I frantically yanked Baker and Chen back out by hauling on their packs, and waved another two guys forward. Hell, no way was I going to let my new fireteam get split up right after we'd met. You'd think we would be first in line to board the next dropship, but the MPs keeping us organized had other ideas, and several dropships lifted off before we were waved forward. Being aboard a dropship wasn't the last of the confusion, when our dropship docked and we got aboard the Kristang starship, we discovered we were not only aboard a different ship from the rest of our platoon, but most of the ship was occupied by the US Army 3rd Infantry Division, not our home unit the 10th. The ship had people from the 3rd, the 10th, most of a company of US Marines, more than a full company of Chinese, two squads of Brits and a scattering of Indian troops. Either the Kristang didn't understand the concept of combat loading, or they had so little regard for human combat capabilities that they figured it didn't matter whether our units were scattered all over hell and gone. Supposedly UNEF HQ was keeping track of who was where, but I had no way to contact anyone in my chain of command. I got us to bunk with some other people from the 10th. It was a lonely voyage, and I was grateful that my guys shrugged and took it in stride. If this was the worst fuckup we got into, we'd be doing great.

CHAPTER FOUR    PARADISE

Unlike Alpha, Paradise had a space elevator. It looked a bit different from the one that hovered over Earth, someone told me this one was put there by the Ruhar. That surprised me, I figured the Ruhar elevator would have taken a hit during the battle when the Kristang had retaken the planet. Maybe targeting space elevators was against one of the unwritten Rules? Or maybe it was just practical; the people trying to conquer a planet wouldn’t want to damage a valuable asset, and the defenders figured, even if they lost that battle, they could try taking the planet back again someday? The Ruhar elevator rode a lightning bolt like the one on Earth did, but whereas the Thuranin elevator ‘cable’ was pure energy, the Ruhar design had a physical cable, thinner than a human hair, in the center of the lightning bolt. Because of this, the Ruhar didn’t have any vital facilities on the equator of Paradise; if that cable ever snapped, it could wrap itself around the planet several times, and crash down with a considerable impact despite the small mass. We were told the cable had explosive charges along its length, to make it less of a disaster if the cable ever snapped or was cut, but for sure I didn’t want to get stationed on the equator, I’d spend half my time looking warily at the sky.