Hercules Chen, Zero Hunter: Toroka VS Mecha-Tsuyo, Part 9 of 17

Fast Freddie pulls out all the stops to escape Macau as the Japanese army launches its brutal invasion of the beleaguered city.

Then, to the north, Gima Goro finds himself aboard Mecha-Tsuyo, a pawn in the Ax Hand’s crusade to track down Toroka.

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This is Part 7 of Hercules Chen, Zero Hunter: Toroka VS Mecha-Tsuyo. If you’d like to avoid spoilers, read Parts 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, and 8 first.

Content warnings: violence, gun violence, animal violence, death, gore, mild swearing, creeps.

The Zero Hunter.

MORNING, JULY 12, 1943
WESTERN SLOPE, DOWNTOWN
PROVINCE OF MACAU

Hercules and Leatherfell caught up with the other officials a couple blocks west, sprinting over craters and past burning buildings on their way to the docks.

Civilians were streaming through the broken streets carrying everything they could in the face of the Japanese advance. The dying cried out in more languages than Hercules knew the names of. Lucky ones were carried on stooped backs and makeshift stretchers. The rest laid in the rubble.

Japanese shells still dropped, but the artillery had slacked off when their troops entered the city proper. Dust flowed up and down the streets like a gritty tide, pushed and pulled by distant explosions. Tracers cut into the upper floors of those buildings that still stood. The rumble of a Chi-Ha tank spearhead grew louder, approaching the scrambling officials.

The Japanese Army was closing in.

“Go, go, go!” Arun kept shouting. The kid was leaping over rubble like a Burmese gazelle, ducking under obstructions and weaving through the bloodied masses. The officials struggled to keep him in sight.

A rattle of machine gun fire tore up the street in front of him, and Arun skidded to a stop, then bolted down an alley on his left.

“Not right!” he shouted with a frantic wave. The officials followed him off the main street. A quartet of Japanese men had blocked off the road ahead, each clad in an immaculate black suit and firing a Type II Bull Pup machine pistol. The enemy agents saw they prey and opened fire. Eight-millimeter rounds hissed past the alley’s mouth, chipping pavement and brick.

“Yajirushi!” Oakley shouted. The officials bolted, but the Society agents stayed on them on a parallel street, firing whenever they had a shot.

The officials sprinted, ducking under the intermittent barrage. Arun turned another corner ahead, around a burning corner shop and onto a main avenue. Hercules wheeled around to follow, only to run headlong into the kid as he scrambled back into cover.

“Bad. Bad, bad!” Arun shouted. He clambered over Hercules like a spider monkey and jumped off his back to dash into the alley.

Hercules peeked around the corner just as an explosion tore the shop open. The boiling wall of concussive air threw him into the exposed intersection with its blast. Smoking tiles and noodles rained down around him, close enough to singe his clothes.

Hercules twisted around on his back, taking in the the chaotic scene. Silhouettes appeared on rooftops ahead. The four yajirushi who'd cut them off before skidded to a halt one block ahead and took cover of their own.

“Ambush,” Hercules managed to gasp. The officials had already made the same observation and had opened fire on the on the menacing rooftop shadows and the encroaching Dragons.

Hercules coughed up a lungful of black grit and pink saliva. Someone grabbed him by the shirt and dragged him behind an overturned charcoal car.

“You are heavy,” Hye grunted. Bullets whipped past her. Hercules would have thanked her had he any air in his lungs to speak. The officials packed in together behind the ancient truck’s meager cover.

“One grenade and we are all done for,” Oxford said. He popped up and got off a single shot before the yajirushi targeted him with a barrage.

“If they don't blow us away, they'll circle around real quick,” Blue yelled.

“We have to break out,” Hercules wheezed. Another salvo battered the old car.

“Which way is our ride?” Oakley asked.

“Docks, close,” Arun said, pointing past the Black Dragons' kill zone.

“Of course they are,” Oakley muttered.

Bullets crashed into pavement, and Hercules realized what had happened: the yajirushi weren’t going to hit them, they were just the anvil. The oncoming Japanese Army was the hammer. All the Society agents had to do was keep them pinned.

“All I got is buckshot, so don't ask,” Blue yelled. He fired both barrels around the fender and was rewarded when by a cry of pain. A body in an immaculate ebony suit fell from the roof and landed in a boneless lump, still clutching his machine pistol.

“Am I hearing a Thunder Crash Slam?” Blue asked. Hercules groaned and sat up.

“Pistols against machine guns?” Hercules wheezed. He grabbed his chest. His lungs felt like someone had pounded on his sternum with a mallet. The officials shifted uncomfortably, eyeing their meager arsenal. It was all they had.

“We will have to make do,” Oxford said. “Is everyone prepared?”

“No pistol, more strong,” Arun interrupted. He grinned a wide grin and held up a silver whistle.

“This boy's got the ace,” Leatherfell said. He patted the skinny kid on the back with his massive paw, almost knocking him over. The other officials looked at him in confusion, but the burly hunter gave them no further explanation, just telling Arun: “Give her a go, mate.”

Arun gave the whistle three long, sharp tweets, then repeated it over and over.

The Dragons’ barrage roared with renewed vigor, peeling the truck apart. Lead pinged off the engine block, buried itself in hardwood, skipped off metal sheeting.

“Good thing they just got pea-shooters,” Oakley grunted. Hercules agreed, only for a Chi-Ha engine to rumble and roar from the next block over. The yajirushi had indeed brought heavy weapons: theirs were self-propelled and wrapped in plate armor.

“What the hell, mate?” Blue shouted over the gunfire and whistling.

“Keep it up,” Leatherfell ordered Arun. The kid kept blowing. The rest of the yajirushi had joined in with their own barking Bull Pups, battering the truck further. The officials' cover was getting chewed away.

“Any other way around?” Hercules asked. Arun shook his head and kept blowing. His face was turning purple.

Hercules risked a peek around the bumper. It was an almost-straight shot down to the docks, but that was past the yajirushi position.

“Thunder Crash Slam,” Hercules told his comrades. “Right up the gut.”

“You good to run?” Blue asked. Hercules' insides felt like mush, but he nodded anyway.

“On three,” Hercules said.

“One,” Oxford started, but was interrupted when a smoking stick grenade clattered to the ground in front of them, less than a meter away.

“Three!” Oakley yelled. She dove for the grenade and snatched it up. All four other officials, Leatherfell, and Jia stood as one and opened fire. Nambus, revolvers, shotguns, and derringers barked, and yajirushi died.

Oakley chucked the primed grenade end-over-end onto the nearest roof, and its blast launched a pair of perforated Black Dragons into the air.

The officials ran.

The yajirushi weren't prepared for the momentum of the firefight to turn so quickly. Two of the tailing agents took lead, but those on the other rooftops were not cowed. They were trained in the art of ninjitsu, and they were not afraid to die for their emperor.

They emptied their magazines and reloaded with trained efficiency. Shattered pavement peppered the sprinting officials.

Arun sprinted down the empty street, still blowing the whistle. The officials brought down each Dragon agent that appeared, but more and more arrived. The Baby Nambu bucked one last time in Hercules' hand, then was empty.

“Out!” he shouted, ducking low.

“And me!” Blue replied. He dropped his empty shotgun in the street.

The howl of a heavy machine gun muted the Japanese guns’ diminutive barks. The rooftops and the enemy agents perched on them burst into particles.

“Bollocks!” Oxford cursed. He dropped to the street, as did everyone else. A second machine gun joined in, raking fire across any yajirushi still moving.

Arun blew the whistle even louder. Blue crawled forward and covered the young man with his body. Rifles began barking as well, and the last Dragon guns went silent.

“Good work, kid,” Leatherfell said. He hopped to his feet and pulled Jia up with him.

Hercules peeked back. A legion of khaki-clad Macanese police officers was advancing up the street, loosing rounds into Black Dragon corpses. They'd set up a pair of Maxim guns on the back of a truck and were still firing. The buildings the yajirushi had commandeered were crumbling under the barrage, reduced to powder.

Arun spit the whistle out and hopped to his feet.

“Run!” he shouted and took off. The officials followed close.

A few of the Portuguese officers saw the scrambling group and opened fire, but Arun’s path led them into a narrow, twisting alley that granted them cover and a path the police truck couldn’t follow.

“Never heard of enemies' enemies?” Leatherfell grunted.

Arun kept them off the shattered main streets, dodging panicked knots of refugees that were growing thicker near the water's edge. Admiral Lacerda Avenue was choked with thousands of terrified people, desperate to board any boat that remained. Out in the Inner Harbor, ships burned.

The roaring crowd clogged every street a block out from the shore, but from there they watched a picket line of Japanese patrol boats that blocked the southern mouth of the harbor. Any ships foolish enough to approach the line caught broadsides.

A pair of picket boats peeled off from the blockade and made their way down the docks from north to south, lighting up every vessel still floating.

“Come, come,” Arun called. He forced his way through a gap in the mob and disappeared.

“A wriggly little git, isn't he?” Blue muttered. He jammed his elbows into a few ribs and forced an opening, struggling to keep the Burmese thief in sight. The officials followed Blue through the throng.

They emerged at the edge of a pier, standing over oil-slicked water. Two docks down, Arun was waving wildly. The Russian boat was still there, tied up at one of the southernmost docks.

The Soviet smugglers were posted at the end of the short pier, swinging ax handles and PPSh-41 submachine guns at the crowd. They recognized Arun and let him through.

“How in the hell did he get over there?” Oakley wondered.

Rifle fire interrupted her thoughts, and the whole crowd dropped to the ground.

A platoon of I.J.A. soldiers open fired on the civilians, with tanks not far behind. The soldiers shouted orders and the crowd surged to escape.

The officials struggled not to get carried along with the stampede. People were climbing over each other, punching and pushing and falling into the dirty water.

The Japanese loosed another salvo into the crowd, then fixed their long bayonets.

A Maxim gun screamed and ripped into the Japanese line, felling several soldiers and pushing the rest back. The police officers had caught up and were charging down the avenue, throwing smoke grenades and bellowing war cries.

The Japanese soldiers recovered quickly and reformed their firing line. Billowing white smoke covered the civilians and gave them some respite, but the policemen were charging through the open. The I.J.A. troops had conquered mainland China, fighting every step of the way. Their rifles, combat experience, and military training would force the counter-attack back, it was just a question of how quickly.

Hercules dodged a fleeing woman and shouted at the officials:

“Use it!”

They understood, and they were moving again, threshing through the chaos to get to the dock. A vicious firefight and crush raged behind them.

The Russian smugglers a few swings and curses to recognize their passengers among the mob. The faux fishing boat’s captain shouted and threw off the mooring lines. His crew raced down the dock and hopped aboard. The ship was bobbed free in the water. Leatherfell and Jia jumped first, then Oakley, Oxford, and Blue. Arun was entranced watching the firefight.

The Chi-Ha tank that had been menacing the officials for blocks joined the lopsided battle.

Its cannon broke the Portuguese advance with one shot to cheers from the Japanese line. The police truck and its machine guns went up in flames, and so did whatever fight the cops had left in them. The Chi-Ha mowed down whoever was left, whether they were still shooting, surrendering, or running. The reinvigorated Japanese soldiers charged past it to bayonet the wounded.

Hercules grabbed Arun under his arms and tossed him into the boat. The Russians objected almost as loud as Arun did, but the officials ignored them all. The boat was three meters into the harbor when Hercules finally leaped aboard.

The captain bellowed another order, and his boat's powerful engines churned, kicking up a fantail of brown water.

Leatherfell and Jia collapsed to the deck, wrapped up in each others arms, and Blue kept a hand on Arun's shoulder while they watched his city burn. The other officials stayed on alert. Shells geysered ahead of them; the pair of prowling picket boats had seen them get underway.

“What are you going to do about that?” Oakley shouted at the captain. The captain ripped a canvas tarp off the bow of the ship.

He had three massive PTRS41 Simonov anti-tank rifles ready on-deck next to a crate of gleaming fourteen-five-millimeter shells.

“There we go!” Oakley said. She flopped down and brought one of the massive rifles to bear.

“Them first,” Oxford said, pointing back. The Chi-Ha had turned its guns on the panicked civilians.

Oakley hefted the rifle and dragged it to the stern, then lined up her shot. She loosed a meter-long muzzle flash and its recoil bounced her off the deck. The Japanese tank might have been a titan against small arms, but the Simonov was built to crack much heavier targets. Its explosive round hit the Chi-Ha dead on, punching through its thin armor to send its magazine sky-high.

Oakley watched and waited, making sure it was all the way done. Flames escaped its blown-out hatches, not crewmen.

Hercules and Oxford took up the other two rifles. They fired in unison, setting the first picket boat aflame in phosphorus. They sent salvo after salvo, vaporizing men and metal from a kilometer out.

Oakley plopped down next to them and opened up on the second boat. Her first shot scalped the cabin and cannons off its deck. Her second split it down the middle like an egg. A few survivors leapt overboard as their ship gurgled to the harbor floor.

The Russians jammed on the throttle and raced between the sinking boats, churning through corpses and jetsam. Hercules reloaded his Simonov to the sound of a dozen engines roaring.

The picket line converged. Near-misses splashed Hercules' face. The officials returned fire. Each of their shots sent phosphoric flame chewing into the interceptors, buckling hulls and silencing guns. Their pursuers turned aside, then the officials were past the picket line, out into the sea

The moon glowed over the twisting green and brown waters where the Xi River met the South China Sea.

The Russians turned north toward Vladivostok; Macau burned behind them and the last free city in eastern China fell.

The Dead Man.

WEDNESDAY AFTERNOON, JULY 14, 1943
ABOARD MECHA-TSUYO
NOHEJI, AOMORI PREFECTURE, JAPAN

//Translated from Japanese.//

Noheji was no longer a city, it was a lesson.

The homes were burned, or crushed, or simply swept away. Its defense force was gone, scorches, oil slicks, and shattered metal all that remained of the thousand men that manned patrol boats and anti-aircraft batteries around the bay. The fisheries were gutted, scraped out by their roots. Houses had been flattened into the ground, trees uprooted and thrown through warehouses, ships were embedded in the faces of distant hills, still dripping salt water.

Gima Goro watched from Mecha-Tsuyo's highest bridge, chained to its bulkhead by his damaged wrist. They waited in Noheji Bay. The entire seafloor had been churned as if dredged, ruining the scallop beds the town was famous for, but Gima knew what had caused the disturbance:

The trudging feet of destiny in flesh had overturned the sea.

“Do we know where everyone went?” Takamoto asked the ship's captain.

“They were taken by Toroka, to show those who cannot see,” Gima hissed through broken teeth. The bridge staff ignored him.

“The Ebisenshi are still combing the town, but few survivors have been found,” Captain Umihara answered. The captain was taller than the cruel pilot, but seemed to cower before him. He had shrunken, tight skin, with bulging bloodshot eyes and graying hair. Thick black wires ran from his ears to a flask-sized box hanging from his neck, a German-built hearing aid. He was quick to grimace when he thought no one was looking.

“Your men move too slow, captain,” Takamoto growled.

“They are trained to handle the most hostile environments on the planet, kaiken. Any other soldiers would be torn apart by the sharks, choke upon the beast's toxic spoor and breath, or be burned by the fires. The Ebisenshi work as the work is to be done,” Umihara snarled.

Umihara had watched with pride as his legion of Ebisenshi dropped into the sea like stones. The armored men looked like brass crabs that walked on two legs. Their segmented shells hissed with each movement, stretching and recoiling like that of their namesake, the prawn. One of their arms ended in a serrated claw, and the tools they carried were gripped against their chests with segmented clamps and modified to fit their inhuman grip. The armor stood over two meters tall, from their weighted boots to their six-eyed brass helms.

“Your toys delay my pursuit, jitte,” Takamoto snapped. The pilot's bald head was red. “I will be with my squadron. Report to me when they find Toroka.”

Umihara saluted, and Takamoto left without returning the gesture. The captain scowled at the Black Dragon's back.

“Do not disturb the kaiken until we have a definitive sighting,” Umihara ordered his crew. He took a long drink from a canteen then studied his men.

Umihara's crew were all young, each competent and cocky, though untested. None had thought Mecha-Tsuyo's maiden voyage would be a live-fire mission on a home island against an unknown foe. Each sailor tended his individual console carefully, from the man coordinating the Ebisenshi's scouting mission to those running fire control for the uncountable banks of weapons that sprouted from Mecha-Tsuyo.

Even the immense man behind captain, a rotund rikishi with his hair done up in a chonmage topknot, waited at the ready in a suspended full-body harness. Braided wires protruded from every hinge and joint strapped to the sumo wrestler's body then disappeared into yet another console.

When Mecha-Tsuyo had emerged from its mountain burrow in an explosion of volcanic rock, Gima Goro simply watched. When one had seen and survived the wrath of Toroka, nothing was left to cause fear, or awe.

The steel giant had smashed its way free of the caldera island, stomping across the acidic lake on diamond-edged knuckles and treaded feet. Each diesel roar was loud enough to shake leaves from trees.

The tall one, Zuboshi, dragged Gima in the mechanical monster's wake, across felled trees and rubble. Mecha-Tsuyo's feet crushed houses as they rolled, its drill-propeller hands piercing craters into dark soil deeper than bombs. Takamoto followed at a distance, smiling as he took in the destruction.

Mecha-Tsuyo crashed across fields and forests, over small mountains and through large hills. It had taken over two hours to reach the sea.

At Abashiri, the patrolling squads swarming the ship climbed aboard Mecha-Tsuyo's feet and the gargantuan thing waded into the water.

Mecha-Tsuyo's flexible neck retracted into its body like a turtle, and it settled onto its belly in the sea. Its arms rotated around until the drills pointed backward, becoming a pair of pontoons. Black exhaust belched from its back, and its legs drew up into its belly. Dozens of cannons rotated in their turrets, stretching as if waking up. Mecha-Tsuyo's arching spine bristled with all manner of weapons. It would be a cataclysm in battle, but it could not compare to Toroka.

Shuttles ferried Gima and the two pilots aboard the waiting hulk, and then they were steaming east, then south. On water, Mecha-Tsuyo could move quickly for its bulk.

In a few hours they had whipped around the Shiretoko Peninsula, cut through the Nermuro Straits, and sliced past the coast of Hokkaido. They finally passed the crags of Cape Erimo. Seals barked and played in their dual wake. From there it was a straight shot to the Tsugaru Strait, and the mouth of Noheji Bay, where they moored in view of the devastated town.

One call from Takamoto drove away the swarming defense ships and terrified old men and young boys who crewed the air raid teams. They all ran from him for they were fools. They did not truly know fear, for they did not truly know Toroka.

Despite the quickness of voyage, Takamoto had never ceased his vocal criticism of the captain. Umihara slumped into his chair once the pilot finally left his bridge, and he did not move for hours.

The Ebisenshi took an hour to trudge across the floor of the bay and emerge at the Noheji docks. Gima listened as they radioed in reports of demolished buildings and splintered trees, that the few corpses they found were bloated with toxic gas.

Three hours passed before the brass soldiers found Toroka's trail.

“Captain Umihara, it is Ebisenshi Tsukihashi,” the radioman finally said. “He reports that his team found evidence of the target moving east, toward Takahoko Swamp.”

“What evidence?” the captain asked, roused.

“He says they appears to be footprints,” his man reported. He hesitated, then said: “Two feet.”

Umihara was taken aback.

“No creature that large could support itself bipedally,” he objected. “Nothing natural.”

“I am only relaying what Ebisenshi Tsukihashi reports, sir,” the radioman confirmed.

“I will inform the kaiken,” Umihara's over-eager executive officer said. He made to head off the bridge.

“After landfall,” Umihara snapped, stopping the X.O. where he stood. He took another long draught of water, then studied the maps he had laid out, before addressing his men: “Prepare to walk.”

The bridge crew exploded into action. They scrambled over their consoles, unsure, jerky in their motions. Officers barked orders into microphones, relaying instructions to every section of the massive ship.

Gima felt Mecha-Tsuyo shudder beneath his feet. The propellers turned, bringing the ship toward the smoking town. Its legs extended out beneath it, reaching for the ruined bay bed. They found purchase, and the entire ship groaned, then lifted out of the water.

“Secure yourselves,” the captain warned through clenched yellow teeth. The bridge crew tightened the seat belts holding them to their station. The captain wound his spidery hand through one of the many leather straps dangling from the ceiling. Gima looked up from his place on the deck. His thin hands were chained to a steel grip bolted into a bulkhead, below a thick window.

“Engage forward stabilizers,” Umihara ordered. His crew murmured into their headsets. The pontoons held aloft on either side of Mecha-Tsuyo's main hull screamed as they rotated, swinging their tons down and forward. The massive screw propellers locked into place as the standing battleship's balance shifted, and Mecha-Tsuyo fell forward. Brown water geysered and Gima's wrist wrenched against the chains as the bridge lurched.

Thin blood dripped off his elbow.

Mecha-Tsuyo hunched forward, leaning on its pontoons like a rikishi ready to charge in a sumo match. Its bow separated, then scanned the landscape with its heavy guns, turning on an armored neck. Umihara's tall bridge arched out of its back like a bull's muscled hump, and he surveyed the land before Mecha-Tsuyo's twin forward cannons.

“East,” Umihara ordered. From their higher vantage, Toroka’s path of destruction was unmistakable.

“I gave no orders, jitte,” Takamoto snarled. He appeared on the bridge wearing only a towel, glistening with sweat, red in the face. His heaving chest writhed with snakes and suffocating women. The furious pilot clenched a handhold with such ferocity that he looked like he believed he could throttle steel.

“The Ebisenshi tracked Toroka to a swamp fifteen kilometers northeast,” Umihara told him. “I ordered my men to make combat-ready.”

“I will lead the attack,” Takamoto ordered. “Find the creature, then follow my lead.”

The small pilot disappeared from the bridge, leaving Umihara fuming, his eyes bulging out even further than before. He drank deeply from his canteen before he issued his orders, water dripping from his cracked lips:

“Make for land. Retrieve the Ebisenshi and ready all weapons and stations.”

Mecha-Tsuyo lurched from the bay, moving on its knuckles like a gorilla. The Ebisenshi climbed into its treaded feet, and its swarm of attendant motorcycles and trucks boiled out of its feet to scout ahead.

The land shook with each rumbling step, and Gima's wrists screamed in pain. After what seemed an excruciating eternity, five blasts rattled Mecha-Tsuyo's superstructure, and Gima ducked down.

“Who fired?” Umihara shouted. His crew looked at their consoles in dismay. One particularly distressed sailor stared at a quintet of blinking lights before him.

“You?” Umihara asked. His distraught crewman violently shook his head. The captain noted the man's station, aircraft control, then growled audibly: “Takamoto.”

Five trails of rocket smoke arced out of Mecha-Tsuyo's back. Takamoto's pulse-jet squadron howled ahead, following Toroka's trail.

“Full speed, follow the kaiken,” the captain snarled. The crew parroted his orders. Mecha-Tsuyo lurched forward, and hauled itself across decimated buildings, destroying whatever Toroka had left standing. It tore apart fields and forests following the trail.

The woodlands ran into the rocky hills, but Toroka had smashed a path through all obstacles. Two small villages had once stood in its way. The town of Takahoko had been swept into brown water of the swamp, down to its wooden foundations.

Takamoto's rocket planes circled ahead like vultures. Umihara ordered them to stop at the edge of the water. Mecha-Tsuyo's shadow blackened the fetid brown.

The wetlands extended four kilometers east, and one north. Its only feature was a large black mud island that broke up the roiling swamp lake's disturbed surface. The trail of destruction ended there. Toroka had disappeared. The bridge crew was all standing, straining to spot it.

“Captain,” the radioman said, “The kaiken.”

Umihara scowled.

“Give it to me,” he ordered, then took the radio operator's seat and put on his headset.

“This is Captain Umihara.”

He listened for a moment, his scowl deepening.

“Yes, kaiken,” he replied before the receiver down. He stood and glared out the windscreen, not making any eye contact with any member of his crew.

“Ground forces, sweep the swamp, Ebisenshi, in the water now,” he ordered. “Ready all guns for the kaiken's command.”

Mecha-Tsuyo's soldiers, trucks, and motorcycles spread around the waterline like ants upon encountering a puddle. Tiny gleaming brass beetles, the Ebisenshi, ignored the divide and forged into the brown water. Their bright spotlights gave away their positions for the brief second before the swirling mud quickly swallowed them.

“Maintain contact with Ebisenshi Tsukihashi and the ground forces,” Captain Umihara ordered.

“And the kaiken,” his executive officer added.

“Yes, sir,” the radio operator mumbled. He suddenly found great interest his dials so he would not have to see the look Umihara was giving his executive officer.

Gima laughed. Umihara stalked over to the thin, rag-draped prisoner.

“You find something funny?” he snapped.

“Your fears,” Gima replied. “You fear men.”

Umihara struck Gima open-handed across his scarred face. The smack was loud enough to make the X.O. cringe. Gima dropped to a knee, covering his face with his good arm.

“They say you have seen this animal,” Umihara said. Hitting Gima seemed to calm him. “Tell me about it, and say nothing else.”

“Toroka is no animal, captain. It is death.” Gima's malicious grin showed off his rotten teeth. Umihara raised a hand again, and Gima shrunk away.

“Tell me of death,” Umihara ordered. His bridge crew had gone silent.

“Death is faster than your guns can track, stronger than they can destroy, more powerful than your armor can withstand,” Gima said.

“You have seen this?”

“Toroka tore my ship in half and peeled its hull like an orange. It breathed poison into the wound and devoured the men inside.” Gima held up his hands, showing the puckered, discolored scars on his palms. He could no longer touch his fingertips together. “Toroka took from me as well, and only allowed me to live to tell its truth.”

“What else can you tell?” Umihara asked.

“Your fate will be the same, whether you fly or float or walk. Toroka is death. Final, complete, inescapable.”

“Worthless,” Umihara muttered. He ordered his deck chief: “If he interrupts bridge operations again, shoot him through his head.”

“Yes, sir,” his officer said. A Nambu gleamed in his well-oiled holster.

Umihara stared down at Gima and promised:

“If you speak another word before I address you, he will shoot you.”

His voice brokered no uncertainty. He wiped his bloodshot eyes with a handkerchief and demanded of his radio operator:

“Has Ebisenshi Tsukihashi found anything?”

The radioman repeated the question into his microphone, then listened to the reply.

“The sediment in the water is too disturbed, captain,” he reported back.

“Forward mortars, launch flares into the lake,” Umihara ordered. His gunnery officers parroted the command to their sections. Gima struggled to his feet to see three stubby banks of mortars thump and send white smoke arcs into the brown water. The flares landed in a circular pattern around the mud island.

Toxic fumes bubbled up as the flares sank into the brown. A single crimson flare sputtered on the black shore of the island, boiling the mud.

“Ask Tsukihashi again,” Umihara ordered.

“He says the wildlife has been agitated. Fish are schooling and leaving the area.”

“We are not here for fish!” the captain shouted.

Across the water, the flare had dried the mud enough to ignite the decomposing plant matter on the island. Orange flames sprang up.

“There is a sound, a rumbling,” the radio man parroted.

“What is the source?” the captain asked.

“Sir, the kaiken demands to know why you launched ordnance without his order,” the executive officer said. He had taken the second radio operator's headset.

“Return to your station, commander,” Umihara ordered.

“Sir, Kaiken Takamoto is in command of this operation,” the X.O. said. Umihara stalked across the bridge and stood over his second-in-command.

“And I am in command of Mecha-Tsuyo,” he snarled. “This is a vessel of the Imperial Navy. The Black Dragons may have stolen it, but we sail for the Emperor. Return to your station. Now.”

The executive officer froze in place, headset to his ear. His knuckles went white and his eyes went wide. He had not heard a word the captain said.

“The kaiken is reporting movement in the water,” he said.

The brown swamp roiled violently. Waves broke over Mecha-Tsuyo's feet.

“I've lost contact with the Ebisenshi,” the radio operator reported. The bridge crew began issuing reports from their stations. Every man with eyes could see something within the muddied lake.

Before Umihara could issue an order, the bridge went silent.

Gima Goro grinned. These men had been told of Toroka, but those were words. The concept of Toroka was reduced by the very act of forcing it through a man's fleshy throat. Words could not describe what Gima had seen.

Toroka was limitless.

Before them, a massive limb burst through the mud. It towered above the circled soldiers and trucks, sloughing tons of water and sediment. Its clawed, webbed hand was larger than a house.

It swatted at the flames devouring the swamp's small island. One swipe scraped the sputtering fire away, removing the accumulated vegetation and soil and revealing gold and black armored scales beneath. The entire lake surged away as Toroka raised itself up on its legs.

The men scouting the lake shore were washed out in an instant. The island sloughed off Toroka by the ton, burying Umihara's men. Faint cries crackled through the radio as each vehicle was smothered.

Gima could see how the ignorant would mistake it for a dragon, or a whale. But Toroka was more, something greater.

“You said it was impossible,” the X.O. accused.

“All weapons, acquire the target,” Umihara said, breaking the silence. He watched as Takamoto's red wasps circled and stung at the rising titan. White tracers picked at Toroka's scales, but it did not notice. Rockets burst against its flesh, leaving scratches and singes that were little more than irritation.

Toroka rose to its full height, near as tall as Mecha-Tsuyo. It faced the mechanical colossus.

Its head resembled that of a turtle, armored in a helm of black and gold bone thicker than a tank and terminating in a jagged segmented beak that Gima knew could shear steel and stone alike. Yellow eyes the size of boulders stared at the machine that challenged it.

Toroka huffed, its armored plates flexed and shifted, bristling like feathers before clamping shut again, sealing its body in a muddied shell.

Whereas Mecha-Tsuyo carried the grace of an ox in the stance of a gorilla, Toroka was nimble: a rippling tower of scaled muscle with the balance of a bird and the quickness of a snake. It held its abdomen and neck parallel to the ground near eighty meters from the ground. Its long tail, cabled with sinew before flattening out like an oar, made up more than half its one-hundred-seventy-five meter length, and whipped back and forth. Even the wind stirred by Toroka's swinging fluke was enough to rip the leaves from trees and tiles from roofs.

A trio of tall flat plates hinged open on either side Toroka's stubby neck letting veiny scarlet frills reach out into the smokey air. They grasped at the breeze, fleshy ribbons pulsing with the beat of Toroka's heart.

The squadron of pulse-jet gnats zeroed in on the alien organs, peppering them with cannon shells. The red membranes retracted in the blink of an eye and the scales snapped shut over them.

Takamoto's squadron peeled away at the last instant, mere meters away from Toroka's swinging claws. The behemoth stomped in frustration, sending a geyser of brown water fifty meters high. Toroka huffed, swinging around to follow the wheeling planes. Its tail flattened forests as it spun.

“Sound the horn,” Umihara ordered.

He switched off his hearing device. His helmsman did not hear, he was rightly focused on Toroka rather than his bug-eyed captain. Umihara snarled and shoved the young man aside and pressed a yellow button on his console.

Mecha-Tsuyo's steam horn wailed louder than anything Gima had ever heard. He clamped his hands over his ears and held them tight.

The horn blared for a full thirty seconds before Umihara released the button. The captain watched silently and re-activated his hearing device. Gima’s body shook and the sound continued reverberating through his chest. He struggled up to peer through the windscreen.

Toroka stood motionless, heedless of the crimson planes swarming about it. Its yellow eyes bored into Mecha-Tsuyo.

The plates covering Toroka's throat split open, and a bright orange membrane ballooned out, inflating until it was the size of a blimp. Toroka reared back, then belched a cloud of green gas while roaring louder even than Mecha-Tsuyo's horn.

The sound shook the bulkheads around Gima, rattling bolts and glass, but he stayed afoot, watching. Takamoto's pathetic planes wheeled away and circled high above. The wall of emerald fumes enveloped Toroka, concealing it, and its howl cut off.

“Fire all weapons!” Umihara shouted. His men were quick on their triggers.

Cannons roared. Shells blasted into the swelling toxic storm. Scores of autocannons chattered, and rockets ripped away from their rails, disappearing into green. Explosions lit the inside of the jade cloud like distant lightning, but the exhalations rushed forward like an oncoming tsunami wave.

“Prepare for gas!” Umihara shouted. He strapped a set of goggles over his bulging eyes, then pulled a fabric mask over his nose and mouth. His crew did the same, as if cloth could save them.

The green wall rushed over Mecha-Tsuyo. Wispy tendrils slithered onto the bridge. They smelled of rot and salt and death and inevitability. Gima breathed it in like a summer's midnight breeze. He coughed once.

“All stations, confirm hits,” Umihara ordered, snapping his hearing aid back on. His stations reported in, none of them unable to confirm impact. He demanded: “Can we confirm the target?”

“Kaiken Takamoto confirms movement in the cloud,” the X.O. reported. “He orders a full barrage.”

“Whatever the kaiken orders,” Umihara snarled. “All stations, fire at will, forward spread.”

Mecha-Tsuyo shuddered in response, pumping out continuous fire. Her heavy cannons shook her to the core.

Gima braced. A trickle of green-tinged blood dripped from his nose. He coughed violently and the taste of copper filled his sour mouth.

A massive black mass shifted within the jade cloud. Umihara had seen it as well.

“Turn thirty degrees to port!” he shouted. Mecha-Tsuyo shuffled around but Toroka was gone.

“Starboard!” the X.O. reported. “The kaiken has eyes on the target!”

The crimson squadron circled above the twisting green cloud.

“All stations, cease fire! Helm, ninety degrees starboard!” Umihara ordered. Mecha-Tsuyo's fusillade cut off and the engines roared below them. He leaned hard into the leather loop, furiously searching for black and gold in the swirling green. “All stations, seek target, free fire.”

A heavy cannon thumped, a bank of Type 96 twenty-five-millimeter AA guns rattled through their magazines, an a pair of red-tailed rockets disappeared into the green haze. Mecha-Tsuyo was shooting at shadows.

“Where are you?” Umihara asked.

Gima laughed. The captain thought himself the hunter. Umihara glared back at him with his bloodshot eyes.

Toroka's claw cut through the swirling green and collided with Mecha-Tsuyo's superstructure. The jarring impact snapped one helmsman's seat belt and the hapless man flew across the bridge to crack his skull against the sharp corner of a fire control console. Umihara grimaced as his body whipped against the ceiling strap. His canteen slipped from his grip and clattered across deck. Clear water mixed with dark blood.

“Agh!” Gima howled. He felt his wrist break against the bloody chains. He coughed again. This time the blood came up with solid bits that caught between his broken teeth.

“Yokozuna, close defense!” Umihara yelled.

Mecha-Tsuyo reared back. Pistons hissed and mechanisms deep in the ship's structure banged into place. Its pontoon arms rose into the air, their diamond-edged drills whined as they spun up. The yokozuna was standing in his harness, ghosting movements with his wired arms and legs. Through the windscreen, Gima could see Mecha-Tsuyo's drill-tipped pontoons: the massive structures were mimicking the round man's movements perfectly.

Mecha-Tsuyo was naught but a giant puppet, controlled by one fat sumo wrestler.

Toroka roared again, a gale powerful enough to blow the poisonous fog away.

It squared itself before Mecha-Tsuyo, crouched low and staring, not three hundred meters away. Its golden stripes gleamed under the red volcanic sun.

“Fire forward cannons!” Umihara ordered.

Mecha-Tsuyo's bow cannons roared in unison, blasting sixty-six-centimeter shells point-blank into Toroka. One round glanced off its thick side armor, careening into the swamp in a shower of black bone splinters. The second exploded against Toroka's shoulder, knocking it back.

Toroka staggered, trailing black smoke and red flame. The shell had cracked a shallow divot into the solid shoulder plate, but no more. Toroka did not do so much as bleed.

Umihara watched, stunned, as Toroka charged.

“All stations - !” he started, but Toroka slammed its heavy skull into Mecha-Tsuyo's main hull, rocking the mechanical hulk back on its treaded heels.

Another crewman lost his seat, careening across the bridge to break his arm on the deck. Umihara hung onto his strap for dear life, while the yokozuna recoiled in his harness then compensated, arresting Mecha-Tsuyo's fall.

Gima's head smashed into steel plating, dizzying him for a long moment. When his senses returned, the smell of burning bone filled the air. Outside, white-hot sparks were flying every time the yokozuna directed a whirring drill into Toroka's armored skin.

The sumo champion directed his mechanical puppet at Toroka, driving it back with diamond-edged jabs and slashes.

“It is mine!” the yokozuna howled. A manic grin cleaved his doughy face.

The twin drills slashed down together, cutting a pair of deep parallel furrows into Toroka's hip. It roared in pain and stumbled away, each retreating step a miniature earthquake.

“No!” Gima shouted. No man could harm Toroka.

Umihara glared at him again, but the yokozuna heard nothing. The wrestler was wholly focused on the battle. He pumped his legs and Mecha-Tsuyo charged.

Toroka crouched low and hissed, spraying green gas through its beak. Its scales flexed out, then snapped shut, and Toroka lunged to match Mecha-Tsuyo's charge.

Whirling drills glanced off its rib armor, chipping calcified bone away with each strike.

Metal sheared as Toroka chomped down on Mecha-Tsuyo's hull. Klaxons screamed and damage reports came in.

The sumo wrestler recovered and brought both hands down hard, directing Mecha-Tsuyo's drills into Toroka's back. They screamed against the hard bone. Blue-green blood splashed against their blades, hundreds of liters with each slash. Toroka hissed and shoved away, but the yokozuna did not let up. The drills struck again and again, pummeling relentlessly.

Toroka recoiled from the assault. Machine guns, autocannons, rockets, and heavy guns blasted into it.

“No!” Gima shouted again. Blood poured out of his mouth. His guts roiled within his abdomen, and his lungs would only fill half-way. He gasped for breath as his bowels let loose. Tears ran freely down his cheeks.

Using his last grams of strength, Gima ripped free from the chain, breaking his hand with the effort. He vomited from the pain, a pink slurry of blood and half-digested rice. He got his feet beneath him then charged across the bridge.

Gima's emaciated body weighed no more than that of a child, but the sumo champion was distracted. Gima buried his bony shoulder centimeters into the big man's gut. The yokozuna doubled over, and Mecha-Tsuyo puppeted his movements. Gima tumbled back down the off-kilter bridge. His head cracked against the bulkhead again, and he went limp. Blood ran into his eyes. The deck leveled beneath him as the wrestler recovered.

“Disengage close combat controls, one-hundred-eighty degree rotation!” Umihara shouted. Gima struggled to his knees, but a heavy boot connected with his chest, dropping him back down. Gima was blinded with red.

“Target two kilometers and gaining separation,” someone reported.

“Free fire!” Umihara ordered. Mecha-Tsuyo shuddered with cannon-fire.

“Negative hits,” a fire control officer reported.

“Fire again,” the captain ordered. His voice had gone quiet and husky. Another salvo of shots shook the bridge. Gima scraped the gummy blood out of his eyes. Toroka was nowhere to be seen.

“Cease fire,” Umihara whispered. The guns cut off. The captain let go of his strap and fell back into his chair.

“The kaiken is keeping up pursuit,” the X.O. reported. “He will demand answers.”

“He will have one,” Umihara sighed. He pulled off his goggles and mask and stared at Gima with those bloodshot eyes. Gima grinned, drooling blood and vomit, laying in his own filth. Umihara summoned his executioner: “Chief of deck.”

“I have been dead this entire time,” Gima whispered.

“You and I would have had much to discuss, then,” Umihara replied. The captain's face never so much as twitched. He toggled the switch on his hearing device and turned away.

Gima slumped against the wall and grinned his pink grin. The chief drew his Nambu and stood over him. Gima coughed, over and over, hacking up blood and tissue with each shuddering retch.

No matter what they did to him, it was Toroka that had ended Gima Goro. He had died months before, on the northern seas. The coughing fit shook him to his bones, yet Gima stared into the blackness of the pistol's barrel and smiled through the wracking coughs.

“No, do not,” the yokozuna said. He disengaged his harness and lumbered over, hand held open. The chief surrendered his pistol and stood aside. The sumo wrestler smirked and aimed while he rubbed his sore belly.

Gima Goro's coughs were silenced in a bright instant of sound and fire, and gunsmoke swirled about the bridge.

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Copyright © 2024 Daniel Baldwin. All rights reserved.

Written and edited by Daniel Baldwin. Art by Dudu Torres.