Charles nodded as he backed out of the schoolroom. “What else could they learn?”
“Depends what modules were loaded in,” Miles admitted. “They’re produced in America, so the basics of English reading and writing are a given. Then there could be modules covering everything from basic human history to specialised Mexican history. Science and maths, farming instructions… this is a colony world, sir. They’ll have loaded as many modules as they could into the system.”
“I see,” Charles said. He hesitated, thinking hard. “They could speak to us.”
“They could,” Miles agreed. “And they could speak to the POWs, if they have any POWs from this colony.”
Charles nodded. The aliens might not be able to speak English properly — he agreed with the analysts that the shape of their mouths would probably prevent it — but they were definitely advanced enough to produce some kind of voder. Hell, he was fairly sure that Marine battlesuits could be adapted to produce sounds the aliens could understand. But if the aliens could talk to humans, but chose not to… what did that mean? Somehow, he doubted it boded well for the future.
“Hey,” Yang said. The reporter sounded unsteady; he’d been sick twice in the flight, according to the subroutine monitoring his suit. “Do you think the aliens took prisoners from here?”
“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.