“Really? You went into space to fight aliens, but you’re worried about a horse?”
“I’m not thrilled with the idea of trusting a big dumb animal between my legs. Of course,” I grinned, “you girls just call that ‘prom night’.”
“Joe!” She laughed and slapped me playfully. “You are awful sometimes.”
“I am terribly, terribly sorry,” I said with zero sincerity. “Sure, we can go on a trail ride, I’d like to try that,” I smiled reassuringly. Being out in the great outdoors, having fun with a pretty girl, who wouldn’t enjoy that?
“Do you know how to ride a horse?”
I shrugged. “Grab the horse’s ears,” I pantomimed with my hands, “left hand is the brake, right is the throttle?”
“Sure, Joe,” she laughed again, “I would love to get a picture of that. These horses know what to do, and they follow the horse in front of them.”
“Uh huh. So, all I need to do is sit down, shut up and hang on?”
“That’s the idea. If you get in trouble, I can rescue you.”
“Oh, great.”
The horse ride was a lot of fun, and we took a drive in the country afterward. Gas supplies had recovered enough that most people could resume driving their cars at least occasionally again. Although at $6.50 a gallon, you had to think about whether a trip was worth it. Being a gentleman, I paid to fill up Rachel’s car; it was almost painful taking that much cash out of my wallet.
The next day was Monday; Rachel had to work, and I had to answer a bunch more questions. That afternoon, she had to fly to Arnold Air Force Base in Tennessee for a conference that would last until Friday morning; it was some computer flight simulator software type thing she was working on. Wanting to impress her, I almost opened my big mouth say that I was a pilot, qualified to fly a Thuranin dropship. Fortunately, good sense stopped me before I blew part of our cover story. Damn, this lying thing was getting old already.
She was scheduled to fly back to Dayton on Friday afternoon, but on Saturday morning, she would be leaving for a girl’s weekend that she and her friends had been planning for months. My timing sucked, that was for sure. “I’m sorry, Joe,” she said.
“Hey, I understand. I’ll be here when you get back. I’m not going anywhere.”
I was wrong about that. To my complete surprise, the debriefing wrapped up Tuesday afternoon, and the Army granted me two weeks of leave. Maybe they figured I deserved leave after our long mission, and I wasn’t just me. Major Simms and Sergeant Adams texted me that their own debriefings were over for now, and they were on leave also. Same with the Ranger and SEAL teams who had been part of the Merry Band of Pirates. My opinion was that we had given UNEF a whole lot to think about, and they needed to process it before bringing us back in for more questions. At some point, soon, the Dutchman needed to go back out. Needed to go back out, in order to verify the Thuranin weren’t sending another ship to Earth. I called Rachel and told her I was going to visit my folks for a while, even though I really, really wanted to see her again.
My timing, really, really sucked.
“You’re packing, Joe?” Skippy asked, while I was stuffing clothes into a dufflebag. “Going to see your loved ones?”
“Yes, Skippy, my parents have been waiting for me to come home since I called them after we jumped into orbit.”
“But your loved ones are right here, Joe.”
“Huh?” My loved ones? If he was referring to himself, he was still in his escape pod man cave aboard the Flying Dutchman.
“Your loved ones, Joe. You know, Jim Beam, Jack Daniels, Johnny Walker-”
“Oh, very funny.” Hmm. Maybe I did have time for a nice drink before I left.
Paradise
Baturnah looked up in shock from the document she was reading. “I can not believe this. This came from our government?”
“Yes, ma’am,” said her aide Pollun Grayce. Grayce had been with Baturnah Logellia for over a decade, a tumultuous decade. The next year did not appear like it would be any less eventful. “It is not an official recommendation from the federal government, nor it is expressed as desired policy-”
“Yet. It is not yet official government policy. Pollun, this is horrific. I feel unclean even reading this.”
“Yes, ma’am,” Pollun agreed. And he did agree. Sometimes, his job was to listen and allow the Deputy Administrator to vent her feelings to a private audience.
“These are people they’re talking about. Sentient beings. They are a young, backwards and ignorant species. It’s not their fault that they are here.”
“Yes, ma’am.” Pollun had done this many times before. After venting her feelings, Ms. Logellia would be ready to discuss policy with a cool, clear head. That was much better than many political leaders that Pollun Grayce knew; they let their emotions run their decision making process. It was understandable that his boss was upset; the report she was reading was radical and shocking. The report stated that the Ruhar federal government, many lightyears away, was considering whether it would be wise policy for the humans on Gehtanu to be sterilized, permanently. The report inquired into the practical, biological and political implications of such a policy. It did not inquire into whether such a policy would be morally acceptable. “If I may guess, ma’am, I think the impetus behind this report was the last status document that was requested by the federal government.”
Baturnah silently raised an eyebrow.
“In the status data,” Pollun reminded her, “there were statistics about the human situation. Food supply, how much food they had in storage, how much food they were growing currently, projections of future crop yields.” All fairly dry information. The federal government had been concerned about the financial drain of providing ‘nutrient mush’ to humans. Humans who were technically a client species of the Ruhar’s bitter enemies. “Within that data were statistics on the human population. And,” Pollun pulled those numbers up on his tablet and showed her. “It states there are currently forty humans pregnant. Plus seventeen children who have been born since humans landed on Paradise.”
Baturnah was not surprised. Not having the advantage of genetic engineering, human females could not consciously choose when to ovulate. “The government is concerned about such small numbers?”
“Administrator, I think our government is mostly concerned about the precedent that has been set. When the humans came here, we know one strict condition imposed on them by the Kristang was that all troops were required to use long-term birth control technologies. That policy was strictly adhered to by their Expeditionary Force, until the Kristang lost control of this planet. We do know that the authority of their force command has been called into question by their rank and file troops-”
“Understandably,” Baturnah said with sympathy. “They are not only trapped here indefinitely; they have lost all communications with their homeworld. Their homeworld is the ultimate source of the authority for their military leaders here.”
“Yes, ma’am. We know from monitoring their internal communications,” the Ruhar provided the zPhone network that humans all used. “That there had been widespread discussion of whether their society here should have a military structure at all, in the future.”
Baturnah sighed. “Very well. The Chief Administrator will have to reply to this, this,” she pointed to the report on her screen distastefully. “He will expect me to craft a position for him,” she understood that her boss considered the humans to be a problem for Deputy Administrator Baturnah Logellia, because the Chief Administrator had more important concerns.
“Yes, ma’am,” Pollun said, knowing that meant he would be expected to prepare various policy options for her. Fortunately, the two knew each other so well by now that he could guess exactly how she would like to reply to the federal government’s offensive inquiry. “I will get my people right on it.”
One thing they were not going to do was inform the humans. Unless, that is, the proposed policy was put in effect. And by then, it
would be too late.
Earth
I called my folks to let them know I would be coming home; I had called them and my sister every day since the Dutchman jumped into orbit, and they understood that I had military duties to take care of before I could see them. Because I wasn’t sure how or when I would get there, we agreed that I would get somewhere near Maine and call them again. Being at Wright-Patterson Air Force base in Dayton Ohio, my plan was to try flying ‘Space A’ to Westover in Massachusetts. After waiting a full day, it became clear that ‘Space Available’ on Air Force transports was zero and not likely to improve soon. Someone suggested I could fly commercial; the economy had rebounded to the point where airlines were flying regular schedules again. When I checked on the prices, I couldn’t stomach paying that much. Sure, I had a lot of back pay coming; money earned at a colonel’s pay grade, and with a hazardous duty bonus. That money was with my parents. But after getting my ass chewed out by UNEF and the US Army, I thought maybe I should make that money last as long as I could, in case my military career was over. So, I took a bus up to Cleveland and caught a train to Boston. The train was, amazingly, clean and on time. Back when the economy had been in the toilet and there wasn’t any fuel for civilian planes, passenger railroads had stepped up and moved people around. It was still a long trip, in a coach seat because there weren’t any sleeping berths available. Skippy offered to hack into the railroad reservation system and get a sleeper cabin for me; I declined the offer.
In Boston, I did the dufflebag drag across the station and caught a train to Bangor Maine. This train was a lot slower and stopped more often. The trip gave me time to think. I found myself thinking about Paradise, wondering what people I knew there were doing.
Wondering if they were still there at all.
That wasn’t a pleasant thought.
My parents, bless them, arranged for a welcome home party for me in the gym of the elementary school. The original plan was for a cookout but it was raining, so we had a cook-in instead. Having a big party was a great plan, because it allowed me to meet half the people in the town at the same time, and answer all their questions at the same time. Telling my story once made it a lot easier to stick to the official cover story. It also helped that UNEF’s cover story had been all over the news since the Dutchman returned, so people already knew most of the carefully-crafted lies that I told them.
Damn, it was good to be home again.
My father grilled a cheeseburger for me; it was cheeseburger perfection. Ok, the truth is I ate three cheeseburgers that day, which tragically left no appetite for the baked beans or potato salad or three bean salad or anything vegetable related. Did ketchup count as a vegetable? That kind of food I could eat any day. Even though there had been fixings for cheeseburgers aboard the Dutchman, I had only indulged in that culinary delight maybe a half dozen times during the mission. They just weren’t the same without being cooked on a charcoal grill. And being on Newark had seriously cut into my opportunity to eat cheeseburgers, because our logistics expert Major Simms had been ruthless about bringing only ‘essential items’ down to Newark. She did not consider even the most delicious of cheeseburgers to be essential.
Not that I’m still bitter about that.
Anyway, being back home again was great.
The only bad part of coming home was that TV reporters had learned that I would be there, and stations from Bangor, Portland and as far away as Boston were there to pester me with questions. They weren’t happy with me because I stuck to the UNEF script. Be boring, I had been advised by the UNEF public relations people. The cover story was that aboard the ship, I had been part of the support crew for the Special Forces teams. The purpose of the mission had been for the Thuranin to train our SpecOps people in space warfare, and to assess human capabilities. UNEF offered the SpecOps people for TV interviews; they trusted super-disciplined Special Forces types not to say the wrong thing during an interview. Me, they mostly wanted me to keep my mouth shut.
“Come on, Sergeant,” a Boston TV reporter asked after the turned the mikes off. “You guys coming back is the biggest story since the Kristang here got wiped out. You have to give us something,” she said with a perfect smile. The station must have figured that an attractive woman would be better able to get me to talk than any of the male reporters.
I shrugged. “I’m sorry, ma’am, there is just not much for me to tell. My role on the ship was to support the Special Forces teams. They got all the fun training, and you know I can’t talk about that.”
She glanced at her cameraman. “I understand. One last question, then,” and as she said that, I noticed the cameraman turn the camera back on. Probably activated her mike also. “We’ve heard rumors that some people have been referring to you as ‘Colonel Bishop’. Why is that?”
Damn. Fortunately, the PR people with UNEF had prepared me in case someone else slipped up about my temporary rank. Apparently, someone had. I laughed. “That was a joke aboard the ship, ma’am. It’s an honorary title. I’m no more a colonel than Colonel Sanders is.”
She looked disappointed. I wasn’t.
My parents’ house looked great; they had the house to themselves again, although there was still a family living in the converted garage. As the economy improved, housing conditions were going back to normal. My parents still had chickens, but they’d sold their cows. The garden looked great, I think they kept such a large garden because it gave my father something to do rather than driving my mother crazy. “No deer fencing, Dad?” I asked, surprised.
“The deer population around here got about hunted out during the bad times, Joe,” my father explained. “We had a pair of Jehovah’s Witnesses come by the house a month back; your mother suggested we put them to work.”
“Doing what?” I asked, knowing that I was walking right into his joke.
“Deer repellant. Nobody wants to come near them,” he chuckled, and I laughed too.
A couple days later during breakfast at my parent’s house, I was enjoying a hot fresh cup of coffee, and surfing news on my father’s tablet. A lot had happened on Earth while the Merry Band of Pirates had been away. First I checked sports news; the NFL was up to 47 days without a player being arrested, that had to be a new record. There was the usual political BS, I skipped over that. Business, hmm, the world economy was on the verge of roaring back; tech companies were pumped about the prospect of reverse engineering Kristang technology. Assuming they could ever figure out how any of it worked. Maybe I could get a shiny beer can I knew to give us a hint. Unlikely, but I had to try. What else was in the news-
Crap. Double crap.
First, I had spit hot coffee on myself, the kitchen table and my toast. Second, the reason I’d spit out the coffee was because I had taken a sip just before reading an article on the internet. Some formerly homeless guy in Vegas had won three million dollars over two days, hitting up five casinos before they all banned him. He had been playing blackjack, and despite the best surveillance by state of the art casino security, there had been no evidence that this guy had been card counting or cheating in any way. In fact, based on interviews, it appeared he wasn’t quite clear on the rules of blackjack. According to the article, it had been an incredible run of luck.
Monkeys, of course, had no idea what ‘luck’ really is.
“Joey, is everything all right?” My mother asked, handing me a napkin so I could blot up the coffee that was soaking my formerly crisp rye toast.
“Yes, Mom, I need to make a quick phone call,” I said as I picked up the coffee cup and a piece of toast, giving her a kiss on my way out the door. It was misting rain, so I stood on the front porch. Putting in my zPhone earpiece, I made a call. “Oh Skippy, I need to speak with you, please.”
“Sure thing, Joe, what is it?” He asked with a too-innocent tone to his voice. It was almost certain that he had been monitoring my web browsing, so he knew exactly what I had been reading.
“There’s a funny thing I want to ask you about
. Some guy in Vegas won a ton of money playing blackjack.”
“You don’t say?” Skippy’s tone was not convincing, he needed to work on that. “Hold a minute, let me scan the internet for pertinent news. Yup, yup, I see it now. Wow, that is amazing. You never know, huh? What a lucky guy. That’s why Vegas is the land where dreams can come true, I guess.”
“Amazing. Yeah, that’s one word for it,” I said, biting into soggy toast. “You wouldn’t, uh, know anything about this, would you? I’m only asking because you are an incredibly amoral sneaky little beer can.”
“Joe! That hurt. Although perhaps ‘amoral’ is accurate, since what happened in Vegas was neither moral nor immoral.”
“Uh huh, that’s debatable. So, you were not involved in any way?”
“Involved is such a vague word, Joe. Aren’t we all involved with each other? At the quantum level, everything is-”
“You know what I meant, Skippy. I will ask a very direct, non-vague question: did you help this guy rip off five casinos?”
“This guy? You mean a Navy veteran who had medical problems and had fallen on hard times? Mr. Ronald Brown certainly deserved a run of good luck in his life. I am surprised at you, Joe. Considering that you are a soldier, I would think you should be happy to see a veteran enjoying good fortune.”
“Don’t try to change the subject. I am happy for Mr. Brown. What I am not happy about is the ‘good fortune’ part. It’s not luck when you are cheating, Skippy.”
“Cheating? Evening the odds somewhat can’t be considered cheating, Joe. Casinos always have the advantage in blackjack. If a player starts to win, the casino can end the game by shutting down the table. The only way for a player to even the odds is to do the same as the house; walk away from the table. Walk away before the game begins. The house always has their thumb on the scale; what was wrong with me helping an average guy do the same thing?”
Paradise (Expeditionary Force Book 3) Page 6