Not that a dozen hungry raptors needed help looking dangerous.
This was the third hunting party this week to run into a raptor ambush, and I was glad I’d decided to bring a couple of busters along. The raptors were getting bolder since they’d been successful in taking down a couple of settlers. The Landing City planning committee was still smarting over that—it was their decision to reprioritize guard details that had led directly to the deaths.
The spectacular death of one of their number caused the raptor hunting pride to hesitate, just long enough for the humans to regroup and open up on them. The raptors were tough, but they hadn’t evolved to withstand a twenty-second-century assault rifle.
Within seconds, the raptors were down. The hunters bent over, panting, more from nervous reaction than exertion. My observation drone hovered nearby, keeping watch.
The group leader, Stéphane, looked up at my drone. “Eh, thanks there, big guy. They come out of nowhere, those bastards.”
I bobbed the drone once by way of acknowledgement. The raptors had set up an ambush for the hunters and almost pulled it off. They were intelligent—there were still ongoing arguments about how intelligent. The original three-person hunting parties were now double the size. And everyone involved took the duty very seriously.
“No prob, Stéphane. A little buster billiards now and then is great fun.”
Stéphane laughed, and the group organized themselves back into a proper skirmish line. We had another kilometer of perimeter to cover before we could head back. I silently ordered down another buster from orbit, and assigned a mining drone to come pick up the remains of the one I’d just expended.
Bob’s personnel busters were a versatile tool for wildlife control. I still wasn’t sure if it was more economical than rigging up an armed drone, though. I resolved to discuss Bob’s plastics-backed shells, if I ever had five free seconds to rub together.
Security was turning out to be a much bigger deal than we’d initially planned for. This planet’s ecosystem was incredibly rich, diverse, and competitive. Even many of the plant eaters had weaponry that would give an earth predator pause. In that particular, it was very much like the popular vision of the dinosaur era.
We’d gotten the hint in the first week on Vulcan, when a pride of raptors had paced through the new townsite like they owned the place. Without so much as a please-and-thanks, they’d tried to eat one of the AMI backhoes.
I grinned at the memory. The backhoe wasn’t harmed, other than needing a new paint job. But it suddenly occurred to the planning committee that they weren’t in charge. At least not yet. Hunting and guarding details had been beefed up forthwith, and we’d mostly managed to keep people and raptors separate. Mostly.
And speaking of which, I had a job to do. I sent the drone up to a thousand meters to get a thorough scan. The colony spread below me, looking a lot like twenty-first-century suburbia—except for the very large fence around most of the perimeter. The fence was backed with sonic stunners, to handle the more unruly wildlife, and the trees had been cleared back an additional half kilometer. A small herd of brontos munched on leaves at the edge of the treeline. Like the raptors, they only generally resembled Apatosauri, and they were only half the size of their namesakes. The colonists had gotten on a dinosaur kick when naming the local fauna, even though some of the associations were a bit of a stretch.
I did a quick overflight of the cleared perimeter. Nothing big enough to matter revealed itself. Satisfied, I turned back towards Landing.
The larger buildings at the center of the town comprised the administrative hub, while the airport and two manufacturing centers formed a triangle around it. People and goods moved around in communally-owned AMI-driven vehicles, available in all sizes from commuter cars to buses. The colonists had decided to build their new life on Vulcan with some social changes, starting with the abolition of private vehicles.
Only three months after landing, the city looked and felt established and stable. I was truly impressed at how quickly everything had gone up. Of course, the USE staff had had literally decades to refine their plans while they were stuck in the enclave after the war. No surprise that they’d worked out a lot of the bugs.
I finished my aerial sweep. It looked like the raptors were done for the day. I called Stéphane. “Hey, chief. All clear. There’s nothing anywhere near the fence now.”
Stéphane grinned into the phone. “Bon! I guess the fence crew will have to come up with something new. They keep thinking they are finished…”
We both laughed. The Fence Construction group was taking a lot of flak lately.
“So, Howard,” Stéphane continued after a moment. “We will be going to the Groggery after our shift, to sample the latest attempt at beer. Care to tag along?”
“I might just meet you there, Stéphane. I have a meeting with the colonel first. I do love watching you guys fall over dead, though.”
Stéphane grinned at me. “Eh, the last batch did remind me a little of actual beer. I think they’ll have it right, soon.”
I nodded and promised to be there.
*
“Afternoon, Howard.”
“Colonel.” I noted that the colonel had his bottle of Jameson out again. Not that I disapproved, but there couldn’t be much of the stuff left, and the supplier was sixteen light-years away. And no longer in existence, but who’s counting. I said, in an aside to Guppy that wouldn’t show on the colonel’s video feed, “I have a TODO to build a distillery, right?”
[Affirmative. And set to a high priority]
Well, all work and no booze… I chuckled, and merged back into my public avatar.
The colonel had been talking during this sidebar. I frame-jacked momentarily and played back the video to get caught up.
“No deaths for the last three days on the patrols. I hope we’ve gotten ahead of this issue with the raptors.”
I put my hands behind my head and stretched while I considered that statement. The raptors weren’t really dinosaurs. They weren’t really anything Earth-equivalent. They were bipedal hunters, slightly larger than the velociraptors in the first Jurassic Park movie. They had large mouths full of teeth more reminiscent of a shark’s than the peg-shaped teeth of the canonical carnosaur. The raptors—and the USE settlers—had discovered that biocompatibility was a two-way street. Judging by the subsequent increase in raptor incursions, humans had proven to be a tasty treat.
“I wouldn’t want to get complacent, Colonel. These are intelligent animals. They won’t just keep marching into weapon range like a horde of zombies.”
“Yes.” The colonel waved a hand in a dismissive gesture. “Which is why I like the aerial surveillance system that you are implementing. Thermal imagers at night. And take out any that approach within a minimum radius.”