by Samit Basu
CONTENTS
Cover
Praise for Turbulence
Title Page
Copyright
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
Chapter Fifteen
Chapter Sixteen
Chapter Seventeen
Chapter Eighteen
Acknowledgements
About the Author
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PRAISE FOR TURBULENCE
“A thoughtful exploration of the blurry difference between heroes and villains. Ethical questions are deftly scrutinised in a depth that a comic book or film would struggle to match.” The Sun
“Basu knows his stuff… he conjures up a vast array of imaginative powers [and] unflinchingly depicts the costly consequences.” SFX Magazine
“…inventive and very clever. But most of all, it is fun. If you have ever picked up a comic book and enjoyed it, then this is a must-buy.” Starburst Magazine
“It is, unabashedly, a new style modern superhero novel with a distinctive twist. It is also current, smart, energetic and a sparkling read. Most of all, the frenetic pace is great and the dialogue fizzes with whip-sharp quips and comments. It’s funny, it’s intelligently witty, it’s great. Loved, loved, LOVED it.” SFF World
“An excellent book, a thoughtful read that throws out questions without any easy answers, that opens up the superhero genre to deeper analysis, and yet is also an incredibly enjoyable superhero story itself.” Fantasy Faction
“As unpretentious as it is entertaining, as compelling as it is thought-provoking, it establishes once and for all that the novel is as much a home for the superhero tale as film, tv and comics… it’s not just an astute and captivating read, but an important one too.” Too Busy Thinking About My Comics
“This is one of those rare superhero stories that is not overshadowed by the powers but is told in the humanity that pulls the superhuman together.” Geek Native
“An entertaining, well-written read. In the genre’s history it will be seen as an important work, a reflection of the subcontinent’s growing self-confidence.” World SF
“The action is fast and full of iconic fight scenes… The humour and cultural references are fun and spot on…” Geek Syndicate
“An entertaining fast-paced story that manages to cover some complex issues and the attention to detail for the various locations is superb… Samit Basu has some serious talent for telling a story.” SF Crowsnest
“Brilliantly written, fun and fast paced action that leaves you wanting more. One word of warning though, you may ignore your loved ones completely until you’ve finished it.” The Tattooed Book
“The best fantasy writer you’ve never heard of… looks set to redefine the superhero genre for the twenty-first century.” Reader Dad
“…his comic timing is quite excellent… Basu has definitely got his own flair for the extraordinary.” Pissed Off Geek
“You can see the novel as a film from the word go and I’ve never read a book like that before. I’d love this to be made into a film for my imaginings to become reality.” BookGeek
“A consistently entertaining book with a thoroughly modern voice and an indefatigable spring in its step.” Superhero Novels
Also available from Titan Books
TURBULENCE BY SAMIT BASU
RESISTANCE SAMIT BASU
TITAN BOOKS
RESISTANCE
Print edition ISBN: 9781781162491
E-book ISBN: 9781781161203
Published by Titan Books
A division of Titan Publishing Group Ltd
144 Southwark Street, London SE1 0UP
First edition: July 2014
1 3 5 7 9 10 8 6 4 2
Names, places and incidents are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead (except for satirical purposes), is entirely coincidental.
Samit Basu asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work.
© 2014 by Samit Basu.
No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means without the prior written permission of the publisher, nor be otherwise circulated in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.
A CIP catalogue record for this title is available from the British Library.
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CHAPTER ONE
A giant lobster rises slowly out of Tokyo Bay. It is an old-school kaiju, three hundred feet long, and stands upright, its hind limbs still under water, in defiance of biology, physics and all codes of lobster etiquette.
It totters slightly, taking in the scenery, and waves its massive claws in the general direction of Tokyo. It screams, an angry, unearthly sound that scatters a passing flock of seagulls. It turns, creaking, to left and right, looks at Chiba, and at Kanagawa, but then does what every kaiju must.
The giant lobster strides towards Tokyo.
* * *
Norio is sparring with a trainer robot in his 124th-floor penthouse on the island of Odaiba, when the call comes. He performs the standby mode kata, and the robot powers down, humming softly. He waves an arm and a holographic talkscreen appears, floating in front of him as he paces around the dojo. It’s Azusa.
“Monster,” she says.
“Type?”
“Lobster.”
“Navy?”
“Waiting.”
“Air Force?”
“Two jets. Four missiles.”
“Impact?”
“None. Should I send out the signal?”
“Do it.”
Norio disconnects, issues a command, and a giant screen on a nearby wall flickers to life. He mutes the excited chatter of the news anchor with a gesture, and stares at the kaiju onscreen as it lumbers towards Odaiba. At its current pace, it will take at least twenty minutes before it starts the usual property damage. More than enough time.
The Kaiju King’s creations usually surface in time to feature on the primetime evening news, but this one is clearly in a hurry, and wants to catch sunset over the Tokyo skyline as it tears up the city.
At least the giant lobster looks suitably monstrous – the last one, three weeks ago, had been a seriously oversized seaweed chips packet with arms. But this one could have had its own Toho franchise. It could have held Godzilla to at least a few draws. The lobster’s maroon exoskeleton shows no signs of missile damage apart from a few burnt spots. Before the Kaiju King’s powers transformed it into its current behemoth form, it had been an ise-ebi, a spiny lobster. Norio looks it up, and is annoyed to find that normal spiny lobsters don’t have claws – the Kaiju King has added those, and his research process is clearly flawed. Clawed or not, Norio has met this lobster’s kind before, in expensive restaurants. Usually as sashimi, though he is quite fond of eating ise-ebi roasted alive. An option that is possibly available today.
Norio fights the memory, but fails. Dinner with his fathe
r and brother at some ridiculously exclusive restaurant in Asakusa. September 2012. They’d talked about lobster that night as well – an American lobster, a normal-sized one, had been found in Tokyo Bay, and his father had been very annoyed. Norio remembered how spectacularly bored he’d felt. He’d wanted to talk about superheroes.
The tattoo on Norio’s wrist throbs, and he shakes his head, clearing eight-year-old cobwebs. He looks ruefully at the tattoo. It’s a goryo, a vengeful aristocratic spirit. It had been the right choice for him, no question, but he wished he could have picked a creature that didn’t rhyme with his name.
He strides to the wall, presses the secret panel, and after it slides open, pushes a button. Another section of the wall clicks, and the secret elevator opens. Norio walks in.
* * *
In Tokyo’s Akihabara Electric Town district, a woman in her mid-twenties shuffles out of a second-hand electronics store. She’s short and slightly unkempt; her akiba-kei T-shirt has seen better days. She snakes through crowded lanes overflowing with comics and electronic stores, ignoring the hypnotic strobing neon signs everywhere around her. She pauses for a second outside a costume cafe to exchange scornful glances with the French-maid-costumed servers and their spellbound otaku customers. Hoverpad operators offer her free rides; she ignores them.
Her tattoo, a wolf made of lightning, glows again, red and urgent, and she picks up the pace. She dodges into a mangakissa and runs up a narrow flight of stairs to a floor full of private cubicles. She runs down a corridor full of purikura photo booths, sliding past groups of giggling cosplaying teenagers mirror dancing with holographic anime versions of themselves. At the end of the corridor is a closed cubicle, its door streaked with stains, an “Out of Order” notice stuck to it with frayed tape. She taps the door and it slides open to reveal a shining metal elevator. She looks up at the camera, draws a sign in mid-air. A robotic voice asks her to identify herself.
“Raiju online,” she says, and the door slides shut.
* * *
In Shibuya, a sushi chef, hat askew, runs down Spain Slope, causing much merriment among a group of German students ambling by a trendy bistro. They film him on their phones as he rushes into his restaurant, barks orders at his trembling assistants, scolds an American couple for pouring too much soya sauce on their salmon rolls, and rushes into the toilet.
Once in, he leans against a toilet cubicle and looks at his arm, where a tattoo of a nightmare-devouring baku glows green. The cubicle wall spins around, pitching him into a dark room behind it, and the words “Baku online” can be heard before the wall closes with a loud click.
* * *
And in a love hotel in the Kabukicho red light district, a stunningly beautiful man in a ballerina outfit apologises to his wailing client. He watches the scruffy businessman stomp out of his boudoir, pops a pill, and hums a popular soap opera theme as he pulls up his stockings, covering a glittering purple tattoo of a horned oni.
* * *
In the preparation chamber, a gigantic hall in an abandoned Hisatomi toy factory on the southern edge of Odaiba, Norio stands in his harness as robotic arms swing around him, attaching his battle-suit components to his body. Azusa’s harness is opposite his, and he watches with the usual mixture of amusement and furtive desire as her slender body disappears like a reversed egg-hatching video, as the round, genderless components snap into place, leaving them both looking like action figures. He’d have preferred an American-style body armour, more sleek and muscly, less rounded, chunky and asexual. But he hadn’t had a say in the equipment design.
Norio’s augmented-reality visor slides down, and through the video feed he watches the giant crustacean’s progress towards Odaiba. Why did they always come to Odaiba? Why not take a right turn and head for the amusement park across the bay? The beast floats steadily towards the man-made island, its entirely wrong body causing only the smallest of ripples in the bay. Most of the mammal and reptile kaiju make a huge mess, wading, splashing, falling down, sending massive waves in every direction. This incredibly ugly Tokyocidal behemoth is one of the most graceful Norio has seen.
Far above the lobster, TV and livestream crews hover, shouting excitedly, each claiming exclusive footage – they used to come in lower, but some of the kaiju had flame breath or hidden wings, and helicopters are expensive. The lobster finds them as annoying as Norio does; it screams at them, and snaps its claws upwards in a futile attempt to pluck them out of the sky.
About five minutes to combat.
Lights go on in quick succession above three tunnel openings on the eastern wall of the preparation chamber. The rest of the team is here. Battle-suited, Norio and Azusa leave their harnesses and head towards the delivery pod. Behind them, come the other three mecha-pilots, all armoured in transit, all moving slightly unsteadily: the maglev transportation gondolas from central Tokyo to Odaiba have been built for speed and efficiency, not comfort. But the five do make an impressive spectacle as they walk towards the battle; in the anime based on their adventures, they usually show this walk in slow motion. Each battle-suit is both white and the mecha-pilot’s specific colour and has their chosen demon emblazoned on its chest. The multi-coloured AR visors obscure their faces: by mutual pact, they have chosen not to know one another’s real-life identities. They’d decided this would make it easier if any team member were captured, or killed. So far neither has happened.
The delivery pod hurtles underground, playing an annoying catchy tune, and then launches into Tokyo Bay, heading for ARMOR station, their command centre. The pilots stand in silence: in their TV show, this is usually the point where they exchange friendly banter and their leader, the mermaid princess Amabie, tells them what the mission is. There is no need for Azusa to do this: the giant lobster on their AR visors is a fairly substantial hint.
Not too far away, the kaiju makes its first kill: a TV helicopter hovers too low, its crew either reckless or new at this game, and the lobster powers out of the water and snaps it in half. The team freezes the image of the beast entirely out of the water on their visors; it is always better to see the whole kaiju as early as one can, since some of them have wholly unexpected body parts hidden underwater. In this case, it’s a hundred feet of additional lobster tail. The other helicopters hover on, cameramen shooting excitedly; the kaiju, framed in a fireball, surrounded by falling chunks of helicopter and human, is a photographer’s dream come true.
“Are you leading this one, Amabie?” asks Raiju.
Azusa shakes her head. “Goryo,” she says.
The others nod.
The pod docks into ARMOR station and its doors slide open. The underwater hangar lights up. They’ve all done this before, several times, but the pilots cannot help their breath catching for a moment as they see their battle-mechas.
Five giant mecha-demons, each thirty feet tall, stand in the hangar, ominous, powerful, silent. As Goryo steps off the delivery pod onto the hangar floor, the creatures’ eyes light up, and their chests open, revealing hollow metal spheres, nine feet in diameter, inlaid with complex circuitry and AR screens. The pilots race to their demons and as they clamber in, the mechas draw them into their bodies. At Norio’s signal, they power up, and float up to the hangar roof, towards the release chamber.
A minute later, Team ARMOR shoots upwards through the dark, muddy waters of Tokyo Bay.
They surround the kaiju underwater. Azusa’s golden mermaid-mecha’s tail undulates as it circles the beast’s tail. The first strike is Norio’s, and his black skull-faced ghost-mecha speeds ahead of the monster and turns, waiting for the others to take their positions. Raiju’s red wolf-mecha poises, waiting to run up the kaiju’s back. Oni and Baku’s hideous metal faces lurk near its lowest pair of limbs.
“ARMOR engage,” whispers Norio.
His black spirit mecha streaks out of the water, shooting pulses of shimmering white plasma at the lobster.
Amabie’s arms extend into sixty-foot-long spikes; she spears its tail.
Oni and Baku’s mecha limbs transform into giant hammers, and they pound at the kaiju’s legs.
Raiju leaps out of the bay behind the monster, landing with a crunch on its shell.
Rings of white light trace the ridges and crags left on the beast’s body from Goryo’s assault, burning its shell as they go, and Raiju’s weight thundering onto its back at full power decides the issue. The kaiju tilts forward, lurching, claws snapping furiously, but its shell does not crack. Screaming, it topples forward, a crustacean skyscraper crumbling in slow motion. What is left of its lobster brain forgets for a moment whatever made it this unnatural size, made it stand upright.
The splash from the fall hurts the creature more than the mechas did. A wall of water rises in every direction, knocking Raiju off its back, sending Oni and Baku scrambling, leaving only Amabie hanging on grimly to its tail. Goryo plummets into the depths at full speed to avoid getting crushed by the falling lobster above him.
The beast streaks forward underwater, and the mechas race after it. The incredible design of their control spheres has left all the members of the team upright and unharmed, even as their mechas twist and topple around them. Now they brace into attack position and charge at full speed.
Stuck to the kaiju’s thrashing tail, Amabie retracts a spike, shuffles forward and impales the beast again, and it shudders and writhes, its mad northward dash halted. Amabie’s mermaid-mecha drags itself further up the tail, and looks for more imaginative ways to hurt the lobster. But the kaiju is in shallower waters now, and it thrusts forwards and upwards, leaping out of the bay by the shipyard just to the south of the Odaiba Telecom Tower. As the beast swings its tail about, Amabie lets go just in time to avoid being crushed to a pulp against a huge cargo ship.
By the time the rest of Team ARMOR catches up, the giant lobster is waiting for them. Perched on a massive tanker, its tail crushing containers on the shore, its six claws poised to strike, its insanely heavy body somehow held up by its four skinny hind limbs, water flowing off its shell and glittering in the light of the setting sun, the Kaiju King’s finest creation yet is ready for battle.