by Alex Irvine
He reached down and turned the radio down. Not off, but down.
“Hey, I was listening to that,” Chuck said.
“Who are you?” Herc asked his son.
Chuck looked confused and belligerent at the same time, like it irritated him not to know the answer to a question, but it irritated him even more that his father would ask him a question he couldn’t answer.
“What?”
Herc smashed the radio into the floor. A few small pieces of it bounced away, but it was a shop-floor model, designed to take a beating. He hadn’t wrecked it, but it made an impression on Chuck. Got his full attention for the first time in Herc’s recent memory.
“Who are you?” he demanded, stepping up into his son’s face.
“I’m the only chance we’ve got to deliver that bomb, is who I am—” Chuck started.
“Not the point,” Herc said.
“—but I’m stuck with two prison guards, the basketball triplets, Tokyo pop, and a washout.”
“Not the point!” Herc said, louder.
Chuck got louder, too. “Pentecost may be a good man, but he hasn’t seen combat in, what? Ten years, maybe? More? The only chance we’ve got at a future is delivering that bomb, and I am the one doing it—”
“That’s not what I’m talking about!”
“That’s who I am!”
“I know,” Herc said, dialing it back just a notch. “I know you’re a great Ranger, and I’m proud of that. But dammit, kid... why are you not a better person? Why didn’t I make you a better person?”
“A better person?” Chuck echoed, as if he couldn’t believe this mattered to Herc. “Don’t blame yourself. It’s not like you really brought me up anyway. After Mom died, I spent more time with these machines than I ever did with you.” He tapped the wrench fondly against the chassis of Striker Eureka.
Herc remembered the mushroom cloud rising over Sydney. The second one. The first had been out at the islands, an hour before, and had slowed the kaiju down. The authorities had given the entire population of downtown Sydney one hour to clear out.
One hour for five million people to get to safety
Then the second nuke came down. The kaiju died. So had Angela. He had not known whether it was the kaiju or the bomb that had killed her. Pentecost had taken him aside and told him it was the kaiju, that she had been killed in the collapse of the building where she worked. Herc had never made up his mind if he could believe that or not. All he knew was that he’d only had an hour. He’d gotten from the base, where he was an active-duty pilot with the Air Force, across the bay into Sydney while everyone else was getting the hell out. Cell networks were down. There was no way to find anyone. He had to guess, and he could only get one of them. He chose Chuck, and Chuck had never forgiven him for it.
Chuck’s school had survived the kaiju but been reduced to ashes and slag by the second nuke. Herc could see the mushroom cloud in his mind, rising over downtown Sydney as he got the hell out of there in an old Bell Kiowa that had probably seen its first service in Vietnam. Was Angela already dead by then? He would never know.
But Herc Hansen had sacrificed everything for this boy, and Chuck would always hate him for it. Sometimes Herc wanted to sit him down and say, Hey, listen, would you really rather I had let you die so I could save your mother? Is that what you want?
Because I pray to any and all gods that have ever existed that you never have to make that choice.
Not that Chuck would listen. Because Chuck didn’t listen to anyone.
“Let’s face it,” said Chuck. “The only reason we even speak today is because we’re Drift-compatible. Because we’re good at smashing things together. In fact, we don’t even need to speak.”
He picked up the battered radio and dialed it back to its original volume.
“Catch you in the Drift, Dad,” he said, and turned it up a little higher.
* * *
MARSHAL PENTECOST EYES ONLY
PAN-PACIFIC DEFENSE CORPS
PERSONNEL DOSSIER
UNOFFICIAL, RELOCATED FROM PPDC CONTRACTOR REGISTRY
NAME
Hannibal Chau (alias); birth name unknown
ASSIGNED TEAM
n/a
DATE OF ACTIVE SERVICE
n/a
CURRENT SERVICE STATUS
n/a
BIOGRAPHY
Unknown. Believed to be American by birth but current citizenship unknown. Resident of Hong Kong. Previous places of residence unknown. Family status unknown.
NOTES
Black marketeer. Previously involved in smuggling of exotic animal parts, possibly drugs and weapons. Known associate of organized crime figures throughout Asia, Russia, Eastern Europe.
Previously contracted through official PPDC channels to assist in recovery of organic materials from fallen kaiju. As of 2021, previous contracting arrangement no longer active. Current arrangement sub rosa, not to be disclosed to any administrative entity. Chau now investing in Jaeger program in return for specified rights to kaiju remains. Provides specimen material for Kaiju Science analysis.
Chau's fieldwork, criminal though it may be, has made a number of Kaiju Science advances possible. Because he
is unscrupulous, he is also innovative. Consider opening direct channels between Kaiju Science and Chau. Gottlieb will resist; Geiszler certain to pursue the opportunity if it arises.
Contact protocols strictly observed. Works from a pharmacy storefront at the edge of the Kowloon Boneslum. Present kaiju glyph as passcode.
Notable for the flamboyance of his dress and personal appearance, as well as a scar on the left side of his face.
* * *
18
NEWT GOT OUT OF A CAB AT THE CORNER OF FONG and Tull, on the edge of the area officially known as the Hong Kong Exclusion Zone, but unofficially called the Kowloon Boneslum. When they’d taken the kaiju out with a series of small tactical nukes, they’d made part of the city a radioactive monument. Nobody had expected people to move back in so soon, but then again, nobody had expected that more kaiju would come so thick and fast. Thousands of people lived in the Kowloon Boneslum now, and the gargantuan skeleton was a tourist attraction... unofficial, of course, since the Chinese government would hardly condone tourism in a nuclear hazard site.
Newt looked up at the ribcage, the boney structure arching up over the lower buildings and curving into and back out of taller structures. Things got rebuilt quickly in Hong Kong, and in the eleven years since that kaiju bit the dust, the city had pretty much absorbed it, except for the skull, which Newt had heard was some kind of religious something-or-other. He wasn’t sure. The only parts of the Kaiju that interested him were the bits he could study, and he’d long since learned as much as he could from the bones. They weren’t that different from the bones of terrestrial animals, except a whole lot bigger and denser and made—literally made, Newt now knew—from silicon compounds instead of carbonated hydroxyapatite.
Clouds gathered overhead, picking up the city’s illumination and reflecting it as a pink glow that made the area look a little sickly. It fit the Boneslum’s atmosphere. Newt shouldered his way through the crowds to a pocket of open space on one corner and shone a portable luma lamp on the orange paper he’d gotten from Pentecost.
In the lamp’s glow, a kaiju symbol appeared on the paper. The glyph representing the kaiju whose bones were the bedrock of this new neighborhood.
Okay, now he knew what to look for. But where to find it? Newt looked around and saw similar glyphs everywhere. Great, he thought. I’ll knock on every storefront in Kowloon and ask for the guy who traffics in kaiju parts. That ought to earn me a quick trip to the bottom of the bay.
Think. Pentecost wouldn’t have sent you out here to wander around. He needs you and he knows it. He wants you out and back with what you need to Drift again, because that’s the order he gave you. So. What are you missing, Dr. Geiszler?
It hit him then, the kind of duh moment that Newt had when he m
issed something. He was so smart that missing anything made him feel stupid. He wasn’t just looking for particular glyphs. He was looking for those particular glyphs that would only show up in the light of a luma lamp.
Why had Pentecost not just told Newt this? Because he figured Newt was smart enough to come to that conclusion on his own. Which was true.
Okay, then, minor and self-inflicted obstacle out of the way, Newt got on with finding the glyphs in question. He played the luma lamp around the area, up the wall of the building closest to the corner. Nothing. Then he tried the sidewalk, on the theory that maybe glyphs would be painted here and there like breadcrumbs leading him to the mysterious Hannibal Chau. He didn’t see anything.
Time to broaden the search parameters, then. He shone the lamp’s beam around everything on the corner: a trash can, a couple of boxes full of free newspapers, the traffic signs.
Ah.
There it was, on the one-way sign pointing down an alley that ran perpendicular to the main road, either Fong or Tull, heading in the direction of the kaiju’s arching ribcage.
Newt walked down the alley. Like most of Hong Kong—especially the older parts like Kowloon, and even the parts of Kowloon that only looked old because they were built after the kaiju attack—this alley wasn’t just back doors. There were plenty of storefronts and houses. The distinction between streets and alleyways wasn’t always relevant here. People were watching Newt and he had a feeling some of them did not have his best interests at heart. He wished he had made an effort to learn Chinese... but then, which damn language did you learn?
He played the luma lamp here and there, on doorframes and signposts and the edges of windowsills. A couple of times he shone it right at a visible glyph, on the off chance that Hannibal Chau would be hiding in plain sight.
Eventually the kaiju symbol lit up on the storefront of a small apothecary.
Figures, Newt thought. A guy like Hannibal Chau who makes his living from kaiju parts, where else would he do his business?
He entered the store and caught the attention of an old Chinese guy grinding some kind of paste with a mortar and pestle.
“Want some bone powder?” the man asked.
“Bone... what? No,” Newt said. “Why would I?”
“Male potency,” the old guy said with a knowing leer. “Guaranteed real. I harvest it. I take it.”
From kaiju, Newt realized. The old guy was proud of being one of the bold souls who dug into the acidic, lethal kaiju corpses. Newt wasn’t sure that was something to be proud of, but it did take guts. Maybe not as much guts as it took to Drift with a kaiju brain, but still. You had to respect an old guy like this who—
Wait a minute, Newt thought. This guy thinks I need bone powder for potency? Now he was irritated.
“Guaranteed? Whoa, no.”
He took another step forward and held the orange piece of paper where the old guy could see it while he stayed bent over whatever he was grinding in the mortar. The old guy looked up. His expression changed minutely.
“I’m looking for Hannibal Chau,” Newt said.
The old guy walked past him to the front of the store. He locked the door and flipped a sign around. Then he beckoned Newt over to a small shelf. He touched a mechanism somewhere on the shelf, triggering a set of hidden doors that slid open to reveal a wall of shelves lined with jars. The fluid suspension in the jars was backlit in amber, silhouetting the various kaiju samples within.
“Good luck,” the old guy said as Newt’s jaw dropped open.
That set of shelves slid aside, revealing a second set. Newt’s mouth dried up and he thought he might be having a heart attack. Then that second set slid aside, revealing a third, and Newt was no longer certain he was living on a fallen Earth. The third shelf slid aside to reveal what Newt could only consider paradise.
Stunned, Newt stepped through the doorway into Hannibal Chau’s hideaway.
It was bigger than the apothecary out front, but still a lot smaller than, say, Newt’s side of the lab he shared with Hermann. The room was lined with shelves stuffed with various bits of kaiju: lymph nodes the size of basketballs, tiny glands and nerve bundles, slices of organs, bits of skin and carapace, jars of liquids distilled from vitreous humor, and Hannibal Chau only knew what else.
Farther back in the room was a multiracial group of flashy tough guys with dead eyes: Chau’s muscle. They were keeping watch over a group of workers at a pair of long tables, peeling and chopping and slicing pieces of kaiju like prep cooks before the opening of a restaurant. They showed no expression and did not speak.
“Oh, my God,” Newt said, peering excitedly at the shelves. “This is heaven!” He couldn’t help himself. “Lymph nodes from a Category II! A gall bladder, in mint condition!”
Nobody seemed to care that he was there. The workers kept their heads down, the tough guys leaned up against the stair railing watching them and making conversation in Chinese. Newt headed for a fish tank full of crab-like creatures.
“Kaiju skin parasites,” he breathed, as if witnessing something holy. “I’ve never seen them alive. They’re always dead by the time I get to a site. I thought—”
“Not if you bathe them in ammonia,” one of the tough guys said. Newt looked over at him with a special Geiszler Conversational Riposte in mind, and then completely forgot what he was going to say.
He was a big guy, this goon, and his voice was all whiskey and broken glass. But that’s not what caught Newt’s attention. This guy wore a dark-red suit cut like he was on his way to see Cab Calloway at the Cotton Club in 1938. His shoe uppers were plated with overlapping scales of pure gold, giving each of his steps a slight jingle. His teeth were customized with a variety of metals adorned with various patterns. He wore sunglasses with leather membranes around the lenses that turned them into goggles, and the combined value of his jewelry and personal adornments would have bought the entire building that Newt’s family had lived in near Boston.
The goon appeared to enjoy Newt’s surprise. He stepped toward him.
“What do you want?” he asked.
“Oh, uh, I’m looking for Hannibal Chau,” Newt said. “I was told he’s here.”
“Who wants to know?”
“Well,” Newt said. He’d been debating how much to tell Chau’s underlings, and for the sake of Pentecost’s project he’d decided to play it close to the vest. “I can’t really say.”
He heard a snicking noise and the thug made a motion too fast for Newt to follow, but it ended up with the tip of a butterfly knife tickling the inside of one of his nostrils.
“Stacker Pentecost sent me!” Newt said quickly.
The guy studied Newt’s face for a moment and then relented, pushing him back a step and stowing the butterfly knife.
It didn’t take Newt long to see through the whole charade. Oh, he thought. Stupid. I was so distracted by the kaiju parts I didn’t spare any focus for the humans. So typical.
“So... you’re Hannibal Chau?” he asked, even though he already knew the answer.
Pentecost had described Chau as a big white guy with coarse features and a scrub of salt-and-pepper hair. Some kind of big scar on the left side of his face. Brash and informal in demeanor, not deliberately cruel but also not averse to cruelty if it would make him a buck. Now that Newt had decided to pay attention to the other members of his species in the room, it was pretty clear that he should have known who he was from the beginning.
This is why I was never actually in the military, Newt thought.
“You like the name?” Chau said with a half-smile. “I took it from my favorite historical figure and my second favorite Szechuan restaurant in Brooklyn.”
“Your favorite historical figure is Hannibal?” Newt had a hard time believing this. “You know he was a political and financial reformer, right? That’s why the Romans kept after him and why he kept fighting them. He ran all over Asia Minor until the Romans forced him into exile, then he poisoned himself.”
“So you’re a historian,” Chau said. “You want me to know you’re smart, okay, I get it. Now tell me what you want before I gut you like a pig and feed you to the skin louse.”
Newt opened his mouth and started talking.
“We’ve, um, done business before,” he said. “I’m Newt Geiszler, one of the leads on Kaiju Science for PPDC. I’m sure I’ve made some purchases from you.”
“If you’ve made ’em anywhere between Manila and Sapporo, yeah, you dealt with me,” Chau said. “So Pentecost sent you? What’s he want?”
“That’s, um, classified,” Newt said. Chau’s hand dropped toward the pocket the knife had come out of and Newt said, “Okay. Okay. I’ll tell you. But not with so many people around. Where’s there a, um... a place we can do business?”
* * *
PAN-PACIFIC DEFENSE CORPS
COMBAT ASSET DOSSIER—JAEGER
NAME
Coyote Tango
GENERATION
Mark I
DATE OF SERVICE
December 30, 2015
DATE OF TERMINATION
November 6, 2022
RANGER TEAM(S) ASSIGNED Stacker Pentecost, Tamsin Sevier; Gunnar Tunari (KIA), Vic Tunari (KIA)
MISSION HISTORY
Coyote Tango was credited with two kaiju kills: Onibaba, Tokyo, May 15, 2016; Ceramander, Hawaii, October 9, 2021. Damage sustained in the Onibaba engagement sidelined Coyote Tango for a full year. It was then held out of deployments for a further period after Kaiju Science and J-Tech teams discovered reactor-shielding issues. During this delay, original pilot Stacker Pentecost was reassigned from active Jaeger service to a command role.
OPERATING SYSTEM
Nautilus-4 Zirca Sync