Kaiju Rising II: Reign of Monsters

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INTRODUCTION

N.X. SHARPS

IT’S BEEN FIVE YEARS SINCE Guillermo del Toro’s Pacific Rim stomped onto the big screen, popularizing the term kaiju amongst large swathes of Western theater-goers, and inspiring me and the team at Ragnarok Publications to create an anthology dedicated to a Japanese film genre featuring giant monsters. With the support of 444 backers, we successfully crowdfunded that anthology and released Kaiju Rising: Age of Monsters into the world. Plenty has changed since then but with Pacific Rim: Uprising and a bevy of other giant monster movies on the horizon (including a film adaptation of the beloved arcade game Rampage and the long-awaited showdown, Godzilla vs. Kong) now seemed like the perfect time to unleash a sequel of our own.

Editing a project like Kaiju Rising II: Reign of Monsters is gratifying on so many levels. It’s an exciting exercise brainstorming what authors might best fit the overarching theme of the anthology while still managing to deliver their own unique style. And once the submissions start rolling in and you get to read original fiction by your favorite authors before anyone else will? Talk about sublime! I knew the anthology would be good, but it wasn’t until I started to read the submissions that I realized just how good. I held some expectations for what the stories of Kaiju Rising II might offer, but authors, beautiful beasts that they are, have a tendency to surprise you.

Rewinding a bit, let me just say that one of the things I love most about the first book, Kaiju Rising: Age of Monsters, is the degree of diversity in the content of the stories. It’s a feature that is frequently mentioned in reviews, and I whole heartedly believe it’s the anthology’s greatest strength. I’m glad to say that Kaiju Rising II: Reign of Monsters only builds on that (hopefully earthquake-resistant) foundation. It’s a leaner predator than its big sister, more King Kong-sized than the Godzilla that is Kaiju Rising: Age of Monsters, but the stories printed on the following pages still manage to span an assortment of genres—action, horror, post-apocalypse, alternate history, and science fiction. We’ve got stories of love and loss, revenge and redemption, duty and sacrifice, conservation and annihilation, all united under the aegis of kaiju. In the true monster movie tradition, our kaiju range from villains to victims, creatures of instinct, forces of nature, and in the words of Jurassic Park’s Muldoon even a clever girl or two.

All books are a team effort, but none more so than an anthology. I’ve already touched on the incredible stories written by our amazing line-up, but I’d be remiss not to mention the hard work by those who made Kaiju Rising II: Reign of Monsters a reality. Alana Joli Abbott, my co-editor, really knows her craft, and her abilities have covered for any of my own shortcomings. Tan Ho Sim’s awesome cover art is a perfect match for this anthology, and I’ll be proud to display it on my bookshelf. Frankie B. Washington has all the experience needed to illustrate kaiju, and his interior art evokes the essence of each of these stories. Without the determination and marketing expertise of Melanie Meadors, it would have been a much steeper hill to climb to reach our funding goal for the Kickstarter campaign. Shawn King’s design sensibilities are second to none, and I’m astonished one of the big traditional publishers hasn’t snatched him up yet. Outland Entertainment’s fearless leader Jeremy Mohler deserves credit for deciding to take a risk on this project, and I’m eternally grateful that he did.

But perhaps the greatest member of the team is you. Yeah, you. Whether you backed the Kickstarter campaign, bought a copy after, borrowed this from a library, or stole it from your friend (don’t give it back, just convince them to buy another copy)—we couldn’t have done it without you. Without a reader, there’s no audience, and it doesn’t matter how good the book is or how much time and effort was sunk into it. So, thank you, even if you skipped ahead to dive straight into the stories like I would in your position. If you’re a fan of kaiju I sincerely believe you will appreciate what these authors have achieved. If this is your first exposure to the genre, I hope Kaiju Rising II: Reign of Monsters can be your gateway drug to a wider, weirder world.

And with that, I am honored to introduce Kaiju Rising II: Reign of Monsters. The Age of Monsters has arrived, and the Reign of Monsters has begun.

N.X. Sharps

March 6, 2018

THE GHOST IN THE MACHINE

JONATHAN GREEN

THE JUKUNG CUT THROUGH THE waves like a spear, the outboard motor purring as Keoni kept his hand on the rudder and his eyes on the horizon. And then the interminable blue and green of sky on sea was broken by the surf-lapped outcroppings of the atoll.

The ring-shaped island was a near perfect circle, the weather-worn tips of the exposed reef dusted with the accumulated sand of crushed sea-shells in some places, while in others a few determined plants sprouted. But the real life lay beneath the waves, where the reef descended like a calcified cliff towards the seabed, which was why the Redmonds fished these waters and were never short of food. And the desalination plant aboard the David Redmond that formed the nucleus of the sea-borne community meant they never went without fresh water either.

The wind tousled Keon’s thick mop of sun-bleached hair while the burning disc high in the sky warmed his skin, and the sea spat its salt-spray into his face.

He looked every part the hunter, his lithe, muscular body toned and tanned, his steely gaze focused on the approaching atoll. At fifteen he was almost a man, but his skin was as yet unblemished by the scars that would one day mark him out as a hunter of Redmond tribe.

The only clothes he wore were a pair of baggy breeches and his favourite leather waistcoat, but then he didn’t need anything more. The only other item he wore was his shark’s tooth talisman, suspended from a leather thong about his neck. In fact, it was on this very atoll that he had found the tooth, all those years before. Remembering the lucky find, Keoni unconsciously put the talisman to his lips and kissed it.

As the outrigger drew closer to the island formation, Keoni caught sight of the natural opening that gave access to the lagoon at the heart of the atoll. Even from this far out he could see the distinct difference in colour between the waters surrounding his boat and the unplumbed sapphire depths of the lagoon.

Some said that there was no bottom to the Great Blue Hole, others that it led to the depthless dark domain of Dakuwaqa himself. But whatever the truth, Keoni knew that within the Blue Hole was where the hunter would find his prey.

As he steered the boat towards the break in the atoll wall, the youth cast a glance back over his shoulder at the receding ship-city. Parts of the David Redmond were still visible beyond the horizon, but then the floating city was huge. An agglomeration of ancient vessels, moored together to form a many-tiered floating platform a thousand metres across, at its widest point, and twelve tiers high in places. The mountainous platforms were supported by the jostling decks of the rocking ships, with Chief Turi’s tented apartment lying on the topmost tier. The great, calico-white awning shone like a beacon in the light of the climbing sun.

Keoni could scarce imagine a bigger settlement anywhere within the bounds of the Coral Sea. But then he had never travelled further than the outlying trading post of Ovation and the pirate-port of Prelude.

Easing off on the motor, Keoni carefully brought the outrigger to the entrance to the lagoon, before cutting the engine altogether.

A coconut bobbed between the hull of the canoe and the starboard float. Must be my lucky day, he mused.

Fishing it out of the water, he reached for his machete, lying alongside a steel box, beside a pile of oilcloth, ready to cut it open and enjoy its bounty. As he did so, the tarpaulin moved.

Warily taking hold of one corner of the tarp he yanked it back. Lying there, in the bottom of the boat, blinking in the sudden sunlight, was the slight form of his sister.

Kaimi? What are you doing here?

I should ask you what you’re doing here! Kaimi countered, shielding her eyes from the blazing sun with a hand.

You know what I’m doing.

Are you mad? Father says you’re not ready.

I’m ready! he snapped back at her.

Father said you must wait until your sixteenth birthday. I knew what you were planning, she went on accusingly. She was younger than him by four years, but the way she spoke to him now, she sounded more like their mother, the ancestors keep her. That’s why I stowed away. Someone has to talk sense into you or father will feed you to the fishes!

I have to prove myself, Keoni said, thin-lipped.

You dishonour the gods by coming here! His sister gave a dramatic sigh. What are you hoping to catch anyway?

Toki! Keoni replied, with a measure of embarrassed pride.

Toki? You would dishonour Dakuwaqa by killing one of his children?

They prey on us, so why shouldn’t we prey on them? No one has ever brought a shark back from the sea. When I do, the elders will have to accept that I am as great a hunter as any Redmond has ever known!

You sound like that idiot Tamati. The toki do not prey on us, his younger sister chided him. They only attack when we enter their territory. And if you brought one back, dead, to the David Redmond, even if that were possible, I think Chief Turi would exile you from the tribe!"

Well I don’t, countered Keoni.

Well I do.

Well we’ll just have to wait and see then, won’t we? Keoni said, using an uncapped flare to light the stick of dynamite he had taken from the box in the bottom of the outrigger.

He quickly let go of the dynamite and it entered the water with a plop, its fuse still fizzing. The flare followed it a split second later.

The siblings watched as the dynamite sank into the blue depths, quickly vanishing from sight, although the pinky-red glow of the sputtering flare remained visible much longer. They both heard the muffled boom of its detonation and felt the surge of the sea beneath the boat as the shockwave rose to the surface. A great column of water burst from the submarine sinkhole before raining back down again in a sudden deluge that drenched Keoni, Kaimi, and the boat.

You idiot! Kaimi shouted as she pulled her soaking hair out of her eyes. Are you trying to kill us?

I have to do something to shake Toki from the comfort of his sea bed, Keoni said.

Water sloshed about in the bottom of the boat between them.

So now what do we do? his sister grumbled, peering over the side of the jukung at the fathomless depths beneath them.

We wait.

And so they waited.

"HOW LONG HAS IT BEEN now?" Kaimi asked for the umpteenth time.

I don’t know! Keoni snapped. About thirty seconds since you last asked? Just shut up, okay?

It had been several minutes since he had dropped his dynamite lure into the ocean, certainly longer than he had thought it would take to stir his prey from its lair, and he was suffering the comedown from the adrenaline peak he had experienced at coming out to the atoll, without his father’s permission.

Since dropping the dynamite into the sea, he had remained standing in the boat, but now his legs ached from maintaining his balance and, disgruntled, feeling that his plan had all come to naught, he sat down on one of the bench seats that crossed the hull.

Kaimi lounged with her head lolling over the side of the boat. What’s that? she asked.

Keoni stood again and moved to the edge of the boat. He looked down into the water, between the hull and the canoe’s portside lateral support float. He could see beads of light twinkling in the dark depths far below. And it was then that he saw the grey shadow beneath the waves, moving at speed towards the jukung.

The shark rocketed out of the sea with the force of a torpedo, its gunmetal grey, bullet-shaped head all gaping jaws as it exited the ocean.

Kaimi screamed while Keoni scrabbled for his spear, not because he thought it would serve him well against the Great White, but just because he didn’t know what else to do. The terrifying selachian cleared the waves for a moment, a moment that slowed in Keoni’s mind as his adrenaline-heightened senses took in every detail, from the remora sucking fish clinging to the monster’s pale belly, and the scars striating its flanks and muzzle—the legacy of previous submarine battles—to the soft, pinky quality of the flesh inside its mouth, the rolling rows of serrated teeth, and the creature’s oblivion-black, soulless stare.

And then it was dropping again, the intimidating mass of it blotting out the burning white disk of the sun for a moment, casting a great shadow across the outrigger. Keoni was aware of Kaimi screaming as the fish hit the water again, sending a wall of water crashing over the boat, as it landed a mere hand’s breadth from the outrigger’s port boom, and setting the vessel rocking.

The young hunter’s blood was pumping now, his whole body shaking as he raised his fishing spear, ready to plunge it into the shark’s eye-socket the moment it broke the surface again. But when the tentacles burst from the boiling sea in the shark’s wake, Keoni was paralysed into inaction.

The rubbery appendages writhed above the surface of the water, as if tasting the air.

Keoni had set out that morning to catch a shark and prove himself a hunter, but now he found himself facing the proposition of dealing with another leviathan born of the deep ocean, some colossal squid!

Kaimi’s screams shook him from his reverie. Get us out of here! she managed to articulate between her howls of horror.

For the briefest moment, Keoni wondered if he could take on a fully grown giant squid and win, but when he saw how far away it was and how long the writhing, suckered arms must be, he thought better of it and ran to the back of the boat, scrabbling desperately at the outboard’s starter cord.

His first tug summoned nothing more than a throaty belch of engine fumes from the outboard.

Come on, Keoni!

He turned and saw the panic writ large across his sister’s face. Following her horrified gaze, he expected to see the writhing limbs moving through the water towards the boat, but what he saw instead froze him to the very core of his being, despite the heat of the blazing sun beating down upon him.

As brother and sister watched together, more writhing limbs emerged from the sea at the centre of the atoll. They were coloured with rippling patterns of pink, orange, and yellow, and there were far more than was normal for a giant squid.

Suddenly several of the tentacles whipped out across the water, elongating with elastic fluidity, and shot past the outrigger. Kaimi screamed again as the muscular appendages struck the water. The surface of the sea became a seething turmoil as something was dragged, thrashing with all its might, back to the surface.

Keoni gasped. With the appearance of the strange tentacles he had momentarily forgotten all about the Great White. It suddenly surfaced again beside the outrigger, threatening to smash the port boom to matchwood as it fought to free itself from the tightening tentacles. The huge fish twisted and turned with such force Keoni worried that, even if it didn’t destroy the outrigger with its desperate thrashing, it would swamp the boat with seawater and sink it just the same.

The shark snapped its jaws open and closed, as if in a feeding frenzy, but still it could not free itself from the clutches of the tentacles. Inexorably it was dragged backwards through the water towards the centre of the atoll, where the water was darker.

The sea frothed and foamed as the shark continued to fight the tentacles—a fight it could never hope to win.

But if witnessing what he had thought was the apex predator of the Coral Sea being captured by this half-seen tentacled leviathan wasn’t shocking enough, what happened next expanded Keoni’s understanding of the truth of his world in ways he could never have imagined when he set out that morning.

As the shark was hauled in, the tentacles began to rise out of the water, impossibly high for a giant squid, or even an overgrown octopus.

It very soon became apparent that no mutated squid had caught the shark, but something much, much bigger.

As the tentacles rose, Keoni saw that they surrounded a vast mouth that made the monster look more like a gigantic starfish, or some impossibly large anemone. The writhing limbs were there solely to feed food into the gaping maw, and as Keoni stared dumbfounded at the leviathan emerging from the Great Blue Hole, he saw the frantic shark disappear inside.

The strange creature was already taller than the outrigger was long, and yet still it continued to rise from the ocean’s unplumbed depths, the roots of the tentacles fusing into what at first appeared to be a serpentine body, until it broadened out into a vast trunk-like structure, and Keoni realised that what he had taken to be the thickness of the creature’s entire body was in fact only its neck. And still it continued to rise.

Keoni! Kaimi’s scream reminded him that rather than staring at the monster emerging from the sea, he should be getting them out of there.

The starter cord was loose in his hand. He gave it another tug, and this time the engine caught. Gunning the throttle expelled any lingering sea-water from the engine and got the motor running up to speed.

The outrigger began to move towards the heart of the atoll, towards the towering monster.

Keoni pulled hard on the outboard, angling the propeller so that the boat described a tight arc across the choppy waves, the pitch of the engine changing as the boat bumped over the surges, rippling out from the centre of the Blue Hole.

His sister’s screams had been replaced by terrified, heart-rending sobs, as she stared up at the monstrosity rising above them, taller now even than the David Redmond, blocking out the sun, its shadow stretching far out across the sea.

And then they broke from the shade and passed into blinding sunlight again, and in that moment Keoni dared hope they might escape the fate the shark had suffered.

Massive limbs, like boneless arms, peeled away from the sides of the creature, four in total. As it rose still higher, another pair of vastly-thick tentacles split apart to form a pair of rudimentary legs and the towering agglomeration of asteroidae-like flesh took its first long stride after the outrigger.

There was nothing Keoni could do other than gunning the throttle and keeping his eyes firmly on the familiar, ziggurat shape of ship-city on the horizon.

Seawater cascaded from the body of the beast in a dozen waterfalls a hundred feet high.

The monster’s leg—for want of a better word—didn’t break the surface of the sea but dragged through the water as the creature waded through the shallows beyond the atoll. And then the colossal limb passed by the boat.

As it did so, Keoni got a closer look at the entity and its writhing flesh. Everywhere Keoni looked, the rippling orange-pink-yellow flesh of the thing was made up of wriggling coral-like polyps, a million microcosms of the creature’s head—a ring of tiny tentacle-like growths surrounding puckered sphincter-mouths.

Lusca! he gasped as a childhood memory surfaced once more.

He remembered his grandfather regaling him and Kaimi with tales of the lusca, monsters from the abyssal depths of the ocean, and the battles they had fought with the guardian gods of old, but he hadn’t really believed those stories to be true. Now he wasn’t so sure.

As the creature left the boat behind, Keoni wondered whether it was even aware of the outrigger. Or was it simply that it had detected something more deserving of its monstrous attentions on the horizon?

Keoni had no idea how the thing sensed the world around it, whether it was through vibrations, smell or sight; just because it didn’t have any obvious eyes on a scale to match its vast body didn’t mean that the billions of polyps that formed its flesh didn’t have myriad eyes—or at least light-sensitive cells—of their own.

The primal terror he had felt upon witnessing the monster’s rising from the Great Blue Hole now became a burning dread as he realised where the creature was headed. Keoni had no idea how its mind worked—or what form such a mind might take—but something was drawing it towards the David Redmond, whether that was the smell of the cook-fires and the reek of diesel or the scurrying movement of the people on the deck, who were surely aware of the monster’s presence by now.

No! Keoni screamed, as the beast closed with the sea-borne settlement.

The distant rattle of gunfire carried to the pursuing outrigger across the waves, underlined by a chorus of shrill human screams.

Keoni gunned the throttle again but in truth there was nothing he could do, other than point the outrigger towards the David Redmond and keep going, even though it meant putting not only his life at risk, but that of his sister too. For the David Redmond was their home, and without it they would have nothing.

EVEN BEFORE THE OUTRIGGER BUMPED against the floating jetty, Keoni leapt from the trimaran canoe onto the pontoon and sprinted towards the steel staircase chained to the side of the ship. Stay there! he commanded Kaimi.

No, I’m coming with you! his sister retorted, throwing a loop of rope over a mooring post before chasing after him.

Keoni gave an exasperated sigh and raced up the stairs, two steps at a time. Upon reaching the deck he was greeted by the clamour of the unfolding horror, as he entered a once familiar world now run to chaos.

The barter-market was a scene of utter devastation. The stalls and makeshift structures of the bazaar had been swept aside by the lusca’s attack. People were staring up at the towering creature in abject terror, their minds broken by fear. Others desperately scoured the deck for missing loved ones, or ran back and forth, searching for an escape from the horror.

And there, in the thick of things, Keoni saw their father, his face red from shouting as he tried to direct people to safety.

Father! Keoni called as he ran towards him, despite the obvious danger, Kaimi close on his heels.

The older man turned, hearing his son’s voice, a look of hollow-eyed dread on his face. Keoni? Kaimi? Oh thank the ancestors, you’re alright!

Daddy! cried Kaimi running into his father’s arms and hugging him.

Where were you? their father demanded, meeting his son’s own horrified stare.

I’m so sorry, father, Keoni said, the guilt and remorse suddenly too great to bear. "I only meant to catch a shark, to prove to you that I am a hunter. I took the outrigger. I didn’t know Kaimi was on board, I swear."

What? His father’s face darkened, as if a storm cloud had passed across the face of the sun. I told you not to, he growled. You’re not ready!

I know. I’m sorry. I had no idea it would lead to this, Keoni said, unable to stop the tears.

What do you mean?

Without really considering what he was admitting to, Keoni told his father everything, how he had taken the boat out to the atoll, how he had used dynamite as a lure, and how the shark had risen from the deep blue depths closely followed by the monster that was even now attacking the David Redmond.

Despite the turmoil swirling around them, Keoni’s world suddenly became very small and still as his father stared at him, clearly appalled, not saying a word. He hugged Kaimi even tighter to him.

F-Father? Keoni stammered. I didn’t know…

You did this? his father said, his voice barely more than a whisper. You, and your overreaching ambition, brought this doom upon us all?

Father…

Do not speak to me. I told you you weren’t ready. Still his father did not raise his voice, and that only made it that much worse. Keoni could see his father shaking as he fought to maintain his composure.

I didn’t know! Keoni protested.

You were told! his father suddenly roared. I told you not to go out there! I told you you weren’t ready and you didn’t listen to me! And now this— He took in the deck of the David Redmond with an expansive sweep of his hand. —this is the result!

Father!

"I said, do not speak to me but still you disobey me! Do not speak to me ever again!"

Daddy? Kaimi sobbed, pulling away from his father’s embrace, as the force of his words began to sink in.

Hush, Kaimi. We must get to safety, their father said.

But what about Keoni?

Their father hesitated before answering. What about him? He is no son of mine.

After having shock after shock piled on him, Keoni was barely aware of the screams that heralded another strike against the ship-city by the lusca. A split second later, an octopoidal appendage struck the deck, sweeping aside habitations and capturing more unwilling victims on its underside with a million tiny sucker-like protuberances.

Some of the men manning the David Redmond’s defensive towers fired harpoons into the beast, or hosed it with flame-cannons, but only the latter seemed to have any real effect on the creature. Where the burning napalm hit, the wet flesh of the creature rapidly dissolved, accompanied by a shrill hissing sound, as if the colony animals that formed the monster’s body were screaming as they burned. But the lusca was huge, and the flamethrowers were few, and while pieces of the creature burned away as quickly and as surely as if eaten by acid, such injuries were only the equivalent of grazes and scratches to a human being.

Keoni turned his gaze from his father, retreating across the deck, dragging Kaimi with him, to the ship-city’s doom as the towering creature struck again. The force of the blow from its gargantuan, starfish-like limb lifted people into the air, only for them to hit the deck again moments later.

Keoni crashed down on his hands and knees. Rolling onto his back he found himself staring up at the titanic beast as something else emerged from the sea behind it.

Two flattened silver horns broke the surface, catching the light of the sun so that they seemed to burn with a magnesium-white flame, and Keoni had to shield his eyes to see precisely what was rising from the ocean behind the colossal creature.

The horns surmounted a finely-sculpted helm, the eye-slit of its visor glowing a barely-discernible ice-blue. The head was joined by a neck of articulated metal plates to a torso just as angular and sculpted, the shoulders tapering to triangular metal points. These were swiftly followed by a slender, yet just as strongly-armoured, torso, and elongated legs, the metallic muscles seeming to flex and bunch as Keoni’s own muscles did.

He stared at the giant, all thoughts of his family and the chaos consuming the David Redmond forgotten in that moment. Where the coming of the lusca had provoked a horrified reaction within him, the appearance of the silver colossus brought forth only awe.

As the metal giant rose from the sea, two slender arms detached from its sides, and with a sound like a fishing spear being sharpened on a whetstone so loud it rang out across the entirety of the ship-city, two slender blades slid from sheathes in the giant’s arms. Keoni found himself blinded by the glare coming off the twin swords.

Without announcing its presence, the silver giant struck, sinking both blazing blades into the body of the lusca. Where the weapons struck, they had the same effect as the napalm flamethrowers, burning away portions of the hideous creature’s body.

A near ultrasonic scream rose from the creature, a squeaking hiss like that made by a squid thrown onto a hot skillet.

The giant withdrew its blades and struck again. Aware of its presence now, the lusca swung its heavy arms at the giant, each one ten times as long as an outrigger. But while the creature was the larger, the silver warrior was the more agile. The giant ducked the wind-milling limbs of the lusca and swung its twin sword-arms again, with a speed that Keoni would not have expected from something so huge.

One of the superheated blades sliced through the meat of the lusca’s body. The second caught one of the four thick tentacles, carving a gobbet of coral-pink flesh from the flailing limb.

Keoni followed its descent as the chunk of anthazoa-flesh thudded down on the David Redmond. It was bigger than a man and a smelled like frying octopus.

With the ship rocking under him, Keoni warily approached the lump of flesh. He could see more clearly now the tiny coral-like creatures that made up the shapeless mound, a writhing mass of tiny tentacles and pseudopods, the milky undulating flesh rippling with bursts of stress colours.

As he watched, it became even more amorphous, as some of the exposed white meat continued to blacken and shrivel—so hot had been the blade that had sliced it from the colossal creature that the excised lump was still cooking—it seemed to Keoni that the rest of the mass was dissolving, as if the surviving polyps were trying to detach themselves from those that were already lost.

A reverberating crash that sounded, and felt, like two ship-cities colliding jerked Keoni’s attention from the dispersing mass of lusca-flesh to the battle raging between the two colossi off the bow of the ship-city.

He gave a cry of panic and disbelief as he saw the silver giant come crashing down towards him. In a desperate attempt to escape the giant’s scything, sun-hot swords the colony-creature had hurled itself bodily at the machine-man. Both taller and heavier that the sun-blade warrior, the impact of the monster sent the giant toppling onto the David Redmond.

People screamed as the colossus they had taken to be their defender became the author of their demise. The giant crashed down on the ship, its feet clearly losing all purchase on the seabed. As it fell, its right side towards the vessel, one of the guardian’s burning blades struck the deck too.

Keoni heard the grinding hum of hidden mechanisms housed inside the vast robotic arm as the giant tried to retract the weapon, but it was still only halfway back in its sheath when it hit, the exothermic blade slicing through the deck plates, the steel becoming molten in seconds. Smoke and steam gouted from the entry point as the sun-hot sword vaporised the substance of the ship.

The blade slid through the ship, cutting through the decks below, severing powerlines and rupturing water pipes. Any poor tribesfolk who found themselves in its path also found their flesh and blood flash-fried by the massive heated blade. Flames erupted from the fissure gouged in the deck as a fuel tank ignited somewhere below. And then slowly, yet inexorably, the David Redmond started to sink.

Where the lusca acted with the instinct of a cornered animal, the robot behaved as if driven by a reasoning human intelligence. Even as it fell beneath the weight of the monster, with a grinding of gears the vast machine twisted at the waist—the piston-powered digits of its colossal hand crushing the side of the ship as it arrested its fall—and swung the blade still extruded from its left arm in a one-hundred-and-eighty-degree arc. It brought the blade backwards first—skirting dangerously close to the hull of the David Redmond as it did so—and then swung it up behind it to bring the sword down on top of the beast.

The blade struck the lusca on the top of what passed for its head, slicing through the tentacle fronds surrounding its cavernous mouth. A smell like shellfish left too long on a fire assailed Keoni’s nostrils as the white-hot weapon burned down through the body of the monster without showing any sign of stopping, bifurcating the creature, until the superheated blade touched the sea, sending great clouds of salty steam into the air and obscuring the titans from view.

The clouds parted again, and Keoni saw the two halves of the monster peel away from each other and flop into the sea, sending a great wall of water washing over the hull. The creature’s pallid flesh had been burned to a blackened crisp where the blade had done its dreadful damage. But at the same time, Keoni saw the silver giant convulse, as if gripped by a paralysing seizure. Its fluid movements stiffened and then, just as if someone had flicked the off switch, the guardian slumped onto the David Redmond, striking it with a dreadful, death-knell clang that rang out across the ship-city.

Keoni stared at the felled giant, its head resting on the deck of the slowly sinking ship, not twenty yards away, in bewilderment. It didn’t make sense; how could the lusca have crippled the silver giant? Surely hitting the side of the ship couldn’t have caused it damage catastrophic enough to put it out of action like this. There was no smoke emanating from within its metal shell and no erratic electrical discharge. Keoni had not even heard the grinding of worn gears or struggling internal mechanisms. There had to be some other reason why the giant had fallen.

Staring fixedly at it in disbelief, he approached the helm-head of the silver giant, where it lay, on its right cheek-plate, facing him. A dim ruddy glow of hazard lighting replaced the blue glow that had emanated from its visor-slit.

Now that the warrior was out of action, and Keoni was no longer dazzled by the brilliant sunlight reflecting from its gleaming armour, he could see that the shell of the giant was in fact pitted with corrosion, rust-red patches visible here and there between the interlocking steel plates, while strange faded shapes had been stencilled in a line down one side of the giant’s metal torso; Keoni supposed it might have been a name.

Keoni! came his sister’s voice from across the deck. What are you doing?

He didn’t answer her but kept walking purposely towards the head of the silver colossus.

As he approached it, he was able to make out a delineation between the metal plates forming the giant’s head. It was unmistakeably a hatch. Was there someone inside the silver giant? Once he had the thought, there was no way he couldn’t open the hatch and find out.

There were discrete indentations hidden between