Jurassic Earth Trilogy Box Set

by Logan T Stark

  “We’re just moving to Shark Reef, we have a schedule,” Becca replied. “You can thank me later.”

  A New Class of Predator

  R eece checked the readouts from Big Yellow on his monitors in the control tower. Unfortunately, the remaining oxygen and power levels were too healthy for him to convince Becca to return.

  “Okay,” he said into the mouthpiece of his headset, “a quick stop at Shark Reef and that’s it. You’re already behind schedule.”

  “The way you worry, sometimes I think you actually care,” Becca’s voice responded over the roar of the helicopter.

  “You got me,” Reece said. “I’ve been thinking about asking you to marry me. Don’t tell yourself though. It’s a secret.”

  “A wedding, huh? That’s quite a leap from friends. I’m guessing Las Vegas with lots of noise and party girls is your thing.”

  “Have you been talking to Jay? Did he say… he… he wanted to go, not me. I just went to keep him company. That’s the truth. I’m much more of a quiet life, barbeque and a warm country evening type of guy. Most of the time, unless I’ve had tequila anyway.”

  “Oh, sure, quiet type. Definitely sounds like you. Can’t chat, honey, Shark Reef’s below. Starting our descent.”

  “You have half an hour,” Reece said, checking the time. “The moon goes over in an hour and a half.”

  “I know. Later, honey bunny.”

  “Hey, Reece,” Mohammed said from across the control tower. “The recordings from the V.A.R glasses yesterday picked up something… well… I’m not sure what it is. It would’ve been too small for the group to see, but if I zoom in. Look. There. You see that?”

  “It’s just a rock,” Reece said, walking over and looking at the image on Mohammed’s screen.

  “Yeah, I thought that, but the wearer looks away, then back again and…”

  “Woah!” Reece said, gawping at the screen. “I’ve never seen something do that before.”

  “I don’t think anyone has,” Mohammed replied. “We’ve no records of any animals like this, from any period in history.”

  The dark green rock had somehow sprouted tentacles and taken down an adolescent draconyx. In a matter of moments it had sucked the flesh from the animal’s head and neck and was now sliding across its rib cage. Opalescent markings across its body pulsed as it continued to devour flesh.

  “Just tell me what to do?” Mohammed said. “Reece?” He repeated as Reece stared at the video in horror.

  “Skip the video back a few minutes,” Reece said.

  “Okay, tell me when to…”

  “Stop,” Reece said, tapping the pause button. “There, you see that. There… in the trees. There’s more of them, tentacles curled around those tree trunks.”

  “Eyes?” Mohammed said. “Are they staring at the group? Are they watching us?”

  “I fricking hope not. Send out some drones and gather as much information as you can. I wanna know what they’re capable of by the end of the day. Put everything else on hold. I’ll keep eyes on Big Yellow.”

  “I think they’re Cephalopods,” Mohammed said. “No bones means conditions to create fossils need to be very specific. It might explain the lack of a fossil record. That’s why we… oh, oh no, that’s not right. D’you see it spray that mucus? That’s just nasty…”

  “I think we might’ve just discovered a new class of predator. If those things can climb then this is all over. Concentrate on finding out what they are and what they can do.”

  “You’re thinking about leaving? Yamamoto spent over a trillion building this place. We’ve only just opened. We can’t…”

  “Just do it,” Reece said. “I know what it means, but I’m not risking everyone’s lives so rich people can enjoy an exotic safari. The only reason those kids are here is as a marketing stunt, to get attention from the world. They come first. Them and my team and… huh… what the?”

  On the runway below the control tower the backup helicopter’s blades were starting to spin up. Dust kicked up around the bulky military grade aircraft.

  “You do not have permission to leave,” Reece shouted into the intercom. “We have a party off base. I repeat, you do not have permission to leave. Desist, repeat, desist.”

  No response came as the craft lifted from the ground. Reece found himself facing off with the grinning face of Aleksi Ponomarenko, their resident Ukrainian bounty hunter. Aleksi waved, then banked and flew in the direction of the mountains.

  “Aleksi,” Reece shouted, “you don’t have permission to take that chopper. We have a party off base. You’re endangering lives. We need that helicopter in case of an emergency.”

  “Relax,” Aleksi replied. “I have all the permission I need. Don’t worry your face, my little fairy cake, I’ll be back before you know it. Just collecting eggs for boss.”

  “You can do that later. Not now. You know the protocols.”

  “Sorry, chief, I exercise veto. Later alligator.”

  “Aleksi, Aleksi,” Reece shouted, slamming his fist onto the control console. “What is it with that guy and authority? It’s always him. Mo, have the flight crews start fuelling the starjet. I don’t like any of this. I have a really bad feeling.”

  “What about the cephalopods?” Mohammed said.

  “Do that afterwards. I’ve gotta contact Becca. We need to bring Big Yellow back right now.”

  High Risk, High Reward

  T he helicopter bounced on a patch of rough air. Aleksi grunted and manhandled the control column to stabilize the aircraft.

  “You listen to me you big ugly bitch,” he snarled. “You do as I say. I am boss.”

  “Steady,” Victor called from the cargo area behind Aleksi. “You break these cryo-chambers and that’s it. We can’t go to the store and buy more.”

  “When you learn to fly, then you can have opinion. Until then, you shut up and do what I say. If you break my cryo-chambers, I’ll leave you in jungle. I swear to god.”

  “Our cryo-chambers,” Victor snapped. “Our! Thirty percent of the bounty is mine. I scouted for weeks with that drone. I found the eggs, me. You should be giving me a higher cut this time after all the work I did.”

  “You can have your higher cut when I die and you become boss. Life expectancy in this game is not good. I already lost three little men, just like you. Now shut up and protect my cryo-chambers. If they get damaged and my eggs spoil in transit, there is no bounty, just risk. I don’t do just risk.”

  “Why don’t you quit then,” Victor sneered. “If you don’t like the risk, why not just quit.”

  The helicopter bounced once more and Victor yelped as he tried to stop the cryogenic preservation boxes from sliding across the cabin.

  “Little man,” Aleksi called. “Do you know why palaeontology has discovered no hundred and fifty million year old human fossils?”

  “Just concentrate on flying?” Victor shouted, sucking a finger that had been squashed between the cryo-chambers and the aircraft’s hull. “I don’t want any more of your crazy psychobabble. You never stop. Your voice is like sandpaper.”

  “There are no human fossils because even though we can travel through time, we don’t come back here too much longer. This is short term thing.”

  “So, it’s dangerous. You know how many people died building this place? I heard over thirty.”

  “I heard more like a hundred, but that is not reason for no human fossils. Reason is, humanity is on the verge of extinction. We don’t come back here for long because humanity is ending. That is truth. There won’t be enough bodies left here to make fossils.”

  “There it is, again with the psychobabble. It’s always ugly with you. An ugly man with ugly ideas.”

  “That’s right. Truth is ugly. Humanity is destroying ecosystem and planet. System rewards greed and worst humans. It teaches society that if you are bad person, you can have whatever you want. Just take it. It is yours. Quick gamble, make millions or billions. If it makes money, don’t worry
about consequence. Steal from poor. Avoid tax to get richer. Humans will be extinct in under a thousand years. I am a bad man because system has taught me to be a bad, greedy, angry man who only cares about me. I don’t quit because I want to have money to step on small people, to make them mine, whilst I ruin planet and get fat and happy, taking what I want when I want. At least I’m honest. Not like lying politician with their jets or C.E.O.”

  “Remind me not to piss you off.”

  “Who says you haven’t. Ah, here we are. We’ll land in that clearing. We move fast, before mummy dinosaur comes home.”

  Shark Grief

  A sh munched on a sandwich and searched out of Big Yellow’s submersible chamber for the promised school of sharks. Big Yellow bobbed on the ocean, between two banks of corals. His V.A.R glasses were only detecting small fish and ammonites, which were hugging the reef and gently swaying in the current. In comparison to their previous stop, this was practically a ghost reef, eerily devoid of life. He was starting to wonder whether the fish and sharks knew something they didn’t.

  “You sure this is the right place? Can’t you use bait or something?” Harper said, squishing his face against the glass of his submersible chamber.

  “It’s the right place,” Becca said. “It’s breeding season on land so could be the same for the sharks. They could’ve moved to deeper waters. Our data on lifecycles is patchy. Like we told you yesterday, it’ll take years to build a detailed database. Understanding behavioural patterns could take decades.”

  “We should have stayed at the other place,” Harper grumbled. “This place sucks. I’ve seen more exciting things in my bathtub.”

  “Yuck,” Marty said. “No one wants to know what you can see in your bathtub. Brilliant, now that image is burned into my brain for life. Thanks a lot.”

  “What if something ate the sharks?” Marissa said.

  “It’s doubtful,” Becca said. “The water’s only five meters deep. Too shallow for large adult predators. We’ll wait a few more minutes. They must have migrated. I’m really sorry guys.”

  All of a sudden Ash’s V.A.R glasses caught a red outline on the topside of the reef. A wildly thrashing fish disappeared and reappeared beside a stream of information detailing the hybodus shark, which could grow up to two meters long and used four antennae on its head to sense vibrations in the water.

  “I see one,” Harper called. He started laughing. “Idiot’s got itself stuck on the top of the reef. Stupid fish.”

  “Why would it do that?” Babs said. “It’s killing itself, shredding itself to pieces. It doesn’t make sense. Becca?”

  “Becca, what’s happening?” Marissa said.

  Ash looked up at Becca. She was hastily flicking switches across the control panels in the cockpit. Something was wrong. Something bad was coming. She could probably see it from her viewpoint above the water.

  Another hybodus darted around the edge of the reef, its antennae roving madly. It convulsed as it swam into Big Yellow’s electric field, then thrashed its tail and surged onwards, under the craft and out the other side. A handful more sharks flashed past and out of sight. The poor animal that had fled over the top of the reef had stopped writhing. Its shredded belly was leaking blood. It lay on its side, trapped and helpless, its mouth opening and closing as it gasped its last breaths. The poor thing was dying.

  “Move you stupid fish,” Harper shouted. “No wonder you went extinct. You don’t have to die. Becca, help it? Don’t let it die!”

  “Becca?” Marissa called. “Why aren’t you answering?”

  “Don’t worry, Marissa, we’re leaving,” Becca’s frantic voice echoed. “We’re leaving now.”

  Big Yellow rumbled and shadows flickered across the seabed as her rotor-blades slowly started to rotate. Ash looked up, willing them to spin faster.

  “Come on, hurry up,” he said. “Hurry up!”

  The corals surrounding the dying shark exploded and a colossal mouth, full of teeth the size of meat cleavers, burst through and crunched down on the shark. Ash pulled against his harness and tried to shrink to the far side of the chamber. His glasses flashed a red message ‘WARNING PLESIOSAUR.’ He ripped the glasses off and screamed. The plesiosaur’s long muscular neck thrashed as its jaws chomped the life from the shark, whose severed tail-fin drifted to the ocean-bed. Screams attacked Ash’s ears from all directions.

  “I knew it!” Marissa cried.

  “Get us out of here,” Minea shouted. “Jesus Christ, Becca, move your ass!”

  Ash’s chest tightened. His heart was pounding like a prize stallion’s at full gallop. It seemed that any moment now, it would burst from his chest and make a break for freedom without him. Babs and Marty were hammering on the shell of the glass chamber, shouting at Becca. The plesiosaur swung its neck so that its gleaming black eyes were level with Ash’s chamber. It eyed him menacingly and its mouth drew back in a vicious snarl. The light rippling across the inside of the chamber turned scarlet as blood leaked from the monster’s savage teeth. The beast lunged at Big Yellow, its jaws snapping shut just short.

  Two enormous flippers, the size of barn doors, reached over the reef and the plesiosaur dragged itself forwards. It slid into the lagoon beside Big Yellow, which rocked as waves lashed against the craft. The giant beast started to roll. It thrashed its long, muscular tail in an attempt to re-orientate its enormous bulk. Then, mercifully, Big Yellow started to lift above the churning water.

  Ash’s cry met with the group’s terror filled screams as the plesiosaur’s head and neck reared from the ocean. The thing was looking right at them, its eyes full of primal fury. It opened its mouth and roared so loudly Big Yellow’s entire framework shook. Ash cupped his ears and ducked. He feared the glass would shatter and he’d fall back into the ocean.

  He opened his eyes to see giant teeth, flapping with ragged flesh, lunge at Big Yellow. The rotor-blades sliced through the side of the plesiosaur’s head, slashing through one of its eyes and its upper jaw. The blade shattered and sprayed shrapnel that clattered off Big Yellow as the beast shrieked and recoiled.

  “Brace for impact,” Becca called. “Brace… brace… put your heads down!”

  “No way!” Marty cried. “No way! This can’t be happening. They said it was safe.”

  “We’re all gonna die,” Marissa yelled.

  “Please, Becca, make it stop!” Harper screamed.

  Ash could hear Marissa chanting the Lord’s Prayer as Big Yellow veered sideways. The water raced up at him. He stuck his head between his knees as the crunching groan of tortured metal and scraping glass attacked his ears.

  Little Devil

  A leksi looked back towards the helicopter. Even though it was only parked a few hundred meters away, the dense grouping of trees and hanging vines were already obscuring it. His military training with the Foreign Legion had taught him that checking where you’d come from every twenty or so meters was vital to survival in jungle environments. The wild and twisting vegetation never looked the same on the way back as it did on the way in. It was easy to get lost in unfamiliar territory only a hundred meters from safety. Many a hardened marine or explorer had succumbed to the wild that way, never knowing how close to salvation they’d been. Aleksi wasn’t going to be foolish enough to join their ranks.

  A whistling cry from the trees above and to the right made his eyes spring wide. He dropped to one knee and held up a hand to signal Victor to stop. He lifted his rifle and scanned the trees. Left and right. Up and down. His senses felt keen. He felt alive and alert. Nothing would be able to sneak up on him. It wasn’t possible. He almost willed something to give it a try.

  “I can’t hold these much longer,” Victor said, struggling with the stack of cryo-chambers. “They’re getting heavy.”

  “Shush, moron,” Aleksi barked, scanning the undergrowth down the barrel of the rifle.

  “My arms are dying, Aleksi. I can’t hold on much longer.”

  Aleksi relaxed the rifle and stood u
p. He turned and stalked towards Victor, titling his head. His hand traced along the length of his belt and came to rest on the hilt of his hunting knife. Then he stopped and smiled.

  “Bingo, my little gringo,” he said, motioning behind Victor with a quick nod. “I have found my eggs.”

  “Can I put these down then?” Victor pleaded.

  “Don’t be stupid. You put them down by nest. Hurry now. This is allosaur country. High metabolism dinosaur. Very big, like t-rex. Always hungry. We would make tasty starter snack. Like bag of peanuts.”

  The large mottled Allosaur eggs were nestled amongst twigs covered in chunks of moss and rotting leaves, at the base of a huge boulder. The trees and vines, draped either side of the nest, gave the impression of a cave. Animal carcasses, stripped to the bone, were scattered around the entrance of the den. Large maggots and giant hairy flies swarmed around the remaining tatters of rotting flesh hanging from the bones. Aleksi breathed in the intoxicating scent of decay, mixed with the pungent aroma of female allosaurus urine. It was a clear signal to most animals to stay the hell away, but Aleksi wasn’t most animals. He was an alpha predator. His combat boots squelched in the blood and urine soaked mud as he entered the den.

  “Put chambers down there,” Aleksi ordered, stooping down and scooping up a handful of mud, which he rubbed on his face, neck and arms.

  “That’s horrible. How can you do that?” Victor said, setting the chambers in the mud. “It stinks.”

  Aleksi said nothing. He rested his rifle on the lip of the nest and swung his backpack round to his front. He walked to the den’s entrance, pulled an explosive mine from the bag and removed the safety pin on the side of the flat, circular device.

  “Stay here,” he whispered to Victor.

  He walked fifty meters from the den and set the mine on the ground. He stealthily placed six more mines, in a circular formation, before returning and retrieving his rifle.