Kaiju Apocalypse

by Eric S. Brown

  ****

  Captain Daniel Walker was the senior pilot of the Trident flight, and while he had been pissed initially at being left behind at Lemura, was now more than ready for a chance at a Mother Kaiju. He brought his Trident, nicknamed “Scather” by her flight crew, up high and in the sun, using the bright light to prevent the Kaiju from seeing the ship. He toggled his heads up display and frowned as he inspected the giant, lumbering beast from a safe distance.

  The Mother Kaiju looked like a giant, walking shark. A fin as large as the Trident protruded from its spine. Its arms ended in hand-like, three fingered hands and the scales covering its body glistened in the light of the stars above. Row upon row of teeth filled the giant mouth of the creature, and a long tail extended out behind it. Large black orbs on each side of the mouth rotated independently, the eyes lacking any sort of emotion. Walker recoiled a little at the realization that this Kaiju was different from any other he had seen before.

  “Not like it matters,” he whispered as he twisted the stick, pulling the Trident into a forty-five degree dive. He pulled the ship onto its back. “Trident Flight, this is Trident Lead. Target acquired. Fox Three! Fox Three”

  Twin AIM-199 AMRAAM missiles streaked from the Trident towards the beast, leaving a thin trail of smoke behind each as they flew towards their target. The “Kaiju Killers,” as they were affectionately known by the Trident crews, locked on the massive Kaiju, using the latest radar information relayed to the Trident from Lemura Base. Both impacted cleanly on the Mother Kaiju and managed to blow chunks of meat from the monster's massive torso. The Mother Kaiju wailed in pain but trudged onwards. Walker flipped his bird back over and clawed for the sky as the Mother Kaiju hunched her back. Small, blister-like bubbles formed all along her spine.

  “What the...?”

  The sky was suddenly filled with tiny projectiles as each blister erupted violently. One projectile narrowly missed Walker’s Trident, and he managed to get a brief glimpse of it outside his window as it screamed past.

  “Holy shit!” his copilot, Commander Sean Osborne, screamed. He had seen it as well. “Did that thing have wings?”

  “Get on the horn with Tower,” Walker ordered as he twisted the craft while more projectiles shot past. “Tell them that the Kaiju had adapted. We have anti-aircraft Kaiju.”

  Walker pulled the Trident into a hard turn, angling back towards the Mother Kaiju he had wounded. His targeting screen was cluttered with smaller icons now, nearly blotting out the Mother. His HUD zoomed in on one of the projectiles and he blinked as he identified what he was looking at. He rubbed his eyes and shook his head as the computer confirmed what he saw.

  “That’s one big flying lizard,” he growled and switched over to the 105 cannons.

  “Tower, this is Trident Lead,” Osborne said over the comm. “Kaiju has anti-aircraft personnel in the air. Repeat, the Kaiju have launched some sort of creature into the air. Looks like... I am designating the new targets as Dragons. Repeat, new targets identified as Dragons. We have a count of four-five-zero Dragons, over.”

  He cut the comms and looked over at Walker, who had an incredulous look on his face. Osborne shrugged.

  “Not every day you get to name a Kaiju,” he pointed out.

  “You’re insane,” Walker said. He flipped back over to the comm network. “Flight, this is Lead. Guns, guns, guns!”

  Walker depressed the firing mechanism of the ship's forward cannons with his thumb. The pintle-mounted tri-barrels swung back and forth, spraying the sky with streams of armor piercing, explosive rounds. The firing mechanism tracked every object in the sky, allowing Osborne to prioritize them as they locked on to their target. The new Kaiju began to fall from the sky as the 105 rounds tore into them. Walker smiled grimly.

  “No armor whatsoever,” he muttered.

  “That’s handy,” Osborne nodded.

  “Target acquired,” Walker said. “Fox–”

  “Incoming!”

  Walker was a combat veteran, one of the few who had survived both New Orleans and Las Vegas. His skills had been honed on the white-hot forge of the battlefield. His list of battles was a mile long. London. New York. Rio de Janeiro, twice. Sydney. He claimed to have the reflexes of a cat, and the eye of a falcon. He also had the record to back up those claims. He was arguably the best pilot still alive. Those skills, combined with two lifetime’s worth of good luck, were the only thing keeping him and his copilot alive as the smaller, flying Kaiju began to spit out streams of molten metal at the four Tridents.

  Walker jerked his stick all the way back and the Trident responded, the aircraft tilting upwards in the sky and rocketing away. The lithe craft had almost made it away clean, but a stray stream of molten metal tore at the undercarriage of the vessel. Alarm klaxons howled as the targeting system of the Trident went down, completely destroyed by the liquid metal. The rudder of the craft began to shake, dropping Walker’s ability to maneuver to almost none. He swore and kicked the floor pedals, disengaged the thrust and waited for gravity to catch back up with them.

  “Jesus...” Osborne whispered and pointed at the screen. Walker looked at the screen and blanched.

  Trident Three, crewed by Lieutenant Commander Etienne Moynier and his copilot, Lieutenant Larry Southard, had been completely destroyed as dozens of liquid metal projectiles tore through them. Pieces of the flaming wreckage crashed to the ground, creating a mockery of a funeral pyre for both warriors, something that the cynical pilots of the Tridents often joked about. Dark humor was what kept them going, although today, it would not be gallows humor keeping them alive. The Mother Kaiju roared triumphantly and continued her march towards Lemura.

  “No chutes,” Osborne announced as he turned in his seat and scanned the sky. “Repeat, no chutes! Damn it...”

  “Weapon targeting system is down completely,” Walker announced as the Trident went through a brief moment of weightlessness before the nose of the aircraft pointed back down towards the earth. As they began to accelerate, he pushed the throttles to full and the engines roared to life. “Landing gear is shot. 105 is down, comms are down. We have engines, but we’re low on fuel. Not much else we can do now, really, except...”

  “Except... what?”

  “You want out? You have plenty of time to eject. Hell, you may even survive.”

  “And land in the middle of that nastiness? Nope,” Osborne said with a shake of his head. “I’ve come this far. Besides, this is something I never thought I’d hear you say.”

  Walker grinned. “Prepare afterburners. We’re gonna ram that bitch.”

  “Hell yeah.”

  Walker put his hand on the secondary throttle, which sat beneath the primary and was almost never used. The Trident, capable of speed six times faster than sound, never really needed to use the afterburners. He wanted to be certain that he had enough momentum and energy behind what he could only think of as a kinetic strike on the Mother Kaiju. Beside him, Osborne jiggled the circuitry of the weapons for a second before he whooped triumphantly.

  “Can’t fire the missiles,” he announced. “But I sure as hell could arm them!”

  Walker’s grin turned feral. He pointed the nose of the Trident towards a spot right behind the head of the Mother Kaiju. He looked over at his copilot.

  “Ready?”

  “As I’ll ever be,” Osborn allowed. “What a way to go, eh?”

  “Bonzai!” Walker screamed and pushed the afterburners to full.

  The Trident leapt as the higher-octane fuel was pushed rapidly through the pistons of the engine, increasing the power and air-intake. The engines, already pushing out enough energy to rattle the entire craft, doubled the maximum speed of the Trident in exchange for the loss of structural integrity. The craft turned into nothing more than the afterimage of a blur as it struck the Kaiju perfectly, the Trident nothing more than a very large explosive bullet as it burrowed completely through the spine of the Mother Kaiju. Munitions aboard the craft exploded, severing the hea
d from the rest of the massive beast’s body, and secondary explosions rent the upper body into shreds.

  The massive fireball which erupted from the disintegrated Trident swept through the air, clearing the sky from the Kaiju Dragons as well as charring a few unfortunate Dog Kaiju on the ground. The massive Mother staggered under the blow, not quite realizing that she was already dead as she tried to continue forward. Nerves, finally catching up with her body, caused her to lose a step, then two. She began to fall.

  The Mother Kaiju's corpse tumbled onto the sands of the beach, crushing hundreds of Dogs beneath her as she collapsed heavily to the ground. A cheer erupted from the walls of Lemura upon the sight of the massive Mother falling dead. However, they quickly faded as the two remaining Mothers renewed their attack. The artillery crashed through the sky, and the fight raged on.

  ****

  Captain (j.g.) Charles Knight liked to play things safe. Unlike the other Trident pilots, he was not known to be a hotdog, and didn’t possess the typical fighter jock attitude that the others wore openly on their sleeves. He was a deliberate, calculating man, which had helped create the image of a man who was in complete control of his faculties at all times.

  Now, though, his icy persona was being tested in battle for the first time. Sticking close to his wingman, he brought the Trident behind and to the right of the other aircraft. Ensuring that his wingman’s six was clear of any hostiles, he began to engage the few smaller Dragon Kaiju still in the air. The 105 cannon ripped them to shreds, the fine orange mist drifting downward after the guns had ruined their bodies.

  “Captain,” his copilot, Chris Cox, warned as he brought up the targeting display. He and his pilot, unlike the other crews, had never managed to become close. As a result, the captain’s call sign, “Tsumetaikaze”, was almost never uttered. It would have been unprofessional, Knight had claimed. Cox wondered if the man was simply too egotistical and vain to allow himself to be called anything other than his rank.

  Knight looked over at the display and frowned. The other Trident was lining up to attack one of the strangest Kaiju he had ever seen. The thing had no legs to speak of, the lower body more like an eel's than anything else. Its back was smooth, as were the scales covering the slender length of the beast. Tall spines ran down the length of the Mother’s back. Energy crackled over them like lightning dancing in a summer sky. This Mother Kaiju had no eyes. Instead, it had three gaping mouths adorning the top of its head. A tree-sized antenna, like moving hair, wriggled above each of those orifices.

  “That’s one ugly bitch, captain,” Cox said.

  “Language, lieutenant,” Knight chastised him.

  “Trident Four, Fox Three!” came the call over the comm. The lead Trident opened up with a full volley of missiles. Four Kaiju Killers from each ship sped through the air towards the monster. The three antennae-like things above the mouths of the Kaiju began to wave frantically in the air. Suddenly, the lightning which ran down the spines of the Kaiju coalesced into a bright light near the three mouths. The missiles were met by a funnel of energy from the thing's central mouth, a bright blue-white beam of energy which intercepted them. One by one, the missiles disappeared in flames as they detonated from the energy coursing over them.

  “Holy shit!” Cox screamed, forgetting his captain’s orders regarding foul language.

  “I saw what it did,” Knight snapped. His hands flew over the Trident's controls as his ship jerked hard to the right, barely managing to avoid the Mother Kaiju's second blast. All three of the thing's mouths hosed the night sky, their fury directed toward the two Tridents still in the air. Trident Four was not as fast as Knight was, and with a flash, the lives of Lieutenants Karl Stodden and Gary Roulston ended. The lead Trident seemed to melt from the heat of the blast. Globs of Trident Four’s molten body rained down over the battle, which was taking place between the Dogkillers and lesser Kaiju on the beach below.

  Knight felt a familiar numbness drift over him, one he had not felt since his frantic escape during the Battle of Sacramento. The bitter, acrid taste of fear filled his mouth. He felt a growing wetness in his flight pants and realized that he had pissed himself. Tears welled up in his eyes as the weight of the numbness became heavier. His heart began hammering in his chest and his stomach tightened as adrenaline coursed through him. He pulled the Trident into a sharp turn and he began to head back over Lemura Base.

  “What do we do, sir?” Cox was yelling at him. Knight knew the man well, despite the barrier he had erected between him and his copilot. There was no hope of him seeing the obvious answer to his question. He was too blinded by his ideology and recklessness. Knight, on the other hand, had already seen how this battle would be played out. There was no hope for them, for humanity. He had one option, but there was a minor impediment which needed to be removed.

  “I'm getting out of here,” Knight said. “I want to live. I need to find somewhere safe to hide until this blows over.”

  “What?” Cox shouted, looking at him. “Are you out of your mind? Get back there and fight! Damn you, we’re going back, even if I have to take command of this ship myself!”

  Knight yanked his sidearm from the holster on his hip and put a bullet into his copilot's brain. The man's head snapped at an awkward angle as bone fragments from his exploding skull bounced off the wall of the compartment behind where he sat. His corpse slumped forward, leaning into the safety restraints that held him in his chair, never knowing what killed him.

  A safe place to hide until this is all over, somewhere safe... Knight thought as he accelerated away from the carnage below. He let the pistol slip from his grasp and it fell to the floor, resting in a pool of rapidly cooling blood.

  ****

  “Sir!” one of Yeltsin's officers shouted at him. “Trident Five – Captain Knight – is disengaging and pulling out! We can’t get any response on the comm!”

  “Let him go,” Yeltsin said, forcing his voice to stay calm even as his fists clenched so tightly that his fingernails drew blood from his palms. He'd suspected that Captain Knight was a coward, but never could have imagined that the man would go so far as to flat out turn tail and run during a battle that was sure to determine the fate of the entire human species. He watched the Trident disappearing over the horizon on the command center's view screen and wished he had the resources to spare to blast the ship into twisted, burning wreckage.

  Yeltsin shook off his anger at Knight and refocused himself on the battle as a whole. The Dogkillers were already beaten and fighting an organized retreat from the beach back towards the walls of the base. Lemura's main cannons were hammering the Mother Kaiju, but the assault on the two remaining Mothers barely managed to slow them down. They had stopped their charge, slowing them, but the things just kept coming. The techs were telling him that the cannons were in danger of overheating from their prolonged use against the Mothers, specifically the turtle-like Mother, but they were the only things holding it at bay. The second they stopped shooting, there would be nothing left to keep the monsters from slamming into the walls of the base.

  There had been no word from Captain Thornton or Doctor Bach as to the status of their mission. Yeltsin knew their ability to locate and destroy the Kaiju Overmind was the only thing that could save them all now. Lemura's defenses were crumbling and within the hour, the Kaiju would break through to enter the city.

  “Sir!” a voice called out. “One of the primary capacitors for batteries just burnt out!”

  “We can still fire though, correct?” Yeltsin asked.

  “Yes sir!”

  “Then we hold, damn it,” Yeltsin growled. “We hold for as long as possible, to our last breath, our dying whisper. I don’t care how we do it, but we shall hold!”

  ****

  Deep in the bowels of the earth, Specialist West and the rest of the men and women in Gamma squad closely followed the lead of Alpha squad. They moved quickly down the tunnels, pausing only briefly to orientate themselves before they advanced ag
ain. Behind them, West could hear heavy gunfire as Beta squad struggled to hold the entrance to the tunnels, their terse and clipped commands in direct contrast to the carnage they were obviously creating nearer the surface.

  “Hold,” Staff Sergeant Smith ordered suddenly, and West and Gamma squad pressed themselves against the tunnel walls. Behind them, Zeta pivoted and covered the rear.