Orphan Brigade (12 page)

“The risk gets a lot lower if they keep the experimentation in the war zone. So where would they conduct something like that, and how could we find it?”

“You're doing very well on your own. Where would you look?”

“There are a lot of possibilities. Space stations. Uninhabitable planets we control. Ships in space. Military-­controlled planets. I ran some rough numbers and they're enormous. Besides, if they really are doing something like this, the location's not in any database.”

“So stop looking at the data that's there and look for the data that's not.”

“What do you mean?”

“Sometimes it's not what you see, but what you don't. The puzzle pieces that should be there but aren't. Large amounts of money that suddenly disappeared from someone's budget. Logistical support that got rerouted with no explanation. Even ­people who vanished, for asking the wrong questions.

“You mentioned reading some professional papers on this subject, which of course would have been authored by the ­people working in this field. What about the papers that aren't there, and the ­people who should have been writing them?”

“I don't follow.”

“Sure you do. Command drafts ­people all the time, and so does your father, even if he never puts a uniform on the ones he selects. All sorts of noted scientists have dropped their civilian work and become part of the war effort over the decades. Some of them did it publicly while others simply packed up and shipped out.

“We need to identify the top experts in this field. Then we need to see who's still on the settled worlds and who's not. Should be easy to do, just by finding out who's no longer publishing. And if we find somebody who quietly disappeared in the last ­couple of years, we'll have a good prospect.”

“What would that do for us, though? How would we track a brain expert in the war zone if Command and my father didn't want anyone to know they were there in the first place?”

“Ayliss, Ayliss, Ayliss.” He gave her a smile. “Have you ever met a scientist who followed security protocol?”

A
fter finally passing the latest in a long series of proficiency exams, Mortas shut off the monitor and rubbed his eyes. He was seated in the adjutant's office in the battalion headquarters, and it was late at night. Through the open door he could see the NCO and young private from C Company who'd been assigned staff duty with him, seated near a bank of radios. Although the building was empty for the night, an emergency order could come in at any time, and so it was always manned by at least one officer, an NCO, and a runner.

It had been a long day, the latest in a succession of them running back to his arrival. As a new lieutenant with no combat experience, his every waking moment was taken up with a crash course in the lessons that the veterans had all learned on the battlefield. Grueling physical training with his platoon, followed by live-­fire ranges that were slowly increasing in complexity now that the new men were progressing past the more basic tasks. At the end of each day Mortas received further education from Captain Noonan, who was proving to be a bit of an enigma. The company commander alternated between a taciturn coldness and an impassioned energy that manifested itself whenever the combat scenarios in the training simulator became particularly intense. Mortas hadn't noticed this behavioral change at first, because it usually coincided with the point in the simulation where he was being overwhelmed by the many tasks he had to perform as a platoon leader.

Though equipped with a detailed understanding of the weapon systems available to an infantry platoon fighting the Sims, Mortas's knowledge came from his precommissioning training at university and the few months he'd spent in Officer Basic. Out in the war zone, however, he was discovering just how much of his schoolroom learning was incomplete or actually outdated.

He'd trained in the Force's excellent simulators many times, but the experience with a unit like the Orphans was a rude shock. Standing in a darkened room, wearing or holding exact replicas of his gear and weapons, he would be thrust into alarmingly realistic depictions of actual combat through a set of goggles almost identical to the ones he would wear in the field. Different scenarios would burst into existence before his eyes, and he could physically move around in that world by turning his head, jumping, or throwing himself prone.

Sometimes he was the only trainee, in which case the program would provide the voices and images of notional platoon members as well as important characters such as the company commander. Explosions would boom in his ears while Mortas was trying to hear what other players were saying, figures would be running, shooting, and sometimes collapsing nearby, and of course the enemy was present as well. The software had been modified to reflect the procedures that the Orphans used in the field, and so he was faced with a steep learning curve.

The most important skill Mortas had to gain was related to the Orphans' spartan firepower. Lacking the heavier weapons systems that were standard in Force infantry units, the Orphans worked hard at incorporating the extra muscle offered by drone gunships, higher-­echelon artillery, and missiles delivered from orbit. Although most of that was managed by the ASSLs who accompanied the infantry, every Orphan was expected to become an expert at requesting and directing those lifesaving assets.

As the platoon leader, Mortas already knew he would be expected to assume the ASSL's duties if the man was incapacitated, but he hadn't anticipated the complexity of coordinating his troops' movements with the overlapping delivery systems available to him. Despite Noonan's personal coaching, he was finding it difficult to juggle all of the available support while also directing the actions of the troops he commanded.

“Up late studying?” He recognized the voice of Captain Pappas, the battalion intelligence officer. Mortas stopped rubbing his eyes and saw the blond-­haired man standing in the doorway, smiling.

“I'm on staff duty, sir.” That sounded a little self-­important, so he added wryly. “You know, in case anything big happens.”

“Yeah, big like having to go rescue some poor MPs from the boys.” Pappas entered the room and pulled up a chair. Mortas already knew that the Orphans had a hostile relationship with most of the units near the brigade's area, and with the military police just about anywhere. “I'd like to ask you a few questions about the Sims you encountered on Roanum, if you don't mind. The ones you walked with.”

“I don't mind at all.” At first Mortas had been skittish about discussing his experiences on the barren planet that now bore Roan Gorman's name, but the brigade commander's edict had held and not many ­people had asked him much about it. “Although we really weren't with them for very long, so I probably didn't learn anything important.”

“Now that's where you're wrong. The best information comes from the ­people on the ground, the ones who are right there. Always has. When you're out there with your troops, you need to keep your eyes and ears open—­and theirs too—­because everything is potentially important. Footprints, trash, the way the enemy operates, all of it means something. And don't just pass the information up the chain. Give it some thought yourself, and talk to your men about it. If the Sims change something they're doing, why did they change? What does that mean for us, and for your platoon?”

The words were soft and inoffensive, so Mortas merely nodded.

“You walked with that Sim column for hours, then hitched a ride with them right through the colony defenses. What was their reaction when you joined them?”

“They never figured out we were human, but that whole gang was pretty exhausted. Numerous walking wounded, their equipment and uniforms all beat-­up; I'd say they'd been in combat for days. I did notice one thing: lots of human gestures that I found surprising. They smiled, nodded, even shook their heads, and they got plenty pissed off when they realized they had to walk all the way home.”

“Yeah, that fits. I've watched a lot of the available footage of Sims in action, a little hobby of mine, trying to identify their most basic commands. It's not easy, with them all chirping and trilling away at each other, but I think I might have figured out how they say, “Come on” or “Attack” based on their hand signals.” He raised an arm and waved it. “Very much what we do when we're trying to encourage ­people to follow us.”

“Trying to decode the bird talk, sir?”

“Maybe. I know there are plenty of linguistic experts working on that, but so far there doesn't seem to have been much success. Did any of them seem to get sick while you were near them?”

“As I said, they were on the ragged edge when we slipped in with them. That was probably the only reason we were able to get away with what we were pulling. And we weren't with them long.” A memory, a bizarre nonverbal exchange he'd had with an anonymous Sim soldier. “I touched one of them. We were going up a steep grade, and I almost overbalanced. This Sim walking in front of me had turned to give me a hand, and he pulled me up the incline. I was so surprised I almost thanked him.”

“Very interesting. You see, in a unit like this, I don't get to observe the Sims even though I'm in their vicinity quite a bit—­sometimes too close.” They exchanged smiles. “There are all sorts of theories about why they resemble us so much, but a lot of it gets quashed by Command and . . .”

­“People like my father.”

“Yes. Back when I was on special staff assignment, before I got shanghaied by this gang of cutthroats, I got to hear all sorts of high-­level stuff. But even that was censored in a way. The discussion only went so far, then it just sorta died.” He pursed his lips, looking into a distance that wasn't there. “They say there's this circle of civilian scientists and linguists who are trying to answer these questions, maybe even work up a translation device, and that Command and the Emergency Senate don't want that to happen.”

“Honestly, I'd never heard that one.”

“The story goes that there's been a lot of duplicate effort because Command won't share the information from the war zones. Funny thing about our war, even with the Step and all our technology, we're more cut off from the folks at home than troops in many of the past wars on Earth. Really makes it easy for Command to keep a lid on things.”

Pappas yawned, prompting a similar response from Mortas. “I gotta shove off to bed. Thanks for the chat, Jan.”

The intelligence man was almost out the door when he stopped. “A word of advice for you. I get the impression you felt a connection with the Sims you encountered. Once you've fought them, and seen what they do to prisoners and the dead, you'll lose that. It gets pretty gruesome. Sam knows how we reproduce and that his equipment doesn't work, so he likes to mutilate our genitalia. If I were you, I wouldn't say anything too positive about the Sims in front of any of the veterans.”

“Because they might think I'm soft?”

“No. Because they'll think you're an idiot.”

J
ust after midnight, Mortas walked outside when he heard a burst of shouting. The NCO from C Company blandly told him it was just a bunch of rowdies headed back to the barracks and that it was best to leave them alone, but he went anyway because he was bored. He had no intention of interfering with the group if they were indeed merely headed to their bunks, and the volume of the yelling suggested they were over a hundred yards away.

Floodlights shone down from the roof of the headquarters and the barracks buildings, and he quickly detected the movement of several figures well in the distance. The shouts had simmered down to loud, drunken laughter, and he smiled as he watched the group cross the field. He already knew the Orphans were infamous for enjoying periods of stand-­down to the fullest, but it didn't seem to rankle any of the commanders and so far there'd been no incidents involving members of his platoon.

The revelers disappeared beyond the side of the most distant barracks, making Mortas wonder if they'd seen him. Good tactics, if they had; by going the long way around, they made sure he couldn't tell which barracks they eventually entered. Having nothing better to do, he went down the short steps and walked out to the spot where the hill's decline resumed. It was a cool night, and Mortas looked up at the stars.

He jumped in fright when the silence was broken by the sound of someone vomiting explosively just around the corner. For some reason this surprise reminded him of Captain Noonan's latest lecture, about not focusing too intently on any one thing on the battlefield. In that simulation Mortas had been maneuvering a single squad around a knocked-­out Sim assault vehicle, utterly intent on not being surprised by what it might contain, when he and his notional troops had been shot up by an enemy team concealed in a nearby stand of tall grass. Noonan hadn't been terribly exercised about the mistake.

“Security, Lieutenant. Security. All-­around at all times. You focus on one thing too closely, and you'll walk right into something else.”

The words were with him as he went around the corner, and Mortas was just beginning to wonder if he shouldn't get some help when he saw a thin figure slumped over the wooden table where the two troops had been working on the radio his first day. The table was in shadow, but there was enough light from the stars to make out the features of Captain Follett, the battalion's anxious supply officer. He wore a set of fatigues but no hat, and Mortas suspected he'd come outside the headquarters when he'd felt sick.

“You all right there, sir?”

The slight figure jerked into an upright position, Follett's head turning side to side in confusion.

“It's okay, sir. It's just Lieutenant Mortas.”

“Oh.” Follett's voice was choked, and he cleared it noisily while pulling a dark rag out of one pocket. “Hello, Mortas. Thank you for checking on me. Feeling much better.”