It started with me telling the basics of my story, from the day we departed Camp Alpha. Then they grilled me intensely for details, and not just about Skippy. I told them mind-blowing intel about the Kristang, wormholes, the Elders; everything I'd learned from the burgermeister. Then, they wanted to know the situation on Paradise, disposition of our forces across the planet, status of Ruhar, Kristang and Thuranin forces. All of which I knew little about, unfortunately. That didn't stop them from asking me the same questions over and over, until I felt like there were grill marks on my backside. It left me feeling that I was letting them down as a military officer, I should have done more to gather intel. How I could have done that, as a prisoner first of the Kristang, and then the Ruhar, and then sneaking around trying to avoid everyone, I didn't know. What I did know was what the Army expected of a colonel, and I wasn't meeting those standards.

Except for, you know, the saving the world thing.

I was going with that one.

During a bathroom break, I was washing my hands next to one of the Army intel officers, a Colonel Landry, who had treated me decently so far. I looked at him in the mirror and asked "Sir, I told you we got the fortune cookies, we heard what the Kristang were doing to our farmland and the Great Lakes, but I didn't hear much detail at my level. Why is the Federal government here in Colorado Springs?"

"You heard there were protests around the world, when the public learned what the Kristang were demanding of us?" Landry paused for me to nod. "When the protests in DC got serious, and started drawing people from across the country, we brought in elements of the 28th Infantry for crowd control, we were hoping to contain the protests enough that the Kristang wouldn't get worried about it and decide to react themselves. Crowd control meant tear gas, rubber bullets, water cannons, all things the 28th isn't trained for. I think the idea was their Strykers would be intimidating to the crowd, but they had the opposite effect; the crowd started throwing bottles and Molotov cocktails at our own troops. We evacuated the president and Congress, at first to St Louis, then here. There were some incidents, and the crowds got completely out of control. The Kristang advised us, strongly, to shoot at the protesters. When the 28th refused to use live ammo, the Kristang ordered us, blatantly ordered us, to send the 9th Air Force in to bomb the crowd. When we refused to do that, the Kristang hit Shaw Air Force Base from orbit, wiped the 9th off the map. Then they used some sort of microwave laser weapon, killed half the people in DC, including the 28th. Things went downhill from there."