The trip down the elevator to Paradise wasn’t much different than the trip up from Earth, except there was no smiling Army cook serving delicious cheeseburgers, we had to settle for MREs again. And this elevator car had more windows, and the passenger compartment was easily three times the size of the one at Earth, I guess this one was designed primarily for civilian use. We got a good look at Paradise as we descended, and we descended pretty fast, there was a lot more vibration than I remember on my one other space elevator experience. Paradise looked good, at least it had a lot of green and blue, not the star-blasted dead browns and tans of Alpha. As the elevator car got close enough so I could see the outlines of villages, it occurred to me that I would soon be setting foot on my third planet. And this would be my first planet that was enemy territory, even if that enemy had already surrendered to the Kristang. Getting low enough so individual buildings were distinctive, I touched the new sergeant’s stripes on my shoulder. This place was a home of my enemy, the aliens who had attacked Earth. Not that I needed any extra motivation, but at that moment, I was filled with determination to do everything I could to get the Ruhar off this planet on schedule, and show our saviors the Kristang that humans could be entrusted with more important tasks in the future. And if any damned hamsters got in my way, well, I’d remember the rules of engagement, but I wasn’t taking any crap from the hamsters. I would show them the same courtesy they showed us, when they sneak attacked Earth and destroyed much of our electric generation capability.

When the elevator car landed with a gentle thump, we were hustled off as quickly as we could move. It wasn’t ten minutes after the last of us cleared the fence line around the elevator complex, that a series of alarm blasts rang out, and the car ascended again to pick up the next group in orbit. I watched it, craning my neck, still amazed, as the guards hurried us along to an airstrip, where there was a line of the biggest airplanes I’d ever seen. The guards called them ‘Dumbos’, because of their large body and relatively small wings. They had four engines, buried inside the wings near the roots, and they were probably six times the size of the US Air Force C-17s I’d gotten used to. Dumbos needed only a short runway, but they couldn’t take off straight up, that took too much power to be practical in a heavy lifter. While I was watching, one lined up and took off, its engines screaming, and I swear the thing was airborne in less than four hundred yards. The engine exhaust could pivot down to help get it off the ground, then the wings took over to provide lift. Anything that big, moving that slowly through the air, made me think there must be an invisible string holding it up. Like Buzzards, Dumbos were leftover Ruhar equipment that we humans were expected to use, until the Kristang took over.