The Ghost Brigades Read Online Free PDF

quality of your lymph usually serves no particular benefit or detriment, just as the electrically conductive nature of human lymph is neither a plus or minus—it’s just there.”
    â€œYes,” Cainen said.
    â€œBut for Rraey who are unlucky enough to have two broken nerve development genes, this electrical insulation is beneficial,” Sagan said. “This fluid bathes the interstitial area surrounding Rraey cells, including nerve cells. This keeps the nerve’s electrical signals from going astray. What’s interesting about Rraey lymph is that its composition is controlled hormonally, and that a slight change in the hormonal signal will change it from electrically insulating to electrically conductive. Again, for most Rraey, this is neither here nor there. But for those who code for exposed nerve cells—”
    â€œâ€”it causes seizures and convulsions and then death as their nerve signals leak out into their bodies,” Cainen said. “Its fatality is why it’s so rare. Individuals who code for electrically-conductive lymph and exposed nerves die during gestation, usually after the cells first begin to differentiate and the syndrome manifests.”
    â€œBut there’s also adult onset Fronig’s,” Sagan said. “The genes code to change the hormonal signal later, in early adulthood. Which is late enough for reproduction to happen and the gene to be passed on. But it also takes two faulty genes to be expressed.”
    â€œYes, of course,” Cainen said. “That’s another reason why Fronig’s is so rare; it’s not often that an individual will receive two sets of faulty nerve genes and two sets of genes that cause later-life hormonal changes in their lymph organ. Tell me where this is going.”
    â€œAdministrator, the genetic sample from you when you came on board shows that you code for faulty nerves,” Sagan said.
    â€œBut I don’t code for hormonal changes,” Cainen said. “Otherwise I’d be dead already. Fronig’s expresses in early adulthood.”
    â€œThis is true,” Sagan said. “But one can also induce hormonal changes by killing off certain cell bundles within the Rraey lymph organ. Kill off enough of the bundles that generate the correct hormone, and you can still produce lymph. It will simply have different properties. Fatal properties, in your case. One can do it chemically.”
    Cainen’s attention was drawn to the syringe that had been lying on the table through the entire conversation. “And that’s the chemical that can do it, I suppose,” Cainen said.
    â€œThat’s the antidote,” Sagan said.
    Â 
    Jane Sagan found Administrator Cainen Suen Su admirable in his way; he didn’t crack easily. He suffered through several hours as his lymphatic organ gradually replaced the lymph in his body with the new, altered fluid, twitching and seizing as concentrations of the electrically-conductive lymph triggered nerve misfires randomly through his body, and the overall conductivity of his entire system heightened with each passing minute. If he hadn’t cracked when he did, it was very likely that he wouldn’t have been able to tell them that he wanted to talk.
    But crack he did, and begged for the antidote. In the end, he wanted to live. Sagan administered the antidote herself (not really an antidote, as those dead cell bundles were dead forever; he’d have to receive daily shots of the stuff for the rest of his life). As the antidote coursed through Cainen’s body, Sagan learned of a brewing war against humanity, and a blueprint for the subjugation and eradication of her entire species. A genocide planned in great detail, based on the heretofore unheard of cooperation of three races.
    And one human.

TWO
    Colonel James Robbins gazed down at the rotted, exhumed body on the morgue slab for a minute, taking in the decay of the body from more than one