by J. E. Gurley
* * * *
Sunday, Dec. 17, 4:30 p.m. CST Gate Rutherford’s apartment, Houston, TX –
Rutherford worked furiously. They had kicked him out of Johnson, but they had yet to shut down his access to the NASA mainframe. That could come at any moment. He downloaded all the data from Goddard and established a backdoor link to the Disturbance Reduction System satellite. If he were lucky, no one would think to add additional safeguards to the DRS. Designed to detect gravitational waves on Near Earth Orbiting objects, the DRS was not powerful enough to scan Haumea, but would be sufficient to follow the new objects trajectory. Of all the satellites and telescopes in orbit, only the DSR had detected the Kaiju four months earlier.
He could have kicked himself for getting into a pissing contest with Colonel Stiltson. The outcome was inevitable. His only excuse was that he did not suffer fools easily. However, with the fate of the Earth at stake, he should have swallowed his pride and ignored the colonel. His deep-seated resentment of the military and, he admitted, his burning rage at the aliens, had combined to become a caustic chemical in his throat that spewed his words like machinegun fire. The tiny voice that normally self-edited his rancor was lost in the sound of gunfire.
He had let the director down, but most of all he had let himself down. He was right about the aliens, but now they would dismiss his theories as the ranting of a madman. The military fought each new war just as they had the last war. It took them years to change tactics. The aliens did not suffer from such human handicaps. They were in the species elimination business, and they adapted quickly to each new situation. He knew the new object headed their way was a weapon, an alien super weapon. He could feel it in his gut. They were through playing around. Now they were getting deadly serious.
The one sticking point in his conjecture was Kaiju Kiribati. If the aliens had a super weapon available, what need had they for another Kaiju attack? That question plagued his mind as he pored over the latest available data from GEMS. He compared the object’s gravity signature to those of the first three Kaiju detected by the DRS satellite and found it to be much larger. The discrepancy could be that it was en route, traveling at a respectable percentage of light speed. The three Kaiju had already slowed to camouflage their re-entry trajectory as natural objects before the DRS had detected them.
A bitter churning in the pit of his stomach arose as Rutherford’s struggling mind suggested the disturbing thought that the extremely high gravity distortions were inherent in the object itself, not in the gravity drive. The answer hit him like a kick to the groin. NASA was working on a nuclear-thermal propulsion system for a Jupiter probe because nuclear power was what they had to work with. The aliens had a gravity drive. It made a macabre kind of sense that they would base their weaponry on their gravity manipulation technology. Humans had developed nuclear weapons first, and then sought to harness its potential for space travel. Perhaps the aliens had followed a similar path.
Such a weapon carried with it the inherent dangers of miscalculation. Any mistake could prove disastrous to the aliens. To protect themselves, they would send it to Earth unarmed and arm it once it arrived at its destination, just as the military had the first atomic bomb used on Hiroshima.
The pieces fell together so neatly that his earlier obtuseness astounded him. The Kaiju was there to arm the bomb. None of the creatures within the Kaiju’s internal ecosystem – Wasps, Ticks, Pancakes, or mice – possessed manipulative limbs or the intelligence to handle tools. Therefore, they had created, or utilized, Squid. Their delicately controlled tentacles, combined with at least ape equivalent intelligence, could perform such a task. They did not have to build a bomb. They simply needed to arm it, an undertaking that could be as uncomplicated as flipping a switch. The Squid were amphibious creatures, hinting at how they would arm the weapon – in the water.
One problem still bothered him: Why not send the bomb inside the Kaiju?
He was no physicist and could not venture a guess at the mechanics involved in creating, transporting, and triggering a gravity manipulative weapon, but he was an astrophysicist. Two gravity anomalies in close proximity created an unstable environment. Two massive bodies, such as planets, stars, or even entire galaxies, affected each other’s orbits, tugging and distorting their masses in a dance of cosmic attraction through the solar system. Sending the Kaiju first eliminated that possibility with the added benefit of using the Kaiju to clear the target area of any threats to allow them the opportunity to arm it unmolested.
He needed help, but he needed to be careful. Even the hint of doing an end run around the military could bring down the full wrath of the military. Instead of banishment from Johnson, he could wind up in some military prison for the duration. Did civilians go to Leavenworth? He had no desire to find out. He needed someone with a theoretical knowledge of gravity drives, not an astronomer’s knowledge of how gravity works. NASA’s work with the warp drive involved gravity compression using dark matter to achieve superluminal velocities, but contacting anyone connected with NASA would set off alarm bells within the military. He would have to engage a coconspirator from outside the NASA fold.
His first thought was of Doctor Hugh Bartonelli, in charge of a Syracuse University project to develop a gravity propulsion system sponsored by Bell Laboratory. He had met Bartonelli twice at astrophysics symposiums, but both meetings had occurred over three years ago. Would Bartonelli even remember him, and if so, would his current reputation as a NASA crackpot impede any chance for cooperation?
He found Bartonelli’s number on the Syracuse website, but got a polite recording asking him to leave his number and a message. His message was brief, describing their common interests and their last meeting in Albuquerque. He was pleasantly surprised to receive Bertonelli’s return call half an hour later.
“Doctor Rutherford, it was pleasant to hear from you. I remember speaking with you at the last symposium. I read your paper concerning the Kaiju, a most interesting adventure.” He paused. “Is this a social call or a professional one?”
“Professional. I need to pick your brains about gravity drives.”
After a long pause, he asked, “Does this have anything to do with the Kaiju?”
Lying would not get their relationship off to a good start. “Yes.”
“I assumed as much. I must warn you, Doctor Rutherford, I have been working with the Air Force on a project. Revealing any details concerning it might place me in an awkward position.”
That was interesting news. Did Bartonelli’s project have anything to do with Colonel Stiltson’s reaction at the mention of a gravity drive? “My inquiry is more general. I have only two questions.”
“And they are?”
He took a deep breath. Would Bartonelli hang up on him or report him to the authorities? “First, what is the possible effect of two gravity drives in close proximity, and second, in case of an accident, what would be the possible repercussions?”
He expected to hear a click as Bartonelli hung up, but he replied, “I assume you are asking as a catastrophist. If your interest were related to your recent dealings with the Kaiju, my obligation to the Air Force would not allow me to answer.”
“Purely theoretical,” he answered quickly. Was Bartonelli hinting that he suspected the reason for his call? “I’m, uh, preparing a new paper for NASA.”
“In that case, I am at your disposal.”
While they worked, he turned on the television without the sound and watched the almost constant CNN coverage of Kaiju Kiribati’s rampage in the South Pacific, wincing each time they replayed bits of video of Kaiju Girra, Ishom, or Nusku or video taken inside one of the dead creatures. The visual assault was a constant reminder of things he would like to forget, but they had been etched into his mind using blood rather than acid. He used the barrage of images to spur his anger and to focus that anger into his search for answers.
The pair danced around the underlying reasons for their conversation like prima ballerinas, but an h
our later Rutherford had his answer, and it frightened him. He had one more fact to check, the pod’s trajectory. Using the GEMS data and his covert link to the DRS satellite, he deduced the object’s speed and projected a strike mid-Pacific Ocean; then, he incorporated the previous reductions in speed recorded by the DRS in the Kaiju trajectories. Plotting his findings on the map, he approximated the strike zone as Latitude 230 and Longitude 1660, a spot in the Coral Sea between Vanuatu and New Caledonia, well south of the last reported position of Kaiju Kiribati, but the close proximity was too much for coincidence.
He pored over the map for over an hour, wracking his brain to squeeze out a cogent reason for that particular area. It was on a line the Kaiju would take to reach Australia, which he deemed its likeliest destination, but why there? Why not closer to Kiribati where it landed or Australia, where a bomb would do the most damage? More importantly, why choose the Coral Sea? Why not target the vast empty ocean south of Australia?
Now, the reporter pointed to a map of Java. At first, he thought the Kaiju had attacked that island, throwing off his calculations, but her interest was a 5.6 magnitude earthquake centered in the nearby Java Trench. He paid little attention to the report or to the headlines scrolling across the bottom of the screen. He focused on the map of the South Pacific, trying to visualize the Kaiju’s path. Then, the reporter switched to a different map of the area, one displaying the interconnecting network of submarine trenches and crustal plates crisscrossing the region. A CGI animation showed one plate sliding beneath the other and the resulting build up of geothermal pressure, resulting in a quake.
Her slender, well-manicured, and pink-nailed finger traced a line along the Java Trench, but his gaze froze on the New Hebrides Trench running between Vanuatu and New Caledonia. The alien pod strike zone placed it in the middle of the New Hebrides Trench. Was there a connection? He prayed he was wrong, but his training as a catastrophist immediately came to the forefront outlining the worst possible scenario. To be certain he was right, he needed one more opinion – a tectonicologist, someone who studied plate tectonics.
By morning, he had his answer. At approximately 10:30 p.m. on Tuesday, December 19 – Monday, December 18 local time – the alien pod would strike the ocean one-hundred-eighty miles south of Efate Island, directly over the New Hebrides Trench. Once detonated, a bomb could release a gravity wave pulse powerful enough to trigger massive shifts in the underlying continental tectonic plates. The devastation would be unimaginable.
No, he thought bitterly, I can easily imagine it. It was my specialty.
Magnitude 8.5 or greater earthquakes would unleash tsunamis making the wave that destroyed the western Kiribati islands look like a ripple on the beach. Most of Polynesia, Melanesia, and Micronesia would vanish beneath the sea. The tsunami would inundate the eastern coast of Australia as far inland as the Blue Mountains. The tectonic shifts could expand across the entire Pacific region, striking California, the west coast of South America, and Southeast Asia, triggering a spate of volcanic eruptions. It would affect weather patterns. Such devastation would have a lasting impact on the global economy. More than one such bomb could wipe out all life on the planet.
And he could tell no one.
Anyone in authority would refuse to listen or dismiss his findings as scaremongering. Even his old friend Director Caruthers would be hard-pressed to give him one more chance. He had only one card to play – Major Aiden Walker. If there was a Kaiju, he was certain Walker would be in the vicinity, probably once again risking his life to stop it. He tried Walker’s number but got no answer, and then realized that if he were on a mission, Walker would not have his cell phone handy. Using military channels to reach Walker was out of the question. He had only one option.
He would have to contact Caruthers and convince him to help. It was a daunting task. If he had not burned his bridges behind him, he had at least left them smoldering. He would have to humble himself to convince the director to help him. Thoughts of the enormity of the consequences of his failure would do that. If he failed, the world would die.
17
Monday, Dec. 18, 2100 hours USS Hatcher, 150 miles northeast of New Caledonia –
Captain Clay Wilkins accepted his orders with the same stoic sense of duty his grandfather showed aboard the USS Ticonderoga in WWII, and his father aboard the USS Wasp during the Cuban Missile Crisis. In fact, his family had served aboard US warships as far back as the Civil War when great-great grandfather Elias Wilkins had helped sink the CSS Alabama during the Battle of Cherbourg on June 19, 1864 while serving as a gunner on the USS Kearsarge. Elias Wilkins had not survived that fatal encounter. Captain Wilkins fully expected not to survive this one.
Kaiju Kiribati had laid waste to Efate Island in Vanuatu, but then unexpectedly stopped atop the center of the New Hebrides Trench, a twenty-five-thousand-foot deep abyss between Vanuatu and New Caledonia. The Australian Navy requested his small reconnaissance fleet of three ships, the nearest available resource, to make contact with the Kaiju, observe it, and take actions to hold it there until the combined Australian-British fleet could arrive. He knew what that meant. His three ships were to sacrifice themselves if necessary.
The Hatcher, a Freedom-Class LCS, Littoral Combat Ship, and its two Ambassador Mark IV-Class Fast Attack Craft, the USS Spindrift and the USS Amanda Gray, were fast and heavily armed for their size, but were no match for a Kaiju. The Hatcher, a modified LCS replacing the Navy’s Frigate-Class ships, was armed with an MK110 57 mm gun, a RIM 116 Rolling Airframe Missiles, and two MH-60 Seahawk helicopters. Its main defense was its stealth design and its 40-knot speed.
Originally designed to operate in small, enclosed bodies of water, such as bays, gulfs, and lakes, the open ocean presented a special set of hazards for the two Fast Attack Craft, especially in bad weather. At just over one-hundred-fifty feet in length and displacing less than two-hundred-fifty tons, twenty-foot waves could shake them to pieces. Unable to make the long passage to the South Pacific without numerous stops for refueling, the FAC’s had been shipped in sections from the U.S. and assembled in American Samoa. Armed with eight Harpoon surface-to-surface missiles, an OTO Melara 3-inch gun, and a CIWS Block B Gatling gun, the FAC’s could handle most threats. Capable of fifty knots, they could outrun anything on the sea. Except a Kaiju.
His small fleet had been serving double duty as reconnaissance vessels and acting as escorts for larger warships when dispatched to patrol the waters south of the Coral Sea. He had expected a boring sea duty. Now, he was on the front lines expected to fight a thousand-foot-long alien creature.
“Anything on radar, Lieutenant?” he asked of Lieutenant Phillip Druze, his First Officer.
Druze leaned on the shoulder of the radar officer watching the scope. “Not a thing, Captain. Do you think we’re late for the party?”
Druze, at twenty-four, was young and eager for combat. Like most Americans, he was eager for payback. Wilkins, twelve years his senior, was more concerned with keeping his crew alive.
“Be patient, Phil. According to the last estimates, we’re close enough to throw rocks at it.”
Rocks might do as well as the weaponry we have on board, he thought to himself. He scanned the horizon with his binoculars, but the moon had not yet risen and finding a black-on-black object in the dark was almost impossible. His eyes were fatigued from searching. He rubbed them and tried again. A bright fireball to port less than two miles distant lit up the night sky.
“My God! Was that the Spindrift?”
“She’s disappeared from radar,” Druze replied. His voice broke as he spoke. “I’ve got the Amanda Gray, but the Spindrift’s just … gone.”
“Battle Stations!” Wilkins called out.
As the claxon wailed and the crew rushed to their stations, he donned his helmet and lifejacket. “Set an evasive course away from the Spindrift. Inform the Amanda Gray to search for survivors but to join us as soon as they can.”
He would lead the Kaiju away from
the wreckage to allow the smaller FAC to slip in unnoticed. At least that was his plan. Beyond that, he had no idea what he would do.
“Send a message to USPACOM. Include a copy to the Australian Fleet. Tell them … tell them we’ve made contact with the Kaiju and are about to engage.”
Druze stared at Wilkins, his face growing pale. “What’s our bearing?”
“South by southwest.” He knew he couldn’t persuade the Kaiju too far off its course, but if he could draw it a little north of its present course, he could bring it to the Australian fleet and let them deal with it. “We’ll tempt it to chase our tail.”
A few minutes later, the radioman announced, “Australian Command asks if we can occupy the Kaiju for another hour. It’s sending a squadron of F-35’s to intercept. The fleet is still three hours west of us.”
Wilkins chuckled to himself. It was like asking the chicken to bait the fox. “Inform the Australians that we will do our best to keep our guest entertained, but if they want to join the party, they had better hurry.”
For twenty minutes, they ran random zigzag patterns two-miles wide, but still they picked up no sign of the Kaiju on sonar or radar. Had the Spindrift exploded from another cause – a fuel leak or munitions mishap?
“Amanda Gray reports no survivors, Captain.”
Wilkins drew in his breath and exhaled slowly. Thirty-five men and women gone in a flash. “Inform them to rejoin us but to remain astern and two miles off our starboard.” In case of a fight, he didn’t want to sink the FAC by accident with a stray missile.
He needed to widen the search area. “Send the two Seahawks aloft. Have them drop sonar buoys and link them to our sonar. That should give us a clearer picture of what’s down there.”