1941539114 (S) by Jeremy Robinson Page B

Maigo, upright and clutching Brice. He reached for his weapon, but before he could reach it, Brice crashed into him and both men went down. Maigo stood over the two men, cocked a fist back and knocked the Russian unconscious with one well placed, and carefully controlled punch.
    She looked down at Brice, who was cringing in fear. “Thank you.” He nodded, and she started to step away, but stopped. “And if I were you, I’d let him wake up first.”
    “Right,” Brice said. He didn’t move.
    Leaving the two men on the floor, Maigo entered the hallway connecting two of the domed sections and opened an outer hatch. Frigid wind swirled inside, biting her skin. Then she stepped out into the darkness and snuck around the side of the building until she saw the three-ringed structure revealed by the explosion, now lit up by a circle of halogen lamps. She would glow like a road flare under all that light.
    Just get to the center , she told herself, repeating Brice’s advice. Make physical contact with the door . “Easy peasy, half-Japanesey,” she whispered, trying to channel her adoptive father again. Then she ran into the light, and all hell broke loose.

 
     
    12
     
    “Just like old times!” Woodstock shouts over the chop of Helicopter Betty’s rotors.
    I climb up into the passenger seat of the red Bell 407 holding a hard black case stamped with the Zoomb logo. I’ve never been a fan of the Zoomb name, logo or their personal history of meddling in secret projects, but now that I’m the primary shareholder with access to those secret projects and enough money to have a Scrooge McDuck gold-coin swimming vault, I’m learning to deal with it. In general, I try to keep Zoomb projects separate from the FC-P, but on special occasions, like when a space monster is swimming toward the coast of Massachusetts, I make exceptions.
    There will likely be blowback from my superiors and the military when they discover Zoomb has been developing anti-Kaiju weapons systems, but if it works, they’ll get on board. And then probably place an order for themselves. I’d like to say I can trust DARPA to develop these kinds of weapons, but there’s no way to know if GOD still has an influence there. I find that ‘Jon’s rule of thumb’ from my college days applies to government organizations as much as it does to women: if she makes you burn when you pee, let her be. Solid life advice I will never say aloud now that I’m married and a father, but Hawkins has heard it.
    I pat the hard case on my lap. “Not quite.”
    Collins climbs into the back and slams the sliding door shut. She’s seated next to an FN MAG machine gun that’s loaded and ready to go, but probably won’t be very useful. We should have upgraded the weapon to something a little more hardhitting, but with Future Betty, I didn’t think we’d need Helicopter Betty for combat again. The weapon probably won’t do much damage to what’s coming, but it can be a useful distraction tool, just in case we feel like incentivizing something to eat us.
    “Take us up,” I say, but I don’t really need to. We’re already lifting off the Crow’s Nest rooftop. My thoughts shift to the girls for a moment, worry clouding my mind. They can take care of themselves, I tell myself. Physically, they’re unmatched, but they’ve already proved themselves lacking common sense.
    As we head out over the open ocean, barely visible in the half-moon light, I turn my attention back to the task ahead of us. Something Kaiju-sized—but not Nemesis—is coming our way. And before we just let something new savage this already ruined stretch of coast, we’re going to, at the very least, shoot the shit out of it. At the most...I look down at the case in my hands...we’re going to field test the Swarm .
    I toggle my headset, which is patched into Devine, but currently transmitting only between us and the Crow’s Nest. “Do we have eyes on the target?”
    Cooper responds, calm and collected.