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Silva didn’twant to look, but felt he had to, and moved close enough to see the wrinkled scalp, to which a few isolated clumps of filthy hair still clung. His eyes catalogued a parade of horrors: the sickly looking skin; the alarmingly blue eyes which still bulged, as if in response to some unimaginable pain; the twisted, toothless mouth; the slightly puckered 7.62mm bullet hole through the right cheekbone; the lumpy, penetrator-filled neck; the bony chest, now split down the middle so that the woman’s flat breasts hung down to either side; the grossly distorted torso, punctured by three overlapping bullet wounds; the thin, sinewy arms; and the strangely graceful fingers, one of which still bore a silver ring.
The Major didn’t say anything, but his face must have telegraphed what he felt, because McKay nodded. “It’s pretty awful, isn’t it, sir? I’ve seen death before, sir—” she swallowed and shook her head, “—but nothing like this.
“For what it’s worth Covenant victims don’t look any better. This individual was armed with a pistol, her own probably, but the Flood seem to pick up and use any weapon they can lay their hands on. Not only that, but they pack a very nasty punch, which can be lethal.
“Most combat forms appear to be derived from humans and Elites,” McKay continued, as she moved to the last table. “We suspect that Grunts and Jackals are deemed too small for first-class combat material, and are therefore used as a sort of nucleus around which carrier forms can grow. It’s hard to tell by looking at the puddle of crap on the table in front of you, but at one time this thing containedfour of the infection forms you saw earlier, and when it popped the resulting explosion had enough force to knock Sergeant Lister on his can.”
That, or the mental picture that it conveyed, was sufficient to elicit nervous grins from the Helljumpers who lined the back wall. Apparently they liked the idea of something that could put Lister on his ass.
Silva frowned. “Does Wellsley have scans of this stuff?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Excellent. Nice job. Have the bodies burned, send these troops up for some fresh air, and report to my office in an hour.”
McKay nodded. “Yes, sir.”
Zuka ’Zamamee lay belly down on the hard-packed dirt and used his monocular to scan thePillar of Autumn . It wasn’t heavily guarded; the Covenant was stretched too thin for that, but the Council had reinforced the security force subsequent to the human raid, and evidence of that was visible in the Banshees, Ghosts, and Wraiths that patrolled the area around the downed ship. Yayap, who lay next to the Elite, had no such device and was forced to rely on his own vision.
“This plan is insane,” ’Zamamee said out of the side of his mouth. “I should have killed you a long time ago.”
“Yes, Excellency,” the Grunt agreed patiently, knowing that the talk was just that. The truth was that the officer wasafraid to return to theTruth and Reconciliation , and now had very little choice but to accept Yayap’s plan, especially in light of the fact that he had been unable to come up with one of his own.