Hello, my name is Braeton. I don't normally like to share my work with others. It has taken many many revisions to get to this point. If anyone notices any inconsistencies within my series please point them out to me.
Disclaimer: I don't own and I am borrowing for my story: Terra Nova characters, one Jurassic Park: The Lost World character (Roland), Nanosaur the Mac Game. I have also utilized Dinotopia's style of naming the 1st and 2nd Generation Nanosaurs. Some of my 2nd, 3rd and 4th generation Nanosaur will be named after some of the characters of Dinosaur Train. Ute Utahraptor's name comes from the Ute Indians in Utah.
1. The other two Raptors
Lucas got in close to Nathaniel's face.
"I will take everything away from you that you ever cared for," Lucas said with a smile.
He walked over to a 7 months pregnant Alicia and balled up his fist to punch her in the stomach. He couldn't see the Deinonychus creeping up behind Alicia.
"LUCAS GET AWAY FROM HER," Nathaniel yelled.
Lucas was about to punch Alicia when a Deinonychus head appeared from the shadows and looked straight into his eyes. He stopped and stared back. A smile etched across the raptor's face, teeth showing. Fear filled Lucas as he looked deep into the raptors hungry eyes.
Suddenly he woke up. He was sweating, but with how hot and humid it was, he wasn't surprised. It was only a dream. He groaned and thought back to his mad scientist and clever soldier of a half-sister, Nethania. Captain Nethania Taylor had been an extremely rare breed of Taylor before she had been killed.
Before his mother's death, he and Nethania had been close. She had taken him with her on a fossil dig in Northern Africa where they found fossils of her favorite species of Dinosaur, Spinosaurus Aegypticus. They enjoyed their time together, but of all the people he blamed for his mother's death, he blamed her the most.
She was invincible and wasn't afraid of anything. She was a highly valued soldier in the US Marines. In just four years, Nethania had reached her father's level of ranking and in four years, she had received three Congressional Medals of Honor for her incredible acts of valor. She never left a man behind, even if she had to fight off the enemy with her bare hands. One time a grenade had been tossed into her general region and before it went off, she grabbed it up and threw it back, protecting her unit.
She commanded a unit called the Underdogs. It was a small unit, but in her mind, smaller was better. Though she was Marines and their father was Army, countless times the two teamed up together.
In addition to her being a lean mean guerilla fighting machine, she was also a mad scientist who was highly specialized in cloning animals using Nano-science. She not only cloned them, she also made them into super strong animals, although the law restricted her from performing these tests on humans. She harbored many scientific breakthrough secrets that Russo-Chinese would pay top dollar to get.
Lucas groaned again and rubbed his eyes. He sold all of his fossils to get enough money to pay Mira to kill Nethania. Lucas swung his legs out of bed and sat on the edge.
"Are you alright?" Mira asked.
"Yeah, just a bad dream," Lucas groaned.
He got to his feet and headed down to the ground. He needed to walk off the dream. Nethania was the only person in the world he really feared. He was glad she was dead. It made the idea of destroying this world look a lot easier. Nethania would have done everything in her power to keep the world from being destroyed.
He got down to where the nearby stream and splashed the cold water on his face. The water wasn't enough. He sat back and began to think about the dream he had. Alicia was pregnant. That shouldn't have surprised him; he knew Alicia and the Commander were romantically involved with each other. He had seen the way the two looked at each other.
Now his mind went back to the raptor. Deinonychus, it meant terrible claw. His sister had been nicknamed "Terrible Claw" Taylor due to a fossilized Deinonychus talon she wore around her neck. Was that why he was so scared of the Deinonychus, because it might have represented his sister coming back from the grave.
Lucas held his breath and dunked his head into the cold pool of water, when he came back up; he shook his head, got to his feet and headed back to camp.
…^…^…
Nathaniel stood at the sink washing dishes as Alicia socialized with the Shannons. He had drawn the short straw that night, but he listened to the chatter going on in the adjacent room. Alicia had just been returned to them by some strange miracle of a chance after she had been held as POW by Lucas, the Sixers and the Phoenix Group. He thought he would never see her again. The moment he did see her, he did not hesitate to drop on one knee and propose to her. Alicia accepted his proposal and the two didn't hesitate to get married.
He finished up the last dish and then rejoined them. Alicia was sitting on the sofa couch, the others had pulled chairs over from the dining room table and Zoe Shannon sat on the floor. Before he could go to sit down with Alicia, there was a knock on the door. He went to get it.
"Hello Skye, you missed dinner," Nathaniel said.
"Thanks sir, but I wanted to have dinner with my mother tonight," Skye said quietly.
"Come on in," Nathaniel said, making way for her. Skye walked in and went to sit down with Zoe.
"We got another report from our scouts. Seems Lucas was a little restless today, he looked like he was being haunted by a ghost," Skye said.
"Odd," Nathaniel said. He snuggled up behind Alicia and held her in his arms on his lap.
"If only he were scared of something," Maddy said.
"Lucas was only terrified of one person in the world. I heard Boylan talking about it," Josh said.
"Who was that?" Josh asked.
"Her name was Captain Nethania "Terrible Claw" Taylor," Josh said. Even in the dim light, they could see Nathaniel's eyes become glossy with tears at the sound of his deceased daughter's name.
Alicia wrapped her arms around Nathaniel, to comfort him.
"Terrible Claw," Maddy said.
"She used to wear a fossilized Deinonychus Toe-Claw around her neck," Nathaniel said.
Nathaniel pressed his head into Alicia's neck.
"Who was she?" Skye said quietly.
"She was my daughter. My first born," Nathaniel said.
"What happened to her?" Maddy asked.
"That's not his favorite topic. Never ever ask him," Alicia said.
"No, I'll tell them. Nethania resigned from the military after Ayani died. In addition to normal mission, Nethania also cloned animals, super animals to help with the war. One of her side projects included cloning a Spinosaurus. Nobody knew what she had been working on, but when she resigned, they cut her funding and her project was canceled. To save her work for another time, Nethania injected the unfinished project into her bloodstream. Or at least that's what she told me. Anyway she was interviewed in New York on her resignation and failed attempt to rescue my wife and the other prisoners. The person interviewing her angered her and before everyone on public television, she transformed into a rampaging Spinosaurus. I rushed to her, spoke to her and calmed her down. She changed back into a human. She was later taken into custody," Nathaniel explained.
"Why was she arrested?" Josh asked.
"Conducting genetic experiments on humans without government commission is illegal. They were under the impression that she had done so, considering she transformed into a Spinosaurus," Alicia said.
"What happened after that? How was she killed?" Josh asked.
"She was killed when she was being transported to prison. The shooter was never found," Nathaniel said.
"How awful," Maddy said.
"I think we've bothered the commander with this enough," Elizabeth said.
"Thank you Dr. Shannon," Nathaniel said, his voice sounded stressed with sadness. He got up and retired to his room. Alicia saw the others out and then joined him.
…^…^…
She was awoken by the blare of her alarm. She reached over her furry saber-tooth cat paw and brought it down on the alarm. The alarm shut off and she rolled onto her side and crawled out of bed. Across the room, a Dimetrodon yawned and got up. She stretched like a normal cat did; arching her back, stretching out with her front-legs, then leaning forward and stretching her back-legs, she yawned deeply and then shook "the cobwebs" loose.
"Morning Dario," she said to the Dimetrodon, petting him on the head. Then she stood up on her hind-legs and as she walked out to the kitchen, she "nano-morphed" into her human form. She got to the kitchen and reached into her fridge for a huge raw steak of meat. Humans normally lacked the enzymes to handle eating raw meat. The bacteria that formed on the meat could make people extremely sick and in some cases kill a human. The serum that enabled her to transform into a Saber-Tooth Cat, a Deinonychus, a Velociraptor, a Utahraptor and a Spinosaurus, strengthened her ability to handle the bacteria on the raw meat. (I do not recommend eating raw meat yourself).
She carried the raw steak back to her room to get dressed, gnawing on the meat as she went. At the moment she wore a pair of Egyptian Silk pants and top. She set the meat down on a plate on her bedside table and began to strip down. She reached into her dresser and pulled out her Vietnam War Era style camouflage cargo pants and pulled them on. She pushed the first drawer in, pulled out another drawer, withdrew a green shirt and pulled it on.
She picked up the meat again and began to chew on it some more, getting a few more bites off of the steak before tossing it to Dario.
"Well, I'm off to work," she said. She left her quarters, walked down the hallway to the huge rotunda which encircled a life-size Spinosaurus statue. In the left hand, the Spinosaurus held a flag pole upon it hung her national flag and her industries flag, its right hand was set upon the Sword of Liberty's pommel. She walked around the rotunda until she came to a room. Above the door to the room were the words Map Room/Mission Control. She walked into the room.
In the room there were Gallimimus sitting at plex monitors, a Pachycephalosaurus stood next to a massive holographic globe set in the center of the spherical room. Standing in a relaxed position next to the Pachycephalosaurus, was beautifully feathered Utahraptor.
"Good morning Captain Taylor," said the Utahraptor to her; he was dark green, with a lime green stripe down his back, and he had a dark red feather Mohawk frill on his head, strips of dark red feathers running along his lime green stripe, along his back bone and along the trailing edges of his arms.
"Good morning Lieutenant Ute Utahraptor," she said.
"Lieutenant Washington managed to get back to the colony, thanks to our attack of the tail end of the Phoenix Group convoy," reported Steeldome, the Pachycephalosaurus. The Pachycephalosaurus was silver with a steel blue back and a steel gray dome.
She nodded to the Pachycephalosaurus and turned around to leave the room.
"Keep up the good work Steeldome," she said over her shoulder. The Pachycephalosaurus nodded and went back to working with the Gallimimus.
Ute Utahraptor followed her to her office which was next door to the Map/Mission Control Room.
"Nethania, did you sleep well last night," Ute asked.
"I had to have Bashskull give me a sleep aid," Nethania replied. Bashskull was one of the few doctors she had and of all the nanosaurian doctors, he was the best there was.
"I was afraid of that," Ute said. Ute had been the first Nanosaur she created and was a part of the League of Utah, her Special Forces unit. He was her second-in-command and a trusted advisor. His human intelligence was beyond all her Nanosaurs.
Nethania dropped into her chair and rested her hands on her desk. On her desk there were large plexs which were at the moment turned off. There was a photograph of her father and Alicia next to the plex directly in front of her.
"The admiral is adamant that we remain hidden," Ute replied.
Nethania tapped the plex in front of her to turn it on.
"Things continue to move at a snail's pace," Nethania said. She brought up the Terra Nova security cams.
A female snow leopard marked Saber-tooth cat walked in, stood on her hind-legs and transformed.
"First Mate Ayani Taylor reporting Captain," the dark haired, tan skinned woman reported.
Twelve years ago, Nethania had spared Ayani's life by using a serum she had developed, which remarkably revived Ayani. Today if they were to dig up Ayani's grave, the coffin would be empty. Nethania used the same serum to revive General Philbrick, but by then she had found a way to clone a perfect cadaver body and put that one in place of the real one. The body could have fooled anyone and to Nethania's relief it did.
"What's the word Ayani?" Nethania asked.
"My son seems agitated by something, but we don't know what. Mira said he had some sort of bad dream, but he didn't elaborate on it," Ayani reported.
"Ute, can you leave us be for a moment," Nethania asked.
"Of course," Ute said. He tapped the ground with his toe-claw twice and then left, closing the door behind him.
"Have a seat First Mate," Nethania instructed her, pushing the chair across from her out with her foot.
Ayani took the seat and sat down.
"This is now serious Ayani. Lucas made an attempt on our home. I can only stay my hand for so long. If he makes another attempt and we are permitted to intervene and I confront him, if he makes me angry enough and I go Spino on him, I could crush him like a bug," Nethania said.
"I understand completely," Ayani said. Nethania could see she was fighting back the tears.
"I know this is hard for you Ayani," Nethania said.
"I am so ashamed of the young man he's become," Ayani said sternly, but still she fought back tears.
"He's not the young man you would have wanted him to be," Nethania said.
"He is my son Nethania, nothing can change that. Fate has not been as kind to him as it has been to Nathaniel. I've seen what this world has to offer and I don't want to see him destroy it. There are too many young lives at stake. If only I could talk to him, to see him again, perhaps I can convert him," Ayani said.
"We need to wait for Roland's green light," Nethania said. She was pleased with Ayani's strength.
"I understand," Ayani said.
"Go home, rest, relax. You're dismissed," Nethania said.
"Thank you," Ayani said. Ayani got to her feet and started to walk out.
"Ayani," Nethania called. Ayani spun around to look at her.
"In the movie Jurassic Park, there's a line that I just love. It goes a little something like "You keep still, because you believe that the raptor's eyesight is based on movement. But no, you stare at him and he just stares right back. That's when the attack comes from, not from the front, but from the sides from the other two raptors you never knew were there," Nethania said.
"I think I understand. Lucas thinks we're dead. He'll be staring at Nathaniel and Nathaniel will be staring back at him, that's when we attack," Ayani said.
"We're the other two raptors he never knew were there," Nethania said.
Ayani nodded her understanding.
"That's all I wanted to say," Nethania said.
Ayani turned and walked out.