Koban: Rise of the Kobani (35 page)

Cory, riding with Cal Branson and Kayla in the third truck today, commented. “The territory for the lions shouldn’t be very large, with so much game around for just the two of them. The fording point should be closer, I’d think.”

“I think you may be confusing the number of predators and type of prey with the size of territory they need. The lions don’t migrate, they stay in one place all year, even when game is scarce in the dry cooler season. I’ll bet this small stream nearly dries up then. They would need more hunting territory for the reduced number of prey. They measure their territory size by that seasonal need. For another thing, the K-Rex and lions don’t usually hunt the same animals, and are not hunting competitors. The big dino herds leave here in the dry season, which is the southern winter, and the largest predators follow them. The adjacent pairs of lions probably determine what each mated pair calls “their territory.” They don’t permit those direct competitors of the same sort of game to intrude on their ranges.

“When this stream gets low, I suspect the lions move closer to the lake. It looked large to me in Kayla’s mind image. The edge could be a boundary of their territory.”

Cory cocked his head, listening to something Cal couldn’t hear. The raised eyebrow from Cal and the look from Kayla showed they both had caught his shift in attention.

He explained. “Big Blue must have found the lake. He isn’t sounding a recall or rally cry for Streaker, which he would if the K-Rex pack were spotted. It’s less urgent, but the Doppler shift proves he’s on his way back here.”

Cal was amazed and a bit envious. “That’s detectable with your new hearing? Not the ultrasonic part, which I know about, but also the frequency shift as he flies towards or away?”

“Sure, I can tell, provided they are making frequent signal calls, when they are circling, or simply floating on a thermal in one place.”

“Man, I hope Avery and Rafe are right about those new nanites. I’d love to get the abilities you have.”

“Right!” he answered pessimistically. “
You
weren’t awakened ten times last night by each wolfbat doing echolocation for non-existent potential threats from the sky, from the trees, or from the ground. Danner and I heard them. Then the little farts went right back to sleep, and snored in ultrasonic harmony. That’s why we were so sleepy this morning.”

Cal nodded in mock sympathy. “I’m sure that’s why Aldry and Rafe complained about how late you and Danner slept when they watched you while your parents were away? The leakage of wolfbat calls through the soundproof dome, from their closest nest, ten miles away. They say you somehow sleep through loud music from Tri-Vid music cubes you leave playing overnight.”

Cory didn’t answer the obviously rhetorical question and comments, intended only to bait him into responding to some verbal trap that adults always laid for teenagers. It seemed to be one of their main outlets for humor.

Big Blue landed on the roll bar on the second truck, where Jimbo and Danner were riding. They waited for a com set call on the group frequency from Danner, to learn what was reported. The two cubes of antelope tossed to the wolfbat was evidence it wasn’t bonus worthy news, since it wasn’t organ meat.

The call came. “The lake isn’t far ahead. The river flows over some sort of barrier that forms the lake, and drops a couple of feet. On the lower side of the barrier is a smaller collection pool, with a water flow from that down a deeper center channel. It looks sort of like a low dam with a mile wide spillway, with water continuing downstream in a center channel after that. The bat saw a long gray rock ridge that runs for miles on each side of the river. Jimbo thinks it’s a natural fault, which uplifted and trapped water on the upstream side.”

Kandy and Kopper appeared ahead, coming from the river to the left in an easy unhurried walk, where the shallow riverbank sloped up to the trucks. This whole area, covered in lush cropped down teal grass from recent grazing, appeared to have been flooded often in the past, and benefited from the rich nutrient deposits.

Flooding probably happened when the monsoons came in the peak of the rainy season, and overflowed the whole river basin. There were piles of whitened and gray driftwood lying about. Sometimes a large tree trunk had floated down with its huge dirt free root ball washed clean, stranded high and dry now. No tall trees like those grew in this region, so they came from well upstream.

Ricco stopped the lead truck with his arm waving to warn them, because the Krall had no brake lights on their vehicles. He got out and walked over to a cluster of what appeared to be sun-bleached branches jutting from the grass and red soil.

As the others pulled up and stopped, they joined Ricco to see what he found curious about sticks. As they drew close, the jumble resolved itself into bones, a lot of them. The curved and pointed horns mounted on multiple armored frills proved some came from the same type of ceratopsian they had followed since yesterday.

Ricco kicked loose another skull, also partly embedded in dried mud. It was from a different type of animal, with a mouth shaped similar to a hadrosaur’s, but this one was far larger than the variety the lions had killed.

The two rippers arrived, and seeing what was being examined, frilled to tell them that there were many more bones closer to the river, and some were only days old, others looked weeks old, with none yet bleached white by the sun, as these bones apparently were. There seemed to be a death trap near here of some sort, which had acted over an extended period.

They drove down closer to the water, which flowed deep right here, in the normal channel that only spread out when the river flooded. Dozens of skulls and rib bones of five or six large animal types dotted both shores. Danner started to walk down a slight grassy slope to the river to examine some recent carcasses closer, when Mel called out.

“Danner, stop! Remember Gunther’s
mudpuppies
. You may be a TG2, but you are not invulnerable.”

He halted, and started walking back. “Mudpuppies don’t even live in rivers this size at home. And they aren’t big enough to kill the animals we see here.”

“One was large enough to eat Gunther
Wrethov from Hub City, when he stopped to piss in a creek. I don’t mean a giant mudpuppy killed any of these dead animals; I’m talking about you using some caution. However, I see gnaw marks on skull and limb bones, and mudpuppies only have a huge mouth with bony ridges for biting, not teeth. These bones were chewed on at some point, possibly post mortem if the animals drowned, I can’t say. Nevertheless, there’s no need to get too close to the deep water to find out the hard way.”

Ricco looked upstream. “I think I see the low ridge of gray rock the lions told Kayla about, and which Big Blue said was just ahead.” He shaded his eyes and carefully looked up in the sky towards the ridge. “I don't see Screamer.”

“I do,” answered Cory, glancing that way. “He’s circling on a thermal where we told him to wait. Probably over the edge of the lake. I’ll motion him to come back and report what he sees.” Ripper vision was sharp and detailed but their vision, and what TG2’s now had for long distance vision was considerably less acute than that of a wolfbat. Cory pointed at the distant dot that was Screamer, and with an arc of the same arm motioned him to return.

The highflying dot, obviously watching, dropped into a brief dive to pick up air speed, and started flapping rapidly in their direction. Cory stepped up next to Big Blue, opened the cooler and pulled out the same number of meat chunks, the same type as he’d given Blue, and waited. He wanted the larger bat to see there was no favoritism involved in Streaker’s reward simply because he had stayed behind longer. Equal pay for equal value work.

Cory Tapped Streaker’s mind as he ate his meat payment, then stepped down to describe what was ahead.

“That ridge is worn down some in the river, by years of water passing over it, but there is a sizable lake above that. Water is flowing slightly deeper in a section near the center, passing over a width of at least fifty feet of flat stone. It isn’t very deep even at center, because previously Streaker saw some two-horns suddenly rush across, and the water never even reached their belly. They don’t have very long legs and a sagging gut, so it doesn’t seem more than two feet deep and slow moving at the center.”

“They suddenly rushed across?” Mel asked. “Did Streaker see any predators approaching to spook them?”

“I think he would have shown that to me, just for more meat, but let me double check.” A quick step up on the truck, a Tap, and he was back down.

“No, they just milled around on the slightly higher sides of the ridge, where the water hasn’t eroded as much, and then about a dozen of them quickly separated and waded into the water and got to the other side as fast as they could, but without running. Not all of them waiting went across at the same time.”

Jimbo made an observation. “Those horns and armored protective neck frills would make them front heavy. If they don’t swim well, they might worry about being swept over the ledge into d
eeper water and drown, just as these animals probably did. The rock could be slippery.”

“Hadrosaurs should swim well, I think.” Cory countered. “Unlike the two-horns, they live in water most of their lives. They also left bones here.”

“Flash floods possibly? We had a rain late yesterday. A big storm upstream might send water down this far suddenly. We can see that it floods here sometimes, apparently deep even this far from the main channel.” Mel pointed at the big trees that had floated here to prove his point.

Shrugging, he said, “Let’s drive up there and have a look. I studied the map and aerial pictures while we drove this morning, and either side has equal access to the mountain passes before we need to leave the river plain. I checked in with Prime City today, and gave them our progress. If we decide to use the ford, I’ll tell them we are traveling on the other side of the river. Saddle up.”

Three of the cats, ran ahead, after learning there were two-horns trying to cross, and that they might be too afraid to go. It sounded like potential easy prey for them to take down. Kayla, who had hunted yesterday stayed with the rest of the “pride” as additional protection.

The cats had decided they would always keep one ripper with the slower SGs at all times, if possible. Kopper had also hunted yesterday, but with a two-horn, his bulk and jaw size might be needed for the strangulation neck grip if they managed to isolate one of the animals from the herd. Unlike the rhinolo, who were not genius level grazers, most dino grazers were positively dim witted. They seldom charged to the rescue of a downed herd member.

Ricco and Neri got back into the first truck, and Danner and Cory into the closest truck with Mel, who assumed the second spot in the little caravan now. The other two took station in line as they trundled over the lumpy knots of grass, eventually getting back onto the migration trail.

On the smoother ground, they made twenty-five miles per hour. Except Ricco’s halftrack kept throwing damp clots of red clay airborne, so Mel shifted farther right to keep the muck off the windscreen. Even that hydrophobic clear substance allowed the mud to slide down too slowly for good vision, if it was being replaced too quickly.

The ridge proved to be over three miles away, and as they drew closer, they saw the rippers hunting hopes had been frustrated. Apparently, the movement of the four vehicles, despite their distance, had frightened the two dozen ceratopsians gathered on the rocky approach to the ford. They were waiting for courage, to make the crossing before the unseen rippers had reached an ambush position. The remainder of the herd on this side had run away from the crossing, to wait for another chance to cross later, or even tomorrow.

Cory expected to hear some complaints from the three cats about the “sloppy” habits of
some people
that didn’t know how to avoid stampeding the prey like cubs. Ignoring a fact, that no one else was hunting because plenty of frozen or cooled meat had been brought along, and they were not running low.

The two-horns they hoped to trap on the ridge, pinned between the water and the cats, foiled the ripper’s hasty plan by the simple expedient of all of them rushing and splashing, sure footedly, over the fifty-foot wide gray granite ridge.

Ricco parked twenty feet from the edge of the water on the smooth stone, worn by untold centuries of migrations and floods. He leaned out to tease the three cats, who were watching their prey stroll away on the other side.

“Why didn’t you get your feet wet and chase them?” This question garnered him sharp looks from three sets of narrowed blue eyes, all glaring his way.

Watching these cats grow up, and having played with them as kittens, he laughed. This would probably earn him a ripper’s form of humorous retaliation before the week was done. Repeated three times. For example, pee directed at his boots, wet fur shaken hard next to him, or perhaps one would catch some small prey animal, eat what little meat there was, then “gift” his boots, underpants, or sleeping bag with the bloody fur and intestines that night. You laughed at even a friendly ripper at your own risk.

The cats moved back from the water as a low wave, perhaps wind pushed, shoved water up the gentle slope of the low ridge, and the flow of water over the center increased briefly. The speed of the water over the top of the granite obstacle was only a few miles per hour, and it dropped barely eighteen inches from the dark pool of water above the natural dam, to a smaller and slightly more turbid pool below, where the slow current stirred leaves and floating dino dung caught in the weak undertow.