Unity (22 page)

Another shriek, as the limb falls away.

I pound my right hand, and the long blade extended above it, at the monster’s chest. It chips the armor, but can’t get through. I punch harder, again and again, knocking it back, screaming now, seeing Howard and seeing red.

Claws streak by my face—by F-B0MB’s face—raking three gouges into the lower facemask.

I kick the creature in the gut, adding a boost from the repulse engines, knocking it back. Then I unload our final batch of rockets. The force of the explosion knocks the alien back, but has the same effect on F-B0MB.

But I recover faster, stabbing at the thing’s chest over and over, chipping away at the seam in front.

And then, with a final thrust, the blade finds a chink, slips through the tightly clenched armor and slides into monster Howard’s chest.

The daikaiju goes still.

Its four yellow eyes stare at me. Empty and unblinking.

Then it moves.

The daikaiju’s still-whole left arm swings around and catches F-B0MB’s right arm in the elbow. Held tight between the robot’s shoulder and the blade buried in the monster’s chest, the elbow bends inward and shatters.

I feel no real pain, but suddenly losing all control of a limb is still jarring.

I flinch back, pulling the blade from the creature’s chest, cursing myself—and Hutch and Sig, whose knowledge I share, for assuming its vital organs would mirror that of a human being’s. This thing might not even have a heart.

The tail sweeps around behind me before I can recover, and it takes out my legs. The repulse engines on the Striker reduce the fall’s impact, but I go down just the same.

Subdued.

On the defense.

About to be impaled by the tail’s sharp tip, and crushed beneath the daikaiju’s massive, rising foot.

And that’s exactly what we want it to think.

Lying on my back, I lift my left hand up, raise a single finger and do my namesake proud.

The first shot strikes the end of the tail, where flesh tapers and becomes a spike. Vegas’s marksman railgun shot removes the tail’s lethal tip and sends the daikaiju reeling back on one foot. Before it can recover, a cloud of rockets, three hundred strong, fired by Berg, Gwen and Ghost, knock the giant forward onto its knees and lone hand. Its back smolders. Blood, as red as ours, pours from its severed arm and tail. And yet, those glowing eyes haven’t lost any of their hateful glare.

The face plates burst open, unleashing the tendrils once more. Up close, I can see a mouth, unleashing a defiant roar.

It loses its voice—and its head—a moment later when F-B0MB’s repulse discs launch me to my feet and I bring the shield-turned-axe down on the back of its neck.

Headless, the body goes slack.

The armor plates open up.

Limp tendrils spill out.

And the whole thing drops down at my feet.

I take a moment to catch my breath and then ask, “How many of these things are on the planet?”

The question goes out to all Unity teams, and it’s Daniel who answers. “Best guess, upwards of ten thousand.”

Sig, Hutch and I all wince in unison, but the hopelessness is shoved back a moment later and replaced by my words, “Well then, one down, ten thousand more to go.”

Three days have passed since the beast’s destruction. But we found no peace in it. The world far beyond us is still in shambles. We can watch the horrors from high above, witnesses to the end of civilization. Of humanity. And every other species on Earth. The daikaiju invaders aren’t particular about what they eat, as long as it’s flesh and blood.

Sig has done the math—she can’t
not
do the math—and says we have just six months.

Six months and everything larger than a raccoon will be wiped out.

Consumed.

The insects will inherit the Earth. And rodents. In a thousand years, the planet
could
be covered in rabbits, leading to the next great extinction.

And in six months, when they’ve eaten everything, will the daikaiju move on?

Will they find this island?

If not, will
we
be all that’s left?

There have to be other nooks and crannies of the world that they’ll overlook.

No
, I think,
they can sense us
. The daikaiju that crashed in the ocean came here because it knew we were here. The monsters turning the mainland to ash might not feel us now, but when we’re the only ones left...I’m not sure there is anywhere on Earth we could hide.

And I don’t want to hide.

I want to fight.

We all do. But what can three Unity teams, Shugoten or not, do against ten thousand daikaiju? We narrowly survived an encounter with just one of them, and that was only because I managed to overcome my greatest fear nine years ago. Vegas, Berg and all the others are still susceptible to another psychological attack, and we don’t even have a shrink on hand to help them work past their phobias or past traumas. Despite having Shugoten on hand, I’m the only one who can take them into battle without turning into a pile of mental mush. Well, me and Hutch.

He’s been quiet since our victory—we all have been—but our friendship is now rock solid. The trust that exists between him, Sig and me is like nothing I’ve experienced. We have felt each other’s worst fears and have overcome them together.

“You’re drifting,” Sig says.

I smile at Sig and lean back, watching the sunset. We’re sitting at the edge of the Unity campsite’s cliff, feet dangling over the precipice of doom, just like the rest of the planet. Some of the hammocks behind us have been replaced by graves. Mandi is there, visited once every day by Hutch. While everyone is quiet for their own reasons, Mandi is his. And if I’m honest, a large part of mine. Freckles is there, too, along with the rest of the Unity bodies we could recover from the crashed transport.

Quinlan, Luiz, Bear, Whitey, Twig and even Mack, have been buried in the field by the landing pad. We buried the long-dead skeletal remains of those slaughtered by Quinlan, as well. I was surprised that Vegas wanted to honor Quinlan’s final request, but despite being a hardened soldier, he’s shown a great capacity to forgive. “Some people break easier than others,” he said, after shoveling the final bit of soil over his old friend’s body. “Sometimes even the best of us. I’ll miss who you were, buddy, and try to forget who you became.” He looked at me then and said, “Overcoming an enemy is just the first step. Making peace with them, that’s the hard part.”

For a moment, I thought he was suggesting there was some way for us to come to some kind of peaceful agreement with the invaders, but that would be like lions making peace with zebras. Sure, the zebras would be all for it, but the lions...they need to eat. And so do the daikaiju. We might just be one stop on some kind of intergalactic migration. Maybe some of us will live, and in a million years, they’ll be back for more. Maybe they’ve been here before?

Visions of the slain daikaiju flit through my head. It invaded my dreams that first night, but I’ve managed to not think about it since we put it under the ground. That was the first body we buried, using Shugoten to dig a massive grave where the tidal wave flattened the jungle—where we first washed up on Unity Island, as we now call it. We didn’t bury the creature out of some kind of respect for our slain enemy. We just don’t want it to be noticed. We’re not ready to face another of those things, let alone have a bunch of them come to find out what happened to poor old Howard.

“Still drifting,” Sig says. “You do that a lot now.”

“There’s a lot to think about now.”

“There has always been a lot to think about,” she says. “It’s just unavoidable now.”

“Thank you, Socrates.” A twitch of movement pulls my attention down to her hand. A spider creeps along her skin, toward her knuckles. “Spider on your hand.”

I say the words casually, but her reaction is big. She snaps her hand up, flinging the arachnid away. But even after it’s gone, she keeps shaking. “Where did it go? Where did it go?”

I’ve never seen her in such a panic, and in that moment, I know the fear of spiders I felt while connected to the psy-net, belonged to her, not Hutch.

“Is it in my hair?” she asks, shaking her head.

I point at the small spider, scurrying away. The size ratio between Sig and the fleeing creature is comparable to a daikaiju and a human. “It’s right there.” I point at it. “See? I don’t think it’s going to mess with you again.”

She catches her breath for a moment, relaxes again and leans her head against my shoulder. I place my cheek against her smooth hair and close my eyes to the sun, drifting once more.

This time inside the mountain.

Daniel, Gizmo, Duff and Doli have set themselves to the task of repairing the damaged Shugoten. There’s a repair bay with an army of robot arms capable of disassembling the giant machines, fixing damage or replacing parts. There are also forty-seven perfectly functional Shugoten standing idle in the hangar bay’s sublevels, including F-B0MB-002 and F-B0MB-003. But the Bases seem more interested in the damaged machines, taking them apart, seeing how they work and exploring how they can be made better. Seeing their excited faces, as they peel back plates of armor the size of buildings, reminds me that they’re just kids.

Kids turned soldiers.

It’s tragic, but a common occurrence in conflicts throughout history. Industrialized nations cry out against the practice when warring African nations recruit the young, often brutally. But those same nations take eighteen-, seventeen- and sixteen-year-olds into their militaries, sending them out into combat from which there is no return. The First and Second World Wars were full of child soldiers, on both sides, the youngest being an eight-year-old boy. The Hitler Youth served the Nazis, while at the same time, Jewish youth resisted the Nazis in the Warsaw Ghettos. Kids in the allied nations, as young as twelve, fueled by national pride, signed up for active duty.

Part of me wants to be aghast that it has happened again, that Unity took a bunch of kids and thrust us into this war. Made us killers. Made
me
a killer. Again. But I’m having trouble staying angry at them. Unity believed that we had twenty more years. And the alternative, in this situation, would have been to sit back, do nothing and let us all die.

But like New Hampshire’s John Stark once said, ‘Death is not the worst of evils.’ Though I doubt he ever pictured being eaten alive by a daikaiju. As the words sift through my thoughts, I find myself feeling connected to America’s revolutionaries. ‘Live free or die.’ Also Stark’s words. The point is, living in fear of losing your life is worse than fighting for it, and losing it. To die fighting is an American cliché, but it still rings true with anyone who has ever been oppressed, humiliated or abused.

Don’t run.

You can’t.

You have to fight, Effie.

That advice saved my life nine years ago, and again, three days ago.

And I intend to follow it again.

I’m just not sure how. Guerilla warfare works, but I can’t recall a situation in history where just eleven people, age eighteen down to nine, fought off an army of ten thousand, never mind an army of ten thousand five-hundred-foot-tall daikaiju from another world.

The situation is hopeless. The realist in me knows that. But it will be better to die fighting.
And take as many of them with me as possible.

“Mind if I sit down?” Gwen’s voice startles me out of my glum determination.

I look back at her. She’s dressed in a white flight suit that matches Vegas’s and shows off curves I would have never guessed she had. I see Hutch behind her, kneeling at Mandi’s grave, hands gripping the cross that marks it. They came here together, probably not expecting company.

I pat the solid cliff edge beside me, inviting Gwen to sit, which she does.

After a moment of silence, Sig says, “Are you drifting, too?”

“What’s that mean?” Gwen asks.

“Means you’re not really here,” Sig says.

Gwen leans forward, looking past me. “Who’s not really here?”

I raise my hand.

“Well, there
is
a lot to think about,” she says, making me smile and Sig laugh.

“Always has been.” I give Sig a little nudge.

“S’pose,” Gwen says, and we all fall silent again.

Hutch joins us in the sun’s setting glow a moment later, sitting down beside Sig and putting his arm around her.

I’ve never had a family, but I think it would have felt something like this.

It’s a perfect moment.

And that’s as long as it lasts.

The stone beneath us shakes. Not violently. But it feels like the whole island is quivering.

“Back from the edge,” I say, pushing myself away. Then I take hold of Sig and drag her with me.

When we’re far enough away from the cliff, we stand on shaky ground and move back further, past the campsite and into the jungle, some primitive instinct telling us to hide.

I search the view before us for some sign of an approaching daikaiju, but the only monster in view is the one we buried far below.

“What is it?” Sig asks, but none of us has an answer.

Crunching leaves turn us around. I’m expecting some kind of attack, but it’s just Vegas and Ghost, shirtless and buff, out for a run.

“What’s happening?” Vegas asks, addressing me.

“No idea.”

“Have you asked Operations?” he asks.

We keep one person in Operations at all times, monitoring the situation around the world, keeping watch on the island’s perimeter, ready to sound the alarm. Right now, that’s Gizmo. And the nine-year-old is probably freaking out right now, trying to reach the person in charge—which is somehow still me—and failing. I had shut my comm off to enjoy the sunset. To connect with Sig, the way we used to. A sacred moment.

But nothing is sacred anymore, it seems.

I tap the comm unit on my black flight-suit collar and Gizmo’s high-pitched voice fills my ear. I can’t understand a word of it.

“Gizmo!” I shout. “I can’t understand you. Gizmo!”

He stops talking, breathing hard. “Effie?”

“I’m here.”

“I couldn’t reach anyone. I thought they got you.”

“Who?” I ask, not really wanting to know.

“
Who?
” He says it like it’s the stupidest question I ever asked. “Look
up.
”

I turn my head up, but all I can see is the jungle’s canopy. The leaves overhead are shaking, filling the air with a loud
shhh
, but it’s not being caused by the rumbling moving through the ground. There’s something above them.

I run back through the campsite, past the crosses and hammocks, sliding to a stop before careening over the cliff. I look up again, and see it.

A massive object, perhaps a mile across and miles long, cruises past—flying, not falling—high in the atmosphere, but still looking way too close. Its surface is black and jagged. Long black spines protrude from the front of it. It makes no sound as it flies past, but the effect of its passing can be seen in the trees, and in the rippling ocean.

A cloud of smaller objects buzz around it. They look like black sea urchins, spiked on all sides.

This is how the daikaiju got here,
I think. But did they
pilot
this thing, or were they
passengers
?

From their altitude, miles above us, I would look like nothing more than a fleck of dust on a boulder seen from a hundred feet away. But I duck back anyway, sure I’ll be spotted. “Back,” I tell the others. “Back inside. Now!”

When no one moves, Vegas rounds the others up and herds them toward the nearest hatch, all of which are now programmed to open for any single brand. But I linger, watching the massive ship head toward the horizon. Vegas returns for me, gripping my arm when I don’t reply to the three times he says my name.

A shadow falls over us, as the setting sun is blotted out.

Vegas steps in front of me, my eyes at hardened pec level. He puts a hand under my chin, lifting my eyes toward his.

“What are we going to do?” I ask.

“We have before us an ordeal of the most grievous kind. We have before us many, many, long months of struggle and of suffering. You ask, what is our policy? I can say: It is to wage war, by sea, land and air, with all our might and with all the strength that God can give us; to wage war against a monstrous tyranny...”