No worries. The two pilots were squeaking away excitedly, working controls that didn't respond. We stunned them both, and I had Adams and Chang drag them down the ramp and clear. "Desai, you're a pilot, take the lefthand seat."

Her eyes were like saucers. "I'm not this kind of pilot!" She protested, waving her hand at the confusing controls.

Skippy, and the Army, didn't know squat about my intelligence level, because I had a totally fucking brilliant thought right then. I dug a hamster zPhone out of my pack. "Hacker, this is Planter, come in please."

Skippy caught on right away. "Hacker here. You in the Dodo yet?"

"Yes, how do we fly this thing?"

"Let me talk to the pilot." I handed the zPhone and earpiece to Desai. Outside the cockpit window I could see three Ruhar soldiers pointing their rifles at the Dodo, shaking the rifles in frustration, and pointing again. It was time to leave, before they got the idea to throw rocks in the engine intakes. I was pretty sure even Skippy couldn't shut down a rock's operating system.

"Uh huh. Yes, I see it. Uh huh, uh huh, yes. Oh, that's good." Desai exclaimed as the displays magically shifted from Ruhar script to English, then Hindi. "Got it. Trying it now." Her hand moved a lever, the engines roared, and the Dodo wobbled. "Strap in!" She shouted. I took the righthand seat and Adams and Chang folded down seats in the back. The ramp closed, Desai looked at me, gritted her teeth, crossed her fingers, and we lifted off. She hit the fence on the way out, scraping the bottom of the ship and snagging tree branches in the landing gear. Skippy apparently told her to cycle the gear again, and we got a green light that the gear doors were closed. "Yes. Now." She pressed a button and lifted her hands from the controls. "Autopilot engaged."

Chang and Adams came forward to hold onto the back of our seats. "Where are we going?" Chang asked.

I looked at Desai, who talked to Skippy. "Hacker says the autopilot is taking us to a  UNEF supply base three hundred klicks north of here."

"Who is Hacker?" Chang demanded. "Bishop, we need to know what is going on. Why couldn't those Ruhar use their rifles?"

"That's Colonel Bishop to you, Lieutenant Colonel Chang." I was pissed. Not pissed at him, pissed at being caught in a lie and not having a solid way out of it. "Hacker is a UNEF cyber unit," a lie, "I was contacted with a plan to get us out of there," truth, "it's part of an effort to strike back at the lizards," truth again. Two out of three ain't bad, I was on a roll.

"The Kristang are our allies." Chang said.

"Fuck that. Sir." Desai shot back angrily.

"Chang, if you still believe the Kristang are our allies, we can drop you off somewhere." I needed to know if he was going to be a problem.