Kaijunaut

by Doug Goodman

  10

  K’tang never made it to the dome. The creature got caught in the center of town, showering lightning on the troops of Ximortikrim. K’tang took to battling the army head-on. The army was eager to face him after all he had done. After all, K’tang was the first to awaken and the first to attack Ximortikrim.

  Thousands of soldiers ran up and down his body while the giant monster did everything possible to destroy them. He breathed lightning all along his body, frying the undead. He swept his long arms around him, and like scythes, they cut down the soldiers where they stood.

  The monster could feel his body being blown apart. It was like being stabbed a hundred thousand times by tiny little fireworks all over his rock-sheltered skin. He needed to do something quickly, but his lightning was weakening. The creature pulled one last bolt out of his chest. The forest of electricity grew around him, spreading to destroy everything within 30 meters around him.

  The Jedik-ikik soldiers were eviscerated, but not without exacting their own price. K’tang lay prostrate on his knees, his long arms at his side like the long draws of a lonely mountain. Smoke wafted in the dark clouds around him.

  Up ahead of him, a great redness poured out from under the dome. Renslot watched as lava flamed along the aqueduct system, rising along the tracks on its way to the center fields where the dead lay with K’tang. K’tang barely had time to lift his arms in protest as lava flooded over him. Higher arches dropped water on top of the lava-coated monster. Rock exploded and water steamed instantly. The giant rock monster fought back helplessly against the geologic weapons, slinging burning globs of lava into buildings as he tried to stand up.

  Renslot shoved his hands into the lava in an attempt to destroy the aqueduct. The heat was too intense for the monster. He recoiled.

  Back in the fields of battle, the lava and the water were too much for K’tang. The lava solidified under the pressure of the cooling water, slowly freezing the mountain god into place. Jedik-ikik cheered, and the lava and water stopped flowing. Renslot and the lava monster, lacking one less leg, retreated back toward the mountains.

  Chapter Five: Emily’s Plan

  1

  “Wait. They’re coming here!” Cole realized. “Those monsters, they’re coming this way.”

  “There’s no guarantee they’re coming here,” Emily said. “They may just be going back to the mountains.”

  “What if they’re not? Can we take that chance? We’re on the other side of those mountains.”

  Emily thought of their training. Part of adapting to new challenges was being able to see the next challenge and analyze it before taking it on. She had to agree with her husband.

  While Emily contemplated their next move, Mathieu said, “There’s no way they should be able to walk either. Hear me out. Those things have to be what, at least five hundred thousand tons? That’s impossible to lift, hey.”

  “We have five of the brightest minds on any planet sitting right here in this room,” Emily said. (C.C. had returned to the main room during the battle.) “For three years, we trained for every kind of eventuality that NASA could throw at us, so if there is anyone who can figure this out, we are the ones to do it. First, though, we have to figure out what we’re up against, so I want all the data we have on these things now. We’re going to make the implausible plausible.”

  Anna stepped forward. “They share a mix of properties from both animals and plants. Last night while I was analyzing our data, I was watching some of the recordings. The way they had to pull themselves free of the ground, it’s like they had a root system and were feeding off the energy from the ground. In fact, I think they are smaller than they appear now. They’re just covered in a few thousand years of dirt and foliage. Remember that patch of skin we found under the rock?”

  C.C. said, “There’s more.” He opened up a graphics file on the table monitor. “This should look familiar. It is the topographical view of the area, showing the mountains near Ximortikrim.” He pressed a few buttons. The mountains and the valley were laid out in bright hues. “This is a geological map. It shows the relatively useless rock below the surface, though there were trace iron elements. We didn’t dig any deeper, no pun intended. Well, now I have.” He brought up a more detailed examination of the mountains. They couldn’t be clearer.

  “Those look like skeletons,” Cole said.

  “Those aren’t mountains. They’re graves,” Emily said.

  “Have you ever looked at a mountain and thought it looked like someone sleeping? In this case, it really was happening,” C.C. said. “But there’s more. See, this spectral imaging pushes out biological ‘noise.’ The program assumed the biomass was more rock. This imaging shows a mix of iron and titanium and a metal I haven’t seen before. These aren’t bone skeletons. They’re metal. I think that sound we hear every time one stands up-that metal banging sound.”

  “Tok, tok, tok,” Cole said.

  “Right. That must be gears of something in the skeleton moving. Kind of like they are turning on.”

  “There’s no way they should be able to walk,” Mathieu said. “I stand by what I said earlier. It is a physical impossibility, alien matter or not.”

  “Who cares?” Cole interjected. “We need to be figuring out how to destroy these things, not how they can stand.”

  “But if we can understand how they move, then we can use that to our advantage,” Emily said.

  Anna said, “Right. So instead of assuming that they are all granite, assume that at least half of what we see is biomass, and the weight comes down to more like a hundred thousand tons. That weight will go down more depending on how much is biomass and how much of the rock is sedentary instead of granite.”

  “With the metal skeleton, that must be what’s offsetting the density of the monster’s biomass.” Seeing the confusion in the eyes of Emily’s husband, C.C. said, “Let me give the quick tour of what we’re talking about. It’s impossible to weigh the giant monster, but we can make some assumptions based on its density. We can use water displacement to help us here. This is the old story of Archimedes and how he needed to figure out whether some silver had been used in the forging of his king’s crown. He noticed that when he got into a tub, the water rose, and he realized this same effect could determine the volume of the crown.”

  “And he ran through the streets naked crying out eureka!” Anna added excitedly.

  “Exactly,” C.C. said. “Now, we could 3D print a model of the Rentok based on our imagery and then dunk the model in a tank of water, but we don’t have the time, so we’re making assumptions on the displacement.” He took out a dry erase marker and wrote on the table:

  .375m

  2.9 l

  “That’s the height of a hypothetical ‘Rentok’ model and its relative water displacement.”

  “So you’re making this up,” Cole said

  “Hypothetical. That’s different.”

  “How? I’m not going to argue. Go ahead. Finish.”

  “Eyeballing the big guy, I’m guessing he’s 500 meters high. If I take that number, and I divide it by my model, I get 1.7 million. Take that and my displacement, and then multiply by density of 2.75 which is the relative density of granite, that tells me that the thing ways 14.2 million kilograms or about 500 tons.”

  Anna drew an x through 2.75 and wrote in green beside it “.9.” “That’s the relative density of a crocodile.” She wrote a few other problems and circled “103K tons.” She said, “Cole, that’s the relative tonnage of the creature if it is half biomass and half granite.”

  “So what do we do with that?”

  “Newton,” Emily said. “An object in motion tends to stay in motion.”

  “Should we launch it into space with our collected fuel?” Mathieu asked.

  “That’s risky, and I don’t think there’s enough fuel to launch it into space, but that’s a good idea. No, I was thinking that in this weak gravity, we could trip it. Once it goes down, then we will have the a
dvantage.”

  “Trip it?” Cole asked. “Seriously? I love you, babe, but we don’t have any 1000-foot-long trip wires that I know of.”

  Emily smiled. Cole was not encouraged.

  2

  Mathieu and C.C. were fitting the seismic pulse cannons onto the DSMUs when Emily walked over.

  “You’ve got to hurry. I estimate the Rentok will be here in five minutes.”

  “I’m doing everything I can, Emily,” Mathieu said. He squinted at a small keyboard and monitor clipped into the DSMU’s shell. “I’m having to code the pulse cannons into the DSMUs, and I keep running into errors. We’re fortunate that everything NASA made came with universal adapters. It’s like one giant Lego set. But that doesn’t mean the parts want to play together. Not to mention that while I’m doing this the fokken ground won’t stop shaking.”

  “Don’t let me stop you.”

  C.C. followed Emily as she walked toward the Ascent Vehicle. “This is a crazy stunt, you know.”

  “It is the application of basic physical principles.”

  “Right. In ways that they’ve never been tested before. You’ll be lucky you don’t destroy the Hab and all of Ximortikrim.”

  “There is the potential energy output not unlike an atom bomb,” she said. “It’s risky, but if you have another option, I’m all ears. Make it quick, though.” She checked her timer. “Four minutes until the big bad arrives.”

  C.C. grabbed her by the elbow. She tore out of it.

  “We have history together. You can’t walk off on me.”

  “I’m the commander. I can walk off on anybody I want.”

  “Emily, I want you to know that I still plan to take over as commander. Once the Rentok are destroyed, this mission belongs to me.”

  3

  BOOM

  BOOM

  BOOM

  REEEEE-AA-RGH!

  The sound filled their helmets. Cole cringed.

  “I don’t like this plan,” he told his crewmates.

  “You wouldn’t have liked any plan,” Mathieu said. “Relax. All you have to do is drive a car. The rest is on us.”

  “I’ve only driven this car once.”

  C.C. said, “And you didn’t crash it, unlike the EDL simulator, so how bad can it be?”

  “I’m bait.” His words were punctuated with the quaking sound of the Rentok.

  “There is that.”

  “My wife made me bait.”

  “I love you,” she said beseechingly. “Come on. It’s the safest place for you, honey.”

  “Hey, it’s here,” Anna said.

  Mathieu said a little prayer. “Holy Mary, look after us.” He made the sign of the cross. “Now and at the hour of our death.”

  “That’s uplifting,” C.C. said.

  “Let’s science this SOB into the Stone Age,” Emily said. “How about that?”

  “Much better.”

  “Cole, go!”

  Behind him, he saw the two giant Rentok, creatures much bigger than any animal he’d ever seen in his life. The Rentok they did not know were named Zree and Renslot, and they were coming over the final mountain. A mountain, Cole reminded himself, that they had only recently learned was a giant burial mound.

  Cole pushed the gear stick forward and shoved his boot down on the accelerator. The giant rover lurched forward. Its cabin bucked backward in complaint, as if he’d just hit something.

  “Slow down, Earnhardt,” Mathieu said. “That’s not a sports car you’re driving.”

  “Right.” He lifted his foot and exhaled slowly. The Golgotha Exploration Activity Rover, or GEAR, pushed across the clearing. Cole turned on his rearview mirror. It showed nothing but jungle. He adjusted the angle. He saw trees, then boulders, then legs, a body, and finally, a head covered in deep crevices. Some of those crevices ended in eyeholes and nostrils and a large, gaping mouth full of flaming colors.

  He hit the lights, and the metal Christmas tree bolted to the solar panel railings lit up all red and green and yellow and blue. A string of lights that read “Merry Christmas” shined in the morning light. It even had a big, yellow star perched on top that had Burt Ives singing “Holly Jolly Christmas.”

  “Personally, I would’ve preferred Brenda Lee,” Anna said. She sang out, “Rocking around the Christmas tree, at the Christmas party hop.”

  “You be bait, you get to pick the song,” Cole said.

  In the rear view camera, the giant magma monster’s eyes turned to Cole. He pressed down on the accelerator.

  “Time to get gone,” he said. The GEAR pushed up to 19 kilometers per hour. It maxed out at 20, but Mathieu had been more than happy to bypass those securities for Cole. Now, the GEAR could do a whopping 30 kilometers per hour.

  All eight wheels of the GEAR dug into the sand as the rover sped across the field and away to the next closest mountain.

  “Hurry up, baby,” Emily said. “Remember, we don’t want them anywhere near the Hab.”

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  The GEAR threw dirt in giant waves around it. In the low gravity, they didn’t immediately fall back to the ground, at least not by Earth standards. They kind of hung in the air like deflated helium balloons.

  As he fled to the southern mountain, two giant monsters on his tail, he discovered that he was paying more attention to the monsters than he was to what was in front of him. The GEAR hit a rock and bounced into the air. It bounced about three times higher than it would have bounced on Earth, which was almost half a meter of air between the GEAR and the ground. He landed with a crashing thud, spewing dirt. Cole nearly overcompensated for the rover’s trajectory and flipped it on its side. Fortunately, the last bit of gravity was working, and pulled the right-side tires back to the ground.

  “Careful,” Emily said.

  Mathieu laughed. “That looked awesome, Cole! I’m sure that was some kind of off-roading record. Did you see how much air you caught? People back home are going to be thinking you did that deliberately.”

  “Not once they get to know him,” C.C. said.

  “You’ll have to show me if I survive this. This thing drives with all the agility of a dumpster truck.”

  “You’ll survive,” Emily said. “But you have to go faster, baby. They’re gaining on you.”

  He had lost time while airborne and steering out of the bounce. The GEAR spun around a bit. It was precious time that the giant Rentok needed to catch up to him. The faster Zree tried to stomp on the GEAR but missed by a few meters. The impact, though, was enough to bounce the GEAR around some more. Cole said a little prayer of thanks that the rover did not go up into the air a second time.

  “Faster!” Emily encouraged him.

  “I’m going as fast as I can,” Cole said.

  “You’re not going thirty,” Mathieu countered. “Push harder.”

  “I don’t know what to tell you, Mathieu. My foot is on the floor.”

  Renslot reached for the Christmas tree with its massive arms. A tidal wave of rock swept at the GEAR. As Cole saw through the rearview monitor the wall of rock come flying at him, he thought of his wife and the nephew he’d never met. “Mellifluous,” he said.

  The GEAR jounced forward as the wall swept behind him. His front wheels went up, and suddenly he found himself climbing up the second mountain.

  “I made it!”

  The GEAR climbed up the low bank. The monsters followed. When he finally came over the steep rise, he was nearly launched into the air again. It certainly felt like it to Cole. All he could see in front of him was the blue horizon and the clouds. Then the nose of the GEAR dipped down, and it slammed into the rock beneath it. He was looking almost down at the tree line.

  “Veer left!” his wife shouted at him. He veered.

  Over the ridge rose the two monstrous heads.

  “Holy shit, they’re big,” C.C. said.

  The giant dinosaurian rock monster, the one the Jedik-ikik called Renslot, came over the ridge first. He took two steps and was almost
to the bottom. Then came the volcano monster. As soon as it took its first step onto the ridge, Emily shouted, “NOW!”

  Four NASA bulldozers, repurposed from forest clearing, powered by robots, steamrolled into the monster’s feet while the rest of the robots jumped out from behind trees and pushed into the monster.

  “I hope this works,” C.C. said.

  “It will,” Emily said. “It’s just math.”

  Mathieu, C.C., and Anna spark-started their SRBs and launched into the back of the walking death. They slammed into it with the power of three Saturn Rockets. They got exactly what they had hoped for. Caught off guard, the three-legged monster fell forward. It collided with the even bigger rock monster, and they both slammed into the ground.

  THOOM

  The rocket-powered DSMUs steered away from the destruction. A giant wave of dirt and rocks shot out from the monsters. A massive geological tsunami rippled across the valley and slammed into the southern mountain. The ripple went right up to the edge of the ridge, but it did not splash over.

  As Cole retreated back toward the Hab, an enormous cloud of dirt flowed over him. One minute he could see fine, and the next, he was enveloped in total darkness, long fingers of dust and dirt reaching around him. The wind from the collision buffeted the GEAR. First it shuddered, and then it tipped. Without any visibility, he couldn’t actually see himself being flung into the air. He felt weightless, and then he was tumbling and rolling. The windows shattered in the GEAR. Thankfully, he was belted in, but that did nothing to defend him against the rocks that came crashing through the broken windows and into his helmet.

  Cole knew he was dead. No amount of training could prevent his death. His life was dependent on the will of inertia. He thought to hail his wife one last time, but he couldn’t find any of the keys. The air was full of brown and black dust blowing everywhere, and the GEAR was tumbling like palm trees in a hurricane. The last thing he thought of before losing consciousness was his wife and his nephew. He hoped she’d remember him, but go on and make a good life with the remainder of her years. He knew she would raise Story as her own. She’d be the best damn aunt Story could’ve ever had, and she’d do everything to raise him right.