by Adam Carter
I fell breathless in the wide branch beside Arowana.
“That,” she said, “was the worst plan ever.”
“Got us up here, didn’t it? You still have your case?”
She showed me where she had stashed it in the leaves. “Now I guess we just wait for the herd to pass us by.”
“Oh no,” I said. “I have a much better idea.”
“What?”
“Still trusting me?”
“I never trusted you.”
There was that friendly banter again. It was unnerving to hear and even more unnerving to realise I was not responding with instant aggression. “Take a breather,” I said. “Let them forget about us.”
She did not know what I had in mind, but seemed willing to give me a chance. I lay against the trunk of the tree while I collected my wits and built up my courage for what I was about to do. Before long, the dinosaurs settled down and after a short while they had likely forgotten about us entirely. Closing my eyes, I waited for Arowana to get nervous, and yes that was me being particularly spiteful.
A further twenty minutes or so later she said, “Whatever you’re going to do, do it soon.”
“They’re coming over?” I asked without opening my eyes.
“Stop trying to be cool and get on with it.”
Opening my eyes, I found her scowling at me. A part of me wanted her to be impressed with not only my ingenuity but also my calmness under pressure, but she was not one to easily impress.
“There aren’t many trees around,” I told her. “Stands to reason they’d come over here sooner or later to eat some leaves. Even I could see they’re herbivores.”
“And?”
“And, they’re almost here.”
“And?”
“And, when they get here, my plan goes into effect.”
She looked at the dinosaurs, looked at me, looked back at them and closed her eyes. “You’re going to get us to jump on them, aren’t you?”
“Unless you want to walk everywhere, yes.”
“You’re mad.”
“And you’re mad for coming with me.”
“Who says I’m coming with you?”
A flat dim-witted face appeared close by as the brontomerus began feeding on the leaves. Several of the creatures were doing so, which afforded me some choice. Arowana was still glowering at me, but I was not about to back out. Now the dinosaurs were so close I could see what a stupid plan it was, but I would rather have been trampled than admit that to her.
“Ready,” I said. “Ready …”
A loud explosion caused the long necks to pull back. I almost fell out of the tree and looked out across the plains in the direction the sound had come. Somewhere in the distance, in vaguely the area where Captain Taylor had set down, a huge plume of smoke was rising. Spooked, the brontomerus herd backed away, their huge bodies turning in panic as they stampeded in the opposite direction.
Neither I nor Arowana much noticed.
“What’s happened?” I asked lamely, the billowing smoke clearly being fed by an intense fire.
Arowana was already sliding down the tree.
“Wait,” I said, clambering after her. “We don’t have to investigate. We can go the other way.”
“Taylor’s landed a jet. We can use it to escape.”
“I think Taylor’s jet’s gone up in smoke,” I said, landing shakily on the ground. “Arowana, wait.”
“Hawthorn, come on.”
“Just a minute.” I grabbed her to arrest the run she had broken into. “Arowana, talk to me. This has nothing to do with stealing her jet. She’s landed because she’s found something and you know what that something is, don’t you?”
“Hawthorn, we …”
“Just tell me the truth for once.”
She closed her mouth, set her jaw firm and grasped her briefcase tightly. “I don’t much care what theories you have, Hawthorn, and I certainly don’t care at all whether you think I’m a nice person. Captain Taylor’s out there in trouble and I’m going to help her.”
“Why?”
“Because she may be trying to kill me, but I’m still a human being. Are you?”
She broke away and backed off, finally turning to run across the plain. I swore, loudly, but Arowana was right. Ceres may have been a savage world, but Taylor was in trouble and if there was anything I could do to save her life then I had to do it.
Begrudgingly, I set out after Arowana in order to face whatever foe was powerful enough to have taken down the woman trying to kill us both.
CHAPTER SIX
The ground became uneven the farther we walked, with mountains in the distance blocking our view of the crash site. Back when the brontomerus had been spooked by the sound of the crash, I had assumed the jet to have come down close to where we were hiding in the tree. However, after an hour of walking we could still see the thick black smoke billowing into the air and were hardly any closer to it.
“I think she must be dead by now,” I said.
“We’re still not turning back.”
I had not been entirely convinced by Arowana’s humanitarian speech, but was willing to go with it for the moment. “So, how well do you know Captain Taylor?”
“What makes you think I know her at all?”
“You’re both part of Securitarn’s force, right?”
“You work for Securitarn as well. Do you know her?”
“I’m an engineer, not a soldier.”
“We’re not soldiers, we’re just security guards.”
“Security guards who insist on walking around with army ranks. If you’re not soldiers, you’re at least playing soldiers.”
“Playing soldiers. That about sums it up, actually.”
It was disconcerting that she agreed with me. “You haven’t answered the question.”
“About knowing Captain Taylor? Yes, I know her. She was assigned to monitor me.”
“She’s your supervisor?”
“Sort of, yes. As soon as her back was turned, I ran away.”
“Ah, that’s why she’s annoyed with you. You went AWOL on her watch and stole some valuable tech to boot.”
She did not answer, which was mildly annoying. I did not know whether she was being silent because I was right or because I was wrong. I chose to believe I was right because I was due being right about something.
There was no sense in running all the way only to be worn out once we arrived, so it was a further hour before the ground underfoot became rocky, with great heights of stone towering about us. By this time we were no longer able to see the smoke and I figured the fire had probably died off. There were so many troughs and valleys, in fact, that I doubted we would ever be able to find the right area.
Unsurprisingly, Arowana was walking with purpose in a specific direction.
“You can’t instinctively know where the fire is,” I said as I trailed.
“No, but I can smell the smoke.”
“There is no smoke.”
“No? Strange I’m following it, then.”
I set my jaw firm, determined not to give her the satisfaction of answering her back.
We continued across the rocks, stumbling several times over the uneven ground. I would have preferred for the mountains to have formed actual valleys, for then we would have had a clear route through which to walk, but the rising rocks were uneven and ragged, forming a haphazard path at the best of times. We reached an incline and scrambled to the top, whereupon we both froze at the scene beneath us.
The ground ahead was rocky but mainly flat, the mountains having formed around it in such a way that suggested to me the area could have been a dried-up lagoon. It was an area so wide that Captain Taylor had decided to set down her jets. All three planes were visible, all of them bent and twisted ruins, faint wisps of smoke still rising from their broken forms. Close to one of the jets lay the corpse of a monster – a dinosaur killer larger than any I could have imagined. Its body lay still, with flies and crow-li
ke birds buzzing about its carcass, tearing away bloody strips. Even from our distance, the wind was blowing the stench of the corpse our way, churning my stomach.
Not wanting to linger on the grisly sight, I trailed my eyes along the ground, flecked with blood and bullet casings. A second creature lay to one side, groaning pitiably even as birds pecked at its face, darting back to avoid being snapped in two by its still-powerful jaws. There was no strength left in the beast and I had no doubt it was dying a slow and agonising death, yet the thought of heading down towards it still did not sit well with me.
And then I saw a woman, pressed up against the rock wall, having attempted to pin herself beneath an overhang. Her dark uniform was saturated with blood and she had torn most of it away in an effort to produce bandages, with little success. There was a rifle in her lap, held loosely but no doubt still loaded, while the woman’s head lolled sleepily in time to her own inner rhythm. She looked delirious and as dead as the dinosaur, but at that moment she was alive.
“Gun,” Arowana said. I stared at her blankly, having forgotten I had the weapon tucked in my trousers. Handing it over, she took it and shoved the metal briefcase back into my arms before scrambling down the rocky decline into the scene of massacre. I watched her go, debating my own course of action. Whatever danger those dinosaurs had caused was passed and I did not want to let the two women talk too much without me being there, so I set off after my companion.
Running across the level terrain, we headed straight for the downed soldier.
Her rifle snapped up as we got to within ten paces and we both raised our arms. Then her head swayed a little and the barrel of her rifle dipped.
“Captain Taylor,” Arowana said gently. “Captain, where’s the rest of your unit?”
Taylor barely stirred. She was a well-built woman with a bristly carpet of blonde hair. She had thin aquiline features and a muscular body which would have put any real soldier’s to shame. “Gone,” she said. “Those things … they’re gone.”
“Tyrannosaurus,” I said.
“Daspletosaurus,” Arowana corrected.
“This is no time to be pedantic.”
Taylor looked at us with bleary eyes. “Are you arguing?”
“Sorry,” Arowana said, dropping into a careful crouch. “Put the gun down, Captain, and we’ll see what we can do about your injuries.”
“Iris?”
“Yeah, it’s me. Captain, the gun?”
“Iris, what are …?” Her head rocked a little but she seemed to regain some of her memories. “I’m taking you back. General Garland’s orders.”
“Taking her back?” I asked. “You’ve been trying to kill her.”
“Kill her? I did?”
“You tried to shoot us down.”
“Oh yeah, I did.” She closed her eyes and smiled. “Should’ve landed. Would’ve saved all this.”
“Didn’t fancy going back,” Arowana said. “Can you move?”
“Do I look like I want to move?”
“You look like hell, Erin.”
“Trying out a new image.”
I followed the exchange with interest. This was not the casual conversation of two people who barely knew one another. I had recently discovered Taylor was my companion’s supervisor, yet it seemed they could even have had something of a friendship.
Arowana checked her over quickly, tightening bandages or peeling them away entirely. Taylor winced as Arowana worked, although did not cry out. Her entire body was stained red with blood and black with sweat, her chest heaving with the exertion of staying alive. She looked upon us with unfocused eyes and I did not have to be a doctor to tell she was in a bad way.
“We need to get moving,” Arowana said.
“She needs to rest,” I corrected. “I’ll build a fire and get a stew going. Ah, I left my turtle shell back at the tree.”
“We can’t stay here, Hawthorn. Daspletosauri hunt in packs.”
“I know. There are two dead ones out there.”
“Two animals don’t make a pack.”
Taylor’s eyes widened. She attempted to raise her rifle and I looked behind me in fear. With the mountainous backdrop behind them I could see three large forms stirring. There were various ways out of the dried-up lagoon, most of which were slight drops like the one by which we had entered. The remainder of the daspletosaurus pack was making its way down such an incline, with two of the beasts already on the level ground. Each monster was bloodied from the earlier attack, but having licked their wounds they were returning.
The creatures towered at almost twice my height and from snout to tail were three times that long. Their bodies were formed much as the ornitholestes we had encountered earlier, although on a larger scale. The main portion of each body was the same oval shape, with two powerful legs providing enough strength for the animal to maintain sustained bursts of speed. Their arms were short but I could not imagine they were useless, while the thick and heavy tail extended behind to act as a counterweight. No doubt it could also be employed as an effective bludgeon.
The heads of the brutes made me quail, however. Each was over half my body length and was formed mainly of jaw, with massive teeth slavering from a lipless mouth. Their eyes were set back on the snouts, protected from whenever they would make an attack with their jaws.
Each beast may have already been wounded, but that only seemed to make them angrier.
I could not take my eyes from them as I whispered aside to Arowana, “Anything you know which might help here?”
“Some of their teeth are eighteen centimetres. That’s over half a foot.”
“That’s not helpful.”
“It is for the dinosaur.”
I risked a sharp glare at her but Arowana was paying little attention anyway. She had thrown Taylor’s arm over her shoulder and was helping the woman to her feet.
“If we move her,” I said, “she might die.”
“She has a better chance than if we left her here.”
One of the dinosaurs bellowed a challenge and my eyes snapped back towards them. They were still a fair distance away, but distance meant nothing to such savage behemoths.
“Captain Taylor held this position,” I said, my nerves shredding. “Maybe we could stay here.”
Taylor’s laugh was short, but spoke volumes of what she thought of that idea.
“I’ll need you to run with her,” Arowana said. I’ll hold the dinosaurs off while you get her away.”
“Away to where?”
She looked across at the three jets, all flaming wrecks. “No idea. We’ll worry about that later.”
This had all the makings of a terrible plan.
“Arowana, there are three of those things out there.”
“Four.”
“What?” I looked back to see a fourth daspletosaurus appearing. “Exactly how many do these things have in a pack?”
“At a guess, I’d say at least six.”
“I hate you.”
“I know.”
I looked back to the dinosaurs, my stomach making very bad moves as I tried to talk myself out of a very bad decision. “All right, give me the gun.”
“What?”
“The gun. You get Captain Taylor out of here, I’ll hold those things back.”
“You’re a better shot than me, all of a sudden?”
“Are you good enough to take down four dinosaurs?”
She hesitated. “No.”
“Then it doesn’t much matter who the best shot is. Now give me the gun.”
She slapped her pistol into my palm and took back her case. That case was becoming the bane of my life. There was of course also Taylor’s rifle, but I had no idea how to operate a rifle, and besides which I did not fancy my chances of being able to prise it from the captain’s fingers.
“I’ll buy you what time I can,” I said, “but I think it fair to warn you I’m not going to be too far behind.”
Another bellow sounded, for the daspletosaurus
pack was still attempting to disturb us through threat. Clearly they had learned caution from having attacked Taylor and her fellow fighter pilots before. Armed with my puny pistol and never having used one before, I decided I had made a rather foolish decision.
The first of the daspletosauri started towards me and I fired a warning shot in the air, hoping to remind it of what it had faced before. The dinosaur did not back away, but did turn so that its huge, lithe body trotted about me in a semi-circle, its head turned to watch me all the while. The second began to move and I was not surprised to find it going the other way, but using the same method of movement. They would come at me from both sides, and twice my height as they were they would have no trouble tearing me apart in their tug of war.
I saw the third dinosaur falling back, while the fourth lowered its head, its eyes boring into mine. Pushing all its strength into its legs, the beast charged.
Screaming at the top of my lungs, I turned and fled, firing the gun in the air far more times than was necessary. Its final sound was a dull click as the firing pin struck an empty chamber. Perhaps sensing my increased terror, perhaps understanding something of the working of firearms, the daspletosaurus pack closed in about me.
Without being able to see where the two women had fled, I ran for one of the slopes leading out of the area, but even as I scrambled up with my hands and feet I was getting nowhere. Behind me the ground shuddered with the boom of daspletosaurus feet and I turned my head to see one of the monsters upon me. Surrendering the idea of fleeing the basin, I tore off across the level ground, throwing everything I had into my run, all the while knowing the mighty beasts behind me were built to chase far swifter prey than Securitarn engineers.
With a dinosaur behind me, I ran around the outskirts of the basin, aware of the others moving in. The only cover I could see was provided by the smouldering ruins of the jets, and I threw myself towards these, determined to make it to them before I could be killed.
One of the beasts must have seen my intention, for it snapped at me with its great jaws, but I must have been too stubborn to die just then because my panic lent me greater speed than I had ever known and a moment later I was tearing through the ruins. Unable to stop, not even realising what I was doing any longer, I crashed into the twisted metal, tripped and slammed my face into the useless hulk.