We Only Need the Heads Read Online Free PDF Page B

for coming,” he said, tried to smile, and failed.

     
    Harry Wilson entered the bridge of the Tubingen; a surprised Captain Jack Augustyn looked up, along with his executive officer and other bridge crew. He gave them a couple of seconds for their BrainPals to register and label him. Then he said, “I think we’re in trouble.”
    Wilson saw Captain Augustyn have an internal debate whether to jump on him for his unconventional entrance and then make a choice, in the space of half a second. “Explain,” he said.
    “We have a couple of CDF corpses in the meat locker right now,” Wilson said.
    “Yes,” Augustyn said. “So what?”
    “I think there should be another one in there,” Wilson said.
    “Excuse me?” Augustyn said.
    “We have two dead CDF,” Wilson said. “I think there was another one on the colony. I’ve been going through Vasily Ivanovich’s data. It’s where I found the data stored in a BrainPal-readable format. But some of the documents aren’t originally Vasily’s. Some of them are from Martina Ivanovich, who forwarded them to Vasily using a BrainPal-to-BrainPal protocol. And some of them are from a guy named Drew Talford. Who also sent them BrainPal to BrainPal.”
    “We have our people on the planet now, identifying the dead,” Augustyn said. “They’ll find him.”
    “They have found him,” Wilson said. “I wouldn’t be bothering you with this if I hadn’t already checked.”
    “If they found him, then what’s the problem?” asked Selena Yuan, the Tubingen ’s executive officer.
    “They didn’t find all of him,” Wilson said. “He’s missing his head.”
    “I would imagine a lot of the colonists are missing limbs and body parts,” Augustyn said. “They were attacked. And it’s been a week since the attack, so scavengers have been at them.”
    “Lots of them are missing body parts,” Wilson agreed, and then sent Augustyn and Yuan an image through his BrainPal. “None of the rest of them are missing a body part that’s been cleanly separated from the rest of their body.”
    There was a moment while Augustyn and Yuan examined the picture. “No one’s found the head,” Augustyn asked, after a minute.
    “No,” Wilson said. “I’ve been having them look intensively for a couple of hours. There are bodies missing heads, but the heads are usually found not too far away, or the separation is ragged. This guy’s head isn’t near the body. It isn’t anywhere.”
    “Some animal could have run off with it,” Yuan suggested.
    “It’s possible,” Wilson said. “On the other hand, when the head of a CDF soldier has been cut cleanly from his body and his head is nowhere to be found, I’d suggest it’s not prudent to assume some animal is making a snack of it.”
    “You assume it’s been taken by whoever attacked the colony,” Augustyn said.
    “Yes,” Wilson said. “And while I’m at it, I think that whoever told us that the Bula didn’t know the colony was here guessed really badly wrong. I think not only did the Bula know it was here, I’d be guessing they’re the ones who made the raid. If they didn’t know it was here, I’m willing to bet whoever attacked it took that head to the Bula, because evidence of a CDF presence on one of their planets is worth more than a little bit of cash.”
    “But they couldn’t have known about the CDF presence here,” Yuan said. “ We didn’t.”
    “At this point, I don’t think it matters if they did before, ” Wilson said. “I think it matters that they do now . And if they do now—”
    “Then they know we’re here now,” Augustyn said.
    “Right,” Wilson said. “In which case it’s not the colony that’s the CU’s biggest diplomatic problem at the moment. It’s us.”
    Augustyn was already ignoring Wilson to focus on contacting his ground forces to get them off the planet.
    They’d gotten only about half of them up before six Bula warships skipped above Wantji and trained their weapons,