Planet of Dinosaurs, The Complete Collection (Includes Planet of Dinosaurs, Sea of Serpents, & Valley of Dragons) Read online

  PLANET OF DINOSAURS

  The Complete Collection

  by

  K. H. Koehler

  Published by K. H. Koehler Books

  http://khkoehlerbooks.wordpress.com

  ***

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events or locales or persons, living or dead, save those clearly in the public domain, is purely coincidental.

  PLANET OF DINOSAURS: THE COMPLETE COLLECTION Copyright © 2011-2012 by K. H. Koehler

  Cover art Copyright © 2012 by K. H. Koehler.

  All rights reserved. No part of this work may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including photocopying, recording or by any information storage and retrieval system, without the prior written permission of the Publisher, except for short quotes used for review or promotion. For information address the Publisher.

  ***

  CONTENTS

  Author’s Note

  Planet of Dinosaurs

  Sea of Serpents

  Valley of Dragons

  ***

  Author’s Note

  This story is fiction, but the paleontology I’ve written into the story is real. For instance, the Ceratosaurus was considered an apex predator of its day, during earth’s late Jurassic Period. Closely related to the more well known Allosaurus, the creature’s fossil record was first discovered in Utah and Colorado in 1884, so Sasha Strange’s extensive dinosaur knowledge isn’t just a quirk of plot. She really would have known these things, since dinosaurs were exciting and fashionable scientific finds during the late Victorian Period, when Sasha lived. It’s entirely possible that she would have been exposed to all kinds of information if she read science periodicals, which I made sure she did.

  At the time, the Ceratosaurus was a new discovery, and a very interesting dinosaur in its own right. I can easily see Sasha learning about these “Colonial” dinosaurs and discussing them with Dr. Ulysses in their letters. Of course, the Victorians’ idea of dinosaur body structure was vastly different from our more accurate modern findings. For one thing, Victorians believed that most or all dinosaurs walked on four legs regardless of species, like modern-day crocodiles and lizards. This concept was eventually corrected to depict predators and certain species of herbivores walking in the upright bipedal manner that we know today.

  I’ve loved, and will always love, dinosaur movies, everything from The Lost World in 1925 all the way up to the modern Jurassic Park Trilogy and beyond. But for the most part, the creators of these books and films were out to create fantasy and entertainment, not to educate on real dinosaur science, and although they’re fun to watch, most of the dinosaurs depicted in popular films did not live on the same continent together or, indeed, even in the same eras. I’ve attempted to create a menagerie of dinosaur species that might conceivably have existed in the same ecology together. It’s true that Sasha’s World is not earth, but rather a place much younger than our earth, but similar environments bring about similar species. If you were somehow able to visit the late Jurassic Period, about 40 million years ago, you would have seen such ship-sized land-walkers as Brachiosaurus and Diplodocus, armored tank-like animals like Stegosaurus, and, of course, the many species and sub-species of Allosaurus, of which Ceratosaurus is a distant cousin. Other animals, like the crocodile and early forms of birds, also began to appear during this period, as well as small mammals, all poised to take over Planet Earth when the Great Extinction began.

  A creature like Newton might also have existed, though Newton is no specific species of mammal. I simply chose a number of properties that I thought would make Newton interesting and well adapted to life on the Planet of Dinosaurs. The Sen, of course, are completely fictitious.

  The only times I intentionally threw scientific fact to the wind was in depicting the sea scorpion that Quinn catches, a creature that died out during the Triassic period, and the herd of aggressive Styracosaurus that Sasha and Quinn witness on their journey back to the Sen’s mountain. These spiky herbivores actually lived during the Cretaceous Period, and yes, I should know better, and do. But I love sea scorpions and Styracosaurus, and though I knew better, like so many filmmakers, I simply didn’t care!

  Join me, Sasha and her men as they encounter all different dinosaurs, terrifying marine reptiles, and even some proto-humans. Love will be tested, won and lost, and a beloved companion lost to the Planet of Dinosaurs.

  I promise it will be amazing.

  —K. H. K.

  6/16/2011

  revised

  10/3/2012

  PLANET OF DINOSAURS

  CHAPTER 1

  London, 1889

  “Sasha, I really must insist that you come out at once and stop acting like a child!” Lord Albertus Strange stated in a severe voice—or as severe as he was capable of, with regards to his only child.

  “I am not acting like a child. And I am not coming out!” Sasha Strange insisted from behind the closed door of her bedchamber.

  She paced across the vast expanse of hardwood floor in her fine white debutante dress and white satin slippers, turned on her heel when she reached her equally white, four-poster bed, then started back across the room, trying to find a way out of her predicament. She had to think fast. Only one hour ago, during supper, her father had stood up amidst the diners at their table, tapped his water glass with a silver knife for silence, and announced his daughter’s engagement to the odious Lord Sirius Quinn. Everyone at dinner had been shocked at the news, including Sasha herself. Like them, this had been the first she was hearing of the engagement.

  “Sasha!”

  Sasha stopped at the locked door, facing it soundly. She clenched her little white-gloved fists at her sides, took a deep, trembling breath, and said, “Father, I will not be marrying Lord Quinn! He drinks, he gambles…and…and he’s a terrible boor!”

  “Sasha, be reasonable, girl! You are nineteen years old. Do you want to become an old spinster like your Aunt Margaret?”

  “Aunt Margaret raises horses and is quite happy in the country.”

  “Aunt Margaret is a scandal. And I will not have my daughter lollygagging about with horse manure on her boots. Now open the bloody door!”

  Sasha gasped. It was the first time she’d heard her father use such foul language! She took a deep breath, steeled herself, and opened the door. Maybe, she thought, she could make her father see reason if he realized how this arrangement distressed her. Sasha was not above a little manipulation, especially when it was her future on the line.

  But the moment she cracked the door open, Lord Strange saw his chance. He stuck his foot into it and nudged it all the way open, glaring down at his daughter with disapproval. Sasha was not moved by her father’s bluster, despite the fact that he was a large, robust man and could easily swing her over his shoulder and carry her downstairs, if he was so inclined. He stood an inch shy of six feet and filled out his suits very well. He was deeply tanned despite the sunless London weather and his ears were bright red. He had steely hair, long sideburns and a well-trimmed mustache. He liked riding and hunting. In his time, he had made many a young lass blush, including her mother. Back then, he’d had a reputation as something of a rake, though Sasha found that very difficult to believe, considering how stern he was.

  Sasha, on the other hand, was willowy and pale
, small for her age, though very strong. Many summers riding horses at Aunt Margaret’s stables had seen to that. Her mother had often said she resembled a little Dresden doll, her ceramic white skin made whiter still by the dark ringlets that framed it, her slightly upslanted eyes huge and dark and contemplative. When Sasha was seven years old, she’d caught the consumption. Her mother and father, understandably concerned for her health, had sent her to a sanatorium in the South of Wales. The doctors there had been very talented, and the air good, and within a year she had made a full recovery and had returned home. By that time, however, her mother had fallen ill to the same sickness and passed on. Sasha had left home ill and returned fit but motherless.

  Her father had seen to it that Sasha’s childhood from then on had been sheltered and rigorously controlled. He hadn’t allowed her to attend finishing school or academy like other girls for fear she might strain herself unnecessarily. Instead, he’d given her tutors and trainers and his vast library of books. For many years she’d been locked away in the Strange Manor like some princess in a tower in a fairy story, with only a once-yearly retreat to her Aunt Margaret’s horse farm in Lancashire for physical activity.

  She’d had her books, but little else in the way of human contact. And as she grew from a willowy child into a sturdy young woman, she most certainly had no suitors. Yet despite these things, it had not been a bad childhood. Her father was protective but loving, his books her best friends and playmates. Sasha had read all of them at least twice. She liked books by Charlotte Bronte and Jane Austen, of course, as other young women her age did, but she absolutely adored books of science and romance—Jules Verne and H. G. Wells, in particular.

  Her curiosity grew, and she began wondering about the viability of the machines theorized in fiction by Mr. Verne and Mr. Wells. Her father indulged her, of course, and this Sasha took full advantage of. Armed with her father’s extensive coffers, she began designing a number of curious devices in the conservatory, the only room in the house large enough to contain the steam machines necessary to carry out her experiments in sound waves and electricity. Once, she’d managed to light the entire manor house on electric lights for one whole day, though that was the exception, rather than the rule. For the most part, Sasha’s experiments had not been very successful.

  There were few people at the house that she could discuss her interests with, but many science journals available, and it was through one such magazine advertizing for pen pals that she became acquainted with an American scientist named Dr. John Ulysses of the University at Cornell, a new and very excitingly academy in the United States. Unlike so many others who dismissed her wild theories, John took an interest in her admittedly amateurish work in sound waves and mechanics. He himself was trying to invent a practical power generator. Together, via letters sent overseas, they both slowly began work on what John called a Tuning Machine—she at Strange Manor, he had University. It was John’s hope that he might one day create an unlimited source of energy using high-frequency oscillations.

  By this time, Sasha had turned eighteen years old, and her father was becoming increasingly worried that she was too cloistered for her own good. He admitted to making a grave error in isolating his headstrong daydreamer of a daughter and made a great effort in throwing debutante parties in the hopes that Sasha might find a viable suitor. Unfortunately, most of the young gentry who attended these lavish parties found her much too…well, strange to be of interest. They did not understand her talk of Tesla coils and Electromagnetic motors, or her admiration for such things as deep-sea submarines and time machines. They were appalled by her demands for a full library of books and a laboratory to experiment in. One curious young suitor played with her steam-powered electric machine and was shocked nearly to death, coming out of it with a full head of white hair. All and sundry slipped quietly out the door and scurried to their carriages, never to be seen again.

  A desperate Lord Strange began looking toward older gentlemen for a decent match for his daughter. He knew a small number of available lords who, if not young and virile, were at least steadfast, strong-willed and of a proper status for Sasha. But each of these Sasha stalwartly rejected. Lord Pemberton was much too old (fifty, at least!), Marquis Bonnevet was French and did not bathe at all, and Count Drogo of Romania couldn’t speak a lick of English.

  Finally, at wit’s end, Lord Strange invited his old friend Lord Sirius Quinn to the latest in the long line of what was becoming colloquially known in polite society as “Sasha Parties”—a term many unmarried English and European men of status regarded with fear and dread. Sasha anticipated the usual farce, of course. Her father would introduce the two of them, highlight Sasha’s beauty and finer talents, and see what interest the middle-aged Lord Quinn might take in his daughter. Sasha, for her own part, would remain polite but aloof. They would dine, speak of trivial things, and Lord Quinn would leave scorched like the others.

  She had not anticipated a wedding announcement over roast beef and red potatoes!

  “I simply cannot marry Lord Quinn,” Sasha stated, then turned to march across the room to her bed. She dropped down, her skirts mushrooming out about her, and took her favorite doll Elizabeth into her arms. Newton stirred on her pillow, stretched, and bumped his head against her hand. She pet the orange tomcat, holding him and Elizabeth against her like shields that might protect her from her father’s ridiculous machinations.

  Lord Strange sighed wearily. He stood with his hands braced against the casting of Sasha’s door as if he might rip the whole house down upon them like Sampson pulling down the temple in the Bible story. “I assure you the stories you’ve heard about Quinn are greatly exaggerated by the press.”

  Sasha raised an eyebrow at that. “Papa, ever since you announced his imminent arrival, I’ve been reading the Times quite studiously. Lord Quinn has been taken into custody by the police at least twice for drunken behavior and once for assault! What kind of husband is that for your daughter?”

  Lord Strange looked uncomfortable. “Lord Quinn is a very…complicated man.”

  “I’ll say!”

  Lord Sirius Quinn was tall and as thin as a snake, with terrible reddish eyes and even redder hair and a perpetually unsmiling face. He looked like Lucifer himself! According to the paper, his fortune was in jeopardy due to his drunken behavior and bad gambling habits. He was nothing more than a gold-digger hoping to seize the Strange fortune for his own dubious needs! She thought about bringing this up as well, but her father looked so hurt and desperate, Sasha felt her throat close up and her heart break at the sight of him. For once, he didn’t look very strong or robust, and she realized he was a hunched old man deeply afraid for her future.

  “Sasha, my darling,” he said, stepping toward her and pitching his voice as reasonable as possible, “you must realize I won’t live forever.” He took her tiny hand in his much larger one. “If something were to befall me, what then would become of you, my darling?”

  Sasha thought about that. Her Aunt Margaret was old and not in good health these days, so the farm was no refuge, should she find herself alone. And she had no other family. Well, there was her Uncle Mycroft, her father’s brother, whom she hadn’t seen since she was a child. But her father and Uncle Mycroft were estranged. According to her father, Uncle Mycroft had an unnatural predilection for indecently young women. Her father’s death would spur Uncle Mycroft to seize Strange Manor, and as a young, unmarried woman, Sasha would have little holdings on it. In fact, she’d likely become his ward, and she shuddered at the idea of sharing a house with such a lecherous old man.

  She held Elizabeth close for a moment before standing up. She made a decision then, something reasonable, something to placate her well-meaning father, if not her own heart, which would forever belong to Mr. Verne and Mr. Wells. “I will spend half an hour in the drawing room with Lord Quinn, but no more,” she announced. “After that, he absolutely must leave. I shall do my best to consider him a viable candidate for a husband. But i
f he proves himself unsuitable, you absolutely must break the engagement.”

  “But if you reject him like all the others, my darling, will you consider further candidates of my choosing?” He stroked her hand.

  Sasha bowed her head and hugged her doll close. “All I can promise is that I shall do my best to be fair to Lord Quinn.”

  CHAPTER 2

  Sasha went cautiously down to the drawing room where Lord Sirius Quinn waited to court her. She opened the great oaken double doors, stepped inside…and struggled to suppress a shudder.

  Quinn was tall and rangy, nothing like the dashing suitors in the books she had read. He slouched in his chair, face pale and freckly and remote as he stared into the hearth, a glass of her father’s finest whiskey in one hand. His unfashionably ginger hair was mussed as if he’d been running his hands through it, and he was dressed in a black mourning suit that suited him rather well. Villains always wear black, she thought to herself as she stepped into the room and curtseyed properly to the lord. Even his name was appropriate, Sirius from Osiris, Egyptian god of the underworld. She forced a smile.

  Lord Quinn looked up, regarding her with watery blue eyes rimmed by dull crimson haloes before forcing himself to stand. He gave her a courtly, if empty, nod. “Sasha.” He sounded bored to pieces.

  “Lord Quinn,” she said and extended her gloved hand.