He knew he should remain with the shuttle, where he could coordinate the operation, but he couldn't keep himself from inspecting the schoolroom.  Inside, it was a mess.  The desks and chairs had been burned to ashes, while the small collection of electronic teaching aids were missing.  There were no sign of any bodies.  On the ground, he thought he saw a handful of tiny footprints, but he knew they could just be his imagination.

“They took the teaching aids,” he said, out loud.  “What could they learn from those?”

“They could learn our language, for a start,” Sergeant Miles said.  “One of my girlfriends used to say that a student could begin with no knowledge of English and master it through using one of those aids.  I dare say the aliens are smarter than schoolchildren.”

Charles nodded as he backed out of the schoolroom.  “What else could they learn?”

“Depends what modules were loaded in,” Miles admitted.  “They’re produced in America, so the basics of English reading and writing are a given.  Then there could be modules covering everything from basic human history to specialised Mexican history.  Science and maths, farming instructions ... this is a colony world, sir.  They’ll have loaded as many modules as they could into the system.”

“I see,” Charles said.  He hesitated, thinking hard.  “They could speak to us.”

“They could,” Miles agreed.  “And they could speak to the POWs, if they have any POWs from this colony.”

Charles nodded.  The aliens might not be able to speak English properly – he agreed with the analysts that the shape of their mouths would probably prevent it – but they were definitely advanced enough to produce some kind of voder.  Hell, he was fairly sure that Marine battlesuits could be adapted to produce sounds the aliens could understand.  But if the aliens could talk to humans, but chose not to ... what did that mean?  Somehow, he doubted it boded well for the future.

“Hey,” Yang said.  The reporter sounded unsteady; he’d been sick twice in the flight, according to the subroutine monitoring his suit.  “Do you think the aliens took prisoners from here?”

“There are no bodies,” Charles said.  “That suggests that the aliens took prisoners or destroyed the bodies ... or there were survivors, who returned long enough to bury the bodies and then retreat.  But there’s no sign of any survivors.”

He looked towards the forested hills in the distance.  If there were survivors, it was unlikely they would risk showing themselves.  They might not realise that the shuttle that had landed by the settlement was human.  Instead, they might remain in hiding, convinced that the aliens had started to hunt them down again.  He shook his head in bitter disbelief.  No one had thought to come up with protocols for alien attack, certainly not on Vera Cruz.  And that whole lack of preparation was biting them on the behind.