The flying creatures were Meridianite gryphons, doubtless created by the planet’s mysterious founders with biotechnology similar to that used for the various posthuman and uplift species of Stellar Compact civilization, such as the lupens. Each bore a rider on its back, a short man clad in a dark outfit and beaked mask.
Eric’s pace slowed; their strength was running out. Rachel pointed to the sauropods, walking with their long necks in a horizontal posture, unlike the ones from earlier:
“There, join the herd!”
Alerted, the sauropods looked up from their grazing and sounded noises like flutes, apparently sensing the danger heralded by five creatures running. Eric ducked under the belly of one and looked up.
The gryphons were huge, with thirty-foot wings more like those of bats than birds, each a membrane of skin with slatted primaries at the ends, attaching all the way along the side of the body and down the tail to form two giant airfoils. The head was like an oversized eagle’s on an elongated neck, and the body was covered in fur. The gryphons’ wings were their arms, leaving legs with curving black talons and long tails ending in fan-like steering vanes.
A grunting alerted Eric to another companion under the sauropod, a pachycephalosaurus which rose from its slumber, lowered its head, and charged. Eric rolled sideways, the dinosaur’s leg caught his with a bruising impact.
Atop their mounts, the riders sighted the expedition and banked to move in. Selva dodged another pachy and raised her laser carbine.
“You’re going to shoot them?” Eric shouted over the din of dinosaur footfalls.
“Only if they leave us no choice!” She fired a few shots ahead of the formation, two gryphons veered off and backwards. The lead man, who wore a red plague-doctor mask, raised an attachment on his arm. A white laser beam flashed between him and a point not five meters from Eric’s feet, cracking like thunder.
“Where the hell did they get that?” Eric swore.
“Relic Founder technology, like the airships we saw from orbit?” Selva set her weapon to auto-aim, then had to roll forward to escape a charging pachy. A second man, in a white mask, aimed something like a wishbone holding several disks. The disks—actually drones—shot out and descended, buzzing like hornets. Selva’s auto-aimed laser took most of them down, but the last clamped onto it and self-destructed in a mess of blazing-hot thermite. Selva shouted, “Into the trees! Now!”
Eric weaved past a triceratops and into a grove of Meridian-style trees. More laser shots thudded around his feet, kicking up clods of dirt from vaporized water. The gryphon riders pulled up, mounts pumping their massive wings to regain altitude. Drawing her pistol, Selva put a hole in the wing-membrane of one, the beast screeched in pain and swayed dangerously. The formation seemed to stay back afterward, circling as they watched for their quarry’s next move.
“No way this was a coincidence,” Selva growled as they regrouped under a tree. “No fucking way, they knew we’d be here!”
“But how?” Rachel asked.
Selva shrugged, took out a tablet and consulted it. “The forest gets thicker up ahead; we may be able to lose them.”
“Unless they have heat sensors, too,” Eric added.
They lost the pachys, which seemed content with their departure, but kept the circling gryphons. Eric considered the aerodynamics of such a creature, how the riders might manage its flight and how much it must eat. Unable to land between the trees, the riders kept them moving with intermittent potshots. The backpack pulled on Eric’s shoulders, his boots weighed him down. A brief respite appeared when the formation of gryphons, after diving again, began circling round for another run.
“The forest is just up ahead, down an incline,” Selva said. “It’ll be a nasty run, no cover. Go right after their next pass.”
But instead of swooping down for another strafing run, the airborne hunters remained circling.
Selva growled. “Shit, they’re on to us. Let’s show them we mean business.”
She raised her pistol and burned one hunter’s shoulder with an expert shot. He wheeled his mount back in retreat.
Eric was first out of the trees, booking it across a rocky outcrop towards a drop and thick forest beyond. The remaining gryphons dove in like gargantuan hawks, screeching.
Only that wasn’t their screech. Crashing out of the underbrush, having pursued them this whole time, came five raptors, feathered and with forelimbs like stunted wings. One was still speckled with mud from its unplanned swim.
A white-masked gryphon rider, maneuvering to cut the expedition off, landed his mount in their path with wing-beats powerful enough to break bone. He saw the raptors too late; one leapt up on the gryphon’s back and went for his head, cutting short his final scream.
Eric almost vomited. Two raptors came rushing at the expedition, Selva cut them down with laser blasts. The rest set upon the gryphon, an ignoble end for such a magnificent creature.
Another gryphon swooped down and seized a raptor in its talons, grip snapping bones as it ratcheted closed, then very nearly became their next victim when it found the dying dinosaur too heavy to carry. The flyer let go just in time to recover and stay airborne, raptors nipping at its tail before returning to finish off their wounded prey. Overhead, the red-masked rider circled past, shaking his fist.
“Hurry!” Eric helped Rachel to her feet, following after the others. They slid down the gravelly slope of the drop, and into the forest.
“Double back, this way!” Selva followed near the base of the incline. They could lose the hunters in here, but the raptors… Jogging fast, they weaved between tall trees and passed up obvious routes to nearby landmarks in favor of more circuitous paths.
Perhaps half an hour later, four giant shadows passed overhead, going back the way they came.
“There they go,” Temerin said. One gryphon had something clutched in its talons, a mess of tattered clothes with a single human arm dangling out. Selva had them pause until they were sure the hunters were not coming back.
“There’s a river up ahead.” She holstered her pistol. They reached it in short order, roaring and bubbling with rapids as it ran downhill. Cobb had the inflatable raft, kept zippered in a bag about the size and shape of a shoebox, they got it out and inflated it. Eric took a paddle and climbed in as they pushed off. “Make sure you’re secure, this won’t be an easy ride!”
Finding a strap, Eric tied down his pack and then buckled himself in, taking a telescoping paddle. The water churned white with foam where it swept around rocks, once the raft left the shore it quickly built speed.
From the trees came screeches, and the last two raptors revealed themselves.
“There!” Cobb pointed. They leapt from rock to rock along the riverbank, eyes fixed on the raft and its occupants. Selva fired at one and wounded it grievously on the arm, it kept going.
“Get the extra clip from my pack!” Selva said to Eric. He pulled in his paddle and undid the top pouch, finding a long laser power module inside. “Quickly!”
The raft bumped off a rock, Eric lost his grip and the module fell into the water with a hearty plunk.
“Well?” Selva demanded.
“I—I lost it.” Eric’s cheeks burned hot with embarrassment.
“You what?” She growled and adjusted the pistol, its shot counter flashing red. The wounded raptor soaked up a few more beams and flopped over, sizzling with heat.
Turning, Rachel shouted, “Look out!”
The final raptor, having run on ahead, scrambled out atop a log leaning across the river and crouched like a cat preparing to pounce as the raft swept closer. Before Selva could draw a bead it leapt, landing in the middle of the raft. Water splashed in Eric’s eyes and up his nose, someone’s stunner went overboard.
Thrashing, the raptor kicked its feet with their curving killer claws, snapping its mouth as it struggled for a hold, slicing tears into the raft. Eric’s hand fell on something lightweight and metal—the shovel for his insta-tent kit. He unhooked it and spun around. The raptor was half-in and half-out of the water now, struggling for purchase with its arms. Raising his arm high above his head, Eric brought the shovel crashing down atop the beast’s skull. The edge bit in a good half an inch, the raptor thrashed a final time and fell still. Putting one foot on its snout, Eric yanked the shovel free and shoved the carcass into the river.
“Dang,” Cobb said.
The raft bobbed on downstream amid the rapids. The trees thinned out, giving Eric a view of rolling hills beyond. Almost dead ahead, maybe a few kilometers away, was a small cluster of huts amid a grove of trees, surrounded by fields. A village! People, no more than rice-grain specks at this distance, could be seen leaving it and heading in their general direction.
Before that, however, the river had one last trick to throw at them: In the churn up ahead, a waterfall dropped away. They were going too fast to stop now, and the shores were too rocky to beach their craft; Eric grabbed his pack and took a deep breath.
The raft pitched forward and threw him down thirty feet.
