Note from Author:
Hey folks, if you've stayed with the story so far you've earned yourself a little reward for your loyalty. This story has pictures that go along with it. They enhance the story experience about 150%, so I strongly encourage you to check them out. I made them myself and am fairly proud of them. They are posted on a forum since you can't post pictures here. The only word of warning I have is try not to read ahead of what's on the fanfiction site. The story on the forum is about 2 chapters ahead at this point, but I'm re-working the story from the forum to here. I'm trying to clean it up a little and add some extra elements. So you'll get the better story experience if you wait to read it here. You'll be on the honor system since I won't be able to stop you, just don't post spoilers in the review section if you can't resist looking ahead. I was going to wait to post the link here until I was caught up, but I told some of the reviewers that I was going to post the link by chapter 6. I kind of forgot that some of the chapters over there were originally two-parters and I split them up into separate chapter here, so I'm getting to chapter 6 here faster.
EDIT: Actually, it won't allow me to post the link in the story, so instead if you want to see the pictures go to "Toho Kindoms forum", go to the "Fan art, music, and movies and games" section. then Look for "Godzilla: Tactical Assault" there and you should be golden.
P.S. -It takes a lot of work to put out a chapter between setting up miniatures and writing. So if you are enjoying the story and want to see more chapters, a little encouragement in the review section definitely motivates me to work on this project.
Chapter 6: The Morning After.
I unstrapped myself from the gunnery chair and rose to my feet. My legs felt wobbly and I was unsteady on my feet. It was an ongoing effect of the adrenaline rush from my near flight. Slowly and carefully, I climbed up to the flight-deck to find it in shambles. As I made my way through the chaotic mess of men and debris, I began to find my feet again. Officers were scrambling all around me, assessing what had happened and how much damage the ship had taken.
Moving more confidently as the initial shock was wearing off, I found my way to the battle-scared island of the Enterprise. There I came upon the remains of a dozen sailors, all of them had been part of the gunnery crews. My heart sank when I discovered the remains of my friend Teddy among them. His blue eyes were just staring up at me lifelessly. It was clear at just a glance that his neck had been broken from the impact of hitting the steel plating of the ship. I stood there speechless.
'I told him that he'd be alright.' I thought bitterly, fighting back tears. 'He was just a kid. He didn't deserve this.'
My knees got weak again and I began to buckle. I had to sit down. I quickly threw an arm out on the flight deck to support myself and ended up putting my hand into a pool of blood. I stared at it for a moment and had the urge to vomit. However, I regained my composure and wiped the blood off on my pant leg instead. I looked around from body to body trying to find Joe and the others. It might have been too late to help them, but if nothing else, I needed to see their bodies for myself.
I realized as I searched that they were nowhere to be found. It occurred to me that there were a lot of other men from the other guns crews who were unaccounted for too. The few bodies that were still on the flight deck couldn't have accounted for even a third of the missing men. There was only one logical explanation; they had to have been blown overboard. Suddenly, there was a flicker of hope for my friends.
I was still feeling too weak to stand, so I crawled over to the starboard side of the ship to look over. In my mind's eye, I imagined seeing them all floating there, just waiting to be plucked out of the water. All I had to do is look over and they'd be there I told myself. However I was disappointed by the reality of the situation. As I peered over the deck, there was only dark choppy water there to greet me. Off in the distance, I could make out the outlines of bodies floating on the water supported by their life preservers, but they didn't seem to be moving. The small specs of men were just bobbing up and down with the waves lifelessly. Worse, the Enterprise was moving away from them.
Unknown to me, it had already been decided that the capitol ships were to change course and return to the nearest port for repairs. The Admiral didn't want to risk keeping them there should the creature decide to return for a second attack. Minutes later I heard the captain announce the plan over the PA system. The undamaged destroyers would remain to fish survivors and bodies out of the water while the rest of the task-force withdrew.
Hours went by like minutes. I watched as Marines attended to the bodies on the deck. I wanted to help, but couldn't bring myself to touch Teddy's body. The damage control teams were already seeing to the needs of the ship. Aside from some clean-up, there wasn't much for them to do though. Most of the damage was minor. The dents in the island section of the ship couldn't be repaired properly until we were back in port. They did wash off the blood though for which I was grateful.
We were still on alert, so I returned to my battle station. However, with the rest of the guys absent, there wasn't much I was going to accomplish on my own. The cannon was too complicated for on person to operate effectively. I didn't know what else to do, so I just stat there and watched the waves. It wasn't too long before the alert was cancelled. With little else to do, I returned to the bunk room.
When I entered, I saw only the empty cots. They were all stacked together tightly one on top of he other. They were three high, two across, and two deep; twelve all together in our section. My place was the one on the left center. If they had been occupied I would have been withing reaching distance of all my buddies. As I stood there I felt just as empty as the cots were. The room was deathly quiet. It felt like a tomb. Tired as I was, I couldn't bring myself to lay down in that lonely place.
I was awake for the rest of the night. The ship sailed on and I wandered the ship aimlessly. I couldn't get the imagine of Teddy's dead eyes looking up at me out of my head.
By noon the next day, our battered task-force arrived at the Subic Bay naval base in the Philippines. Repair crews started working right away, patching the fleet back together. Almost every ship in the fleet had taken damage in one way or another, thankfully most of it was light.
Most of the damage was a result of the monster's final pass over us. Some of the ships had loose ammunition explode on their decks as it was blown around. Two cruisers collided into each other having been blown off course. A third cruiser had more serious damage. It had a huge hole in it's forward hull from were the monster had gouged the ship with it's beak. The crew had done an outstanding job of compartmentalized the flooding, but if they had taken much more punishment, they might not have made it back to port at all. As it was, it limped back in with the destroyers that had remained behind to collect our men in the water. They arrived about two hours after the main fleet.
The worst losses were the two destroyers sunk in the attack. The majority of both crews went down to the ocean floor with their ships. Just over six hundred men in all were either KIA or MIA. We were lucky not to have suffered worse causalities, but it was still terrible loss and a great blow to moral across the fleet.
I pitched in and did what I could to help the repair guys get things back in working order on the Enterprise. We fared better than most ships had. The sturdy carrier had sustained only minor structural damage during the fight. The crew was shaken by the sudden attack, and like myself, were rattled by the death of fellow crew-mates. Overall though, the Enterprise was still intact and in fighting shape, ship and crew.
As the destroyers arrived in port, they came bearing good and bad tidings. While they had fished out a lot of bodies of comrades from the water, they had also found more than a couple survivors. Following the guidelines a more recently established naval tradition, they ransomed some of the Enterprise's sailors back to us for a couple of tubs of ice cream. It was well worth the cost.
As I came to see what they had brought back to us, I was overcome with joy to see them carrying Joe up the ramp. His arm was broken, but he was alive. There were others from my gunnery crew too. Big Jim was right behind Joe. He was helping to move another sailor up the deck on a stretcher. Jamie Boggs was on the other end of the stretcher helping out. Randy followed closely behind them. Almost everyone was back, except one. There was no sign of Nick, the gun captain. I ran over to them and they set Joe down off to the side so I could talk with him. I took his hand and grasped it tightly.
"You have no idea how happy I am to see that you're alright Joe. I thought the worst had happened." I told him.
He smiled up at me, but Joe was not himself. His usual overconfident demeanor was nowhere to be found. It was ironic, there had been so many times before then that I had wished Joe would wash that cocky smirk off his face, but at that moment I would have loved to have seen it. The whole world felt a little off kilter, something normal would have gone a long ways to setting my mind at ease.
"Nick didn't make it Mark. He drowned in the water." Joe told me somberly. "We went for a bad ride after that thing went over us. We were blown at least one-hundred and fifty yards overboard. I think Nick hit his head on something on the way out. I saw him floating, but he was face down in the water. I couldn't get to him in time to help him. I'm sorry."
"You have nothing to be sorry to me for Joe." I reassured him. "It wasn't your fault. None of this was your fault. It was that thing at attacked us, It killed our friends. Teddy is dead too. I thought all you guys were dead, and that I was all that was left of us. I didn't know how I was going to carry on. I'm glad I was wrong." I looked around at the rest of the guys. "It's good to see all of you."
"I'm glad you are ok too." Joe replied. "When I didn't see you in the water I didn't know what to think." He looked like he wanted to say more, but couldn't find the words.
"Well, for now just get to sickbay and get some rest." I told him. "I have a feeling we're going to need you back at the guns sooner then later." He nodded and they picked him back up.
The monster that attacked us the night before had not been quiet following its raid on the fleet. As it headed north, it changed its heading and veered off into the waters of the Japanese home islands. The Japanese military had not yet implemented radar, so they didn't have the slightest idea of what was coming at them. The monster had infiltrated their airspace around Kyushu, the southern-most island that made up Japan. Its speed left a vapor trail that initially went unnoticed in the morning air, but its path was taking it directly towards Nyutabaru Air Base.
Down on the airfield, a flight of medium Betty bombers were being prepared to launch. In just a few hours they were going to be relocated to a base over in China. They were to be part of the renewed effort to hunt down Baragon. The warplanes were lined up all in a row and being fueled up. Bombs were being wheeled out by crews on the runway in preparation for them to be loaded into the planes.
The fueling truck had just finished with the last plane and the ordnance teams were beginning to hoist in the first bombs when a strange whistling noise could be head all over the base. The crews came out from under the aircraft and looked to the skies. Above them, they could see a long white band on the horizon. It almost looked like someone was drawing a thin line made out of clouds. They had no idea what it was. None of the men had ever seen anything like it before. They looked at one another confused. Was it some sort of weather phenomena?
The line in the sky suddenly turned and hooked around towards them. As it came closer, they could see that something was in front of he vapor trail and, in fact, was the thing causing it to appear. The air raid siren began to go off. Whatever was coming at them, the officers in the control tower decided that it was a threat.
Soldiers ran out from the barracks and started to man the AA guns at the perimeter of the base. Most of the ground crews wisely took cover in the nearby bunkers, though some of them stayed to watch as the situation continued to unfold. Pilots suited up and began to scramble to their fighters, but it was already far too late for that to do any good. Within seconds the creature was upon them.
The first thing that it did was pass over the base. It came in extremely close to the ground. In fact, it was so close that its chest clipped the control tower. Between the force of the impact, and the immensely strong winds that followed, the tower toppled over. The officers inside smashed against the glass as the tower hit the ground.
The fighters occupying the runway near the control tower were picked up by the intensely strong winds and scattered like leaves in the breeze. Some fell right back down to the runway and were crushed, while others flew into the hangers behind them. One of them blew up on impact starting a fire.
Within just a few seconds, half the base was a devastated. It didn't take long for the attacker to return. The creature circled back around and landed on the far side of the base. The nearby AA gunners trained their weapons on it and opened fire. It reacted by flapping it's wings and creating a surge of wind strong enough to blow away anything that wasn't nailed down.
The gun crews were striped off their machines and flew away. Bombs that had been sitting on stands on the runway began to fall over. Some of them landed on their nose and exploded immediately on impact, while others rolled across the runway, threatening to blow up anything they came across. Several bombs made their way into the sides of buildings before finally going off. The bombers on the runway became airborne hazards, tearing up anything in their path. Full of fuel, they spread fires all over the base as they were ripped open.
One of the bombers found its way directly into the main fuel storage. The tanks buckled under the pressure and the largest explosion yet rocked the entire base.
Nearby, two squadrons of Zeros were performing training exercises, mock battles to hone their dog-fighting skills against each other one on one. Leading them was Akira Honda, a veteran pilot of the Sino-Japanese war. He had been temporarily knocked out of combat, but was due to rotate back into the Chinese theater soon. He had been wounded in his left shoulder from a stray piece of flak some weeks ago, but it had almost completely healed.
He was only one kill away from being declared a flying Ace and getting his last kill wouldn't be too much trouble as long as he could get back into the fight. As brave as they were, the Chinese pilots were not as well trained and flew inferior aircraft. The odds were stacked high against them when they came up against an experienced Japanese flyer.
Akira had not seen any Chinese fighters for over two months though. He had been getting back into the swing of things for the last couple of weeks by leading a crop of fresh young recruits on training flights. It was a far cry from actual combat, but it wasn't so bad. At least he could feel the sky beneath him again. There was nothing else quite like it. A good aviator loved the skies as much as a sailor loved the Ocean.
Akira watched his pups execute the last of their maneuvers for the morning. This was to be there final sortie together and his last lesson. He was going to miss them. Though he hated the idea of being their babysitter at first, he had come to find he enjoyed teaching. No one was more surprised that him that he had a knack for it.
Akira hated to leave his students behind, but he figured in a couple more weeks some of them would be joining him at the front. He was eager to see what they could do in a real combat situation. He signaled for his flyers to get back into formation for the trip back home. They regrouped and started southward towards the base. After a few minutes, Akira picked up his radio transmitter and depressed the button to speak.
"Akira to tower, Akira to tower." He spoke loudly and clearly. "Come in tower, this is Tanaka flight on approach. Requesting landing clearance, over." Akira could only hear static came back over his receiver. "Takashi, can you try raise the base? I'm not getting through." Akira asked his wing-man. Takashi obeyed and waited for an answer.
"I'm getting nothing back sir." Takashi reported. "Could they be having issues with their radio?"
"It's possible." Akira shrugged. "We'll just have to get in closer and try again. If we can't make contact, we'll just have to circle until we are sure it's safe to land. We still have plenty of fuel and we should be the only thing up in the air at this point anyway. The bombers aren't supposed to take off for another two hours yet and I'm supposed to be with them when they do."
"Captain Akira, the base!" One of the junior pilots cut in frantically.
Akira looked up to see a huge ploom of smoke rising over three-hundred feet into the air in front of them. The airbase was on fire. As they flew in closer they could make out the carnage below. The fuel storage had gone up and five smaller fires were burning all over. Parked planes had been turned over and were scattered everywhere. Not a single building was left undamaged.
"Sir, What happened?!" Takashi asked.
"Looks to be a raid of some sort." Akira answered. He could see that bombs had cratered a portion of the runway. He knew that the Americans had brought a carrier force to the area. His eyes narrowed. "Attention Tanaka flight. Be on your guard, the base has been attacked and we have to assume the attackers are still in the area. Keep your eyes peeled for enemy planes."
Within his Zero, Takashi looked to his left and then his right. Nothing could be seen. If there were enemy aircraft in the area, they were nowhere to be found. Just then there was the flash of a shadow above him. Takashi tried to look up, but the sun was directly in his line of sight. There was something up above him 10 o'clock high, but it kept itself directly in line with the sun so he couldn't see it.
"Akira...!" Takashi began, but it was already too late.
KA-BOOoommmmmmmm-!
Takashi's fighter was hit and blew into a hundred pieces that fell from the sky burning. Akira turned to see what happened, but it was all over in a split second. Whatever had hit Takashi's plane was already gone. A moment later, the entire flight group could hear a thunderous noise that resembled thunder. The fighters vibrated as the blast wave hit them. One of the other fighters that had been following behind Takashi's suddenly lost control as it passed through the path of where his fighter had been. It spun about as if it were caught up in a whirl wind. It was Goro's plane.
"Goro, bail out!" Akira radioed to him. "Goro, bail out!" He repeated, but he could see that Goro was pinned to his seat as his fighter continued to tumble out of the sky. 'What the hell is going on!?' Akira thought to himself. Suddenly he heard a pop from behind him. A third fighter was going down, this one was on fire. Something had cut off the right wing of the plane. This time it was Kobayashi. He was able to bail out and Akira caught a glance at what had attacked him.
A pair of giant brown wings rose over the fighter planes and banked in a barrel loop up and around the flight group. It came around and started back towards them again.
"Break formation!" Akira barked over the radio. "Squadron one, break right, squadron two, break left with me. The fighters began to maneuver out of the way, but one of them got caught as it did. Sharp talons on the feet of the creature plucked it out of the sky and crushed it. The pilot didn't have any chance of escape. Akira wasn't sure who it was. At that point everything had turned into pure chaos.
Whatever the thing was, it was larger, faster, and more maneuverable than their planes were by a long shot. Akira knew if they were going to have any chance against it they'd have to pull together and take it on as a group. They still had enough planes left to make a fight of it. He quickly issued out his orders to both squadrons and they moved into position.
With its last kill, the creature had lost much of its initial speed. It was slow enough to allow the planes to get on either side of it. They approach from both directions, not leaving it anywhere to go. The fighters closed within firing range and opened up on it with their 20 mm cannons. Many of the bullets hit home, but to Akira's horror, he could see all the burning magnesium tracer rounds bouncing off the beast's hide. Their machine guns appeared to be useless again it. Only then Akira realized just how bad their situation truly was.
"All fighters break off!" He shouted into his mic, but it was already too late. The monster changed its course and went for the second group of fighters that were approaching it. It began to furiously beat its wings at them. The force its wings created knocked the planes off course, scattering their formation. Two of planes collided and fell from the sky.
"Honzo, take command and get everyone who's left out of here." Akira commanded.
"Yes sir." Honzo replied.
Akira turned his plane on a direct course for the monster and pushed his plane as fast as it would go, gaining altitude. He aimed his cross-hairs right at its head. He knew he had no chance of winning, but he intended to at least buy his men time to escape.
The monster changed course again, before he could fire. It was diving, closing in on one of the Zeros that had been sent reeling from its previous attacks. The creature had not noticed Akira's plane moving in from above it. Akira could see that it was already too late to help the other pilot. The monster flew directly over their plane and swooped down scrapping the canopy of the fighter off against its armored underbelly. The pilot lost his head along with the top portion of his aircraft. Akira cursed in his cockpit. Too many of his men had already died. He would not let it happen to any more of them.
To his benefit, the monster changed course again and was circling back his way. Its new focus was on the clump of retreating fighters moving off in the distance toward the base. It still had not noticed him. Akira opened up his canopy and pressed his stick down hard bring his fighter into a forty five degree dive. There was a patch of clouds that would mask his Zero's approach. He was going to put his fighter directly in the flight path of the monster. He only hoped it wouldn't see him until it was too late.
Akira locked his controls into place and said a prayer as he jumped out of his plane. The fighter continued on course without him and he tried to look back as the force of his free-fall was dragging him towards to the ground. Once he determined he'd gotten a safe enough distance away, he deployed his parachute. It jerked him to a sharp stop, the force the shook his own body like a rag-doll.
Akira struggled to see if his efforts had been in vain. He turned against the straps of his chute and saw his plane crash directly into the left wing of the monster. The fighter exploded as the remaining fuel ignited. The monster immediately had trouble maintaining it speed and course. In fact, it was struggling just to remain in the air for a moment or two. He watched as it turned and began to fly west out of the area. Akira cheered as he realized it had given up on hunting the remaining Zeros. His desperate gamble had paid off.
The creature came to be know as Rodan and news of its attacks on the U.S fleet and Japanese airbase spread quickly. Its appearance changed the political situation in Asia. It had hit two of the major powers in the Pacific in the space of just a few hours. More importantly, we went from a single manageable menace to two. What made most people uneasy was that Rodan, with his unbelievable speed, could conceivably hit anywhere in the Western Pacific in the space of twenty-four hrs.
There was still he very real fear of Angirus reappearing too. If he were to do so, we'd have a terror for the land, sea, and air. Such as it was, the Japanese called for a conference with all the major powers in the Pacific to address the threats. Our government agreed to it, but only under certain conditions. First, Japan had to agree to cease its invasion of China permanently. They agreed to this with little argument. With all the recent losses of men, material, and supplies to Baragon, they could no longer effectively carry on the war anyways and over the last few weeks, the Chinese had managed to throw together a huge counterattack. They had taken back a lot of lost territory while the Japanese had been distracted fighting Baragon.
The Japanese had terms of their own though. Their stipulation was that the United States could no longer supply the Chinese military with American equipment. The Chinese didn't like it, but they begrudgingly agreed once we had whittled down the Japanese into agreeing to only discontinuing the supply of tanks and warplanes. Small arms and artillery was to remain as it was. The Chinese agreed to those terms. The Russians were more than willing to fill that void afterwards.
As part of the agreement, we were able to talk the Japanese into allowing us to temporarily move three army divisions into China to help hunt down Baragon. They were suspicious at first, but eventually agreed to it. I guess they'd had enough of their own men dying facing off with the monster alone. Still, they stipulated that we were obligated to remove those forces once Baragon was dealt with. With the agreement signed, preparations were made and U.S. forces from the Philippines were mobilized.
In the meantime, the plans for the conference were also set in motion. Since all sides were still a little weary of each other, a neutral site was selected. The site they settled on was a small Chinese town on the border that had been occupied by the Japanese for months. It had been recently retaken by the Chinese. One of the big selling points for it was the airfield located nearby, which would allowed representatives from all sides to fly in and meet there quickly.
The plan was to bring in delegates from the various militaries, scientific experts, and I-witnesses who had seen the monsters up close to share their information and discuss strategies on how to kill them. The whole thing was set to last for three days and the site was already being prepared. Admiral Nimitz was invited/ordered to attend, given his experience. In turn, the Admiral insisted I come along as well, given the insights I had about Angirus, and that I had encountered Rodan first hand as well. I had misgivings about going, but was not in a position to refuse.
Prior to leaving, there was one matter we had to see to first. We had a military funeral to honor all the men we lost in the naval battle. There weren't many bodies, most of the men lost had been taken by the sea. I'm not sure if that made it easier or harder to accept the losses. There were only a handful of caskets to deal with, but I couldn't help but think of their families. None of them would have a body in the cemetery to visit, nothing to say goodbye to. Didn't seem right considering what their sons had given up for their country. The best we could do for them was send letters and flags and hope it helped ease their burden.
I thought about Teddy's folks. They would at least be getting a body back, but I doubted it would make them feel a whole lot better.
Later that day we went to the airfield, boarded a C-47, and took off for the conference.