Kaiju Apocalypse (22 page)

“And Matan? “ Curri asked.  “Is it not in your power to spare him?”

“You do not comprehend the magnitude of the device I am asking you to activate.  It will eradicate the Earth and all of the Kaiju with it.  Even if I wished to spare your friend, I cannot.  The class of Tridents he's piloting was not built for space travel.”

Curri glanced about her.  Rebecca and Nanci were weeping openly.  All the others of the Lannier tribe, too, were frozen by fear and despair. 

“Choose now, Curri,” Bach urged her.  “Revenge or a painful, meaningless death at the claws of the creatures outside these doors?”

“Curri?” Rebecca asked.

“Kill them,” Buck spoke up through his own tears.  “Kill every last one of those monsters.”

Curri met the boy's eyes and nodded.

“Which way?” She snapped at Dr. Bach over the comm.

“Good,” he laughed.  “I knew you would be up to the challenge at hand.”

**** 

Matan was quickly able to discern how the Trident functioned, and after a brief moment of sheer panic when he nearly flew the aircraft into the ground, he managed to turn the autopilot off. He carefully swung the craft around and climbed high into the sky. He peered down at the waters below and grimaced as he spotted the numerous Mother Kaiju stalking the ruined city. The people in the bunker didn’t stand a chance, he realized. Curri and the others would die.

One lone Trident stood little chance against a Mother. An entire wing of Tridents might be able to stop one or two Mothers. Against this many, Matan wasn’t sure he would even be able to hurt one before they brought him down. He had to try, though. He had to do something.

He looked over the display panel. The digital touch screens made the system easy to figure out, and after a few seconds, Matan was able to discover that the Trident was not only armed, but it was equipped with missiles as well. His eyes swept across the sky and saw that a small reticule on the window followed his eyes movement. He grinned as he fixed his gaze on one of the Mothers. A second later, the reticule changed color from green to red.

“What are you doing?” Dr. Bach asked through the comm. “You disabled the autopilot.”

“Fighting,” Matan grunted and launched a missile at the Kaiju. The small missile struck the chest plate of the Mother, rocking her back on her heels. The Kaiju roared in pain, and as the smoke cleared, Matan could see a large hole in the Kaiju’s chest. Bright orange blood poured from the wound. The Mother staggered and fell into the water, her body creating a large wave as she splashed down. “Killing Kaiju.”

“I’m going to give you some help,” Dr. Bach informed him. “You may feel a slight... tingling in your head, but it will pass.”

A sudden pressure near the base of his skull nearly overwhelmed Matan. The Trident wobbled slightly as the pressure built and he was barely able to maintain a level flight. True to the doctor’s word, though, it passed as quickly as it hit him and Matan found himself seeing everything around him in a manner he didn’t think was possible. Multi-dimensional graphing overlaid his visual display and he could see varying ranges for different Mother Kaijus. He blinked and rubbed his eyes.

“Wow...” he breathed.

“You can now see what the drones I sent up to act as escorts can see,” the doctor said. “Use them wisely.”

Matan’s feral grinned stretched nearly to his ears. He twisted the handle of the craft and took the Trident into a steep climb. The drones followed obediently after him. He leveled out and broke into a sharp turn. He directed the drones to focus their missiles on one Mother in particular, while he used the large cannons on the Trident to strafe the Kaiju, distracting her from the drones. Incendiary rounds exploded as they pierced her thick hide and the Mother howled in anguish as thousands of rounds impacted. She feebly swatted the air around her, but the drones, smaller than a grown man, easily slipped through her claws.

Two missiles lanced out from the drones and struck the Mother in her gaping maw. Blood, teeth and scales flew everywhere as the face of the Kaiju disappeared behind the twin explosions. Matan zipped past her as she began to totter, the damage extensive enough to throw the beast off-balance. Matan cackled madly and pushed the throttle forward for more speed. The Trident responded and he climbed back into the sky.

The drones warned him of the impending attack from another Mother. He dodged it with contemptuous ease and inverted the craft. He looked out the window and spotted the attacked. A large, bloated Mother covered in blisters was launching the small anti-aircraft Dragon Kaiju. Their silvery forms took to the sky, firing molten streams of metal at the drones as they zipped by. One lucky stream clipped a drone and Matan’s vision wobbled as he lost the perspective of one of the drones.

The extra large Mother roared as two more drones launched their missiles at her. Matan followed their lead and fired three missiles of his own. The Dragons flew upwards to interpose their bodies in front of the target, their shapes obscuring the radar enough to cause two of the missiles to veer off and kill a Dragon instead of harming the Mother. Matan swore as the drones missed as well, their fiery warheads exploding harmlessly on the large Mother’s well-armored back.

“Think you’re clever, do you?” Matan growled as his cannons started firing, wiping out a dozen of the Dragons in one sweep of continuous fire. The aircraft shuddered as one Dragon clipped the wing of the Trident with its own. Matan regained control quickly and twisted the craft into a loop. The drones followed, though they were quickly falling to the Dragons. The plots he had moments before, so rich and detailed, were slowly disappearing under the assault of the Dragon Kaiju.

Matan watched one Mother Kaiju that appeared to be some sort of cross between a dragon and an ape take several drones to its chest, explosions blossoming over in showers of fire, shrapnel, and charred flesh that flew from the beast's body in smoking clumps.  The Kaiju stumbled backwards, nearly falling, but managed to stay on its feet, despite the barrage. Another cluster of the drones flew across the air in front of its face, targeting its eyes with their guns. The thing howled in pain as the drones blinded it. It stumbled into the path of larger crab-like Mother Kaiju. The crab-like Kaiju angrily reached out with its pincers, drawing blood as they clasped the wounded Kaiju and flung it out of its path and into the murky water.

The wounded Kaiju rose back out of the water and let loose an earth-shattering roar of challenge. The crab-like Mother turned back and began to charge the wounded Kaiju. The two great beasts clashed, humanity forgotten as they vented their natural born rage and anger upon one another in a test of strength and might. Ignored, the drones continued to fire their guns into the two, wounding both and enraging them further. The combatants fell beneath the waves, pincers locked onto the throat of one Kaiju while teeth were embedded into the neck of the other.

Another Dragon flashed into view and he fired the cannons reflexively. The incendiary rounds tore the smaller Kaiju to pieces and he flew through the remains of it. Something small cracked the pane of glass, which protected him from the elements, the small crack quickly growing larger as the constant pressure from the winds escalated the problem. Matan slowed the Trident and the crack stopped growing, but now, he found himself with a new and unexpected problem.

A claw from a Mother Kaiju narrowly missed his Trident, and the acid stream she vomited up at him barely missed. The craft, moving just fast enough, managed to miss all of the corrosive liquid, but he knew that his time was running short. He had to give Curri and the others a chance to get inside the bunker and do whatever Dr. Bach needed them to accomplish.

A plan began to form in the back of his mind, one so audacious and daring that he wasn’t certain whether it was truly his idea or one implanted by the doctor.

“Dear God, please let this work,” Matan whispered, praying for the first time since he had been a young boy being held in the protective arms of his mother, and before she had been ripped away during the Night of the Burning Sky. Before he had become a jaded and given up all hope for humanity’s future. “Please.”

The drones began to fly near the faces of the approaching Mother Kaiju, annoying them and buzzing close to their eyes and ears. The Mothers responded as he had hoped and they began to thrash wildly in the air. A Mother was accidently struck by another, and they howled at one another. The drones continued to instigate and prod them, angering them further. Matan fired another missile at them for good measure, and the two Mothers began to brawl, their single-minded purpose forgotten in their lust for blood and carnage.

The Trident shook violently. Matan glanced out the broken window and spotted a Dragon Kaiju clutching the wing of the aircraft. He tried to shake it off, but the Dragon held firm, the razor-sharp beak of the beast digging into the fuselage. He felt control of the aircraft slipping from his fingers and realized that his time was running out.

He took the Trident into a violent and steep dive, which caused the Dragon to lose its grip on the wing. However, the small Kaiju had managed to damage some of the electrical components within and the stabilizers were now shot. He could turn left and right still, but he could not take any sharp turns. His maneuverability had just been cut in half.

“Matan,” Dr. Bach said over the comm. “You are doing good work, but I need you to do one more thing.”

“Huh?” Matan asked as he began to pull out of his dive, or tried, at least. His hands were locked in position. He tried to move. No part of his body from his neck down was responding. Panic began to fill him. “Doctor, I can’t move my arms!”

“I know.”

“What do you mean?” Matan cried out.

“I need you to die in a blaze of glory,” Dr. Bach said. “Curri’s psychological profile that I’ve been able to build on her over the past few hours suggests that the loss of both you and the soldier named Higgins would give her the combined strength and despair she would need to activate the Verhys module.”

“No... don’t,” Matan pleaded as tears began to form in the corner of his eyes. “I can do this. I can win.”

“There is nothing to win, young man,” Dr. Bach chided. “There is simply a task to accomplish and the means to facilitate it. You are nothing more than the means.”

Matan began to swear and yell at the doctor as the Trident built up more speed. The propulsion kicked into overdrive and the aircraft screamed downward from the sky. Matan could see the dark blue water rushing up to meet him. He tried one last gambit.

“If you’re going to kill me, drive me into one of those God-forsaken Mothers!”

Silence reigned over the comm for long, terrifying moments as the ocean grew bigger and bigger in his view. Matan’s heart began to beat faster and faster before he felt his hand move, and pulled the stick back, taking him out of his dive. The g-forces pushed him back into the pilot’s chair as he leveled out mere meters above the waves of the ocean. The Trident turned and lined up on another Mother Kaiju.

“Thank you,” Matan whispered as missiles began to fly from the underbelly of the Trident. The Mother staggered from the onslaught and roared in pain. Matan felt the aircraft increase speed. “Thank you.”

Matan felt another one of the Dragons land on the Trident's hull with a loud thud that shook the ship.  The Trident wobbled as two more Dragons joined the first.  Their claws tore and ripped at the ship's hull. Warning lights lit the entire console in front of him as the Dragons continued tearing into the ship. It no longer mattered – it was too late. The Trident crashed into the Mother Kaiju, turning itself and the Mother Kaiju's upper torso into a blazing eruption of burning fuel and detonating ordnance. Matan's last thought was of Curri.  Her face flashed before his eyes as they were melted away inside their sockets.

The Mother Kaiju fell into the ocean, dead. Of the Trident or Matan, there was not a trace left.

**** 

Curri stared at the withered old man in the life support chair with unveiled disgust. Various tubes were connected to his frail body through the chair, and his sunken eyes were yellowed. Something in the chair hissed, a continuous sound that began to grate on the ragged edge of her nerves.

The room was quiet. The others in her tribe had elected to stay in another secure room together to be with one another when Curri activated the bomb. It left her alone, with the exception of the man on the video comm display who was looking down upon her. She turned away so she would not have to look at him as she tried to comprehend the massive device before her.