“I can’t believe you just did that,” Jason said.
Few Words did his own version of a shrug. “Animals in nature can detect fear, also benevolence. I was not in any danger.”
“Just the same, you may want to have our medic take a look at that leg,” Jason noted.
Few Words looked at the back of his left calf and saw a stream of blood coming from a small bite. “They were just excited. It wasn’t intentional.”
Dira moved to his side and looked at the bite. “Let me at least clean and disinfect it. I’ll get my kit.”
As Dira jogged by Jason, her eyes met his for a fleeting moment and she smiled. Then she was gone.
Chapter 34
Mollie ran directly at Woodrow and then, at the last moment, let her body fall to the deck where she slid the rest of the way. Tightly gripped in one small fist was what Woodrow referred to as a nutcracker. Nothing more than a solid piece of rounded heavy steel, it delivered more than a little extra punch—especially when the punch targeted vulnerable areas: nose, solar plexus, throat, and testicles.
Mollie wasn’t holding anything back. Punches needed to be thrown with everything she had, and for that reason Woodrow was wearing a padded helmet and a cup. As she slid and came to a stop between his feet, she maneuvered onto her side like Woodrow had taught her—perfectly positioned to fire off a strategic blow to Woodrow’s most vulnerable area. She punched with everything her nine-year-old body had to offer. Purposely missing the obvious target, Mollie nailed Woodrow in the solar plexus.
He immediately doubled over, reaching for his gut. Through clenched teeth he spat, “You tricky little—”
Mollie wasn’t done. Woodrow had spent a good hour showing her how to throw an effective uppercut. With Woodrow’s head lowered, she just had to take the shot. She connected a solid blow to the side of his head, and saw it whip upwards and back.
“Damn it! Will you wait a flippin’ minute?”
Smiling, she shook her head. “You told me not to show mercy. You told me to stop fighting like a little girl and go for the kill.”
Woodrow, finally able to stand upright, nodded his head. His grimace turned to a wary smile. “All right, let’s move on. I think you’ve got that maneuver pretty well mastered.”
Mollie’s confidence level was bolstered up with every new trick and sly move Woodrow instructed her on. At first she’d felt guilty, as if she was doing something wrong; now she embraced what Woodrow called her inner Wonder Woman side. She’d been skeptical she would be able to inflict pain on an adult, but no longer. If she used her brain—didn’t panic—she definitely could deliver … what did he call it? Oh yeah, a world of hurt.
“What am I learning tomorrow?”
“I’m going to show you how to escape from various bonds.”
“What do you mean bonds?”
“Like ropes, duct tape, plastic zip ties; anything that makes you a prisoner and unable to fight back. By the end of the day, you’ll be a little Houdini.”
“I don’t know what that is, but it sounds like fun.” Mollie handed over the nutcracker to Woodrow, who placed it back on a shelf in the cabinet.
“We’re also going to spend more time at the firing range. You need to be a crack shot. Sometimes all you get is one chance. I want to make sure, even under pressure, you don’t miss what you’re shooting at.”
* * *
Bristol watched Orion check her multi-gun, then move on from one SEAL to the next checking theirs as well. She acted different when she was in charge, away from the captain. Domineering. Not attracted to women in the slightest—never had been—Bristol found himself strangely bemused by the tall, highly muscular female. There was something primal about the way she moved. She made Bristol uncomfortable when she was close, but he wasn’t totally adverse to it, either.
“Did you hear me, Bristol?”
“No. What did I miss?”
Bristol returned her stare and then realized he was the only one with his visor open. He closed it and looked around the shuttle’s hold. Five SEALs stood at the ready, each looking back at him with an expression of contempt. So what, they don't like me. I don’t care.
“I need to know you’re paying attention. We’re at Her Majesty’s forward starboard hull. You’re clear on where we should phase-shift to, right?”
“Probably.”
Two of the SEALs’ facial expressions turned from contempt to out-and-out anger.
“Why don’t you show some respect?” the larger of the two men asked.
Bristol glanced down at the soldier’s name tag, Carl Gibson, and took his time answering. “I’m not part of your little army here, Carl. So why don’t you back off; give me some room to think. Can you do that?”
Carl looked as though he was ready to throw a punch.
“Relax, Gibson, you’ll get used to Bristol. It’s just the way he is,” Orion said flatly.
“Where should we go first? Once we’re inside?” Orion asked Bristol.
Bristol glanced out the porthole to where the mammoth vessel supposedly sat. The brainchild of his brother, the late Captain Stalls, it had been a colossal job acquiring the toric-cloaking device. A large unwieldy thing, they’d pulled it from a wrecked destroyer drifting dead in space. Once the destroyer had been scavenged from stem to stern, Her Majesty, a converted luxury liner, was enveloped in a highly-conductive type of mesh netting, which was then tied to a phenomenal piece of technology called a toric-device. A device using black zodium crystals that could no longer be found anywhere in the universe, and couldn’t be synthesized in a lab. Its only source came from a planet the Craing destroyed over a century earlier. Now, from off the ship, she was totally invisible. Bristol thought about his dead brother, who was unquestionably ruthless, a totally unscrupulous pirate, but still—he missed him.
“Bristol!” the gunny yelled.
“Yes, first the promenade deck. It’s wide open; ample room for us to phase-shift into, without the possibility of landing on a bulkhead, or something equally dense,” Bristol said, looking directly at Gibson. “From there we’ll head for the bridge. Once we’re there I can find the control for the toric-cloaking device and shut it off.”
“If your coordinates are accurate we should be phase-shifting into the center of the compartment, several feet above the deck, just in case you’re off.”
“Whatever.”
Gibson gave Bristol another sideways glance and shook his head. Orion relayed all of their phase-shift controls over to her HUD.
“On three, two, one …”
Orion’s team phase-shifted two feet above Her Majesty’s promenade deck. Everyone bent their legs anticipating the drop, but hadn’t needed to.
“Looks like grav is offline,” Orion said.
Bristol took back control of his own phase-shift capability and set its coordinates for the far side of the promenade deck. In a flash he was across the compartment.
“Come on, Bristol, we need to stay together,” Orion admonished.
He waited for them to phase-shift next to him and then reached up to the bulkhead where there was an access keypad. A doublewide hatch slid open and Bristol pulled himself through it. Overhead lighting flickered, and between strobes of bright light, Bristol saw two bodies floating along the corridor. He thought he recognized them—at least, what was left of them. Decomposition had run its course. Their bloated, rotting faces looked more like wet, shriveled prunes than the tough guys he once knew.
Bristol held back, letting Orion and Gibson move ahead of him down the corridor, then jumped ahead of the four SEALs. As Bristol moved closer to the first body, he tried not to look at it; it was one of his brother’s pirates. Like most of them, he’d worn a long ponytail, which now floated close to his distorted face. Bristol cautiously edged by the body and pulled himself forward in close pursuit of Orion and Gibson. But as Gibson moved past the second corpse, without a backward look, he gave the dead body a glancing shove, putting it on a direct trajectory toward Bris
tol.
It was too late by the time Bristol reacted. The dead pirate’s body veered backward, spun around and floated headfirst toward him. Bristol grimaced as cloudy, vacant eyes bore down on him. Frantically, reaching for the bulkhead, anything to push off against, Bristol saw first the corpse’s swollen face first, then its body, as it careened into his helmet. A wet, pinkish smudge splattered his visor. Disgusted, Bristol kicked out at the body, sending it rotating down the corridor in the opposite direction. Curses erupted from the SEALs behind him.
It took another thirty minutes for the team to reach the bridge. Bristol positioned himself in front of the nearest console and went to work running the ship’s diagnostics. Apparently, the AI was only minimally operational, and there was substantial damage on multiple decks, many of them now open to space. Her Majesty was in worse shape than he had figured.
Within an hour, gravity had been restored and Bristol determined the massive drives would, in all likelihood, be operational soon, as well.
With the toric-cloaking device deactivated, more personnel were arriving from The Lilly. The bridge was filling up; crewmembers began situating themselves at consoles. Something inside Bristol found this more than a little irritating. The truth was, with his brother dead, the ship was rightfully his.
Three more entered the bridge: Brian Reynolds, the woman Betty something or other, and the hopper.
“How you coming along getting my ship operational, Bristol?” Brian asked, taking a seat in the command chair.
Chapter 35
No one got much sleep through the night. Even with their encircling fire barricade, the sheer size, the scale, of the indigenous animal life here necessitated that the fire be kept equally large. Apparently, the nocturnal predators were proportionate to, if not more abundant than, those of the day. As it turned out, anyone not on sentry duty was needed to add kindling to the fire and help keep it stoked.
The rhinos, without having protective battle suits, were showing the most wear. Monster mosquitoes the size of golf balls zeroed in on their exposed hides, resulting in painful stings as if from large hypodermic needles. Dira was in constant demand. The bites were bad enough, but the intense itching that followed was debilitating.
By 0600 all the wood gathered the previous evening had been burned.
“What time is sunup?” Jason asked Ricket.
“0640, Captain. The swarms of mosquitoes are already starting to dissipate.”
Jason looked over to Traveler who, like the rest of the crew, was periodically firing stun-level plasma bolts into the surrounding trees. His hide was covered in swollen, oozing boils. Dira, having just finished treating Few Words, moved in to attend to Traveler.
Jason saw movement in the trees and fired off several plasma bolts in the same general direction.
“How am I supposed to light up with those damn things hovering around?” Billy asked, joining Jason and Ricket.
“Maybe this is a good time to quit,” Ricket answered, looking up at the tall Cuban SEAL.
Billy ignored the comment. Noticing Jason’s preoccupation with Dira and Petty Officer Myers, he said, “Look, a woman who looks like she does, who can even make a battle suit look sexy, is going to attract attention. Especially on a ship where the male to female ratio is so off-kilter.”
“Are you getting to a point anytime soon?” Jason asked.
“Cap, it’s no secret that you and Dira have something going on. Okay? Your own daughter sees it.”
Jason's eyes turned toward Billy and glared.
“Hey, I’m just telling you how it is here, my friend. Anyway, um … looking the way she does, she’s had to turn men away on a daily basis. I know all this because she and Orion are friends, they talk.”
“So what are you saying? Petty Officer Myers hasn’t taken no for an answer?” Jason asked.
Billy shrugged and said, “She’s a big girl, Cap. She’ll speak up if she needs help.”
A low-flying mosquito hovered in close to Ricket’s visor, causing him to bat it away with an audible thump.
Dira was finished with Traveler, having applied ointments and salve over much of his exposed hide. As she headed off toward her RTM, sure enough, Myers followed not far behind.
Jason turned toward the petty officer. “Myers, we’re breaking camp. I want you on task.”
Turning to Billy, Jason said, “I want to get the next drone paired off and get us the hell out of Jurassic Hell.”
Both Ricket and Billy answered at the same time, “Aye, Cap.”
The two moved off in separate directions while Jason continued to watch Myers, who lingered outside Dira’s RTM for a moment, then jogged off toward the others.
* * *
With the evacuated campsite now twenty minutes behind them, Ricket’s best-guess estimate was the drone was about a half mile away. He and Jason continued to stare at the holo-display, waiting for the drone’s icon to reappear. What came into view was a slow moving herd.
Jason leaned forward, using his HUD optics to zoom into the distant landscape. Sure enough, they were dinosaurs.
“What are those things, Rizzo?”
“Triceratops, Captain. There must be thirty or forty of them.”
They approached single file, in a long line. Soon they’d be upon them and Jason nervously took in their girth—huge, almost beyond belief. Sure, he’d seen their pictures in books, their skeletons propped up in museums, but here, in real time, they were truly frightening.
“Perhaps we should get out of their path.”
“Although they are believed to be fierce fighters, they’re herbivores. I don’t think they’ll pay us much attention, unless we directly confront them or make a surprise movement,” Rizzo said.
As the lumbering dinosaurs moved by, Jason and the rest of the team stepped several paces back into the trees to let the long procession pass. Each one had a large boney frill protruding upward behind its head, and three horns, not dissimilar to those on the rhino-warriors. As Rizzo suggested, they didn’t seem to have an interest in them. Thick stubby legs trod forward, kicking up layers of dust. To Jason, their behavior reminded him of huge cows. Even their repetitive jaw movements were like cows chewing their cuds.
Few Words made a sudden shoulder jerk that turned into an almost flailing motion. He quickly reached an arm behind himself to scratch one of his oozing mosquito bites. That was all it took to startle the closest of the Triceratops. It charged. Head low and horns pointed forward, it came directly for Few Words. Holding his ground, the rhino-warrior brought up his heavy hammer instead of drawing his plasma weapon. Jason brought up his own multi-gun but before he could get off a shot, Petty Officer Myers stepped in next to Few Words, blocking Jason’s clear shot angle. Myers fired continuously but the massive beast kept coming. Spouts of blood erupted from its head and forward torso as mini-rail munitions peppered the Triceratops’s hide. No more than ten yards out, Traveler and the two other rhino-warriors rushed in from the dinosaur’s left flank. With one swing of its massive head, the Triceratops’s forward horn took one of the rhino-warriors’s head clear off at the shoulders.
Two more Triceratops charged. Jason pivoted and fired. Changing from rail to mini-missiles, the closest Triceratops’s eye exploded in a plume of smoke. Its steps faltered and it came to a stop. Shaking its head violently, it turned and ran off in the direction of the other fleeing dinosaurs. Two crazed dinosaurs remained and both were out for blood, but heavy hammers swung and multi-guns fired until both triceratops lay still on the ground.
The four rhino-warriors went down to three in number: Traveler, Few Words, and the one called Born Late. Another SEAL was lost, as well—John Parker—leaving Jason, Billy, Rizzo, Myers, Chang, Goldstein, and Mead as the remaining Navy combatants. Dira and Ricket both survived and were attending to the injured.
This mission was taking a bloody toll. As the casualties added up, Jason was becoming more and more convinced that how they dealt with their enemies, the Craing and now this
faction of the Caldurians called the Originals, needed to change. No longer could he and his father afford to hold back advanced technologies from their own government, fearing they would be misused or cause an imbalance of power among the rivaling nations on Earth. It was only from strength that Earth and the Alliance would survive. But first he and his team needed to be successful here—because in this realm of time, the Earth that was home didn’t exist.
Both the SEAL’s and rhino-warrior’s remains were phase-shifted deep below ground. There was little time for any kind of memorial service in such a perilous environment.
The injured, attended to by Dira, included Myers. Apparently he’d been stepped on by a triceratops; his battle suit saved his life. But even battle suits had protective limits, and Myers had one, maybe two, broken ribs. Myers’ internal nanites would repair the damage in hours, so it mystified Jason why he needed so much attention. The upper portion of his suit was off and Dira was wrapping his chest with a bandage.
“In ten minutes you’ll be completely healed. It’s just not necessary,” Dira explained, sounding more impatient than she probably had intended. She finished up. She looked at Myers and didn’t return his smile. “You’re all set. Thank you for wasting needed medical supplies.” She collected her supplies, stood, and strode off without acknowledging Jason’s presence.
Jason watched as the petty officer’s eyes leveled on her, tracking her as she walked away. He brought his attention back to matters at hand. With their latest round of casualties, everyone was quiet, introspective. Jason and Ricket took point, following in the rough direction of the last sighting of the drone icon. Jason took a quick look behind; everyone was on edge—heightened senses coincided with the violence of the land. Jason saw Billy in the process of lighting up.
Realms of Time (Scrapyard Ship) Page 18
