A Second Sweep

8.3.5 SW
Late Morning SW-CP-Local Time
Ghost Forest > Site of the Crates

Gauss looked up from his datapad with a look of confusion. Buddy did find chemical traces of blood spatter and even slight tracks in the terrain that led the investigation back to the area with the crates. Only the open crate remained. Gauss's datapad screen glowed, outlining the tracks in a green and white spectrum. Searching the database for known animal tracks came up empty. These prints looked to be the size of a small quadrupedal animal, one with the back feet of a canid and front feet... that seemed more like slender hands.

"What the hell?" he muttered to himself as he looked at the screen.

"Here!" called the Marshal. "Found something."

Gauss proceeded over to the Marshal's position to take a look at the find.

"Looks like it shed its skin. Leaving this husk behind." he said.

Gauss sneered for a moment at the thing hanging from a branch in the Marshal's hand before taking photos.

"All of this needs to be destroyed after we take samples and document. I'm talking incinerators. We clear?" ordered the Marshal.

Gauss nodded, still with a look of awe and disgust on his face. Buddy the droid pipped.

"I was able to locate more tracks, Rico." said Buddy in his friendly, buzzing android tone.

Several minutes later the team had discovered drag tracks and occasional shoe prints and the unknown animal prints which were now bigger. These tracks followed the same path the search team had taken yesterday. The tracks continued faintly back out of the forest to the southeast into an open field that led back toward the airfield. It was slow going but Buddy was able to keep sight on the traces left behind.