Koban: Rise of the Kobani (34 page)

Kayla and Kopper finally returned, their sleek teal fur wet, but natural oils had repelled most of the rain. Climbing into the truck cab next to Cory, he thought the cat smelled less like a ripper and more like an old damp and dirty sock. She picked the careless image up when her frill brushed him going past.

She turned her massive head towards him, intense blue eyes looking into his, sniffed his breath, and sent a rebuttal thought. “I don’t smell like rhinolo vomit.”

The much-maligned rhinolo was what every rotten smell, bad taste, or stupid act was used for comparison.

A camping expedition on an untamed continent, with few comforts was proving less romantic to the two boys by now, in only a day. So far, the only exotic dinosaurs had all been seen from their butts, and those butts had gifted them all day long. When Rigson suggested they camp early for the day, and let the mud dry overnight, they were ready. Now that the storm had passed, he led the trucks over to the same trees they avoided earlier. There was now a supply of splintered wood for a campfire, even if it was a bit green. It proved to have a sap that helped it burn well, and caused a nice crackling sound, with a spicy scent.

They had brought four auto tents, made of a type of Smart Fabric for a cover, and a Living Plastic framework that needed only electrical power from its rechargeable batteries to flow and stiffen the struts, to make a comfortable two-man air conditioned tent, with a small cook stove. Roughing it indeed.

They had circled the trucks, with relatively little room between bumpers
. They took advantage of tree trunks between trucks, so nothing the size of a wandering ceratopsian could wander into the tents in the middle of the night. Not that the rippers or wolfbats, or the two TG2’s wouldn’t easily sense them approaching. The wolfbats gathered leaves and branches and made nests twenty feet off the ground, and gratefully accepted warmed raw kidney for a dinner.

Rather than the small cook stoves, they used the fully enclosed microwave systems, one per truck, to prepare their rhinolo and antelope meats and vegetables, searing the outsides of the steaks with the built in broiler coils. The filtered and enclosed cooking system retained the odor of the sizzling meat, lessening the attraction for downwind predators.

Warmed raw organ meat fed Kally and Kandy, since they had not had an opportunity to hunt yet. Kayla and Kopper frilled everyone in the camp concerning their side trip and hunt today. They had chased down several small mammals that normally lived underground.

The rippers, using their grass matching teal fur had belly crept close enough that when they sprang up after the foraging animals, they couldn’t retreat to their main burrow entrance, and the rippers had already located two alternate “back door” openings. They cut them off from those as well. Of the seven animals they scattered in a mad scramble, they caught three. The terror
flavor
wasn’t as keen as they had hoped as they frilled the low intelligence prey when they died.

That disappointment was matched by the poor taste of their stringy meat, which had a sharp unpleasant tang. The frilling showed the dying animals had been digging for grubs, and picking a type of grass eating caterpillar from grass blades. The smell of their flesh was similar to the smell in the mouths and stomachs of the insect eaters. Rippers didn’t waste a kill, so they ate what they caught, poor taste or not.

Based on today’s hunt, these particular Jura animals
were firmly off the future menu. After receiving the mental images from the rippers, Mel concluded they behaved much like prairie dogs, a description his pocket computer furnished him when he described how they lived. Similar, if the Earth namesake had grown to reach thirty pounds, had six legs, hairless black belies and spotted teal fur.

The visit to the pair of lions had been more productive. The lions, no dummies, were quick to back away from their still fresh hadrosaur kill when the two gigantic cats suddenly strolled up on them. The rippers politely walked slowly around the half-eaten prey towards the nervous pair, and Kayla turned her head to the side to offer the lioness her frill. This was a gesture clearly inviting communication, and it placed the one offering at risk, with their throat so exposed.

Neither of the lions had ever encountered, or had even seen frill images of rippers before. However, the feline body type, their scent, and the frill ruff were unmistakable evidence of similarity. Besides, these two midsized feline killers, built for the chase, instinctively recognized that the two massive and muscled giants didn’t
need
to be polite if they didn’t wish to be.

Seladaq glanced at her mate, Hasbuk, for moral support, and then tentatively moved forward to touch frills with the huge teal cat. Her tan, lanky body looked even more vulnerable next to Kayla’s bulging muscles. That was why Kopper had stopped well back and sat on his haunches. His even greater bulk, at just over eight hundred Earth pounds was too intimidating. The three hundred pound female already looked small next to Kayla’s six hundred fifty pounds. Even the male lion weighed only about four hundred.

Kayla slipped naturally into the nonverbal speech she used with her wild pride relatives at home. Human language and their different styles of images and thinking would not help establish a rapport here, if one were even possible. Her mother Kit, and her uncle, Kobalt, had not received a welcoming from any of several lion pairs they had contacted previously. That was in an area almost a thousand miles away from this region.

As was typical in a frill contact, images were exchanged rapidly. The first ones from Kayla were of identification of herself and Kopper, and assurances that the rippers were only visitors, passing through this area, and they did not intend to stay. Although she was firm in stating that they would hunt as they passed by, and there were two more rippers in their pride. The concept of a large pride took more explanation, and Kayla projected that previous meetings with others like Seladaq revealed lions formed only small family pairings.

Seladaq, feeling relief that these were not to be competitors for their territory or for their prey, was nevertheless not pleased that four of these huge predators would possibly disrupt their own hunting. She wanted to know why they were passing this way and how long they would be here. Was it a migration, like the large herd animals, which passed this way between the rains and dry times? That didn’t seem right as she asked this. It wasn’t possible these large hunters had passed here before, undetected.

The next images from Kayla clearly seemed to have family emotions attached, except Seladaq was shown images of strange pale animals that stood on two legs, and used incomprehensible not-life things that moved on the ground and lifted in the air like giant fliers. The rippers went inside these not-life things also, and were not eaten, or even afraid. She was told the group would all be far from here, towards the mountains, in another two or three days. If the lions would give them information about the dangers here, about recent giant predators that follow the herds, there would be a kill made of a large animal, and left for them.

Seladaq couldn’t repress a sense of scandal at the image of an entire one-ton corpse of a two horned grass eater. She and
Hasbuk could not consume so much meat before it rotted, and they had no cubs at home to feed. It was wasteful!

Kayla noted with satisfaction the offer of a food payment for information wasn’t rejected, instead it was the thought of the waste, a concept a ripper entirely supported. The offer was amended to reflect a smaller prey, such as the one the pair had killed today.

Instantly, the lioness projected embarrassment, at having forgotten they already had meat for the remainder of the week. She explained she needed to frill with her mate, who had started to pace nervously at the lengthy exchange.

Kayla used the opportunity to frill-in Kopper on the proceedings so far, and then the two females resumed their negotiation. Because neither lions, nor rippers, were mentally or emotionally capable of lying during frill contacts, beyond withholding the truth or a thought, the offer of food for information was accepted as sincere by the lion pair.

Hasbuk wanted them to transit through their territory quickly, and approved of giving the visitors information that would help them go faster. They would leave their hunting range even sooner if they crossed the river a short distance ahead, at a place where the herds crossed.

Seladaq saw no advantage to tell them of the occasional fresh meat of herd animals they could
cautiously
be scavenged from the safety of sandbars at the edge of the river. No need to give them a source of food they did not earn by hunting. If they didn’t go look for that food, they didn’t need to fear what lived in the deeper waters.

Kayla learned about a pack of the two-legged, blue-feathered predators which were following the heard of “two-horns.” A ceratopsian was too large for just a pair of lions to take down, aside from the waste of meat, so the four giant predators were no competition for the lion’s normal food source, merely an easily avoided threat to themselves. The lions could outrun them, and their bodies represented too little energy return for their meat, for the effort of pursuit. That was a calculation both cat species could make instinctively, as could any successful predator that had eaten recently. If hungry, almost no prey was ignored.

To avoid the large predators, they were told they could cross the river where the herds crossed. The largest predators generally did not follow them there.

Kayla knew the images from Seladaq were of what the human pride called a K-Rex, one of the more dangerous threats the wolfbats were asked to seek, and had so far not reported. She would take pleasure in reporting not only how many there were, but how to avoid this group.

Seladaq told her that the K-Rex never pursued any herd animal that reached the safety of a wide rock ledge that went across the widest part of the river, where shallow water slowly drifted over when the rainy season ended. It was a place to ford to the other side of the river, which herds had used for thousands of years of migrations.

It was perhaps the risk of slipping on slimy rock and an inability to swim that held the K-Rex on the banks. An apex predator was surely not otherwise afraid of something a ceratopsian was willing to brave. The lions didn’t particularly like to get into water, a trait that rippers shared, and the lions feared the river water animals. They had no clear mental picture of those creatures, simply of large surges of water seen and remembered, via frill images passed on from other lions that had narrowly escaped becoming prey, while drinking at the edge of the steeper riverbanks.

Leaving the lions to their envied feast of fresh tasty meat, the two hungry cats made their opportunistic “prairie dog” kills, with the unsatisfactory outcome for their palates, and then they walked through the afternoon thunderstorm and a “cheerful” soaking downpour.

When they delivered the information about the K-Rex hunting pack of four, probably a family grouping, and learning of the river ford location, Mel wanted to check it out the next day. The river led to the mountains from either side, of course, and they would be separating from a known K-Rex pack. He preferred avoiding them to killing them.

After an uneventful night, other than the occasional distant roars and cries of an equally remote victim, they woke rested at daybreak. An hour at which the two teenagers were
certain
nature did not intend man to be awake. It was the threat of poured cold water that drew them out of their sleeping bags. That, and exuberant frilling from two big playful cats who eagerly wanted to greet the new day in a strange land.

A quick meal of precooked and packaged food, military rations brought back with the Beagle in storage pods, the tents were emptied, and allowed to automatically collapse and fold. A brief
interlude
behind nearby trees provided for morning relief of the male physiology, and Neri found a clump of dense bushes to hide her more lady-like ablutions. They were all ready to roll in just under an hour.

Ricco took over driving the lead truck today, with Neri Bar and Kally riding with him. They were staying closer to the river today, to make certain they didn’t miss the place to ford the quarter mile wide stream.

This wasn’t one of the great rivers, which satellite pictures had found on Jura, but mineralogical and spectrographic data suggested the volcanic mountains near the river’s origin were rich in heavy metals. Aside from exploration, discovery, and adventure, the material-poor human colony of Koban needed precious metals to pay for what they needed from Human Space. They had found mineral wealth in the foothills of mountains on Cenozo, but they hoped to find other sources, some that were possibly easier to obtain in greater quantity. They had new small scale automated mining equipment to place where they found suitable deposits. The richer the deposits, the greater the early returns.

Kandy and Kopper ranged ahead on foot today, since the going was slower away from the beaten down migration trail. The wolfbats were up, watching for both the K-Rex threats they had been shown, and for the lake
, which the lions indicated was just upstream from the river fording point. It wasn’t clear how a lake would form where the river grew so wide and shallow that animals as short legged as the two-horn ceratopsian could easily cross.

Multiple herds of larger animals had taken this route, even sauropods, which so far appeared only on photos. Where there were taller trees closer to the mountain foothills, satellite photos depicted something that looked a great deal like a blue and white giraffe, eating leaves on those trees. It was a chance to name things, which would be remembered and repeated for generations that partly motivated any explorer.