Crucible of a Species (29 page)

“That was about the dumbest thing I ever saw, Estes.” Hsu called over towards the marine.

“What the hell was so dumb about it? It’s by itself, has a claw missing and now, thanks to us, it can’t run very well. The poor thing’s just hungry.”

“But it’s a puken dinosaur? Just what were you thinking of?”

“I think you’ve been watching too many vids, Hsu.” Estes shouted as he went back for a second load of MREs. “In any case, it’s gone now and I didn’t give it any service issued food so you can’t report me.”

Hsu replied, “You just fed the thing. Do you really think it won’t be back?

“Look around you. None of these animals are particularly afraid of us. Even the little ones are constantly running through camp. Oh, it’ll definitely be back. It’s found a source of free food. You just watch.”

Estes wasn’t giving up, “Didn’t you ever have a dog, Hsu? It can’t be that much of a problem. I’ve got work to do, stop buggin’ me.”

Hsu watched as Estes returned to his work followed by a group of six small birds, barely knee high that constantly scrambled around the marine’s feet.

No, that’s not right,
she corrected herself. They weren’t ‘birds’ but six dinosaurs with that particular hip structure that the doctor had described to the platoon along with feathered arms with hands at the end of them instead of wings. They didn’t have the raptor’s killing claw like Saren’s friend did but that only meant they were a little less aggressive, a little less likely to try and take a finger with the next handout.

Sara Hsu turned, rolled up and stowed her sack,
Guess we can live with that. If they’re as big as we are then they weigh less than half of our weight. Haven’t see any that a half-way decent marine couldn’t handle. Question is, how long is it gonna be before they want us to go outside the perimeter and bring in meat for the whole expedition? You know it’s gotta come sooner or …

The alarm sentinel went off pulling Hsu from her thoughts. Her gaze switched to the control panel and a chill ran down her spine as she saw the warning of a barrier breach. Down on the other end of the berm, two of the auto-sentinels had shut down. The sounds of Pulsar firing rose above the jungle but Hsu didn’t need to be told what was happening as the ground beneath her feet began trembling.

There was a breakthrough and, with the number of perimeter sightings they’d had in the last few days, it was obvious just what was happening down there. The big ones, the tyrannosaurs were on the plateau and they were out for blood.

One warm morning ninety-nine million years ago,
the sun rose from behind a blood red horizon of billowy stratocumulus clouds. Its rays kissed the wave tips of a calm, cobalt tropical sea and flung themselves onto the cliffs and high coastal plains of a land disturbed by none but the waves and the wind.

The rising sun marked the start of another day in a period called the Mesozoic era. It was a very stable period in the history of the planet and, on this day, life began as it had in these lands for more than one hundred and fifty million years. This was the world of the dinosaurs and the life in it changed, expanded and grew influenced only by the unforgiving competition of Darwinian evolution.

Vast herds of grass-eating hadrosaurs, such as the red-combed, duck-billed hypacrosaurus, covered large sections of the highlands. These herbivores, along with the horned ancestors of triceratops sporting their iconic head frills, were the primary food source for thirty-foot, four-ton predator tyrannosaurs like daspletosaurus and the slightly smaller gorgosaurus dinosaurs that shared the hunting grounds of the plateau. In the same family as modern birds, these carnivores shared many of the modern avian characteristics including a turbocharged blood circulatory system for rapid sustained movement, exceptional hearing and vision capabilities that ranged far beyond those available to humanity. For now, these apex predators ruled the land and it would be several million years into the future before their slightly larger cousin, the Tyrannosaurus Rex, would evolve to become the pinnacle of the species.

Over the previous two million years, a broad river worked to cut a deep valley across this plateau. The river’s path meandered as it cleaved the flatland from west-to-east on its way into the sea. Bit-by-bit the waters slowly wore away the softer red and yellow sediments while flowing around those hard mineral formations more resistant to the abrasive forces of the flow. This process created steep-walled peninsulas that attached to the surrounding highlands while stretching out into the valley like the interlaced fingers of a pair of hands.

One such long, thin finger of land existed near the mouth of the river. The top of this projection had a relatively flat topography that expanded to several hundred yards at its widest point. Open fields of grass covered portions of it bordered by the dense jungle growth of the highlands except for one small band of bare ground located where the peninsula attached to the mainland as it narrowed to form a land bridge.

This bare stretch of ground was unique on the planet. Its distinctiveness arose from the fact that it was not created by wind, water or any other natural cause. Here, for a brief stretch, the jungle environment had been violently uprooted in an unnaturally straight path and within this exposed area, it was barren of any life; plant or animal. This barrier was the product of human intervention where forces foreign to the world of this age had scooped up the surrounding soils and piled them high to form a long earthen barrier between this isolated finger of cretaceous jungle and the mainland. It was a barricade designed to keep the life of the mainland from their eons-old passage of trails onto the plateau.

Other unnatural features topped the barrier and the local residents, had they been reasoning intelligent animals, would have considered them magical. Magical in the sense that, even though the features were not alive, they glowed and pulsed with an ethereal light under the skies of both night and day. The waves of electromagnetic energy emitted by the towers were invisible to the beings who created them but, to the keen-eyed predators of this world, they were very visible and painfully disturbing. The tower emissions were nothing like the crisp light of the day or the soft, reflected light of the moon. They formed a shimmering, hard phenomenon that, for all its intensity, the predators could not clearly see even by those with the sharpest vision. The emanations of this unnatural barrier gnawed at the instincts of the predators while at the same time presenting a deadly fascination and attraction to those species that dominated this era.

These hunters learned that when the barrier defenses flared, they brought death to any trying to cross onto the plateau. Worst of all, unknown to the human visitors, the influence of the pulsing emissions extended over a wide area of the mainland, enticing other predators of all species and sizes to venture far from their normal hunting grounds. Like most predators, the hunting packs were territorial and did not welcome the intrusion of outsiders. The recent appearance of fierce competitors into hunting grounds near the barrier fired the tension and anger of the local packs that were already in a high state of agitation.

Heedless of the rising tension just over the other side of the barrier, a small brown-haired human girl pushed through the cool jungle and bright fields peacefully covered in the warm glow of the early morning. Ship’s services technician, Cyndi Stewart, was on her first deployment and had no experience with life outside of the Argos. This was her first time out in the sunlight of this world, immersed in the rich smells and melodious calls of the surrounding jungle.

Out of uniform, her hair mussed and her eyes dark and weary, Cyndi was suffering from another sleepless evening tormented by her fears. She deeply feared the unnatural damage that humans were inflicting upon both the world she came from and now this world. Since the landing of the Argos, the demons that haunted her had grown to an intolerable level. Her anxieties fed upon themselves, increasing in violence every night with horrible dreams of the destruction of the world of her youth. Cyndi also believed that their actions here in the remote past were destroying their world of the future because of their unnatural presence in this time.

After all, the thought echoed repeatedly through her brain, an act as simple as stepping on a bug or killing an animal can have repercussions that will echo and multiply down the ages in unimaginable ways. No one really seems to care about how much we do to hurt our world.

Cyndi stumbled over a root, almost dropping the box. Waves of anxiety crossed her face as she checked the coded digital lock on the box.
Thank God, it’s still secure. I can’t fail again. This should all have ended when we were orbiting Jupiter and then again when we crashed. The devil himself must be watching over their shoulders, how else could they have survived?

She noisily travelled the jungle path heedless of the world around her. According to the others, the berm should be just ahead. Her heart raced with excitement. This would be the end of it and what an end it would be.

Cyndi was willing to give up everything to save the planet she loved and she now recognized that her previous failures were there for a reason. She was being saved for something more, something greater. Her actions now would do more than save the Earth, she would save all humanity for all time. She would make this sacrifice and prevent the irresponsible blundering of these people from destroying the human race. The invaders of this ancient planet would all die and the Earth and time itself would return to normal.

One last barrier of trees ahead, already she could see the berm. Cyndi came across a set of tracks and stopped, they were animal tracks with only three-toed prints as large as hers. She had heard about these animals from those who worked outside of the Argos but the monsters of those stories never seemed real. These tracks brought out a reality that there were animals out here and they were big. Cyndi shook her head before continuing down the path but she now paid a bit more attention to the surrounding jungle,
I can’t let that stop me. Everyone knows that marines exaggerate. I can’t let something as small as a set of tracks frighten me away from what must be done.

The ground near the berm was soft and a little damp from the morning dew as she climbed the steep wall. Cyndi’s feet sank into the soft loam of the sides making it hard to hang on to the case without jolting it. The AutoSentinel tower hummed quietly as she approached. She could feel the slight tingle of its operation on her skin. They had told her it would be like this and that she shouldn’t worry about it.

Cyndi set the box on the ground and opened it. She had used ten of the injectors stowed inside the box on the food stasis containers so only two remained; they would have to be enough. This time it would work and the dinosaurs would be the ones who would save their world.

It was tempting to place the injector directly onto the gimbaled joint that held the transmitter array but that wasn’t the right spot. She needed to kill the AI processor securely buried in the armored section at the base.

The first injector attached itself onto the tower base when she activated the latching tab. A short sprint along the top of the berm to the next tower. It took her less than a minute to place that injector.

Cyndi had to be very careful with these injectors since they didn’t have the normal failsafe features of commercial ones. The injector would activate the nanobot swarm inside it on her command. Last night she preprogrammed the nanobots to first bore through the casing of the AutoSentinel and then work their way inside the tower searching for any hydrocarbons. The AI processors were hydrocarbon-based circuits and the nanobots would dissolve them on the molecular level before ending their own short lifespan. The AutoSentinels would simply cease to function. Cyndi realized this was a very dangerous procedure since animal matter is also hydrocarbon based and an improper release of the small robots would be fatal.

Take your time and give each a quick examination, Cyndi thought as she forced her hand over the latch tab. They’re touchy but the risk is worth it. When the towers are gone then the dinosaurs will be free to cross the berm and destroy the invaders. They’ll save their own world and the future world of humanity. History will then return to normal and it won’t matter if I’m the only one who knows how close the human race came to not existing.

A simple flick of the timer inside the storage case and the AutoSentinels would cease working in less than a minute. Cyndi felt good as she slid down the side of the berm and began walking back towards the Argos. She wondered whether she should return to the safety of the ship or remain outside and let the end come now. Some people, those who stayed inside the ship, would survive. Would it be better to starve with the survivors or to wait outside and die quickly? Cyndi hadn’t thought about it until now but starvation seemed to be a rather slow and painful way to go.

Cyndi realized she was still carrying the box.
Silly me
, she thought as she threw it off into the weeds. A rustle of branches and a low-toned warble answered from where she had thrown the container. Nervous now, she broke into a jog. Then a sound like no other sound ever heard sent icy shafts of fear across her body. She screamed, “No, not yet,” as she bolted off in panic down the path.

The blow came from in front but the small girl never saw it. It knocked her off her feet to land hard on her backside. She couldn’t breathe, her chest hurt but the pain was nothing compared to the agony that came when the teeth of the raptor closed over her shoulder. The raptor lifted her into the air and shook Cyndi like a rag doll before dropping her to the ground.

A second set of teeth clamped onto her ankle and whipped her around. Barely conscious, battered and shaken, she heard a loud snap. She had just enough time to wonder what had caused it before her head hit the tree.

Cyndi remained conscious, barely. Swimming in a pain-filled haze, she felt a great weight settle onto her chest. A searing hot, ripping of nerves near her hip forced a moment of clarity into Cyndi’s brain. She heard a mumbled, mewing sound; it came from her. A blazing pain spread up across her stomach and the mewing exploded into a manic scream. Adrenalin-pumped panic set in as she realized that she was being flayed alive.

Cyndi tried to flail out and a second set of teeth scraped down her arm, catching onto her wrist. Blackness came for a moment as her head flew back down to bounce against the hard ground. An electric jolt ripped through her nervous system an instant later, savagely thrusting the small girl into a mind-numbing world of pain. Another and then another jolt followed, holding her just on the edge of consciousness.

The pack of four small carnivorous dinosaurs, which a paleontologist would have classified as ten-foot long microvenators, cried out in glee as they danced around their latest catch. The growing screams of the pain-racked human excited them causing their neck feathers to stand out, hard and straight down their backs. The smell of their victim’s hot blood mixed deliciously with an unfamiliar musky scent and it drove their frenzy to unbelievable levels. Instinct held them back from delivering the deathblow. It was much more satisfying to strip the featherless, bare flesh from their prey, allowing the hot, strangely salty blood to pump out in delicious waves and fountains.

The pack members screamed along with their victim as they hopped and danced, heads darting in to take another morsel or a foot slicing cruelly across the victim to force her back down and then spin around for another bite. For Cyndi, the pain seemed to go on for hours but it was less than a minute when the feeding stopped.

One sharp-clawed foot stomped down on the prey by instinct as their four black-feathered heads lifted to look towards the berm. The sound coming from the barrier was unmistakable. More cries filled the jungle, ending in the unique low rumbling sound of the large predator.

The raptors exploded into fear-filled flight when the first of the giant tyrannosaurs leapt up onto the top of the berm. They fled, leaving their human victim barely alive and bleeding out her life in pulsating streams of pungent hot liquid.