The muffled whir of the screws moving the submarine along seemed to get louder when Martin Sanchez lay his head down. He would stretch out in a borrowed cot, shift around, give up on getting comfortable, sit back up, then repeat the process over and over. It had only been two hours. He couldn't sleep, he couldn't think above the sounds of machinery, and there was no place in the sub, at least none he had access to, which didn't trigger a claustrophobia he didn't think had been an issue since he was a child.

"Need a valium?"

"Huh?!" Martin shot up. Had he been a few inches taller, he would have banged his head on the ceiling. When he'd last laid down, he had been alone in the sleeping quarters. The stranger looked vaguely familiar. Martin hadn't made an effort to socialize at the naval base in Oahu that morning. He had no idea what he would have said to any of the military personnel and the people he'd assumed to be scientists, so he kept to himself as best as he could.

"You look anxious," the stranger said. He was sitting on a cot on the other side of the small room, a bag of candy in one hand. The other was currently rifling through the bag, presumably trying to search by feel for something in his favorite color. "I don't blame you, first time in one of these things can be a little nerve-wracking, right?"

"Who are you?" Martin asked, rubbing his temples as he realized he wasn't going to get any sleep on this trip.

"Errol Smith," the stranger answered, removing the hand fishing for candy and extending it.

"That what that's for?" Martin pointed to a badge hanging from his new bunkmate's breast-pocket. There was a picture this Errol Smith character with a toothy grin, and a large orange "E" next to it.

"You've got one, too," Errol said, keeping his hand extended for an awkward moment before Martin took it and shook.

"Mine doesn't have an initial on it," Martin replied, producing his badge. "Got this 'W' on it. For 'witness.'"

"So your name isn't Walter or anything?" Smith chuckled. "That's a shame, we could have confused everybody."

Martin shook his head, and rubbed his temples again. The presence of another person in the bunk was exacerbating his claustrophobia.

"I was serious about the valium," Smith said. "Buzz down to sick bay, they'll hook you right up. First time I had to ride this thing it got me through the trip. It's suicide by air when you get close enough to the island, and any surface boat that isn't surrounded covered in cannons is asking to get sunk."

"How many times you been down here?" Martin asked, lying down on his back. He had given up on sleep, and the whirring still got to him, but somehow this was the closest thing to comfortable he could achieve.

"Oh… four or five. I come and go enough, but I usually get to hitch rides on the Gotengo."

"The Gotengo?!" Martin's eyes widened. "Who are you, man?"

"Errol Smith, already said." He paused a moment. "Oh, uh… Field Research Specialist, United Nations Special Committee on Kaiju Research. Same as you."

Martin groaned. He was newly pressed into service with the UNSCKR. One close encounter with a massive lizard and he was an asset to global security, or so he was told.

"So, Varan, huh? Only seen him in person once," Smith said. "That shriek he does when he pounces on something, how creepy is that?"

"Yeah, it's intense," Martin muttered. The monster's cry was shrill, but he recalled being far more worried about getting stepped on that day, three weeks prior to being herded onto the submarine.

"Varan's not much of a stomper, from what I've read on him," Smith said. "Likes to bite, swat, what have you."

Martin's brow furled without a thought. This stranger was eerily intuitive.

"Sorry man, not doing that on purpose," Smith said. "So, uh, yeah, I'll get out of your hair. Intercom unit's on the wall. Don't be afraid of asking for the valium, newbies do it all the time."

"Got it," Martin groaned. He started rubbing his temples again. Smith hopped off of his cot.

"I'll let you relax," Smith said as he walked out the door. "The 'E' stands for 'Empath', by the way."


"Relay Seven should be out of range no more than once a month now. Max time approximately seven minutes, ten seconds. All satellites this far out are unaffected by solar flare activity, we're sure of that by now. Tsuburaya Station reports no debris more than one thousand miles from the asteroid belt. Previous reports of a signal from the outer edge of the solar system are unsubstantiated so far. We'll keep an eye out, but speculation so far is just some basic radiation signature. That's all for now, next report will be at 0500 hours home time. This has been Captain Edwards aboard the Mogera. Over and out."

Captain Gerald Edwards ended his recording and transmitted it. This was, mercifully, yet another uneventful report. Deploying the Mogera, one of the few functional mechas, into space was a controversial decision, one Captain Edwards himself had doubts about. But he was the only person NASA had left with any experience in one of the Kaiju Killers at that point.

"Jerry, chow in five!" A woman called from outside the communications center.

Edwards pushed himself from his seat. The vaunted artificial gravity system programmed into the Mogera kept him from floating to the ceiling, but didn't match the dedicated space stations that had begun to populate the outer orbits of the solar system. So while somebody aboard the mecha wouldn't float through corridors like astronauts in the first few decades of space travel, they could bound across the floors like, as one crew member had put it, Olympic hurdlers in slow motion.

Before Edwards could make it out of the comms room, a central console started to chirp. Incoming transmission, he thought. His last transmission home wouldn't arrive in Houston for hours, so this was something. He returned to his seat and turned on the receiver.

The transmission started as little more than feedback. Slowly, it changed into a steady tone, then a murmur. It grew louder, with words few people would recognize, even fewer would understand. Edwards gripped his seat, and for a moment it felt like there was a brick in his stomach.

"Stah-varr Kilaak." The murmur began repeating that phrase. The same message that had been received, on Earth, five years ago. That time, it had preceded bloodshed. "Stosh-des Ghidorah. Stah-varr Kilaak. Stosh-des Ghidorah."

Captain Edwards cut off the receiver, cursed, and raced from the comms center.