Maybe they're migratory and they just moved away, Bass thought. He thought it, but he didn't necessarily believe it.
"Raise the ship," he said to Dupont.
Dupont handed him the radio handset. "Got 'em."
"Skyhawk, this is Lander Six Actual. Lima Zulu is secure. Land med-sci."
The Essay carrying the med-sci team was in a decaying orbit one-third of the way around the planet from Central Station when Bass put in the call. They were able to make their landing in another three-quarters of a standard hour. It wasn't a Marine assault landing, they didn't come in hard and fast and off the coast. The Essay made a slow, spiraling descent just like the one at Camp Ellis and touched down gently behind the Dragons.
Dr. Bynum was the first person off the Essay. Owen the woo leaped off right behind her. It held its head high to sniff the strange air, then playfully gamboled about, radiating a soft, contented pink as it examined everything it encountered until a voice called his name. It looked, saw Dean, galloped to him, screeched to a bumpy stop, and nuzzled its human.
As the woo romped, Dr. Bynum looked around and spotted Gunny Bass and Lieutenant Snodgrass approaching. Bass had his helmet off and his sleeves rolled up, so she could see him.
"Mr. Snodgrass," she said, acknowledging the officer's salute with a nod, then immediately looked at Bass. "What's the situation, Gunny?"
"No nearby life-forms bigger than the large amphibians the scientific team reported last year, and the nearest of them are half a klick away. Watch out for the bugs, though, some of them are big enough they just might carry you away if they gang up on you."
Bynum laughed lightly, then turned back to business. "No sign of survivors?"
Bass shook his head. "I've sent a squad through Central Station to the top of that hill"—he pointed at the rise with the antennas on its top—"but we haven't entered any of the buildings yet. No sign of people or remains on the streets."
"Lieutenant Commander," Snodgrass interrupted. "As senior officer present, I should give the report. Please direct your questions to me."
"Mr. Snodgrass, any communications report you think I should have, you can give me at the appropriate time," Bynum replied. "Right now, the commander of the landing force is briefing me on what I have to know before my med-sci team can proceed with its investigation."
"But Lieut—"
Bynum wrinkled her nose and looked at Bass. "Does everything smell like that around here? The air carries the distinct stench of something rotten, very much like stale vomitus." She had seen the stains on Snodgrass's uniform and knew quite well what the smell was.
"No, ma'am. The smell seems to be localized," Bass replied straight-faced. Snodgrass turned red.
Bynum looked toward Central Station. "If nobody's been in any of the buildings, we may as well begin in the admin center. Even if we don't find any signs of people, there should be some records that can tell us something."
"Exactly my thinking, ma'am."
"Gunnery Sergeant, I'm not, I think, older than you, at least not very much. But hearing ‘ma'am’ coming out of your mouth makes me feel that way. My name's Lydios, Lidi for short. If I may call you Charlie?"
Bass smiled warmly and gave the doctor a bow. "My friends do indeed call me Charlie. It'll be my pleasure, Lidi."
Snodgrass turned a deeper red as he struggled to stifle a protest. An enlisted man and a lieutenant commander on first name terms? This was an outrage! He knew if he reported this breech of military discipline to Commander Tuit, the ship's captain would just shrug it off. As soon as he had the chance, he would report it direct to the Admiralty. Even if he had to use the influence of one of his uncles to get his report into the proper hands.
Several hundred meters away a watcher huddled among the root pillars of a mangrovelike tree, one of the few woody species on Waygone. The watcher hunkered so low in the water that only her head from the bridge of her nose was above the almost stagnant surface. At so great a distance, even if an infrared receiver picked up her body heat emanations, it would read her small apparent size and low body temperature to be signs of a medium-size local amphibian. She wore the earpiece of a receiver that picked up burst transmissions from one of the eavesdropping devices the Master had ordered left around the Earth barbarian station. Though she was quite articulate in her own tongue, her xenolinguistic skills were poor, so she understood little of what the barbarians said. She understood enough, though, to know that all the barbarians who were coming to the surface were down and they were about to discover the surprises. She removed the receiver's headpiece, lowered herself beneath the water, and swam to where the large one in command of the watchers waited for her report. The large one, if he so chose, might have someone carry her report to the Master and the leaders, those who just came down and those who were hiding, where they waited for all the Earth barbarians to assemble. Perhaps the large one would choose her to deliver her report to the Master. That would be a rare honor, one she would cherish. But if the large one ordered her to return to observe, or to do anything or nothing else, she would obey unquestioningly.
Chapter 15
"Oh my God," Lieutenant Snodgrass gasped, "what happened in here?"
Dean glanced at the lieutenant. The navy officer was visibly shaken. Dean and the other Marines of first squad had seen dead men before, plenty of them, and besides, these appeared to have been dead a very long time. Sergeant Ratliff nudged one of the bodies with his foot. It was nothing more than a loose collection of clothing inhabited by bones. A gleaming white skull lay on the floor a few meters away but it was hard to tell which of the several bodies littering the floor it belonged to. Evidently animals had disturbed the remains and scattered body parts.
"Better inform Sergeant Bass," Snodgrass said to no one in particular. His voice quavered as he spoke.
"I've already told the Gunny, sir," Ratliff responded. The damn lieutenant was getting in his way, but Gunny Bass had said it was all right for him to come along, so they were stuck with him. One thing Ratliff noticed that made him smile inwardly despite the horror all around them was that while Snodgrass looked down his nose at Marines in general, and Gunnery Sergeant Bass in particular, as soon as anything bad happened, what did he do? He called for the Gunny! "Spread out, men," Ratliff ordered, "and search the whole place. Don't touch anything. We don't know what killed these people." The other members of the squad fanned out and began exploring the rooms and corridors radiating off the building's foyer.
Ratliff was thinking ahead already. Someone would have to gather the remains and try to identify them. He shuddered. They'd come to help the people, and now the mission had turned into a graves registration detail.
Snodgrass managed to get control of himself. Gingerly, he reached down and shook a bundle of rags that had once covered a human body. A long white bone rolled out onto the floor. "Yikes!" he exclaimed and recoiled as if it was a poisonous reptile. Lying nearby were the skeletal remains of a human hand. On one finger glittered a ring that had survived whatever killed its owner. Snodgrass reached down to pick it up, and as soon as he touched the bones they disintegrated into a fine powder.
"Lieutenant, I don't think it's safe to touch anything until we know what killed these people," Ratliff said. Snodgrass quickly brushed the powder off his fingers and looked up guiltily. He had the ring.
"I know what I'm doing, Sergeant," Snodgrass replied automatically. Then quickly: "Well, I thought the ring might help identify the body." He felt awkward and embarrassed, being corrected by a mere enlisted man for doing something common sense should have told him was not at all wise. "I thought—"
Ratliff held up a hand for silence. Bass was transmitting on the command net. "Lieutenant, Gunny Bass is headed over here on the double. He says everybody stand fast. The place is secure and...and, Jesus, there are hundreds of bodies all over the place!"
Central Station was located in Society 437's subtropical zone. Of the three stations the scientists had established on the planet,
Central was the largest, with 846 inhabitants—scientists, technicians, support personnel, and even a few family members. BHHEI normally recruited only single men and women or husband-wife teams without children for its expeditions since the cost of including nonproductive family members was prohibitive. And the separations could be for such long periods that marriages often dissolved before the absent spouse returned. But occasional exceptions were made in the cases of scientists with special qualifications who were willing to subject their families to the dangers of deep-space exploration. Dr. Morgan, for instance, as chief scientist for the Society 437 expedition, had brought along his wife and their children, ages ten to seventeen.
The expedition had been on Society 437 for a full year before communications ceased, and during that time no circumstance, no living thing more than usually inimical to human life, had been detected on the planet. And now it appeared everyone, every man, woman, and child, was dead. That is, they were all dead at Central Station. If there were any survivors, they had not yet made themselves known. But from what the Marines could see, the death visited upon the people at Central had been thorough and horrible.
"Sergeant! Sergeant! Come here, quickly!" Lieutenant Snodgrass shouted. Bass had just arrived and was standing in the foyer of the administration building, wiping the perspiration from his forehead. Staff Sergeant Hyakowa and a navy corpsman came in right behind him. Snodgrass was standing on the second floor balcony that led to the communications control room. Having gotten Bass's attention, he whirled around and ran through a door, out of sight.
Bass looked at Hyakowa and shook his head. Ratliff emerged from one of the downstairs offices and cast an inquiring glance at the platoon commander. Bass shook his head no, and Ratliff returned to searching the downstairs rooms.
"What the hell has Snotty found now?" Hyakowa asked in a low voice.
"Let's go see," Bass answered, and they swiftly mounted the stairs to the second floor. Hyakowa carefully reset the safety on his weapon.
The data control room was surrounded on all sides by windows that looked out over the compound. It was stuffed with banks of computers, scanners, printers, and more esoteric equipment. The skeletal remains of several bodies were scattered about the floor.
"Look!" Snodgrass commanded when the two NCOs came through the door.
"Power's been out a long time, Lieutenant," Hyakowa said. "What's to look at?"
Bass laid a restraining hand on his platoon sergeant's shoulder. "Not so quick, Wang," he said slowly. "The lieutenant's right. Half the equipment that was in this control room is missing."
Hyakowa noticed then the gaping spaces in the console banks where instruments had been removed.
"And what's left has been deliberately destroyed," Snodgrass almost shouted. To prove his point he held up a piece of equipment. It looked to the Marines gathered around as if it had been melted. "Nothing in here works," the lieutenant exclaimed.
"Doc," Bass said to the corpsman, "what do you think?"
Confederation Navy corpsmen were far more than the pillpushers of old. They had the skills, training, and equipment to perform fairly complicated battlefield surgery and could diagnose and successfully treat the most common diseases and disorders that still plagued mankind. The corpsman, Hospitalman First Class Horner, took the equipment from Snodgrass and examined it closely. He nodded his head at Bass. "I'd say from the very brief postmortems we've run on the bodies so far, someone sprayed those people and this equipment here with a very powerful acid."
"Acid?" Snodgrass shouted in disbelief. "Acid? Who the hell would do that? I've never heard of such foolishness!" He snatched back the piece of communications equipment and held it possessively. "Heat did this, goddamnit! Sabotage!"
"Lieutenant," Horner replied patiently, "acids oxidize material. Same thing as burning. What you've got on that piece of metal is an acid burn. Gunny, it's time to get Commander Bynum in here. That's what I think, anyway." He also thought Snodgrass was losing it—or they didn't teach basic chemistry at the Confederation Naval Academy anymore.
Bass nodded and began speaking into the command net. Snodgrass made as if to protest but Bass silenced him by holding up a hand.
"What the hell do you need the doctor for?" Snodgrass shouted. "Everyone's fucking dead down here! Why don't you get your ass moving, Sergeant, and find out who did this?" Snodgrass's face turned red.
Bass regarded the lieutenant briefly. He realized the communications officer was on the verge of hysteria. "Lieutenant," he replied after a moment, "I am in charge of this landing party, and speaking of ‘asses,’ you are becoming a big pain in mine." Snodgrass began to bluster but Bass silenced him with a wave of his hand. "Now, Mr. Snodgrass, you stick with the communications matters and I'll command the landing party. Otherwise, sir, I'll have to ask you to return to the Fairfax."
Snodgrass just stared silently at Bass for a second or two. "But—But—" He gestured vaguely around the control room.
"We need to find out who—what—?"
"Lieutenant," Bass answered, "we will, we will. That's why we need the med-sci team, they'll be able to find out. But I'm not putting one foot outside this compound until I know what we're up against down here. And just don't forget one thing, sir. Whoever—or whatever—did this to them," he gestured at the bodies scattered on the floor, "can do the same thing to us."
"Well," Dr. Bynum said as she straightened up and stretched her back, "I really need to get some of these remains back to the ship to do a thorough postmortem, but I've been able to establish one salient fact: First Class Horner's diagnosis that these people were killed by an acid is correct. I deduced that from the nature of the injuries they sustained, as you can see from the condition of the bones and the clothing, and the fact that a great many of these bones have no calcium in them anymore. That explains why they crumble to dust when disturbed."
The Marines gathered around her looked on in silent anticipation. "So what, precisely, does that mean?" Snodgrass asked. Bass glanced over at him sharply. The lieutenant's tone of voice dripped with sarcasm.
"Okay," she replied, ignoring Snodgrass's tone, "take a look at the remains over here." She stepped over to a heap of rags and bones lying undisturbed near the wall. "Now remember, I'm not a forensics expert," she continued, reaching down and picking up a bone fragment, "but anybody can see from these remains what might've happened here." She held out the fragment for the Marines to inspect. "This is the radius, the bone on the thumb side of the victim's right forearm. Note that it is only about four inches long, about a third or a quarter of the normal length of this bone in an adult. The end that connects to the carpus, or wrist, is gone entirely, and that end of the bone"—she rubbed it vigorously with her finger—"disintegrates into a fine power when touched. Note also there is no skull, no cervical vertebrae, the collar bones are missing, and so on. They were not carried away by foraging animals either. This white powder is all that's left of them." She stirred the powder on the floor with a finger. "Observe that there appears to be no right leg from the knee on down. You will also see—" She bent and rummaged among the clothing remnants. "—that the left side is essentially intact" She pulled another bone from among the clothing and held it up. "Left radius. See the difference?"
"So I repeat, Doctor, what happened?" Snodgrass demanded.
Still ignoring his tone, Dr. Bynum held up a clothing fragment. "This is what's left of the shirt the victim was wearing. Note how the right side is entirely gone. See the zipper that ran down the front? The upper half is melted." She tossed the fragment to the floor, where it raised a cloud of fine white dust, the remnants of the dissolved bones. "How many bodies have we examined so far, Gunny?" she asked, turning to Bass. "Maybe twenty? Horner looked at another twenty? They all display similar injuries. To put it simply, so even you can understand, Lieutenant Snodgrass, these people were sprayed with an extremely toxic and volatile substance that literally dissolved the body parts it touched. The reason this particular victim's r
ight radius was not completely destroyed is probably because he threw up his right arm to protect his face and that partially protected the bone on the inside of his arm. Partly."
"Holy shit," someone said softly. Dean glanced nervously at the man standing next to him as all the Marines gripped their weapons more tightly.
"So they were attacked," Bass responded quietly. "This was not some kind of, um, ‘environmental’ anomaly?"
"No, Gunny," Dr. Bynum said. "These people, all several hundred of them, were deliberately and violently killed. It must have been terrible."
"Oh, Mohammed's big red gonads, Doctor!" Snodgrass exclaimed. "Who? Who would've done it? And how? I've never heard of anything so ridiculous!" Snodgrass's normal arrogance, which was always difficult to endure, had become even more pronounced now that he was frightened. There would be no more daydreams of him saying, "Dr. Morgan, I presume?"
"I know who did it," Dr. Bynum announced. Bass glanced sharply at her. "The people who did this are, quite obviously, Lieutenant, very nasty customers who don't much care about killing whoever gets in their way."
"Amen," Hyakowa said.
"Any idea about the type of weapons used?" Bass asked.
"No, except it was some kind of acid. Judging from the absence of calcium in the affected areas, I'd say specifically some kind of phosphoric acid. Possibly—and I emphasize ‘possibly’—white phosphorus. Mixed with organic solvents like carbon disulfide or benzene, it can be very toxic. Judging from what I've seen here, I'd say it was sprayed somehow on the victims."
"Oh, who ever heard of such nonsense?" Snodgrass exclaimed, too loudly.
"Lieutenant, years ago phosphorus was used in military ordnance," Bass said. "I remember reading that it was very effective and very deadly."
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