They put me in prison at the only Kristang base on the planet, staffed by the roughly thirty Kristang who had been inoculated with an experimental drug to protect against the biohazard on Paradise, all volunteers. An advanced guard of the most gung-ho, or the most desperate for promotion. Everyone one of them, fanatical assholes. I was kept in isolation, true isolation, I didn't even see any lizards while in my cell, food was delivered through a sliding drawer once a day. For entertainment, I watched the sunlight change direction in the tiny window, high up on the wall. And listened for the screaming that went on intermittently, and rifle shots in the mornings. On the fifth, maybe sixth day, I had a visitor from the United States Marine Corps.

"Bishop, I'm Major Cochrane, how are you, son?" He glanced around the cell, looking for a place to hang his cover, then tucked it under his arm. He looked even worse than I felt, dark circles and bags under his eyes, and he was gaunt. UNEF HQ officers were setting an example by cutting their food rations. It was a race to see if we ran out of packaged food supplies before our first crops were ready for harvest.

I leaned back against the wall, there being no place to sit, or lay down, other than the hard, cold floor. "Well enough, sir, considering. No complaints. The chow could be better, and this bed is hard, but at least it's not lumpy." I joked lamely.

"This is serious," Cochrane frowned, "the Kristang want to make an example of you, you and the others who defied their orders."

"How many others? I've heard the firing squads, in the mornings."

Cochrane looked stricken. "Americans, that I know of, seventeen, we're trying to get an exact count. Plus Brits, Indians, and Chinese, a couple French troops."

"All on death row?"

He nodded slowly. "That doesn't count the deaths when the Kristang got impatient, and hit units from orbit. Collateral damage, they say," he said with a nervous glance at the ceiling, as if that were the only place the lizards count put listening devices. "The sites they hit, just happen to be where our people were hesitating to carry out orders to retaliate." he glanced at my out of the corner of his eye. "Your people were lucky. If you hadn't been famous to the Kristang, they would have wiped out your command with a railgun strike, along with Habitrail. As it is, they wanted you to watch when they destroyed that school. The Kristang don't tolerate defiance from lesser species."

"Retaliation is when you hit back the people who hit you. Hamster women and children didn't hit us. That's just murder. They made me a colonel," I pointed to the bird on my uniform, "said I'm a hero for killing Ruhar soldiers, now they want to kill me for refusing to murder Ruhar women and children."