by Adam Carter
Passing through the initial gate was easy since the swamp had reclaimed most of the outer fencing years ago. Whitsmith could still see portions of the fence sticking out at awkward angles like markers for the graves for what should have been their protection. Their approach to the building was of course noted and the large entryway was opened for them, the steel shutters rolling up as people inside operated the necessary machinery. The vehicle trundled through the shutters and Whitsmith gave the signal to lower it behind them. As she watched those shutters fall she could not help but breathe a small sigh of relief. No matter how many times she ventured into the wider world she always felt as though it would be the last. She would never of course admit her fears to anyone, but this world was harsh and she had seen far too many people claimed by its horrors.
Whitsmith left the workmen to take the animal to the pens. It would need to be washed and brought back to consciousness, then fed and made to understand it was not in any immediate danger. But that was someone else’s job. Whitsmith had far worse matters to attend to. She had to make her report to her boss.
Unsurprisingly, Valentine was waiting for her in what passed for his office. Whitsmith had always found it strangely amusing how they had settled into this place. Initially it had been their prison; but when they had turned on their guards and taken over it had become something the prisoners owned. There was of course no means off the world and they were every bit the prisoners they had been before the takeover, but at least they were now masters of their own fates. That no one had ever come looking for the guards, that no one had even bothered to wonder how things were going down here, told Whitsmith that no one cared. The world was off-limits, so it had never made sense to her that there was a prison here to begin with. Close proximity to Jupiter also screwed around with radio signals, and long-distance messages were certainly out of the question. At the institution – which was their nice word for prison – they used industrial, military-issue walkie-talkies, which were good for a range of several miles. The world badly despised allowing transmissions of any sort, and if not for the impressive military hardware, even the radios would not work. Any communication device which relied on satellites was pointless and had been discarded or recycled into something useful.
Nothing was ever wasted on this world.
Valentine’s office was that of the former warden. The actual cells themselves were still used as bunks for some of the people here, simply due to the lack of space, but whenever Whitsmith walked those corridors lined with the thick vertical bars she never looked into the cells. She had spent too long in a cell to ever be able to sleep in one again and was only grateful she was one of the lucky ones to have been assigned a proper bedchamber.
Valentine leaned back in his chair as she stopped at his desk. He was a smartly dressed man in a business suit which he always seemed to be able to keep presentable and pressed. Whitsmith had seldom seen him without a tie, and today was no exception. He was a tall man with short blond hair, thinner than most people of importance Whitsmith had ever known. Why he cared so much for his appearance she could not say. Perhaps he thought he was impressing someone, but even then she couldn’t say who that might have been since he certainly didn’t impress her. If he wasn’t so meticulous in everything he did, perhaps he would have impressed her by being normal. But, if he was like everyone else, he would not have been Dexter Valentine.
He had been writing when she entered, scribbling away at his work as though it meant anything. Valentine kept meticulous records, and Whitsmith’s excellent memory was certainly the thing which had made him initially notice her. He pushed his thin glasses further up the bridge of his nose and leaned his elbows on the desk as he awaited her report. Just why he wanted a report she could not say. There was certainly nothing to report save that she had brought in the moschops like he had wanted.
“It went off without a hitch,” she said. “We didn’t lose anyone.”
“You seldom do, Aubrey. What level shall we put the moschops down for?”
She saw he was eager to reach for his pen and wondered cruelly how he would react when he finally ran out of ink. “Put it down for a level four. Five if you want a tag-team.”
Valentine pulled a face as he made the necessary marks on his paperwork. “I was hoping for something a little more powerful than a level four, Aubrey.”
“I take what I can get, Dex. Maybe next time you could give me a shopping list.”
He ignored her sarcasm and continued to write something. Or maybe he wasn’t ignoring her sarcasm but was instead recording it. She craned her neck to read it, but his handwriting was terrible.
“We need a fiercer dinosaur to draw the crowds, Aubrey,” he told her seriously. “Something better than a herbivorous moschops. People have been getting a bit bored with the tournaments lately.”
Whitsmith could understand why. Throwing volunteers into a pit with an angry animal was perhaps one of the worst blood sports Whitsmith could conceive. If the volunteers survived they gained a variety of rewards; if they failed they almost always died. Wagers were made on the results of the combat, and some of the prisoners had even become legendary due to their incredible success rate and ability to please the audience. Whitsmith found the entire thing sickening.
“There are predators out there, Dex,” she told him, “but they’re a little harder to bag. And the moschops wasn’t a dinosaur, by the way. It was from the Permian era and wasn’t even a reptile.”
Valentine ignored her, just as he always did when she corrected him about such things. He did not care that not all prehistoric animals were dinosaurs. He did not care that only certain reptiles from the Triassic, Jurassic and Cretaceous periods were dinosaurs, and that did not include anything that flew or lived in the water. All Valentine cared about was keeping the institution running. Whitsmith was not even convinced he had seen any of the wildlife up close.
“If you don’t want me for anything else,” Whitsmith said tiredly, “I’m going to hit the shower then go to bed.”
“Actually there was something.”
He wasn’t supposed to say that and he knew it. He knew her routine following a successful hunt and had no reason to stop her like this. Whatever it was, it had better be important.
“We’re getting reports of something strange out in the swamp.”
“What kind of strange?”
“We don’t know yet. Something reasonably small and extraordinarily powerful. Some of the water purifier equipment was destroyed yesterday and just this morning one of my patrols reported seeing something hanging around outside the perimeter we set up.”
Whitsmith rubbed at tired eyes and fought to stifle a yawn. “Probably a dromaeosaurid. There are enough of them out there.” Dromaeosaurids were a problem which should have been dealt with via shotgun, so far as Whitsmith was concerned. From the harmless-sounding bambiraptor to dromaeosaurus to velociraptor, the dromaeosaurid family consisted of all the vicious, feathered hunters with a scimitar claw on each foot perpetually raised from the ground. This claw was never blunted through contact with anything other than its prey, and the dromaeosaurids were easily the most fearsome creatures on this world. And that was even including the bigger tyrannosaurids.
Still, there was nothing Whitsmith was willing to do about it right now. Dromaeosaurids were often known to hunt at night and in almost all instances they were pack hunters. She knew Valentine would have his eye on her capturing one for his blood sports, and perhaps Whitsmith could even look into it. But she would have to take with her a lot more support and certainly more weapons than she could carry on her person.
“I’m not so sure,” Valentine said and Whitsmith thought back to figure out what he wasn’t sure about. “There were no tracks at all out there.”
“So they’re finally using their feathers to fly,” Whitsmith all but snapped. The implication sank in immediately, however, and Valentine’s face was a blanket of concern. “I’m going to bed,” Whitsmith muttered as she left. A
s she continuously liked to remind Valentine, dinosaurs could not fly. The thought of something as powerful as a velociraptor having learned how to fly ... it did not even bear thinking about. The former prisoners were barely holding their own as it was some days; even with the ridiculous flying theory disregarded, if the dinosaurs were becoming smarter there was simply no chance for any of them to last much longer.
CHAPTER TWO
The pit fights were not going well, and Dexter Valentine was beginning to panic. During the planning stages it had seemed a wonderful idea to overrun the prison. Valentine had put a lot of thought and energy into the plans, had found the work both exciting and stimulating. He was of course not one of the people who had initially decided to attempt the breakout, but he was certainly the man they had come to in order to thrash out a plan of attack. That all the ringleaders had died during the takeover had left a gap in the command post, and Valentine had slipped into it nicely. He had restored order to the confusion he had seen seeping in. Anarchy had its good points, but the simple fact was someone had to be in charge. Given entire freedom, the escaped prisoners would have killed one another before the year was out, and any who remained would have made quick meals for the dinosaurs outside. That they had killed every single one of the prison guards was terrible, since they had no one who actually knew how everything ran. Also, they had no information on how to contact anyone outside of their stupid little world, and what call-signs and codes they would need in order to avoid having a squad of armed soldiers coming in to clean them out.
Restoring order was Valentine’s first order of business and he had done this by appealing to the prisoners’ baser instincts. No one wanted to perform the menial jobs such as guard duty or cleaning. In fact most of the prisoners didn’t want to do much at all. So Valentine had created the fighting pits. Volunteers would be thrust against various wild animals and bets would be taken on who would win, if not survive. Those who lost the bets had to perform the menial chores no one wanted to do. Those who won gained perks and sometimes even money, although there did not seem any point in anyone having money any more. It was ironic that a lot of the prisoners were there in the first place because of crimes they had committed for money; and that now they were free they had no longer any need for the stuff.
Valentine had maintained order for several years now, although recently he had noticed people were beginning to tire of the games. They were always such a good crowd-pleaser before, yet there were only so many animals out there to be found. Initially he had pitted people against the various species of crocodiles lurking in the swamp. There were some large, mean crocodiles out there, in fact, and an array he had never before considered. There were crocodiles with long legs, those which existed primarily on land; and oddly vegetarian crocodiles, which even Valentine found fairly interesting.
Aside from the crocodiles there were various other species living about the swamp. Many vicious dromaeosaurids were found locally, although when Whitsmith had told him about the things he had had no idea what she was talking about. These dinosaur names were all Greek to him, he had told her one time. She had thought he was making a joke and had laughed. To this day he still didn’t understand what was funny about that. Whenever Whitsmith spoke to him of the creatures out there he always made her use terms he would understand. Dromaeosaurids, it turned out, were like little tyrannosaurus rexes. They were nothing like them, Whitsmith assured him, but in Valentine’s mind they were close enough. They looked vaguely the same and they would eat you if they could.
On the hunt for fresh animals to bring to the pits, Valentine had pushed Whitsmith farther into the outside world. So far as most of the prisoners knew things, the institution was located deep within a swamp and there was nothing else the entire world over. That the entire world could be a swamp would have been ridiculous, but no one seemed to question such a thing. Whenever Whitsmith travelled to the plains and valleys beyond the swamp, therefore, she had to select a group of workers from those few who knew some of the secrets of their world. Secrets, Valentine scoffed. There were secrets to their world all right, but Valentine didn’t know any of them. He liked to pretend to believe that he did, but the truth was he was as much in the dark as everyone else around the place.
Discovery of the outside world was not his primary concern, however. He had kept its existence a secret all this time, and the monsters out there had kept the prisoners from venturing too far. When they had first overrun the prison, several people had set off to explore. None had returned. Perhaps they had died, perhaps they had discovered Paradise. Either way they were out of Valentine’s hair and if he was going to maintain control of this situation he needed everyone where he could handle them. It was perhaps selfish of him, but none of them were there because they were decent folk. There were a few petty thieves in the prison, but for the most part they were murderers and rapists and Valentine had no pity for any of them.
The crime which had placed Valentine on this rock was something he never revealed to anyone.
“We need something different,” he mused aloud. He was no longer in his office, but had taken himself to the roof of the prison. The building may have been infested with swamp vines, moss and damp, but nothing that could hurt him could get to the roof. The building had been a prison, which meant it was designed to keep the inmates in and unwanted visitors out. From the roof, Valentine commanded a poor view of things, for the trees rose about him and the green/brown murkiness of the swamp gave him little in the way of a pleasant sight. But being up on the roof got him away from everyone and allowed him to think. And when Dexter Valentine was given the opportunity to think, bad things happened.
“There’s not much left, sir.”
Valentine had almost forgotten he had brought Anthony Stone with him. Stone was a large, heavy-set man who had been put away for rearranging the body-parts of the man his girlfriend had cheated on him with. Stone had no remorse for anything he did, and very little patience for anyone. Valentine had offered him the position as his personal bodyguard, knowing Stone would protect him with a passion. Stone was afforded his own chambers and pretty much any perks he wanted. As soon as Valentine died he would lose all of that, and would never have been able to run things without him. Stone would be willing to risk his life to safeguard Valentine, and they both knew it.
Stone was no fool, but nor was he a strategic genius, which meant while Valentine might sometimes bounce ideas off him, he would never seriously discuss his future plans with him.
But Valentine had more pressing things to consider than his bodyguard. The moschops would buy him some time, but it wasn’t the herbivores the prisoners liked to watch. It was all very good pitting a human against a herbivore, for there were some truly fascinating defences those beasts had developed, but if the animal won it would then just wander around the pit, growling a bit and sometimes striking the walls. A carnivore’s kill invariably ended in the loser being torn apart and most of the time devoured. Valentine had himself never been a fan of blood sports and seldom watched the matches, but he understood this was what the prisoners wanted. And if he did not give them what they wanted they may well take out their frustrations upon him.
An expedition could be in order. An exploratory expedition to bring back creatures more exotic than those living about the swamp and the plains beyond. It seemed ludicrous to no longer consider any prehistoric animals exotic, but over the years they had simply become commonplace. An expedition could breathe new life into their meagre existences, but would also likely reveal to too many people that there was more to this world than the swamp. It was a dilemma he had faced before, and one to which he only wished there was an easy answer.
Behind him he heard Stone grunt something and figured the man had just decided to have an opinion on something. Ignoring him, Valentine leaned against the wall overlooking the swamp, wondering what else might be out there. Whitsmith should have left by now to look into that animal sighting: perhaps she would come up with something worth
throwing into the pits. Or perhaps he should develop some new form of entertainment. Someone one time had suggested a theatre, but no one had really been all that interested. Valentine was not a man to have developed a stereotypical viewpoint on criminals, but certainly those within his prison were a mean-spirited violent bunch.
Stone grunted again and Valentine wondered whether the man was developing a cough. He looked over to him and froze, his eyes widening. Stone stood precisely where he had been standing before, but he was no longer alone.
The two women wore green/brown armour to camouflage them into the surrounding swamp. It was bulky and cumbersome and made them look like mobile tanks, but he did not doubt either would be able to move faster than anything Valentine could manage. They wore no helmets, and he marvelled at how their heads seemed to float upon the rim of the suit’s thick neck-guard, giving them the impression of deep-sea divers or the earliest lunar astronauts. Their expressions were stern, calculated, and Valentine was surprised to see how young they were. The closest to him wore her blonde hair short and messy, although it was likely a current fashion somewhere. She could not have been older than twenty and he would have bet good money she was still in her teens. The other woman had darker hair, what there was of it, and colder eyes. Each woman held a rifle, one pointed at either man, and Valentine found the entire process fascinating. He was very glad the dark-haired woman had her gun pointed at Stone.
“Good morning, ladies,” Valentine enthused, not being foolish enough to make any movement with his hands. He searched his memory for what their uniforms might have told him. They looked vaguely Jovian, but Jupiter had so many moons it was difficult to keep track of who was where. The planet itself, obviously, could not support any life and terraforming a gas giant would have been a fiscal nightmare.
