Radiant

"Drop me," I told Festina. "Now you have to run."

Ubatu heard them first, thanks to her bioengineered hearing. But the Rexies made no effort to be silent, and within seconds even Li picked up the sounds of human-sized dinosaurs crashing through the foliage. The diplomats stared blindly into the dark, straining for a glimpse of their attackers… but Tut, with a grin on his face, didn’t bother to look. Instead, he pulled on the bear mask and flexed his fingers like claws. Softly he whispered, "Grr-arrh."

Meanwhile, Festina sprinted toward the scene. The light on her belt let her see well enough to set a fast pace, and the trail she was following led straight to the open riverbank. She wouldn’t get there before the Rexies; but if Tut and the diplomats could withstand the first assault — even if they just dodged or ran for cover — Festina would do the rest.

Provided she didn’t get killed in the process. Her stun-pistol could fell a Rexy with only a few shots, but it wouldn’t handle three at once.

I myself was out of the picture. Festina had set me down on the trail, and I sat there, seeing everything, doing nothing. Not yet. There would come a moment when I’d have to… no, I dismissed the thought. The future had not yet arrived; all I had was the present.

A present in which people were fighting for their lives.

All three Rexies screeched simultaneously: their piercing eaglelike cry. Tut screeched back, imitating the sound; a moment later, Ubatu did too. Her aura flickered with fearful hope she might frighten the animals off… but Tut was just shrieking for the fun of it.

The Rexies were not intimidated. As they reached the open bank, they screeched once again in unison; then they charged.

Tut went for the one in the rear. I thought he might try the clothesline maneuver again, since it worked so well in Drill-Press… but Tut never used the same trick twice. Instead, as he and the Rexy converged, he suddenly dropped to the dripping-wet grass and slid forward on his butt, easily passing under the snapping bite aimed at his face. If the Rexy had reacted quickly, it might have jumped on top of Tut with its great clawed feet, gouging his entrails with a few brisk swipes; but neither the dim-witted dinosaur nor the EMP clouds possessing it had been prepared for Tut’s move. He slid on by, then spun to his feet with a helicopter swing of his legs. Half a second later, he’d jumped on the Rexy’s back: one arm around its throat, the other pushing its head forward to expose its spine.

Then he slammed the bear mask’s muzzle against the back of the Rexy’s neck.

For a moment, I didn’t understand what he was doing. Then I realized he thought he could bite through the dinosaurs vertebrae… as if he really was the mask he wore, able to snap with the sharp white fangs like a genuine bear. He’d have done more damage if he used his own teeth — the mask’s jaw was locked in place so it couldn’t open or close. When Tut smashed it up against the Rexy, all he did was dent the mask’s nose.

But.

The Rexy wasn’t built to carry a man-sized weight on its back… especially not on slippery wet grass while homicidal clouds interfered with its normal mental functions. The animal lost its footing and went down with a wailing cry. The cry ended when something went pop: the deceptively soft sound of bones breaking. Tut’s bite had done nothing effective, but with his right arm around the Rexy’s throat and his left still exerting forward pressure, the extra momentum of the fall had snapped the beast’s neck.

For a moment, the Rexy’s life force was nothing but anger: an outraged fire, furious for Tut’s blood. Then the aura changed to confusion and fear; the panic of an animal discovering it can no longer move its limbs or tell its lungs to breathe. Perhaps outwardly, the Rexy looked dead — motionless, heart stopped — but inwardly, its brain would take minutes to die with the blood in its skull growing stale. Smoke leaked from the creature’s mouth as the pretas who’d driven the animal to its fate now fled. The Rexy would die alone… bewildered by what was happening, frightened of being powerless, eventually slipping into stoic numbness as it waited for the end.

Tut stood and gave the Rexy a kick. Then he threw back his head and roared in triumph. Two seconds later he raced into the bush, making bearlike growls… as if he’d forgotten his companions. He never even looked back.

Meanwhile, Li and Ubatu had to deal with the other two Rexies. Li (true to form, but with indisputable common sense) ran away as best he could. Since running forward or back would take him too close to murderous Rexies, Li went the only way left: toward the river. Despite the darkness, he found the edge of the bank and eased himself over. Weeds grew on the low, muddy cliff above the water; Li got a stranglehold on some well-rooted ferns and dug his feet into the mud, plastering his body against the cliff side. His clothes, his hands, his face, were instantly covered with muck… but his grip was secure and his position safe — below the bank’s lip so the Rexies couldn’t see him, but above the torrents of the rain-swollen river.

Ubatu, however, didn’t run. She thought she was a fighter; and the way she’d wrestled Tut into submission proved she knew some martial arts. Unfortunately, practicing in a gym or scuffling with an unaggressive man like Tut wasn’t the same as dealing with two reptilian killing machines. If Ubatu had tried surprise tactics, she might have come through unscathed — we’d already seen that a Rexy’s minuscule brain couldn’t deal with the unexpected. But Ubatu chose to confront the pseudosuchians as if they were honorable opponents facing her in a dojo. I think she even bowed to them… though perhaps she was just assuming some preparatory jujitsu stance I didn’t recognize.

It didn’t help that her form of combat was based on grapples and throws. Rather than delivering strikes from a distance, she obviously intended to close with the animals — grabbing them, forcing them to the ground, maybe trying a chokehold to make them surrender. As if they were likely to moan, "I give up," and congratulate Ubatu on a well-fought match.

But that’s just my uninformed guess. I don’t know what Ubatu really planned; she never got a chance to explain.

One Rexy reached her a fraction of a second before the other. She grabbed the first by its small weak arms and began rolling back as if she were going to pull the animal with her, probably tossing it over her head.

Imagine her surprise when a spindly limb broke off in her hand. Snapped away clean at the elbow.

The arm had been flimsy to begin with… and the Rexy’s preta- driven rush through the jungle had caused several damaging falls: falls that fractured the arm with numerous cracks, to the point where Ubatu’s bioengineered strength could finish the job of impromptu amputation. She continued rolling backward — couldn’t stop her momentum — but now she was desperately off-balance, only gripping the Rexy by one of its arms while still holding the detached limb in her other hand like some blood-gushing back scratcher.

Ubatu hit the ground awkwardly: far from the smooth roll she must have intended. The Rexy came with her but slowly, not jerked off its feet the way a human might have been. (Jujitsu throws are designed for tossing Homo sapiens, not pseudosuchians with a completely different musculature and weight distribution.) Instead of sailing cleanly over Ubatu’s head and smacking into the ground, the Rexy landed on top of her — screeching like a demon and snapping its jaws in an effort to bite anything within reach. Ubatu clubbed its snout with the severed arm she held, gashing the Rexy with its own claws; but the animal scrabbled wildly with its legs, trying to get away and stand up. Its great taloned feet raked Ubatu’s own legs, shredding her trousers and gouging the skin beneath. She was lucky the claws hit no major blood vessels… lucky too that the Rexy just wanted to right itself rather than use its claws to cripple her. Even so, one talon pierced her left thigh, punching deep into the meat before the Rexy stumbled away. With an injury like that, I didn’t know if she’d be able to stand, let alone maneuver and fight.