The descent sled, dangling by its parachute straps, swung back and forth. Eric, still strapped in, had a little ledge on which to place his feet, but precious else to help him. The tree had no branches along its sides, only the dandelion-like tuft sprouting from the top. Its trunk was thick and tough, perhaps for protection against fires.
Selva came scampering up, followed by Cobb and Professor Temerin, all of whom had shed their spacesuits for the survival clothes they wore underneath.
“Are you hurt?” Selva shouted up. A good thirty feet separated Eric from the ground below.
Eric undid his helmet, let it fall down. “I don’t think so. Just got knocked around a bit when I hit.”
“Don’t try to unstrap! Can you throw down the supplies?”
Each expedition member had been given a set of supplies to cram into their pods as well, Eric’s consisted of an insta-tent and the second first-aid kit. His arms were free, enabling him to unhook the two containers from either side of the sled and drop them to the ground.
Selva took them and put them in a pile with hers. “Now, there’s a yellow emergency handle above your head. That’ll release the parachute, and once you start to fall the airbags will deploy. Pull it straight out, then try to relax your body.”
Eric found the handle and pulled, tensing up instead. The sled fell, airbags deploying with a pop, and landed with a gentle thump. He undid the straps and rolled off.
“Excellent!” Temerin helped him to his feet. Under his spacesuit, Eric had on a shirt and jacket with a pair of all-weather pants, he retrieved his hiking boots from the container with the first-aid kit.
“Let’s get going, then,” Selva said. “We may have been seen, and I’d like to be gone before anyone can show up.” One of her supply containers held a laser carbine which she assembled from three pieces, along with several stunners, pistols, and a solar sheet for recharging. Eric took a set of weapons and fastened the first-aid kit to the insta-tent backpack, with its shovel and portable grill stored on the sides. Despite its bulk, the load was light in Meridian’s 0.87 gees.
Rachel was just over a hill, crouched down with a stick in hand as she examined a dinosaur trackway. The thirty-four percent oxygen concentration gave Eric a rush of energy with every breath, as if preparing him to take on whatever dangers this world might hold.
“Likely a brontosaur, but I can’t tell for sure.” Rachel looked up as they approached.
“See any T. Rexes?” Cobb asked.
“No, but I imagine they’re around here somewhere.” The lightest of the bunch, she got a pack with water-filtration and organic reprocessing equipment, while Selva had the other insta-tent and first-aid kit, and Temerin and Cobb carried rations. A few other miscellaneous items were distributed out, and they set off.
“The nearest village is five kilometers that way.” Selva pointed southwest. “If we keep a good pace, we should be there by mid-day.”
The next few hours took them across more rolling hills, Eric guessed this area would be a forest on a world less prone to fires. Here, even wet plants would burn. They stopped beside a rocky streambed for lunch, Eric got a silver-foiled ration meal and watched the insects buzz by.
With a chirp, a little dinosaur leapt out from the bushes. It was perhaps the size of a turkey, long-necked and covered in primitive feathers, shaded brown with a lemur-like striped tail.
“Compsognathus neogenesis.” Rachel’s eyes widened. The compy chittered again and with rustling leaves was joined by at least a dozen others. “We may want to watch out, they can get nasty in packs.” The compies circled up around her, sniffing at her food and jumping as they vocalized.
Selva said, “Beat it.” As if on cue, they looked back to the bushes, turned tail, and skittered off.
“Well, that was—” Eric got cut off by the sound of something much bigger crashing through the foliage. This one was like a shrunken Tyrannosaurus, with a horizontal bodyplan four meters long and covered in feathers.
A raptor.
“Shit!” Rachel shrieked. Two more raptors ran up beside the first, and Eric saw the blurs of another pair flanking them.
“Form a circle!” Selva growled, raising the laser carbine and flipping it off safe with the whine of charging capacitors. There were several species of raptor, Eric knew. He figured this was one of the largest.
The raptors had featherless snouts with rows of sharp teeth, and curved claws on their feet, one raised off the ground. Their eyes were like birds, twitching back and forth as they studied these new intruders. Eric took out his shovel and raised his own pistol, an angular-styled laser with a readout below the holographic sight showing twenty shots. Against a pack of killer raptors, that didn’t feel like a lot.
Selva pointed the laser between the first raptor’s feet and clicked the trigger. It discharged with a cyan lightning bolt and crack of superheated air, the beast let out a bird-like screech and jumped back. The other raptors, picking up on the threat, screeched as well. “Start walking towards the hill. Slowly, keep eye contact! They’ll leave us alone if they realize we’re not an easy kill!”
Eric stepped first, garnering attention from another raptor which lifted a foot as if to move. He swung the shovel, it reconsidered. He wished he’d learned more biology—what sort of threat display would make a dinosaur back off?
The expedition’s circle crept towards the hill, Selva keeping the attention on herself with a few more laser blasts, not shooting them directly lest that trigger an attack. The raptors went into a wide formation, continuing to stalk them.
“We can pick up the pace,” Rachel said. “But don’t run, and stay together—predators give preference to attacking strays.”
Eric cracked off a few shots, warding back a raptor that seemed to be sizing him up. One started a fire at the base of a bush, which quickly burst into flames.
“Careful what you shoot,” Temerin said. “Don’t want to burn the whole prairie down.” The ‘grass’ nearest the fire, more of flower-like tufts than individual blades, had closed up into shells, denying the fire easy fuel for a spread.
They were stalked for a good thirty minutes, until they came to a steep riverbed with a fallen tree trunk spanning it. Posts and ropes on either end showed someone had fastened it in place as a bridge, the first sign of civilization they’d seen yet.
“Cross one at a time.” Selva kept her gun leveled at the dinosaurs. Rachel went first, shimmying across on hands and knees, and once she reached the other side, Professor Temerin followed. Eric was next.
The trunk was gnarly and tough, with thick streams of sap seeping out from where it had been nicked. Definitely designed for fire resistance. His crossing was agonizingly slow, inching along over a river some thirty feet below.
Selva was last, her cybernetic augments giving her enough balance to cross on two legs. She swayed dangerously as a raptor stepped on after her, then reached the other side. She shouldered the laser carbine and pulled out one of the stakes. “Here, help me lever this thing!”
Crowding around it, they pushed with all their might. The raptor was halfway across, stepping like a two-legged cat with one foot after the other while its less-bold packmates stayed behind.
“On three!” Cobb shouted. “One, two, three!”
The trunk slid free, sending it and the raptor tumbling down into the water. The others screeched in anger.
“Now we run?” Eric asked.
No one bothered giving an answer, they sprinted off as fast as they could while the rest of the raptor pack broke right, searching for another place to cross. They were fast, Eric hoped they could still lose them. The endurance-enhancing treatments they’d gotten en route, and the high-oxygen atmosphere, worked wonders for their pace, they zig-zagged past a herd of ankylosaurs and up a rocky bluff.
An object, white-and-black, clattered down past Eric’s head—Rachel’s laser pistol.
“Leave it!” Selva shouted as he moved to go back down. “We have to keep going!”
The top of the bluff gave them a view of the surrounding landscape, with the river back in the distance and more rolling hills up ahead past a group of sauropods.
In the air, something caught Eric’s eye: A V-shaped formation of large flyers, wings spread wide as they advanced—right towards the bluff.
The chase was not over. Indeed, it had only just begun.
