Terra Read online

  Terra

  ‘The long journey home’

  By

  Robert A. J. Turnbull Jr.

  Text and cover copyright © 2016

  Robert A. J. Turnbull Jr.

  All rights reserved.

  Any similarities between characters in this novel and/or anyone living or deceased

  is strictly coincidental and unintentional.

  Novels by this author.

  Some books are free at the author’s web site www.hawkslegend.com

  Other novels are for sale on Amazon/Kindle.

  The “Worlds Collection.”

  (Collection of short stories & Novellas)

  Worlds of Survival.

  Worlds Near Infinity.

  Worlds Apart.

  Worlds Apart, Vol. 2.

  Worlds in Time.

  Other novels by this author:

  Hawk’s Legend.

  Hawk’s Legend II - Déjà vu.

  Hawk’s Legend III - The West Coast Journals.

  Hawk’s Legend - Apocalypse. (prequel to the free Hawk’s legend Trilogy)

  Satan’s Tear.

  Satan’s Mist.

  Valley of Lost Time.

  The Deadcountry Chronicles.

  The Deadcountry Chronicles II.

  The Deadcountry Chronicles III.

  Empires of the Dinosaurs.

  Empires of the Dinosaurs -Phase Two.

  Last Train to Pangea “Death by Dinosaur”

  The Zombie Slayer/ (bonus novella) Zombie proof Island.

  Jurassic Portal.

  Terra / (bonus novella) Grinders.

  Contents

  Terra

  Chapter 2.

  Chapter 3.

  Chapter 4.

  Chapter 5.

  Chapter 6.

  Chapter 7.

  Chapter 8.

  Chapter 9.

  Chapter 10.

  Chapter 11.

  Chapter 12.

  Chapter 13.

  Chapter 14.

  Chapter 15.

  Chapter 16.

  Chapter 17.

  Chapter 18.

  Chapter 19.

  Chapter 20.

  Chapter 21.

  Chapter 22.

  Chapter 23.

  Chapter 24.

  Chapter 25.

  Chapter 26.

  Chapter 27.

  Chapter 28.

  Grinders.

  Chapter 2.

  Chapter 3.

  Chapter 4.

  Chapter 5.

  Chapter 6.

  Chapter 7.

  Chapter 8.

  Chapter 9.

  Chapter 10.

  Chapter 11.

  Chapter 12.

  Chapter 13.

  Chapter 14.

  Chapter 15.

  Chapter 16.

  Chapter 17.

  Chapter 18.

  Chapter 19.

  Chapter 20.

  Chapter 21.

  Chapter 22.

  Chapter 23.

  Terra

  “SKY ANGEL! Jesus, where the hell are you?” Dar Ward shouted over the com of his skimmer as he swiftly darted over the green jungle canopy below scanning for the creature that he had just caught a glimpse of.

  “On your six Dar…Christ, if you keep dodging those three to four hundred foot trees like that you’re…”

  “I saw pterosaurs, the flying kind; the ones that aren’t supposed to exist around here anymore. Jesus Sky, if they’re coming back…”

  Sky chuckled over the com of her skimmer and added “Like you’d know what they…HOLY SHIT!”

  “Told ya.”

  The second skimmer closed on the first as they started to get into the denser and much taller trees than those two hundred foot ones that created the green canopy below.

  “Coming up on your six Hotshot, just remember we’re far from our base and any kind of flier could be out here. From what I saw you could be right.”

  “Roger Sky, glad I’m not losing my mind.”

  “Too large to be pterosaurs Dar, even if they were babies.” The skimmers had to split as they veered around a stand of what was commonly called 400’s, meaning the height of the trees. As they rounded the stand, right in the middle of their path stood another 400.

  “Jesus, we’re gonna die if we don’t slow down Hotshot.” Sky pulled back on her throttle and Dar noticed she was dropping back as he did likewise.

  “Sorry Sky, keep forgetting if we crash into that pretty green canopy below, it’s another two hundred feet to the ground.” Slowing enough to pull back alongside of her he glanced over to the beautiful raven haired girl with piercing blue eyes that could be seen through her clear protective visor and the windscreen of her skimmer.

  “Command…teachers, everyone said our ancestors killed or chased all the fliers out of our areas. There hasn’t been…”

  “Hotshot, keep your mind on your flying.” her serious tone eased slightly “Dar, look…try to remember we are flying the last two skimmers Wheel 7 has, they need them…us.”

  “Ok kiddo,” the twenty year old chuckled “love ya like a sister Sky and don’t mind taking orders from a nineteen year old, but Jesus girl, we saw flying…”

  There was a dark shadow that blotted the bright sunny heavens and before Sky could turn to see what had made it Dar screamed over his com.

  “I’m so fucked Sky! Something hit me from above and took out one of my collectors. Oh God Sky, we’re about at our max altitude now and…” the shadow passed again, but this time Sky got a glimpse as it passed some of the lower trees and did a hard bank to her left, the shadow followed.

  “Ok you son-of-a-bitch,” she screamed over her radio “let’s see you match this.” She did a hard right bank, and then hit her vertical thrusters and as she did a violent climb straight up, she could see a giant winged shape flash beneath her.

  “Oh my God Dar, it’s a giant pterodactyl!” As Sky leveled out the monster slammed into a stand of monolithic tree tops and slowly vanished out of sight through the thick green canopy of the prehistoric jungle below. The 400s made small islands above the two foot trees below and as an assortment of smaller flying reptiles burst forth along the pterodactyl’s crash path, she swerved to avoid another stand of 400s.

  “Sorry Sky Angel…I got careless” there was some broken static as Sky desperately searched for her companion and wingman.

  “Aw shit, Sky…” there was the sound of branches being broken “I’m going down. Christ…I told them these things weren’t meant to go this high for any…” there were more snaps and cracks that were followed by barely audible cussing, and the radio went dead.

  “Hotshot! Hotshot…Dar, do you copy?”

  After seconds of static, came a weak “Barely Sky, fucked up the skimmer, maybe me, too early to tell.” The sounds of Dar struggling with his harnesses, or something; but he was alive.

  “Really? Dar, what about you?”

  “Yeah…” static “not…too…good.”

  “I’m coming down to get you.”

  “NO! Finish the mission if you can…you…kno…” there was nothing.

  Sky knew they were too far from base and as they had flown the last two aircraft Wheel 7 had, there would be no rescue. The skimmers they had flown were originally designed to fly no higher than one to two hundred feet, they were to be used to protect the farmers outside the wheel from the raptors that stalked their area of Terra. What engineers still existed back in Wheel 7 had redesigned them to fly higher just for this mission and Dar had protested every step of the way, but she knew that he’d never let her leave without him.

  Sky was the daughter of wheel’s commander and knew even he’d never be able to send anyone after them. She sighed deeply because if she continued the mission
, Dar was as good as dead. Sky slowly circled the torn and broken brush below her to see only a slight whiff of smoke drifting up from Dar’s craft. If she went down, there’d be no taking back off, not from that forest of giant trees, and the creatures that stalked among them.

  “Oh fuck it!” she shouted over her radio as she slammed the throttle forward and kicked the flight control of her skimmer upward. Nose pointing toward the heavens her tiny craft slipped high above the highest of the trees as she looked out the side window and smiled at the beauty of the dark green jungle and the deep blue, nearly cloudless sky. Her skimmer started to vibrate and knew she had pushed it a bit too far, it was now or never. She changed the channel on her com and trying not to shout, moved the mike closer to her lips.

  “Base do you copy?”

  “Barely Sky…Christ! Sky, sensors show you at a little over a thousand miles from base, did you…”

  Sky desperately keyed her mike “Tommy, Dar’s down, I’m at…Christ, one thousand feet, skimmer is about to conk out on me, going in after Dar…Tommy he’s all alone down there…tell dad…well, ya know…” there was a lot of static and Sky’s skimmer vanished from the sensors. Sky had gambled that if she got high enough that she could reach the base; that much she did. However she now found herself with barely enough power to control her rather rapid descent.

  Trying to flatten her skimmer out to give her more control, she managed to fire her vertical stabilizers one last time to slow her to just a horrifying rate of decent.

  “Better than what I was doing,” she tried to chuckle but it came out more of a nervous cackle. “God that canopy is coming up fast.” With a scream she wrenched back on the control stick of her skimmer and just as the nose started to come up she entered the dark green canopy with a crashing success…right where Dar had gone through. She keyed her mike “Dar, dammit…I sure hope you cleared some of the…”

  A giant limb slashed the side of her skimmer and ripped a huge gash just below her side window which caused her to yaw violently. Finally managing to get upright again she vainly tried to swing to her right, but a second and then a third limb flipped her tiny skimmer upside down. Just as she could see the ground looming before her, another limb flipped her upright, ripped out the bottom of her craft, and slowed her so much that she looked for another leafy limb.

  “Yeah, thought so.” she muttered as there were no more limbs to use to slow her, only one rather large tree a few hundred feet in front of her. Shoving the flight control down she slammed into the ground kicking up a huge wave of old leaves and dirt…and vines that seemed to slow her even more. She looked out of her left window to see Dar staring at her as she slid by and barely stopping ten feet in front of the gigantic tree. Realizing that her eyes had to be the size of large unblinking saucers, she managed for force herself to blink and desperately began to feel her battered body…she was intact!

  “Great! I’m alive!” she looked out of the cracked and battered cockpit “And in a jungle full of flesh eating dinosaurs…this sucks.”

  There was a loud bang on her window and if it wasn’t for her harnesses, Sky would have jumped out of her seat. She looked over to see Dar shouting if she was all right.

  “Jesus Dar, I nearly shit myself, you jerk!” yet she managed a smiled “Glad to see you’re mobile. Step back I’m going to have to blow my canopy, the crash jammed it.”

  Dar stepped back and with a moderately loud snap popping sound followed by a loud snap and off flew the mostly shattered canopy. Dar watched as it flew back over Sky’s skimmer and thudded to the ground behind her craft. Dar helped his shaken flight leader out of the cockpit and onto the short, bent and buckled wing. He nodded back to what was left of his skimmer.

  “Nothing left of the survival gear, man those limbs shredded most of old ‘Dancer’. Damn, Sky that sure pisses me off, I loved that old heap of alloy.”

  Sky smiled and gently pulled Dar to one side and pointed all around with a sweeping motion.

  “Ok Dar, look…we’re a few thousand miles from home. Finding traces of the rumored ‘any other wheels’ is out; mission over!”

  “So now what boss?” he forced a smile knowing full well the odds of them making it back to the base was negligible for the moment, it would be more about surviving in a primordial world long enough to think about getting home.

  “If we go west, we go further from home and there is no guarantee we’d even find another wheel, if they even exist. East of here, once we get out of this forest there is…uh, what…a good seven or eight hundred miles of open raptor territory? North, than east wouldn’t be much better; allosaurus country, and I’m guessing more fliers…” he looked in the direction Sky was looking “OH NO SKY…” he shouted much too loudly and clamped both hands over his mouth as he muttered though his fingers “not south?”

  “Dar,” she muttered softly as she slid off of the wing onto the leafy ground “No one can come out this far to rescue us. That leaves south…the swamps. That is assuming that we even make the few hundred miles south to get to the swamps, remember we still have all this t-rex forest to get through in one piece. If we head southeast…”

  “Then what Sky?” he tossed his arms into the air and snorted “Swamps? Really? Jesus Sky, you know I think the world of you, but swamps…I can’t swim.”

  “I know Dar, I know. You have to remember the marshes and swamps to the south mostly have the giants, the water creatures. Remember your survival classes? Swamp creatures are good because…”

  Dar looked at this feet and scuffed the leafy soil “…because they attract the meat eaters that go for them instead of humans. Assuming that if we don’t get stepped on, or find only the ones that are not aggressive toward humans…we might live long enough to go home.”

  “Right, and don’t forget the fact that once we hit the swamp, we can turn east and make our way to the river, the same river that northward a thousand miles or less, passes our wheel…and home.”

  “Sky, those were three hundred year old photos that you’re depending upon, things change.”

  She chuckled softly “I didn’t say it was a perfect plan, just a plan, but that river still flows to the east of our wheel, Wheel 7. It still is only moderately deep, not too much current and wide enough to keep meat eaters off of us. I hope once we get there it will be slow enough for us to make a raft and pole upstream.”

  “And of course you’re forgetting the things with teeth in the water, the ones why we cannot go swimming in the river that flows by 7, why the intake pipe repair teams go with heavily armed support.”

  Sky chuckled “We build a raft, we pole up the river, we should make it home in a year or two as we’ll be poling upstream…but doable.” she winked “Unless you have a better idea, I mean due east would get us home in, or about the same amount of time, but it is walking.”

  “Sky there are thousands of raptors due east of here in that stretch of pampas, assuming that we ever get out of this giant forest that we can’t see what’s around a tree twenty yards from us.” He sighed reluctantly “South.” He picked up his backpack with the few things that he had managed to salvage before Sky came crashing down to join him.

  Sky grabbed her survival pack and the two of them loaded what they felt they could carry without stressing themselves and gave the two destroyed skimmers a sad nod before turning to head south. Sky rubbed Dar’s shoulders reassuringly “We’ll be ok.”

  “We’re gonna die!” he snorted back.

  Chapter 2.

  The wary duo hadn’t gone far when they heard the first body shaking bellow that reminded them both that they were now prey for anything with teeth. There was a loud snapping of brush and the crash of trees from the other direction and Sky grabbed Dar by the collar as she pulled them under the roots of a prehistoric banyan tree. Barely hitting the ground there was a violent crash that actually bounced them a few inches off the ground and as Dar rubbed his head from where it had hit the overhead root, a giant scarred foot landed ten yards fro
m where they had hidden.

  He rolled on his side, looked upward and then back to Sky who was staring in the direction he had just looked.

  “Holy Christ…Sky…is…” Dar was whispering and then realized that the foot raised and the more distant crashes told him it was quickly leaving.

  “I thought those things were a myth.” Dar gasped as he tried to gather his horrified amazement at what he’d just seen.

  “Mega-rex? Me too Dar.” She slowly looked at her companion “And it’s going the way we have to go.”

  “Uhhhh…noooo…” Dar whispered, then realizing that they were safe for the moment grinned and added “maybe we could kind of skate that area?” He rolled back over and leaned against some inner roots that were twice the size of a human and patted them.

  “I say we stay right here amongst our friends here tonight and let them…”

  There was screaming of which neither had ever heard! Those were followed by vicious roars, bellows, and thrashing among what had to be fallen trees and overly large brush; there was a battle to the death going on and it wasn’t far away.

  Both peeked out from between the huge roots and listened for nearly an hour knowing from their training that when the large beasts fought everything smaller, that they usually fled in the opposite direction, but nothing came their way. Slowly they climbed out from their ‘hide’ or hidden place, looked down the path the mega-rex had cut through the smaller trees. All down the wide path were uprooted trees and what it hadn’t knocked over, it had snapped off giant limbs like humans would twigs.

  “Jesus,” Sky muttered “will ya look at that?” she grasped Dar’s arm and began pulling him reluctantly along the debris-lined path “It made plenty of cover for us to duck into if we need to.” She looked back at the leery twenty year old “We have to Dar, before smaller raptors decide to come and check out if dinner is served.”

  “Yeah…raptors…let’s just make sure that dinner isn’t us, ok boss.” Sky never smiled, she knew he was right and prayed that all her training had been remembered correctly. Her brother Tom and Dar had been friends since as far back as she could remember and Sky always tagged along. At one time she had a crush on Dar, but then he confessed that he had feelings for her brother, things got strained for a few years. However friendship was stronger than the strangeness that she felt, and soon all was good once again. Tom however stayed friends with Dar, but for them things were never quite the same after Tom married his childhood girlfriend. Even after she died from one of the many illnesses that occasionally ravaged their huge settlement, Tom pushed everyone away as their dad was grooming him to take over command eventually. Sky knew he was uneasy around Dar…and so did Dar. However Sky and Dar remained best friends and took many of the survival classes together.