The Modern Kaiju Era

Part III: Earth's Greatest Battle 2/3

Part III

"Earth's Greatest Battle"

Part 2 of 3

By: 2nd LT. Anthony Hicks

United States Army

"Many that live deserve death. And some that die deserve life. Can you give it to them? Then do not be too eager to deal out death in judgment. For even the very wise cannot see all ends."

- J.R.R. Tolkien, The Fellowship of the Ring

In 1963, improvements to the BETA-Class aerial battle ships gave way to the construction of the first of several advanced flying battleships, The Atragon. Sporting three batteries of missiles, the largest maser beam yet constructed channeled through a nose drill, and capable of traversing through the sky, the sea, and the earth. Crewed by around 50 people, the joint Japanese and AKDC weapons platform became used primarily as an exploratory vehicle.

It was during one such venture into the depths of the Pacific Ocean, an attempt was made to examine what remained of the Mysterian base. What they uncovered however was far more shocking. Instead of an isolated compound, the base had been located well within the ruins of an undersea nation that spanned for hundreds of miles across the ocean floor. What hadn't been destroyed in the nuclear attack awed the observers as proof of advanced ancient civilizations.

Divers wearing specially designed pressure suits explored the coral encrusted ruins, finding dozens of engraved metal plates covered in a strange language, resembling a combination of hieroglyphic and Sumerian text. The plates were recovered for examination, but would remain indecipherable for the next few years. Another discovery that fascinated the divers, was a huge carved mural, depicting an enormous sea serpent coiled around a throne. Unbeknownst at the time, this was no mere artistic metaphor.

While the true boarders of the undersea kingdom wouldn't be fully mapped until the mid-eighties, researchers spent weeks probing the ruins and scraping away centuries worth of encrustation, hauling up tons of archaeological discoveries to astonish the world. The deluged structures were reminiscent of classical architecture, but at the same time foreign, like an amnesia victim might feel about a face they should recognize. There were several large temples of differing size and shape, ranging from small pyramid-like constructs to blocky monoliths with rounded edges.

The statues put the best of ancient Rome to shame. What was left for researchers to find, were exquisitely crafted sculptures depicting men, women and creatures. Warriors holding shields and spears, maidens dressed in flowing robes and golden headdresses, again their garb had flavors of familiar ancient styles, but composed their own unique fashion. One statue of a warrior in an armor breastplate bore a symbol on the piece resembling an aquatic serpent, similar to the one in the mural, and a helm accented with dragon-like horns.

Perhaps the most impressive of the structures was a mammoth figure of a winged lion, with attire resembling an Egyptian Pharaoh. What was strange about the statue was it's posture, poised not in the stoic fashion after the famous Sphinx, but rather in a dynamic moving pose. It's forelimbs outstretched and it's face contorted in anguish, it's expression indicating it was trying to flee or in pursuit of something. An odd choice, one might think, and one would be justified thinking that. But this mystery too would be exposed by the Venusian Revelation, which I'll discuss in the next section.

Despite the presence of pictographic symbols in numerous places, they found nothing that came close to translatable, the language, if it was one, frustrated explorers to no end. The inscription at the base of the Sphinx seemed large enough to indicate the name of the thing, and a sequence of symbols found around the cities they guessed might be the name of the civilization. With the idea of hauling tons of stone slabs to the surface an unfeasible one, all their hopes rested on those engraved metal plates to crack the code.