Kaiju deadfall, p.10
Kaiju: Deadfall, page 10
“How is Ingersall?”
“He’s helping me with the comm repairs. We had to replace all the wiring between the antenna and the computer. We had to strip wiring from the service module, but we’re almost done. Maybe two hours.”
He didn’t remind her that had been her estimate seventeen hours earlier. “Increase oxygen levels and keep me informed of any more changes. Langston out.”
He didn’t say, but they all knew, that if their orbit was dropping, they would have more than enough oxygen to last until impact, despite the ruptured tank. There was no reason to conserve it.
“Mahall out.”
“Is she crazy? That thing can’t be pulling the ship down. It’s impossible.”
Langston turned to Crenshaw. “No, she’s not crazy. She’s frightened, and she’s exhausted. I am too. Whatever the reason, we have less time than we thought.”
“Maybe she’s starting to think God isn’t out there where those things came from.” She paused. “But the decaying orbit is caused by something,” she suggested, and then glanced away as if embarrassed. “I … felt something out there when we were near the teardrop.”
His senses tingled. “Oh?”
“It’s not benign. It’s alive somehow.”
That she had mirrored his thoughts so well disturbed him more than the idea that he had been imagining everything.
“Let’s stick to the facts, shall we? Get suited up. It’s time to make more observations.”
She swallowed hard and nodded, though her face revealed her concern.
During the trek to the alien object, Langston reviewed what they knew, and it was very little. They had no tools powerful enough to penetrate the surface, no instruments capable of providing a scan of the interior or intercepting any signals that the object might be emitting. He had experienced no increase in gravity near the object, so its mass was not affecting Lunar One’s orbit, but he feared Mahall might be right.
This time, they had brought more equipment from the lander with which to take measurements of the object. They dragged their possessions along behind them in a four-wheeled lunar buggy like a couple of homeless people. They had also brought shielding laboriously removed from the lander cradle to construct a bridge across the chasm.
The teardrop was a shadow puppet cast by an invisible hand. It lay across the surface of the moon like an ancient artifact, a totem of a forgotten race, or a fragment of an abandoned temple. Its presence filled him with dread, as if it would reach out and yank his soul from his body, if he truly had a soul. He had doubts. Maybe Mahall felt it too. With her deeply religious background, such a confrontation with evil would frighten her, challenge her beliefs.
The teardrop swallowed the meager light of the faraway sun as if a rift in space. Not that far away, he thought. The sun is actually closer at this moment than if I were on Earth. The objects edges were blurred and indistinct, creating an optical illusion that seemed to make it undulate like a heat mirage. He tore his eyes from the object to help Crenshaw set up a video recorder, a wide-spectrum electro-magnetic detector, and a sound detector. Sound could not travel through a vacuum, but sensors in the soil would pick up any vibrations coming from it.
After setting up the equipment, he circled the object, studying its outlines. The bas relief designs carved into its surface could have been either art or structural. If art, they resembled nothing he had ever seen. If structural, he could see no purpose for them. His gaze followed the convoluted lines until he became dizzy. He held his hand above the ebony surface. A spark jumped between the object and his glove. For an instant, he saw a great lumbering multi-legged creature crossing a vast rocky plain beneath a dark purple sky mottled with crimson clouds. Then, it was gone.
“Are you okay?” Crenshaw asked.
He nodded, but then realized she couldn’t see him nod in the bulky spacesuit. “Yes.”
Crenshaw held an electronic notepad in her hand, glancing down at it and then up at the teardrop. “The temperature of the object hasn’t changed, even though the ambient temperature is over a hundred-degrees centigrade. It seems to be absorbing the sunlight without heating.”
This piqued Langston’s interest. “How is that possible?”
“I have no idea.”
Langston stared at the object. Were the shadows deeper along the sides? He squinted for a closer look. The ground vibrated and the teardrop moved.
“Did you feel that?” he asked.
“Yes. It dropped another two meters. The buried end is raising a mound of soil.”
The thought produced a shudder in Langston. There was no appreciable seismic activity on the moon. It was as if the teardrop was deliberately trying to free itself. If it did, what would happen?
“It’s trying to pull free,” he said.
“Or maybe its position is simply shifting in the lunar soil.”
Crenshaw’s suggestion made more sense than his far-fetched idea, but he knew he was right. “I think it’s shifting to re-establish contact with the Girra objects.”
“This is all just speculation,” she replied. “We have no proof of any of this.”
“You felt it, just as I did. It’s trying to communicate with us, or we’re intercepting some of its messages. I’m positive it’s communicating with the three objects it accompanied to Earth, controlling them. If we could stop it somehow …”
He left the thought unfinished. They had no way to interfere with gravitons or to damage the object. They were casual observers to the destruction of their home planet.
“As you said, we’re just speculating,” he admitted.
As he saw it, they were long on theories but short on facts. He was certain that he was right about its function as a relay station, but with no way to prove it or even test his theory, there was little they could do but observe.
The ground trembled again, causing a rockslide. Boulders the size of small cars careened down the steep slope, slamming into the teardrop.
“It’s getting dangerous around here,” Crenshaw said.
“We’ll leave the instruments. Maybe they will discover something.”
As they hurried back up the crater’s rim, Langston glanced back over his shoulder at the towering peaks balanced so delicately above the teardrop. If the object was trying to dig itself out…
“How much does the Orion mass?” he asked.
“About twenty-five tons. Why? Are you calculating the effect the object might have on Lunar One?”
“No, I’m wondering what effect Lunar One might have on it.”
Crenshaw turned to face him. He couldn’t make out her expression through her darkened faceplate, but there was no disguising the dread in her voice. “You’re not thinking what I think you’re thinking.”
“Lunar One has less than thirty-six hours to live. I see little chance for rescue by that time.”
“But you’re suggesting we all become martyrs even if we have no clue if we might make a difference.”
“I don’t want any martyrs. We’ll return to Lunar One and wait as long as we can for rescue. Then, you, Mahall, and Ingersall will take the lander, all the remaining oxygen, establish a stable orbit, and wait for rescue. I’ll plot a course that will plunge the Orion into the crater as close to the teardrop as I can. It should produce a large enough explosion to cause a massive landslide and cover the teardrop with thousands of tons of rock.”
“If you think it will work, we should do it now. The teardrop might break free before then. I’ll come with you. That will give Mahall and Ingersall more oxygen and more time.”
Langston braced himself, as he skidded down the outside slope of the crater, leaving a cloud of dust that hung suspended in the air but did not blow away. “No. No one dies until all hope of rescue is gone. Then, it will be me. I’m the captain, and the captain always goes down with his ship.”
“I know you were in the Navy, but you were a pilot, not a ship’s captain.”
“I am now, and this is an order, Crenshaw.”
“Yes, Sir.”
She snapped a crisp salute with her gloved hand, but he could hear the anger in her voice. He understood her willingness to sacrifice herself against an enemy of Earth, but crashing the Orion was a one-man job – his job. The others had no guarantee of rescue. In the end, his might be the kindest death.
Girra
13
Saturday, August 11, 12:35 a.m. (CDT) Hammond, Indiana –
General Elliot McCabe lowered his night vision goggles and wiped his perspiring forehead. He had seen enough. For four hours, wave after wave of jet fighters and attack helicopters had mounted an unprecedented assault on the Girra creature and its host of flying creatures. The winged creatures had thrown themselves into jet engines and into the rotors of helicopters to bring them down. Scores had died, but more of the creatures took their places, pouring from the blisters dotting Girra’s serrated segments. McCabe wondered if the creature was hollow, a kind of mobile aircraft carrier. The jet aircraft had been forced to land to refuel and rearm, but Girra’s march continued unabated.
Now, it was his turn.
An entire armored division waited just outside Hammond, Indiana for Girra. If Girra could not be stopped that night, almost ten million people in the metropolitan Chicago area would be at risk. The city was under evacuation, but he knew that only a few hundred thousand would ever make it out in time. The expressways were jammed with automobiles and traffic was at a standstill. The elevated trains were being swamped at each station by mobs of frightened passengers. The airports had been reopened, but re-routing planes into the area took time, time they did not have.
A ring of steel open at the end facing the approaching creature surrounded the city of Hammond, Indiana. The steel was the Third Armored Division, comprised of four battalions of 150 M1 Abrams tanks capable of firing conventional rounds and Excalibur rockets, 60 Bradley fighting vehicles, and 3,000 men armed with machineguns, mortars, and shoulder launched Serpent rockets. In addition, 115 M114 and M198-155 mm howitzers augmented the armor. McCabe believed it more than enough firepower to meet Girra’s challenge. Once Girra was destroyed, the military could concentrate on Nusku in the Nevada desert and Ishom in San Francisco. He shook his head in wonder at whoever had named these creatures.
“Sounds like a Saturday morning Japanese anime cartoon show,” he commented aloud.
“What, sir?” his aid, Major Frank Wojohowitz asked.
“Nothing, Frank, just musing.”
McCabe had not witnessed first-hand, but had heard of the creature’s cannibalistic feeding frenzy. When not involved in battle, the flying units tracked down and delivered hapless civilians to supply the creature’s incessant feeding. Most of the aircraft had been lost in attempts to keep the creatures engaged to keep them from attacking citizens. While one part of him understood the concept of a weaponized monster that fed on the enemy, it was his people dying, his people feeding the creature. It had to be stopped.
“Tell the artillery batteries to commence firing when the creature is within range.”
While Wojohowitz dutifully relayed his order, McCabe did a rapid mental calculation of the amount of explosives he was about to deliver to the creature. The Abrams fired 105 mm shells, each delivering 4.8 pounds of high explosive amatol to their target. In an hour, they could rain down almost 30,000 pounds of explosives. The 155mm howitzers were heavier, delivering 15 pounds of TNT to the target. In an hour, they could fire 69,000 pounds of high explosives. That was almost fifty tons of destructive force, not counting the smaller firepower of the mortars, Serpent rockets, and LAWS rockets. He was confident that nothing on Earth, from the heavens, or from hell itself could stand up under that kind of withering firepower.
“Almost within range, sir,” Wojohowitz reported.
McCabe nodded. His throat tightened as it always did before a big battle. It wasn’t fear. He had seen action in Kuwait, Iraq, and Afghanistan. It was apprehension. So much could go wrong. The Bradley armored vehicles were positioned to keep the flying creatures occupied, but what if the creature had not yet shown its full power? The fate of Chicago, perhaps the country, depended on the next hour’s fight.
Through his binoculars, he saw the swarm of flying creatures, Wasps someone had aptly named them, moving ahead of Girra. There were hundreds of them, like an alien air force. The stillness of the night erupted with the thunder of the 155 mm howitzers firing from a distance of five miles. Even at that distance, their shells could penetrate almost two inches of concrete. He had confidence in his men, his equipment, and in God. Let the battle commence.
The Wasps moved swiftly and were among the defenders before the first shells struck Girra. The staccato bursts of nearby machineguns and anti-aircraft weapons interspersed with the screams of the dying. Lines of tracers arced through the air, crossed by the fiery tails of LAWS and Serpent rockets. Many scores of the Wasps died, but not enough. They fell into the masses of soldiers like demons, rending flesh and stabbing with their stingers. Men screamed, as Wasps wrenched them from the ground and conveyed toward a horrible death.
The flashes of huge explosions illuminated Girra’s massive bulk, as it lumbered toward them. The slow moving target seemed oblivious to the barrage of artillery and tank fire. Flares dropped around it, illuminating it for the artillery spotters. Its ebony body absorbed the light of the flares, reflecting nothing. It was as if the creature were a moving shadow, a Girra-sized hole into nothingness, visible only as a jagged silhouette against the setting moon and flashes of explosions.
“Nothing affects it,” Wojohowitz said. “It’s like we’re throwing water balloons at it.”
“It has to have a weakness,” McCabe replied, but he, too, was exasperated by the lack of success. He had watched men and armor wither under such bombardments, while feeling sorry for the enemy on the receiving end. He hated this enemy as no man could hate another human being. It was like hating a hurricane or a tornado, and he was as helpless as he would in raising a fist against a force of nature.
The slow but relentless movement of the creature brought it into the midst of the first squadrons of tanks. He watched one of his Abrams explode as an artillery shell struck it. Either he had to move the tanks back or …
“Order the artillery to cease fire.”
Wojohowitz stared at his superior officer aghast. “But, sir, they’re our most effective weapon.”
He glared at Wojohowitz. “They’re doing nothing. Let the tanks worry it for a while. They’re more mobile. We have to see what the creature is capable of.”
“You’re sacrificing your tanks?”
McCabe watched another tank explode. “It’s either the tanks or Chicago. Which would you sacrifice? Hammond is lost. We have to buy Chicago more time. Now, order the artillery to cease fire and move them back closer to the city.”
Wojohowitz swallowed hard. “Yes, sir.”
McCabe knew how his aide felt. It was his men he was sacrificing, not hunks of metal. He knew them, had trained with him. They trusted him, and he was betraying them. Even if they could forgive him, he could never forgive himself.
* * * *
Saturday, August 11 1:30 a.m. (CDT) Chicago, Illinois –
Hammond, Indiana, was no more. Gate had watched the great battle between alien and man’s machines from a distance of three miles. The thundering roar of artillery and tanks accompanied the brilliant flashes of light raining down tons of explosive firepower on the Girra, all to no avail. Its seemingly indestructible ebony armor resisted even the largest explosions. Its slow pace remained unfaltering. As he had witnessed in Wicmac, the Wasps swept down among the defenders like avenging angels, killing and rending flesh, transporting immobilized victims to Girra. Girra’s great bulk trampled man and machine before they could be withdrawn to a safe distance. It had been a valiant effort but one doomed to failure.
He had followed in the creature’s wake, seeing firsthand the dead and dying, the stunned survivors, and the wanton destruction. It was as if a hundred F5 tornadoes had ravaged the landscape. Buildings were crushed and forests twisted and splintered. Roads and bridges smashed, power lines downed, railroad tracks bent and curled under the creature’s enormous weight. If the aliens’ intentions were to crush Earth’s cities flat, lay waste to the countryside, and route its inhabitants, they were succeeding. He held out little hope for Chicago.
Just north of Hammond, he traded his motorcycle for an abandoned four-wheel-drive Jeep. He stopped long enough to siphon gasoline from another vehicle and place a call to Director Caruthers in Houston from his now working cell phone. As he expected, the news wasn’t good.
“Ishom contained one of the creatures. So did Nusku. San Francisco has been completely destroyed. Nusku is closing in on Las Vegas,” Caruthers said without preamble. “The military managed to evacuate most of Vegas’ population.”
“San Francisco?”
“Ishom attacked after sunset. No one was prepared. I’m afraid the loss of life was very heavy. After destroying San Francisco, the creature marched down the peninsula and then turned north to Oakland. They managed to evacuate a large part of its population in time. We don’t know where the creature will head next.”
Gate had feared as much. The attacks had been well coordinated. He was certain the aliens had a master plan of some kind. If only, he could figure it out.
“Have we heard anything from Lunar One?”
Caruthers was silent for a moment. “Nothing at all. We’re trying to pick them up on a telescope. Gate, maybe you had better get out of there. I can arrange transportation. Come back to Houston where you can do more good.”
“I appreciate your concern, but I’ve got to see this through. As soon as I’ve learned all I can, I’ll return to Houston.”
“Well, stay safe, if you can.”
He hung up before he accepted Caruthers’ offer. He was tired and hungry, his ribs ached, and he had seen death up close and personal for the first time in his life. It wouldn’t take much coaxing to sway him, but he had to see the thing through. He chose a farm road that had survived Girra’s march north. He met few people fleeing south. Most abandoning the Chicago area were moving north or west. Those who could commandeered anything that could float and sailed out onto Lake Michigan to wait out Girra’s rampage. As he drove north, the distant sound of explosions reached him, jets making more futile attacks on Girra and its host of Wasps. The waste of lives sickened him. The military had the bit between its teeth and refused to abandon the attack in spite of the lack of progress thus far. Traditional weaponry wouldn’t stop the creature.
