The Ghost Brigades

The Ghost Brigades is a science fiction novel by the American writer John Scalzi, published in 2006. It is the second book set in his Old Man's War universe and, unlike the first, it is told in the third person with a single main point of view.

The Colonial Defense Forces get out of a captured Rraey scientist that a specialist in consciousness transfer, Charles Boutin, has turned traitor and has arranged an alliance between three other species against humanity. While looking into Boutin's clumsy attempt to fake his own death, they find that he had successfully stored a copy of his own consciousness in a computer before he went.

With no other way to learn where he has gone or what he intends, the Special Forces — the troops other soldiers call the Ghost Brigades — build a body using DNA taken from Boutin's decoy corpse and try to implant the stored copy into its brain. The attempt appears to fail. The soldier, named Jared Dirac, is posted to a platoon commanded by Jane Sagan, whose orders include keeping an eye on him in case Boutin's mind surfaces in him after all.