Kaiju Rising: Age of Monsters (48 page)

Big Dog

Timothy W. Long

It was a different world inside the box.

The pod rattled loud enough to make her ears ring for days. It smelled like exhaust and raw fuel. Her eyes stung from spent shells and multi-stage accelerants. Vertigo ate at her gut every time she looked outside, and just when she thought she was used to all of these sensations she would be picked up and tossed back into her chair hard enough to knock the breath right out of her chest.

The world rocked back and forth as Commander Katie Cord attempted to keep up with the viewports. Each three inch thick glass window provided a limited view of the world ahead, and what she saw was not pleasant. The act of actually turning to view her ‘six’ was worse thanks to a creaking chair that more often than not, smacked her head against the side of the padded portcullis.

What she saw of the hills of Saipan were beautiful but there were also patches of scorched earth among the trees and grass.

But for all that she wouldn’t give this up for the world.

“Six degrees lift. Hit ‘em with the fifty-fives again.” She bellowed into the radio. It hung a foot from her head and she had to reach for it because holding on, she’d learned early on, could practically dislocate her shoulder.

The machinery screamed around her as the beast fought to move sixty-seven hundred tons of metal, gears, grease, fuel, and ammo. Not to mention five souls all of whom were under her command. A staggering step, and then she was in the air again. Exhale, wait for it and then just like that, smashed into her padded chair.

Katie lowered her headgear exactly eight seconds later as her commands were relayed to waiting gunner, Mack. She knew her seat was uncomfortable but the gunner had to hang on for dear life every time the big guns fired.

“Hit six!” the gunner rattled back.

“We got a oil leak in seven primary,” Kilmer called from the reactor room. “I need two or three minutes to get it under control.”

“Sorry, Kilmer. We don’t have time to stop and shut down a boiler.”

“I’ll do what I can but these are not the ideal working conditions.”

“Noted,” she said and clicked off.

“Movement right, I make it forty five degrees,” her topside spotter yelled into the nearest porthole. O’Hare’s position was perilous at best. His mount swayed with each step of the beast. During trial runs, Katie had sat there for a few hours, and if there was a scarier place on Earth, she’d never heard of it.

At least in the hole she was protected by a couple inches of American steel. A direct hit was nothing. Big Dog could take it. It was the Kaiju she had to worry about. The minute one of them got close enough to engage in actual combat she was going to be sent home in a bunch of little boxes.“

Commander, I see movement,” the man next to her said in a thick German accent.

I wish the movement was a bullet seeking your head
, she didn’t say out loud.

Heinrich Glaus, former commander of the famed Panzer Corp was smug. He wore his adopted American uniform with the same aplomb he’d worn his Nazi clothing. His shoes were spit-shined so that they gleamed in the dank pod and his rank insignia shined like gold.

Another shuddering couple of steps and she saw it, too.

“It’s a Mark One?”

“Mark Two, begging the commander’s pardon. We are headed for some fun time,
ja
?”

“You think this is fun? I’d hate to see what you do in your down time.”

“Mainly listen to music. I must confess that sitting in a metal box for years has damaged my hearing some but when I hear Grieg’s music I can, for a time, forget all of this.”

“Do you forget the screams of men? Asshole.” The last word was under her breath. The man probably didn’t hear it, but she really needed to learn to hold of her tongue.

Dammit. What would her very proper and very Kentucky father say if he heard his daughter using such language? Since Germany had surrendered six years ago, her feelings of hatred for her nation’s former foe had not lessened. They’d killed her Teddy, and she would never forgive them. Any of them.

“It was a bad time for us. You know? It was a bad time for all of us. I did not like what I did just as I do not like this.”

He didn’t like this? What did he like, the screams of millions of Jews as they were fed to the fires? So many questions remained after the surrender, and with the truce in effect many of them remained unanswered. Germany had agreed to reparations but when the threat of Kaiju, as the Japanese had named their new allies, had spread, so had the need to present a united front with the assistance of the European nations.

When Katie’s career in the Air Force had nearly come to an end, thanks to a test flight gone wrong, she’d thought that a peaceful life lay ahead for a year, or so. At least until the beasts picked up their attacks and spread their seed and rage across the rest of the world.

“We need delta wing and we need them now. Let command know.” She squinted at the shape ahead. She used to wear eye glasses but had given them up in recent months to appear more able. She was not about give up command of the largest machine of war the US had ever created.

“On the way.”

“How did they know? How did they know we were coming here?”

“Did you think they would leave a nest unprotected, Commander?”

“But ground pictures didn’t pick up anything this size.”

“We can take it. Think of the glory from this mission when we take down a class two and bring home a sample of the beast.”

“I don’t know. This feels wrong.”

Big Dog continued its lumbering steps. Glaus yanked the radio transmitter to his mouth and shouted directions, and then made adjustments as they drew nearer to the enemy. The Kaiju might be huge and they might be nearly unstoppable but they were still as dumb as rocks. Rocks that could swat fighters from the air and crush tanks with hands the size of busses, but still, tactics needed to be adhered to.

“
Ach!
It’s a class three. No, I make two of the creatures.”

Katie grabbed the command receiver and triggered it.

“Lightning one, lightning one. This is Big Dog. Where is that wing?” she yelled. Katie triggered the transmitter several times, and then asked again.

“Big Dog, we are sending you some love. Stand by.” The man had a Southern Drawl heavier than her own.

“Can you hurry it up before we engage?”

“We hear you, Big Dog. General Patton sends his regards, ma’am,” the man replied.

“The general is here?”

“Ah. Patton is a great strategist. Perhaps there is hope,” Glaus replied.

“If you didn’t believe in this mission, then why the hell are you here, Glaus?”

“I am here, Commander, because I believe in the mission, and I also believe in you. Now lead us forward,” he said and lowered his viewfinder.

Big Dog had not been her idea. She was brought in late and that was only thanks to a favor that General Monroe and his admiration for her work on the latest destroyers. Many of them lay at the bottom of the ocean, thanks to the Japanese alien allies, but many of them still patrolled near home, and that was enough for her. When she’d proved herself to have a good eye for tactics against the beasts she’d been moved up to the project.

Big Dog was the first of its kind. A machine large enough to contend with the Kaiju. Work had begun after the third disastrous battle of Fukujima when all was had been going in the Americans’ favor. Then the wave of advanced and larger beasts had descended on their forces and decimated them. The war had been all but at an end when the alien’s craft, damaged and lost near Earth, had sensed the detonation over Hiroshima and come to investigate. It was sheer bad luck that the ship had crashed near Fukishima, making a new island in the Japanese sea.

“Target ahead. It’s firing. Shift fifteen degrees. No, make it twenty five,” Glaus bellowed.

“Shit!” Katie yelled as commands were translated to drivers.

Below them the boilers screamed as they poured power into four squat legs. Big Dog swayed to one side, and then took a couple of shuddering steps. Something whistled overhead and created an explosion she felt in her gut a few seconds later.

“That was too damn close, Glaus!”

“If you’d care to switch positions?”

She frowned. He was quicker than her but not by much. She turned her attention to the map of the terrain that hung a few feet away and just over the portholes. Just another mile and a half and they would arrive to deliver their payload.

If they arrived.

“Shift starboard fifteen,” Glaus shouted.

Katie braced herself again but was slammed into her hard seat? Why didn’t she design this part better? Something with more padding and webbing to keep her from getting tossed around. The hard canvas like straps that made up her seatbelt bit into her chest and shoulders.

Something screamed overhead, and she looked up instinctively but saw only the dull metal. Bombs exploded in the distance. She clicked over her backup radio to hear the chatter.

“Delta, I have two targets. Engaging,” one of the pilots squawked.

The man’s voice sounded frightened but there was also the hint of exhilaration she’d always felt behind the stick of an aircraft. It wasn’t for women just ten years ago. They worked in factories and prepared food and supplies for men in the field. After a decade of war and learning
(though Eisenhower would never admit this) from the Soviets that a female was more than cheap labor. They could fly, drive armored vehicles, and fight as well as men.

Katie bellowed orders at engineering to keep the beast righted. Ballast shifted as Glaus called out command after command to avoid being hit by one of the Kaiju rounds. The strangest part of the creatures, apart form their massive size, glowing green skin, and scales the size of Tucker luxury automobiles, was their weaponry. Entirely organic they could fire projectiles that were heavy and struck with great force. They could also unleash acidic bombs that obliterated everything in their splash path.

The creature rose seventy feet into the air. Its abdomen opened and extruded a pair of the rounds. It took a step toward them and then the bombs were on the way. They accelerated with a propellant that no one in intelligence had been able to fathom. It seemed to react to oxygen and then convert its outer coating into an accelerant. The balls didn’t move like standard projectiles, but they picked up speed as they flew, often arcing into the air before striking a target. She’d seen three such balls eliminate a platoon and fifteen tanks before an out of control and ancient P-51 Mustang had smashed into the attacking Kaiju’s head causing the beast to lose an eye. Portable artillery had been brought up to finish the howling beast and its squad of Japanese Kaiju controllers. They’d rode on a bamboo platform, three of them lying on their stomach, hands touching the creature to create the strange telepathic link.

At one time she’d had dreams of capturing a small one and seeing the results of Army intelligence, but by the time they’d brought one home, sedated with enough cattle tranquillizer to kill an entire herd of cows, it has been close to death. The only connection they’d manage had put the creature in a panic and it had self-immolated leading to the loss of six building at Area 51, and at least fifty-seven deaths.

She’d been leading the research on Big Dog when the base had been destroyed and barely managed to make it out alive. Since then she’d embarked on this quest to bring back a sample rather than an entire beast. If her reasoning was correct the sample would be viable since it was separated from the Kaiju.

“Bring the forty-eights online, Gunny Mack,” she called and then got slammed into her seat as Glaus shifted their stride once again.

“Aye,” called back the gunner.

Big Dog shuddered as the guns extended from portholes. She stared at her console until all six barrels showed they were ready. Red lights clicked off and green lights underneath glowed.

“Glaus, let’s take it down.”

“One moment, Commander,” he said, and then shouted commands.

Big Dog shifted to the right and then came to a shuddering fifteen-degree adjustment so quickly she almost broke her damn neck. She slammed into the padded chair for the hundredth time and cursed once again.

“Easy!” she yelled.

“Just testing. I apologize, Commander. I have to know our maneuverability. When I drove a Panzer it took a few days to get the handle on it.”

“Hang of it,” she corrected him. “And I don’t want to hear any more tank stories. Just do your job.”

“Yes,
mein heir
,” he replied stiffly.

She swallowed and took out the eclipse lender, as she’d called it after getting the first one back from the engineers. She’d designed it but they’d given it a truly hideous name. Katie lowered a bar and lined it up. With the shuddering and rhythmic steps of the Kaiju, it was still nearly impossible to determine their path. She could strap on the device with the support of the metal extension rod and as long as her head wasn’t ripped off by another wild maneuver she might actually get lined up.