"Sir, I have done that, you know that." Twice. No, three times. Four, actually. Back home, I'd asked my neighbors to capture an alien soldier, using shotguns and an ice cream truck. At the Launcher, I thought we were making a futile gesture, that the hamsters would see us in the launch tube, or somewhere along the way, and they'd kill us like sitting ducks. The point of us even trying to fight back at the Launcher had not been to accomplish anything useful against the Ruhar, because at that point we all thought they'd already taken the planet back permanently. The point had been to show the Kristang that their human allies didn't give up even when the odds were impossible, so the Kristang wouldn't think of people back on Earth as useless cowards. We are mostly likely dead anyway, had been my thinking, so why not hit back? Also, I was a soldier. Despite the fact that my motivation to sign up had been as much about paying for college as patriotism, the Army had somehow trained me into a soldier, and soldiers don't quit. The third time had been when we took the Flower, I had not truly believed we could do it until the last Kristang was dead and the reactor didn't explode. And the fourth time was the raid on the asteroid base. That had been the toughest for me, for unlike the action at the Launcher and taking the Flower, I hadn't personally been at risk at the asteroid base. Chang, and Giraud, and Thompson and Adams and the others had been directly at risk, I'd sent them away while my ass stayed safely aboard the Dutchman, with Desai's fingers at the controls, ready to jump away should anything threaten the ship. "I've risked people's lives even when I thought we had no chance of success. I'll do it again when I think it's necessary. What I won't do is deceive people. Sir, I will talk to everyone on this list," Skippy could handle the translation for me, "and tell them honestly what I think of this mission. If they still want to go, then I'll be honored to serve with them."

Brenner nodded. "I'm sure these people all know what you're going to say, but go ahead, I wouldn't suggest otherwise. Bishop, the best team you can take into combat are people who fully know the risks, and follow you anyway."

"When do we leave?" My mind was racing through all the things that needed to happen before the Dutchman broke orbit. And that was only the stuff I could think of, I'm sure I was forgetting a million important things. It would be nice to rely on a super intelligent AI, but Skippy was too absent-minded. He had also demonstrated many times that he wasn't easily able to think like us biological trashbags. If I left the logistics up to Skippy, he'd remember everything but water. Or oxygen.