To my surprise, she responded in very slow, careful and squeaky English. "Sergeant Joe Bishop, please leave that outside. You can use this." In her hand was what looked like a Kristang zPhone, but a bit smaller. She offered it to me, with its own mic and earpiece. "I will explain," she said slowly, as if she had memorized only a few phrases of English, and found our words difficult to pronounce.

I hesitated, then nodded. Army regs said I wasn't supposed to be away from my zPhone while on duty, but this was an opportunity to get my hands on Ruhar technology, and maybe gain some intel about the hamsters. It was why UNEF set up Embedded Observation Teams in the first place. I walked outside, gave my zPhone to Baker, came back in, and used the Ruhar device.

"Thank you." The burgermeister said in English, then put her own earpiece in and switched back to using her translator. "It is comfortable?" Even the computer version of her voice had a squeaky tone to it.

I looked at the display of the device, expecting it to ask me to speak a couple pages of text, so it could learn my particular speech pattern, but it displayed 'Ready' in bold red letters. That made me suspicious. "How does this know how I speak?"

The burgermeister smiled. "Your speech has been recorded, analyzed, translated, and programmed into the device in your hand. We did not wish to waste your time in setting up the device, as we have much to talk about."

So they'd been spying on me. Fair enough, of course they'd want intel on their adversary. "Why can't I use my own," I almost said zPhone but figured that wouldn't translate well in Ruhar, "tactical radio?"

Again she smiled. A friendly smile, but also an 'I know something you don't know' smile. It was getting mildly irritating. "The Kristang did not provide you with advanced weapons," she pointed to my sidearm, "aren't you curious why they did provide you with advanced communications equipment, that is used by every human on this planet?"

That made me pause. "Uh," hell, I wasn't a comms expert. "Probably, uh, every country on Earth uses different radio and computer gear, and since we don't have our own communications satellites here," I looked up at the ceiling, "the only way we can all talk to each other is with common radios." As I said it, it made sense, although I hadn't given it much thought before.