‘Well, I don’t know what you are talking about. What communicator? Leave it for later, there they are.’
Toshi called back, ‘I see them. Are the troondon attacking? We may be a little late, looks like they are surrounded.’
* * * *
David dives to the ground and immediately rolls to his side. An eight foot tall, falling body with massive jaws slides by his head and he find himself eye-to-eye with the raptor. Trapped between the dead and attacking raptors, David manages to pull his combat knife from his webbing. Snaking his arm between the mountains of hot, rapidly twitching flesh that surround him, he sinks the blade deep into the raptor’s throat. The thirteen-inch blade moves easily through the soft tissue to sink up to the hilt. David’s reflex give it a twist as it digs into the flesh to open the wound and prevent the muscle from holding onto the blade. As he withdraws the blade, he twirls the tip sunk deep inside its throat, slicing widely across the softs tissue to insure a killing wound and rapid internal bleeding. Blood gushes out over his arm and the torso twitches as he withdraws the blade, a clean but painful kill. He can barely breath from the weight around him.
As David pulls the blade from the wound a green mass falls down over his extended arm, knocking the blade from his hand and dislocating his shoulder. Then another weight drops, covering him and the bleeding raptor and a hot trickle of bloods washes down across him. ‘Oh shit, my ankle. I need some air.’ Then the noise stops. The screams and cries of battle become distant.
Half conscious thoughts drift through David’s mind, ‘Am I dying? I still hurt. I can hardly breath. Aw shit, I wanted to see just one more sunrise.’
David passes in and out of consciousness as he waits in the stench and darkness. Unable to move his arm or his leg. Exhausted, he lay on the ground entwined with his wounded attackers. The rush of battle is gone from his mind. Adrenaline is replaced by pain and a growing fear fed by the warm, shallow breathing of the green twitching bodies around him. His thoughts drift around the day’s work, ‘What could I have done better? Did I fail them? How long before one of these guys gets up and finishes the job? God, I’m thirsty!’
The weight suddenly lifts from his legs and torso. The sound of firing and screeching rises as strong hands painfully lift him. Searing pain flashes through his arm and neck, ‘Watch my shoulder!’ David yells as they pulled him from the still thrashing pile of raptors. He can see Alex and Tom are there. He turns his head to Alex, looking over at him with a big smile on his face. ‘You made it! Wow, you look like walking roadkill!’
‘You’re beautiful too!’ Alex grunts as they carry him to the security of the rocks. Mark follows behind them, Pulsar rifle at the ready.
Out on the edges of the clearing, the raptors run and scream their rage as they are driven back by the sudden appearance of the Hunter and the new attackers. They circle, scream and fight one another without attacking the small group of humans and the troondons at their center. Confused by the sudden appearance of the Hunter, they are hesitant, afraid of the unknown. The cries of frustration and rage fill the air around the clearing.
‘I think I’m going to need a hearing aid after this.’ Mark pants as he fires again.
Then, quite unbelievably, the screams and screeches grow worse. Pandemonium settles on the attackers as the two T-Rex’s emerged from the trail behind the boulders and push through the attacking raptors and into the clearing with the grace, stealth and confidence of a tiger approaching his cornered victim.
Mark is cut off. He lifts his rifle toward the nearest attacker. It is less than forty feet from him, just two quick steps for the T-Rex. A nightmare of killing muscle, directed by a predator’s intellect, tenses for the attack on the three raptors retreating behind Mark. Mark’s mind silently registers the fact that he is smack in the center of the path of attack. ‘Strange,’ a random thought passes through a part his mind, ‘it probably won’t even notice me when it kills me.’
Before the T-Rex’s fury of tension can be released, three of the troondons fly from the security of the boulders behind the giant killer. Two land onto the side of the T-Rex like lions attacking an elephant.
Tom turns from where he was helping David and grabs his rifle. His hand fumbles with the control as he struggles to increase the setting for the slug size. He twists and lifts the Pulsar, reactions quickly directing the deadly tool toward the T-Rex nearest him.
A supersonic crack fills the air as a massive slug passes with its entire charge from the muzzle of his rifle. The T-rex erupts as if it were a watermelon hit by a fifty caliber round. The massive slug, still set to hollow point and moving at hypervelocity speed, contacts and implodes within the massive theropod’s body. The energy of the stars suddenly unleashed, vaporizes and liquefies half of the massive forty-foot beast. Screaming vapor carries the remnants of the beast out across the clearing. Burning flesh and superheated bio-liquid fly across and into the green raptors behind the monster. Finally broken, the raptors turn and run screaming into the brush in panic.
The second T-rex badly mauled two of the troondon. Discarding the two screaming attackers with no more care than a swimmer pulling leaches from his body. It turns and for the first time cold, yellow eyes focused on the small figure baring its path. The third troondon braces and flings itself into the air toward the remaining T-Rex just as a slug carries into the side of the massive beast’s head. Two more slugs follow in, expertly directed by Tom’s pistol to the center of the beast’s brain. It falls to the ground, a forty-foot mountain of dead meat. Mark stands there for a second. Stunned. Slowly he turns to stare at Tom.
‘Sorry sir, I used the whole charge of the rifle for the first one.’ Tom said. ‘Actually, I always wanted to try that.’
Mark walks over to the two troondon hurt by the T-rex. He approached them slowly. ‘Thank you guys. Let me see if I can help.’
They pull back in fear. Then a female runs over, yelling at them. Mark looks at her and then tries again. Slowly, hesitantly they allow him to touch them. As Mark reaches for his medical kit, he sees the second Hunter landing in the clearing. Something in the back of his mind wonders where they had found a clear spot big enough to land in. There was so much carnage around them. So many massive green bodies lay withering on the ground.
Seth was the first one out of the Hunter’s door. He runs down to Mark and gently kneels, ‘I’ll take care of that sir.’ He said.
‘Funny how that kid is always with a big shit-eating grin on his face.’ Mark thought to himself as he handed Seth the kit. Then Seth turned his back and Mark notices the blood seeping through Seth’s shirt, around his body-vest. ‘Guess we all had a hard day.’ He says aloud to no one in particular.
Seth turns to him, smiles and says. ‘Well, we didn’t make quite as big a mess as you guys did but we did have our excitement. I’m hungry!’ He says, looking around as he administers to the wounded troondon. ‘Do you think those big green birds are good to eat?’
* * * * *
‘Tell Rachel Zavtek that her son is just fine but she’s going to have to wait!’ Mark replies to Toshi. ‘We have to clean up things here first and there’s some wounded that need immediate attention. Fortunately, none of our injuries are that serious. I wish I could say the same for the troondon.’
The peacefulness of the glade gradually returns as the troopers methodically and mercifully put down the wounded raptors. The troondon are nervous. Four of them have died in the raptor and Tyrannosaurus attacks. Amazingly powerful, but strange aliens saved them. Aliens, who at one time were their enemies, now seem to help those who should be left to die. Adding to the strangeness, the ‘Food’ that the aliens call Hypsilophodonts, walk among them with impunity. Their world has been turned upside down.
Whistles, calls and warbles gradually rise again to fill the background noise in the clearing. As with the Hypes before them, the troondon chicks are the first to follow and approach their strange alien saviors.
‘Hang on a second. No, get out of my poc
ket!’ Adrian pushes a troondon chick away from his utility webbing. ‘Ok, so you guys like fig energy bars. Wait until I unwrap it. Ok, I give up. Take it. Hope I don’t get a ticket for littering.’
Molly was sitting down with Gabe and several of the troondon chicks. Tom noticed her quietly talking to a female troondon. Tina is nervously standing very close to Molly’s side. ‘Is that the troondon that Gabe is so attached to?’
‘Yeah. I’ve been trying to get her to come over. She’s still very nervous. You know, we have to get them to move from this site. It’s not going to be safe for the chicks around her by nightfall.’ Molly replies.
Tom walked over beside Molly. ‘Alex is ok but he got cut up a bit. I can’t get him away from Buddy though. I think those two are going to be very close. Mark has them resting in the Hunter. We’ll get them back to Doc as soon as possible.’
Mark and David walk in at the end of the conversation. Mark comments, ‘Right Tom. I’m trying to get things settled here. Looks like the dinosaurs are getting ready to move on their own anyway. Why are the Hypes so nervous? The action is over now.’
David’s arm is wrapped tight around his chest with a sling. He is using a branch for a cane as he stands beside Mark. He looks like he is in pain. ‘Could be because the Hypes are normally a part of the Troondon diet. Wouldn’t you be nervous walking and sitting in the center of a group of tigers.’
‘Yeah, guess I would. Well they behaved nicely.’ Mark finished, ‘David, I was talking briefly with Adrian. I believe we are beginning to see a pattern here. We should return to the station as soon as possible.’
‘Can’t we wait just a little longer?’ Sara shouts over toward Mark, ‘I want to take more data from these raptors. They have some characteristics of an Utahraptor but that shouldn’t be. Utahraptors should have died out about 40 to 60 million years ago. It could be a Megaraptor but they …’
‘Take what information you can but I believe we need to return quickly.’ David replies.
Molly turned to Mark, ‘I’ll break Gabe away from his friends.’
Mark gave David a hand and started him back toward the Hunter. ‘I’ve noticed that every time we were attacked it was by small groups of two or three dinosaurs. When we fought back, more dinosaurs appeared, seemingly out of nowhere and the attack intensified.’
‘Yes, the exception to this is the T-Rex attack.’ David replied.
‘This is the only T-Rex attack we’ve been party to so far. In all the others, we were observers. We did not initiate or return the attack.’
David’s face whitened slightly, ‘I don’t really like what you’re implying. Are you saying we could get jumped by dozens of T-Rex’s any time now?’
‘We may have been lucky. I don’t think those two guys knew what hit them. Tom’s pretty fast on the draw.’
David tried to recall the final moments of the fight. ‘Yeah. The Blackbirds, Utahraptors and the orange-feathered ones that Adrian told us about all had a chance to realize they had a fight on their hands. Maybe they called for help. It’s possible they can communicate in frequencies beyond our range of hearing. Like a dog can hear higher frequencies than we can.’
‘Mark, I also noticed in our short flight that these predators seem to be moving in mass. There’s too high a predator concentration around here for the level of food supply. Its almost like a migration. We saw it with the troondon leaving our Station area. We now have these Utahraptors running and attacking in large packs.’
‘The area they are travelling in is not like a migration though. By definition, migrations take months to complete and can cover thousands of miles. Migrations in our time are driven by changes in food supply due to seasonal changes. There are no seasons in the here and now, the whole planet is nearly the same temperature.’
‘These guys are only migrating tens or perhaps a hundred miles in their travel. Something other than the seasons must be driving them.’
Mark was looking closely at the bushes on the edges of the clearing. ‘I talked briefly with Seth and Adrian. They ran into a pack of orange colored theropods that seemed to appear out of nowhere. The attack had the same characteristics. A brief, violent skirmish and then all hell breaks loose. Only in their case there were no predators in the area beforehand, or at least none that could be seen, during their fly-over.’
David motioned for Dan to come over. ‘We need to move out as quickly as possible.’ He said when Dan was in hearing. ‘It’s possible that this area is going to be crawling with T-Rex’s real soon. I also think we need to get back to the Station and reinforce our perimeter.’
Mark looked at David with a question he didn’t have to ask. ‘That’s right Mark. If the troondons have moved out of the plateau by Cretaceous Station, then what is moving in to take their place?’
References
1. Currie, P. J. (1987). "Bird-like characteristics of the jaws and teeth of troodontid theropods (Dinosauria, Saurischia)". Journal of Vertebrate Paleontology 7: 72–81. doi:10.1080/02724634.1987.10011638
2. (editors) P. McCabe, J. Parrish, “Controls on the distribution and quality of Cretaceous coals“, The Geological Society of America 1992 ISBN 0-8137-2267-5 (On line, analysis of tidal variation)
3. http://www.badarchaeology.net/data/ooparts/antelope.php (Cretaceous Hammer and other artifacts)
4. D. Varricchio, J. Horner,F. Jackson (2002). "Embryos and eggs for the Cretaceous theropod dinosaur Troodon formosus". Journal of Vertebrate Paleontology 22 (3): 564–576. doi:10.1671/0272-4634(2002) 022[0564:EAEFTC]2.0.CO;2. (Troondon nest care)
5. D. Varricchio,J. Moore, G. Erickson, M. Norell, F. Jackson, J. Borkowski (2008). "Avian Paternal Care Had Dinosaur Origin". Science 322: 1826. doi:10.1126/science.1163245. (Troondon Nest Care)
6. H. Yaoming, M. Jin, W. Yuanqing, L. Chuankui Li (2005). "Large Mesozoic mammals fed on young dinosaurs". Nature 433 (7022): 149–152. doi:10.1038/nature03102. PMID 15650737(Repenomamus)
7. Britt; Chure; Stadtman; Madsen; Scheetz; Burge (2001). "New osteological data and the affinities of Utahraptor from the Cedar Mountain Fm. (Early Cretaceous) of Utah". Journal of Vertebrate Paleontology 21 (3): 36A. doi:10.1080/02724634.2001.10010852
8. D. Grimaldi, M. Engel, Evolution of the insects, Cambridge University Press, 2005
Nesting Habits of Troondon
Troondon nests average six feet across and were oval in shape. The eggs were laid out geometrically and in pairs. The have found evidence for nesting habits that suggest the eggs tended to hatch all at the same time. Up to 20 or more eggs per nest. Adults stayed with the nest for an estimated 45 to 65 days for laying , brooding and hatching. A comparative analysis with similar birds and crocodile and found that the egg volume to body mass comparison suggests that the female did not brood eggs, the male did, as is told in our story.
The long nesting period suggests an extended pair-bonding between mates. Troondon chicks appear to have left the nest shortly after hatching, as both crocodiles and some birds do. Remains of adults and juveniles found together may indicate that young troondon enjoyed some parental protection in a family group.
Chapter 9: Dominance
“The machine does not isolate man from the great problems of nature but plunges him more deeply into them.”
Saint-Exupéry, Wind, Sand, and Stars, 1939
Brittany climbed up to the front of the Hunter Recon vehicle. ‘Yes!’ She thought to herself. ‘Seth’s piloting.’
‘Hi Seth, thanks for helping Tina and me. She was really scared about coming on board. I think your coaxing did the trick. By the way, I want to ask a favor.’
The faintest trace of a pout formed on Brittany’s face, ‘Could I bring Tina up here? She’s never flown of course and I bet she’d love it!’
‘Whoa, do you know how crazy you sound?’ Adrian said from the other side of the cockpit. ‘There’s not a lot of room up here but there is a lot of sensitive stuff. How would she fit up here with that big tail of hers? Suppose she panics? Do you know what kind
of incident report I’d have to write?’ Pitching his voice low, Adrian mocked a flight report.
“Situation: Dinosaur was brought into cockpit of Hunter Recon and Assault Craft.
Purpose: Sightseeing.
Comments: Dinosaur panicked and tried to jump out of vehicle. Captain Seth Sassaman lost two teeth and acquired a broken rib and lacerations when said dinosaur attempted to exit via the viewscreen. Vehicle lost control and impacted with moderate damage.”
‘That would be all over the Hive-Tab net at the Station in minutes. I guarantee you that the recording would be all over the solar net when we got home. I’d have crackpots from all over the service calling in and asking me why I waited over sixty-five million years to call in the claim. No! Not a good idea!’
‘Oh, come on Adrian.’ Seth countered. ‘They live in tunnels, right? She’ll have no problem getting up here. Besides, where’s your sense of fun and adventure. This is a first. When we were back home at Europa Station planning this expedition did you ever think we would be bringing a dinosaur into the cockpit of a Hunter? This is unique! For that matter, did you ever think you would be talking to a dinosaur?’
‘Brittany, if you think she won’t completely panic, then you can bring her up but bring her in slowly.’ Seth shouted with a big smile as Brittany raced back toward the cargo area. ‘Watch out for that big tail, hers I mean!’
Adrian moved his hands up to the display. ‘I’m gonna cut the down-view displays and make them opaque. The full display will be sure to panic someone who’s never flown.’
‘Say, I hope you didn’t really pack up some of that Utahraptor meat did you? Remember the Blackbirds? They were a disaster.’ Adrian shuddered, just thinking of the meal.
Seth nonchalantly scanned the horizon as they approached the deep river valley. ‘The Blackbird wasn’t all that bad, just a little gamey. Yep, as a matter of fact I picked up a couple of choice flank steaks. They’re in stasis now.’
Nodal Convergence (Cretaceous Station Book 1) Page 30