by Isaac Hooke
“What was that about displacement coordinates?” Manic asked Surus.
“I recorded the trek from the recall site to the Elder vessel, and memorized that data before entering the nexus,” she replied. “Bright One was able to correlate the recall point based on that.”
“So we have about an hour and fifty minutes before impact,” Tahoe said. “Assuming we successfully disengage the safeties.”
“Less,” Rade said. “Check your countdown. We have only an hour and twenty minutes to return to the Acceptor site, at least if we hope to make the-six hour recall window.”
“Told you we should have programmed the Time Selector to give us more time,” Fret said.
“Yeah, and if we did that,” Bender said, “then we’d be stuck on the planet while the damn ship impacted, fool!”
“Oh yeah...” Fret said.
“Wait, this Bright One isn’t going to give the other Elder a say in this?” TJ asked. “He’s just going to crash and incinerate his own ship? Can we be sure Bright One will follow through? What if he’s lying?”
Rade glanced at Harlequin. “Ask him how we know we can trust him. He did say he was hesitant to agree, after all.”
I have made up my mind, and I will follow through. You have my word. I have realized it is essentially our fault that humanity’s future has been lost. We must set this right. The rest of the crew has been begging me to abort, but I have refused, and locked down the incoming grav elevators to prevent any of them from reaching the nexus. Their only recourse is to evacuate. I will stay here and fly the ship all the way down, ensuring that none attempt to alter our flight path.
“Stay here?” TJ said. “He’s going to die for us? I’m not sure I believe it. What would you do, boss, if an alien boarded the Argonaut, and told you everything we just told this Elder? Would you really destroy your own ship, and go down with it?”
“It depends,” Rade said. “If one of them appeared two years earlier and warned me of what would happen, I would be more inclined to believe them. And if two years later another alien arrived, took control of my ship, and destroyed an asteroid on a collision course with their homeworld, preventing the first aliens from ever developing, I’d probably do it, yes. I’d hate to be responsible for the loss of an entire species.” He turned toward Harlequin. “Ask Bright One if there is any way he can eject before impact.”
Bright One’s reply came a moment later. No. As I said, I must fly the ship all the way down. A few of the crew will no doubt remain aboard and attempt to stop me. I must stay in the nexus and keep it secure.
“All right,” Rade said. “Then I thank you for doing this.”
Go! Bright One wrote. Deactivate the engine safeties while there is still time!
Rade and the Argonauts retreated to the shimmering bulkhead and stepped through into the grav elevator tunnel beyond, where the blue lights continually pulsed in streaks down the cylindrical bulkheads.
“What now?” Lui said when nothing happened after several moments.
“I presume Bright One will activate the elevator and bring us as close to the engineering section as he is able?” Rade said.
Sure enough, the mechs floated off the deck and the walls became a blur. Rade was once more forced to secure himself to the passenger seat with the straps.
He was in awe yet again at how big the ship really was as the passageway continued to twist and turn around them. Those walls blurred past to the left and right, occasionally swerving up and down as the group switched direction. He wondered what could power such an immense system, but he realized if the Elder were capable of creating the wormholes called Slipstreams, they probably weren’t lacking for power.
The walls abruptly came to a halt, the blurs turning into solid masses, and the party dropped down to the deck as the artificial gravity reasserted itself. The team stood before a shimmering bulkhead, while the tunnel extended seemingly to infinity behind them.
“Are we where we should be?” Rade asked Surus.
“I believe so,” Surus said. “There should be a dinosaur environment on the other side, and beyond it, the engineering section.”
“Harlequin, Bender, your mechs go first,” Rade said. “Clear it.”
The designated pair remained in the passenger seats of their respective Hoplites as the AIs conveyed the mechs through the shimmering bulkhead.
Harlequin’s voice came distorted over the comm a moment later: “It’s clear. There’s definitely a dinosaur environment here.”
“Team, forward!” Rade said.
nineteen
Rade and the others passed through the membrane and joined Harlequin and Bender.
Rade stood within one of the prepared dinosaur environments. The vast compartment had been designed to resemble a rainforest, with well-spaced trees whose expansive boughs created a canopy that shielded the sky above, cloaking the view in perpetual twilight. Rade was reminded of the starting point of his team on Earth, except the ground here was far mossier, and he could see several swamps and marshes ahead.
There was a glass tunnel around them that originally had been meant to shield Elder watchers and scientists, but it ended in a series of jagged edges after only a few meters. The broken rim was covered in red blood. He could see several trampled, shattered fragments ahead, where the remainder of the conduit formed a path of crushed glass through the jungle, the trail occasionally submerging beneath the different marshlands. He zoomed in on that trail in the distance, but couldn’t see the far bulkhead beyond the jungle trees. That meant the compartment was probably big. Very big.
“We follow the trail of broken glass,” Surus said.
“Activate LIDAR,” Rade said.
The team advanced, stepping over the mossy ground, circumventing most swamps but wading through them with the mechs when necessary. The glass tunnel proved intact in places, sometimes extending for several hundred meters, before inevitably falling into disrepair once more, the large fragments sprinkling the terrain.
Rade sometimes saw the wreckages of insect-like Elder robots scattered next to the tubes, along with crashed transport craft, and he realized that these Elder had been attempting to herd the dinosaurs, but failed, probably when Zhidao intervened; the Phant probably turned them into bait—especially the robots, which he could easily take over. Either that, or he simply had the machines attack the organic Elders. Without anyone to herd them, hundreds of dinosaurs had probably been driven out through the membranes and into the uninhabitable portions of the ship by the onrush of predators. Hundreds more had likely succumbed to those same predators while still inside the breathable environments.
Sure enough, Rade spotted the sporadic decomposing, half-eaten Titanosaur body in the distance. Usually carnivores such as Utahraptors or Velociraptors were dining upon any such corpses, the unhappy result of the membranes between environments failing, thanks to Zhidao. Then again, maybe the Elder had purposely allowed some herbivores into this environment, so that the carnivores could feed on their natural food, because somehow Rade couldn’t imagine Utahraptors or T-Rexes eating out of tin cans.
Then again, the Hoplites were essentially big walking tin cans to some of these creatures anyway.
The Argonauts always gave any sighted carnivores a wide berth. While it was doubtful the dinos would attack while feeding, Rade thought it best not to provoke them in any manner. According to his embedded database, these types of dinosaurs were theorized to be extremely territorial.
“Remember the time we went to that pride parade, Bender?” Manic said at one point during the march. “Dressed in drag? Wearing lipstick, wigs, and dresses?”
“Ooo Bender,” TJ said. “I didn’t know you swung that way!”
“Oh yeah, baby, you’re missing out on the wild side,” Bender said. “I’m massaging my nipples right now just thinking about it.”
“Actually,” Manic said. “We went because we were trying to pick up lesbian chicks.”
“Sounds like a wasted effort to
me!” Fret said.
“Dude, you got no comprehension of how things work in the real world,” Bender said. “None at all. See, lesbian chicks, they dig me. Why? We have an understanding. They like women. I like women. And guess what? I got myself a threesome out of that parade, with two girls I could have sworn looked like twins, all dressed in matching white, with bright green eyes and dark hair worn in sweet-ass pony-tails. Mmm-hmm, those were the days.”
“And here you are now, mech-deep in dinosaur feces, sixty-five million years before humankind even evolved,” Fret said.
“It is a bit of doozy, ain’t it?” Bender said. “But that’s why we’re here. Doing our part to re-invent pussy. If I had a choice about it, I’d try to add in more features. Little textures to make the pussy experience more pleasurable. And tight. They all gots to be tight.”
“Sounds like you’re an ass man,” Fret said.
“Why, you offerin’?” Bender quipped.
Eventually the rainforest gave way to a wide plain. Rade suspected he was seeing the breakdown between environments directly, and that there was supposed to be a membrane separating forest from plain. On the far side, he could see the eave of another thick rainforest stretching from horizon to horizon. Likely yet a third environment that had been mixed with the others.
The glass fragments continued across those plains, though the tunnel proved intact in several places. Dead robots and Elder craft were once more scattered along the perimeter.
Hundreds of humps dotted the grass on either flank of the broken tunnel. Rade realized those humps belonged to reposing T-Rexes, whose individual members composed the biggest herd he had ever seen.
“That’s one big-ass herd of chickens,” Bender said.
“It’s like all the Rexes the Elder stored across environments have gathered, forming a single, large herd,” TJ said.
“That’s what happens when environmental separators go down,” Lui said.
“I thought the Elder were only collecting one or two pairs of each species,” Manic said. “This looks like a whole lot more than one or two pairs.”
“Actually,” Harlequin said. “There were likely more than a thousand T-Rex species near the end of the Cretaceous period. If you take a look at the members of this herd, you can see that none of them are precisely alike, as far as physical characteristics go. The plumages vary across the board. As does the size and shape of their heads. Some don’t even have any feathers. These Rexes are all cousins, no doubt. And can probably interbreed, producing fertile offspring.”
“That’s fascinating and all,” Fret said. “But how are we going to get across?”
“It looks like they’re sleeping,” Manic said. “So we can sneak across.”
“Not all of them are sleeping,” Lui said.
Rade saw that a few were indeed awake, licking at their feathers, scratching under their necks with their taloned feet, and so forth. He was reminded of large birds preening themselves.
“Maybe our future selves could lend a hand?” Fret said. “And teleport a couple of Hellfires here for our detonating pleasure? We just have to make a note to remind ourselves.”
“Impossible,” Lui said. “Considering that the destination Acceptor is on Earth, remember?”
“Well when we get back to the future, we could go back to Earth and move the Acceptor into deep space, placing it at this exact position!” Fret said. “Then we can send back whatever we want.”
“Ha,” Lui said. “Good luck with that.”
Rade studied the plains, but the herd seemed to cover the land all the way to either horizon. He zoomed in and realized that wasn’t true, as the humps seemed to end about two klicks in either direction.
“We could loop around their perimeter?” Tahoe said.
“That’s a fairly wide perimeter,” Lui said.
Rade glanced at the countdown he had set earlier. “There isn’t time. We only have twenty minutes before the safeties kick in and begin to decelerate the Elder ship. And another forty minutes after that before we have to be back at the recall site on Earth.”
“Jumpjet across them, then?” Manic said.
“Now that’s what I’m talking about,” Bender said.
Rade checked the fuel levels. “Electron, do we have enough fuel across the unit to jet across the plains to those trees? At a height of say... twenty meters? Given current levels?”
“Not directly,” Electron said. “I would recommend planning a series of large, arcing hops over the plains. I have calculated seven different waypoints for those hops, based on herd density.”
On Rade’s HUD, several green arcs appeared in sequence, indicating the path the team would take across the plains, given the current distribution of tyrannosaurs. A distribution that was likely to change once the group began the crossing.
“You’ll have to update those waypoints in realtime,” Rade said. “As we jet over.”
“Of course,” Electron said.
“All right, Argonauts,” Rade said. “It looks like we have a plan.” He relayed the waypoints to his team. “Use your jumpjets, and follow the arcs to each waypoint. Bender, lead the way. Tahoe, arrange the marching order.”
“Yes boss!” Bender said. “Thank you boss.”
Juggernaut launched. A moment later a number appeared on Rade’s HUD, courtesy of Tahoe, indicating which order he was to follow the others.
The mechs of Lui and TJ arced into the air ahead of Rade, and then Electron took a running leap forward and activated jumpjets. Rade instinctively held on in the passenger seat, though he was already strapped into place.
Behind him, the remaining Hoplites followed.
Rade peered over the edge of the passenger area and noticed the T-Rexes were stirring below. Some had begun to mirror the flight of the Hoplites, and a few leaped up, snapping their jaws at the air in an attempt to snatch the mechs out of the sky.
Rade removed his seat strap so that he had freedom of motion and aimed his scope down at the T-Rexes. He targeted the eye region of one of them and squeezed the trigger. He repeated the act several times, blinding as many as he could. The other Argonauts did the same from their passenger seats, and the injuries caused the afflicted dinosaurs to howl madly, dropping out of the chase even though they all still had one eye remaining.
As the Hoplites began the descent phase of their arcs, Rade saw that some of the dinosaurs had already anticipated their landing, and were gathering in the formerly clear area of the first waypoint to await their meals.
“Don’t descend yet, don’t descend!” Rade instructed Electron as he swung his rifle around to bear on the T-Rexes ahead.
“I don’t intend to,” Electron replied.
Juggernaut maintained its altitude, and altered course, swinging to the left, heading toward a new waypoint. The targeted area was clear of dinosaurs for the time being. The closest herd members noticed the directional change, and were racing to intercept.
“Crafty bastards,” Lui said.
Rade’s mech touched down behind Lui’s and launched once more, heading for the next waypoint. Behind him, the trailing mechs narrowly avoided being chomped on by the T-Rexes, with Fret’s mech, on drag, forced to land farther ahead of the waypoint than the others. Other T-Rexes approaching from the opposite direction nearly cut him off, and Fret’s Hoplite barely jetted above those snapping jaws. Fret was firing his rifle the whole time, sometimes at almost point-blank range.
“Who the hell said this was a good idea again?” Fret exclaimed.
The party continued in that manner, hopping and arcing from waypoint to waypoint, slowly crossing the plains while the Argonaut passengers fired at the deadly carnosaurs. The Hoplite AIs avoided several more close calls, and soon the forest eaves were fast coming up. Rade spotted the nests of several pterosaurs on those canopies, and some of the winged dinosaurs were circling overhead. It was probably a good thing that Rade and the others wouldn’t be flying over that forest.
As the party members came
arcing down at the final waypoint, which ended in front of the forest, Rade glanced at fuel levels across the party. There was enough for the Hoplites to make a few final short jumps. Perfect for fighting purposes, if it came to it.
“Keep LIDAR active,” Rade said as Electron followed Lui and Bender underneath the eaves of the forest, whose undergrowth proved thicker than the last jungle environment. “Let’s make sure no unexpected surprises are waiting for us in there.”
White three-dimensional outlines generated by the LIDAR overlaid his vision, appearing past the screen of shrubs and trunks ahead as photons from the different LIDAR beams scattered across all nearby surfaces, penetrating the thick forest. He saw the silhouettes of trees and smaller dinosaurs, including what appeared to be a herd of feathery, quadrupedal herbivores cautiously foraging half a klick ahead.
Rade returned his attention to the pursuing T-Rexes, and with the others he targeted the predators through the trees behind him, hitting them in the eyes and forcing them to drop out in agony.
“We’re dining on fricasseed eyeballs tonight, baby!” Bender said.
Despite the penetrative vision, the Hoplites occasionally tripped on various shrubs or logs embedded in the clinging foliage as they made their mad dash forward, causing enough noise to alert the entire forest to their presence. Rade heard a rumbling from ahead, and he knew the din had triggered the herbivore herd into stampeding.
Rade kept firing at the predators behind him, but unfortunately, because of the thick undergrowth, the T-Rexes were slowly gaining on the party.
“We’re going to have to stand and fight,” Tahoe said.
“We don’t have time!” Rade said.
“We got tangos ahead,” Lui said. “Airborne.”
