Seeing Sumiko so taken aback by this, Akiko began to grow concerned.
“Is Daddy coming home again?” she asked.
“It’ll be all right, dear,” said Sumiko, deeply shaken by the depth of Koichi’s resolve. “Don’t you worry about a thing.”
At the edge of Sagami Bay, just off the coast of Miura, a small wooden minesweeper was moored. As the men on deck watched through their binoculars, a radiation detector buoy nearby suddenly began flickering wildly. Upon closer inspection, the men could see the corpses of deep-sea fish floating on the surface all around the buoy.
Godzilla had arrived far sooner than expected.
Panicking, one of the watchmen grabbed his radio.
“This is Kuroshio 12. Detecting a major signal on the Geiger buoy at 35.033 degrees north, 139.41 degrees east. Also observing large numbers of deep-sea fish corpses!”
All at once, a group of submarine chasers was dispatched—each towing a large underwater megaphone connected to its stern. From these megaphones, an audio recording of Godzilla’s ominous roar was being broadcast throughout the Bay; it was a recording discovered among the rubble in Ginza, taken by a reporter who’d stayed on the rooftops to capture the beast’s rampage to the very end.
This was more than enough to trick Godzilla into thinking another beast was attempting to lay claim to its territory.
Back at port, the operation’s harbor broadcasting team began transmitting to all vessels to keep all parties informed of the developing situation, which was already far removed from what they had originally planned.
“We now have multiple reports of deep-sea fish surfacing near the halfway point between Izu Oshima and Sagami Bay. We expect that Godzilla will appear any minute now. Luring via underwater megaphones is currently underway. All ships, prepare to weigh anchor ahead of schedule at 0720 hours.”
Yukikaze and the other destroyers were all ready to go.
Noda stood on deck with Akitsu, waiting to set sail.
“Looks like Mizushima-kun gave up on trying to come with us, eh?” said Noda.
“Can’t help but feel bad for the kid,” said Akitsu. “But it’s for his own good.”
“Honestly, I wish we didn’t have to involve Shiki-san in this either. He’s an ex-kamikaze pilot, after all. I worry he might try to do something drastic.”
“He’s got Akiko waiting for him at home. He wouldn’t abandon that little girl.”
And then it happened—a muffled boom rang out from the ocean, and something truly massive and engulfed in flames and smoke came flying through the air toward the harbor. Carving a parabolic arc through the sky, the enormous object crashed right into the building they’d made into their operational HQ, setting it ablaze. As the building crumbled beneath the object, they could make out through the flames that it had been one of their submarine chasers. Godzilla had caught up to one of their underwater megaphones and promptly returned the invitation to sender.
For a split second, all of the men in the harbor froze in place.
Then after a few moments’ delay, came the emergency alarm.
“The decoy unit’s been wiped out! Godzilla has entered Sagami Bay! All Wadatsumi vessels, move out immediately!”
Akitsu cast his gaze out over the bay.
“Look!” he said, pointing his finger. “Over there!”
Just a stone’s throw away from port, a cavalcade of massive, jagged dorsal fins was carving through the waves in their direction.
Godzilla had already arrived.
“How did it get here so quickly?” Noda exclaimed.
The mines they’d placed near the entrance to the harbor exploded one by one, but Godzilla paid them no mind. Its reptilian spine slithered lithely through the water as it made a beeline for the shore.
“Evacuate the harbor! It’s about to make landfall!”
Meanwhile, Shinden had been wheeled out from the hangar and now sat idling by the runway, its engine humming so softly it was hard to believe it hadn’t been flown in years. Then came the transmission from the naval port:
“Godzilla has breached the final defense line! It’s coming ashore!”
The situation had already turned dire. It was now or never.
“I’m off, then,” said Koichi, before taxiing onto the runway.
He gave one last salute to Tachibana and his assistants before shifting the engine lever into full throttle. Shinden skated down the asphalt, slowly picking up speed before eventually inching up off the ground and taking flight.
He quickly discovered that the amount of torque produced by the plane’s giant propeller, combined with its atypical shape, caused Shinden to veer slightly to the left; Koichi had to do a bit of counter steering at all times just to keep her airframe horizontal.
She was a fussy flyer, that much was for sure—but Shinden could accelerate far faster than the late-war planes Koichi was used to thanks to the remarkably greater efficiency of the high-octane fuel it used. The difference is night and day, Koichi thought as he nodded in admiration of the craft. He adjusted his trajectory, then increased his speed even further, shooting off through the skies in Godzilla’s direction.
Back on the ground, the maintenance crew gazed up at Shinden’s vapor trails as Koichi zoomed away, leaving them behind to head into battle.
“Time to end this, Shikishima,” Tachibana muttered. “Once and for all.”
There was no longer even a hint of condemnation in his voice.
The naval port, meanwhile, was in a state of total pandemonium.
Godzilla had already climbed ashore—at an incredible speed that defied even their most conservative of estimations—before their destroyer unit could even weigh anchor to go and meet the beast in Sagami Bay.
Noda and Akitsu now stood helplessly on deck, gazing up at Godzilla as it made landfall, the rippling waves from its every step rocking Yukikaze beneath their feet. Then, raising its legs up high, it climbed up onto the shore, stomping right over the flaming wreckage of the submarine chaser it had thrown and the ruins of their HQ building as it crossed the harbor and started making its way inland.
“Well, shit,” said Akitsu. “What do we do now? Our whole plan’s ruined.”
“We set sail regardless,” said Noda. “The operation won’t work if we can’t utilize the full depth of the Sagami Trough. We’ll just have to place our hopes on Shiki-san, and pray he can lure it back here.”
A desperate broadcast rang out over the harbor’s loudspeakers:
“All ships, move out immediately! I repeat: All Wadatsumi vessels, move out!”
The four destroyers upon which the core of the operation hinged—Yukaze, Keyaki, Yukikaze, and Hibiki—formed an imposing fleet as they made for the Sagami Trough. But unless Koichi could guide their target back to them, there was little these erstwhile warships could do to help. Even what little firepower they had remaining after being remodeled to serve as repatriation boats was all but useless now.
Eventually, one of the dispatchers emerged from the communications room on the bridge of Yukikaze—now their effective operational HQ—with a message. “Noda-san!” said the man. “We’re getting a transmission from Shikishima-san!”
The dispatcher patched Koichi’s voice through the bridge’s speaker system.
“This is Shikishima speaking,” said Koichi. “I’m in the air. Will now proceed to lure Godzilla back to operation waters.”
“Good!” Noda said into the radio. “We’re almost in position ourselves!”
“Copy that. I’ll try to be there as soon as possible.”
“Listen to me, Shikishima!” shouted Akitsu, practically ripping the receiver out of Noda’s hands. “Don’t you go pulling any heroics on us! If you orphan that little girl again, I’ll drag your ass back up out of Hell myself, you hear me?”
There was no reply.
“Shikishima! Do you hear me?” Akitsu barked again—right as the transmission abruptly cut off. “Goddamn him. Did he just hang up on us?”
The lack of response from Koichi only exacerbated Noda’s fears.
“Shiki-san,” he said. “You wouldn’t…would you?”
From Shinden’s cockpit, Koichi gazed out over the fields and small mountain towns sprawled out below him. To think each and every one of these tiny houses had its own Akiko, its own Noriko, its own Koichi—whole families, simply trying their best to live their lives in earnest. He refused to let Godzilla destroy a single one of them.
With renewed resolve, Koichi faced forward once again.
He could see the creature dead ahead, just over the next hill.
From this distance, even Godzilla didn’t look so imposing.
Having taken Akiko into her home and attempted to reassure the girl until she finally cried herself to sleep, Sumiko was already feeling frazzled and at a loss when the telegram arrived. But when she actually read the words that were written on the page, the shock was so intense, it was all she could do to keep herself from fainting.
With trembling hands, she thought of Koichi and the path he’d chosen.
“Oh, God,” she said, hyperventilating. “Not like this.”
By the time Shinden reached her destination in the skies over rural Kamakura, Godzilla had already leveled every residence in the vicinity to the ground.
Koichi opened fire with his 30mm gun as he flew right past the tip of the creature’s nose. The 30mm rounds, of course, did no damage to the beast whatsoever—but the maneuver still drew Godzilla’s attention, which was exactly what Koichi wanted. It set its sights on Shinden, and when Koichi flew in for a second pass, the beast lurched its massive head forward with no less than twice its usual speed. But with a last-minute tilt to one side, Koichi narrowly escaped its jaws.