Kaiju Rising: Age of Monsters (49 page)

The visors had a phosphorous layer that allowed her to pick out the footprints left behind. It was all rhythm, something she learned in one of her countless piano lessons as a kid. She could follow the beat and determine it’s next step.

This one’s steps told her it would veer to the right after three more steps. She focused on the warriors strapped on the beast’s shoulders. They were indistinct at this distance. They’d tried sniping the soldiers but the Kaiju had seemed to feel their deaths and go into a rage that led to it losing control and in the process losing its ability to extrude its weapons. The first time that happened the explosion had been like a nuclear detonation.

“I wish we could just tiny nuke the bomb on these bastards.” Katie gritted her teeth.

This battle might be a test but it would also lead to a loss of life and one of those lives might very well be her own.

“That would be unwise. I was an observer on the first attempt to remove the alien craft from the waters of Okinawa.”

“I heard what happened,” she tried to cut him off.

“The beasts were furious, Commander. It was a massacre. The island, as we call it, opened up and out poured such a menagerie of beasts it was like leaving Dante’s Inferno with Hell on our heels. Flying beasts with four and six wings intercepted the craft and drug them to the ocean. Our assault force on the water was sent to the bottom. We suffered over six thousand losses and this was all, as the theory goes, due to the material. The nuclear material. Even Einstein was baffled.”

“I don’t need a goddamn history lesson,” Katie shot back.

Big Dog shifted around her as guns were readied, shifting the weight to the front of the metal beast. She moved the eclipse lender aside and tried to concentrate on the task at hand.

“We always need a history lesson. My country would have done well to pay attention to 1914 but we were blind.”

“Shut your mouth. Just shut your goddamn mouth, right now. As your commander, I order you to.”

“You do not wish me to speak of the past or you do not wish me to speak at all?” he asked.

His blue eyes were as piercing as ever, but she could tell she’d hurt him.

You know what I mean. You know. You’re the reason my husband is dead!
She wanted to scream, then drop out of the stupid webbing, pick up a wrench, and beat this man to death. Her husband had died inside a tank.

“There’s a second one!” Glaus gasped and pointed.

Gunny Mack came over the intercom a half second behind with the news.

“Got a Mark Three on his six. Ah shit-biscuits.”

“We’re going to die in this stupid metal box.”

“We are not going to die, Commander,” Heinrich said with such finality she wanted to believe him.

“I want the one of sixes readied,” she called to Gunner Mack.

“Readying the rounds.” His Jersey accent came back strong.

Katie considered the path of both beasts. The Mark Three towered over the Mark Two by at least forty feet, and with that height came so much mass that even their largest shells might do nothing more than clean its teeth. On three legs, this was a newer Kaiju, something they’d never faced before. Mark Threes had been seen but never in combat. During the battle of Saipan in 1949 a Mark Three had threatened but hadn’t been required because the American forces were so soundly trounced the Three had slunk back into the depths.

“Commander, I don’t think we stand a chance.”

“Two degrees high,” she yelled. The size of the guns meant that the slightest shift resulted in a greater arc and it took a careful touch to get the angles just right. In test after test she’d beaten the mighty Heinrich Glaus at every version of artillery and tank shelling they threw her way.

What she hadn’t been prepared for was actual combat with the exception of flying the X-187 Marauder, the plane that had been set to upgrade the US Air Force before the war became one almost entirely on the ground.

“Mark, two degrees high.”

“Watch for the soldiers. It appears they have spotters on both shoulders,” Glaus said.

“I know.” She slid her binoculars down and spotted them as well.

Jets roared overhead as the first of the fighters arrived. They stayed high but, as they closed in, the planes dipped low to deliver their payloads.

Dozens of missiles fell toward earth. Propelled but unguided they relied on inertia and the pilots. It also didn’t take into account the stuttering steps of the giant beasts, and that’s why most of the first wave missed.

Explosions rocked the ground and tore up terrain. Smoke rose into the air and billowed. A second flight screamed in and delivered another blast. Most of the ordinance struck but it was like hitting an elephant with a BB gun.

“Fire two and four!” Katie yelled, and then wrapped her hands around her head.

The pounding as the smaller guns bellowed was like sitting near a gong. The pulse struck her hard enough to rattle her teeth.

“One and Three ready,” Gunner Mack called over the comms.

“Fire one and Three.” She took her hands off her ears long enough to hear her own voice, and then slapped them back around her head.

The firing went on and shells arced into the sky.

They were still a kilometer away but closing fast. The shells arrived in a few heartbeats.

The monster tried to shift to the side but it was too late. Several of the shells struck and blew the beast back. Detonations rocked up and down the coast as shells continued to fall.

“One of the eights at the ready,” Gunner Mack called.

“We have to line up. Keep them warm, gunner,” Katie said.

Heinrich dropped down from his perch and appraised Katie’s condition.

“None the worse for wear, I see.”

“Just do your job. I can take care of myself.” She glared.

The man nodded once and resumed his watch. She slapped the Eclipse Lender to her eye to inspect the damage.

The shells had done damage, and a lot of it. On top of the Kaiju’s shoulder men clung to the remains of their wooden platform. Many had fallen but the three who appeared to be meditating
were still strapped next to the monster’s neck, hands extended as they continued their silent vigil. Why did it make the monsters crazy when the men were killed? Why? What sort of symbiotic connection existed that was so deep it transmitted each other’s pain.

Or was that it? Did the men feel pain just as the Kaiju did when the Japanese warriors were struck?

“Damage?” she asked Heinrich.

“The new magnesium shells worked marvelously. I can see that chunks are missing. The Class Two is hurting and has slowed.”

“What about the drivers. Can you see them? Can you make out their faces?”

Heinrich was silent or a few seconds. He shifted to a longer lens then looked back down into the cockpit.

“They are in great pain. Did we hit them?”

“If we’d hit them this entire area would have gone up.”

“The Two is moving,” Heinrich said.

She didn’t need the reminder. If they stayed here much longer they were dead.

“We need to get closer.”

“No, we need to run. I see its chest cavity undulating. Is that the word?”

“Yeah.” Katie rolled her eyes. “Gunner, get those plates in place. Brace for impact, and I want crews standing by with soda,” she yelled and hit a button on her console.

Men moved into action rerouting boiler steam to the six-inch plates. Her console reported the shields were moving into position.

“Slow to one quarter flank and squat,” she called out and punched more buttons.

Big Dog came to a near stop, and then shifted its weight to back legs. Front legs pistoned down, lifting her big puppy’s front end into the air. Her view of the world disappeared. She stared for as long as she could even raising herself against the webbing until all she saw was sky and a pair of Kaiju intent on tearing Big Dog to scrap.

The plating came into place completely covering their view. She tried to think of the men topside that were diving into cavities in the ship or cowering behind the plating.

The shells hammered at Big Dog. He shuddered and shook but, to her surprise, they bounced away just as Heinrich had said. The angled plating had been the German’s idea based on his days commanding Panzers.

Katie slid her own periscope down and stared at the Kaiju, cursing her new and limited view of the action. The glass was hard to see through thanks to damage from the last salvo. Something had struck the glass and made it dirty on the port side. She strained her eyes but only made out vague shapes.

The fighters came screaming overhead to buy them time. Missiles leapt away and flew at the Kaiju. The class three howled at the planes and fired on them. A shotgun blast of heavy balls took four planes but at least a dozen escaped.

“Acid!” someone called from topside. Might have been Peter but his voice was high and scratchy and hard to make out.

“How much?” Katie yelled into the intercom. The shifting and rocking of Big Dog made it almost impossible to hear her own thoughts.

Gunny must have been feeling lucky because he fired a fresh salvo of rounds. They screamed over the distance and hit the class two low. The explosions ripped it off the ground and sent the beast crashing forward.

“It’s not too bad. Deploying counter measures.”

Katie grimaced. Counter measures were simply bags of baking soda, but at least the stuff would stop the plating from being eaten away.

“Angle the one O six milimeter down ten degrees and fire,” she called.

A few seconds later her commands became action and Big Dog shuddered as its largest guns fired.

“Plate down six feet,” she ordered. It was too hard to make out the action.

“Plate down,” Gunny Mack confirmed.

Her view shifted long enough to make out the Class Three coming into view.

“Engineering. Kilmer, we need to be fast. Can you give me full power and take us to port at speed.”

“On it.”

“The leak?”

“Still there but we got most of it contained.”

“Are we moving to flank?”

“I’m trying.”

“It better be your best because that Class Three is about to pound us.”

“Damage!” Glaus said, and she nearly leapt out of her seat.

The shells arrived and took the Kaiju right in the back of the head. The explosion was immense as the beast died. There was some soft material back there but the chance of making such a strike was hard to pull off.

The ground shook as the Kaiju went up. The rolling terrain and accompanying tropical trees shuddered, then were blown over by typhoon forced wind. Fire spread, and then came a small mushroom cloud.

“Son of a bitch, that was a big explosion.”

“
Ja
, and the class three is moving now. Fast. It doesn’t seem to have been affected by the blast,” Glaus said.

Big Dog lurched to the side just as it fired. The shotgun blast of hundreds of pellets the size of boulders arced toward them. Big Dog kept moving as it shifted from ‘ass down’ to ‘ass on the run’, but there was a problem. Even if they managed to turn around, a feat that would take minutes instead of seconds, even if they went to flank speed, there was no way they were outrunning the class three.

“How soon?”

“Not long now. It’s running.”

She ordered the plate lowered. If she kept it up it would only delay the inevitable and she preferred to see their doom approaching.

“What’s it doing?” Glaus asked.

She had no answer.

The guns thundered relentlessly as they were loaded and fired in tandem. Forty-eights and one O sixes with their own unique sounds. But the pattern was so fast it was staccato and music to her ears.

Then a fresh wing of fighters spread across the battlefield and unleashed hell. Missiles raced across the sky to impact with the building sized beast. Explosions danced across it’s mid section, arms, and legs. The Kaiju howled in fury and extended whip like armatures to bat at the gnats swarming past.

Something else whistled overhead and stuck the creature, giving it pause.

“What the hell?”

“Battleships are firing.”

“But that’s a death warrant,” she said.

“It will also buy us time.”

“It’s not worth the loss of life.”

“I do not agree. If we locate a weakness in the beasts then a million deaths may someday be averted.”

“You would say that.” She muttered under her breath, “Fucking Nazi.”

“As I have explained, your anger toward me is misplaced.

“Not now, just shut up about you and how your country followed orders to kill millions. Is that why you’re on this mission? Redemption.”

“As a matter of fact it is
,
fräulein
.”

Katie wanted to shoot back an angry retort, but she never got the chance. The class three Kaiju did something unexpected, something she’d never seen or heard of before.