The Hammers had started out with nine NCOs and enlisted, Julio’s team, by the time it got officially linked up, with one and three. Sergeant Glover and Julio were the only remaining from his team and there were only four Hammers. It had been a bloody slog.
Along the way Julio had seen some things he hoped would eventually fade from consciousness. When thousands of Posleen normals were killed in a nine foot wide passage, it was necessary to more than just wade through the bodies. He’d found himself hacking parts out of the way, stomping through them, his suit becoming covered in yellow blood.
Broken and flayed suits had become a thing of norm. Passages choked with a mixture of suits and Posleen and rubble.
But this was something new. It appeared to be a pit filled with nothing but bones. There was a bit of flesh on them and some sort of bug had infested the pit, but it was the bones that showed through.
“Charnal pit,” Sergeant Glover said, stepping up beside him. “Looks like mostly Posleen. They must have been eating the normals to keep them from eating the food supply. Look, see the little ones?”
“Yeah,” Julio said, his eyes wide.
“Nestlings. They eat their young, too.”
“Madre de Dios,” Julio repeated. “That is sick.”
“Hey, they reproduce so fast that… ” The sergeant paused.
“So fast that what, sergeant?”
“That is not a Posleen bone,” the sergeant said. “Go get me some rope. I need to get down there.”
“We get anybody captured?” Mike said, rotating the bone back and forth.
Posleen were aliens, their physiology wildly different than humans. And over the past fifty years he had seen more bones, of both species, than he cared to remember. Back on earth during the Retaking there had been thousands of charnal pits filled with the remnants of the humans the Posleen used as “thresh.” By the same token, Posleen bodies, consumed or just shattered, littered the earth to the point where their toxic blood made some areas untillable for years.
But the point was, Posleen bones and human bones did not look much alike. Among other things, Posleen bones had a very distinct “ridge” down the center. Human bones were much more rounded. And whereas there were some terrestrial animals that had bones remarkably similar to a human femur, they were on earth. Not three hundred light years galactic inward.
“Not even any unaccounted for,” Colonel Shan Gilman,the 11 ACS personnel officer, G-1, raised a hand in a shrug. “Every human that dropped on this world is accounted for. There are a few legs missing, but… ”
“But it don’t account for this, sir,” Sergeant Major Rolph Tilton said, walking over. He held up the skull in his hand and waggled it back and forth. “More we dig in there, the more of these we’re finding. And this ain’t a full grown guy.”
“Girl,” Mike said, looking at the skull. “Female. Teen.” He took it and turned it back and forth. “Malnourished for that matter. And with really bad teeth.”
“So how did it get here?” Colonel Gilman asked, desperately. “We didn’t bring any teen females with us!”
“Interesting question,” Mike said, turning the skull back and forth. “But I don’t think we’re going to solve it today. Clean out that pit and find out what’s all in there. Keep me posted. Rawls.”
“Sir?”
“Attach Private Garcia and his sergeant to the Hammers. We’re heading back to the ship.”
“Roger, sir.”
As the hatch of the Banshee shuttle closed the helmets came off as if on cue.
Mike flicked the helmet of undergel to let it know it might as well crawl back in the helmet then looked around.
“Julio!”
“Sir?” the private squeaked, trying to figure out if he was supposed to have kept his helmet on or something.
“What do you think?”
“Uh,” Julio said, blinking furiously in thought. “I think I’m glad to be back on a shuttle headed for the ship, sir. I know the suits keep you clean but I’m looking forward to a shower and some rack time.”
“Spoken like a true soldier,” Mike said, smiling at the chuckles from the veterans in the shuttle. “But I was actually talking about the bones.”
“Don’t know what to think, sir,” Garcia replied. “I mean, they’re not our guys. And we’re the only humans on this planet.”
“So how did they get there?” Mike asked, leaning back with his eyes cleared.
“Not sure, sir.”
“Gimme an answer, private,” Mike said. “Any answer is fine.”
“Okay… ” the private said, nervously. “Well… The Posleen could have brought them here. Sir. I mean as food or something. Maybe some sort of trade.”
“Sergeant Glover.”
“Sir?” the sergeant replied. He and Garcia had been around the General for a month but it didn’t mean he was any less nervous in his presence. He wasn’t even sure what he was doing here.
“You’ve been in the ACS for six years. Enlisted from an unrecovered part of Florida. Bounty hunter?”
“My father was, sir,” Glover said, his brow furrowing. “I did some Posleen hunting before I joined up.”
“Since then you’ve participated in the retaking of five worlds. Ever seen human sign?”
“No, sir,” Glover replied. “I mean, I saw something like this, an old pit that is, in Florida. But not since I’ve been off-world. All the planets where humans had gotten caught by the Posleen were cleared by the time I joined up.”
“So what do you think of Private Garcia’s theory?” the General asked.
“It’s possible but it doesn’t match past record, sir,” Glover said. “If the Posleen were going to be trading in human thresh, you would expect to see it closer to Earth. This is a long way from home, sir.”
“That it is,” Mike said. “Okay… Clarke.”
“Sir?” Corporal Edgar Clarke was a two year veteran of the Hammers. Six foot two inches tall he, like most of the Hammers, looked a bit incongruous next to their “primary.”
“Alternative theory.”
Clarke hated this. When the General wasn’t busy with something else he’d pose these little “think sessions.” Clarke was more than happy to kill Posleen or, hell, throw his body between Posleen fire and his boss. But he hated when he was asked to think.
“Humans evolving on another world, sir?” Clarke said. “Or maybe being put there by God or something.”
“Two theories, equally queriable,” O’Neal replied. “The first being covergent evolution by name. That is that similar species occur with similar conditions. Thus you get rat-looking creatures in Australia and rats in England. Not well thought of by the scientific community but they’re pretty inbred anyway. Chalk that up as a possible. The test will be determining if they have human DNA. DNA don’t lie. In which case we get to the ‘God made it that way’ theory. Which is actually my first choice.”
“Really?” Clarke said.
“Certainly,” the General replied, thoughtfully. “For values of God.”
“Hi, Mike.”
The recording had been made months before and was a “back channel” communication, a personal message between two officers. In this case, originating from General Tam Wesley, the ACS branch Assistant Chief of Staff for Operations.