"You know what the worst thing is?" Baker asked. "There's no end to this deployment. When I went to Nigeria, I knew it was twelve months there, and I'd be rotated back home. Even in World War Two, guys knew there was an end in sight; win the war and you can go home. It may take years, but there was an end to it. Even when it got really hairy, guys knew that if they hung on and survived, they'd be going home eventually. This war has been going on for thousands of years. There's no end to it. There's no victory strategy, there's no point when we can say the mission is accomplished and it's time to go home. Now that I think about it, the message I got that I was being deployed offworld didn't say how long the deployment would be."

"We get the hamsters off this planet, and we go home, right?" Chen said hopefully.

"Maybe." Sanchez pushed his chicken ala king around on his plate. "Unless the lizards, I mean," he shot a worried look at me, "the Kristang, need us someplace else. We're already out there, right? And we're trained, and by then we'll be experienced. It may make more sense to the Kristang to redeploy us, rather than ship us all the way home and bring in new units."

"Crap." Chen summed up everyone's feelings about the subject. "We just got here, and already I want to get home."

I needed to put a stop to the glum talk. "Guys, look. I'd love to know when we're going home too. Check days off the calendar until we ship out. The evac schedule here is thirteen months, figure another couple months after that for us probably rebuilding infrastructure or something like that. Keeping us here is expensive for the Kristang, they have to ship all our food over a thousand lightyears, right? After this mission is done, I'm thinking they bring us home. Come on, in this war, how many assignments can the Kristang have for us? Even with our new toys, we're not qualified for real combat."

"Yeah, Ok, I guess so." Sanchez nodded halfheartedly.

"This damned schlumpernur has everyone feeling down." I looked out the window at the drizzle. "If the sun was shining, and we got some news from home, we'd all be feeling great. We're out on our own, no officers looking over our shoulders, we got it pretty good here. Chen, get the box of cake out of the fridge," that goodie had been delivered from the platoon three days before, "and let's celebrate. The forecast calls for this rain to end day after tomorrow."