The Ghost Brigades

As the title indicates this second book in the Old Man's War series focuses on the Special Forces of the Colonial Defense Forces (CDF) of the Colonial Union known as the Ghost Brigades. As we learned in the first book, unlike the regular CDF forces who are taken from Earth's elder population, volunteers that sign up for off-world military service for a second chance at a youthful, enhanced existence, the Ghost Brigades are generated from the DNA of volunteers who died before they could become regular CDF soldiers. With generated personalities and even greater enhancements the Ghost Brigades from day one are created solely to be supreme military fighters and they and their missions are, for the most part, kept separate from the CDF regulars. Both CDF regulars and the Ghost Brigades are sent out to protect human colonists on worlds threatened by various alien races and most of their ranks never live to finish their term of service. And, even if they make it to the end of their period of service, they may never return to Earth.

We met one of those Special Forces soldiers in the first book, Jane Sagan, who was generated from the DNA of the dead wife of the main character in that book, John Perry, a CDF regular. When it is discovered that a traitorous CU scientist has escaped, leaving a dead clone of himself as a deception and working with three alien races to defeat the CU forces, which could possibly lead to the extinction of humanity, Jane Sagan and her Special Forces team is brought in to lead a dangerous mission to recapture the scientist and defeat the alien plot.

A kink in the mission is that Jane must use and watch a new member of her team, Jared Dirac, who was created from the DNA of the dead clone of the traitorous scientist Charles Boutin and whose consciousness was experimentally downloaded into the new soldier. Wanting to know what had made Charles Boutin turn traitor and where he fled to, the experiment to try and recreate Charles Boutin so he could be interrogated didn't appear to work and Jared Dirac develops his own personality and becomes a good Special Forces soldier. However, as time goes on memories from Charles Boutin begin to creep into Jared's consciousness. Through their integrated Brain-pals Jane must keep watch on Jared to make sure he remains loyal to the mission and eliminate him if he starts to show the same traitorous tendencies as Charles Boutin.

As in the first book the action is non-stop and there are new surprising reveals about the Colonial Union and its never ending conflicts with alien races, raising many questions. These reveals will most certainly be further delved into in the next book in the series.