The Ghost Brigades by John Scalzi Page A

them, but not all three at once. Special Forces have been told to stop this war before it starts. If this helps us to do that, we should do it. Try it, at the very least.”
    â€œRobbins,” Mattson said. “Your thoughts.”
    â€œIf General Szilard is correct, then doing this would get around the legal and ethical issues,” Robbins said. “That makes it worth a shot. And we’ll still be in the loop.” Robbins had his own personal set of worries about working with Special Forces technicians and soldiers, but it didn’t seem the right time to air them.
    Mattson, however, did not need to be so circumspect. “Your boys and girls don’t play well with normal types, General,” Mattson said. “That’s one reason why Military Research and Special Forces research don’t work together much.”
    â€œSpecial Forces are soldiers, first and last,” Szilard said. “They’ll follow orders. We’ll make it work. We’ve done it before. We had a regular CDF solider take part in Special Forces missions at the Battle of Coral. If we can make that work, we can get technicians to work together without undue bloodshed.”
    Mattson tapped the table in front of him, pensively. “How long will this take?” he asked.
    â€œWe’ll have to build a new template for this body, not just adapt previous genetics,” Szilard said. “I’d need to double-check with my techs, but they usually take a month to build from scratch. After that it takes sixteen weeks minimum to grow a body. And then whatever time we need to develop the process to transfer the consciousness. We can do that and grow the body at the same time.”
    â€œYou can’t make that go any faster?” Mattson said.
    â€œWe could make it go faster,” Szilard said. “But then you’d have a dead body. Or worse. You know you can’t rush body manufacture. Your own soldiers’ bodies are grown on the same schedule, and I think you remember what happens when you rush that.”
    Mattson grimaced; Robbins, who had been Mattson’s liaison for only eighteen months, was reminded that Mattson had been at this job for a very long time. No matter their working relationship, there were still gaps in Robbins’s knowledge of his boss.
    â€œFine,” Mattson said. “Take it. See if you can get anything out of it. But you watch him. I had my problems with Boutin, but I never saw him as a traitor. He fooled me. He fooled everyone. You’ll have Charles Boutin’s mind in one of your Special Forces bodies. God only knows what he could do with one of those.”
    â€œAgreed,” Szilard said. “If the transfer is a success, we’ll know it sooner than later. If it’s not, I know where I can put him. Just to be sure.”
    â€œGood,” Mattson said, and looked up again at Phoenix, circling in sky. “Phoenix,” he said, watching the world twirl above him. “A reborn creature. Well, that’s appropriate. A phoenix is supposed to rise up from the flames, you know. Let’s just hope this reborn creature doesn’t bring everything down in them.”
    They all stared at the planet above them.

THREE
    â€œThis is it,” Colonel Robbins said to Lieutenant Wilson, as the body, encased in its crèche, was wheeled into the decanting lab.
    â€œThis is it,” agreed Wilson, who moved over to a monitor that would momentarily display the body’s vital signs. “Were you ever a father, Colonel?”
    â€œNo,” Robbins said. “My personal inclinations didn’t run that way.”
    â€œWell, then,” Wilson said. “This is as close as you’ll probably get.”
    Normally the birthing lab would be filled with up to sixteen Special Forces soldiers being decanted at once—soldiers who would be activated and trained together to build unit cohesion during training, and to ease the