Plot Summary

• Aliens come to attack Earth
  • They’re sort of hamsters named the Ruhar
  • One of their ships crashes into Thompson Corners, Maine, where Joe Bishop lives
• Joe Bishop gathers a crew of civilians, an ice cream truck with kid’s characters including Barney the dinosaur drawn on the side of it, and captures an alien
  • He treats the captured Ruhar soldier well (Even if he does nickname him “Fuzzyface”) and treats his wounds and feeds him the Ruhar food that he finds on the soldier.
  • He turns Fuzzyface in to the State Police when he finds them at a roadblock
• Other Aliens called the Kristang attack the Ruhar fleet and kick them out of orbit
  • Earth welcomes Kristang as saviors
  • Kristang recruit human soldiers to help with the War Effort
  • Joe is reconnected with some of his fireteam from Nigeria – Cornpone and Ski
• The humans train on Camp Alpha
  • Joe is promoted from Specialist to Sergeant
  • Joe is put in charge of a different fireteam
  • Joe meets (and spends a nice evening with) Shauna Jarrett
• Humans go “Paradise” which is a planet owned by the Ruhar, but has been agreed to be turned over to the Kristang
  • Humans are supposed to oversee the handover of the planet
  • Peacekeeping mission
• Joe is put in charge of a small squad of people
  • They are sent to be an Embedded Observation Team (EOT) to keep an eye on Hamster civilians and report back anything odd.
  • Meets Lester Cornhutt, the friendly mayor
• Joe gets visited by a Ruhar official – the regional governor, and refers to her as the Burgermeister
  • He reports it to UN Command, and is introduced to Major Emily Perkins, an intelligence officer
  • They tell him to keep meeting with the Ruhar official
  • She meets with him because he treated the soldier he had captured on earth well
  • She feeds him a significant amount of information
    • Humans are now slaves to the Kristang
    • Ruhar attacked earth to try to make earth undesirable to the Kristang
    • Wormholes are how races get around the galaxy
    • Wormholes can shift
    • They were built by elder races
    • There was some sort of wormhole shift and now earth is near a wormhole so that’s why the Ruhar attacked
  • Mail stops coming from Earth, food shipments are decreasing
• UN troops are now forced to start growing their own food
• Some Ruhar start moving offworld
  • Ruhar mostly don’t want to leave and keep acting like they’re not actually leaving
• Joe gets shipped down near the equator on convoy duty at Fort Arrow to protect his identity when the Kristang start becoming suspicious about how the humans are getting information
• Ruhar counterattack
  • Joe was out on a hike when the fort was hit
  • Joe gets some Zinger missiles and leads a counterassault against the Ruhar and shoots down two troop transports, killing 1000 Ruhar soldiers
• Kristang come back and want Joe Promoted
  • Joe gets promoted to Colonel
  • Joe meets Colonel Chang, who is promoted to Lieutenant Colonel
• Kristang want Joe to kill a bunch of Ruhar civilians
  • Joe refuses
  • Joe gets put in prison on death row
  • Ruhar counterattack and kick the Kristang out
• Joe breaks out of prison with Sergeant Adams, Colonel Chang, and Captain Desai
  • The Ruhar capture them and take them to a base
• In prison, Joe meets Skippy The Magnificent who is an ancient alien AI who looks like a beer can and can talk
  • Skippy helps Joe break out of prison
  • Skippy helps Joe steal a Ruhar transport with the Adams, Chang, and Desai, but Joe pretends Skippy is a human hacker
• Joe, Skippy & co go to a resupply station staffed by Major Simms and convince 20 of the people at the resupply base to come along to save earth
• They take the Ruhar transport and attack a Kristang ship called the Flower
  • Four people are KIA
  • Skippy has to physically jack into the Kristang ship to take control, instead of taking control wirelessly
• They use the Kristang transport to dock with a Thuranin Star Carrier
  • Steal the star carrier
  • Put all the Thuranin to sleep through their cybernetic implants
  • Jump all the Thuranin and Kristang into a gas giant
  • They name the ship “The Flying Dutchman” and call themselves “The Merry Band Of Pirates”
• Skippy wants to find the rest of his AI kind and needs an Elder Comm Node
  • Joe wants a Wormhole Gate Controller to shut off the wormhole that goes to earth
• They attack a Kristang research facility built into an asteroid
  • Using Thuranin Combots and Kristang powered armor suits they capture the Comm Node and Wormhole Controller
• They head back to Earth and shut down the wormhole
• Back on Earth, the US govt wants to interrogate Joe and the Crew and Skippy
  • The doctors interrogating Skippy anger Skippy
  • The gov’t doesn’t want to let him continue to be in control of the ship
  • Skippy hacks random systems on earth because he’s bored
  • Joe gets to see his parents
• The US Govt sets up another expedition so that Skippy can find more Comm Nodes after the first one turns out not to work
  • New crew has scientists and civilians and researchers
  • Also has SAS special forces lead by Major Smythe
  • Joe is in charge of the ship with Chang in charge of the crew
• End BOOK 1