Standing in the middle of a knot of troops, he unlimbered a small metal box with a glass face. It had delicate insides and like most marine equipment, a heavily armoured exterior. He aimed it down the hallway and adjusted the controls. A couple of LEDs lit up brightly. The gauges stayed motionless. He panned it slowly from right to left.
'Nothing,' he reported. 'No movement, no signs of life.'
'Move out' was Gorman's disappointed response.
Hicks held the scanner out in front of him while his squad covered him, front, back, and sideways. They passed rooms and offices. Some of the doors stood ajar, others shut tight The interiors were similar and devoid of surprises.
The farther they went, the more blatant became the evidence of struggle. Furniture was overturned and papers scattered about. Irreplaceable computer storage disks had been trampled underfoot. Personal possessions, shipped at great cost over interstellar distances, had been thrown thoughtlessly aside, smashed and broken. Priceless books of real paper floated soddenly in puddles of water that had leaked from frozen pipes and holes in the ceiling.
'Looks like my room in college.' Burke was trying to be funny. He failed.
Several of the rooms Hicks's squad passed had not just been turned upside down; they'd been burned. Black streaks seared walls of metal and composite. In several offices the triple-paned safety-glass windows had been blown out. Rain and wind gusted through the gaps. Hicks stepped inside one office to lift a half-eaten doughnut from a listing table. A nearby coffee cup overflowed with rainwater. The dark grounds lay scattered across the floor, floating like water mites in the puddles.
Apone's people systematically searched the lower level moving in pairs that functioned as single organisms. They went through the colonists' modest, compact living quarters one apartment at a time. There wasn't much to see. Hudson kept his eyes on his scanner as he prowled alongside Vasquez looking up only long enough to take note of a particular stain on one wall. He didn't need sophisticated electronic analyzers to tell him what it was: dried blood. Everyone in the APC saw it too. No one said anything.
Hudson's tracker let out a beep, the sound explosively loud in the empty corridor. Vasquez whirled, her gun ready Tracker and smartgun operator exchanged a glance. Hudson nodded, then walked slowly toward a half-open door that was splintered partway off its frame. Holes produced by pulse-rifle rounds peppered the remnants of the door and the walls framing it.
As the comtech eased out of the way, Vasquez sidled up close to the ruined barrier and kicked it in. She came as close as possible to firing without actually unleashing a stream of destruction on the room's interior.
Dangling from a length of flex conduit, a junction box swung back and forth like a pendulum, driven by the wind that poured in through a broken window. The heavy metal box clacked against the rails of a child's bunk bed as it swung.
Vasquez uttered a guttural sound. 'Motion detectors. I hate 'em.' They both turned back to the hallway.
Ripley was watching the view provided by Hicks's monitor Suddenly she leaned forward. 'Wait! Tell him to—' Abruptly aware that only Burke and Gorman could hear her, she hurried to plug in her headset jack, patching herself into the intersuit communications net. 'Hicks, this is Ripley. I saw something on your screen. Back up.' He complied, and the picture on his monitor retreated. 'That's it. Now swing left There!'
The two men who shared the operations bay with her watched as the image provided by the corporal's camera panned until it stabilized on a section of wall full of holes and oddly shaped gouges and depressions. Ripley went cold. She knew what had caused the irregular pattern of destruction.
Hicks ran a glove over the battered metal. 'You seeing this okay? Looks melted.'
'Not melted,' Ripley corrected him. 'Corroded.'
Burke looked over at her, raised an eyebrow. 'Hmm. Acid for blood.'
'Looks like somebody bagged them one of Ripley's bad guys here.' Hicks sounded less impressed than the Company rep.
Hudson had been making his own inspection of a room on the lower level. Now he beckoned to his companions to join him. 'Hey, if you like that, you're gonna love this.' Ripley and her companions shifted their attention to the view being relayed back to the APC by the voluble private's camera.
He was looking down. His feet framed a gaping hole. As he leaned forward over the edge they could see another hole directly below the first and beyond, dimly illuminated by his helmet light, a section of the maintenance level. Pipes conduits, wiring-all had been eaten away by the action of some ferocious liquid.
Apone examined the view, turned away. 'Second squad, talk to me. What's your status?'
Hicks's voice replied. 'Just finished our sweep. There's nobody home.'
The master sergeant nodded to himself, spoke to the occupants of the distant APC. 'The place is dead, sir. Dead and deserted. All's quiet on the Hadley front. Whatever happened here, we missed it.'
'Late for the party again.' Drake kicked a lump of corroded metal aside.
Gorman leaned back and looked thoughtful. 'All right. The area's secured. Let's go in and see what their computer can tel us. First team, head for Operations. You know where that is Sergeant?'
Apone nudged a sleeve switch. A small map of the Hadley colony appeared on the inside of his helmet visor. 'That tal structure we saw coming in. It's not far, sir. We're on our way.'
'Good. Hudson, when you get there, see if you can bring their CPU on-line. Nothing fancy. We don't want to use it; we just want to talk to it. Hicks, we're coming in. Meet me at the south lock by the uplink tower. Gorman out.'
'Out is right.' Hudson would have spat save for the fact that no suitable target presented itself. 'He's coming in. I feel safer already.'
Vasquez made sure her suit mike was off before agreeing.
The powerful arc lights mounted on the front of the APC illuminated the stained, wind-scoured walls of the colony buildings as the armoured vehicle trundled down the main service street. They passed a couple of smaller vehicles parked in a shielded area. The APC's gleaming metal wheels threw up sheets of dirty water as it rumbled through oversize potholes Internal shocks absorbed the impact. Wind-blown rain lashed the headlights.
In the driver's compartment, Bishop and Wierzbowski worked smoothly side by side, man and synthetic functioning in perfect harmony. Each respected the other's abilities. Both knew, for example, that Wierzbowski could ignore any advice Bishop gave. Both also knew that the human would probably take it. Wierzbowski squinted through the narrow driver's port and pointed.
'Over there, I think.'
Bishop checked the flashing, brightly coloured map on the screen between them. 'That has to be it. There's no other lock in this area.' He leaned on the wheel, and the heavy machine swung toward a cavernous opening in the wall nearby.
'Yeah, there's Hicks.'
Apone's second in command emerged from the open lock as the armoured personnel carrier ground to a halt. He watched while the crew door cycled and slid aside. A suited Gorman was first down the ramp, followed closely by Burke, Bishop, and Wierzbowski. Burke looked back, searching for the tank's remaining occupant, only to see her hesitate in the portal. She wasn't looking at him. Her attention was focused on the dark entrance leading deep into the colony.
'Ripley?'
Her eyes lowered to meet his. By way of reply, she shook her head sharply from side to side.
'The area's secured.' Burke tried to sound understanding 'You heard Apone.'
Another negative gesture. Hudson's voice sounded in their headsets.
'Sir, the colony CPU is on-line.'