. Sorry, it’s been a very long week. I got your number from the base operator,” I winced at that lie, hoping she wouldn’t think that was creepy of me. “I’m not, you know, stalking you or anything.” OMG what an idiot I am! If she didn’t think I was creepy before, then mentioning ‘stalking’ should have set off her al
arms.

  But she laughed! Someone up there liked me, and I didn’t mean a shiny beer can. “That is good to know, Joe. Listen, if you’re not busy tonight, would you be interested in dinner?”

  “That depends,” I tried to be smooth while inside I was shaking. “I’m not familiar with fabulous Dayton Ohio. Do you know a place that has people who can actually sing?”

  She laughed again. “Dayton has a bigger supply of ironic hipsters than you might expect, but we can try to avoid them.”

  “Wow, Joe,” Skippy said after Rachel ended the call. “Did you just have a real girl ask you on a date? I thought there were no more surprises in the universe.”

  “A real woman, Skippy, and it’s not such a surpr-” I stopped, a bad thought running with a chill down my spine. “Hey, Skippy. This Rachel. She said she works in IT. Is that right? She’s not an undercover intel type, is she? She did ask a lot of questions last night.” I was afraid that our meeting the previous night may not have been the coincidence that it seemed. UNEF sending an attractive woman to see if I blew our cover story was exactly what I expected them to do.

  “Nope. She is genuinely who she says she is. She did talk and text with friends today, telling them that she met a cute guy from ExFor. And that you are ‘that Barney guy’. I know you hate being referred to as Bar-”

  “Cute?” I interrupted. “She said I’m cute?”

  “Those were her exact words.”

  “Oh, damn,” I said with disappointment.

  “What is wrong with that?” Skippy asked with surprise in his voice.

  “She said that I’m cute. Puppies are cute, Skippy. I was hoping she said that I’m hot.”

  “Oh, boy,” Skippy sighed heavily. “Every time I think I have plumbed the lowest depths of your stupidity, Joe, I find a bottomless well beneath it. At some point in your life, you have had social contact with human women, right? Yet, you apparently know absolutely nothing about the fairer sex.”