Intently, West watched the glowing dot which represented Alpha Four, who was further ahead of the main body of Dogkillers. The dot suddenly went from green to red, and then disappeared from view. His auditory sensors had picked up no noise at all, despite the typical echo which seemed to fill the tunnels. While West was still new to the Mark II suit, he could tell when trouble was afoot.
Evidently, so could Smith. “Weapons hot! We got incoming!”
West swallowed. There were no heat signatures which indicated that Dog Kaiju were inbound, but he trusted Alpha squad’s expertise. He turned his head and watched Zeta begin to make their way slowly back up the tunnel. There had been a break earlier, and West knew – as every Dogkiller did – that the junction could serve as both a choke point and a potential funnel for Kaiju.
“Gamma Six, this is Gamma Three,” West said as he keyed his comm.
“What’s up, West?”
“I’m not reading anything on my scanners,” he stated. “No heat signatures, nothing. I thought we’d get something down here. I mean, yeah, it’s a bit warmer down here, but nothing?”
“Wait one,” the squad leader said. A minute passed, then two, before his squad leader got back to him. “I won’t relay what was said word-for-word, West, but let’s just say, you should focus on your job at this time and let Alpha do their job, okay?”
“Uh, yes, Sergeant,” West sighed. He hadn’t thought that Smith’s anger towards him would interfere with her professionalism, but sometimes, you just never knew.
“We got Dogs!” a voice cried over the comm. He recognized the voice from Zeta squad, and he quickly looked at his tactical display. Zeta was being attacked from both sides by Kaiju, which surprised him. The only way the Kaiju should have been able to flank Zeta was by going through the two other squads, and West was fairly certain he would have noticed Dogs running past.
“Impossible,” he heard someone else from the squad mutter. West found himself nodding in agreement. There simply was no way that they could have managed such a feat.
“They tunneled through the walls!” Smith announced over all comms. “Gamma, get back there and assist Zeta. Alpha, hold position.”
West, along with the rest of Gamma squad, hurried back towards Zeta, whose life signs were rapidly dropping one-by-one. The heavy suits were shaking the tunnel walls with their footfalls, causing a small bit of rubble to fall from the ceiling as well. A larger chunk dropped down onto Gamma Four’s suit, which only West saw. He glanced up and saw a small hole opening up in the top of the tunnel. Yellow eyes appeared from deep within the darkness. He stopped running and tried to jump aside. He made it, but only just. The second ambush narrowly missed him, leaving him alive.
Nobody else in Gamma squad survived, however.
A new breed of Kaiju, one spawned from the hellish depths of mankind’s worst nightmares, spilled out from the hole in the ceiling. A horrific cross between spiders and slugs poured forth, their yellow eyes burning in rage as they swarmed over Gamma squad. The men and women struggled to fight them off as best they could, but the new Kaiju left acidic sludge everywhere they touched, dissolving rock, armor and human flesh alike. The brave cries of defiance turned to horrific screams of pain and terror.
West began firing at the new Kaiju, his 105 making short work of the ones he could hit. The others, though, were too close to the rest of his squad, and the slime which dripped from the bodies of the Kaiju was rapidly devouring the new armor which the Minister had previously said was nearly impenetrable. He tossed two grenades up into the hole in the roof, and shot the Kaiju that was trying to crawl out. Orange slime and blood fell to the floor, landing with a sickening splat!
The grenades exploded above, the muffled concussions shaking the ceiling and causing part of the tunnel to collapse. He checked his readings but saw nobody else from Gamma still alive. On the plus side, all of the Kaiju were dead as well. West turned and ran back to Alpha squad, his breath coming in panicked gasps.
“Cathe! Cathe! Spider-slug Kaiju! They slime everything and it burns through everything!”
“What are you talking about, West?” Smith demanded over the comm.
“Gamma’s gone. Zeta is probably gone, too,” West explained as he slowed his approach to the lead squad. He looked back over his shoulder. “Nothing followed. I don’t think they realized I escaped, but they were fucking slugs with legs, Cathe. Slugs!”
Smith was silent for a minute before she responded. “Beta is being overrun by Dogs. Neither Gamma or Zeta are responding.”
“We gotta be close,” West stated as he rounded the final bend in the tunnel. Alpha squad was waiting there for him, guns pointed in his direction– though not right at him, he noticed. “A new breed of Kaiju? This far down? The Overmind has to be close.”
“We can't stay here,” one of the members of Alpha Squad urged Smith. “Fish or cut bait, Sergeant.”
Smith nodded. “Wheeler is right. We need to keep moving.”
“Should we move to assist Beta, Sergeant?” Another Alpha member asked.
“Forget that!” West blurted out, interrupting the conversation. “Our mission is the Overmind. If we're not already all that's left, we soon will be.”
Smith readied her Mark II suit's cannon, a fresh magazine locking into place. She had come to a decision. “We press forward. I’ll take point. West, stay near the middle of the group. Wheeler, take the rear. Let’s move!” She shouted, leading the way around the bend in the tunnel.
Smith came face to face with a small pack of Dog Kaiju that had been creeping its way towards the Alpha Squad. Their mouths opened as she slid to a stop and let the automated targeting system that was within the suit track all six of the Kaiju. She let them have it with her cannon on full auto. The rounds tore the monsters apart, spraying the rock walls with their entrails. As the creatures' bright orange blood smoked on the rock, eating away at it, she kept moving. West, ignoring her order to stay back with the rest of the squad, was right on her heels. The rest of Alpha charged after them.
More Kaiju came as they moved deeper, and more Kaiju died. Smith moved like the Grim Reaper, harvesting the dead Kaiju with each step. She was operating in an alpha state now, no longer directly conscious of her actions, merely a passenger as her training took hold. She was the Volksrächer, born of a land which no longer existed and a people whose ghosts cried out, and she was going to avenge the billions who had fallen at the hands of the invading Kaiju.
One way or the other.
*****
“Lemura Tower, this is Trident One,” Calloway called over the comm as the two Tridents streaked back to Lemura as fast as they could. Static greeted him. He toggled his comm and tried again, with the same results. He flipped frequencies. “Two, this is One. You getting anything from Lemura?”
“Negative, One,” came the response. “We’ve tried all the frequencies as well. Something’s jamming the signal.”
“Acknowledge, Two. One out,” Calloway looked over at Dr. Bach, who was leaning back in his seat with his eyes closed. “Doc. Hey, Doc!”
“Huh? Whuzzat?” the theoretical physicist blinked and yawned noisily. He stretched his legs out and smiled dreamily. “Are we back at the base yet?”
“No,” Calloway said. “I haven’t been able to raise the base. We’re getting some sort of static interference. I think the Kaiju are jamming our signal.”
“No, that’s just the result of the solar flare hitting the earth.” The doctor shifted his body to get as comfortable as he could in the cramped cockpit. “It makes long-range radio frequencies go haywire. Another hour or three and it should be clear.”
“What?” Thornton looked over at the physicist now. “What do you mean solar flare?”
Dr. Bach began to explain. “A solar flare is when our sun ejects a corneal mass from the surface, which in turn–”
“Not what I meant!” Thornton interrupted, his voice harsh. “You deliberately chose today to assault the Overmind, knowing we
wouldn’t have communications once we got out over the ocean and lost our line-of-sight laser comms?”
“Oh, well, yes,” Dr. Bach nodded. “My theory suggested that the Overmind works very similar to that of a radio, and I guessed that control of the Dog Kaiju and the Mothers would be weaker today. It’s why I had to hurry and get the theory passed. The next solar flare wouldn’t have happened for another three weeks by our predictions, and I doubted that Lemura would stand another week at most.”
“Jesus...” Calloway muttered. “If you weren’t so smart, I’d toss your ass out the window.”
Thornton nodded. “Makes sense, I guess, but we had them earlier. Why not now?”
“Curvature of the earth, radiation spikes, the ionosphere playing merry hell with the radio band frequencies, take your pick,” Dr. Bach explained. “All these things can and do happen during a flare, especially when a corneal mass ejection occurs. Did you know that, one nearly hit the planet full on in July of 2012? It was a near miss. It would have been worse than the Carrington Event was. Imagine fighting against the Kaiju while trying to recover from something like that. Talk about blind luck, though luck is comparative when looking at it in hindsight...”
“Hey, what’s that?” Calloway asked as an unidentified blip appeared on their radar. He toggled the IFF and it blinked blue after a moment of indecision. Seconds later, detailed information flowed across his screen. “Well, at least the radar still works. That’s Trident Five.”
“Knight? What the hell is he doing out this way?” Thornton wondered as he checked his fuel gauge. They had just enough to make it to Lemura at their current speed. He did some quick mental math before making a quick decision. “Trident Two, slow to eight-five-zero knots, acknowledge.” Thornton slowed the Trident down by two hundred knots, which would give them an additional fifteen minutes of flight.
“Roger, One. Slowing to eight-five-zero knots,” came the reply from Trident Two.
“We got laser comms with Knight?” Thornton asked his co-pilot.
“Uh... yeah, raising him now.”
“Trident Five, this is Trident One. Come in, Trident Five,” Thornton said once Calloway had linked their comms.
No response.
“You sure he’s receiving?” Thornton asked after a moment.
“He’s five-by-five,” Calloway confirmed. He double-checked his comms again, and then frowned. “That’s weird. Maybe he’s suffered some sort of–”
The threat detector suddenly screamed to life, filling the cockpit with a cacophony of noise. Calloway’s eyes widened as he immediately scanned the water, looking for any sign of the Kaiju. The ocean appeared to be tranquil below them, however. His eyes tracked back up to the threat radar.
“Holy shit! Two incoming missiles, designating Tango One and Tango Two. Range, one-six miles and closing fast!”
“Who fired at us?” Thornton nearly shouted as he pushed the Trident lower towards the ocean surface. “Was it Kaiju?”
“Knight fired at us!” Calloway yelled as he flipped a switch. “Preparing chaff and flares!”
“Hold one,” Thornton said as his heart began to slow down from its frantic pace from moments before. “Neither has a lock on us.”
“Trident Two, you have inbound Tangos, do you copy?”
“Both have hard-lock, One,” Trident Two replied in a calm voice. At least, as calm as a pilot under fire could be. “Preparing to deploy chaff and flares.”
“Knight! What the fuck are you doing? You’ve targeted allies, you blithering asshat!” Thornton shouted into the comm, ignoring radio protocol in his anger. “Break off your attack, damn you!”
Trident Five remained silent.
“I know you’re reading this, Captain Knight. Respond, damn you!”
No response.
“Fine. You want to play games with me, you little shit,” Thornton growled. “Sidewinders are armed and seeking, Knight. Don’t make me shoot you out of the sky. Acknowledge receipt of this transmission, over!”
“...find a safe place. I just need to find...” a whispered reply broke through the comm.
Thornton and Calloway shared a look. “Are we recording all of this?” Thornton asked, his voice carefully neutral.
“Yep,” Calloway nodded.
“Last warning, Captain Knight. Detonate your missiles or you will be fired upon.” Thornton leveled off the Trident roughly fifty meters above the surface of the ocean. Trident Two had not followed their descent, choosing instead to try to climb into the upper atmosphere to take the two missiles which had locked onto them. They rapidly moved further from Trident One. He toggled the comm himself. “Trident Five... Knight, listen to me. Destruct your missiles now. You’ve accidentally targeted Trident Two. You’ve targeted Commander Tom Coonradt and Lieutenant Robert Head. You know them, they’re your friends. Coonie and Gets More? C’mon Knight, kill those missiles.”
“Ten seconds,” Calloway warned.
“You can’t make me go back there,” Knight whimpered over the comm. “You can’t. You can’t.”
“Five seconds.”
“Deploying chaff and flares,” Trident Two announced. “Hitting afterburners... now!”
Thornton and Calloway watched helplessly as the two Sidewinder missiles ignored the chaff and the flares, homing in on Trident Two. A bright flash appeared high in the sky above them, and suddenly, the missiles and Trident Two were gone from the screen. Calloway toggled the comm switch a few times, but was met with static only. The two men sat silently in the cockpit for a minute before they risked speaking again.
“How’re we loaded, Cal?” Thornton asked.
“Four AIM-33 Sidewinders,” Calloway replied in a cold tone. “We’re well within range of him.”
“Target his chicken shit ass,” Thornton growled.
“Are we... shooting at another human being?” Dr. Bach asked, his voice filled with confusion and worry.
“He’s a rutted coward, Doc,” Calloway corrected. “Not a human. Sidewinders are targeting... lock! I have a solid lock!”
Thornton depressed the trigger and the two missiles leapt from beneath the stubby wings of the Trident. They rocketed away from the Trident and into the sky, their targeting systems in their data programming locked fully on the other Trident. The three men in the cockpit watched the missiles track through the air as they moved closer to Trident Five.
Knight, for a reason that the three men would never fully understand, did not budge from his level course. His engines ran hot, and his metallic radar signature remained easy to track. No chaff or flares were fired, giving the two missiles an easy time of it. Three pairs of eyes watched the missiles move on their intercept course. Knight continued to run on a straight and narrow path as the missiles accelerated to an intercept, and without much fanfare, Trident Five was blotted out of existence.
*****
The memories of Cathe Smith’s long-dead family came to mind as the caverns began to twist oddly around her. Faces appeared and disappeared with maddeningly speed, their visages just at the edge of her mind but never fully brought into focus. It was distracting, but Smith refused to falter. The cold which ran through her veins was born of experience and determination, from willpower and inner strength.
She shook her head. Something was messing with her mind, and she didn’t believe that it was any sort of inner doubt. “Alpha, move it!” she kicked a Kaiju in the head, brain matter exploding outwards and showering the rock walls of the tunnel. “We’re almost there!”
The tunnel opened into a vast cavern. The sheer darkness of it almost startled her, but Smith had been prepared for the contingency. External lights on her suit kicked on as thermal imagery began to draw a picture of just how immense the cavern was. Teeming around her was thousands of Kaiju snarling, a slathering, howling mass of flesh and anger. Her head continued to swim as she tried to absorb all of the information she saw.
There. She felt, more than saw, the presence which had been trying to overwhelm
her for the past ten minutes. Deep in the bowels of the cavern sat something which twisted the walls around it, causing her to feel nauseous and anxious at the same time the longer she stared. Eight arachnid-like legs protruded from its body, supporting the weight of the thing's massive brain-shaped lump of a body. Scores of tentacles, all originating from its central mass, whipped and cracked in the air around the thing. The Overmind Kaiju had no discernible eyes or ears that Smith could see. Its central mass was several times larger than an assault tank. On the upside, she noted, it had no scales or armor of any kind. Other than the thing's tentacles, its body appeared to be exposed brain matter, soft and gelatinous.
“A soft target,” she whispered. She opened her mouth to issue commands.
The Kaiju Overmind struck before she could give the order to attack. One of its tentacles shot outward, snagging a member of Alpha Squad who had skidded to a stop to Smith’s left. It jerked the man off the ground and proceeded to smash him time and time again into the wall of the cavern, cracking his enhanced Dogkiller armor open like an egg. Blood and fluids from the armor's systems leaked from the damaged suit, but the tentacle continued its grizzly work. A second tentacle shot forward at Smith. She dove from its path, rolling as the metal of her suit clanged against the cavern floor, and brought her cannon to bear. Smith fired a series of three bursts which cut the tentacle to shreds.
Kaiju Apocalypse Page 5
