I was about halfway done eating when I frowned.

"What is it?" Kendall asked.

"Well, I was just thinking, the Expeditionary Force on Paradise may never eat another cheeseburger again. Ever. They should be able to grow enough food, but, they're going to be strict vegetarians. Even before the Ruhar took the place back, shipments of supplies from Earth had stopped." That meant no medicines, either. I hoped the Ruhar were better about sharing their advanced medical technology than the Kristang were.

"Yeah," Kendall nodded grimly, "the lizards didn't tell us anything, but the space elevator stopped working a couple months after you left, it was obvious they weren't shipping supplies out to you. Until you came back, we had no idea what was going on with UNEF. The fucking lizards didn't tell us anything. My brother serves with UNEF, he's with the 3rd Infantry. You think they're going to be all right?"

I thought about the burgermeister, and her promises about taking care of the humans on Paradise. "I don't know about all right, but, yeah, I think they'll be Ok with the hamsters in charge. Your brother better get used to being a farmer. Hey," I held up the last half of my cheeseburger, "here's to UNEF. I'm eating this for them."

"Hooah!" Everyone shouted, and we silently enjoyed our burgers.

"Damn, that was good." Kendall said. "Another?" She looked toward the grill.

"Oh yeah." I grinned. Saving the world has its perks.

"Rise and shine, sleepyhead!" Skippy announced, waking me from a sound sleep the next morning.

"Ugh. What time is it?" I asked groggily.

"Fifteen minutes before Staff Sergeant Kendall plans to wake you up."

"Then I have time for ten more minutes of shut-eye." I pulled the pillow over my head to shut him out.

"No way, Joe, this is our private time. You want to snuggle?"

"Not even if you were a real beer can."

"That hurts. Hey, you want to know what I did last night, while you were sleeping?"

Oh shit. I sat upright and flung the pillow across the room. "What the fuck did you do this time, Skippy? Did you get bored, and break into the files of other governments' secret agencies?"

"Huh? No, I did that last night, when I was reading the NSA's files. Don't worry, none of the other governments around your world have secrets worth keeping either."

"I thought you were busy chatting with people, like, all people?"

"Yeah, thank you for that, I'm still doing it, and most of them still think I'm an asshole."

"Imagine that. Do you now have a large enough sample size to determine that you are, in fact, and asshole?"

"The jury's still out on that one. Considering that it's a jury full of monkeys, I'm going to ignore it. Anyway, fascinating as chatting with several billion monkeys is, I got bored again, and did something useful. I finished downloading all data-"

"What do you mean, all data?"