Chapter Twenty-Nine: Disappearances

February 14, 2537 (Military Calendar) \
New Harmony, Beta Persei System

"So exactly what the fuck happened in there?" Dempsey quickly asked Lieutenant McCandlish, unable to contain himself any longer.

It had been three days since the botched trip into Currith, and McCandlish had only just recovered from the burns and broken bones he'd sustained from the explosion. The El-Tee was in a talkative mood, and when officers were in talkative moods we enlisted were always sure to pump them for information.

"Yeah, mind telling us why that house decided to blow up with us right next to it?" Esposito interjected, sliding his breakfast tray in between mine and Banks's before sliding himself in.

McCandlish didn't answer until he was finished swallowing his last bite of scrambled eggs. "It was all going normally, at first…" the El-Tee murmured, taking a swig of orange juice. "The contact let Agent Rodney and me inside. I waited by the door, but Agent Rodney went into the man's den… Now, I know they were talking about the local innies and the disappearances. Nothing interesting, you understand. Then suddenly, I hear Rodney shout. There was a scuffle, and when I entered the room to investigate, the man almost had a chokehold on Agent Rodney."

"The contact tried to kill him?" I raised an eyebrow.

McCandlish took another bite of scrambled eggs and shrugged. "He had his hands around Rodney's throat; it's safe to assume homicide was on his mind," the Englishman rolled his eyes. "I pulled the wanker off the agent. Then his jacket falls off; he had enough C4 strapped to his chest to put a dent in the whole block..." the El-Tee got a faraway look in his eyes as he thought about that. He gave a low, mirthless chuckle and muttered, "He did put a dent in the whole block..."

"You are a lucky bastard, you know that?" Dempsey chuckled. "When the innies fired an RPG at us, it hit your humvee, which had been empty. If it had hit either of the other ones..."

"Well, better burned than blown to kibble, I suppose," the El-Tee shrugged, returning his full attention to the breakfast in front of him. The rest of us did likewise, putting the kibosh on the usual conversation. Sure, we had exchanged nods with Death once again, but that was never a good topic of conversation to bring up. Especially not during a meal.

The klaxon wailed throughout the entire firebase as we walked out of the mess hall, ready to face yet another day of routine and repetition.

Marine life was quite polarized. Either you spent day after day bored as shit with nothing to do, or you spent day after day trying to accomplish the difficult task of not dying while Covies cooked the air all around you with superheated plasma. There was no middle ground between the two extremes. Aristotle wouldn't have been happy.

"Alpha Company, report to the motor pool," the voice said throughout the PA system.

"Oh, Christ, what now?" Banks snapped. "We already risked our necks this week, why can't they have some other company go?"

"Because we're the only full-strength company in the firebase," Devereux replied. "Bravo Company is out on patrol north of Currith, and Delta and Charlie Companies are having squads sent out to reconnoiter the coastal fishing villages later this afternoon. That just leaves jolly old us."

McCandlish herded us towards the motor pool. As we joined the rest of the company, I looked for the DIA agents who would be accompanying us. Agent Rodney was absent—he had been more seriously wounded than McCandlish—but there were seven other DIA agents. They were not dressed in black suits, however. They looked more like SWAT operatives with their battle armor on.

"Will everyone kindly shut the hell up!" Gunny Stisen barked, silencing the throng of Alpha Company marines. Good ole' Gunny Stisen. We hadn't spoken to each other since his assignment to the 9th Force Recon, and that probably wasn't going to change. Sure, he fought on Harvest same as me, and he was an asshole.

Captain Hasegawa, who had been standing in the passenger seat of a warthog to be seen by everyone, started to speak after we fell quiet. "Local dispatches have just picked up emergency calls coming in from an isolated community about five klicks southwest of our current location. We may have another one of these disappearances happening as we speak. Gunfire has been reported, so we're going in armed and ready for anything. The rebs are not getting away this time. Mount up!"

I wasn't driving, this time. Instead, I hopped into the back of a transport 'hog along with half my squad. Dempsey rode in another warthog with the other half. The entire company quickly mounted up and sped out of the firebase, tearing down the roads towards the place where the emergency calls were coming in.

I slapped a fresh mag into my BR55, rubbing down the stock and barrel of the rifle with an oil rag. I then forced myself to put the weapon down onto my lap. My nervous tick was to tinker with my weapon—constantly adjusting the sights, cleaning it, checking the ammunition, etc. Better to just be patient and wait. Not that I was looking forward to any action, but still…it would really be nice to catch these 'Liberation Front' innies red-handed in the disappearances. Then we could break them.

I could see the smoke in the distance as we drew close to our destination.

"Looks like the Innies have been through here already," Singh observed, squinting as he watched the smoke.

The convoy continued along the back roads and up the hill until we finally rumbled into the suburban community where the emergency call had come from. It was a small, isolated place; probably around twenty or thirty homes. A few police cruisers were already in the neighborhood. Half a dozen or so officers were questioning residents and cordoning off the area around the burning house.

The smoke's source was the home at the far end of the street—the most isolated home of this isolated community. Most of the home had burned to the ground. All that remained were glowing red embers, pieces of floorboards and tiling, husks that may once have been furniture—all the features of…well, of a burned home.

"I'm Detective Fisher, Ghalad Provincial Police," the inspector in charge of the scene introduced himself to Captain Hasegawa as we powered down our convoy and dismounted.

"Captain Hiroshi Hasegawa, A Company CO, 9th Force Recon," the Captain introduced himself to the inspector in charge. "We are acting under the authority of Governor Montgomery. I understand there are Insurrectionists in the area?"

"The Downey home went up in flames, we get here within three minutes, and now the Downeys are gone and so are the perpetrators. Neighbors gave us reports of gunfire during the incident." Detective Fisher gave a hapless shrug, rubbing the bridge of his nose. "I haven't the slightest idea how the rebs could have gotten away so fast. Satellite coverage didn't even pick up any heat signatures in the area, besides the other residents, of course."

As Hasegawa and the inspector continued to converse, the company divided into platoons. Lieutenant McCandlish led us up the street towards the burned-down house. A police officer accompanied us, outlining the situation.

"You already know what happened here," the policeman grunted. "That house was the home of John and Melissa Downey, as well as their eight-year-old daughter—all of whom are missing."

"We'll see if missing means 'gone without a trace'," McCandlish muttered. "Garris, get your marines around the grounds of that house. Look for any signs of abduction and see if you can pick up a trail. Tirimev, I want a…"

I didn't stick around for the rest of McCandlish's spiel. I gathered my squad and set off towards the burnt house. A faint rumble of thunder boomed in the distance. I glanced up at the cloudy sky, noting the storm front moving in from the west. "We'll have to find what we need to find before we get rained out," I sighed.

There wasn't anything to find, though. We searched relentlessly for two hours, looking for any trace of the people who had kidnapped the Downey family.

The thunderstorm was getting pretty close. I wasn't afraid of getting struck by lightning or anything, nothing like that. My only concern was that when it started raining, the crime scene would be compromised, and we would lose any possible crucial details left behind by the kidnappers.

Our clue was a detail so small that most of us missed it. Ultimately, it was Lucky Larry Eldridge who found it. He'd been anointed 'Lucky Larry' after surviving the Siege of Cedar Rapids without a scratch - the only marine in Alpha Company to do so.

"Sirs! Sirs!" Eldridge was shouting, waving to Tirimev, his squad leader. I was nearby with Lieutenant McCandlish, so we decided to head on over and take a look as well. When we got over to Eldridge, we found him holding what looked like a breathing apparatus-the kind scuba-divers put in their mouths. It had been lying in a patch of ferns. It was metallic, but it hadn't rusted. In a somewhat humid climate such as this, that meant it hadn't been out here for very long.

"I'm not even going to ask how you found that..." Tirimev grunted. "Bag that object and give it to one of the DIA agents. They can run a DNA test and find out who this belongs to. From there, they can probably-"

"Don't bother," I shook my head.

"I beg your pardon?" Tirimev didn't sound too pleased at being interrupted.

I crouched down and examined some of the ferns that the breathing apparatus had been found in. A few of them were stained blue. When I looked up at the tree the apparatus was in front of, there were a few more spots of that same blue substance. It seemed almost luminescent; had it been nighttime, those stains probably would have glowed faintly. I knew that substance anywhere. It was blood.

"I don't think the UNSC keeps DNA records of grunts," McCandlish stated.

It all made horrible, clear sense. The disappearances, the attacks... I remembered the inspector mentioning how the satellites hadn't even picked up the perpetrators' heat signatures fleeing the area. It was because the perpetrators had to wear chilled environment-suits in order to survive.

"I'm going to report this to Captain Hasegawa," McCandlish started heading back up the hill towards the community. "I'm sure Governor Montgomery will be interested to know that the Liberation Front has not been responsible for these disappearances...we have bloody Covies on the planet."

My heart sank to the region of my knees, and as I slung my BR55 over my shoulder and trudged uphill after the El-Tee, the only thing going through my mind was: Here we go again...