As he came within a few metres he could see a pair of legs twisting side to side in the current beneath a waterlogged skirt. And outstretched arms floating beside a huge, bloated body.
And smell it. Rotten and putrid.
He stepped away from the dead girl’s body, coughing and spluttering at the stench. And hurried past. He had no desire to take a closer look. Whoever that was, they’d been dead some time. And, with no animals on the planet, there was nothing to eat their remains except their own bacteria.
But the smell grew no better. More bodies lay wrapped around the rocks near the riverbank, or trapped between them. At least a dozen, and who knew how many more had been carried further downstream.
So this was where the colonists from Saint Jean had ended up. The insurgents had tossed them over the cliff, down into the river, and they’d floated on until they came to a stop among the rocks. What had these people done to deserve that?
His body shook as he strode past them.
Those insurgents hadn’t just killed a fellow Legionnaire. They’d murdered dozens of innocent colonists. Not just the men who might fight them, but the women and kids, too.
That was it. He wasn’t going to spend days sneaking back to Estérel. He was going to regroup with Bairamov and Desoto, then find the bastards who did this, and make them pay.
CHAPTER 22
The sky was glowing blue with the first light of the sun rising above the hills as Logan crouched among the trees, studying Saint Jean for a second time. The village was just as dead as when he’d first seen it, except there were more bullet holes and RPG craters from the firefight yesterday.
A column of smoke rose from one of the houses near the bridge, where the dirt roof had collapsed, and the wooden frame beneath smouldered. Something must have hit it and set it alight. Of the insurgents, there was no sign this morning. But he could still smell the burned ammunition and food packs from the blackened pile of scrap beside the road that had once been their mule.
He couldn’t afford to stay out much longer in the sunlight. His suit had a radiation detector, his helmet didn’t. For all he knew, he could be dying already.
He followed the trail of the truck tracks toward the village, looking up into the hillside for any sign of insurgents as he did so. But nothing moved up there.
He could see some of his own grenade craters spread across the hillside, but the insurgents must have carried away their dead and all their possessions.
For now, at least, the hillside was empty. He could only hope it remained that way.
The remains of Gallo’s suit lay slumped in the road about twenty metres from the burned mule. Logan didn’t want to look at the mess, or smell it. But the stench of burned flesh filled the air as he approached the pile of wreckage that used to be a suit, and the blackened flesh of the man who used to operate it. He should bury what was left of Gallo, but he had no time right now. He’d return as soon as this mess was sorted out.
He tried not to breathe as he strode toward the remains. He’d only known Gallo for a few weeks since he’d joined 1st Company, and had been starting to get to know the man. And now he was just a mangled mass of flesh in a melted suit.
What a waste. He didn’t deserve that.
Gallo’s rifle lay beneath the suit, but it was of little use to a man on foot. Logan would barely be able to lift it without the suit’s artificial strength, let alone fire it. Grenades still hung from the side of the suit, and he tried not to look inside as he crouched and grabbed some. Then clipped them onto his belt, and hurried away from there as fast as he could.
The open door of the building with the antenna was still swinging on its hinges as he entered the village. He crept across to it, and peered in through the windows. Nothing was moving inside the building. Sunlight reflected from the console beside the rear wall, but the screen was off. There was no signal his helmet could hook into to communicate with the Legion.
He stepped into the open doorway for a closer look. The console screen was broken, and the electronics behind it smashed. Whoever had thrown the people out of the village had made sure no-one could communicate with it, either.
He stepped back into the street, and reached out to close the door. Then thought better of it. If the door had been open since the insurgents killed the villagers, they’d notice if it was closed today. He couldn’t afford to bring them looking for him.
He crept on toward the bridge. Track marks led away on the far side, along the road toward the mine. Some of the logs had fallen away at the side of the bridge and now lay at an angle across the river, probably torn away by the explosion. But the truck must have got over.
The claw marks in the dirt from Bairamov and Desoto’s suits left long trails on this side of the road near the river. They’d got this far, too.
So where were they?
He opened his mouth to transmit to them, then thought better of it. If they hadn’t been captured, he had a good chance of hearing from them as they returned along the road. If they had… he was just eliminating any chance of surprising their captors. It was radio silence for now.
He crept toward the bridge, pistol at the ready, for all the good it might do him. Then over the logs to the far side.
He glanced back. No-one was following him, but he’d left a long trail of boot prints in the dirt as he moved.
Well, too late to think about that.
The child’s tricycle that had been lying on its side was now upright, on its wheels. And there was something else, too.
Hoof prints. A horse had walked along the road recently, and he didn’t remember that from the day before. Maybe he’d missed them in the heat of the battle, but they looked fresher than the marks the truck and suits had left behind.
The prints stopped at the bridge. Then began again on the far side, where the horse would have stepped off the logs and back onto the dirt. The trail continued for a few metres, then curved around, toward a wide building with doors large enough for the horse to get through, that could be a barn of some kind.
And one of the doors was slightly ajar. The wooden bar that would have sealed the doors shut lay on the ground beside them, shattered into half a dozen pieces, presumably hit during the battle the day before.
And no hoof prints came out of the building.
So one thing was sure. He wasn’t alone.
None of the insurgents had ridden horses during the attack on the truck yesterday. But maybe they’d hidden the animals somewhere over the ridge. If the insurgents were out in the daylight, they couldn’t have come far without something to help them move fast enough to escape the sun’s radiation.
He crouched low as he jogged to the corner of the barn.
He peered in through the gap between the doors, but could see little more than a pile of straw in the corner of the barn. He’d seen the back of the building yesterday when he scouted out the river. It was completely buried beneath the dirt. There was no way in or out, aside from these doors.
His heart pounded, and sweat dripped down his forehead as he crept toward the door. He’d have felt a lot safer in his suit than he did with just an inch of wood and some body armour to protect him. He took a few long breaths as he pulled a grenade from his belt, then pulled the pin.
He tossed it through the gap, crouched, and covered his ears. The flashbang exploded in the barn, rattling the doors and illuminating the interior through the gap between the doors. A girl screamed, and the horse whinnied.
Then he kicked the partly-open door.
The bottom scraped on the dirt as it opened, and it exposed the dirt floor and piles of straw and hay inside as he swung around the edge of the door. The horse’s hooves thumped on the ground as it reared up, but the reins were tied to a pillar that supported the upper level of the barn. The pillar jerked as the reins pulled against it, and a cloud of dust fell slowly toward the floor from the hay and straw piled on the upper level.