Tribe of Three: Walking Thunder
Dec. 1st, 2008 07:08 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
ursangnomeFor the Threads of Damocles LARP I play, I've done a couple stories.
Background and 'Rosalie's Request'
'Counting Coup'
At the time I finished "Counting Coup" I had an idea for the next story, which is now complete.
The game started with the concept of "whimsy stories" - stories set in threads that might be, but hadn't been seen in game. Before the game began, I wrote one which described Antarctica at the time of The Event - the scientist stationed on the continent were trapped without access to home or new supplies, and luckily found access to something like a cross between Arthur Conan Doyle's "Lost World" and the "Savage Land" of Marvel Comics. In the next two years, nobody else chose to use the concept, so when I needed to get a dinosaur into game, this is what came up.
Part 1: The Bet
Jerky made excellent bait. Miryam Laughing Fox stood in the bright sunshine in the back courtyard of the Port Tucumcari Oasis, dangling the strip of dried meat about three feet off the ground, wriggling it gently, trying to entice a reaction. The results were predictable. Shiny metal limbs coiled, tail twitched, and the pseudo-reptilian body leaped up, jaws snapping shut just short of the target.
The little sentry device, designed by SINES Security and dubbed "Mr. Bitey" by the shaman-woman, had been recalled from the field after some difficulties during a Team B deployment, leaving it idle at the bar when Team A returned from Boston. Miryam had found it easy to tease the raptor-bot into chasing certain small items which it's tiny electronic brain registered as having what Mr. Sines had explained were, "anomalous bio-signatures". Miryam didn't know what about the jerky was anomalous, but it made a good raptor toy.
A number of the team members lounged around the courtyard, most nursing beers or glasses with several fingers of Oasis One. The implications of events during the last deployment hung heavily on the gathering, and only occasional whispers stirred the somber air. Near where Miryam continued to tease the robot, Cody and Rom had spread some battered and dusty gear across a couple of tables, settling in for a round of required maintenance.
After a few more minutes of metallic jump-and-snap, Miryam turned to her teammates and said, "I like Mr. Bitey, but he's a bit... repetitive. I bet a real one would be fun, though! What do you think, Cody, could we get a real, live dinosaur?"
The big mechanic didn't look up from scraping dusty rust off a gear from the Grover Cleveland's winch, "Hm," he said casually, "We'll have to see what we can do about that."
A snort came from a nearby shady corner, where Zero reclined with his forage cap pulled down to cover his eyes while he napped. "Well, Fox, I guess that's the end of that," the security man said, sitting up and setting his camo cap back on his head.
Lieutenant Angelina Zappatori turned around in her seat at a neighboring table to regard Zero with a bit of a squint, "And what, exactly, is that supposed to mean?" she asked.
"Well, Lieutenant, that was just a nice way of Cody sayin' no, without sayin' no," Zero chuckled, and waved a dismissive hand, "There ain't gonna be no real dinosaur."
ENY's premier pilot cocked her head quizzically, and gestured with her glass of whiskey. From the tone of her speech, it was obviously not her first, "What, do you mean to tell me that you do not believe that Cody, our Cody, who can make airplanes fly without engines, who has just come through a war, and the threat of his own non-existence, and out the other side in one piece could not, if he wished, procure a real dinosaur?"
"Well...," Zero hemmed noncommittally.
Zappatori's eyes narrowed. She saw an opening, and took it, "Do you furthermore mean to imply that Cody would risk disappointing his tribe-mate after they had shared such a harrowing experience?" Miryam, to support the point, slid up next to Angie, her eyes big and face in a slightly sad pout.
"...um...," Zero, seeing himself trapped, thought furiously for an escape, but not fast enough.
"Then it's a bet," Angie stood, slightly wobbly, and extended her hand to shake on it, "In thirty days, Miryam will have her own dinosaur. Loser serves a formal dinner, with entertainment, to the winner in the Oasis. The evening to conclude with a sultry rendition of 'Someone to Watch Over Me'." Zero slowly and reluctantly shook the pilot's hand, and Angie then turned a steely gaze upon the mechanic.
Cody slowly lifted his eyes from his work, and scowled at Zero and Zappatori. He turned to Rom, who silently shrugged. Then, he looked to Miryam, whose eyes brightened expectantly. Finally, he turned back to the wagering pair, and spoke with grim determination, "Well. We'll have to see what we can do about that."
Part 2: Seeking the Aurora
It took three days combing through Penn State records to find a solid lead, finally settling on some of the first transmissions captured by Camp Century after the Event. Then came two more days of plotting a course through free gates - seventeen jumps in all. Four of those were in inhospitable wastes, and two others were in volcanoes. Violence broke out near three of the gates, one required a precarious game of chess to win passage, and one other called for negotiation with a clown named Mr. Jingo who seemed very keen on acquiring an AM radio.
Eventually, the Tribe reached the abandoned port of Dunedin, New Zealand, where a vessel in shape for quick refurbishing could be found. After an impromptu christening as the "Spencer's Star", the Tribe went to sea. In record and story, the southern oceans can be treacherous, but either by chance or by a quirk of thread boundaries and dynamics, the waters south of New Zealand were glassy calm, chill, and misty. 2200 miles southwards sailing brought them to Ross Island, and the McMurdo Antarctic station.
At the time of the event, McMurdo Station had been a bustling research, personnel, and supply depot for much of the continent, with nearly a thousand souls in residence. But now it was an icy ghost town, beaten down by thirty years of snow, glacier, sea, and neglect. Most of the buildings had at least partially collapsed, and those few structurally sound enough to risk exploring had been carefully emptied of most portable goods and materials.
Two buildings seemed to have avoided that fate, perhaps by chance, but more likely through occasional maintenance. One was a motor pool garage, the other a nearby medical clinic. Both still retained small supplies of diesel fuel, and electrical generators that could be started with minimal repair.
Cody predictably got to work in the motor pool. The abandoned station wasn't their final destination on this trek, and the Spencer's Star certainly wasn't going to take them any farther south, so there was work to be done. Rather than stand around in a frigid garage handing Cody wrenches and unrecognizable machine parts, Miryam and Rom took to an exploration of the clinic.
Even dead cold, Rom noted a pronounced scent - something earthy, with a tinge of ammonia. Perhaps it was age and weather combined with cleansers, as the place had certainly been kept clean. Laboratory, examination, and operating spaces had all been put in order, drawers filled with instruments, machines covered to protect them from dust. One office held copious notes left on the desk in neat stacks, but they were laden with biological jargon incomprehensible to the warrior and shaman. A great deal about insertion of recombinant alleles, chimeric plasmids, and rejection profiles, but nothing that looked important to the pair. The incubators they found in good repair looked to be far more useful to their mission, so they were carted off to the motor pool.
The McMurdo-South Pole Highway stretches across the Antarctic ice from the McMurdo Ice Shelf to the Amundsen-Scott South Pole Station. Once, a tracked vehicle could cover the 900 miles of unpaged ice and filled-crevasses in 10 days. The Tribe had expected the trip to be much worse, perhaps even impossible, but the highway had degraded only slightly in the three decades since it received regular maintenance. An occasional new crevasse or rough outcrop complicated the passing, but all in all the frozen desert had changed surprisingly little. The sun hung low near the horizon during the trip, as the Antarctic autumn was passing, leading to the long night of winter. The tractor and supply sled growled along through hour after hour of twilight, across empty ice. The occupants passed the confined days telling stories and playing, "I Spy". Miryam always seemed to win that game, though Rom and Cody didn't seem to mind.
Eventually, the South Pole Station crawled into view. The main building sat askew, with several of its supporting legs collapsed. The old geodesic Dome station adjacent to the raised building sat intact, and had been mentioned repeatedly in the reports from Camp Century. In the Dome, the Tribe found the drilling rig, and under that the ice caverns...
... a kilometer down through rough ice tunnels and chambers the Tribe eventually stood at the mouth of the final cave, several hundred feet up in the wall of a great cliff of blue-white ice. The cliff wall extended left and right as far as they eye could see, and a stairway was carved into the ice wall leading to the ground below There, stretching into the distance, lay an inexplicably green landscape: a mixture of cycads, palms, evergreens, and ferns taller than houses spread over hills and rocky outcrops. Here and there, they could see a stirring in the canopy that could not be explained by the wind, and a small reptilian head on a long neck rose to browse on the vegetation. Above all this soared a number of other reptilian beasts, circling high on leathery wings, with long toothy maws opening to cry out to each other, "Skeeract! Skaw! Skaw!"
"Well," Cody said, unzipping his parka in the warm breeze rising from the Jungle below, "I think Zero will need to brush up on his Gershwin."
Part 3: The Tribe of Three vs Tyrannosaurus Rex
A set of steps carved into the ice switched back and forth down the cliff face from the cave to the forest floor below. As the Tribe descended the air grew warm and heavy in stark contrast to the thin, cold arctic air they'd recently trekked through. The forest floor was covered with a thick, soft, damp loam, and among the trees a deadening hush hovered, as one can only find far from mechanized human habitation.
With Rom in the lead, the three struck out away from the cliff, quickly losing sight of the ice wall among the broad trunks. They left blazes along the way as they walked, to lead them back to the cave and better-known lands on their return. After they covered a mile and more, the trees grew taller, and less closely packed, allowing occasional dapples of sunshine to reach the forest floor, which had only sparse undergrowth. Only in the gaps where one of the giant plants fell did they see riots of tangled, competing growth in the sunshine that reached the ground. Near these tangles they started to catch their first close-up signs of the wildlife: small, scurrying things in the brush, foot-long dragonflies, and winged forms cruising across the gaps in the forest canopy, but nothing that qualified as an unmistakable dinosaur.
They came along a stream of melt-runoff from the glacier walls, and followed it for another mile before they heard a high-pitched scream cut through the forest quiet. The three didn't need to even glance at each other - they took off at a run along the banks of the stream, towards the source of the cry. It seemed that sound carried well among the boles of the great cycads, as it was several minutes before they broke out of the forest, through a wall of brush, and onto the shore of a large pond.
The Tribe drew up short on the hard mud shore, before they plowed into the man standing there. His hair was a light brown, shaggy mess, but he was clean-shaven, and wore well-crafted garments made out of what appeared to be the tanned hide of some scaled beast. His belt bore pouches of similar hide, and he carried an obsidian-tipped spear, which he quickly moved to a defensive position as the trio skidded to a halt before him. He had reflexively dropped into a crouch, but after a moment of surprise he took in the newcomers, and his eyes went wide.
"We heard a scream," Miryam volunteered, hoping English might serve, "and we came as fast as we could. How can we help?"
The man blinked, "You... your clothes... you're from..."
"From outside, the rest of the world, yes," Miryam finished for him. "We'll have time for that later. Who screamed?"
The man nodded, and began looking about the shore. "That was probably my niece, Kira," he began, "She probably snuck out here to fish again, foolish kid." He paused, then scowled, and turned towards Miryam. His grip tightened on his spear, and he looked over the redhead and her companions suspiciously.
"Relax," Cody said, "If we'd made someone here scream, we'd be running away, not toward the place. Really, we're just here to help."
"I'm Miryam," the young woman offered, "the big guy there is Cody. And that's Rom," she indicated the dark-haired warrior, who nodded.
"I'm called Doyle. Doyle Henriksen." He looked over newcomers, considered, and then sighed, "Fine, come with me. Keep your eyes on the shore for signs of trouble, or a girl about so high," he held his hand perhaps four feet off the ground, "blonde, dressed like me," He started along the beach, eyes scanning the ground and brush.
It was only a short way along the water's edge, around a rocky outcrop, that Rom made the discovery, "This hers?" he asked, holding out a long slim shaft of some reed with a string hanging from one end. The primitive fishing pole still bore a baited hook.
"Yes!" Doyle said, stepping up and taking the rod, "Where did you find it?"
"Over there," Rom pointed up by the forest's edge, "Doesn't look good, though." As they walked up to the area, Rom indicated the numerous tracks showing large, two-toed feet with vicious talons. Among them in the mud were some prints of small, bare human feet. Then, near the top of the bank, he pointed at one special impression, "Anyone here with boots? 'Cause this one ain't ours," he indicated one boot track, with a sole worn nearly smooth with use.
"Damn," Doyle said, "it's Moreau."
"That bad?" Miryam asked.
"Yes," Doyle began, "Moreau's crazy. Her child was taken by a beast many years ago, and she couldn't bear the loss. She... broke inside, became obsessed with the dangers around us, and survival. She started talking about how in order to live among the monsters, we'd have to become like them, but she said that almost reverently."
"She was one of the first, who came here from your world," he gestured out and up, towards the ice walls, "and she started taking trips back to the ice, and also out into the forest, among the beasts. She became a hermit, and started... experiments. First it was like medicine, with surgeries and injections. Whatever she wanted, that wasn’t enough. She turned to other arts. Rituals. She trained a whole pack of deinons - you might call them, 'raptors', I think - meat eaters the weight of a man. Some people who went out of the village alone when she was around never came back. We found some of them afterwards. She'd done... strange things before letting her deinons feast...." Doyle trailed off.
"Okay," Cody said, "You mentioned a village. How far off is it? Enough folks there for a rescue party?"
"Over a mile, back the way we came," Doyle shook his head, "It'd take too long; by the time we came back, Kira might be dead."
Cody persisted, "Not if we split up. You know your people. Go back, and get who you can, and come running. We'll try to catch Moreau, and leave a clear trail as we go."
Doyle scowled, looking dubious.
Miryam stepped up, and laid a gentle hand on Doyle's arm, "Cody's right. Two chances at saving her are better than one. We're tough, well armed, and have a few tricks this Moreau and her dinos probably haven't seen. But if we aren't enough, you're going to need a lot more people. We'll find her for you, don't worry," she gently took the fishing pole from Doyle, "Now run. Even with this plan, we don't have much time."
Doyle glanced at them all, nodded, and dashed back up the shore, then darted into the forest undergrowth.
"Dino predators, big as us. This sounds fun," Rom said in a low voice, drawing his sword.
"Never a dull moment," Miryam agreed, "and it's time to get workin'," she laid the fishing rod across her open palms, and started a low chant, tapping a rhythm with her foot. The others joined her, each with a hand on one of the shaman's shoulders. The rod began to gently twitch, to point towards its most recent owner...
----
It was a half-hour jog through the forest, allowing the pull of the young girl's fishing pole to guide them. About half way through, Rom had taken a count of tracks. He guessed at half a dozen of the bipedal deinons, and one other larger, heavier animal, perhaps horse-sized. He'd found no further boot prints along the trail, and told the others he supposed the woman was mounted on the larger creature.
The forest grew more dense as they approached a large, rocky hill, where two spurs of stone formed a small valley at its base. Between the arms, the trees were mostly replaced with dense clusters of undergrowth plants, with only the occasional conifer tree or giant fern. The thickets grew well over all their heads, blocking the view to the boxed end of the valley, where the dowsing rod inexorably drew them.
The valley ended in a steep-backed natural amphitheater, with the large entrance to a dark cavern where the two arms of the hill finally met. The thickets were thinner within the bowl of the theatre, and a rock outcrop on the floor served as a sort of stage.
On the stage rested a large, crudely carven slab serving as an altar. A woman, with dark hair going to grey stood next to the altar. Dressed in a battered combination of native tanned skins and clothes of more modern make, in one hand she held a knife of chipped obsidian. Her other hand stroked the hair of a tow-headed girl who was bound to the slab with crude but effective ropes.
The Tribe of Three crouched in a thicket at the edge of the amphitheater, watching as the woman spoke quietly to the child for a moment before turning and starting to rummage around in a large basket at the foot of the altar. She finished with the basket, set smudge-sticks of local herbs smoking at the four corners of the slab, and began to chant words none of the three understood.
Miryam and Cody both shuddered as the woman increased the pace of her chant. "Damn," Cody whispered, "She's got power. You feel that, Miryam?"
"Yep," she replied, "and she's callin' something. Can't tell what, but it feels... primal." She watched as a cloud of dark red mist began to gather over the altar, and then looked to her teammates, "I think I can keep it down, and give you two a chance to deal with her."
Rom nodded, drew his sword, and with a few fast gestures indicated that he was going to try to use the sparse cover to circle around behind the altar. He then quickly faded into the brush.
"Well," Cody murmured, "I guess that leaves me to be the distraction this time," he nodded to Miryam, who was settling herself down and opening a small leather bag of polished stones. As she started a quiet chant in counterpoint to the one from the woman at the altar, Cody moved towards the center of the amphitheater.
The woman's chanting grew louder, and the mist started to thicken and coalesce. She reached a crescendo, and she stood over the girl with her eyes closed, the black stone knife held high and about to plunge it downwards when Cody stepped into the clear, perhaps forty feet away, and called out, "Excuse me, Ma'am. A moment of your time?"
The woman stopped chanting and her eyes popped open. Still holding the knife high to strike down, she stared in surprise at Cody, who moved a few steps closer. He could hear Miryam’s quiet drumming, and could see the red cloud wavering. Not wanting to lose any moments of stall he could get, he continued, "I take it you're Ms. Moreau?"
"Yes," Moreau said. She quickly took in his clothing and equipment, and it was clear on her face that she was doing some very fast thinking. Her eyes narrowed, "And you... you're from...?"
"I think you'd probably say I'm from, 'beyond the ice,' or somesuch. I'm sorry, but I can't help but notice you've got a small child there, and a knife." His hand drifted to the butt of the Cannon at his hip. He wasn't likely to get a decent shot off before she could drop behind the stone slab, but he hoped she didn't guess that.
"I... cannot expect you to understand what we need to do here," she began, the mist above her continued to thin.
"I understand blood sacrifice and callin' up nasty spirits," Cody interrupted, "Why don't you put the knife down, and we can talk for a bit," Cody paused, waiting for her to think it through.
She needed no time to think, "No." She glanced over her shoulder and snarled out something that sounded almost like words, but none Cody had ever heard before. The half-dozen creatures that loped around the rocky platform must have been the "raptors" Doyle had mentioned - though they didn't look a lot like dinosaurs to Cody. Sure, the body plan was right, with them loping up on two legs designed for running, with the addition of a huge, vicious claw on each foot that looked good for eviscerating victims. They had shortish arms ending with smaller, but still nasty claws, and similarly dangerous looking teeth in their mouths. While they only came as high as Cody's hip while walking, from nose to tail-tip they might have been a full ten feet long, and probably weighed a good hundred and fifty pounds. The thing that got him was that they were covered in feathers, like some freakish lizard-bird cross. Their arms were almost wing-like, and the tails had long plumes on the end. But, bird-lizards or not, they looked mean, and there were six of them quickly forming a circle around Cody.
"Crap," he said quietly, the raptors never stood still, and slowly started circling around him. He knew pack tactics when he saw them. "Now boys, let's not make this difficult." One of the creatures snarled and snapped at him, "... okay, fine, difficult it is." Cody reached down to his belt, and grabbed a grenade. He shouted, "Ears! Cover!" pulled the pin, dropped the grenade, and slapped his hands over his own ears.
Instead of exploding, the device emitted a high-pitched shriek, like a hundred train-whistles, or like nails on a chalkboard shoved through a jet engine. It seemed to cut right through Cody's hands and pierce like hot nails through his ears, but clearly it was worse for the raptors. They all lay on the ground, writhing in agony, feebly clawing at the sides of their heads. In a moment, the screeching died down, and Cody managed to regain his composure before the raptors did. He drew the Cannon from its holster, and its massive rounds finished off the creatures before they recovered. The pistol smoked empty, and he looked up to the dais.
Moreau stood agape at the havoc Cody had wreaked upon her minions, which was a bad move on her part. Miryam’s drumbeat quickened to a rapid tattoo, and her own chant ended with a high cry, and the red mist flashed and disappeared. Rom had used the distraction to close in on the dais unseen. He leapt up onto the platform, sword drawn, and a swift duel took place. Moreau's stone knife stood as little hindrance to the metal of Rom's sword, and in mere moments the woman was down.
Cody started to walk towards the dais, popping the Cannon's cylinder open, reloading as he went. Looking to the left, he saw Miryam emerge from the cover in which she'd been concealed. The woman appeared to call something across the clearing, but Cody couldn't hear it over the persistent ringing left by the grenade. The big man shook his head, and with a couple hand gestures indicated that he couldn't hear anything yet. She gave a thumbs-up, indicating both that she understood, and that the situation was all-clear.
Cody had reached the dais, and clambered up to help Rom free the girl tied there. The ropes were tough, but eventually gave way, and upon being freed the girl, still near hysterics, threw her arms around Rom's neck and clung there desperately. The warrior looked to Cody, a bit nonplussed, but all the mechanic could do was shrug and smile, and gesture down to Miryam. She'd had a lot of experience with children recently, and perhaps she could calm the girl down long enough to detach her from her savior. Rom nodded, and hopped down with his burden. Cody remained on the dais for a moment to examine the trappings there.
The altar was a crude affair, a stone slab with a blood-groove cut round the perimeter of the top, for gathering the vital fluids of the victim. The channel led to the head of the altar, where it would drain down through a spout. Under the spout there was a large basket, full of mottled, pale, leathery ovoids. Eggs. Huge eggs, some the length of Cody's forearm. Dinosaur eggs. He looked up to shout about his find to his teammates.
Down below, Miryam, now holding the little girl, was waving her free arm frantically, trying to get his attention. When he was looking, she continued gesturing, pointing, behind him. He froze in place, still half-crouched over the basket of eggs, and slowly looked over his left shoulder. Deafened as he was, he hadn't been able to hear it as it had emerged in the cave in the rock wall behind the dais, but now there the beast was - Tyrannosaurus Rex.
The thing was huge - a dozen feet tall at the hip, it loomed down over him, its seven ton mass seeming to bear down on its prey. The thing's skull alone was as long as Cody was tall, all mouth and teeth. It brought its head down level to the top of the dais, mere feet away, regarding him for a moment before it roared.
This, even Cody's abused ears picked up clear as day, as it washed over him like a thousand lions in chorus. The wet, meaty stench of its breath alone almost brought him to his knees. Even as he reached for the Cannon, he knew it was a useless gesture. The animal was just too big, but he drew and started bring the weapon to bear.
Rom once again sprang onto the dais, this time with a massive stone in his hands. He whirled, trading his own momentum into the stone, hurling it at the Tyrannosaur, and hitting it squarely in the side of the snout. Even as big as the dinosaur was, this caused its head to turn aside, so as Cody came around with the massive revolver, he could draw a clear bead on the thing's left eye. Once again, the gun thundered, and the monster roared again, this time in pain.
It didn't need to be said, but Cody shouted it anyway, "Run!" He and Rom leaped down, and sprinted for the cover of the forest, Miryam and the young girl just a few yards ahead of them. As they reached the shade of the trees, the beast roared again, this time in rage. They could feel the ground tremble under its massive tread as it picked up speed to chase.
Thr Tribe pelted through the forest trying to keep the lead they'd gotten as the Tyrannosaur recovered. Rom, the most fit of them, took the girl from Miryam as they ran. They had no plan, and no course. The trees that were tall enough to provide shelter were too big around to climb. On the flat the beast would have been on them in moments with its long strides. So, they made as much use of cover as they could, pelting around or through clumps of underbrush, hoping it would have to slow down to maneuver. This worked some, but the forest was open, the cover sparse, and the beast gained on them.
As they ran, they started to spread apart, coming close to splitting up - each of them starting to think that trying to lead the animal away from the other two might allow them to escape. Miryam and Cody had this nascent plan cut short as they ran down a wide path, bursting out into full sunlight, and came to a skidding to a stop to avoid hurtling over the edge of the 100-foot cliff that cut across the forest.
The two stood at the edge, looking down, watching a few pebbles they'd dislodged drop, bouncing off the cliff wall. It was quiet for a moment, except for the thumping and crashing of the approaching dinosaur. Miryam looked back to the forest, and sighed, resigned. Her expression then became quizzical, "Dumb question at this point, but how the heck can one thing make as much noise as a whole herd of buffalo?"
Cody looked at her, rubbing a hand at his ear, thinking he still didn't hear her well. "Huh? Buffalo?" He looked back down the cliff forlornly.
"Yeah, stupid thing to think before you get eaten, I know," she started.
Cody's head snapped up. "Buffalo!" he cried, "Cliffs!" He reached to his belt, an brought up a spool of cable, "Tripwire!"
He handed the toggle-end to the cable to Miryam, and pointed to a tree nearby, "Three feet up, twice around the tree, and hold on for dear life!" She took off, as he took the spool-end of the cable and dashed to another tree on the other side of the path they'd taken through the trees. When he'd wrapped it around the tree and hitched it tight, he started to shout. Miyram joined him, hoping to draw the creature to the trap.
The Tyrannosaur did not disappoint. It came thundering along the same path the pair had taken, and as it ran one massive foot snagged on the cable. The wire cut into the trunks of the anchoring trees as it came under tension, and it twanged loudly as it released, and dinosaur stumbled and skidded ponderously towards the cliff edge. It managed to slow as it went, coming to a stop with crumbling rock at its toes. It teetered awkwardly for a moment, heading barely balanced by heavy tail, its tiny forearms windmilling as it tried to regain balance. The pair held their breaths, praying silently. The moment stretched, the beast precariously balanced.
One heartbeat. Two. The dinosaur fought for its balance, and seemed to be winning. Slowly, its great weight began to settle back. The monster of a past age prepared to take a step back, to turn around, when Rom came sprinting up the same path out of the woods. He ran pell-mell towards the dinosaur, ran up its tail, along its back, and as he reached the head he planted his feet and sprang away, back towards the forest, kicking off with all his might.
This added momentum, the beast could not counter-balance. It tilted slowly, ponderously forward, and fell. Rom also dropped, from nearly twenty feet up. He'd stopped his forward motion, and landed hard on the ground at the cliff's edge, knocking the wind from him. This was nothing, though, compared to the bellowing crash of the great hunter falling to its final rest.
----------
"So," Cody told Zero as they sat together at the small Oasis table, "that was the end of Rex. We gathered up the kid, and took her back to her village. Nice little place they got there, all things considered. Apparently they didn't send any idiots to Antarctica, so when things went to heck, they managed to get by. I have to fill out this godawful report for General Stevens and Penn State, to see what kind of aid we can send. Route's a pain in the neck, but you can get there."
Zero gazed at the mechanic, somewhat incredulous, "That's quite a tale you got there, Cody. Sounds mighty tall, even for around here."
"It's no tall tale, Zero," Cody said, "It is one-hundred-percent true. Look here," the big man leaned over to a crate by his feet, and lifted the canvas that was covering it, to reveal leathery ovoids, almost like river stones. "Eggs, Zero. Dinosaur eggs. Got them into an incubator, and kept them warm the whole trip back. No mean feat, that. But we're pretty sure they're viable. Should be hatching soon."
"So, you better shine up your dress uniform buttons, and talk to Cookie about the menu. We went a long way to get her a fancy night out, and it'd better be worth it."
Background and 'Rosalie's Request'
'Counting Coup'
At the time I finished "Counting Coup" I had an idea for the next story, which is now complete.
The game started with the concept of "whimsy stories" - stories set in threads that might be, but hadn't been seen in game. Before the game began, I wrote one which described Antarctica at the time of The Event - the scientist stationed on the continent were trapped without access to home or new supplies, and luckily found access to something like a cross between Arthur Conan Doyle's "Lost World" and the "Savage Land" of Marvel Comics. In the next two years, nobody else chose to use the concept, so when I needed to get a dinosaur into game, this is what came up.
Part 1: The Bet
Jerky made excellent bait. Miryam Laughing Fox stood in the bright sunshine in the back courtyard of the Port Tucumcari Oasis, dangling the strip of dried meat about three feet off the ground, wriggling it gently, trying to entice a reaction. The results were predictable. Shiny metal limbs coiled, tail twitched, and the pseudo-reptilian body leaped up, jaws snapping shut just short of the target.
The little sentry device, designed by SINES Security and dubbed "Mr. Bitey" by the shaman-woman, had been recalled from the field after some difficulties during a Team B deployment, leaving it idle at the bar when Team A returned from Boston. Miryam had found it easy to tease the raptor-bot into chasing certain small items which it's tiny electronic brain registered as having what Mr. Sines had explained were, "anomalous bio-signatures". Miryam didn't know what about the jerky was anomalous, but it made a good raptor toy.
A number of the team members lounged around the courtyard, most nursing beers or glasses with several fingers of Oasis One. The implications of events during the last deployment hung heavily on the gathering, and only occasional whispers stirred the somber air. Near where Miryam continued to tease the robot, Cody and Rom had spread some battered and dusty gear across a couple of tables, settling in for a round of required maintenance.
After a few more minutes of metallic jump-and-snap, Miryam turned to her teammates and said, "I like Mr. Bitey, but he's a bit... repetitive. I bet a real one would be fun, though! What do you think, Cody, could we get a real, live dinosaur?"
The big mechanic didn't look up from scraping dusty rust off a gear from the Grover Cleveland's winch, "Hm," he said casually, "We'll have to see what we can do about that."
A snort came from a nearby shady corner, where Zero reclined with his forage cap pulled down to cover his eyes while he napped. "Well, Fox, I guess that's the end of that," the security man said, sitting up and setting his camo cap back on his head.
Lieutenant Angelina Zappatori turned around in her seat at a neighboring table to regard Zero with a bit of a squint, "And what, exactly, is that supposed to mean?" she asked.
"Well, Lieutenant, that was just a nice way of Cody sayin' no, without sayin' no," Zero chuckled, and waved a dismissive hand, "There ain't gonna be no real dinosaur."
ENY's premier pilot cocked her head quizzically, and gestured with her glass of whiskey. From the tone of her speech, it was obviously not her first, "What, do you mean to tell me that you do not believe that Cody, our Cody, who can make airplanes fly without engines, who has just come through a war, and the threat of his own non-existence, and out the other side in one piece could not, if he wished, procure a real dinosaur?"
"Well...," Zero hemmed noncommittally.
Zappatori's eyes narrowed. She saw an opening, and took it, "Do you furthermore mean to imply that Cody would risk disappointing his tribe-mate after they had shared such a harrowing experience?" Miryam, to support the point, slid up next to Angie, her eyes big and face in a slightly sad pout.
"...um...," Zero, seeing himself trapped, thought furiously for an escape, but not fast enough.
"Then it's a bet," Angie stood, slightly wobbly, and extended her hand to shake on it, "In thirty days, Miryam will have her own dinosaur. Loser serves a formal dinner, with entertainment, to the winner in the Oasis. The evening to conclude with a sultry rendition of 'Someone to Watch Over Me'." Zero slowly and reluctantly shook the pilot's hand, and Angie then turned a steely gaze upon the mechanic.
Cody slowly lifted his eyes from his work, and scowled at Zero and Zappatori. He turned to Rom, who silently shrugged. Then, he looked to Miryam, whose eyes brightened expectantly. Finally, he turned back to the wagering pair, and spoke with grim determination, "Well. We'll have to see what we can do about that."
Part 2: Seeking the Aurora
It took three days combing through Penn State records to find a solid lead, finally settling on some of the first transmissions captured by Camp Century after the Event. Then came two more days of plotting a course through free gates - seventeen jumps in all. Four of those were in inhospitable wastes, and two others were in volcanoes. Violence broke out near three of the gates, one required a precarious game of chess to win passage, and one other called for negotiation with a clown named Mr. Jingo who seemed very keen on acquiring an AM radio.
Eventually, the Tribe reached the abandoned port of Dunedin, New Zealand, where a vessel in shape for quick refurbishing could be found. After an impromptu christening as the "Spencer's Star", the Tribe went to sea. In record and story, the southern oceans can be treacherous, but either by chance or by a quirk of thread boundaries and dynamics, the waters south of New Zealand were glassy calm, chill, and misty. 2200 miles southwards sailing brought them to Ross Island, and the McMurdo Antarctic station.
At the time of the event, McMurdo Station had been a bustling research, personnel, and supply depot for much of the continent, with nearly a thousand souls in residence. But now it was an icy ghost town, beaten down by thirty years of snow, glacier, sea, and neglect. Most of the buildings had at least partially collapsed, and those few structurally sound enough to risk exploring had been carefully emptied of most portable goods and materials.
Two buildings seemed to have avoided that fate, perhaps by chance, but more likely through occasional maintenance. One was a motor pool garage, the other a nearby medical clinic. Both still retained small supplies of diesel fuel, and electrical generators that could be started with minimal repair.
Cody predictably got to work in the motor pool. The abandoned station wasn't their final destination on this trek, and the Spencer's Star certainly wasn't going to take them any farther south, so there was work to be done. Rather than stand around in a frigid garage handing Cody wrenches and unrecognizable machine parts, Miryam and Rom took to an exploration of the clinic.
Even dead cold, Rom noted a pronounced scent - something earthy, with a tinge of ammonia. Perhaps it was age and weather combined with cleansers, as the place had certainly been kept clean. Laboratory, examination, and operating spaces had all been put in order, drawers filled with instruments, machines covered to protect them from dust. One office held copious notes left on the desk in neat stacks, but they were laden with biological jargon incomprehensible to the warrior and shaman. A great deal about insertion of recombinant alleles, chimeric plasmids, and rejection profiles, but nothing that looked important to the pair. The incubators they found in good repair looked to be far more useful to their mission, so they were carted off to the motor pool.
The McMurdo-South Pole Highway stretches across the Antarctic ice from the McMurdo Ice Shelf to the Amundsen-Scott South Pole Station. Once, a tracked vehicle could cover the 900 miles of unpaged ice and filled-crevasses in 10 days. The Tribe had expected the trip to be much worse, perhaps even impossible, but the highway had degraded only slightly in the three decades since it received regular maintenance. An occasional new crevasse or rough outcrop complicated the passing, but all in all the frozen desert had changed surprisingly little. The sun hung low near the horizon during the trip, as the Antarctic autumn was passing, leading to the long night of winter. The tractor and supply sled growled along through hour after hour of twilight, across empty ice. The occupants passed the confined days telling stories and playing, "I Spy". Miryam always seemed to win that game, though Rom and Cody didn't seem to mind.
Eventually, the South Pole Station crawled into view. The main building sat askew, with several of its supporting legs collapsed. The old geodesic Dome station adjacent to the raised building sat intact, and had been mentioned repeatedly in the reports from Camp Century. In the Dome, the Tribe found the drilling rig, and under that the ice caverns...
... a kilometer down through rough ice tunnels and chambers the Tribe eventually stood at the mouth of the final cave, several hundred feet up in the wall of a great cliff of blue-white ice. The cliff wall extended left and right as far as they eye could see, and a stairway was carved into the ice wall leading to the ground below There, stretching into the distance, lay an inexplicably green landscape: a mixture of cycads, palms, evergreens, and ferns taller than houses spread over hills and rocky outcrops. Here and there, they could see a stirring in the canopy that could not be explained by the wind, and a small reptilian head on a long neck rose to browse on the vegetation. Above all this soared a number of other reptilian beasts, circling high on leathery wings, with long toothy maws opening to cry out to each other, "Skeeract! Skaw! Skaw!"
"Well," Cody said, unzipping his parka in the warm breeze rising from the Jungle below, "I think Zero will need to brush up on his Gershwin."
Part 3: The Tribe of Three vs Tyrannosaurus Rex
A set of steps carved into the ice switched back and forth down the cliff face from the cave to the forest floor below. As the Tribe descended the air grew warm and heavy in stark contrast to the thin, cold arctic air they'd recently trekked through. The forest floor was covered with a thick, soft, damp loam, and among the trees a deadening hush hovered, as one can only find far from mechanized human habitation.
With Rom in the lead, the three struck out away from the cliff, quickly losing sight of the ice wall among the broad trunks. They left blazes along the way as they walked, to lead them back to the cave and better-known lands on their return. After they covered a mile and more, the trees grew taller, and less closely packed, allowing occasional dapples of sunshine to reach the forest floor, which had only sparse undergrowth. Only in the gaps where one of the giant plants fell did they see riots of tangled, competing growth in the sunshine that reached the ground. Near these tangles they started to catch their first close-up signs of the wildlife: small, scurrying things in the brush, foot-long dragonflies, and winged forms cruising across the gaps in the forest canopy, but nothing that qualified as an unmistakable dinosaur.
They came along a stream of melt-runoff from the glacier walls, and followed it for another mile before they heard a high-pitched scream cut through the forest quiet. The three didn't need to even glance at each other - they took off at a run along the banks of the stream, towards the source of the cry. It seemed that sound carried well among the boles of the great cycads, as it was several minutes before they broke out of the forest, through a wall of brush, and onto the shore of a large pond.
The Tribe drew up short on the hard mud shore, before they plowed into the man standing there. His hair was a light brown, shaggy mess, but he was clean-shaven, and wore well-crafted garments made out of what appeared to be the tanned hide of some scaled beast. His belt bore pouches of similar hide, and he carried an obsidian-tipped spear, which he quickly moved to a defensive position as the trio skidded to a halt before him. He had reflexively dropped into a crouch, but after a moment of surprise he took in the newcomers, and his eyes went wide.
"We heard a scream," Miryam volunteered, hoping English might serve, "and we came as fast as we could. How can we help?"
The man blinked, "You... your clothes... you're from..."
"From outside, the rest of the world, yes," Miryam finished for him. "We'll have time for that later. Who screamed?"
The man nodded, and began looking about the shore. "That was probably my niece, Kira," he began, "She probably snuck out here to fish again, foolish kid." He paused, then scowled, and turned towards Miryam. His grip tightened on his spear, and he looked over the redhead and her companions suspiciously.
"Relax," Cody said, "If we'd made someone here scream, we'd be running away, not toward the place. Really, we're just here to help."
"I'm Miryam," the young woman offered, "the big guy there is Cody. And that's Rom," she indicated the dark-haired warrior, who nodded.
"I'm called Doyle. Doyle Henriksen." He looked over newcomers, considered, and then sighed, "Fine, come with me. Keep your eyes on the shore for signs of trouble, or a girl about so high," he held his hand perhaps four feet off the ground, "blonde, dressed like me," He started along the beach, eyes scanning the ground and brush.
It was only a short way along the water's edge, around a rocky outcrop, that Rom made the discovery, "This hers?" he asked, holding out a long slim shaft of some reed with a string hanging from one end. The primitive fishing pole still bore a baited hook.
"Yes!" Doyle said, stepping up and taking the rod, "Where did you find it?"
"Over there," Rom pointed up by the forest's edge, "Doesn't look good, though." As they walked up to the area, Rom indicated the numerous tracks showing large, two-toed feet with vicious talons. Among them in the mud were some prints of small, bare human feet. Then, near the top of the bank, he pointed at one special impression, "Anyone here with boots? 'Cause this one ain't ours," he indicated one boot track, with a sole worn nearly smooth with use.
"Damn," Doyle said, "it's Moreau."
"That bad?" Miryam asked.
"Yes," Doyle began, "Moreau's crazy. Her child was taken by a beast many years ago, and she couldn't bear the loss. She... broke inside, became obsessed with the dangers around us, and survival. She started talking about how in order to live among the monsters, we'd have to become like them, but she said that almost reverently."
"She was one of the first, who came here from your world," he gestured out and up, towards the ice walls, "and she started taking trips back to the ice, and also out into the forest, among the beasts. She became a hermit, and started... experiments. First it was like medicine, with surgeries and injections. Whatever she wanted, that wasn’t enough. She turned to other arts. Rituals. She trained a whole pack of deinons - you might call them, 'raptors', I think - meat eaters the weight of a man. Some people who went out of the village alone when she was around never came back. We found some of them afterwards. She'd done... strange things before letting her deinons feast...." Doyle trailed off.
"Okay," Cody said, "You mentioned a village. How far off is it? Enough folks there for a rescue party?"
"Over a mile, back the way we came," Doyle shook his head, "It'd take too long; by the time we came back, Kira might be dead."
Cody persisted, "Not if we split up. You know your people. Go back, and get who you can, and come running. We'll try to catch Moreau, and leave a clear trail as we go."
Doyle scowled, looking dubious.
Miryam stepped up, and laid a gentle hand on Doyle's arm, "Cody's right. Two chances at saving her are better than one. We're tough, well armed, and have a few tricks this Moreau and her dinos probably haven't seen. But if we aren't enough, you're going to need a lot more people. We'll find her for you, don't worry," she gently took the fishing pole from Doyle, "Now run. Even with this plan, we don't have much time."
Doyle glanced at them all, nodded, and dashed back up the shore, then darted into the forest undergrowth.
"Dino predators, big as us. This sounds fun," Rom said in a low voice, drawing his sword.
"Never a dull moment," Miryam agreed, "and it's time to get workin'," she laid the fishing rod across her open palms, and started a low chant, tapping a rhythm with her foot. The others joined her, each with a hand on one of the shaman's shoulders. The rod began to gently twitch, to point towards its most recent owner...
----
It was a half-hour jog through the forest, allowing the pull of the young girl's fishing pole to guide them. About half way through, Rom had taken a count of tracks. He guessed at half a dozen of the bipedal deinons, and one other larger, heavier animal, perhaps horse-sized. He'd found no further boot prints along the trail, and told the others he supposed the woman was mounted on the larger creature.
The forest grew more dense as they approached a large, rocky hill, where two spurs of stone formed a small valley at its base. Between the arms, the trees were mostly replaced with dense clusters of undergrowth plants, with only the occasional conifer tree or giant fern. The thickets grew well over all their heads, blocking the view to the boxed end of the valley, where the dowsing rod inexorably drew them.
The valley ended in a steep-backed natural amphitheater, with the large entrance to a dark cavern where the two arms of the hill finally met. The thickets were thinner within the bowl of the theatre, and a rock outcrop on the floor served as a sort of stage.
On the stage rested a large, crudely carven slab serving as an altar. A woman, with dark hair going to grey stood next to the altar. Dressed in a battered combination of native tanned skins and clothes of more modern make, in one hand she held a knife of chipped obsidian. Her other hand stroked the hair of a tow-headed girl who was bound to the slab with crude but effective ropes.
The Tribe of Three crouched in a thicket at the edge of the amphitheater, watching as the woman spoke quietly to the child for a moment before turning and starting to rummage around in a large basket at the foot of the altar. She finished with the basket, set smudge-sticks of local herbs smoking at the four corners of the slab, and began to chant words none of the three understood.
Miryam and Cody both shuddered as the woman increased the pace of her chant. "Damn," Cody whispered, "She's got power. You feel that, Miryam?"
"Yep," she replied, "and she's callin' something. Can't tell what, but it feels... primal." She watched as a cloud of dark red mist began to gather over the altar, and then looked to her teammates, "I think I can keep it down, and give you two a chance to deal with her."
Rom nodded, drew his sword, and with a few fast gestures indicated that he was going to try to use the sparse cover to circle around behind the altar. He then quickly faded into the brush.
"Well," Cody murmured, "I guess that leaves me to be the distraction this time," he nodded to Miryam, who was settling herself down and opening a small leather bag of polished stones. As she started a quiet chant in counterpoint to the one from the woman at the altar, Cody moved towards the center of the amphitheater.
The woman's chanting grew louder, and the mist started to thicken and coalesce. She reached a crescendo, and she stood over the girl with her eyes closed, the black stone knife held high and about to plunge it downwards when Cody stepped into the clear, perhaps forty feet away, and called out, "Excuse me, Ma'am. A moment of your time?"
The woman stopped chanting and her eyes popped open. Still holding the knife high to strike down, she stared in surprise at Cody, who moved a few steps closer. He could hear Miryam’s quiet drumming, and could see the red cloud wavering. Not wanting to lose any moments of stall he could get, he continued, "I take it you're Ms. Moreau?"
"Yes," Moreau said. She quickly took in his clothing and equipment, and it was clear on her face that she was doing some very fast thinking. Her eyes narrowed, "And you... you're from...?"
"I think you'd probably say I'm from, 'beyond the ice,' or somesuch. I'm sorry, but I can't help but notice you've got a small child there, and a knife." His hand drifted to the butt of the Cannon at his hip. He wasn't likely to get a decent shot off before she could drop behind the stone slab, but he hoped she didn't guess that.
"I... cannot expect you to understand what we need to do here," she began, the mist above her continued to thin.
"I understand blood sacrifice and callin' up nasty spirits," Cody interrupted, "Why don't you put the knife down, and we can talk for a bit," Cody paused, waiting for her to think it through.
She needed no time to think, "No." She glanced over her shoulder and snarled out something that sounded almost like words, but none Cody had ever heard before. The half-dozen creatures that loped around the rocky platform must have been the "raptors" Doyle had mentioned - though they didn't look a lot like dinosaurs to Cody. Sure, the body plan was right, with them loping up on two legs designed for running, with the addition of a huge, vicious claw on each foot that looked good for eviscerating victims. They had shortish arms ending with smaller, but still nasty claws, and similarly dangerous looking teeth in their mouths. While they only came as high as Cody's hip while walking, from nose to tail-tip they might have been a full ten feet long, and probably weighed a good hundred and fifty pounds. The thing that got him was that they were covered in feathers, like some freakish lizard-bird cross. Their arms were almost wing-like, and the tails had long plumes on the end. But, bird-lizards or not, they looked mean, and there were six of them quickly forming a circle around Cody.
"Crap," he said quietly, the raptors never stood still, and slowly started circling around him. He knew pack tactics when he saw them. "Now boys, let's not make this difficult." One of the creatures snarled and snapped at him, "... okay, fine, difficult it is." Cody reached down to his belt, and grabbed a grenade. He shouted, "Ears! Cover!" pulled the pin, dropped the grenade, and slapped his hands over his own ears.
Instead of exploding, the device emitted a high-pitched shriek, like a hundred train-whistles, or like nails on a chalkboard shoved through a jet engine. It seemed to cut right through Cody's hands and pierce like hot nails through his ears, but clearly it was worse for the raptors. They all lay on the ground, writhing in agony, feebly clawing at the sides of their heads. In a moment, the screeching died down, and Cody managed to regain his composure before the raptors did. He drew the Cannon from its holster, and its massive rounds finished off the creatures before they recovered. The pistol smoked empty, and he looked up to the dais.
Moreau stood agape at the havoc Cody had wreaked upon her minions, which was a bad move on her part. Miryam’s drumbeat quickened to a rapid tattoo, and her own chant ended with a high cry, and the red mist flashed and disappeared. Rom had used the distraction to close in on the dais unseen. He leapt up onto the platform, sword drawn, and a swift duel took place. Moreau's stone knife stood as little hindrance to the metal of Rom's sword, and in mere moments the woman was down.
Cody started to walk towards the dais, popping the Cannon's cylinder open, reloading as he went. Looking to the left, he saw Miryam emerge from the cover in which she'd been concealed. The woman appeared to call something across the clearing, but Cody couldn't hear it over the persistent ringing left by the grenade. The big man shook his head, and with a couple hand gestures indicated that he couldn't hear anything yet. She gave a thumbs-up, indicating both that she understood, and that the situation was all-clear.
Cody had reached the dais, and clambered up to help Rom free the girl tied there. The ropes were tough, but eventually gave way, and upon being freed the girl, still near hysterics, threw her arms around Rom's neck and clung there desperately. The warrior looked to Cody, a bit nonplussed, but all the mechanic could do was shrug and smile, and gesture down to Miryam. She'd had a lot of experience with children recently, and perhaps she could calm the girl down long enough to detach her from her savior. Rom nodded, and hopped down with his burden. Cody remained on the dais for a moment to examine the trappings there.
The altar was a crude affair, a stone slab with a blood-groove cut round the perimeter of the top, for gathering the vital fluids of the victim. The channel led to the head of the altar, where it would drain down through a spout. Under the spout there was a large basket, full of mottled, pale, leathery ovoids. Eggs. Huge eggs, some the length of Cody's forearm. Dinosaur eggs. He looked up to shout about his find to his teammates.
Down below, Miryam, now holding the little girl, was waving her free arm frantically, trying to get his attention. When he was looking, she continued gesturing, pointing, behind him. He froze in place, still half-crouched over the basket of eggs, and slowly looked over his left shoulder. Deafened as he was, he hadn't been able to hear it as it had emerged in the cave in the rock wall behind the dais, but now there the beast was - Tyrannosaurus Rex.
The thing was huge - a dozen feet tall at the hip, it loomed down over him, its seven ton mass seeming to bear down on its prey. The thing's skull alone was as long as Cody was tall, all mouth and teeth. It brought its head down level to the top of the dais, mere feet away, regarding him for a moment before it roared.
This, even Cody's abused ears picked up clear as day, as it washed over him like a thousand lions in chorus. The wet, meaty stench of its breath alone almost brought him to his knees. Even as he reached for the Cannon, he knew it was a useless gesture. The animal was just too big, but he drew and started bring the weapon to bear.
Rom once again sprang onto the dais, this time with a massive stone in his hands. He whirled, trading his own momentum into the stone, hurling it at the Tyrannosaur, and hitting it squarely in the side of the snout. Even as big as the dinosaur was, this caused its head to turn aside, so as Cody came around with the massive revolver, he could draw a clear bead on the thing's left eye. Once again, the gun thundered, and the monster roared again, this time in pain.
It didn't need to be said, but Cody shouted it anyway, "Run!" He and Rom leaped down, and sprinted for the cover of the forest, Miryam and the young girl just a few yards ahead of them. As they reached the shade of the trees, the beast roared again, this time in rage. They could feel the ground tremble under its massive tread as it picked up speed to chase.
Thr Tribe pelted through the forest trying to keep the lead they'd gotten as the Tyrannosaur recovered. Rom, the most fit of them, took the girl from Miryam as they ran. They had no plan, and no course. The trees that were tall enough to provide shelter were too big around to climb. On the flat the beast would have been on them in moments with its long strides. So, they made as much use of cover as they could, pelting around or through clumps of underbrush, hoping it would have to slow down to maneuver. This worked some, but the forest was open, the cover sparse, and the beast gained on them.
As they ran, they started to spread apart, coming close to splitting up - each of them starting to think that trying to lead the animal away from the other two might allow them to escape. Miryam and Cody had this nascent plan cut short as they ran down a wide path, bursting out into full sunlight, and came to a skidding to a stop to avoid hurtling over the edge of the 100-foot cliff that cut across the forest.
The two stood at the edge, looking down, watching a few pebbles they'd dislodged drop, bouncing off the cliff wall. It was quiet for a moment, except for the thumping and crashing of the approaching dinosaur. Miryam looked back to the forest, and sighed, resigned. Her expression then became quizzical, "Dumb question at this point, but how the heck can one thing make as much noise as a whole herd of buffalo?"
Cody looked at her, rubbing a hand at his ear, thinking he still didn't hear her well. "Huh? Buffalo?" He looked back down the cliff forlornly.
"Yeah, stupid thing to think before you get eaten, I know," she started.
Cody's head snapped up. "Buffalo!" he cried, "Cliffs!" He reached to his belt, an brought up a spool of cable, "Tripwire!"
He handed the toggle-end to the cable to Miryam, and pointed to a tree nearby, "Three feet up, twice around the tree, and hold on for dear life!" She took off, as he took the spool-end of the cable and dashed to another tree on the other side of the path they'd taken through the trees. When he'd wrapped it around the tree and hitched it tight, he started to shout. Miyram joined him, hoping to draw the creature to the trap.
The Tyrannosaur did not disappoint. It came thundering along the same path the pair had taken, and as it ran one massive foot snagged on the cable. The wire cut into the trunks of the anchoring trees as it came under tension, and it twanged loudly as it released, and dinosaur stumbled and skidded ponderously towards the cliff edge. It managed to slow as it went, coming to a stop with crumbling rock at its toes. It teetered awkwardly for a moment, heading barely balanced by heavy tail, its tiny forearms windmilling as it tried to regain balance. The pair held their breaths, praying silently. The moment stretched, the beast precariously balanced.
One heartbeat. Two. The dinosaur fought for its balance, and seemed to be winning. Slowly, its great weight began to settle back. The monster of a past age prepared to take a step back, to turn around, when Rom came sprinting up the same path out of the woods. He ran pell-mell towards the dinosaur, ran up its tail, along its back, and as he reached the head he planted his feet and sprang away, back towards the forest, kicking off with all his might.
This added momentum, the beast could not counter-balance. It tilted slowly, ponderously forward, and fell. Rom also dropped, from nearly twenty feet up. He'd stopped his forward motion, and landed hard on the ground at the cliff's edge, knocking the wind from him. This was nothing, though, compared to the bellowing crash of the great hunter falling to its final rest.
----------
"So," Cody told Zero as they sat together at the small Oasis table, "that was the end of Rex. We gathered up the kid, and took her back to her village. Nice little place they got there, all things considered. Apparently they didn't send any idiots to Antarctica, so when things went to heck, they managed to get by. I have to fill out this godawful report for General Stevens and Penn State, to see what kind of aid we can send. Route's a pain in the neck, but you can get there."
Zero gazed at the mechanic, somewhat incredulous, "That's quite a tale you got there, Cody. Sounds mighty tall, even for around here."
"It's no tall tale, Zero," Cody said, "It is one-hundred-percent true. Look here," the big man leaned over to a crate by his feet, and lifted the canvas that was covering it, to reveal leathery ovoids, almost like river stones. "Eggs, Zero. Dinosaur eggs. Got them into an incubator, and kept them warm the whole trip back. No mean feat, that. But we're pretty sure they're viable. Should be hatching soon."
"So, you better shine up your dress uniform buttons, and talk to Cookie about the menu. We went a long way to get her a fancy night out, and it'd better be worth it."
