Hunter's Moon (Cretaceous Station Book 2)

by Terrence Zavecz

  Anton Dotschkal, Corey Zavtek and Alex Grissom watched from the high ridge overlooking a field and the river valley below. ‘Well I guess you’re right Corey, you can see the damn thing in the daytime now.’ Anton turns as he pulls the binoculars down from his eyes.

  ‘Look how you can see colors in the tail even in the daytime.’ Anton frowns to see just how excited Corey is. ‘It’s beautiful, I’ve never seen anything like this before even when we were back on Europa.’

  Anton hands Alex the binoculars and reaches up to grab a wide-brimmed, soft hat from his head. He pulls it off to reveal a head, slightly balding, and wipes his forehead with his arm. ‘What the hell are you so excited about. I think it’s damn scary. This is the third comet we’ve seen since we came here. This is also the brightest and, according to Mark, it will get even brighter as it passes by us just outside the orbit of the moon. That’s much too close for my tastes.’

  ‘Aw, what are you griping about?’ Alex chimes in support of Corey. ‘You know nothing catastrophic is going to happen for at least a thousand years. We’re plenty safe.’

  ‘No, we are not plenty safe. You’re talking about events that we know only through fossil records that are over sixty five million years old. This planet may suffer a thousand strikes between now and the big one and our fossil record wouldn’t see it. Oh, but we will see it all right and even get to feel it if it happens to hit nearby. Hitting right down anywhere near here or, God only knows, right on top of us. No, I don’t like it a bit.’

  ‘Consider what they’ve been telling us, this solar system is just passing into the Sagittarius Arm of the galaxy. Mark and Paul say there’s a logjam of cosmic radiation and debris all bunched up at the edge of this arm. It’s all right here where we are passing through. We’re obviously sweeping up a whole lot of junk from all over the area as we sail through the edge of the arm. Any one of these comets or even an asteroid would mean the end of us if it hits close.’

  ‘Aw, stop worrying Anton. Won’t do any good anyway.’ Alex turns back to the Hunter to fire up the cargo robot. ‘We can’t do anything about it. Won’t do you any good at all if your time is up. If it isn’t up, then you are going to be ok no matter what happens. Enjoy the show and let’s get this Gravitonic Field Drive out and begin the installation. I want to have Hive-Tab communications and field-lift support for our sleds over here if we’re going to begin the heavy work.’

  ‘That sounds like defeatism to me Alex. There’s always something you can do about it.’

  ‘Oh come on! I’m not saying you shouldn’t fight back or avoid the obvious disaster. It’s just that there are situations where you can’t do anything about it. So, until something happens, stop worrying.’

  Anton stands up and arches his back, rubbing it with his free hand as he walks over to a crate and unlatches the lid. ‘Yeah, right. Let’s get back to work. You and Corey bring the main drive boxes out and have them taken over there to pad four. I’m going to setup the jumpstart accelerator so we can fire this thing up as soon as possible. Once we get it up and going, I want you to finish the building shell around it. I know we don’t expect any rain but I don’t want to take any chances on some dino-rat or its equivalent coming over and chewing into something sensitive.’

  Corey commented as he positioned the robotic loader, ‘What’s a jumpstart accelerator Anton? I never heard you guys talking about one before.’

  ‘The jumpstart starts the vibrating magnetic field using a short range but very intense teaser field. We have to dynamically tune it to get the big generator to respond to the teaser field. Once the big one catches, we can shut the jumpstart down. We probably won’t need it again after that because these drives aren’t meant to be turned off. We can even repair them while they are running; well at least for most repairs. We don’t need the jumpstarts all that often, basically at first startup. That, by the way, is why you haven’t heard about the unit until now. We’ll be drawing all of our electrical power from the generator after it starts as well as having all of the gravitonic benefits and Hive-Tab resources. Unfortunately this one doesn’t have a long-range communications module in it. Would have been nice to have a backup.’

  Three large vacuum sealed crates, each about five hundred pounds earth standard gravity, were lifted from the Hunter. They were using one of the light-weight field robotics, this one operating on four legs for stability because of the weight and bulk of the load. The robots are smart enough to act with a minimum amount of direction and remove each crate from the Hunter without damage, even with the relatively small doors. These crates however are both critical and delicate so Corey keeps a direct Hive-Tab link with the robotic rather than letting it run full autonomous. With the hard link, he can feel, see and hear everything the robot is doing from the prospective of the robot even without an operational gravitonic field.

  Alex moves from crate to crate as it’s placed on the pad and opens a small box in the corner, ‘Diagnostics say everything is functional Anton. Should we start assembly? I’ll have to setup some temporary lighting for about three hours.’

  ‘I’ve got more to do over here too Alex. Oh, all right I get the hint. You’re right though, it’s getting dark fast. I don’t want to leave these alone over here all night so I’m going to stay over here. Why don’t you two go back and I’ll sleep here in one of the emergency huts off the Hunter.’

  ‘Oh no, I’m not leaving your here alone.’ Alex returns. ‘Standing orders from the Boss. No less than two guys when outside the perimeter and that’s at all times.’

  Corey breaks his link with the robotic and turns around, ‘OK, I’ll call in and tell them we’re staying out here tonight. I’d like the opportunity to get off base one night and Rachel can handle Gabe. Ah, is there anything on board to eat?’

  Alex smiles and walks back to the Hunter, ‘Heck yeah! This here’s a Hunter Recon Vehicle. We have a full galley with a lot of stasis trays packed at all times. If you want to really rough it we could start a campfire. We’ve got some SPAM or, since you are real lucky guys, I’ve still got some of the fish we caught in Blackbird Valley last month and even a small tray of Hadrosaurid steak. Heck, we’ve even got a good stock of lager in there.’

  ‘Great, let’s rough it.’ Corey replied. “How about it Anton.”

  Anton sets down the utility spanner, ‘Yeah, I’m in too. Let’s make a night of it. I’ll grab a couple of the AutoSentinels and fill out the perimeter security net. Look, why don’t we gather some wood for our cookout? I’ll pick some up on my way back in. Maybe I can find something a little more substantial than these little sticks. Let’s get moving, I don’t want to have to be out walking in the dark and the Sun’s going down pretty fast. I can already see some lights over at the Station.’

  ‘Hey Corey, why don’t you grab a couple AutoSentinels and set them up on the south side. I’ll walk over to the river’s rim on the North. I don’t think we’ll see anything coming up over the cliffs but I’ll put in a couple anyway.

  ‘Dave warned us to stay clear of the swampy area around the lake down there.’ Alex calls over to Anton and Corey. ‘Ouch, that’s the third one I’ve killed. I’m getting out the mosquito zapper if we’re going to be sitting around here in the dark without a breeze from the ocean. These guys sure haven’t changed over the years. Don’t you little blood suckers know there are much bigger targets just down the swamp a bit? Leave us little guys alone.’

  Corey’s walk into the brush is a new and welcome experience. His work seldom allows him to leave the Station complex so this whole evening is almost like a vacation. The setting sun runs long cool shadows across a land strangely bordered with a mix of large coniferous pine trees and low palms. He can hear the waves of the ocean over the next ridge and the soft peat covering the ground feels like a plush rug beneath his boots. Unlike the crisp, almost sharp air of the Station, warm scents drift and change with every shift in the wind. The scents are sweet, almost like boxwood or sage grass in bloom but not quite the
same.

  ‘There’s plenty of wood here. I wonder if I can find some decent size pieces of whatever’s giving off that great aroma. It might be nice for the fire; sorta like mesquite. Maybe next time I’ll bring Gabe along, he’d love this.’ Corey muses to himself. ‘Ah smoke. They must have started the cook fire already.’

  ‘Wait just a second, what’s this? I don’t recognize these tracks but something sure was back here. Well I’ll be darned, they were watching us. There too, they hid in this brush and looks like they were here for a while, judging by all the tracks. Not too large, maybe only about four feet high with an eighteen inch span between their feet. Well, I guess as long as they keep to this curiosity level and don’t ratchet up to the “I want a taste” level we’ll be ok.’

  ‘Well now look at this, flowers. A whole green leafy bush full of them. Kinda makes you homesick. Wonder if we can take some back to the plateau. I’d like to put some around the house.’ He mutters as he makes a GPS entry in his personal log.

  A voice drifts over the brush, ‘Corey are you OK? It’s getting pretty dark, you’d better head back in right now.’

  ‘I’m OK Anton. I’m on my way back now.’

  Corey walks back along the edge of the ridge. The ocean in the distance on his right has darkened from an aqua to a deep blue and meets the black-velvet skies at a clear horizon. Birds and Pteranodon are settling into their cliff-nests for the evening just as the night-riders appear. ‘Strange how these evening flying dinosaurs seem to have just appeared in the last few weeks.’

  His eyes scan the trail ahead and to the sides as he walks through the low rough brush. Arms filled with wood for the fire, Corey’s thoughts drift across the nearby sea to the cliffs over on the other side of the river’s mouth, ‘According to Sara and Dieter these flying dinosaurs aren’t in the fossil record and they do seem to be dinosaurs, unlike the reptilian Pteranodon. Well, they are relatively small with wingspans of only about two feet maximum. They also tend to stay over the water and in flight. You would have thought a skeleton or two would have preserved over the years. Maybe they haven’t been around long enough to leave fossils.’

  Gradually his ears become aware of a low rumble, or not actually a rumble. More like a sound that glass balls would make if they were placed into a slowly turning inverted bell. The warbling of the bell increases, in volume and pitch. Some of the strains are long and low, others are short and sharp. Corey stops to listen. He’s heard this song before from the mainland but never so clear and never so close. Sara said these are the cries of the long-necked Paluxysaurus down by the swamps.

  Walking forward again, his thoughts stay with the songs and calls filling the forest behind him, ‘The short cries seem to cycle like a call and answer sequence. First one cries off to his left, then another answers from off in the distance to his right. Almost like communications rather than simple bird talk. They change in pitch and length. Then there’s … what’s that?’

  ‘Ah, from the plateau. The evening song of the Hypes is rising to sing the sun to bed once again. Shoot, I gotta get a move on, it’ll be pitch black by the time they finish. Boy, they sure sound different from over here, just as beautiful though.’

  Anton rises to meet Corey and grabs some of the wood from him as he enters the clearing, ‘Jeez I was just about to send out our marine friend here to get you Corey. Pushin’ it a bit aren’t you. Getting just a little too dark to be out there by yourself.’

  ‘We haven’t seen anything bigger than a bunny rabbit here. You guys are too jumpy. Well, I guess that’s not quite true. I ran across some tracks to the south of something almost man-sized. Oddly enough, it looks like they were watching us. Anyway, I guess there are larger animals here.’

  ‘No matter what you may see during the daytime, we are on the mainland and there’s every possibility of our being in someone’s hunting grounds. Well at least you got a pretty good stack of wood I see.’

  ‘Yeah, I wanted to try some of this stuff. It has an aromatic smell to it. I thought we might use it sorta like mesquite on some of the Hadrosaurid steaks. Let’s get going, I’m starving. I’m going over to get a drink.’

  Alex begins breaking up some of the wood pieces and soon a bright fire is going. ‘Here, we’ve used this as a grill before. Help me to set a few rocks up to support it.’

  Anton held his arm, ‘Easy, you have to wait for a good set of coals before we put the steaks on anyway. Just wait a bit and don’t put the mesquite or whatever it is onto the fire until we put the meat on. You’ll lose all of the aromatic smoke. Let’s put these pieces in this bucket and let them soak a while so they get good and wet. We’ll get better smoke from them.’

  ‘Hmm, these sticks do smell good but I’ve never encountered them before. Don’t taste too bad either.’

  ‘Corey, I think these are going to cook real nice. You may have hit onto something here. We’ll have to take some back …. Whoa, what are you doing. You leave that shirt on!

  ‘Just wanted to put something a little more comfortable on Alex.’

  ‘No sir! You do not take that off nor do you remove your pants if you’re going to sleep out here tonight. That’s your armor and it stays on while you are out here. Those orders come straight from Dan and even though you don’t report to him you know Mark will support him. The only place you can sleep without that armor is back in the Hunter with all the doors sealed.’

  The evening passed as they traded stories of past assignments and adventures. Soon the warm coals heated the water-soaked wood and filled the air with a pungent aroma. The smoking hot grill quickly cooked the steaks and they decided to take some of the aromatic wood back with them tomorrow for future cook fires.

  Three of the AutoSentinels fired off as they were cleaning up from their meal. Alex reached for his Pulsar. ‘They backed off after the warning. No identification.’ Corey said as he scanned the monitors.

  Then two more fired off from the side. They stopped and three on the other side went off. Alex put his helmet on and scanned the brush, ‘The damned things sound like they’re testing our perimeter.’

  Corey looked up from the monitors, ‘They’re about the same size as the ones that made the tracks I saw earlier. They move too fast, can’t get a good reading on their body mass so I can’t tell how large they are. Oh shit! One of the AutoSentinels just dropped out of the net. Do you think …’

  ‘Easy Corey,’ Alex cautioned. ‘That’s not too common but it’s nothing to get excited about just yet. May have just been an equipment failure.’

  ‘See that? Nothing else and the perimeter hits seem to have stopped. Let’s tone down the fire a bit and just watch for a while. I don’t expect them to be firing at us but I still don’t like being back-lighted.’

  Evening song fills the air both near and far. As they worked, a faint rustle over by the cliff edge faded without any alarms. Then they sat and talked for an hour watching the dark night shadows work their way across the field as the bright full moon ran across the star-dense sky.

  Corey poked at the comforting fire. The jungle around them echoes with the calls and song of the night life. His thoughts are lifted by the beauty of the evening and long forgotten memories, ‘You know, my Great Grandpop Alex Zavtec used to tell me stories about the hunter’s moon. That’s what this is you know, a hunter’s evening.

  You see, our family comes from a small tribe called the Wends that once lived in the Carpathian Mountains of Eastern Europe. It was a hard and wild life. Just like this, in the evenings they would sit and listen to the wolves as the packs sang to the night sky. The packs filled the woods every night with their howls, winter or summer. Sometimes, particularly during the winter, the packs would be heard right outside the door to their house. My grandmother hated them but my grandpop would scold her and tell her to be quiet.’

  ‘He would not talk bad about the wolves for our families had been mountain hunters for generations. Now, some hunting is best done in the daytime, other types of game can be
st be found at night. My ancestors never hunted the wolves though. You see, there was a level of mutual respect. Oh, an occasional goat might go missing but that was overlooked for the wolves provided a more valuable service.’

  ‘Ah but it’s during the night that my ancestors were busy, especially on evenings such as this. Those rare nights blessed by the full Hunter’s Moon that would light the fields, casting long dark shadows revealing even the slightest movement.’

  ‘Hunting at night is always a challenge but your eye adapt to it after a few minutes. Even so, your eyes play tricks on you, dark shapes mingle, crawl and merge with the faint shadows cast by starlight. A moonlit night is a little better. The hunter’s eyes grow accustomed to the low light provided by the stars and a partial moon. However, the best hunts were during the bright evenings of the full moon, the “Hunter’s Moon”.’

  ‘On nights like this, the hunters would stalk the barren or wooded slopes of the mountains, moving silently from cover to cover along the game trails. The wolves followed them, driving the game from the surrounding countryside back toward and into range of the hunter’s arrows, slings or spears. Nobody knows how or when this practice started for it just was that way for generations. As was their custom, the hunters always gutted and cleaned their kill on the spot. The packs stayed back a respectful distance during the cleaning. Even the youngest, most brazen ones learned to hold back. You see the hunters always left a portion of the kill for the pack. Even in the lean late winter months of starvation, the strong bond formed over the generations between them and the packs enforced the sharing of the kill. Woe to the man or woman who broke the bond.’

  ‘Grandpop told me many family stories, other less pleasant stories. Some, a little less pleasant, going all the way back to the defense of their homeland from the invasion of the Turks in the 16th century. The Turks invaded the poor mountain villages of the Wends. They spread terror and bloodshed in their passing across the area, all without provocation. Whole villages died, or perhaps that’s too kind a word for you see the invaders left men, women and even small children behind. Yes they found the families, all of these friends and relatives were brutally tortured, burned and mutilated. The path of the army was easy to follow for in its wake it left the villagers, hundreds of Wends at a time nailed to the trees in agony or death or worse still impaled on stakes. It is a very slow and agonizing death. The Turks were bringing the blessings of Islam to tribes who had themselves been Christian for less than a hundred years.’