‘The burn might actually do more damage to these smaller animals around here. You know, those little mammals that look kinda like opossums and rats as well as those little dinosaurs we see scurrying around. I mean the little ones that look like chickens.’
‘Well, I don’t like just shooting the T-Rexes.’ Mark said as he scanned across the valley. ‘We could simply tie them up and lift them with the Hunter. We could take them down-river a few days walk away.’
‘Ok, then how do we move the hadrosaurid herd? I don’t think they are going to panic at the site of us little guys walking up to them. They have no experience with us and therefore no reason to fear ….’
A flurry of shots rang out from the others waiting below. Dan and Mark turned to see who broke firing discipline.
* * * *
‘Damn it Todd, this is not good.’ Jonas Buckwheat whispered to Todd Rangle. ‘You swore up and down that we would find gold and diamonds and other gems on this expedition. You also said it would make our place in GraviDynamics. We’d be promoted into cushy jobs. The way it is right now, we will be lucky if we can get out of here alive. I’ve almost gotten myself killed twice already while you sat safe and sound on the Argos. Now we run into a whole pack of T-Rex killing machines.’
Jon and Todd stood watch on the perimeter of the expedition camp looking over the mixed palm shrub and pine growth around them. It was hot and humid and they liked to gripe about it. They liked to gripe about most anything.
Todd Rangle joined Blackwave with Jonas right out of college. He and Jonas were Columbia psychology majors with dreams of getting rich quickly and easily, none of which had worked out. When they joined Blackwave, the Europa project had been a small but rapidly growing startup. Jonas, or Jon as he liked to be called, had been sure that if they got into the company early enough the human resource needs of the station would grow and they would be assigned to counseling on Europa.
‘Europa sees a lot of the asteroid miners,’ Jon had said. ‘Sooner or later we’ll find someone that discovered one of the large platinum or gold finds like in that Times Net story last year. Then we can buy into it and … easy street for the rest of our lives.’
Things didn’t quite work out as planned. Instead of human resources, GraviDynamics assigned them to this God-awful project. The company didn’t even have a damn human resource department! Jon was sure their talents were obviously wasted here doing grunt work and standing watch. They should have nice, cushy offices back at headquarters.
‘We’ve been working like common laborers for these imbeciles. Some of them don’t even have degrees much less one from a good school! That Nolen’s totally out of his depth.’ Jon grumbled.
‘It’s all that brown-nose Alex’s fault.’ Todd grumbled back. ‘He’s always there whenever Dan wants something done. Now we’re supposed to be standing watch like a couple of robots.’
Jon turned to Todd, ‘Look, there’s no way we can get back to Europa soon but I think we can at least get assigned back on Station. I’ve been talking with Doctor Graeme. I’m sure he could use some counselors on his staff.’
‘Yeah, but how do we get rich from this place? We ..Yaaaah!’ Todd screamed.
Jon staggered back as two raptors, as tall as him, came up behind Todd. One jumped right onto Todd’s back. The raptors have long slender jaws with small, pointed teeth and slender bodies. They are covered in brown feathers and a red plume that runs down the back onto the tail. The raptor tried to knock Todd over when it grabbed his shoulder and tried to shake him. Todd just didn’t shake. It was all the raptor could do to simply hang onto the screaming man.
Jon immediately opened fire at the second raptor standing in the brush. Two of the half-dozen rounds fired went true to the raptor ripping off its head and one of the arms. Jon then opened on the raptor attacking Todd. By some miracle, the hypervelocity slugs missed his friend and totally missed the raptor.
Three other raptors were circling around the fight when Alex and Dieter came running. Alex dove in and shoulder-butted one of the raptors, knocking it to the ground. Dieter grabbed the other two by their arms and flung them off ten feet into the air. Alex turned and pulled the raptor out of Todd’s hands where he was trying to wring its neck and let it run off into the brush. The air was filled with screeching raptors and the echo’s of the impacts from the shots fired by Jon.
‘You stupid jerks.’ Alex yelled in a muffled voice at them. ‘Where the hell is your firing discipline? The word was silence!’
‘We were attacked!’ Jonas started.
‘Yeah, by a couple of fish-eating Ricardoestesia.’ Dieter Chitz, an amateur Paleontologist, answered, barely able to contain his laughter. ‘They probably thought you were a trout! ’
Alex stood over Jon and Todd with fire in his eyes. ‘You goofballs are supposed to be combat experienced. I’m beginning to wonder, particularly about you Jon. You do not break silence when we call the discipline! You two meatheads fired enough shots to kill a flock of those things. It’s a goddamn miracle you didn’t kill yourself or someone else. Actually it’s a shame you didn’t save me the trouble of shooting you myself!’
‘Observe how Dieter and I handled these guys if you can’t follow the pre-mission instruction. We went over all this at the Station or were you two guys playing with your twinkies at the time? Your body masses almost three times theirs, even though they are the same size as you. We come from a higher gravity period, you’ve got body armor and those little dinosaurs have hollow bird bones and half your muscle mass. You should have shaken these featherweights off like a Chihuahua attack.’ Alex finger-poked their chests as he quiet-shouted into their faces nose-to-nose. Todd actually tripped over the dead raptor behind him.
‘Here, undo your blouse. Let me see your shoulder.’ Alex said as he helped Todd up. ‘Well, a little blood from the scratches. If you two goof-offs would have been awake this would not have happened. Jon, you move your candy-ass over to the pack and get some antiseptic for Todd. Wait, first drag this damn carcass out of our camp. Todd, you little twerp, I don’t want to see you at the Doctors for this and I don’t want to hear any complaints. It’s your own fault. We’ll talk about this later at the station. This isn’t over, particularly for you Jon. Discharging your weapon like an idiot! If I hear another peep out of either of you, you’ll be digging new Hype nests with kitchen spoons for a month.’
Alex abruptly stopped, turned and looked up toward the ridge top. ‘Sorry sir. We had a slight mix-up with some of the locals here. No more problems, we settled it.’
Alex keyed off his transmitter and turned back to Jon and Todd. ‘I swear if you two end up getting me in hot water with Dan I’ll make you wish you never left home.’
* * * * *
‘It’s those two goofballs again.’ Dave commented to Mark from down the ridgeline over their private channel. ‘Strange, our friends in the valley didn’t even raise a head. They must have heard the commotion.’
‘I guess I need to talk to Dan about those guys.’ Mark said quietly as he turned back toward the T-Rexes.
Dave unconsciously shook his head even though Mark couldn’t see him. ‘As you wish sir but it looks like Alex has things in hand. Sometimes it’s best to let things take their natural course.’
‘Got’cha. Ok, we’ll let things slide for a while. David, you know you’re right. All this commotion and those big guys didn’t move a muscle. Can you come back over here?’
Dave low-ran back across the ridgeline. He was wondering why those fish-eaters attacked. Perhaps they had nearby nests or maybe they were also territorial?
Dave dropped down on the hilltop next to Mark. They watched the T-Rexes sleeping in the valley and the herd casually grazing below.
Mark sensed Dave next to him and asked, all the time keeping his eyes glued to the T-Rex’s, ‘Any thoughts on why they didn’t react?’
‘We keep expecting these dinosaurs to react like big game does up our way.’ Dave commented. ‘Our wildlife has l
ived in the presence of humans for generations. The wildlife of our time has learned to fear us and they know our smell. These brutes sleeping down there have no reason to be concerned about us. Heck, we barely qualify on their light-snack menu much less as a major threat.’
‘This whole situation is shaping up to be rather like the early encounters with the American buffalo. When people first came to the American plains with rifles, a hunter could sit a quarter mile away and kill off a whole herd without them getting nervous. The animals had no experience with something killing from far-off. Those old rifles made a tremendous noise when they discharged. It didn’t bother the buffalo. They simply stood there as buffalo after buffalo dropped dead. They had no experience that told them to fear the noise.’
‘Are you proposing we shoot them all? Even the hadrosaurids?’ Mark asked.
‘No. That would be a waste of time and ammunition. We have to get the herd moving. They represent the food supply for these predators. Like African lions, they follow the herd. If the hadrosaurids leave, then the T-Rexes will follow them.’
‘Our current problem is that we can’t go down there and just chase them off. For one thing, there aren’t enough of us. They also aren’t afraid of us. We’re rather like wolves and the hadrosaurids are the buffalo. If we go down there singly, they will either ignore us or step on us. It’s easy to forget from up here but each of these so-called cows is darn near forty feet long. If we go down as a group and try to drive them then they might perceive us as a threat. If so, they will stand together as a defensive bunch like we saw them trying to do on our trip down the river. Grouped together like that they can effectively defend themselves against one or two large predators or packs of smaller ones. If they catch you out there alone then you’ll have a thirty foot hadrosaurid bull stomping down on you.’
‘But how about the T-Rexes?’ Dan asked. ‘Aren’t they going to come over charging as soon as they see us?’
‘No, I don’t think so. This isn’t some SciFi vid where these guys go around attacking everything they see. Lions and tigers don’t just attack unless they are looking for food or they think you are a threat. When they are fed they are downright peaceful, as long as you don’t get too close.’
‘Our Tyrannosaurus have a nice herd down there for later dinners and they’ve just fed. I’d think we’d need to worry more about the smaller carrion eaters like those fellows down by the dead T-Rexes.’
A group of smaller dinosaurs, perhaps eight to fifteen feet long, was feeding on the remains of the two dead T-Rexes. They squabbled, snapped and ripped at the carcasses not a hundred feet away from the sleeping victors.
Mark turned from the herd and began to scroll lines in the ground. ‘Ok then, Dave here’s what we do. We draw on an ancient Indian trick. I’ve even seen reports where our ancestors did it with Mastodon herds a couple of million years from now.’
* * * * *
Seth Sassaman brought the Hunter up the shore of the inland sea in a slow, quiet and easy low glide. It was another beautiful day and the clear blue tropical waters passed below like a patchwork of colors drawn from the bright sandy seabed to be broken by huge islands of darker coral. As he flew up the gentle white sand coastline, he played with a school of fish. They swam in and out of the coral, running ahead of the shadow of the Hunter as it formed directly below the craft.
The school suddenly darted out of the water followed by a dark shape that rose into the air like a rocket-boosted submarine. The massive flippers and a long, tooth-filled head twisted in mid-flight as it saw the larger meal of the Hunter approaching mid-air. The sky ahead seemed to fill with teeth as the creature veered directly into the flight-path coming straight at Seth.
Seth pulled into a turn and screamed low toward the beach to avoid the suddenly airborne sea-life. ‘Guess I’ve got to stay a bit higher when I’m over the water.’ He said to himself. The low trees and brush ahead of him rushed by as he crossed the beach. His eyes flickered to the heads-up display only to refocus on a second shape rising above the trees toward him. He pulled back on the control and shot straight up into the air.
‘Guess you’ve got to stay up a bit higher when you are out over the brush lands too.’ A calm Molly Pasteur smiled at Seth from the next seat over. Molly’s big-bright smile always made Seth feel good even when it masked some serious, good-natured mocking.
Molly sat in the co-pilots seat enjoying the expressions on Seth’s face and the antics of the Hunter as it zigged over the sea and land so quickly. The images passing by their view screen with such rapid turns was like watching an old 3-D vid. There was no shifting or tilting noticeable inside the Hunter because of the reactionless gravitonic drives. The threat however had been real.
The ground passing below them, as they moved further inland, was heavy swamp crossed by wide channels which were in turn bordered by towering Cyprus-like trees. In spite of the swamp, the area was covered with large four-legged dinosaurs that mixed with smaller, two-legged leaf eaters. The Hunter rapidly moved farther inland to dryer soil and eventually landed in the clearing where Mark, Dan and Dave waited.
‘You must have taken the long way getting here Seth. Did you stop for lunch?’ Mark asked with mock seriousness.
‘No sir, we took a little longer getting the second tractor on board.’ Seth said as he looked Mark straight in the eye giving him his best good-natured grin.
‘Yeah, and had to divert around the flying mosasaur that forced us over to the flying watchamacallit, what was that thing Seth?’ Molly chimed in with an impish grin spread across her face.
‘I don’t know what it was and you didn’t have to bring it up. Suffice it to say, Sir, I won’t fly quite so low and slow again. I imagine they would have gotten a big surprise if they would have contacted our drive field sir.’
‘Seth, you don’t want to take that chance. We don’t know what would happen if you hit a solid biomass like that. At some point the field has got to overload. Let’s get going and unload this equipment. I don’t know how long our big-bird friends out there are going to stay sleeping.’
Seth had never reported that earlier incident when they had run through the flock of parrots on the first day. Hopefully Dan wouldn’t look at the Hive Tab records. Molly smiled that personal, knowing look at Seth but he knew it was better to simply walk off and setup for unloading.
Mark walked over to the group of Blackwave operators standing behind the Hunter. ‘Alex, we want to drive the herd down the valley toward that open plain to the west. I want you to set up two “V” shaped barrier counter-burns. I don’t want the burn to get out of control so use the bulldozers to plow a firebreak over at the two arms of the “V”. This tinder on the ground will go up pretty fast in the high oxygen so make sure the plowed area is wide enough to prevent any of the fire from jumping back toward our camp here.’
Bob Brody stood in the background and listened. Bob is the team’s demolition expert, not that he’d had a lot of blasting to do around here since the landing. He turned to Toshi and grabbed the utility strap across his back to loosen the webbing a bit. ‘This is a little too tight Toshi. Are you forgetting basic already? You’re going to rub your back raw if you leave it like you had it. I guess life is too easy for you truck drivers and you forget the basics.’
‘What are you talking about, I’m beat.’ Toshi Yakamura griped good-natured back at Bob. ‘I’ve either been trucking things around the Station or, before the Argos landed, I was flying supplies and people down both day and night. All you did was sit on your backside doing guard duty with all the hard work performed by the AutoSentinels.’
‘Oh yeah, the pack does ride better. Thanks Bob.’
‘Aww, that caps it off. Here’s another one of the damn ticks crawling up my leg. You’d think we could get away from these things. I hate them!’ Toshi griped and began examining the rest of his legs.
Alex walked into the middle of their banter. ‘OK Bob and Toshi, take off but don’t get too close to those T-Rex�
�s. I want to know every time one of those sleeping beauties moves a muscle. Let us know when you are in position. We’re going to begin setting up here now. I’ll let you know when we begin the push.’
After a short wait, Alex and Tom mounted the bulldozers and began scraping the surface brush back to expose bare ground. The valley was a little less than a mile wide and three or more miles long. The dozers made a terrible racket as they pushed aside the brush but there were no reports of movement from the three T-Rexes back were Bob and Toshi we watching. They dozed and slashed a twenty-foot wide, “V” shaped clearing across the valley. It extended up to the bare stone walls on either size of the flat valley floor. Then Alex and Tom dismounted and started a fire in the leaves and debris that remained at the bottom of the cleared slashes. This smaller fire could easily be controlled and would burn off any fuel remaining in the slashed area that might let the fire move in the wrong direction. The slashes blocked backward movement of the flames, stopping them from coming back to encircle the team.
David Pope turned to Seth and Molly. ‘You missed the briefing so I’ll update you. We are going to drive the herd out by conducting a low level, controlled burn down the valley. The team will control the active flame-front so that a burn-line, starting at this cleared area, extends across the valley from edge-to-edge as we move from west-to-east. Slowly the flames will drive the herd down the valley and out the bottom. The valley has a natural slope to it with the stream exiting between those two cliffs below. This will force the dinosaurs out of the valley and we can then bottle up the narrow area where the stream exits. Hopefully we will not be noticed by the T-Rexes and the killers will simply get up and follow the herd.’
‘The low burn should move quickly and won’t harm the larger trees. The vegetation will grow back quickly. After the herd is gone, the burned brush we leave at the edges will discourage any early return to the valley by the herd of hadrosaurids since their local food supply will be gone. It will also nicely clear the debris on the valley floor for our ore excavation thus doing two jobs at once.’
Nodal Convergence (Cretaceous Station Book 1) Page 17