Patriots Chapter 12

Date 4 Months Later, Location a government safehouse outside of Louisville

The door buzzed and Perdy opened it to step into what was by now a very familiar office. There were bookshelves on the walls, a large desk with the trinkets that accumulate with a long career, and behind the desk sipping coffee was a human female with a dark complexion that had become quite familiar over the many weeks since that phone call.

*“I miss Richard, I hope he’s okay.”*

Perdy kept the thought to herself as she sat in the oversized chair opposite the desk. “Agent Jones, I admit I was a bit surprised to be called into your office. I don’t know what else I can give you if this is another debriefing.” Her voice was tentative as she sat down, her ears drooping a bit as she anticipated another round of questions. Be it about hardware, the Dlamisan intelligence ministry, or field procedure, she had drained her brain of everything she knew on any of those topics weeks ago.

Ms. Jones, however, only smiled and took another sip of her coffee. “Actually, this isn’t a debrief. In fact, I’ve got some good news, after all this time the government has finished the investigation of your proffer and we’re now ready to talk about what happens to you next.”

Perdy’s ears came up. “You don’t mean?” She couldn’t quite keep the disbelief out of her voice as the agent’s smile only grew wider.

“In fact, I do mean just that. Congratulations Perdy, the government is prepared to offer you citizenship considering your service to Earth. The information you provided us combined with the equipment that was right where you said it’d be let us find dozens more Dlamisan intelligence assets around the planet. We’ve now been able to deal with them appropriately.”

Perdy swallowed and flicked her ears sideways in embarrassment. “Sorry…Our government shouldn’t be doing that to a potential ally. And when you say you’ve dealt with them you don’t mean…you know…permanently?”

That only made Agent Jones laugh a bit. “Oh, relax Perdy, I work in intelligence and frankly just as a matter of professional pride we’d have been more insulted if your government wasn’t bothering to spy on us than by the fact that you were. And no, we didn’t do anything permanent or even injurious to the other Dlamisans who were engaged in espionage. You’d be surprised at how effective just a knock on the door is. Especially if you’re flanked by a couple of heavily cyber-enhanced soldiers and hand a person a pre-paid ticket to leave Earth and then politely ask if they need help packing.”

She shook her head and smirked a bit. “Actually, when we got to the part where we scanned their biometric data it got almost comedic. When they found out it was to put them on the blacklist for entry to Earth space, they figuratively began tripping over themselves to try to cut a deal. And in one case, it was literal.” Another chuckle and another sip of coffee as she pondered the good memories before clearing her throat.

“Enough woolgathering I suppose. I imagine you’re curious to know the rest of what happens to you.”

Perdy nodded. “You could say that!” She said, her tail beginning to wag for the first time in what felt like ages.

Agent jones set down her cup and clasped her hands as she leaned forward a bit. “I’m going to be blunt. We’re going to grant you citizenship, but for your own safety and to promote smoothness with our relations with Dlamias we need to get you off-world. All your people are coming to Earth proper after all, and there’s so many we can’t promise that if you stay one or more individuals wouldn’t end up snitching about you to your government.”

Perdy’s ears drooped a bit at that, and her tail stilled. “I-I was hoping to stay on Earth, but I can’t fault your logic.” She stifled a soft whine. *“I guess I’ll not be seeing Richard anytime soon then.”*

“I’m glad you see where we’re coming from. But now on to the solution.” Ms. Jones tapped her desk and a holoprojector built into the wood fired up displaying the image of an Earth-like planet. Perdy leaned forward and squinted at the labeling.

“Erehwon? I-I know I’m not familiar with every human tongue, but surely that’s not a word.”

Jones just chuckled at the confused question. “It’s joke, the planet is named the backwards spelling of ‘Nowhere’, implying it’s as far away as you can get from here. The survey team that charted it clearly had a sense of humor. Frankly survey teams are all a little bit off kilter. Either you get severe burnout cases that can’t be arsed to name things and just put catalog numbers on everything no matter how impressive it is, or you get geeks who let their sense of humor run rampant when naming things.”

“That seems a little inefficient, and what happens if a team gives a place a bad name?” Perdy asked, her confusion only growing.

“Ah that’s easy, when a colony is founded, the inhabitants have a grace period of 20 years to vote on and change the name of their planet, and when they do, we dutifully update the charts and everything. That said from what I’ve heard Erehwon is likely to stick.” She chuckled a bit. “And to be honest, it’s not the worst. There was one system where the survey team named every planet after characters from The Lord of the Rings. That…was a bit much.”

“If you say so! I’m not exactly familiar with said rings, or their lords so I can’t comment.”

“Hah! Point taken! Now then…” She motioned towards the holoprojection. “Erehwon has already had the first and second wave of settlers arrive. It’s an agricultural colony, and even after the terraforming processes there’s still plenty of Copexium in the atmosphere to enable Dlamisans to breathe unaided. And since you’d be going in the third wave, it’s still very early in the colonization process and we can make sure you get a land allotment.”

“But where it’s really best for our needs is this…” She brought her hands together over the projection and the image zoomed out till it was a wide galactic map. Animated lines tracing out the edges of both Human and Dlamisan space. “Erehwon is in a star system that’s part of what we’re calling the Canis Major sector since that’s the major constellation it's most closely a part of. The best thing about it is that from an astrographic standpoint it’s as far away from Dlamisan space as you can get while remaining within our borders. I fully expect that it’ll be many years before any official ships from Dlamias ever visit it. So, any Dlamisans you do end up meeting will more than likely be enough of, what’s the word…outliers? Yes Outliers, enough of outliers to not take umbrage to your presence and report you back to your government.”

Perdy peered at the screen some more and then leaned back. “This is an amazing offer.” She wrung her hands some as she looked at the map. “I don’t want to sound ungrateful or anything…this is more than I have any right to expect.”

Agent Jones smiled. “I’m sensing a ‘But’ coming soon. It’s okay Perdy, go ahead and tell me what your concern is.” The sudden gentility in her voice was a little disarming but it did the trick.

Perdy swallowed and continued. “B-but I’ve always had a partner of some sort. First my teammates when I was in military training, and later Oliver when I was part of an action team. This is so generous, and I feel so stupid to get hung up on this, but I-I just don’t know if I can make a change like this alone.”

“Ah, we kind of anticipated that actually.” Ms. Jones touched a button on her desk. “Send him in please.”

Perdy looked up as the door buzzed and opened to reveal someone very familiar. “Richard?! What’re you doing here? D-don’t tell me I got you into trouble too?”

Richard could only chuckle a bit in embarrassment as he walked over to another unoccupied chair and sat down. “Well…after they separated us that night, I admit there was about two days of pretty um…intense questioning. But when our stories meshed, they eventually realized that I didn’t have anything to do with the incident and let me go.”

He smiled at Perdy and reached out to give one of her hands a squeeze. “Ms. Jones here and her superiors figured you’d need a friend with you. So, they made the same offer to me that they did to you. New planet, new career, the whole nine yards.”

The big Dlamisan squeezed his hand back and her tail began to wag again. “A-are you sure though? I mean wouldn’t I be totally upending your life and your career? That doesn’t upset you?” Still, she did squeeze his hand back, enjoying the touch after being separated all this time.

“Heh, well I hardly made the decision on a whim I assure you. But as I said before, I don’t have any family left that I’d be pulled away from. And I did talk about it with some of my friends and they were supportive, and it’s not like I was ever really going to climb the social ladder here in Louisville at all. So yeah, I turned in my notice at work months ago and have been working on getting things in order since.”

He chuckled softly. “Besides, we both have skills that qualify us for double land allotments. So, if we put it together our new farm will be one of the larger ones on Erehwon. That’s a damn fine start if you ask me.”

That last bit only made Perdy cock her head to the side in confusion. “Skills…double land allotments? Now what’re you talking about?”

Richard glanced over at agent Jones who simply nodded. “Go ahead, you can break that bit of the news at least.”

“Heh, thanks.” He turned back to Perdy and smiled. “Well remember how I told you I have…er had…a job and career working on programming drones for security and inspection applications?” He paused and waited till Perdy nodded. “Well it turns out that agricultural drones run on a lot of the same base code frameworks that my roving cameras do. So, when I’m on Erehwon along with raising crops, I’ll have a second job servicing and maintaining agricultural drones for us and others.” He chuckled a bit. “I never thought I’d be transitioning at my age from desk work to doing field repairs on robotic harvesters and grain transport trucks but the last few months I’ve been studying and getting the certifications taken care of.”

Perdy’s tail wagged. “That certainly sounds like a role that will be in demand on an agriculture focused world. But that doesn’t really explain how I qualify for a double land-grant.”

Richard opened his mouth but was interrupted by Agent Jones. “Let me take this one.” She smiled and waved her hand over the holoprojector, the starmap slid to the side to be replaced with charts of demographic data. “It’s no secret that right now we’re spread very thin in our defenses. One of the biggest bottlenecks being personnel. Our colonization efforts have put us in the middle of an empire-wide baby-boom, but it’s still just that a baby-boom.”

She leaned back in her chair and looked over Perdy. “It’ll be a minimum of 20 years before our personnel bottleneck begins to be solved. And at least to start with the Starmada will have first call on any qualified personnel graduating from our academy, the Marine Expeditionary forces are a close second, and our ground defensive garrisons are a distant third. Even then we still must prioritize where garrisons and their facilities go, there’s just not enough budget to do everything all at once.”

Another swipe of a hand and the demographic data faded to be replaced by what appeared to be the text of a legal document. “In light of all that, three months ago a bill passed both chambers and was signed into law. The bill was specifically about the new Militia Mobilization Initiative, authorizing the Earth government to assist in the setup of defensive local volunteer militias to help defend our outermost colonies.”

Another sip of her coffee and she continued. “Governor Williams of Erehwon has, in conjunction with the colonial council have decided to avail themselves of this and we’re looking to you to help with the establishment of the Erehwon Civil Defense Force. It’ll be a lot of work initially to get it established but after that it’ll be one of those one-weekend-a-month, two-weeks-a-year deals barring any decision by CDF leadership to do any additional training exercises.”

Perdy opened her mouth to say something, but Jones just laughed. “No, it won’t be all on you Perdy. We already have a bunch of older veterans who are near retirement ready to form the core of the training cadre in exchange for the ability to spend their twilight years sitting on their porch watching the wheat grow. But that said, with your long lifespan and your experience with the Dlamisan military and the galactic knowledge that you’ve obtained from a career in intelligence you’re a solid asset. And when Governor Williams was briefed on your situation, he all but rolled out the red carpet for you. And best of all he’s promised to keep any mention of your species out of all official government paperwork, so Dlamias won’t figure out where you are.”

Perdy blinked and her jaw worked a bit as she struggled to find the words, she was so gobsmacked. “T-this seems like a lot! What are we talking about here? I don’t know if you’re wanting a regular army or?”

Agent Jones just shook her head. “No no…the CDF is a defensive force, the job will be that in the event of an invasion, to help save lives and slow down the invaders enough to give the Starmada time to respond. And while the body armor and small arms are all going to be top of the line; the mechanized, fixed wing, rotary, and surface-to-space assets will be older surplus that’ve been reconditioned and upgraded.” She sighed and leaned back in her chair. “It’ll be a big job, but with luck after a few decades we’ll be able to stand up a regular garrison and the CDF can be dissolved, and you can switch to being a full-time farmer.”

Perdy just sat there for a moment processing it all. The moments just passing in silence until Jones spoke up again. “Oh yes, one other thing. The two of you will be required to also participate in raising your share of the cryogenically frozen embryos that are part of the colonization effort. I hope that isn’t a deal-breaker.”

Before Perdy could even find her tongue, she was so busy taking it all in Richard spoke up. “How about it Perdy? Would you like to build a life and a family in the colonies with me?”

Any further words on his part were cut off as Perdy scooped him up into a hug that while not literally bone-crushing was the next best thing and a big Dlamisan tongue gave him a lick to the face. Not even Jones escaped her exuberance as a tail wagging at mach fifty sent her coffee cup flying across the room!

“Sorry!” She said sheepishly as she set Richard down, the pair of humans laughing at the scene. “I’ll take that as a yes, and don’t worry. A little spilled coffee is a small price to pay. I don’t often get to make people happy in this job. It’s a nice change.”

Perdy smiled and wagged her tail as she squeezed Richard gently with one of her arms. “Hey Richard?”

“Yeah?”

“Will there be burritos on Erehwon?”

That question made Richard laugh so hard his knees got weak and tears rolled down his cheeks.

“Perdy, I have many years left and you have many decades still! If there’s not a good place for burritos, we can bloody well learn to make the best damn burritos on the planet!”