by JE Gurley
He reached over and turned on the iPod docking station on his desk, rarely used since his return from Nevada and his encounter with Nusku. Soon, the smooth jazz sounds of Spyro Gyra floated throughout the room. He closed his eyes and tried to lose himself in the fluid saxophone and roving bass line, but the IR image from Haumea haunted him, twisting the melody into the trampling of a dozen Kaiju legs smashing cities. The shrill trills of the saxophone became the screams of the dying. He slapped off the iPod and sighed into the empty silence it left. Not even music brought him any joy.
He longed to reach for the bottle of scotch in his top desk drawer. For the first month after his return, which he jokingly labeled 1A.N. for Year One After Nusku, the bottle or one like it had been his constant companion. Even in his worst drunken stupor, he knew alcohol was not the answer and had slowly weaned himself from the bottle. It would not be the answer now.
He needed access to the GEMS satellite. His hand was now steady as he dialed Caruthers’ number.
The director answered on the third ring. “I was expecting your call,” he said.
“I need the GEMS.”
“Did the NEOWISE photos help?”
“They were … inconclusive. It’ll take six hours for the rotation to offer a clearer image.”
Caruthers paused. Rutherford imagined him leaning closer to the phone. “You saw something, Gate,” he charged.
“Yes, but it would be foolish to go to anyone with it now. Six hours; then I’ll know for certain.”
“I appreciate your candor, Gate, but I need to know. Goddard has closed ranks on me on GEMS. Maybe I can throw the fear of God into them.”
Rutherford glanced at the telltale photo atop the pile and sighed. “They’re there all right, and they thrive at Earth-norm temperatures.”
“You’re frightened. I can hear it in your voice.”
Rutherford snickered over the phone. “Damn right I’m frightened. You should be too. We all should be scared shitless.”
Caruthers sighed. “I’ll get you that feed from GEMS. I’ll call you back in an hour.”
Now he had set the wheels in motion. Once Caruthers had sunk his teeth into a project, he was persistent and persuasive. That was why he was the head of NASA. Goddard Space Flight Center and Johnson Space Center were both NASA and worked too closely to allow petty jealousies and professional rivalries to stymie any effort to identify the source of the Kaiju. Astronomical observations took back seat to saving the planet. If the director could convey his fear to the researchers at Goddard, he would have his access.
* * * *
It took Caruthers two hours, but Rutherford had his link with Goddard in Maryland. The researchers in charge of GEMS, Ahern and Patangan, were distant and cool toward him, but not outright hostile as he had expected for disturbing their routine. In return, he was polite and offered to keep them in the loop. He waited impatiently for the satellite to reach its new position. Using an instrument designed to detect gravity distortions caused by black holes light years away was different from detecting distortions within the solar system. Each planet created its own gravity well that bent light. Sifting through the streams of data for one particular line of numbers or an anomalous spike in a graph was slow, painstaking work, but by three a.m., he had his answer, and it surprised even him.
“Do you see it?” he asked the Goddard technician who had drawn the short straw to work with him.
The video link was fuzzy, but her weary expression and tired eyes stared at him with undisguised skepticism. She studied the point he had indicated for a long moment; then, brushed her long auburn hair away from her face and leaned closer to the image on the screen.
“It could be an anomaly,” she finally replied.
“Moons don’t dance. Namaka shuddered as it passed into Haumea’s shadow. Something grabbed it and shook it.”
“A gravity distortion?” She still was not convinced, but at least she had not dismissed him as insane, seeing aliens in the shadows.
“It would take a gravity field five times the strength of Haumea’s to cause that kind of shift.”
“It could be a micro black hole. We think we’ve discovered—”
He cut her off midsentence. “It’s too strong for a micro black hole.”
“It would explain the sudden loss of signal from New Horizon two years ago.”
He was beginning to lose patience with her. She was almost as stubborn as he was. “So would deliberate destruction.”
“Doctor Rutherford, jumping to conclusions based on a single observation isn’t going to help your case.”
He took a deep breath to calm himself. “I’m sending you the latest feed from NEOWISE. The IR spike on the surface and the source of the gravity anomaly originate from the same area.”
He waited while she compared the two photos. She still was not ready to concede, but her protests lacked her earlier certainty. “It doesn’t preclude a natural inclusion on the planet – a heavy metal asteroid or a micro black hole.”
He confused her by replying, “You are absolutely right. I can see you need more convincing, so let’s widen the field, see if we detect any more anomalies in the region.”
She nodded her head. A half-smile creased her lips. “I’ll need more coffee first.”
Unlike her, he was riding an adrenaline surge, created by certainty and fear. Caffeine would only bring him down. “Will you please refocus the satellite to widen the field first? Then, perhaps you need a break. You’ve been working very hard and have been more than patient with me. I’ll continue to observe while you re-caffeinate.”
She blushed. “Some here think you’re too driven, Doctor Rutherford. I think you’re a hero.”
It was his turn to be embarrassed. He was glad the video link was fuzzy. People had called him a hero before, but he did not like the title. A hero does what he or she does without fear and regardless of the consequences. He had been scared to death the entire time he had followed Girra’s path of destruction and traipsed around inside Nusku.
“I’m no hero. I’m just a scientist searching for answers.”
“We’ll find them.” She rose from her desk. “I’ll reposition GEMS, but then I need lots of coffee.”
The first images from the newly positioned satellite showed nothing, just empty space. After refining the image, the distortion on Haumea reappeared in the same location.
“It’s not an error or an anomaly,” she told him. “Something is definitely there. While you were going over the data, I pulled up old images from New Horizon. The object couldn’t have been there for more than two years. If so, it would have affected the orbits of the nearby Trans-Neptunian objects more severely. Stranger yet, when I checked for other gravity spikes, I found three evenly spaced at twenty-four hours apart dated four months ago.”
Rutherford’s heart went cold. She had not yet made the connection, but he had. The numbers were etched into his brain. “That’s a perfect match for the three Kaiju.”
Her expression changed from bemused fascination to fear as the color drained from her face. “You were right,” she gasped.
“I take no joy from it. The aliens are much closer than everyone thinks. They can react more quickly than we anticipated.”
“You anticipated them,” she pointed out.
“It was my job to imagine the worst case scenario and extrapolate possible outcomes. This is as worst case as it gets.”
She looked at him with a puzzled expression. “When I was running the newer data, I found this.”
She placed an image on the screen. It was just empty space, but the numbers indicated something was there. The object was invisible against the blackness of space, revealed by the distortion of the light waves of the stars behind it. Only a very massive object or one possessing an unnaturally high density could cause such distortions. Or one using an alien gravity drive, he thought.
“We need to estimate its speed. I don’t have to check its destination. It’s headed for us.”
He heard her sharply indrawn breath. “I have to contact Doctor Patangan. He will want to be here.”
“You get him there while I contact Director Caruthers. Unless I underestimate him, I think we’ll soon have all the help we need.”
He should have been elated to discover proof that he had been right. The months of ridicule had hurt him deeply, and there had always been the nagging doubt that they were right and he was wrong. Vindication should have tasted sweet in his mouth. Instead, all he tasted was stomach acid from his churning stomach.
13
Saturday, Dec. 16, 1530 hours USS Mississippi, Southern Pacific –
The passengers on Walker’s lifeboat went wild when they saw the submarine surface less than two hundred yards off their starboard beam. After their harrowing ordeal, the USS Mississippi represented safety. To the Americans on board the Radiant Princess, it represented a piece of home. The sight of the American flag on the mast drove many to tears. To Walker, the sub’s appearance meant he could get back to his original mission – killing the Kaiju. The atmosphere on deck was somber as the crew gazed into the dazed faces of the innocent victims climbing aboard the submarine. Some, in a state of delayed shock, could not get their limbs to work. Members of the crew carried them from the lifeboats as gently as they could. Walker could see it in the crew’s faces: they thirsted for revenge. So did he, but he now had a greater respect for the danger the enemy represented. The aliens were learning.
He climbed from the lifeboat weary and worn out. He waited until the passengers disembarked before helping the crew remove the dead bodies. Enclosed in black body bags, they went into the sub’s freezer. All except Stimson. His body went into the Sail awaiting a Navy burial at sea. Perez walked beside the stretcher bearing Stimson with her hand resting on the body bag. McGregor glared at Walker across the deck, and then disappeared inside the Sail.
Talent climbed aboard the sub one-handed, favoring his injured left wrist. His shoulder was bloody where the fight with the Wasps had reopened his wound. He looked as if he carried the weight of the world on his shoulders, shoulders stooped and eyes focused on the deck. Costas had informed Walker that Talent had shot his friend Owens as a Wasp carried him away. He knew from experience that a mercy kill was a hard thing to do and even harder to live with.
“You should see to your wounds,” he told Talent.
“Yeah, after a cup of coffee.” He eyed the open hatch with distaste. “Can’t I ride up top?”
Walker patted his uninjured shoulder. “Come on. It’s not so bad once you get used to it.”
With the addition of the survivors, the number of people aboard the submarine suddenly increased by twenty percent. Making space for them required a wholesale shifting of personnel and a little Navy ingenuity. The crew relinquished their bunks to the weary passengers, tending to them as honored guests. Fire Team Bravo offered their bunks in the missile room to displaced sailors and made do with fold-out cots scattered throughout the missile bay. The ship’s doctor went around patching up their physical injuries, which were mostly minor in nature – cuts and bruises, a few gashes from close encounters with Wasp talons, and exhaustion. These he could remedy with aspirin, Band-Aids, antibiotics, and sedatives, but their mental scars would remain with them for the rest of their lives. These were beyond his limited scope.
Most heart wrenching of all were the faces of the nine children, the sole survivors of the hundreds of children aboard the ship. Some of the younger ones clutched dolls or toys as if lifelines to their so recent past. The older ones seemed to shrink into themselves, becoming hollow-eyed children, Lost Boys in an alien Never Land. The lucky few were with their parents, clinging to them as they never had before. Most were now orphans, thrust into the midst of strangers by events they barely comprehended. The crew took it upon themselves to entertain them with songs, feats of amateur magic, and storytelling. It was a heartwarming effort, but despite the occasional bursts of laughter or fleeting smile, the children’s sad faces quickly resumed their original blank masks of withdrawal.
Walker wasn’t sure how to deal with his subordinate, Captain McGregor. McGregor blamed him for the deaths of the two Fire Team Bravo members, Watts and Stimson. While as team leader their deaths were indeed his ultimate responsibility, he knew he could have done nothing differently to save them. He knew because he had gone over every detail of the encounter in his mind during the wait for the Mississippi to arrive. There is one axiom a leader cannot ignore – in battle, men die.
It was a basic dark law of military physics. Every action produced an equal and opposite reaction. No one knew that better than he did. Survival was an immutable equation based on the absolute truth of numbers. Like a Las Vegas odds maker, during a battle every soldier calculated his or her chances of dying versus that of the enemy. It was a roll of the dice, and sometimes the dice came up snake eyes. The deaths of two men and nine passengers did not make for a glowing report. He felt his failure deep in his weary bones. He could deal with it, but could McGregor?
Ensconced in the missile room, the fire team performed the normal post-mission routine of cleaning weapons and restocking supplies, but now McGregor’s men sat on one side of the room, and he and Costas on the other. They worked in silence, the only noise the soft clicks of rounds loaded into ammo magazines. Specialist Maddy Perez, who had been on the lifeboat with Stimson and had witnessed his death, sat slightly apart from her comrades. She felt honor bound to side with her team members, but did not agree with their condemnation of Walker.
He was not worried about their actions under fire. They were U.S. Navy S.E.A.L.S. In a fight, they would do their jobs to the best of their abilities. What concerned him was their attitude. Once they reached their destination, inside the Kaiju, he could not take the time to explain every order or to win their trust. Some of them would likely die on the mission, perhaps all of them. The attack on the cruise ship was just a taste of the enemy’s power. They could not comprehend the tenacity of the creatures inhabiting the Kaiju under full Kaiju control. They had to obey his orders without question, regardless of their opinion of him. Anything less could mean mission failure and all their deaths.
He could replace McGregor to avoid the inevitable confrontation, but that would be a career ender for the young captain and could further alienate the team. He would just have to ride this one out.
Mark Talent proved another quandary. Although Talent was a passenger on the Radiant Princess and a civilian to boot, he had guts and skill with a weapon. He had shown something of his character during the fight against the Wasps, using a 9 mm, a kukri, and an MP5. He was cool under fire and had an innate sense of leadership for a man who claimed to be a loner. His berserker rage after killing Owens, if properly focused, would not be a hindrance. In fact, Walker preferred a little genuine hatred for the enemy to simply getting the job done. An angry soldier took more chances, and sometimes that made the difference between success and failure. A soldier should never waste his life, but should be ready to spend it if needed.
Now, down two team members, he could use Talent’s help, but he wasn’t sure if Talent was willing to risk his life again. As a civilian, he would most certainly face resentment from the other members of Fire Team Bravo who would see his presence as an affront to the memories of their two fallen comrades. He thought Talent could deal with that. The larger question was if Commander Murdock would allow a civilian onto the team. While it was technically Walker’s team and his mission, rescued civilians at sea came under the sub captain’s jurisdiction.
His mind was still in turmoil from the mission. He decided to perform his evening prayers. His ritual ablution before Maghrib was a quick one. The addition of the survivors and his fire team placed an extra burden on the sub’s limited recycling capacity. The brief rinse had washed away the visible blood from his face and hands but not from his mind. Looking down at his hands, he could still see traces of blood from the rescue mission, mingled with layers of bloodstains de
posited over the years. It was invisible to others. Only he could see it, but that did not make it less real. He feared his hands and his soul would never be free of the bloodstains of his victims.
As a sniper, he had done his duty. He had no qualms about killing the enemy, even fellow Muslims if it meant saving more lives, American lives. His superiors assigned his targets, but the call to make the shot always remained his. He knew the first time he failed to pull the trigger would be the last day he would be of any use to himself or to his country. One that day he would resign.
He chose a quiet corner in the missile amid the instruments death away from prying eyes. He hoped for a taste of tranquility, but inner peace, like peace in the real world, proved elusive. Often he had no opportunity to perform the required rituals for salat, the daily prayers. Many times his prayers were just a few silently spoken phrases to remind him there was a God and that Allah was his name. He knew any Imam would consider him a lapsed Muslim, but it was the heart that mattered, not the ritual.
The juxtaposition between his locale and his goal was not lost on him. He too often recited his prayers with his weapons by his side. With no Imam to read aloud the first two rak’at verses, he performed the third rak’at by quoting silently from the first book of the Qur’an. He sought absolution, but forgiveness hovered just beyond his reach, taunting him. Finally, he gave up. He would try again during his Isha’ evening prayers before retiring, if he had the opportunity to sleep.