“We’re coming up on the Colorado River,” Robo Yamamoto said over the com. “Are you ready to deploy?”
“Aren’t those fighters gonna see me drop?”
“Hopefully not, hold tight,” the robot called, barrel rolling the stargo-jet and causing a flurry of perusing homing missiles to twist until they connected and exploded. Unsighted by the expanding ball of flame, the Nightwraiths were too late to avoid a hail of rockets from the warhorses, which riddled their ranks, blasting a few clean out of the sky, burning shrapnel raining, and causing others to trail dark smoke, causing them to fall back.
“Nice mooooooo,” Reece said, attempting to celebrate the move, but sounding like a startled cow as the stargo-jet jinked wildly downwards and zoomed directly downwards towards a busy highway.
At the last second, with an eighteen-wheeler shedding tire smoke and skidding sideways as its wheels locked up, Reece was pinned to his seat as the jet pulled up before dropping into the red rock ravine of the Colorado River. Dazed and fighting off a wave of nausea, he recognized the bypass bridge spanning the canyon, the Hoover Dam’s sheer concrete wall rising up behind it.
“Ready in three…” the robot said, shooting under the bridge. “Two…” he continued pulling up sharply and climbing vertically against the Dam. “NOW!” He yelled, plunging the nose and releasing the fuel tank.
Reece had no time to engage the thrusters and the craft slammed into the water, the impact so severe the right side of his harness tore from its mooring. Winded and breathless, through falling spray, he watched the stargo-jet zoom through the ravine in the direction of Mead Lake, inches from the river’s surface, carving a gulley in the water as it rocketed. Nightwraiths shot overhead, oblivious to the fuel tank bobbing in the water just below the lip of the Dam.
“WOW! … Uh… fuel,” Reece said, dragging the sliders to open the fuel tank’s valves as the stargo-jet corkscrewed out of the ravine and to the right, evading yet more rocket fire.
Out of sight, orange flashes lit the horizon beyond the mountains, leaving Reece with nothing to do but hope and watch the fuel gauge climb.
“…oming back…” a voice crackled over the com a few minutes later. “…e… eady.”
“Okay, we’ve enough water. I’m ready, coming up.”
Heavy with water, reservoir tanks near full, the fuel tank seemed unwilling to rise out of the river. Reece closed the valves and pumped the throttle, coaxing the craft to breach the surface and slowly hover forwards at a paltry few miles per hour.
“Get a giddy on, you useless donkey!”
Slowly, the craft rose and began increasing speed, cascading water. Reece could see black dots penetrating the late evening sky behind the returning stargo-jet. He dragged the joystick to the side, realizing he needed to be facing the opposite direction in order to dock with the incoming jet. Whilst climbing and turning, to his horror, he saw more approaching warplanes silhouetted on the opposite horizon.
“More bogeys incoming,” Reece yelled over the com. “At three and twelve o’clock. There’s more at seven… now six too, they’re everywhere, at all the o’clocks, they’re coming in at all the o’clocks!”
“Fly towards them,” Robo Yamamoto said. “Don’t ask why, just do it.”
“They’re everywhere!”
“Fly right down the middle of the canyon. I’ve got this.”
As Reece obediently pushed the joystick forwards, he realized his trust for the robot was growing. He realized he was beginning to believe that perhaps there was more of Nori inside the chunk of metal than he’d given credit for. Perhaps even, it was Nori. Perhaps he’d made a horrible judgement call.
The wings of the oncoming Nightwraiths fluttered between light and dark as rockets fired. Through his rear camera, Reece watched Nightwraiths firing from behind also, the stargo-jet speedily filling his monitor as the fuel tank cleared the dam. There was a sudden and almighty thunk, but instead of the shroud of the dock closing around him, Reece saw the lower tract of the Colorado River racing up. He’d bounced off the stargo-jet.
“Whaaaaa…”
“Just a little love tap,” Nori said as the swarms of missiles overhead crossed paths, blasting criss-crossing Nightwraiths from the sky. The stargo-jet streaked through the falling debris. “I’m coming round again. Start climbing. When I say so, yank the joystick back as hard as you can.”
Disorientation flooding his senses and with no choice but to obey, Reece kicked the engine power to maximum. The engines protested as the fuel tank steadily gained altitude. Ahead, squadrons of Nightwraiths were fanning out, banking and turning. A fresh onslaught of rockets twinkled like burning stars in the night sky, and they were growing larger by the second. They were so fast and so big and so many…
“Now, pull up!” Nori cried.
Reece yanked the control column as hard as he could. The fuel tank reared up like a trusty steed at a gunfight. There was a deafening crack of metal on metal and the world beyond the windows went dark. Reece was contemplating whether or not he was dead when he heard the thunderous roar of the stargo-jet’s main thrusters engage. His seat cushioning practically swallowed him up as they rocketed towards the heavens, punching a hole in the atmosphere. Through shaking vision, in the rear monitor, he saw the Hoover Dam and the remaining Nightwraiths shrinking to nothing. Soon, sunlight streamed from behind the blue marble of Earth, ushering in the second dawn of that day, a new dawn, a dawn sparkling with fresh hope. They’d done it. Within a few hours Becca would be safe and heading home. They’d pulled off the impossible.
The Discovery
W hen Becca first stumbled upon the file in a sub directory, whilst tinkering with the starcom computer system, she’d stepped away from the console to take in the magnitude of the discovery. It was incredible. It felt as though she’d discovered fire. It changed everything. Now, as she sat at the computer, deciding how best to manage the tough choices ahead, she chewed her lip thoughtfully. She’d come a long way, but was fast running out of options.
She was pondering whether to move the ten of spades below the jack of diamonds, or move the five of hearts below the six of spades. If she chose the former, she’d free a new slot which she could fill with the king of clubs and the cards cascading from it, thus releasing a fresh card from her most crowded position. It seemed the smartest thing to do, but it was impossible to be sure. Dead ends lurked down even the most bountiful looking avenues.
“Yeah, go for it,” she said. “What the hell, do it.”
During her first games of Solitaire she’d cheated here and there, reversed the cards to engineer a win, but she wouldn’t allow herself to do that anymore. She now played the game like it was life, no second chances, live or die by the choices you made. She’d created real life consequences for her failures, as she felt it helped her stay focussed and moved her mind away from despairing lethargy. Four losses in a row meant missing out on a meal or a shower, even after a rainstorm when she knew the water storage tanks would be brimming over. Six losses earned her a night sleeping on the hard concrete floor. That had only happened once, which was inevitable considering the amount of games she’d played over the long weeks of imprisonment.
It was fair to say she was playing the game of her life, and this was the most important round so far. A loss would mean ten losses in a row. If she couldn’t manifest a win from this game, her punishment would be to open the door to the starcom facility, walk outside and locate the lingering cephalopod. Only after a visual confirmation of its position was she allowed to sprint for the safety of the bunker. The punishment wasn’t completely suicidal. It would enable her to relay valuable information to modern-day Earth that her rescuers would be able to use.
She knew the creature was still out there. She heard it scuttling across the structure from time to time, its muscular tentacles thumping the concrete. She was becoming accustomed to the habits of the resident monster, which came and went every few days, which she guessed was because it had multiple fee
ding grounds. She’d also learned it wasn’t an active predator by nature. It picked off unsuspecting animals opportunistically, if they were unfortunate enough to be passing. Primarily, however, it liked to hunt by pretending to be injured prey. It was unnervingly adept at mimicking the herbivorous stegosaurus and draconyx. Its faux moans of distress regularly summoned carnivorous beasts lusting for blood.
Some of the resulting battles had raged for hours. From the confines of the starcom bunker, with its frosted letterbox windows high on the walls, which were almost impossible to see through, she could only imagine the damage the great creatures were inflicting on each other, of the gouging scratches and puncturing bite wounds. Whilst the trees shook and the ground quaked, and the monsters snarled, roared and hissed, she imagined it was King Kong and Godzilla locked in mortal combat. In her mind only one would survive to limp away, until the sequel obviously, where the loser would miraculously come back to life because of some misdirection or leap of logic on behalf of the writer. She knew the sequel was coming too, it was only a matter of time.
On one occasion she’d recognized the roar of an allosaurus, the largest and most powerful carnivore roaming the island. She’d been convinced the cephalopod had been killed in the ensuing fight. In the days following, her hope had become conviction. But her convictions were dashed when, days later, she’d heard the cephalopod mimicking the dying cries of a stegosaurus once again. The titan had survived. Amazingly, it had bested the mighty allosaurus. Even if a rescue mission successfully arrived, getting the upper hand on the super-predator outside would be a tall task.
The chair beside Becca scraped across the floor and she recoiled in shock, ripped at once from her thoughts. Aleksi Ponomarenko sat at the console beside her, his breaths rasping, the stench coming from his head wound overwhelmingly rancid.
After Becca had discovered the dying man at the starcom facility, with synthetic skin spray covering a section of skull and an eye that had been ripped off in a cephalopod attack, she’d had little in the way of medical supplies to deal with the horrific injury. In order to stave off gangrene and save the man’s life, she’d used a severed section of rotting cephalopod tentacle to attract flies, which in turn had bred maggots. She’d then introduced the maggots into Aleksi’s wound, to eat the dead flesh, thus keeping it clear from infection. It was an ancient, but effective remedy still used in hospitals across the world on modern Earth. That didn’t, however, make the side effects any less disturbing.
Now, as Aleksi took a seat beside her and woke the second monitor, she could see the maggots squirming across his brain below a film of synthetic skin, hunting and devouring necrotic tissue. He twitched and babbled randomly as they moved, making him resemble a malfunctioning android from a horror film. Not much of what he said made sense anymore.
After being imprisoned with the man for over a month, Becca was increasingly convinced he’d committed multiple murders. At night, in his sleep as the maggots writhed across his brainpan, he spoke of terrible things, much of it jumbled and incoherent, but some of it clear as day. It sounded like he was reliving conversations he’d had with people before they’d died, before he killed them. The conversations were often accompanied by delighted laughter. It sounded like he was relishing the unspeakable memories and it frightened her to the core.
The Jekyll to Aleksi’s Hyde came out in the day, where he slunk in the shadows, moping, cowering and begging for help, which Becca duly provided. Her moral compass wouldn’t allow her to deny the wretched man aid, even if he was more of a monster than the cephalopod outside. At least the thing outside killed out of necessity. Becca left her computer and retreated to the storeroom to rustle up an afternoon snack. The sounds of food preparation helped mask one of Aleksi’s more disturbing routines, which she knew was about to follow.
“I don’t understand you. Who are you, what do you want?” Aleksi yelled at the computer.
Becca continued to prepare her meal as noisily as possible. For some reason, every time there was a thunderstorm, Aleksi liked to open the starcom communication system and listen to the incoming static, which he seemed convinced was talking to him. She found it best to be as far away from the man as possible whilst he ranted at the bouncing equalizers on the computer screen, and raved at the crackling white noise coming through the speakers. No matter how hard she tried, it was nigh on impossible escaping earshot of the man within the boundaries of their cramped concrete world.
“Who are you?” Aleksi screamed. She heard him stand up and bang his chair repeatedly on the floor. “You need to speak up. I don’t understand what you’re saying! Why won’t you speak up?”
For the next ten minutes, whilst the man screamed, Becca busied herself with crunching her cereal loudly and concentrating on the thunder outside. The storm was definitely coming closer. The rain lashing the structure was growing stronger, which was excellent as it helped drown out the maniac in the adjacent room. She looked down at her bowl and grimaced.
“So much for long life milk,” she groaned. “They should’a called it shorten your life milk.”
Upon hearing something strange, Becca glanced towards the kettle, wondering how it was whistling so loudly when she hadn’t turned it on. Perhaps she’d hit the switch accidentally whilst preparing her meal. The whistling sound was still swelling, but no steam was coming from the kettle’s spout. Gripped with curiosity, she walked over. The entire compound suddenly began shaking, packages and boxes jostling on the shelves around her, falling to the floor.
“Please…” she said, dropping her plastic bowl, cereal and milk flying everywhere. “Please be what I think you are.”
Every nerve in her body blazed, like fire tearing across gasoline. She was sure she recognized the sound. She was positive she was hearing the whine of the stargo-jet’s engines as it hovered over the facility. Electric hope consumed her upon hearing the metal of the landing pad compressing.
“They’re… they’re here,” she said, staggering into the main room where Aleksi was seated, trembling so hard her unsteady legs felt they were about to give out. “They’re… Oh, God, please be real…”
She was terrified it was her imagination playing tricks on her again, that the dark stranger was taunting her once more.
“What do you want?” Aleksi screamed at his monitor. “Are you coming for us, have you finally come to deliver judgement? I hear you, take me, take me up and make me whole!”
Tears welled as Becca heard boots clomping the gantry leading from the landing platform. They continued down the stairwell on the side of the structure. She actually pinched herself to check she wasn’t dreaming. She bit the side of her palm so hard tooth marks remained in her skin. She doubted she’d be able to handle waking from a dream this real, where salvation seemed so close. She knew it would break her.
CLANG – CLANG – CLANG
Becca stared at the main door, tears rolling down her cheeks. She couldn’t move.
CLANG – CLANG – CLANG - CLANG
“No,” Aleksi whimpered, dashing into the sleeping quarters, the springs on his bed crunching as he buried himself in his quilt. “I’m not ready, I’ve changed mind. Leave me alone.”
Slowly, Becca edged to the door and stared at the circular valve handle.
“Wh… who is it?”
“Delivery for Miss Beaton,” came a voice sounding like all the Christmases, birthdays and holidays of childhood rolled into one.
“R… Reece… Is that you, is this real?” She said, clenching her hands to steady herself, digging her fingernails into her palms. “Please be real. Is that really you?”
“It’s me, hon,” came the muffled response. “Don’t suppose you have any room at the inn for some weary travellers?”
Becca feverishly span the handle and threw open the door, and there, becoming drenched by pouring rain, blades of lightning carving the sky, was the smiling face of the most wonderful man she’d ever known. Becca shakily drew a hand to her mouth, feeling her short, shoc
ked breaths against her fingers. She couldn’t believe what she was seeing.
“Have the warhorses form a perimeter,” a wiry white-haired man behind Reece said. On his command a squad of marines and four ten foot tall armored robots spread out. A tall dark gray humanoid robot beside the white-haired man seemed to be staring at Becca inquisitively, its head cocked slightly, lights on its mouthpart pulsing. “Use infrared and ultraviolet scanning. If anything moves, put it to sleep.”
“Still not getting anything, Commander. There’s nothing out here apart from bones and insects.”
“What d’you think made those bones, genius? There’s definitely something out there,” one of the combat personnel replied.
“I dunno, they could’a got old or sick. That happens. Animals do die, even dinosaurs.”
“All fifty of them? Even that one with its stomach eaten out? That’s one heck of a stomach ache.”
“Whatever, man.”
“All this way and the first dino we come across is dead. That’s just sad,” one of the female marines said.
“We’ve scanned from the jet and with the horses, Commander,” a large muscular chimed. “If that cephalopod was here it’s moved on. We could’a scared it off.”
“Check the perimeter anyway,” the white-haired man ordered, lightning tearing across the sky, rain pouring. “When you’ve finished, get inside, put your feet up, eat some chow and lick your wounds. Congratulations ladies and gentlemen, you have achieved. Welcome to Jurassic Earth, slugs. Tomorrow after everyone’s rested, we’ll dust off and head for some high ground where it’s safer, the plateau or maybe a nearby island that’s not quite so destroyed, let you have a quick look around as promised.”
“Thank you,” Becca stammered, looking around. “Thank you for coming back. Is that… really you,” she said, reaching out and holding a hand to Reece’s cheek. “I can’t… I can’t believe you’re real…”
Jurassic Earth Trilogy Box Set Page 36
