The Ghost Brigades

Charles Boutin was a brilliant scientist who studied how consciousness can be moved from one body to another. The Colonial Defense Forces now know he has betrayed humanity and sided with three alien species. Boutin is believed dead, yet he left a recording of his mind behind.

The Special Forces, known as the Ghost Brigades, want to learn his plans. They grow a new soldier from Boutin's DNA and wait for the copied consciousness to rise. The transfer does not go as expected.

The soldier, Jared Dirac, wakes with a mind of his own. He is assigned to a platoon under Lieutenant Jane Sagan, while his superiors watch him closely for any trace of Boutin. This is the second book in the Old Man's War series, and it reads as a standalone story with a new cast.

Dirac learns what life in the Special Forces demands and what the Colonial Union faces. The book is quick, clipped military science fiction with dry humor. Its central question is whether a man is defined by the memories he carries or by the choices he makes, and events here carry on into The Last Colony.