by A21 Reporter Andy Clems
There were scenes of chaos and terror on Thursday morning as a giant aquaphibian rampaged through the World Aquanaut Security Patrol’s base, Marineville.
The colossal creature was first detected by Marineville Tracking Station One in the early hours of the morning, as Lieutenant Moss recalls. “We spotted a huge mass on the radar approaching the west coast around oh-six-hundred hours, moving rapidly. There were no ships or subs in the immediate area and it was heading straight for the shore. We got it on video-scan just as it made land, a gigantic aquaphibian, maybe fifty, sixty, feet tall rising out of the sea and climbing the cliffs!”
The aquaphibian covered the 20 miles to Marineville in less than half an hour, by which time the base was on full alert. Commander Sam Shore was on duty during the emergency. “It was the darnedest thing you ever saw, a great lumbering undersea alien moving towards us with terrifying intensity. It crushed the west security checkpoint guardhouse like it was matchwood. We couldn’t use the hydromic missiles because of the huge risk of collateral damage, so we had to think of a plan real fast. Our security force managed to distract it with assault weapons, but nothing we had seemed to have any great effect on it.”
Marineville controller, Lieutenant Atlanta Shore, witnessed much of the devastation as it unfolded. “After it broke through the security cordon it made straight for the power plant and smashed it to pieces. There was an enormous explosion that rocked the whole control tower. With the power plant destroyed, we had no way to move the surface installations to the underground shelters, and it wasn’t long before the alien started moving towards the vulnerable structures.”
Commander Shore ordered an immediate evacuation of Marineville. Lieutenant Horatio Fisher was on hand when the order was given. “The Commander wasted no time in ordering as many people to safety as possible. The air was suddenly swarming with fighter aircraft and evacuation helijets from the Marineville airfield. I requested permission to stay in the control tower to assist in coordinating the operation, but Commander Shore ordered me to proceed to the nearest helijet landing pad with Lieutenant Shore and the other control tower personnel.”
“It came at the last possible moment, but we finally caught a break” said Commander Shore “the lab boys had a theory that the creature’s enormous size may have been the result of exposure to a revolutionary new growth drug known as Theramine. International Rescue had their own trouble with the stuff in South America some while back. I guess we’ll never know how Titan got his webbed hands on a sample, but I wouldn’t be in the least surprised to learn it was down to one of his devious surface agents.”
“Anyhow, given this working theory, which was all we had to go on, we were able to synthesize what we hoped would be an effective antidote. By the time it was ready, Marineville was almost completely evacuated, but the base was badly damaged and fire raged in many of our installations. I knew getting the antidote into the creature would take nerves of steel and there was only one man for the job.”
Captain Troy Tempest, the commanding officer of the WASP flagship Stingray, was given his orders by Commander Shore “It was the craziest situation, and I’ve seen some crazy situations in my time! Directly I picked up the antidote from the science division, I got to one of the few remaining helijets as fast as I could and we took to the sky. They’d put the antidote into a modified rocket shell, and I loaded it into the launcher and leaned out of the helijet’s cargo door trying to line up my shot.”
But things nearly turned from bad to worse as Troy recalls, “The aquaphibian must have known we were up to something because it started swiping at the helijet with its huge claws. We were thrown around quite a bit, but the pilot held her nerve and managed to line us up just right. I squeezed the trigger and the rocket blasted out of the barrel and flew straight and true, hitting the creature dead on the side of the neck. It roared loudly, made a final drunken lunge at us, which we managed to evade, and then crashed to the ground, flattening an abandoned hovercar as it did so. By the time we had landed and rushed to the scene, it had returned to normal proportions. Boy were we all glad about that!”
The aquaphibian is currently in secure custody at Marineville. Commander Shore issued a statement thanking the personnel of the base for their actions during the crisis and praising Captain Tempest’s actions, adding “Marineville may be damaged, but don’t count us out yet, we’ll be back on our feet in a short while. And if Titan has any more big ideas about attacking Marineville, we’ll sure be ready for him next time!”
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