Lieutenant Gonzalez shot a dirty look at us, and a sergeant started walking in our direction. It was official, I had no business being in charge of anything, the Army made a huge mistake giving me even responsibility to set up a tent. I got the men back together, and we tried to lift the wall unit again, but every time we got it a few inches off the ground, Valdez started laughing at his own joke, and it cracked everyone up. Finally, I sent Valdez away to get us some water, called over a half dozen more guys, and we got the damn thing set upright and fixed into place.

"One sheep." Cornpone laughed, and I couldn't help joining him.

After we got the tent set up, Cornpone and I finally connected with the other two guys of our old fireteam; Sergeant Greg Koch, and Private Dave Czajka. We called Koch 'Sergeant', he had a nickname but you needed at least sergeant stripes to use it, unless you wanted a six foot three shaved head black man from Georgia glaring at you. You didn't. Dave we called 'Ski', because he was from Polish stock around Milwaukee, and even though his last name didn't end in '-ski', the rest of us figured it should have. Really, it was his fault for not having a decent nickname when he joined our unit. Damn, it was good to get the band back together! I had trusted all three of them with my life. We'd gotten into some hairy shit in Nigeria, we'd come through with nothing worse than some scars and bad memories. Before I left home, I'd sort of kept in touch with them by spotty emails, but I hadn't heard from them since then, and Cornpone and I weren't sure either of them had made the trip from Earth. They had, they'd been on a different Kristang ship, and arrived at Camp Alpha a few hours before us. Koch got us bunked into a tent, which we had to help set up, and he figured out where to go for chow. We were happy campers.

Sergeant Koch went off to do important sergeant things, and the dining facility wasn't opening for dinner until another three hours, so Cornpone dug into his pack for snacks.

"What you got?" Ski asked.

Cornpone winked. "Uh, let's see. Damn! I got a gen-u-ine smorgasbord of Hooah! bars."

"A smorgasbord?" I asked skeptically. "Really?"

"Oh yeah, a smorgasbord at least. Could be a plethora, maybe even, oooh, an honest to God, gosh-darned corn-u-copia of snack foods." It was funny to hear Jesse say 'plethora' in his deep southern accent.

"Cut the bullshit, man, you're making me hungry." Ski protested. "What flavors you got in there?"

"Well, I got Cinnamon Cardboard, of course, also Raisins 'n' Gravel, and, my personal fave, Original Sawdust."

Crap. I got stuck with Raisin 'n' Gravel. The raisins were harder to chew than the gravel.