by Adam Carter
“Name,” the blonde barked, and while she was young Valentine got an instant impression that she had done this sort of thing before.
“Valentine,” he replied amiably, flashing her a smile he hoped did not come across as too roguish. “Dexter Valentine, ma’am. This is my associate, Mr Stone. How do you do?”
“You’re in charge here?” It was almost not asked as a question. Valentine knew for her to even ask that meant they had been watching the prison for some time.
“I am,” he replied, deciding it would have been stupid and perhaps even fatal to lie to her. “I must say, your stealth is highly impressive. Admirable, in fact.”
She did not seem nearly as impressed by his praise. “What happened to the guards?”
“Guards?”
“This is a prison.”
“This is a prison?” He quickly thought better than to deny the clear fact. “Of course this is a prison, yes.”
“So where are the guards?”
“I don’t know. It was empty when we found it. Abandoned. As you can see, the swamp has tried to reclaim this building over the years. Possibly the dinosaurs got all the guards. And the prisoners, I don’t know.” He continued to speak slowly, making all his words clear so she would not have to question his motives.
“How long have you been here?”
“A few years,” Valentine replied casually. “We’re here to study the dinosaurs.”
“Study the dinosaurs?”
“Yes. It’s a research programme.”
“This world is off-limits.”
“Yes. We sneaked in.” He paused for effect. “And you? If it’s off-limits, what are you doing here?”
The two women exchanged a momentary glance, but it was enough to tell Valentine that quite possibly he was right and they should not have been here either. “Our unit’s camped nearby,” the blonde continued. “We need someplace to stay for a while.”
Valentine spread his arms wide. “Feel free to accept our humble hospitality. Whatever we have is yours. I’m afraid we can’t offer you much, but we’ll do our best for such distinguished visitors. You’re from Ganymede, no?”
“Io,” she replied. “Twelfth Regiment.”
“Ah.” Io was a big place. Without a country he had no idea which Twelfth Regiment they could have been from. She spoke English with the tiniest hint of a Birmingham accent so it had to be somewhere in Io’s northern hemisphere considering the south of Io was mainly of French descent. It didn’t much matter where they were from, of course; a bullet from a gun would kill him just as easily from a French woman as it would an English.
He suddenly realised his mind was rambling into tangents. It tended to do that when he was under a lot of stress, and Valentine was not used to having guns pointed at him.
“Is there anything specifically I can do for you perhaps?” Valentine asked, having terrible visions of these two women bringing in their entire unit and all of them wandering about the prison. The instant the other prisoners caught the whiff of soldiers they would react badly and soon enough some would become aggressive. At that moment in time Valentine could only guess at the reason for their presence, but he had to assume the worst. It had been around five years since the prisoners had revolted and in all that time they had received no word from the outside worlds. It was entirely possible these soldiers were here to find out just what happened at the prison five years earlier.
Valentine needed to find out as much information as possible before making a decision. He was not averse to murdering their entire unit if it would keep him and his people alive, but that was a recourse he wanted to leave until the last possible moment. If it came down to that, he would make sure they were nice, clean kills. He could only imagine the horrors some of the prisoners could put two such women through and he would risk the wrath of his people to help the women avoid that fate.
With any luck, however, they were here on an entirely unrelated matter. They would stay a few days, as the blonde had said, and leave to continue with whatever their mission happened to be.
“We don’t need anything,” the blonde soldier replied. “Just a place to stay for a while.”
“We could do with some information,” the dark-haired woman said. She was a few years older and Valentine had been surprised she was letting the younger woman do all the talking. “If these guys have been here for a while studying the wildlife they should know something of their habits.”
The blonde seemed annoyed to have her decisions countermanded before other people, although did not say as much. Instead she simply agreed. “Sure. And if they don’t know enough about the dinosaurs at least we’ll know they’ve been lying about being here to study them.”
“They’re not all dinosaurs, you know,” Valentine said, trying to remember all the useless things Whitsmith had ever said to him: all the things he had never cared about. “Only land-based reptiles were dinosaurs, you know. Nothing that flew or lived in the water.”
The two women exchanged glances which told him they found his response amusing.
“And only certain creatures from the Triassic, Jurassic or Cretaceous were dinosaurs,” he continued, unperturbed. “Why, just yesterday my chief researcher brought me a report about a moschops in the area. Moschops predated the dinosaurs, you know, because it used to live in the Permian era.”
“Yeah,” the blonde said with a tight, wry smile, “but the Permian era sort of ended a few years ago, Valentine. Everything exists on this rock all at the same time. No one cares about eras any more.”
That much was true, but Valentine felt his knowledge stash becoming somewhat depleted already. He needed to get them to speak directly with Whitsmith, although she would have already gone off to look into that animal sighting. Knowing his luck she would get herself killed by it. He knew she thought he had been joking when he had said as much to her yesterday when she was bringing in the moschops, but Valentine never joked about such things. He had trusted people before, had considered people extremely valuable, and they always let him down by getting themselves killed. He was surprised Stone had lasted as long as he had.
But all this talk about the eras merging could wait until he could get them to speak with someone who actually knew what they were talking about. “I think these philosophical debates can wait until we get your unit here safely,” he said diplomatically. “Why don’t you signal them now and bring them in?”
The blonde’s eyes sparkled with a humour he did not like at all. She saw straight through him, there was no mistaking that. But she did not contradict him, and for that he could only be grateful. It bought him a little extra time in which to sort things to his own advantage.
Lowering their guns at last, the two soldiers shared brief words before the dark-haired woman walked to the edge of the roof and jumped off. Valentine assumed she was abseiling down the side and not committing suicide, although the latter would have been a big help to him. The blonde regarded him with an amused expression and said, “How about a tour of the facility?”
Since there was very little scientific equipment throughout the entire prison, it was the worst possible request she could have made.
Valentine smiled politely. “What a wonderful idea.” He almost went to place his arm about her shoulder as they walked back to the roof hatch, but stopped himself just in time. It was at that moment he realised he did not even know her name.
CHAPTER THREE
There were always creature sightings around the institution and Whitsmith knew if she investigated every one of them she would never get any work done. Most of those creatures were any of the variety of crocodiles living in and around the marsh. She had catalogued the various species of crocodile so that future sightings which reached her desk could be categorised without the need for her to actually venture out into the humid, oppressive atmosphere of the swamp. Whitsmith had come to know a great deal about crocodiles over her years in the prison, far more than she had ever wanted to, and had even caught many her
self for participation in the pit fights. Having watched her fair share of these fights, she knew just how mean and ruthless a crocodile could be. She had seen first-hand that a single swipe from their massively muscled tails could shatter a person’s spine; she had seen how they locked their jaws upon their prey and twisted, with the motion of a shark, to tear a chunk of flesh from its victim. While the prey died from either shock or loss of blood, the crocodile could sit back and simply wait for its meal to prepare itself for consumption; as though the crocodile was preparing a TV dinner, staring all the while in anticipatory hunger.
Whitsmith did not much like crocodiles, but she certainly respected them.
When Valentine had told her about the creature sighting and that it was potentially dromaeosaurid activity, Whitsmith had half hoped she would have been able to put it down to crocodiles. As she had read over the information they had received about it, however, she could distinguish the tell-tale signs which indicated whatever was out there was not a crocodile.
Oddly enough, the evidence did not point to a dromaeosaurid either.
That there were two creatures out there, separate from one another in their hunting, was the most likely explanation. Unfortunately the only way for Whitsmith to make certain would be if she physically went out there and looked.
Without any alternatives, that was precisely what she found herself doing.
The swamp that morning was terribly close and Whitsmith found difficulty in even breathing. The oxygen content of their world was generally richer than that of her native Earth, perhaps because it lacked major unnatural pollution, perhaps because its environment had been designed to reflect a period from millions of years earlier, when the world had naturally contained a greater degree of oxygen. She neither knew nor really cared that much, for it did not help her in her life. Nor did it help her breathe any better in the enclosing swamp. Why Valentine would not let them move to a more hospitable part of the wold she would never know.
“You all right? You want me to carry you or anything?”
Whitsmith ignored the snide comment made by her companion. Whitsmith had a certain authority within the prison so could command whatever resources she pleased, within reason. As such, whenever she ventured into the swamps she never went without a full contingent. She took more people with her into the swamp than she did any other part of their world, in fact. Therefore she presently had a team of fifteen people, some of them nearby, others spread out to form a perimeter. The woman Whitsmith had kept close to her side was a vicious, violent individual named Katie Hudson. Hudson had been imprisoned for multiple counts of GBH. Whitsmith did not know the details, whether they were all against the same person or Hudson just like beating people up. All she knew was that the large heavy-set woman with the permanent scowl and broken nose was not a person who ever gave anyone any leeway. Weakness was a bad thing to show before Hudson, for there was very little keeping her in line even within the prison. But Whitsmith had one time seen her wrestle a crocodile. It had only been a two metre long brachychampsa, but the woman had broken its back by slamming it upon the ground with all her weight behind the plunge. It was at that point that Whitsmith had decided that while Hudson may not have been the greatest human being, she was certainly a good person to have at her back.
“This is the area the creature was last sighted,” Whitsmith said. “Keep a watch out while I take a look around.”
Hudson grunted and moved off to whatever position she thought best. Hudson had little respect for anyone, but she did seem to like it when people sucked up their inhibitions and just got on with the job. Whitsmith had once developed a theory that Hudson only beat on people who were too afraid to fight back. She had visions of someone standing up to her and the two becoming inseparable friends. Whitsmith did not intend to become that person: she liked to see as little of Hudson as humanly possible.
Momentarily putting the violent woman from her mind, Whitsmith crouched to examine some crushed foliage. The swamp about her was formed of tall, sad trees; weeping willows and other pathetic specimens sadly patrolled the area. The ground was half bog, half solid, but even the solid ground could turn into marsh at any given moment. They had constructed canoes to take them across the entirely liquid parts of the swamp, although there was still a surprising amount of solid, reed-strewn land around, scraggly and depressing as those reeds were. Whitsmith had known nothing about swamps prior to coming to this world and, as with the crocodiles, had only learnt through necessity.
The crushed reeds and pathetic grass showed an animal had been this way recently. She searched for more prints, for if she could determine how many feet the creature walked upon she could decide whether it was a crocodile of a dromaeosaurid. Her initial sweep leant her more towards the latter, which would have been a shame considering the dromaeosaurids were such a vicious bunch. Wrestling a crocodile and winning was one thing, but taking on an actual dinosaur in its natural environment was something she doubted even Katie Hudson could manage.
Brushing the dirt from her hands, Whitsmith rose and looked about her at the swamp, listening to the usual sounds of chirping insects and rushing wind. Whatever was out there, the swamp did not care and just carried on with things the way they had always been.
“There are rumours of utahraptors further north,” Hudson said. Whitsmith had not even noticed the other woman was standing so close and tried to hide the fact she had been startled. The most common dromaeosaurids in the local area were all fairly small, and having to face something larger than a human being was not an idea which sat well with Whitsmith. Unlike the capture of the moschops earlier, Whitsmith was in the thick of things here. She may have had a contingent of people to protect her, but here she was far from in control. She did not even know the identity of the beast out here, and therefore could not tell its habits. It could easily have been watching them even now and she would have no idea.
“If it is a dromaeosaurid,” Whitsmith said, “which seems likely, there won’t just be one of them. They tend to live in packs.”
Hudson did not need to be told that, although Whitsmith was nervous and whenever she was nervous she tended to tell people facts about their situation; as though knowing the danger they were in would somehow lessen its intensity.
A shout sounded from someway behind them and the heads of both women snapped about. The cry had been short and cut-off, and Whitsmith felt a terrible sinking feeling in her stomach that she knew what that meant. Without a word the two women hastened off in the direction of the cry. Whitsmith drew her pistols nervously, her sweating palms causing them to almost immediately slip from her grasp, but she clutched them for dear life. Hudson withdrew from its mooring upon her back a large gun whose barrel made it resemble some bizarre cross between a blunderbuss and a rocket launcher. Whitsmith could not imagine the gun being able to hold more than one shot at a time, but nor could she see any creature surviving a direct hit with the thing.
They slowed as they reached the edge of the marsh, where the ground slipped into the bog in an untidy slide. Several other people had gathered by this point, most of the perimeter guards in fact. That made Whitsmith feel a little better: with so many bodies around the chances of the beast selecting her as the next target were marginally small. With a clearer mind than a moment earlier, Whitsmith examined the scene without getting too close to the water’s edge. There was indication that something had been dragged through the reeds and into the brackish water, but no signs of other disturbance. With the ground as slick as it was, there was every possibility the guard had simply slipped and slid into the marsh, disappearing beneath the foetid surface.
She would, however, suspect creature involvement until she had direct evidence to the contrary.
Giving quick commands to the remaining guards to focus their attentions on specific directions, Whitsmith searched for any animal tracks which might be able to tell her just what they were dealing with. Her instincts still said this had been a crocodile attack, yet the prints e
arlier had suggested a two-legged dinosaur. An utahraptor, or any of its ilk, would not have dragged the body into the mire, though, and again she wondered whether there was more than just the one animal to be dealing with here.
“Whitsmith!”
Whitsmith heard Hudson shout and leapt back without even looking to see the cause. She fell onto her backside in sheer shock at the thing sliding out of the water bare metres from her. The thing was called a deionosuchus and she knew it well. Ten metres of moss-green scales, an armoured hide which could shatter knife blades and a temperament of the fiercest Rottweiler. Four short, fat legs protruded from a bulky, massive body, the thick, muscular tail trailing in its wake. The head was a vicious snout of teeth almost as large as a human hand-span, while the head itself was easily as long as Whitsmith was tall. The gigantic prehistoric crocodile gazed upon Whitsmith with cold and baleful eyes as it shuffled towards her. Crocodiles were among the fastest creatures that ever existed, and its trepidation at approaching her could only have been put down to the close proximity of so many other figures. And those figures were panicking; shouting and running and wailing for all they were worth. The cacophony confused the crocodile, which was perhaps the only thing which had yet saved Whitsmith’s life.
Scrabbling backwards, Whitsmith realised she had been granted a reprieve and intended to put it to full effect. She had not studied the crocodiles for fun but through necessity, and now that she knew just what they were capable of she did not fancy being torn apart by one. Sometimes dying in ignorance was a far more merciful end than the alternative.
Her movement alerted the deionosuchus, its head snapping back towards her. Her people’s flight had taken them out of the thing’s range anyway, and the only viable prey remaining was Whitsmith herself. Her mind screamed at her to get out of there as quickly as possible, but her body froze as the crocodile bore down upon her. She could watch its approach but was powerless to do anything about it.