“There are no bodies,” Charles said. “That suggests that the aliens took prisoners or destroyed the bodies… or there were survivors, who returned long enough to bury the bodies and then retreat. But there’s no sign of any survivors.”
He looked towards the forested hills in the distance. If there were survivors, it was unlikely they would risk showing themselves. They might not realise that the shuttle that had landed by the settlement was human. Instead, they might remain in hiding, convinced that the aliens had started to hunt them down again. He shook his head in bitter disbelief. No one had thought to come up with protocols for alien attack, certainly not on Vera Cruz. And that whole lack of preparation was biting them on the behind.
The remainder of the settlement was as uninformative as the schoolroom. All electronic devices seemed to have been looted, along with the bodies… and the remainder of the settlement had been scorched. Looking at the damage, Charles couldn't help wondering if the aliens had used grenades to destroy all traces of their presence, once they’d swept the colony and killed or captured the inhabitants. But they could have obliterated the entire colony from orbit, once they’d withdrawn. It made no sense.
Yang cleared his throat. “Shouldn't we try looking for survivors in the countryside?”
Charles snorted. “There’s twenty-two of us,” he pointed out. “We don’t even begin to have the manpower to search even a small part of the countryside. All we can do is sweep the settlement and hope any survivors decide to show themselves.”
He took one last look around the settlement, then called his Marines back to the shuttle. “We’ll leave a message behind,” he added. It was risky — if the aliens found it, they would realise that someone had been on the planet’s surface — but one he knew had to be taken. If there were survivors, at least they would know they hadn't been abandoned. “They will know we were here.”
“Sir,” one of his Marines said. “What will happen to the planet? I mean, once the war is won?”
“I have no idea,” Charles said. The Mexicans held clear title… assuming they could hang onto it while they struggled to pay their debts. But if the Captain was right and there was an alien world only one or two jumps from Vera Cruz, it was unlikely that the other interstellar powers would allow the Mexicans to keep the planet. They’d want to ship in reinforcements and planetary defences, then monitor the aliens indefinitely. “Why do you ask?”
“It's a beautiful world,” the Marine said. “I could apply for settlement here.”
“But very vulnerable,” Charles said. It wasn't uncommon for ex-soldiers, particularly SF operators, to be headhunted by colony world settlement corporations. Their training and experience made them good at keeping law and order on the frontier. “The aliens might be right next door.”
He took one final look into the distance, then cracked open his helmet. The air of Vera Cruz flooded in, a damp warmth tinged with smoke. He wondered, suddenly, if this desolation was the fate the aliens had in mind for Earth… then pushed the thought aside as he resealed his helmet and motioned for the Marines to return to the shuttle. They'd inspect one of the farms, but he wasn't hopeful. The colonists had been taken too badly by surprise to organise a resistance.
“Let's go,” he said.
* * *
Marcus wanted to crack open his own helmet as the shuttle made the brief hop from the settlement to one of the nearer farms, but he didn't quite dare. Who knew what might be present in the planet’s atmosphere? The Marines had booster shots that made them immune to almost every known disease, yet such broad-spectrum vaccines were rare outside the military. He forced himself to breathe through his mouth as the shuttle landed again, hitting the ground so hard he was sure they’d crashed, then followed the Marines out of the shuttle.
There was a farmhouse at one end of the field, a comfortable-looking building his briefing had identified as a Hacienda. Once, it had been intact; now, it’s walls were blackened and it was completely deserted, just like the buildings in the main settlement. Marcus remained outside as the Marines swept through the building, hunting for survivors or hints that someone, somewhere, was still alive. But they found nothing.
“Hey,” one of the Marines called. “I found a body!”
Marcus joined the general stampede towards the muddy ditch. A body lay at the bottom of the mud, clearly in an advanced state of decomposition. It was impossible to tell if it was male or female, young or old. One of the Marine stepped down into the ditch and took a DNA sample for later checking against the Mexican colony records. Marcus wondered, absently, if the body had been abandoned because no one knew it was there… or if no one had survived to come back and bury it. There was no way to tell.
“Female,” the Marine grunted. The suits could run basic checks, although without the records it was impossible to positively identify the body. “Around thirty years old, but too much damage to be sure.”
Poor bitch, Marcus thought. He’d seen horror before — he’d filmed horror for the jaded audiences in the civilised world — but this was something new. His imagination filled in all manner of scenarios. Maybe she'd been the proud owner of the farmhouse, running from the alien monsters that had destroyed her world; maybe she'd been the daughter of the farmhouse owner, trying to sneak around the aliens when they attacked. Or maybe she’d been a servant… there was no way to know. Her face would be broadcast all over the datanets, probably with a story composed to drum up support for the war, but she would never know it. God alone knew what had happened to the others.
“Leave the body here,” Major Parnell ordered. “We’re not equipped to take her with us.”
The Marines worked rapidly, digging a hole in the ground that would make a suitable grave. Marcus wanted to argue, wanted to point out that they could take her bones home, but he knew it would be futile. For all they knew, the aliens had left the body behind as a deliberate trap, although he privately considered it unlikely. The insurgents the civilised world fought regularly had a nasty habit of doing just that, but would the aliens understand the human urge to take care of dead bodies? It was quite possible that the aliens left their dead bodies to rot where they fell… or that they ate their own flesh and blood. There were so many fictional aliens invented by humans that he liked to think that they were ready for anything.
There was a pause when the body was placed into the makeshift grave. “Do you know what to say over her body?” One of the Marines asked. “She would be Catholic, wouldn't she?”
“Perhaps,” Parnell said. He stepped forward, composing himself. “My father was Isolated Catholic, but he never taught me prayers for the dead.”
He hesitated. “We do not know this girl’s name, our lord, and we do not know why or how she died,” he added. “But we ask that you take her in your loving arms and lead her to a better world than the one that killed her. Amen.”
The words sounded vaguely silly, Marcus thought, but there was a sincerity around them that outshone the prayers offered in Westminster Abbey. He made a mental note to ensure that the video of the brief ceremony was accidentally deleted. Someone would be bound to complain that the service hadn't been right, forcing the Royal Navy to waste time on rebuttals — at best. At worst, Major Parnell and his men might be punished, despite meaning well. No, it was better that the recording be destroyed forever.
“We’ll leave another message here,” Major Parnell said, as they headed back towards the shuttle. “But I’m not hopeful.”
Marcus couldn’t disagree. The aliens had systematically captured or killed every human on the planet — and they’d either taken or destroyed the bodies. Either way, he decided, it didn't bode well.
* * *
“No survivors,” Ted said, looking down at the images from Vera Cruz. “None at all.”
“There might be a handful hidden in the countryside,” Major Parnell offered. The Marine didn't look tired, but there was a weariness around him that made Ted want to send him straight to bed. “We have no
idea just how capable the aliens are on the ground or what sort of surveillance systems they will deploy.”
Ted nodded. Human surveillance was good, but it could be jammed or disrupted by a well-prepared enemy. There was no way to know what the aliens might deploy on the ground, yet it was unlikely anything they had was far inferior to humanity’s systems. They certainly didn't dare assume otherwise.
“Surely the colonists would have seen them coming,” Fitzwilliam said. He looked up at Major Parnell. “Could your men have caught all of the colonists if you dropped from orbit?”
“If we were trying to drop in on their heads, we’d do a paraglide from the shuttles,” Parnell said. “Or we could risk a straight drop through the planet’s atmosphere, although I’d hate to try that against any kind of ground-based defences. Still, Vera Cruz had no defences at all. The colonists might even have assumed the aliens were human visitors until it was too late.”
Ted barely heard him. “The colonists might have been taken as prisoners,” he mused. “Do we know?”
“No, sir,” Parnell said. “We know nothing for sure. The bodies could easily have been carried some distance from the colony and buried — or simply vaporised. We don't know the aliens took prisoners. But if I was waging war on a newly-discovered alien race, I'd sure as hell want prisoners to study.”
“Assuming they think like us,” Fitzwilliam mused.
“They can't be that different,” Parnell said. “Even if they are homicidal monsters who find humans irredeemably ugly, surely they would want to know how to kill us.”
Ted shuddered. Human doctors and scientists without morals had performed chilling experiments on helpless test subjects, after carefully deeming them to be subhuman and thus not worthy of any legal protection. The aliens wouldn't even have to wonder if the humans deserved legal protection; they’d just start experimenting at will. After all, humans had happily carried out experiments on non-human creatures before even starting to reach into interstellar space.
“I think they’ve already mastered the art of killing humans,” Fitzwilliam said, sardonically. “Just ask the crews of Formidable and Invincible.”
“It doesn't matter,” Ted said. The concept of humans being used as alien test subjects — or even being kept in POW camps — was horrifying, but there was nothing they could do about it for the moment. “XO, how do we stand with the loading?”
Fitzwilliam glanced down at his terminal. “A few more hours to take on raw material, then compress it down into suitable projectiles,” he said. “Assuming we don’t get interrupted, we should be ready to make the next jump in a day or two.”
“Which will also give the crew a chance to rest,” Ted said. Not that they dared relax completely. The aliens had to suspect that Ark Royal needed to replenish her stocks of raw materials. If they were watching… he shuddered and put the thought out of his mind. Doing nothing might have been safer, but it was also futile. “We’ll jump through the unexplored tramline tomorrow, then. I feel rather exposed out here.”
“My men can return to inspect the remaining settlements,” Parnell offered. “Or even to try low-power signalling…”
Ted shook his head, firmly. “If there are survivors, we will have to hope they hold out until the end of the war,” he said. “One shuttle flight was dangerously revealing.”
The Marine looked as though he wanted to argue, but didn’t. Instead, he saluted and left the compartment. Ted watched him go, then turned back to the display. One tramline had been explored, the other… God alone knew where it went. No, that wasn't entirely accurate. They knew which star held the other end of the tramline; they just didn't know what might be orbiting that star. An alien homeworld… or merely a staging base?
“One day,” Ted said, out loud. “And then we will know.”
Chapter Twenty-Eight
“So,” Rose said. “What do you think of our chances?”
Kurt considered it. She'd come to his office, they’d fucked, they’d showered… and every instinct told him to get her out of his office before someone caught them together. Every time he was called to a meeting, he wondered if the senior officers knew. But he knew Rose and he needed to talk… and besides, he didn't want to chase her out. They were supposed to be working together, after all.
“I wish I knew,” he said. Every war the Royal Navy had simulated had involved purely human opponents, with both sides aware of the tramline networks reaching through their territories. Now… tramlines could be predicted, to a certain extent, but there was no way of knowing what might lie ahead of Ark Royal as she made her way through enemy territory. “Too little data to calculate.”
Rose smiled. “You don't think this is a lucky ship?”
Kurt shrugged. They'd won their first engagement through surprise and superior firepower, the second when the enemy had broken off and the third… technically, they’d fled the battlefield, after giving the enemy a bloody nose. Luck had played a large role in their success, he had to agree, but he preferred careful planning. Planning tended to be more reliable, in the long run.
“I think we need to keep ahead of the bastards,” he said. Whatever damage they’d done at New Russia, the aliens would still be in command of the territory — and priming themselves for a drive on Earth. Or maybe head around the edge of human space and attack one of the other settled worlds. There was no way to know what they might have in mind. “And I also think we have to concentrate on our planning.”
Rose gave him a bewitching glance. It was funny how he could no longer think of her as anything other than beautiful. And she was beautiful. But dangerous, so dangerous… Molly was comforting, when Rose burned like a candle alight at both ends. And yet… how long had it been since he and Molly had made love, even before his recall to duty?
“Planning,” she repeated. One hand reached for her tunic, threatening to pull it open to reveal her breasts. “Isn't there something else you would like to do?”
“I’m not a young man any longer,” Kurt reminded her, embarrassed. “I need time to recharge my batteries before doing it again.”
Rose smirked. “And there I was thinking that you were behind the stimulant shortage,” she said. She went on at his questioning glance. “Someone — probably more than one person — has been talking the doctor into issuing stimulants. The doctor won’t say who.”
“Not me,” Kurt said. There were warnings about using stimulants for sexual pleasure. In the long term, they could create dependency or reduce potency. But if someone believed that the entire ship was doomed, they might not care about the long-term effects. “I still need to recharge naturally.”
He looked down at the flight rosters, although — in truth — they’d been over the same thing several times already. It provided an excuse to meet in private, yet it had long since worn out its usefulness. But the only alternative was to draw up new training simulations, which they would then have to fly out with their pilots… angrily, he scowled down at the list of names. Surely his life hadn't been so complicated before he'd started an illicit affair?
Rose leaned forward and placed her hand on his knee. “Thinking about your children?”
Kurt flushed. He hadn't been thinking about his children… but now she’d mentioned them, the guilt flooded back into his mind. Whatever happened between Molly and him was one thing, yet he would always be the father of Penny and Percy. His affair, his betrayal of their mother, would hurt them badly. He knew that for a fact. And yet he couldn't stop himself from touching Rose, now she’d broken the barrier between them.
“I miss them,” he admitted, partly to cover his real thoughts. “And I may miss the rest of their lives.”
The thought overwhelmed him. Penny would walk down the aisle… and he wouldn't be there to escort her. Percy would grow up, perhaps join the Royal Navy to be like the father he’d started to admire… and then marry himself, without his father to watch and advise him. And Molly… what would Molly do to make ends meet? Maybe she would marry agai
n, even though her best years were past. Or maybe she would just work longer hours to keep the kids in their private school.
“You’ll see them again, I’m sure,” Rose said. She withdrew her hand and stood up, pacing around the cabin. “Tell me something. Where do you see us going?”
Kurt blanched. It was the question he had studiously refrained from even contemplating, as if refusing to think about it would make the question go away. But it hadn't and it wouldn’t.
“I don’t know,” he admitted, finally.
Rose made him feel young again, he admitted, in the privacy of his own thoughts. He was old enough to be her father, just about; there was no denying that the thought of making love to her was a hell of a turn-on. And the danger, the looming threat of death or discovery, added a certain kind of spice to the whole affair. But afterwards, assuming they made it home, where would they be?
It wasn't fair on Rose, he knew, to tell her that he would leave Molly. Even if he wanted to leave his wife, he wasn't sure what he could say to the children — and he didn't want to walk out of their lives. It was bad enough that his current job could end his life in a split-second leaving them alone. He knew it would be worse if he walked away from their mother, leaving them even though he was still alive. Or would he wind up competing with Molly for their affection?
“Neither do I,” Rose said, practically. She walked forward and sat down on his lap, wrapping her arms around him. “I don’t expect to survive the next few weeks and neither should you.”
Kurt blinked at her. The feel of her body pressing against his was hellishly distracting, but he didn't want to forget what she’d said. “You don't expect to survive?”
“We’ve lost fourteen pilots so far,” Rose pointed out. There was an oddly dispassionate note to her voice. “I had someone in the analysis section run through the numbers for me. The odds of any of us surviving any given battle with the aliens are terrifyingly low. Sooner or later, our luck is going to run out and the aliens will kill us. Don’t you know that to be true?”
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