They were fighting robots. Casey backed away from the body in disgust and stood. That would explain the stupidity of the small aliens, but not the intelligence of the overall assault; a robot could not make the immediate decisions required in a battle. Instinct told Casey the robots could only react to stimulus and not turn to the creative thinking needed in complex situations.

Of course, that was true for human produced robots. There was no idea what an alien robot could do when given free rein; that was something he was going to have to discover soon.

He walked to the center of the gully, searching for more robots. The situation was giving him a bad feeling; the missing aliens may prepare a trap. On the positive side, they might all be dead. That was something he would need to see to believe.

If the aliens had taken the bodies and equipment of his soldiers, then it stood to reason that a silencer would be near or in the real spacecraft.

Taking a deep breath, he continued towards the ship, trying to keep his gaze from locking on any specific place or object.

A strange mist was flowing from under the craft and slowly spreading into the gully. Small bits of the gully floor protruded from the mist, and what plants it touched were rapidly wilting.

As he neared the ship, he saw another alien robot lying on the ground just under the rim of the craft. Nudging it with a foot, he saw was dead. The man from the house had been very active and was probably incredibly lucky. The position of the body suggested it had been looking at the ship when it died.

Casey kneeled and looked under the spacecraft.

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A mother lode of bodies lay under the ship as if placed there for convenient disposal. One more check of the surroundings. Then Casey crawled into the tight space to search the dead for information and weapons.

His men were butchered. Casey searched each man, forcing himself to examine the damage done to their bodies and remember the expression on their faces. When the time came to confront Turner and the people responsible for this mess, he wanted to recall every facet of the horror; he wanted to see the faces of his men while he killed officers capable of creating this mess.

Someone had searched the bodies in a haphazard manner. Casey found more ammunition than he might need and several personal weapons his men had secreted on their bodies. He slung another automatic over his shoulder and took the silencer from a damaged weapon. Four fragmentation grenades went into his pockets, followed by three extra batteries for his night vision goggles.

Two dead actors were mixed in with the bodies of his men. He guessed they were the two who had died on the porch of the house. He looked over the bodies again and realized the count was wrong; there should have been two more bodies.

Unless the aliens had taken two live people, he thought with a shudder. With efficient movements, he screwed a new silencer onto his gun and crawled out from under the ship.

More debris of battle lay on the sled as it hovered next to the ship, with enough space on one side of the sled to have held the body of the second person taken from the house.

Casey looked at the lowered ramp leading to the open hatch of the ship. The only place the body could have gone, the door was open and waiting for Casey to enter. The probability of meeting an alien on the ship was too high to even consider. If he walked into that ship, he walked on alien ground. They would have the advantage.

All logic told Casey that he should return to the woods and continue the good fight. They were the missing in action, and their rescue was an unacceptable risk.

He stepped to the end of the ramp and looked up at the ship.

It was small; there could not be too many places for the aliens to hide the prisoners.

A soldier never left his comrades behind. He brought the bodies’ home for proper burial, or he sought to save the forgotten.

Logic be damned, Casey took a step on the ramp and covered the open hatch with his assault gun set to automatic.