Marcus wanted to crack open his own helmet as the shuttle made the brief hop from the settlement to one of the nearer farms, but he didn't quite dare.  Who knew what might be present in the planet’s atmosphere?  The Marines had booster shots that made them immune to almost every known disease, yet such broad-spectrum vaccines were rare outside the military.  He forced himself to breathe through his mouth as the shuttle landed again, hitting the ground so hard he was sure they’d crashed, then followed the Marines out of the shuttle.

There was a farmhouse at one end of the field, a comfortable-looking building his briefing had identified as a Hacienda.  Once, it had been intact; now, it’s walls were blackened and it was completely deserted, just like the buildings in the main settlement.  Marcus remained outside as the Marines swept through the building, hunting for survivors or hints that someone, somewhere, was still alive.  But they found nothing.

“Hey,” one of the Marines called.  “I found a body!”

Marcus joined the general stampede towards the muddy ditch.  A body lay at the bottom of the mud, clearly in an advanced state of decomposition.  It was impossible to tell if it was male or female, young or old.  One of the Marine stepped down into the ditch and took a DNA sample for later checking against the Mexican colony records.  Marcus wondered, absently, if the body had been abandoned because no one knew it was there ... or if no one had survived to come back and bury it.  There was no way to tell.

“Female,” the Marine grunted.  The suits could run basic checks, although without the records it was impossible to positively identify the body.  “Around thirty years old, but too much damage to be sure.”

Poor bitch, Marcus thought.  He’d seen horror before – he’d filmed horror for the jaded audiences in the civilised world – but this was something new.  His imagination filled in all manner of scenarios.  Maybe she'd been the proud owner of the farmhouse, running from the alien monsters that had destroyed her world; maybe she'd been the daughter of the farmhouse owner, trying to sneak around the aliens when they attacked.  Or maybe she’d been a servant ... there was no way to know.  Her face would be broadcast all over the datanets, probably with a story composed to drum up support for the war, but she would never know it.  God alone knew what had happened to the others.

“Leave the body here,” Major Parnell ordered.  “We’re not equipped to take her with us.”