Landry finished washing his hands and grabbed a paper towel, I could see his hands were shaking slightly. He took a deep breath, like he was trying to make up his mind. "There's still a lot we need to know from you, but, however you did it, you got us out of one hell of a mess, Sergeant, and the Army isn't going to forget that. Before you appeared in orbit and hit the Kristang," he let out a long breath, "we were running through scenarios for NCA," he meant the National Command Authority, "and there weren't any good options. The best we were hoping for was some sort of survival, for the human race. You got us out of a no win situation. Don't forget that."

I went back to the debriefing, trying to answer the questions as completely as I could. After many hours, the questions got to be repetitive, and I was answering almost on autopilot by this time, when the CIA guy snuck in a surprise.

“Sergeant, can we isolate the device?”

“Uh, I’m sorry, what device?” Shit, I should have been paying better attention. In my defense, they had been questioning me for nine solid hours, with only brief bathroom breaks and a snack.

“The AI, the alien AI.”

“You mean Skippy? I wouldn’t call him a device, he doesn’t like that. What do you mean isolate? Like ignore him? He’s very persistent.”

“Isolate, as in place it in a lead vault, or under Cheyenne Mountain, or inside a Faraday cage, something that will isolate it from access to outside electronic systems.” He explained in a tone like he was speaking to a child. “Sergeant, you do understand this AI represents a potential security risk?”

“Look, you don’t know Skippy like I do. I’ve seen him warp spacetime and throw a starship jump half a lightyear off course. And that's what he does as a hobby. You could probably drop Skippy into a volcano and that wouldn’t even make him warm, or interfere with his ability to fry every electronic system on this planet. It would piss him off. I wouldn’t do that.”

“We have to consider-“

Now the CIA guy was pissing me off. “No, I already told you," I refrained from adding 'you dumbass', "Skippy only temporarily disrupted the operation of the local wormhole, and it will reboot, or reset itself or whatever in less than a month. If we let that happen, there are going to be some angry lizards coming through and wondering what the hell is going on with Earth. Skippy isn’t a security risk, he’s our only hope for security. We need to do what I promised, and fly back out there so he can shut the wormhole down permanently, lock all other species out. Then we help him find this Collective, whatever that is.”

The CIA guy scowled at me, apparently we were mutually pissed at each other. “That is a promise you didn’t have the authority to make, Sergeant, and now that you’re here-“