by J. E. Gurley
“If the aliens are there, the military will gladly open their pocketbook to bankroll a probe. They’ll just buy one less aircraft carrier or something to cover the cost.”
“There’s that. Okay, I’ll put the deal to them. They’ll probably drool on their pocket protectors for more asteroid-searching capability. They might just go for it.”
Rutherford smiled at the waitress who was still eying them suspiciously to assure her that her two guests weren’t mad men, at least one wasn’t. “There’s one more thing.”
Caruthers stared at him. “Jesus, Gate. You don’t want much, do you?”
“I need data from the GEMS.”
Caruthers’ face clouded and he narrowed his eyes. “The Gravity and Extreme Magnetism Small Explorer mission was cancelled six years ago. You know that.”
“I also know the Air Force revived the mission and launched GEMS on a Delta IV Heavy two months ago, along with a new, improved version of Janus. Sam Ahern and Sanjay Patangan are running the GEMS operation from Goddard.”
“How the hell did you … That’s classified information, Gate. I wouldn’t let just anybody know you know about it. How do you know by the way?”
“I know a nuclear payload tech. He spent three days at the Cape working on a top-secret Air Force satellite. I guessed from his involvement, it had something to do with warheads. The military bitched about Janus’s failure for months after the Kaiju arrived. Then, they went silent. Sometimes it’s not what you hear but what you don’t hear.”
“How did you know they sent up three nuclear warheads? Even I wasn’t in the loop on that one. I only found out because they needed a manned mission to correct a faulty alignment thruster. For that they needed Johnson.”
Rutherford grinned. “Three? I didn’t know how many. I just assumed they wouldn’t be satisfied unless they built it bigger and better. Why waste the opportunity to spend taxpayers’ money with Congress so eager to assure its constituents it’s doing everything in its power to thwart the alien invasion? I’m surprised they settled for three missiles.”
“How did you learn about GEMS?” He scowled. “Did Patangan blab? He always was a talkative bastard. If he cornered you at a conference or a party, you couldn’t get away from him. You just had to smile, nod your head politely, and pray someone came to rescue you.”
“No one talked, Carl. Sam Ahern has been working for Bell Labs since they pulled the plug on GEMS six years ago. Three months ago, he suddenly took a sabbatical. By itself, it meant nothing, but then he immediately went to Goddard. His specialty is black hole detection by measurement of gravity distortions. I drew a straight line between point A and point B and got GEMS. I assume the military is scanning the Oort Cloud for an alien ship. They won’t find one there.”
“I’m glad to see you back behind a telescope, but I think your real talent lies in espionage. I’m guessing you’ll go public if I refuse.”
Rutherford rolled his eyes. “You know me better than that, Carl. No blackmail. I’m just letting you know what I know to cut through all the bullshit and the red tape. I don’t have time for Senate sub-committees or chain-of-command decisions. We can keep this in the NASA family and keep the military out.”
Caruthers snorted. “Good luck with that. The military has had their collective noses up my ass since the Orion fiasco.”
Rutherford understood the director’s reluctance to bypass the military. Although publically touted as a hero for destroying the alien communications pod on the moon, Commander Langston’s deliberate act of crashing the Orion Lunar One spacecraft had ruffled a few feathers. NASA had excluded the military authorities from the decision-making loop, and because of the manner in which the military hierarchy worked, they couldn’t believe that the director had not abetted or at least given his tacit approval to Langston’s actions.
“If I can pick up gravity distortions around Haumea, we’ll know for certain if the aliens are there.” He decided to play his hold card. “If we can detect gravity wave distortions between Earth and Haumea, we could have months advance warning of another inbound Kaiju instead of a few days, or no warning at all, as with this last one. That should make the military happy. They’re going to send more Kaiju. You can bet on it. I know how the aliens think. I wouldn’t be here begging hat in hand if I didn’t think I was right.”
He sat back and studied his friend’s face, searching for something in the NASA director’s troubled eyes that offered a glimmer of hope. He had spread all his cards on the table. He had counted on their friendship to get this far, but he knew Caruthers would not allow personal feelings to sway him. Any change of procedure or sudden shift in focus of the GEMS or the NEOWISE satellites could set back their research for years. If he was wrong, there would be serious hell to pay, and Caruthers would be the first one to suffer, but he wasn’t wrong. He couldn’t be.
Finally, Caruthers cleared his throat. Rutherford was so tense, the sudden sound made him jump. Caruthers spoke slowly. “I can’t make any promises, Gate, but you have an uncanny sixth sense about these things. That’s what made you such a good catastrophist. I’ll go out on a limb for you one more time, but I don’t know how much weight my word carries.”
“Tell the military that I’m certain another alien pod is headed this way even now. We need to know where it’s going to land.”
Caruthers wrinkled his brow, reached for his wine glass, and drained it in one gulp. “Are you that certain?”
“Why send a single Kaiju to such a remote location? I know I predicted it, but I assumed they would send more than one. What can a single Kaiju do in a territory as large as the Southern Pacific Ocean? It’s there for a reason other than wiping out the human population one island at a time.”
Caruthers shook his head. “You scare me, Gate, you surely do.” He pushed his half-eaten steak away from him and looked disdainfully at his empty wine glass. “I think I just lost my appetite.”
“Now you know why I can’t eat.”
Caruthers raised his glass and caught the waitress’s attention. “If you’re right, Gate, you may be announcing the end of mankind.”
Rutherford sighed. He knew he was right, but his certainty offered no consolation. “Now you know why I can’t sleep.”
The waitress rushed to the table with a bottle of wine. As she re-filled the director’s glass, he said, “I hope you’re in no hurry. I may need a few of these.”
9
Saturday, Dec. 16, 10:00 a.m. Radiant Princess, north of Enderbury Island –
For Talent, the waiting was harder than facing more of the creatures. Inexplicably, the Kaiju had approached no closer. It sat there like a lump of coal floating in the ocean. A steady stream of Wasps continued to fly to the nearby islands and return laden with a cargo of human bodies. He was thankful the creature was too far away to witness the feeding process close-up. He was spared that particular horror. He had read the reports – humans, some still alive, dropped into that giant tentacle-encircled maw, multiple rows of serrated teeth grinding the bodies to a pulp, and depositing them in a lake of acid to digest and feed the myriad of creatures living within the Kaiju’s body.
The ship’s crew, the two-hundred-fifty or so remaining from the original twelve hundred, abandoned lowering the lifeboats. They rounded up the passengers and directed them to the Princess Theatre. Upon learning that they were not evacuating the ship, many passengers chose to remain on the open decks or returned to the imagined safety of their cabins. A few refused to leave their seats in the lifeboats, fearful the boats would leave without them.
Most of the sixteen-hundred seats in the dimly lit theater were empty, a far cry from the crowd packing the theater during one of the musicals he had attended a few nights earlier. It had been a review of 60’s rock, including a Beatles medley, his favorite group. Those two hours of pleasure now seemed a lifetime away, as distant as the Golden Age of rock and roll itself. Some of the crew and a few of the passengers carried pistols, shotguns, or fire axes – an
ything that might offer a defense against the return of the Squid or an attack by Wasps. Many of the hastily armed people looked uncomfortable with the responsibility of defending the passengers thrust upon them. Some had probably never fired a gun at anything but paper targets, skeets, or beer cans.
The ship had settled another six feet deeper in the water in the last hour. Talent had ventured below decks to Deck 3 and watched the water steadily creeping up the stairs. If the Wasps didn’t attack soon, they would have to abandon ship or go down with it into the briny deep. He hoped that wasn’t the Kaiju’s plan all along, to separate them from the ship for easy pickings. He hated to think that the creature was that smart.
They had barricaded the corridors leading to the theater from the elevators and the Wheelhouse Lounge on Decks 6 and 7 with tables, chairs, desks, cases of booze from the bars, and anything else that could fill a gap in the defensive wall. They had blocked the smaller side doors and the doors to the backstage area with stage scenery, wheeled carts, forklifts, costume racks, and boxes of merchandise stripped from the boutiques. In spite of the preparations, an air of despondency lay over the gathered crowd so thick Talent could taste it. With only a few emergency lights working, they sat in the dark like frightened children who had switched off the lights to hide from monsters, or like settlers huddled in the fort waiting for the Indians to attack. This time, Talent was not rooting for the Indians.
Owens walked over to him carrying a twenty-gauge shotgun taken from the sports equipment room. He and Talent had removed the useless birdshot from several boxes of shells and replaced them with steel ball bearing scrounged from one of the ship’s machine shops. They had not had time to do more, but Talent doubted they would use even those few. If an army couldn’t stop them, how much resistance could a group of untrained passengers offer against the creatures? Unlike most of the people in the theater, Owens seemed at ease. Like Talent, he knew that if any of the creatures broke through the barricades, they would all die a horrible death, but he was eager to inflict some damage before he died.
“Walking forward along the deck is like walking uphill,” Owens groaned, noting the ten-degree incline toward the ship’s stern. “It’s going to be hard to hold on to a seat with one hand to keep from sliding downhill and fight off the Wasps with the other.”
“I’ll see if I can find you a seat belt,” Talent replied.
“That would be nice. By the way, have I told you I can’t swim?”
It was the second time Owens had mentioned the fact to him. Talent suspected he was telling the truth. “I don’t think I’ve got time to teach you, but I wouldn’t worry too much about it.”
Owens sighed. “I wish they would hurry up and come.”
Talent arched an eyebrow at Owens’ odd remark, but he knew how the Chicagoan felt. Every groan of the sinking ship, each time the ship suddenly lurched and shuddered as another area flooded, drove home the fact that their refuge was rapidly becoming useless. Inside the theater, they could bring several weapons to bear on individual creatures as they came in through the chokeholds of the doorways. If forced to evacuate the ship, as seemed imminent, they would have only one or two armed people to defend the one-hundred-sixty or so passengers cramped into each lifeboat.
“Patience is a virtue,” he told Owens.
Owens sneered. “I’ve never been very virtuous. Let’s get it done.”
“Are you in a hurry to die?”
Owens’ face turned cold and hard and his tone was bitter as he said, “I died when Chicago died. I’ve just been marking time since then.”
“Don’t check out too early on me,” Talent said. “You’re the only person I trust to have my back on this ship.”
Owens smiled and rested the shotgun across his shoulders behind his head. “Oh, I’ve got your back, all right. If one of those things grabs me to haul me off, you’ll do the honors, right?”
Talent nodded. “No problem.”
De le Rosa walked over. After his initial moment of panic, he now seemed calm and collected. Talent figured most of it was a show for the passengers. Inside, he was as frightened as Talent was.
“We bypassed the dead comm tower and jury rigged an antenna to the radio. I’m not sure of the range, but we managed to send out an SOS. A nearby freighter acknowledged and is on the way here.”
“Great,” Talent replied. “How long?”
De le Rosa’s cool façade waver a little. “Three hours.”
Talent’s hopes faded. “We don’t have three hours. We might not have three minutes.”
A walkie-talkie burst into life as one of the crewmembers that the third officer had stationed outside in the corridor reported in. “They’re here,” he yelled.
Overhearing his report, the noise level of the crowd rose tenfold as the first fingers of panic began to ripple through the crowd. People wept or prayed individually or in groups. Most had not witnessed the earlier Squid attack or watched videos of previous Wasp attacks in the U.S. Their fear, however badly it gripped them, would become overwhelming once the carnage began. Talent hoped the people selected to defend the crowd would not be among the first to cut and run.
“I had better see to the passengers,” de le Rosa said, and then tuned, and walked away.
The crewman who had reported the Wasps’ arrival burst through the door a few moments later. Two other crewmen quickly shut the door behind him and barred it with a steel pipe wedged through the handles. It was the best they could do, but Talent knew the makeshift lock would not hold for long against a Wasp onslaught.
Owens glared at the door and pumped a shell into the chamber of the shotgun. Talent made sure the reloader for the .357 was ready to go. He set it and the open box of cartridges on the seat beside him within easy reach. He had chosen a spot on the starboard side of Promenade Deck on the theater’s upper level. The Kaiju was off the starboard side of the ship, and he figured the starboard side offered the Wasps the easiest access to the theater. If the Squid returned, it would not matter. They could bore right through the hull and enter the theater from any place they chose.
Owens moved across the aisle to the far side of the door. Between him and Talent, stood two crewmembers armed with a pistol and a shotgun and a nervous passenger armed with a shotgun. Farther back spread out across the top of the stairs, half a dozen passengers armed with fire axes and boat hooks waited. Although from different backgrounds, ethnicities, and countries, each person had one thing in common, a look of dread anticipation in their eyes; all, that is, except for one of the crewmembers, a short Filipino bartender about twenty-five years old standing next to him. She gripped the pistol with both hands as if she knew how to use it, her legs braced and bent slightly at the knees for balance. Instead of fear, her face was a mask of burning rage. Talent thought that was a good thing. A little honest rage could make up for a lack of courage or scarcity of skill. She glanced at Talent and noticed his scrutiny of her.
“Those bastards killed my roommate,” she said. “We’ve been together for five years. Now, she’s gone. I’m going to kill at least one of them before they get me. I have to watch it die.”
The sound of shattering glass filtered through the barricades. The creatures were breaking through the outside doors into the elevator lobby. Passengers began fighting their way down the main staircase to the lower level, running toward the stage away from the doors. The frenzied mob trampled people too feeble or too slow to keep up and shoved others over rows of seats or down the steps in their eagerness to escape. Talent tried to ignore the crowd, but he knew the stampeding passengers would limit the armed defenders’ fields of fire, thereby reducing their effectiveness.
The rising din of the crowd and the scent of blood from injured passengers fed the Wasps’ fury. They attacked the last barricades with increased zeal. It had taken the passengers an hour to erect the barriers, but the alien Wasps demolished them in less than five minutes.
Talent got his first up-close view of a live Wasp as it pushed its
head through a gap in the pile of rubble. If he had not already confronted the Squid, the sight might have disheartened him. In the confined space of the corridor, it had folded its wings across its back. It scuttled down the corridor on its two pair of hind legs, reaching out the two forward pair to grasp the handles of the doors. The razor-edged talons at the tip of the appendages looked like four scythes. The door rattled but held until a shotgun blast shattered the glass door. He glared at the Malaysian cook who had fired his shotgun.
“Wait until they’re inside, fool! You’re wasting ammunition.”
Chagrined, the cook nodded, licked his lips, and pointed the shotgun at the entrance; then, realized he had forgotten to pump a fresh shell into the chamber. He glanced at the others in embarrassment and reloaded. They didn’t have long to wait. The first Wasp yanked at the door until the hinges bowed and then snapped. A salvo of bullets and shotgun pellets killed it as it burst through the open doors. Its demise was more a matter of luck than the result of a well-aimed fusillade.
Another Wasp clambered over its comrade’s corpse. The defenders rushed out of its way, still firing at it. It finally went down with several large holes in its head, but not before slicing into a passenger’s chest with one of its long, curved talons. The man’s expression was one of disbelief and horror. He clutched at the gaping wound with his hands as he fell. Both Wasp and passenger hit the floor at the same time. Talent had no time to check on the man, but he judged by the size of the gash in the man’s chest, and the amount of blood slowly spreading around him, he didn’t have a chance.
More of the creatures entered the theater from other entrances. A flapping sound like sails in a breeze filled the theater as Wasps took to wing in the open space. Now the defenders had to think in three-dimensions to avoid death from above. Gunfire exploded in all directions. Talent was amazed they weren’t shooting each other in a Wild West crossfire. He and Owens directed their fire at a Wasp that had cornered two older women. The ex-Chicago cop began striding toward the creature as Talent reloaded. His face was grim and his lips twisted into an angry snarl. He pumped shells into the shotgun and fired until it was empty, and then produced his pistol and continued firing. The overeager detective blocked Talent’s line of fire.