“If that were true, we wouldn’t be having this discussion. He’s hoping Ayliss will take you with her. You’ll have no authority over her security detail, which will be completely restaffed, but he’s more than happy to have you with her.”
Leeger smiled. “You see, the Chairman is quite a pragmatist. Most fathers wouldn’t realize that it’s not a bad thing to have a trained fighter sleeping next to their daughters. You can’t be one of her bodyguards anymore, but as the boyfriend of a woman who’s probably headed to a dangerous place, you’ve got a lot to recommend you.”
The sun wasn’t quite down when Mortas noticed the activity outside his office window. B Company’s first sergeant was directing a work party of some kind, and they were erecting tall poles at intervals along the edge of the parade field. He walked over to the window to see what they were doing, and slowly became aware of the sounds inside the barracks. The building had been practically empty for the last two days, but now it echoed with young male voices.
The work party finished setting up the poles on the barracks side of the field, then broke up into teams that moved out onto the grass. Separated by many yards, they began setting up even more of the unidentified rods, this time in large circles. Intrigued, Mortas looked around the office for his hat.
The filthy rags he and the others had been wearing when they were evacuated from Fractus had been destroyed aboard ship, and every man had been scrubbed within an inch of his life before undergoing chemical decontamination. They’d been issued the one-piece flight suits worn by Fleet personnel over the loud objections of the surviving Orphans, and he’d made a point of getting out of the suit as soon as he’d returned to the battalion area. He now wore the woodland camouflage that had been issued to him on his first day.
Going out into the hallway, Mortas was surprised to see shadows all along the corridor from inside the soldiers’ rooms. Dak and Mecklinger had been successful in rounding up the remaining members of First Platoon, it seemed.
Heading down the stairs, Mortas encountered one of the new men leaning heavily on the side rail. The soldier gingerly took a step down, then used his free hand to move what was an obviously wounded leg. Mortas remembered him as a baby-faced blond who looked a little pudgy, but when he got alongside him the face that suddenly snapped in his direction was worn and thin. The eyes were startled and angry, but they softened immediately.
“Sorry, Lieutenant. You surprised me.”
“I know the feeling. Here.” Taking the man’s arm, he looped it over his shoulder. They slowly worked their way down the steps.
“The other guys said we’re gonna do some kind of memorial. That true, sir?”
“I hadn’t heard that, but the sergeant major told me Colonel Watt’s going to speak to us.”
“You hear the rumor, sir?”
“Which one would that be? The one where the war is over?”
“I like that one. No, I heard that we’re so understrength that they’re gonna bust up the outfit.”
They’d reached the bottom of the stairs, and Mortas managed to keep the shock off his face. He released the man’s arm and opened the outside door, holding it ajar with his boot while helping him to limp forward.
“No. I hadn’t heard that one. You suppose that’s what Colonel Watt’s gonna tell us?”
“God I hope not.” They went down the three outside steps and onto the grass. The sky was darkening, and soldiers in woodland camouflage were gathering on the field in twos and threes. “I’ll tell you the truth, sir. When they told me I was going to the Orphans they said this brigade was made up of kill-crazy suicide machines. I thought I was a goner for sure.”
Two First Platoon soldiers appeared out of the shadows, taking the new man’s arms over their shoulders after greeting Mortas. The new man stopped them when they started leading him toward a spot where the rest of the platoon was gathering.
“But ya know, right in the middle of that whole thing, all the explosions and the shooting and Sam showing up out of nowhere, I suddenly realized that everybody around me knew what he was doing. And I was scared to death, but I joined in, and I kept doing what the others were doing, then all of a sudden it was over.”
“You did fine, Ithaca.” One of the veterans holding him up muttered. “We all did.”
“Ithaca? That’s your name?”
“Yes, sir.”
“I’m sorry I didn’t know that, Ithaca. I promise I’ll remember.”
“Aw fuck that, sir.” Ithaca grinned, and the baby face was back for a moment. “If you got any say in this, how about you keep us with you? They break us up, try to keep the platoon together.”
“I’ll see what I can do. Maybe they’re gonna leave us alone.”
A light burst into life behind him, and Mortas turned to see what it was. One after the other, the poles bordering the field caught fire. Torches. He looked out into the darkness and saw figures among the circles of the tall rods, lighting tapers, then setting the circles alight. He finally understood what had been going on. The brigade commander would address the remnants of the battalion, then they would separate into smaller units and move into the different circles to eulogize the fallen. It was a warm night, but he shivered at the prospect of memorializing so many dead.
Aided by the fire, he spotted Dak and a clutch of First Platoon troops. More and more soldiers from the battalion were arriving on the field, and there seemed little organization to any of it. He passed several men from other companies as he walked, mostly faces he recognized, and was touched to be greeted with warmth. With inclusion.
Getting closer, it was impossible not to choke up. The platoon had never counted more than thirty members, but now they were under twenty, many of them clearly just returned from the hospital. All around him were leg braces and slings, and he noted that Ithaca was now sitting on the grass with two other First Platoon men who were too injured to stand for long. He decided that was why they weren’t falling in for the standard battalion formation as he walked up. Quiet voices greeted him, hands squeezing his shoulder or brushing his sleeves, and he returned the gestures.
“Hey, sir.”
“Good to see you, Lieutenant.”
“They bustin’ us up, El-tee?”
Mortas managed a smile. “I’m just a new lieutenant. What makes you think they tell me shit?”
They shared a subdued laugh, then First Sergeant Ettleman’s voice came from the direction of the battalion headquarters, gentle, respectful.
“B Company, on your feet.”
The same commands sounded from the other companies, and Mortas looked up to see a group of men coming down the walkway from the hilltop command building. They were helping a tall, stocky man whose left leg was in a brace, and he found a smile—a real one—blossoming on his face.
“Hey, it’s Major Hatton!”
“I thought he was dead.”
“I heard he lost both his legs.”
“Ya think they’ll give him the battalion?”
“Why not? They’re gonna break us up anyway.”
“Fuck you. We ain’t goin’ nowhere. Who’d do all the dirty work if they got rid of the Orphans?”
The chatter ended with a chorus of startled commands, from the troops closest to the approaching group.
“Battalion, atten-shun!”
“It’s Colonel Watt! It’s the brigade commander!”
Mortas had already come to attention, automatically, an ingrained response, but he now saw that one of the men helping Major Hatton was Colonel Watt himself. Emile Dassa was one of the others, as was the intelligence officer, Captain Pappas. They carefully lowered Hatton to the grass, slightly uphill and facing the semicircle of troops, before Colonel Watt spoke.
“At ease, men. Please have a seat. Everybody sit down.” The throng in the shadows made a long, sighing sound as the wounded we
re helped back to the grass and the others, mostly sporting aching muscles and minor injuries, joined them with effort.
Watt’s broad shoulders were outlined by the lights from the battalion headquarters behind him, and he raised his hands with the fingers spread, as if holding something in front of him that no one else could see.
“It’s hard to know how to feel, isn’t it? I can’t tell you how sorry I am about the way things went. But I also can’t tell you how proud I am of the way things went. I’m heartbroken to see how many Orphans we’re missing, and yet I’m grateful to every one of them.
“So if you’re having a hard time—as I am—figuring out how you feel, that’s all right. I won’t pretend to tell you how to handle this, but I will suggest that if our dead comrades were given the chance to switch places with any of us here, they would turn that chance down. Just as I know that every man here would gladly, instantly, take the place of our lost Orphans if he could.”
Watt’s hands came together, and his arms trembled slightly.
“Tonight you will be memorializing your fallen brothers. You’ll speak of their strength, their humanity, their humor, and their flaws. I’ll leave that in your capable hands.”
The stocky man stopped for a moment, and for that instant Mortas heard only the hissing of the nearby torches. Even before the brigade commander began to speak again, Mortas knew what was coming. Tears welled up in his eyes, making him glad of the darkness.
“I won’t talk much longer. I just wanted to say that I’ve been in ten different units during this war, and that I’ve never seen one that came even close to the Orphan Brigade. This unit was a special unit, a different unit, made up mostly of people who volunteered to be a part of it. We did things the right way, the smart way, and when that word got around it attracted soldiers who wanted to fight alongside the very best.”
Watt’s face broke into an involuntary grin, and he didn’t try to hide it.
“I’ll never forget this one time . . .”
Hours later, Mortas emerged from the silent barracks onto the bare parade field. The torches had been extinguished and removed, but the scent of smoke still lingered. The night air was cool, made more so by his attire. Shorts and running shoes, a T-shirt and his scarred torso armor. The bandage on his left arm was now visible from the wound where the Sim infiltrator had cut him, and he scratched it idly as he walked out onto the grass. Spreading his legs, he bent over and began to stretch.
The platoon had gathered inside one of the torch rings after Colonel Watt was finished eulogizing the brigade, and they’d taken turns memorializing the fallen. Dak had taken the lead, but he’d asked Mortas to say something about Berland. Mortas had been surprised by the number of things he’d been able to mention, wisdom Berland had passed to him in the short time he’d been his platoon sergeant.
An ASSL who’d known Daederus had joined them and spoken about his friend, and Mortas had been able to contribute a few words about the grounded flyer’s last actions. Ladaglia had so many friends in the platoon that he’d seen no reason to recount the man’s passing, but no one had seemed to have known Jute very well. Mortas had told them about the man’s prescient assessment of the fix they’d been in, and his dedication to stand with the Orphans no matter what it ultimately cost him.
All around them, warmed by different torch circles, the battalion’s survivors had praised, mocked, and bid farewell to the men who had marched and slept and eaten and laughed and died next to them. Mortas had been surprised by the amount of laughter, but as each group had finished and then walked off, they’d done so in silence. Many had gone to their bunks, but many more had gone back out to continue the unauthorized celebration of the fact that they were still alive. Dassa had appeared out of the gloom as Mortas had walked toward B Company’s barracks.
“Hey, Jan.”
“Sir.”
“It’s Emile. Don’t make me beat that into you.”
“Somehow I knew we were gonna have to finish that fight, one of these days.”
They’d shared a laugh, and Dassa had stopped walking. Mortas had done the same, and the younger man had waited until they were alone. Shadows moved around on the field, dousing the lights, but they were out of earshot and might as well have been ghosts.
“You did really well out there, Jan. For a first-timer, under circumstances like those, you did just fine.”
“Thanks, Emile. That means a lot, coming from you.”
“I don’t know how they’re gonna work this, but if we both got shipped to the same unit, I wouldn’t complain.”
A breeze had washed across Mortas’s face just then, and he’d felt some of the weight lifting off and floating away with the wind.
“I’d like that too.”
They’d shaken hands, and Dassa had disappeared. Standing there, watching the wraiths taking down the smoking torches, he’d remembered Berland’s request that he get the platoon reassigned to a safe, cushy job somewhere. The words of the memorial had come back to him, the stories and the names and the sad truth that he hadn’t known so many of those men. He hadn’t even known Ithaca’s name until the new man told it to him.
“I didn’t know them. They were my platoon, and I didn’t know them.” The words had come out unbidden, whispered, then gone. Carried away like the smoke and the eulogies and the Orphan Brigade itself. The truth remained, however, and he didn’t like it. So he decided to do something about it.
While changing into his athletic clothing, Mortas had studied the platoon roster on the office wall. It hadn’t been updated since the battle, and the names of the deceased had bitten into him. He’d only read the entire list once, and spent the rest of the time memorizing the names of the living.
He finished stretching and began to jog slowly in place, the words whispered under his breath.
“Sergeant Dak, platoon sergeant.”
He shuffled forward, his sore legs fighting the weight of the armor as he crossed the dark expanse.
“Sergeant Mecklinger, squad leader.”
The grass ended, and he was out on the road, jogging now, feeling the machine coming alive. Telling him that he was alive. That the uncertain future was a thing for the next day, the next hour, maybe even the next minute, but at that moment, right there, he was alive and in control.
The names came out evenly now, and Mortas repeated them as he ran down the dark road and disappeared.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
No book comes into existence by itself. I want to thank my editor at HarperVoyager, Kelly O’Connor, for her invaluable advice in the writing of Orphan Brigade. Additionally, I’d like to acknowledge HarperVoyager publicists Pamela Spengler-Jaffee and Lauren Jackson, for all their hard work in promoting this series. Special thanks goes out to publicity expert Beverly Bambury, for her marketing expertise and her tireless efforts.
I would also like to thank my West Point classmates who have provided feedback on the series so far, especially Michael McGurk, Meg Roosma, Chris Franchek, Keith Landry, and Ginni Guiton. Many of them took the time to read different drafts of Orphan Brigade as it was being written, providing helpful insights along the way.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
HENRY V. O’NEIL is the pen name used by award-winning mystery novelist Vincent H. O’Neil for his science-fiction work. A graduate of West Point, he served in the U.S. Army Infantry with the Tenth Mountain Division at Fort Drum, New York, and the 1st Battalion (Airborne) of the 508th Infantry in Panama. He has also worked as a risk manager, a marketing copywriter, and an apprentice librarian.
In 2005 he won the St. Martin’s Press Malice Domestic Award with his debut mystery novel Murder in Exile. That was followed by three more books in the Exile series: Reduced Circumstances, Exile Trust, and Contest of Wills. He has also written a theater-themed mystery novel entitled Death Troupe and a horror novel featuring his first female protagonist, a tal
e of the supernatural called Interlands.
www.vincenthoneil.com
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COPYRIGHT
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously and are not to be construed as real. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, organizations, or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
ORPHAN BRIGADE. Copyright © 2015 by Henry V. O’Neil. All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the nonexclusive, nontransferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, decompiled, reverse-engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins e-books.
EPub Edition JANUARY 2015 ISBN: 9780062359209
Print Edition ISBN: 9780062359216
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