Kaiju Apocalypse (6 page)

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 again. 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.

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.