Kaiju Apocalypse by Eric S. Brown, Jason Cordova Read Free Book Online Page A

moving hair, wriggled above each of those orifices.
     
    “That’s one ugly bitch, captain,” Cox said.
     
    “Language, lieutenant,” Knight chastised him.
     
    “Trident Four, Fox Three!” came the call over the comm. The lead Trident opened up with a full volley of missiles.  Four Kaiju Killers from each ship sped through the air towards the monster. The three antennae-like things above the mouths of the Kaiju began to wave frantically in the air.  Suddenly, the lightning which ran down the spines of the Kaiju coalesced into a bright light near the three mouths.  The missiles were met by a funnel of energy from the thing's central mouth, a bright blue-white beam of energy which intercepted them.  One by one, the missiles disappeared in flames as they detonated from the energy coursing over them. 
     
    “Holy shit!” Cox screamed, forgetting his captain’s orders regarding foul language.
     
    “I saw what it did,” Knight snapped.  His hands flew over the Trident's controls as his ship jerked hard to the right, barely managing to avoid the Mother Kaiju's second blast.  All three of the thing's mouths hosed the night sky, their fury directed toward the two Tridents still in the air. Trident Four was not as fast as Knight was, and with a flash, the lives of Lieutenants Karl Stodden and Gary Roulston ended. The lead Trident seemed to melt from the heat of the blast.  Globs of Trident Four’s molten body rained down over the battle, which was taking place between the Dogkillers and lesser Kaiju on the beach below.
     
    Knight felt a familiar numbness drift over him, one he had not felt since his frantic escape during the Battle of Sacramento. The bitter, acrid taste of fear filled his mouth. He felt a growing wetness in his flight pants and realized that he had pissed himself. Tears welled up in his eyes as the weight of the numbness became heavier. His heart began hammering in his chest and his stomach tightened as adrenaline coursed through him. He pulled the Trident into a sharp turn and he began to head back over Lemura Base.
     
    “What do we do, sir?” Cox was yelling at him.  Knight knew the man well, despite the barrier he had erected between him and his copilot.  There was no hope of him seeing the obvious answer to his question. He was too blinded by his ideology and recklessness. Knight, on the other hand, had already seen how this battle would be played out. There was no hope for them, for humanity. He had one option, but there was a minor impediment which needed to be removed.
     
    “I'm getting out of here,” Knight said.  “I want to live. I need to find somewhere safe to hide until this blows over.”
     
    “What?” Cox shouted, looking at him. “Are you out of your mind? Get back there and fight!  Damn you, we’re going back, even if I have to take command of this ship myself!”
     
    Knight yanked his sidearm from the holster on his hip and put a bullet into his copilot's brain.  The man's head snapped at an awkward angle as bone fragments from his exploding skull bounced off the wall of the compartment behind where he sat.  His corpse slumped forward, leaning into the safety restraints that held him in his chair, never knowing what killed him.
     
    A safe place to hide until this is all over, somewhere safe... Knight thought as he accelerated away from the carnage below. He let the pistol slip from his grasp and it fell to the floor, resting in a pool of rapidly cooling blood.
     
    ****
     
    “Sir!” one of Yeltsin's officers shouted at him.  “Trident Five – Captain Knight – is disengaging and pulling out! We can’t get any response on the comm!”
     
    “Let him go,” Yeltsin said, forcing his voice to stay calm even as his fists clenched so tightly that his fingernails drew blood from his palms.  He'd suspected that Captain Knight was a coward, but never could have imagined that the man would go so far as to flat out turn tail and run during a battle that was