Kaiju Preservation Society(43)

CHAPTER

15




“Here’s the deal,” Martin Satie said to us as we neared Bella’s nest. “I’ll drop you off, you have ten minutes to plant your instruments and do anything else you need to do. At ten minutes, be back at the landing zone. I’ll come down and pick you up.”

“You’re not landing?” Aparna asked. She and Niamh were in the passenger area of the helicopter, along with Ion Ardeleanu. I was in the copilot seat. Nominally, Ardeleanu was in charge of the mission, but in reality, he and I were along to be armed security for Aparna and Niamh while they planted cameras and instrument packages. They were armed as well—Riddu Tagaq gave them the same very basic weapons training I got a couple of days ahead of them—but not as heavily as Ardeleanu and I were. They had cameras and instruments to set up.

“Dr. Chowdhury, I never land on the jungle floor if I can help it,” Satie said. “It’s a very good way to get those critters in your back seat. Now”—he tapped his headset—“I’ll keep a channel open, and I’m ready to come get you if you need an emergency extract. Please do not need an emergency extract. They’re messy and dangerous. Come back to the landing zone instead. Ten minutes, that’s all.”

“How do these things usually go?” Niamh asked Satie. “Do you have to do a lot of emergency extractions?”

“Not when people are smart,” Satie said. “Every one of these is different. This is the first time I’m landing near a nuclear explosion site. This is the first time I’m landing near a nesting kaiju. Maybe those things don’t make a difference. Maybe they change everything. I don’t know, you don’t know, Dr. Healy, Drs. Chowdhury and Ardeleanu don’t know, and even this one”—he pointed at me—“is in the dark. When we get back, we get to write it up so everyone else can learn about it. Until then, however, we choose to be smart and not have an emergency extraction.”

“Mate, if that’s your idea of a reassuring speech, you have work to do,” Niamh said.

“It wasn’t supposed to be reassuring, so that’s all right.” Satie nodded. “And here we are.”

We all looked out to see the mountain of Bella, roosting at the edge of the water-filled explosion crater. Around her was the mass of her natal jelly, and around that was a carpet of green, leading up and through the downed trees. A mat of moss and algae had grown aggressively on the previously scorched ground, a reminder that life here treated radiation much differently from back home.

South and east of Bella, about eighty meters from her, was a small, flattish area, just big enough for Satie to drop us off. I looked at Bella as we came in. She appeared not to notice us.

“Is she asleep, like Edward was?” I asked Satie.

“Ask the experts,” he said.

“She’s nesting and conserving her strength to make more eggs,” Ardeleanu said. “Staying in one place makes it easy for her parasites to go feed and come back to her. Based on the behavior of other nesting kaiju over the years, unless we directly disturb her or she’s otherwise in physical distress, she’s not going to rouse herself, or bother us or the helicopter.”

“If she does you’ll be walking home,” Satie said.

“It’ll be fine,” Ardeleanu assured us. He looked over to Aparna and Niamh. “We just do it liked we practiced yesterday, we’ll be in and out and back home looking at the data.”

The two of them nodded at this. Our practice session the day before had been on the jungle floor directly below the base, with spots corresponding to where the aerostat pictures had suggested would be optimal places to put the cameras and instruments. Niamh and Aparna got good at pounding in the stakes that the instruments would attach to, and then popping on the clear domes of the camera and instrument packages themselves. I got better at moving around with both a shotgun and the canister launcher, either of which was literally a handful in itself. This on top of the electrified baton and a bandolier that held shotgun shells, pheromone canisters, and various sprays. Niamh had taken one look at the bandolier during practice and informed me that Chewbacca had called and wanted his clothes back.

“Bringing us down,” Satie said. We started our descent.

“Remember, Jamie and I get out first,” Ardeleanu said. “Then I’ll signal you two, and you get the instrument packs out of the cargo hold. Jamie will signal Satie to lift off when you two have gotten everything and secured the hold.” Aparna and Niamh nodded at this. “It’ll be fine,” Ardeleanu repeated.

The earth rose to meet us, and then Satie hovered, inches above the ground. “This is it,” he said. And nodded to me. “Watch your step.”

I nodded, took off my headset and attached a much smaller headset, opened the door to jump out, exited, and slid hard on my ass. The moss and algae had made the ground slippery. I cracked my knee on the way down and cursed at the pain. I could hear Satie saying something to me through my new headset, but the racket of the rotors made it difficult to hear. I decided to ignore it and instead got up (carefully), retrieved my canister launcher and shotgun, switched over the safeties, then hobbled over to the passenger door. I pounded on it; Ardeleanu opened it up and got out. He’d seen me tumble and was more careful about putting his feet down before retrieving his own weapons.