Orphan Brigade (11 page)

The NCO had already shed his armor and helmet, and now shook out a soft cap which he adjusted as he approached. Just under average height but barrel-­chested, his fatigues were so faded that the greens, blacks, and browns of its camouflage pattern all seemed to blend together. Mortas walked toward him, and the NCO saluted when he was a few yards away.

“Good afternoon, sir. I'm Sergeant Berland. I'll be your platoon sergeant.” Mortas had already returned the salute, and the older man shook his hand. He was indeed older; his black hair showed gray in front of his ears, and his forehead was creased with wrinkles. His eyes were green, but it was hard to tell because they seemed permanently set into slits.

“It's good to meet you.” Like most new infantry lieutenants, Mortas had imagined this meeting many times. The first interaction with the seasoned NCO who was to be his mentor while also serving as his subordinate. Words failed him, and he lamely asked, “How'd it go at the range?”

Berland turned to look at the platoon, where the men had settled into cleaning the weapons. Most of them had positioned themselves to be able to see their new platoon leader, which brought back Mortas's concerns about how they'd judged his performance on Roanum.

“Aw, today was just marksmanship training. Nothing elaborate. We've got six new men, and only two of them are veterans, so I wanted to see if they could hit anything. They did all right, and it never hurts to get the experienced men out there either.”

“I understand we're still waiting for a few men to come back?”

“Yes, sir. Five hospital cases, all expected to return.” He gave his new officer an appraising look. “Some of the older guys have a little difficulty finding their way home.”

“That's understandable.”

His answer seemed to please the platoon sergeant, who gave him a slight smile. “To tell the truth, sir, I'm a little surprised you got out here as fast as you did. That was quite an experience you had.”

Mortas sensed that this was a test, perhaps related to his status as Olech Mortas's son. “It wasn't easy, but it was only a few days. I learned a lot, I can say that.”

“I bet you did.” Berland nodded slightly, the narrow eyes unreadable. “Well don't worry about a thing, sir. I've been all over this war, and this brigade is the best I've seen. The platoon's loaded with guys who know what they're doing, and most of them have been together a long time.”

“I'm looking forward to this.” The words came out unplanned, and he was struck by how much he meant them. How long he had meant them. “So. Should I meet the men?”

Berland considered his response, seemed to change it, then went ahead anyway. “There is one question the troops wanted me to ask you, sir. I hope you don't mind.”

And here it was. The question, and so many ways to ask it. How come you're alive, and the other three are dead? Are you a dumb-­shit rich kid who's going to get us all killed? Why should we trust you with our lives?

“Go ahead.”

Berland actually looked left and right, even though they were alone. Mortas glanced across the field, toward the platoon. Some seated, some standing, all of them appearing busy, but he imagined them trying to hear what was being said, even from that distance.

“There was this rumor . . . nothing official. Me, I don't care, but some of the men were curious.” The platoon sergeant leaned in and lowered his voice. “Is it true you fucked the alien?”

Mortas felt his eyes blinking rapidly, and he made them stop. He felt a sensation akin to vertigo, something he normally associated with having narrowly missed major injury solely by chance.

Berland's eyes widened, waiting, and his mind raced. The answer was important; after all, this was the one question his troops had decided to ask their new lieutenant. For an instant he saw Trent as he had known her, annoying at first but unquestionably intelligent, then growing in his estimation until he would have gladly died for her. And yet he knew the right answer, from having spent so much of his life in the rough-­and-­tumble of prep school and university sports. A male world with its own expectations.

The right answer was a lie in this case, and it would have been a betrayal if that
thing
had actually been Amelia Trent.

But she—­
it
—­wasn't. In the end, the thing itself had been the ultimate betrayal. Mortas was surprised to realize he owed it nothing.

He cleared his throat, looked left and right in imitation of Berland, then spoke in a hiss. “Yes.”

Berland's head jerked back in mock surprise. An instant later a grin spread across his face, and he nodded appreciatively.

“Aw-­
right
. I've had a lot of lieutenants over the years, and all the good ones were sick,
sick
individuals.” He wagged a playful finger at him. “You might be the best one yet.”

He turned, and for the first time Mortas noted that many of the troops over by A Company were observing him and Berland closely. The platoon sergeant ignored them, taking a step away from Mortas and staring at First Platoon. A meaty arm came up, and he extended his thumb in the air.

The response was electric. The members of the platoon came to their feet, hooting and hollering like spectators at a sporting event. Then they were clapping loudly, drowning out shouted comments that were clearly approval. A moment later several of them were calling over to the A Company troops, words of pride and derision passed between soldiers in different units from time immemorial. Some of the A Company men waved dismissive hands at the B Company troops, but a few of them briefly joined in the applause and Mortas saw more than one thumbs-­up.

Berland tilted his head in Mortas's direction, smiling broadly at the applauding First Platoon. “Welcome to the Orphans, sir.”

 

CHAPTER FOUR

A
yliss's mind never seemed to completely shut down during the Step. Though heavily sedated for the voyage like any other passenger, she always emerged from the experience half-­believing she'd been awake the whole way. Experts had assured her that those memories were only dreams—­and that the dreams had been of brief duration—­but she remembered them with great clarity and suspected they had gone on for a very long time.

Mankind's greatest achievement required her to be unconscious and sealed within a protective chamber inside the craft that would take her across the generated Threshold. As Olech Mortas's daughter and a representative of the Veterans Auxiliary, Ayliss always traveled in comfort, and so her sleep compartment was both spacious and luxurious. When strapped into its cushioned seat, she could just reach the chamber's low walls and the heavy bubble that was the cubicle's lid. The soldiers she'd interviewed had described the claustrophobia of the transit tubes in which they were forced to make the Step, saying they were so much like caskets that the transports were known as coffin ships.

The Step could reduce enormous space voyages from decades to days, and in this case—­the trip from Earth to Broda—­to mere hours. Even so, Ayliss routinely experienced a sensation akin to having been asleep for only minutes before shifting into semiconsciousness. As usual, she now became aware in some part of her brain that she was asleep in the bright compartment. The drugs kept her calm, but the constant activity of her intellect raced through thoughts and memories the same way her body was racing through the cosmos.

A picture formed around her, figures looming because she was only six. The ribbons from a black bonnet had been tied too tightly beneath her chin, but minders on either side held her hands and kept her from loosening it. Looking down, she saw the hated black dress that she'd torn to shreds many hours later and the black shoes that she'd thrown from her bedroom window.

It was a familiar dream, if a dream it was, and Ayliss could sometimes direct her actions in it. She usually made her little-­girl self look over her shoulder, trying to see Jan, but she never accomplished it and often wondered why. He had been there, one year younger, and weeping not far behind her.

The minders shuffled forward slowly, mastodons in a black-­draped herd, heads down and pulling her with them. Ayliss was unable to see anything except the dark trousers and skirts of the ­people in front of her, some of them in uniforms that she recognized from her father's office.

Father. Without her bidding, the girl in the bonnet began turning her head from side to side, becoming agitated, trying to see the only parent she had left. Astounded that he wasn't right there, where he should be, with her and Jan now that they no longer had a mother. Fighting the hands now, trying to break free and being told to stop it, that everything was going to be all right.

The legs in front of her finally gone, able to see now, and then not wanting to. The flower-­encircled bier, a tripod with a photo of Father and Mother on their wedding day, and what looked like a short set of carpeted stairs. She'd stepped right up onto them, and been startled when she hardly recognized the face of Mother. Motionless, but not asleep. Heavy makeup, something Ayliss didn't recognize because Mother never wore any, the face so thin, much smaller than the last time Ayliss had seen her, only a few days before.

The hands again, telling her that we don't stand on the kneeler, asking her if she wanted to say a prayer for Mother, but Ayliss had looked around while she possessed the vantage point. Seeing Father at last, tall, strong, a few yards off to the side. Someone was talking to him—­someone was always talking to him—­but he sensed her attention and turned to look. The blue eyes that she loved so much, exactly like her own—­Jan had Mother's eyes but she had Father's—­looking directly at her, but different. So terribly different. She knew them as the indicators of affection and praise and mirth, and that day they held none of that. They held nothing at all.

Not even sadness that Mother was gone.

Father regarded her for several moments, blankly, as if not recognizing her, and when the hands pulled Ayliss away she started to scream. They misunderstood, picking her up, holding her, cooing words of comfort and the never-­ending litany that everything was going to be all right, but they were too stupid, they were
all
too stupid, to know that she was screaming at Father to care about what had happened, to Mother, to her, to Jan, and then she'd been carried from the room and the hands were shaking her, trying to get her to calm down, shaking, shaking—­

“Ma'am? Ma'am?” A male face appeared in front of Ayliss's, a uniformed technician, a familiar sight at the end of a space voyage. A hand was gently rocking her shoulder, still attempting to rouse her even though she was wide-­awake. Sharp memories of the dream of that terrible day, when everything had changed. The dreams always stayed with her, which was why Ayliss doubted they were dreams at all. The technician released her and straightened up, standing respectfully outside the low compartment.

“It's quite all right, ma'am. You shouldn't feel embarrassed at all. The anesthetic often has that effect on ­people. You'll stop crying in a minute or so.”

B
roda was the smallest of the planets first settled by humans after Earth. It had been bypassed initially because, though habitable, it had lacked the natural riches that made other planets more attractive. The Brodans liked to joke that their home had none of the things politicians, corporations, and generals would want—­which made it Paradise.

It also made Broda the destination of choice for ­people seeking that most fundamental aspect of freedom, the desire to be left alone. The planet's government reflected that desire, heavily codified in law, and over time a culture had developed on Broda that had morphed into its key industry.

The Brodans dealt in data. Clean, untainted data, accurately processed with a transparent history. Information that bore the stamp of the Brodan Data Guild was considered completely reliable, devoid of manipulation, and as free of bias as was humanly possible. The Guild's exacting methods for collecting, verifying, classifying, and analyzing information were open for all to see. Those methods were taught at universities on every settled world, not just for proper data analysis, but also as a rival to the scientific method and even a framework for philosophical thought.

Technology had made the corruption of information both simple and easy, to the extent that analysis and findings from non-­Guild sources were automatically suspect. In a universe where every excuse, twist, and outright lie could be propagated instantly and endlessly, the genuine article was very hard to come by. The Brodans, devoted to clean data in a way that was almost worship, had become the lone trusted source—­which of course earned them enemies in every corner of the inhabited planets.

None of those enemies hated them more than the Emergency Senate, which was an added reason for Ayliss to rely on them so heavily. She was a frequent visitor to Broda and, although her status as Olech Mortas's daughter had made gaining their trust difficult, she was now a welcome visitor.

Dev Harlec was as unlikely an ally as she could have imagined, which was why she'd set out to befriend him right from the start. As a professor of data analysis on Earth, he'd become famous for lectures and publications that skewered powerful entities for their twisted relationship with the truth. Those entities, tired of his assaults, had finally managed to have him removed from his teaching position and blocked from getting another. Much of his writing had then been banned under a blanket wartime-­security act, and Dev Harlec had decided his days as a man of Earth had come to an end. On Broda he was regarded as a cross between a political refugee and a holy martyr, and he took special delight in tormenting the Emergency Senate and the leadership of the Human Defense Force from his new home.

“Naughty Ayliss Mortas! One of these days your dad's going to revoke your papers, and you're going to be stuck here,” Harlec exclaimed when Ayliss stepped from the elevator. Sunlight streamed in from every direction because Harlec's floor—­and it was all his—­was perched atop a tall building, and most of its walls were transparent. The Brodans' obsession with openness was reflected in their architecture, and looking out over the capital city she saw miles and miles of translucent surfaces.

“I can think of worse fates.” Ayliss crossed the shiny floor and deposited a kiss on Harlec's bald head. She would have been able to do this even if he'd been standing, but the researcher was seated in a chair with outsized casters which he enjoyed rolling from terminal to terminal. Freestanding electronic towers of astounding capacity reached for the bubble roof like pillars, a seeming throwback to an earlier age of technology. Ayliss, already immersed in Brodan technique, knew that many of their brightest minds preferred to perform their initial work unconnected to larger networks. Sharing and cross-­checking of information might be mandatory, but continuous linkage to other systems was not.

“I would have expected your tan to be better, spending so much time under the sun.” She reached for an identical chair and rolled it closer while Harlec smiled at her jab. The transparent material of the walls was a special polymer created to block dangerous rays and emissions, from within or without. Additionally, Harlec's petite frame had never known exercise even though he favored athletic warm-­up suits with hoods that hung down his back like a monk's cowl. What was left of his hair was all gray, and his slitted eyes looked across at her from behind thick glasses. Harlec was rumored to have already gone through several pairs of transplanted eyes because of the brutal hours he spent poring over data streams. Whenever he started wearing a set of glasses, the ocular anachronism indicated he was due for another surgery.

“Afraid I don't get around as much as you do.”

“You know I only make the trip so I can see your smiling face.”

“Of course. But it doesn't hurt to demonstrate you can pretty much go anywhere you please, while your outlandishly powerful father is basically stuck on Earth.” One of the secret pleasures of visiting the different planets was the knowledge that Olech, despite his high position, couldn't risk being lost in the Step. With only a few exceptions, he was essentially Earth-­bound.

“Sometimes I think you dislike him as much as I do.”

“Why would I have a reason to dislike him? He and his cronies wanted to put me in jail, and to this day they persist in their silly scheme of overloading Broda with data that's simply noise.” Unable to combat the Guild's popularity, Olech and others like him had adopted the strategy of agreeing to every request for information, then providing oversized feeds loaded with garbage. “And we won't waste any time discussing their endless war.”

“Oh, we would never do that.” Ayliss winked. “Listen, I may have finally come across something juicy.”

“I'm crushed. You only visit when you want something.”

“If it's half as good as I think it is, we both might see my father headed into early retirement.”

“Tell me.”

“I've been digging through the Auxiliary's records for a long time, searching for something nasty, but I finally figured out I've been looking in the wrong place. Most of the returned vets don't trust anybody, and at any rate the database has been sanitized. Honestly, I suspect the good information never leaves the war zone.

“So I got hold of a smuggled eulogy, the ones the troops send back, and it mentioned a facility where a new soldier was questioned about his background. His history regarding violence, personal hostility, gang membership. When he protested, saying he hadn't seen action yet, he was told that they were establishing a baseline.”

“That
is
interesting.”

“So I began looking again, now that I knew what I was after. I didn't find much, but there were fragments. Tests of brain function on returned vets, for example.”

“That could be easily explained, especially if the subjects had been concussed.”

“Exactly. Which is why I screened out the ones who'd suffered trauma to the head. A surprising number hadn't even been wounded, and every one of those soldiers fell into one of two categories. Decorated for bravery, or punished for cowardice.”

She let that hang in the air, watching Harlec's expression turn deeply contemplative.

“Sneaky Command. You think they might be looking into brain function as it relates to performance on the battlefield?”

“Fits, doesn't it? Get a baseline with the new guys, then compare that with the performance of the survivors at the other end. If there is a link, they should be able to find it that way.”

“And if they can establish that link, they might be stupid enough to think they can alter the brain function through drugs or surgery. Take any normal human being and turn him into a hero.” He shook his head. “It's been tried before, many times. All sorts of undesirable side effects, and the results were far from reliable.”

“I found a ­couple of professional papers that came to that same conclusion. But that doesn't mean they wouldn't try it anyway. And here's where it gets really interesting: I couldn't find any record of this kind of testing on unwounded veterans that wasn't at least two years old. Prior to that it was pretty common.”

“So either they gave up, or they found what they were looking for.”

“If they found what they were looking for, they'd need to do a lot more research and then move on to experimentation. Human experimentation. And they sure couldn't do that anywhere near the settled words. Probably not even this side of the CHOP line.”

“Now
that's
nasty. But I've seen them do nastier things, and for dumber reasons. If they thought they could find the switch that takes flight and turns it into fight . . . Command would certainly consider that worth the risk.”