Chapter 11

The Marines and advisors stared down at the body that Davis had tripped over. The rest of the company was busy packing up their bivouac site and pulling security while the group that had run over to see what had happened to Davis continued to look down with a mixture of shock, confusion, and disgust.

The body had been here for a while. That much was made evident by the level of decomposition. From the looks of the clothes and gear that sagged around the skeleton, it appeared to be a colonist. The pistol on their belt and the combat webbing, a lightweight, non-armored version of the vests the Marines wore, told them that whoever this was had been part of some security detail. While the presence of the body itself was a concern, it was the least of their worries.

The skeleton's lower jaw was missing.

And it wasn't a clean separation either, which could have been written off as some scavenging wildlife having taken it off once the body decomposed enough. No, whatever had done this had done it messily, and with a lot of force. Fragments of the jawbone were still connected to the upper skull, but they were bent and flayed out and to the left, almost as if they'd been struck by something with enough force to have ripped it away.

"What the fuck?" Eberwein said, finally breaking the silence. Bartz looked up from the body, his eyes focused on the advisors.

"You said that the Covenant picked up the transmission while passing by the planet." Bartz said. "This sure as hell looks like they made a pit stop."

"I…we…the report said it hadn't." Kurt said, seemingly stunned at this development. Pops stepped forward and took a knee, pushing aside the shoulder strap of the body's webbing. Embroidered into the shirt beneath was the winged logo of the ship. The words 'USCSS Covenant' were above the wings, and 'Weyland-Yutani' beneath.

"Well unless this cat took an escape pod down on his own, I'd say that at least a few of them touched down here." Pops said. He then stuck a gloved hand down the skeleton's shirt.

"What are you doing?" Janet asked. She was flanked by the other advisors, and had finally regained her voice after first seeing the body. Pops didn't answer. Instead, he grabbed ahold of something and pulled. There was the quiet sound of metal breaking. He held up his hand in front of him. The chain of a metal ID tag was held between his fingers, the square tags dangling beneath them. Pops used his other hand to grab the tags. "Ankor, Alex E." Pops said, reading the tag. "Blood Type B-Positive, employee number 6479S-C." Pops looked up from the tags towards the advisors, rising to his feet. "Don't you think you should take that down or something?" Pops asked.

"Right. Right." Kurt said, nodding. Pops tossed the tags towards the advisors, and they were caught by Frank, who passed them to Janet. The woman was looking down at her tablet, rapidly plugging in the information.

"Well, this has officially become a rescue and recovery operation." Captain Bartz said, looking down at Ankor's body and wondering just what the hell had happened to the man. "Fick, Brink."

"Sir." Both Lieutenants said. Bartz looked at them.

"Get your Marines squared away and ready to move out. Until we move out, I want one-hundred percent security. I don't know what did that to him, but I don't want whatever it was catching us off guard." The two officers nodded and started back towards the beach. Bartz turned to speak with the advisors, but was interrupted when his radio squelched in his earpiece.

"Captain Bartz." One of the Walter units said. Bartz took a moment to think of which one it could be, and wished he'd taken the time to program them with different voices.

"Go for Bartz." He said.

"Sir, Knight here." The synth had realized the communication issue and taken it upon himself to identify who was speaking. "Rook and I were patrolling at the edge of the fog. We found something you're going to want to see."

"What is it?" The Captain asked.

"Sir, it appears to be a lander." Knight relayed.

"What's its status? Is there any personnel nearby?" Bartz asked.

"It's destroyed, sir." Knight said. "You're going to want to see this yourself. And I believe our Weyland-Yutani reps are going to want to see it as well."

"Check." Bartz said, even more confused. He turned to the advisors. "Two of my synths just found what they're saying is a destroyed lander further down the beach." He turned his back to them and started walking back towards the beach. He didn't know what had happened here, but his gut was telling him that it wasn't good.