A Matter of Honor

            The submarine Atragon was the flagship of the G-Force fleet: the most powerful, versatile, and advanced machine they possessed, and Doug Gordon was her captain. It struck him as a little ironic that a ship that had been designed as a weapon against the Americans in World War II should now be piloted by an American. Gordon had served on the Atragon from the very earliest days of G-Force. He had been part of the first troop transfer from the US Navy when the organization was first formed. Well he remembered how little that arrangement had been to Captain Jinguji’s liking. The proud old warrior had been nothing short of brutal to the young gaijin when he first began his service. But even then, Gordon wasn’t the kind of man to let anyone else push him around. He had submitted to the Captain’s abuse with stoic pride, pushing back whenever he could, and doing his duties with all the drive and perfection of a man with something to prove.

            In the end, he had been the only American sailor left on the Atragon. The others had all quite and transferred to less abusive commands. Gordon had never quit anything in his life, and he’d be damned if he was going to start now. His dogged perseverance and strict devotion to his duty had, at last, earned Jinguji’s grudging respect, though he had still made it clear that Gordon was the sole exception to his hatred for Americans up until the day he died.

            The Atragon itself, meanwhile, had gone through more fights, suffered more damage, and been rebuilt more often than any other ship in the fleet (at least, of the ships that remained in the fleet). Gordon had helped in more overhauls than he could count, and now knew her at least as well as he knew his own body.

            Today, she was on patrol a hundred meters deep and fifty miles off the Australian coast. A navy cruiser had picked up some odd radio signals in this area, and the Atragon had been sent to investigate. It might be nothing, or it might be a Mu remnant planning an attack on Sydney, or a dozen other possibilities. You needed a flexible mind to survive in G-Force.

            So far, after ten hours slow cruising along the coastline, they hadn’t found anything. Gordon was just about ready to call it in as a false alarm when one of the panels lit up.

            “Captain, sonar contact.”

            Gordon leaned forward, adjusting the screen in front of him to show a view of the sonar screen.

            “What is it?”

            “Identified as Anguirus, sir,” said a female officer.

            That was surprising. Anguirus was usually a fairly sedentary creature; staying on islands or coastal waters until something disturbed him. It was rare to find him out at sea like this.

            “Bearing?”

            “West by Northwest,” answered the sonar man. “He…he’ll be passing right over us in a minute.”

            Gordon switched to the top camera, giving him an enhanced view of the ocean directly overhead. The camera’s special sensors made the water as clear as air, allowing him to see every solid object passing overhead about as clearly as if he were viewing it on a very cloudy day.

            After a few tense seconds, the massive, bulky shape of the kaiju glided into view overhead, leaving a white trail of foam in his wake. Like Godzilla, Anguirus was basically just a huge dinosaur. In his case, he resembled the armored ankylosaurs, except that his horned, crocodile-like head proclaimed him to be a meat-eater. A thick, jointed shell covered in spines protected his back, and his armored tail – which was half-again as long as his body – was lined with enormous spikes that folded flat when not in use, but sprang up as tall as telephone poles when he needed them. The tail ended in a heavy club ornamented with two curved spikes.

            The giant silhouette passed swiftly by, his long tail beating the water behind him.

            “Where are you going?” Gordon muttered to the monster overhead.

            “Uh, sir?” said the sonar man.

            “What?”

            “If he maintains this course, he’ll be heading right for Brisbane.”

            There was a heavy silence in the cabin.

            “He won’t,” said Gordon confidently. “He’s not the type.”

            Still, this was an odd coincidence: a strange signal, and in the same waters a major kaiju swimming purposefully toward land. They needed to know more.

            “Surface and follow him,” Gordon ordered.

            The Atragon rose smoothly, breaking the surface about three hundred yards behind the kaiju’s tail. Anguirus paused, glanced over his shoulder at them, and then continued his journey westward. The Atragon steamed after him.

            The First Mate, Lieutenant Ikehata Hyodo, cleared his throat.

            “Sir,” he said. “If he’s on his way to Brisbane…”

            “He’s not,” said Gordon simply.

            Anguirus was not the type of kaiju who raided cities. He was a fierce fighter, and much more dangerous than he appeared, but he wasn’t aggressive toward man in the way that someone like Godzilla or Rodan could be. On the contrary, Anguirus had what Gordon could only describe as a code of honor: alone of almost all the kaiju mankind had yet encountered, Anguirus stoutly refused to engage military forces. At first it had been thought that he was simply more easily cowed than any other monster, but the events of the Black Hole War had disabused them of that notion. During that conflict he had nearly killed himself fighting Mechagodzilla, disabling the robot’s left arm even after having his jaw broken in three places. He had only ceased fighting when the robot knocked him unconscious by stomping repeatedly on his head.

Anguirus would fight an equal or superior opponent to the death, but he refused to engage any enemy he regarded as inferior. The idea of him wantonly attacking a city was ridiculous.

So why was he going that way?

Gordon really wished they had Miki with them; she’d be able to just ask the critter. But, of course, she was much too important to waste on a simple scouting mission, and no one had so much as suggested she come along. She was probably back in Tokyo, or who knows where: almost definitely too far off to be of any help to them now. If he tried to have her flown in, even if the brass agreed to it, she almost certainly wouldn’t get here before Anguirus himself showed them what he was up to.

Still, they needed to let them know what was going on. At this rate, they’d be in the city in just over an hour.

“Call it in,” said Gordon.

The five present members of the United Nations Godzilla Countermeasures Committee – UNGCC, better known as G-Force – received Captain Gordon’s report with alarm.

“Excuse me, Captain, do we have this right?” said Dr. Yoshida. “You are telling us that a major kaiju is less than an hour away from a city of two million people, and your recommendation is that we…do nothing?” 

“No,” said Gordon, not bothering with the ‘sir.’ “I recommended that, unless Ms. Saegusa can be brought in time, we continue to follow and observe him.”

“That sounds an awful lot like doing nothing, Captain,” said Admiral Stenz.

“Sir, knowing Anguirus’s nature, I’m positive he isn’t about to attack Brisbane for no reason.”

“Then what is your interpretation of his behavior?” asked General Aso.

“I don’t know for sure yet,” Gordon admitted. “My best guess would be that he senses some kind of threat or enemy in that direction.”

“We don’t have any reports of kaiju sightings in that area,” said Dr. Jinguji. “As a matter of fact, we haven’t had any sightings on the Australian coast since the Second Mu War, and that was five years ago! You don’t seriously think that Megalon is still alive, do you?”

“Probably not,” Gordon admitted. It was hard to recover from having your head blown up, even for a kaiju. “But it’s possible that some other creature, perhaps a gyaos, or something we’ve never seen before is waiting in that direction.”

“There haven’t been any gyaos sightings for years,” Professor Okubo sighed. “Last we heard from Ms. Kusanagi, she told us that Gamera is sleeping peacefully. Now he wouldn’t be doing that if there were gyaos flapping around, would he?”

“I didn’t say I thought it was a gyaos, you greasy old bastard! I just said that something has caught his attention.”

There was a murmur of indignation at Gordon’s outburst, but he didn’t care. It wasn’t the first time his bad temper had gotten the best of him. Hell, Okubo got off easy compared to some other superior officers he’d chewed out!

“Captain Gordon,” said Admiral Stenz. “Whatever your personal feelings or gut instincts may be, you’re first priority is to protect to lives of the people of Brisbane, is that clear?”

“Admiral…”

“Is. That. Clear?”

Gordon ground his teeth.

“Yes, sir.”

“Therefore, you are ordered to do anything and everything in your power to stop Anguirus from making landfall. Understood?”

Gordon nodded.

“Dismissed.”

The screen went blank. Gordon looked out the bridge window. Anguirus’s spike-covered shell filled his vision, but beyond that he saw the Australian coast just visible on the horizon.

The bridge was deathly silent.

“Captain?” asked Hyodo, nervously.

Gordon took a deep breath.

“Maintain course,” he said. “Keep following him.”

The order to do ‘anything and everything in his power’ to stop Anguirus could mean only one thing. There were very few weapons in existence, short of a hydrogen bomb, that posed any serious threat to a kaiju. The Atragon’s various missile systems might do some minor damage, and the big guns would probably not even pierce Anguirus’s hide. But they did possess one weapon powerful enough to disable or even kill almost any known kaiju in the world: the Absolute Zero Cannon. This weapon blasted all the energy right out of an object’s molecules, freezing it solid and, more often than not, causing it to shatter into pieces. It was an updated and vastly more powerful version of the freeze cannon that had been installed on the Atragon when it was first built and which it had used against Manda during the First Mu War. Manda had survived, but with permanent nerve damage that left him a sluggish, disoriented shell of his former self, and that was from a device barely a tenth as strong as the current version.

Godzilla himself was the only kaiju known to have taken a direct hit from the AZC and survive with no permanent damage. The Atragon was currently the sole ship to carry it (though Gordon had heard rumors that they would try to mount it on one of the new mechas they were building), and it had only fired the weapon four times in its entire history. The trouble was that the AZC destroyed itself with each firing, so that each time they used it, they had to take the ship apart and install a new one, which cost G-Force about twice its annual budget in one go.

The authorization to use this weapon on Anguirus if he made landfall staggered Gordon. It was a kill order. G-Force had just authorized him to kill what was widely regarded as one of the noblest and most trustworthy monsters in the world. It was like being authorized to drop a nuke on Mothra.

Actually, it was worse than that. Anguirus had saved his life – saved his entire crew – during the Second Mu War. The Atragon had been damaged by the sea-dragon Dagahra, but Anguirus had intervened by attacking both Dagahra and the shark-like Zigra at the same time to protect the downed ship.

It had been an all-but-suicidal move. Zigra had nearly taken his leg off by the time the Atragon was able to issue supporting fire (Zigra had been the third time they had fired the AZC). Once Zigra had been dispatched, Anguirus had been able to turn his full attention on Dagahra, and though the sea dragon was nearly twice his size, and though Anguirus had lost a lot of blood and was fighting on a broken leg he had still managed to tear part of Dagahra’s wing off, driving him into full retreat.

Gordon could see that the entire crew was thinking the same thing. They couldn’t kill Anguirus, whatever happened.

The trouble was, Anguirus was now within sight of the Australian coast.

Hyodo leaned in close.

“Captain,” he said. “We can’t risk two million lives out of gratitude.”

“It’s not gratitude,” Gordon answered. “It’s honor.”

“Take us into the air,” he ordered after a few minutes’ silence. “Block him. See what he does.”

The Atragon fired its high-powered jump-jets, lifting itself into the air. Putting on speed, it soared over Anguirus, then turned and lowered itself into the water, the enormous drill on its nose pointing at the kaiju.

Anguirus stopped and cocked his crocodile-like head to the side as he contemplated the Atragon, as though confused as to what the submarine thought it was doing. Then he opened his jaws – still crooked from being broken by Mechagodzilla – and gave a high-pitched bark of annoyance. With a flick of his tail, Anguirus lurched forward and dove under the Atragon. The submarine shuddered as the enormous beast swam mere feet beneath its hull, buffeted by his wake.

“Captain?” Hyodo asked as soon as the kaiju had passed.

Gordon grunted.

“That settles it,” he said.

“Settles what?”

“If Anguirus had gone rogue, he’d’ve just cut right through us,” Gordon said. “He’s not heading for Brisbane: he’s got something else on his mind.”

“But what?”

Gordon shrugged. Anguirus was barely half-a-mile from the coast of North Stradbroke Island.

Brisbane is cut off from the open ocean by two long islands: North Stradbroke Island and Moreton Island, both of them long, narrow, and sparsely populated. If Anguirus continued on his present course – as he showed every sign of doing – he would cross the northern end of North Stradbroke in maybe half-an-hour and then have nothing but open water between him and the city.

            The Atragon rose into the air again, continuing to follow the monster from overhead as he approached the shore.

The screen flickered, and G-Force was back.

“Captain!” Admiral Stenz snapped. “Anguirus will be making landfall in minutes. You are ordered to stop him now.”

“He’ll be landing on the island; not the coast,” Gordon answered. The admiral gave a hollow laugh.

“I don’t believe it,” said Professor Okubo. “Captain Gordon, do you really intend to let a major kaiju just land in a city of two million people unopposed?”

“He saved our lives,” Gordon answered simply.

“So your lives are worth more than the lives of everyone in Brisbane? Possibly more?” Okubo snapped.

“It’s a matter of honor,” the captain replied. “Anguirus would understand that better than you.”

“Captain Gordon,” said Stenz, very slowly and clearly. “You are hereby ordered to deploy the Absolute Zero Cannon immediately.”

Gordon glanced out the window. Anguirus had entered a shallow bay under rocky cliffs beneath the resort community of Point Lookout. He was wading now; no longer swimming. On the nearby beaches, vacationers were visible fleeing in panic before the monster.

“No.”

Admiral Stenz glared at him. Gordon glared right back.

“You are relieved of duty,” said Stenz through clenched teeth. “Lieutenant Hyodo, secure the Captain.”

Hyodo looked in horror from the admiral to the captain to the monster.

“I wouldn’t try it, Hyodo,” said Gordon. He didn’t really think Hyodo would; they were friends after all. But he thought it just as well to remind him that he, Gordon, was one of G-Force’s top hand-to-hand fighters.

“Captain, I swear…”

But before Stenz could finish, the screen flickered and died as a wave of energy surged over the ship. The Atragon rocked, but remained airborne as every screen, light, and instrument onboard flickered. Some went black.

“EMP!” one of the officers shouted.
            “Damage report!”

“Engines still firing.”

“Navigation, communications offline.”

“Energy weapons offline.”

“Forward guns report still functional, but the automatic loaders are down.”

“Son-of-a-bitch…” Gordon muttered, his eyes flicking out the window as the cliffs before them crumbled and something huge began to emerge.

Anguirus, however, didn’t wait for the creature to free itself. He rose onto his hind legs and shrieked a challenge. The creature answered with a low, almost metallic growl as long, thin legs tore through the rock. Anguirus lunged forward and seized the nearest of these in his jaws and pulled. The other monster snarled in surprise and pain, but Anguirus’s grip was like death and he kept tugging it ruthlessly.

As the monster struggled to free itself before its leg was torn off, the crew recognized enough to confirm their guess.

“It’s a MUTO!” Hyodo exclaimed.  

The MUTO – Massive Unidentified Terrestrial Organisms – were parasitic, insect-like remnants from the Age of Kaiju. Like the other kaiju, they drew strength from radiation, but unlike most of the known monsters, they were not mutants but more or less the same as they had been all those hundreds of millions of years ago. Their lifecycle required them to seek out sources of radiation to serve as food for their growing eggs. Something like the nuclear plant outside of Brisbane would have done very nicely.

“That explains the signal we caught the other day,” he growled. “Dammit, I thought these bastards were extinct.”

The MUTO had managed to extract herself enough by now to make a lunge at the smaller monster, slashing at him with the scythe-like claw on her other leg. It caught him on the back of the neck, drawing blood from under his thick scales. He released his grip and stepped back, his teeth bared, his tail whipping back and forth.  

The female MUTO was enormous. Compared to her, Anguirus looked like a Labrador teasing a buffalo. She stood nearly three hundred feet tall. He barely made that on his hind legs. Her two front legs – which were the longest of her six and ended in razor-sharp scythes – were raised, ready to tear into the smaller kaiju if he dared attack.

He did dare.

Anguirus seemed to gather himself up like a spring and then launched straight at the MUTO. She slashed at him with her scythes, but he curled himself up in midair, forming an armored, spike-covered ball. The blows struck harmlessly against his shell, and he slammed into her like a boulder. The MUTO howled and staggered back, but stayed on her feet. Anguirus unrolled himself, landing on all fours beneath her, and then immediately thrust up with his nose-horn, aiming for her relatively unarmored belly. She screeched in pain, lurched backwards, and struck him hard across the face with the flat of her scythe, then stabbed downward with the other. It landed across the top of Anguirus’s muzzle, forcing his head down into the surf. Taking advantage of his brief immobility, the MUTO bent down and latched her jaws on the back of his neck, between the end of his shell and the five horns protecting the back of his head.

Anguirus snarled and twisted under her grip, slashing at her face with his front claws, but they only scrapped against her armor as she bit deeper. Blood welled out from beneath her jaws, but Anguirus’s struggles only became more violent. He jammed his horns back against her face to no effect. Then his long tail swung around, every spike standing on end, and he struck her on the top of the head with his club.

That got her attention.

The MUTO released him, howling and backing away, but Anguirus didn’t even pause for breath. Still bleeding from the neck where she bit him, he charged after her retreating form, sprang up onto his hind legs, and seized the underside of her throat in his jaws. The MUTO snarled in fury, but Anguirus kicked his own feet out from under himself so that his full weight hung unsupported on her throat. The MUTO was strong, but not that strong. She toppled forward into the ocean, shrieking and flailing her many limbs. Anguirus seemed to flip her over, so that she landed on her back in the surf, and that’s when he appeared to notice the soft, swinging egg sack on her underside. Abandoning her throat, he turned, ducked his head, and drove his horn right into the bulbous mass of orange and red eggs.

The egg sack split open like a bursting balloon, spilling steaming hot, clear liquid and unfertilized ends all over him. Anguirus howled as the stinging fluids hit his eyes, but he didn’t stop. The MUTO screamed in agony as he ripped through this one soft part of her.

Too late, she reached out with her scythes, hooked Anguirus under his shoulders and pulled. The blades pierced his flesh and grated against his bones, severing muscles and sinew. He was yanked back like a fish on a hook and slammed against the crumbling cliffs.

The MUTO rose shakily to her feet, her underside still gushing fluids. Anguirus staggered up as well, bleeding from multiple wounds. He stood on his hind legs, his forelimbs hanging stiff and trembling before him as blood flowed from the wounds on his shoulders, dying the surf around him. Gordon thought wildly of Moses turning the Nile to blood.  

The MUTO charged, covering the ground between them in a single bound. But Anguirus had been ready for her. He ducked, turned, and swung his powerful, clubbed tail right into the knee on her middle-left leg. The crack was loud enough to be heard for miles down the coast. She screamed, her claws scrapping harmlessly against his shell as she staggered sideways. Anguirus gave her no respite, however, and swung his tail back again, this time hitting the rearmost leg, almost as hard, snapping that one as well.

She collapsed onto her left side, trying to hold herself up with her still-undamaged front pair of legs. Anguirus was on her in an instant. With whatever strength he had left in his arms, he seized the back of her head and forced it down, exposing the back of her neck and making a gap in her armor, through which the relatively soft flesh shown. Then, as she shrieked and struggled, he rammed his horn right into that gap and tore upwards, as if he were trying to dig through her neck. A massive chunk of flesh came away on his horn. Her clear bodily fluids sprayed into the air. Anguirus tossed his head to remove the bits of flesh, then bit into the ragged hole he had made in her neck, shaking his head back and forth to tear it even wider. He kept biting and worrying even after she had stopped moving.

Finally, Anguirus seemed satisfied that his opponent was dead. The MUTO’s head was hanging on only by a few narrow strips of flesh and her massive body was limp. Anguirus sniffed her once or twice, then threw back his head and gave a howl of triumph that probably was heard all the way to Sydney.

As one, the crew of the Atragon let out a long, steady breath. As if the ship too had been waiting, tensed, to see the outcome of the battle, its equipment flickered back on with the destruction of the source of the EMP.

“Captain Gordon,” said Stenz furiously. “Did you just hang up on me?”

The whole crew actually laughed.

“No sir,” said Gordon. “Not intentionally. I was just about to, but the MUTO got there first.”

“MUTO?” Yoshida asked.

“Yes, sir; we had a female MUTO hibernating in the cliffs just below Point Lookout.”

There was a very heavy silence from the people in Tokyo.

“And…Anguirus?” asked General Aso at last.

“Well, he’ll be needing a little R&R,” Gordon commented, looking out the window as the monster limped back to the open sea, leaving a trail of blood in his wake. “But he’ll be alright. He’s heading back East now.”

They didn’t need to ask whether the MUTO was dead or not. When Anguirus left the field, it was because the fight was over.

“Captain Gordon,” said Stenz. “You disobeyed a direct order…”

“Yeah? What about it?” asked Gordon gruffly. “If I hadn’t, you’d have a MUTO tearing her way through Brisbane right now.”

“Be that as it may,” Stenz answered. “You will nonetheless return to base and report for disciplinary action.”

He paused, then added,

“As soon as you have located and killed the male MUTO.”

Gordon nodded and saluted.

“We’ll take care of it,” he said. “Atragon out.”

The screen went blank. Gordon leaned back in his chair. Anguirus had reached the open sea and was now swimming away, off to find some place to rest and recover before his next fight.

Now, though, it was their turn.

“Lieutenant Hyodo,” Gordon ordered. “Start scanning for any signs of EMP activity. We’ve got us a MUTO to kill.”

The False Voice

                  She didn’t look like much, thought Commander Yamoto of the Red Bamboo about the unconscious girl on the other side of the glass. She was barely eighteen; very small in build and stature; pretty, but nothing special. Nothing about her bespoke any extraordinary qualities whatsoever.

                  Yet this little girl, alone of mankind, could control the most awesome force of nature the earth had ever known.

                  It’s a funny old world, he thought.

                  And yet, what had this girl done with such power? Nothing. Nothing but try to keep the beast away from populated areas. She held the means to rule the world in her grasp, and she was content to act as a kind of monster repellent.

                  The Red Bamboo could surely find better use for such a skill. They, the vanguard of the Revolution, would tame that wild beast as a weapon against their enemies: the fat, indolent people of Japan. The corrupt, morally-bankrupt Americans. The hypocrites and traitors of China. All would fall before the peoples’ greatest weapon: Godzilla. 

                  Miki Saegusa lay strapped securely to the hospital bed. A helmet bristling with innumerable wires and antennae covered her head. This device, the only one of its kind in the world, had a twofold purpose: using specialized electronic signals, it would both activate her ESP along a specified wavelength and record the activity for later analysis. Trigger a telepathic signal, record it, analyze it, and store it for later use. In this way, they were slowly building up a kind of telepathic dictionary; a phrase-book for commanding the King of the Monsters.

                  They had been at it for nearly fifteen hours, and Yamoto felt almost ready for a test run. He turned to the technician in charge, who nodded. They had enough for now. Let the girl recover for a while and, in the meantime, see whether their efforts were worth the investment.

                  It had not been easy to get a hold of her. As the only remotely reliable defense against Godzilla that anyone had yet discovered, Saegusa was well protected. G-Force had guards on her day-in and day-out, and she always moved under the highest possible secrecy. But the Red Bamboo had eyes everywhere; even inside G-Force. Although it had taken almost six months to set up, the plan had succeeded: a false alarm that Godzilla was making his way to the Australian coast set her and her guards scrambling onto an emergency jet, then a little knock out gas in the passenger compartment, and then like magic her guards were tossed out the doors and she was a guest of the Red Bamboo. Of course, once they were done picking her brain they’d just feed her to Ebirah; they couldn’t have her telling everyone about their plans, could they?

                  “Is the machine ready to transmit?” he asked.

                  “Yes, sir,” answered the technician.

                  The machine was based off of old Dr. Mafune’s design: supposedly it could transmit orders over vast distances, even underwater. Godzilla, according to their sonar, was a mere thirty miles away, drifting lazily south.

                  “Begin transmission,” Yamoto ordered. “Order him to turn north.”

                  He called her “the Little Voice.” He knew, of course, that she was actually one of the humans. He even had some idea of what she looked like; though she was so small it was hard to differentiate her from any other human. She had given him a name for herself, but he found that too confusing to keep straight: how could someone be one thing, and also another at the same time? He was Godzilla, and only Godzilla. Mothra was Mothra, and only Mothra. But the Little Voice wasn’t only the Little Voice, but also Miki, and also ‘human.’ He had trouble wrapping his brain around the whole concept. So, to him she was just the Little Voice.

                  Godzilla liked the Little Voice. She was the only human he liked. She was the only human he knew as an individual. Until he had met her, he hadn’t even really understood that humans were like that: individuals. He had just thought of them as ‘Man:’ the great, singular enemy that had brought so much pain and misery down upon his head for reasons he didn’t understand, and whom he had hated with all his might.

                  He did not hate Man anymore; that anger had long since cooled. He did not like Man either. Most days he just wanted to ignore Man, and hoped that Man would return the favor.

                  But he liked the Little Voice. She was kind to him. She respected him. She seemed to care about him. In return, he was usually willing to do what she asked him, which something he couldn’t say about anyone else in the world, except maybe Anguirus or Mothra.

                  Now, as he dozed and drifted through the waters, he heard her…or thought he did.

                  Turn around.

                  Godzilla snapped out of his doze. 

                  LITTLE VOICE?

                  It sounded like her, and yet…it didn’t.  

                  Turn around.

                  WHY?

                  Turn around.

                  He growled. Why should he turn around? He stopped swimming and floated there, hundreds of feet below the surface, looking around and listening.

                  Turn back.

                  He wasn’t anywhere near land. There was only one ship nearby, and it was behind him. Why did she want him to turn back?

                  Turn back.

                  Now he was getting angry. It sounded like she was trying to command him!

                  YOU DON’T CONTROL ME!

                  Turn back.

                  That’s it? No response at all? Just another order?

                  That wasn’t her. That couldn’t be her. She never tried to order him around. She talked to him, she didn’t just issue commands like that. And she certainly would have been frightened by his rebuke.

                  Then he realized: he always sensed emotions attached to the Little Voice. He could tell when she was scared or desperate or happy. This voice had no emotion. It was a dead voice. A false voice.

                  With that realization came two thoughts: the first was that someone was trying to control him using a crude imitation of his beloved Little Voice. The second was that, to imitate the Little Voice, they may have had to do something to her. They might have hurt her.

                  Godzilla roared in fury.

                  FALSE VOICE! I WILL KILL YOU FOR THAT!

                  The order came again:

                  Go north.

                  This time Godzilla listened carefully, trying to determine where it was coming from. It was coming from the southeast. With another roar and a flash of his tail, he turned and began swimming at top speed towards the False Voice.

                 

                  Miki Saegusa awoke with her head throbbing painfully. She felt as though something had gone in and torn apart her brain while she slept and she was having a very hard time making any kind of sense of her thoughts. She didn’t know where she was or how she had gotten there, and she only had the vaguest notion of who she even was. She tried to massage her aching head, but she was much too tired to even life her arms. She groaned and stopped trying: it made her head throb even harder.

                  After a few moments, her mind had arranged itself enough to realize that she felt not only exhausted and in pain, but somehow dirty: violated. The memory of being the victim of some terrible crime seemed to hover just at the edge of recollection. She wanted to push it away, but her natural desire to know her own mind overcame her aversion. Yet, it remained just as elusive as ever.

                  As she became a little more aware, she tried to recall where she was. She remembered being on a plane…yes, a G-Force special jet to Australia…someone had seen Godzilla heading for land. And then what?

                  She tried to feel her head again, but her arms still wouldn’t move. Now that was odd. She was tired, but not quite that tired. She wiggled her fingers and toes…yep, they still worked. So why couldn’t she lift her arms?

                  It suddenly occurred to her that this ought to be alarming, immediately followed by the realization that she should open her eyes.

                  They were stabbed by a brilliant light and she closed them again. Her arms definitely wouldn’t move, and what’s more, she couldn’t so much as sit up. Had there been a crash? Was she paralyzed?

                  Gingerly, she squinted against the glare and looked down her body. Thick black straps at her shoulders, chest, waist, knees, and ankles completely immobilized her, binding her to a white-sheeted bed. The rest of the room was cast into shadow by the light that shone in her eyes, except for a mirror covering the top half of the wall to her left.

                  She didn’t need to be psychic to know someone was watching her from the other side.

                  Miki felt wide-awake now. Wide awake and scared. Where was she? Who was watching her? What did they want?

                  Well, the latter question was obvious enough: they wanted her brain. Ever since her existence had become known, every government and scientific institution on the planet had been salivating over her brain. It was all G-Force could do to keep them away from her.

                  Now it looked like someone had gotten around them. And by the way her mind felt, they had already been picking her apart.

                  She wondered whether they hadn’t already taken her gift. Carefully – because her mind still felt very tender – she reached out a little, searching...

                  There were people on the other side of the mirror, just as she had thought. They were agitated, alarmed, angry even. Miki tried to sort through the various signals. There were a lot of people, all men, and all in a state of emotional distress. Something bad was happening. Something they had been worried about. She couldn’t tell what, but for the moment relief at still having her ESP compensated her for the sense of ominous mystery.  

                  Although she could speak mind-to-mind and hear responses, actually reading minds, going in uninvited and looking for information, was very difficult for her. It required great concentration, and usually considerable guesswork. Most of the time her gift manifested in reading emotions more than thoughts, and in her current state, she doubted she could do anything more demanding than that.

                  Suddenly, she sensed one of the people in the next room was on the move. He went away, then came back, heading right for her. Miki braced herself, certain that whatever followed would be unpleasant.

                  The door opened and a tall, athletic looking man in a military uniform emerged into the circle of light. He surveyed her with a single eye, the other being covered by a black eye-patch.

                  “Ms. Saegusa.”

                  “Who are you?” she asked.

                  He didn’t answer.

                  “Where am I?”

                  “At the moment,” he said. “All you need to know is that Godzilla is less than twenty miles from our current position and approaching at great speed.”

                  That didn’t make any sense, though she could tell he was telling her the truth.

                  “Why would he be coming here?” she asked.

                  “Who knows why he does what he does?” answered the man in the eye-patch.

                  “I do,” she answered at once.

                  She was naturally a fairly shrewd guesser; often having to piece together facts from the small fragments of information she was able to uncover when trying to read minds, and now she was beginning to form a picture of the situation. They had kidnapped her to study her telepathy; that much was obvious. But what if they’re interest hadn’t been so much scientific as practical?

                  “And I think I know why he’s coming,” she said. “You called him, didn’t you?”

                  The man seemed to be debating how much to tell her.

                  “Your powers exceed your reputation,” he said. “No doubt you know why you’re here, then?”

                  “You want to try to take my ESP,” she said. “You want to use it to manipulate Godzilla.”

                  “Correct,” he said. “And we have hit a snag. On our very first test run, he ignored our commands and instead started swimming towards us at top speed. Now, I require that you tell me what we did wrong.”

                  “You…you tried to command him?” she said in alarm.

                  “Of course,” he said. “As you do.”

                  “I don’t command him!” she exclaimed. The situation was much worse than she had thought. “I talk to him! He’s not a machine, or a pet; he’s an intelligent, proud, wild creature! Do you have any idea how offended he would be if I tried to command him?”

                  More aspects of the situation seemed to be forming before her as she understood more and more.

                  “When you sent your orders to him,” she went on. “He must have known that it wasn’t me. But he’ll probably also know that, if it wasn’t me, that I must be involved somehow. He’ll know what you’ve done.”

                  “Don’t be ridiculous,” he said. “He’s just an animal.”

                  “No, he’s not,” she answered. “He might not be able to understand all the details, but he’ll know that I’m in danger. If he’s coming here now, that means he cares enough about me to do something about it. There are very few creatures in this world he cares about, and if he thinks any of them are in danger, then trust me; you’ve never seen rage like what he’ll unleash. Not in this world.”

                  The man frowned at her, and she saw the implications of what she was saying were beginning to sink in. Miki was a small girl, and she had a small voice to match. But the conviction and, more so, the content of what she had just said alarmed him. She found herself actually laughing in defiance of him.

                  “Congratulations,” she told him. “You’ve just become the personal enemy of the most powerful creature on earth.”

                  The one-eyed man’s face contorted in rage.

                  “Call him off,” he ordered.

                  Miki took a deep breath. She knew what she had to do, but doing it would be very alarming.    

                  “No.”

                  She gasped as in a single, fluid motion he whipped out a large knife and stuck it up against her throat.

                  “Call. Him. Off.”

                  Miki took a second to compose herself, then forced herself to speak.

                  “If you kill me,” she gasped. “There’s nothing that will stop him.”

                  “Then I won’t kill you,” he answered with a snarl. The knife traveled down across her chest.

                  “If you torture me, he’ll know I’m in pain,” she said. “When we communicate, he can sense how I’m feeling. That’ll just make him angrier.”

                  He didn’t answer, but from the look in his single eye she could tell he was sorely tempted to do it anyway. The knife, in any case, continued to lightly stroke her abdomen.

                  Trying very hard not to imagine what it would feel like to be cut up like a dissection subject, Miki steeled herself to put her plan into action.

                  “I’ll call him off,” she said. “If you let me go.”

                  “You aren’t in a position to make demands,” the one-eyed man answered.

                  As if to emphasize his point, he cut a small hole in her blouse. It was a very sharp knife.

                  “No,” she said as firmly as she could. “You aren’t in a position to make demands. You have a very angry Godzilla bearing down on you. I’m the only thing in the world that might be able to stop him, and the only way I’ll do that is if you let me go.”

                  He glared at her, the knife twitching in his hands. The anger and hatred she sensed coming off of him terrified her. But she also sensed an equal measure of fear in him. She pressed her advantage.

                  “Even…even if you’re willing to die just for the pleasure of m-murdering me, what about your facility?” She swallowed hard and went on. “I guess I’m not your only science experiment here. What’ll your superiors say? What’ll happen to your organization? Is it really worth it?”

                  That, she saw at once, struck home. Realization of his position dawned across his mangled face. She sensed the inner struggle fade as his fear won out. Then his anger flared in a sudden outburst and he lunge at her, raising the knife.

                  “He’ll know!” she gasped. She was only just in time. His knife stopped mere inches over her face, having apparently been intending to give her one painful disfigurement to punish her for getting the better of him. Miki’s eyes watched the gleaming edge as it hovered just over her face, her breath coming in short, rapid gasps as she waited to see what the one-eyed man would do. But her warning had brought him to his senses and after a few, tense moments he returned the knife to its sheath.

                  “Where do you intend to go?” he asked when he had recovered sufficient composure to speak.

                  “There’s a G-Force ship following him at all times,” she said. “Do you have any helicopters?”

                  He nodded.

                  “Then take me there.”

                  The one-eyed man bit his lip so hard that Miki saw a drop of blood forming between his teeth. With a furious movement, he swept from the room. A few minutes later, he returned with four rough-looking guards. They undid the straps tying Miki to the bed, and she felt wonderful relief at being able to move her limbs. It didn’t last long, though. As soon as she sat up, one of the guards grabbed her and held her arms tight behind her back. Another bound them with a zip-tie.

                  “Hey, what are you…”

                  “You’ll be released when you approach the ship,” the one-eye man growled. “In the meantime, we can’t have you seeing anything unwholesome, can we?”

                  The third guard pulled a strip of duct-tape over her eyes, blinding her.

                  “Just stop him,” one-eyed growled.

                  “I’ll try,” she said. “I promise.”

                  “What do you mean you’ll ‘try’?”

                  “Well,” she said. “Like I said, I only talk to him. It’s possible you’ve made him angry enough that he’ll just kill you anyway.”

                  Someone – she guessed it was the one-eyed man – hit her across the face.

                  “Get her out of my sight.”

                  The guards roughly led/carried Miki through what seemed to be a bewildering maze of passaged, staircases, and catwalks before finally emerging out in the open on a windy rooftop. She was bundled into the helicopter, which flew straight and fast to the west.

                  Only when they sighted the G-Force ship Yamane did the guards roughly pull the tape off of Miki’s face, allowing her to be blinded yet again by the sudden blaze of sunlight. They cut her free of her ties, loaded her into a harness, and lowered her onto the deck, where a crowd G-Force personnel were waiting for her.

                  As soon as she touched the deck, she was surrounded by strong hands helping her out of the harness, strong arms hugging her, strong voices wanting to know what had happened and whether she was alright. G-Force was mostly comprised of either top-ranking scientists or extra-tough military personnel. Miki, therefore, was something of a novelty in the organization. Everyone, especially the military guys, looked on her as a kind of ‘team daughter,’ and they were all extremely protective of her. But that would have to wait: time was running short.

                  Somehow, she managed to make the nearest soldiers understand that she needed them to be quiet for a bit, and they made sure everyone else on deck knew it. Disentangling herself from the crowd, Miki ran along the forward deck toward the bow. The Yamane, along with its sister ship, the Serizawa, was a custom-made design; part cruiser, part scientific vessel. Its forward deck was outfitted with a small airstrip, allowing G-Force’s VTOL aircraft to take off and land on it. Miki stood on the bare flight-deck, near the rail, motioning for the men to keep back. Composing herself with measured breathing, she sent her thoughts out into the ocean, to where she knew he was moving.

                  Godzilla?

                  LITTLE VOICE?

                  Yes. It’s me.

                  YOU ARE HURT?

                  No, really; I’m fine.

                  YOU ARE…SCARED?

                  Just a little shaken. I’m alright.

                  FALSE VOICE?!

                  It’s gone. It’s dead now. You’ll never hear it again. You don’t need to go fight it.

                  There was a pause. She could feel his anger still smoldering, and what was more, his suspicion.

                  I WANT TO SEE YOU.

                  Miki hesitated, glancing back at the men. Even if Godzilla didn’t mean them any harm, he was so big that even surfacing next to the ship would be dangerous. But she sensed his concern, his need to be certain.

                  Alright. But be careful; don’t hurt the ship.

                  “Brace yourselves!” she called to the men. “He’s coming up!”

                  They all scrambled to grab hold of something. There was silence for a moment, and then maybe two hundred yards off the port side the water swelled and churned. The Yamane rocked violently. Miki grabbed onto the rail to steady herself. The ocean fell back in torrents as a black shape rose out of the water before them.

                  He had only emerged up to his chest, but even so Godzilla towered far above the Yamane’s mast. It was like having a rocky hill suddenly appear in the middle of the ocean. As always, Godzilla looked too big to even be alive.

                  His massive head – the size of a small house – swiveled around to survey the ship’s deck. A low growl seemed to make everyone’s insides tremble. His face bent down, attempting to focus on Miki’s comparatively insignificant form. Although she knew he meant them no harm, knew that he had actually been concerned for her, Miki couldn’t help feeling a little afraid as she gazed up into those great eyes.

                  LITTLE VOICE?

                  She forced herself back into contemplation.     

                  See? Here I am. Safe.

                  Feeling a little silly, she waved.

                  He growled, and she felt the metal deck quiver beneath her feet. At the same time, she felt him convey a sense of warm relief and care that she would scarcely have imagined possible for such a creature. She had warned the one-eyed man that Godzilla cared about her, but she hadn’t realized how much he actually did. It was staggering to think that she meant so much to such a being.

                  STAY SAFE.

                  Thank you. You too.

                  She swore she almost sensed something like a laugh, but a second later it was gone and she decided she had imagined it. The King of the Monsters turned away from the Yamane and plunged back beneath the waves, calm once more.

                  Miki exhaled slowly, then turned to greet her friends and satisfy both their concern and their curiosity. But first, she decided she ought to send a message to G-Force HQ, to let them know that somewhere about twenty miles to the west of them, there was a secret facility that needed investigation.  

                  After all, she promised to call off Godzilla. She never promised not to call in anyone else.

                 

                  Commander Yamoto waited patiently for the Chairman’s call. The loss of the island facility was, of course, a major blow, but they had at least managed to evacuate before the Americans arrived. They had even gotten most of their research off the island, and what they couldn’t take, they had destroyed. Nothing now remained but a smoking crater. The Red Bamboo had escaped again.

                  Still, it had been a blow: an investment of time and capital that they could scarcely afford. Yet, that investment was not wholly in vain. Indeed, if he played his cards right, it may prove to have all been worth it.

                  The screen flickered, and the shadowy form of the Chairman appeared.

                  “Commander Yamoto,” he intoned solemnly. “I have read your report of the debacle in the South Pacific. A billion dollar investment wiped out in one day. Ebirah let loose, with little prospect of recapture. A security breach resulting in the discovery of several undercover agents. And all you have to show for it is minimal loss of personnel and some half-finished research.”

                  There was a pause as the Chairman allowed the litany of failure to hang in the air.

                  “Can you offer anything in your defense?”

                  “I can, Chairman,” said Yamoto smoothly. “I believe that this event, though undoubtedly costly, may yet prove the key to a great victory.”

                  “Is that so? And what makes you say that?”

                  “It has revealed to us where we were mistaken,” said Yamoto. “And with that, has shown us the true means to proceed. We thought of Godzilla as a warrior. But that is not so. Godzilla is not a warrior, but a bomb. And the girl is his detonator.”

                  The Chairman cocked his head, intrigued. Yamoto smiled inwardly, and went on.

                  “Let things calm down for a time. Let them lower their guard. In the mean time, we shall select our target. Then, when all is ready, we shall take her again. We shall make her call to him, in pain. And so we shall bring his wrath down upon whatever city we choose.”

                  Yamoto finished and waited for the Chairman’s response. The shadowy figure sat motionless, apparently considering the idea. Then he answered a single word:

                 “Excellent.”