‘I’ll go up top and guide the stacking. I’ll call in for a floater when I get up into the Hive Field and we can take these over to the kitchen.’ Sara announced as she started over to the base of the small trail that wound up the cliffside.
As she approached the cliffside Sara stopped. ‘Dave, Dieter! Come over here. There’s a terrible odor coming from the grotto.’
Sara ran over to the entrance of the small cave entrance near the base of the trail. She looked in hoping to see back to where the smaller tunnel opens into a large cavern that has a shallow underwater entrance to the sea. Dieter and David dropped what they were doing and climbed the shallow slope over to the cave entrance and looked in. The smell of blood and rancid flesh filled the entrance.
‘I can’t see a thing.’ Sara said.
‘Wait here but get out your pistol and be ready. We have a flashlight in the boat utility box. I’ll be back in a second.’ Dieter said as he ran back down the hill.
David pulled Sara back a little further from the entrance. ‘Something must be dead in there and it’s recent or the locals would have cleaned it up. Whatever killed it might still be in there so just stand to the side a little here and wait for Dieter.’
Dieter returned and carefully moved to the other side of the cave. He had his battle helmet on and pistol at the ready. He could see a pile of something in the light about fifteen feet ahead where the tunnel turned.
‘Scan both sides and the ceiling before you go in there Dieter.’
‘Yeah yeah, nothing to be seen. I’m going in.’
The crystals in the sandstone and quartz glistened with the reflected light of his flashlight as he entered. ‘Ok, nothing in here. Come in and back me up. I’m going into the grotto room.’
‘Sara, you can come in but stay at the entrance. Watch our backside. I don’t want any surprises.’ David carefully walked into the cave and over to Dieter. ‘OK, go ahead. I’ll keep my head in the doorway behind you and watch.’
Dieter walked into the room and ran his light over the walls. The walls were filled with quartz and other small rocks fixed in a white sand matrix. Not much room to hide in here. ‘Nothing so far, I’m heading into the grotto.’
Around the turn, he could see dim tracings of refracted sunlight as it entered the grotto from the submerged entrance. The rays spread over the walls of the cavern lighting it in glimmering streaks of green and white bands as the water slowly moved in the sea currents. The cavern walls are hard rock. Pieces are strewn around the floor and Dieter has to step carefully while watching the shadows. Several small animals fled into the water as he entered.
Dieter walked around the edge of the cavern, careful to examine every nook. ‘Nothing in here. It could have exited through the water entrance.’
‘Yep, watch your back as you come out.’ David called back. ‘Ok, let’s see what’s dead.’
The floor is soaked in fly-covered blood and gore in the corner of the cavern. Clumps of meat with broken, gnawed bones protruding from them seem to move in the dim light. Maggots! The pile is covered with maggots, beetles and many other small scavengers many of which David, with all his years of experience in the field, could not identify.
Dieter ran outside and grabbed a small branch from a bush on the edge of the cliff. Brushing a clear area, he digs into the pile and pulls out a head with a broad, flat muzzle.
‘Hypes! Oh my God they are Hypes!’ Sara cries. ‘Who would do such a thing? Why kill and mangle them like this?’
‘They were partially eaten.’ David said as he toed a leg from the pile. ‘Look at the cuts and marks on the bone. Here, the leg was broken and cracked so that they could get at the marrow. Doesn’t really look like they finished their meal though.’
‘I don’t see any tracks but then the floor is too hard. Nothing outside either.’ Dieter commented.
‘We need to look back up the trail for tracks.’ David commented. ‘The Hypes must have come from up on the plateau unless the Troondon brought them here from the mainland. That really doesn’t make sense though. I just don’t understand why they would bring them here.’
‘How do you think the Hypes are going to react to this?’
‘I really don’t know.’ Sara replied. ‘They don’t seem overly concerned about their young ones after they get to a certain size. They do watch the very young very carefully though. We’ve seen them take their dead after an attack but we were not allowed to follow. Most of all, we don’t know anything about what their reaction will be to death in a situation like this.’
David stood up and thought for a few moments. ‘OK, you climb to the plateau. We’ve got to finish unloading the food. Dieter, you stay here and help me guide the bags up to the top as I fasten them on the crane. Sara, call into Dan on a secure channel and let him know what happened. If he agrees, then go over and get Molly, Tina or whomever you think is best and bring them back down. We need to decide what to do with this mess. More importantly, we also need to find out if someone breeched the security at the top of our plateau.’
Sara’s Hive Tab came alive as she emerged from the cliff trail. Contacts and communications tags, provided by the Gravitonic Field covering Cretaceous Station, flooded into her system. Messages, notes from others and waiting requests filled the mental queue provided by the small implant located behind her right ear.
She ignored them all and called the head of security, Daniel Drake. ‘Hey Dan, we have a bit of a problem down here. No, everyone is ok but could you hurry over to the sand crane on the North Face of the plateau? David thinks you need to bring some support and perhaps an AutoSentinel with a repeater.’
‘Ok Sara, I’ll be right there but what level of support do you need?’
‘No immediate threat. Please bring two men and a floater to help carry the supplies back to the kitchen and no, that’s not why I called. David also thinks you should bring two more team members with rifles. That should do it for now.’
‘Be there in 20.’
Sara began hoisting the stasis bags of supplies up the cliff. She uploaded three bags by the time Dan and his men arrived with the floater.
‘I have an AutoSentinel and repeater coming from storage. Why were you so cryptic in the call? Did you guys catch something alive on this trip?’
‘Hi, could two of you please take over here. We need to bring up the rest of the supplies. The rest of you follow me down I’ll tell you on the way.’
‘There was nothing exceptional on this trip until we got back to the plateau.’ Sara commented to Dan as she climbed down the trail. ‘We may have a problem here though. When we beached we found several dead Hypes in the grotto. David says they’ve been partially eaten. It’s pretty ugly.’
David and Dieter approached as they reached the bottom of the cliff. The two Blackwave specialists exchanged places without comment and continued unloading the supplies. Dieter greeted them as he passed, ‘Keep vigilant guys. Something killed and put these Hypes in the cave and it doesn’t look like they finished their work. Looks rather like butchery for the sake of violence rather than food hunting.’
Dan and David went into the cave when all of a sudden there was a commotion at the top of the cliff. Dan called up to the guards using his helmet because the Hive Tab field did not extend down to the cliff bottom. ‘What’s going on Tom?’
‘Three Hypes just appeared out of nowhere and want to come down. They’re getting pretty upset.’
‘Oh, I wasn’t ready for this. How the hell did they get wind of it anyhow? Alright, let them down.’
‘What happened here Dave?’
‘Well, I don’t know. It’s not like any kill site I’ve ever seen and I haven’t been able to find any tracks. We have several dead Hypes in there. They’ve been mauled but only partially eaten. There’s a lot of blood around the cave as though they were still alive in there when the worst violence began. If they would have been drug in dead we wouldn’t have so much blood across the floor. The level of violence just doesn’
t make sense. It’s almost like a cat playing with a mouse for the pure pleasure of it.’
‘Do you think any of our team did it?’
‘They would have had to have been pretty sick. I haven’t had a chance to examine the remains closely but everything I’ve seen looks like bite marks, claw slashes and pure fury. No indication of weapons fire or knife marks. Also, the meat near the bones shows some indication of canine cuts. I’d say two or three inch tooth structures. No, I think one of the locals did it. Some dinosaur or reptile perhaps.’
‘Buddy, I didn’t see you come down. Go ahead in. Hang on Dan I want to be in there when they go in.’ David said as he walked over toward the cave with the three Hypes.
Dan turned to Dieter and Sara, ‘I recognize Buddy but who are the other two?’
‘I don’t know.’ Sara returned. ‘Unfortunately this means we aren’t going to be able to communicate well with them. Buddy only speaks a few words and the other two most likely can’t talk at all. I wish Tina or Molly had come along.’
Dan called back up to Tom Bracken, ‘Call Brittany and ask her to bring some Hypes that can talk to us.’
‘They’re already here sir.’
‘How the hell … Oh, I bet they picked up our transmissions using those Hive-Bot scarves that your son made for them. I thought we were being cryptic enough in our conversation. These guys seem to continually surprise us.’
Sara’s son, John Wenford, is researching hive intelligence in the form of microscopic Hive-Bots. Self-constructing nanotechnology artifacts, a single Hive-Bot is relatively unintelligent and weak. However, when combined with several million other microscopic robots, the mentality of the whole entity quickly approaches artificial intelligence quotients. Their functioning is like the cells in the human body but, unlike human cells, they do not need the intimate contact or rigid programming since they are all individually programmable. Scarves made from the robots and worn on the necks of the Hypes allow them to communicate across the Hive-Tab network through a short range link directly into the minds of the dinosaurs.
Tina ran into the cave without stopping to greet Sara and the others. She emerged a few moments later, quite visibly shaken. ‘What you do here? Why?’
‘We didn’t do this Tina.’ Dan replied immediately. ‘This is how they found the bodies. I was rather hoping you could tell me what may have happened.’
‘I don’t know. Never kill like this. Strange smell all through cave.’
‘That’s the smell of death Tina.’ Dave replied.
‘No, more than that. Strange sharp smell. Something very wrong.’
‘Do you think the Troondons did it?’
‘No, never like this. They kill, sometimes very bad but not like this. Troondon take, we never see again. Why someone do this?’
‘Can you tell how they brought the Hypes to the cave?’
‘Smell follows outside and up trail. I first smell just down from top of trail.’
Dan cut in. ‘Now wait a minute. We have security fields up on top. We would have recorded anything unusual and the system would have notified us.’
‘They come trail. How get there we not know.’
‘If Tina’s right, then we have a hole in our security net. I think they must have entered from down on the shoreline.’
Dieter spoke up, ‘Doesn’t make sense sir. Why drag them all the way over to the cave here? We know there are no other Hype colonies on the mainland, at least not nearby.’
David returned from the cave. ‘They’re pretty shaken. They don’t like things changing very much and this is entirely alien to their way of life. I guess we’re pretty lucky they’ve accepted us. We must have really upset their home-life.’
Sara turned to Dave, ‘Yeah, I guess things have been pretty stable around here for a long time until we came. They don’t even have seasonal changes in the weather. Our arrival must be rather traumatic for them. An incident like this doesn’t help matters either.’
As they talked, one of the Hypes emerged from the cave and ran up the trail. David watched, ‘They were not real happy with my poking around in there. I expect they would like to take care of the remains.’
‘Ah Brittany, don’t go in there. You don’t want to see that. Say, is there anyone missing from the community up there? Any of the Hypes we know?’
‘No Doctor Pope. At least no one that I know of and I was down in their caverns with them. All seemed normal until we heard your call. Then Tina seemed to get very upset and we ran over here.’
‘Dan, I’d like to go up top and see if I can find anything. Maybe there’s something we’re missing.’
‘OK Dave, keep in touch. We’ll install the AutoSentinel down here so we can watch the bottom of the cliff. Last thing we want is some of our team members ending up like this. Most of all I want to find out how they evaded our security net.’
‘Lots of questions at this point. We need to get some answers. I’m going to look over by the rocks while you skirt around the water’s edge. I don’t have to tell you to be careful over there do I?’ Dan said as he walked off and began searching the base of the cliffs.’
‘Mom, unless you need me I’m going to go back to the plateau and see if I can find out who is missing.’ Brittany began collecting her things. ‘I hope this doesn’t put too much of a crimp on our work with the Hypes.’
‘Not by yourself young lady.’ Dan called over to her. ‘We’re going back to the original orders until we find out how they breached security. Stay armed at all times and no travelling without a companion. That means a human companion Brittany.’
* * * * *
Corey sat on the edge of the Hunter’s portal and watched Anton update his progress report. They’ve gone about as far as they could with just the three of them working on this side of the river. He could hear Alex up in the cockpit talking with the Colonel.
‘No sir. I didn’t put a priority flag on my report. We were able to handle the situation and I saw nothing that exceptional in the incident. I simply thought that since we are on this new section of the mainland we ran into something new. Happens all the time around here you know.’
‘Yes sir, it is unusual that the perimeter security was breached but we didn’t have the full AI network up. No sir, we were able to handle the situation without any other incidents. No sir, nothing abnormal since the other night and we are on schedule for the construction.’
‘No sir. We need to take the bridge pillar on the North Side up to construction level 340.3 before we can begin the bridge phase over here. Bob and Sotak have been working that end and I understand they are a little ahead of schedule.’
‘Yes and we are about ready to head back over and help them complete their side. Then we’ll need to bring over more manpower and robotics for our next phase over here on the south side.’
‘Yes sir. I’ll tell them. See you tonight.’
Alex turned to Anton and Corey, ‘Well, for the record we’re on heightened security now. Quite coincidentally, we had five Hypes killed and butchered in the grotto cave last night. Dan’s linking in our incident report with the killing because they also had an unexplained security breach and the tracks they found on the cliff-top were similar to the images we sent over.’
‘So, we wrap it up and then head over to the other side as per the original plan. We’ll need to beef up our perimeter though and keep at least an AI presence to monitor the security. So, let’s get going.’
* * * * *
‘OK, we’re into the final batch. Looks pretty good if I do say so myself.’ Sotak Luti turned to Bob Brody who was examining grain structure of the last pour segment. He slowly paced the silicon-rich concrete based arm that extended over a hundred yards out over the valley floor. They are scanning the structure sonically for cracks or uneven curing of the newly poured bridge support arm.
Bob had to shout back over to Sotak, ‘Yeah, nice and uniform all the way through. Nice working with this sand base. Most of the stuff is pure silica but t
here’s enough coral mixed in with it that the matrix reflow doesn’t tend toward a pure crystal output. The resulting mix is full of enough imperfections that it makes the end product a less brittle than we usually get. Stuff should last a thousand years!’
‘That’s about the right time frame.’ Sotak quipped. ‘After that we don’t want to be in the area. I wonder how hard this area will be hit when the comet finally strikes.’
Sotak picked up the sonic leads and they retracted back into the tool. ‘You finish up, I want to go back to the tractor and put this away. I also want to see how the pour melded with the rocks on the face of the cliff. If all went as well as this pouring we should be able to start on the other side tomorrow.’
‘The cliff strata seems to be holding the strain nicely.’ Janet Andersen added across their Hive Tab link. Janet is a GeoPhysicist from Bucknell who first came to GraviDynamics to work on the Europa base site. She was a major contributor to the string model for the original Jupiter Red Spot theory that resulted in their being able to travel back in time to this location.
‘Hey, did you guys notice that? Most of the small dinosaurs left the area when you started that deep probe analysis of the bridge. It’s rather scary-quiet around here now. I’m going to note it in our day report. Maybe the sonic pulses of the probe are driving them off. We might have a fenceless barrier here if we do it properly.’
‘Would you come over here Janet.’ Sotak called from the tractor over near the edge of the clearing. ‘I just heard the strangest alert from our AutoSentinel. We shouldn’t …’
Janet turned to see why Sotak stopped. What met her eyes stunned her into immobility. Things like this just don’t happen! Sotak was down on the ground and being pulled toward the brush by a dark-brown dinosaur. The beast seemed to be only slightly larger than him and a part of her mind wondered how the normally light-boned dinosaur was able to manhandle the large man so easily. The raptor had it’s mouth over his helmet partially covering his face and it shook as it pulled him along. She could barely hear his muffled cries although he was only a few yards away. She could see him twisting and turning, trying to grab his attacker.
Hunter's Moon (Cretaceous Station Book 2) Page 12
