The lights came on, as cold as before and Maxwell found himself looking at the bodies of the compound’s former occupants, lying on the floor and in heaps like he remembered.

  Except that something looked out of place.

  “Corporal Valerio, get your ass in here,” said Maxwell, keeping his voice steady.

  “What’s up, Sergeant?” asked Valerio, clambering up the ramp. The other squad members stayed outside, though Private Fleming kept leaning into the opening to see what was happening.

  Maxwell pointed to the far end of the storage area, where a few corpses lay near the wall. “I remember all these bodies being gathered in the middle of the floor,” he said.

  Valerio looked where Maxwell had indicated, his brow furrowed. “I can’t rightly remember, Sergeant. There’re plenty corpses in here – three thousand too many. It was a lot to take in the first time.” Valerio turned his head towards Maxwell. “The visual recordings in your suit databank should go back that far.”

  “They do,” said Maxwell. “But I’m damned if I’m going to stand here searching through the files.”

  He backed slowly towards the exit, his eyes not straying from the dead.

  “Let’s get away,” he said. “It’s time we returned to the others.”

  Maxwell urged Valerio down the ramp ahead of him and then paused on the exit threshold to make one final scan of the storage bay. The corpses hadn’t moved and Maxwell realised he’d allowed himself to become so affected by this place that he was trying to catch the dead in the act of moving while his back was turned.

  Shit.

  Before Maxwell could give his next order, he heard a soft thumping coming from behind. The noise was gentle like that of a body sliding down a heap of other corpses. Spinning about with his gun ready, Maxwell stared into the room, his teeth bared and gleaming white.

  Nothing had changed.

  “What’s up, Sergeant?” asked Barkley.

  “Close this door,” said Maxwell, not answering the question. “We’re returning to B-22 like I said.”

  He jogged down the ramp and then increased his pace as he ran south towards the accommodation building. Once there, Maxwell turned west. Had he known darkness would come this quickly, he wouldn’t have investigated the storage building. As it happened, night had fallen almost an hour earlier than the time indicated in the planetary survey documents, so Maxwell wasn’t going to entirely blame himself for the error.

  His earpiece crackled.

  “Sergeant, did I hear that you’re on your way back?” asked Corporal Fine.

  “That’s right,” said Maxwell. “We should be at B-22 in less than five minutes.”

  “Private Chau found something that might interest you, sir.”

  “A fridge full of cold beer?” Maxwell couldn’t remember hearing that alcohol was prohibited within the CES, but he hadn’t seen any sign of it around the compound so far.

  “Hah. Not a chance, Sergeant.”

  “Whatever Chau found – do I need to know about it right this moment?”

  “It’ll keep for five minutes.”

  “In that case, see you in five,” said Maxwell.

  It sounded like Chau had unearthed something of potential interest, but Maxwell didn’t want to hear about it until he was back with the others. Revisiting the storage room corpses, along with the earlier false alarms, had left him doubly cautious and he just wanted to concentrate on returning to B-22 as quickly as possible, without any distractions.

  Although he maintained a good pace, Maxwell kept a close watch ahead, and he paused to check the side alleys as he passed. Every so often, he twisted to look over his shoulder, to ensure his soldiers remained close.

  Squad A arrived at the usual entrance to B-22 without incident.

  “Are you sure you don’t want to get that last mattress, Sergeant?” asked Fleming.

  “Maybe later,” said Maxwell.

  The soldiers entered the B-22 airlock space. Before he closed the outer door, Maxwell paused to listen. With the onset of darkness, even the jungle sounds were dying away, and all he heard was a single, plaintive cry of a distant, unseen creature.

  He closed the door, sealing out the night. Entering the storage space beyond, Maxwell discovered that the mattresses were gone. Soon after, the soldiers of Squad A arrived at the open plan area of B-22 where those mattresses had been laid on the floor in the far corner, with overturned desks around them providing a small degree of privacy.

  “What have you got for me?” asked Maxwell, striding across to where Corporal Fine was sitting with her feet on the security controller, her gauss rifle propped within easy reach.

  Fine rolled sideways onto her feet and faced Maxwell. For a lingering moment, she looked into his visor, as if reading something in his expression. Then, she turned and picked up an object from the console which hadn’t been there when Maxwell left thirty or forty minutes ago.

  “This,” said Fine simply.

  It was a framed photo, maybe twelve inches by eight. A pair of thirty-somethings - a man and a woman dressed in fashionable civilian clothing - beamed at the camera lens.

  Chau hadn’t picked up the photo because he was interested in this memory. The two members of the CES were standing on the compound landing pad and Maxwell guessed the image was taken immediately after they’d arrived on Xaros.

  “Three shuttles in the background,” said Maxwell.

  “Yes, sir,” said Fine. “The third one is different to the models we saw on the landing pad outside.”

  “Looks military,” said Maxwell. “An older model.”

  “Yes, sir. There was no record of the CES having three shuttles.”

  “And that third shuttle is missing.” Maxwell gave a short laugh. “Ivey Metz must have been well connected to have laid her hands on all this hardware.”

  Fine pointed over her shoulder at the security controller. “Maybe this console holds the flight records for all of those shuttles.”

  “As well as everything else we need in order to find out what happened here,” said Maxwell. He smiled without humour. “We’re making progress.”

  “Slow and steady.”

  Maxwell’s eyes found Chau and he raised a thumb in his direction. “Good spot, Private.”

  Chau didn’t answer but he raised his own thumb in acknowledgement.

  “Anything else to report, Corporal?” asked Maxwell.

  “No, sir.” Fine lowered her voice. “I was listening on the open channel. There’s something not right about this place.”

  “The sooner we’re done, the sooner we can be out of here,” said Maxwell.

  “You were going to check the recording from your helmet sensor,” Fine reminded him.

  Maxwell felt a sudden reluctance, as if part of his mind didn’t want to know the truth – just in case it turned out to be the wrong kind of truth. Even so, he accessed the feed recording and loaded it onto his HUD.

  Usually if he wanted to review a recording, he’d link to a device with a larger screen and stream the data across. Since he didn’t have access to anything here on Xaros, Maxwell had no choice other than to use the tiny screen inside his suit helmet. The deployment vessel on the landing pad was equipped with suitable hardware, but paying it a visit at night was out of the question.

  He spent a few minutes watching the recording of when he’d first entered the central prefab and then compared it with the recording of his most recent visit. The corpses which had caught his attention hadn’t changed position.

  Berating his overactive imagination, Maxwell searched through the feed recording until he found the place where he was carrying the mattress across the alley. Despite replaying the file several times, as well as pausing it so he could zoom into the images, he found nothing out of the ordinary, though admittedly the HUD screen wasn’t the best tool for the job.

  Remembering Lyles’s false alarm, Maxwell called her over and instructed her to search the recording of her own helmet feed.

  “There’s nothing there, Sergeant,” said Lyles after a time. She looked faintly embarrassed. “It must have been in my head.”

  “Don’t worry about it, Private,” said Maxwell.

  He sent Lyles back to her position behind one of the desks.

  “So everything’s just great, huh?” said Fine. “Nothing to worry ourselves over.”

  Maxwell could see from her face that she didn’t believe it, and neither did he.

  “Why don’t you and the rest of Squad B take break, Corporal?” he said. “You’ve got four hours.”

  Fine nodded and walked away across the open plan space, skewering soldiers from afar with her pointed finger and then indicating where they should sleep. Fine and Diaz shared, with enough room on the mattress that Maxwell didn’t feel too guilty about abandoning the fifth.

  As Squad B settled down, Maxwell sat in front of the security controller. For a long while, his mind played over everything which had happened since he and his squads came to Xaros. Usually this far into a mission, the shooting would have started, while here, Maxwell had only fired his rifle into that strange part-biological security breaker.

  Although nothing had yet tried to kill him, Maxwell wasn’t feeling relaxed. In fact, he couldn’t remember a mission that had got him worked up like this one. A mental image of those corpses in the storage building kept jumping into his head and he wondered why the bodies had hardly decomposed at all. Maybe the interior was equipped with a preservation module and there was nothing more to it.

  As well as that, Maxwell kept remembering the moment when he’d seen movement along the alley. What his brain had registered was something huge and fast, which had moved with the shadows like they were its natural home.

  The Marauder’s sensors didn’t see anything. Technology doesn’t make mistakes.

  No matter how hard he tried, Maxwell couldn’t convince himself.

  When Squad B’s four hours ended, he was grateful for a chance to sleep, in order that his mind might gain some respite. The mattress was comfortable, but Maxwell’s dreams were unsettled.

  When he awoke, it was to a new day on Xaros.

  Chapter Sixteen

  “What’s the plan for today, Sergeant?” asked Private Diaz. She was holding a steaming coffee from one of the replicators.

  “What makes you think we aren’t going to sit on our asses until this security controller unlocks?” asked Maxwell, a half-eaten plate of replicated scrambled eggs on his lap. He was hungry enough that they almost tasted great.

  “In the last ten years, I can’t remember one time when you wanted us to sit on our asses.” Diaz grinned. “Are you trying to convince me today’s going to be the exception?”

  Maxwell laughed. “Hell no.”

  “Are we going to search a few more of these prefabs?” asked Lyles.

  “We’ve still got people to find,” said Maxwell.

  “Maybe they all took off in that third shuttle.”

  “There’s no way in hell you could fit more than a few hundred inside the missing shuttle, Private.”

  “I’m just looking for easy answers, Sergeant,” said Lyles.

  “Keep looking, Private, but you won’t find any here on Xaros.”

  Maxwell finished his eggs and picked up his own coffee which he’d left balanced on the edge of the security controller. He took a sip, grimaced, and then took another. Placing the cup down again, he rose from his seat.

  “Listen up, here’s the plan.” He waited until everyone was listening and then he continued. “We’re leaving one squad here to watch over this hardware. The second squad will search some of the other buildings.” He paused for a moment. “And we didn’t check out the two CES shuttles on the pad. Maybe there’s someone inside, or maybe the last pilot forgot to enable the security locks. If so, we’ll have access to that shuttle’s flight records.”

  The soldiers didn’t have any questions, since the plan was as simple as they came.

  “Squad A, we’re heading out first,” said Maxwell. “We’ll search for a couple of hours, or until I think we’ve done enough. Then we’ll return here, and Squad B can stretch their legs.”

  Before departing, Maxwell gave his gauss rifle a once-over. The weapon had a stock and two grips, the vertical foregrip being three-quarters of the way along the gun’s three-inch-diameter barrel. That barrel held the firing coils, but where it neared the pistol grip at the stock, the lower section became flat. That section was the magazine, which could be ejected in a split-second and a new one slotted in.

  The gauss rifle wasn’t designed for field disassembly, but it had a tiny readout that usually showed the remaining ammunition, and which could also display the results of a hardware audit. Maxwell’s gun was a-okay and he’d already pushed extra gauss slugs into the magazine to replace those he’d fired yesterday, so the ammunition readout was at fifty.

  “Are you planning to stare at that rifle all day, Sergeant?” asked Fleming. He thumbed over his shoulder. “We’ve got a compound to search.”

  “Then let’s get it done,” said Maxwell.

  He led Squad A along the corridor and into the airlock. With a warning for everyone to be on their guard, he activated the outer door panel. Warm, humid air and bright light filled the space, but it was the sounds of a thousand different species in the Xaros jungle which made this planet feel as alien as any Maxwell had visited. Yesterday, the planet’s wildlife had been muted. Today, they were in full voice. Maybe it was because of the early hour, Maxwell thought.

  Outside, he turned to get his bearings. This day was sunny like the last, and the sky no less perfect. Maxwell wasn’t feeling the beauty. A menace hung about this place, scarcely hidden beneath the façade of paradise.

  “Where to, Sergeant?” asked Barkley.

  Maxwell didn’t relish the thought of searching through another of the larger structures – not just yet. “We’ll head over to the shuttles,” he said.

  He turned west away from B-22, along an alley separating the accommodation blocks. The shuttle pad wasn’t far and soon the soldiers were at the westernmost edge of the accommodation structures.

  “The door to our shuttle is open,” said Maxwell, spotting it at once. He didn’t ask if anyone had left it open. He knew nobody had.

  “The Marauder’s sensors detected no movement during the night, Sergeant,” said Barkley. “We already talked about it.”

  Maxwell was tempted to speak to Lieutenant Bishop, but for the moment he held the squad in place and watched the shuttle. The distance was too far for certainty, but he thought he could see marks on the vessel’s flank.

  “No movement. No sign of anything. Private Lowe, Private Barkley, stay here and keep watch. The rest of you, with me.”

  Without waiting for confirmation, Maxwell broke into a run towards the shuttle. It was a few hundred metres away, so he measured his pace, preferring to arrive fully combat-ready than panting for breath.

  As the distance lessened it became increasingly apparent that the shuttle had suffered damage. Slowing for the last fifty metres, Maxwell’s eyes took in the details. The shuttle’s side door hadn’t been opened, so much as it had been punched inwards and torn completely out of its housing. The buckled door had been hurled into the interior and it lay aft of the opening, where its weight had crushed several of the bucket seats.

  “What the hell is going on, Sergeant?” asked Valerio.

  Maxwell didn’t answer. At the shuttle entrance, he leaned inside and looked left, then right. The door housing was pushed in and torn, leaving sharp edges he was careful to avoid. From here, the cockpit was only partially visible – enough to reveal the mangled wreckage of the pilot’s console. Maxwell listened carefully. The shuttle’s engines had gone offline and he heard no other sound from the interior.

  Maxwell climbed inside and made his way along the narrow aisle leading to the cockpit. The pilot’s console was way beyond repair - the hardware had been torn clean from its mountings and it was crushed out of shape.

  Backing out of the cockpit, Maxwell returned to the passenger bay and crouched just inside the entrance. He told the others what had happened.

  “We’re going nowhere in this deployment vessel,” he said.

  “How did it happen?” asked Fleming. “The damn warship is meant to be watching this compound.”

  “Private Barkley, get me a channel to the Marauder,” said Maxwell. This had gone on long enough.

  “Yes, sir,” said Barkley. A few seconds later, he spoke again. “The channel is open; I’m diverting your suit comms into it.”

  “Lieutenant Bishop,” said Maxwell, the moment he heard the increased static in his earpiece. “Tell me what’s happening.”

  “The sensors are clear, Sergeant and they have been ever since you set down. This is what we do and we’re good at it. We haven’t taken our eye off the ball for a moment, and even if we had, the feed recordings are all held in the Marauder’s databanks. We’ve detected nothing.”

  “My soldiers are on the ground, Lieutenant. Whatever the Marauder’s sensors are telling you, something wrecked this shuttle since we landed.”

  “That seems to be the case,” said Bishop.

  “I need a plan, Lieutenant.”

  “I’ll speak to Captain Grisham and get back to you. Is this your request for an extraction?”

  Maxwell clenched his teeth as he considered his answer. “Not yet. Let me check out these other shuttles.”

  “Copy that. I’ll speak to you soon.”

  The comms channel went dead, and Maxwell met the gaze of the other soldiers.

  “Those two CES shuttles don’t look damaged. Not from the outside, at least.” he said. “We’re going to check them out. Depending on what we find and depending on what Lieutenant Bishop comes back with, will determine whether I request an extraction.”

  “We can’t stay here, Sergeant,” said Valerio. “We can see with our own eyes that something broke into our deployment vessel, and if the Marauder’s sensors didn’t see what it was, then the warship can’t offer us any air support.”

  Maxwell nodded. “I hear what you say, Corporal, and I agree one hundred percent.” He had a thought. “Last night, I saw something move in the compound and I trusted the Marauder’s sensors more than I trusted my own eyes. Now—” he gestured towards the shuttle’s cockpit, “Now we know those sensors aren’t seeing everything.” He let it hang.