“Tell me.”

  “All the civilian comms kit I’ve ever seen has a single connector to the aerial and those connectors are usually half the thickness of these ones here.”

  “How sure are you, Private?”

  “Sure enough, sir.”

  “Which means the CES had a military comms unit here on Xaros.”

  “That’s what it looks like.”

  Maxwell closed his eyes. “They could have broadcast anything, anywhere, without needing to go through the comms hub on Kanis.”

  “Yes, sir. That’s if I’m right about the hardware.”

  “The missing hardware,” said Fleming.

  “So, what next, Sergeant?” asked Corporal Valerio.

  “Private Barkley will let the Marauder know what we’ve discovered. If the orders don’t change, we’ll head to that central prefab and see if we can find out what happened to the people here on Xaros.”

  “Captain Grisham is going to want us to find that missing comms unit, sir,” said Fleming.

  “No doubt,” said Maxwell.

  He clenched his teeth. His unease was steadily growing. Whatever the recent history of Xaros, Maxwell was sure he wouldn’t like knowing the truth when he finally got to the bottom of the events which had led to this mission.

  While Barkley informed Lieutenant Bishop of the discovery here in the comms building, Maxwell spoke to Corporal Fine on the comms. As expected, Squad B hadn’t found any dead bodies, nor anything else worth reporting.

  “Lieutenant Bishop confirms what I thought about civilian comms hardware, Sergeant,” said Barkley. “And he doesn’t have any idea how the CES managed to lay their hands on military gear.”

  “Any change in orders?”

  “No, sir. We’re to continue our search of the compound. Lieutenant Bishop also suggests we keep an eye out for anything that might point to where Ivey Metz was staying. She was the leader of this place, so maybe she kept some records.”

  “We’ll see what we can find,” said Maxwell.

  With the comms hardware missing and no obvious way to find out where it had been taken, he turned his attention to his next intended destination.

  “Let’s move out,” he said. “We’re going to search that central building.”

  Just saying the words made the adrenaline pump in Maxwell’s body. He wasn’t afraid, but something lay just over the horizon – he could sense it coming.

  Beckoning the others and ordering Squad B to meet outside, Maxwell headed to the entrance.

  Chapter Eleven

  “Plenty of time until dark,” said Private Diaz, looking up at the still-light sky.

  The words were a scarcely veiled reminder that nobody wanted to be here when night fell, and Maxwell hadn’t yet made his mind up about whether he’d order a return to the Marauder when it became too dark to continue the search.

  Once more he put off the decision. Passing between two buildings and turning right past the next, he entered an alley between two more pairs of accommodation units.

  And there it was. The largest prefab was a rectangular block of alloy, the same as all the others, only much larger even than the comms building. With a two-hundred metre front and eighty-metre height, the structure was likely intended as a warehouse. As far as Maxwell knew, the CES had no requirement for this much storage space and the known inventory of what they’d brought with them to Xaros listed no equipment that would necessitate a warehouse.

  Of course, the representatives of the church had somehow managed to obtain military-grade comms hardware, so Maxwell wouldn’t have been entirely surprised to find a row of tanks parked up inside. In reality, he was expecting something different.

  “Four personnel entrances and one main entrance in the centre,” said Fine, standing a couple of metres away, her eyes narrowed as she scanned the building. “Usually in prefabs like this one, there’s a middle area shaped like a cross, where they store shit, with offices at the corners where the personnel work.”

  A prefab this size was unusual, but Maxwell and his squads had seen a few. Mostly the design was just like Fine had described, though he’d seen one or two with variations.

  “The Marauder already cracked open the door security on this one, right?” asked Chau.

  “According to Lieutenant Bishop we can walk straight in,” said Barkley.

  For another few seconds, Maxwell waited in the gap between the two buildings closest to the main prefab and watched for signs of activity. Everything was still and he suddenly noticed the sounds of the jungle had gone, as if Xaros was holding its breath.

  “Should we enter through one of the personnel entrances, Sergeant, or—?” asked Fine.

  “You know me, Corporal. I’m a straight-down-the-middle type of guy.”

  “The main entrance, then.”

  Maxwell nodded. “Private Vaughan, set up your repeater between these two buildings. That should give you a clear line of sight into the storage area once we open the door.”

  “Yes, sir.” Vaughan immediately unslung his XR repeater and kicked out the tripod.

  “Private Lyles, you cover Vaughan while he’s prone. If you see anything or hear anything, or even if you thought you saw or heard something, holler.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  Without another word, Maxwell broke from cover and strode across the forty-metre space separating the central prefab from the surrounding accommodation units. The loading entrance’s lower edge was more than a metre off the ground and a short metal ramp led up to it. The entrance itself was eight metres wide and similarly high.

  Above the door, were painted letters. These letters were badly eroded, suggesting this prefab had seen use on another world before it was brought to Xaros. Maxwell thought they read TF-02, which didn’t make it any clearer where the prefab had been previously installed. Green lights shone on the access panels both sides of the entrance.

  Maxwell went to the left-hand side of the door. He thumped the wall with the side of his fist. The alloys were as solid as he knew they’d be. Checking over his shoulder, he saw that Vaughan was tight to the side wall of the western perimeter building, while Lyles was crouched near the adjacent prefab. She raised her thumb.

  Everyone was ready and Maxwell didn’t need to ask. Three soldiers were with him on this side of the door and the other four were on the far side.

  “Activating the panel,” said Maxwell.

  Without drama, the prefab’s main entrance rose upwards into its ceiling recess, at the same time revealing that the walls were more than two metres thick.

  “Dark,” said Fine.

  Daylight spilled many metres into the opening, becoming progressively gloomier the deeper it went. Maxwell peered inside. Unfortunately, the sensor in his suit – which could normally handle dark conditions – didn’t deal with sharp contrasts nearly so well, and it struggled to adjust. He could tell that he was looking into a large space, which opened out beyond the doorway, but other than that, nothing.

  “Can’t see a damned thing,” he said.

  “There’s usually a light switch just inside the entrance,” said Fine.

  “I’ll get it,” said Maxwell.

  He jumped onto the ramp and that was when he caught the first cloying odours of decay. The light switch would be situated on the inner wall and Maxwell entered the building, feeling exposed as he did so.

  A couple of metres along the wall, he located the fist-sized button which would activate the lights and he pressed it quickly, keeping himself in a position where he could see into the storage space.

  The lights came on, cold and blue. Maxwell stared into a cross-shaped storage room that filled much of the building’s interior.

  Hundreds upon hundreds of people lay dead on the floor in the centre of the prefab, their pale blue clothing torn and stained with enormous patches of dried blood – blood which had sprayed liberally on the floor, leaving the alloy more brown than grey. Here and there, the dead had ended up in heaps, their limbs frozen in ways which told the grotesque stories of their final moments as life ebbed away in sprays of crimson.

  The smell of death came to Maxwell once more, carried on the faint breeze of escaping air. He wrinkled his nose.

  “Corporal Valerio, move up. The rest of you wait outside. You don’t need to see this.”

  “What happened to them?” asked Fine on the comms.

  “Butchery,” said Maxwell. “That’s what happened.”

  He walked deeper into the storage area. The nearest corpses were about fifty metres away. Maxwell fixed his eyes on one – a man who was lying on his back, staring at the heavens. Although this man’s injuries were hidden beneath a thick crusting of blood on his face and chest, Maxwell guessed his throat had been cut. As far as he could tell, the others had been slaughtered in the same manner.

  “Who the hell did this?” said Valerio.

  Maxwell glanced across. His squad medic was shaking his head, his expression more one of anger than anything else.

  “The cause of death looks obvious to me,” said Maxwell, approaching the closest bodies. There were no overt signs of decomposition except for the smell, which was stronger here. “Plug in that med-box, Corporal. I want confirmation that these people weren’t already dead when their throats were slit. And tell me how long ago they died.”

  “Yes, sir,” said Valerio.

  He carried the med-box in a cloth pack, which he shrugged off his shoulders and lowered to the floor next to one of the bodies. Opening the pack revealed a metal cube packed with electronics and a single screen on the front. Valerio pulled out an extendible wire with a probe on the end, and, without ceremony, held that probe against the neck of the corpse.

  “A few seconds and it’ll be done, Sergeant.”

  Maxwell was familiar with the routine and while he waited, he scanned the room again. The details were only now beginning to sink in, and he clenched his teeth in anger at the brutality of it all. Rational thought remained and Maxwell noticed something.

  “There aren’t ten thousand people here,” he said. “I reckon three thousand at most.”

  Valerio raised his head. “This one died from having her throat cut.”

  “How long ago?”

  “Forty days, give or take.”

  “There’s hardly any decomposition and this place isn’t refrigerated,” said Maxwell. He lowered his brows in thought. “Some of these units are fitted with tech that preserves whatever’s stored inside.”

  “That’s only in the prefabs designed to store medicines, sir,” said Valerio. “Those preservation modules cost too much to be used in every storage unit.”

  “The CES managed to get their hands on a military comms system, Corporal, so it’s possible they had access to other tech as well. Is there any way to tell if a preservation module is what kept these corpses looking so fresh?”

  “You’ve seen what normally happens a few days after death, Sergeant. These bodies would look and smell a lot worse than this if there wasn’t anything slowing the decay.” Valerio stared at Maxwell a moment longer. “What are you thinking?”

  “I’m not thinking anything at the moment, Corporal.” Maxwell pointed at the bodies. “But I’m definitely asking myself where the other few thousand disappeared to.”

  Pushing himself to his feet, Valerio moved over to the next corpse, carrying the med-box with him. “Judging by the blood splashed on the floor over there, I’d guess that more people died here, Sergeant.”

  “All of them?” asked Maxwell.

  From here, he could see into every corner of the storage area, and blood covered much of the unoccupied floor and, in places, extended three metres up the walls. He’d seen the results of mass killings before, but not where the outcome had been so liberally smeared upon every available surface.

  “Your guess is as good as mine, Sergeant.”

  “Where were the bodies taken?” said Maxwell. “And why?”

  Valerio didn’t answer and he withdrew the probe. “Another death to trauma and the resulting blood loss,” he said. “Same time of death as the other one.”

  “Any idea what kind of weapon did this?”

  Reaching into the side pocket of the med-box pack, Valerio pulled out a flask, unscrewed the lid and put it to one side. From the same pocket, he withdrew a roll of pristine bandage.

  “Let’s take a look,” said Valerio. He tipped the water onto the neck of the corpse and scrubbed with the bandage.

  Maxwell watched, his lips tight together. This victim was a woman, her hair long and dark, her eyes closed and her face pale like the moon. And now she was dead, killed out here on a fringe world, lightyears from her family.

  “Looks like a single cut, Sergeant,” said Valerio. He put one hand under the woman’s neck, causing her head to tip back and revealing the depth of the wound. “It cut all the way to the bone.”

  “A knife, or something else?”

  “I don’t know,” said Valerio. “I can’t even tell you if the attacker was strong or not. Some blades can hold an edge that lets them cut through flesh with no effort whatsoever.”

  For long moments, Maxwell didn’t speak. The longer he stayed here on Xaros, the less he liked it. Each new discovery raised more questions than it answered, and he didn’t feel he was anywhere close to solving the mystery of what had taken place.

  “Private Barkley, are you keeping the Marauder informed?” he asked.

  “Yes, sir,” said Barkley. “We have no new orders.”

  “Sergeant?” said Private Lyles on the open comms, her voice taut. “You told me to shout out if I saw something, or even if I thought I saw something.”

  “What was it?” asked Maxwell, with a rising sense of alarm.

  “Just a maybe. Something came over the wall to the north.” She cursed. “Could be just my imagination.”

  “Tell me what you saw.”

  “I don’t know, sir,” said Lyles, sounding embarrassed now. “I only saw it from the corner of my eye. It was moving fast and I thought it might have been an animal. And then when I really looked, nothing was there.”

  “Did anything show up on the Marauder’s sensors?” asked Maxwell. “They should be able to spot movement easily enough from ten thousand klicks.”

  “Checking,” said Barkley. He was quiet for a few seconds. “Nothing on the warship’s sensors.”

  “Sorry, Sergeant,” said Lyles apologetically. “I guess this place is getting to me.”

  “Don’t worry about it, Private, and you shout up again even if you’re not sure,” said Maxwell.

  “Yes, sir.”

  Despite receiving the all-clear from the Marauder, Maxwell didn’t feel reassured, though his proximity to three thousand murdered HF citizens wasn’t helping his mood. He turned his attention to Corporal Valerio, who was now examining his fifth corpse.

  “Anything new, Corporal?”

  “Throat cut, forty days ago.” Valerio made a sweeping gesture that encompassed the other bodies. “I don’t think I’m going to find anything different even if I looked at every one of these corpses.”

  “I agree,” said Maxwell. He stared at the other exits from the storage area which led into the personnel areas of the prefab. As much as he wanted to lock this place up and never return, Maxwell knew he couldn’t do that. Not yet. “We’re going to search the rest of this building,” he said on the comms.

  Nobody complained, though it was clear the soldiers didn’t relish the task.

  Unwilling to divide his meagre forces into pairs, Maxwell instead repeated the earlier method of searching in two squads.

  The prefab was large and the personnel rooms were numerous. Almost an hour later, Squads A and B rendezvoused at the main door through which Maxwell had initially entered the structure. Aside from three thousand corpses, the place was empty.

  Night time was drawing closer and Maxwell cursed that his job would be incomplete when darkness came.

  Chapter Twelve

  Addressing the squads, Maxwell spelled out the situation. “Approximately seven thousand people are still missing, as is the compound comms unit. Additionally, we need to locate the CES data array, which should hold recordings from the compound monitors and we—”

  “Sorry for interrupting, sir,” said Barkley. “I’ve been speaking to Lieutenant Bishop and he says the compound data array might also hold records of comms transmissions sent and received by the main comms unit.”

  “If that’s right, it’s even more important we locate that array,” said Maxwell. “And we also need to locate the security controller. Like I said earlier, that’ll tell us if any of the wall guns fired.”

  “We could manually check the magazine readouts on those repeaters if we got up onto the wall, sir,” said Chau.

  “Thank you for the suggestion, Private, but we lack the numbers to follow every lead – not without splitting up more than I’m willing to allow.” Maxwell studied the compound map. “If we head north-east from here, we’ll come to another of the larger prefabs, then cutting back west will bring us to two others.”

  “Leaving a total of four unsearched larger buildings within the compound,” said Corporal Fine.

  “We’ve got three hours until nightfall,” said Maxwell. “We’ll search the next couple of buildings and then I’ll let you know where you’re sleeping tonight.”

  Maxwell set off. In order to head north-east, he needed to follow the wall of the largest prefab directly north, and then cut east, before a gap between the surrounding accommodation units allowed him to travel north-east. Corporal Fine walked alongside.

  “If the Kijol stole that comms unit—” She hesitated. “Those consoles are meant to purge their databanks once their power supply is cut off. If it was Kijol, maybe they figured out a way to keep the hardware online so they can break its encryption. Then they’ll be able to extract the location of the routing proxy between here and Kanis. After that—”

  “I’ve been thinking the same thing, Corporal,” Maxwell admitted. “I don’t know what to say other than to remind you that our comms network was built secure and by some real smart people.”