by Joel Babbitt
Colonel Alexander appeared at that very moment through the gates of the visitors’ compound. “What got into her?” he asked in surprise.
“Sir, I think she had a bad reaction to the splice,” Washington called out as Sergeant Thompson jumped on the heavy quadcopter to start it up.
“She took the key!” Thompson exclaimed.
“Can you rig it, sergeant?” Alexander asked as he arrived at the quadcopter.
Pulling a multi-tool from his weapons harness, Thompson popped the hood of the finicky machine. In a couple of moments he cursed and stood up, dropping the multi-tool as the four rotors all started to spin-up. Shaking his hand, he said “You better go on without me, boss. I just cut my hand open.”
Captain Washington was already in the pilot’s seat and had the quad by the handlebars. Hopping on behind her, Colonel Alexander strapped in as Washington goosed the throttle and the large plasteel machine leapt up into the air.
“Get the folks ready to move, Sergeant,” Colonel Alexander called out. “We’ll be back as soon as we talk some sense into that woman.”
“If we can talk some sense into her,” Washington said as they rose up past layer one up to a layer-two altitude, which would enable them to tail the doctor easier than if they were down skimming the tree tops with her. Putting the quadcopter into its highest gear, Washington steered the quadcopter in a broad arc to the south in pursuit of Doctor Pastore and her three accomplices.
“She’s turned off her linker,” Colonel Alexander called out above the noise of the rotors.
“Not surprising, sir,” Washington answered. “I don’t think she wants to talk to us.”
Alexander grunted in reply as he tapped on the display at the passenger’s seat of the heavy quad copter. “But she didn’t turn off the data-link to her quad,” he said.
Captain Washington glanced back at the colonel who was tapping away before silently going back to steering. After several moments he called out over the noise of the rotors again.
“Her navcomputer says she’s going to… Primus Colony,” he said in disbelief. “Now why would she go to that desolation?”
Captain Washington knew the story of Primus Colony very well. Three years before, the entire colony had died of some previously unknown disease in the space of one week. It was a terrorizing disaster that had seen leaders of the Camallay Unity Government calling for the fire-bombing of Primus Colony to keep the disease from spreading. In the end, however, Primus’ self-imposed quarantine had worked and the entire colony had died; every man, woman, and child.
Both Colonel Alexander and Captain Washington knew that no one knew the dangers of Primus Colony better than Doctor Pastore. Her husband and three children had been there during the disaster, while she had been off-planet attending a medical convention. The trauma of losing her whole family to some unknown disease and watching the whole drama unfold from Prexlar, a few jump-tunnels away, and not being able to do anything to help or prevent it, was almost certainly what had started the cracks in her psyche. Within a year of the disaster the lingering trauma of it led to the mistakes that got her medical license revoked. But she had been on the mend and seemed to be stable again, which is why Marik had hired her at a starter rate.
Obviously, she was not.
“Try hacking her navcomputer, sir,” Washington called out over the high winds. They both wore situence glasses, but the helmets with their commo gear had been left behind in their rush to catch the other quadcopter.
“I’m working on it. Our good friend Jaxin Fae Rellis locked them down tight, however, so I don’t know as how I’ll have much luck with it.”
“Well, sir,” Washington said, “I spliced out the whole bit about Lieutenant Flanagan dying and any mention of our special friend, so at least she doesn’t have any secrets with her.”
Alexander grunted as he continued to tap, growing only more frustrated with his own lack of progress against the doctor’s quadcopter’s security systems.
“And,” Washington continued, “we were going to have to do something with those three women anyway. Nobody’s been to Primus since the quarantine was established three years ago during the disaster. Maybe Doc Pastore’s going there for some closure. Perhaps she can find what killed her family and that colony.”
Alexander grunted in reluctant agreement. “Maybe we should have just spliced out the memories of her family’s fate and the Primus Colony disaster.”
“Don’t you think that would have been a bit too overt, sir? Surely the solkin would have found out about that. We don’t want to get her killed by some solkin assassin team.”
Alexander looked up at Captain Washington. “I think she’s going to kill herself either way, what with her choice of refuge. Would have been better to just let her die happy.”
Captain Washington couldn’t argue with that.
Finally, after several more minutes of tapping away at his display without results, Colonel Alexander sighed. “I don’t really feel like chasing the good doctor all the way to Primus Colony anyway. Send a notice out to Terra Alta that she’s broken the quarantine with three passengers aboard. Let’s go ahead and turn back.”
Without looking back at him, Shannon Washington slowly turned the quadcopter in a long arc that put them on a northern heading, back toward the home of the Mon-Jikkik Over-Clan.
* * *
Jim Ryker thrived on new experiences. While most people are hesitant when encountering an alien culture, Ryker was fascinated. Though his uncle hired plenty of yazri whenever he needed violence done, he’d never actually seen a yazri clan. Because of this, while Colonel Alexander had been in council with the elders of the over-clan, Jim had gone poking about among the various sub-clans of the Mon-Jikkik.
Because he was one of Mar-Shal’s men, very soon he found acceptance among the clans as he went from one tree to another. Sitting at the first meal of the night with one clan, then another, he had heard much and began to understand the motivations that were at the heart of yazri culture. He was no sociologist, even his mother would have laughed at the idea, and indeed it wasn’t from any academic interest or even from the normal tourist sort of interest that Ryker was mingling with the clans. He was far too driven for that.
No, Ryker was fishing for information. And by dawn, as he sat listening to a small group of yazri warriors talk about the far hunts they had conducted out on the eastern steppes, he believed he had found what he was looking for.
Now, as he stood talking with Colonel Alexander and Captain Washington in the late morning sun, despite having lost a heavy quadcopter and the expedition’s doctor, the pair of veteran warriors couldn’t help but smile with the news.
“You say they took down a metal caribou?” Colonel Alexander asked in disbelief.
“Yep,” Ryker smiled and nodded. “And they said that inside were parts for ‘metal flying things’. Oh, and they said that there were probably fifty metal caribou in that herd. And that wasn’t the last herd of metal caribou they saw, either. They’ve seen two more in the last month.”
“Metal caribou herds with drone parts,” Alexander mused. “Sounds like we’ve found their supply line. Well,” he said, looking at the other two, “we were already going to have to travel out east to avoid Principay on our way to talk with our customers in the Far Point colonies. Looks like we’ve got some caribou hunting to do.”
“Yes, sir,” Captain Washington said. “I think that would give us further proof of Principay’s intentions. Not that we need further proof, but I think it might help Terra Alta come to our side.”
Colonel Alexander was silent for a few moments, and his face took on a somber expression. “I guess we have gone about gathering the colonies to fight Principay, haven’t we? So, yes, I guess we have a side now, don’t we?”
“Sir,” Washington said as she stood straighter. “We didn’t start this fight, but if not us, then who? And if not now, then when?”
“Yes, it seems no one else is leading the charge, so I guess we’ll hav
e to keep doing it,” Alexander said with a note of finality as his face took on a look of grim determination.
* * *
Marik’s Marauders left the Mon-Jikkik Over-Clan in mid-day, when most of the nocturnal yazri were sleeping in hammocks in the great trees of their forest. Stey-Jik and his son Lord Tan-Jik were both there to see off their hunt master and allies, however, as Colonel Alexander had expected. Farewells were short, for neither the yazri nor Colonel Alexander were people of many words. Soon all four survey trucks and the party’s one heavy quadcopter were on their way through the forest trails that led out east into the great steppes.
Lieutenant ‘RePete’ Flanagan was pilot on the quadcopter, though Jack Wolf had respectfully declined to co-pilot for him this time, preferring to keep his feet on the ground after the last time he and RePete went up in a vehicle together. So Jim Ryker took the honors. Besides, though the control systems made it simple and intuitive, Wolfman didn’t know how to pilot a heavy quadcopter, whereas Ryker had plenty of experience with them.
Colonel Alexander rode in the lead, with Wolfman behind him, then Sergeant Thompson, with Captain Washington bringing up the rear. The specialists were tasked to drive each of the vehicles, with the yazri pulling gunner on each rig. They all trusted the yazri to gun, but driving was an art that the yazri tended to do with a bit too much enthusiasm. The four humans preferred a steadier hand.
The Mon-Jikkik’s forest was quiet, almost relaxing for the party as they bumped along over tree roots, low ferns, and the occasional rock on the same trail that the yazri warriors followed as they traveled to their hunting grounds. Only a few kilometers down the trail the hunting path split off, however, delving deeper into the forest, whereas the party split off to the north. They would follow this path until it spilled out into the western reaches of the eastern steppes.
“Colonel,” Ryker’s voice came over the linker, the noise of the quadcopter’s rotors was mostly screened out, but it was still audible. “I don’t think the yazri have cleared this portion of the trail for some time.”
“Why do you say that?” Colonel Alexander replied, breaking out of his thoughts as he bumped along in the lead truck.
“We’re seeing trees down in the big clearing up ahead, lots of claw marks on them, and what looks like an old kill that’s been drug into the trees near the south end of it.”
Colonel Alexander sat up and pushed the conversation to all the other linkers. “Son, say that again for everyone’s benefit will you?”
“I said that it looks like something big has been taking down trees and killing things in the clearing up ahead,” Ryker said.
Specialist Krrrz looked over at Colonel Alexander with his shiny black multi-facet eyes from behind the steering wheel. From up in the gunner’s hatch Gunner the yazri bent down and looked at him as well.
“Ryker, see if you and RePete can get a good look around the clearing. Flush out whatever might be there, if there’s something hiding, will you? I don’t want to take the convoy into some new rapto-rex or titanosaur hunting ground. Meanwhile, we’ll hold tight behind this bend in the hill.”
Specialist Krrrz brought the armored survey truck to a halt on the trail, while behind him the other three trucks all followed suit. On top of the four trucks the yazri gunners all scanned the surrounding forest, swinging their guns slowly left and right as they watched. Several tense moments passed while they waited.
Colonel Alexander had brought up the tactical display on the vehicle’s dashboard, and as Gunner and Bug scanned the forest Alexander watched the heavy quadcopter skim the forest edges. He wished they had thermal imagers on the quadcopter, but it only had a basic sensor suite and control matrix, enough to fly the thing and get where you were going, but not much else.
Eventually, the quadcopter had made its sweep of the clearing, focusing most of their efforts on the watering hole on the southern end.
“I guess whatever it is isn’t here at the moment,” Ryker’s voice came over the linker. “Looks clear to me.”
While Bug and Gunner both sighed in relief, Alexander wasn’t so sure. Perhaps he was a bit paranoid, but that was how a person stayed alive. He would take every precaution before he ever crossed that meadow.
“Ryker,” Alexander countered, “I want you and RePete to make a broader pass around the area. Find us an alternate path if one exists, and if not then make a broader sweep of the area and see if you can find out where whatever it was went.”
Back on the heavy quadcopter, Ryker gave RePete a ‘he sure is paranoid’ look. RePete just nodded knowingly and banked the quadcopter to the right to do a broader sweep of the area in their search for an alternate path.
As the quadcopter buzzed around off in the distance, Colonel Alexander allowed the members of the convoy to dismount and stretch their legs, relieve themselves, or generally just relax a bit—only one from a vehicle at a time, of course. The colonel had just dismounted himself when the sound of a strange bird trilling loudly not far into the forest brought his senses to sharp awareness. Suddenly, a flurry of birds took to flight not a hundred meters south of the convoy, their noisy calls disrupting the rhythm of the forest all around them.
“Mount up!” Alexander called out to the three others who were also outside the vehicles as he drew his Mk-12 blaster pistol. “Time to move, people. We’ve been here too long,” he said over the linker.
Scanning the trees as he backed up to the door of the armored survey truck, Alexander could hear heavy footsteps as he saw a pair of thin young trees deeper in the forest fall over suddenly. Whatever it was had to be heavy and was coming on fast, but the brush was too deep to even get a glimpse of it.
“Incoming!” he yelled as he jumped in the survey truck. “Move out!”
Bug didn’t have to be told twice. Punching the accelerator, the armored truck’s tires spun in the mud, slowly catching and launching the truck down the path. Behind their truck the other three trucks followed in close succession.
“Sir!” Captain Washington’s excited voice came over the linker. “I think we have a rapto-rex on our tail!”
“Drive it like you stole it, Bug!” Alexander’s tense tone mirrored Washington’s. “Get us out of here!”
As the line of trucks broke through the tree line and into the large clearing, not fifty meters behind them a trio of gigantic, mostly four-legged dinosaurs with long, spiny crests down the lengths of their backs came sprinting out of the trees, using their smaller front legs to turn impossibly fast in pursuit of the small convoy. In the rear of the convoy, Sergeant Hobbs was firing his sonic gun.
“Crested megarunners, sir!” Washington’s voice came over the linker.
Alexander grimaced. Crested megarunners were the carnivorous version of the crested megavores. They were fast—so fast that they would likely outrun the convoy. And there were three of them…
“Convoy, go to four vehicles abreast through the clearing!” Alexander ordered. Giving him a worried look, Bug obeyed.
Twisting the steering wheel, the survey truck left the main track, quickly losing ground. Vehicles two and three had also turned off the track, all of their drivers doing their best on the rough ground to give their gunners as stable a platform to fire as possible. Three heavy sonic guns and the second vehicle’s EP-3 Pulse Laser never ceased firing.
In the rear of the convoy, the last truck was far too close to the lead crested megarunner. The massive dinosaur was twice the length of the truck and it was tuned by nature to run faster than the ubiquitous scattersaurs of this continent. Outrunning a wheeled armored truck on open ground was certainly in its portfolio. And besides, truck three had hit some pretty serious bumps and had begun to lag behind…
With one mighty leap into the air, the lead megarunner came slamming down onto the back of truck three. Soar, the yazri gunner, was so surprised by the maneuver that he had no time to fire his heavy sonic gun and was plucked out of the gunner’s hatch and swallowed whole in the blink of an eye. Sergea
nt Thompson and Specialist Alphabet were both thrown about like rag-dolls in their harnesses inside the truck. As the rear axles of the vehicle snapped like twigs, the megarunner’s massive weight pushed the vehicle into the dirt, bringing both itself and the truck to a sudden, jarring stop.
“Keep going!” Alexander called out, trying to put some distance between the other vehicles of the convoy and their attackers. He wouldn’t abandon vehicle three, but it wouldn’t do any good to melee the three massive beasts; that was a battle he knew he couldn’t win.
While the three massive beasts alternately ripped at and clawed their armored prey, the three remaining vehicles of the convoy stopped at the edge of the clearing.
“Ryker! RePete! I need those crested megarunners distracted!” Colonel Alexander ordered. “Try to keep them off of Thompson’s truck. Disrupt them while we try to knock the fight out of them one by one.”
Alexander switched channels. “Focus fire, gunners,” he called to the three trucks. “Hit the small one on our left.”
The distinct whirr of the EP-3 Pulse Laser’s cycling barrels peppering the smallest of the three massive creatures was drowned out in three-second intervals by the distinctly hollow sound of the heavy sonic guns firing blasts of sonic energy in unison, but the range was extreme for the close-ranged sonic guns, so they had no noticeable effect. The pulse laser was having the desired effect, however, as each laser bolt bit into the hide of the massive creature like a hot poker. The megarunner faced the small group of vehicles and bellowed a hissing yowl of a war-cry.
At that moment the heavy quadcopter arrived, and the other two crested megarunners were distracted just long enough by the large, flying object to not notice their pack-mate charge away toward the three vehicles.
“Sonic guns, on my command shoot for the head!” Alexander called over the convoy net.
The two heavy sonic guns both ceased firing, waiting for the command as the smallest of the three megarunners came running toward them. Waiting for what seemed too long, as the megarunner approached to barely thirty meters away Colonel Alexander finally called out “Now!”