Issue In Doubt

CHAPTER Two

Launch Bay, NAUS Monticello, in Semi-Autonomous World Troy space



First Lieutenant Mitchell Paige gave the twenty Marines of his section a final look over—he’d already inspected them—before saying a few words prior to them entering their landing craft. His Marines weren’t exactly invisible, but he’d have had a hard time picking them out in the dim light if they hadn’t had their helmets and gloves off. The patterning of the utilities worn by Force Recon tricked the eye into looking beyond them instead of registering on them.

“Marines, we don’t know what you’re going to find on Troy.” Paige ignored the quiet chuckles that statement brought from the Marines. “That’s why Force Recon is going in, to find out.”

Some of the Marines exchanged glances: No shit Sherlock. That’s what Force Recon does; we go in to find out when nobody knows dick.

“The Monticello been listening on all frequencies since exiting the wormhole, but as of—” Paige checked his watch. “—three minutes ago, no transmissions have been picked up, nor has anything registered on any of the ship’s sensors. So we know no more than we did when we left Earth.” He gave a wolfish grin. “That’s why the Union called on us. We’re going to find out, and then some alien ass is going to get kicked!”

“OOH-RAH!” the twenty Marines roared. None of them said, or even thought, anything about the fact that their commander wasn’t going planetside with them. Everyone understood an officer going along with a Force Recon squad on a mission would only be in the way.

“Mount up!” Paige bellowed over the cheers. The Force Recon Marines pulled on their helmets and gloves as they filed into the landing craft and the waiting Squad Pods. One Marine in each squad carried a rifle. The other Marines were armed only with sidearms and knives—purely defensive weapons.

Paige watched until the landing craft’s ramp closed, then gruffly said, “Let’s go,” and ducked through the hatch from the launch bay. Gunnery Sergeant Robert H. McCard, the first section chief, followed. The two Marines headed for the Command and Communications Center, where Captain Jefferson J. DeBlanc, 2nd Force Recon Company’s executive officer, and the company’s First Sergeant John H. Leims waited for them. Along the way, they had to press against the side of the narrow passageway to let the platoon’s second section pass on its way to the launch bay.

It wasn’t long before the officers, senior non-commissioned officers, and communications men of 2nd Force Recon Company (B) were gathered in C&C, and eight Force Recon squads were on their way to the surface of Troy.

The Cayuga Class frigate Monticello was a stealth vessel, specially configured to support Marine Force Recon and small raiding parties. To that end, she had a compartment equipped with comm gear to allow a command element to communicate with its planetside elements via burst microwaves, and give it directions as needed. Her external shape had odd, unexpected angles designed to reflect radar signals in directions other than back at a radar receiver. A coating over the entire hull except for the exhausts was designed to absorb and/or deflect other detection methods. Strategically placed vanes and trailing stringers dispersed heat from the exhausts, giving the starship a faint, easily overlooked heat signature. She was not designed for offensive fighting; her weapons and counter-weapon systems were strictly defensive.

Two hours earlier, the Monticello had exited a wormhole two light minutes northeast of Troy and slowly drifted planetward while using all of her passive sensors to search for spacecraft loitering in the area of her destination world. The warship also constantly scanned the planet’s surface for signs of life, human or alien. When no signs of any presence, human or alien, were detected either in space or on the surface, the order was given for the landing party to prepare to head planetside.

The Monticello’s equally stealthed landing craft were each capable of landing up to fifty fully armed infantrymen on the surface of a planet, or launching four “Squad Pods” into the upper atmosphere for scattered planetfall. They were called “Spirits,” both because they were as visible to standard detection methods as ethereal spirits and because they could spirit troops to or away from a planet’s surface. The Squad Pods were intended to be mistaken for meteorites during their transit through an atmosphere: an ablative coating was designed to stop burning as soon as the antigrav drive kicked in when the pod was close to the ground, giving the impression that the meteorite had burned up. The Squad Pods normally landed away from populated areas, and flew nape-of-the-earth to their final destinations.

The eight Force Recon squads landed on Troy at widely separated locations so they could cover as much territory as possible. Upon completion of their missions, the Marines would return to their Squad Pods and rendezvous with the landing craft for return to the Monticello, where she maintained station near the collapsed entrance to the wormhole.

The Monticello stood ready to reopen the wormhole on fifteen minutes notice, either to return to Earth with the Marines, or to flee from an approaching enemy starship.



Planetfall, Semi-Autonomous World Troy



Squad Pod Alfa-1, with first squad aboard, plunged to the ground near the McKinzie Elevator Base. Its meteorite-mimicking track blinked out two and a half kilometers above the surface when its antigrav engine cut in to bring the small craft down twenty-seven kilometers distant, gently enough to avoid injuring its passengers, then scooted along, barely above the ground, to its final destination. Squad Pod Alfa-4, carrying fourth squad, made planetfall on the opposite side of Millerton from the elevator base. Pods Alfa-2 and 3, and Bravo-1, 2, and 3 made planetfall in other locations on East Shapland, the primary settled continent on Troy. Squad Pod Bravo-4 was the only one to visit the continent called West Shapland, which only had one settlement; some twelve thousand souls resided in and around the coastal fishing town of Pikestown. There was less than two minutes from the time the first pod reached its landing zone until the final one touched down on its.



Foot of the McKinzie Elevator Base, Millerton, Semi-Autonomous World Troy



Staff Sergeant Jack Lummus, leader of the first squad, didn’t give any orders when his Marines dashed off Alfa-1; touchdown was a well-rehearsed maneuver, and everyone knew what to do. The five Marines darted off in five different directions and went to ground fifty meters away from the pod, facing away from it. Each Marine had his motion detector, air sniffer, and infrared receiver operating before he took cover in one of the many craters that pocked the tarmac. Lummus didn’t even say anything when his four men all reported they were in position and searching. Not that he was concerned about being overheard by whatever possible enemy that might be lurking nearby. Force Recon helmets were well enough muffled that any sounds that escaped them were unintelligible up close, and totally inaudible beyond a meter or two. Anyway, communication was via radio burst-transmissions that faded out within two hundred meters—it simply wasn’t necessary for him to say anything.

The Marines lay waiting, and watching their surroundings and various detectors for sign of anybody in the vicinity.

After half an hour, Lummus transmitted, “Report.”

The four reports came in. Corporal Tony Stein had seen a skinny dog that seemed to be scrounging for something to eat, but none of the Marines had seen, heard, or detected anything human, or even remotely resembling the aliens they’d seen in the images they’d studied on Earth and on the ship. Nobody had seen a body, or anything that looked like part of a body, human or otherwise.

“One and two,” Lummus ordered, the command for his Marines to check their first and second objectives. “Record.”

“Recording,” Sergeant Elbert L. Kinser said as he and and Stein headed for the elevator station’s control building.

“Recording.” Corporal Anthony P. Damato and Lance Corporal Frank P. Witek headed to the elevator.

After the two teams searched their first objectives, the squad would reassemble and move on.

Lummus remained where he was so he could coordinate the two pairs. One Marine in each pair had a vidcam on his helmet, keyed to his eye movements; the vidcams would record everything the Marine looked at. As a just-in-case, the vidcams had a “deadman switch” arrangement that would automatically transmit their contents to the starship loitering above if the Marine was killed or incapacitated.



The Elevator



Damato and Witek were closer to their objective and reached it first. An executive elevator cab was in its docking cradle. Scorching around the open hatch gave evidence of fighting. The two Marines checked their surroundings and didn’t detect anybody nearby except for the other Marines.

“Go,” Damato sent. He and Witek went around the cab-dock in opposite directions to meet at its rear. Neither saw or otherwise detected anybody either along the way or once they rejoined. The elevator cab was an oblate spheroid, with three observation ports equally spaced around its circumference, and the airlock in the position of a fourth port.

“Cover.” Damato climbed an access ladder to the top of the docking cradle as he gave the order, while Witek remained on the ground watching their surroundings. Another ladder looked to Damato like it went up the elevator’s pylon at least as far as the anchoring stays. But he was only going up it far enough to look into the port on that side of the cab.

The cab’s interior lights were off, and little ambient light reached inside, so Damato used his infrared scope. All he could make out was the passenger seating and the refreshment console next to the attendant’s station, or rather their remains. The interior of the cab was wrecked. He removed his feet from the ladder rung they were on and slid down the ladder the same way he would going from level to level in a starship. That saved his life.



The Control Building



Sergeant Kinser and Corporal Stein reached the control building a minute after Damato and Witek reached the elevator’s foot. The building was small. They knew from mission prep that it had two rooms, an administration room and a control room. The former had front and rear entrances, as well as a window on each exterior wall and another into the control room. The latter was windowless, climate controlled, and had no direct access to the outside. The main door, off center on the front wall, was off its hinges, blown into the building. The front window was broken.

“With me,” Kinser said. He led Stein in a circuit of the building. They trod on shattered glass going past the administration room; the windows on the side and rear were broken out from the inside. The broken back door was on the ground, also knocked out from the inside. On the way around, Kinser looked in through the windows while Stein checked the area with his eyes, ears, and all of his detectors.

Back at the open entrance, Kinser said, “Inside.” The two Marines held their weapons the way a police officer would; finger outside the trigger guard, muzzle pointed up. An infantryman entering a building like this would have his finger on the trigger and the muzzle pointed where his eyes were looking.

The interior of the admin room was a shambles. Everything—desks, chairs, cabinets, office machines—was overturned and broken. Files, hardcopy and crystal both, littered the floor. Using infrared, Kinser and Stein saw stains on the floor, walls, and furniture that experience told them was most likely blood. They saw no bodies or body parts. Looking through the broken door and shattered window to the control room, they could see that the computers and other equipment in it had been smashed.

Kinser and Stein had just turned to enter the control room when they heard the first shot.



Downtown Millerton, Fifteen Kilometers From the McKinzie Elevator Base



Fourth squad’s pod touched down on what looked like a junkyard, but had actually been a parking lot. Corporal James L. Day began recording the instant the Squad Pod dropped its ramp to let the Marines out. PFC Joseph W. Ozbourn began recording as soon as his feet hit the pavement. Land vehicles of all manner were in the lot, every one of them smashed, tumbled, leaning on or piled on others. The Marines headed rapidly for the nearest unblocked exit from the lot to take positions. Day and PFC James D. La Belle went fifty meters left, to the far edge of the parking lot. Lance Corporal William R. Caddy and PFC James D. La Belle headed the other way. They didn’t have to go quite as far to reach that end of the lot. Sergeant Grant F. Timmerman remained where they’d exited and watched into the lot.

Fourth squad was on a narrow street, with the lot on one side and the backs of buildings, mostly one story, none more than three, on the other. Doors and windows all along the block had their doors and windows knocked out from the inside. Timmerman was nervous about being so close to so many buildings he and his Marines hadn’t cleared, so he only kept his squad in place for ten minutes before calling his men in and leading them into the middle-most building.

The interior was a cavernous space, with only three doorways to smaller rooms; the wall next to two of the rooms was marked with the universal symbols for male and female restrooms, the third with the word “office” next to it. The doors were all broken in. Stains on the floor showed that water had flowed out of the restrooms, though it no longer was. Day and Ozbourn checked inside the rooms while the others covered them. All the fixtures were broken, which explained the water stains on the floor outside them.

A more-than-waist-high counter separated a kitchen area from the larger area; the space had obviously been a restaurant. That was confirmed when the Marines examined the broken chairs and tables—and broken crockery—that littered the floor. The front door and windows had been blown in.

The Marines didn’t linger in the restaurant, but began methodically searching the buildings to the right of it. Timmerman always had someone watching the buildings on the other side of the street. Everywhere they went they found destruction; nothing inside the buildings had been left unshattered. There were no bodies or body parts.

They had almost completed a circuit back to their starting point when there was a burst of fire, and La Belle, who was watching the street, pitched to the ground, bleeding profusely.



Jordan, East Shapland



Fifth squad landed a klick away from Jordan, a farming town a thousand kilometers from Millerton and the McKinzie Elevator Base, located on a river of the same name. Like first squad at Millerton, the five Marines dashed away from their pod toward the points of an imaginary star and settled in place to watch and wait. But they didn’t spend as much time in observation before moving.

“Up, move out,” Staff Sergeant William G. Harrell ordered after twenty minutes in place. He didn’t have to tell his Marines what direction they to head in, or in what order to go. Corporal Hershel W. Williams led off, followed by Harrell, Lance Corporal Douglas T. Jacobson, and Sergeant Ross F. Gray. Corporal Anthony Casamento had rear point. Williams and Jacobson recorded. Their first objective was a small cluster of farm buildings about three hundred meters off, on the way to Jordan. They went through a field of chest-high corn. The Marines went at a normal walking pace. They weren’t concerned about being seen; they knew how effectively the camouflage pattern on their uniforms tricked the eye, and the rows of corn were far enough apart that they didn’t give away their movement by pushing through them.

The first thing the Marines encountered was some kind of native avians that rose complaining to fly away from dead animals they’d been feeding on. The Marines guessed the corpses were dogs, but it was hard to tell; the carcasses had been thoroughly scavenged and the bones scattered.

“Be sharp,” Harrell said. He wondered how the crow-like avians had detected him and his men, and knew that their noisy flight would alert anybody in the area to the Marines’ presence.

The first of the farm buildings they examined was the barn. It had large double doors. One side of the door was down, the other was hanging on one hinge. Inside, whatever stalls the barn may have held were buried under the debris of what had been the floor of the barn’s hay loft. The Marines carefully made their way through the debris, but didn’t see anything that looked like human remains, though there were obvious cattle skulls. Elsewhere, a grain silo had been torn open to spill its contents. A shed was broken apart, as were the vehicles it had sheltered before the farm was attacked. The remains of a smaller building and its contents appeared to have been a small smithy.

Harrell saved the farmhouse for last. The porch roof sagged—two of the pillars that held it up had been broken away. The door was blown in, as were the windows on the front of the house. The squad headed for the porch.

The Monticello had withdrawn after launching the Spirits, and was more than one and a half light minutes from Troy by this time, resulting in a five minute time lag between when Staff Sergeant Lummus at the foot of the McKinzie elevator sent the message that the squads in Millerton were under attack and the message was received by fifth squad.

“Hold,” Harrell ordered when he received the message. The Marines lowered themselves to the ground in a five pointed star, facing outward. “Someone’s hitting first squad,” Harrell told his men. After a couple of minutes with no further message, and no sign of unwelcome company, he ordered, “Inside, on the double.”

The Marines jumped up and dashed into the farmhouse. The interior of the house was as thoroughly trashed as the barn and other out buildings had been. The only differences were that the farmhouse’s second floor hadn’t been collapsed into the first, and there were no bones. The windows on the side and rear walls were all blown outward, as was the back door.

After a few minutes search, with no additional reports on what was happening elsewhere, Harrell gave the order to resume the movement to Jordan. The Marines kept to the field, walking between the rows of corn, bent low enough that only their heads were above the corn stalks.



Edge of Alberville, Thirty-Five Kilometers West of Millerton



With plenty of space for its relatively small population, the people of Troy revived a lifestyle that began in the middle of the twentieth century, but died out in the first half of the twenty-first: the bedroom community. Alberville had a large enough shopping district to tend to the basic needs of its population of 18,000, and schools from pre-elementary to pre-college for its children. But other than shopkeepers and teachers, people went to Millerton or other locations for work. Commuting was via a network of high speed maglev trains, which people also used to go elsewhere for entertainment, dining, and recreation.

Sixth squad found that the alien invaders had demolished the train system as thoroughly as they had everything else. The guideways were broken and collapsed. The train cars were broken and their parts scattered about. The train station was gutted, and its roof was sagging.

Half an hour after landing, having ascertained that there was nobody nearby, Staff Sergeant William J. Bordelon ordered his squad into Alberville proper. The five Marines spot-checked houses on their way to the shopping district. Everywhere it was the same: front doors and windows had been broken in, those on the sides and rear blown out, the entire contents of the houses reduced to scrap. No sign of a body or body part.

The Marines were confident in the ability of their camouflage to keep them unseen to any observers. Still, they spread out and moved stealthily, flitting from shadow to shadow.

Bordelon called a halt when the squad reached a park that marked the transition from housing to shopping. Again, the Marines examined their surroundings and checked their sensors. Again, they saw and detected nothing.

Until Bordelon gave the order to move out.

“I have movement,” Corporal Louis J. Hauge, Jr. suddenly said from the squad’s rear point. “Seventy-five, five o’clock.”

Bordelon slowly swiveled to his right rear. Seventy-five meters away was a house he recognized as one he’d checked himself.

“They’re following us,” Bordelon said out loud, while silently cursing himself—how could anybody be coming up from behind? Where did they come from? His motion detector was set to check three-sixty, but it hadn’t shown any movement. “Down.” He set action to words by lowering himself to the ground. “Show me.”

Hauge aimed a pulse of ultraviolet light at the empty window frame where he’d detected movement.

Bordelon looked where Hauge indicated, but the only thing he saw inside the window was the strobing flash of an automatic rifle firing at him. In an instant, he had his handgun drawn and fired at a point behind the muzzle flash. He never knew if he’d hit anything—just as he fired, a burst of automatic fire tore into his right sideshattering his ribs and shredding internal organs.

Less than a minute after Hauge reported motion, all five Marines of sixth squad were dead.



McKinzie Elevator Base, Millerton



By chance, Staff Sergeant Lummus had been looking in the right direction to see the flash of the weapon that fired at Corporal Damato.

“Sixty-five degrees!” he shouted into his helmet comm. That shot just missed Damato. How the hell did anybody see him? he wondered. I know where he is, and I can hardly see him!

Damato and Lance Corporal Witek took cover behind the elevator pylon. Sergeant Kinser and Corporal Stein took vantage points inside the control building, Kinser facing the direction the shot had come from, and Stein watching the rear. No more shots came for almost a minute.

Abruptly, shrill shouts rang out from all directions around the elevator. Most of them sounded like they were more than two hundred meters distant.

Well within range of our detectors, Lummus thought. Why didn’t we pick up anything?

No point in worrying about it, it was time for the squad to get out. Lummus looked to his rear. He was fifty meters from the Squad Pod, but his men were three times as far. If he could make it to the pod, he could pilot it in two short hops to pick them up. If the aliens didn’t have something to knock it out before he could get to them. In a few words, he told his Marines what he was going to do. They all said they’d be ready to pile in as soon as he reached them.

“I’ll cover you,” Kinser said—he had the only rifle in the squad.

Lummus braced himself, then lunged out of his crater like a sprinter leaving the blocks. He heard the loud cracks of Kinser’s rifle firing, and the less-loud cracks of the other Marines’ handguns. Lummus zigged and zagged to spoil the aim of anyone shooting at him. He was more than halfway to the Squad Pod when he looked beyond it and saw a mass of aliens racing toward him. The speed with which they jinked side to side startled him so badly he stutter-stepped. That was just enough to allow bullets from two directions to hit him. He crashed to the tarmac, dying.

At the rear of the control building, Stein shouted, “I hope he gets here in a hurry!” as he fired his handgun at rushing aliens. “There must be a hundred of them coming at us.”

Kinser swore. “He’s not coming, they got him.” He turned and ran to the back of the building to help Stein try to fight off the aliens. The two fired as fast as they could, but most of their shots missed. The attackers reached the building and dove through the door and windows, dropping their weapons in favor of using their long, vicious claws to rend the Marines.

Damato and Witek fired into the mass of charging aliens from opposite sides of the pylon, but to little effect.

“He better get here soon, or we’re screwed,” Witek shouted.

“We’re screwed.” Damato swore softly. He hadn’t looked in the direction of the Squad Pod, but he knew that Lummus should have reached it and been on the way by then. But he didn’t hear the pod’s engine—he knew it wasn’t coming.



Downtown Millerton



Corporal Day was the closest to PFC La Belle. He pulled the wounded Marine away from the door where he’d been shot and grimaced at the blood coming from several holes in his shirt. He glanced at La Belle’s face; it was pale, and his eyes were rolled up—shock was setting in.

“Stay with me, Jim.” Day wrenched La Belle’s first aid kit from his belt and reached into it for the self-sealing bandages. He tore La Belle’s shirt open and grimaced again when he saw the wounds. Working feverishly, he did his best to cover all of the punctures. Blood welled up around the edges of the bandages. Day guessed at exactly where the holes were, and poked a finger into the bandages in those spots. He got three out of five on the first attempt; the synthetic material of the bandages sank into the wounds and began to do their job, speeding a coagulation agent. By the time Day found the other two holes, blood had stopped welling out and La Belle wasn’t breathing.

“I told you to stay with me, man!” Day slapped La Belle.

“Let’s go,” Sergeant Timmerman snapped, gripping Day’s shoulder.

For the first time since he began tending to La Belle, Day was aware of the sound of gunfire from inside the building; the other Marines had been firing at whoever had shot La Belle.

“We’re going back to the Squad Pod,” Timmerman said.

“Right.” Day stood and bent to lift La Belle over his shoulders in a fireman’s carry.

“Move it, people!” Timmerman shouted at his squad.

Lance Corporal Caddy and PFC Ozbourn stopped firing out of the windows and followed Day at a sprint to the rear of the building. Timmerman brought up the rear.

Outside, they were almost to the Squad Pod before they ran into trouble. Fire erupted from the building they’d just exited, and the one they’d first entered. The first shots were wild and missed. Day reached the pod and dove in, hauling La Belle as far from the hatch as he could get.

Caddy fell through the hatch, shot in the back of his neck. Day turned back to pull him inside. Then had to reach outside to help Timmerman get Ozbourn, who also was shot, inside. Timmerman suddenly pitched forward with his legs dangling outside the pod. Day dragged him in the rest of the way, then slapped the “close” button to shut the hatch. He crawled over his squad mates to the front of the pod and took the controls.

It was several minutes later, when the Squad Pod was arrowing to orbital altitude to rendezvous with the Spirit, before Day was able to turn his attention from piloting the pod to checking the other Marines.

They were all dead.

How did they spot us?



Nearing Jordan, East Shapland



“I have movement, two o’clock, one seventy-five,” Corporal Williams said from the point position.

“Hold.” Staff Sergeant Harrell’s order held his Marines in place, facing outward, weapons drawn. “Moving where?”

There was a pause before Williams answered. “Whoever it is seems to have stopped, my motion detector isn’t showing anything now.”

“I have movement, nine o’clock, one fifty,” Corporal Casamento said a few seconds later. “Approaching at a slow walk.”

Harrell thought about it: Someone stationary was 175 meters to the right front, someone else 150 meters away was approaching from the left, through the rows of corn rather than between them. They could be aliens, or they might be survivors. For that matter, they could be farm animals, starving or well on the way to turning feral. He checked his own motion detector to see exactly where the object to the left was. He stood. Using his magnifying face shield, he could make out movement in the tops of the corn in the right direction and distance. A cow? A pig? It wasn’t tall enough to show above the stalks. It could be a child.

“Increase interval,” he ordered. “We’ll take the one coming from the left. Stay alert to everything else. Let me know if you detect anything.” He listened for the string of “Aye ayes” that told him his Marines heard and understood. A barely audible rustling told him his men were shifting their positions from ten meters apart to fifteen.

In just under two minutes, the approacher reached them. It passed through the last row of corn three meters from Sergeant Gray. It was bent at the hips, its torso parallel to the ground. It had a short snout that gaped open slightly, showing many dagger-like teeth. Feathery structures protruded from the backs of its arms and legs, ran down its long neck and spine, and formed a jutting tail. It wore leather webbing studded with pouches. It was armed.

Gray and Casamento moved reflexively as soon as they saw it; they dove at the alien to tackle and restrain it. It saw them almost as soon as they saw it, and let out a loud screech as it dropped its weapon and slashed at Gray with talons that hadn’t seemed to be on its hands seconds before. Gray screamed in agony, and fell onto his side, clutching the intestines that boiled out of his abdomen.

Before the creature could do anything else, Casamento slammed into it, bearing it to the ground. Lance Corporal Jacobson dashed up and jumped over Gray to get to the alien. He grabbed an arm that was swinging at Casamento, talons extended to rip the Marine’s face from his head. The alien was strong, its arm swing sent Jacobson tumbling—but its bones were fragile, and one snapped. It shrieked in pain, and the broken arm flopped.

Harrell dove in. He grabbed the alien’s head, twisted it and pulled its neck straight so it couldn’t get to Casamento to bite him. Jacobson recovered from his tumble and pinned the alien’s thrashing legs. In an instant, he had a tie-down wrapped around the creature’s lower legs, preventing it from kicking out. Casamento managed to wrestle both of its arms behind its back and bound its wrists. Then he wrapped another tie-down around its muzzle to keep it from biting.

“The one at two o’clock is running this way,” Williams shouted.

“Jacobson, check Gray,” Harrell ordered. “Williams, Casamento, get ready.” He checked his motion detector, and drew his sidearm, aiming it in the direction his detector showed the rapidly approaching jinking movement.

The second alien burst through the last row of corn and staggered to an abrupt stop, shrieking as it saw the other, bound alien.

And just that fast, the three Marines fired at it.

Two pistol and one rifle bullet struck it. It reared up, stretching its neck high, mouth wide as though to scream. But only a weak caw came out. The alien toppled to the ground. Harrell put another bullet in the thing’s head.

“I want its weapon and gear,” the squad leader said. “Be careful, it might have post mortem spasms.” Then to Jacobson: “How’s Gray?”

“I think he’s dead.” Jacobson’s voice was thick.

Harrell knelt next to his assistant squad leader. Blood flowed slowly around the loops of intestine that had fallen through the deep gashes in Gray’s belly. His eyes were open and glazed. Harrell checked for breathing and a pulse and found neither. He sighed.

“Put bandages on him to seal his gut,” he told Jacobson. “Then we gotta get out of here.” He looked at the alien that was now bound with more tie-downs, the alien that had killed a friend of his. “Bring the prisoner,” he said, gritting his teeth. He didn’t say he’d rather kill the monster. But he thought it. He didn’t need to say to bring Gray’s body; that was automatic.



Aboard the NAUS Monticello, Leaving Troy Space



The Force Recon mission was a disaster. Eight squads, forty highly skilled Marines, had made planetfall. Close to thirty of them had died. Two squads had been completely wiped out, and their bodies not recovered. Most of the other squads only had one or two survivors; all except one squad that had a survivor had managed to bring back their dead. Only fifth squad had lost but one Marine. The mission would have been a failure as well as a disaster if fifth squad hadn’t captured one of the aliens.

Who were these aliens?