Exodus: Tales of The Empire: Book 2: Beasts of the Frontier. Read Free Page A

for the particle
beam rifle to recharge the pistol if necessary.  He thought for a moment about
trying to drain the pistol into the radio, rejecting that idea after a little
thought.  If something went wrong, he would be without both radio and weapon.
    His backpack had
also been ripped open, and much that had been in it was lost.  He still had
some rations and tools, as well as an emergency blanket of ultrathin
hyper-insulating material that could come in handy.  There were a couple of
rips in the blanket, but not anything he couldn’t work around.  Some of the
backpack material could go to mending his mountain outerwear.
    By this time his
front was warm to the point of overheating.  He stood to orient his back to the
fire, then shrugged out of his clothing so he could take stock of it.  The
skinsuit was torn in a dozen places, but he thought he might have enough
material to fix it.  Finding the tube of nanogel in the repair kit attached to
the suit’s left leg, he moved the skinsuit into position and squirted the gel
on the exposed tears.  Five minutes later that side of the suit was almost like
new, and he repeated the process with the other side.  By that time he had
turned again, and his back was starting to freeze.
    After getting
back into the skinsuit, Dang draped his body with the insulating blanket, then
shrugged back into his partially repaired outerwear.  There were still some
areas that were not adequately protected, but on the whole he would stay warm
enough.
    At least I’m
not going to die of cold , he thought as he strapped everything he wanted to
carry back onto his body.  At least not yet, he amended as he caught
sight of something moving in the tree line across a small clearing.
    A head poked out
of the forest, what would have looked like a carnosaur in the history books, or
perhaps at the Imperial Zoo in Capitulum.  It had a ridge of spikes running
down the top of the head, and as it moved out into the clear, more spikes could
be seen on its back.  It’s whitish skin blended in with the snowy environment,
even more so under the shadows of the trees.
    Dang recognized
it from the videos he had studied of dangerous life on Everest.  Mountain
Raptor was the official name, also called walking death by the people who lived
on the planet.  It was a warm blooded creature not at all related to the
dinosaurs that had evolved ten thousand light years away.  It was evolved for
this kind of climate, with infrared vision and pits in the nose that allowed it
to find and follow prey by their heat emissions.  The biped stalked into the
clear, a second following on its heels, most probably a mate.  And they both
looked directly at where Dang had built his fire, unerringly seeing it
despite the obscuring trees.
    The man knew he
had to get away from the fire.  Right now the fire was obscuring his own heat
signature.  Once the creatures had gotten closer they wouldn’t have a problem
picking him out.  He pulled his pistol at the thought, then shook his head.  He
was sure he could hurt the predators with the high velocity rounds of the
pistol, maybe even both of them.  Killing them both?  Of that he had no doubt. 
He would be walking death shit on the snow in a couple of days.
    The creatures
separated and started in a run in his direction.  Their heads moved back and
forth suspiciously, always reorienting back in the direction of the fire.  Dang
thought it was time to get out of the area.   A quick look showed him the best
path, running away deeper into the woods, then taking off at a right angle to
get away, using the fire for cover.
    The raptors
rounded on the fire, coming in from opposite angles, trapping their prey.  The
predators were about as intelligent as Earth wolves, meaning they were
intelligent indeed, not merely depending on instinct.  They recognized the fire
for what it was when they got close, not something they could eat, something
that could hurt them.  They sniffed for a