Miki had to swallow hard to prevent herself from vomiting. She shook her head. “My God. I can’t believe what it looks like down there. It’s worse than the interior of a slaughterhouse. Is this what it looks like all over the world? Is humanity going to come to an end in a war that results in a river of blood and gore?”
Nick walked over to Miki and grabbed her hand. Their fingers interlocked and he sighed. “We knew it would be like this. That we are fighting robots and not living beings. They have no regard for human lives. We are soldiers. We fight for a cause. Those robots are soulless exterminators. They are trying to complete their mission as quickly and as efficiently as possible.”
Jerome took in everything that he saw as his strategic mind quickly formed what he hoped was an efficient attack plan. He began yelling out orders to his team, “Captain Granderson, I want you to contact the programmer on the ground and tell him to head to ground zero as soon as you drop that EMP bomb. Tell him when he sees the flash that he is to run back to the factory where this all started! He has seen these robots up close and he has been studying them from the start without panicking! He may have information that can be helpful to us! Once you have him, try to use the TR-3B to contact the Horsemen through the TR-3B’s communication system. Then help me in fighting the robots that are attacking the people who are trying to flee the city.”
Jerome then moved his hand over the city pointing to the humanoid robots who were destroying it. “It looks like each of the robots is more or less composed of car parts from the same type of cars. That will help us to designate them.”
Jerome was still looking at the city below him as he shouted out the next part of his plan, “The three robots that we are going to designate as Focus, Mustang, and Taurus are spread out along the outskirts of the city. I can move the fastest. I will take on these three robots. If we can take them out, it will open up some streets for people to run out of the city. Chagon, you take the two robots in the middle of the city. We are designating them as Transit and Super Duty. Stay low to the ground and to try and avoid detection for as long as possible. Use your stealth and try to engage them one at a time. I will keep an eye on you. If you need help, I will fly in and assist.”
Jerome turned to Nick. “It’s obvious from here that extra time and materials were put into that alligator. It’s got more than two times as much armor as any of the humanoid robots and it’s built to fight kaiju.” Jerome placed his hand on his best friend’s shoulder. “Leviathan is the most physically powerful of any of us. I need you to fight what I am calling Robogator head on. Don’t hold back. Let the beast loose. Do you understand?”
Nick nodded silently in reply. Inwardly, he was concerned about what would happen if he didn’t hold back. Since he had first transformed into a kaiju and went on a rampage, he had gained a considerable amount of control over his kaiju-self, but it took a good deal of restraint on Nick’s part to maintain that control. He found that he was best able to control his kaiju-self by only transforming into Leviathan for short periods of time. He also found that it helped him to maintain control if he tried to reign in Leviathan’s destructive urges. He knew that this was a different situation than those he had trained for. Nick had worked on using his Leviathan form to operate in a surgical fashion by maintaining control of himself in case he needed to operate in close proximity to the people that he was trying to save. If he was engaging the battle robot in the middle of a destroyed city, then there would be no one alive in the immediate area. If there was ever a time that he could let Leviathan cut loose and tear into an opponent, this was that opportunity. Nick was fully confident that Leviathan could defeat the battle bot, but what concerned him more was if he could calm himself down after he had defeated it.
Jerome gave Nick a quick hug because he knew what he was asking of his brother, and he also knew that Nick was up to the challenge. Jerome released Nick then he turned around and called out to the pilot, “Captain Granderson, did you send out that message to the programmer?”
“Yes, sir!”
Jerome started taking off his clothes and Nick and Miki followed his lead. When they were completely naked, he yelled to Captain Granderson. “All right, drop that bomb then open the bay doors and let us loose!”
Captain Granderson brought the TR-3B low over Detroit and then dropped the EMP bomb on the city. There was a bright blue flash that cascaded over what remained of the skyline. None of the buildings in the city were physically damaged but every electrical system within fifteen miles of downtown Detroit was fried, including the factory that had nearly completed construction on a second robotic alligator. After he had dropped the EMP, Captain Granderson circled around and opened the bay doors to the TR-3B. The Kaiju Corps were standing at the bay door and their bodies were already shifting and growing as they started the transformation from human to giant monster.
Jerome half-shouted, half-roared, “Let’s do this!” Then he, Miki, and Nick jumped out of the TR-3B to engage the robotic murders below.
Chapter 8
When the team had jumped out of the aircraft at roughly one thousand feet above the city, they were almost directly on top of Transit and Super Duty. Miki was three-quarters of the way through her transformation when the robots came into view. When she hit the ground, she had fully transformed into Chagon. Her Chinese dragon-like form caused her belly to slither across the ground and the hundreds of crushed bodies that littered the streets. As she crawled across the streets, she could feel the remains of each and every person that Transit and Super Duty had heartlessly crushed. Nick was right. The robots were cold, unfeeling machines. She, however, was a living creature with powerful emotions. Emotions that could be used to help push her body to their limits and passed them. In her kaiju form, the emotion that most dominated her thoughts was anger. Anger was both a visceral and primal emotion, and it was what drove all of the team members when they were in their kaiju forms. The kaiju were aggressive creatures that were prone to violence, and as Chagon felt her body sliding through the dead, her anger grew to a fever pitch.
Chagon’s blood-covered body slithered over rubble and through dust as she made her way toward Super Duty. The robot was destroying an office building when Chagon slithered next to its foot. Chagon moved like lightning as she crawled up Super Duty and wrapped her serpentine body around its legs. Super Duty moved its arms to try and grab its attacker, but the kaiju’s reflexes were too quick for the robot to counter. Chagon continued to wrap her body around the robot as she made her way toward its face. Super Duty’s arms were pinned at its sides as Chagon finished positioning her body around the robot. Chagon’s body was completely wrapped around the robot’s torso as she swung her head around to stare into its face. If there was even the slightest chance that the robot felt fear, she wanted to see it in the mech’s eyes as she ended its existence.
Chagon began to constrict her body, and Super Duty’s armored body squealed as she crushed it like a tin can. The robot’s head popped off its body as hundreds of tires and computer parts forced their way out of the upper part of the robot. In a matter of seconds, the battle was over. Chagon had attacked her target and crushed it before Super Duty even had a chance to respond. As Super Duty’s body crumbled and she fell to the ground with the scrap metal that was left, Chagon took some small solace in the fact that if the robot did experience pain or fear, she inflicted as much of both as she could on it.
Chagon landed on top of the crushed body of Super Duty. The kaiju freed herself from the debris and then she immediately swung her head in the direction she had last seen Transit. Chagon quickly realized that she was not the only giant who possessed both speed and stealth as Transit’s metal hand grabbed her just under her head.
Garudasaurus soared over the decimated city. He was doing his best to remain unemotional for the sake of the soldiers under his command and the citizens that they were trying to save. Chagon and Leviathan were fighting in the middle of the city. Most of the civilians in that part of the cit
y were already dead. That fact allowed Chagon and Leviathan to attack the robots with all of the ferocity and anger that they had pent up within them. He, however, would be engaging robots who were still attacking the people of Detroit. Garudasaurus could not simply attack the robots in a blind rage. He would need to be cognizant of where he was in relation to the people who were trying to escape the city so that he did not inadvertently crush them while he battled the robots.
As Garudasaurus flew over the outskirts of Detroit, he could see the hundreds of thousands of people who were still alive and trying their best to escape the city. In their panicked state, the citizens of Detroit had become a mob that was stampeding away from the danger behind them.
Garudasaurus watched as the mob of people trampled those who fell to the ground in front of them. The robots had roused the people to such a state that the citizens of Detroit were unwittingly assisting in the extermination of their own kind. Garudasaurus was faced with a double-edged sword as he was preparing to fly into a position where the panicked mass could see him. Up until this point, the only experience that the public had with kaiju was when Chagon and Leviathan had first transformed and attacked humans. Garudasaurus had no doubt that when the fleeing people first saw him that he would only add to their terror as thoughts of those attacks mingled with the horror of the giant robots pursuing them.
Still, the initial burst of panic was an unavoidable consequence of the action that was needed for the greater good. The people of Earth needed to realize that he and the other members of the Kaiju Corps were here to protect them. If they were going to come to that realization, they would need to see the kaiju fighting off the robots on their behalf. Garudasaurus knew that when he flew over the mob of people trying to leave the city that he was going to inadvertently cause the deaths of more people at the hands of the mob. He also knew two other things. The first was that he would have the mob’s attention and that they would see him fighting the robots and hopefully realize he was here to help. The second thing that he knew was that with no form of electronic communication on the planet outside of the Horsemen that he would have to repeat this scene in every city that they engaged the robots in. There would be no news report or social media feed that the kaiju were fighting to save the human race. Garudasaurus and his team would have to convince the world one city at a time.
The winged kaiju pushed his doubts aside, and he flew a wide low arc over the fleeing people below him. As he expected, the mob screamed at the sight of him and many of them near the front of the mass of people tried to turn around and run from him only to be pushed to the ground by those behind them and trampled to death. At the back of the evacuating mob, Garudasaurus could see Taurus walking into the sea of people and crushing them like ants beneath his colossal metal feet. Garudasaurus screeched as he fixed his eyes on the robot, and as his call echoed over the citizens of Detroit, they stopped running, and as one, they turned their heads around to see Garudasaurus slam into Taurus’s torso.
Garudasaurus hit Taurus with enough force that he was able to push the giant robot several blocks away from the fleeing citizens. The kaiju saw the mob turn and look at him as he collided with the mech. He hoped that seeing him engage the mech was a first step in winning over their trust. Garudasaurus took one moment to look behind him to see how much distance he put between Taurus and the people it was attacking. The brief second that Garudasaurus had turned his head allowed Taurus to initiate a counter attack. The giant robot grabbed Garudasaurus by the shoulders and threw the kaiju to the ground. Garudasaurus’s face slammed into the blood-soaked streets of the city. The kaiju was lifting his face out of the remains of slain humans when Taurus’s foot came crashing down on the back of his head. The blow drove Garudasaurus’s face right through the street so that when the kaiju opened his eyes, he found himself staring at the city’s sewer system. The kaiju was surprised as dozens of people who were hiding in the sewers screamed at the sight of his massive beak smashing through the street above them. Their screams invigorated the kaiju as he realized that if he failed here, the people he was staring at would be dead within seconds.
Garudasaurus rolled onto his back to see Taurus’s foot coming down toward him again. The kaiju’s hands reached out and grabbed the metal foot as it was still coming down. Garudasaurus found that his strength was far greater than the robot’s, as he was able to stop the mech’s foot with relatively little effort. Garudasaurus pushed back on the foot which caused Taurus to lose its balance and stumble backward. The robot took a few steps backwards to regain its balance, and in that time, Garudasaurus was able to return to a standing position.
Garudasaurus clenched his clawed hands into a fist and then he delivered a stiff right jab to the robot’s face. The jab shook Taurus’s entire body, and before the robot could retaliate, Garudasaurus threw a left hook into its side that punctured its outer armor. Garudasaurus had driven his claw right into the robot, and as he opened it inside of Taurus’s torso, he could feel tires and computer parts shifting around his fingers.
Taurus’s hand shot out and grabbed Garudasaurus by the neck. The robot began to squeeze the kaiju’s throat in an attempt to strangle him. Garudasaurus’s neck muscles tightened as his air supply was suddenly cut off. The kaiju knew that both he and the robot had each other in a death grip. It was a matter of if Garudasaurus could do enough damage to the robot’s CPU to render it inert before it was able to choke the life out of him that would determine the victor of this battle. Garudasaurus began clawing and tearing at everything that his claw could reach inside of Taurus while the robot continued to apply pressure to his neck. Garudasaurus continued to tear at the mech’s insides as his legs became weak and he fell to one knee.
The kaiju could see the world around him becoming dark as his lungs threatened to burst from the lack of oxygen. Garudasaurus glared at the robot, and though he had no air in his lungs with which to create sound, the kaiju tried to screech at the mech in defiance. As Garudasaurus opened his beak and let out the soundless screech, he thrust his claw farther into the robot where he grabbed whatever he could. He then yanked his claw back out of the robot’s chest with a handful of circuit boards and wires. As he pulled the robot’s insides from within its body, Garudasaurus could feel Taurus’s grip loosening. The robot’s hands slid away from the kaiju’s neck and then it fell to the ground, defeated.
Garudasaurus took several deep breaths then he looked to his right to see Mustang wading through another group of fleeing people. The kaiju realized that he had to be quicker and more efficient as he engaged the next two mechs if he was going to save as many people as possible. Garudasaurus leapt into the air and unfolded his wings, allowing them to fill with wind. The kaiju screeched and flapped his wings several times to gain altitude then he streaked toward Mustang like a living missile.
Leviathan’s huge and thickly muscled body crashed down into the streets of Detroit with the force of a small meteor. A shockwave erupted from the impact point of his landing, sending dust, debris, and corpses flying into the air. Leviathan was walking through the dust cloud he had created when he saw a shining metal form close to the ground moving through the cloud toward him. As the dust continued to settle, Leviathan could make out the form of Robogator moving toward him at a much greater speed than he would have thought possible. Robogator was still several blocks away from Leviathan when the reptilian kaiju reared his head back and then thrust it forward, spewing a plume of flames from his mouth that engulfed not only Robogator but everything on either side of the street for five blocks. The five-block radius instantly turned into an inferno as Leviathan continued to spew flames from his mouth for a sustained twenty seconds.
Leviathan was still unleashing his flames when Robogator emerged from the fires around the kaiju’s feet and sank its metal teeth into the monster’s left thigh. Leviathan roared in pain as Robogator’s teeth fell just short of embedding themselves into his thigh bone. The kaiju lifted his fists into the air, and then he brought them c
rashing down into the back of the robotic alligator. While the blow shook the mech’s body, it did not force it to release its grip. Robogator started to roll his body to the side, which not only dug its teeth deeper into Leviathan’s leg, but it also caused the kaiju to lose his balance.
Leviathan quickly repositioned his right leg to keep himself from falling over then he once again started to deliver strikes to Robogator’s face. Leviathan delivered blow after blow, but despite his efforts, that robot refused to release its grip. Leviathan roared when the mech’s teeth gouged farther across his leg as Robogator once again attempted to roll over and pull him to the ground. Leviathan fought to keep his balance as he considered the fact that his enemy felt no pain. He realized that he was not going to be able to force the mech to release his leg because it was taking a beating. He was going to have to pull the robot’s teeth out of his leg if he was going to free himself.
Leviathan reached out and he placed his right hand on Robogator’s upper jaw and his left hand on the mech’s lower jaw. The kaiju roared in both pain and anger as he pulled on the robot’s vice-like jaws. Both the kaiju’s arms and the mech’s jaws were shaking as the test of strength continued. With each passing second, Leviathan was forcing Robogator’s mouth farther open. When he had pulled the robot’s jaws open wide enough, Leviathan quickly pulled his leg out from in between Robogator’s teeth. Leviathan then used his good leg to kick the mech in the face with such force that it dented the robot’s lower jaw and knocked out several of its metal teeth.
Undaunted by the damage to its face, Robogator spun around and swung its battle-axe-shaped tail into Leviathan’s injured leg. Leviathan roared with pain and fell to one knee when the metal appendage struck his open wounds. The kaiju was in a crouched position as he opened his mouth and unleashed a wave of flames that engulfed the robot. As before, Robogator walked through the inferno unaffected by the scoring fire. Robogator emerged from the flames, opened his jaws wide, and then sprang at Leviathan’s face. Leviathan was able to throw his hands up and grab the robot’s jaws, but Robogator’s momentum pushed Leviathan flat onto his back.
Kaiju Corps Page 6