Kaiju Preservation Society(45)

Until we got to where we planned to plant the first instrument pack and found a stack of tree crabs scavenging a carcass just where we planned to plant the thing.

“Oh, shit,” Aparna said, pulling up.

“Keep walking,” I said. “We have our screamers on. We’re going to scare them off as we get closer.”

And we did, most of them. They went skittering away as we drew up on them. But five tree crabs remained, policing the carcass, antennae waving threateningly at us.

I had been here before. But unlike before, I had now spent time under Riddu Tagaq’s tutelage learning how to deal with the little fuckers.

Which was, you march right up to them, grab them mid-carapace where they have a blind spot, and then chuck them hard and far.

Which is what I did to the first one I came up to before it had time to react. I hurled it and it flew, chittering in alarm as it did. My crab fighting skills were impeccable.

Its fellows turned their antennae to follow its path into the air and back down again, and then turned their attention back to me.

“Who else wants some?” I asked.

In a movie, they would have all comically fled. In reality, I had to repeat the process of grabbing and chucking four more times. And then I had to pick up a rotted carcass and heave it some distance away, so that if the tree crabs came back, they would bother the corpse, not us. I came away from the whole experience smelling even worse than I had before, which was saying something.

I stood where we had planned to place the instrument package and made a ta-da motion. “Whenever you’re ready, Dr. Chowdhury,” I said. Aparna shook herself out of motionlessness and swiftly got to work, unzipping her bag, pulling out the stake and mallet, and getting to installing the package.

While she did that I scanned the area, canister launcher in hand. If there was anything larger than a tree crab, it was not making itself known. The one advantage of walking around in a nuclear explosion debris field, if one wanted to call it an advantage, was that there was very little verticality. Nothing would be coming at us from above. It was one less dimension to worry about.

“Done,” Aparna said, standing up. The instrument package stuck up a few inches from the ground; its cameras were now at about the same height as a prone human.

“Is it sending?” I asked.

Aparna nodded and pointed to a green light on the package. “Sending to the nearest aerostat and receiving, too. They’re probably already getting the signal back at Tanaka.”

I waved to the package and then looked at my smartwatch. “That took four minutes. Come on, let’s plant the other one and get to the chopper.”

“It’s going well so far,” Aparna said.

“Come on, Aparna,” I said. “Don’t jinx it.”



* * *



Ion Ardeleanu literally said, That went better than I thought, before he slipped and fell on the moss, and something the size of a panther came for him out of the natal jelly.

We didn’t see it coming. Ardeleanu was walking up from a small sloping hill, and Niamh was ahead of him on the climb. It’s fair to say my and Aparna’s attention was on Niamh, not on Ardeleanu, on account that Niamh was our friend, and also because it was Ardeleanu’s role to be security, and thus, to be secure. Unlike the rest of us, this wasn’t his first time on an away mission. We thought he knew what he was doing. We weren’t prepared for his slip, his fall, and then the creature bursting out of the jelly to come for him.

Aparna and I were twenty meters away from Niamh when it happened; they were in turn ten meters ahead of Ardeleanu. We were close enough to Niamh that they saw our expressions change, and turned to see what happened. Niamh had their baton out, as had Aparna; once their instruments were planted, they were ready to assist in their own defense.

This came in handy for Ardeleanu because Niamh didn’t waste any time. They sprinted to where he was, somehow not slipping and falling, and started whacking away at the creature that was now trying to yank Ardeleanu back down the slope, toward the kaiju natal jelly. Aparna and I ran to assist.

Niamh’s baton whacking had managed to dislodge the creature from the fallen biologist, and now it, apparently pissed, started making threatening movements toward Niamh. Niamh was not impressed and swung at the thing again, and this time there was a notable pop as an arc of voltage went from the baton to what passed for the creature’s face. Niamh had turned on the electric part of the baton. The creature backed off, rapidly, shaking its face, but didn’t retreat entirely.

Aparna went to Ardeleanu and checked his wounds; I went to Niamh, who was looking pissed and ready to get into it with the creature.

“You okay?” I asked.

“What a stupid question to ask right now,” Niamh said, which meant yes, they were okay.

The creature stood its ground several yards away, sizing us up.

I shouted back to Aparna, “How is it?”

“Left leg’s torn up and bleeding,” she said.

“I’m fine,” Ardeleanu said, and tried to get up.

Aparna put a hand on his chest to keep him from moving. “He’s really not fine at all.”

I nodded at that and switched my headset over to Satie. “Chopper Two, come in.”

“You don’t have to tell me, I see it,” Satie said. “Coming to you for an emergency extract.”