So, those were The Rules. I wasn't capitalizing those words on my own, that's the way they were on UNEF's PowerPoint slides. The point of The Rules seemed to be that inhabitable planets within practical range of a wormhole are rare and precious, and the Maxohlx and Rindhalu could not allow lesser species to damage valuable real estate. The Rules weren't focused on protecting soldiers or civilians on either side, there was no alien equivalent to the Geneva Conventions for space warfare. The Maxohlx and Rindhalu had put The Rules in place to prevent their ancient war from getting out of hand. As long as lesser species conformed to The Rules, they could kill each other all they wanted.

All of The Rules were Ok by me, especially as UNEF didn't have any nuclear, nano, biological, chemical or relativistic railgun weapons with us at Camp Alpha; The Rules meant such weapons wouldn't be used against us. Except maybe biological, if an enemy thought they could get away with it. There wasn't any point to us humans worrying about it.

I didn't see Shauna running again in the mornings, and I didn't want to be creepy by pinging her via zPhone. So I was thrilled when we ran into each other in the DFAC, which is what the Army calls a dining facility. It was a big tent, with tarps on the ground to keep dirt and dust out of the food, and the pervasive acrid burnt smell to a minimum. I had a tray of sandwiches, one peanut butter and one was some kind of mystery meat, with mashed potatoes and what was supposed to be gravy. And green beans. Real green beans, they looked like, they weren't cooked to death. And a roll. With butter. After busting my ass all day, I was hungry and all the food looked good. I turned around to find a table, and almost crashed my tray into Shauna's.

"Hey! Uh, Shauna, right?" I said as nonchalantly as I could.

"Hey yourself." She looked at my tray. Her tray only had a sandwich, green beans and an apple. "You want to grab a table?"

Did I? Not trusting myself to speak without saying something stupid, I simply nodded and followed her to a table that wasn't too crowded. "You know what I was doing on Columbus Day," I said as a way to open a conversation, only it may have come across as bragging so I added "did you do anything stupid that day?"

"I was with friends in Phoenix."

"You weren't out leaf peeping that day?"

She titled her head and gave a me a sarcastic look. "People in Phoenix don't do a lot of leaf peeping."

"Got it. My family doesn't need to go looking for leaves, by Columbus Day they're covering the lawn two feet deep."

"You going to eat?" She looked at my still full plate.

"Oh, yeah. Don't want to talk with my mouth full." I bit into a sandwich and swallowed quickly.