Corporal Jones and I kept our weapons raised and pointed towards the unknown individuals in the hallway until Private Kasongo had rappelled down to our position. In the meantime, I had radioed the bridge of the UFS Roald Amundsen, keeping them posted on our situation. The other squads were too far away to provide any assistance, so we were on our own for now, although Gunny and the shuttle would be coming to assist us in the near future.

We started to advance slowly into the hallway, two people always covering the advance of the third, just like they taught in basic training. As we came closer, it became apparent the humanoid figures we’d seen from a distance showed no signs of life whatsoever. They were seated against the wall, right at the end of the hallway which led into a big open space. I let the Corporal and Private Kasongo cover my back while I inspected the two bodies.

“Commander, can you switch on your helmet cam?” I heard LC Moore’s voice come out of the comms.

I did so immediately while I pointed my flashlight at the two bodies. They were completely covered in a chalky substance, and a whole pile of dust. But from the contours, you could still clearly tell one body was leaning against the other’s shoulder. I took out my knife and gently started tapping at the chalk.

“Be careful, Commander.” LC Moore talked to me once more over the radio.

“Mhmm.” I hummed back while I concentrated on the task at hand.

The fifth tap of my knife made a chunk of chalk fall off, revealing the visor of some kind of power armour. The glass was transparent enough to see a skeleton staring back at me.

“Wow.” I heard Corporal Jones gasp. She was looking over her shoulder at what I was doing.

“Eyes forward, Corporal.” I commanded.

“Y-yes Ma’am!” She immediately started scanning the room again. “S-so we’re not alone in the galaxy after all…”

“Clearly not.” I nodded while I kept chipping away chalk.

“You are staying very calm, if I might say, Commander.” Private Kasongo commented.

“It always was a bit egocentric of humans to think they’d be alone in the galaxy, don’t you think so, Private?” I replied quickly.

“I guess…”

“Although I have to admit, even I did not expect us to find anything like this that soon, and so close to home nonetheless...” I tapped the chalk once more and this time a crack formed, almost covering the entire body of whatever being was in front of me. I used my knife to wedge it in between the crack and pushed. The left half fell off completely in one go, crumbling when it hit the ground. It revealed an appendage coming out of the lower back of the armour.

I then heard a noise coming through my radio, but I couldn’t really place it. “LC, was that you?”

“Yeah, sorry Commander. I… uh… choked a bit on my drink.”

“Oh, please do be careful. I can’t come and rescue you at the moment.” I chuckled.

“Y-yeah…”

It took me ten more minutes to break both bodies out of their chalk prison. “Gunny, what’s your ETA?” I radioed Turner.

“Almost there, Commander. We are trying to get a good angle. Thompson says he can take the shuttle inside.”

“I would rather he didn’t. The structure is rather unstable. Wouldn’t want the engine’s vibrations to make things collapse.”

“I hear you, Commander.” Thompson replied. “I’ll put her down outside.”

“Okay, make sure the ground is solid, so you don’t take a tumble too.”

“Will do.”

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Gunny and the scientists reached us down in the tunnels not too much later.

“Prep these bodies for extraction. I’d like to take them with us for analysis.” I ordered the scientists around, and they immediately got to work.

“What about me, Commander?” Gunny asked.

“Can you stay with them for a while longer? I would like to check around for a bit longer.

“Awh. I’d have liked to come with you for a bit. You know, in case you need some heavy lifting.” He juggled his machine gun around a bit with his power armour.

“You sure you don’t just want some action?”

“Maybe a little bit of that too.” I couldn’t see it because of his helmet, but I could imagine his signature smug without issues.

“I can stay behind with the scientists, ma’am.” Private Kasongo offered. “If the Gunnery Sergeant wants to join you.”

I gave him a quick nod. “Alright then, Gunny and Jones, you’re with me. Kasongo, don’t let them out of your sight.”

“Yes ma’am.” He gave me a salute and positioned himself next to the scientists.

We started a sweep down into the big big open space. It was completely empty but so big our flashlights had issues lighting it up.

“Gunny, did you take any lumen grenades with you?” I asked while looking over my shoulder to my right.

“Want me to fire one?”

“Otherwise I wouldn’t be asking.”

“Roger that. Cover me for a second.” He swung his machine gun over his back while me and Corporal Jones set up around him. He took a lumen grenade out of his grenade pouch, which was strapped to his exoskeleton. It was practically just a relatively tall cylinder. He then put it on the ground and took the igniter. “Lighting up in three, two, one.”

We all ducked away, making sure to avoid staring directly at the lumen grenade. It was sent flying into the air with a loud screech, but it was darn effective at lighting up the entire area. When our eyes adjusted, we could finally tell what we were standing in.

We were at the bottom of some kind of giant concrete silo, which was surrounded by several levels of open spaces. On the far side I could tell there was some big, red, alien writing marking every single floor. Very similar to how Earthen numbering systems worked.

“This looks like a huge fallout bunker.” The Corporal stated as she looked around.

Gunny nodded. “I’ve seen some of these in Russia.”

“... But where are all the people…” Jones continued.

“Long gone.” I said as I started to get closer to the edge of the silo and shone the light of my flashlight into one of the dark corridors leading away from the central chamber. It landed on a bulky silhouette, again covered completely in chalk. “Gunny, can you give that a hit with your armour?” I signed him over to the hulk in front of me.

He quickly obeyed my order and ran in front of me. Lifting his machine gun for a moment before bringing it down hard on the chalk. It appeared to be a lot sturdier than the chalk around the armours we’d found earlier, but to no avail. The shock immediately shattered the crust.

“Holy shit.” Gunny called out.

“What’s wrong?”

He moved over to the side to give me a clearer sight of the opened chalk cocoon. “It’s a huge fucking spacebug, Commander.”

“Fuck me.” Jones called out from behind me.

I moved closer to the bug and looked at it for a second. It was clearly not alive anymore, and it didn’t look like anything I’d ever seen before. It had at least 12 holes in its head, probably for eyes of some kind, and razor sharp teeth meant for cutting through meat.

“I think I might know what happened to these people.” I brought my hand to my helmet again to use my microphone. “Got another one for pickup here.”

“Roger that, Commander.” Private Kasongo replied.

“Are you serious, Commander? Do you think these bugs ate all these people?” Jones sat down next to me and poked the bug with her rifle.

“Well. It’s a theory, but I think so. Would explain where everything went.”

“And what about those two people back there?” Gunny nodded back to where we came from.

“Maybe some off-world explorers.” I shrugged. “Again, it’s just a theory.”

“Fair, but I know one thing though.” Gunny then continued. “I’m happy these bugs appear to be dead as hell. Because they look like nasty fuckers.”

“That makes two of us.” I stood back up and led the way deeper into the facility.

We didn’t find anything else, no other bodies, no other bugs, not any equipment these people might have used in the past. The only thing that was left was the concrete remains of the building.

When we headed back to the shuttle, they had already loaded up the samples for analysis.

“Planet looks to be inhabitable and ready for colonization, ma’am.” One of the scientists reported to me once I climbed on board.

“Hmm. I’m not sure if we should, though. Not yet anyway.”

“It would be prudent to first figure out what happened to the bug creatures that apparently inhabited the planet before.” The other scientist agreed with me.

I nodded and then commanded the shuttle to pick up the other teams. In the meantime, I leaned back against the wall. My shoulder blade had started to hurt a bit now that most of my adrenaline was gone. -I should probably let it get checked out by Doctor Winter…-