John Scalzi - Old Man's War 02 - The Ghost Brigades

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Scalzi, John - The Ghost Brigades

THE GHOST BRIGADES

John Scalzi

PART I

Chapter 01

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Scalzi, John - The Ghost Brigades

Chapter 02

Chapter 03

Chapter 04

Chapter 05

Chapter 06

Chapter 07

PART II

Chapter 08

Chapter 09

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

Chapter 15

Acknowledgments

Scanned by Mjay February 2007

v1.0 Proofed by Dajala. All formatting and paragraph breaks have been inserted as per the treeware.

Common OCR errors fixed and a basic spell check has been completed.

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Scalzi, John - The Ghost Brigades

The Author has marked telepathic speech by the use of a double colon character '::'. This has not been

scan friendly and was regularly OCR'ed to be either " or - or even a horizontal ellipsis. I have corrected

the majority of these errors (and will do all of them in a full read through) but this version may contain

some inconsistencies.

To Shara Zoll, for friendship and everything else. To Kristine and Athena, for their patience and love.

PART I

ONE

No one noticed the rock.

And for a very good reason. The rock was nondescript, one of millions of chunks of rock and ice

floating in the parabolic orbit of a long-dead short-period comet, looking just like any chunk of that

deceased comet might. The rock was smaller than some, larger than others, but on a distribution scale

there was nothing to distinguish it one way or another. On the almost unfathomably small chance that

the rock was spotted by a planetary defense grid, a cursory examination would show the rock to be

composed of silicates and some ores. Which is to say: a rock, not nearly large enough to cause any real

damage.

This was an academic matter for the planet currently intersecting the path of the rock and several

thousand of its brethren; it had no planetary defense grid. It did, however, have a gravity well, into

which the rock fell, along with those many brethren. Together they would form a meteor shower, as so

many chunks of ice and rock did each time the planet intersected the comet's orbit, once per planetary

revolution. No intelligent creature stood on the surface of this bitterly cold planet, but if one had it could

have looked up and seen the pretty streaks and smears of these little chunks of matter as they burned in

the atmosphere, superheated by the friction of air against rock.

The vast majority of these newly minted meteors would vaporize in the atmosphere, their matter

transmuted during their incandescent fall from a discrete and solid clump to a long smudge of

microscopic particles. These would remain in the atmosphere indefinitely, until they became the nuclei

of water droplets, and the sheer mass of the water dragged them to the ground as rain (or, more likely

given the nature of the planet, snow).

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Scalzi, John - The Ghost Brigades

This rock, however, had mass on its side. Chunks flew as the atmospheric pressure tore open hairline

cracks in the rock's structure, the stress of plummeting through the thickening mat of gases exposing

structural flaws and weaknesses and exploiting them violently. Fragments sheared off, sparkled

brilliantly and momentarily and were consumed by the sky. And yet at the end of its journey through the

atmosphere, enough remained to impact the planet surface, the flaming bolus smacking hard and fast

onto a plain of rock that had been blown clean of ice and snow by high winds.

The impact vaporized the rock and a modest amount of the plain, excavating an equally modest crater.

The rock plain, which extended for a significant distance on and below the planet surface, rang with the

impact like a bell, harmonics pealing several octaves below the hearing range of most known intelligent

species.

The ground trembled.

And in the distance, beneath the planet surface, someone finally noticed the rock.

"Quake," said Sharan. She didn't look up from her monitor.

Several moments later, another tremor followed.

"Quake," said Sharan.

Cainen looked over to his assistant from his own monitor. "Are you planning to do this every time?" he

asked.

"I want to keep you informed of events as they happen," Sharan said.

"I appreciate the sentiment," Cainen said, "but you really don't have to mention it every single time. I am

a scientist. I understand that when the ground moves we're experiencing a quake. Your first declaration

was useful. By the fifth or sixth time, it gets monotonous."

Another rumble. "Quake," said Sharan. "That's number seven. Anyway, you're not a tectonicist. This is

outside your many fields of expertise." Despite Sharan's typical deadpan delivery, the sarcasm was hard

to miss.

If Cainen hadn't been sleeping with his assistant, he might have been irritated. As it was, he allowed

himself to be tolerantly amused. "I don't recall you being a master tectonicist," he said.

"It's a hobby," said Sharan.

Cainen opened his mouth to respond and then the ground suddenly and violently launched itself up to

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Scalzi, John - The Ghost Brigades

meet him. It took a moment for Cainen to realize it wasn't the floor that jerked up to meet him, he'd been

suddenly driven to the floor. He was now haphazardly sprawled on the tiles, along with about half the

objects formerly positioned on his workstation. Cainen's work stool lay capsized a body length to the

right, still teetering from the upheaval.

He looked over to Sharan, who was no longer looking at her monitor, in part because it lay shattered on

the ground, near where Sharan herself was toppled.

"What was that?" Cainen asked.

"Quake?" Sharan suggested, somewhat hopefully, and then screamed as the lab bounced energetically

around them again. Lighting and acoustic panels fell from the ceiling; both Cainen and Sharan struggled

to crawl under workbenches. The world imploded around them for a while as they cowered under their

tables.

Presently the shaking stopped. Cainen looked around in what flickering light still remained and saw the

majority of his lab on the floor, including much of the ceiling and part of the walls. Usually the lab was

filled with workers and Cainen's other assistants, but he and Sharan had come in late to finish up some

sequencing. Most of his staff had been in the base barracks, probably asleep. Well, they were awake now.

A high, keening noise echoed down the hall leading to the lab.

"Do you hear that?" Sharan asked.

Cainen gave an affirmative head dip. "It's the siren for battle stations."

"We're under attack?" Sharan asked. "I thought this base was shielded."

"It is," Cainen said. "Or was. Supposed to be, anyway."

"Well, a fine job, I must say," Sharan said.

Now Cainen was irritated. "Nothing is perfect, Sharan," he said.

"Sorry," Sharan said, keying in on her boss's sudden irritation. Cainen grunted and then slid out from

underneath his workbench and picked his way to a toppled-over storage locker. "Come help me with

this," he said to Sharan. Between them they maneuvered the locker to where Cainen could shove open

the locker door. Inside was a small projectile gun and a cartridge of projectiles.

"Where did you get this?" Sharan asked.

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