by M. C. Norris
“How old is she?” Skyler asked, attempting a smile.
“Luna will be fifteen months, next Tuesday.” Jill looked down at the floor. She toyed with the ring on her left hand, and then glanced back up with a raised eyebrow. “Yeah. Go ahead and do the math.”
“Wasn’t planned?”
“Are they ever, anymore?” Jill dropped her chin. “Her father and I have been trying to make it work. We got married when we found out. Maybe not the best idea, but it seemed like the right thing to do at the time—for her. I felt like it was our parental duty to at least make an effort to hold it all together, but yeah-no. We’ve been living apart for the last six months. Luna and I moved back up to Anchorage, to be closer to my mom. Just took a job at a fish canning factory.” Jill wrinkled her nose, and nodded her head. “So, that’s the glamorous life I’ve been living ever since the band broke up.”
Skyler left the lockers, and eased closer to Jill. She took a seat on the counter beside her. “You’ve just been doing what you needed to do. Accidents happen.” Just as soon as that word left her mouth, Skyler regretted it.
Jill’s head snapped up. “I really don’t like to use the word ‘accident.’”
“I’m sorry, I …”
“Luna wasn’t planned, no, but she’s a wonderful oops. She’s my very best thing. Seriously, she’s the best thing I’ve ever done.”
“That was a stupid choice of words. I’m sorry.”
“Luna is my everything. I guess that’s why I don’t feel at all ashamed of my situation, even though some part of me knows that I probably should be.”
“No, don’t even say that.”
“It’s okay. Seriously. I get it, but it is what it is. I mean, I imagine that the guys probably all went on to do awesome things after the break-up, advancing science, making tons of money, whatever, and I’m happy for them. Genuinely happy. I hope they each found whatever redemption they needed to help them get past that huge failure, because we all needed something to move on. Luna was that, for me. When I saw her for the first time, all was forgiven. The mistakes of the past were erased, because the person I used to be—was gone.”
“Honey, I don’t think that the guys fared half as well as you might imagine they did,” Skyler said. “In fact, I think they were all really struggling to pick up the pieces. Out of all of you guys, I think you’re the only one who was spared the whole identity crises, and you’ve got Luna to thank for that.”
Slapping footsteps approached the women’s locker room door. They were punctuated by an insistent knocking against the metal frame. “Jill? Ms. Hale?” Takashi’s voice.
The girls looked at each other. “We’re in here,” Skyler replied.
“Two things. Thing one: we’re all grounded until Captain Roswell straightens this out. Thing two … can I come in?”
“Yeah,” the girls replied simultaneously.
Takashi staggered into the room. He took a second to steal a glance at his new surroundings, and then he raised his hands in a tamping gesture. “Thing two: we’ve got a Kaiju attack happening right now, just a couple of clicks up the Yangtze River.” Takashi grinned. “We’ve decided we’re going to do something about it, before the SEALs have a chance to respond with conventional weapons. We’re streaming Carl right now, right out there in the hangar.”
“Are you freaking kidding me?” Jill replied.
“Not one bit.” Takashi snapped his fingers. “J-man’s got this one.”
“I’m going to see Commander Bent,” Jill said, marching past Takashi toward the locker room door.
“Wait. Whoa-whoa-whoa. Why?” Takashi spun, and grabbed her by the forearm. “What are you doing?”
“I’m leaving. That’s what I’m doing.” She twisted loose of his grip. “I’m going home to Anchorage to be with my child, and obviously, I need to put in for my resignation now, before you guys get me into even more trouble. Seriously.”
“Wait,” Takashi said, grabbing hold of her arm again. He flinched when she turned, as though he expected her to punch him. When she didn’t, he lowered his defenses. “Don’t say anything about what we’re doing.”
“Of course I wouldn’t.” Jill curled her lip, and scowled.
“Here’s the best part,” Takashi said, releasing Jill’s arm. If his artificial eyes could’ve glowed any brighter, they might’ve set his eyebrows on fire. “Get this. The Kaiju attack is involving a double-hulled Russian submarine from the millennial-era, and the serial number is an exact match for the same one that slipped through our fingers two years ago, just a few miles offshore.”
“You’re joking,” Skyler whispered, eyes widening. Her heart was hammering against the backside of her chest like some desperate stranger wanting in. She covered her gaping mouth.
Takashi nodded. “It’s our pirates. We’ve got them.”
Chapter Eleven
“How’re we even going to see what’s happening? We don’t have a monitor,” Collin said, dabbing at his temple with a wet cloth that Skyler had procured for him.
Skyler’s thoughts were still with Jill. She wished only the best for her. She understood why Jill had left, embarking down a path that she felt she’d no other choice but to take. Hopefully, Bent would arrange for her release. However, as she sat in the circle of Psyjackers, on the floor of the women’s locker room, Skyler couldn’t help but feel as though a new spot had just opened up on their four-person team. Ever since their arrival on the Barrier Reef, she’d felt as though they didn’t trust her, as though they regarded her as belonging to some separate division of their program that would never enable her to sit at the cool kids’ table. Obviously, as the inventors and charter members, they were entitled to a clique, but Skyler hoped to prove to them that her involvement would mark the next step in Psyjack’s evolution. “We can watch through our phones,” Skyler replied.
“Bingo,” Takashi said. “I’m seeing a private drone, MINGYU-0613. Looks like she’s right-smack on the scene. Awesome coverage. Bit of a diva, though. Looks like you’ll have to ‘Like’ her before she’ll let you on board.”
Skyler sidelined the window streaming her Barrier Reef drone that was still searching the Barrier Reef for Captain Roswell, and she opened a new window through her maps app. She zoomed in on the Yangtze River, and pulled up a list of available drones. MINGYU-0613 received a tap from her thumb. A cute, animated character with an oversized head of flouncing pigtails hopped up and down in the middle of her screen. Her flashing “Like” tab had already been translated to Skyler’s preference for the English language.
“Yes-yes, I like you,” Skyler said, tapping the tab. The animated girl emitted a squeal of delight, clapped her hands, and blew Skyler a kiss that was accompanied by a spray of fluttering hearts. The character spun like a dervish, and disappeared in a puff of glitter. MINGYU’s feed sprung open, and Skyler couldn’t believe what she was seeing on her screen.
“What the heck is that thing?” Collin asked, gawping down at his phone. “Have you ever seen one like this before, Sky?”
The black cylinder barely recognizable as a submarine was being crushed in a many-legged bear hug. Four sets of blunt and wrinkled appendages, the color of boiled crayfish, terminated in owlish claws that raked furrows through the vessel’s steel walls. Not unlike an enormous caterpillar clinging to a floating twig, the inverted monster’s body rippled sluggishly while rows of feet adjusted their grip. Although the creature’s head could not be seen beneath the river, a curious snout broke the surface to probe around on the submarine’s bow.
“That thing is repulsive,” Takashi said.
“It’s a tardigrade,” Skyler replied, sounding a little breathless. It was impossible for her to hide her fascination with the Kaiju creatures. She could watch them for hours on end in the laboratory, and she’d come to love each and every one of them, in a purely scientific way.
“A what?”
“I named them after a similar species of microorganism native to earth. Some call the
m tardigrades. Others call them water bears. The similarities between the earthly version and the Europa strain are so stunning that I’m almost inclined to believe that—”
“Nerd alert. How the heck are we going to pry the sub loose from that nasty bugger?” Takashi asked. “J-man, what’s your twenty?”
“Mouth of the Yangtze. How the hell did you manage to walk on these tentacles, Collin? It’s like herding cats down there.”
“Don’t lead so much with your head. You’re top-heavy. Keep your feet out in front of you where you can see them. Pivot at the waist. Use your pincers for balance.”
“Like you’re dancing the calypso,” Takashi said.
“That’s not helpful,” J.J. replied.
“Earthly tardigrades are fantastic organisms, found everywhere from boiling vents in ocean trenches to the heart of the Antarctic. Freeze them, boil them, expose them to massive doses of radiation, even blast them into the vacuum of space, and they do just fine. They’re basically indestructible.”
“Also not helpful,” J.J. replied. “Takashi, can you get a bead on the target for me.”
“Aye-aye.”
It was obviously going to take some finesse to edge her way into the group, and to find her place amongst the team. Not only was she a biologist working amongst technical engineers, but they functioned like a well-oiled machine, while she was just a loose bolt bouncing around in the machine’s cogs. Psyjack was commissioned to seek and destroy monsters. She understood that. Her role in the project as the Kaiju biologist was key, but that didn’t make her feel any better about butchering them. The truth was that most of these creatures were harmless, even beneficial, when inhabiting their proper ecological niche. It wasn’t their fault that they’d been displaced, and had become a nuisance. That was her fault.
“Sky. Weaknesses. Do they have any?”
“Um—they’re not armored, so there’s that, but I don’t think you’re going to want to try and pry anything loose from its grip, because that’s probably not happening. You’re better off coming around from behind. Central nervous system on these guys is like a braided rope of nerve endings running from the back of its head to its rump.”
“A spinal cord.”
“Sort of. Except that it doesn’t have a spine.”
“How does something that huge support itself without bone structure?” Collin asked.
“Awesome question,” Skyler replied. “None of the Kaiju have a skeletal structure, yet their musculature is built to withstand that enormous weight. It’s almost like they were designed to reach this potential, if the right set of circumstances ever presented itself.”
“But, why would those circumstances ever present themselves on a frozen moon?”
“Exactly,” Skyler said. “They wouldn’t. Not in a trillion years.”
“Then why is the growth potential even there?”
“You’re getting closer and closer to what I call, ‘the curtain.’”
“The curtain?”
“Push far enough in a single scientific direction, odds are you’re going to come to the curtain. If you ever reach that curtain, do you dare throw it back? That question itself is perhaps more important than whatever answer might be waiting on the other side.”
“J-man, you’re moving in on the target,” Takashi said. “One kilometer and closing.”
“I can see it!”
“Already?”
“Damned straight, I can. This thing’s eyesight underwater is incredible.”
“Nothing like it in all the world,” Collin said.
As the deadly Charybdis bore down on its unsuspecting prey, Skyler felt a twinge of desperation grip down on some vital part of her. This marvelous durable survivor from a faraway world was just trying to understand the environment in which it had been so rudely transplanted, and now, because of Skyler, it was probably going to die a violent death.
“You might not actually need to kill it,” Skyler heard herself blurt.
“What?” J.J. replied.
“I’m just saying, the most important thing is capturing that sub. Just give it a good pinch, and it will probably let go.”
“Oh, I’m going to give it a lot more than just a pinch,” J.J. said. A grin spread beneath his visor. “That tub of lard doesn’t even see this coming.”
“Woohoo!”
Takashi’s whoop reverberated throughout the hangar, as the armored slab of Kaiju might slammed broadside into the soft flesh of the water bear. Its stumpy legs sprung wide in shock, releasing the hostage sub without a fuss. Paddling its appendages in an effort to right itself, the injured animal churned the river into foam.
“Didn’t see that one coming, did you, fatso?” J.J. said, as he extended his left pincer like a boxer setting up his opponent for a right hook.
“Guys …”
When the opening presented itself, the spiked forceps slashed out to connect with the water bear’s gummy face with a slap so thunderous that the distant shockwave was felt through the hangar floor. J.J. clamped his left pincer around the dazed creature’s throat, and proceeded to pound on its head. Indigo blood flew from its whipping snout.
“You’re letting the sub get away!” Skyler shouted. “What are you doing?”
“Just having a little fun,” J.J. replied.
“Our heads are already on the chopping block. You can’t afford to be screwing around. Let those pirates get away again, and we’re all headed straight for the brig.”
“Alright. Settle down.”
She seriously wanted to punch him. What these geeky cowboys couldn’t possibly understand, and what Skyler had refrained from telling Jill, was that parenthood wasn’t the only life-changing experience that had the power to render a person unable to relate to whomever they might’ve been beforehand. The Europa mission had lifted Skyler to the highest point of her life, and the pirate attack had slammed to down to her lowest. By the time she’d found the strength to rise up from that experience, and hitch painfully forward into new realms of understanding of the alien menagerie inadvertently unleashed into the seas, she could no longer relate to the woman she’d been before the accident than Jill was able to appreciate her pre-parenthood self. The creatures, while dangerous, and threatening the entire civilized world, felt somehow connected to her, even if that connection was steeped in projected guilt.
“Got the sub,” J.J. said. He clamped his massive blades around the battered ship’s waist, and lifted it from the roaring river. Tons of brownish water cascaded from its ruptured hull. In the hand of Carl the mighty Charybdis, the nuclear submarine looked no bigger than a cigar.
“Just set it over there on the bank for now,” Takashi said.
“Don’t just set it on the bank for now. Are you kidding?” Skyler screwed up her face at Takashi. “Get that thing back to base right now so they can start searching it.”
“Always pandering to the Navy,” Takashi said, in a low mutter.
“I’m not pandering to anyone. I’m making perfect sense. What more important things do you have to do?”
“Kicking ass. Taking names. You know, our job.”
“No, she’s right,” J.J. said, rotating his bizarre immensity downriver, and taking his first cautious steps. “If anyone’s still alive in there, they’ve got some explaining to do.”
Skyler watched the pinkish form of the water bear depart the scene of its merciless beating. It tumbled stiff-legged downriver. Rolling, spinning, it disappeared beneath the current in a cloud of indigo blood.
In the lab, water bears were the clowns of the interaction tanks. You couldn’t help but smile at that frenzy of paddling legs, that restless snout that explored every crevice for a bite to eat, because they were always hungry. Social creatures, they glommed together, intertwining their trunks and trundling legs. They seemed to actually enjoy meeting the other species, and interacting with their human observers. Water bears were nice.
“Heads-up, big guy,” Takashi said. “We’ve got a squadron o
f Navy gunships coming in fast, at three o’clock.”
“Don’t fight them,” Skyler said. “Those conventional weapons can’t hurt you.”
“I don’t know about that,” Collin replied, still daubing his temple with the wet towel.
“Is that how you got that bruise?” Takashi asked.
“Had to be.”
“We’ve never seen psychosomatic trauma like that before.”
“No one ever took a hit like that before.”
“Sure you didn’t just bump your head against something in the Devil Ray?”
“No.” Skyler put her hand on Collin’s wrist, and lowered the towel. “Take a closer look at his injury.”
Takashi leaned in. Collin’s face was set aglow by those unnatural eyes. For the first time in forever, Takashi appeared to be at a loss for words. He seemed reluctant to believe that their technology presented a possibility for danger to the pilot. Maybe too reluctant, even defensive. “J.J. was piloting a dolphin that got killed two years ago, and nothing whatsoever happened to him. How do you explain that?”
“I don’t need to explain anything, Takashi. I’m presenting evidence with pretty obvious interpretation. There’s a very real risk associated with wearing this helmet.”
“They’re circling around,” Collin said.
“I see them. I see them.”
“They’re banking in attack formation.”
“I can’t exactly hide, and I’ve got a pretty long walk ahead of me.”
“Hold up the submarine. Surrender. Raise your pincers. Do something!”
The Charybdis teetered as J.J. lifted its massive claws into the sky. Torrents of water rushed through the underling scaffold of tentacles. Although the creature appeared capable of walking on land, it was a better designed for vaulting in great leaps over the bottom of the sea. Balance was not one of its better attributes.
