The Ruhar had attacked us, and we thought the Kristang had been our rescuers, but the rescue had become an invasion. It changed everything, and, in a way, it changed nothing for us on Paradise. What could UNEF do? All of our supplies were delivered by the Kristang. We had no way to get home without the Kristang. Even if we now saw the Kristang as enemies, how did we know the Ruhar were any better? The Ruhar on Paradise weren't in any position to help us anyway, so it didn't matter whether we liked the Kristang or not.

Humans on Paradise were screwed either way.

Colonel Wilson came into the office while I was finishing a cup of coffee and reading supply reports, preparing for another foray out to plant potatoes. The coffee was bitter and bland at the same time, and had gotten cold, and I was determined to savor every drop. Those coffee beans had traveled across lightyears to get into my cup here on Paradise. It tasted of home. I didn't know if we'd ever get another shipment from Earth. Wilson poured the last of the pot into a cup, sipped it, and made a face. "I just came from General Meers HQ, he doesn't know how we should handle these rumors about the fortune cookies. The Kristang are sure to find out, I'm surprised they haven't bitched about it already. Unless they have, and HQ is keeping it quiet."

With their near total control of our communications, there was no way the Kristang didn't know what was going on. Maybe they didn't care. People on Earth knew what was going on there, and what could they do about it, with Kristang starships in orbit able to bombard any spot on the planet with maser beams, missiles and railguns? "We need to change our mindset about our mission here," I suggested. Mindset was a buzzword I'd seen on many an Army PowerPoint slide. "We, I mean, at least we Americans, have been thinking the Ruhar hitting us was another Pearl Harbor, and we're now out in the South Pacific in WWII, hitting them back. We now know all that is crap. The truth is, we're in Operation Torch, and we're not the Allies or the Axis, we're the Berbers."

"I'm not following you, Bishop." As a US Army officer, Wilson had to know Operation Torch was the code word for the American and British assault on North Africa in November 1942. "Berbers?"