Issue In Doubt - By David Sherman Page 0,10

it had sheltered before the farm was attacked. The remains of a smaller building and its contents appeared to have been a small smithy.

Harrell saved the farmhouse for last. The porch roof sagged—two of the pillars that held it up had been broken away. The door was blown in, as were the windows on the front of the house. The squad headed for the porch.

The Monticello had withdrawn after launching the Spirits, and was more than one and a half light minutes from Troy by this time, resulting in a five minute time lag between when Staff Sergeant Lummus at the foot of the McKinzie elevator sent the message that the squads in Millerton were under attack and the message was received by fifth squad.

“Hold,” Harrell ordered when he received the message. The Marines lowered themselves to the ground in a five pointed star, facing outward. “Someone’s hitting first squad,” Harrell told his men. After a couple of minutes with no further message, and no sign of unwelcome company, he ordered, “Inside, on the double.”

The Marines jumped up and dashed into the farmhouse. The interior of the house was as thoroughly trashed as the barn and other out buildings had been. The only differences were that the farmhouse’s second floor hadn’t been collapsed into the first, and there were no bones. The windows on the side and rear walls were all blown outward, as was the back door.

After a few minutes search, with no additional reports on what was happening elsewhere, Harrell gave the order to resume the movement to Jordan. The Marines kept to the field, walking between the rows of corn, bent low enough that only their heads were above the corn stalks.

Edge of Alberville, Thirty-Five Kilometers West of Millerton

With plenty of space for its relatively small population, the people of Troy revived a lifestyle that began in the middle of the twentieth century, but died out in the first half of the twenty-first: the bedroom community. Alberville had a large enough shopping district to tend to the basic needs of its population of 18,000, and schools from pre-elementary to pre-college for its children. But other than shopkeepers and teachers, people went to Millerton or other locations for work. Commuting was via a network of high speed maglev trains, which people also used to go elsewhere for entertainment, dining, and recreation.

Sixth squad found that the alien invaders had demolished the train system as thoroughly as they had everything else. The guideways were broken and collapsed. The train cars were broken and their parts scattered about. The train station was gutted, and its roof was sagging.

Half an hour after landing, having ascertained that there was nobody nearby, Staff Sergeant William J. Bordelon ordered his squad into Alberville proper. The five Marines spot-checked houses on their way to the shopping district. Everywhere it was the same: front doors and windows had been broken in, those on the sides and rear blown out, the entire contents of the houses reduced to scrap. No sign of a body or body part.

The Marines were confident in the ability of their camouflage to keep them unseen to any observers. Still, they spread out and moved stealthily, flitting from shadow to shadow.

Bordelon called a halt when the squad reached a park that marked the transition from housing to shopping. Again, the Marines examined their surroundings and checked their sensors. Again, they saw and detected nothing.

Until Bordelon gave the order to move out.

“I have movement,” Corporal Louis J. Hauge, Jr. suddenly said from the squad’s rear point. “Seventy-five, five o’clock.”

Bordelon slowly swiveled to his right rear. Seventy-five meters away was a house he recognized as one he’d checked himself.

“They’re following us,” Bordelon said out loud, while silently cursing himself—how could anybody be coming up from behind? Where did they come from? His motion detector was set to check three-sixty, but it hadn’t shown any movement. “Down.” He set action to words by lowering himself to the ground. “Show me.”

Hauge aimed a pulse of ultraviolet light at the empty window frame where he’d detected movement.

Bordelon looked where Hauge indicated, but the only thing he saw inside the window was the strobing flash of an automatic rifle firing at him. In an instant, he had his handgun drawn and fired at a point behind the muzzle flash. He never knew if he’d hit anything—just as he fired, a burst of automatic fire tore into his right sideshattering his ribs and shredding internal organs.

Less than a minute after Hauge