by Alex Irvine
It struck Raleigh that Pentecost had brought him back not because he was the only quality Ranger still out there, but because Pentecost saw something of himself in Raleigh. Damn, Raleigh thought. My readjustment period might have been a little easier if I’d known that... but Stacker Pentecost plays his cards close to the vest, as the old guys used to say.
Of course, the next thing Pentecost said both confirmed and countered Raleigh’s line of thinking.
“I was warned that if I ever climbed into a Jaeger again, the toll would be too much. You and I, we’re the only two ever to run a solo combat. I called you here because I needed someone who would never stop. No matter what. Someone who would do the right thing. Regardless of the circumstances, your loss... or me.” Pentecost held out his hand. Raleigh shook it.
He wasn’t sure what to say next, and didn’t have to say anything because Tendo Choi’s voice came over the comm in Pentecost’s office.
“Marshal, I just got two signals,” he said. “But unprecedented dilation. A forty-meter spike.”
“Category?” Pentecost had slipped his pill bottle back in his pocket and was preparing to hit the LOCCENT again, less than three hours after deploying every Jaeger he had, and nearly losing them all.
“Looking at the rations... both Category IV,” Tendo said. “Mass displacements are big. Real big.”
“Where are they heading?” Pentecost asked. He moved toward the door. Raleigh followed.
“That’s the thing. They’re not headed anywhere. They’re staying above the Breach, like they’re protecting it.” Tendo double checked something on one of his readouts. “The Breach is still open, Marshal. Gottlieb’s idea about it staying open longer the more kaiju mass it passes seems to be correct.” Then he frowned. “Problem is, they’re staying so close to it that all of the energy wash from the Breach is killing my ability to get a good look at them. All I can tell is they’re big. And they’re not going anywhere.”
Pentecost looked at Raleigh. Did the kaiju know? Did they know that humanity was going to try to seal the Breach? Did they wonder if it was possible? Or were those two Category IVs just waiting for something else to join them?
Were they waiting for a third? If they were, then maybe Operation Pitfall needed to get going before Number Three showed up and made things even more complicated. Already Gipsy Danger was going to be holding off two Category IV kaiju all by herself while Striker Eureka made the run for the Breach.
Would it work?
He had to believe it would.
While he ran through all of those questions, Pentecost had gone to a closet on the far wall of his office.
“Striker and Gipsy on deck,” he said.
“But sir,” came Tendo’s voice, “Herc cannot fly. His arm... he—”
“You heard me,” Pentecost said.
Tendo acknowledged the order and signed off.
Poor Tendo, thought Raleigh. He heard Pentecost, but he couldn’t see him, so he couldn’t understand.
“Time to get moving,” Pentecost said.
He wore a shining black Ranger flight suit, and in both hands, he held a Ranger helmet, with the symbol of Coyote Tango proudly blazoned on the side.
* * *
PAN-PACIFIC DEFENSE CORPS
PERSONNEL DOSSIER
NAME
(Marshal) Stacker Pentecost
ASSIGNED TEAM
Jaeger Program;
ID M-MPEN_970.89-Q
DATE OF ACTIVE SERVICE
March 2, 2015
CURRENT SERVICE STATUS
Active; deployed Hong Kong Shatterdome
BIOGRAPHY
Born December 30, 1985, Tottenham, England. Parents Obadel, laborer, and Viviane, club performer. Family loosely involved with organized crime. Father died 1995 of wounds suffered in knife fight with nightclub owner. Stacker, then 12, burned club down and attacked father's killer. Sent to military school, realized suitability for military service. Entered Royal Air Force, completed pilot training at Leuchars, continued education in Avionics and Network/Cyber-Facing Defense and Warfare. Deployed to Germany to oversee development of neural bridge controls and ideomotor reflex interface matrices, in liaison with Jaeger Project. Deployed to Sydney to observe construction of first Mark I Jaegers. Given command of Coyote Tango, deployed to Kyoto to oversee final assembly. Active Jaeger service 2015-16, moved into command role after Onibaba engagement at personal request of PPDC Secretary General Dustin Krieger. Previously commanded Lima and Anchorage Shatterdomes before current assignment to Hong Kong. Instrumental in creation of current Kwoon training and assessment program as well as several other now-standard Ranger training modules.
NOTES
Otherwise exemplary service record marred only by reprimands for questionable judgment in the matter of adoption of Mako Mori (current Ranger, dossier available, q.v.). Medical staff suggest Pentecost's long-term use of Metharocin, post-absorption of high doses of radiation from insufficiently shielded reactors in Coyote Tango, are damaging his circulatory system. Command fitness and readiness should be monitored and successors designated on a High Command level.
* * *
29
FIREFIGHTING CREWS WERE BATTLING ALL OVER Kowloon to save the city and prevent the fires from getting into the XZ, where the wood-frame buildings would go up like pine needles. A fire in the XZ would release radioactive ash to rain down all over everyone in the area. Heavy helicopters and cargo planes crosshatched the sky overhead, dropping fire-retardant foam. The candles on the kaiju skull were out. Patiently, the members of the Church of the Breach relit them one by one.
Emergency crews were working through rubble, using dogs and sonar equipment to locate survivors. There were always more than anyone expected after something like this, one more testament to the resilience of humanity.
In the middle of all this chaos, which had been going on all night, Newt Geiszler was hard at work. He had a kaiju brain, and nothing was going to stop him now.
It was morning, the weather clear and sunny. Newt felt brand-new, with new frontiers opening up before him. He was about to do something no human being had ever done, creating a new scientific discipline that could never have existed before him. He was going to be a rock star.
He had to use a heavy mallet to drive the iron electrodes deep enough into Otachi Junior’s skull that they would reliably conduct the signal necessary for the Drift. He was sweating by the time he’d finished the task, and his nose was bleeding again. The inconvenience of a bloody nose just made him more impatient. Already he’d had to wait more than eight hours to start the experiment while Baby Otachi off-gassed all of its most toxic volatile compounds, assisted by some of the late Hannibal Chau’s carbon-dioxide pumping systems. Then he’d had to file a report because even with the world coming down around their ears and two new Category IVs flitting around the bottom of the ocean by the Breach, Marshal Pentecost demanded reports.
Newt had some theories about why the kaiju had not advanced. He figured he’d be proven right or wrong sometime in the next few hours, so he hadn’t bothered sharing his ideas with anyone. Operation Pitfall was on its own timetable. The Shatterdome’s heroic crews, led by the extra-heroic Tendo Choi, had gotten Gipsy Danger and Striker Eureka ready to go again inside eight hours. Pitfall was a go as soon as everyone could get the nuclear payload field-ready for abyssal pressures, which would be pretty soon.
For his part, Newt did science. If Pitfall worked, great! The world would be saved and they could go back to fighting among each other, rather than a common enemy. If not, the PPDC would need everything Kaiju Science could give it, and Newt had a feeling this Drift was going to give him some very interesting insights.
While he’d worked on preparing Baby Otachi’s body, Pan-Pac Defense Corps vehicles bearing soldiers and security equipment had arrived. They had put up plastic tents to keep the experiment out of the rain, and brought floodlights to keep the experiment out of the dark. One of those tents extended over most of Bab
y Otachi’s upper body. They had also brought Hermann Gottlieb, who was now fluttering around and getting in Newt’s way.
Newt wheeled his custom-built Pons unit through the last of the rain, which was almost over. There was a hint of light in the eastern sky, far out over the Pacific. The Breach was that way, thought Newt. It’s already morning there.
Gottlieb was listening to a Pan-Pac Defense radio monitor and fidgeting.
“They have two signatures in the Breach,” he said when Newt came in with the Neural Connector. “Two of them.”
“Hey, you want to help, give me a hand with this,” Newt said. “Neural interface is off the scale. That didn’t happen when I Drifted with the cold cuts.” Newt was excited. He didn’t care how many signatures there were on Tendo Choi’s screen.
“This can’t be right,” Gottlieb said. “There should be three Kaijus coming, not two.”
Ohhhhh, that’s right, Newt thought. I forgot this is all about you and your model, Hermann. So sorry to be busy saving the world instead. Also he was irritated that Hermann had pluralized “kaiju” like it was an English word.
“It hurts to be wrong, doesn’t it?” he said, all mock sympathy.
“I am not,” Gottlieb insisted. “But the only way to find out is to do this...”
The next word out of Hermann’s mouth shocked Newt so profoundly that for a moment he considered the possibility that he might have been wrong all along. Maybe Hermann wasn’t a pompous, prissy, egomaniacal number slave all the time after all.
That word was, “...together.”
Hermann grabbed one of the Neural Connector squid caps and mashed it down over his head.
“I’ll go with you. That’s what Jaeger pilots do, share the load.”
“You would do that with me?” Newt looked around, half expecting the world to be ending already. Biblically. Cats lying down with dogs, rains of frogs, rivers of blood, the whole works.
“With worldwide destruction a certain alternative, do I really have a choice?” Hermann asked.
Well, Newt thought. If you were going to put it like that...
“Say it with me, then!” He slapped his own squid cap on. “We’re gonna own this!”
Hermann made a fist like it was the first time in his life he had performed the action.
“We’re gonna own this,” he repeated, less than convincingly.
Okay, Newt thought. Not the rah-rah type. But we knew that.
“Yeah,” he said. “Pass me that cable over there.”
***
The assembled pilots and researchers and LOCCENT staffers and displaced techs whose Jaegers were in pieces at the bottom of Hong Kong bay all had one thing in common as they assembled in the Shatterdome with a gleam of dawn on the horizon.
They all knew they were going to die.
Chuck and Herc Hansen stood close together, but only Chuck was in uniform.
“The old man’s off his rocker,” Chuck said. “I can’t pilot Striker alone.”
Tendo Choi looked up from his workstation and called out, “Marshal on deck!”
Everyone turned and snapped to attention, and then they had one more thing in common: astonishment at the sight of Marshal Stacker Pentecost in full flight suit.
No one said a word until Mako approached Pentecost and he said to her, “Funny. I don’t remember it being so tight.”
Mako did not smile. “Getting back in a Jaeger will kill you,” she said.
“Not getting in one will kill us all.” Pentecost put a fatherly hand on her shoulder. “You are a brave, brave girl. I’m lucky to have seen you grow up.”
Mako nodded. Tears stood in her eyes but she did not let them fall.
“Now, if I’m going to get through this,” Pentecost said, “I’m going to need you to start protecting me.”
The prelaunch sequence for Striker Eureka and Gipsy Danger was well underway. Above them, the petals of the Shatterdome started to open.
Chuck strode up to Pentecost.
“You’re flying with me? How are we supposed to match up?” He made no effort to hide his skepticism, or his hostility toward the idea.
In any other circumstance, Pentecost would have torn him a new one for insubordination. But now, with bigger issues confronting them than disrespect for a senior officer, Pentecost just answered the question.
“I carry nothing into the Drift,” he said. “No memories, no rank. As for you, you’re easy. You got daddy issues? Check. You’re an egotistical jerk? Check. You’re a simple puzzle I solved on Day One.” With a look over at Herc, Pentecost added, “But you are your father’s son. We’ll match up just fine.”
Chuck looked back and forth between Pentecost and his father. Raleigh could tell he hadn’t expected Pentecost to cut into him like that.
“Works for me,” Chuck said eventually.
The petals were open and the dawn sky shed light on the gathering at the center of the Shatterdome. Pentecost stepped up onto the Jaeger hand, and stood on the backside at the edge of one of the maintenance bays. He waited, surveying the remains of the Jaeger project that he had sacrificed everything to sustain. They had been abandoned by the countries they were trying to protect. They had no money. They had no resources to build more Jaegers or upgrade the two that could still take the field. The kaiju were coming faster and faster, bigger and bigger, evolving week by week to answer the threats they encountered and shared via the hive mind Newt Geiszler had discovered. The two surviving Jaegers were heading out on a suicide mission... and today Stacker Pentecost was going to die.
When there was silence in the Shatterdome, and he had taken a moment to enjoy his last dawn on Earth, Stacker Pentecost spoke. He raised his voice so that the crew up on the LOCCENT mezzanine could hear him as well as the pilots and techs nearby.
“Today, on the edge of hope, at the end of time, we have chosen to believe,” he said. “Not only in ourselves, but in each other. To depend on each other. Today, not a man or woman in here now stands alone. Today will be the day they tell stories about. The day we face the monsters at our door. We take the fight to them.
“Today, we are canceling the apocalypse.”
It was a short speech, but as Pentecost often reminded himself, the Gettysburg Address could be read out loud in about a minute. A cheer went up, and he let it go for a moment. Then Pentecost stepped down and the crew of the Shatterdome got down to business. They had Jaegers to launch, and a nuclear payload to deliver right down the throat of the Breach.
* * *
Boneslum Millionaires; or, Kingpins of The Kaiju Black Market
by Anonymous
In every city where a kaiju has made landfall, there’s a guy like him: the guy who shows up just after the kaiju has gone down, greases palms, makes sure the authorities look the other way long enough for people—the right people—to get to work. The black market in kaiju parts is one of the biggest untaxed—by which we mean illegal—industries in the world, surpassing the trade in endangered species. Anything people used to get (or think they got) from tiger blood or bear gall bladders or rhino horns... now they think they get it from kaiju bits. And the godfather of that industry was Hannibal Chau.
He’s dead now. You may have heard. You may also have heard of the manner of his death, in which case you might see a certain poetic justice in the idea that kaiju kingpin Hannibal Chau was eaten by a prematurely born kaiju committing its single living act on this Earth. That’s karma, is one way to think about it.
But you only know about Hannibal Chau because of the ostentatious ninety-year-old fashions and loud elective dental work. Did he have style? Yeah, in the way that gangsters have style because if they don’t, the kinds of knuckledragging subhumans who work for them get ideas about taking over. Style keeps people cowed, especially when you combine it with violence. Was Hannibal Chau innovative? Absolutely. He saw the potential in the postmortem kaiju market and acted on it before anyone else. Now the kaiju market is worth billions, and even government agencies ne
ed to work with the kingpins because they want what the kingpins are selling: for research so they can save the human race. The stakes couldn’t be higher.
That’s why all the other kingpins, in Los Angeles and Sydney and Lima and Shanghai, are looking at each other and wondering who’s going to step into the void he left. With Chau out of the way, the kaiju black market is without its capo. There’s going to be a fight to replace him.
Not that any of it will matter if the kaiju keep on coming. Pretty soon they’ll be trading human parts on whatever passes for a black market wherever they come from.
* * *
30
NEWT PLUGGED IN THE LAST OF THE CABLES leading from the electrodes driven into Baby Otachi’s brain to the customized Pons, which he was already mentally designating the Geiszler Array. He went outside and asked some of the PPDC marines guarding the area what was going on back at the Shatterdome. They didn’t know.
“Well,” Newt said, “I’m about to do a kind of hairy experiment in here. You mind pulling the plug if it looks like things aren’t going as planned?”
One of the marines looked at the Geiszler Array and Baby Otachi, with Hermann standing at attention like an undertaker. Then he looked back at Newt.
“Are you kidding me?” he asked. “How the hell will we know if things aren’t going as planned?”
Well, Newt thought. That was a good point. He went back into the tent and tapped the squid cap into the Geiszler Array. Hermann had his own squid cap on already.