Kaiju Apocalypse (17 page)

“Let’s do this then,” McCoy ordered. “I got the old man.”

“You heard the LT,” the Gunny grunted. “Let’s blow this popsicle stand.”

The door blew outward from the charges Kirby and Grimes had rigged on it, clearing out the mass of Dog Kaiju on its other side. Given some breathing room, thanks to the explosion, the troops rushed out of the bunker. McCoy's breath caught in his throat as he saw all of the Mother Kaiju that had been drawn to the city. There were over half a dozen of the giant monsters closing on the bunker. One of the Phoenix shuttles lay in the street, destroyed. Its hull was caved inward and smoke billowed from the remains, drifting skyward. There was no sign of the pilot of the craft.

The second shuttle, hovered a dozen meters away from the position, nearly street-level as it waited with opens doors. Thousands of rounds of ammunition tore into the nearest Mother Kaiju in a desperate bid to slow her down long enough to allow the soldiers to board. The roar of the Mag cannon’s continuous fire left McCoy's ears ringing. The Gunny was screaming something at him as a shadow fell over them all. McCoy couldn't make out the Gunny’s words, only could tell that the Gunny was... afraid. He shook his head to clear it. The Gunny was never afraid, McCoy thought as a giant foot came down upon them. Something heavy broke him, caused him an immense flash of pain and agony that was indescribable. Then there was only darkness.

*****

Captain!” Tiffanie cried from the sensor station, where she was still assisting Yamilé.

Nathan did not need her warning, though. He saw the gigantic creature from his own display on his command chair. It was as large as the island of Pacifica and filled the
Argo's
main view screen.  The mighty wings were over a hundred miles long from one tip to the other, and the beast’s body was massive and bloated. The creature’s lips were parted to show rows of glistening teeth as it streaked upwards from the Earth, the massive wings fighting against gravity so that it could escape to the stars.

The sight of the thing was enough to drive a sane person mad. The crew on the bridge around him began to panic. Some tried to cover their heads and not look at the screen, while others struggled simply to breathe. Yamilé clawed at her eyes with her fingernails, screaming at the top of her lungs as her mind simply snapped. The bridge crew’s cries of fear echoed off the
Argo's
walls. Nathan forced himself to hold it together, but it was difficult, almost too difficult for the man.

“All hands, man your battle stations,” his raspy voice echoed throughout the ship. Every single man and woman not in cryo heard his voice and the desperation in it, and hurried to their assigned station. The bridge's lighting switched to the red glow of emergency lights as he plopped into his command chair. “Target that abomination with everything we've got!”

Missile ports slid open all along the
Argo's
forward hull as her rail guns began to blaze away at their maximum rate of fire, the electromagnetic guns firing tow ton tungsten-core bars of steel at the Kaiju every second. The gunners had not waited on his order to open fire, though Nathan didn’t blame them. The beast was on a direct course for the
Argo
, and it was closing fast.

“Once you have a solution, fire at will,” he told the missile crews. Over two hundred missiles flew from their respective ports in a staggered wave as some crews responded to the threat faster than others did. Bright blue flames could be seen propelling the missiles across the narrow divide between the
Argo
and the massive Kaiju.

Nathan’s eyes were locked onto the screen as the missiles began to close in on the Kaiju. Everything seemed to slow to a crawl as the missiles, tiny icons of blue on his screen, moved closer and closer to the giant red blob on the opposite side of his monitor. His eyes drifted up to look at the visual display of the winged monster.

“Contact in three, two, one...” Tiffanie counted down for the benefit of those still willing to fight.

Almost every single missile fired struck the Kaiju dead on. The darkness of space lit up in a cacophony of atomic fire. The bright nuclear explosions overwhelmed the crew and blinded the
Argo's
sensors briefly. A panel started smoking near Nathan’s command chair, which elicited a cry from the crewmember manning the station. Power on the bridge flickered briefly, which was indiscernible to the crew but created a massive problem at one particular station.

“Sensors offline!” Tiffanie yelled.  The forward view screen had gone blank as well.

“Get those sensors back online now!” Nathan shouted at her, his hands squeezing the arms of his chair in a white-knuckled grip. It took every ounce of his willpower to stay seated and not launch himself across the bridge to fix the problem himself.

The screen flickered back to life just in time to reveal a flash of the Kaiju's razor-sharp teeth before they sank into the
Argo's
hull. The massive strike from the beast shook the entire ship and jerked it sideways in space, which did a number on their speed and orbital pattern. The members of the bridge crew who were not strapped into their seats were thrown about like ragdolls, bouncing against their consoles and tossed violently into the bridge's walls. The bridge filled with the sound of snapping bones and crashing bodies.  Everywhere around him, people were crying out in pain or calling for help. Stations overloaded from power surges through the
Argo's
central systems and blew apart like small flash bombs. Fires raged in the dim red lights of the bridge.

“We... we hurt the thing, sir!” Hiro shouted from his station, which by the grace of God was still intact. Nathan looked around, his head swimming. He saw Tiffanie lying on the floor several feet from her station, her neck twisted in an awkward and unnatural angle as blood dripped from the corner of her open mouth. Her dull, lifeless gaze seemed to blame him for what had happened to both her and the
Argo
. The captain felt sick to his stomach, but he knew that his responsibilities were to the entire ship, and not just his bridge crew.

This included the thousands of souls he had sworn to keep alive. 

He jumped from his seat and raced for the helm. The
Argo's
pilot was dead, her headless body strapped into her seat at the station. The chair was soaked in blood. A piece of the bridge's ceiling had collapsed and shaved the poor woman's head cleanly from her shoulders. The
Argo
continued to shake as alarms blared like air raid sirens. The Kaiju had hold of the
Argo
and it was pummeling the sturdy hull with its fists between slashes of her giant claws along the topside.

“Clearly, we didn't hurt her enough!” Nathan shouted at Hiro as he spun the chair containing the helmsman's corpse out of his way. Their only hope was to get away from the beast before it tore them completely apart and finished off humanity. An unprogrammed jump was dangerous, but he had been left with no other option. He had to keep everyone alive, no matter the cost to him. Nathan’s fingers flew over the controls of the helm as he manually brought the warp engines online.

“Captain, this jump is unadvisable,” Medea chimed in from the computer terminal. He scowled as he continued trying random combinations of coordinates, hoping one would work.

“I don’t have a choice, Medea! If we don’t, then this Kaiju will open us up and that’ll be all she wrote, sweetheart! Poof! Humanity is done! Game over!”

He finished typing in the coordinates and pressed the confirmation button. The lighting on the bridge, already dim, turned nearly completely off as the engines drew almost all the available power to them. The Laws of Physics broke as space bent and blurred around the huge ship and the even larger monster still clinging to it.

The great Kaiju writhed and shuddered in pain as the jump bubble formed around the
Argo
. It released the ship as one of its mighty hands was severed at its wrist by the growing bubble of distorted energy and time. One last, defiant strike to the ship’s hull rocked the entire vessel from bow to stern. The main view screen shattered into a mass of flying shrapnel.  Shards of it caught Nathan in his right shoulder as he tried to turn away from the explosion. He fell to the floor with glass protruding from the ghastly injury, his own blood mixing with his deceased helmswoman. The shaking from the Kaiju stopped suddenly as everything around them turned sideway. The
Argo
blinked out of existence, leaving the dying home world of humanity far behind – and the Mother of All with it.

*****

An entire day had passed since the
Argo
escaped from Earth, and damage reports continued to come in, though not in the flood that they had initially. The captain had been discharged from sickbay and returned to duty, much to the chagrin of the Medical Board. They wanted the captain to take more time off before going back to work. He ignored their advice, though, and found himself on the bridge a mere five minutes after being cleared for active duty once more.

Bandages were wrapped around his right shoulder and his arm was set against his chest in a sling. Still, he worked on. The
Argo's
engines were fried, the power surge that had given them their unplanned jump overloading the circuitry which drove them. It would take weeks, if not longer, and more than a little luck to get them online and fully functional again. That, he recalled, was the
good
news.

Thousands of colonists and crew had perished in cryo-sleep. The great Kaiju had gotten lucky during her attack, and had crushed and mauled one entire section of the ship. That second just happened to contain almost a third of the colonists who had originally been meant for Alpha Centauri Prime. Over half the active crew was either dead or injured as well, but they followed the lead of their captain and continued to work through the pain and suffering that they all were dealing with.

He stood, staring out into the vastness of space on the repaired view screen before him. He knew that mankind’s destiny lay in the stars, had known this since he was a child. However, the Mother of All, as he had taken to thinking of her, had planted a tiny seed of doubt in his heart. He did not know where she would go, or what she would do. He knew that the
Argo
had hurt her badly. Would she find another planet to take over, or would she try to follow the
Argo
through space and time? He didn’t know. Nobody had ever been able to read the alien mind of a Kaiju. The best anyone could do was guess.

6,107 men, women and children.

That was all that was left of humanity. It was his job to find them a new home, and to keep them alive. It was a dangerously low number, one that concerned the scientists who were already creating breeding programs, much to his chagrin. He had thought that, as a species, humanity was above such things. He had never considered the potential disruptions that could arise if women were forced to bear children, or that computer models would have to be drafted in order to prevent any sort of inbreeding. He had been sure humanity would survive, once. Now? He was no longer sure of anything.

They were alive, for now. For how much longer, Nathan thought, was anybody’s guess.

“And all day long and all night, the wind bore the ship on, blowing fresh and strong,” Whitmire whispered as he stared into the dark abyss of space. He fiddled with the bandages of his shoulder with his mobile hand. “But when dawn rose, there was not even a breath of air. And they marked a beach jutting forth from a bend of the coast, very broad to behold, and by dint of rowing came to land at sunrise.”

Much like the
Argo
of old, only sheer determination would take them home.

Wherever that ended up being.

Part III

The device has not detonated.

Five simple words changed humanity’s destiny, words which still hung in the air around the old man. The words had haunted the old man for years, mocking him, taunting him and assailing his conscience. It affected his sleep, his dreams. As his eyes failed him and the physical ailments became too much to bear, the words became that much more of a burden. The worst part of it all was that it was his fault, and only he knew it. The guilt of such knowledge could destroy any man.

His body rested in a hovering chair before a sea of monitors that covered the walls of the room around him. Originally designed as a temporary mobile medical support unit, the chair had become as much a part of him as the withered, drooping skin that covered his bones. Blue veins showed through his nearly transparent flesh, their spider web-like appearance giving the illusion of a shattered piece of glass. His eyes were sunken deep into his skull and ringed with the telltale signs of sleeplessness, but they still gleamed with the sharpness of intellect and cunning. Rows of tubes extended from the chair's arms and into his. They, more than his feeble old heart, pumped his blood and kept death at bay. Despite the indignities, he bore through it. He was a survivor, after all – he had lived through the end of the world three times now.

His mind drifted back to the days when he was a younger man, back when saving the world actually meant something. The first time that the world ended was when the oceans rose to reclaim the land and brought the massive Mother Kaiju with it. Mankind, initially overwhelmed by the gigantic creatures from the dark water, had been forced to seek shelter in domed city fortresses upon the islands that remained after the great flood.  There,they had made their stand, the power of technology against the teeth and claws of the Mother Kaiju. Mankind held its own for some time, with the massive Kaiju unable to break through the thick walls of the city-states. Mankind and Kaiju settled into a stalemate, and for a time, an uneasy peace reigned.

That all changed with the arrival of the smaller foot soldiers of the Kaiju, the nine-foot long Dog Kaiju. Nor-wic fell first, and one by one, the city-states fell until only one remained. Lemura, the last standing city-state, had been the location of what humanity believed would be the last great fight between mankind and the Kaiju. The great beasts and their armies of lesser Kaiju had been fought back off its shores, trying to crush the city under their claws. A surprise attack by humans on a small island out in the middle of the ocean, followed by a sudden scientific breakthrough, had led to the destruction of the Kaiju Overmind.

This victory had seemed to shake the Kaiju to their core. The human race was given a brief reprieve and chance to rebuild from the Kaiju War. However, the stay of execution was all too brief as the Kaiju returned in force.

The second end was that of Lemura and all that had been rebuilt under the guidance of himself and Governor Yeltsin.  When the Kaiju returned, they came like never before.  There was no prolonged war, merely a series of quick decisive battles that thoroughly shattered what remained of the human race and wiped away most of the traces of the world before. What had once been a planet filled with light, laughter and hope had turned into a silent planet of death and sorrow.

Like many others, he had fled in those dark days. The world, as it was, had thought him dead. Instead of dying, however, he had retreated to a highly classified, and at the time being, unmanned research station buried deep in the Himalayas. The station was fully automated and equipped with not only a state-of-the-art AI, but also several drones designed to make life easy for anyone manning the remote location. There, he sat and planned, plotting to take back the world for humanity once and for all.

Often, he had considered reaching out to contact Yeltsin, to let the man know he was still alive, but something had kept him from it. Perhaps it had been fear, or something deeper, darker. If Yeltsin had known he was alive, the Minister would have spared no expense in bringing him back to his secured location beneath Lemura. He had wanted no part of the reconstruction or the desperate battles that came after, so he stayed in his station.

Though he had avoided Minister Yeltsin, he
had
contacted some of his old colleagues who had survived and passed along to them the design of a bomb that would destroy all of the Kaiju – and the Earth with it. Unfortunately, when Lemura finally fell, the device had yet to be fully completed. Yeltsin and a handful of survivors, holed up in Lemura's primary “last resort” bunker, took over the project, fulfilling his wishes without even realizing it. There, they continued work on the schematics, he had sent until a crude version of his bomb was online and tapped into the core of planet. His theory precluded the potential for cracking the core itself and triggering a chain reaction which would interrupt the spin of the planet, killing everything on it. He had waited and waited for Yeltsin to use the bomb and end them all, but for whatever reason, the minister-turned-governor never had. So he had languished, alone, while the world continued to spin... and Kaiju rampaged in their ceaseless orgy of destruction and carnage.

The device has not detonated
.

He shivered at the memory, a cold chill running up his back. The chair was comfortable and set at the proper temperature to keep him warm, but no amount of technology could hold back the growing cold which was creeping through his body. Wracked with confusion and guilt, he had lain in the mobile support chair, his body mostly immobile, and his mind wandering back, thinking of the billions who had died. His sanity began to slip as his former colleagues died off in their forgotten bunkers.

Suddenly, and rather unexpectedly, a massive ship appeared in the skies over the Earth. He had recognized the craft, the moment of its arrival, though he doubted what he saw initially as he questioned his sanity. The ship was the
Argo
, which had been tasked to leave Earth behind and search for mankind’s new home many years before. He had doubted his own eyes for a long time, even as the evidence piled up before him. Finally, he had accepted it for the truth and a new plan began to form in his still-active mind.

It was an easy matter to hack into its systems unnoticed and monitor what transpired on board the giant colony ship. The great ship had been sent out into the stars to find a new home for those it carried, the last hope of the human race. The mission to Alpha Centauri had been a complete and utter failure. A creature which had existed in Earth legends had already claimed the system as its own, and nobody on board the
Argo
wanted to fight for a new home. So they fled, leaving behind the potential new home to return to the bosom of mankind’s origin.

He had not known whether to weep or laugh as he listened to the ship’s hails over the various comm channels as the massive ship came into range. Its crew was completely unprepared to find the Earth still in the Kaiju's clutches upon their return. They set about gathering fresh supplies to leave the Sol system once more while also attempting to locate any survivors on the Earth's surface to take with them. He kept his silence throughout and merely watched their activities from the safety of his hidden facility, unwilling to leave his home. The thought of leaving Earth and allowing the Kaiju a true and complete victory over mankind sickened him, and he certainly was not foolish enough to believe that the
Argo
stood a decent chance of finding an Earth-like world to call home before the limited amount of supplies it could carry ran out.

He watched as the ruined streets of Lemura again ran red with the blood of humans as soldiers from the
Argo
discovered Yeltsin in his secret bunker and tried to take him with them to the stars. He had been
sure
that the former governor would not leave Earth without detonating the bomb he'd unwittingly helped build, but something must have gone terribly wrong. The
true
end had never come, and Yeltsin and the soldiers rescuing him disappeared beneath the giant foot of an enraged Mother Kaiju.

His years of studying the Overmind and the Kaiju had taught him the beasts' real nature.  He knew of the great mother Kaiju that slumbered beneath the Earth's mantle, waiting to be awakened to take flight. The time of that awakening corresponded with the arrival of the
Argo.
Maybe her time to awake had come naturally, or maybe something about the great colony ship's experimental engines had stirred her the rest of the way out of her slumber? It hadn’t mattered, not really. She had awaken with a ferocity born of hate and rage, and had rent the entire Pacific Basin asunder as she roused from her cocoon.

She took flight, reshaping the seabed as she rose. The planetary orbit was destabilized, and the moon shifted subtly due to this. Monstrous waves rose unbidden and crashed over every last bit of land still standing, including his hidden retreat. It had been a harrowing few weeks as he had worked to keep the water from flooding his home. Earth’s orbit around the Sun was erratic now, and no computer model was in agreement, of what path it would take.

Miraculously, the planet itself survived. The damage done was beyond any sort of mending, though. He had prayed Yeltsin had set some sort of remote timer in order to detonate the bomb, but there had been no flash of heat and pain, no cleansing of the world, as the fires of bomb were unleashed. There was nothing but the mother of all Kaiju's birth pains as she broke free, and in an act which would shock the old man to his very core, engaged the
Argo
in space.

The massive ship fought against her with all it could bring to bear, but it was far from enough. Left with no other obvious choice, the ship's captain must have risked an unplotted leap across the galaxy, for the
Argo's
spatial jump bubble had formed around her. The Mother of All continued to fight, to rend into the colony ship, as it began to phase out of the solar system. The chaotic energy of the uncontrolled jump sliced into the massive Kaiju, wounding her grievously as the last hope for humanity disappeared into the stars.

After the colony ship was gone, vanished to only God knew where, her gargantuan body had fallen back to the world of her hibernation. Her death throes, which had lasted for many years, shook the Earth and stirred the oceans. Her children howled in anguish as she died. However, after she had died, they lived on. They hunted the last remnants of humanity, the few survivors who had been pushed to the brink of civilization and thrust into an age when club and spear were needed.

Everyday, he would ask the AI, which cared for his now-failing body the same question.

“The bomb? What of the bomb?” 

The device has not detonated
was always the same reply. The cold in his belly continued to grow, gnawing at the edges of his soul, and his sanity.

*****

Curri was never sure whether it was night or day. Nobody could, not anymore. Once, she had been told, you could look up and see the stars in the heavens clearly. Those days had long passed. Light and dark blended into a constant gray that hung over the Earth, due to the thick fog. There did not seem to be a difference between day and night any longer. A world of vibrant colors, once upon a time, Curri’s environment was, and in her eyes, always had been one of a listlessness and constant gray.

She moved with the grace of a dancer across the jagged, uneven rocks. She was at least two miles from the cave where she and the others of her clan called home. No one else ever came out this far, unless things were so dire they had no other choice. Curri, like her father before her, was bold to the point of recklessness, and regularly partook in such excursions. It was her only escape from the pressing burdens of her duties. She could not recall when her life was different, when the world was alive with life and sound, but the images from her father’s bedtime stories of her youth painted a picture which was so very unlike the world in which she lived. She often wondered if it was all simply a lie to get her to sleep on nights when the night terrors came.

The most vivid memory of her young life had been the day when the sky had burned and the ground had rumbled. Her parents told her that something had came home to Earth, though she couldn't quite remember what that something was supposed to have been. Her father had been so full of hope and excitement, his smile infectious on her young psyche. He was sure the time of the Kaiju was over, though that had deeply confused the young Curri. Whatever had arrived in the stars over the Earth would see to it, he said. He had continued to insist that they were saved even as he died in the collapsing tunnels of a world Curri could never quite grasp.

Curri's mother hadn't been as easily convinced, which saved both of their lives. The woman had done everything within her power to keep Curri levelheaded and aware that nothing might come from the thing in sky. As always, her mother had been right. All the thing in the sky had brought with it was more death, terror, and ultimately, sadness. Her clan called it The Day of the Burning Sky, and for good reason. The skies burned with a strange fire as the Earth beneath their feet shook endlessly. There had been nearly three hundred people fighting to stay alive on the island with them when it all began. Afterwards, there were less than fifty.