by Alex Irvine
The kaiju that had killed his brother.
Mako saw it too, and she wasn’t ready.
“What the—!?” she exclaimed.
Raleigh’s right arm tensed, and Mako’s did the same. Their connection was tight.
“I’m okay,” Raleigh said. “Let me control it.”
Then, before he could say anything else, Knifehead was gone and they were standing in a ruined cityscape. Abandoned and crushed cars littered a street under a rain of ashes.
Mako froze.
***
On the command mezzanine, the neural-handshake display exploded into visual noise.
“Both out of alignment!” Tendo Choi cried out.
Gipsy Danger thrashed around and then froze. Nobody was applauding now. Crews backed away. Somewhere an alarm was sounding.
Tendo heard Raleigh over the dedicated Conn-Pod channel.
“Mako, relax. Breathe,” he said. “Let it go. Don’t get stuck in a moment...”
Looking at the display, Tendo Choi thought that was good advice.
But probably too late.
***
“Mako! Mako!” Raleigh kept saying her name, but she wasn’t hearing him.
She unclipped her boots from the control platform’s restraints and stepped off. The neural handshake twisted and Raleigh smelled ashes. He heard sirens, and the sound of helicopters overhead.
***
Mako crouched, scooting down a flight of cement steps. She held a red shoe in one hand, its broken laces trailing as she got down to the street. The other shoe was on her foot. Her stockings were torn and filthy.
“Mom? Dad?”
Ash fell like snow. From somewhere nearby came a rumble like an earthquake, but it wasn’t an earthquake. The sirens for earthquakes were different. This was a kaiju siren.
“Where are you?”
The rumble intensified and Mako froze, dropping lower as the vibrations threatened to knock her off her feet. Then she saw it, rearing back over the buildings down the block, a tanklike clawed monster taller than any building she could see. It was a twenty-story crab, blue-green with yellow streaks, moving on four pointed legs that punched holes deep in the street with each step, smashing buildings out of its way with pincered forelegs. Its head stuck out more than a crab’s, with slitted yellow eyes and jaw mandibles that snapped open and closed as it moved.
Kaiju.
It roared and crushed a building with a sweep of one claw, propelling a cloud of dust into the air. Mako was already running away, quickly lost, turning this way and that in streets strewn with rubble and silent human forms...
When the monster stepped in front of her, the sound of its footfalls was like the world ending. Mako was screaming. She turned and fled back in another direction, with the kaiju tearing through buildings as it moved. It had seen her, and she could not outrun it. She could only hope to hide.
She cut around corners as quickly as her feet would carry her and ducked into an alley. A figure in some kind of suit and helmet was there, watching her. Mako’s father had always told her not to talk to strangers but she couldn’t help herself.
“My dad,” she said. “He said to wait for him. He said he would be right back...”
The kaiju was coming closer.
“He said monsters were not real,” Mako said, and raised her arms to protect herself from the billowing clouds of dust.
***
In the Conn-Pod, Mako raised both arms. A signal light went off, triggering a heads-up display warning: WEAPON SYSTEM ENGAGED.
***
From the command mezzanine, Tendo Choi scrambled to get control as Gipsy Danger’s plasma cannons deployed from their forearm armatures. The smell of ozone washed over him. Emergency lighting went on all over the Shatterdome, bathing the scene in a deep red. On the floor below, crews scattered.
The cannons swung around, barrels flaring as they charged toward capacity. Waste heat created wind inside the Shatterdome. The Russian crew, watching from the gantry raised next to Cherno Alpha, saw the plasma cannons come to bear on them. They ran.
The windows of the command mezzanine rattled with the storm inside the Shatterdome. Dust sifted down from the rafters. Some of the displays went out.
“Go to failsafe!” Tendo Choi screamed over the noise. He hit a button to trigger the failsafe protocol.
Nothing happened.
An engineer at another console shouted, “No response! There’s a problem with the neural blocker!”
“Everybody out of here, now!” Tendo Choi started yanking cables out of the control console, hoping to cause some kind of crash in Gipsy Danger’s systems. It occurred to him that he’d shouted in Chinese, but people seemed to have gotten the message. Techs and command staff ran for the back of the LOCCENT and out the door into the Shatterdome’s interior, past the window that gave such a fine view of Hong Kong Bay
Tendo Choi and Herc Hansen were the last people in the LOCCENT. Herc was already hauling at the heavy conduits that carried power to the main LOCCENT terminal banks.
The storm in the Shatterdome quieted, but the flare from the plasma cannons’ vents was too bright to look at.
They were fully charged.
Tendo Choi didn’t want to think about what the Shatterdome would look like if those cannons went off inside it. The Jaegers themselves might survive a salvo, but the facilities wouldn’t. The repair bays would be reduced to slag. The suiting areas, all of the living spaces, the mess hall... Gipsy Danger’s I-19s would shred those like they were cobwebs. One shot to the LOCCENT would leave the Hong Kong Shatterdome deaf, dumb, and blind until they could completely rebuild the electronics, which would overload and melt at the merest touch of superheated plasma. And that wasn’t even considering what would happen to the people who might be in the repair bays or the LOCCENT itself. Any human caught in the blast of an I-19 wouldn’t leave enough behind to interest a crow.
Long story short, if those plasma cannons discharged, what was left of the Jaeger program’s combat capability would take a catastrophic hit. The next kaiju would wave at them as it went by on its way to destroy Brisbane or Jakarta.
Tendo Choi and Herc tore the rest of the cables out of the wall. It didn’t make any difference.
“Come on, Raleigh, man,” Tendo murmured. “Come on.”
***
The street outside the ally shook with the kaiju’s steps. Windows cracked and fell from their frames in sparkling showers onto ash-covered cars. Mako huddled against the wall. There was nothing else she could do. She looked down at the red shoes in her hand.
“Mako,” said the man in the suit and helmet. “This is just a memory. Snap out of it. This isn’t real.”
She shook her head. “Monsters are real. Monsters are real...”
The helicopter sounds grew louder and louder, drowning out the sound of the kaiju’s havoc. A shadow passed over Mako and she looked up to see a huge robot, carried by giant helicopters. As quickly as it was there, it was gone... and the monster loomed in the mouth of the alley.
Its head was low to the ground. It spotted her. Lunging toward her, it collapsed the street-side walls of the closest buildings and crumpled the trash container closest to Mako like it was made of foil. Its claws tore long gashes in the concrete as it dragged its arm back for another swipe.
Mako couldn’t move. She was going to die. Her father had told her monsters weren’t real, but she was going to die.
Then something jerked the kaiju out of view. The street was suddenly empty.
Mako could see immense craters where the monster’s legs had punched deep into the ground. Incredible sounds echoed around her. Mako covered her ears as three cars skidded and tumbled down the street. Despite herself she edged a little closer to the mouth of the alley. What could have grabbed the kaiju? She had heard stories of the giant robots, but she had also heard that they could not stop the kaiju... and her father had said there were no monsters.
She didn’t know what to think.
Her ears rang. The kaiju, grappling with the robot, sprawled into the buildings across the street away from a powerful knee blow, smashing them into ruins. The robot’s faceplate shone a brilliant blue through the dust and smoke. Large pillars stood from its shoulders. Where one of its hands should have been, instead there was a cannon barrel, its interior beginning to glow.
The monster struck back, knocking the robot out of view, and then springing after it.
Mako stayed where she was. She did not dare go out in the street, even to see this titanic clash of giants. She held the red shoe with the broken lace tight to her breast. The other red shoe was on her foot, dirty and smudged. The thunder of the battle rolled toward her, reverberating from the fronts of buildings.
Then a single flash lit the street like lightning striking. Like a hundred lightning strikes, and a hundred claps of thunder all at once. There was a brief moment of silence— or what seemed like silence through the ringing in Mako’s ears—and then the kaiju fell into view, toppling down to hit the street with an impact that knocked her sprawling.
She picked herself up and saw that the man in the suit and helmet, farther back down the alley, had fallen too. But he still had no ash on his suit. How could that be? Mako stepped toward the mouth of the alley and out onto the street. Through the noise in her ears, she heard car alarms. Thousands of car alarms.
The kaiju monster lay silent and dead. Smoke rose from its wounds. The street melted around its corpse. Mako stayed back. Then she saw the robot and took another step back.
It was as big as the kaiju, and also wounded. One of its arms was heavily damaged, the shoulder joint spitting sparks. Oil and something else shiny streamed in rivulets down its body from gaping holes. It was looking away from her. Steam vented from ports on the back of its head.
When it turned to face her, she gasped. Half of its head was missing, and its glowing blue faceplate was shattered. Through the empty space where the rest of its head should have been, she saw a man, the pilot, standing alone. The sun through the clouds of ash and smoke glowed around him. He was tall, commanding, dark-skinned and bleeding. He looked down at her and Mako wanted to accuse him of something.
Her father had said there were no monsters.
***
Pentecost rushed into the LOCCENT. He saw Tendo Choi and Herc Hansen tearing desperately at the cables.
“Take them offline!” he shouted, knowing it was unnecessary but unable to stop himself. He jumped right in and started tearing out cables too. A fiber-optic bundle at the far end of the console ripped loose with a puff of smoke and a squeal. Right inside the window looking out over the interior of the Shatterdome, Herc Hansen hauled up a conduit as thick as his arm while Tendo worked at the coupling linking it to the terminal interface. It came loose as Gipsy Danger swiveled and leveled the plasma cannon directly at the LOCCENT.
The Jaeger halted. Its operating lights died out. The plasma cannons vented a blast of waste heat and retracted, the glow from the plasma focal chambers slowly dying away.
Pentecost surveyed the damage. He’d never heard the Shatterdome so quiet. Looking around the LOCCENT, he saw that Chuck Hansen remained. He was looking out at Gipsy Danger, jaw tight with anger and mouth twisted in a look of pure scorn.
***
Inside the Conn-Pod, Raleigh felt the neural handshake break for good as Gipsy Danger went dark. He kicked loose of the command platform, mind still full of what he’d just seen.
He’d heard the name Stacker Pentecost before he’d ever entered the Jaeger program. He’d even heard about the Tokyo fight, and how Pentecost had beaten the monster down and killed it alone, after his co-pilot Tamsin Sevier had suffered a seizure and neural collapse inside Coyote Tango’s cockpit. Raleigh had known all that. But it was one thing to have heard about something like that. Feeling it, seeing it, via the Drift was something else.
And he hadn’t known about Mako. Pentecost had saved her, not just on the day the kaiju known as Onibaba tore through Tokyo but after that, pulling her out of an orphanage and guiding her along the path toward becoming a Ranger. Raleigh even thought he remembered her in Alaska, right before... well, right before he’d left.
No wonder Pentecost didn’t want to send her into the field. Also, no wonder it was killing her not to go. All she wanted was to avenge her parents... and follow in the footsteps of the man who had become the only parent she had. Pentecost had made her a Ranger, and now, after this, he would never let her fly
Mako was on her knees, arms loose and dangling by her side. Raleigh squatted next to her and laid her gently on her side. She was still coming out of it and Raleigh knew that as soon as she was fully aware, the realization of what she had done would crush her.
“Hey,” he said. “It’s okay.”
She just looked at him.
Raleigh knew it wasn’t okay, and he knew Mako knew it. But what else could he say?
PAN-PACIFIC DEFENSE CORPS
PERSONNEL DOSSIER
Name:
Mako Mori
Assigned team:
Rangers, ID R-MMAK_204.19-V
Date of active service:
March 4, 2020
Current service status:
Active; based Hong Kong Shatterdome
BIOGRAPHY
Born April 23, 2003. Father Masao Mori, swordmaker. Mother Sumako Mori. Only child. Grew up in Tanegashima in a small village. First trip to Tokyo, when her father required treatment for cancer, coincided with attack of kaiju Onibaba, in which both of her parents died. She was close witness to the end of the battle between Onibaba and Coyote Tango.
Mori was orphaned and Coyote Tango's pilot, Stacker Pentecost, took an interest in her. Pentecost adopted Mori and saw her put through school. He is ambivalent about her choice to join the Jaeger program, acknowledging her mechanical and engineering skills but concerned that her psychological scars will destabilize any neural handshake she might enter.
Mori is emotionally invested in becoming a pilot—she wishes to avenge her parents and prove her worth due to the common assumption that she is favored by Pentecost. She feels burdened by these motivations, and frustrated because her only path toward redeeming herself is via a combat role in Gipsy Danger.
PPDC psychological staff suggest that while Pentecost may be correct about Mori's emotional fragility, her skill set suits her to a Conn-Pod more than a repair bay. As always, however, psychological staff's role in Jaeger assignments is advisory only.
NOTE
Mori has been the technical lead on the Mark III Restoration Project that has restored Gipsy Danger to combat readiness.
16
IN THE AFTERMATH, PENTECOST TOOK A MOMENT just to breathe. He wasn’t feeling up to this. Truth was, he wasn’t feeling up to much of anything. But the kaiju weren’t interested in how he was feeling. The human race wasn’t interested in how he was feeling. He had a job to do, a sworn duty to perform. He would rest when they nailed his coffin lid shut, and not before.
Tendo Choi crawled out from under the command console, fistfuls of loose cables dragging behind him.
“I want a full inspection of Gipsy Danger,” Pentecost said. “Report on my desk by nightfall.”
“There’s nothing wrong with Gipsy Danger,” Tendo said. “It’s Mako’s connection. The machine was responding directly to her fear. I’ve never seen that.”
Pentecost was thinking of the haunted-Jaeger stories the Rangers told each other, and the techs told each other about the Rangers.
“Get them out of there,” he said.
***
Twenty minutes later, Pentecost was in his office with Herc Hansen listening to Chuck Hansen vent.
“This is ridiculous!” Chuck declared, continuing a conversation he’d been having mostly with himself up until now. “They’re putting our lives at risk—and our whole mission—against an enemy that’s already kicking our ass. You think I want them on my wing when I try to
drop a nuke into the Breach? They don’t deserve to pilot a Jaeger, sir.”
The last part of the younger Hansen’s rant was delivered from Pentecost’s office doorway. On the final “sir,” he threw the door open and stormed out. Herc started to follow, then stopped.
Pentecost saw him look back and forth. Divided loyalties, he thought. I know a little about that.
“Gimme a moment,” Herc said to his son. Chuck nodded. Herc then shut the door and came back to Pentecost.
“Your son is out of line,” Pentecost said. “He’s arrogant, he’s overbearing...”
“And he’s right,” Herc said. “Look, I know you don’t like him, but this time he’s right. They aren’t ready for combat.”
Pentecost heard him out, but he wasn’t quite ready to acquiesce in this Hansen rush to judgment. They didn’t have all the facts. A clipboard on his desk held a fat sheaf of printed readouts from Gipsy Danger’s trial.
“We’re still examining Gipsy Danger,” he said. “There might have been a mechanical failure—”
“Stacker,” said Herc. He was probably the only person in the Shatterdome or its associated facilities who called Stacker Pentecost by his first name, and then only in private. “I am a father. I know how you feel. But we both saw it. We both know it.”
Pentecost let the clipboard fall. He looked up to meet Herc’s gaze.
“I saw it. I know it. That doesn’t make it any easier.”
“Oh, I know,” Herc said. “Remember, Stacker. You and me, we go all the way back to the beginning. We piloted Mark Is, we stood up against the first kaiju, and we watched the next generation of Rangers come up and stand on our shoulders. That’s the way of it. Now we have to face up to two things about this next generation. One, they might not be as good as we were. Two, they’re going to take over for us either way.
“But the thing is, boss,” Herc went on, “if we let ’em go out too early, all we’re doing is killing ourselves quicker.”