“Maybe it was a trick of the light, something natural, perhaps erosion from meltwater coming off the mountains,” Scarlet offered. “It could still be natural what you saw.”
“A waterfall broadcasting a signal?” Hadley said, shooting the idea down. “I don’t think so.”
“Trust me, it wasn’t meltwater,” Reece said. “At least I don’t think it was.”
“Is the signal any clearer now we’re on the ground?” Schweighofer asked. “Can you make out what it’s saying?”
“No,” Nori replied. “It’s intermittent and very weak, barely decipherable. In fact, it’s weaker here than it was from orbit.”
“If it’s coming from here, shouldn’t it be stronger now we’re close by?”
“Conventional wisdom says yes, but I think conventional wisdom may not apply in this case. This is likely something outside human knowledge, something beyond our technology.”
“Man, this sounds like we’re getting ourselves into something bad,” Razak said. “I feel bad vibes, man. Bad, creepy vibes.”
“Whoever built whatever’s out there is almost certainly long dead,” Nori reassured. “I wouldn’t worry about ending up face to face with anything alive.”
“That doesn’t help,” Razak said. “That just makes it more creepy. Dead is always bad.”
Second by second, inch by inch, Becca and the group shuffled ever closer to the screens as the drones advanced on the ridge, around which lay the potentially Earth-shattering revelation. Until she saw if for herself, Becca was finding it impossible to believe there wasn’t a rational explanation for what Reece and Nori had observed. Just like Scarlet, she was trying to come up with rational explanations for the signal.
Perhaps it was caused by insects, from high frequency wing vibrations, or a reflection of a signal from modern Earth that had strayed through the star portal and was being boosted and reflected by the mountains’ glacial geometry. Maybe it was an interaction between wind and icicles, or maybe it was a combination of all these things and Scarlet was spot on. It was possible Reece and Nori had simply observed a trick of the light. Mars conspiracy theorists were always raving about light falling across strange, yet wholly natural formations on the red planet as proof of intelligent design.
It seemed every five minutes some nut was jumping up and down about an odd shaped rock they’d discovered in the NASA archives, which they were convinced was irrefutable evidence of ancient aliens. Their go-to mantra to validate their claim was invariably that straight lines never occurred naturally in nature, which was of course nonsense. You only needed to look at the nearest tree trunk to disprove that, or the stem of a flower, or any number of rocks, like slate, or the interlocking hexagonal basalt columns comprising the Giant’s Causeway in Northern Ireland, or the bones in the limbs of pretty much every mammal that walks the planet.
Until you hit the cellular or atomic level, the macro world was abundant with naturally occurring straight lines. Straight lines weren’t evidence of anything other than pure chance, chaos, random ordering, geological phenomena or biological design evolved according to requirements necessary to exist within a given environment. Still, the broadcast signal was compelling enough that she wasn’t ready to disbelieve just yet.
A dusting of gravel tumbled across the ice ahead of the drones. The images on the screens slewed as the small aircraft hunted for the source of the disturbance.
“Dinosaurs!” Scarlet exclaimed, bouncing on the spot and pointing at the screens. “No way, look, real life dinosaurs, just like the movies!”
Excited gasps and mutterings moved through the huddle of onlookers.
“This is so surreal,” Hadley whispered. “We’re actually on a fricking planet back in time full of dinosaurs aren’t we? No, not a planet, our planet, Earth… Jurassic fricking Earth… I can’t... it’s just… this is actually happening isn’t it?”
“Almost everyone says the exact same thing when they see their first dinosaurs,” Reece said. “It’s quite a thing to wrap your head around.”
“This sure ain’t no dream,” Molotov said. “This is definitely happening. I’m no dino scientist, but those things definitely look like they qualify.”
“Good news is they look a lot smaller than those cephalopods we just fought,” Schweighofer said. “Less limbs and smaller. That’s always a bonus.”
“Hey there,” Scarlet said, admiringly. “Look, they’re coming down to see what’s up.”
“Easy, Scarlet,” Commander Blake urged in a low voice. “These are not pets. They’ll strip your arms to the bone and eat your face given half the chance. You are food. Do not become complacent, people. Our mission is to gather intel, not to make friends with the wildlife.”
“Nice, Commander,” Fang said. “Adding to the magic of the moment as always.”
“Zip it, Fang,” the Commander growled. “This is a combat zone, not a petting zoo. As painful as you all make it, my job is getting you home in one piece. Thus far I have failed. I will not fail again. I don’t care if that triggers your delicate sensibilities.”
“He’s right,” Reece said. “Don’t mistake these things as being cute. In my experience almost every dinosaur we’ve encountered is dangerous, smart and strong as hell. Even the herbivores have mean tempers. It’s not common, but they’ll eat meat too if it’s the only thing going. I say we give everything that breathes down here a wide berth.”
Becca remained focussed on the screens. She was looking at images of a sheer rock-face, patchy with grass and fissures packed with wind blasted snow. A group of dinosaurs were hopping between impossibly skinny crags and ledges. It was difficult to make out much detail on the silhouettes cast against the contrasting sunset sky, but the animals reminded Becca of velociraptors, not the ones from the movies, the big ones, but their real-world counterparts, about knee high.
As she watched, she marvelled at the animals’ ability to descend the rock wall. It reminded her of a documentary she’d seen on ibex goats that grazed on a near vertical dam in Italy. The goats’ hooves were coated in an organic compound similar to rubber, which enabled them to grip the leanest of lumps and bumps on the steepest of inclines. As the dinosaurs on the screens drew closer, and the glare of the sky became less of a hindrance, Becca’s skin electrified and she inhaled sharply.
“Look, f… feathers!” She said. She grabbed Reece’s arm and squeezed. “They’ve got feathers running down their spines! We’ve just found feathered land-based dinosaurs. Tell me you’re seeing this?”
“And look how they’re moving. That’s a straight up wall. How’s that even possible?” Reece said, tilting his head to the screens. “They look like some kind of Ornithopod. See those pompadour crests?”
“But feathers!” Becca pressed. “It so obvious I can’t believe we never put two and two together. The dinosaurs on the Jura island didn’t have feathers because the climate was warm. They didn’t need them. It’s so obvious, don’t you see? Here it’s cold. Here feathers are useful. These animals are using them like fur, to trap warm air close to their bodies. They’re using them for insulation, not flight. It’s… so obvious now I see it. How’d we never think of this before?”
“That actually kinda makes sense,” Reece said.
“More than sense. Look for yourself. Why else would evolution provide something that cumbersome with feathers in a place like this? They’re clearly not for flight, right?”
“Then maybe,” Reece continued thoughtfully, “if feathers were evolution’s first attempt at winter coats, which it’ll eventually decide is better served by fur, then maybe feathers were an evolutionary wrong turn. Perhaps feathers evolved here in the cold, but as they spread across the planet, evolution figured they were more useful for flight. I mean, pterodactyls and pterosaurs use skin, membranes to fly. Skin is heavy. Feathers are light as… well, a feather…”
“Yes, yes, that’s it!” Becca said, her face glowing with enthusiasm. “D’you know what it does to me when you get all
dinosaury like this?”
“Oh, no, you’re not gonna be one of those weird couples are you?” Hadley moaned.
“I hope so,” Becca said, threading her fingers through Reece’s. “I seriously hope so. Weird and wonderful together forever.”
“I’m with her,” Reece said, smiling and squeezing her hand. “I’m fine with weird, so long as it’s with her. I’m old and ugly enough that I don’t care what anyone thinks anymore. I’m a happy man.”
“Bleeeeuuuch…” Fang belched in disgust, sticking out her tongue and shuddering. “Couples are the worst.”
The group laughed.
“We should be extra cautious of those dinosaurs,” Nori said, cutting through the laughter. “They’re displaying aposematic coloration across their tails and flanks. Red, yellow and black. That’s normally a warning. They could be venomous.”
“Venomous?” Hadley said.
“That’s my guess,” Nori replied. “You’ve seen brightly colored sea snakes or those high-vis rainforest frogs. This could be the same thing. We should exercise extreme caution. We don’t have the means to synthesize an antivenom if one of these things bites one of you.”
“Can’t they just be like parrots, giant Jurassic parrots?” Hadley countered. “Parrots are colorful and they’re not venomous.”
“Maybe,” Nori conceded, “but caution is always the best policy. Let’s not tangle to test the theory.”
“Back at home,” Razak said, “vipers used to make their dens in the rocks outside our village. As a kid, me and my friends got beatings on more than one occasion for playing in the foothills. There were vipers everywhere, mean ones. Stray dogs got taken all the time. I’m with Nori. Let’s not mess.”
“Fortunately, we are not stray dogs,” Commander Blake said. “If one of those vipers comes near, you put it to sleep. We have the technology and firepower to handle th…”
Suddenly one of the dinosaurs launched from the rock-face, claws splayed, and chomped down on a drone. The feed filled with flashing razor teeth before fuzzing to static, then shutting off, leaving a blank hole in the bank of holographic screens illuminating the hold.
“Get some altitude and pull back to a safe distance,” Commander Blake ordered.
The maddened dinosaurs were now chasing the reversing drones, slung low, fore-claws outstretched, teeth bared, tails wildly slashing the sea ice.
“Use the drones to lure them from the mountain,” Molotov suggested. “Let’s try and get them to chase them across the ice, remove the threat from the area.”
“Good thinking,” Commander Blake began. “Nori…”
“I have a better idea,” Nori interrupted, internal components inside his metallic exoskeleton whirring up. “They’ll get bored of chasing lures they can’t catch. We need something with a bit more impact. Give me a moment to compute this.”
“Dude, you sound like a struggling PS4,” Hadley said as the whine of Nori’s internal hardware accelerated. “Are you okay, is he okay, is that sound normal?”
“Almost there,” Nori said, the light comprising his mouthpiece flickering, the shutters in his eye lenses twitching. “Almost done… almost…”
“I almost feel like I shouldn’t be watching this,” Scarlet said, looking uneasily at Nori. “That’s not right.”
Becca watched a handful of the drones arrange themselves into a configuration resembling something like a constellation in the night sky. Little vents across the wasps opened, revealing intense bright lights within.
“Done,” Nori announced.
“DAMN!” Scarlet piped.
Becca chuckled to herself. She’d seen Nori perform a similar trick once before, in the cave where Aleksi had tried to sacrifice her. This time, instead of projecting an Allosaur, Nori had instructed the wasp drones to project a lifelike 3D image of an enormous pterosaur, its wings beating, savage amber eyes glaring down on the small dinosaurs, who were screaming and scrabbling clumsily on the ice, skidding as they fled. The virtual pterosaur hung for a moment, allowing the vipers to get a head start before issuing a bloodcurdling screech and taking pursuit.
“That’s quite the party trick,” Molotov said, chuckling approvingly. “Game of Thrones style, nice.”
“The drones won’t have enough power to project for more than a few hours before they need to return to the warhorses for charging,” Nori said.
“It looks like we have a clock, people,” Commander Blake hollered. “Let’s not hang around. Send the remaining drones around that ridge ASAP. Let’s get in and out before our virtual dragon loses power.”
“He said unto them,” Aleksi hissed from behind, “oh, generation of vipers, who taught you to flee from the vengeance to come?”
“Fantastic,” Schweighofer said with a sigh. “Our friendly neighbourhood psychopath is back awake and unhinged as ever.”
“No!” Becca cried as Commander Blake drew his javelin pistol and barged through the group. She positioned herself between the Commander and Aleksi, stumbling backwards, trying to push the weapon down. “No, you can’t.”
“I’ve heard just about enough of his Old Testament bullcrap,” Commander Blake growled, locking eyes with Becca. “Here’s something biblical for you to chew on. Have you ever heard the story of Aesop, the farmer who tried to save the snake from the cold, the freezing cold? You know how the snake repaid the farmer? It bit and killed him. Why? Because it was a goddamn snake! Don’t be stupid. Don’t protect the snake.”
“You already have been bitten,” Aleksi said, gurgling weak laughter. “All of you, little people with your toy guns, your big ideas, chest beating warriors from the cosy lands of milk and honey. This world doesn’t care for your pathetic philosophy. It knows your names and has marked you all. Don’t fight it. Waste of energy if you ask me. I will take great pleasure watching you all die, one by one.”
Drool dribbled from Aleksi’s teeth. He issued a brief inhuman laugh, then his face dropped to a deadened terrifying stare.
“You seriously wanna save that?” The Commander said, tearing his weapon from Becca “That animal is a bona fide, throw away the key, maniac. He tried to kill you once already. He wants to kill us all. He’s not even trying to hide it. Listen to his words, turn around and look at him. Look at his face. Look!”
“I… of course not,” Becca said weakly. “I don’t want to hear his voice or see his face ever again, but we can’t torture him. I need us to be better than him. I just… please, just leave him tied up. He can’t go on forever. He’ll tire himself out eventually.”
“Soon we will all be part of forever,” Aleksi hissed, a wicked smile playing across his hideously deformed face. “I don’t care what you do to me. It doesn’t matter. You can’t escape what is coming. When you see what I see,” the man said, scanning the bank of unoccupied seats across the cargo hold, as though pretending he could see something unnatural. “When you see their faces… and you WILL see their faces… Judgement has come comrades. The gates are open.”
“No!” Becca cried, pushing down the Commander’s weapon again as he tried to lift it.
“Maybe you should listen to man, little goat,” Aleksi said. “The snake does as the snake is. I know what I am, but what are you? This is test, little goat.”
Becca exhaled and grimaced, using all her self-control to keep her hand clasped around the barrel of the Commander’s javelin pistol. The impulse to stop the Commander silencing Aleksi was one she was rapidly beginning to question.
“She’s right, we can’t torture him,” Nori said as Becca yielded and released the weapon.
The Commander glared back at Nori, then reluctantly holstered his javelin.
“Uh… guys, check this out!” Molotov said. “Is that… take a look at this… Tell me if I’m seeing what I think I’m seeing. How’s that even possible?”
“Is that a…”
“No fricking way!”
“A temple?” Hadley said. “What the hell’s a temple doing all the way out here? I don
’t like this, this is different.”
Becca and the Commander dashed to the screens. Becca stopped in her tracks, hardly able to take in what she was seeing. Sure enough, the screens were all displaying the same image, of a temple carved into the mountain. It definitely wasn’t an illusion and certainly wasn’t created by erosion or any natural process.
Stone columns, that had once stood proud, lay collapsed and littered across stairs leading to an enormous doorway, which was sealed with a slab of rock, maybe ten meters high, though it was hard to tell without anything to scale it against. There appeared to be a golden inlayed symbol on the great door. Two statues stood guarding the foot of the stairs, eroded by the elements to the point there was little discernible detail remaining. They looked like deformed bowling pins. A chunk was missing from the shoulder of the right statue. It lay a short distance from the foot of the stairs, half buried in the ice.
Becca tried to tune out the sea of noise crackling around her, so she could develop her own theories. Logically, the temple looked like the entrance to something you might see in an Egyptian travel brochure, the resting place of a pharaoh king or queen. It could’ve just as well been one of the mysterious facades carved into the sandstone cliffs of the Al Siq canyon in Petra, Jordan, the setting for the finale of Indiana Jones and The Last Crusade.
The temple before her boasted golden adornments in recesses either side of its great door, which gleamed in the setting sun, splaying beams of golden light that created a spectral, almost holy quality.
“So, we’re not the first?” Scarlet said, her voice faint. “There was a civilization before us…”
“Anyone else wondering what they look like?” Razak said. “This is the creepiest shit ever. Man, maybe they’re watching,” he said, turning and gazing across the icy plains. “I feel like we’re being watched. Anyone else feel that? I swear there’s a presence.”
Jurassic Earth Trilogy Box Set Page 44
