Chapter 4: Finding the Future from the Past

It had been more than three months since the young ones injuries received from the Anaviper and Raptaurs. They had obediently accepted their punishment and were about the receive training on new weapons for their group to increase their protective ability. X-bows, compound powered given them extremely powerful penetration and the ratchet cocking system made them faster and easier to load.

After an hour of training and practice all of the young ones were hitting bull’s eye 98% of the time. A pair of radios was also added to the items the young ones were told to keep with them while they traveled between the ship and camp. The serious med kit was the other item added after Elk and Zaa completed an extensive testing by Eagle and Zeee giving them medic status.

The advantage of the X-bow over the Atlatl is strength does not affect the X-bow and the bolts are secure allowing more movement and better accuracy add to that they were repeating X-bows holding five bolts a pump action stroked twice to cock it and you can fire again. Atlatl cradled the arrow and had to be held with fingers to keep it in place before throwing.

The young ones were very happy to have the X-bows, radios and medical kits. This led them to ask for permission to explore farther out. After a very ... long ... long ... long discussion it was agreed to allow them to embark on an expedition five days travel north, five days east, ten days south, ten days west, five days north and finally five days east which should bring them back to our camp. It was decided that their group was large enough to handle just about anything anyone knew about. More importantly they had earned the trip by taking their training and lessons very serious and excelling at every challenge we gave them.

It was two weeks into their travel that the young ones met with their first trouble. Dragon, like a komono lizard but three times the size. This was about 25 feet long head to tail and stood about 8 to 10 feet at the shoulder. It took three bolts in one eye and two in the other to kill it. All the other bolts barely broke through the tough scaled skin. These Dragons spit like a cobra and the saliva was a strong anesthetic similar to lidocaine but much stronger. It was not known until one of the young ones slipped on some spit and fell into it, within seconds they could not feel or move the arm that had landed in the spit. This turned out to be a great discovery but a very deadly one too. We were called on the radio and sent the sled with a small team to recover this new animal. Two carbines were left with the young ones just in case.