Pacific Rim

by Alex Irvine

  EVACUATION AND RESETTLEMENT PROGRAMS

  Citizens of Pacific coastal cities will be receiving further information as new housing is constructed farther inland, prioritized according to progress on the Wall.

  COMPLETION OF UNDERSEA BARRIERS IN THE SOUTH PACIFIC

  The kaiju must be contained at all costs, and under no circumstances will they be allowed to break out of the Pacific and threaten Europe, India, or the East Coast of the Americas.

  The Working Group’s members wish to thank Marshal Pentecost, his Rangers, and the entire staff of the Jaeger program for their courageous service.

  3

  STACKER PENTECOST FELT BESIEGED ON ALL sides. He had just lost two promising Rangers, the incoming class of new Jaeger academy graduates was bringing with it a particular set of problems, and the Jaeger graveyard at Oblivion Bay near San Francisco was acquiring new occupants at an ominous rate. Yancy Becket was dead, his body lost at sea. Raleigh Becket had quit the Jaeger program, suffering from clear post-traumatic stress, compounded by his mercurial temperament and survivor’s guilt. Gipsy Danger was crippled and would have to be scrapped.

  On top of that, there was young Mako Mori to deal with. She was ready to stop being his student and start being a Ranger... or so she thought. Pentecost thought differently

  But that was a personal issue. Pentecost put it aside and set his mind to the difficult task before him.

  He stood in the Anchorage LOCCENT looking at a bank of monitors, each displaying the face of a different member of the United Nations Pan-Pacific Breach Working Group, a portion of the Subcommittee on Kaiju Defense and Security. From their expressions, he knew how the conversation would go, and he wasn’t going to like it. He’d seen the press release, and more importantly, he’d been part of the Group’s internal conversations for the past several months. Pentecost was dealing with frightened people, and frightened people always did one of two things: fight or flee. Since these frightened people were bureaucrats, they were just about guaranteed not to fight.

  But Stacker Pentecost was not a bureaucrat. If he was going to go down, he was going down fighting.

  “We are losing Jaegers faster than we can make them,” the Working Group’s designated speaker said. “And cities. Lima, Seattle, Vladivostok... this is no longer a battle or a strategy. It’s a slow, painful surrender. And we can’t surrender. I can’t surrender.”

  Each member of the Group, a standing subcommittee of the United Nations since 2016, gazed at Pentecost from their individual monitors, their faces carefully arranged masks of professional, diplomatic regret. Around Pentecost, LOCCENT was silent. They had no more funding to keep it going. The bureaucrats were fleeing, and the first thing they always took on their way out was the money.

  The only other people in the room were Tendo Choi, in his standard bowtie, suspenders, and ducktail haircut, and one of Pentecost’s veteran Rangers, Herc Hansen. Both stood out of view of the monitors.

  “The kaiju evolved,” the British UN representative said. Pentecost didn’t know him. “The Jaegers aren’t the most viable line of defense anymore.”

  “I am aware,” Pentecost began, then stopped himself. He reconsidered his approach. “It’s my Rangers who die every time a Jaeger goes down. But I’m asking you for one last chance. One final assault, with everything we’ve got—”

  A fight, he said to himself. Instead fleeing just so we can die somewhere else.

  “Marshal Pentecost,” the Australian rep cut in, “we’ve been through this before. The simple fact is the Breach is impenetrable.”

  “With our current assets, perhaps,” Pentecost said. “But just as the kaiju have evolved, we are evolving as well. We have the Mark V-E Jaeger through the design phase and ready for prototyping. It’s ready to go as soon as the funding is released.”

  “That just isn’t on the table, I’m afraid,” the Australian said.

  Pentecost felt his last glimmer of hope disappear. The 5E was supposed to be built in Australia. If their own representative wasn’t going to stand up for it, how could it survive?

  But they needed it. They kaiju were getting bigger and stronger. The Jaegers needed to match them, hell, exceed them. Not only that, they needed to make a push toward the Breach.

  “My Kaiju Science researchers have made enormous strides toward understanding the physics of the Breach. You have their report. The more we understand about the Breach, the closer we get to being able to destroy it... if we have the combat assets to take the fight to the kaiju,” he said.

  Pentecost had a savage dream of leading a force of Jaegers through the Breach to whatever lay on the other side, and doing to the kaiju exactly what they had done to humanity. He would need a hell of a lot more in the way of Jaeger tech and combat support if he was ever to make that dream a reality. There also didn’t seem to be any way to get into the Breach, but that was a matter of building tougher Jaegers that could withstand the electromagnetic storm it created.

  They were getting closer. They couldn’t stop now. Not after so many had died.

  “Nothing is impenetrable,” he continued. “We just have not yet discovered the tool that will penetrate the Breach. That is why our mission has grown even more critical. The Mark V-E Jaeger is the centerpiece of the next stage of that mission. It is crucial that we be able to continue developing to meet the threat.”

  “The Group feels otherwise, Marshal Pentecost,” said the member from Panama.

  Pentecost wasn’t surprised. Her country had just received an enormous windfall, billions of dollars to construct a barrier to the Pacific entrance of the Panama Canal. The kaiju had not found the Canal yet, but they had hit Guatemala and Ecuador. It was only a matter of time. The money for the Canal barrier had come straight out of the final-phase prototype funding for the Mark V-E Jaeger. The thought made Pentecost furious.

  Picking right up as if the whole thing had been rehearsed—which Pentecost didn’t doubt it had—the American put in, “The world appreciates what you and your Rangers have done, Marshal. But I’m not going to expend my country’s remaining military forces and weapons on futile attacks when I could be protecting my people. And those people feel safer behind a wall.”

  The Wall, Pentecost thought. The goddamn Wall. Humanity’s monument to fear, to flight instead of fight.

  “But they’re not safer,” he said. “The walls won’t hold. My research team says the frequency of attacks is about to reach a saturation point. They’re going to spike.”

  “We’ve intensified the coastal wall program and moved citizens and supplies three hundred miles inland to the safe zones,” the British rep said. “That is the prudent course, and that is the course we will take.”

  Pentecost wanted to ask the British rep where exactly in Britain was three hundred miles inland. For that matter, why did the British have a voice in this at all? He was British by birth himself, but he had also been a front-line Jaeger pilot. He had killed kaiju and had the scars to show for it, both inside and out. All of this flashed through his mind in a swell of anger. But he controlled himself and stuck to his theme.

  “Safe zones that only the rich and the powerful can buy their way into,” he said. “What about the rest?”

  “Watch your tone, Marshal,” the American rep said.

  Pentecost looked at the man for a long moment. A number of responses went through his mind. Take the high road, he told himself.

  “Fear and walls won’t save anyone,” he said. “You can huddle in caves with hope as a pillow, but it won’t work. When the last Jaeger falls and the kaiju take the shores, they will not stop. They’ll keep coming until east meets west. There will no longer be any safe zones. Nothing will be left.”

  “You have your answer, Marshal,” the American rep said. “After the eight months needed to begin the decommissioning of the remaining Shatterdomes, the United Nations will no longer be funding the Jaeger program. You are free to continue it, and I’m sure that a man of your determination will find a
way to keep Jaegers in the field. We will welcome their interventions when and if more kaiju appear. However, this body has decided that the best interests of the human race are served by acknowledging that our finite resources are more effectively applied to a sure defense than to a reckless offense. Good luck to you, Marshal.”

  The monitors went dark.

  That was that. The bureaucrats of the world had chosen flight.

  Pentecost took a moment to gather himself. Concentrating on every motion, he removed a pill box from his uniform pocket and swallowed one of the tablets. He’d have to take care of himself if the next weeks and months unfolded as he expected.

  “So that’s it?” Tendo Choi asked from the other end of the command platform.

  Herc Hansen approached and the three of them stood in the darkened and quiet LOCCENT.

  “Suits and ties and flashy smiles,” Herc said. “That’s all they are.”

  Stacker Pentecost shot him a look. Herc was right, but Pentecost also believed in respecting authority.

  Until, that is, the duly constituted authorities proved themselves unable to govern. Pentecost unclipped his Marshal’s wings from his uniform and set them on the table. If any of the UN reps had still been watching, the gesture would have been clear to them; as it was, the significance of it registered immediately with Herc and Tendo.

  “We don’t need them,” said Stacker Pentecost.

  He was free to continue the program, the Group had said. As long as he could find a way to keep it alive.

  Well, he thought, there might be such a way. It was distasteful, perhaps, but this was war.

  PART II

  FIVE YEARS LATER

  PAN-PACIFIC DEFENSE CORPS

  PERSONNEL DOSSIER

  NAME

  Raleigh Becket

  ASSIGNED TEAM

  Rangers; ID R-RBEC 122.21-B

  DATE OF ACTIVE SERVICE

  July 12, 2017

  CURRENT SERVICE STATUS

  Inactive

  BIOGRAPHY

  Born December 11, 1998, second of three. Older brother Yancy (q.v., also an active-duty Ranger, KIA February 29, 2020), younger sister Jazmine. Parents deceased. Entered Jaeger Academy at Kodiak June 1, 2016, qualified the next year. Assigned with brother Yancy as Gipsy Danger's inaugural crew. First deploy October 17, 2017, brought down kaiju Yamarashi in Los Angeles. Four subsequent kills, all in Gipsy Danger and all with Yancy Becket as co-pilot. Deployed to Lima Shatterdome in 2019, then Alaska in 2020.

  Combat citations for bravery in PSJ-18 and MN-19 engagements.

  During engagement with kaiju AK-20 “Knifehead,” co-pilot Yancy Becket was KIA. Survived and assumed solo control of Gipsy Danger but was dismissed for disobeying orders prior to engagement. Refused survivor benefits. Also refused mustering-out brain scan requested to analyze RB's ability to pilot Gipsy Danger after loss of neural handshake.

  COMMAND ASSESSMENT

  Skillful but prone to lapses in judgment. Disrespectful of command structure. Strong-willed, with both positive and negative consequences.

  NOTES

  Last known location Nome AK. Believed to be working on anti-kaiju wall construction.

  ADDENDUM

  Candidate for re-enlistment?—SP 12/2024

  4

  THE SIGN ON THE WALL READ: ALASKA ANTI-KAIJU barrier: keeping our coasts safe. For miles on either side of the sign, and rising more than four-hundred feet above it, the Wall itself wordlessly repeated the sign’s promise.

  Raleigh Becket didn’t believe it for a minute.

  Maybe the rest of them did. Maybe they thought that concrete and rebars and I-beams could hold back a kaiju. But none of them had ever seen a kaiju. Raleigh Becket had seen five, up close and personal, and killed every one. With Yancy gone, though, he hadn’t seen the point in going on. Who else was he going to Drift with? Some random Ranger wannabe, deemed compatible by the eggheads after a bunch of tests? He was supposed to do that after sharing the Drift with his brother? No.

  That was why Raleigh was standing in the crowd of Wall workers at the morning muster. A light snow was falling off and on, and it was cold. Typical Alaska, even the more temperate parts like Sitka, Raleigh’s current worksite. At least it wasn’t Nome. Also it was a hell of a lot colder in the shadow of the Wall, but since it was morning they were on the sunny side. When they came off shift that afternoon, they would be coming from the deep freeze of forty stories up to the deep freeze of late afternoon in the shadows. Raleigh preferred the mornings.

  Usually the morning muster was a by-the-numbers harangue about which materials needed to get where, which parts of the Wall were due for what kind of work, et cetera and so on. Raleigh tuned it all out most mornings, but this morning the shift foreman, a disagreeable side of beef by the name of Miles, varied his schtick.

  “I got good news and I got bad news, guys,” he said. “What do you want first?”

  Near Miles but on the other side of the crowd from where Raleigh stood watching, a portly guy with a roll half-stuffed into his face called out, “The bad news.”

  “Well,” Miles said, “three guys died yesterday working the top of the Wall.”

  He let that sink in for a minute, as he always did when he announced fatalities. It wasn’t unusual; they were building the Wall fast, and nobody complained about workplace safety with the fate of the human race on the line.

  “Jeez,” the guy with the roll said. “What about the good news?”

  Miles held up three red ration cards, fanned out in one hand like he was about to do a card trick.

  “I got three new openings... top of the Wall,” he said.

  The guy with the roll took one immediately.

  “I got no choice,” he said to whoever would listen. “Five mouths to feed.”

  The second red ration card disappeared, but there didn’t appear to be much interest in the third. Duty on top of the Wall was about the most dangerous work you could do this side of kaiju dentistry. That was why you got the better ration cards, but dead men didn’t eat.

  “No takers?” Miles called out.

  There was a pause. Then Raleigh walked up to him and reached out.

  “I’ll do it.”

  Miles turned and held out the card before he’d registered who had spoken.

  “Oh,” he said. “Flyboy. Still sticking around? You sure you got the cojones to work way up there?”

  Raleigh didn’t take the bait.

  “I’m comfortable with heights,” he said evenly

  Miles didn’t give him the card.

  “Is that right? Well shut up and make sure you don’t swan dive. I got nobody left to mop you up. Comprende?”

  Raleigh took the card and followed the rest of the up-top crew to the elevator. He could feel Miles staring at him as he walked.

  ***

  Feet spaced across two parallel beams fifty feet above the framed part of the Wall and a hell of a lot farther from the ground, Raleigh welded the last angle brace from those parallel beams to a vertical one that stood another thirty feet above them. It was the highest point of the Wall. If you looked south, you could see the same thing all the way to the horizon: the Wall, different parts of it in various stages of completion depending on terrain and crew availability.

  If you looked north, the same, all the way to Nome and the North Slope. No kaiju had ever appeared that far north, but it didn’t do any good to only build part of a wall. If it had been up to the brain trust behind the Wall project, it would have extended across the Arctic coast all the way to Newfoundland.

  Raleigh finished the weld and waited for it to cool so he could get a look at it. Solid. He kicked the brace, just out of superstition, and clipped himself into a safety harness.

  He jumped off the edge of the Wall and enjoyed the view for the fifty-foot drop down to the main up-top materials staging area, a steel platform bristling with crane arms. There, the chatty guy who liked rolls was trimming
the edge of a beam. His name, Raleigh had discovered unwillingly, was Tommy.

  “You’re Raleigh, right?” Tommy said as Raleigh unclipped and came over to help prep the beam so it could finish its trip to the top.

  Here it comes, Raleigh thought. He nodded.

  “Is it true what they say, that you used to ride a Jaeger?”

  Not ride exactly, Raleigh thought. But he didn’t contest the point. He nodded again.

  “And then you crashed one?” Tommy went on.

  For the third time Raleigh nodded.

  Tommy whistled. “Don’t those things cost something like sixty billion dollars each?”

  Because he couldn’t stand to just keep nodding, Raleigh said, “Never got the bill.”

  Tommy stared at him like he wasn’t sure whether Raleigh was joking. For a while they worked together in silence. They got the beam lashed to a crane and as it lifted away to the highest reach of the Wall.

  “So how’d you end up in a hole like this?” Tommy asked.

  Raleigh had been hoping that Tommy would shut up. He looked over at him and said, “I love the hours. And the silence.”

  Nodding and completely missing the point, Tommy said, “Oh, me too. Love it. Some people just don’t get it. They yap and yap and they don’t know when to stop...”

  Then he started talking about his kids. Raleigh sighed and flipped down his safety visor. He wouldn’t be able to hear Tommy over the sound of the welding torch... he hoped.

  ***

  That night they did what they always did, and stopped by the commissary to pick up the day’s rations. Raleigh was walking away from the booth where a bored functionary stamped cards when he heard the word “kaiju”. He looked up.