Columbus Day by Craig Alanson

We were fighting on the wrong side, of a war we couldn't win. And that was the good news. The Ruhar hit us on Columbus Day. There we were, innocently drifting along the cosmos on our little blue marble, like the native Americans in 1492. Over the horizon come ships of a technologically advanced, aggressive culture, and BAM! There go the good old days, when humans only got killed by each other. So, Columbus Day. It fits. When the morning sky twinkled again, this time with Kristang starships jumping in to hammer the Ruhar, we thought we were saved. The UN Expeditionary Force hitched a ride on Kristang ships to fight the Ruhar, wherever our new allies thought we could be useful. So, I went from fighting with the US Army in Nigeria, to fighting in space. It was lies, all of it. We shouldn't even be fighting the Ruhar, they aren't our enemy, our allies are. I'd better start at the beginning....

A selection of scenes from Columbus Day:

There was a faint click, and the other door popped open a quarter inch. Cautiously, I pulled it open and stuck my head in. Beyond the door was a warehouse, maybe fifty feet by thirty, twenty feet tall, filled with racks of what I thought was mostly old, useless, dirty, dusty broken junk. I wandered in cautiously. Why the Ruhar had made the effort to store any of it made no sense to me. Surely there had to be something in there that I could use as a weapon.
A man's voice, with a snarky attitude, rang out behind me. "Excellent! Bipedal, 1300cc brain, opposable thumbs. A hairless monkey. You can carry me out of here."
I spun around in a panic. No one was there. "Who said that?"
"Me. Here, I'm the shiny cylinder on the shelf. I unlocked that door."
"You are? You mean you're talking to me through a speaker in that thing?"
"No, I am that thing. I am what you monkeys call an artificial intelligence."
I cocked my head and examined it skeptically. "You look like a chrome-plated beer can." That was a completely accurate description. The cylinder even tapered slightly at the top, and was ringed by a ridge. "You're really an AI?"
"Yup. You should refer to me as The Lord God Almighty."
"That position is already filled. I think I'll call you Skippy."
"Don't call me that, it sounds disrespectful, monkey."
"You prefer shithead? Because that's the other option, Skippy-O." I kept glancing around, fearing the Ruhar would hear me.
"Can we compromise on The Great and Powerful Oz?" It asked.
"I'm not a flying monkey, so that's a no, Skippy."
"Unacceptable."
"How about we go for something more formal, like Skippy McSkippster?"
"No."
"Skippy Skipperson? Skippy Skippkowski? Skippy Von Skipping? Or maybe Sir Skippy Skippton-Skippersworth?"
"No, no, no and NO!"
"I can go on like this all day."
"I believe you could."

"What you got?" Ski asked.
Cornpone winked. "Uh, let's see. Damn! I got a gen-u-ine smorgasbord of Hooah! bars."
"A smorgasbord?" I asked skeptically. "Really?"
"Oh yeah, a smorgasbord at least. Could be a plethora, maybe even, oooh, an honest to God, gosh-darned corn-u-copia of snack foods." It was funny to hear Jesse say 'plethora' in his deep southern accent.
"Cut the bullshit, man, you're making me hungry." Ski protested. "What flavors you got in there?"
"Well, I got Cinnamon Cardboard, of course, also Raisins 'n' Gravel, and, my personal fave, Original Sawdust."
Crap. I got stuck with Raisin 'n' Gravel. The raisins were harder to chew than the gravel.

"Space combat sounds complicated." I thought back to when I'd listened to the Chicken pilot talk about air combat after our first war game, on Camp Alpha.
"Uh huh. Then there's the Skippy factor."
Part of me wanted to avoid taking the bait. "The Skippy factor?"
"You know, my incredible awesomeness."