summed it up for the general over a cup of coffee in a much more straightforward manner.
“The troops are clean. Some of them are a little banged up, but we’re talking scrapes, bruises, and a cracked rib or two. That all happened when they more or less fell down a slope during the retreat, from what they told us. Not a single alien-induced cut on the lot of them.”
“You sure?” Young asked, skeptical. “Could they be lying?”
Weston shook his head and downed his coffee in two long gulps. His teeth were stained yellow, which made Young think that the good doctor either drank way too much coffee or should definitely stop smoking. “Of course, but we checked them head to toe. No cuts. Just scrapes. No cuts hiding in the scrapes, from what we could tell. No foreign matter found except for dirt, native pollen, and clothing fibers. For the most part, they’re all healthy as horses. We’ve been checking for any kind of anomaly, but the only thing we found was half a dozen coins in one of the privates’ small intestine. Turns out he swallowed them on a bet.”
Young grinned behind his own cup, but didn’t comment. “Could something be hiding in their bodies?”
“Well, we x-rayed them, did MRIs, full body scans, took blood and tissue samples…. We don’t have all the results back yet, but I doubt it.”
Weston was eying the donuts now. He was on his third shift and obviously hungry, but the plate was on the general’s side of the table and though this was an informal conversation, Young’s four stars formed an invisible barrier between them. “You want my professional opinion, sir?”
“That’s why we’re here,” Young reminded him mildly, and pushed the donuts across the line.
Weston nodded his thanks and took a huge bite. He chewed and swallowed quickly, obviously used to eating fast. “There wasn’t enough contact or proximity between these men and whatever attacked them to transmit diseases. The ones who got that close got killed, and considering all those diced-up, perforated bodies in the morgue, I’m thinking probably not by biochemical agents.” He licked a smear of chocolate off his thumb.
“They are clean, too, by the way. Dead, but clean. Not a single trace of alien matter, not even in the wounds.”
Young preferred to keep the bodies out of it for the moment.
“So if I wanted to talk to the men…?”
“I’d say go ahead, but since we don’t have all the lab results yet, they’re still quarantined. I recommend you use the interview room, just in case. Security glass and intercom. Safest method, if you ask me.”
“Set it up,” Young ordered, emptied his own cup of coffee, and left to make some arrangements himself. He wanted to be able to take off at a moment’s notice as soon as they had a confirmation of the alien’s current whereabouts. Somehow he suspected nobody had thought to put the necessary personnel on standby yet. Turned out he was right.