“Skippy, you are not helping. Major, I have not been ignoring UNEF, I haven’t wanted to talk about it, because Skippy is a thousand percent right on this. We can’t do anything to help UNEF. We can help the billions of humans on Earth. And if anyone has the bright idea that we should trade Skippy to the Ruhar, in exchange for the hamsters transporting UNEF back to Earth, forget about it.”

Skippy was cheery to hear that. “Thank you, Joe, I appreciate-“

“Skippy’s programming will make him go inert in the presence of interstellar capable species, so if we give him to the hamsters, we lose the capability to shut down wormholes. Or anything else.”

“Oh.” Skippy genuinely sounded surprised. “That hurt, Colonel Joe, for a moment there I thought you were expressing some tiny bit of loyalty to me.”

I sighed before I could stop myself. “Skippy, you’ve made it clear, every time you can, that you’re a powerful super being and we’re bacteria to you. This isn’t a friendship between you and me, this is an alliance between species, or cultures, or whatever it is. We’re useful to you, and you’re useful to us. When I make a deal with you, I am absolutely going to uphold my end of the bargain. I don’t know if you consider any deal made with bacteria to be worth keeping on your part.”

“Huh.”

“Yeah, huh.” I caught a warning look from Simms out of the corner of my eye, she probably was concerned about me risking Skippy getting pissed off. She didn’t know that little shithead like I did.

“Fair enough, Colonel Joe. You don’t know this, since you are, after all, bacteria, but I am actually a hundred percent reliable when I make a promise. We can work on that.” He still sounded hurt. I wondered what portion of his capacity was devoted to an emotion-emulating subroutine. It was almost convincing.

“Are we done, Major? “ I asked Simms. “There isn’t anything we can do to help the Expeditionary Force on Paradise. UNEF came out here to protect Earth; that mission got all fucked up because the lizards lied to us, but we can protect Earth. That is our mission. If there ever is a way to reestablish contact with UNEF, I’m all for that, but it’s beyond our capability.”

Simms nodded with a grimace. “You want me to talk to the crew?”

That would be taking the coward’s way out. “No, I’ll handle it.”