“I heard,” Becca said, sobbing softly, picturing Reece’s wonderful face, full of warmth, like sunshine, with a radiant personality to match. She’d fallen for him quickly, but had been too shy to let him know. She’d dropped hints, but the idiot hadn’t picked up on a single one. She wished she’d told him how she felt sooner. “I wish I could see him just one more time.”
“Who knows what comes after this,” Molotov said. “Maybe you will. I’m sure of it. When you find him again, hold on and don’t let go. Don’t waste a second. It’s all too short.”
“I won’t,” Becca said, sniffing back tears and pressing her face into Molotov’s chest. “Schweighofer loves you too. I guess we’ve been lucky.”
“Better to have loved,” Molotov said, pulling back and smiling at Becca. “Better than that, we were loved. But, hey, every great love story has to end. The best ones anyway...”
“I don’t want it to end. I can’t… this can’t be it… What about the fuel tank’s radio, maybe we can…”
“Not enough juice, you know that,” Molotov said, gently releasing her. “Amplifier’s too weak, antenna too small, power too low. No, it’s the starjet or nothing. If I don’t resurface the warhorses’ll protect you. If they sense you’re in danger they’ll engage. You’ve got a nano implant so can’t be tricked anymore. You don’t need to do anything drastic if you don’t want. Try and get to the mainland, build somewhere safe, far away from here. I don’t know what else to say.”
“Safe…” Becca said, expelling a disbelieving laugh, her hand brushing the pistol tucked into her belt, the steel cold. “Don’t let that happen. Please come back. I won’t survive being alone again.”
“That’s definitely plan A,” Molotov said, laughing. “I’m just saying, if this doesn’t work… don’t stick around. Get away, far away.”
Becca nodded.
“Okay, it’s time…”
Becca threw her arms around the friendly giant one last time. She hugged him so hard and for so long he had to gently pry her off. He kissed her forehead and stroked her cheek, then strode out towards the hole in the ice. He lifted the fuel tank door, turned and smiled at Becca, nodding goodbye.
Playtime
A leksi sensed the physical matter around him changing, the mountain’s form altering. He sensed atoms and molecules shifting their arrangements. He sensed the nurturing force holding his hand was constructing a fortress that they’d be able to use for great battles ahead, for conquest after conquest.
“Looooookkk…” Mama moaned. “Sssseeeeeee…”
Aleksi felt himself floating up, high above the swirling galactic abyss. He saw the physical matter of the mountain turn translucent; a world made of ethereal jelly. He could see Becca and Molotov, the woman and the brute, standing on the ice, puny and pathetic, bugs ready to be squashed. He hated the way they were smiling at each other. It disgusted him. They were so weak.
“Can I play now?” Aleksi asked. “Can I hurt them.”
“Sssssoooooon…” Mama moaned, her voice beautiful and deep.
Earth shattering sounds detonated all around. Aleksi felt the matter of the physical plane changing more rapidly now. He felt the fortress rising up, towards the heavens.
“I see. To be real god I must look down on subjects,” Aleksi said, watching the woman and the brute shrink away. “Your time will come,” he growled. “You will feed my corn.”
Ascendant
B ecca skittered sideways as the ground quaked. Molotov dropped the fuel tank door and looked up at the mountain, bewilderment furrowing his brow. The warhorse on the ice with him staggered, then dropped to all fours, the ice vibrating with ever greater intensity. Molotov threw out his arms and glanced down as a crack weaved between his legs. The icefield began splitting around him, sending up cracking blasts, chasms opening to his left and then his right, water spraying. His warhorse toppled into one of the newly forming crevasses.
The machine clawed in a desperate bid to clamber free before it was crushed and swallowed as the floes slammed shut before rebounding open, like pneumatic jaws. The entire icefield was moving now, a shifting jigsaw of fracturing plates. Molotov was forced to sever his visual connection with the swallowed machine. Its spinning motion as it was swept away by undersea currents was too disorientating.
Molotov sprinted towards Becca, vaulting fissures in the retreating icefield, which was being drawn away from the island by a force Becca couldn’t understand.
“Quick, run!” Becca yelled, trying to work out how and why the mountains across the ice seemed to be sinking beneath the horizon.
She could hear rushing water, a roaring torrent, as though the entire volume of the cove was funnelling towards and cascading over a distant waterfall. Molotov stumbled over the last few meters and leapt as the icefield collapsed, huge bergs slamming and sliding towards the horizon amidst a torrent of raging white water. Aghast, Becca watched the fuel tank becoming mangled between the rolling bergs, like beef in a mincer, diced in seconds, their shelter swept away.
“The mountains, they’re sinking,” Molotov said, turning and staring out in dismay. “Are we imagining this. Is it a hallucination? It can’t… I don’t…”
“No, it’s happening,” Becca said, connecting to Scarlet’s warhorse beside her, the scene unchanging. “We’re going up. Shit… Aleksi’s happening, he must’ve done something, it has to be. The water’s draining. I knew it, I knew he’d do something, I told you. We need to get to the starjet. We’ll run out of air if we keep going up. How the hell’s he doing this?”
“You go ahead, I’m not leaving without Raz,” Molotov said, rushing to the temple steps. “You go, we’ll follow.”
Molotov hastily cleared the snow covering Razak and threw the man’s body over his shoulder. He looked back across the ice, struggling to take in the magnitude of the unfolding destruction. He connected to his warhorse and immediately understood. The machine was falling away from an enormous chunk of rock, water and ice cascading over its sides. He quickly realized he was looking at the underside of the mountain housing the temple, rising towards the stratosphere, taking with it a chunk of the Earth’s crust, like the root of a colossal tooth.
Becca waited until Molotov was returning before racing between the beached icebergs beyond the shoreline. She descended across the drained seabed, past coral banks that suckled and popped as thousands of marine invertebrates struggled to draw oxygen from the suffocating air. There were crabs scurrying, fish slapping, ammonites winding in circles on their sides, tentacles drilling them helplessly into the sodden silt.
Molotov and the last remaining warhorse followed Becca’s lead. A joker fish reared out of the mud ahead, blocking their path, its clownish grin full of razor teeth. Becca whipped her pistol from her belt, checked it was toggled to stun, then blasted the creature with a few rounds. Although she knew the poor animal would likely suffocate regardless, she couldn’t bring herself to kill another creature on this planet. None of the animals deserved any of the horror humans had brought to their shores. The joker’s eyes rolled and the animal flopped down, gills pulsing as the defeated predator drew its last gasping breaths.
“At least you’ll be asleep when it happens,” she said under her breath, a sick feeling filling winding in the pit of her stomach.
She glanced back at Molotov, checking he was still with her, then skirted the joker and rounded the corner. The starjet was lying slanted to one side, wedged on a coral bank, pinned under a slab of ice. She gawped in amazement. Behind the craft the star portal was rising over the horizon, like an alien sun, shimmering golden solar wings fanning either side of the incredible celestial phoenix.
The portal was positioned in a geostationary equatorial orbit, below the horizon. She knew if she could see it from here, they were moving skyward fast. At this rate they’d clear the atmosphere in no time. Indeed, the air was becoming thinner, harder to draw, the sky turning a deep shade of blue as they passed through the clouds.
“Can you fly?” Molotov yelled. “You can fly helicopters, right? You can manage the jet?”
“I think so. I understand the basics,” Becca said, her breaths clouding, the temperature dropping fast. “I should be good.”
“Do so, there’s more jokers incoming,” Molotov said, wheezing down the thin air. “I got this, go, power us up, get us out of here.”
“Put them to sleep. Don’t kill them.”
“I can’t see it making a difference.”
“They’ll be asleep, they won’t feel what’s coming.”
Becca raced for the cockpit. She eased through the destroyed galley, an alleyway of sharp edges and mangled metal. Once through, she dumped herself into the pilot’s seat, buckled up and scanned the controls, trying to make sense of the layout.
“Come on, come on,” she pleaded. “Stop panicking and eat the fricking elephant, kiddo.”
She glanced over her shoulder as Molotov strapped Razak’s body into one of the port side seats. Scarlet’s warhorse positioned itself just inside the loading ramp, Gatling guns aimed at a clutch of joker fish, who were dragging themselves towards the loading ramp, tentacles lassoing beached bergs, dragging their jellied bulk across the muddy seabed. She watched Molotov stumble and fall to one knee, clearly becoming overcome by lack of oxygen. Becca could feel it too. She could hear her breaths, wheezing and shallow. The jokers were also succumbing to the altitude, their momentum slowing, the gills opening wide, wetly flapping, gasping.
They were still rising through the clouds. The altimeter told Becca they were approaching airliner cruising altitude, thirty thousand feet. There was no air. They were succumbing to hypoxia. Any moment now, Becca knew they were going to black out. She flicked on the power and heard an engine swell, but there was an obvious problem. Only one of the engines displayed as operational.
“Hold on, we only have one engine,” she called. “We’re hundred percent gonna crash.”
“Crash away,” Molotov wheezed. “H… urry…”
Becca punched the throttle and the starjet eked forwards, struggling to free itself from beneath the slab of ice pinning it to the coral bank. She could hear the warhorse’s Gatling guns whining as they fired. Desperate, Becca throttled down and up repeatedly, jerking the craft incrementally forwards. As her vision was darkening, the starjet popped free like cork from a bottle.
She levelled the craft, its belly bouncing across the collapsed icefield, shredding impacts jarring her teeth and shaking her limited vision. A few seconds later they passed over the temporary horizon and were careening towards the forest below. She engaged the air brakes and flared the nose, trying to shed speed and avoid becoming pancaked by the rapid deceleration of colliding with the Earth. She glanced at the altimeter, watching the numbers on the dial spin so fast they were a blur, dropping hundreds of feet at a time. Her ears popped painfully. The thickening air and increasing doses of oxygen enlivened her senses as though she’d had a shot or adrenaline to the heart.
“Ten thousand,” she shouted, glancing towards the topographic display on the central console, which displayed a mountainous landscape ahead. She yawed and weaved, shaving off knots with each manipulation of the stick. “Five thousand… one thousand… too fast…”
At three hundred feet she dipped the nose so she could see where they were aiming, so she might steer them away from the worst of the obstacles. She had no time to react. They were already crashing through the pines, the craft bouncing and shuddering violently. The electronic viewscreen fuzzed with static and shut off, plunging Becca into a dark world of neon dials and switches. She throttled back and gripped the control column, desperately trying to keep the nose raised so it didn’t dig in and wheel end over end.
A section of the hull overhead tore away. A tree trunk pierced the cockpit, jousting the co-pilot’s seat, wrenching it from its bolts and pinning it to the back wall. Snow and wind lashed her face, thousands of stinging whips. The stick was dead, she had no control, they were passengers now, at the mercy of fate, a toboggan rushing across the mountainside. She gripped hold of her harness with crossed arms and closed her eyes, reciting the alphabet as the sounds of splintering devastation gradually subsided around her. She was suddenly thrown forwards, her chest and lungs compressing against her harness, forcing an involuntary shriek. They’d stopped.
“Molotov,” she managed, disengaging the harness, struggling up and stumbling towards the back of the craft. She eased through the destroyed galley and into the hold, lights flickering, dangling wires sparking. Great chunks of the starboard hull had been cleaved away and snow was falling in from the overhanging pines. The loading ramp had somehow been ripped clean off. “Molotov! Molo…”
“Here,” the man replied, coughing and raising a hand. He pulled himself up using the cargo netting, blood dribbling from his eyebrow and cheek. “Miss Beaton, you crash with the grace and style of a dead goose.”
“You’re alive,” Becca said, rushing into the hold.
“Feels like my brain’s been hit with a Buzzsaw, but yeah, I’m in one piece.”
“Aleksi’s doing something,” Becca reeled. “He lifted the mountain. I don’t know what he’s up to. I don’t know how we’re gonna stop him. We gotta find a way to stop him.”
“We need to warn everyone back home, we can’t let anyone come back. It’s more important now than ever. Does the radio…”
Becca shielded Molotov as a sound emanated from the darkness towards the back of the jet. Scarlet’s warhorse limped from the shadows, left arm ripped away, domed head crushed, right leg leaking fluids. The machine’s breastplate suddenly popped open and wasp drones swarmed from their honeycomb pouches. The machine teetered and collapsed, twitching, giving a decelerating whine, then relaxing still.
“Becca, Razak, Molotov, do you read?”
Becca felt terrified by what she was seeing, fearing it was a trick designed to taunt them. Her eyes were telling her she was staring at the materializing holographic image of Nori, but that couldn’t be right, could it? The image was grainy and distorting, the voice distant, but it looked like Nori. She tried to connect with the fallen warhorse, but it was dead.
“Are you real?” Becca whispered. “Please be real.”
“This is real,” Nori replied. “It’s not an illusion. We know what’s happening. We’re coming back. Is everyone okay?”
Molotov hung his head, the blood seeping from his wounds slowing in the cold. Neither Becca or Molotov wanted to be the first to relay the awful news, that Razak was gone.
“Is everything okay?” Nori repeated.
“We’re alive, me and Molotov,” Becca replied. “Raz didn’t make it. Aleksi killed him.”
“No…” Commander Blake’s voice came, full of agony.
“I’m sorry, Commander,” Molotov said. “I couldn’t… I… there’s no excuse. I didn’t see it coming. He tricked us. I know that sounds stupid, but… I… do you have any casualties? Is Schweighofer okay?”
“She’s fine. Everyone on our end is present and accounted for,” Nori replied.
“Becca, it’s Reece. How you holding up, hon?”
“Oh, my darling,” she said, reaching out towards the holographic projection, joyful tears forming in her eyes. “Is that really you? I thought I was never going to see you again. Please don’t be a trick.”
“It’s me hon, we’re coming back. I love you so much. Hang in there, we’ll be there soon, just hold on a bit longer. We got a new ship, and a dog, Daisuke. He’s looking forwards to meeting you. He’s cute as hell.”
A dog barked off camera, leaping up so its fuzzy ears peeked in and out of frame.
“Where’d you get a dog?”
“It’s a long story. I’ll fill you in when we get back. Damn, it’s good to hear your voice.”
“You too,” Becca said, sniffing back a powerful surge of relief. “I thought I’d lost you.”
“Nah, you’re never getting rid of me. You got me for keeps, like foot fungus. You’
re never getting rid of me.”
Becca spluttered with tearful laughter.
“We’ll be with you in just over a day,” Nori said. “Our long-range scanners have detected the mountain rising. The entity’s escaped confinement. Our job just got a whole lot harder. You need to stay strong, ignore the hallucinations. They’re gonna get worse, so you need to resist.”
“Entity?” Becca said. “Is that why we’re seeing things from nightmares? I keep seeing my dad… he… he… it’s horrifying. Is this entity what flew the temple into orbit?”
“Unfortunately, yes,” Nori replied. “Now it’s free, things are going to start ramping up quickly. Use the warhorse for visual aid. The hallucinations can’t affect machines.”
“All our warhorses are toast,” Molotov said. “We got no machines left. The jet’s also fubar.”
“Then close your eyes if you have to. Don’t trust anything that seems wrong. You need to be strong. Trust your instincts. Don’t listen to the things they say. Don’t be tricked and don’t leave the jet. Stay put. Don’t go anywhere.”
“How do we know we can trust you’re real?” Molotov said.
“You’re going to have faith on this one,” Nori replied. “It’s us, we’re coming back. You’ll know for sure if it’s a trick soon.”
“Any idea how we stop this thing?” Becca asked.
“Yes. Explained in its most basic form, we’re dealing with an electrical being. We can stun it with an electromagnetic pulse. I can trigger one from the star portal. Once triggered, an infiltration team can move in and plant a spectral bomb, send this thing back where it came from.”
“What, you want us to infiltrate? You mean the mountain? It just left the atmosphere. It’s probably in space by now. How?”
“I’ll explain the details when we get there. Look, I need to go. I need to contact Tim and Aaditya on Earth. The Americans, Chinese and British have space capable fighters. We can’t force them, but they might be able to buy us time and provide cover. This is going to be one hell of a fight. We need to win this one. If we don’t it’s over, for every living thing on Earth.”
Jurassic Earth Trilogy Box Set Page 56