Old Man's War Boxed Set 1 (58 page)

“Except you,” Jared said.

“I was building the soldiers, Dirac,” Boutin said. “They had to let me know what was going on. I had top-secret clearance right until the moment I shot that clone of mine. That’s why I know the Conclave is out there. And that’s why I know if the Colonial Union isn’t killed, humanity’s going to get wiped out.”

“We seem to have held our own up to this point,” Jared said.

“That’s because the Colonial Union takes advantage of chaos,” Boutin said. “When the Conclave ratifies its agreement—and it will in the next year or two—the Colonial Union won’t be able to found colonies anymore. The Conclave’s military force will kick them off any planet they try to take. They won’t be able to take over anyone’s colonies, either. We’ll be bottled up, and when another race decides to take one of our worlds, who will stop them? The Conclave won’t protect races that won’t participate. Slowly but surely we’ll be whittled back to one world again. If we’re left with that.”

“Unless we have a war,” Jared said, not hiding his skepticism.

“That’s right,” Boutin said. “The problem isn’t humanity. It’s the Colonial Union. Get rid of the Colonial Union, replace it with a government that actually helps its people instead of farming them and keeping them ignorant for its own purposes, and join with the Conclave to get a reasonable share of new colonial worlds.”

“With you in charge, I presume,” Jared said.

“Until we get things organized, yes,” Boutin said.

“Minus the worlds that the Rraey and the Enesha, your allies in this adventure, take for their own,” Jared said.

“The Rraey and the Enesha weren’t going to fight for free,” Boutin said.

“And the Obin taking Earth,” Jared said.

“That’s for me,” Boutin said. “Personal request.”

“Must be nice,” Jared said.

“You continue to underestimate how badly the Obin want consciousness,” Boutin said.

“I liked this better when I thought you were just trying to get revenge for Zoë,” Jared said.

Boutin reared back, as if he’d been slapped. Then he leaned in close. “You know what the thought of losing Zoë did to me,” Boutin hissed. “You
know
it. But let me tell you something that you don’t seem to know. After we took back Coral from the Rraey, the CDF Military Intelligence office predicted the Rraey would make a counterattack and listed the five most likely targets. Omagh and and Covell Station were right at the top of that list. And you know what the CDF did about it?”

“No,” Jared said.

“Not a goddamn thing,” Boutin spat the words. “And the reason for that was that the CDF was spread thin in the aftermath of Coral, and some general decided what he really wanted to do was try to grab a colony world from the Robu. In other words, it was more important to go after some new real estate than to defend what we already had. They
knew
the attack was coming, and they did nothing. And until the Obin contacted me, all I knew was that the reason my daughter died was because the Colonial Union didn’t do what it’s supposed to do: keep safe the lives of those in its protection. To keep safe my daughter. Trust me, Dirac. This has
everything
to do with Zoë.”

“And what if your war doesn’t go the way you want it to?” Jared asked, softly. “The Obin are still going to want their consciousness, and they’ll have nothing to give you.”

Boutin smiled. “You’re alluding to the fact that we’ve actually lost the Rraey and the Eneshans as allies,” he said. Jared tried to hide his surprise and failed. “Yes, of course we know about that. And I have to admit it worried me for a while. But now we have something that I think puts us back on track and will allow the Obin to take on the Colonial Union by itself.”

“I don’t imagine you’ll tell me what that is,” Jared said.

“I’ll be happy to tell you,” Boutin said. “It’s you.”

Sagan scrabbled on the ground, looking for something to fight with. Her fingers wrapped around something that seemed solid, and she pulled at it. She came up with a clod of dirt.

Aw, fuck it,
she thought, and then sprang up and flung it at the hovercraft as it went past. The clod connected with the head of the second Obin, sitting behind the first. It tilted in surprise and fell off its saddle seat, tumbling to the ground.

Sagan bolted from her place in the grass and was on the Obin in an instant. The dazed creature tried to raise its weapon at Sagan; she stepped to the side, yanked it out of its hand, and clubbed the Obin with it. The Obin screeched and stayed down.

In the distance the hovercraft was wheeling around and looking to make a run at Sagan. Sagan examined the weapon in her hand, trying to see if she could make sense of the thing before the hovercraft came back her way, and decided not to bother. She grabbed the Obin, punched it in the neck to keep it subdued, and searched it for an edged weapon. She found something like a combat knife hanging from its waist. Its shape and and balance was all wrong for a human hand but there was nothing she could do about that now.

The hovercraft had now turned around completely and was bearing down on Sagan. She could see the barrel of its gun spinning up to fire. Sagan reached down, and with the knife still in hand grabbed the fallen Obin and with a grunt heaved it into the path of the hovercraft and its gun. The Obin danced as the fléchettes sliced into it. Sagan, covered by the dancing Obin, stepped to the side but as close as she dared to the craft and swung the knife as the Obin flashed by. She felt a shocking wrenching of her arm and was spun hard into the ground as the knife connected with the Obin’s body. She stayed down, dazed and in pain, for several minutes.

When she finally got up she saw the hovercraft idling a hundred meters away. The Obin was still sitting on it, its dangling head held on to the neck by a flap of skin. Sagan pushed the Obin off the hovercraft and stripped it of its weapons and supplies. She then wiped the Obin’s blood off the hovercraft as best she could and took a few minutes to learn how the machine worked. Then she turned the thing around and flew it toward the fence. The hovercraft crested the guns easily; Sagan set it down out of their range, in front of Harvey and Seaborg.

“You look terrible,” Harvey said.

“I feel terrible,” Sagan said. “Now, would you like a ride out of here, or would you like to make some more small talk?”

“That depends,” Harvey said. “Where are we going?”

“We had a mission,” Sagan said. “I think we should finish it.”

“Sure,” Harvey said. “The three of us with no weapons, taking on at least several dozen Obin soldiers and attacking a science station.”

Sagan hauled up the Obin weapon and handed it to Harvey. “Now you have a weapon,” she said. “All you have to do is learn to use it.”

“Swell,” Harvey said, taking the weapon.

“How long do you think until the Obin realize one of their hovercraft is missing?” asked Seaborg.

“No time at all,” Sagan said. “Come on. It’s time to get moving.”

“Looks like your recording is done,” Boutin said to Jared, and turned to his desk display. Jared knew it before Boutin said it because the vise-like pinching had stopped mere instants ago.

“What do you mean that I’m the thing to get you back on track against the Colonial Union?” Jared said. “I’m not going to help you.”

“Why not?” Boutin said. “You’re not interested in saving the human race from a slow asphyxiation?”

“Let’s just say your presentation does not leave me entirely convinced,” Jared said.

Boutin shrugged. “So it goes,” he said. “Naturally, you being me, or some facsimile thereof, I would have hoped you’d come around to my way of thinking. But in the end, no matter how many of my memories or personal tics you may have, you’re still someone else, aren’t you? Or are for now, anyway.”

“What does that mean?” Jared said.

“I’ll get to that,” Boutin said. “But let me tell you a story first. It will make some things clear. Many years ago, the Obin and a race called the Ala got into a go-around over some real estate. On the surface, the Ala and the Obin were well-matched militarily, but the Alaite army consisted of clones. This meant they were all susceptible to the same genetic weapon, a virus the Obin designed that would lie dormant for a while—long enough to be transmitted—and then dissolve the flesh of whatever poor Ala it was living in. The Alaite army was wiped out, and then so were the Ala.”

“That’s a lovely story,” Jared said.

“Just wait, because it gets better,” Boutin said. “Not too long ago, I thought about doing the same sort of thing to the Colonial Defense Forces. But doing that is more complicated than it sounds. For one thing, Colonial Defense Forces military bodies are almost entirely immune from disease—the SmartBlood simply won’t tolerate pathogens. And of course neither the CDF or Special Forces bodies are actually cloned bodies, so even if we could infect them, they wouldn’t all react in the same way. But then I realized there was one thing in each CDF body that was exactly the same. Something I knew my way around intimately.”

“The BrainPal,” Jared said.

“The BrainPal,” Boutin said. “And for it, I could create a time-release virus of its own—one that would embed itself in the BrainPal, replicate every time one CDF member communicated with another, but would stay dormant until a date and time of my choosing. Then it would cause every body system regulated by the BrainPal to go haywire. Everyone with a BrainPal instantly dead, and all the human worlds open for conquest. Quick, easy, painless.

“But there was a problem. I had no way to get the virus in. My back door was for diagnostics only. I could read out and shut down certain systems, but it wasn’t designed to upload code. In order to upload the code I would need someone to accept it for me and act as a carrier. So the Obin went looking for volunteers.”

“The Special Forces ships,” Jared said.

“We figured the Special Forces would be more vulnerable to their BrainPals locking up. All of you have never been without it, whereas regular CDF would still be able to function. And it turned out to be correct. You eventually recover, but the initial shock gave us lots of time to work with. We brought them here and tried to convince them to be carriers. First we asked, and then we insisted. Not one cracked. That’s discipline.”

“Where are they now?” Jared asked.

“They’re dead,” Boutin said. “The way the Obin insist is pretty forceful. I should amend that, though. Some of them survived and I’ve been using them for consciousness studies. They’re alive, as much as brains in a jar can be.”

Jared felt sick. “Fuck you, Boutin,” he said.

“They should have volunteered,” Boutin said.

“I’m glad they disappointed you,” Jared said. “I’ll be doing the same.”

“I don’t think so,” Boutin said. “What makes you different, Dirac, is that none of them had my brain and my consciousness already in their heads. And
you
do.”

“Even with both, I’m not you,” Jared said. “You said it yourself.”

“I said you’re someone else for now,” Boutin said. “I don’t suppose you know what would happen to you if I transferred the consciousness that’s in here”—Boutin tapped his temple—“and put it in your head, do you?”

Jared remembered his conversation with Cainen and Harry Wilson, when they suggested overlaying the recorded Boutin consciousness upon his own, and felt himself go cold. “It’ll wipe out the consciousness that’s already there.”

“Yes,” Boutin said.

“You’ll kill me,” Jared said.

“Well, yes,” Boutin said. “But I did just make a recording of your consciousness, because I need to fine-tune my own transfer. It’s everything you are as of five minutes ago. So you’ll only be mostly dead.”

“You son of a bitch,” Jared said.

“And when I’ve uploaded my consciousness into your body, I’ll serve as the carrier for the virus. It won’t affect me, of course. But everyone else will get its full strength. Then I’ll have your squad mates shot, and then Zoë and I will head back to Colonial Union space in that capture pod you’ve so thoughtfully provided. I’ll tell them that Charles Boutin is dead, and the Obin will lie low until the BrainPal virus strikes. Then they’ll move in and force the Colonial Union to surrender. And just like that, you and I will have saved humanity.”

“Don’t put this on me,” Jared said. “I have nothing to do with this.”

“Don’t you?” Boutin said, amused. “Listen, Dirac. The Colonial Union is not going to see me as the instrument of its demise. I’ll already be dead. They’re going to see you, and you alone. Oh, you’ll be a part of this, my friend. You don’t have a choice.”

“The more I think about this plan the less I like it,” Harvey said to Sagan. They and Seaborg crouched at the line of the forest edging the science station.

“Try not to think so much,” Sagan said.

“That should be easy for you, Harvey,” Seaborg said. He was trying to lighten the mood and doing a poor job of it.

Sagan glanced down at Seaborg’s leg. “Are you going to be able to do this?” she asked. “Your limp’s gotten worse.”

“I’ll be fine,” Seaborg said. “I’m not going to sit here like a turd while you two are completing the mission.”

“I’m not saying that,” Sagan said. “I’m saying that you and Harvey could switch roles.”

“I’m fine,” Seaborg repeated. “And anyway, Harvey would kill me if I took his gig.”

“Goddamn right,” Harvey said. “This shit is what I’m good at.”

“My leg hurts, but I can walk on it and run on it,” Seaborg said. “I’ll be fine. But let’s not just sit here and talk about this anymore. My leg’s going to tighten up.”

Sagan nodded and turned her gaze back to the science station, which was a rather modest collection of buildings. On the north end of the compound were the Obin barracks, which were surprisingly compact; the Obin either did not want or need anything approaching privacy. Like humans the Obin collected together at mealtimes; many of them would be in the mess hall adjacent to the barracks. Harvey’s job was to create a distraction there and draw attention to himself, leading the Obin in other parts of the station toward him.

On the south end of the compound was the energy generator/regulator, housed in a large, shed-like building. The Obin used what were essentially huge batteries, which were constantly charged by windmills placed at a distance from the station. Seaborg’s job was to cut the power, somehow. He’d have to work with what he found there to make it happen.

Between the two was the science station proper. After the power dropped, Sagan would enter, find Boutin and extract him, pounding him unconscious if need be to get him to the capture pod. If she came across Dirac, she would need to make a quick determination whether he was useful or if he had gone traitor like his progenitor. If it was the latter, she would have to kill him, clean and quick.

Sagan suspected she was going to have to kill Dirac no matter what; she didn’t really think she would have enough time to decide whether he was trustworthy or not, and she didn’t have her BrainPal upgrade to read his thoughts on the matter. Sagan allowed herself a moment of mirthless amusement at the fact that her mind-reading ability, so secret and classified, was also completely useless to her when she really needed it. Sagan didn’t want to have to kill Dirac, but she didn’t see that she had a whole lot of options in the matter.
Maybe he’s already dead,
Sagan thought.
That would save me the trouble
.

Sagan shook the thought out of her head. She didn’t like what that particular line of thought was saying about her. She would worry about Dirac when and if Dirac showed up. In the meantime, the three of them had other things to worry about. In the end, what really mattered was getting Boutin to that capture pod.

We do have one advantage,
Sagan thought.
None of us really expects we’re going to survive. That gives us options
.

“Are we ready?” Sagan asked.

“We’re ready,” Seaborg said.

“Fuck, yes,” Harvey said.

“Let’s do it then,” Sagan said. “Harvey, you’re on.”

Jared woke from a brief nap to find Zoë staring up at him. He smiled. “Hello, Zoë,” he said.

“Hello,” Zoë said, and frowned. “I forgot your name,” she said.

“I’m Jared,” he said.

“Oh, yeah,” Zoë said. “Hello, Mr. Jared.”

“Hello, sweetie,” Jared said, and once again he found it hard to keep his voice even. He glanced down at the stuffed animal Zoë carried. “Is that Celeste the elephant?” he asked.

Zoë nodded, and held it up for him to see. “Uh-huh,” she said. “I used to have a Babar, but I lost it. Do you know Babar?”

“I do,” Jared said. “I remember seeing your Babar too.”

“I miss my Babar,” Zoë said in a little voice, but then perked up. “But then Daddy got me Celeste, after he came back.”

“How long was he away?” Jared asked.

Zoë shrugged. “A long time,” she said. “He said he had things he had to do first. But he said he sent the Obin to protect me and watch out for me.”

“And did they?” Jared asked.

“I guess so,” she said. She shrugged and said in a low voice, “I don’t like the Obin. They’re boring.”

“I can see that,” Jared said. “I’m sorry you and your dad were kept apart for so long, Zoë. I know he loves you very much.”

“I know,” Zoë said. “I love him too. I love Daddy and Mommy and all the grandparents I never met and my friends from Covell too. I miss them. Do you think they miss me?”

“I’m sure they do,” Jared said, and willfully avoided thinking about what happened to her friends. He looked back at Zoë and saw her being pouty. “What’s wrong, sweetheart?” he asked.

“Daddy says that I have to go back to Phoenix with you,” Zoë said. “He says that you’re going to stay with me so he can finish up some work here.”

“Your daddy and I talked about that,” Jared said, carefully. “Do you not want to go back?”

“I want to go back with Daddy,” she said, plaintively. “I don’t want him to stay.”

“He won’t be gone very long,” Jared said. “It’s just the ship that we brought here to take you home is really small, and there’s only going to be room in it for you and me.”

“
You
could stay,” Zoë said.

Jared laughed. “I wish I could, honey. But we’ll have fun while we wait for your daddy, I promise. Is there anything you’d like to do when we get to Phoenix Station?”

“I want to buy some
candy,
” Zoë said. “They don’t have any here. Daddy says the Obin don’t make any. He tried to make me some once, though.”

“How was it?” Jared asked.

“It was really
bad,
” Zoë said. “I want jawbreakers and butter-scotch and lollipops and jellybeans. I like the black ones.”

“I remember that,” Jared said. “The first time I saw you, you were eating black jellybeans.”

“When was that?” Zoë asked.

“It was a long time ago, sweetie,” Jared said. “But I remember it like it was yesterday. And when we go back, you can have any candy you want.”

“But not too much,” Zoë said. “Because then my stomach will hurt.”

“Exactly right,” Jared said. “And we really couldn’t have that. A stomachache just wouldn’t do.”

Zoë smiled up at Jared and broke his heart. “You’re silly, Mr. Jared,” she said.

“Well,” Jared said, smiling back. “I try.”

“Okay, I’m going to go,” Zoë said. “Daddy’s taking a nap. He doesn’t know I’m here. I’m going to go wake him up because I’m hungry.”

“You go do that, Zoë,” Jared said. “Thank you for visiting, Zoë. I’m really glad you came by.”

“Okay,” Zoë said, turned around, and waved back to him as she went. “Bye, Mr. Jared! See you later.”

“See you later,” Jared said, knowing he wouldn’t.

“Love you!” Zoë said, in that casual way that kids do.

“Love you too,” Jared whispered, as a parent. He waited until he heard a door close down the adjoining hall before he let himself release the ragged, tearing breath he had been holding in.

Jared looked at the lab, his eyes flitting over the console Boutin had brought in to manage the consciousness transfer, and lingering on the second crèche Boutin had brought in, the one in which he would place himself before sending over his consciousness to Jared’s body, wiping out Jared’s existence as if he were simply a placeholder, something put there to mark time until the body’s true owner could take possession.

But then, Jared thought, wasn’t that actually the case? It
was
Boutin who was intended to be in this body. That was why it was created. Jared was allowed to exist only because Boutin’s consciousness refused at first to take up residence. It had to be coaxed in to share the mindspace Jared had created as caretaker. And now, irony of ironies, Botuin wanted it all, wanted to push Jared aside entirely.
Damn it,
Jared thought crazily.
I just got this brain set up the way I like it!
He laughed, and the laugh sounded shaky and weird to his ears. He tried to calm himself, bringing himself into a more rational state breath by breath.

Jared heard Boutin in his head, describing the wrongs of the Colonial Union, and heard the voice of Cainen, whom he trusted more to be honest about these things, echoing the sentiments. He looked into his own past as a member of the Special Forces, and the things they had done in the name of making the universe “safe for humanity.” The Colonial Union
did
straddle every line of communication, directed every course of action, kept every aspect of humanity under tight control, and fought nearly every other race they knew of with persistent ferocity.

If the universe
was
as hostile as the Colonial Union said, perhaps this level of control was justified, for the overarching racial imperative of holding ground and making a place for humans in the universe. But if it
wasn’t
—if what was fueling the Colonial Union’s constant wars was not competition from the outside but paranoia and xenophobia from the inside—then Jared knew that he and everyone he’d known inside the Special Forces and out of it could have, in one way or another, led to the slow death of humanity that Boutin assured him was out there. He would have chosen to refuse to fight.

But,
Jared thought,
Boutin isn’t reliable
. Boutin labeled the Colonial Union as evil, but Boutin also chose to do evil things. He caused three separate races—two with long-standing issues—to come together to attack the Colonial Union, exposing billions of humans and billions of other intelligent creatures to the threat of war. He had experimented upon and killed Special Forces soldiers. He was planning to kill every single member of Special Forces and every other CDF soldier with his BrainPal virus, something akin to a genocide, considering the numbers and the unique makeup of the Colonial Defense Forces. And in killing the Colonial Defense Forces, Boutin would leave the colonies and Earth defenseless against any race who chose to claim one of the colonies as its own. The Obin couldn’t stop the land rush from these other races—and probably wouldn’t even if they could. The reward for the Obin was not land but consciousness.

The unprotected colonists would be doomed, Jared realized. Their colonies would be destroyed and there would be nowhere for them to go. It wasn’t in the nature of the races in this part of the galaxy to share their worlds. Earth with its billions might survive; it would be hard to displace billions of humans without a fight. The more sparsely populated and less ecologically burdened colony planets would be far more attractive. But if someone decided to attack Earth, and the Earth had indeed been held back by the Colonial Union for its own purposes, it wouldn’t be able to fully defend itself. It would survive, but the damage would be immense.

Doesn’t Boutin see this?
Jared asked himself. Perhaps he did, but chose to believe that it wouldn’t happen that way. But maybe he simply never considered the consequences of his actions. When the Obin contacted him, perhaps all Boutin saw was a people so desperate for the thing he could give them that they would do anything to get it. Maybe Boutin asked for the moon and didn’t give a thought to what he would do with the moon once he had it. Maybe Boutin didn’t really think the Obin would really, truly give him the war he asked for.

Interlaced within all of this, Jared felt a sick-making worry for Zoë: What would happen to her if Boutin failed or was killed; what would happen to her if he succeeded? Jared felt guilty for worrying about what would happen to one small child when billions of lives would be altered or ended, but he couldn’t help himself. As much as anything, he was looking for a way where Zoë lived through all of it.

Jared felt overwhelmed by the choices he needed to make, and underwhelmed by the information he had to make them with, and utterly bereft at how little he would be able to do about any of it. He felt like he was probably the last person in the world who should be wrestling with all of this. But there was nothing to be done about it now. He closed his eyes and considered his options.

An hour later Jared opened his eyes as Boutin came through the door, trailed by an Obin. “You’re awake,” Boutin said.

“I am,” Jared said.

“It’s time for me to make the transfer,” Boutin said. “I’ve programmed in the process and run the simulations; it looks like it’s going to run perfectly. There’s no point in putting it off anymore.”

“Far be it from me to stop you from killing me,” Jared said, casually.

Boutin paused; Jared saw that coming right out and mentioning his incipient murder disturbed Boutin.
Good,
Jared thought.

“About that,” Boutin said. “Before we do the transfer, I can run a directive that will put you to sleep, if you want. You wouldn’t feel a thing. I’m offering that to you. If you want.”

“You don’t seem to want it,” Jared said.

“It makes the transfer more difficult, from what I can see from the simulations,” Boutin said. “The transfer will take more securely if you’re conscious as well.”

“Well then, by all means I’ll stay awake,” Jared said. “I wouldn’t want to make this more difficult for you.”

“Listen, Dirac,” Boutin said. “This isn’t something personal. You have to understand that you offer a way to make this all happen quickly and cleanly, with the least amount of bloodshed on all sides. I’m sorry you have to die, but the alternative is far more death.”

“Murdering every Colonial Defense Forces soldier with your virus doesn’t strike me as the least amount of bloodshed,” Jared said.

Boutin turned and told the Obin to start the preparations; the Obin went to the console and went to work.

“Tell me,” Jared said. “After you’ve killed all the Colonial Defense Forces, who is going to protect the human colonies? They won’t have defenders anymore. You’ll have killed them all.”