[COPY] TROPHIES - Containment Protocol, Part 6
It's good eatin'. Fiction. 2000 words (10-minute read).
Lt. Booker, and his platoon of Abrams tanks have just fought off a pack of marauding tyrannosaurs, 4 to the front and 2 more falling upon their rear. Previous chapters of Containment Protocol can be found here: https://raytabler.substack.com/s/rays-serial-fiction
TROPHIES - Containment Protocol, Part 6
by Ray Tabler
“Platoon, lager up around Pebbles.” Booker radioed.
The tank commanders acknowledged, and began churning their way uphill. Once a perimeter of armored vehicles had formed, Booker climbed down from his hatch and approached Pebbles. The Bradley’s commander, sergeant Fessler, straightened up from his inspection of Pebbles’ tracks as Booker walked up.
“How’s she look?” Booker eyed the suspension.
“Seems okay, from what I can see. I was worried that big lizard had knocked one of the road wheels cattywumpus. But all that was really wrong was a bunch of mud and sod stuck in there.” Fessler reported. “My chain gun’s a different story though.”
Booker looked up, and whistled. “God damn!”
The barrel of the 25-mm auto cannon, sticking out of the turret atop Pebbles, was noticeably bent. The T-Rex’s serrated teeth left gouges in the metal of the barrel. And the beast’s jaws compressed the thick-walled tube enough to flatten it out of round. Worst of all, the five-foot length of the barrel was kinked upward about halfway to the muzzle.
“I’m afraid to fire the darned thing.” Fessler admitted. “Just as well. She won’t cycle anyway. Jerking the gun like that pulled it loose some from the mountings. Turret sticks and grinds when I traverse it too. Bearings probably all buggered up.” Fessler spat in disgust at the situation. “She’s just a big, green truck, now.”
“Well, at least you can still move.”
“Yeah,” Fessler nodded. “And we ain’t being processed into dino turds. There is that.”
Booker snorted at the lame joke. “Okay. Check Pebbles over, and make sure she can still move. We’re falling behind schedule.” Movement caught Booker’s eye. “Now what the hell is she doing?”
Booker stalked off. Fessler watched him go, deciding he’d rather deal with a banged-up Pebbles than what Booker was wading into.
“Muñoz, what’s she doing?” Booker demanded, tilting his head at Nohfa.
The indig woman was bent over the T-Rex Jackson had shot off of Bam Bam. She hacked away at one of the dino’s numerous teeth with her machete. Every a few chops, Nohfa would grasp and heave the tooth back and forth to check progress. The tooth came free. Nohfa grunted in triumph, holding the sharp, bloody, triangular ivory thing out to Booker for inspection. Her palm was half the size of the incisor. Or was it a canine? Booker was not an expert on teeth, Jurassic or otherwise.
“Hmm.” Booker sure didn’t want to touch the grimy, grisly prize.
Nohfa smiled, tossed the tooth into a green, metal ammo box on the ground next to her. It rattled on the walls of the box. Booker leaned forward to find more liberated dino teeth in the box. Nohfa was already at work on another chopper. The empty ammo box reminded Booker of the amount of brass already expended since they’d transited the gate. With no reloads available in this entire universe.
“She says she’s taking trophies.” Muñoz said.
“Taking—” Booker paused to get his blood pressure under control. “Is that necessary?”
“It is to her.”
“For some kind of caveman voodoo ritual?”
“You really want me to ask her that?” Muñoz laughed. “Taking down one T-Rex is a big thing for her people. Legendary hero stuff. We just killed six of them. She needs proof, to back up the story.”
Nohfa tossed another tooth into the ammo box, and flung the machete into the soil. It stuck, quivering upright. Her hands were covered in dino blood, so she wiped her brow with the back of a forearm. There followed a long monologue in her language, punctuated with a lot of pointing and sweeping of her arms. Bits of julienned dino gums flew from her gesturing hands during the animated soliloquy. Booker dodged them as best he could.
Presently, Nohfa wound down, and nodded at Muñoz, signaling she was done.
“What’d she say?” Booker asked.
“She wants to collect teeth from each of the T-Rexes.”
Booker twisted and judged the distance to where the tanks had done battle with the other four T-Rexes. “No way. She can pull as many teeth as she wants from this one and the one that chomped on Pebbles as long as we’re stopped here. The others are too far away. I don’t want to waste fuel on a tank tagging along after her while she collects souvenirs. For all we know another pack of these things could show up any minute.”
While Booker and Muñoz talked, Nohfa climbed up on top of the dead T-Rex and began harvesting the blue-green feathers of it crest. She stuffed the plucked foot-long feathers under one arm and yanked another one, as if she did this type of thing every week. She spoke over her shoulder, with the air of a mother scolding children.
“She wants the tails too.”
Booker looked at the T-Rex’s meaty tail. “That thing’s gotta be a thousand pounds! What the hell’s she want that for?”
“Say’s the tails are good eatin’.”
“You’re serious?”
“Her people can’t afford to pass up extra calories the way we do. These carcasses will be covered in the same kind of scavengers as we saw back at the gate before they can get out here to harvest the meat.” Muñoz shrugged. “Besides, it’ll be a good move diplomatically.”
Booker rolled his eyes. “I thought my job was to drive tanks, not be a diplomat.”
“Guess you’ll do some of both today.”
Booker sighed. “Fine. She can take one tail.”
Nohfa looked up, arms stuffed with shimmering dino feathers. “Woon?”
She cut loose with some exasperated rant in her language at Muñoz. Muñoz replied, shrugging. Nohfa frowned at Booker, and actually growled. Booker found the growling fetching, rather than ferocious.
“One.” Booker held up an index finger, and gave back a stern expression.
Nohfa sighed and rolled her eyes, as if Booker was the most unreasonable man in the world. Which, perhaps he was. This world, anyway.
She piled the feathers onto Bam Bam’s open rear ramp. A half-dozen steps brought Nohfa back to the dead T-Rex. She snatched the machete from the ground with a disgusted glance at Booker, and began methodically hacking away at the meat of the tail.
Booker shook his head and looked at Muñoz. “I’ll get her some help.” He looked at his watch. “We’ll be here all day otherwise. I guess I should feel lucky she didn’t want those giant drumsticks too.”
Muñoz doubled over in laughter as Booker walked away.
Booker directed sergeant Ennis and his crew to help Nohfa. She made good use of the extra hands, supervising with Muñoz translating.
“This is gonna take forever, even if we had more machetes.” Ennis observed. “Hang on. I got an idea.”
After some preparation, Ennis radioed Booker, over the platoon channel. “Hey, El-tee, we’re gonna set off some C-4 over here.”
“What?” This was the last thing Booker expected to hear.
“Fastest way to detach the tail from that T-Rex.”
Booker keyed the mic, and opened his mouth to question the wisdom of the scheme. But then paused. This was definitely not SOP. However, nothing about this whole mission was by-the-book.
“Alright. Try not to hurt anybody.” Booker reluctantly gave his approval.
“Roger.” There was a brief pause before Ennis came back over the platoon channel. “Fire in the hole!” Snap! The sound of the C-4 igniting reminded Booker of when a friend on his high school basketball team had suffered a fracture during a game. Only louder. “That did most of the job. Looks like we’ll only need one more charge.”
Once the tail was free, Ennis talked Fessler into allowing the fifteen feet of slightly scored meat to be draped over Pebbles’ rear deck, and secured with strapping. As reluctant as Fessler was to travel with the tail dripping onto his track, he could see Ennis’s logic. Pebbles’ chain gun was out of action, and her turret wasn’t traversing properly anyway. Lashing the tail on the back of Bam Bam would be a bad idea if another mob of small dinos attacked. Fessler couldn’t shake the feeling he’d jinxed himself by calling Pebbles a big green truck.
Booker watched the crews of Pebbles and Bam Bam winch and manhandle the weighty tail onto the damaged Bradley, between checking Fred’s ninety degrees of perimeter for more threats. Nohfa and Muñoz approached Fred. Muñoz carried a number of T-Rex feathers. Nohfa took two of the feathers from Muñoz, and climbed up onto Fred’s prow. She paused, looked directly at Booker, and tossed her hair with an offended, feminine annoyance. Then she straddled the tank’s gun barrel, sliding out to the business end. Perched precariously, with a leg dangling on each side, Nohfa then secured the feathers to the muzzle with lengths of nylon cord.
Booker raised an eyebrow at Muñoz.
“She says that Fred, and the other tanks have earned the right to bear the trophies.” Muñoz explained.
Nohfa raised her arms to the sky, clamping onto Fred’s barrel with her legs. Rusty stared up at her from the driver’s seat. With a loud, clear voice, she chanted something with fervor. The prayer went on for maybe twenty seconds, accompanied by sweeping gestures to the heavens, the dead dinos, and Fred. Every man in the platoon stopped to witness the ritual. Nohfa finished by laying forward to embrace the gun barrel, whispering some further incantation directly into the metal.
Booker blinked at Muñoz.
“It’s tough to translate that.” Muñoz shrugged.
Nohfa dropped sinuousy to the ground from Fred’s muzzle, and beckoned Muñoz before heading to Wilma, the next tank in the outward-facing circle. Muñoz smiled ruefully at Booker and followed her. Nohfa reverently repeated the awards ceremony, for Wilma, Barney, and Betty. Pebbles and Bam Bam also received decorations, with some additional heartfelt chanting over Pebbles’ bent chain gun barrel.
“Boy, that cave lady really hates the El-tee.” Yoder, Wilma’s loader quietly commented to Mulroney after Nohfa had adorned Wilma’s gun muzzle with dino feathers.
Mulroney fixed Yoder with a fatherly forbearance. “Son, you got a lot to learn about women.”
“What’d’ya mean? She won’t even look at him.”
“That indig gal has her cap set for lieutenant Booker. And our commanding officer will be lucky to get out of this wacko deployment with his virtue intact.” Mulroney asserted. “Funny things happen when a soldier gets far from home. And I don’t think we could get much farther than this.”
Yoder bounced a look between Booker and Nohfa. “No way. The El-tee is too by-the-book for that.”
Mulroney chuckled. “I wouldn’t bet on it.”
Yoder’s eyes narrowed in calculation. “Twenty bucks says so.”
“Normally, I wouldn’t bet on this type of thing. But you need a lesson in the complexities of human nature.”
They shook on it.
Down in Wilma’s turret, Gonzalez, the gunner, spoke up. “Hey, Can I get a piece of this action?”
Mulroney’s smile widened.
“Is church over, now?” Booker asked Muñoz.
“Yeah.”
Pointedly ignoring Booker, Nohfa climbed aboard Fred, and resumed her seat on the main gun mantle, a tanned, muscular leg on each side of the barrel. Booker briefly considered ordering her to ride in one of the Bradleys. But decided it wasn’t worth the delay the inevitable argument would precipitate. He glanced around at the other vehicles. Everyone appeared ready to roll.
“Let’s get moving. Fred’ll take the lead.” Booker radioed.
The platoon uncoiled from the lager, shaking out into march order again. Nohfa pointed the way, and Rusty followed her direction. The proud, blue-green feathers fluttered from each gun muzzle. Behind them, the scattered T-Rex corpses began to rot in the sun.
END.
Return for Chapter 7, Family Reunion, next Tuesday. Previous chapters of CONTAINMENT PROTOCOL can be found can be found on my Serial Fiction Substack page: https://raytabler.substack.com/s/rays-serial-fiction
Check out my novels at Novus Mundi Publishing, or just order them directly from Amazon:
A Grand Imperial Heir (sequel to A Grand Imperial War)
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