The Ghost Brigades omw-2

by John Scalzi

  ::But we're more than that,:: Martin continued. ::We're the first people organically adapted to living in space. Every body system is organic, even the BrainPal—we've got the first totally organic BrainPals. That's one improvement that's going to be passed down to the general Special Forces population the next time they do a new body edition. Everything we are is expressed in our DNA. If they can find a way to let us breed naturally, we'll have a new species: Homo astrum, who can live between the planets. We won't have to fight anyone for real estate then. And that means humans win.::

  ::Unless you don't want to look like a turtle,:: Jared said.

  Martin sent a sharp ping of amusement. ::Fair enough,:: he said. ::There is that. And we know it. We call ourselves the Gamer-ans, you know.::

  Jared fuzzed a moment until the reference came into his head, from back in the evenings at Camp Carson, watching science fiction films at ten times speed. "Like the Japanese monster?::

  ::You got it,:: Martin said.

  ::Do you shoot fire too?:: Jared asked.

  ::Ask the Obin,:: Martin said.

  The sled entered the ring.

  Jared saw the dead man almost as soon as they slipped through the hole in the side of Covell Station.

  The Gamerans had informed Special Forces that Covell Station was largely intact, but "largely intact" clearly meant something different to troops who thrive in hard vacuum. Covell Station was airless and lifeless and gravityless, although some electrical systems remarkably still had power, thanks to solar panels and hardy engineering. The Gamerans knew the station well; they had been in it before, retrieving files, documents, and objects that had not already been destroyed or looted by the Obin. The one thing they didn't retrieve was the dead; the Obin still came to the station from time to time and might notice if the number of the dead dramatically reduced over time. So the dead remained, floating cold and desiccated through the station.

  The dead man was wedged up against a corridor bulkhead. Jared suspected he hadn't been there when the hole in the hull they slipped through was made: The explosive decompression would have sucked him right out into space. Jared turned to confirm this with Martin.

  ::He's new,:: Martin confirmed. ::To this section, anyway. The dead drift a lot around here, along with everything else. Is that someone you're looking for?::

  Jared drifted toward the dead man. The man's body was parched and dried, all the moisture long since boiled away. He would have been unrecognizable even if Boutin had known him.

  Jared looked at the man's lab coat; the name tag claimed him to be Uptal Chatterjee. His papery skin was green. The name was right for a colonist, but he'd clearly been a citizen of a Western nation at one point.

  ::I don't know who he is,:: Jared said.

  "Come on, then,:: Martin said. He grabbed the railing with both left hands and propelled himself down the corridor. Jared followed, letting go of the railing on occasion to get past a dead body bumping through the corridor. He wondered if he might find Zoe Boutin floating in the corridors or other part of the station.

  No, a thought said. They never found her body. They found hardly any colonist bodies.

  ::Stop,:: Jared said to Martin.

  ::What is it?:: Martin said.

  ::I'm remembering,:: Jared said, and closed his eyes, even through they were behind his cowl. When he opened them, he felt sharper and more focused. He also knew exactly where he wanted to go.

  ::Follow me,:: Jared said.

  Jared and Martin had entered the station in the weapons wing of the station. Coreward lay navigation and biomedical research; in the center was a large zero-g lab. Jared led Martin coreward and then clockwise through the corridors, pausing occasionally to let Martin pry open deactivated emergency doors with a jack-like piston. Corridor lights, fed by the solar panels, glowed feebly but more than enough for Jared's enhanced vision.

  ::Here,:: Jared said, eventually. ::This is where I did my work. This is my laboratory.::

  The laboratory was filled with detritus and bullet holes. Whoever had come through was not interested in preserving the technical work of the lab; they had just wanted everyone dead. Blackened, dried blood was visible on tabletops and down the side of a desk. At least one person had been shot here, but there was no body.

  Jerome Kos, Jared thought. That was the name of my assistant. He was originally from Guatemala but immigrated to the United States when he was a kid. He was the one to solve the buffer overflow—

  ::Crap,:: Jared said. The memory of Jerry Kos floated in his! head, looking for context. Jared scanned the room, looking for computers or memory storage devices; there was nothing. ::Did your people take the computers from here?:: he asked Martin.

  ::Not from this room,:: Martin said. "Some of the labs were missing computers and other equipment before we ever got a chance to swing through. The Obin or whoever must have taken them.::

  Jared pushed himself over to a desk he knew was Boutin's. Whatever had been on the top of the desk had long since floated away. Jared opened the desk drawers to find office supplies, hanger folders and other, not particularly useful things. As Jared was closing the drawer with the hanger folders, he saw the papers in one of them. He stopped and pulled one out; it was a drawing, signed by Zoe Boutin with more enthusiasm than precision.

  She drew me one a week, in Wednesday art period, Jared remembered. I would take the new one and hang it with a pushpin, and take the old one and file it. I never threw any away. Jared glanced up at the corkboard above the desk; there were pushpins in it, but no picture. The last one was almost certainly floating somewhere in the room. Jared had to fight off the urge to look for it until he found it. Instead he pushed off from the desk toward the door, slipping out into the corridor before Martin could ask him where he was going. Martin raced to keep up.

  The work corridors of Covell Station were clinical and sterile; the family quarters worked hard to be the opposite. Carpeting— albeit of the industrial sort—covered the floors. Children in art classes had been encouraged to paint the corridor walls, which featured suns and cats and hills with flowers in pictures that were not art unless you were a parent and could be nothing but if you were. The debris in the corridor and occasional dark smear against the wall worked against the cheer.

  As a research head with a child, Boutin received larger quarters than most, which still meant it was almost unbearably compact; space is at a premium in space stations. Boutin's apartment lay at the end of C corridor (C for cat—the walls were painted with anatomically divergent cats of all sorts), apartment 10. Jared pulled himself down the corridor toward apartment 10. The door was closed but unlocked. Jared slid the door open and let himself in.

  As everywhere, objects floated silently in the room. Jared recognized some things but not others. A book that was a gift from a college friend. Some picture in a frame. A pen. A rug he and Cheryl bought on their honeymoon.

  Cheryl. His wife, dead from a fall while hiking. She died just before he left for this posting. Her funeral was on the second-to-last day before he came here. He remembered holding Zoe's hand at the funeral, listening to Zoe ask why her mother had to leave and making him promise he would never leave her. He promised, of course.

  Boutin's bedroom was compact; Zoe's, one room over, would have been uncomfortable for anyone who wasn't five. The tiny child's bed was shoved along one corner, so securely wedged there that it hadn't floated away; even the mattress stayed stuck. Picture books, toys and stuffed animals hovered. One caught Jared's eye, and he reached for it.

  Babar the Elephant. Phoenix had been colonized before the Colonial Union stopped accepting colonists from wealthy countries; there was a large French population, from which Boutin was descended. Babar was a popular children's character on Phoenix, along with Asterix, Tintin and the Silly Man, reminders of childhoods on a planet so distant from Phoenix that no one thought much about it. Zoe had never seen an elephant in real life—very few of them ever made it into space—but she had nonetheless been
delighted with the Babar when Cheryl gave it to her on her fourth birthday. After Cheryl died Zoe made Babar a totem; she refused to go anywhere without it.

  He remembered Zoe crying for it while he was dropping her off at Helene Greene's apartment, as he prepared to travel to Phoenix for several weeks of late-stage testing work. He was already late for the shuttle; he had no time to get it. He finally settled her down by promising to find her a Celeste for her Babar. Placated, she gave him a kiss and went into Kay Greene's room to play with her friend. He then promptly forgot about Babar and Celeste until the day he was scheduled to return to Omagh and Covell. He was thinking of some reasonable excuse to explain why he was coming home empty-handed when he was pulled aside and told that Omagh and Covell had been attacked, and that everyone on the base and on the colony was dead, and that his daughter, best beloved, died alone and frightened, and far away from anyone that ever loved her.

  Jared held Babar while the barrier between his consciousness and Boutin's memories crumbled, feeling Boutin's grief and anger as if it were his own. This was it. This was the event that set him on the path to treason, the death of his daughter, his Zoe Jolie, his joy. Jared, helpless to guard against it, felt what Boutin felt: the sick horror of unwillingly picturing his child's death, the hollow, horrible ache standing in that place in his life where his daughter had been, and mad, acidic desire to do something more than mourn.

  The torrent of memory wracked Jared, and he gasped as each new thing hit his consciousness and dug in. They tumbled in too fast to be complete or to be completely understood, the broad strokes of memory defining the shape of Boutin's path. Jared had no memory of his first contact with the Obin; only a sense of release, as if making the decision freed him from a lingering sense of pain and rage—but he saw himself making a deal with the Obin for a safe haven in exchange for his knowledge of the Brain-Pal and consciousness research.

  The details of Boutin's scientific work eluded him; the training they required to comprehend required pathways of understanding Jared simply didn't have. What he had were the memories of sensual experience: the pleasure in planning to fake his death and make his escape, the pain of separation from Zoe', the desire to leave the human sphere and start his work and create his revenge.

  Here and there in this cauldron of sensation and emotion, concrete memories winked like jewels—data repeated across the memory field; things to be remembered from more than one incident. Even then some things still flickered in memory, but just out of reach—knowing Zoe was the key to Boutin's defection but not knowing exactly why the key turned, and feeling the answer sway from his grasp as he reached for it, tantalizing and torturous.

  Jared turned away to focus on the nuggets of memory that were hard, solid and within reach. Jared's consciousness circled one of these, a place name, roughly translated from a language spoken by creatures that didn't speak like humans.

  And Jared knew where Boutin was.

  The front door to the apartment slid open and Martin clambered through. He spotted Jared in Zoe's room and pushed over to him. ::Time to go, Dirac,:: he said. ::Varley tells me Obin are on their way. They must have bugged the place. Stupid of me.::

  ::Give me a minute,:: Jared said.

  ::We don't have a minute.:: Martin said.

  ::All right,:: Jared said. He pushed out of the room, taking Babar with him.

  ::Now's not the best time for souvenirs,:: Martin said.

  ::Shut up,:: Jared said. ::Let's go.:: He pushed out of Boutin's apartment without looking back to see if Martin was keeping up.

  Uptal Chatterjee was where Jared and Martin had left him. The Obin scout craft hovering outside the hull breach was new.

  ::There are other ways out of this place,:: Jared said, as he and Martin huddled by Chatterjee's body. The scout was visible at an angle, but it apparently hadn't spotted them yet.

  ::Sure there are other ways,:: Martin said. ::The question is can we get to any of them before more of these guys show up. We can take one of them if we have to. More, there's going to be a problem.::

  ::Where is your squad?:: Jared asked.

  ::They're on their way,:: Martin said. ::We try to keep our movements outside the rings to a bare minimum.::

  ::A fine idea any other time but this,:: Jared said.

  ::I don't recognize that ship,:: Martin said. ::It looks like a new type of scout. I can't even tell if it has weapons. If it doesn't, between the two of us we might be able to take it out with our Empees.::

  Jared considered this. He grabbed Chatterjee and gently pushed him in the direction of the hull breach. Chatterjee slowly floated across the breach.

  ::So far, so good,:: Martin said, when Chatterjee's body was halfway across the breach.

  Chatterjee's body shattered as the projectiles from the scout craft blasted through his frozen body. Limbs twirled violently and then were shattered themselves as another volley coursed through the breach. Jared could feel the impact of the projectiles on the far wall of the corridor.

  Jared felt a peculiar sensation, like his brain being picked. The scout's position shifted slightly. r.Duck,:: Jared tried to say to Martin, but the communication didn't make it through. Jared dug in his heel, grabbed Martin and yanked him down as a fresh volley ripped through the corridor, shredding the hull breach wider and passing dangerously close to Jared and Martin.

  Bright orange blazed outside and from his position Jared could see the scout tilt wildly. From below the scout, a missile arced its way up and impacted on the scout's underside, cracking the scout in two. Jared noted to himself that the Gamerans did indeed shoot fire.

  ::—was sure a lot of fun,:: Martin said. ::Now we'll get to spend a week or two in hiding while the Obin scour around looking for whoever blew up their ship. You've made our lives very interesting, Private. Now, time to go. The boys have shot up the tow rope. Let's get out of here before any more show up.:: Martin scrambled up and over and then launched himself out of the breach, toward the tow cable hovering five meters beyond it. Jared followed, grabbing the cable with one hand and holding on for dear life, while Babar stayed clenched in the other.

  It was three days before the Obin stopped hunting for them.

  "Welcome back," Wilson said, as he approached the sled, and then stopped. "Is that Babar?"

  "It is," Jared said, sitting in the sled with Babar secured in his lap.

  "I'm not sure I even want to know what that's about," Wilson said.

  "You do," Jared said. "Trust me."

  "It has something to do with Boutin?" Wilson said.

  "It has everything to do with him," Jared said. "I know why he turned traitor, Harry. I know everything."

  TEN

  One day before Jared returned to Phoenix Station, clutching Babar, the Special Forces cruiser Osprey skipped into the Nagano system to investigate a distress call sent by Skip courier from a mining operation on Kobe. The Osprey was not heard from again.

  Jared was supposed to report in to Colonel Robbins. Instead he stomped past Robbins' office and into General Mattson's before Mattson's secretary could stop him. Mattson was inside and looked up as Jared walked in.

  "Here," Jared said, thrusting Babar into the hands of a surprised Mattson. "Now I know why I punched you, you son of a bitch."

  Mattson looked down on the stuffed animal. "Let me guess," he said. "This is Zoe Boutin's. And now you've got your memory back."

  "Enough of it," Jared said. "Enough to know you're responsible for her death."

  "Funny," Mattson said, putting Babar down on his desk. "Seems to me that either the Rraey or the Obin are responsible for her death."

  "Don't be obtuse, General," Jared said. Mattson raised an eyebrow. "You ordered Boutin here for a month. He asked to bring his daughter with him. You refused. Boutin left his daughter and she died. He blames you."

  "And you do too, apparently," Mattson said.

  Jared ignored this. "Why didn't you let him bring her?" he asked.

  "I'm not running a day
care, Private," Mattson said. "I needed Boutin focused on his work. Boutin's wife was already dead. Who was going to take care of the girl? He had people at Covell who could do it for him; I told him to leave her there. I didn't expect that we'd lose the station and the colony and that the girl would die."

  "This station houses other civilian scientists and workers," Jared said. "There are families here. He could have found or hired someone to watch Zoe while he worked. It wasn't an unreasonable request, and you know it. So, really, why didn't you let him bring her?"

  By this time Robbins, alerted by Mattson's secretary, had entered the room. Mattson twisted uncomfortably. "Listen," Mattson said. "Boutin was a top-flight mind, but he was a goddamned flake. Especially after his wife died. Cheryl was a heat sink for the man's eccentricities; she kept him on an even keel. Once she was gone he became erratic, particularly where his daughter was involved."

  Jared opened his mouth; Mattson held up a hand. "I'm not blaming him, Private," Mattson said. "His wife was dead, he had a little girl, he was worried about her. I was a parent too. I remember what it's like. But that topped with his own organizational issues created problems. He was behind on his projects as it was. It's one of the reasons I brought him back here for the testing phase. I wanted him to be able to get work done and not be distracted. And it worked; we finished testing ahead of schedule and things went so well that I gave the go-ahead to have him bumped up to the director level, which was something I wouldn't have done before the test phase. He was on his way back to Covell when it was attacked."

  "He thought you turned down his request because you're a pissant tyrant," Jared said.

  "Well, of course he did," Mattson said. "That's Boutin all over. Look, he and I never got along. Our personalities didn't mesh. He was high maintenance, and if it weren't for the fact he was a fucking genius, he wouldn't have been worth the trouble. He resented the fact that I or one of my people was always looking over his shoulder. He resented having to explain and justify his work. And he resented that I didn't give a shit if he resented it. I'm not surprised he thought it was just me being petty."