Bootstrap Colony (4 page)

The creature was just huge. Most
of the head was bare scales, from the top of the head back was a white stripe
down the spine bordered by a pair of black stripes that tapered into tiger
stripes down the flanks. The body feathers were a mix of browns and tans.

It had a massive head ending in a
beak. Sharp steak knife like teeth line the rear of its jaw and muzzle. The
arms were built like a raptor’s, but without the vestigial wings. The hind
quarters were solidly built; the tail was short, ending in a stub of feathers.
“T-Rex meet big bird, film at eleven,” Mitch commented, watching the massive
thing stalk the now distressed sauropod. A rustle in the bush and another of
the creatures stepped out, then a juvenile version.

“Bring the whole family why don’t
you. Dinner is served,” Mitch sighed, shaking his head. Sighing in frustration
he waited and watched. He turned his head as they clear the camera view,
catching sight of the sauropod as it headed North and possible safety. “Good,”
he muttered...”Ah crap, me and my big mouth,” he muttered as a giant t-Rex
creature rushed out of the brush on the far side, tearing into the surprised
creature.

With a bawl it tried to strike,
thrashing its neck and tail, but unable to hit the Rex. The Rex clamped down on
the already torn and bloodied neck; a muttered growl can be heard over the
saurapods throaty bellow. Its forelimbs tore into the sauropod, latching on
with meat hook claws, and began to pull it down. With a shrieking cry and low
moan the gentle giant stumbled, then fell. Mitch felt the truck suspension bob
as the fall generated a small earth tremor. The herbivore tried to move, but
the others arrived and began to tear at it as the ambusher bit down. They tore
into the giant, eating it while it was still alive.

Muttering about poor table
manners Mitch flicked to the KITT AI and ordered the tractor to get moving. He
passed the tractor, keeping it between him and the Rex family. The juvenile
looked up interested, mouth dripping gore, but the slurping sound behind it was
too much and it returned to the meal in front of it. Mitch sighed in relief.

He thought about trying a double
load, but then talked himself out of it. It would just be too dangerous if
something would go wrong, especially near the Rex family. Last thing he needed
was to tempt fate any more than he had already.

Unfortunately due to the lay of
the land he couldn’t detour without adding three to four hours each way to the
trip. The detour would expose the convoy vehicles to the grasslands as well. He
logged the Rex family as capital predators with the security AI, making sure
they kept an eye out for them.

There were only thirty four
large, and twenty two small cargo trailers left, as well as a half a dozen
flatbeds. Most of the gear was not short term critical, things like textile
mills, the autoclave, asphalt maker, kilns, helicopters, plane, and other gear
were nice to have long term, but he could in theory live without them. Not that
he intended to do so unless it was absolutely necessary. He hooked up the
tractors and last fertilizer truck and headed off.

It would have been nice to be
able to tow something other than the small trailers with the hummers, but they
just didn’t have the grunt. For the umpteenth time he felt that regret, then
wryly snorted. “Split milk, split milk. What the hell am I going to DO with all
that milk anyway, I don’t have the room?!”

His hummer took the lead as they
arrived at the Rex kill; warily he watched them as he crossed the field. The
security AI beeped, warning him. “No shit Sherlock,” he commented dryly and
then “Acknowledged.” To the AI. It beeped insistently again, and then his HUD
built into the hummer came on and pointed to the nearby bushes. He squinted,
and then pulled out the binoculars as the hummer slowly creeped along. “Well
well, late dinner guests,” he observed. He flipped to IR, noted the raptor
body.

“Uninvited ones too,” he
commented as the winds shifted and one of the Rexes looked up and bellowed a
challenge. Caws answer it. “I think it is time to get out of dodge,” he
commented. The Rex family was definitely agitated, flapping their arms, and
clopping their mouths together with gunshot like cracks. “Yup, definitely time
to get the hell out of dodge!” Mitch commented, feeling a thrill of fear as he
accelerated past the fracas. His vehicles followed, dipping through the gully
and then onward.

Back at the base he parked and
sighed. He had the tractors unload as close to the places he wanted the cargo
pods as possible, and then sent them to refuel and park for the night. With
that kill it might be a day, or even two days before the Rex family moved on. A
little too dangerous to be driving by regularly, let alone let an unmanned
unarmed vehicle drive by. He couldn't risk losing one. “Another damn delay,” he
muttered, then sighed. He returned his attention to the wind farm.

The robots had set up the parts
in neat piles where he had indicated. One robot was almost finished driving the
base of the last one into the ground. He took a look around, then shrugged and headed
over to start putting parts together.

The next day he throttled the
urge to go check the Rex kill several times before giving in and sending the
medium range UAV to check. A half hour later he got a beep, taking a look at
the tablet he noted the snoozing Rex family, just as he had suspected. The
carcass was torn apart, but there was still a good amount of meat left. Vulture
like birds hovered overhead. A small bird like therapod darted in, the adults
snort in annoyance then the juvenile chased after it. Mitch sighed and
redirected the drone to return to base. “So much for that!” He sighed in
annoyance as he turned to the chores.

He knew he was in over his head,
or at least starting to be. Dividing his time between the animals,
construction, maintenance, and farm was too much, even for a twenty eight hour
day. The thought made him snort and look over to the makeshift sundial. It had
taken him a week of careful plotting to get the day straight, then an hour of
programming to get the clocks in all the machinery reset. Fortunately he had
planned for it, but the software patch designed to do the change all in one go
had gone hinky, forcing him to manually reset a few clocks that had balked at
the change. The tedious repetitive programming had been enough to drive him to
distraction.

There was still a lot to do, the
farm machinery was on the sixth field, he still needed to get the pastures up,
the fish tank needed cleaning again... the list went on and on. The second
batch of tilapia had hatched the day before, a minor triumph, but one that
again reminded him he was on borrowed time. He had only a few weeks to set up
the various pumps, tanks, and ponds for them before they out grew the small
tanks they were in. Fortunately they would still use their yolk sacks for
another few days before needing feeding.

Then of course there were the
other various animal related chores, and building the base was a big headache.
Constantly trying to balance power need with power available was also a
headache. He couldn’t start on the walls, the fences or the cave interiors
until he had more power and more TIME! The farm was going the best he could
manage, fortunately the combine and farm equipment were mostly self sufficient
and automated. Maintenance was a pain; the droids just didn’t have the reflexes
and fine control to do small connections or to clean themselves when muck got
into various joints or gears. Plants should be sprouting soon, they would need
water. He rubbed his brow.

He had relocated one of the cats
and one dog to the mobile home after he had spotted a spider rat trying to
sneak in. The damn things were everywhere now, six legged varmints, and four
beady eyes. They stayed away from the cats and dogs, but were constantly in the
animal feed or running through the herds, causing them to moo or neigh in
fright.

A few had been stomped; he had
gleefully tossed them in with the cheetah. The cheetahs were another concern,
constantly pacing in their cages. They needed outdoor space, placed to run as
did many of his other animals. He sighed again.

It always came back to the
animals he mused. He tightened the last bolt and then stepped back, allowing
the robot clearance to lift the shaft of the turbine and place it into the
base. He connected the electrical line, then the bolts to the base. He watched
as the robots played out the guy wires, then drive the stake ends into the
ground. Then he shook his head and moved to the next one.

Releasing the cats and dogs was
not an option, with their limited gene pool and pregnant condition he couldn’t
take a chance that one would be injured or killed. The idea of letting the
cheetah loose was also disregarded. The wrench slipped and he skinned his
knuckles. Swearing he checked it, then shook it as the skin smarted, reminding
him to pay closer attention to what he was doing. He looked over the area,
waiting for the pain to recede a little.

A wall of cargo pods along both
sides of the garage opening had framed it nicely. The wall to the north was for
the animals, the wall to the south was for storage, and more animal corrals. As
soon as he had the time he planned to pull solar panels off the tops of the
crates and hook them to stands or lean them against blocks where they could get
the most light. The way things were now many weren’t getting much power after
seventeen hundred. In fact the ones closest to the wall were completely shaded
after sixteen hundred and therefore only getting a trickle of ambient light...
and therefore only generating a trickle of power. He'd have to move them.

He finished the second turbine
then turned to the third as the robot put it on the base. With these three wind
turbines he should have enough power to better expand things. There were six
other windmills; two of them were giants that would require concrete foundations
before they could be erected.

He was still a long way away from
turned on the mainframe, but getting closer. Setting up the water turbines will
be a major hassle he realized, and the potential for injury high. He now was
dreading it.

He had four portable waterwheel
versions, already set up and chugging along under the falls. In fact they were
producing a lot of his energy, almost too much for the little alternators to
handle. Fortunately the windings were superconductors, so his concern was more
for the metal shaft holding out under the load over anything overheating.
Keeping the liquid nitrogen topped off was handled by the super conductive
cable, its outer sheath acted as a hose, channeling the super cooled liquid
around the cable, and up around the windings and then back to the small
refrigerator unit. It was all self contained and therefore one less thing for
him to have to worry about.

The final turbine was completed
as the sun began to set. He hurried the final connections, accidentally
fumbling the bolts before getting things sorted out. The cabling was connected
in the last ounce of light. He trudged to the motor home, sighing in
contentment as the lights came on automatically. He could hear the turbines
chuffing slightly in the light breeze, he now had more power, and better yet,
more power at night and during cloudy days, things were looking up.

The next day he impatiently sent
the UAV out before he turned to his morning chores. The Rex family was still
stubbornly parked at the carcass, but the carcass was much smaller. He might
luck out with them abandoning it later in the day as the sun rose over the
horizon. If the Rex family waited too long the main herd would get too far away
from them after all.

He had directed the robots to
clean the pens, now he replaced the gate with a more secure one, this one with
vertical slats only twelve centimeters apart. He had the robots refresh the
water and place empty crates inside on their sides, and then turned the dogs
out into the first pen. They sniffed around for a bit, wrinkling their noses at
the smell of the other animals. Tails were wagging and it didn't look like they
could get out so he fed them then quickly and then left the pen and went on to
the next chore.

The sows grunted as he checked
things over, the water was topped off, and feed was okay. The robot assigned to
feeding and watering was only one pen ahead of him so he paused to check the
stats from the windmills, then the water turbines and solar efficiency logged.
He really needed to relocate many of the panels that were catching too much
shade soon. One hundred thirty nine cargo pods were arranged as he had planned,
and the spaces for the greenhouses had been plowed and leveled. The materials
for each of the greenhouses were stacked beside each plot. The habitat domes
were still packed, with the caves he decided he could do without them.

He spent the day removing solar
panels from the roofs of the cargo pods, a tedious task that the robots could
not do without damaging them. They did transport them out to the solar field,
propping them up with rocks and running a cable out to them. Having the robots
run the lines made it much easier to make the connections. The afternoon check
with the UAV showed the Rex family up, but not far away from the kill. The
juvenile was rather impatient, being herded back to the pack by the rest of the
adults. Birds and more scavengers had settled on the remains of the kill, the
Rex’s were ignoring them, a clear sign they were about ready to move on.