Colonel Young strode in, dropped his pack on a table, ran a hand across his face to wipe the sweat off, and stuck his head in Price's office door. “Goddamnit, we’re in the shit now. Our buddies the Kristang are pulling their destroyer out tomorrow, that leaves us with a single frigate in orbit for fire support. What do you want to bet that frigate bugs out at the first sign of a hamster warship? The old man wants contingency plans in case the Ruhar come back. We need to be prepared to defend this planet on our own.”

“That bad, sir?” Captain Price asked, startled.

“Bad enough that they want a platoon to pull out of here tomorrow, and redeploy to beef up security at a couple logistics bases. UNEF figures no way the Ruhar would risk damaging the cargo Launcher, so they're stripping us thin to cover more likely targets. What?” Colonel Young reacted to a raised eyebrow from Price. He turned to the right and noticed me. “Who are you, Sergeant?”

I saluted crisply. “Bishop, sir, I was transferred here, just flew in this morning.”

“Bishop, huh? Yeah, you’re the Barney guy, we heard you were coming." I was never going to escape that. "You can clear out, Sergeant. And keep your mouth shut. Not that we can keep this quiet anyway.” Young said with a sigh.

“Yes, sir.” I walked out as fast I could without completely losing my dignity.

The convoy escort team I was assigned to was a good group, led by a green-as-grass second lieutenant who was smart enough to listen to his staff sergeant. Captain Price was right, there wasn’t a place for another sergeant on the convoy team, so I filled in as basically an experienced specialist, did what Staff Sergeant Lombard told me to do, kept my mouth shut, and maintained a good attitude, at least on the outside. I still wore sergeant stripes, carried a sidearm and the personnel system still listed me as an E5, so I hadn't been busted down in rank. Yet.

Overall the assignment wasn’t bad, I did get to see a bigger slice of Paradise, from equatorial jungles, over mountain passes and down to the grasslands. It was a nice planet, too bad it was infested with hamsters, and we had to hand it over to the Kristang after E-Day. Paradise would have made a very nice second home for humanity. Since we couldn't even get to planets in our home solar system without help from aliens, that was only wishful thinking.