The Ghost Brigades omw-2

by John Scalzi

  "It gets better," Szilard said, and sent over Dirac's entire classified file, complete with technical material. Sagan sat silently, digesting the material; Szilard sat, watching the junior officer. After a minute one of the mess staff approached their table and asked if there was anything they needed. Szilard ordered tea. Sagan ignored the waiter.

  "All right, I'll bite," Sagan said, after she was done examining the file. "Why are you sticking me with a traitor?"

  "Boutin's the traitor," Szilard said. "Dirac has just got his brain."

  "A brain that you tried to imprint with a traitor's consciousness," Sagan said.

  "Yes," Szilard said.

  "I submit the question to your attention once more," Sagan said.

  "Because you have experience with this sort of thing," Szilard said.

  "With traitors?" Sagan asked, confused.

  "With unconventional Special Forces members," Szilard said. "You once temporarily had a realborn member of the CDF under your command. John Perry." Sagan stiffened slightly at the name; Szilard noted it but chose not to comment. "He did quite well under you," Szilard said. This last sentence was a bit of an ironic understatement; during the Battle of Coral, Perry carried Sagan's unconscious and injured body over several hundred meters of battlefield to get her medical attention, and then located a key piece of enemy technology as the building it was in collapsed around him.

  "The credit for that goes to Perry, not me," Sagan said. Szilard sensed another play of emotion from Sagan at Perry's name, but again left it on the table.

  "You are too modest," Szilard said, and paused as the waiter delivered the tea. "My point is, Dirac is something of a hybrid," he continued. "He's Special Forces, but he may also be something else. I want someone who has experience with something else."

  " 'Something else,' " Sagan repeated. "General, am I hearing that you think Boutin's consciousness is actually somewhere inside Dirac?"

  "I didn't say that," Szilard said, in a tone that implied that perhaps he had.

  Sagan considered this and addressed the implicit rather than the expressed. "You are aware, of course, that the Kite's next series of missions will have us engaging both the Rraey and the Enesha," she said. "The Eneshan missions in particular are ones of great delicacy." And ones I needed Will Lister for, Sagan thought, but did not say.

  "I am of course aware," Szilard agreed, and reached for his tea.

  "You don't think having someone with a possibly emergent traitorous personality might be a risk," Sagan said. "A risk not only to his mission but to others serving with him."

  "Obviously it's a risk," Szilard said, "for which I rely on your experience to deal with. But he may also turn out to be a trove of critical information. Which will also need to be dealt with. In addition to everything else, you're an intelligence officer. You're the ideal officer for this soldier."

  "What did Crick have to say about this?" Sagan said, referring to Major Crick, the commanding officer of the Kite.

  "He didn't have anything to say about it because I haven't told him," Szilard said. "This is need-to-know material, and I've decided he doesn't need to know. As far as he knows he simply has three new soldiers."

  "I don't like this," Sagan said. "I don't like this at all."

  "I didn't ask you to like it," Szilard said. "I'm telling you to deal with it." He sipped his tea.

  "I don't want him playing a critical role in any of the missions that deal with the Rraey or the Enesha," Sagan said.

  "You'll treat him no differently from any other soldier under your command," Szilard said.

  "Then he could get killed like any other soldier," Sagan said.

  "Then for your sake you'd better hope it's not by friendly fire," Szilard said, and set down his cup.

  Sagan was silent again. The waiter approached; Szilard impatiently waved him off.

  "I want to show this file to someone," Sagan said, pointing to her head.

  "It's classified, for obvious reasons," Szilard said. "Everyone who needs to know about it already does, and we don't want to spread it around to anyone else. Even Dime doesn't know about his own history. We want to keep it that way."

  "You're asking me to take on a soldier who has the capability to be an immense security risk," Sagan said. "The least you can do is let me prepare myself. I know a specialist in human brain function and BrainPal integration. I think his insights on this could be useful."

  Szilard considered this. "This is someone you trust," he said.

  "I can trust him with this," Sagan said.

  "Do you know his security clearance?" Szilard asked.

  "I do," Sagan said.

  "Is it high enough for something like this?"

  "Well," Sagan said. "That's where things get interesting."

  "Hello, Lieutenant Sagan," Administrator Cainen said, in English. The pronunciation was bad, but that was hardly Cainen's fault; his mouth was not well formed for most human languages.

  "Hello, Administrator," Sagan said. "You're learning our language."

  "Yes," Cainen said. "I have time to learn, and little to do." Cainen pointed to a book, written in Ckann, the predominant Rraey language, nestled next to a PDA. "Only two books here in Ckann. I had choice of language book or religion book. I chose language. Human religion is…"—Cainen searched his small store of English words—"… harder."

  Sagan nodded toward the PDA. "Now that you have a computer, you should have more reading options."

  "Yes," Cainen said. "Thank you for getting that to me. It makes me happy."

  "You're welcome," Sagan said. "But the computer comes with a price."

  "I know," Cainen said. "I have read files you asked me to read."

  "And?" Sagan said.

  "I must change to Ckann," Cainen said. "My English does not have many words."

  "All right," Sagan said.

  "I've looked at the files concerning Private Dirac in depth," Cainen said, in the harsh but rapid consonants of the Ckann language. "Charles Boutin was a genius for rinding a way to preserve the consciousness wave outside of the brain. And you people are idiots for how you tried to stuff that consciousness back in."

  "Idiots," Sagan said, and cracked the smallest of smiles, the translation of the word in Ckann coming from a small speaker attached to a lanyard around her neck. "Is that your professional assessment, or just an editorial comment?"

  "It's both," Cainen said.

  "Tell me why," Sagan said. Cainen moved to send files from his PDA to her, but Sagan held up her hand. "I don't need the technical details," she said. "I just want to know if this Dirac is going to be a danger to my troops and my mission."

  "All right," Cainen said, and paused for a moment. "The brain, even a human one, is like a computer. It's not a perfect analogy, but it works for what I'm going to tell you. Computers have three components for their operation: There's the hardware, there's the software, and there's the data file. The software runs on the hardware, and the file runs on the software. The hardware can't open the file without the software. If you place a file on a computer that lacks the necessary software, all it can do is sit there. Do you understand me?"

  "So far," Sagan said.

  "Good," Cainen said. He reached over and tapped Sagan on the head; she suppressed an urge to snap off his finger. "Follow: The brain is the hardware. The consciousness is the file. But with your friend Dirac, you're missing the software."

  "What's the software?" Sagan asked.

  "Memory," Cainen said. "Experience. Sensory activity. When you put Boutin's consciousness into his brain, that brain lacked the experience to make any sense of it. If that consciousness is still in Dirac's brain—if—it's isolated and there's no way to access it."

  "Newborn Special Forces soldiers are conscious from the moment they are woken up," Sagan said. "But we also lack experience and memory."

  "That's not consciousness they're experiencing," Cainen said, and Sagan could sense the disgust in his voice. "Your damned BrainPal forces open
sensory channels artificially and offers the illusion of consciousness, and your brain knows it." Cainen pointed to his PDA again. "Your people gave me a rather wide range of access to brain and BrainPal research. Did you know this?"

  "I did," Sagan said. "I asked them to let you look at any file you needed to help me."

  "Because you knew that I would be a prisoner for the rest of my life, and that even if I could escape I would soon be dead of the disease you gave me. So it couldn't hurt to give me access," Cainen said.

  Sagan shrugged.

  "Hmmmp," Cainen said, and continued. "Do you know that there's no explainable reason why a Special Forces soldier's brain absorbs information so much more quickly than a regular CDF? They're both unaltered human brains; they're both the same BrainPal computer. Special Forces brains are preconditioned in a different way from the regular soldiers' brains, but not in a way that should noticeably speed up the rate at which the brains process information. And yet the Special Forces brain sucks down information and processes it at an incredible rate. Do you know why? It's defending itself, Lieutenant. Your average CDF soldier already has a consciousness, and the experience to use it. You Special Forces soldiers have nothing. Your brain senses the artificial consciousness your BrainPal is pressing on it and rushes to build its own as quickly as it can, before that artificial consciousness permanently deforms it. Or kills it."

  "No Special Forces soldiers have died because of their Brain-Pal," Jane said.

  "Oh, no, not now," Cainen said. "But I wonder what you would find if you went back far enough."

  "What do you know?" Sagan asked.

  "I know nothing," Cainen said, mildly. "It's merely idle speculation. But the point here is that you can't compare Special Forces waking up with 'consciousness' with what you were trying to do with Private Dirac. It's not the same thing. It's not even close."

  Sagan changed the subject. "You said that it's possible Boutin's consciousness might not even be in Dirac's brain anymore," she said.

  "It's possible," Cainen said. "The consciousness needs input; without it, it dissipates. That's one reason why it's near impossible to keep a consciousness pattern coherent outside the brain, and why Boutin's a genius for doing it. My suspicion is that if Boutin's consciousness was in there, it's already leaked away, and you've got just another soldier on your hands. But there's no way to tell whether it's in there or not. Its pattern would be subsumed by Private Dirac's consciousness."

  "If it is in there, what would wake it up?" Sagan asked.

  "You're asking me to speculate?" Cainen asked. Sagan nodded. "The reason you couldn't access the Boutin consciousness in the first place is that the brain didn't have memory and experience.

  Maybe as your Private Dirac accumulates experiences, one will be close enough in its substance to unlock some part of that consciousness."

  "And then he'd become Charles Boutin," Sagan said.

  "He might," Cainen said. "Or he might not. Private Dirac has his own consciousness now. His own sense of self. If Boutin's consciousness woke up, it wouldn't be the only consciousness in there. It's up to you to decide whether that's good or bad, Lieutenant Sagan. I can't tell you that, or what would truly happen if Boutin got woken up."

  "Those are the things I needed you to tell me," Sagan said.

  Cainen gave the Rraey equivalent of a chuckle. "Get me a lab," he said. "Then I might be able to give you some answers."

  "I thought you said you would never help us," Sagan said.

  Cainen switched back to English. "Much time to think," he said. "Too much time. Language lessons not enough." And then back to Ckann. "And this doesn't help you against my people. But it helps you."

  "Me?" Sagan said. "I know why you helped me this time; I bribed you with computer access. Why would you help me beyond this? I made you a prisoner."

  "And you struck me with a disease that will kill me if I don't get a daily dose of antidote from my enemies," Cainen said. He reached into the shallow desk moulded from the wall of the cell and pulled out a small injector. "My medicine," he said. "They allow me to self-administer. Once I decided not to inject myself, to see if they would let me die. I'm still here, so that's the answer to that. But they let me writhe on the floor for hours first. Just like you did, come to think of it."

  "None of this explains why you would want to help me," Sagan said.

  "Because you remembered me," Cainen said. "To everyone else, I am just another one of your many enemies, barely worth providing a book to keep me from going insane with boredom. One day they could simply forget my antidote and let me die, and it would be all the same to them. You at least see me as having value. In the very small universe I live in now, that makes you my best and only friend, enemy though you are."

  Sagan stared at Cainen, remembering the haughtiness of him the first time they met. He was pitiful and craven now, and that momentarily struck Sagan as the saddest thing she'd ever seen.

  "I'm sorry," she said, and was surprised the words came out of her mouth.

  Another Rraey chuckle from Cainen. "We were planning to destroy your people, Lieutenant," Cainen said. "And we still might. You needn't feel too apologetic."

  Sagan had nothing to say to that. She signaled to the brig officer that she was ready to leave; a guard came and stood with an Empee while the cell door opened.

  As the door slid shut behind her, she turned back to Cainen. "Thank you for your help. I will ask about a lab," she said.

  "Thank you," Cainen said. "I won't get my hopes up."

  "That's probably a good idea," Sagan said.

  "And Lieutenant," Cainen said. "A thought. Your Private Dirac will be participating in your military actions."

  "Yes," Sagan said.

  "Watch him," Cainen said. "In humans and Rraey both, the stress of battle leaves permanent marks on our brains. It's a primal experience. If Boutin is still in there, it might be war that brings him out. Either by itself or through some combination of experiences."

  "How do you suggest I watch him in battle?" Sagan asked.

  "That's your department," Cainen said. "Except for when you captured me, I've never been to war. I couldn't begin to tell you. But if you're worried about Dirac, that's what I would do if I were you. You humans have an expression: 'Keep your friends close and your enemies closer.' It seems like your Private Dirac could be both. I'd keep him very close indeed."

  The Kite caught the Rraey cruiser napping.

  The Skip Drive was a touchy piece of technology. It made interstellar travel possible not by propelling ships faster than the speed of light, which was impossible, but by punching through space-time and placing spaceships (or anything equipped with a Skip Drive) into any spot within that universe those using the Skip Drive pleased.

  (Actually, this wasn't exactly true; on a logarithmic scale Skip Drive travel became less reliable the more space there was between the initiation point and the destination point. The cause of what was called the Skip Drive Horizon Problem was not entirely understood, but its effects were lost ships and crews.

  This kept humans and other races that used the Skip Drive in the same interstellar "neighborhood" as their home planets in the short run; if a race wanted to keep control of its colonies, as almost all did, its colonial expansion was ruled by the sphere defined by the Skip Drive horizon. In one sense this point was moot; thanks to the intense competition for real estate in the neighborhood humanity lived in, no intelligent race save one had a reach that came close to its own Skip Drive horizon. The exception was the Consu, whose technology was so advanced relative to the other races in the local space that it was an open question as to whether it used the Skip Drive at all.)

  Among the many quirks of the Skip Drive, which had to be tolerated if one were to employ it, were its departure and arrival needs. When departing, the Skip Drive needed relatively "flat" space-time, which meant the Skip Drive could only be activated when the ship using it was well outside the gravity well of close-by planets; this required t
ravel in space using engines. But a ship using the Skip Drive could arrive as close to a planet as it wanted—it could even, theoretically, arrive on a planet surface, if a navigator confident enough of his or her skill could be found to do it. While landing a spacecraft on a planet via Skip Drive navigation was officially and strongly discouraged by the Colonial Union, the Colonial Defense Forces recognized the strategic value of sudden and unexpected arrivals.

  When the Kite arrived over the planet its human settlers called Gettysburg, it popped into existence within a quarter of a light-second from the Rraey cruiser, and with its dual rail guns warmed up and ready to fire. It took the Kite's prepared weapons crew less than a minute to orient and target the hapless cruiser, which only at the end could be seen trying to respond, and the magnetized rail-gun projectiles needed less than two and a third seconds to travel the distance between the Kite and its quarry. The sheer speed of the rail-gun projectiles was more than sufficient to pierce the hide of the Rraey craft and tunnel through its innards like a bullet through soft butter, but the projectile designers hadn't left it at that; the projectiles themselves were designed to expand explosively at the merest contact with matter.

  An infinitesimal fraction of a second after the projectiles penetrated the Rraey craft, they fragmented and shards vectored crazily relative to their initial trajectory, turning the projectile into this universe's fastest shotgun blast. The expenditure of energy required to change these trajectories was naturally immense and slowed down the shards considerably. However, the shards had energy to spare, and it simply meant each shard had more time to damage the Rraey vessel before it exited the wounded ship and began a long and frictionless journey through space.

  Thanks to the relative positions of the Kite and the Rraey cruiser, the first rail-gun projectile struck the Rraey cruiser forward and starboard; the fragments from this projectile tunneled through diagonally and upward, not-so-cleanly chewing through several levels of the ship and turning a number of the Rraey crew into bloody mist. The entrance wound of this projectile was a clean circle seventeen centimeters wide; the exit wound was a ragged hole ten meters wide with a gout of metal, flesh and atmosphere blasting silently into the vacuum.