Orphan Brigade

by Henry V. O'Neil

  Olech raised his own eyebrows while sliding back into his seat. “Thanks for the tip. Good thing I thought of it in time to warn him to keep his mouth shut.”

  “You think he’s all right? To go to a new unit, I mean?”

  “It’s what he wants. He’s just like Ayliss; once he gets an idea in his head there’s no getting it out.” From his slumped position, the chairman exhaled loudly. “So you still think we should send him to the Orphans?”

  “It’s an excellent combat outfit, almost one hundred percent blooded veterans, with strong leadership and seasoned NCOs. You can’t give him a better chance than that.”

  “A better chance . . . they’re a fire brigade, for God’s sake. One of these times they’re gonna get thrown into something that’s way too big for them, and that’ll be the end of the Orphans.”

  “I believe the term is ‘independent’ brigade. And they’ve been tossed into a few scrapes they shouldn’t have walked out of, but they survived anyway.”

  Olech’s lower lip disappeared under his front teeth, but then he brightened somewhat. “Sounds like what happened to Jan out there. Talk about an impossible situation, and he came back from that.”

  “He’s always been very tough.”

  “All right, then. Lieutenant Jander Mortas is now the newest Orphan.” Olech kept the smile, but it was forced. “Fitting in a way, isn’t it?”

  Leeger’s face darkened. “Don’t do that to yourself. You made a very difficult decision when they were young, and the fact that they’re still alive shows it paid off. And someday you’ll be able to explain it to them.”

  “I don’t know about that.” Olech pointed to one of the largest screens on the office walls before hitting another button. Leeger turned to watch, yet again, the final moments for the alien that had accompanied Jander to Glory Main.

  Lights strobed around the transparent tube, and a voice was broadcasting an emergency warning that the alien was transposing into something else. One instant it resembled Captain Amelia Trent, the human being it had impersonated, and the next it burst into thousands of dots with wings, storming around the tube in a cloud of chemical poisons. Fire exploded inside the cylinder, destroying the alien, the light so intense that it blinded the camera for an instant.

  Although they’d watched it many times before, the two men sat in silence when it was over. Leeger sensed that his boss needed him to say something.

  “We always knew there were things out there that we wouldn’t be able to explain. Now we’ve seen one of them.”

  “Still not sure what we’ve seen.” The chairman’s voice was contemplative, and his eyes were distant. “Or why there was only one of them.”

  “Maybe it was a test, to see if they could get by our technology.”

  “Maybe.” Olech changed the image on the screen. A kind-­looking man with gray hair was waving at them now, an old picture of Interplanetary President Daniel Larkin. Olech and a small circle of senators had come to power literally over his dead body. “You know, the longer I hold this job, the more I wonder if Dan Larkin wasn’t right after all. Probably looking down on us all these years, laughing his ass off.”

  Mortas was back in the circular room, but no longer considered it a cell. He sat on the bed, reading a long string of messages that had accumulated during his ordeal. The screen of his handheld was loaded with outdated notes from classmates and other friends, wishing him safe travel and an even safer time in the war zone. Although it had been only a few weeks, Mortas felt a great deal of time had passed and that an enormous gulf separated him from those ­people.

  The jacket of his dress uniform was on the bed next to him, and he would have changed completely except his father’s minions hadn’t managed to scrape together a set of fatigues for him yet. It was just as well; he’d been cleared to make one communication to Earth and needed the privacy.

  Punching in the access codes he’d been provided, Mortas found his heart beating just a little faster when the device on the other end activated. A familiar face appeared, blond hair and a giant, excited smile.

  “Jan! It’s you! It’s really you!” his sister Ayliss shouted at him, the image distorting as she shook the device at her end. A line of code at the bottom of the screen said she was in Buenos Aires, and from her outfit he guessed it was night. The golden hair had been fashioned into long curls that were then pinned up at the back of her head, and she was wearing a light blue dress that exposed one shoulder completely.

  “Yeah, it’s me.” Mortas couldn’t keep the smile from his features. “I suppose you heard I didn’t get very far.”

  “That’s not what I heard at all.” The face grew older-­sister grave. “I heard you did some great things out there.”

  The inexact wording brought him back to one of the more unpleasant realities of being a member of the Mortas family, the basic assumption that someone was always listening. Security personnel, friends of their father, enemies of their father, journalists, even out-­and-­out spies. It had always irked him, and with so much to tell his sister, it annoyed him even more.

  “Oh, I didn’t do all that much . . . it was the ­people I was with. They really pulled me through.”

  “From what I was told, you did a little pulling yourself.”

  He allowed the smile to return. “And who would have been telling you that?”

  “Olech’s got his sources, and I have mine.” An impish grin, which usually meant she was about to do something that would rankle their father. “And sometimes they’re the same ­people.”

  “He asked me to become one of those ­people, just a while ago.”

  “I know. You took it, right? You’re going to be smart, this time?”

  “Never done the smart thing before, why start now?”

  The blue eyes lost their humor, and he thought some of the color left her cheeks. “No. You’re not going back out there?”

  “I have to.”

  “No you don’t!” The words were soft, the voice angry. “How can I make you see that? I work with the veterans, they tell me all about what it’s like out there, and now you’ve seen it—­”

  “Exactly.”

  An expression of pain, mixed with sadness. “You know, I only heard you were missing after they’d found you. And even then it was like the floor just fell away from me, as if somebody punched me right in the stomach. I thought I’d prepared myself, but now I know there’s no getting ready for something like that. And you’ve got the chance to keep me from going through that again, and what are you doing? Throwing it away.”

  “You like the idea so much, you take the job. I’m sure he’d give it to you.”

  A minute shake of the head, the curls bouncing. “So not fair, Jan. I will never work for him.”

  “I’m sorry.” The words came out as a frustrated whisper. Wishing he could speak freely, to explain it all, to tell her what it had been like and not sure he could actually do that if given the chance. “Listen—­”

  There was a buzzing sound at the hatch, and he realized he didn’t know how to open it. Looking back at the screen. “Hey, someone’s at the door, can you give me a moment to let them in?”

  “That’s all right, Jan.” The finality of the words was matched by the leaden tone, and for a moment he was looking at his father again. “I gotta go too. I’ve got a function.”

  Her head cocked to one side reflexively, an Ayliss quirk that told him she’d just rolled a tear back into her eye before it got loose.

  “You be careful out there, all right?”

  “I will. Don’t worry.”

  Ayliss’s eyes were no longer focused on him, his sister’s voice growing distant as if a shell were closing around her. “You come back. No matter what you have to do. Come back. That’s all I ask.”

  “You can count on me.”

  “I love you, Jan. No matter
how stupid you are.”

  “I love you, Ayliss. Don’t worry.”

  The communication broke off, terminated from the other end.

  The gray fatigues were stiff and new, and his boots were black and unscuffed. Shipping out for the first time, Mortas had been terribly conscious of the way his attire had screamed his status as a newbie. Now he found he didn’t care.

  Alone in the circular room, he experienced a strange feeling of suspension, a frozen disassociation with his surroundings. Thoughts cascaded over each other, tumbling from his survival experiences to his incarceration, rebounding off the interview with his father and Ayliss’s anger. Why had it been so difficult to tell them what he’d discovered out there, the things he’d learned about himself and the bond he’d forged with the others?

  The attendant who’d brought his latest uniform had also given him a small daypack, and Mortas reached for it now. It would probably contain the same food ration and toiletries that had been in the other bag, the one that had been stolen from him once he’d been sealed in the transit tube that was supposed to have taken him to his first unit.

  All those things were in there, but his searching hand closed on something eerily familiar, as if it had been waiting for him. Long and black, it had felt clumsy in his hand the first time he’d hefted it. It once had a smaller partner, but that wasn’t in the bag and Mortas presumed it was lost forever. Resting in its dark sheath, Cranther’s fighting knife beckoned to him, asking him to draw it. Remembering the first time he’d used it, in a frenzy of fear as he stood face-­to-­face with a Sim militiaman whose only crime had been walking guard on a bridge Mortas and the others needed to cross. And the other time, right in the middle of the crisis at the enemy spacedrome, when he’d driven it into a Sim soldier who hadn’t realized he was human and an enemy.

  The evil blade came out pristine and black, making him wonder who might have cleaned it when a tiny piece of paper separated from the metal and fluttered to the floor. Mortas bent over and picked it up, mindful of the exposed blade. There was handwriting on the paper, a woman’s script:

  Paranoia is healthy, Lieutenant. Nurture yours.

  The signature identified the author as a Captain Erica Varick, and Mortas was at a loss until he considered just who might have secured Cranther’s knife for him. He’d last seen it being collected by strangers in biohazard suits, once he and the alien impersonating Amelia Trent had been safely secured in their decontamination tubes. Standing nearby, in the battle-­scarred armor of the all-­female Banshees, had been the commander of the armed escorts who had met them when they reached Glory Main.

  Calm and confident, she’d contradicted the order telling Mortas to leave all weapons on the hijacked Wren. Next she’d told him to set aside anything he wanted to keep while he and Trent were stripping naked. She’d no doubt seen what Trent had turned into and, judging from the note, considered Mortas quite the rube. He’d never seen her face, and had assumed neither of Cranther’s knives would be returned to him.

  Mortas was sliding the weapon back into its scabbard when the screen of his handheld lit up and the device beeped at him. The new message was terse, orders assigning him to the First Brigade (Independent) of the Human Defense Force and instructing him to report immediately for embarkation. Mortas frowned, never having heard of the unit and wondering why it wasn’t associated with a larger organization such as a division or a corps.

  The handheld beeped again, with an addendum for the original message, and he opened it with interest. It was almost the same set of orders, except the unit’s name had been changed to read:

  First Independent Brigade, Human Defense Force—­Orphans.

  CHAPTER TWO

  The party was in full swing by the time Ayliss got there. She’d spent most of the early evening at a tedious state function, where ­people hoping to eventually get close to her father had spent a lot of time trying to get close to her. Ayliss considered it funny that so many of the climbers hadn’t bothered to learn how she felt about Olech, and she made no effort to educate them. After all, she was now in the information business and had already learned that knowledge can be a very pricey thing.

  As a minor representative with the Veterans Auxiliary, Ayliss spent much of her time traveling, ostensibly to see how the returned veterans of the long war were being treated. She certainly did that, and with a vigor that had elicited the amazement of her Auxiliary superiors. They’d expected her to be spoiled and lazy, and their ignorance of her motives was another oddity that Ayliss Mortas found amusing.

  But even her mirth had limits, so after the more senior officials had left the earlier function she’d decided it was time for some real fun. A few of the climbers had still been trying to make conversation with her, so Ayliss excused herself with the genuine explanation that she needed to speak with her security detail. As Olech Mortas’s daughter, Ayliss had been surrounded by bodyguards—­hers and those of her playmates—­from a very early age. An informal protocol existed, designed to keep the protectors of the elite from getting in each other’s way. At functions like this one the host was responsible for security, and so Ayliss’s own modest bodyguard detachment had been required to wait outside the loud ballroom along with several other details.

  Having found her team, she’d quietly whispered into the ear of its leader, a man not much older than her twenty-­three years named Lee Selkirk. The security man stood an inch under six feet, which made him one inch taller than his charge. Selkirk’s brown hair was cut short at the top of a frame that was toned and lean, and his eyes were in constant motion as he listened to Ayliss murmuring that it was time to seek entertainment elsewhere.

  Elsewhere was a penthouse atop a skyscraper whose tenants were among Argentina’s uppermost echelon. Ayliss had been raised and educated alongside the children of rich families from across the settled planets, and the penthouse party was being thrown by a friend from university days named Marco. Earth’s overpopulation might have fueled the settlement of the nearest habitable planets many decades before, and the never-­ending war had certainly taken its human toll, but even so, the streets were far too congested for ­people of her station to utilize surface travel most of the time. Their armored shuttle had been forced to circle twice before touching down on the penthouse’s landing pad, waiting while other airborne partygoers were being dropped off. The enormous tower practically blazed with light, and dancing figures could be seen through a wall of rocket-­proof glass. While they circled, Ayliss studied the darkly enormous expanse of the Rio de la Plata far below.

  Her blue off-­the-­shoulder gown and fancy coif were only slightly out of place in the throng when she walked off the landing pad with her guards. Marco’s jacketed attendants escorted Selkirk and the rest of the detail to an interior room where they would wait with the other security personnel, and Ayliss glided across the dance floor alone. The room was high-­ceilinged with broad white walls and carpet the color of blood, and it contained at least two hundred ­people. A tray with champagne went by, and she took one of the long-­stemmed glasses as her first drink of the evening.

  Alcohol wasn’t the only recreation available, and she detected the aroma of herbal intoxicants while sliding past the dancers. She was assaulted by wild greetings from university classmates, the driving beat of the music, and assorted dilations and gyrations, but she responded in good grace as she’d been taught. Normally Ayliss would have been all too happy to join in on the frivolity, especially after the dryness of the earlier function, but she wasn’t there to mingle.

  Several doorways punctured the unadorned back wall, and the rooms behind them were much smaller and considerably darker. Expensive couches and antique chairs took up most of the space, much of it having been moved from the main party area. Ayliss was pleased by the noise-­dampening effect of the smaller chambers, and stopped for a moment to let her eyes adjust. Young figures writhed on the couches to one side, but she stee
red away from them toward a similar space where the attendees seemed to be taking a break from the action.

  The seating in this room was individual, and she slipped past a circle of shadowy figures talking in spaced-­out voices.

  “Get it? The Sims are human. In fact they’re us, but from the future. That’s why they don’t screw. They make new Sims in test tubes, which explains why there’s so many of them.”

  “If they’re just us from the future, how come their tech is so lousy?”

  “It’s not lousy, just spotty. Exactly what our tech would be like if we were on a spaceship that got caught up in somebody else’s Step and tossed into the past. We’d have only what was on the ship, and we’d have to reinvent the rest.”

  “You think that was it? The Step? That was what caused this whole mess?”

  “Of course. In all those decades of space exploration, we never bumped into anything sentient until we invented the Step. Moving faster than light opens all sorts of doors, like time travel. Don’t you see? Nobody’s creating the Sims at all. We just opened the door to the future . . . and out came our great-­great-­great-­grandchildren.”

  Ayliss screwed up her face even though no one could see it. She’d never heard that theory before, and was pondering its value when she reached the far wall. Her eyes hadn’t adjusted to the deeper gloom when a low male voice said hello from nearby. She made out a set of long legs that were attached to a large, lounging figure in a stuffed chair, and a hand moved in the shadows to indicate an open seat.

  She only knew the man by his nickname of Python, but rumor had it that he’d served a full hitch in the war. Other stories spanned the gamut, saying he was European royalty, a minor music star, and even a fighter in underground death matches. Ayliss was only certain that he sold drugs, which meant he was connected to a wide range of illicit sources.

  Once seated, Ayliss had a clear view of the open entranceway but was relatively sure the shadows concealed them. “Nice to see you again.”