by Ken Rivers
The super-Kaiju spent a moment with its mouth open, entire rain systems lifting from its steaming white-hot jaws. Even with this off-the-chart power, there was a price to be paid for the destruction it craved, and payment was due. It was resting.
How long until it could move again?
“Yari, can you do anything about Midori? I can’t see shit and I doubt we’ll get another chance to regroup.”
“Way ahead of you. Midori is still lost in the mists. I’ll try to find which way is up. You focus on Aoi.”
A full-frontal attack had proved to be near suicidal. There was an opening, for sure. During its recharge to move or strike was a window of opportunity, but I didn’t know how much time we had to take advantage of it. It seemed like two seconds at most. We needed to be close, but also not be very fucking dead at the same time.
Aoi grunted with every move but kept going. I feared the breaking crush of another attack by Enkiru and Tawa. It hung over our heads like it was at the end of a slowly-breaking rope. But, it didn’t come.
I could see the Spire behind Aoi. He had nearly cleared the rim of the crater.
When the behemoth finally recovered, it turned and faced Aoi. From my blue-colored viewport inside Aoi’s head it looked like it was staring straight into my eyes. Another shimmer and it was gone again. I closed my eyes and waited for the hammer to fall. The crush of a city block deafened my hearing, but it wasn’t the ground around Aoi.
It stood over the broken Spire. Head pointed down, its jaw unhinged, stretched wide enough to eat the damn thing whole, and began a second buildup of power.
“Mark,” Yari’s voice was distant. She labored through the same pain I did. “The Spire is a lot of things to the Levani, including a reminder of our power, and loss. But for you and me, it has a special meaning we can never escape. While the tower stands, so do you and I.”
“But, so does that asshole, right? He used the damn thing to transform his Kaiju just like we did.”
“It’s hard to explain, but I’ll try. We used our combined energy to expand the size and capabilities of Aoi and Midori. Tawa and his Kaiju are different. When he failed to bond with me and used Rau-Kan to mature Enkiru, I felt something like separation. Like Tawa had left the cycle of this existence. There is no way he hasn’t given himself completely to the black. Enkiru is as much Tawa as Tawa is Enkiru now. When he burns the Spire and guts the foundations, he wins. He will go on rampaging as a new force of nature in the galaxy. And we will all die.”
Midori’s vision cleared, and I could see sunlight trying to penetrate the haze of destruction. “Nice work, baby girl. Guess it’s now or never, then?”
“Yes. But at less than half strength and with no plan, we have to pull something out of our asses.”
Hearing my words coming out of her mouth made me grin in spite of the odds we faced. “Just give me the tools and the problem and I’ll figure something out. Gonna barn door this shit.”
“I actually know what that means.” She sounded surprised.
Midori cut through the clouds into the light of the triple suns and soared higher, past the stratosphere and into the mesosphere and then hung there, wings ruffled and uneven. Streaks of orange blood colored her in the battle paint of death from breast to feather-tip.
Enkiru’s teeth and gums had gone white again, and swirls of dark energy began to accrete around its life-ending maw. A flash of gold light, then another, and another. From far off on the solitary still-standing rampart, the girls worked unprotected on top of the last Old-Tech cannon. Blast after blast ricocheted off the behemoth’s broad chest. A buzzing scratch reflecting the energy away each time it was let loose, like tiny peasant stones flung at a mighty castle portcullis.
Then a soft wet thud.
For the first time, it looked around, and then looked around again. The accretion disc wavered and shrank, and the bulk of the beast lurched forward. It was enough to turn its head and gain its worried attention. But its body stayed hunched over, laboring at existence.
“NOW!” Yari screamed.
Midori shimmered and disappeared from the sunlit sky like the God of Fire itself. A thin line of golden light drew across the distance into the back of the super-Kaiju’s skull. The end of the string of light followed Midori through until she came out the bottom of its jaw. Before she cleared the stadium of jagged teeth, she gripped the exposed bone and pulled, taking its head down with her.
At the same moment, Aoi barreled into the side of its knee, buckling it and tipping the behemoth just enough to start it falling over.
Enkiru’s head was opened up for the universe and all the people it had just killed to see. The Spire jutted from the beast’s back, still standing, covered in black pitch and apartment-sized chunks of quivering biomass.
On my hands and knees inside both Kaiju viewports, the vortex of light and color swept up and pushed me back into my corporeal form. I lay next to Aoi. Less than a hundred yards away, I felt Yari more than saw her. She laid there for a time, hugging and caressing Midori as I walked to her while holding Aoi. He licked at the hair on my arm and wheezed every few seconds.
“You did a good job, baby girl. Not bad for a first-time Mother.”
“You, too,” she smiled.
I sat and watched her simply live in the moment, knowing that in some part of her, Yare was experiencing the same thing.
Imagining Pusi, B, and Lana getting to that cannon tower and doing what they did brought a smile to my face. I wasn’t a big hug type of guy, but damn it, I was gonna tackle-hug those ladies. I heard the rocks and debris scratch underfoot in front of me. I squinted through the brown and grey clouds and saw movement.
But, it wasn’t three female heroes. It was one figure, listing back and forth and slowly emerging from the fog of the aftermath.
Slick black skin covered by twisted cartilage, silver hair down to the knees, and crystal blue eyes pushed halfway out of their sockets. Red pooled around the edges with streams so numerous as if to be a hundred waterfalls of blood.
Tawa stumbled toward Yari. The Father’s armor had left me, but I stood in spite of the pain and fatigue. I sat Aoi down and he limped along with me.
It was a race between us to get to Yari, who was still kneeling and embracing Midori’s charred feathers and bald patches. I could feel her calmness, though. Like none of this was happening.
As I closed on Tawa, I stopped dead in my tracks. He wasn’t alone.
“Where’s…Mother?” he whimpered, half-drowning in mists that churned and ebbed slowly through him and around him.
I made it to Yari before he did and stood in his path, my Surudo blade held firm in my right hand and Aoi growling with arched back to my left.
“He’s not gonna stop. What should I—”
“Mother?” the desperate call from the void asked, like a lost little boy in a crowded sea of strangers.
“Come here,” she called to it. “Come to me, child.”
What I felt then was not part of me or any part of her I had felt before. A well as deep as the universe swelled underneath her and she was one with it.
I was merely along for the ride.
The creature’s voice shifted between that of a young child and the deeper, self-absorbed Tawa. “Mother? Where have you been?” The mists shifted and blurred around limp arms and a back pocked with jagged vertebrae and shreds of clothing stuck fast to its tacky dermis.
“Tawa. Enkiru. You’ll be at rest soon enough.” There was a regal quality about her voice that shocked and mystified me. “Your journey has been long, longer than most. But such is the life of a Father who abandons his kin. Some cycles need continuing, but this is not one of them. The pain that surges across this universe, all of it has a source. A root from which springs a sobbing tree of wilted dreams.”
“Mother?”
“You will be the last Father who abandons his child. The last to abandon the Mother. The last to run from his necessary path of pain and self-sacrifice. You will be
the last because there will never be another from now until time has stopped who will experience the gap between what you are now, and what I will make you.”
Tawa’s black hulking body and spidery limbs stepped forth against the mist. The further he separated, the louder Tawa’s voice became. “Inssside, we are all—”
“We are old and wish to rest, my pig-headed husband. Come, like the girl said,” Saiina’s voice crescendoed forth. She glided forward and put a hand on Tawa’s forehead and melted the black off him. He stood, a bit thinner than I remembered him, and looked quite confused. “This is a path decided long before either of us came to be. Come. Let’s take that walk you promised me.”
“I can’t believe you remembered that,” he said.
“What more do I have to say or do to convince you that I loved you? Stubborn old Flit-beaked dickhead.”
“I’ve done too much, Sai. It can’t be as easy as that.”
She stood in front of him, hands on hips in mid-scold. “Maybe it’s a universal man thing, the bad hearing. You and I went through what no two Levani have ever gone through. But, look at what we have now. These two. These two are the next step. At least, that’s what I feel. Anyway, come on, damn it! Take my hand before I chuck you back into the mists you came from.”
He and the misted child both reached for Yari’s hand and they all faded into light. I saw three figures. A Father and Mother who would never quit, and their child, who drank their resolve like the Fountain of Youth itself.
30
Yari sat across the long, dark mahogany-like meeting table in the Great Hall of the Levani Chiefs. We were alone. Fading sunlight fed the halos that hovered and wavered around candles placed sporadically around the room.
“Are you sure about this?” she asked.
I took a long pull of my Levani ale. “See this? This is beer. Your people didn’t have beer before me. That’s a lifetime gig, being the guy who brought beer to a planet.”
“I’m serious,” she folded her arms, straight, full-bodied blue hair spilling over her right shoulder. “This is going to ruffle a lot of feathers.”
“Meh. Let them be ruffled. I’m the…wait for it…FATHER OF BEER!” I drank until the suds refused to slide to me from the sides of the cup. “Don’t worry, there isn’t much they can do. The dickhead humans who first came here were interested in low level, easy-to-understand shit. Profit. So much so, that they left their best tech here just in case the opportunity for more profit arose. Tech that was so awesome, it helped us beat a super-Kaiju. As long as we promise some kind of monetary compensation, CONRTOL will be fine.”
“You sound, and feeeeel, drunk…SIR.”
It was the first round of beers I’d had in ages. And, it was named after the events that made us legends on Levani, so I was sucking it down like a humpless camel. “Like I said, meh.”
Yari stood, poured herself a glass of water, and began undermining my bid for establishing a month of beer worship. “They’ve had the girls in custody for a week, now.”
“You’re preaching to the choir, here. This Bone Meal Hefeweizen is incredible. Levani priests can hold a room at temperatures to be worthy of song. Although I’d like to take a crack at some IPA at one some point. Maybe. Twin Mists IPA?”
“Tawa and Enkiru are in the ether now, with Saiina. Those names might not be the best for beer.”
“Sorry,” I stood to get another drink and stopped. “Sounds like they’re almost here.”
The rhythmic pounding of boots on the ground and proper English meant only one thing, the Earth envoy had arrived. They filed in, ten strong, and sat at their designated places. On our side of the table were me, Yari, and three representatives of the surviving Levani clans.
A stodgy, medal-ridden, square-jawed CONTROL mouthpiece started the proceedings. “We thank you for this platform for dialogue between our two peoples. Earth and Levani have benefitted from centuries of trade and mutual management. We are here to reaffirm your commitment to the rebuilding of our survey outpost for the continued betterment of Levani society.”
Yari stood and bowed, a long, perfectly-postured motion, and slowly rose from it. She then took her broken piece of Life-Tech and skipped across the length of the table until it hit the big-jawed mouth piece in his big-ass jaw.
“We wish to renegotiate,” she said.
“Now, Ms. Yari, I believe it is… we respect your desire to advance the discourse between our peoples. Hopefully, you will be able to see—”
Aoi and Midori jumped out from under the table and skulked around in front of the gallery that had assembled. Half the humans pulled back from the table, the other half leaned in and stared with wet lips and probing, sweaty hands. “So, it’s true?” one of them slobbered.
“Yes. It’s true,” I said. “It’s also true that since Tawa yen is dead, your presence here on Levan is no longer legitimate.”
I felt so important at that table. I wore the slick garb of the Levani, shiny robes and extra lengths of cloth thrown over my shoulder. I liked that I could stick it to my former employer. I was free of the loop. I never had to check in again. I was the master of my own ship. And it just so happened, that my ship was a galaxy-smashing badass of a vessel.
I took first shot at intergalactic diplomacy as a certified mechanic. “First, you turn full about-face on your, and I quote, ‘Sustainability Plan for Leviathan Management.’ That’s done with. Next, give us back the Pusani, the human, and the Levani who helped us—and you fat-headed fucks by proxy—destroy a monster that would’ve been on Earth’s doorstep right about yesterday. Should make for good PR back home if you don’t. Clear?”
The mouthpiece and the well-fitted hat wearers close to him grumbled together for a minute or two. Their heads all turned toward me at once. “We agree.”
I pretended to wash my hands in the air in front of me. “Sweet!”
“Under one condition,” he said while shadows crept in across his big-boned head. A fucking ridiculous bulbous and soulless head. “We agree as long as you two, and only you two, retain control over any and ALL Kaiju on Levani.”
Yari’s hands shot out across the table and she stood with her perfect C-cup tits hanging over the well-used wood. “Deal!”
“Tech Agent 619, what say you?”
“Guess you’ve never been married. What she said.”
The meeting lasted a few hours after that but consisted mostly of us sitting there and just being there. Pointless waste of time, but that was the bureaucratic way.
We departed from the meeting hall and hopped on my refurbished and better-than-new rail-bike. Yari slipped on behind me and whispered in my ear, “I remember so many things about how we met, but now I know memories from you that you never meant to tell me about.”
“Me, too,” I said.
“I plotted a course for your bike. Just press the button and let’s go. I have a surprise for you.”
I did what she asked, and we sped off into the Levani countryside. I had been in such a rush to get from here to there or from there to another place that I hadn’t been able to take in the sights as I once had.
Continental island edges that dropped off into the core of the planet and sky colors full of every hue of what a rainbow could have on offer. We crossed an unassuming Levani island bridge and were onto a less clean and less manicured part of Levan I had never been to before.
“It looks like nobody lives here, Yari.”
“This place has been abandoned for quite some time. Not for any sinister reason or political maneuvering. It was just the policy of the Elders to move everyone from the outlying islands into the central island. What’s very rare about this island is that the previous owners and their claim to the land has been difficult to track and therefore canceled. So, anybody, as long as they are Levani, can come here and take as much of the land as they want. It’s just that nobody does.”
I slowed my pace on the rail-bike and took in the scenery. “Not bad country, here. I had a plot of lan
d back on Earth I was eyeballing forever. But to actually get land and get the permits and make it one hundred percent yours was impossible.”
“That’s what I thought.” Her arms squeezed harder around my waist. “We’re close, now,” she said.
We went through a grove of thick trees that I had to slow down for. It was a rare sight to me, thick tree growth on this planet. Once we cleared the forest, before us was a long flat plain lush with yellow Levani grass, but also mixed in was green grass that I had seen on Earth.
“Did you splice the green grass in, or something?”
“No. It grows wild here.”
“It’s beautiful.”
“If that’s beautiful, wait until you see what I have for you.”
We continued on and had to cross a stream a few times. Then, it appeared out of the green and yellow around me.
In the Levani design, but using less immaculately carved and lathed wood, was a log cabin. My dreams brought out of my mind and made into reality. Like she had seen them herself.
“Do you like it?” she asked.
I was off the bike at that point, slowly circling around and taking all of it in. I went right to her, picked her up off the bike, and carried her to the front door.
“Where I come from, this is how we first make love.”
“Right here?”
“No. I carry you through, then we get all wet and nasty wherever we want.”
She tapped her forehead like an answer she was hoping for would pop out of it. “I’m not sure I like the idea of ‘wherever’ for our first time in the house.”
“I respect that. Since you built the house, without me. And designed the house, without me. How about you make the choice for us? Just so it’s all you?”
“Is this a test?”
“Maybe a quiz.”
“It’s your call, then,” she finally said.
“Ok, let’s head in.” We stepped inside to the well-lit, and well-warmed idyllic cabin. That can mean lots of different things to lots of different people, but let’s just say, it was straight fucking PERFECT.