I told him, as best I remembered. He nodded. "You're right, it's probably bullshit, but I'll pass it along to battalion HQ."

Lester Cornhut had been telling me the burgermeister wished to talk again, and he was insistent, almost pleading with me. I felt sorry for the hamster, but I was still pissed off, and wasn’t going to be manipulated again by a lying weasel, or hamster. According to Lester Cornhut, the regional governor had made a special trip to Teskor just to talk with me. Or talk to me, or at me. I told him, thank you, but no. He looked hurt.

Three days later, a pair of hamvees roared up to our command post in a cloud of dust. I'd been on our basketball court playing a game of horse with Baker when they arrived, we both scrambled to put shirts on quick. A major hopped out of the lead hamvee, accompanied by a security detail. "Sergeant Bishop?"

I saluted. She looked vaguely like our brigade intelligence officer, who I'd only seen pictures of. "Yes, ma'am."

"I'm Major Perkins. I need to talk to you, inside." She gave me the now-familiar gesture to take my zPhone off.

Inside, I was glad that we'd spruced up the place that morning, we'd been getting casual about policing our trash out in the middle of nowhere. "Bishop, your intel about the wormholes caused a shitstorm at UNEF HQ. Someone there mentioned the wormhole shift intel to the Kristang and they blew a gasket, wanted to know where we'd heard those outrageous lies, denied the whole thing. Which means it's true, and the fucking lizards are lying about it." That was the first time I'd heard a senior officer speak against our allies, it surprised me. "You heard this from a Ruhar? I want to meet her."

"Uh, sir, that's complicated. She doesn't live here in the village, she's like a regional governor or something around here. She comes through here once a week, and we met at her friend's house, for tea." I felt like an idiot saying I was sitting down for tea with the enemy. "It's a hamster thing, they have tea when they meet."

"All right, when is she coming back?"

"Day after tomorrow, supposedly, but, I told her friend here that I didn’t want to talk to her again. I can give word that I’ve changed my mind?”

"Hell, Bishop, that won't work, I need to meet with her. You don't know what questions we need to ask her. UNEF has a lot they want to talk about."

"I don't ask her questions. She talks, and I listen. She talks about whatever she wants. I figured she was bullshitting me, like, a hamster psyops thing." Damn, the burgermeister had been telling the truth!? "Do you want to hear everything she told me?"

"Yeah." She pulled a tablet and microphone out of her pack. "I'll record what you say on this. On this, and not on a zPhone, you got that?"