Authors: Marc Cerasini
"Get in closer!" the cameraman shouted. But the pilot was worried. The Cessna was already in range of Godzilla's radioactive ray. He didn't want to think about what would happen if they were hit.
Suddenly, the pilot saw a CV-22 Osprey with gray-and-purple-mottled camouflage drop out of the sky right in front of the Cessna. It was Raptor-Two.
The pilot of the Cessna immediately dropped the small plane's flaps and swerved to avoid a collision, but Raptor-Two stayed in front of him.
"Attention, unidentified aircraft," a woman's voice said over their radio. "You are in restricted airspace, interfering with a United States military operation. I strongly advise you to leave immediately."
The Cessna pilot banked his small plane once again. And again, Raptor-Two got in front of him.
"Dodge them!" the cameraman cried. Though the pilot had second thoughts, he remembered his flagging career and dived the aircraft. But they had gotten very close to the much larger aircraft that was doing battle with the enraged mutant saurian. As Godzilla let out a blast of radioactive fire, it missed Raptor-One and streaked toward the helpless Cessna.
"Get out of the way!" Lori cried over the radio.
"I'm on it," Toby cried. As he spoke, he maneuvered Raptor-Two until it hovered between the Cessna and Godzilla's burst of radioactive fire. The full force of the monster's blast struck Raptor-Two.
Inside the cockpit, systems began shorting out and sparks flew from the consoles. Though Raptor-Two was armored, it was in no way as heat-resistant as Raptor-One.
One by one, Raptor-Two's systems shorted out. Worse than that, the rotor blades on the starboard propeller began to melt. Suddenly, the aircraft was crashing.
"Mayday! Mayday!" Lori cried. "We are hit and are going down -" At that moment, her radio went dead.
"Eject! Eject! Eject!" Toby cried. Then he reached behind him, grabbed the yellow-and-black-striped ejection control, and pulled.
The ACES II "zero-zero" ejection seat - so named because it can save the pilot from certain death even if his aircraft is at zero speed and zero altitude - blasted the pilot of Raptor-Two through the cockpit escape hatch.
* * *
In the Cessna, the pilot and cameraman watched in horror as Raptor-Two seemed to disintegrate before their eyes. Suddenly, the cockpit hatch blew open and one of the pilots was blasted free. He tumbled through the air and disappeared from sight.
As the reporter banked the Cessna away, the cameraman noticed something strange. He grabbed the pilot's shoulder.
"Look!"
he cried, pointing.
The Cessna pilot struggled to control his plane, but he peeked out of the corner of his eyes in the direction his partner was pointing. Despite his fear, and his struggle to keep the aircraft in the sky, the pilot's jaw dropped in amazement.
As the two men watched, a huge swirl of whirling colors seemed to envelop Raptor-Two. For a second, the aircraft was entirely engulfed in a bright, throbbing glow. Then, abruptly as it appeared, the mass of light just vanished.
Raptor-Two struggled to stay in the air for another moment. Then, as the two reporters fled from the scene, Raptor-Two turned belly-up and plunged into the valley below.
* * *
For a second, Toby was totally disoriented. Then he felt a jolt that told him that his parachute had opened. Because Raptor-Two was so low, Toby tumbled through tree branches just seconds after his chute billowed open above him.
He broke through a thick bundle of branches and leaves and landed hard. He rolled over once, then struck the trunk of a tree.
* * *
Tia scanned her radar screen in horror. Raptor-Two was gone. "Is Two down?" Pierce asked calmly.
"Yes," Tia replied, fighting her emotions.
"I'm taking command," Pierce declared, just as Kip maneuvered for another attack on Godzilla.
"I'm ready to fire!" Kip protested, his focus still on the target. But Pierce was the commander, and he overruled Kip's objection and took control of the warplane.
"I was ready to hit him hard!" Kip argued angrily.
"The rules of engagement are clear," Martin reminded him. "If an aircraft is lost, the survivor is to break off the attack and return to base. Immediately."
Kip seethed, but said nothing. The excitement of the battle was starting to wear off. It was replaced by worry for his teammates in the other aircraft.
"Did anyone see a parachute?" Pierce asked as he flew out of the valley, away from Godzilla. The monster bellowed a challenge as the Raptor disappeared into the sky.
"I saw one," Martin replied. "Just one..."
Tia nodded. "That's affirmative," she said. "I only saw one chute."
The rest of the flight to Gunnison County Airport was conducted in silence. Everybody wondered who punched out... and who didn't.
Thursday, July 15, 1999, 2:15 P.M.
Project Valkyrie headquarters
Nellis Air Force Base, Nevada
Tobias Nelson was found by Billy and Zelly Whitman, the two teenagers who sneaked into Gunnison National Forest on a quest for video footage of Godzilla. They brought the unconscious G-Force member out by horseback on the evening after the battle - and then they sold the footage and exclusive rights to their story to a tabloid television show for $1.2 million.
Toby had a broken arm and a concussion, but the prognosis was good. He was isolated in the base hospital until the military could debrief him about the crash.
There was no sign of Lori Angelo. The Air Force investigative team that combed the wreckage of Raptor-Two found that the escape hatch and ejection seat on Lori's side of the aircraft were both missing - which indicated that she had ejected from the aircraft. The investigators concluded that her parachute had failed to open.
Military patrols were still in the area, searching for her remains. Hopes were dimming, however. It was a big forest, and there were many scavengers.
The unidentified small plane that had caused the crash of Raptor-Two had vanished. No doubt the occupants feared punishment. The Air Force sent the word out that any witnesses to the event would merely be questioned, but still, no one came forward.
Dr. Irene Markham was handling the debriefing of Raptor-One's crew. G-Force had suffered their first defeat - and their first casualty. Morale was low, and their mood wasn't helped by the executive order to pull G-Force out of combat. The team felt it was a signal that the president had lost faith in them.
General Taggart knew better. He understood that if they went into battle now, they would be short of both aircraft and personnel. He thought that it was best for G-Force to stand down.
Meanwhile, Godzilla continued his trek across the heart of the United States. The creature had completely crossed Colorado and was now just outside Garden City, Kansas.
* * *
The blinding flash against the black depths of starless space startled and temporarily blinded Dr. Chandra Mishra, and he pulled away from the space telescope's eyepiece. He blinked the stars out of his eyes and peered through the eyepiece again.
The bright after-blast corona from the mysterious event was still spreading outward. He checked the ultraviolet telescope GLAZAR. It, too, had recorded the phenomenon.
It was four days
after
the EarthFirst nuclear explosions. The Reyes-Mishra Asteroid Swarm appeared to have been successfully obliterated as a threat to the earth.
Could one of the nuclear missiles have detonated late?
he wondered. Then he dismissed the notion as unlikely.
Yet
something
had exploded inside the small scattered remnants of the Reyes-Mishra Swarm. Dr. Mishra watched as the halo around the flash continued to expand.
Suddenly, a beep went off on the console beside the puzzled professor. He grabbed the radio headphones, which were floating in the gravity-free environment, and put them on.
"Dr. Mishra," he announced into the mike.
The voice on the other end of the radio came from NASA's Deep Space Observation Station. Because of the great distance, there was a split-second gap between the signal and its reception.
"Did you see it, Dr. Mishra?" the man on the radio demanded. Even distorted by time and distance, Dr. Mishra recognized his co-discoverer's voice.
"Yes, Dr. Reyes," Dr. Mishra replied. "I
did
see it... but how is this possible?"
The split-second delay seemed like an eternity. "We have accounted for all of the nuclear rockets," Dr. Reyes answered finally. "That flash was not caused by our weapons."
Dr. Mishra peered through the eyepiece of the space telescope. The event in deep space was still expanding.
Something is terribly wrong
, he thought ominously.
What have I done?
* * *
Dr. Max Birchwood Watched the nest on Mount Rushmore from a hill several miles away. It was as close as anyone was permitted to get to Rodan, who had remained in its lair, minding its single egg, for days now, atop the magnificent sculptures carved over decades by the artist Gutzon Borglum.
The
kaiju
ologist had a feeling that this might be the day when the egg finally hatched. There was no scientific reason for his optimism. It was just a hunch.
He looked away from his telescope and down at the Air Force radio that the military had given to him. In the event that Rodan took to the air, he was ordered to notify headquarters. Fighters would be scrambled, and the war against Rodan would begin again.
Sighing, Dr. Birchwood wondered if attacking Rodan was the right thing to do. He had a theory that the creature had only flown to warmer climes to lay an egg. He was convinced that once the egg hatched, Rodan would return to the North Pole, and would not trouble mankind again.
But it was just a theory, and the Air Force wasn't buying it. So Dr. Birchwood knew that he would have to make a decision soon. Should he trust his instinct, or obey his commanders?
* * *
Dr. Chandra Mishra and two Russian astronomers had waited for hours for the after-blast corona to fade so that they could get their first clear look at the event.
The aftereffects of the celestial explosion were still too bright for observation by the human eye, but the ultraviolet telescopes aboard Mir were beginning to make headway.
Finally, the ultraviolet and radio telescopes began getting decipherable photographs. The three scientists pored over them.
Then they looked up from the images and at one another as they realized the ominous implications of their discovery. When the scientists were sure of their conclusions, they contacted their various governments.
Something, they said, was twisting and writhing in the very heart of that celestial flash, in the exact spot where the EarthFirst rockets had exploded four days before.
Although they did not agree on what the object was, they all knew that the threat of the asteroid collision had suddenly been replaced by a totally unknown phenomenon.
Only Dr. Mishra seemed certain about the object. He maintained not only that it was an alien presence but that it also had somehow been released from the asteroid swarm by the EarthFirst blast.
The other scientists rejected his notion as bizarre conjecture, of course. But everyone could agree on one fact: Whatever it was, the object was still moving toward Earth, and it would still arrive in a few weeks.
* * *
On Friday, July 16, a press conference was held at the Johnson Space Center outside Houston, Texas. It was a follow-up to the announcement made four days before, which stated that the Reyes-Mishra asteroids had been successfully targeted in the initial nuclear blasts. Now, as the members of the international press converged on the center, Dr. Ramon Reyes opened with a brief statement.
"It has been confirmed by tracking stations all over the globe," he announced. "The asteroids that threatened Earth have been obliterated."
There was riotous applause, then the scientist continued.
"There is, however, a single small piece that is still on a trajectory toward Earth," he informed them. "This fragment is too small to be tracked by the second wave of nuclear missiles, and if it does enter the earth's gravity, it will almost certainly be burned up in the atmosphere.
"In short," Dr. Reyes concluded, "the earth has been spared from destruction by the combined technological advances of the human race. Let us use this second chance wisely."
Reporter Nick Gordon pushed to the front of the crowd of journalists and shot a question at the scientist on the podium.
"Is it true," Gordon demanded, "that Dr. Chandra Mishra believes that this object coming toward us is a space
alien?
"
Looking uncomfortable, Dr. Reyes tried to answer. "It is true that Dr. Mishra does not concur with the theories of the rest of the scientific community. Why, exactly, I cannot say..."
* * *
Still aboard the Mir space station, Dr. Mishra observed the object that approached the earth. The more he learned about it, the more he believed that the thing was no asteroid.
Though his theories about what it might be were dismissed as nonsense by his colleagues, Dr. Mishra continued to file daily reports to NASA, and continued his research aboard the space station well beyond the time when he was scheduled to return home.
To Dr. Mishra's eyes, the object was behaving too oddly to be natural. Was it a spaceship? An aberration? Or something else?
His gut feelings told him that it was far from harmless, and he watched its movements with increasing trepidation.
Of course, Dr. Mishra knew that gut feelings would never convince a community of scientists of anything. But, in truth, as he continued his observations, he hoped sincerely that his colleagues would turn out to be right, and that he would be proved dead wrong.
* * *
On Tuesday, July 20, at around two on a hot South Dakota afternoon, Dr. Birchwood wiped the sweat from his brow, swallowed hard, and grabbed the radio.
Rodan had begun moving around in its nest of debris and broken railroad cars. Something was happening.