Raptor Threat: Dino Squad, #1

By Tom Wright

WARNING: This book contains action. Lots of action. Dinosaur-fighting action. Jurassic Park meets Transformers.

Raptors wage war with their dinosaur foes across the galaxy, and they've set their sights on Earth. If they can't take the planet for themselves, they plan on destroying it like they did 65 million years ago.

Human-friendly dinosaurs team up with the United States military, forming the Dino Squad. Their goal? Repel the raptors, save the planet.

Or die trying...

• Language: English
• Publisher: Moonlight Crew Publishing
• Release date: Mar 25, 2015
• ISBN: 9781507092378

Tom Wright

I’m Tom Wright. Web guy by day, author… also by day. My wife, Molly, co-founded the Austin Science Fiction/Fantasy Book Club, so I read SF/F pretty regularly. After several books, I can firmly say I enjoy fantasy with lots of action. I write what I enjoy, hence the popcorn fantasy. I live in Austin, TX with Molly and our two daughters.

Book preview

Stats

Tyrannosaurus Rex:

Height: 4 meters

Length: 12 meters

Weight: 8100 kg (9 tons)

Stegosaurus:

Height: 3 meters

Length: 9 meters

Weight: 3000 kg (3.4 tons)

Triceratops:

Height: 3 meters

Length: 9 meters

Weight: 5400 kg (6 tons)

Velociraptor:

Height: 2 meters

Length: 4 meters

Weight: 68-136 kg (150-300 pounds)

Human:

Height: 1.8 meters

Weight: 72 kg (160 pounds)

Pterodactyl:

Length: 2 meters

Wingspan: 10 meters

Weight: 22 kg (50 pounds)

Chapter 1

Rexie

GRAWRR!

Rexie’s translator beeped on the side of her head, muttering, Frustration. Anger. Rage. Frustration. Fear-inducing. It was rare when the translator didn’t parse the dinosaur’s language into formal human speech. Rexie’s roar communicated something more primal than normal. She was angry.

Two velociraptors leaped away, ducking behind the cover of stacked cars, wary of engaging an enraged tyrannosaurus rex. The gray-skinned raptor behind Rexie ducked, barely avoiding a broken neck from Rexie’s swinging tail. That raptor had delivered the t-rex a healthy shock with projectile stun gun-modified hands, resulting in Rexie’s fury.

Rexie turned, her eyes flashing with menace. The raptor cowered before her, hands raised in supplication. He trailed off as his hand sparked, a stun bolt racing from one claw to the next. A guilty expression crossed his scaly face as he looked between his hand and the t-rex before him. Rexie roared again, even louder this time, drowning out her translator’s mechanical voice. Rage. Fury. Rage. Fury. Fury. Fury.

The raptor raised his hands and fired, twin stun bolts racing into Rexie’s open mouth. He turned and ran, his powerful back legs propelling him away from the colossal t-rex.

Trike

Trike stood off to the side, shaking his massive three-horned head back and forth. Now he’s done it, he said. His voice came out in a warble, translated by the machine covering his voice box.

Done what? What did the raptor say? his human companion asked. Stacy sat astride Trike’s back in a high-tech saddle, her combat uniform blending in with Trike’s dark green and brown scales.

Made her even angrier. What is he, suicidal?

Rexie ran after the retreating raptor, covering a lot of ground with each rocket-assisted step. She left shattered cars in her wake. The raptor screeched, the words lost on the human’s ears. Trike just shuddered with grim anticipation. This is gonna hurt.

Trike watched Rexie lower her head, rearing to the side as she caught up to the raptor. With an abrupt motion, she slammed her head into the smaller dinosaur, sending him through the concrete wall of a building. After looking into the newly-made hole in the wall, confirming that the raptor went through several more walls, Rexie roared again, long and loud. Trike heard the translator as he listened to Rexie’s triumphant battle cry. Satisfaction. Extreme satisfaction.

Trike’s human rider noticed two raptors converging on Rexie’s position. She yelled, Look out!

Trike didn’t wait for Rexie to engage the raptors. He lowered his head, his upper horns parallel to the ground, and fired two grappling hooks into the building across the street. Two cables stretched out between him and the embedded hooks. Trike braced himself as the two raptors slammed into his taut cables, one clotheslining himself. The other leapt to avoid a similar fate, but caught his feet on the cables and tumbled forward in a broken heap. Rexie gave Trike a brisk nod of gratitude. Trike detached the cables before nodding back. He surged forward to find more raptors to fight. Blackened, singed footprints marked the pavement where Trike stepped as he activated his foot-rockets to move more quickly.

He turned the corner of a building to see Spike in the next intersection a block away. The giant stegosaurus swung his four-spiked tail from which he earned his namesake, swatting leaping raptors this way and that. His armored sides and dorsal plates showed scoring where vicious raptor claws had landed hits and were turned away. Smoke wafted from his front-mounted cannons, lazily extending skyward as if mocking the frantic pace of the battle. Street vendors cowered behind cars and ducked into storefronts to escape the seething fight. Luckily, the raptors focused on Spike instead of any unarmored passerby. But with those humans so close, Spike can’t use any of his big guns, thought Trike.

Stacy sent out non-lethal concussive blasts from her heavy artillery gun. The blasts would stun the opposing raptors without incapacitating Spike, owing to his heavy armor. At least, they would if they stopped hitting Spike dead on.

"Are you trying to hit him?" Trike asked, his translator sending the message to Stacy’s earpiece.

Spike’s fine. And I’d aim better if you would stop moving around so much.

Trike snorted. He almost stopped her, but one of the concussive blasts hit a pack of the snarling enemy, leaving them sprawled on the sidewalk. Various bits of electronics lay scattered beneath their twitching bodies. Terrified vendors ran away from the downed dinosaurs, their fear of the raptors outweighing their anger at losing their wares in a random street battle. Got ‘em, Stacy said, the satisfaction evident in her voice.

Spike hunkered down, tucking his legs underneath his shell-armor. The remaining raptors leapt simultaneously, sensing weakness in their single foe. Before they landed, Spike activated the heat vents from his charged armor, blasting the airborne dinosaurs away in a wall of super-heated air. The raptors slammed into the surrounding buildings, slumping down against the walls. Those who could still move tried to tend their scalded skin.

Trike looked overhead as Tara swooped by, while Spike looked after the scared and angry street vendors.

Tara

Tiny rockets from Tara’s body harness detonated above a snarling pack of raptors. The stun-rockets