COLUMBUS DAY

By Craig Alanson

Text copyright © 2016 Craig Alanson

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Table of Contents

Chapter One    Columbus Day

Chapter Two    Deployment

Chapter Three    Camp Alpha

Chapter Four    Paradise

Chapter Five    Intel

Chapter Six    Fort Arrow

Chapter Seven    Colonel

Chapter Eight    Planting Potatoes

Chapter Nine    Jail

Chapter Ten    Skippy

Chapter Eleven    Away Boarders

Chapter Twelve    Merry Band of Pirates

Chapter Thirteen    Flying Dutchman

Chapter Fourteen    Space Suits

Chapter Fifteen    Raid

Chapter Sixteen    Home

Chapter Seventeen    Idle Hands

Chapter Eighteen    Ticking Clock

Chapter Nineteen    Outbound

CHAPTER ONE    COLUMBUS DAY

The Ruhar hit us on Columbus Day. Every country had a name for the day the Ruhar attacked; the common name that stuck, after a while, was Columbus Day. I guess that makes sense. There we were, innocently drifting along in the cosmos on our little blue marble, like the native Americans in 1492. Over the horizon come ships of a technologically advanced, aggressive culture, and BAM! There go the good old days, when we humans only got killed by each other. So, Columbus Day. It fits.

When the morning sky twinkled, with what we later learned were Ruhar warships jumping into high orbit, we were curious. When power plants, refineries, factories and other industrial sites around the planet started getting pounded from orbit with hypersonic railgun darts, we were shocked. For me personally, when a Ruhar combat transport dropped out of the sky and skidded across a potato field, outside my tiny hometown in northern Maine, that was when I became Officially Alarmed. It was a Monday morning in early October, the Columbus Day holiday in America, I was home on leave from the Army, visiting my folks. Taking a break after my battalion got rotated home from peacekeeping duty in Nigeria. What a shit job that was, I was happy to be home in the States. My leave was ended by a burning streak across the sky, as the Ruhar transport came directly over my truck, arced over the lake, and crashed in the Olafsen’s potato field, plowing up dirt and potatoes until its nose was half submerged in a pond. It wobbled side to side for a minute, with a screaming sound coming from its engines, then it took off and flew low and unsteadily over the tree line toward the center of town, trailing smoke from its underside.