Free Orphan Brigade by Henry V. O'Neil

and easily pushed him off. Both of them routinely swam laps for exercise, and Reena gracefully glided off toward a small spillway where water flowed into the pool. A break in the wall allowed access to a round tub equipped with underwater jets, and Olech obediently followed her into it. A continuous stream of heated water flowed across them as they sat on a submerged bench, and she let him kiss her again before they began to speak, close in and quiet.
    â€œI’m sorry Jan didn’t take the offer.”
    â€œMaybe I should have followed your advice and made the announcement before seeing him. Left him nowhere to go.”
    â€œHe still might have refused. And then where would you be?”
    â€œProbably making a second announcement about my brave son asking to be sent back to the war zone instead of becoming an ambassador . . . which we should probably do anyway.” A brief shake of the head. “Kid doesn’t trust me at all. Neither of them do.”
    â€œI know you don’t want to hear this, but maybe it’s time to tell them.”
    â€œThere’s never going to be a time. I can give them the absolute truth about their mother and their upbringing, and they’ll just assume it’s one more lie. Look at Ayliss. She took a job she didn’t want with an outfit she despises just so she can dig around for something that could embarrass me. She’s getting better at slipping my surveillance, and she’s got that fool Selkirk helping her do it.”
    â€œShe’ll get tired of playing revenge soon enough. And even if she does find something, we’ll just muddy the waters. Not like we haven’t done it before.”
    Another kiss, in gratitude. “Don’t know what I’d do without you.”
    â€œSure you do—­you’d be miserable again. All those years, and I was right in front of you the whole time.”
    He nuzzled her ear, then spoke directly into it in a voice almost too low to hear. Olech described everything that Jander had told him about the alien, finishing with, “The thing communicated with him telepathically, through two decon chamber walls. Sound and images. Jan said at one point it was as if he was reliving the creature’s injury, when they were hijacking the Wren.”
    â€œDo you think we’ve finally seen one of the Sims’ creators?”
    â€œMaybe. Everything we suspect about whatever made the Sims has been conjecture, so it’s hard to know. It would have to be incredibly advanced, so a telepathic entity that can change its shape to replicate a living human certainly fits that description.
    â€œBut why only one of them? Was this some sort of probe?”
    â€œCan we be sure there was only one? Command hasn’t always been reliable about what’s happening in the zone.”
    â€œThey were pretty rattled by this. And they didn’t hesitate to pass the word to every unit out there. Every Forcemember in the war zone knows what happened, and yet there hasn’t been a single report about anything like what Jan encountered.”
    â€œThey said they detected a plague virus on the alien?”
    â€œYes.” Olech’s whisper was long for a single syllable. “That part makes no sense at all. Why would it be carrying something like that? Even if it infected the entire corps headquarters, even if it wiped them out, a virus wouldn’t have gone far beyond that. Very low payoff, when you consider the delivery system.”
    â€œThink it was for deception, in case the thing was found out? Conceal its true purpose?”
    â€œExactly. According to Jan, the alien told him it was all a ruse right from the start. It said they included a Spartacan Scout among the maroons because a Spartacan would have to head for a high-­level headquarters with the information that he’d found a new Sim colony. That’s one reason they ended up at Glory Main.”
    â€œThat Spartacan