The Ghost Brigades (25 page)

Jared focused on the name Cheryl Boutin and felt muted, conflicted emotions echo back from his memory. Jared realized that while Boutin had affection for his wife, labeling that affection as love would have been overstating the case. The two married because they both wanted children and they both understood and liked being around the other well enough, although Jared sensed that even that emotional attachment had been tamped down by the end. Their mutual joy of their daughter kept them from separation; even their cooled relationship was tolerable and preferable to the mess of a divorce and the trouble it would cause their child.

From some crevasse in Jared's mind came an unexpected memory about Cheryl's death, that on her fatal trip she had not been hiking alone; she had been with a friend who Boutin suspected was her lover. There was no jealousy that Jared could detect. Boutin didn't begrudge her a lover; he had one of his own. But Jared felt the anger Boutin felt at the funeral, when the suspected lover had lingered over the grave too long at the end of the funeral ceremony. It took time away from Boutin's final farewell to his wife. And Zoë's to her mother.

Zoë
.

Jared traced her name on the gravestone, and said the name in the place she should have rested but did not, and felt again the grief that spilled from Boutin's memories into his own heart. Jared touched the gravestone once more, felt the name engraved into stone, and wept.

A hand rested on Jared's shoulder; he looked up to see Cloud there.

“It's all right,” Cloud said. “We all lose the people we love.”

Jared nodded. “I know,” he said. “I lost someone I loved. Sarah. I felt her die and then I felt the hole she left inside me. But this is different.”

“It's different because it's a child,” Cloud said.

“It's a child I never knew,” Jared said, and looked up at Cloud again. “She died before I was born. I didn't know her. I couldn't know her. But I
do
.” He gestured to his temples. “Everything about her is in here. I remember her being born. I remember her first steps and her first words. I remember holding her here at her mother's funeral. I remember the last time I saw her. I remember hearing that she was dead. It's all
here
.”

“No one has anyone else's memories,” Cloud said. He said it in a way to soothe Jared. “It just doesn't work that way.”

Jared laughed, bitterly. “But it
does,
” he said. “It does with me. I told you. I was born to hold someone else's mind. They didn't think that it worked, but it did. And now his memories are my memories. His life is my life. His daughter—”

Jared stopped talking, unable to go on. Cloud kneeled down next to Jared and put an arm around his shoulder and let him mourn.

“It's not fair,” Cloud said eventually. “It's not fair you have to mourn this child.”

Jared gave a small laugh. “We're in the wrong universe for fair,” he said, simply.

“That we are,” Cloud agreed.

“I
want
to mourn her,” Jared said. “I feel her. I can feel the love I had for her. That
he
had for her. I want to remember her, even if that means I have to mourn her. That's not too much to bear for her memory. It's not, is it?”

“No,” Cloud said. “I guess it's not.”

“Thank you,” Jared said. “Thank you for coming with me here. Thank you for helping me.”

“That's what friends are for,” Cloud said.

::Dirac,:: Jane Sagan said. She was standing behind them. ::You've been reactived.::

Jared felt the sudden snap of reintegration, and felt Jane Sagan's awareness wash over him, and felt mildly revolted by it even as other parts of him rejoiced at coming back into a larger sense of being. Some part of Jared's brain noted that being integrated wasn't just about sharing information and becoming part of a higher consciousness. It was also about control, a way to keep individuals tied to the group. There was a reason why Special Forces soldiers hardly ever retired—being retired means losing integration. Losing integration means being alone.

Special Forces soldiers were almost never alone. Even when they were by themselves.

::Dirac,:: Sagan said again.

“Speak normally,” Jared said, and stood up, still looking away from Sagan. “You're being rude.”

There was an infinitesimal pause before Sagan responded. “Very well,” she said. “Private Dirac, it's time to go. We're needed back on Phoenix Station.”

“Why?” Jared said.

“I'm not going to talk about it in front of him,” Sagan said, indicating Cloud. “No offense, Lieutenant.”

“None taken,” Cloud said.

“Tell me out loud,” Jared said. “Or I'm not going.”

“I'm giving you an order,” Sagan said.

“And I'm telling you to take your orders and shove them up your ass,” Jared said. “I'm suddenly very tired of being part of Special Forces. I'm tired of being shoved around from place to place. Unless you tell me where I'm going and why, I think I'm just staying right here.”

Sagan audibly sighed. She turned to Cloud. “Believe me when I tell you that if any of this passes your lips, I will shoot you myself. At very close range.”

“Lady,” Cloud said. “I believe every word you say.”

“Three hours ago the
Redhawk
was destroyed by the Obin,” Sagan said. “It managed to launch a Skip drone before it was totally destroyed. We've lost two other ships in the last two days; they've entirely disappeared. We think the Obin tried to do the same with the
Redhawk
but weren't able to do it for whatever reason. We got lucky, if you want to call this lucky. Between these three ships and four other Special Forces ships that have disappeared in the last month, it's clear the Obin are targeting Special Forces.”

“Why?” Jared said

“We don't know,” Sagan said. “But General Szilard has decided we're not going to wait until more of our ships get attacked. We going in to get Boutin, Dirac. We move in twelve hours.”

“That's crazy,” Jared said. “All we know is that he's on Arist. That's an entire moon to look at. And no matter how many ships we use, we'll be attacking the Obin home system.”

“We know where he is on Arist,” Sagan said. “And we have a plan to get past the Obin to get him.”

“How?”

“
That
I'm not saying out loud,” Sagan said. “It's the end of discussion, Dirac. Come with me or don't. We've got twelve hours until the attack begins. You've already caused me to waste time coming down here to get you. Don't let's waste any more time getting back.”

Goddamn it, General,
Jane Sagan thought, as she tracked through the
Kite,
heading toward the landing bay control room.
Stop hiding from me, you officious prick
. She took care not to actually send the thought in the conversational mode of the Special Forces. Because of the similarity between thinking and speaking for Special Forces members, nearly every one of them had had a “did I say that out loud” moment or two. But that particular thought spoken aloud would be more trouble than it was worth.

Sagan had been on the hunt for General Szilard since the moment she had gotten the order to retrieve Jared Dirac from his AWOL adventure on Phoenix. The order had come with the notice that Dirac was once again under her command, and with a set of classified memos from Colonel Robbins detailing the latest events in Dirac's life: his trip to Covell, his sudden memory dump and the fact that his consciousness pattern was now definitively that of Charles Boutin. In addition to this material was a note forwarded by Robbins, from General Mattson to Szilard, in which Mattson strongly urged Szilard not to return Dirac to active duty, suggesting he be detained at least until the upcoming round of hostilities featuring the Obin was settled one way or another.

Sagan thought General Mattson was a jackass, but she had to admit he'd hit the nail on the head. Sagan had never been comfortable with Dirac under her command. He'd been a good and competent soldier, but knowing he had a second consciousness in his skull waiting to leak down and contaminate the first made her wary, and aware of the chance that he'd crack on the mission and get someone killed besides himself. Sagan considered it a victory that when he
did
crack, that day on the Phoenix Station promenade, he was on shore leave. And it wasn't until Mattson swooped in to relieve her of further responsibility toward Dirac that she allowed herself to feel pity for him, and to recognize that he had never justified the suspicion she held him in.

That was then,
Sagan thought. Now Dirac was back and he was certifiably around the bend. It had taken most of her will not to tear him a new asshole when he had been insubordinate on Phoenix; if she had had the stun pistol she used on him when he originally cracked, she would have shot him in the head a second time just to make the point that his transplanted attitude didn't impress her. As it was she could barely remain civil to him on the ride back, this time by fast courier shuttle, directly to the
Kite
's bay. Szilard was on board, conferring with
Kite
commander Major Crick. The general had ignored Sagan's earlier hails when she was on the
Kite
and he was on Phoenix Station, but now that the two of them were on the same ship, she was prepared to block his path until she had her say. She marched herself up the stairwell, two steps at a time, and opened the door to the control room.

::I knew you were coming,:: Szilard said to her, as she entered the room. He was sitting in front of the control panel that operated the bay. The officer that operated the bay could do nearly all his tasks via BrainPal, of course, and usually did. The control panel was there as a backup. When it got right down to it, all the ship controls were essentially BrainPal backups.

::Of course you knew I was coming,:: Sagan said. ::You're the commander of the Special Forces. You can locate any of us from our BrainPal signal.::

::It wasn't that,:: Szilard said. ::I just know who you are. The possibility of you
not
coming to find me once I put Dirac back under your command didn't even cross my mind.:: Szilard turned his chair slightly and stretched out his legs. ::I was so confident you were coming that I even cleared out the room so we'd have some privacy. And here we are.::

::Permission to speak freely,:: Sagan asked.

::Of course,:: Szilard said.

::You're out of your goddamned mind, sir,:: Sagan said.

Szilard laughed out loud. ::I didn't expect you to speak
that
freely, Lieutenant,:: he said.

::You've seen the same reports I have,:: Sagan said. ::I know you're aware of how much Dirac is like Boutin now. Even his brain works the same. And yet you want to put him on a mission to find Boutin.::

::Yes,:: Szilard said.

“Christ!” Sagan said, out loud. Special Forces speak was fast and efficient but it wasn't very good for exclamations. Nevertheless, Sagan backed herself up, sending a wave of frustration and irritation toward General Szilard, which he accepted wordlessly. ::I don't want responsibility for him,:: Sagan said, finally.

::I don't remember asking you if you wanted the responsibility,:: Szilard said.

::He's a danger to the other soldiers in my platoon,:: Sagan said. ::And he's a danger to the mission. You know what it means if we don't succeed. We don't need the additional risk.::

::I disagree,:: Szilard said.

::For God's sake,:: Sagan said. ::
Why?
::

::“Keep your friends close and your enemies closer,”:: Szilard said.

::What?:: Sagan said. She was suddenly reminded of a conversation with Cainen, months before, when he had said the same thing.

Szilard repeated the saying, then said, ::We have the enemy as close as he can possibly get. He's in our ranks, and he doesn't know he's the enemy. Dirac thinks he's one of us because as far as he knows he
is
. But now he thinks like our enemy thinks and acts like our enemy acts, and we'll know everything he knows. That's incredibly useful and it's worth the risk.::

::Unless he turns,:: Sagan said.

::You'll know it if he does,:: Szilard said. ::He's integrated with your whole platoon. The minute he acts against your interests you'll know about it and so will everyone else on the mission.::

::Integration isn't mind reading,:: Sagan said. ::We'll only know after he starts doing something. That means he could kill one of my soldiers or give away our positions or any number of other things. Even with integration he's still a real danger.::

::You're right about one thing, Lieutenant,: Szilard said. ::Integration isn't mind reading. Unless you have the right firmware.::

Sagan felt a ping in her communication queue: an upgrade to her BrainPal. Before she could give assent it began to unpack. Sagan felt an uncomfortable jolt as the upgrade propagated, causing a momentary flux in her brain's electrical patterns.

::What the hell was that?:: Sagan asked.

::That was the mind-reading upgrade,:: Szilard said. ::Usually only generals and certain very specialized military investigators get this one, but in your case, I think it's warranted. For this mission, anyway. Once you're back we're going to yank it back out, and if you ever speak about it to anyone we'll have to put you somewhere very small and distant.::

::I don't understand how this is possible,:: Sagan said.

Szilard made a face. ::Think about it, Lieutenant,:: he said. ::Think about how we're communicating. We're thinking, and our BrainPal is interpreting that we are choosing to speak to someone else when we do so. Outside of intent, there is no significant difference between our public thoughts and our private ones. What would be remarkable is if we
couldn't
read minds. It's what the BrainPal is supposed to do.::

::But you don't tell people that,:: Sagan said.

Szilard shrugged. ::No one wants to know they have no privacy, even in their own heads.::

::So you can read my private thoughts,:: Sagan said.

::You mean, like the one where you called me an officious prick?:: Szilard asked.

::There was context for that,:: Sagan said.

::There always is,:: Szilard said. ::Relax, Lieutenant. Yes, I can read your thoughts. I can read the thoughts of anyone who is in my command structure. But usually I
don't
. It's not necessary and most of the time it's almost completely useless anyway.::

::But you can read people's thoughts,:: Sagan said.

::Yes, but most people are
boring,
:: Szilard said. ::When I first got the upgrade, after I was put in command of the Special Forces, I spent an entire day listening to people's thoughts. You know what the vast majority of people are thinking the vast majority of the time? They're thinking, I'm hungry. Or, I need to take a dump. Or, I want to fuck that guy. And then it's back to I'm hungry. And then they repeat the sequence until they die. Trust me, Lieutenant. A day with this capability and your opinion of the complexity and wonder of the human mind will suffer an irreversible decline.::

Sagan smiled. ::If you say so,:: she said.

::I do say so,:: Szilard said. ::However, in your case this capability will be of actual use, because you'll be able to hear Dirac's thoughts and feel his private emotions without him knowing he's being observed. If he is thinking of treason, you'll know it almost before he does. You can react to it before Dirac kills one of your soldiers or compromises your mission. I think that's a sufficient check to the risk of bringing him along.::

::And what should I do if he turns?:: Sagan asked. ::If he becomes a traitor?::

::Then you kill him, of course,:: Szilard said. ::Don't hesitate about it. But you be
sure,
Lieutenant. Now you know that I can get inside your head, so I trust you'll refrain from blowing his head off just because you're feeling twitchy.::

::Yes, General,:: Sagan said.

::Good,:: Szilard said. ::Where is Dirac now?::

::He's with the platoon, getting ready, down there in the bay. I gave him our orders on the way up,:: Sagan said.

::Why don't you check in on him?:: Szilard asked.

::With the upgrade?:: Sagan asked.

::Yes,:: Szilard said. ::Learn to use it before your mission. You're not going to have time to fiddle with it later.::

Sagan accessed her new utility, found Dirac, and listened in.

 

::This is nuts,:: Jared thought to himself.

::You got that right,:: Steven Seaborg said. He'd joined 2nd Platoon while Jared had been away.

::Did I say that out loud?:: Jared said.

::No, I read minds, you jerk,:: Seaborg said, and sent a ping of amusement Jared's way. Whatever issues Jared and Seaborg had had disappeared after the death of Sarah Pauling; Seaborg's jealousy of Jared, or whatever it was, was outweighed by their mutual feeling of the loss of Sarah. Jared would hesitate to call him a friend, but the bond they had was more amicable than not, now reinforced by their additional bond of integration.

Jared glanced around the bay, at the two dozen Skip Drive sleds in it—the total fleet of Skip Drive sleds that had been produced to that point. He looked over at Seaborg, who was climbing into one to check it out.

::So this is what we're going to use to attack an entire planet,:: Seaborg said. ::A couple dozen Special Forces soldiers, each in their own space-traveling gerbil cage.::

::You've seen a gerbil cage?:: Jared asked.

::Of course not,:: Seaborg said. ::I've never even seen a gerbil. But I've seen pictures, and that's what this looks like to me. What sort of idiot would ride in one of these things.::

::I've ridden in one,:: Jared said.

::That answers that,:: Seaborg said. ::And what was it like?::

::I felt exposed,:: Jared said.

::Wonderful,:: Seaborg said, and rolled his eyes.

Jared knew how he felt, but he also saw the logic behind the assault. Nearly all space-faring creatures used ships to get from one point to another in real space; planetary detection and defense grids, by necessity, had the resolution power to detect the large objects that ships tended to be. The Obin defense grid around Arist was no different. A Special Forces ship would be spotted and attacked in an instant; a tiny, wire-frame object barely larger than a man would not.

Special Forces knew this because it had already sent the sleds on six different occasions, sneaking through the defense grid to spy on the communications coming off the moon. It was on the last of these missions that they heard Charles Boutin on a communication beam, broadcasting in the open, sending a voice note toward Obinur asking about the arrival time of a supply ship. The Special Forces soldier who had caught the signal chased it down to its source, a small science outpost on the shore of one of Arist's many large islands. He'd waited to hear a second transmission from Boutin to confirm his location before he returned.

Upon hearing this fact, Jared had accessed the recorded file to hear the voice of the man he was supposed to have been. He'd heard Boutin's voice before, on voice recordings that Wilson and Cainen had played for him; the voice on those recordings was the same as the one on this one. Older, creakier and more stressed, but there was no mistaking the timbre or cadence. Jared was aware just how much Boutin's sounded like his own, which was to be expected and also more than a little disconcerting.

I've got a strange life,
Jared thought, and then glanced up to make sure the thought hadn't leaked. Seaborg was still examining the sled and gave no indication of having heard him.

Jared walked through the collection of sleds toward another object in the room, a spherical object slightly larger than the sleds itself. It was a piece of interesting Special Forces skullduggery called a “capture pod,” used when Special Forces had something or someone they wanted to evacuate but couldn't evacuate themselves. Inside the sphere was a hollow designed to hold a single member of most midsized intelligent species; Special Forces soldiers shoved them in, sealed the pod, and then backed off as the pod's lifters blasted the pod toward the sky. Inside the pod a strong antigravity field kicked in when the lifters did, otherwise the occupant would be flattened. The pod would then be retrieved by a Special Forces ship located overhead.

The capture pod was for Boutin. The plan was simple: Attack the science station where they had located Boutin, and disable its communications. Grab Boutin and stuff him into the capture pod, which would head out to Skip Drive distance—the
Kite
would pop in just long enough to grab the pod and then get out before the Obin could give chase. After Boutin's capture, the science station would be destroyed with an old favorite: a meteor just large enough to wipe the station off the planet, which would hit just far enough away from the station that no one would get suspicious. In this case it would be a hit in the ocean several miles off the coast, so the science station would be obliterated in the ensuing tsunami. The Special Forces had been working with falling rocks for decades; they knew how to make it look like an accident. If everything went to plan, the Obin wouldn't even know they had been attacked.