Science Ninja Team Gatchaman
Written by Toriumi Jinzō
Illustrated by Ōtori Workshop
Part 2: Alien Invasion
Chapter 2
“You reckless moron!” Ryū shouted up at the pilot. He was terrified of the Cessna, but he also admired the pilot’s bravery and skill. The pilot didn’t look too much older than him, and he considered himself a passable pilot at best. The man chasing him had skill; he only wished that they weren’t at odds.
A strange sense of competitive ire riled Ryū up. The Cessna wasn’t trying to destroy his hovercraft, so he had to assume that the plane was trying to capture the vessel. He brought up the map on his navigation screen and checked his current location for any nearby terrain features that might help him. There were a few small islands around here that were constantly shifting and changing because of volcanic activity. If he zipped from island to island fast enough, he might be able to lose the Cessna. The plane would be able to keep up with him if it could guess where he was going, but not even he knew his ultimate trajectory. All he wanted right now was to get away.
“If he’s gonna chase me, I don’t have to make it easy,” Ryū muttered under his breath. The hovercraft flew out of the narrow channel back out onto the open water.
As soon as Ryū was out in the open again, the Cessna came hurtling towards him. The hovercraft made a sharp turn to avoid the plane, and the Cessna strafed to the left. Small columns of water shot up around the hovercraft.
Ryū was startled. He read his compass heading and tried to calculate the best course to prevent the Cessna from damaging the hovercraft—or him. He’d managed to keep himself in once piece so far, but he had no idea how long his luck would last.
The Cessna passed by the hovercraft and disappeared into a crevice between two small islands just ahead. Ryū waited with bated breath for the plane to reappear, but it stayed gone, at least for now.
This was an opportunity. It would take Ryū a little less than ten minutes to get to a small, rocky volcanic island that had a few good hiding places. It was growing dark, so visibility was poor, but that applied to the Cessna, too. Ryū increased the speed of the hovercraft and sailed towards the rocky island.
The hovercraft had no running lights, so Ryū was piloting using only the machine’s sensors and navigation monitors. He knew the risks, but he’d managed to out-fly the Cessna thus far. He would risk anything to keep himself and the hovercraft safe.
Ryū pressed a button on his control panel. A whooshing sound like a cut through the air, and then and a wire shot from the port side of his hovercraft and wound around a rusty harpoon embedded in the island’s shore. Ryū coaxed the wire to pull the harpoon free. The wire loosened, and a short time later, the harpoon sank into the water, dragging the wire with it.
Ryū rotated the hovercraft, spinning it around 180 degrees. Then he stopped moving. For better or worse, he’d acquired a hidden weapon.
The Cessna spotted the hovercraft and approached.
Ryū chuckled nastily. If he pushed the hovercraft forward now, he’d be plotting a collision course toward the Cessna… and once the Cessna was close enough, he could attack it with the harpoon. He positioned his wire so that the Cessna would run into it, triggering the hovercraft to haul up the harpoon and pierce the plane.
“This is it,” Ryū said in a hushed tone. “No turning back now.”
The Cessna flew into the perfect position. The wire should have caught it. Ryū urged the hovercraft to go faster.
The wire cut through the water and jumped up, bringing the harpoon along with it. The moment it looked like the Cessna was going to crash into harpoon, it swerved at a very low altitude. The plane went under the wire and skimmed the ocean’s surface. The plane’s landing gear got wet, but it didn’t crash.
The Cessna passed overhead and then soared into the darkening sky. Clouds gathered overhead.
Ryū flipped the wire-cutting switch. He couldn’t use the harpoon like that again. He took a moment to catch his breath.
When the wire was cut off, the clouds overhead turned red-orange in an instant—fire and blood.
“Goddammit!” Ryū cursed, thinking that the Cessna had done something reckless and exploded.
A huge, red-hot fireball broke through the clouds and came rushing at him. Before Ryū could string two thoughts together, the fireball plunged into the ocean with a roar. A dark void two hundred meters across appeared on the ocean’s surface, hissing steam. More steam rose into the sky, swirling into a vortex.
Ryū was stunned by the sight. A moment later a pressure wave of super-heated air swept over him. He struggled to remain conscious and managed it for a few seconds before blacking out from the pain. The towering wave of a tsunami dragged the hovercraft down to the ocean floor.
***
Later that night, the news reported a tsunami of unknown origin doing severe damage to the Ogasawara Islands and the nearby island of Iwo Jima. The tsunami’s effects were felt all over the Sea of Japan all the way to the Izu Islands. Some parts of the Pacific Coast suffered minor flooding.
The government immediately began investigating the tsunami’s cause, but no one was really all that hopeful about discovering it. Everyone knew that the Ogasawara Islands were a volcanic island chain. An underground volcanic eruption would easily explain the tsunami and associated tidal wave.
There was a problem with this theory, though.
Japan utilized a number of sensors, both above-ground and underwater, so that there would be warning before events like the eruption that had caused the tsunami and brought so much devastation to the Ogasawara Islands. No seismic anomalies had been detected. Radar hadn’t sensed any meteorite activity. Radiation levels were normal. Space debris hadn’t caused the tsunami, and neither had a nuclear attack.
But if the tsunami hadn’t been caused by a volcanic eruption, a meteorite, or a nuclear bomb… then what was left? More news organizations around the world picked up the story. The Japanese military authority launched a full-scale investigation. The American Oceanographic Institute used its deep-sea research vessel, Octopus 30, to search the ocean floor in the area where the tsunami had originated.
The cause of the tsunami remained unknown, but people around the world kept asking questions.
Translator's Note
The Izu Islands are a chain of volcanic islands off the coast of Honshū, Japan’s largest island. They are part of Tokyo Prefecture.
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