by Alex Irvine
Seconds later, the pieces of Otachi came tumbling down to their own crashing impacts in different parts of Hong Kong.
Now’s my chance, Newt thought. He ran back toward the corner of Fong and Tull, through the wake of destruction left by Otachi and Gipsy Danger. Emergency crews, sirens... bodies in the streets. Newt saw it, and knew it would bother him later, but right then he had one thing on his mind.
He caught Hannibal Chau coming out of his pharmacy with his crew of goons behind him.
“Okay, go for the wings first, the Germans go crazy for those things,” Chau was saying. Then he saw Newt and stopped.
Newt imagined what he must look like. Bloodied, covered in dust and grime, glasses broken, clothes torn and filthy. He’d seen a lot in the past couple of hours. He’d learned a lot from the kaiju-Drift hangover. And now was the time to put it into action.
“We made a deal,” he said to Hannibal Chau. “You owe me a brain.”
***
Chau didn’t like it, but he couldn’t back out... or maybe he could have and just chose not to. Newt didn’t care. What he cared about was a kaiju brain, and he was going to get one. This one, formerly belonging to the Category IV known as Otachi.
He was watching city sanitation trucks hose away blue kaiju fluids before they could completely melt the pavement around where this half of Otachi had landed. On the partial corpse, which included Otachi’s lower body and one of its forelimbs, work crews operating heavy equipment peeled back layers of flesh. Different layers and pieces were worth different amounts to different markets, but Hannibal Chau saw money in every molecule of dead kaiju. Acid smoke rose around collecting crews in hazmat suits as they plucked off skin parasites and put them in jars.
Chau himself was walking the perimeter of the work site, issuing directions and maintaining order. Newt had to hustle to keep up with him.
“I still can’t believe what you did to me,” Newt complained. “I could’ve been eaten.” His voice sounded funny because he’d stuffed tissue in his nose to stop it bleeding.
“That was the plan,” Chau said. “Fortunately for you it didn’t become necessary.”
Newt tried to snort, but it didn’t work because of the tissue. All it did was pressurize his head.
“Lesson learned,” he said. They paused near a large opening in the corpse, with hoses leading into it. “What’s taking so long?” he demanded. He needed the brain, he needed to get back to work, and this delay was killing him. They’d been here for nearly an hour already.
Chau paused to consult a portable monitor showing a team of interior scouts who wore old-fashioned diving suits that looked like they’d been stolen from a museum.
“We pump the cavity full of CO2, like any laparoscopic surgery,” Chau said.
Newt knew this part. “That delays the acidic reaction, yeah.”
“Allows for harvesting. But my boys need oxygen pumped.” Chau pointed at some of the hoses. “They move slow.” Still looking at the monitor, he spoke into a radio. “Boys, what’s going on in there?”
“We’ve reached the upper pelvic area,” one of the scouts answered. Moving to the twenty-fifth vertebra...”
On the camera feed, Newt could see the scouts shining flashlights through the labyrinth of viscera and connective tissue. The gigantic vertebrae towered over them.
“Secondary brain,” the scout said.
Newt’s pulse quickened. About time, he thought.
Then the scout said, “It’s damaged.”
“What?” Newt looked at the feed. He could see the secondary brain, nestled at the juncture of the spine and the immense arch of the kaiju’s pelvis. It was clearly burned and pieces of it had been torn away. Newt was crestfallen. He needed that brain.
“Wait,” the scout said.
“Wait? What does he mean, wait?” Newt peered into the feed and saw the scout’s flashlight trained on a membranous wall near the damaged secondary brain. Something was moving behind the membrane.
At the same time, he heard rhythmic noise over the radio in Hannibal Chau’s hand. Thump... thump... thump...
“Can you hear that?” the scout asked. “A heartbeat.” He sounded more curious than frightened, which was exactly how Newt felt. Otachi couldn’t still be alive, but there was clearly movement in the membrane, amid a tangle of organs.
“Oh my God,” Newt said. “It can’t be.”
“What?” Chau asked.
“It’s pregnant,” Newt breathed.
Maybe it was the light. Maybe it was unexpected sounds, or the trauma of impact, or the blind imperative that drove any living thing to survive at all costs. Whatever the reason, at that moment the unborn Otachi tore out of its birthing sac in a flood of kaiju amniotic fluid that swirled around the fleeing scouts. The radio connection dissolved into static and the video cut out.
Seconds later the newborn kaiju thrashed through the opening in Otachi’s abdomen and flopped out onto the street.
Seeing it was enough to make Newt rethink everything he thought he knew about kaiju procreation... and Precursor strategy. He’d known they had reproductive organs, and assumed that they could breed, but if a pregnant kaiju had been sent, and gone into combat first before trying to deliver its child...
Newt wouldn’t have thought it possible for the news from the Anteverse to get worse, but he had a feeling it just had.
They wouldn’t have to build every individual. All they had to do was hit on the right model and get two of them through the Breach to start breeding. If Hermann was right—a long shot, but always possible—that could start happening any time now. If four kaiju came through, and two of them could breed with each other, the other two could keep the Jaegers busy long enough that before anyone could do anything about it, the coastlines of Planet Earth would all be under siege at once by native-born kaiju.
This would not be one of them, thankfully.
The creature squealed, snapping its fanged mouth and rolling blind eyes in every direction, a newborn nightmare twice the size of a bull elephant. The crew scattered. The baby demolished Chau’s assembled recovery equipment and some of the slower crew members along with it. Newt, mesmerized, still maintained enough of a survival instinct to take a few steps back. Clearly this creature was premature, unformed. It gasped and rattled, scraping claws across the pavement and leaving a trail of amniotic fluid as it tried to drag itself away from the corpse of its parent.
Newt noticed as he scrambled away that its umbilical cord was wrapped around its torso and neck. Reaching the limits of the cord’s length, the newborn Otachi lost its momentum and sagged to the pavement, emitting a long wheeze. Its claws still scrabbled at the concrete and its tail flicked around on the street as if it already might have the first glimmerings of a secondary nervous system operating it independently. A surge of fluid, the fetal version of Otachi’s corrosive bile, flooded out of its mouth, smoking and sizzling on the ground. The tail dropped and the newborn kaiju grew quiet.
After a long pause, Newt and Chau approached it.
“Gone,” Chau said. Newt could see him calculating how much a fetal kaiju would bring him on some black market or other. He was also getting his swagger back after running for his life a few seconds before. “Umbilical cord wrapped around its neck. Lungs weren’t fully formed. Could only live outside the womb for a minute or two.” Full of his own particular showboating sense of grandeur, he flicked open the butterfly knife he’d used to pick Newt’s nose and buried it in the dead kaiju’s forehead. “Ugly little bastard.”
Newt relaxed a little. He took a step away from its head, wanting to get a look at the rest of it before decay set in. Hey, he thought. A brain. It has a brain I can use. Maybe even two!
He looked back to tell Chau this as Chau shouted an order in Chinese to one of the recovery crew. Then he reached out to work the knife loose from the dead baby kaiju’s head. It spasmed, rearing up and lurching forward to bite down on Hannibal Chau’s upper half. It reared up again, umbilical cord
still tangled around it, flipping Chau around in the manner of a bird flipping a fish head-down, the easier to swallow.
Chau screamed, but only for a second, as Baby Otachi caught him, bit down again, and gulped, devouring Hannibal Chau whole.
Then it turned and charged toward Newt, who ran for his life.
He heard its hungry squealing behind him, felt the impacts of its forelimb claws on the ground. It shouldered cars out of the way and was gaining on Newt, whose only thought was I was wrong, I mean I was right but I was so wrong. I never wanted this, all I wanted to do was study them, must reconsider, oh shit how could there have been so much slack left in that umbilical cord. Please die please die please die...
Newt slowed and turned to see that the kaiju had collapsed again. Its tail twitched and fell. Its mouth was open a little, and Newt thought he could see Hannibal Chau’s body outlined against the inside of its belly. He let out a long breath. The baby Otachi wheezed and died, its last nervous impulses shaking out through its legs, which scraped weakly at the ground before going limp. Fluid leaked from its mouth and burned into the street near the only remaining artifact of Hannibal Chau’s existence: a single shoe, flung off Chau’s foot as he pinwheeled in the air above baby Otachi’s open jaws. Its gold-plated upper gleamed through the hanging dust in the air.
Report, Newt thought, taking out the same recorder he’d used before his first kaiju Drift.
“Twenty-three hundred hours,” he said. “Hong Kong attack. Unscientific aside: Hermann, I have reassessed my desires to see a live kaiju, for I’ve experienced the unforeseen side effect of filling my pants.” It was an exaggeration, but Newt thought he would let Hermann wrestle with the conundrum of whether to take him seriously.
A searchlight shone down toward him as he heard the beat of a Sikorsky’s rotors. He looked up and smiled. Pentecost had found him.
And he had found a brain.
28
RALEIGH AND MAKO CAME STRAIGHT OUT OF THE Conn-Pod and headed for the mess hall, where word was the celebration was already beginning.
“Killing kaiju makes me hungry!” Raleigh bellowed, blowing off some steam on their way. Mako smiled, but stayed quiet. He wondered if she ever raised her voice. There was a lot of steel in her, but you had to look closely to find it... unless you were a kaiju, in which case she let you know pretty quick.
In the mess hall, there was indeed a celebration. Not a champagne-popping party, exactly, but this was a big day and everyone knew it... though everyone also knew the cost. They’d survived, they’d won... but they’d lost Crimson Typhoon and Cherno Alpha. Those were five good Rangers gone, and two fewer Jaegers that would take the field against the kaiju next time. In contrast to the last time he’d come into the mess hall, Raleigh got a full-on cheer and more than a few pats on the back. He had proven himself again. At least for now. And Mako had proven herself for the first time.
He saw Chuck Hansen over at a table across the room. Chuck gave him a nod, but didn’t approach. Whatever, Raleigh thought. He turned when someone called out to him and saw Herc heading toward them, arm in a sling and taped up tight to his body.
“You saved us out there, mate,” Herc said. He nodded in the direction of his son and added, “He won’t admit it, but he’s grateful. We both are.”
“All part of the job, Herc. You’d do the same for me.” Raleigh went to shake Herc’s hand, careful not to put too much into the shake out of concern for Herc’s broken collarbone. Raleigh had broken a few bones, but never that one. He’d heard it was one of the most painful.
A rustle passed through the crowd and Raleigh saw everyone looking back across the mess hall toward the main entrance. Marshal Pentecost was coming in. Everyone parted to give him room as he made straight for Raleigh and Mako. The two rangers snapped to attention.
For a long moment he looked at each of them in turn.
“In all my years,” he said, loud enough for the entire room to hear, “I’ve never seen anything quite like that.”
Raleigh cracked a grin. Mako smiled too, a different kind of expression. Pentecost gave each of them in turn an approving nod, which for him was the equivalent of a full-on bear hug. Raleigh couldn’t believe it. Pentecost had acknowledged them in front of the entire Shatterdome crew. Positive reinforcement from Pentecost? He wasn’t quite sure how to process it.
He didn’t have to look at Mako to know that she was experiencing a different version of the same delighted confusion. Both of them were proud, but Mako had just gotten the best kind of thumbs-up from the man who meant more to her than any other human being in the world. Raleigh had touched her feelings for Pentecost during their Drifts together. She would be walking on air. He thought he could sense it right now, in the persistent connection Rangers always felt after they’d Drifted together.
Pentecost turned and raised both arms. The mess hall fell silent.
“But as harsh as it sounds, there is no time to celebrate and no time to grieve.” He paused, to let the assembled crews adjust to the change in mood. “Rest assured, there is worse to come... and our only chance is to meet it head on. So please...”
A trickle of blood ran from Pentecost’s nose. He wiped it away and went on, but everyone in the room saw it.
“Reset the clock.”
In the LOCCENT, Raleigh knew, Tendo Choi had heard. Raleigh could picture the giant clock in the Shatterdome, suddenly clicking to 00:00:00... and then 00:00:01...
Pentecost nodded at his people, and walked out of the mess hall.
Raleigh looked at Mako. He could see that she knew what he was thinking. He set his tray down and followed Pentecost. It was time to get some things out in the open.
***
Raleigh got to Pentecost’s office and found the door open, so he went in. He heard water running before he saw Pentecost splashing his face in the office bathroom. Pentecost’s nose was still bleeding. He wiped the blood away as he noticed Raleigh standing in his office.
“Why didn’t you tell me?” Raleigh asked.
He’d already put the whole thing together. Part of it came from Mako’s memories that he’d absorbed during their first Drift together. Part came from just looking at Pentecost and knowing what he did about the early history of the Kaiju War. Part came from how quickly they’d gotten Raleigh on Metharocin, right off the chopper from Alaska. He knew about radiation shielding and the first generations of nuclear-powered Jaegers... well, he knew some of it. Now he needed Pentecost to tell him the rest, because if they were going to drop a nuke into the Breach without their leader, they needed to know about it now.
“What’s to tell?” Pentecost said. He set his pill box down on the edge of the bathroom counter and leaned against the counter himself. “The Mark Is... we scraped them together in fourteen months. The last thing on our minds was radiation shielding. When the end of the world is staring you in the face, radiation poisoning is a long-term problem. We had a lot of circuitry burns, that kind of thing. Lives were being lost. I ran nearly a dozen combat missions in Coyote Tango.”
Pentecost’s face relaxed a little as he remembered the early days when he was desperate and invincible and the greatest Ranger anyone had yet seen... But Raleigh realized that he also remembered that those early days had begun the process that now was accelerating toward its inevitable end.
“I was in a slow roast,” Pentecost continued. “I stayed under the radar with medical, but the last time I jockeyed was Tokyo...” He trailed off, and Raleigh could almost see what he was thinking, because he had seen it from Mako’s perspective. Coyote Tango and Onibaba, tearing each other apart in the streets of Tokyo.
“I finished the fight solo,” Pentecost said, with a look at Raleigh that said he knew Raleigh understood. “For close to three hours. I burned away.”
The brain damage, the radiation... Raleigh was amazed Pentecost was still alive. He’d piloted Gipsy Danger solo for maybe fifteen minutes, and he would wear the circuit burns for the rest of his life. Pentecost’s
must have been much worse. The toll on an individual brain after a broken Drift, when a Ranger had to keep control over a systems array designed for brainpower not doubled but squared by the Drift... a lot of pilots wouldn’t have survived the three hours. Pentecost was still around ten years later.
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.”