by Steve Cole
“Least he didn’t lick us,” said Harm.
Adam ignored her, taking some crumbs of comfort from the gesture of friendship and good luck. “Let’s get this over with.”
The hum of the generator grew louder as Adam and Harm crept through the jungle. A hard, white light bathed the clearing up ahead. And there, maybe twenty meters ahead, a tall, narrow building was blotting out a swarm of stars in the indigo skies. It was a patchwork of riveted panels—some made of steel, catching a glint of the moon, others caked in rust.
“Built so tall to keep out other raptors,” Adam noted. “Guess even they would have a tough time climbing sheer metal.”
Harm straightened, a slender silhouette against the floodlit glade. Aside from the power hum, it was eerily quiet. “Should we—”
“Go!” Doubling over, Adam grabbed Harm’s hand and bolted into the brightness. He felt horribly exposed, convinced at any moment a bloodcurdling howl would sound and the vicious Vels would fall upon him and Harm, tearing them to ribbons. The second he reached the thick, protective blackness of the tower’s shadow, he hurled himself down flat. Harm hit the ground a split second later.
Panting for breath, his pulse pounding, Adam looked up. The tower was shielding them from sight, but the guarded entrance to the camp and its Vel sentries were maybe two hundred yards away. How quickly could the raptors cover that distance and discover their intruders?
They wormed forward on their bellies toward the tower. Adam saw a crude door cut into one side, held in place with bolts and heavy hinges, a lock welded into the metal. “We’re going to have to check around it for a way in,” he whispered.
“I’ll go,” Harm offered.
Adam held his breath, gripping the turf with sweaty palms. The unnatural hum and buzz of the generator filled his ears. He held statue-still until she came back—with a frown on her face.
“I saw a way in—we might just make it,” she reported. “But there’s this cable running from the base of the tower.”
“So?”
“It stretches toward that outbuilding where Chen told us to wait.” Harm looked at Adam. “What do you think the Vels need the power for?”
“I don’t know. But when we wreck the generator, it’ll be useless, won’t it?”
“But what if it’s something important to the Vels and some of them run straight there as well as to the tower?” Harm persisted. “They’ll find the whole lot of us and catch us.” She paused. “Maybe that’s the idea. Maybe Chen’s setting us up somehow, to save his own skin.”
“They wouldn’t let him trash their generator first,” Adam argued. “Anyway, Loner would kill him before he could escape.”
“Unless the Vels or Geneflow kill Loner first,” Harm said. “We don’t know how Josephs watches what goes on here, but maybe Chen does. Maybe he’s tipped her off that we’re coming somehow.”
“So he can get in with Geneflow? Nah—”
“He’s already admitted to doing it once. You don’t believe me, fine. I hope I’m wrong too.” Harm folded her arms. “But I say we check it out before we turn out the lights, ’kay?”
“All right.” Adam nodded uneasily. “But we go really carefully.”
Moving slowly and keeping close to the ground, Adam followed Harm as she trailed the cable. The grass was sharp and scratchy. The power lead was old and frayed, patched up with tape, and it snaked into the cover of thick jungle for a good fifty yards. Adam hardly breathed. He heard a low, buzzing hum growing louder. Slowly, so slowly, he and Harm edged nearer. Adam had that nightmare sense of being compelled to witness something he’d rather not see—his pounding heart was surely outdoing the generator for noise.
Harm tentatively parted some thick, leafy fronds and gave them a narrow view of the decaying concrete outbuilding, lit only dimly by the reach of the floodlights. Its door stood ajar. A crude fence made from timbers and tree trunks and lengths of wire edged its perimeter; this was the source of the humming noise.
An electrified fence, thought Adam. What are they protecting in there?
Four quiet beeps sounded, as if buttons were being pressed somewhere close by. The power snapped off. The fence fell quiet, deactivated.
Then a sharp-jawed, reptilian head pushed into sight, a Vel so massive it made Loner seem more like a monitor lizard. It sniffed the air suspiciously outside the door. Its lean body was festooned with quills, each ending in a deadly barb, and it wore the same crude metal armor on its throat, arms and thighs as the sentries at the main entrance.
The door to the outbuilding swung open. A ripe smell like manure caught in Adam’s throat. In the shadowy light, he saw another Vel step out.
“Soon, now,” said the huge, feathered reptile. “Very soon.”
Adam looked past it, riveted by what was inside the room. He couldn’t make sense of it at first: large mounds of dried dung, long grass and palm leaves. Lots of them, maybe twenty. Like enormous nests. And each nest held as many as a half-dozen pale yellow objects the size of footballs, the shape of giant—
“Eggs,” Harm breathed beside him. “Oh, my God, Adam. The raptors have been breeding.”
16
DEATH STRIKE
Adam lowered his head, fear clawing inside him as the Vel came out through a doorway in the fence and the sentry activated the code again, restarting the electric fence.
Harm let the bush fronds mask the scene once more, and the two of them crawled backward as quietly as they could, staying low on all fours, following the cable until they were back in the ominous shadow of the humming tower.
Adam looked at her. “The feast,” he murmured. “Harm, that’s what the Vels who came for us before were talking about. All those human prisoners . . .”
Harm’s face was filled with anger. “It’s going to be the bone pit all over again. Those things will hatch and they’ll be hungry and—”
Adam nodded quickly. She didn’t need to go on. “I don’t get it, though. Geneflow can clone things, like the ostriches. Why do they need hatchlings when they could just make new raptors?”
“Stop asking dumb questions and come help me,” Harm hissed angrily. She’d gotten up and was searching carefully for the small gap in the tower’s patchwork structure. “We’ve got to trash this thing. Let the Brutes get in and smash those eggs for us.”
As Adam got up, a realization hit his mind. “Harm, that shelter on the beach at the Brute camp, blocked by boulders. The one you said was new—” He swallowed hard. “D’you think . . . ?”
“That they’ve got eggs too?” She seemed to deflate a little, resting her head against the rough metal. “Yeah, figures. That’s why they’re going to take all the ‘soft-skins’ away with them. To give to their hatchlings.” She breathed deeply. “There is no good side here. Both packs are out for blood.”
Adam stood beside her and chanced a squeeze of her hand. “Whatever Chen’s planning, Loner will smell those two Vels at the outbuilding and keep Lisa and David away.”
“And they’ll come looking for us.” As if comforted by the thought, she nodded. “Well, if we’re going to do this, first thing we need to do is loosen the big rivet thing.” She pointed above his head. “Then this metal plate should lift up a bit more, I can slip through, and you come in after me.”
Adam nodded and tried to turn the rivet. To his surprise, it wasn’t too hard to shift—judging by the heavy scratches in the metal, it was a lot harder to tighten things with a handful of claws. Soon he had the rivet out and was able to slide the heavy, rusting metal plate up an inch or so. Harm pulled herself up and wriggled inside. Adam watched her bony legs disappear through the gap. There was the sound of scuffling. “It’s okay. Now your turn.”
Adam squeezed his head through the narrow gap into the humming, whining darkness and started to struggle inside. He gasped as his ribs caught on the metal, sucked in his stomach as far as it would go. “Pull me in,” he hissed, and felt Harm’s clammy hands fasten on his own. Imagining a raptor coming up
behind to bite his legs off, he wriggled all the more furiously until at last he fell in a face-first sprawl on sand and spiky grass; there was no solid floor to the enclosure. He rolled over, disoriented in the thick, rumbling darkness—
And his heart slammed to a halt as a red eye shone down at him and hot breath blasted across his face.
Then he realized it was only an operating light to show the generator was running and the heat was being pumped out by the very thing they were here to destroy. He willed himself to stay calm and looked about properly. The inside of the tower was no bigger than a walkin closet; it reeked of gas fumes.
Harm was already tearing up the grass to get at the sandy soil beneath. “Where’s the valve thing?”
Adam peered around at the generator until his eyes fixed on a black plastic cowl on one side marked AIR INTAKE and protected by a grille. He tapped it. “Just like David said,” he murmured. “But since we don’t have claws, we’ll need a screwdriver.”
“We’ve got a rock,” Harm reported, handing him a sharp stone. Hoping the generator’s racket would mask the sound, he smashed it against the black grille, again and again. His efforts loosened the screws just enough for Harm to turn them with her fingers. She winced as the metal bit into her fingertips, then finally pulled the cover free.
Adam hesitated. “How much sand do you think we’ll need to zap it?”
“Just chuck in loads.” Using both hands, Harm poured fistfuls into the engine’s cooling fan. Adam grabbed a handful and tossed it in too as Harm went back for more. Suddenly the two of them were throwing in piles, recklessly, wildly. Finally we’re doing something back to the raptors, Adam thought dizzily, sticking it to Geneflow.
The generator’s hum changed pitch, and a sickly whine started up beneath the unsteady tug of their breathing.
“We’ve done it,” Harm muttered. “Time to go.”
“You first,” said Adam, “I’ll help push you out.”
Harm squeezed herself through the narrow gap, gasping, wriggling and shifting about, trying to make it through as quickly as possible. Adam prayed there were no raptors waiting just outside. The floodlights were still glaring as he scrambled through after her into the fresher air. He couldn’t hear anything over the juddering noise. His ribs felt like they were going to crack, but somehow, with Harm pulling on his arms, he made it back out—just as the lights began to flicker. The generator threw a grinding, grating screech out into the night and the lights slammed off. Scraped and bruised, he collapsed with Harm onto the sandy grass.
At once, unearthly noises rose from the dark camp—howls and hoots and hoarse mutterings. Heavy figures came crashing through the grass from all directions.
Adam gripped Harm’s hand tightly, hauled her up and ran with her into the jungle. As they smashed through the wild undergrowth, he wondered how they could safely rejoin the others.
He was still wondering when they ran straight into a Brute.
It was huge, claws long and lethal; the tangle of quills on its chest was like countless talons reaching out to rake them. Harm yelled in alarm. The creature actually took a step backward, surprised perhaps by this prey that had no scent. Then its tail lashed out, smashing splinters from the tree beside Adam’s head. Harm yanked him away, and they sprinted off in the only direction possible—back toward the Vel camp.
The ground rocked with heavy footfalls as the raptor recovered itself and gave chase. A terrible, ululating howl went up from somewhere close by. A Vel call to arms or Brute battle cry? Whichever, it was soon followed by the ringing of claw on metal, the whistling of air as spike-tipped tails whipped and swung and the squawks and barks of wounded beasts, a cacophony raking apart the night.
The Brute attack is under way already, Adam realized, and we’re caught in the middle of it.
“Those things are faster than us,” Harm panted as she and Adam ran breathlessly through the jungle murk toward the generator tower. “Maybe if we climb up—”
But then the crocodilian head of another Brute flashed out at them from the undergrowth. Adam yelled and ducked aside, feeling its acid spray spatter the flesh of his arm. He put on a burst of speed to keep up with Harm as she raced through the long grass past the tower. But the second Brute was gaining, its jaws snapping, claws reaching out to skewer him.
With a shriek of defiance, a Vel hurtled out from nowhere and hurled itself at the Brute invader, sickle claws tearing at its belly. Loner? Adam thought with a surge of hope. But no, this was a larger, bulkier creature, unwounded—as yet. The two seven-foot reptiles smashed into a tree and half uprooted it. Adam glanced back for a second, saw the Vel’s jaws sinking into the Brute’s neck even as the Brute forced its claws into the Vel’s eyes, each bathing the other in blood. Then the first Brute emerged from the jungle and drove its tail like a sledgehammer into the injured Vel’s skull, again and again. Barking and yowling, the two Brutes tore their foe to pieces.
Horrified, Adam turned and ran on. But where was Harm? The darkness was disorienting—everything looked different in shadow, and the noise of threat and combat was growing louder, harsher. I can’t even shout her name, Adam realized, shrinking into the scant cover of some small and scrubby bushes. I’ll get us both killed, I’ll—
With a bellowing roar, a massive armored Vel sentry thundered past Adam’s hiding place. The two Brutes left the corpse of their victim and stomped toward the newcomer. The sentry backed slowly away toward the forest—as two more Vels flew out of the jungle foliage, sickle claws slashing, jaws snapping. It had been a trap. Now it was three against two. In a blur, the sentry blocked an acid strike with the armor on its arm, grabbed hold of the Brute’s head and snapped its neck, even as his pack brothers stabbed at it with their own claws. The other Brute refused to retreat, spitting and clawing at the Vels as they wrestled him to the ground through sheer weight of numbers.
Got to head for the outbuilding, thought Adam. It’s close to the cliffs, and maybe I can climb down and hide. He crawled for the egg-house on all fours, sick with dread, alive with adrenaline. He realized the sky was beginning to lighten—he’d soon be easier to spot.
But then a different kind of scream rang out. Terrified. Human.
“Harm,” Adam breathed. He got to his feet and broke into a sprint before his head could even process what he was doing, following the winding power cable. There must be something I can do, he thought helplessly as he burst out of the undergrowth close to the now-dead electrified fence. He saw two Vel sentries lying in twisted heaps on the blood-soaked ground. He saw the door standing wide open and trampled nests inside.
And he heard a familiar cold, choking voice from the other side of the outbuilding. “Sweet. Perfect. Mine.”
Adam crouched behind one of the reptile corpses and saw the Brute with the hunched back advancing on Harmony, who was sprawled on her back on the grass, frozen with terror. He opened his mouth to shout, to try to distract the Brute so Harm could get up and run.
Then a menacing, cackling hiss stirred the hackles on his neck as a scorching jet of fluid arrowed over his shoulder past his face. An inarticulate noise escaped his lips as he realized how close he’d come to getting the back of his skull burned open. He turned to find another Brute behind him, the largest yet. Its jaws were still drooling, and its dark eyes shone in the scaly, mudbrown face, which was crowned with a thick coronet of barbed wire.
The Brute queen. All other thoughts were shattered in that terrified moment of recognition. Adam tried to run but stumbled over the Vel corpse and fell.
“Adam!” Harm cried out. The hunchback almost crushed him while turning to face the queen.
“We want soft-skins alive.” The towering creature started toward Harm, claws clicking and catching the rising sunlight. “Alive for the newborns’ feast.”
But Hunchback barred her way, stretching his neck as if trying to match the queen for height. “Back,” he rasped. “Girl is perfect. Mine.”
“Bent-backed scum.” The queen tilted
her head to one side and spat flecks of acid at his face, her hate-filled eyes agleam. “I rule you.”
“No.” Jaws twitching, Hunchback shook his head. “We do not serve you.”
Adam saw Harm, still on her back, edging sideways on her elbows toward him. The Brute queen noticed too; she swung her head toward Harm and hissed—just as Hunchback lunged forward and stuck his claws into her flank in a series of swift, razorlike slices. “Mine!” he barked again.
With a shout more of disbelief than of pain, the queen cuffed Hunchback hard around the jaws and gripped him in a tight hug. She ground his throat against the fierce thorns of her chest quills, opening his flesh in twenty places. Hunchback thrashed and flailed, blood and acid frothing in his throat.
Harm stared as though rooted to the spot. “Quick,” Adam panted, grabbing her wrist and pulling her to her feet. “While they’re distracted.” But he hesitated himself—should they run for the cliff edge and hope they could climb down out of reach or run back into the jungle?
While these thoughts flashed through his mind, the Brute queen finished with Hunchback. As his body flopped at her feet and lay still, she looked up, licked her bloody claws and fixed Harm and Adam with her hate-filled stare.
“Now!” Adam insisted, breaking into a sprint for the dense jungle and dragging Harm along with him.
“We can’t outrun that thing!” she shouted.
“We have to!” snapped Adam.
The Brute queen was already coming for them.
Harm broke free of Adam’s grip and began to climb the nearest tree, legs and arms at ninety degrees to the trunk, scaling it as swiftly as Adam might’ve climbed stairs. As the huge beast quickened its stride, Adam tried to follow her, but his own technique was clumsy in comparison. The giant reptile was closing the distance between them with terrifying speed.