As Patent and the rest of his team had hoped, the younger ones were even more amenable to embracing the new technologies and toys Alpha Unit had at their disposal. The young Eresdrans were naturals in the air and seemed to share an almost psychic link with one another as they maneuvered the smaller jet-fighter-like craft that Alpha Unit had supplied them. Alpha Unit’s nano-printers that were spitting out the jet fighters were also tweaking their designs to accommodate to a world where innumerable new factors came into play, differences in the planet’s specific gravity, and so on, not to mention the size of the Nouveau-Vikings themselves.
The younger Eresdrans were eager to employ their new toys for the hunt, since they’d come back empty-handed, and warriors on whom the entire tribe’s existence depended did not like to return home without their bounty of food. Their hope was to use the jet fighters Alpha Unit had supplied them to actually score some kills to feed their people meat; Eresdrans didn’t do well on a vegetarian diet. Most of the fruits and plants on the planet were great for getting high and blowing off steam. But addiction to them, which came with overuse, just made them easier prey for the things they were hunting. The plants, it would appear, had evolved to foster the success of the larger predators, and were only too happy to enfeeble the Eresdrans if they were foolish enough to embrace the vegetarian lifestyle.
The hunt had migrated to the jungles of Eresdra, and was no longer contained in or focused on the desert area where Omega Force had mixed things up with the elders earlier.
Just as well, Patent thought. With this many warriors in the air at once and this many jet fighters, they’d be scrambling to avoid crashing into one another in the smaller patch of desert on this largely forested world that reminded him of the Pacific Northwest running from California to Washington in winter.
Everyone on Eresdra, the Nouveau Vikings included, now sported smart contacts which allowed everything the locals and anyone on Alpha Unit and Omega Force was experiencing to be sucked into a collective pool of intel. That intel could then be assessed and analyzed by other team members and by portable AIs—supersentiences in suitcases that could be carried into the field. So Patent had taken in the highlights of the wrestling match between Crumley and Asger. It bothered Patent he couldn’t be on location to mix it up with Asger himself. Greco-Roman-style wrestling was a favorite sport of his. But the Alpha Unit cadets needed his attention; sacrifices had to be made, explaining why his current status could be described as “No Joy.”
Continuing to observe the goings on overhead, Patent noted that several of the teens had remained committed to the dragons despite the offering of jet fighters, but the beasts didn’t accommodate to just any rider; the youths had to share genetic information with the dragons they were keyed to that the dragons could smell. What was worse, there weren’t enough of the dragons to accommodate all of the youth. Ariel was working on the genetic tweaks to help more of the dragons accept more of the Eresdrans as riders. Last but not least, she was working on a way of making more of the dragons fertile so the future would bode well for accommodating more would-be dragon riders. Both technologies would be left behind when Patent and his people left, along with a third technology for summoning dragons yet to arise from their slumber beneath the Earth, not sensing the danger their riders were in because they or their descendants had been dispatched eons ago. None of those were the side projects that occupied Ariel now.
Patent was just grateful to have her back. After playing her part in gaining them entry to the space ship that had passed through the portal, fondly referred to as “the clam,” the Nautilus had returned her to Patent. Satellite had remained aboard the Nautilus to see if he could coax Starhawk out of his current catatonic state.
Patent approached Ariel to get a take on her progress. “How are we doing?” She looked up from her station of monitors where she was studying the results of the latest cultural exchange between the Eresdrans and Alpha Unit only briefly before returning her eyes to the screens.
“Shit!” Ariel exclaimed. “I really had no idea what these people were up against. Hunter gatherers, yes. I got that they had denigrated to a simpler way of life, an almost enviable one from our perspective. But I just had no idea.”
Patent’s attention migrated from the action going on in the sky back to the monitors on Ariel’s outburst.
One look at the monitors and Patent took the cigar out of his mouth. The smoke pouring out of his lungs might have cut the visual acuity of his eyes some, compromising his ability to resolve what was on the monitors, but not enough to hide the truth. Ariel was right; a day in the life of an Eresdran was no less formidable than a day in the life of an Omega Force veteran.
Up until now, Patent had been studying only the take-offs and landings from the makeshift airport that Alpha Unit had whipped together to accommodate dragons and jetfighters alike. That was exciting enough to behold. It was a good thing he’d given himself a chance to acclimate to the real action to follow.
Honestly, the last time Patent saw footage like he was observing on Ariel’s monitors he was watching Godzilla Versus Mothra Japanese flicks on the VSC—the Vintage Sci-Fi Channel. The old, low-budget movies were always worth a few laughs. The action sequences on the monitors though were making his belly ache for an entirely different reason.
Inside the jet fighters Alpha Unit had provided them, the young Eresdrans buzzed the Godzilla-looking one—minus the tail and plus a tongue that flicked like a fly catcher at meddlesome gnats; no, Patent wasn’t exaggerating the scale of the monster to his humanoid attackers—at least not by much. That tongue it wielded had already dispatched two of the very nimble jet-fighters. Possibly encased within the fuselages of those jets, the pilots would go down the monster’s gullet like poorly designed pills that just refused to dissolve in the GI tract, meaning they could be cut out later—providing the rest of the team could take down this beast. It was that or hope the pilots could blast their way out from inside the creatures using the jets’ afterburners. On the plus side, Patent couldn’t see having to hunt one of these beasts more than once a year. It would have supplied even a tribe of ravenous Nouveau Vikings enough food to last at least that long, perhaps with leftovers to trade with neighboring tribes.
The Mothra-looking one—every bit the flying giant insect, but designed more like a dragonfly—fired lasers out its eyes with targeted precision that had no trouble tracking the jet fighters on all sides, owing to those bulbous eyes that could see for nearly 360 degrees. There were few blind spots to capitalize upon. The jet fighters’ onboard AIs would have highlighted those windows of opportunity for the pilots, but so far, no one had been able to turn them to their advantage. Patent watched helplessly as one jet fighter after another went up in flames from the dragonfly’s targeted laser hits.
Prior to fighting off the encroaching “gnats,” “Mothra” had been engaged in pollinating one of the local varieties of flower. The lasers—which could be directed out any of the planes on the multifocal eyes that allowed the giant dragonflies to see as if through the window panes of a geodesic dome—as if Bucky Fuller had designed the eyes—were used to get the flowers to give up their pollen. Apparently the flowers only bloomed in the heat of the equatorial zone. This time of year, the warmth migrating further north, “Mothra” had been coaxed by the scent of the migrating flowers.
It apparently was adapted to feed on them year-round even if the flowers needed coaxing to give up their seeds in Spring and Winter.
The giant dragonfly handled like a helicopter in the air, far less maneuverable than the jetfighters. But it could target numerous of them at once, and had no trouble keeping up with the rapidly darting planes. The fighter jets could handle the assault to their hulls, providing they ducked out of the path of the death rays before they cooked the passengers inside. The Eresdran teens were managing that for the most part, despite the insect’s phenomenal tracking ability. It flew flat and level like a bomber whose bombs didn’t empty out its “belly” but fell
from above in the form of pulsed laser blasts targeted at its prey.
The relative-to-humans teens and twenty-somethings flying the dragons were doing even worse against “Mothra” and Tailless “Godzilla.” The creatures had evolved to become immune to the dragons’ fiery breaths and incendiary bombs—dropped in the form of so many infertile eggs.
Tailless Godzilla—TG for short—sported a hide that was equally impenetrable to the dragons’ talons and beaks. They could do little but hope to blind it, but the creature had learned to fight with its eyes closed for the most part to avoid getting its eyeballs parboiled.
That left the dragon riders with little choice but to jump off their mounts onto M—short for “Mothra”—or TG, hoping to employ their small size to their advantage; they would be hard to detect on the surface of either creature.
These younger Eresdrans had nothing like the weapons of the older ones, however, which must have only been employable by those with purer bloodlines dating back to their ancestors and the ancient times those weapons were first utilized. Like with the dragons that only accepted riders with the right genes which they could smell, the wielders of the weapons likely needed a genetic fingerprint match to get the weapons to fire. That left the younger ones to make do with cruder weapons.
Several of the teens that had leaped from their dragons—which had since ascended out of range of both TG and M—rappelled down TG on lines that they hooked to the creature’s many spiky scales.
Each time the youths got a few yards further down TG on their rappelling lines, they drove in a spike between the scales, causing the beast to cry out. Precision laser fire from M could then scald its tongue, harrying it further—provided the youth scrambling up M’s tail, onto which he had jumped, could coordinate his attack effectively enough to confuse M as to who M’s true enemy actually was.
***
Monad was doing all he could to hold on to the tail of the dragonfly. The insect flicked its rear extremity with the force of an Eresdran catapult. He had only managed to hang on by digging in under the scales and by taking advantage of the locking mechanism in his body suit; his muscles alone would never have been enough to maintain his grip. The body suit’s artificial joints, with a flick of his wrists, locked into place. Beyond that, the suit had one far greater advantage. It was made of the same stuff as the dragonfly’s wings, which meant the creature’s laser-targeting couldn’t fry him; but it could blind him if he didn’t react fast enough.
The trick now was to advance up the tail and along the thorax to situate himself at the neck of the dragonfly, so he could grab hold of that head and force it in the direction he wanted to misdirect the dragonfly’s laser targeting; or more to the point, redirect it toward TG. All the effort would be for naught if the other team members didn’t get TG to open his mouth or his eyes in time for the lasers to do any good; TG’s every other body part was immune to the lasers.
This was really a five man operation to mount the dragonfly: two riders to secure the tail with lines to keep it from flicking so wildly; another two with shields to keep the dragonfly’s laser targeting from killing its riders. But Monad was flying solo today; they were just short on the necessary manpower. They’d lost most of their dragon riders on their last hunt, and it would take too long to train new ones. And there was no point risking lives needlessly just to prove how brave Eresdrans were; this was one situation in which fearlessness was actually a relatively small part of the equation.
The dragonfly’s whipping motion, which could not be restrained by his absent teammates, had broken Monad’s spine. It was all Monad could do to continue to crawl forward with the strength in his arms, having lost the use of his legs.
He’d finally advanced to the giant insect’s thorax, where his old challenges left him and he found himself confronted with entirely new ones. The vibration coming from the wings attached at this region were threatening the vertebrae in his neck; they would turn them to powder in less than a minute. He’d watched it happen to another comrade many moons ago. Once those vertebrae were shattered, the survivor, if you could still refer to him as such, would be completely paralyzed. Their people would then feed him to one of the dragonfly’s caterpillars, where he’d be digested slowly, over a period of months; it was a form of exquisitely agonizing torture. Without facing the greatest challenge on Eresdra and surviving it, there was no chance of entering the seventh heaven, the realm reserved for his kind; the greatest, most fearless of all warriors who put their skills in service forever of the greatest good. He looked forward to the honor, if it came to that, but not to failing at his mission. The survival of the rest of his tribe relied on him succeeding in reaching the neck of this dragonfly.
He was finally there, close enough now to control the head of the dragonfly. Still, it was over for him, for his cervical vertebrae were shattered. He could no longer move. It didn’t matter; he had one last trick up his sleeve. Those who had built this suit harkened back to another age. His translucent coverall possessed the technology to read his mind if he could no longer direct it with his body, and respond accordingly. And so it was that he was now able to grab hold of the head, and again, with the suit’s strength, force it in time to target the sensitive regions of TG. All he had to do now was wait for the opportunity to fire, secure in the talents of his teammates. Together they would bring down TG, and then the last thing Monad would be called upon to do would be to rip off the head of the dragonfly. Right before doing that he’d make sure to not blink in time, allowing the creature to blind him. It was said with the loss of his sight, his other senses would be heightened, and so his torture. Luckily for him, the dragonfly had already laid its eggs, so there was no worry about what fate would befall him upon the completion of this mission.
***
So far, Patent noted, the Eresdran youths were one for five in getting TG to cry out and expose his tongue to M’s perfectly timed and aimed laser fire. “What the hell is going on with that dragonfly rider?” Patent found himself mumbling. Possibly he was new at his job.
With enough agony to override good sense, the Eresdrans might get TG to open its eyes to find out how better to direct its animosity at its attackers. TG could then hope to punch or kick the planes out of the sky.
Several of the jet fighters were now flying about TG’s feet with grappling hooks and lines, hoping to trip it up and get it to bash its head against the boulders below that littered the forest floor. Getting its head bashed in might also get TG to think foggily enough to open his eyes where he’d get into even more trouble. Or, in a panic to keep from falling on the wrong thing, might open his eyes long enough to take a tree like a splinter to an eye.
It was a dangerous game they were playing. Several of the Eresdrans manning the fighter jets attempting to get the drag lines around TG’s feet had for all their good efforts managed only to get smashed into the ground under the monster’s stomping feet. Several other craft saw their lines tear as TG kicked them into the nearest boulders hard enough to explode the craft.
***
Vigdis loved fighting alongside Turid; it had been that way since they were kids. It was always assumed they’d be mated for life, if only because they didn’t look quite like the other Eresdrans. Their features were relatively softened, by comparison, both possessing far less prominent skeletal ridges over their eyes. In all likelihood, no one else would have them. Such traits were associated with inferior warriors.
Turid shouted, “That ought to do it!” He was communicating via the speaker phone in his helmet at the other pilots he was coordinating his attack with on the feet of TG. “Three times around with the ropes should be more than enough if what those Earthlings said about the strength of these strands is true.”
“That’s three!” Vigdis hollered excitedly back at him from the other craft’s cockpit, as she brought the third line around and sunk the hook under one of TG’s scales. This creature had to predate the dragons, she thought, before they learned to fly.
It was the last thought she ever had. Both she and Turid went flying against the side of the hill after one good kick from TG tore through the lines ensnaring both legs and sent the two jet fighters spiraling out of control.
***
Patent winced at the sight of the exploding jets. Had those riders been on the dragons, the dragons might have been able to withstand the bashing, and with their wings enfolded about the riders, protected them as well. Score one for ancient, tried and true methods; zero for modern day fighting techniques. Those deaths were now on Alpha Unit’s shoulders, and more specifically, his.
At this rate, sustained efforts on the part of the Eresdrans to bring down their prey were going to lead to a far higher death count in the name of providing supper. But as with the Native Americans of Earth, the Eresdrans did not just hunt for meat. The hides of both creatures had been employed as shields—taken from the scales of the last TG they’d hunted. The hairy thorax of M had been employed as body armor; an enemy could be impaled on the dagger-like hairs long enough to finish killing him with adjunct weapons. Even the glassy wings of the last M the tribe had encountered had been taken apart to forge the flying-squirrel suits modern day parachutists on Earth used to increase the Eresdran youths’ hang time. For the ones that lost their grip on their grappling lines, those under-arm and between-leg flaps allowed them to skirt down the side of TG, or catch a swell of breeze back up to where they could reattach themselves to one of the grappling lines.
Other wing components from prior engagements had been fashioned into visors on helmets that could diffract the laser blasts of M without blinding the Eresdrans.
Patent was hoping someone would score a win with one of the jet fighters before one of the dragon riders managed a kill so he could get more of the youth to embrace the alien technology they’d been gifted. But their tribal lore carried warnings of old-world tech that dated back millennia; warnings that pertained to the death-dealing capacity of such tech and how easily it could be turned back on those using such devices. So even if the jet fighters proved more effective at bringing down M and TG, Patent wondered if he’d make a dent today in their social programming. He had been lucky enough to find a few more open-minded sorts among their number than he expected to find.
The Star Gate Page 26
