HUMAN TEETH MARKS

1563 4D

“The radio trace is dead, as usual, but we found genesign on one of the trails.” The officer, muttering to himself, skimmed through the datasheet, glanced up at the ArCorp duty board. Rain drummed on the metal roof of the temp office. Damn the roads up here. Neerin and Garth were gone, dead and burned in a gorge after a wrong turn; he’d have to get replacements from the mercenary militia group from City, and they were hard to manage.

“You say something?” His superior poked his head in from an adjacent cubby.

“That farmer the detention group dropped off — remember him?”

“Yeah?”

“Got genesign on him. After the radio trace flatted out.”

“You forget the alien leads we’re after?”

“No, but—“

The senior officer cut in, “Let that crap wait. The labs got a hit on Garth‘s autopsy. Human teeth marks on his liver, what was left of it. Altered genetic traces.”

“Bugs?”

“That’s the take on it. All of Dreckin‘s mercs are going up to the bitch farm for a cookout.”

“There? But that’s where the farmer went. That’s why Neerin and Garth went up there in the first place.”

“Hmm. Where’d the gene trace come from?”

The officer studied the sheet, thumbed it to the map. “There’s a trail pass coming down to the triple switchback on the Drevill road, about a day out of Signo 43. Right where the trail meets the road.”

“If he’s going that way, I’ll brief the quarantine patrols. They can do something besides shoot andros, for once.”

“He’s probably stopping at Engrammatic.”

The senior officer smirked. “You’re catching on.”