Against the Eldest Flame (Doc Vandal Adventures Book 1)

by Dave Robinson

  Standing eight feet tall it must have been about twenty feet long from nose to tail and it was approaching at a dead run. White feathers lined its back, and saliva dripped from six inch teeth. Its black beady eyes were fixed on Doc and it gave a roar that showed more teeth than he had time to count. The mouth was easily big enough to take half his body in one bite. At first he thought it had no forelimbs, but then it uncoiled them, showing long feathered arms with a wicked claw at the wrist. Earth was large, and he hadn’t been able to see everything even if he had wanted. He had seen dinosaurs before, even watched live footage, but that was from millions of years in the past, not the present.

  His pistol appeared in his hand and he fired two quick shots into its center of mass. The gun cracked and feathers flew from the divots dug by the explosive rounds but the creature’s only response was a roar. Gus’s Holland and Holland spoke from behind him, it’s authoritative bark signaling a shot the gorilla placed right in the center of the dinosaur’s skull. It kept coming. Doc fired twice more, trying to hit the wounds but the creature was moving too fast and all he did was send more feathers and blood flying. Gus fired the second barrel of his Holland and Holland, smashing into the dinosaur’s left shoulder but even that barely slowed it down.

  Then it was upon him. Instead of the bite he expected, Doc was slammed in the chest as the dinosaur swung its head sideways, sending him flying. Pain stabbed from his chest, and then he hit the ground and the impact drove all the breath from him with a “whoof.”

  A moment later, Gus was standing over him, rifle clubbed as the gorilla faced off against the dinosaur. Wood splintered as Gus smashed his rifle-butt into the dinosaur’s nose. Even with the blood pounding in his ears, Doc could hear the sound of the gun-butt breaking and he knew Gus was going to spend the next week complaining about how Doc made him ruin his rifle and how was he going to replace it in the middle of Africa? His side aching, he wouldn’t be surprised if the dinosaur had cracked a couple of ribs, Doc rolled out of the way and struggled to his feet.

  He had lost both his pistol and machete in the impact, and he knew the rubber bullets in his other gun probably wouldn’t even get its attention. That left his fighting knife.

  Gus was losing his battle with the dinosaur. Vic and Gilly had closed and were hammering it with pistol fire, but their guns were having no more effect than Doc’s own had. It was just too big and had too simple a nervous system. Pain and shock weren’t factors; it was just like fighting a zombie. Fighting a much bigger, faster, zombie with six inch teeth and foot-long claws.

  Drawing his knife, Doc rolled under the dinosaur, slashing for its hamstrings. His first slash raised a red line along its leg and hot blood covered his hand. The dinosaur roared and snapped at him, and he just pulled his head out of the way.

  Gus smacked it in the nose again, and Vic dropped her gun and drew her sword. Gilly held back, firing methodically.

  The dinosaur roared, snapping toward Gus and then Vic. For the moment, Doc appeared to be beneath its notice.

  “Come and get me,” Gus yelled, dropping his rifle and beating his chest. Doc wished he had a camera, though if Vic got her hands on such a picture, Gus would never live it down. The ultimate civilized gentleman, beating his chest like one of his savage cousins. It was the ultimate come-down for a gorilla who was more at home drinking tea from fine bone china than fighting for his life in the African jungle.

  The dinosaur paused for an instant, sniffed, and then opened its mouth and struck at Gus. Gus jumped backwards, and as he did, Doc drove his knife into the dinosaur’s left leg, wrapped both hands around the hilt and pulled. The razor-sharp edge bit through tendons, as he hamstrung the dinosaur.

  The animal screamed, almost hitting the same register as Doc’s whistling, its leg buckling. Doc dove sideways, getting out of the way.

  Vic took the moment to dash in under its upraised throat and deliver a deep slash with her short leaf-bladed sword. Blood fountained everywhere, covering both her and Gus.

  The dinosaur collapsed, its tail still twitching. Vic leaned forward, her hands on her knees, panting from exertion. Doc took deep slow breaths, flushing his lungs. Gilly kept watch, having kept away from the beast. He looked fresher than the others, but there was a small stain on his bandages, and Doc wondered how much the trek was taking out of him.

  He did a double-take as a figure rose from the brush behind Gilly. At first he thought it was a native in a feathered headdress, but then the truth hit. Despite all the lies, Africans didn’t stoop any more than anyone else: and this person’s body was almost level with the ground. It was a smaller version of the dinosaur they had fought, only this one had the glitter of intelligence in its eyes, and a crescent-headed spear in its hands.

  More rose from the grass. They were surrounded.

  #

  Doc held his hands out, palms upward. He could hear one of the smaller dinosaurs behind him and a prickling on the back of his neck made him sure that it was holding a crescent spear or something even more dangerous. A glance around told him the others were doing the same. Vic dropped her short sword, and Gilly his machete. Gus’s rifle was already at his feet.

  One of the small dinosaurs, a little shorter than the others but quite a bit stockier, came and stood in front of Doc, its head bobbing back and forth like a rooster. It looked him up and down, and he took the opportunity to do the same to it. It stood about five feet tall, and its body was almost six feet long, not counting the tail. Doc figured that unless it had hollow bones it was probably a good three hundred and fifty to four hundred pounds. Unlike the bigger dinosaur, its snout was foreshortened and it had a bulge toward the rear of its skull. Both eyes had migrated forward in its skull, providing true binocular vision with greater ocular separation than a human.

  Its head was covered with long red and blue feathers, which faded into a russet and gray down further back on its body. Copper bracelets adorned its wrists and it had several strings of beads around its neck. A large pouch hung in the middle of its chest, looking for all the world like a sporran: and probably serving the same function. Instead of the spear it held a club lined with shards of obsidian, much like the weapons carried by the Aztecs.

  It met Doc’s gaze and emitted a series of clicks and groans, interspersed with what sounded like nothing more than dog barks. It meant absolutely nothing to him.

  Doc nodded solemnly, then slowly pointed to himself. “Doc.”

  It clicked a sound that even he would have had trouble replicating then raised its arms and gave a loud shriek.

  The others responded in kind, and the dinosaur in front of Doc poked him in the chest with the blunt nose of its club. It made another gesture, that unmistakably said, “move,” and pointed east.

  Doc started walking east as directed. A look over his shoulder told him the others were being herded the same way by most of the dinosaurs, while one or two stayed behind to pick up what the group had dropped.

  They walked for another two or three hours through a mixture of both open terrain and brush before they came to a clearing full of thatch domes. Doc and his associates were herded into a circle by a series of prods and pokes. As they stood there, their captors pushed aside four of the smaller thatch domes, revealing earthen pits. Each pit was about eight feet in diameter and maybe ten feet deep. Doc wasn’t sure, but there seemed to be a good two or three dozen different domes, some as much as thirty feet across. A giant fire pit filled the center of the clearing, probably twice as big as needed for an elephant.

  Starting with Gilly, Doc and his team were shoved toward separate pits. Their captors weren’t gentle about it, either. Once he reached the edge they gave him no time to prepare for the drop, but just pushed him into the pit. If he hadn’t been expecting the fall, he could have been seriously hurt. As it was, he had the breath knocked out of him, and felt a stabbing pain in his chest. The fall hadn’t helped his ribs.

  Rolling over, he felt them gingerly. They were sore, possibly cracked, but
he didn’t think they were broken.

  It was going to be a long day.

  #

  Vic ducked and rolled the moment she hit the packed earth floor. Unfortunately the pit was only ten feet across, so she banged her heels awkwardly into the far wall. Shaking her head, she rolled into a sitting position. Taken prisoner, again. At least this time she wasn’t the only one. This was not what she had signed up for.

  She laughed; she hadn’t really signed up for anything. Vic had been a fourteen-year-old Russian émigré in the streets of London when she’d first met Doc and Gus. A daredevil on a bicycle, she’d gone wild during her grandmother’s final illness. The money had run out first; forcing Vic to withdraw from the private girl’s school she had attended since they had reached England.

  Her grandmother’s deathbed was in some Viscount’s townhouse where Vic found it best to be neither heard nor seen. The Viscount’s grandson was sixteen and far more interested in Vic than she was in him. He was a pimply-faced bully who luckily spent most of his time looking for new victims on the playing fields of Eton. Vic spent most of her time either below stairs or as far away as her bicycle would take her.

  One place it took her was the airfield at Croydon, which was where she had met Doc and Gus.

  Vic had been trying, not very successfully, to teach herself to fly a DH.4 she had found in the back corner of a hangar emblazoned with the words Cibola Holdings. Her grandmother didn’t have much time left, and Vic was pretty sure she wasn’t going to be welcome at the townhouse for long after her grandmother passed. The way she figured it, her best hope was Wrangel’s Fleet in Tunisia, the last remnants of the Russian state.

  All she needed was a way to get there, and nothing made more sense to her teenage mind than a plane. It had taken her a while to find the right plane, but after spending a couple of weekends haunting the airfield she had found her target. The DH.4 was small enough for one person to fly, and she was pretty sure she could find fuel once she got to France. With that in mind, Vic had taken to spending as much time as she could at the airfield, looking for her chance. On that particular evening, Vic had been sitting in the front cockpit of the DH.4 trying to figure out the controls when she met her first gorilla.

  “A-hem,” the gorilla, who she later learned was called Gus, had somehow managed to sneak up on her while she was absorbed in figuring out the instruments.

  “What?” She had just about jumped out of the cockpit at the sight of the huge hairy figure. While she wasn’t able to do that, she was able to push herself back against the far rim of the cockpit. Unfortunately for her teenage peace of mind, Doc had come up on that side.

  Those first few minutes had her heart further in her throat than any time before or since. They had also changed her life. Neither Gus nor Doc had really known that much about society at that time, and Vic’s grandmother had been a very good teacher.

  Vic had found herself in the surprising position of social mentor, while they taught her everything she could absorb about her new love: flying.

  By the time her grandmother passed on, Vic had moved into Doc’s household and she had never left. She had grown up traveling the world, and had more adventures than she could have imagined as a girl.

  Now it had her stuck in a thatch-roofed pit in the Belgian Congo. At least this time she wasn’t tied up while an insane Nazi zombie ranted about branding her. Vic took a deep breath and settled in to wait. Night was always the best time to escape, even if the pit was dark.

  #

  Lying in his cell, Doc finally had time to think about their captors.

  Something about them looked familiar, but he wasn’t sure where he had seen them before. They certainly didn’t look like anything he had ever seen on Earth before. They weren’t alien, though. Doc was sure of that. The problem was that he was just as sure that they didn’t belong here either.

  Whatever it was, it would have to wait. His first priority had to be getting out of here, and since their captors appeared to be diurnal, that would be best done at night.

  Lying down on the rough earthen floor, Doc had to laugh at the comparison between his current surroundings and where he had grown up. Here the sounds were natural, he could hear the wind and animal noises; even the faint mutter of what sounded like Gus complaining to the creatures that held them. Not so on the Moon.

  Very few people knew that Doc had been born on the Moon; only Gus and Vic knew the full story.

  His father had been an assistant to Nikola Tesla, who had taken his mentor’s ideas of an electric flyer and put them into practice with the aid of a fortune he acquired by marrying a Boston heiress. Both Doc’s parents had been fascinated by flight and the possibility of space travel; so much so that they intended to spend their first anniversary on the Moon.

  Their spacecraft, the Columbia, was saucer-shaped and about forty feet in diameter, with the living quarters in a twenty-foot section in the center. They launched on July 4th, 1900 with both Tesla and Mark Twain in attendance. They were the last people to see James Clark Vandal, Sr. and Jean Porter Vandal alive.

  Twenty-four hours later, Columbia was on its final approach to the Moon, traveling at over six thousand miles per hour. Doc had often wondered what it must have been like for them. Were they happy? Excited? Had they known Jean was already pregnant? Why were they going so fast? They were barely two hundred miles up. Those were just a few questions to which the answers were permanently lost when Columbia collided with a meteoroid barely three inches in diameter above Mare Crisium. The rock punched through the outer ring, destroying the propulsion system but leaving the inner sphere intact. Their relief must have been short-lived as they realized they were less than two minutes from a collision that was sure to kill them.

  What they didn’t know, was that at the time of the collision they were directly over an observation post that had been set up by the Forty-Third Archonate some hundred and eighty-five million years previously. The Archonate itself had long since disappeared, but the observation station remained. It had spent most of the time in stasis, relying on a series of sensors that it rebuilt every million years or so when the field dropped. The sensors also had the ability to drop the field themselves, if certain triggers were met. One of those triggers was a spacecraft accident above the observation post.

  The field dropped and the artificial intelligence controlling the observation post started processing information. Luckily the alert was flagged, so the AI would deal with it before integrating the last eight hundred and ninety-seven thousand years’ worth of observation data. Tractor generators spun up, flinging an immaterial safety net up toward Columbia. The system even determined that the approaching vessel lacked any form of acceleration compensation, and so it used the minimum necessary power to land Columbia without it splattering over the moonscape.

  The system did its best, but for James and Jean Vandal, that best wasn’t quite good enough. James died instantly on impact. Jean didn’t, quite, but her injuries were fatal.

  The AI did what it could; having determined Jean was pregnant it sent out remotes and put her body into stasis. James being already dead, it fell back on standard procedures and initiated a post-mortem consciousness upload. Using the knowledge it had gained from examining James’s body, the system transferred the fetus to a research chamber, terminated Jean’s body and uploaded her consciousness.

  Neither upload was completely successful. Both minds lost any memory of the period immediately before their deaths, as the system was only able to read long-term memories. There were also problems due to the vast difference between human and archonite physiology. The AI could not simulate a body properly, and so neither upload retained a full emotional range.

  While the two new uploads integrated, the AI turned its attention to the fetus. After exhaustive analysis, it made a number of changes and improvements to the basic human model. The resulting child would be stronger, faster, more intelligent and quite a bit longer lived than his fellows. He would also possess fa
ster reflexes and more acute senses.

  Had his parents retained the ability to feel emotions, it’s possible they might have taken issue with the changes the AI made to their son.

  They did not.

  This was the environment in which Doc had been raised. An alien moon base with observational records of nearly two hundred million years of Earth’s history. He had seen evolution in action, but never gotten his hands dirty. His “parents” had taught him what they could, but their own situation limited their ability to socialize him. The AI was more his parent than either of the others. Its remotes held him when he cried as a child, and it was the one who had shown him the history of the planet below, spending hours showing him all the different kinds of earthly life it had seen.

  It was also the one who had kicked him out when he turned eighteen. Launching the rocket that landed in Pettyburg, Kansas.

  That was where he had seen their captors before. Sixty-seven million years ago, in historical records on the Moon. Doc was probably the only person alive who knew that humanity was not the first intelligent species to dominate the planet. During the Cretaceous there had been another: sentient dinosaurs who reached a level of technology equivalent to ancient Greece and Rome.

  They hadn’t been seen on Earth since then.

  How had a tribe survived unnoticed for that much time? How had they survived the Dinosaur Killer? Doc had seen what that asteroid had done to the Earth; he had watched their civilization die out so completely that they had left no traces behind. Now they were back, back and it was as if they had just stepped from that day to this.

  Once they were done with this Eldest Flame they were going to have to look into it. There were other things in Earth’s past that humanity had no knowledge of, and some of them were far more deadly than modern scientists could possibly imagine.