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