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be
able to tow something other than the small trailers with the hummers, but they
just didn’t have the grunt. For the umpteenth time he felt that regret, then
wryly snorted. “Split milk, split milk. What the hell am I going to DO with all
that milk anyway, I don’t have the room?!”
    His hummer took the lead as they
arrived at the Rex kill; warily he watched them as he crossed the field. The
security AI beeped, warning him. “No shit Sherlock,” he commented dryly and
then “Acknowledged.” To the AI. It beeped insistently again, and then his HUD
built into the hummer came on and pointed to the nearby bushes. He squinted,
and then pulled out the binoculars as the hummer slowly creeped along. “Well
well, late dinner guests,” he observed. He flipped to IR, noted the raptor
body.
    “Uninvited ones too,” he
commented as the winds shifted and one of the Rexes looked up and bellowed a
challenge. Caws answer it. “I think it is time to get out of dodge,” he
commented. The Rex family was definitely agitated, flapping their arms, and
clopping their mouths together with gunshot like cracks. “Yup, definitely time
to get the hell out of dodge!” Mitch commented, feeling a thrill of fear as he
accelerated past the fracas. His vehicles followed, dipping through the gully
and then onward.
    Back at the base he parked and
sighed. He had the tractors unload as close to the places he wanted the cargo
pods as possible, and then sent them to refuel and park for the night. With
that kill it might be a day, or even two days before the Rex family moved on. A
little too dangerous to be driving by regularly, let alone let an unmanned
unarmed vehicle drive by. He couldn't risk losing one. “Another damn delay,” he
muttered, then sighed. He returned his attention to the wind farm.
    The robots had set up the parts
in neat piles where he had indicated. One robot was almost finished driving the
base of the last one into the ground. He took a look around, then shrugged and headed
over to start putting parts together.
     
    The next day he throttled the
urge to go check the Rex kill several times before giving in and sending the
medium range UAV to check. A half hour later he got a beep, taking a look at
the tablet he noted the snoozing Rex family, just as he had suspected. The
carcass was torn apart, but there was still a good amount of meat left. Vulture
like birds hovered overhead. A small bird like therapod darted in, the adults
snort in annoyance then the juvenile chased after it. Mitch sighed and
redirected the drone to return to base. “So much for that!” He sighed in
annoyance as he turned to the chores.
    He knew he was in over his head,
or at least starting to be. Dividing his time between the animals,
construction, maintenance, and farm was too much, even for a twenty eight hour
day. The thought made him snort and look over to the makeshift sundial. It had
taken him a week of careful plotting to get the day straight, then an hour of
programming to get the clocks in all the machinery reset. Fortunately he had
planned for it, but the software patch designed to do the change all in one go
had gone hinky, forcing him to manually reset a few clocks that had balked at
the change. The tedious repetitive programming had been enough to drive him to
distraction.
    There was still a lot to do, the
farm machinery was on the sixth field, he still needed to get the pastures up,
the fish tank needed cleaning again... the list went on and on. The second
batch of tilapia had hatched the day before, a minor triumph, but one that
again reminded him he was on borrowed time. He had only a few weeks to set up
the various pumps, tanks, and ponds for them before they out grew the small
tanks they were in. Fortunately they would still use their yolk sacks for
another few days before needing feeding.
    Then of course there were the
other various animal related chores, and building the base was a big headache.
Constantly trying to balance power need