dinosaur island
Dinosaur island part 1 (not to be confused with Jurassic park, although there are some slight similarities.)
Dave Richter stood at the front of the LSIV (Light submersible insertion vehicle.) watching the prow cut through the water almost silently, the only sounds being the gentle splash of water against the hull, indistinguishable from the normal ocean sounds.
They were travelling across the Pacific Ocean; towards the island know as la isle mortema. It was supposed to be a variation of the Latin words meaning island of death, clumsily translated by a scientist in front of a computer somewhere.
They were currently about seventy kilometres from the island, the five submersibles barely more than black shapes against a black ocean.
They had taken off from Brisbane, Australia, under cover of darkness, heading east into the Pacific Ocean.
The island they were to 'sanitize' was not on any maps, and any satellite photography showed a different location for the island every day, purely because it didn't have a fixed position. It was a floating island created for the sole purpose of those scientists who saw it as their mission in life to create sentient life that rivalled humans in a creature. None had yet succeeded.
Everything had been tried, monkeys, dogs, tyrannosaurus rex, raptors, cats, bears, dolphins, everything. None of them worked, they all reverted to a bestial form of cunning intelligence that had the fixed mission of killing as many other creatures as possible.
This is what had happened out at the island. An experiment had escaped, one that was as close to 'sentient consciousness' as no other had been, when it had escaped, it had set most of the other experiments loose. Now there was an island full of raptors and other medical misfits awaiting them.
Their job was to go in, disable the automated air defences, and then set a laser beacon so that several b-97's, a new breed of stealth aircraft based on the b-52, could level the island using hundreds of MOAB's. (Massive ordnance air burst, or 'mother of all bombs' as most soldiers call it.)
It was going to be a fun day.
* * *
Dave went below, to where his fifteen soldiers waited. They were all pouring over several tactical maps, and overlays of an attack plan.
Dave took the top overlay, which contained detailed troop movement orders and routes, down to the metre, before throwing it to the side and putting down a new, clean sheet. He began to draw a new attack plan on the surface.
"Sir!" One of the female soldiers said. "That's completely insubordinate and totally off mission to do that! Sir!" Every else just smiled. The woman was new to the team.
"Look here." He said, removing the top sheet again and replacing the old one.
"Tell me why we are to walk down this narrow escarpment, through heavy forest, along a very narrow, closed in rout." He didn't sound angry, he seemed to be just asking her opinion.
"Sir, in case of snipers here, sir? Or mounted guns in the buildings here and here sir?" She said, pointing out the indicated spots. It was a tactically sound plan, but not a very good one for what they were going in to do.
"Tell me, have you ever seen a raptor use a mounted gun, or a rifle for that matter?" Dave asked.
"Sir...no, sir." She said meekly, chagrined.
"Don't worry about it. Those fucking idiot civilians should have realised we were up against enemies who can only fight close quarters, and planned accordingly, if you want someone to blame, blame them. If we followed the plan, we'd get caught in a narrow space, unable to use large-calibre weapons, and with no help at all. Now, I don't give a shit about orders, I got here by adjusting plans to suit the enemy, not adjusting the enemy to suit the plans. We will enter here...and here," He said, indicating two long, sweeping beaches devoid of any vegetation, obviously not completed when the island was made. "Then make our way along here, through the larger hallways, and the open air courtyards, detour through the labs, maybe see if the raptors have a specific weakness to any type of toxin, copy all the computerised notes, and then detour through the hangers, look for anything useful there. These scientists can't confine themselves to just one project, so look for any technology that is finished. And then we'll head for the air defence platform, download the tracking schematics, modify them to attack small, completely organic targets, and then climb this tower here," He tapped the map again. "Fire a laser beacon into the mountainside here," he tapped the map yet again. "And then get out of there. Mission complete.
"Sir. Ah, why don't we just blow the air defence platform, sir?" The young woman asked.
Dave turned to her. "Because we can use it against the raptors." He replied.
"Sir?" She asked, confused.
"We set it to attack small, organic targets, it shoots the raptors for us." He said.
"Sir, but won't it shoot us? Sir?" She asked.
"Tap your chest." Dave said.
She did so, producing a knocking sound as her fist contacted her Kevlar vest.
"Metal." Dave explained. "Non organic metal."
The woman's eyes grew wide as she realised what he was getting at.
"Does everyone agree on the plan?" Dave asked.
"Sir?" The woman asked tentatively.
"Yes?" Dave asked, smiling, he liked having someone who actually stood up to him and asked questions.
"Sir. Shouldn't we cut through the containment cells? See how close they got to creating a sentient, and copy any information pertaining to that? Sir?" She asked.
"Don't they keep all the information on that in the labs?" Dave asked, surprised.
"Sir. No. Look here, at the electrical conduits, there's no connection between the lab computers and the science computers, they're all closed circuits to minimise the risk of a virus infecting all the computers. Sir." She said.
"I see. Yes. That seems best, any other questions, comments, or amendments to be made?" He asked everyone.
"Sir. Why are we collecting intelligence and technology when our orders are to set the laser and get out? Sir?" The woman asked.
"Keep asking smart questions like that and showing me up, and you may just be in for a promotion, lieutenant." He said, and she flushed with embarrassment.
"Sir. I don't mean to offend. I'm just curious. Sir." She said.
"Well, we collect information, documents, technology, and other bits and pieces so that the men in the government don't demote me for going off the planned path. If I didn't have a good reason for going off mission, other than the fact that their plan sucks, then I'd probably have to salute you next time I see you." He said, and she smiled nervously.
"Now, get ready, we land in a few minutes." Dave said as he sent the information to the other submersibles, the click of safeties being set to off and magazines checked echoing throughout the small space.
* * *
They landed silently, in a textbook perfect beach landing.
The submersibles slammed into the beach, all sound muffled by the sand, the front end opening and spilling soldiers out.
Each soldier held a different weapon. Some rifles, some pistols, and every one of them had very high-tech eyepieces attached to their shoulder plates, which flipped down over their right eye.
The eyepiece was a technological miracle. It contained information on every known weapon, ammunition type, explosive device, plant, animal, computer blueprints, hacking aids, Tutorials on everything ranging from lock picking, to laying c4, to cooking a feast using only rations.
Each and every soldier in a twelve-mile radius showed up as an orange dot on the eyepiece, pinpointing the location of the soldier. Each one had a built in mic, a wireless connection to a satellite that relayed the information to mission control, night-vision, infra red, a new type of spectrum analyser that could detect animal secretions, fingerprints, blood, and many other things besides. It even had a nifty little x-ray option, which allowed the user to see up to three metres through solid objects with perfect clarity, and it even had an artificial neural network devoted to lip reading. It had a zoom factor of up to fifty times, which, when used with a special, non-visible laser sight on a gun, could pinpoint the exact spot where a bullet would hit if it left the barrel at that exact time.
Anything you could think of it could do. The only thing Dave thought would make it better is if it could stand at parade for him.
Every soldier on the beach also held a very unique type of weapon. They each carried a weapon that was completely devoid of any technology.
Some of them had long dai-katana's sheathed across their backs, some the smaller katana, some the short katana known as the wakizashi, others still had the samurai knife known as the tanto, some had nunchaku, crossbows, extendable steel batons, the variant of the extendable baton that extended into a staff, some even had nightsticks.
They all held these weapons in case they ran out of ammunition, or were caught in extreme close quarter action. It was widely known that between a samurai sword and a combat knife, the sword would win hands down every time.
Dave lifted his left fist, in the sign for halt. He scanned the area around the beach, searching for heat signatures through the thermal sights of his silenced dragunov, It was a German sniper rifle, the design nearly two hundred years old, but it was still a very good rifle.
There was nothing in the immediate area, and all teams reported in a single curt 'negative', over the radio.
There were five teams of twelve on the two beaches. They were unimaginatively name, Alpha, Delta, Halo, Charlie, and Bravo.
Dave was the leader of Halo team. Usually his team would be inserted by the old HALO drop method (high altitude, low operation), which involved freefalling to low altitude and then opening the parachutes just in time to land without killing themselves.
His team was the reconnaissance group, whereas Alpha was the heavy weapons, Bravo the explosives, Charlie the spec-ops team, whose main job was clearing rooms quickly and cleanly, and then Delta, the demolitions and electronics team.
Dave's team was to go in first, and check the area for tangos, report back their exact position, and wait for Alpha and Charlie to go in and kill all targets, and cover Delta and Bravo while they moved into position to destroy any security systems present in the main complex.
Dave's team moved out, heading for a forested hill halfway between the beach and the main complex.
After that, all teams moved inside, not finding a single tango, or any sign of habitation whatsoever. It was as if the island had swallowed all life.
Thee made their way towards the centre of the complex, where all the information and toxicology reports were kept on all raptorial test subjects. They collected all the information, cloning all the hard-drives, and then moving on towards the labs. Again, they noted the absence of all life.
There should have been bodies everywhere. The information given to them said that there was several hundred permanently stationed scientists stationed at the island, and some fifty or more security personnel. They could have all disappeared into the jungles surrounding the complex, but they should have seen something by now.
They were halfway to the containment cells, which was where the raptors had first escaped, when the attack happened.
Dave was point, moving down a narrow hallway lined with broken doors opening into darkness. It was obvious that something had happened here, as if the raptors had gone door-to-door searching for prey. Again, there were no bodies, although there were several patches of bloodstains across the walls and floor, and even some on the ceiling.
Everyone whirled as something crunched behind them.
Dave stared down the hallway, seeing his eleven other soldiers frozen in mid-step. Not one of them could have made the noise, none of them were clumsy enough.
But that was when Dave noticed it, there wasn't eleven men any more, there were ten.
"Where's Hurly!?" Dave asked, drawing his silenced d. eagle.
"He was right behind me!" His second in command, a man known as 'cobra' said.
Cobra began moving backwards, shining a light into each room.
He stopped a few doors down, and then backed away, his hand over his mouth, as if to stop himself being sick.
"What is it soldier?" Dave asked.
"Sir...I think you need to take a look at this sir." He said weakly, turning away from the door, stumbling across the room and vomiting.
The rest of the team didn't move as Dave made his way back to the doorway.
He shined his light in, and, even though he was an experienced soldier, had seen heads torn off by high powered rifles, been the one firing the rifles more than once, he still felt his stomach churn at the sight before him.
The twelfth member of the team lay sprawled across a bent and broken cot, his neck extended, cut open all the way around it, head held on only by his oesophagus, his face completely torn off, white skull showing through the blood, blood spilled from the wound to his neck, his eyes staring blankly, intestines spilling onto the clean white sheets from and eviscerated stomach.
Dave leant against the doorframe, trying to steady himself. For something to do that much damage in so short a time, it had to be something powerful, and fast as hell.
Dave felt something, like a shiver passing through a group of campers after hearing a ghost tale. He whirled, gun up, just in time to see the end of Cobra's leg whip out of sight into another doorway.
Dave was about to rush in and help when Cobra's head rolled out from the doorway.
Dave made the decision. They couldn't stay there.
"Move!" Dave roared, already moving towards the end of the hallway, closely followed by the rest of his team.
Dave opened a com channel as he went, which had been set to silent, and was about to start speaking when he heard a hurried shout over the radio.
"They're all gone!" The voice shouted breathlessly, as if the person was running.
"Charlie and alpha are gone! Bravo is missing! And my whole team just got fucked up by something!" The voice shouted, and then something cut across the channel, a raptorial war cry, then the unmistakable sound of tearing flesh, and then complete silence.
Dave was still pounding down the hallway, switching pistols as he went.
The pistol he produced from his left holster was one sweet piece of metal.
It was known as the Vle. Vle stood for variable lethality law enforcement. This name made Dave laugh, because it didn't have a 'variable lethality', it was full-on deadly all the time. When set to three shot burst, it had a firing rate of sixty thousand rounds a minute. It could fire a burst of three rounds in less than a three hundredth of a second. It couldn't even be used unless the person firing the weapon was wearing a special ring. It was developed by Metalstorm ltd. In Australia, the same people who made the Metalstorm rifle, which overtook the Heckler & Koch G-11 as the most technologically advanced assault rifle in the world, and the Metalstorm rifle only had a firing rate of ten thousand rounds per minute.
Instead of firing bullets using a firing pin impacting primers and igniting bullet powder, the bullets from the Vle were ignited by electrical charges, much like the standard fragmentation grenade.
The first Vle prototype was revealed in 2005, and was still one of the most foremost pistols in the world.
Dave held it at head height, his eyes staring down the barrel, in case something came bursting from one of the doors.
He heard a yell from behind him, and risked a glance backwards, seeing that only nine soldiers followed him now, and redoubled his pace.
According to the plans, the hallway ended in the labs.
By the time they reached the labs, there were only five soldiers left. Dave, the new female recruit, another female, and two men. All were pretty scared.
As they were running, the last soldier in the group would just disappear without a trace. Dave had witnessed a soldier trip, falling between two open doors. And then, a shadow had seemed to flicker from one side to the other.
The soldier had been staring at Dave, pleading wordlessly for help, when his head fell straight from his shoulders.
They reached the labs at a sprint, slamming the heavy steel door behind them.
"What the fuck just happened!" One of the remaining soldiers yelled, forgetting all about military decorum in his fear.
Dave swept over to the man. Dave was only 5'6, but he lifted the nearly six-foot, hundred kg soldier, off his feet and slammed him into the wall, placing his face inches from the soldiers. "We just lost half the team! Pull yourself together!" He roared.
He released the soldier, who fell to the ground, slumping down around his Metalstorm rifle. "We're screwed man." He said, in a defeated kind of voice.
"You're not dead yet." Dave commented, turning his back.
He was halfway through the turn when a small portion of the plasterboard wall exploded inwards.
A black, clawed hand/paw/claw [what the hell do raptors have for hands?] reached in through the small hole it had created and began reaching around.
Dave was about to raise his rifle and fire, when the thing found the soldier who had slumped against the wall. The claws on the hand swept back and forth once, cutting the soldiers face open on the first swipe, and slitting his throat with the second.
Dave leapt forwards, leaving his gun holstered, and snatched up the Metalstorm rifle, flipping it and catching it in the perfect firing position while the other three were still too stunned to react.
Dave squeezed the trigger, bracing for the recoil.
The Metalstorm emitted a high pitched whirring sound, the wall exploding with numerous explosions of plaster, showering them all with white dust, making them all look like they had aged several decades.
Dave's rifle stopped firing. No clicking came from the gun, because it didn't have a firing pin.
Whatever it was behind the wall, it wasn't going anywhere.
The wall was a picture of black stars against a white sky, each star surrounded by a red halo of blood. The force of the bullets had caused blood to shoot back towards the source of the bullets.
Dave dropped the rifle, picked up his Dragunov, and started to move again, the three other soldiers, still in shock, followed unconsciously.
They were very close to the containment cells, where they knew the doors and walls were all reinforced metal.
Just as they were about to enter the 'safe' area, something stepped out into the corridor in front of them.
Dave skidded to a halt, raising his dragunov, much too slowly, the creature stepping forwards and slashing at him.
The dragunov blocked most of the blow, causing the claw to skirt to the side, but catching him across the cheek with a grazing blow.
Dave dropped the dragunov, kicking it as it fell to knee height. The heavy rifle almost broke his foot, but he managed to direct in a good shot straight for the creature.
The stock of the rifle swung around, catching the creature in the head with the very tip, causing a bone shattering impact, knocking it off its feet where it twitched feebly.
Dave rolled forwards, snatching up his rifle and continuing forwards, the encounter over so fast that that the team had barely gained on him.
Dave yanked the handle upwards, the door unsealing with a hydraulic hiss, and then he pulled on it with all his weight, but the door seemed to be stuck.
"Move!" Shouted one of the remaining soldiers, a giant bloke named Fred Carson who looked to be able to tear apart an angry lion with his bare hands.
Dave moved, and Carson leapt forwards, aiming a heavy kick for the door. The kick connected with brutal force, and something inside the door snapped.
Then Carson tried to open the door, which was now unstuck, but it was opening with the greatest reluctance.
"Hurry up." Dave warned, lying prone, his dragunov aimed for the corridor, where an ominous sound of clicking claws was echoing.
The other two members, a female named Gena 'cat' Hillsworth, and the woman who had just joined the team had taken up covering positions on either side of the corridor, looking at the open doors and walkways with trepidation.
Gena held a g36k, with underslung grenade launcher, laser sight, and optic sights. It was a good assault rifle, and Dave had seen Gena nail targets at a hundred metres with pinpoint accuracy, using both bullets and grenades.
Dave was surprised to see the newcomer hefting an improved version of the usas-12 shotgun. The usas-12 was a fully automatic shotgun with rotating barrel clip much like a rocket launcher. The improved version was very powerful, and could spray its load of buckshot in an area only a metre across at sixty metres. With a laser scope, a good shooter, and slugs, it could be as accurate as any assault rifle.
Carson held a scoped, laser sighted, silenced Fal. The Fal was an assault rifle, accurate as any sniper rifle, and its 7.62 millimetre round could make a mess of almost any target.
"Contacts!" Dave called unnecessarily, as three blurred shapes burst from the walkways at amazing speed.
Dave fired first, aiming for the leftmost figure.
The bullet took it right in the chest, dropping it in an instant. The one thing movies didn't show was that bullets don't really have any impact value. Being hit by a bullet had the same force as being punched by a junior student. Not much.
The 7.62 millimetre round exploded from the barrel of the rifle in a flash of muzzle-fire, spinning in a clockwise direction; it hit the creature in the breastbone, shearing the tough bone in two. The impact fragmented the jacketed hollow point round, which fragmented into a thousand pieces, fragments exploding from the other side of the creature as the bullet lost all its momentum.
The fragments exploded out of the skin, leaving a small entry wound, but an exit wound the size of a clenched fist, a ragged hole showing where the bullet had finished its lethal work.
The second bullet Dave fired followed the same trajectory, hitting a bit higher, sending a small amount of internal organs spilling from the creature.
The creature pitched forwards, slamming into the ground where it tripped one of its comrades, sending it tripping to the floor as well.
The third was nailed by buckshot round from the shotgun, the retort deafening in the enclosed space, nearly obliterating the things head.
The second creature stopped kicking after a three-round burst from the G36K, which fired the NATO 5.56 millimetre round.
"I need help here!" Carson called, straining with the door, barely three seconds had passed.
Dave leapt up and their combined effort got the door moving.
The two females fired again, dropping three more targets as they came around the corners.
They got the door open just enough, and then they all slipped through, trying to shut the heavy door before something could follow them in.
Dave saw the creature coming for the door, and drew his Vle, and pulled the trigger once. The three bullets were fired within milliseconds of each other, spilling from the gun with incredible speed. The three bullets each hit the creature in the neck, almost severing its head, just as they managed to get the door shut, the dead creature hit the door with a dull thud, and then there was silence.
Dave looked around, they were in the containment labs, but instead of rows of cages with rats in them like most labs, this lab held a wall full of metal doors, like those used in old castles and solitary confinement in prisons, only more futuristic, with a panel for entering a digital code on each door.
Dave walked over to these, noting how some of them hung off their hinges. There was a single one not open, which had a heading over it, and seemed much more important than the others.
The title read, SINGLE ENTITY RAPTORIALLY ARTIFICIAL FINISHED INTELLIGENCE, NON ANTHROPOMORPHIC [S.E.R.A.F.I.N.A See, smart eh?]
What a mouthful, Gena said, coming to stand beside him, staring at the closed door and wondering what could be behind it.
It was an unspoken agreement between the four people not to speak about what had just happened. Emotions just got in the way of doing your job.
Dave stepped up to the cage door, and looked through the bars, which were set into a window-like space three-quarters of the way up. Inside the large room was a single creature, obviously a raptor, and just as obviously dead.
It was female, Dave could see that, and looked exactly like something from Jurassic park. It was lying on the grey metal floor, eyes closed, mouth open, revealing long, sharp, lethal looking teeth.
Its skin was a uniform brown colour, and each strong leg was tipped with claws, most noticeably the sickle shaped claw of a velociraptor.
"What do you think?" Gena asked.
"I think that this was a true sentient, and then it upped and died, like every other experiment does sooner or later." He replied.
"What about the title? Non-anthropomorphic? Sounds like something from a story written for people who have serious special integration problems." She said.
"You a fan of yiffstar?" He asked, with a cynical smile. Everyone knew what yiffstar was. It was a site dedicated to people who liked to read about people and animals in sexual situations. [Sorry, had to do it. Temptation was way to strong]
"Not really." She replied. "But that anthropomorphic line makes me think that they were trying to make an animal to satisfy those freaks." She said.
"It doesn't mean that they're trying to make a creature that's half human." Dave started to explain. "I reckon it means that they were experimenting with human DNA, and trying to make them as smart as us by making their brains like ours." He said, pointing around at the signs above the other doors, which read pretty much the same.
He turned and walked away from the door. "Shame really, this was the first time they even got close to a sentient." He said in an offhand way, wondering how long it would be until they did create a sentient.
He was about to sit down when he heard a cultured, feminine voice emanating from the stall he had just looked into.
"Please, don't leave?"