"Same as you, Captain. Standard, near as damn it. I'd swear there was an energy Screen still protecting us, but nothing registers on my sensors. What we do have here is standard gravity, and a breathable atmosphere, but don't ask me what's maintaining them. We could survive here without our suits, if we had to."
"Don't even think it," Silence said quickly. "Don't even take your helmet off. Since we don't know what's maintaining these conditions, we can't be sure they won't cut off at any moment. Also, I want full quarantine procedures followed. Suit integrity is to be preserved at all times. Is that clear, everyone?" Quick affirmatives came back to him from the rest of the team. Frost just grunted, but that was to be expected. Silence glared about the deserted foyer. "Marines, move out and set up a defensive perimeter. Investigator, don't wander too far away just yet. Stelmach, don't touch anything. Cross, you've been here before. First impressions?"
"The place is a mess," said Cross. "Whoever came through here really wrecked the place. I can't tell anything from this."
Silence had to agree that the Communications Officer had a point. The foyer looked as though a grenade had gone off in it. Maybe several grenades. Furniture had been overturned and scattered everywhere, much of it wrecked or reduced to little more than kindling. The main reception desk, a huge slab of iron wood, had collapsed in the middle, as though something extremely heavy had sat on it. None of its built-in instruments were functioning. There was no trace of life anywhere. There were wide cracks in the walls through which could be seen the hellish glow of the fires outside. But strangely, the bronze light didn't penetrate far into the darkness. The sprinkler rain had touched and soaked everything, forming pools and little lakes here and there.
"No blood and no bodies," said Frost from the far end of the foyer. "But somebody put up a fight. There's damage to the walls and ceiling from discharged energy weapons. No sign they actually hit anything, though."
Silence looked up at the jagged holes in the ceiling. Trust Frost to spot something everyone else would have missed.
"Why the ceiling?" said Stelmach suddenly. "How big were their attackers?"
"Let's try and keep an open mind," said Silence. "We don't have any hard evidence yet that there were any attackers. This could turn out to be just another really bad case of cabin fever. Unlikely, I'll admit, but we have to consider all possibilities. Frost, run an energy scan on these disrupter holes. See how old they are. Stelmach, see if you can find a working terminal somewhere in this mess that'll let you access the Base computers. The Commander's log might give us a few clues. And Cross, how come the sprinklers are still working? Surely, they should have run out of water long ago?"
"The sprinkler systems feed off the underground lake," said Cross. "It's a long way down, but there are millions of gallons down there. It could rain forever in here, on a planet of eternal fires. It's like a miracle."
"Don't start getting religious on us," said Frost. "I'd hate to have to puke inside this helmet."
"Over here," Stelmach said suddenly. "I've found someone."
"Stay put," said Silence sharply. "Don't touch anything. Investigator, check it out."
The Security Officer was crouching beside the collapsed main desk. Frost moved quickly in beside him and studied the situation for a long moment. "It's a hand, Captain. Human. Unprotected. No obvious booby traps attached, according to my sensors. Help me move the desk, Stelmach."
They moved awkwardly around the desk in their clumsy suits, and Cross and Silence moved forward to help them. A pale colorless hand protruded from under one side of the desk. Working together, the four of them used the power of their suits' servomechanisms to lift the massive ironwood desk and put it carefully to one side. And then they all stopped and looked at what they'd uncovered. It had been a woman once, but most of her was missing. The bones were still there, piled loosely together, but picked so clean of flesh they seemed almost polished. The only flesh left was on the face and part of the arm attached to the hand they'd found. Most of her long hair was still there, but something had cracked open the back of the skull and removed the brains. Sprinkler water pattered down on the head and ran down the staring face like tears.
"Picked clean," said Frost. "And judging by the ragged end of the remaining arm, I'd have to say this was brought about by teeth, rather than any blade or sharp instrument. Same with the back of the skull; brute force did that, not a cutting tool. I wonder why they left the face and the arm…"
"Perhaps it, or they, were interrupted," said Cross.
"What could have done this?" said Stelmach, his voice thick with nausea. "What kind of creature…"
"Move away and take some deep breaths," said Silence. "Vomiting inside a hard suit is not a good idea."
"I'm all right," said Stelmach angrily. "I can handle it."
"It was a good question," said Cross. "What kind of creature would feed like this?"
"Practically anything," said Frost. "If it was hungry enough. The thoroughness is interesting, though. They didn't just go for the fat and the muscle; they took everything. That's unusual. More commonly, different species feed off different parts of the body… Maybe the attackers killed her first, and then something else came along afterward, and fed off the body."
"There are no living things anywhere on this planet," said Cross. "Unless the attackers brought something with them."
"Still think this was cabin fever, Captain?" said Stelmach.
"I'm not ruling anything out yet," said Silence calmly. "This is looking more and more like an alien attack, I agree, but we still have no hard evidence that anything other than humans were ever here. Remember, the Hadenmen are loose again. And there's always Shub and its Furies. Investigator, could the tissues taken from this body have been intended for study, rather than food?"
"Quite possibly, Captain. It would explain the thoroughness."
"This can wait," Silence decided. "I want this whole Base checked out, floor by floor. There'll be time for questions and hypotheses after we're sure this place is secure."
He gestured sharply to the marines. With Frost in the lead the party moved on deeper into the Base, weapons at the ready. Things grew worse the further in they got. There was destruction everywhere, and more partial bodies. Doors had been torn out of door frames, holes punched through walls, instruments wrecked, the pieces scattered to no apparent purpose or pattern. Every room had been torn apart and wrecked, but nothing obvious had been taken. The number of bodies mounted steadily. The amount consumed or taken varied, but the heads were always left intact apart from the brains, leaving so many silently screaming faces. Silence felt a slow core of cold anger building within him. This wasn't an attack, it was a slaughter; and he swore silently to every new dead face that he would take a bloody revenge for them all.
Frost just seemed increasingly interested, but she was an Investigator, after all. Cross said very little, except to comment on the increasing destruction and identify the occasional face in a choked voice. Stelmach had nothing to say, but kept very close to the others. The six marines maintained their defensive perimeter, checking every open doorway and turn of the corridor with trained weapons. Tension built inexorably as the away team moved on through the darkness, their only light what they had brought with them. Shadows loomed and danced; the only sound was the dull thuds of steel boots on the floor and their own increasingly harsh breathing. No one felt like talking much. There was still no trace of any actual alien, but broken swords lay discarded here and there, shattered on something harder than steel, and there was more damage to walls and floor and ceiling from discharged energy weapons. Here and there great holes had been punched through the thick steel walls, as though by some incredible force. Silence couldn't have done it, even with all the strength of his powered armor. The last creature he'd seen capable of such a feat had been the genetically engineered aliens he'd discovered sleeping in the vaults on Grendel. The thought disturbed him, so he kept it to himself, for later. And everywhere they went, the wa
ter came down in an endless rain, as though trying to wash away what had happened.
On the second floor Frost stopped suddenly and knelt down, shining her lights onto something on the floor. The others crowded around her, adding their lights to hers. The Investigator studied the pool of dark liquid thoughtfully and then stirred it slowly with a steel finger. It was a thick, sticky liquid that tried to cling to her finger when she pulled it away. She had to shake her hand hard to get it free.
"What is it, Investigator?" said Silence finally.
"Too early to say, Captain. I've seen smaller splashes of it here and there, but with nothing to suggest what it is or where it came from. But it looks organic."
"Alien blood?" said Cross.
"Maybe," said Frost uncommittedly. "I'll take some samples, and the Dauntless labs can run tests on it."
"Follow full quarantine procedures," said Silence. "Just in case."
"Of course, Captain."
Of course. She knows what she's doing. Let her get on with her job. Silence took a deep breath and let it out slowly as he straightened up. He looked about him and scowled inside the safety of his helm. It wouldn't do any good for the others to see how frustrated he was getting. They'd ended up in one of the main control centers on the second floor, and it was even more of a mess than anywhere else, if that was possible. Most of the instrumentation had been ripped out of its settings and partially dismantled. As though the dismantlers had never seen anything like it before. Perhaps they hadn't. Not for the first time, Silence remembered the alien ship he and Frost had found crash-landed on Unseeli, with its strange and unnatural biomechanical systems. A ship that had been grown as much as made. The single alien from that ship had killed every human being in Unseeli's Base Seven and transformed the Base itself in horrid alien ways. Hopefully, that wasn't what they had here. The signs were different.
"Stelmach, try and find a computer terminal you can access. I need the Commander's log."
"I'm doing my best, Captain. There are some working systems still on-line, but reaching them's the problem. Whatever came through here really trashed the place."
I want results, not excuses! Silence nearly snapped, but kept it to himself. "Do your best, Stelmach. We won't leave here till you've exhausted every possibility." He looked around as Cross came over to join him. "Anything new?"
"Not exactly, Captain. There's something wrong here. Apart from the obvious. There aren't enough bodies."
"Explain."
"Given the size of the contingent running this Base, we should have encountered far more bodies than we have. Unless they're all piled up somewhere we haven't found yet, I'd have to say as many as seventy to eighty per cent of the Base personnel are missing. Which suggests to me that the invaders may have taken the surviving personnel with them when they left."
"As hostages."
"Or specimens."
"But there is a chance they could still be alive?"
"Unknown, Captain. They could have been taken to the alien craft for… study."
And that was an interesting choice of word, Silence thought unhappily. It could mean anything from observation to vivisection. Either way, it was a complication Silence could have done without. He came to Gehenna to investigate what had happened at its Base, not go chasing blindly off after missing personnel. But he couldn't just ignore them. Not if there was a chance, however small, that some of them might still be alive. He scowled, torn over what to do for the best. His duty was clear; discovering what had happened in the Base had to have top priority Whatever had trashed the Base so thoroughly could be a threat to the Empire itself. Just at the time when the last thing it needed was another threat. But he couldn't abandon people to death or worse. He couldn't. He made himself stop frowning. His head was beginning to ache again. Facts. He needed hard facts to help him make his decision.
"Stelmach…"
"All right, all right! I think I've got something…"
Silence and Frost moved over to join Stelmach and Cross beside a comm panel that didn't look quite as wrecked as the others. It still looked pretty bad, and from the way Stelmach and Cross were fiddling about with its innards, there was clearly still a lot wrong with it.
"Bear with us for a moment, Captain," said Stelmach without looking up from what he was doing. "I've cobbled together parts from a dozen panels, and if we're very lucky, it might just condescend to work for us."
"I helped," said Cross.
"All right, I was going to tell them. This man's wasted in Communications, Captain. He knows more about the inside of comm tech than I do, and I thought I knew everything. Ever thought about a career in security work, Cross?"
"Save the recruiting speeches for later," said Frost. "What have you got?"
"If we're extremely lucky, access to the security systems. There are surveillance cameras throughout the Base, and their files are kept separate from the rest, hidden away for obvious reasons. Apparently, the aliens didn't dig deep enough to find them."
"Yeah," said Silence. "Right. That sounds like Security."
"You'd better hope I'm right, Captain," Stelmach said stiffly. "Whatever happened here, it's over. The attackers are long gone. These security files could be the only records of what actually happened here."
"We'll applaud later," said Frost. "Get on with it."
Stelmach sniffed loudly, just to let them know his feelings were hurt, and then he and Cross made the last few connections. The information in the security files downloaded directly through their comm implants so that visions from the past played directly on the inside of their helmets. They were patchy and incomplete, flashes of sight and sound, a swift succession of scenes from throughout the Base, but taken together the story they told was clear enough. Of what happened the day the aliens came to Gehenna Base.
They were insects, of all shapes and sizes. Spiders and bugs and praying mantises and yard-long centipedes, scuttling and crawling in an endless tide. They varied in size from less than an inch to bigger than human, and everything in between. Horrid combinations of dull carapaces and shimmering wings, too many legs and eyes, and all of them moving incredibly quickly in sudden darting movements. They snapped and stung and tore at human victims with clawed limbs. Some had clacking mandibles big and strong enough to rip a man's head from his shoulders with an ease that was almost obscene.
Silence's skin crawled with instinctive reaction. There was something awful and unnatural about insects that big. That organized. He watched with mounting horror as the insects swarmed through the Base, crawling over all the surfaces, running along the walls and ceiling, jumping up and dropping down on the Base personnel, biting and tearing without pause or mercy. Blood splashed everywhere, and the smaller insects licked it up. Disrupters and cold steel took their toll on the invaders, but there were so many insects, thousands of them, and they never stopped coming. And men and women died from poisoned bites and stings or lay shuddering on the floor while smaller insects burrowed in their flesh. Huge bugs like living armor tore human limbs away with horrid ease and waved them like dripping banners. People screamed and fought and died, and still the insects pressed on.
"Interesting," said Frost quietly. "I've never seen so many apparently different and unconnected species acting together. Could be a mass consciousness, a gestalt or group mind. Or maybe they're all drones, following orders from some hidden and protected queen. I can't be more certain without specimens to examine. But I'll tell you one thing for sure, Captain. Those big bugs aren't natural. Insects don't get that large. Body structure won't allow it. Which implies they were genetically engineered, constructed and adapted for various functions. Maybe all of them were. Which in turn suggests a level of biotechnology well in advance of anything we have."
"How can you be so calm?" said Cross angrily. "Those bastards slaughtered men and women and tore them apart, and you sound as though this was nothing more than a training session!"
"All part of the job," said Frost.
"Damn you
, those were real men and women!"
"She knows that," said Silence. "But she's an Investigator. She's seen worse. Now, be quiet and watch the records."
"I think this new file shows the beginning," said Stelmach. "It's the last intact one."
The Base's force Screen shut down suddenly, for no reason anyone in the Base could understand. Which was supposed to be impossible. The personnel weren't too worried—at first. The Base had been designed to protect them from the heat of the fires, even without the Screen. And then the insects came, cracking the Base open like an eggshell to get at the unprotected flesh within. The Base called for help with increasing desperation, but the comm systems were useless. Jammed. Which was also supposed to be impossible.
Finally, one by one, the cameras stopped recording as the insects discovered and destroyed them. And after that, there was only darkness.
The control room surroundings reappeared on the insides of everyone's helmets as the security file came to an end, and they all stood quietly for a long moment.
"There was a pattern to the invasion," said Frost. "The larger insects broke things, the medium range attacked people and investigated human tech, and the smaller ones cleaned up after them, sucking up blood, carrying away machinery, and eating the fallen, whether human or insect."
Silence closed his eyes, but he could still see the images of men and women screaming, struggling helplessly, or crying out for help that never came. He was glad he'd seen only glimpses of the carnage. He didn't think he could have stood seeing the horror of it in real time. He opened his eyes and breathed deeply to clear his head. He had to be cool and centered if he was to have his revenge on the bugs.
"They were specialized by function." Frost was still speaking, and Silence made himself pay attention. "Designed for specific purposes. But what did they want here?"
"What aliens always want," said Stelmach. "To destroy humanity."
Silence swallowed hard, his mouth dry. "It isn't usually that simple, Stelmach. We know what happened here, but not why. And without the why, we can't hope to predict what they'll do next. They could be anywhere inside the Empire by now. There has to be a reason for all this destruction and slaughter. Investigator, you said the insects appeared to have been designed for specific tasks in this assault. That implies there was an aim to be achieved, an end to be reached."
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