Godzilla 2000 (11 page)

A huge Kamacuras rose into the air right in front of him. Its multifaceted eye filled Tilson's display. Quickly, the pilot armed the Avenger cannon and pressed the trigger.

Tilson's A-10 vibrated as over a thousand rounds of armor-piercing depleted-uranium shells ripped into the creature's eye. Like a ripe pimple, the eye popped, spewing black ichor into the air like a fountain. Some of the oily black slime splattered onto Tilson's windscreen, limiting his vision, until the air rushing over his cockpit blew it away.

As he banked to the left, Tilson saw Nail Four open up with its cannons, and two insects blew apart in midair. Then another Kamacuras appeared in front of him, and Tilson fired again. The monster exploded, cut in half by the Avenger's killing shells.

Tilson flew through a cloud of gore. Pieces of flesh bounced against his fuselage. Tilson prayed that his turbofan engines wouldn‘t suck up any of the creatures' guts. He didn't want to stall at such a low altitude. If he did, there was nothing to do but eject - and Tilson didn't want to end up like Pederson. He'd rather stay on top of the food chain.

Through his headphones, Tilson could hear the excited cries of the pilots in the second string. They, too, were in the fight of their lives.

"I got one on my tail!" Nail Four cried. Tilson looked sideways and spotted the other A-I0. A huge creature was flying behind it, its mandibles snapping at the warplane's already damaged tail fins.

"I got him," Tilson replied. He pulled back the stick and did a high, arching loop, barely missing a smaller Kamacuras flying above him. He came down right behind the bug chasing Nail Four.

Tilson aimed and fired. The stream of explosive shells cut the monster's wings into tatters. The Kamacuras dropped out of the sky and was dashed to bits on the earth below.

"Thanks, Nail Two." The other pilot's voice crackled in Tilson's helmet.

"Any damage?" Tilson asked. There was a pause before the pilot of Nail Four replied.

"The controls are sluggish," he radioed. "The rear stabilizers are heavily damaged."

"Let's get out of here," Tilson replied. "I'm out of ammo, and there's nothing more we can do now."

Before he turned and banked away, Tilson watched as the second wave of A-10s attacked the swarm. With each bomb dropped and missile fired, more of the ravaging Kamacuras died.

But not enough
, Tilson thought bitterly.
Not nearly enough.

Then he and the only other survivor of the first wave headed their battered and stained aircraft back to Hays Municipal Airport for refueling and rearming.

And then I'll be back
, Tilson vowed.

* * *

On the banks of Big Creek, a line of M1A1 Abrams main battle tanks waited for the signal to fire. The swarm was moving toward them, and though more air attacks were inbound, the swarm would almost certainly reach the river in another fifteen minutes.

It was up to the tanks to stop them, to hold the line. If they couldn't, then the rest of Kansas, and maybe the rest of America, was doomed.

* * *

Thousands of miles away, alarms began to blare on the Japanese research vessel
Kongo-Maru
.

Still in her nightclothes, Dr. Emiko Takado emerged from her cabin and rushed onto the bridge. Quickly, she scanned the instruments. What she saw chilled her, even in the warmth of the South Pacific air.

"What's the matter?" a sleepy technician asked as soon as he reached the bridge. Without taking her eyes off the radarscope, Dr. Takado answered.

"It's Godzilla. He's fully awake now, and moving."

The crew of the research vessel immediately went to work, manning all stations.

Emiko felt as if she'd been caught off-balance. Her data had suggested that Godzilla would awaken eventually, but not nearly so soon. Nor so quickly.

"We must get clear of Godzilla -" she began, but she was interrupted by the sonar technician.

"Dr. Takado!" he cried as an image burst upon his screen. "Godzilla is rising to the surface - he's coming up right under us!"

"Send an SOS -" But Dr. Takado's command was again cut short as something rammed into the
Kongo-Maru
.

Helplessly, Dr. Takado was thrown across the bridge. The control panel in front of the sonarman exploded in a shower of electric sparks.

Then the entire ship was lifted out of the water.

A thunderous roar slammed against the crew's ears and echoed throughout the vessel. Then the ship lurched again and the lights went out. This time, Dr. Takado was dashed to the floor.

A second roar shook the entire ship. Dr. Takado pulled herself off the floor. Fearfully, she peered out through the cracked windows.

The Pacific night was lit by blue electric flashes. The water glowed as if on fire.

Godzilla comes
, Dr. Takado thought, an eerie calm descending on her.
It is karma.

Then fire ripped through the research ship as the fuel tanks ignited. Crewmen and technicians were incinerated in the terrible heat.

Finally, a tremendous blast ripped through the ship, and it split into two burning pieces that quickly sank into the dark ocean like stones.

A row of jagged, irregular dorsal spines broke the surface briefly, then sank again as Godzilla swam away.

The destruction of the
Kongo-Maru
happened so fast - and was so complete - that not even the briefest message of warning had been broadcast.

Friday, May 28, 1999, 12:07 P.M.
Project Valkyrie's main hangar
Nellis Air Force Base, Nevada

According to the White House press secretary, the first phase of General Burt Selkirk's battle plan was a great success. The swarm was contained, many of the giant insects were killed or wounded, and the lives of dozens of civilians had been saved.

According to Pentagon insiders, however, the initial assault was an unmitigated disaster. Million-dollar aircraft had been reduced to metal fragments and a number of pilots - trained with plenty of Air Force dollars - had been slaughtered, possibly in vain, because the swarm was far from defeated.

In fact, three hours after the battle in Kansas began, it was obvious there would be no immediate victory. Contrary to the
kaiju
ologists' predictions, the creatures had proved to be immune to cold. Now the scientists were thinking that the Kamacuras had gone dormant only long enough to grow wings.

At least the initial assault had confirmed that the creatures were relatively easy to destroy. The biggest problem the military faced now was their numbers. After the first two hours, the A-10s were recalled, and F-111 low-level fighter/bombers were scorching the big bugs with napalm.

The tanks were able to hold the creatures back. So far, none of the monsters had moved beyond Route 70 or the banks of the Big Creek, despite their ability to fly.

The bad news was that casualties were indeed heavy, and the battle was far from over. The joint military command announced that the conflict was expected to stretch on into the night.

In the meantime, reconnaissance teams were sent into areas where the Kamacuras had rampaged. Civilian survivors who'd found refuge in storm shelters, root cellars, and drain pipes were quickly airlifted out.

Tia watched the INN network feed and saw her uncle interview a farmer, his wife, and a nine-year-old girl who had survived the onslaught by hiding in a tornado shelter.

The G-Force team, along with Air Force technicians and Colonel Krupp, watched the battle in real time on the giant television screens. Over the course of the three hours, they lost their connection with one satellite after another as each moved out of range. Soon, however, another would move into orbit over the battlefield.

Tia Shimura was enjoying herself thoroughly. She took to the satellite equipment the way she took to every other technical problem thrown at her - like "a duck to water," according to Colonel Krupp.

At ten o'clock, the G-Force team broke for brunch. To Colonel Krupp's surprise, the usually solitary Kip Daniels sat between Pierce Dillard and Tobias Nelson at the table. They didn't talk much, but at least some of the tension that had fragmented the team was evaporating. Krupp believed the change was due to the harsh lesson of the battle in Kansas.

During the meal, Lori Angelo was unusually quiet. She cou1dn't forget the haunted eyes of that mute little girl she saw on television, nor the troubling feeling that her dreams had been more than mere dreams.

As the meal ended, General Taggart made an appearance. He ordered them all to report to the front door of Hangar 13 at 1200. Then he left the cafeteria without another word.

* * *

All of the members of the G-Force team, including Colonel Krupp and Dr. Birchwood, were assembled in front of Hangar 13 fifteen minutes ahead of schedule.

None of them had ever been inside 13, the largest hangar at Nellis Air Force Base. It was so large that it could comfortably house a B52 bomber.

Nellis AFB was close to an area of the Nevada desert commonly known as Dreamland, because so many strange aircraft were designed and tested there. Much of the base had been abandoned in the mid-nineties when the Pentagon realized that the activities at the top-secret base were no longer much of a secret.

The place was so famous that it had even passed into modern myth and legend. According to UFOlogists, Nellis was one of the possible locations of the infamous "Hangar 18," where the Air Force stashed the dead aliens they recovered from the Roswell "UFO" crash of 1947.

Indeed, when she first arrived, Lori was familiar with the stories, and she was disappointed to learn that there were only sixteen hangars at Dreamland!

When G-Force was established by a joint decree of Congress and the president, the Air Force dumped the program - called Project Valkyrie to hide its true purpose - at Nellis. By the late 1990s, even the UFOlogists had stopped hanging around.

As they stood in the hot Nevada sun, Kip noticed that Toby and Pierce both seemed to be bursting with excitement. Even the usually taciturn Colonel Krupp was smiling. Tia, Martin, and Kip all shared meaningful glances as the purpose of their visit became obvious.

There was a rumble of heavy machinery, and the huge hangar doors began to grind open. A hush fell over the group as they faced the Raptor.

Raptor-One had been designed on the same principles as the Bell/Boeing V-22 Osprey tilt-rotor aircraft. But the Raptor was twice as large, with a wingspan of 175 feet and length of over 100 feet.

Like the Osprey, the Raptor's wings seemed short for the thickness of the fuselage, and the huge turboshaft engines were mounted at the very tips of the wings. The two engines were topped with four-bladed propellers that were fifty feet long.

The Raptor lifted off the ground with the propellers in the horizontal position. Then computer-assisted controls tilted the engines forward until the propellers were vertical. The engines could be adjusted at various angles, allowing the aircraft to slow, speed forward, or hover like a conventional helicopter.

From the side, the stubby fuselage of the Raptor was thick in the front, with a mass of windows making up the entire nose of the aircraft, but tapered in the back. Like the Osprey, the Raptor had twin vertical tail stabilizers, but they were mounted on the fuselage - not on the swept-back rear horizontal wings.

The Raptor was a propeller-driven airplane, so it was not as fast as more conventional jet aircraft. But it didn't have to be. It was designed to battle Godzilla, not high-tech fighters. Its top cruising speed of 250 miles per hour was just right, because the real magic of the Raptor lay in its defensive and offensive capabilities.

Behind the cockpit, which was filled with the most advanced avionics, targeting, communications, and radar equipment, the Raptor was not much more than a huge ammunition bay. Its heavy-lifting capabilities enabled it to carry a wide variety of anti-
kaiju
weapons - from dozens of cadmium missiles to thousands of rounds of 50mm armor-piercing uranium shells for the four Avenger cannons that ran along its fuselage.

The wing pylons were designed to carry two standard cruise missiles - one per wing - and an array of smaller missiles. The cadmium missiles, Maverick air-to-surface missiles, and laser-guided smart bombs were all in armored bays in the wings themselves.

As a defense against Godzilla's radioactive breath, Raptor-One was almost completely coated with a lightweight variation of the reinforced carbon-carbon (RCC) tiles that protected the space shuttle from the heat of reentry.

The propeller blades were made completely of reinforced carbon-carbon, and RCC was even used to cover the missile bays and the cannons, which were exposed only when they were being utilized.

The cockpit transparencies were made from double panes of a revolutionary new translucent Teflon, which repelled heat instantly. This allowed the Raptor to take a direct blast of Godzilla's breath, with temperatures in excess of 1,200 degrees F, without suffering damage.

The overall color scheme of Raptor-One was called "cloud gray," and there were jagged lines of purple and mauve cutting across its back and sides. Scientists conjectured that Godzilla might have trouble spotting the aircraft in the sky with this jangled color scheme.

Kip stared at the fighting machine with awe. Though he'd flown the simulator dozens of times - the mockpit was an exact duplicate of the Raptor-One's cockpit - and he knew the schematics, the performance capabilities, and the dimensions of the aircraft by heart, seeing the gigantic airplane in the flesh was still breathtaking.

I'm supposed to fly that?
Kip thought nervously.

Toby whistled in admiration. Pierce was so awestruck that he couldn't stop staring, despite the fact that he'd flown this very aircraft before it was armed. Tia and Martin exchanged glances, clearly impressed.

"She's beautiful," Lori whispered. General Taggart stepped up behind the astonished group.

"There she is," he announced with pride. "Raring and ready to go. I'll give you a guided tour."

"When do we take her up, General?" Kip asked hesitantly.