From Days of War and Monsters Vol. II

Edited by Yasuhiro Okada

Excerpt from chapter 6, “New Killers on the Bloc”

Ed: This is a partial reconstructive transcript of an audio/cellular recording by Major Edward Tilden, USMC, confirmed via Geneva Conventions Identification Card scan.

Major Tilden witinessed the arrival of Voyoka 099 and the first of the Zerkalo Bloc invaders in Kenya, East Africa, where the Marines maintained an enduring footprint prior to the Bloc’s appearance. Tilden’s transcript has been edited to update generic descriptors of Voyoka 099 and its accompanying support with confirmed names of Bloc forces.

What happened this morning is going to go down in history, and I saw it. If you’d been there on that July morning in Gettysburg or that Friday afternoon when Kennedy’s limo rolled by you or that day Chicago simply disappeared to mark the beginning of the end of the world, you’d want to document your memories, too.

My name is Ed Tilden, Major, United States Marine Corps, Weapons Company Commander for the [REDACTED], originally assigned to destroy [REDACTED] in coordination with [REDACTED] of the SSI [Shadow Sun Syndicate—Ed.]. That mission has been suspended following the zero-five-seventeen appearance of as-yet unidentified threats today.

A quarter of our forces in Mombasa were in the field when we observed what we thought was heat lightning—we don’t get storms here, so we took it as an atmospheric anomaly. Kenya is a dustbowl this time of year; we’ve been swimming in flying dirt ever since dawn. But the lightning was a constant, not erratic as you’d expect, and when the air ripped open, we saw a shimmering shape like a hexagon. It was a vertical shape—like a doorway. And then tons of metal stomped into view.

The first one through came in with weapons blazing. It was like a building built of guns.

My old man loved those cheesy sci-fi movies from the ’50s—we had shelves of VHS tapes like Monsters Unstoppable and Mars Wants Earth and Horrors from Inner Space. I knew them all. These invaders look like something from those old movies. The difference, though, is that [Voyoka 099] sure as hell doesn’t look like it’s made of rubber and cardboard, is about ten stories tall, and is riddled with enough gun emplacements to take out all those 1950s’ monsters combined. It has a top turret, offset to one side, that spits gunfire while in full rotation.

Behind it came a parade of machines out of thin air. Some of them were immediately airborne and headed south for the Tanzania border where G.U.A.R.D. forces are supposed to be positioned. Four rocket choppers were in the air to give pursuit within minutes. Some of the invaders stood up on flat metallic legs like those on tables as soon as they hit the ground, and they moved fast to assault our companies in Mombasa—without wheels, their gravitational center is going to make them difficult for our guys to topple. And from somewhere in the middle of their forces came music.

Brainwashing robots from space.

My old man would have loved the movie.

[Voyoka 099] targeted our ground forces and two of the rocket choppers. The choppers were hit so many times, they were driven off their flight trajectory by a hundred yards or more before they came down. The ground forces were mostly able to evade, though we were blanketed by so much dust and, ultimately, smoke from our own weapons that we could have used protective breathing gear.

Then we heard [Voyoka 099] move. The earth shook. The slamming of its footsteps was the sound of car crashes, dense but brittle. It seemed to have an unlimited supply of ammunition; the bullets never stopped.

Until Zor-Magna arrived.

I must admit that for most of my career, I’ve never expected to be saved. It’s not what you sign up for as a Marine—or for any role in the U.S. Armed Forces, for that matter. But as that silver giant Zor-Magna came across the horizon, chakram at the ready, I damn-near cheered. [Voyoka 099] redirected its fire at first sight of Zor-Magna, allowing us to reposition to provide tactical support.

Zor-Magna opened up with a hell of an arsenal of energy weapons that we could only tolerate thanks to our MCEP gear; otherwise, we’d have been stumbling around three-quarters blind. The [WW82s] were close enough to engage, so we unloaded our own arsenal of shoulder-launched missiles and Javelins, courtesy the Brits, and somewhere along the way, knocked out that propoganda music, much to my personal gratification. Calls to surrender don’t become more effective just because you set them to lute music, as far as I’m concerned.

[Voyoka 099] doesn’t seem to pose as much of a threat to us as individuals as we first anticipated, so we’ve scattered to maximize our safety. Its targeting system seems unprepared to deal with smaller forces, like individual men, so here’s hoping it has some kind of Achilles’ heel we can zero in on.

At my comand, just under a tenth of my company joined me in the remnants of a security post on the A14 headed out of Mombasa. It used to be a police station. That’s where we are now, waiting for an opportunity to ambush these new invaders. We can hear the steady gunfire from [Voyoka 099]; it stops on occasion for a few minutes, but when it starts up again, I swear to God it’s closer than it was before.

There’s a stone wall between the Lokoni Divisional Police Station and the A14 that you could knock a hole through with a shotgun and twenty shells. It’s hardly secure, but to my guys, it doesn’t have to be secure—it just has to feel secure.

I just told Lieutenant Rogers that we’re fine here so long as Zor-Magna doesn’t accidentally knock Walkin’ House of Guns over on us. A couple of minutes ago, G-tanks rolled by our position, headed south on the A14. They seem like obvious targets to me.

Rogers asked me if—

Ed: Major Tilden’s recording ends here with an explosion of an unidentified origin. His survival could not be determined in the aftermath of the recording’s discovery, and he remains classified as Missing in Action (MIA).