Dinosaur World Omnibus Page 25

  These thoughts continue to bombard my brain: over and over they churn. I don’t know what to do, I don’t even want to know what to do, but I know I have to do something. If only for Harper I have to be willing to do something.

  We left the forest some time ago and entered the rolling plains. There are no more trees between us and the shuttle now, of which I’m glad since it means there won’t be any more dinosaurs hiding in ambush. It means all I have to worry about henceforth is human problems. Unnatural enemies.

  Onyx is beginning to slow and I know he’s tiring. He’s not designed for such a hard run, and I feel bad for running him down so. I espy a small stream ahead and rein him in so he can catch a few minutes’ rest. Harper and I dismount and leave him to it, moving quickly to the top of the nearest hill so I can reconnoitre. There’s no sign of the lieutenant through my binoculars, but that doesn’t mean she’s not out there.

  “I could call her again,” Harper suggests. “She might lie about her position, but with any luck she may reveal something.”

  “I’m more inclined to contact Spring or Summer. God knows what the lieutenant’s told them about me. She might have turned them against me already for all I know. Convincing them of the truth is going to be tricky.”

  “Or impossible.”

  That’s a point I readily concede. Then I notice something and put the binoculars back to my eyes. I feel my heart beat a little faster at the sight; something I really could have done without. There are several forms moving through the grassy plains about two miles away, heading in a direction away from us thankfully. They’re keeping low, but the grass masks them well. I had thought coelophysis were confined to the forests, although it seems our records of Ceres are somewhat lacking. Which would make sense since no one’s allowed down here to catalogue the dinosaurs or anything. All we really know is what dinosaurs were like on Earth millions of years ago, not what they’re like here on Ceres now.

  I tell Harper about the coelophysis. There’s no point in hiding anything like this any more, and we’ve both agreed on total disclosure from now on. Secrets kill, and when there are only the two of us there doesn’t seem much point in taking such foolish chances.

  “Well there’s nothing we can do about them now,” Harper says somewhat more maturely than I had expected her to. She’s beginning to grow up and doing so very fast in fact. It seems this excursion to Ceres was good for some of us at least. “How much more distance do we have to cover?”

  “I’d say an hour, maybe slightly more. It all depends on how quickly Onyx there’s going to be able to make it.”

  “He’ll come through. Onyx hasn’t let us down yet, Claire.”

  It sounds very strange someone using my name like this. In my life outside of the military of course people call me Claire, except for Davey for obvious reasons. But to be at work and have someone even knowing my name is not something that’s ever happened before. It’s strange, yet at the same time makes this situation more real to me. It’s hammering into my brain just what I’m going through here, making me realise that this is indeed life-changing. Whatever outcome this has, it’s not going to be good for everyone, and amidst it all it’s just nice someone knows who I really am.

  We head back to the stream and take a little water ourselves. There are likely colonies of bacteria in that water, but we don’t have the time to properly process the stuff. But then again we swallowed a lot more when we were almost drowned by that lake creature so if we’re going to be infected with something it’s already inside us.

  Onyx seems ready to complain when we mount him again so soon, but we can’t afford to let him rest much longer. If I’m right and we are indeed only an hour from the shuttle he can have all the rest he wants when we get there.

  The final leg of the journey speeds by. It’s difficult to tell the time of day here on Ceres since the artificial sun never moves and the great head of Jupiter is there whether it’s night or day. Charging across the plains, a dark shape finally comes into sight and I realise with glee it’s the shuttle. It’s still a full ten minutes before we reach it, although as I draw the draconyx to a halt it’s to note the stark emptiness of the area. The shuttle itself is larger than the one I lost, a full twenty metres in length and ten wide. It stands silently a metre from the ground via three metal landing legs, no thrum of the engine or, more importantly, of the cannon warming up to fire.

  “I think we beat them here,” I say, dismounting and reaching up to help Harper. She leaps into my arms and I set her down gently, patting Onyx on the side of the head. “Take a nap, pal: you earned it.”

  “Thanks, Onyx,” Harper says, stroking the side of his face and laughing when he tries to lick her. It’s one of those moments when I’m reminded as to how young this girl is, and how wrong it was of the government to use her in this fashion. For all my earlier anger and insults towards her, Marigold Harper is still very much a child. This is a heck of a way to have the meaning of adulthood kicked into her head.

  “If we can get inside,” I say, “we’ll have the advantage.”

  “What about Onyx? If they see him they’ll know we’re here.”

  “I’m not hiding, Mary. I want to have it out with the lieutenant, and the best way of doing that is to train those guns on her. The really big guns on the shuttle. That way she’ll have to at least listen to me.”

  “You think she’ll admit what’s going on to the others?”

  “Lieutenant Winter, for all her faults, is a good woman. She’s just following orders. Once I give her the opportunity to come clean she’ll do so. I think she’ll be glad to be disarmed. It’ll take the responsibility from her so she can return to her superiors a failure as opposed to a traitor.”

  “I hope you’re right about her.”

  “Yeah. No more than I do.”

  I approach the shuttle and key in the unlocking sequence for the door. I’m not surprised to find the lieutenant’s changed the code, and this is the final moment upon which I could have had any doubts about her. I believed Harper, she was too sincere in everything she was saying, but there was always a nagging hope in the back of my mind that she had fabricated the entire thing and that the lieutenant wasn’t really under orders to kill me so they could blame everything on me if it became necessary.

  Now it seems I have to at last own up to the fact that the lieutenant’s turned on me.

  “Claire!”

  I look back to Harper, startled to see she has a gun to her head. Corporal Summer is a large man, but it would appear he can sneak up on people like a snake when he has to. Standing off to the right is Private Spring, her own gun raised but not pointing anywhere in particular as she nervously looks from one person to another, trying to work out what’s going on. The lieutenant stands on the left, her own rifle levelled directly upon me, a sad look of tired resignation clouding her eyes.

  “Sure wish you hadn’t come, Corporal.”

  “Yeah,” I say. “But then that’d be letting you off nice and easy, ma’am. And being in the army’s never been about taking the easy option has it?”

  It’s a taunt she ignores, and I don’t blame her. Facetiousness never becomes a junior officer.

  “Spring, Summer,” the lieutenant orders without taking her eyes off me, “get the professor into the shuttle.”

  Summer’s looking a little awkward, but his gun’s still to Harper’s head so there’s not much I can do about anything. “Ma’am, what’s going ...”

  “Now, Summer: this isn’t a debate.”

  “Ma’am.”

  I’m now certain Summer and Spring don’t know anything about the lieutenant’s orders regarding me. Allowing them into the shuttle would be very foolish, for I don’t want to be left alone with the lieutenant. If I can get the others on my side then it’ll be all of us against the lieutenant, and there’s no way she’d kill her entire team, especially without orders to do so.

  “I know everything, ma’am,” I say quickly, before Summers can move anywh
ere. “I know you’ve been instructed to kill me in case the government needs plausible deniability later.”

  Summer had forced Harper one step forward, but stops at these words, casting a questioning look at the lieutenant. Spring, bless her, still looks like her gun’s too heavy in her hand.

  The lieutenant doesn’t meet any of their eyes: I’m surprised she’s even meeting mine, but then she knows if she looks away I might just shoot her. “You have your orders, Corporal.”

  I wonder whether she’s talking to Summer or me.

  “If you want to kill me, ma’am,” I say, “then I’d rather you just got on with it. I mean, your mission’s completed isn’t it? You have the black box you came here for. You do remember your actual mission, don’t you? The one you were sent in to do after the government sent the professor in ahead of us just so we could extract her?”

  “Hold on a minute,” Summer says, his confusion turning to anger; at me for spreading these lies, at the lieutenant for their being true; at the government for turning us against each other. “Lieutenant, what’s she talking about?”

  Winter finally breaks eye contact with me and lowers her weapon. “Two years ago the Jupiter government put into operation a plan to collect data on Ceres. Data they needed to obtain from the ground. They attached a probe to a commercial flight, to its black box. Then they hijacked the plane and purposefully crashed it onto this world. The probe’s spent the past two years gathering intelligence and now the government wants it retrieved.”

  “And you knew about this?” Summer accuses.

  “No,” she snaps back. “Of course I didn’t know about it. I found out before we left. By that time the plane was crashed and everyone on board had been dead two years. There was nothing I could do to save them, and I had orders to retrieve those data. And that’s just what I did.”

  “What sort of information did the probe gather?” I ask.

  Winter shrugs. “Didn’t ask. Not my place to know.” She scratches her cheek absently, at the three scars which run across her face. I realise something very obvious has been staring me in the face for some time now.

  “You’ve been to Ceres before,” I say. Not an accusation, not a question, just a statement.

  She meets my eyes once more and nods very slowly. “Years ago. I was much younger then. And teetotal. Once you’ve fought these monsters hand-to-hand it drives you to the bottle, trust me.”

  “So you’re doing me a favour by killing me?” I guess.

  Winter ignores me. “The government’s been here a whole lot more frequently than anyone likes to believe. More than I reckon they have as well. I’m not their only agent to come here, and I’m likely not their only agent to come here twice.”

  “So what do they want with Ceres?” I ask.

  “No idea, didn’t ask. But I reckon it has to be something to do with military potential. Covert missions are always about military potential.”

  “You really don’t care do you?”

  “Autumn, when you’ve seen what I have you’ll learn not to care any more either.”

  I don’t know what she means and I don’t want to. “So,” I say in a small voice, “what happens now then? You kill me and return home as planned?”

  “Screw that,” Summer says defiantly.

  “You shouldn’t have said anything,” the lieutenant tells me sadly. “By rights I should kill you all now and go home alone. Just me and the black box.”

  “And that’s what you’re going to do?” I ask.

  She stares at me for some moments and I see something of the old protector in her at last. “No,” she sighs. “No, I’m not. I don’t know what I’m going to do.”

  “I’ll tell you what we’re going to do,” Summer says heatedly. “We’re going to take that black box to the media and expose the government for the murder of everyone on that plane.”

  “No one would believe us,” Winter says. “They would for a week or so, but there would be a cover-up and then we’d be arrested and disappeared.”

  “So what’s the alternative?” I ask.

  “The only thing we can do,” Winter says, “is follow the plan. We leave you here, Autumn, tell our superiors you died. They’re happy, you’re alive.”

  “For how long?” Summer asks. “No one can live on this world.”

  “It’s better than a bullet in the head,” Winter snaps. “And it’s all I can offer.”

  “Then I’m staying too,” Harper surprises us all by saying. I look at her questioningly and she straightens her back even where she’s being held. Her eyes are still trembling, but there’s more determination there than I’ve seen in her before and something in my heart breaks for her. I’ve never been prouder to have called her a friend than in this very moment. “You can say we both died,” Harper continues. “They’ll believe that.”

  “Your father will not be happy,” the lieutenant says. “He’ll sue the government for inadequacy.”

  “Good,” Harper replies and I love her for that. “If he pushes hard enough maybe things will start to unravel.”

  The lieutenant thinks about all we have said and I can see we’re getting through to her. “All right, we’ll give it a shot. We ...”

  The plain erupts with the crack of a single explosion and I stare with wide horrified eyes as Summer topples, a crimson spray cascading from the side of his head. Harper stands petrified, while Winter jumps back a pace in shock.

  Spring, her arm entirely steady now, trains her rifle upon me and the lieutenant with a scowl. “This was a simple operation, Winter. You really should have put a bullet in this woman by now.”

  “What the hell ...?”

  “Back-up,” Spring says with a tight smile. “Our government always has a back-up plan. Plans within plans as it were. Just as you didn’t inform the group as to your real mission, I didn’t tell you about mine.”

  “I trained you,” the lieutenant rages.

  “And a good six months it was, thanks. But all things come to an end. If it makes any difference I’ve put this off until the last possible moment, but I don’t have any choice now. If you hand me that black box right now I’ll disarm you both and leave you here to fend for yourselves. I’m not a total jerk.”

  Winter doesn’t even so much as look at Summer’s corpse as she replies, although we all know she’s thinking about him. “The black box is going to the media, Private. We’ll take our chances.”

  Spring makes a sound of complete disrespect. “Don’t be stupid.”

  A loud rapport cracks the air once more and I dive, knocking the lieutenant to the floor where we both roll to behind cover of the shuttle. Spring screams angrily and I see her swing around with her gun. Harper, entirely forgotten and considered useless by Spring, has matured considerably over the past two days. Where once before having a man’s brains blown over her might have sent her into bowel-moving despair, today she’s a different woman. And she seems to have remembered I gave her a pistol.

  She’s never fired one before though, so her shot, even if it was meant to hit Spring, didn’t come close. The attack was enough to jar Spring, however, enabling me and the lieutenant to get out of there. I lay down rapid cover-fire and shout for Harper to get to cover herself, watching as Spring dives beneath the shuttle to find cover of her own.

  We can’t all hide behind the same cover, though.

  “Sorry about all this, Autumn,” the lieutenant says beside me.

  “Like to say you’re forgiven, but you’re not. Mary! Can you hear me?”

  “Claire!”

  The shout comes from behind a rock, which is good since it’s unlikely Spring will bother going all that way just to put a bullet in her. If she can retrieve the black box and get off-world she’ll be happy enough. Which means she’s going to be coming our way instead.

  “This isn’t clever,” Spring calls. “You know I don’t want to hurt anyone else.”

  “Like I care what you think, you little ho.”

  The lieut
enant holds out a hand for my silence and I realise I shouldn’t be replying to the woman’s baiting. All it’s doing is giving away our position. She can see as much by looking under the shuttle of course, but the landing struts are very thick and there’s every chance we could be moving from one to another.

  “I don’t want any more deaths,” Spring shouts. “Seriously, I’m behind schedule enough as it ... what’s wrong with your dinosaur?”

  It’s a trick, and an obvious one, so I don’t look. Then I hear Harper’s shout, for she clearly didn’t know it was an obvious trick and took a look anyway. “Claire!” she shouts. “Onyx: he’s nervous!”

  Now I do look and see that indeed Onyx is on his feet, shaking his head from side to side. It’s fear from the gun discharges, I tell myself. It has to be, since the alternative is ...

  “Autumn!” the lieutenant says and I follow her eyes to the crouched form of a familiar theropod, its red eyes glaring at us from the end of its long snout. Behind it there’s another one, and another, and my heart sinks when I realise we’re surrounded.

  “Spring!” I shout without taking my eyes off the things. “We have to get into the shuttle. We have to all get into the shuttle right now.”

  “What are you harping on about?”

  Harper screams and begins loosing shots wildly. I break from cover, charging over to her rock, bringing my own rifle to bear and releasing a sharp discharge which all but shreds the coelophysis which had launched itself at her. Harper shrieks as the body collapses beside her, its blood spraying across her and mingling with Summer’s. The girl’s blouse is soaked through and she stares at the blood and starts shaking. I can’t afford for her to fall into shock and grab her by the arm, yanking her to her feet.

  “Into the shuttle,” I tell her. “Winter! Open the door!”

  The lieutenant nods and keys in the correct number sequence. A creature leaps at her while she’s working and I take it down with a barrage of fire. I would have thought the sounds would have kept the animals at bay, but it seems to be attracting them.

  Spring appears from nowhere, a rifle in either hand, firing precision shots: short bursts which take down an enemy at every squeeze. She looks very annoyed, but if she’s occupied with the coelophysis she can’t be shooting at us.