The human partners, when they learned to hear like the wolfbat, also could make complex sound maps in their minds, and could save other information in the same matrix. Flock Leader and Flight Leader both had new ideas, learned from humans, which they had saved for use if they were able to lure followers to come here, to a fresh exciting place to form a new flock, with new prey.
Their practice with mind sharing with humans, and with rippers, had left them with an idea of how they might convince cousins of rippers to work with them as well. They could spot prey too large for a wolfbat from their aerial advantage point. On the ground, large cats that could pull down such prey, often could not find them, or position themselves for an ambush to make a successful sprint after fast and agile prey.
Because all of the families of cats on Koban had inherited the ancient common ability to share mind pictures, Flock Leader hoped they could find a way to cooperate with them, as they now did with rippers and humans on hunts on their home territory. He and Flight Leader had seen it was difficult to obtain cooperation from the mated pairs of lions that lived on the open plains of this new land. They lived in relative isolation, and did not cooperate in hunts even with others of their own kind.
However, they could delicately, and cautiously, try to approach other cat families for cooperative hunting in the forest. Cautious, because to those cats a wolfbat was not only a competitor for some of the same food sources, but potential prey.
Wolfbat flocks near dryer regions at home had learned to help dessert panthers find prey among the dunes, in trade for a share of the kills. This had been initially arranged by their human partners, after they had trapped and shared thoughts with many of the midsized cats. The purpose of the humans was originally only to convince the cats to leave people alone, or to be hunted by them in turn. However, they recognized that threats alone would not prevent a hungry predator from attacking one of them if a person was found all alone.
The key was to reduce how hungry the panthers became, and thus be willing to avoid a more dangerous sort of prey. That’s where their cooperation with wolfbats was the key. To help them find their prey more quickly, then guide them to the prey, or chase the prey to them. The concept of payment had been harder to convey, but leaving a quarter of a kill in exchange for more frequent kills was eventually arranged.
Without humans to be the mediators it would be more difficult, but Flock Leader had hopes it would work. If it did not, there was ample smaller prey in the forest canopy, in the occasional clearings, and along the riverbanks of a huge slow flowing river only a few miles away. If they hunted other plateaus with wolfbat populations, there would be inter flock warfare.
When the squadrons returned, they reported numerous signs of flying birds and reptiles in the treetops, or gliding above them, and small four legged animals eating the vegetation on the more exposed flat top of their new home. Distant flock calls were heard from the nearest plateau, well away on the far side of the river, so they had distant neighbors out hunting today.
When Flock Leader signaled a migration to a new home, the squadron males divided the weight of the meat sacks between them and rustled their leathery blue wings as they opened them for the effort of the leap into the sky carrying the extra weight. They had to move their food supply first, into the large cavern that the humans had discovered under the plateau’s top. They said they used a form of echo, like wolfbat sounds, which found the hidden cavity and an entrance, but that the method didn’t make a noise that could be heard by ears. The hard dish the human herd leader pointed to was shaped a bit like a round ear, and he told them that it “saw” the underground opening from high above all of the air.
When a smaller not-life flyer brought Flock Leader and Flight Leader to explore last week, they had soon found the crevasse openings under the vines that hid the deeper passages leading into the large cavern. They were exactly where the human partner’s mental pictures indicated they would be found. The cavern was much larger than they needed right now, but had room for them to grow into a great flock if they found enough food.
The higher priority meat was already being moved, with Flight Leader showing the four squadron leaders the way. Flock Leader called out to the females to prepare to follow him. The twenty four females, many already bearing future pups, grasped one each of the coils of light but strong chording, which the humans gave to them to weave long lasting support webs to hold their individual nests. That would keep their nests clear of the sides and floors of the cavern, where slithering predators would potentially come to eat their pups. The not-life coils were stronger, thinner, and longer than the vines they would have used. The slithering creatures would find them very difficult to use as a crawlway.
For two days, they were busy stringing the chords into a series of crisscrossing supports for the more complex webbing that the females instinctively wove using the thin lines. Then most of the flock flew out to gather vines, sturdy limbs, and foliage to line the basket like structures, and thus provide firmer support for the weight of a family, and to hold the flightless pups securely. They were careful to leave the concealing vines over their outside entrance in place.
This was hard, energy consuming work, and with their high metabolisms, they would have frequently needed to interrupt nest building to hunt for food. The high quality meat they brought with them sustained them while they completed their base of operations, and they had some left, in case early hunting failed to prove productive.
That proved to be a nice reserve of meat, but unnecessary for their continued survival when the nest building was finished. Prey was plentiful and at least in this area, not particularly wary of the unfamiliar presence of wolfbats. That would change of course.
The females were settling into their nests and preparing them for occupation by one or two pups each, using a soft downy blue lining, pulled from additional fur that pregnancy hormones caused to grow long and fluffy on their stomach. Flock Leader’s mate was as busy as the other females, and she was cranky and tended to snap at him (literally) if he perched on the side of the nest too long, presenting himself as the leader he was to the other wolfbats.
Most of the other males were off either guarding the entrance to the nest, out hunting, or scouting the new territory. As future fathers of many species had learned, on multiple worlds, going hunting for large game was often less hazardous duty that simply standing near your expecting mate.
Flock Leader, a fresh screech of irritation in his ear as motivation, wisely elected to be the leader outside, for a while. He went to seek signs of some of the several varieties of felines that were said to inhabit this jungle region. It was raining as he made his exit between the vines, but the rain was warm, and thus more inviting than his most recent contact with his grumpy mate.
He circled over the jungle canopy, sometimes dipping below the crowns of the giant trees, and flying under or between their layers of limbs, watching for signs of cats on the forest floor. He saw marsh dogs, eight or ten in a pack, sniffing their way through the surprisingly sparse underbrush. The amount of ground cover here was less than in the forests where Flock Leader had previously lived. There was less sunlight leaking its way through the canopy of these trees, with overlapping limbs constantly trying to steal every photon of light from their neighbor.
He often saw browsers and scavengers rooting through the leaf litter, seeking tubers, insects, leaves, or small animals. He saw a few fly covered stripped carcasses a time or two, often near small streams that the frequent rain fed. There were arboreal creatures in the trees, half the mass of a wolfbat, but taste tests had proven their rangy meat was bitter tasting, apparently a result of their tolerance of a bright red fruit that was toxic to most other animals.
Obviously, water sources were places a predator could wait for meals to arrive. However, there were so many small streams and pools, that this didn’t narrow his search area greatly.
When his ears detected shrieks and screams under the canopy to his left, closer to t
he large river, he flew that direction, chewing on one of the last cubes of rhinolo meat, expelled from his throat storage sack. Flying burned more energy than gliding on thermals above the forest.
He soon followed the noise to a pack of two dozen screamers. They had surrounded a large deer-like animal and her fawn. The sixteen to twenty inch high, two legged blue theropod dinosaurs had surrounded the two much larger creatures. The mother could have easily broken through the ring by leaping over or forcing her way through the little predators. However, her fawn, probably only a few days old, was unlikely to avoid the teeth that would try to grip its hooves and leap at is throat, in an effort to trip it and bring it down. Once on the ground, the small sharp teeth would deliver multiple wounds, to bleed it to fatal weakness even if helped to its feet by the doe.
The blood on the dappled fur indicated that the fawn had already been attacked, perhaps even down briefly, since there were bleeding bites on its lower legs, sides, and on its neck. There were a few such blood marks on the doe’s legs, but she would have been able to kick the attackers loose. The heaving flanks of the bleating fawn were evidence of a longer chase, and that the pair had finally been overtaken when the fawn’s energy ran low.
The screamers, named that because of their attack strategy of leaping high and emitting a high pitch loud screech to terrify their prey, used their leaping ability to overcome their natural height disadvantage. They used numbers and endurance to pursue and overwhelm tired larger prey. The doe was well above their normal prey size, unless the pack was considerably larger. A solid kick not dodged could cripple or kill a screamer, and a broken leg meant a slow starving death alone, or even sooner if another predator found them.
Clearly, this modest sized pack had chosen the pair with the goal of separating the fawn from the mother, and now that the chase had reached the point where the fawn had to stop running, the standoff was merely a waiting game. A screamer would dart in and nip at one of the fawn’s legs, adding to the steady flow of blood that would weaken it until it sank to its knees. Once bled enough for the fawn to collapse, the doe would eventually give up the lost fight and save itself for the next breeding season. The greatest risk for the screamers was that the doe would hold them off until the noise drew a much larger predator, and it took their prey away from them.
Flock Leader looked at the shaky fawn’s wide legged stance, barely able to stay on its feet, and he felt great sympathy. For the screamers!
As a fellow predator, he had been in similar standoffs when he was a squadron leader, with too few wolfbats under his command to take a prey animal down directly, forced to wait them out as they weakened from wounds. Too often, a passing ripper or pack of wild dogs would claim their prize as they waited. To him the fawn looked like tender succulent meat that would feed a third of his flock for a day.
Had his flock been closer, or he heard one of his squadron’s calls above the trees, he would have gladly have called in a team of his larger predators to steal the fawn from the screamers. Three of his younger squadron mates could lift the fawn, and fly it into the lower limbs of these trees for rendering. However, he was on his own, and his predator’s sympathy went to the screamer pack.
Accustomed to cooperation with humans, and sometimes with rippers, Flock Leader analyzed the problem from that standpoint. If he were helping those partners, in exchange for a share of the kill, what could he do that would earn him a share of the meat? His advantage as an aerial scout wasn’t needed, because the prey was already found and surrounded. It was obvious to him after only a moment of circling, staying well above the scene below.
He partly folded his leathery blue wings and dropped in a controlled dive, suddenly uttering a low frequency scream that served no echo ranging or communication function for wolfbats. It was deliberately scaled to the hearing range of other animals.
The startled looks of the screamers, as they glanced up at the falling blue blur was proof enough they heard him. However, they didn’t scatter, because they instantly recognized that he was alone, and thus could not take the fawn from them.
The doe also looked up, and her already tangible fear was evidenced as she backed away from her fawn, unprepared for this second assault. Wolfbat attacks and cries may have been heard by her previously, with another flock just on the other side of the river. Perhaps it may have been instinctive. She oriented her two long straight horns vertically, to defend herself from a strike from above at her exposed neck, prepared to thrust them back at any contact there or on her back.
Flock Leader had no intention of going for her neck, or even biting her legs to try to trip her, and thus risk a kick. He opened his wings at the last moment to swoop over her rump, and he used his rows of forearm grasping claws to scour her flanks, raking his claws on each side, and delivered a hard nip to her short, nervously whipping tail. He pulled up well behind her rearward thrusting horns, which protected her elongated neck and front shoulders.
His final cry, as he flapped rapidly up and made his wings snap taut to generate a loud popping sound, accomplished his purpose. The startled doe leaped forward, into the circle of screamers, who promptly went after her legs and leaped onto her back. She panicked at finding herself attacked from two sources, and in that instant, her sense of self-preservation was stronger than the bleating of her trembling fawn. She shook off her attackers as she ran into the scattered underbrush between the bases of the giant trees.
Flock Leader landed in the lowest limbs just above the scene of slaughter below him, and observed with interest as the screamers quickly went for the throat of the fawn, ending its kicking and cries in a few bloody minutes. They were less efficient at this, because of their smaller size, and thus less merciful than wolfbats would have been in ending the prey’s life quicker.
However, the concept of mercy was as alien to the wolfbat as it was the screamers. This was survival, not a sporting event with manufactured rules. A struggling prey animal was likely to injure you, and delayed the start of feeding. The sooner it was dead the better.
As the screamers started to feed, Flock Leader made a low frequency sound from time to time, to remind them he was watching them, and some of them kept at least one eye on him at all times. The two dozen slender little hellions had more to eat than they could hold, despite the fawn’s limited supply of flesh and organs. It was rare that a pack this small could protect the leftovers of a kill for a repeat feeding the next day, and they couldn’t carry it away. They ate what they could and then stayed near, to try to protect the kill from other small scavengers overnight. If any competition of size appeared, and their digestion had not progressed enough to remove the lethargy they now felt, they would be compelled to surrender the remains of the carcass.
Flock Leader watched as they left the side of the kill, one by one, the smallest and least dominate pack members being the last to feed. That was when he silently swooped down, and used his front leg claws to snare what was left of the exposed backbone and skin, and flapped furiously to gain altitude with the reduced weight of the fawn. One haunch fell away, the connective tissue bitten away, but the remaining weight proved there was meat enough left to feed at least two or three wolfbats for a day. None of the screamers made a serious move to stop him, and even the screeches of protest were softer than before the kill had been made. They were small, and had a stomach to match. They were full.
He returned to the limb where he had watched the feeding, and draped the carcass securely over several branches. He then flew above the canopy and spotted the plateau, and saw a squadron circling in a thermal above the cliffs. Alone as he was, the carcass was a bit too heavy for him to fly it to the nest, so he issued a loud ultrasonic call, and waited for the sound to travel the two miles. When he saw the squadron leader turn his four squad-mates towards the sound’s source, he issued a new cry, which would allow them to home in exactly on his location.
When they arrived, he issued the follow-me-to-a-kill call, and led them through the tree canopy to where t
he remains of the fawn lay on the branches. He commanded they feed on the remains while he flew low over the screamers below, forcing them to notice that he had numerous flock mates at his disposal now. It would be obvious to the dominate members of the pack below that he was a leader of this flock, or at least of the squadron.
He regurgitated another cube of rhinolo meat from his throat pouch, and stayed behind after he sent the squadron back to the nest. He knew without the remains of a kill to hold them here, the screamers would return to their own nesting area to digest in safety. At least that was what a cousin species of them on Flock Leader’s home continent would do. He wanted to follow them.
After an hour of observation, he spotted some of the pack trailing off through the trees, in groups of four or five. Staying high, he kept several groups in sight as they wandered through the forest. After a time he found their home territory, which he marked in his memory from above the tree tops and flew home.
On subsequent days, between hunting, he would return to the screamer’s home territory, and sat and watched for them to form hunting parties. The pack consisted of perhaps seventy members, but he only followed those hunting parties of about twenty or more. They were most likely to try for larger game, which could furnish him opportunities to help. He had given up on finding cats to try to form a partnership. They were possibly nocturnal, too isolated, or too stealthy. He’d not seen any in days of looking.
Koban Universe 1 Page 5
