Orphan Brigade (6 page)

“They came in standing up, running flat out, didn't even notice that creek bed, explosions all around and shit flying right over our heads. Incoming, outgoing, hugging the dirt, I swear some of them ran right over us at one point. Just after that I pulled out a grenade, but my hands were shaking so bad I couldn't arm it, so Steve reaches over and takes it from me.

“Didn't even look at the thing. He just tossed it away, shook his head like I was crazy, then crawled straight into the lieutenant's creek bed. It was maybe six inches deep, but that was six more inches under that shitstorm, and we were still there the next morning when a patrol came out looking for our bodies.”

The other shades chuckled at that, their faces flickering in and out of existence. When the original speaker spoke again his voice was lower, muted, as if he'd remembered what they were doing.

“It's important to have a buddy like that. Somebody who'll stop you from doing that
really
stupid
thing you were gonna do just because you couldn't think of anything better.”

One of the other figures began speaking about the dead soldier, part of a group eulogy that had been a standard practice in the war zone for many years. Recordings of these tributes were prohibited by a Human Defense Force command structure that took full advantage of the enormous distance between the inhabited planets and the deployed troops to exercise a one-­sided form of information discipline. Grieving families were receiving smuggled copies of the impromptu ceremonies more frequently now, and Command had labeled this trend a threat to the war effort. Possessing a copy of one of these rituals was punishable by a long term in prison, even for Olech Mortas's daughter.

Ayliss smiled when she pondered what the ­people running the war would do if they knew her true reason for watching the contraband recording. That she was actually looking for something that was a genuine threat to the war effort—­and the apparatus that supported it. Viewing the ghostly figures surrounding her, she couldn't help thinking of Jan. Even then headed back to the zone when he could have avoided it. Once more an ignorant tool of their father.

She almost missed it, the reason Python had handed her this particular recording. Ayliss had given him some general guidelines, little things to look for that wouldn't tell him what she was trying to find. It made her feel like one of Command's intelligence officers, passing information requirements to the troops in the field without explaining why they were important.

A new face had taken up the collective story, a soldier so young that he looked like a child. He was smiling, reliving the memory.

“I hadn't even been assigned to a unit when I met Steve. He was a corporal then, sent to pick me up from this crazy Force facility where I'd been sent when I got to the zone. Stupid headshrinkers—­asking me all these questions about where I was from, did I get in a lot of fights, was I in a gang. I kept telling them I hadn't seen any combat yet, but they just kept saying that they were trying to establish a baseline for some bullshit study.

“Anyway, Steve had my orders when they finally let me go, and we were supposed to come right to the unit. Me, I didn't know
anything
, but here was this corporal who'd seen all this action so I just went with him. Next thing I know we'd stowed away on this supply ship headed to this tre-­
men
dous base with clubs, hot chow, girls . . . boy did we have fun.

“We were both privates when we finally got to the outfit—­”

Ayliss didn't hear the rest, her mind replaying the sentences that were most important to her.

Stupid headshrinkers—­asking me all these questions about where I was from, did I get in a lot of fights, was I in a gang. I kept telling them I hadn't seen any combat yet, but they just kept saying that they were trying to establish a baseline for some bullshit study.

There. She felt pain in her palms, and forced her hands to release the arms of the chair. Finally, after all the long hours spent searching through the archives, all the mind-­numbing inspections of the military hospitals and veterans-­care facilities, all the interviews with returned soldiers whose distrust of Command—­and anyone associated with it—­was so complete that their every answer was evasive. But there it was. The first indication that her suspicions weren't mere supposition, and that Command was actively digging into the psyches of the troops fighting the war.

If what they were doing with that knowledge was even half as extensive as she believed, it was going to generate a scandal that would remove her father from office and take away the only thing he truly cared about. Not his dead wife, his two children, his cronies, or his mistresses. Olech Mortas was going to lose his place in the game. And he was going to know who'd taken it from him.

The recording ended, even though she hadn't heard a word after the young soldier's revelation about a secret medical facility in the war zone where his personal aggression had been measured. The images and the fire evaporated, and she could see Selkirk again. Leaning forward in his seat, studying her with concern. Completely read in on her quest, and yet completely unable to understand why it was so important to her.

“Lee. We have to identify the unit this came from.”

“A
pproaching Unity, sir.”

“Thank you, Jason.” Olech smiled at the young staffer before the man walked off down the rolling office that was the chairman's personal underground train. Olech's immediate staff numbered more than one hundred men and women, and he prided himself on knowing all of them personally. Many more attendants were waiting at Unity Plaza, the sprawling complex that was both his headquarters and his home.

“You know what's strange? Every time I come back here, I feel completely detached.” Olech spoke to Hugh Leeger, who was seated across from him studying a handheld.

“You were only gone for two days this trip, in constant communication the whole time. You've got an unusual idea of what ‘detached' means.”

The underground train sped along without a sound and almost without vibration, and Olech looked out at the olive-­colored walls as they raced by. He briefly imagined himself as just a commuter on his way to work, but the sight of a security strongpoint studded with weaponry ruined the notion. He turned back to Leeger.

“I used to be gone for months on inspection tours. Those were multi-­Threshold voyages,
really
deep space, and when I came back it was like I'd never left. Now that I'm not allowed to do anything even remotely like that, a two-­day trip completely disorients me.”

“There was a time when you weren't the Chairman of the Emergency Senate. And I'm not going to become the first security chief to lose a head of state in the Step.” Leeger didn't make the obvious observation that he would probably share Olech's fate if anything ever happened to him. Leeger's predecessor had been killed protecting Olech during the chaotic gunplay that accompanied the murder of Interplanetary President Larkin.

“You thought you could lose one in his own private train tunnels. If I'd listened to your paranoia this thing would have no windows, and what would I look at then?”

“Plenty to look at right here in the car.” It was no secret that young, attractive ­people constituted most of Olech's personal staff, and Leeger did his best to promote the mistaken assumption that the Chairman hired based on looks. Privately, he believed Olech had subconsciously replaced his own children when selecting the ­people who were his closest attendants. “And it was a mistake to put in the windows, no matter what kind of blast they can sustain.”

“See? Paranoia. Utterly baseless concern. I'm directing mankind's first war in space, yet I'm in almost no danger at all.”

“I wouldn't go that far.”

Olech continued as if Leeger hadn't spoken. “I'm not sure if it's a good sign or a bad one, to be honest. I do my share of the whip-­cracking in the alliance, and there are plenty of times when I have to say ‘no' to ­people who are in a position to retaliate.”

“You also hand out plenty of favors, and go out of your way to make the lesser members feel more important than they are. I'd say they balance pretty well.”

“But I still have to call them out when they short the war effort. That actually costs them, in real terms and prestige. You'd think they'd resent something like that.”

“Maybe you've only caught them on the minor things, and they consider themselves lucky. Maybe they're getting away with murder, and you just don't know it.”

Olech looked around the spacious compartment, glad to be away from the cramped office in the shuttle that had taken him to see Jan. Several of his private staffers sat on blue-­padded seats, busy with various tasks, which made Olech smile. If security concerns were going to cut him off from much of the population, he was darn sure going to have real ­people around him at work.

One of those staffers, a pretty brunette seated on the blue cushions, abruptly set aside her handheld and donned a set of blacked-­out goggles. She quietly acknowledged the incoming communication while slipping an electronic glove onto one hand. Shortly after that she became deeply involved in a whispered conversation, the gloved hand tapping away at a keyboard only her eyes could see.

Olech suppressed a laugh. “Remember the last full meeting of the Senate?”

Leeger turned in his seat, trying to identify whatever had lifted the Chairman's spirits. His eyes fell on the goggled staffer, and he almost laughed as well.

“You're thinking of Senator Bascom.”

“Exactly. What an ass. Three times more assistants than anybody else in attendance, and he always had at least one them in the goggles. Even when they were walking.”

The two men chuckled quietly, trying not to disrupt the work going on around them. “I remember that. Two attendants directing the poor guy's steps while he was supposedly handling vital messages for the very important Senator Bascom. I had one of my ­people chat that kid up later on; he was pretending the whole time and trying like hell not to trip. No messages coming or going. There never were.”

“But that just makes sense. Who would want to communicate with Bascom if he wasn't standing right in front of them?”

They laughed again, but Olech's thoughts slowly returned to the disturbing topic of his own safety. No matter how distant the Sims might be, there was plenty of potential threat in close proximity. It was not lost on Olech that the tower he lived in had once been home to the murdered president of an earlier version of the same coalition he now led.

And while Earth was still seen as the predominant force in the alliance, Olech's power to influence the others was not absolute.

The short train slowed to a halt, and Olech saw one of the reasons why he wasn't considered a target by the government of at least one alliance member. Thick, rust-­red hair fell to the shoulders of an attractive woman wearing a blue business suit that matched her eyes. Average height and weight, she showed a few minor wrinkles that came from an expressive face that wasn't afraid to laugh. The woman smiled warmly at the train, even though the glass was reflective and she couldn't be sure if Olech was watching.

But he always was, so she had no doubts.

The platform was bathed in a bright glow from above that suggested a skylight even though they were directly underneath the broad tower that was Olech's home and place of business. A tile mosaic made up of tiny lacquered squares covered the walls around the platform and the tunnel for many yards, a design conceived by the redheaded woman. Even the guard station had been subsumed into the tableau, which had the overall effect of transforming the tunnel and the platform into a dock on a subterranean river.

Olech was the first off the train, and the woman stood waiting until he covered the distance and took her in his arms. She stood immobile on purpose, so that the embrace would not occur in the path of the numerous staffers who would be detraining as well. The chairman's retinue was a busy group, and they passed the man and the woman in a long-­standing longstanding tradition where they utterly ignored them.

In continuance of this homecoming custom, the members of Olech's immediate staff moved quickly to the waiting elevators and headed up into the complex. Alone now except for the guards, Olech broke the kiss but kept the embrace.

“Coming back to you is always so special. Even when I've only been gone for a while.”

“You were gone?” Reena's eyes twinkled, and he pulled her in tight again.

Nuzzling her marvelous hair, Olech recalled how the woman in his arms had come into his life as a minister from Celestia, a rich planet where her brother ran the show. Her political genius and diplomatic acumen had attracted him right from the start, but they'd worked together for years before declaring their mutual affection. That had been long after his wife had died, when even the most libertine of his allies had begun to question the steady succession of women passing through his bed. Beautiful, every one of them, but none of them befitting a man of his station.

Reena Corlipso had put an end to all of that, and even if Olech suspected she'd been urged to do so by his partners—­and especially her brother—­it made no difference because it made so much sense. Earth and Celestia were the two biggest players in the alliance and, like an arranged marriage of old, the pairing of Olech and Reena had brought the governments of both worlds much closer together.

It didn't hurt that the two of them were also an excellent match and that the bond between them was genuine.

“How is Jan?” Her words brought him back to a less pleasant reality, and Olech gave her a slight headshake. Taking his hand, Reena turned toward the waiting elevator.

A
short time later, Olech Mortas burst through the rippling surface of his private swimming pool. The pool doubled as his safe room, where he and Reena could discuss the topics they did not wish overheard—­which meant they spent a lot of time there.