Then we found the fortune cookies, and everything changed. The Kristang scanned all the supplies that were delivered to the space elevators on Earth, looking for contraband. We discovered, troublingly, that the Kristang were particularly looking for digital data storage devices, which they burned out with magnetic or ultraviolet pulses. What they didn't expect was people printing words on paper, and sticking that paper on the inside of food packages. To the Kristang scanners, a reinforced cardboard container with tiny writing printed on the inside looked like any other cardboard container. Those containers were packaged on Earth, delivered dirtside on Paradise by the Kristang, and unpacked by humans. When the first supply guys opened a food package with a fortune cookie on the inside, thank God they had the smarts to not say anything about it over their zPhones; everything was word of mouth after that. The fortune cookies were carefully removed from the packaging and hand delivered to UNEF HQ, where they caused a full-blown panic shitstorm.

I learned about the fortune cookies directly from the 3rd Division intel officer, whose hands were literally shaking when he told me the news. The info from Earth was bad, and the fortune cookies had contained secret codes to authenticate the data to UNEF HQ, so we knew it was legit. After our Expeditionary Force left Earth, things had started to go downhill. Even before I left, I'd heard rumors of the Kristang being heavy-handed; directing where our infrastructure repair efforts should be focused, taking over mining and refining facilities for critical materials, and attempting to strictly control certain information on the internet. Like most people, I figured the Kristang were doing what they needed to prepare us in case the Ruhar came back, and that there were always going to be problems when two alien species adjusted to each other. And civilians tended to whine about everything anyway.

The fortune cookies told us conditions on Earth has become worse, much worse. The Kristang had taken over some of the best farmland across the planet, including vast areas of the American Midwest, to grow their crops and raise their food animals. Farmers were not compensated by the Kristang for the land they'd lost, and in cases where groups of farmers tried to block the Kristang from occupying their land, they had been killed by maser strikes from orbit. The worst taking of land wasn't even land, the Kristang wanted all of Lake Superior and the Caspian Sea to grow the types of fish they ate. They planned to sterilize those entire massive lakes with powerful gamma rays, and set up their own biosphere in the water. People were warned they needed to be a hundred kilometers from the lake coasts when the gamma rays struck, which would happen when the massive dams were complete and the gamma ray satellite was ready, in a year or so. Protests in cities like Shanghai, Chicago, San Francisco and Paris had been hit by maser strikes, when the Kristang felt efforts by human governments to halt those protests had been ineffective against 'subversive elements and traitors'.