Five minutes later, Reynolds and two pissed-off looking Kristang showed up to retrieve us. We were hustled back to the shuttle bay, and as soon as General Meers and his staff were aboard, the dropship door slammed shut and the alarm sounded to depressurize the bay. Despite my fear that Meers was somehow pissed at me, he didn't say anything, Reynolds didn't think it was a big deal, and the ride back down was smooth

Chang and I never spoke about what the drunk Kristang had said, how he'd called humans 'slaves'. I thought about it a lot, and reported it to Meers' intelligence staff. To my dismay, they acted like they'd heard it all before, it wasn't news, and it wasn't a big deal. It was a big deal to me, it confirmed my worst fears that the burgermeister had told me the truth about the Kristang.

Were we fighting on the wrong side of this war?

CHAPTER EIGHT    PLANTING POTATOES

The first assignment UNEF had for me was, despite what General Meers had told me, to fly around and give speeches. That lasted two weeks, and, man, it was awkward for everyone involved. For me, it was awkward to wear my crisp new uniform in front of a crowd of soldiers, people who’d been in combat like I had, worse situations that I’d been in, and they were wearing the same uniforms and doing the same jobs now, while I wore silver eagles, flew around in a shiny Buzzard and ate good food with the officers. It left me feeling like a total fraud. For the soldiers who had to stand waiting for me to give my canned speech, it was awkward because they all knew I didn’t deserve to be an officer, hadn’t earned it, yet they couldn’t say anything negative. It sucked. When my speech was mercifully over, I asked people questions, let them talk about their experiences, and ignore the awkwardness of me being there. That worked for everyone. When I was standing around in a crowd, shooting the shit with soldiers, letting them tell stories of what they’d done during the aborted Ruhar invasion, I could be just Joe Bishop, and they could be soldiers, and we could talk.

And then I had to get back on the Buzzard, fly to the next base, and do it all over again. I hated it.

So it was a blessing when UNEF found a real job for me; planting potatoes. The Kristang told UNEF it was time for humans to grow our own food on Paradise, to reduce the logistical burden on the Kristang, and to give us some food security in case fleet actions upstairs disrupted shipments. Some genius in UNEF HQ must have decided that me giving speeches had run its course, read my personnel file and saw that I was from northern Maine, and had the brilliant insight that I must be an expert on planting potatoes. My new assignment was to coordinate agriculture activities across a quarter of the continent that UNEF occupied. We weren't only planting potatoes, of course, we had a program to plant a wide variety of crops from seeds shipped from Earth. Planting potatoes was the derisive name we applied, although I was expected to be officially enthusiastic. Planting potatoes gave me an opportunity to fly around Paradise, be seen by the troops, and according to the UNEF PR staff, it gave me a chance to be seen as a hard-working grunt who made good through hard work and initiative. It was a relief to be doing something useful.