Peter Hamilton - Fallen Fragon

The terrain they were driving through was hilly, a landscape of crumpled valleys and short, awkward slopes. Tall trees thrived along the upper slopes of the ridges, projecting impossibly slim spires above the forest roof. Topped with fluffy violet leaf plumes, they looked like the battle pennants of some medieval army marching to war. Down in the valley floors the trees were fat bruisers, nearly spherical, their gray-silver bark bristling with hard, venomous thorns to repel wood-drillers and acidlice. The upper half of their swollen boles sprouted concentric circles of whip branches, shaking small leathery leaves in the breeze to produce a continuous discordant clattering. They grew together in an almost solid fence, pushing and straining at each other as decades-long battles were fought for ground and light. Those that lost and died were riddled with holes as animals burrowed their nests into the rotting wood. Swarms of fungus leeched to the crumbling bark, producing a glistening rampage of color as they wept glutinous fluids saturated with spores. Ferns and tuber leaves dominated the dim floor of the forest, banishing tiger-grass and bushes, while carnivorous coilwraiths hung from forks in the overhead branches to catch insects amid their wriggling fronds.

The road reached the first swath of forest a couple of kilometers from the factory. Its builders had tried to avoid the trees where possible, curving it around along valley walls or letting it run beside the fast-flowing streams. As a consequence, the lead vehicle could rarely see more than two or three hundred meters ahead.

Lawrence frowned as they began to slow. He couldn't see any reason for it. The road was a mess, sure, but it didn't pose too much of a problem for their vehicles. They weren't even in the forest yet; it was running along the side of them fifty meters away. Up ahead there was a sharp curve around the base of a small hill. But there was no barrier, nothing blocking the track.

"What's happening?" he asked over the command link. They were almost stationary now.

"Something up ahead. The ground's moving."

"Moving?" Lawrence didn't understand.

"Can you hear that?" Nic asked.

Lawrence braked to a halt. "Hear what?" He ordered his AS to turn up the Skin's audio sensitivity. That was when he realized the jeep was shaking slightly.

"That!" Nic insisted.

The Skin's receptors were picking up a bass rumbling.

"Six-nine-three and Seven-six-two, deploy forward with carbines," Captain Lyaute ordered. "Five-four-one, watch our tail."

Skins were jumping down from the jeeps, moving forward in a double buddy formation. Squat muzzles had emerged from their arm carapaces.

Lawrence didn't like the situation at all. None of his briefings had mentioned this being an earthquake zone.

The herd of macrorexes lumbered around the side of the mountain, a wall of beasts over eight meters high, with the smallest weighing in at ten tons. Unlike Earth's dinosaurs, they didn't have long necks and tails. Their bodies were husky cylinders fifteen meters in length, with three sets of legs. It was an arrangement that allowed them to move in a sequence of synchronized jumps, arching their spine so that a wave motion rippled down their dorsal column, each set of legs bounding forward in unison. A flattened heart-shaped head rose and fell as the body undulated, swinging occasionally from side to side as far as the stumpy neck permitted. The end of the jaw was caged by three curving tusks longer than a man's arm, two pointing up, one down; they opened and closed in a steady rhythm. The sides of the head swept together in a series of bladelike triangular fins that looked as if they could cut through steel. Their eyes were invisible somewhere among the sharply crinkled bone ridges of the upper skull.

Now that the macrorexes were in full view, their trumpeting cries split the air. Shrubs and bushes simply detonated under the pounding impact of their legs.

Lawrence thought yesterday's drugs must still be kicking through his blood cells. He remembered the giant beasts from his briefing files, but couldn't really grasp that forty or fifty of the monsters were coming at him in a motion that resembled a perpetual skidding crash.

"You've got to be fucking kidding," Nic groaned. There was real fear in his voice.

The Skins out in front of the jeeps opened fire. Lawrence couldn't even tell if the bullets were penetrating the filthy ash-gray hides. They certainly weren't having any effect The trumpeting rose to a crescendo, and Lawrence realized the macrorexes were only 150 meters away. Nothing was going to stop them.

Captain Lyaute was yelling incoherently in the command communication link. Someone else was calling desperately for helicopter support. Skins were running hard, ripping through the cloying tigergrass as the macrorexes pounded toward them. Lawrence jammed down hard on the accelerator and pulled the wheel over. Tires spun wildly in the greasy soil. There was absolutely no way he was going to be able to loop around a full 180 degrees before the front rank of macrorexes reached them. "Hold on," he shouted, and sent the jeep skidding and bouncing toward the edge of the forest Out of the corner of his eye he could see a couple of macrorexes charging along the treeline. Smaller trunks were pulverized into a cascade of splinters as their huge armored legs plowed into them. Long whip branches were severed cleanly by the fin-blades on the edges of the beasts' heads, twirling away through the air.

The first rank of the herd caught up with the fleeing Skins. Jaw tusks flashed behind the slowest, puncturing his carapace without even slowing. He was tossed aside, fountaining blood as he cartwheeled through space. A couple more were overtaken, vanishing below the thundering legs. The tusks chomped down again. Screams reverberated along the communication link, cut off with horrifying swiftness. The macrorexes were moving at a phenomenal speed. A cool part of Lawrence's mind knew they'd never be able to keep it up for long, not even with this planet's oxygen feeding them. They must have started the charge just seconds before meeting the company.

The corpulent trees were only fifteen meters ahead of him. His view jounced about wildly as the suspension thrummed over rocks and hidden furrows. He turned the wheel savagely, aiming for a gap that was probably wide enough to take the jeep. To his right, the macrorexes were closing fast amid a debris plume of shattered timber.

That was when he caught sight of something sitting on the neck of one of them. A crouched profile of a man-leopard hybrid, forelimbs windmilling with wild enthusiasm. Mouth flung wide in an insane jubilant laugh.

That Couldn't Be—

"Lawrence!" Amersy shrieked.

Lawrence yanked at the wheel. The front fender of the jeep clipped a spiky, bloated trunk, knocking them violently to the right. Lawrence fought the motion, Skin muscles and power steering forcing the wheels around. Inertia shunted them through the gap at a wide angle. One tire burst as it slammed into a rock. Lawrence kept the accelerator hard down, sending them plunging farther under the trees. Whip branches slapped across the windshield. Then there was a giant tree dead ahead. Lawrence thrust his other heel down on the brake, which made no appreciable difference to the chaotic rush. The jeep's front bumper hit the tree full on, sending everybody tumbling forward. Skin carapaces hardened, protecting the vulnerable bodies from the worst of the impact "Out!" Lawrence ordered. "Move it."

It was as though the crash were still happening. The sound of disintegrating wood grew louder. They could barely balance on the shaking ground.

Lawrence staggered onward, hoping to hell he was heading in the right direction. His orientation was screwed up. The AS display grid was out of focus.