by Paul G White
SHA’LEE RESURRECTION
Paul G White and Keith Argyle
All rights reserved; no part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying or otherwise, without the prior permission of the authors.
Copyright © 2013
Paul G White and Keith Argyle
SHA’LEE RESURRECTION
PART ONE
CHAPTER ONE
The Comora stood black as jet on her five-point landing gear, casting a broad shadow over the lush, low-growing vegetation of the plateau. The immense starship was more than a hundred and thirty metres long and ninety wide, a broad, ovoid disc, thirty metres high in her middle, tapering to a thin edge along her waistline. The rear third of her length was dominated by three huge elliptical bulges above and below her waistline, which housed the ship’s powerful star drive. A few metres away from her rounded prow the jungle-covered ground sloped gently down to a strip of pristine white coral sand, bordering an azure ocean; beyond her stern, the jungle terrain rose steeply towards a ridge, which crested more than three-hundred metres above the small plateau.
Inside the great ship a skeleton crew, under Captain Lessil, were directing the many field expeditions, which were presently collecting data on the flora and fauna of the island. A number of expeditionary groups had already returned from the field with live samples of plants and animals – even a couple of fertilised eggs taken from the nest of one of the carnivores that roamed the island. Once they had unloaded their samples, the members of the field units had been eager to return to the jungle to continue their work, and no one had remained long at the ship.
Lessil had to admit that prospects for the expedition as a whole were not looking promising. They had already discovered that the mainland continents were overrun by huge, fearsome creatures with vast appetites for flesh; and without destroying every single one of them – something which contradicted every Sha’lee ethic, and which would prove extremely problematical, anyway – the only alternative had been to search for an island not already colonised by the predatory beasts. The task had proved an impossible one, but this island, which was small in comparison with the continental masses, had seemed less densely populated than most other areas of the planet. The indications were that a rise in sea level had cut off the island and its inhabitants many generations ago, and natural processes had selected in favour of smaller size within the ranks of the species trapped there. And the warm climate was perfect for Sha’lee to settle and thrive.
However, the beasts on the island, though smaller than their cousins on the larger landmasses, were still proving formidable; and they were widespread over the island. Which had presented Lessil with a quandary: should he order the extermination of the creatures, or should he remain true to Sha’lee philosophy, however galling it would be to leave this fertile and beautiful planet uncolonised? Millennia of tradition had won out in the end, and Lessil had decided to carry out a detailed scientific survey of the flora and fauna before the Sha’lee moved on in search of another planet to colonise. He was an astute Captain, who knew the value of giving his crew an interesting project to complete before they resumed their long journey between the stars. To continue upon their search for a new home so soon after their hopes had been so cruelly dashed would have left the crew in such low spirits that, as captain, he would have been hard pressed to raise their morale. This way, they would undergo a period of interesting and strenuous activity that would settle them down for the next stage of their journey.
CHAPTER TWO
Tane manoeuvred the heavy ground vehicle into the clearing on its concentric rings of whispering airjets. Along one edge of the flattened ground, primitive sequoia trees towered into the cloudless sky, and around the rest of the perimeter, giant cycads jostled for space amongst ginkgoes, tree ferns and bromeliads, their topknots vying for the life-giving rays of the sun.
In the middle of the clearing their quarry, a huge theropod dinosaur, was sinking its teeth into a still-bleating hadrosaur. Without raising its head, the theropod shifted position alongside its kill in order to watch the intruder through bright yellow eyes. Though not as large as its cousins on the mainland, nevertheless, at more than nine metres long and weighing around three tonnes, the female theropod was still enormous to the Sha’lee observers. Its flanks were mottled with patches of glistening green and brown scales, and as it shifted position once again, they were offered a glimpse of its pale yellow underbelly. Running each side of its snout to a point above its eyes and terminating in gaudy tufts of red and turquoise feathers, they could see parallel ridges of bright scarlet bony nodules, which Erwe supposed would probably form part of the creature’s mating display.
But every pair of Sha’lee eyes was fixed on the rows of teeth in a pair of massive jaws that presently gripped a piece of flesh bigger than an adult Sha’lee. Doubtless, such jaws and teeth could do considerable damage to a ground car, and as it would be extremely foolhardy to be unprepared should the beast decide to charge, Tane fed power to the jets and allowed the vehicle to lift a few centimetres above the damp humus covering the floor of the clearing.
With a deep bass rumble, the theropod warned the interloper to keep its distance; and seemingly satisfied that the glittering creature had heeded the warning, angled its head to allow the chunk of meat to slide down its throat. The Sha’lee watched, fascinated, as giant neck and throat muscles worked to gulp down the bloody meat. Moments later the dinosaur bit into the carcase once again, and with a horrible crunching sound, ripped off another enormous mouthful.
This was their opportunity. Erwe judged the distance to their prey and depressed the pad on the ground vehicle’s control panel; and at the same moment, Tane cut the jets and dropped the heavy vehicle flat on the ground so that its considerable weight would act as an anchor. Instantly, a high-tensile net flew out from the ground car’s prow and enveloped the two legged carnivore as it swallowed the chunk of flesh from the remains of the prey animal. At once, the heavy beast fell, hopelessly entangled in the strong mesh, its heavy, iron-hard claws reflexively ripping at the netting in a futile attempt to break free.
Erwe had expected the animal to lie down in submission the moment it knew that it was trapped, but the reality proved somewhat different. With a hideous roar of rage, the creature disgorged the half-swallowed chunk of flesh to clear its airways, then flexed its mighty thigh muscles and regained its feet, dragging the dead weight of the ground vehicle along with it. Bellowing with anger, it increased its pace despite the encumbrance of the net and the heavy vehicle attached to it, and headed towards the massive orange-brown trunks of the stand of sequoias, which masked a steep, boulder-strewn slope down to the beach.
Seal, the entomologist in the party, grinned at Erwe and projected a thought, depicting the ground vehicle being dragged the length and breadth of the island with Tane, the driver, desperately hanging onto the controls, whilst all the other passengers bounced higher and higher with every jolt and jounce over the rough terrain. Erwe flicked back a sardonic reply about Seal’s ongoing problems with the size and biting ability of many of the local insects, and Seal was obliged to acknowledge that she had made a valid point. Meanwhile, Tane was wrestling with the controls of the bucking vehicle in a desperate attempt to steer it away from the trees and the precipice, whilst a wide furrow of dark brown soil lengthened behind the ground vehicle as it ploughed through the rotting leaves and vegetation, cutting all the way through to the subsurface soil.
Huffing and bellowing, with its mighty thigh muscles knotted from the effort of pulling its unwanted burden, the beast made a rapid change of course and stumbled for the gap between two sequoia trees. In that moment, Tane knew he was no
longer in control, if, in fact, he had ever owned any vestige of control over the movement of the beast. Desperately, the driver released the net at the exact moment the carnivore reached the gap – too late to prevent the impact of the vehicle’s prow with the immovable trees. The groundcar hit with a violence that hurled everyone forward in their seats, and threw the transparent protective canopy spinning into the undergrowth. No one was in their safety harness; in fact, no one had foreseen the likelihood of such an event as this. These beasts were proving extremely powerful – more powerful than anyone had anticipated – and far less compliant than any wild creature on far off Sha’lee’an.
Teilinn, Perl and Fen, the squad’s defence troopers were somersaulted into the undergrowth by the impact. Teilinn and Fen instantly regained their feet and brought their energy weapons to bear on their surroundings, in case the carnivore should double back to attack them. Perl, however, had cannoned against the thick trunk of one of the trees, and was lying on her back gasping for breath. Erwe leapt out of the vehicle to render first aid to the stricken trooper, but Perl waved her away. She was heaving great gasps in an attempt to fill her lungs with air, and she was broadcasting angry thoughts of dire pain and retribution against any of the local fauna unfortunate enough to line up in her sights.
Erwe couldn’t help laughing at the trooper’s expense and she was joined by her companions, who hooted and chortled for some minutes until Perl was compelled to gain control of her emotions. Finally, there was silence, broken only by the chirruping of insects and the faraway cries of the receding carnivore, which was still trumpeting its displeasure at being restrained by the netting.
Erwe stared out between the trees and over the blue ocean and took in a deep breath; apart from the gigantic animals roaming every tiny spit of land, this world was truly beautiful – a fitting place for a colony of Sha’lee to lay down their roots. But the captain had made the decision to leave the world fallow, and Erwe could understand why. To exterminate the indigenous animals purely on the grounds of the safety of a colony of Sha’lee would be a crime of galactic proportions, particularly when there were certain to be other, more suitable planets to seek out. All it would take was more ship time, and the Sha’lee crew were well conditioned to life on board. And anyway, who could say what these fearsome creatures might eventually evolve into? To risk interrupting their eventual evolution into thinking beings would be a far greater crime than the mere act of extermination.
The damage to the groundcar was sufficient to render it temporarily unfit for the task they had been given, so all they could do was wait to be picked up. The herpetologist stepped between the trees to the edge of the steep slope to gain a better view of the area, while Tane reported the incident back to the ship. Over the treetops some distance away, a pair of quetzalcoatlus glided silently along on immense leathery wings, on the hunt for unwary prey. Erwe had studied data on these giant flying creatures and she still wasn’t certain she could believe the information. The pterosaurs seemed simply too enormous to fly; but fly they did, and more than one of her shipmates had had a lucky escape from the two metre long beaks of the airborne predators.
As her eyes followed the flight of the two flying nightmares along the line of the treetops, a searing flash of light almost blinded her. Instinctively, her mind broadcast an image of the event as her disbelieving gaze tracked the fireball across the sky. Every Sha’lee within ten kilometres responded to the contact and turned to stare at the fiery light in the sky. There was nothing to give scale to the fireball, so Erwe had no notion whether it was small and fairly close by, or large and distant. She only knew it was intensely bright and travelling at an immense speed, burning the atmosphere as it tumbled on its way. Time seemed to slow to walking pace as the brilliant sphere of light plunged through the blue arch of the sky on a collision course with the ocean.
Many images of the fireball were passing between all those Sha’lee within line of sight, and soon Erwe’s agile mind had performed rudimentary calculations, which informed her that the meteor was vast but far away. She relaxed a little, and felt the others who had become temporarily connected over the preceding few seconds, relax also. Probably no danger for some time was the consensus of the thoughts. The blinding light touched the distant horizon of the turquoise sea and sank almost out of sight before erupting to the skies in a mind-numbing explosion of fire and soil and rock and ocean.
As Erwe watched the immense cloud of ejecta climb skywards, filling most of the horizon with its vision of hell, it was clear to her that this was a planet-changing impact; one which would probably kill species on a global scale. They had to get back to the Comora urgently, but their ground vehicle was disabled. As one, the members of the party turned and headed back in the direction of the ship, keeping the ocean to their left-hand side. Teilinn, Perl and Fen held their energy rifles at the ready and took the lead as they began their battle with the undergrowth, which now seemed to have developed a life of its own, snagging their clothing and tripping them at every opportunity.
As yet another thorny plant snagged at her clothing, Erwe thought peevishly, Why didn’t the astronomers give warning of the approach of the meteor? But no sooner had the thought germinated than she knew that the space rock was probably too small and moving too fast to have shown on anything but the most detailed scan. And anyway, the astronomers could not be expected to comb the skies of every newly-discovered planet on the off-chance that a meteor would hit nearby so soon after the Comora had settled on the ground. Erwe ripped the fabric of her garment out of the clutches of the thorns and redoubled her efforts to return to the ship. She had no notion how much time they had before they felt the effects of the blast; it might be hours . . . or minutes!
She glanced over to her left at the surface of the sea and, near to the horizon, her sharp eyes picked out a hint of disturbance. Not a tsunami, she thought. Too soon! In the middle distance, she spotted a flock of flying reptiles, winging their way between two promontories, unaware of the fate that was soon to befall them. The pterosaurs were roughly halfway to their destination when the heat from the billion-megaton impact shredded their wings and roasted their flesh, dropping them into the sea in a cloud of sooty embers. Even at this great distance from the impact the heat that preceded the blast wave was still a terrible factor.
Erwe screamed with her mind EVERYONE TAKE SHELTER IF YOU CAN! But her warning call was futile, for the lungs and flesh of everyone not protected by a ground vehicle were instantly seared by the intense heat; and seconds later, those within the temporary safety of the ground vehicles were subjected to the violent temperatures as the canopies evaporated and the composite metal bodies heated almost to melting point. As she screamed her warning, she sensed Tane close beside her and Erwe used all her female strength to throw the smaller, slighter male into a deep, moist cavity beneath the roots of a giant sequoia. Erwe dived into the hole on top of Tane and the first deadly effect of the impact passed over them.
Tane grunted in pain as Erwe’s full weight landed across his ribcage and he gasped for breath, severely winded. But Erwe paid no attention to Tane’s minor discomfort. Choking from the smoke and embers of burning vegetation, she emerged from their refuge to see swathes of flaming trees and bushes downslope uprooting and hurtling towards her as the blast wave followed in the tracks of the intense heat. She ducked into the cavity once more, preventing Tane from getting to his knees in the restricted space. Tane railed at the rough treatment, but his complaining was interrupted by the rending of the massive tree trunk above their heads, overlaid by the thunderous roar of the distant meteor impact.
The fibrous tree trunk shattered with a hideous scream and huge pieces flew up the slope, taking other vegetation with them. The roaring continued for some minutes while Erwe and Tane cowered in their tiny refuge, unwilling even to risk peering out while so much deadly debris was hurtling past at near supersonic speed. They huddled with hands clasped firmly over their ears to cut out the continuous roar of the bl
ast wave, their minds numb with shock, their emotions shattered. Amidst the overlying cacophony, neither could hear the calling of mental voices; the telepathic medium was silent, and Erwe feared that they might be the only survivors within ten kilometres.
Numb with shock, the herpetologist heard a crunching sound close to her ears and cautiously moved her hands to investigate. The crackling sound ceased with the movement, and she realised that everywhere was now silent save for a quiet whimpering; the crackling noise had been the result of pressing her palms too fiercely to her ears, and Tane was huddled tightly into a ball, keening his sorrow at the loss of all his friends. At that moment, Erwe suspected that their survival depended upon her ability to inject a feeling of hope into her dispirited companion, because the tone of Tane’s mental aura suggested he had sunk into a pit of despair.
Cautiously, Erwe raised her head from her bolthole and surveyed the scene of desolation. She swivelled around full circle, only peripherally aware that her full weight on her companion’s body was causing Tane extreme discomfort – and saw that the catastrophic devastation was complete. Nothing stood more than a metre above ground; huge trees had been uprooted and lay with every single trunk aligned with the direction of the blast. She realised just how lucky she and Tane had been to find a refuge so close at hand, and from the quietness of the telepathic airwaves, she deduced that few, if any, of her crewmates had been so fortunate.
Wearily, with heavy heart at the loss of her friends and crewmates, Erwe hauled Tane from the shelter and resumed their trek back to the Comora, determined to carry the lighter male if necessary. Progress was extremely arduous because their path was strewn with fallen trees and the charred and sooty carcases of animals of all sizes. The outer flesh of many of the larger creatures had been almost vaporised by the incredible heat and a great number of the carcases had been shredded by shards of wood from trees shattered by the ensuing blast. Ribcages and skulls, stripped of flesh, littered their path as they laboriously picked their way amongst the uprooted trees and still-burning vegetation. The stench of charred flesh filled Erwe’s nostrils, threatening to make her vomit at any moment.
