Starfist: Blood Contact (20 page)

"I'd say from the very brief postmortems we've run on the bodies so far, someone sprayed those people and this equipment here with a very powerful acid."

"Acid?" Snodgrass shouted in disbelief. "Acid? Who the hell would do that? I've never heard of such foolishness!" He snatched back the piece of communications equipment and held it possessively. "Heat did this, goddamnit! Sabotage!"

"Lieutenant," Horner replied patiently, "acids oxidize material. Same thing as burning. What you've got on that piece of metal is an acid burn. Gunny, it's time to get Commander Bynum in here. That's what I think, anyway." He also thought Snodgrass was losing it—or they didn't teach basic chemistry at the Confederation Naval Academy anymore.

Bass nodded and began speaking into the command net. Snodgrass made as if to protest but Bass silenced him by holding up a hand.

"What the hell do you need the doctor for?" Snodgrass shouted. "Everyone's fucking dead down here!

Why don't you get your ass moving, Sergeant, and find out who did this?" Snodgrass's face turned red.

Bass regarded the lieutenant briefly. He realized the communications officer was on the verge of hysteria. "Lieutenant," he replied after a moment, "I am in charge of this landing party, and speaking of

‘asses,’ you are becoming a big pain in mine." Snodgrass began to bluster but Bass silenced him with a wave of his hand. "Now, Mr. Snodgrass, you stick with the communications matters and I'll command the landing party. Otherwise, sir, I'll have to ask you to return to the
Fairfax
."

Snodgrass just stared silently at Bass for a second or two. "But—But—" He gestured vaguely around the control room.

"We need to find out who—what—?"

"Lieutenant," Bass answered, "we will, we will. That's why we need the med-sci team, they'll be able to find out. But I'm not putting one foot outside this compound until I know what we're up against down here. And just don't forget one thing, sir. Whoever—or whatever—did this to them," he gestured at the bodies scattered on the floor, "can do the same thing to us."

"Well," Dr. Bynum said as she straightened up and stretched her back, "I really need to get some of these remains back to the ship to do a thorough postmortem, but I've been able to establish one salient fact: First Class Horner's diagnosis that these people were killed by an acid is correct. I deduced that from the nature of the injuries they sustained, as you can see from the condition of the bones and the clothing, and the fact that a great many of these bones have no calcium in them anymore. That explains why they crumble to dust when disturbed."

The Marines gathered around her looked on in silent anticipation. "So what, precisely, does that mean?" Snodgrass asked. Bass glanced over at him sharply. The lieutenant's tone of voice dripped with sarcasm.

"Okay," she replied, ignoring Snodgrass's tone, "take a look at the remains over here." She stepped over to a heap of rags and bones lying undisturbed near the wall. "Now remember, I'm not a forensics expert," she continued, reaching down and picking up a bone fragment, "but anybody can see from these remains what might've happened here." She held out the fragment for the Marines to inspect. "This is the radius, the bone on the thumb side of the victim's right forearm. Note that it is only about four inches long, about a third or a quarter of the normal length of this bone in an adult. The end that connects to the carpus, or wrist, is gone entirely, and that end of the bone"—she rubbed it vigorously with her finger—"disintegrates into a fine power when touched. Note also there is no skull, no cervical vertebrae, the collar bones are missing, and so on. They were not carried away by foraging animals either. This white powder is all that's left of them." She stirred the powder on the floor with a finger. "Observe that there appears to be no right leg from the knee on down. You will also see—" She bent and rummaged among the clothing remnants. "—that the left side is essentially intact" She pulled another bone from among the clothing and held it up. "Left radius. See the difference?"

"So I repeat, Doctor, what happened?" Snodgrass demanded.

Still ignoring his tone, Dr. Bynum held up a clothing fragment. "This is what's left of the shirt the victim was wearing. Note how the right side is entirely gone. See the zipper that ran down the front? The upper half is melted." She tossed the fragment to the floor, where it raised a cloud of fine white dust, the remnants of the dissolved bones. "How many bodies have we examined so far, Gunny?" she asked, turning to Bass. "Maybe twenty? Horner looked at another twenty? They all display similar injuries. To put it simply, so even you can understand, Lieutenant Snodgrass, these people were sprayed with an extremely toxic and volatile substance that literally dissolved the body parts it touched. The reason this particular victim's right radius was not completely destroyed is probably because he threw up his right arm to protect his face and that partially protected the bone on the inside of his arm. Partly."

"Holy shit," someone said softly. Dean glanced nervously at the man standing next to him as all the Marines gripped their weapons more tightly.

"So they were attacked," Bass responded quietly. "This was not some kind of, um, ‘environmental’

anomaly?"

"No, Gunny," Dr. Bynum said. "These people, all several hundred of them, were deliberately and violently killed. It must have been terrible."

"Oh, Mohammed's big red gonads, Doctor!" Snodgrass exclaimed. "Who? Who would've done it?

And how? I've never heard of anything so ridiculous!" Snodgrass's normal arrogance, which was always difficult to endure, had become even more pronounced now that he was frightened. There would be no more daydreams of him saying, "Dr. Morgan, I presume?"

"I know who did it," Dr. Bynum announced. Bass glanced sharply at her. "The people who did this are, quite obviously, Lieutenant, very nasty customers who don't much care about killing whoever gets in their way."

"Amen," Hyakowa said.

"Any idea about the type of weapons used?" Bass asked.

"No, except it was some kind of acid. Judging from the absence of calcium in the affected areas, I'd say specifically some kind of phosphoric acid. Possibly—and I emphasize ‘possibly’—white phosphorus.

Mixed with organic solvents like carbon disulfide or benzene, it can be very toxic. Judging from what I've seen here, I'd say it was sprayed somehow on the victims."

"Oh, who ever heard of such nonsense?" Snodgrass exclaimed, too loudly.

"Lieutenant, years ago phosphorus was used in military ordnance," Bass said. "I remember reading that it was very effective and very deadly."

"Yes, it caused terrible burns," Bynum added.

"If that stuff was used here," Staff Sergeant Hyakowa said, "how can you defend against it?"

"Good question," Bynum answered. "One thing is to deprive it of oxygen by submerging it in water.

Another is to get it off you as quickly as possible. These people were no doubt caught entirely by surprise, so they didn't have a chance."

"It had to have been pirates," Snodgrass blurted, apparently accepting Dr. Bynum's theory.

"How do you get that, Lieutenant?" Hyakowa asked.

"Who else? You know one of my objectives is to check the accuracy of the Project Golem projections, and we know pirates are fully capable of commiting an act like this. Pirates, that's who I say did this."

"Hmm. I don't know," Bass replied. "I admit I don't know much about pirates, Lieutenant, but I do know the use of acid-spraying weapons is not, tactically or practically speaking, the best way to engage an enemy. And then there's the destroyed electronic equipment." He turned to Dr. Bynum. "But absent any other explanation, Commander, I accept yours. If whoever did this, pirates or whatever, is still around, we'd better be ready to deal with them."

Bass looked at the men standing around him. None had ever seen such slaughter before. Fortunately, it had all happened so long ago that surveying the destruction now was more like exploring old catacombs with ancient skeletons lying around than walking through a butcher shop, which the place must've looked like just after the attack. But each man could imagine what must have happened here.

And each also knew that it must have required a lot of manpower to kill all those people. And Bass could tell that the men of first squad, although wary of potential danger, were ready to confront it.

"Okay," he said, "we have two more stations to visit. There may be survivors somewhere. Let's saddle up."

"Charlie," Hyakowa said on the way out of the administration building, "I sure hope whoever did this on Waygone is long gone by now."

Bass did not reply, but he could not get Dr. Bynum's statement out of his mind, that whoever killed all those people were "very nasty customers." And he did not think they had been pirates. But what about those missing electronic components? In the pit of his stomach an unfamiliar and very uncomfortable knot of cold fear was growing.

Absently, Lieutenant Snodgrass fingered the ring he'd put in his pocket. He took it out and examined it. It was beautiful, with a large gem of some sort in the center and an ornate scroll design around the setting. Somebody's class ring, he realized. He looked inside. What he saw there made him catch his breath. And then he began laughing. The laugh rose to an hysterical, gasping, breathless crescendo, and when the lieutenant was able to partially regain control of himself, he started all over again. He held the ring out at the astonished Marines, trying to tell them something, but was laughing and gasping so hard that nobody could understand him. At last he made a supreme effort to get a grip on himself and was able to shout, "Dr. Morgan, I presume?" and convulsed with laughter all over again.

Bass and Hyakowa exchanged troubled glances. "Shit," Bass sighed, "don't we have enough problems? Keep your eye on that boy, Wang. He's going to be big trouble."

CHAPTER 16

Dean crouched in the shade of a building, scanning the sector of the forest he'd been assigned to watch.

Owen, suffused a dull pink, indicating he was resting, perched comfortably on Dean's left shoulder. Dean was particularly alert, as were all the Marines, and more than a little nervous after what they'd discovered at Central Station. Corporal Pasquin had been on the squad circuit three times in the past fifteen minutes, asking for reports.

Dean could see nothing bigger than the tube-shaped, flying insects moving out there. It was getting very hot. A tiny drop of perspiration slid slowly down his right temple.

"I hope you aren't sleeping, Lance Corporal," a voice rasped from behind him. Startled, Dean whirled around. It was Pasquin, making a personal check of his fire team's positions. Dean was embarrassed that the corporal had come up on him without being detected and irked that Pasquin would even think he might doze off on guard.

Dean didn't bother to answer. Relations between them had been tense and utterly formal since their run-in at the promotion party. When the corporal did not follow through on his threat to bring him up on charges for insubordination, Dean had been relieved. But, ironically, he had also lost some respect for Pasquin, because it proved he was not a man of his word—and he spoke rashly. Now, Pasquin squatted down beside him. "Hot," he said. Dean nodded. Out of the corner of his eye Dean noticed that Owen had turned from pink to greenish-yellow, which he knew from experience indicated the woo was upset about something but not yet frightened. Ignoring Pasquin, Dean lowered his infra screen and scanned the tree line. Nothing. He blew air out of his lungs—whew!—and raised the screen.

"See something?" Pasquin asked as he tensed and shifted the position of his blaster.

"No. I just noticed Owen here changed colors. I thought he might have sensed something. I think he can tell when danger's nearby."

Pasquin snorted derisively. "I've never heard such crap before, Dean, taking a goddamn pet on a deployment, much less going on alert whenever he shits."

Oh, no, Dean thought, here he goes again! "Well, Top Myer said I could bring him along, and Gunny Bass didn't object, Corporal. Besides, Owen's not just my pet, he's—well—he's third platoon's mascot."

"I know, I know."

"And really, Corporal, the woos can sense danger. When we were down in the caves on Diamunde, Owen—"

"Ah, shit! ‘Diamunde,’ ‘Wanderjahr,’ ‘Elneal’—that's all I ever hear from you guys! Can't you ever talk about anything else?"

"Well, excuse me all to hell. I'm sorry you weren't with us." Touché for insinuating I'd go to sleep on guard, Dean thought. Instantly, he felt embarrassed by his remark. It was too much like bragging. "Sorry.

I was just—" Dean turned his head to look directly at the corporal as he spoke.

"Goddamnit, Dean, keep your eyes to the front! You're responsible for the security of this sector.

Don't go dozing off or screwing around with that goofy-looking pet of yours there." Pasquin spoke in a voice loud enough to be heard in the forest.

"Keep it down," Dean said. "Look, Corporal, all I was saying was—"

"Shut up, Lance Corporal Dean! Don't tell me what to do. Goddamnit, one of these days I'm going to strangle that stupid-looking little shit." He thrust a stiff finger out at Owen, who'd begun to turn a light shade of blue.

Dean leaped to his feet so quickly Owen almost lost his balance. "You even breathe on Owen, and so help me I'll—" Dean shouted, forgetting his noise discipline. Pasquin stepped back quickly—and bumped into Staff Sergeant Hyakowa, who'd come from the nearby platoon command post to investigate the shouting.

"What's going on here?" the platoon sergeant asked quietly.

"Uh, nothing, Staff Sergeant," Pasquin muttered, his face reddening. Hyakowa looked inquiringly at Dean, who remained silent.

Hyakowa studied the two for a moment. "All right," he said at last. "Keep it down out here. Pasquin, come with me." Hyakowa took Pasquin to the nearest building, which turned out to have been a nursery for the station's children. The brightly colored toys lying in disarray all about the small room contrasted vividly with the Marines' chameleons. Hyakowa sat atop what must have been the matron's desk while Pasquin remained standing.