Kaiju Preservation Society(80)

Sanders waved this away. “Into a national park no one goes to anyway.”

“Bella might move,” Aparna said. “If she’s in too much pain or is confused, she might leave here. If she leaves here and heads to Goose Bay, then thousands of people might die.”

Sanders grinned widely. “Which is even better,” he said. “There’s a Canadian military base there. A nuclear attack on Canada’s military? In Labrador? Shit, that’s confusing for everyone. They’ll spend months trying to figure out who did that and why. I figure they’ll eventually settle on China, because why wouldn’t they. A nuclear at tack on North America, during a pandemic, right before the United States election—right before this United States election. That’s going to be amazing. Martial law for the U.S., for one. Stocks will crater, for two. I have short sellers standing by.”

“Martial law and the economy cratering is a nice opportunity for you,” I said, sarcastically.

“Don’t be angry that I have a plan, Jamie,” Sanders said. “It’s more than you had, clearly. You really thought you could just send Bella back by fiddling around with my laptop?”

“Maybe,” I said, realizing how ridiculous it sounded now.

Sanders reached into his shirt and pulled out something tiny on a chain. “USB security key, my friend. The capacitors don’t discharge without this physically plugged into the laptop. I mean, come on, that’s just basic CEO-level security right there.”

“Why do you even have your perimeter still on, then?” Niamh asked.

“Perimeter?” Sanders looked confused.

“Excuse me, your trans-dimensional portal,” Niamh spat, disgusted.

“It’s a good name,” Sanders said. “I thought it up myself.”

“Dude, it’s from fucking Doom,” Kahurangi said.

“You do have a history of stealing terms from science fiction classics,” I pointed out.

“I have no idea what either of you two are talking about,” Sanders said. “As for your question, Dr. Healy, it’s still active because it’s a fail-safe. If Bella became unruly before we had an indication she would go nuclear, we could send her back. We don’t need it now. In fact, when I’m done here I’ll go turn it off. Strand Bella over here for good.”

“How does it work, anyway?” Niamh pressed. This session was meant to extract answers from us, but Sanders was an egotistical shit and liked to talk. Clearly the plan we’d all decided on without discussing it in advance was to keep him monologuing.

“You like it?” Sanders asked Niamh.

“I want to understand it.”

Sanders casually looked at his watch. “For all the good it will do you, given how much time you have left.”

“I want to know how you thought of it, prototyped it, and had it ready for this”—Niamh motioned with their head to encompass everything—“in a couple of weeks. And by you, I mean whatever scientists you employ, because you clearly have no capability for it.”

“Ouch,” Sanders said. “I have an engineering degree.”

“You have a bachelor’s from a college where you’re a legacy,” I said. “Your family probably endowed the building and they let you skate through.”

Sanders narrowed his eyes. “I could feed you all to parasites right now, if you want.”

“Then you wouldn’t get answers to your questions,” Aparna said.

“I’m not getting any answers now!” Sanders said. “You have me monologuing, I’m guessing, to stay alive longer. Yes, I know about monologuing. I’ve watched The Incredibles.”

“The trans-dimensional portal,” Niamh promoted. “Monologue on that, please.”

“Clearly we had it before now.”

“Since when?”

“Since the 1960s, if you must know.” Sanders turned to me. “Remember that bit of drama back at Tanaka Base? Where your administrator tried to lecture me about my family’s involvement in the old version of Tanaka being obliterated? She was more right than she knew. That kaiju didn’t just happen to be near the base. We lured it in.”

“So you’ve killed KPS people before,” I said.

“We didn’t know the kaiju had a malformed reactor,” Sanders said. “We can’t be blamed for that.”

“No, just for putting the kaiju in a place where it could kill dozens of people.”

“If you like,” Sanders said, conceding the point because he didn’t seem to care about it very much. “We were trying to get it into an earlier version of the portal, which was powered like this one is, with our company’s RTGs.” Sanders jerked a thumb back at the generator container. “That one’s a prototype polonium-210 RTG. Outputs a ridiculous amount of energy really quickly. Perfect for this use case. Fuel doesn’t last very long, though.”

“You’ve tried this before?” Aparna said.

“It didn’t work,” Sanders said. “We could make a tear in the dimensional wall, but it wasn’t significant enough to bring anything through. We needed more residual thinning, and we could never get it. Until now. That first kaiju going nuclear and thinning the barrier, and then Bella sitting at the edge of the crater and having her reactor keep it thin?” Sanders made a chef’s kiss action with his hands. “Perfect. My family’s been waiting for actual generations for this moment.” He motioned around. “We’ve had this prepped to go for years. We update the components from time to time, obviously. But we’ve been ready.”