by Alex Irvine
“Ugh,” Newt said. “Are you okay?”
“Of course. I’m completely fine,” Hermann said. “But you saw it. Didn’t you?”
Then he leaned over and puked violently on the ground between them. Newt sighed and waited for him to finish. Then he stepped around the mess and handed Hermann a handkerchief.
“I did,” he said. “We have to warn them. Their plan...”
“It’s not going to work,” Hermann said.
As soon as Newt was sure Hermann could stand, they both ran out of the tent shouting for someone to get them a helicopter.
***
Raleigh and Mako were already in Gipsy Danger’s Conn-Pod running their pre-deployment checklist and integrating their Drift. Pentecost was at the elevator door, waiting. Time was short, but he had to be patient because Herc Hansen was sending his son off to die.
Pentecost had sent a lot of people off to die in the years of the Kaiju War, but had had no children. The closest he knew to the experience of fatherhood was his relationship with Mako and he’d found it virtually impossible to permit her to deploy. Herc and Chuck had assumed they would be together whatever happened, but even a tough old bastard like Herc Hansen couldn’t run a Jaeger with a broken clavicle.
He stood a little way off from Pentecost, the fat bulldog Max sitting at his feet as he regarded his son for the last time.
“When you Drift with someone,” Herc said quietly, “you feel like there’s nothing to talk about.” He hesitated, trying to master his emotions and failing. When he spoke again, his voice quavered and the sorrow on his face was impossible for Pentecost to look at. He dropped his gaze to the dog, who looked up at Herc and then around the room, searching for the source of his master’s sadness.
“But I don’t want to regret all the things I never said out loud,” Herc said.
“No need,” Chuck said. “I know them all.”
He wrapped his father in a crushing farewell hug, then took a step back. Pointing down at Max, Chuck said, “Take care of him for me.”
Herc nodded, his expression grave. Technicians approached and guided him back from the deployment areas as over the comm an automated synth voice started the countdown to Gipsy Danger’s Conn-Pod drop.
“Engaging drop in ten... nine...”
The elevator doors opened. Pentecost entered and held the door for Chuck, who did not look him in the eye and did not look back at his father. Over Chuck’s shoulder, Pentecost met Herc’s gaze.
“Stacker,” Herc said. “That’s my son you’ve got there. My son.” Herc gave him a nod. Pentecost nodded back. Farewell.
***
“...Eight... seven...”
The drop countdown continued. Mako and Raleigh Drifted together, the initial rush there and gone in an eyeblink. Something about her thoughts sparked a realization in Raleigh’s Drifting mind.
“All these years, I’ve been living in the past,” Raleigh said.
Of all the people in the world, Mako was maybe the perfect one to create the thought. She’d been there. She wasn’t judging, only observing. Around them, Gipsy Danger’s command and control systems came online. The Conn-Pod heads-up showed the Jaeger’s body reading green across the board. The Shatterdome techs had done some immortal work in the past hours.
“I never really thought about the future,” he went on. “Until now.” There’s irony for you, Raleigh thought. Nothing like a suicide mission to make you think about the future.
He reached out and touched Mako’s hand.
Gipsy Danger’s head dropped down the shaft toward the deployment bay, the roar of the guide rails overwhelming whatever Raleigh would have said out loud. But he didn’t need to speak in the Drift. Mako could hear loud and clear what he was thinking.
No turning back now.
***
In the LOCCENT six hours later, Tendo Choi fiddled with his suspenders and kept one eye on the monitors showing the neural handshake strength in Gipsy Danger and Striker Eureka. He wasn’t worried about Gipsy— Mako and Raleigh were tight—but Striker was a concern. Chuck Hansen was an emotional mess, a stew of anxieties and grudges related to his father, and also grappling with the fact that he was probably never going to see his father again, so would not have a chance to make any of it right. That was not a recipe for the kind of focus a Ranger needed for a solid Drift. Mako Mori could tell you all about that.
Marshal Pentecost was also a concern. Tendo had looked over Pentecost’s brain scans before the initiation of his neural handshake with Chuck, and he knew one thing. Whether Striker Eureka delivered its payload or not, Stacker Pentecost was on his last mission. The three-hour solo he’d done in Coyote Tango ten years before had carved enough damage in his brain that Tendo couldn’t see how Pentecost could still tie his shoelaces. He was one exceptional human being. Also doomed, suffering from long-term radiation sickness as well as the blood-vessel damage that came from treating the radiation sickness. Again, not exactly an ideal recipe for a solid Drift.
Yet somehow, he was looking at both neural-handshake readouts and they were perfect.
“Both neural handshakes at one hundred percent,” he said, for the benefit of the rest of the LOCCENT crew.
His other eye, figuratively speaking, was on the remote satellite view tracking the Super Sikorskys that carried Gipsy Danger and Striker Eureka southeast into the open ocean. Striker had the nuke strapped to it, shielded inside pressure-resistant casing that made it look like a backpack. The warhead inside that casing carried with it enough potential energy to level an entire city centre. If Gottlieb’s numbers were right it would also be enough to collapse the Breach.
If they could get there before more kaiju came pouring out.
If they could get through the two kaiju already patrolling.
If the Jaegers could operate in the unthinkable pressures of the Marianas Trench for long enough to make the run and deliver the payload.
That was a lot of ifs. But balanced against them was the absolute certainty that if it didn’t work, they would all die.
Both Sikorsky teams were making good time, well within the mission parameters. They hit a fog bank and disappeared from visual, so Tendo glanced over at the large holoscreen showing the whole of the Pacific Rim. The Breach glowed near the center of the screen, with two red dots circling it slowly. Tendo brought up another display, showing the feed from the Sikorskys’ belly cameras. Everything looked good to go.
Herc Hansen, relegated to command (at least Tendo figured that’s how he would think of it), called out the kind of update Pentecost had always insisted on. Overcommunicate, Pentecost always said.
“Two actives still in circle formation in the Guam quadrant,” Herc said. “Code names Scunner and Raiju.”
The two Jaegers appeared on the enlarged inset showing just the immediate area around the Breach.
“Jaegers,” Tendo Choi said. “Time to seal up and get ready to go swimming.”
He watched the Jaeger status screens as both Ranger teams shut all external ports. Jaegers had ports for intake and exhaust all up and down their torsos, especially near their power plants. Tendo was a little worried about Gipsy Danger’s operational window with ports sealed. The reactor heat would build up fast... although the deep ocean water would draw a lot of the heat away. It might all work out.
Also, what with Scunner and Raiju, they probably had more immediate problems than worrying about Gipsy Danger’s ability to cycle out waste heat.
Over the noise of the Sikorskys’ rotors bleeding into the feed, everyone in the LOCCENT could hear Pentecost give a last pre-drop reminder.
“The Jaegers will hold the pressure long enough. Remember, this isn’t a battle. It’s a bomb run. You hold them off; we’ll get to the Breach.”
Simultaneously, Pentecost and Mako hit their cable release buttons. The two Jaegers dropped through the thick fog and hit the surface of the ocean with a titanic double splash. Tendo switched away from the Sikorsky feed and brought up twinned relays
from each Jaeger’s cranial cameras. The Jaegers sank into the depths, their operating lights swallowed up by featureless darkness. Ocean depth at their target landing location was seven thousand meters.
It took the Jaegers almost fifteen minutes to touch down on the ocean floor, where they sank deep into the silt. Their slow-motion impact, at only five meters per second, stirred up a cloud of silt that reduced visibility to zero. Tendo could see that from the LOCCENT, and Raleigh confirmed it.
“Switching to instruments,” he said.
The two Jaegers moved out across the ocean floor, quickly finding that a forward-leaning half-jog was the best way to keep speed and balance on the sediment. It looked like slogging through heavy snow.
“Half a mile to the ocean cliff,” Pentecost said. “Then we jump, three thousand meters down to the Breach.”
“Half a mile?” Chuck said. “Can’t see a bloody inch.”
As Chuck spoke, Tendo saw one of the two kaiju bogeys make a move.
“Gipsy, you have movement on your left flank.”
“I don’t see it,” Chuck said.
Tendo’s eyes widened as remote sensors fed him data about the kaiju’s mass and speed.
“It’s moving fast,” he said. “Faster than any kaiju we’ve seen yet.”
He saw Raleigh and Mako looking around in Gipsy Danger’s Conn-Pod.
“We got nothing,” Raleigh said.
The kaiju was almost there.
“It’s Raiju,” Tendo said. “Left flank! Left flank!”
“I don’t see anything!” Raleigh shouted.
Tendo looked at Gipsy Danger’s instrument readouts. It was true. Tendo, looking via remote sensors beamed up to space and then back down, had a better look at the moving kaiju than Gipsy Danger did.
“Brace for impact, Gipsy!” Tendo cried.
31
RAIJU WAS THIRTY-FIVE HUNDRED TONS OF MUSCLE and hate, crocodilian in shape save for longer and better articulated arms and legs. Its back, legs, and shoulders were a forest of spikes and knobbed plates. It barrelled into Gipsy Danger moving at perhaps forty miles per hour. There was an incredible discharge of kinetic energy when the kaiju appeared from the silt cloud and slammed into Gipsy Danger’s left side.
Raleigh and Mako staggered. Systems were shocked offline as the impact caused ripples in the fluid-core synapse systems, but they kept Gipsy Danger upright as they grappled with Raiju and emergency shunts restored Gipsy’s neural-pathway cohesion.
Jaeger and kaiju rolled across the seafloor, crashing into a subsea mountainside a few hundred meters from the lip of the last drop toward the deepest part of the Marianas Trench: Challenger Deep, where the Breach glowed and poured out energy that baffled the Jaegers’ instruments. Raiju pinned Gipsy Danger and snapped at her head. Moving in unison, Raleigh and Mako dodged to the left on the motion rig and Raiju’s jaws scraped along the side of Gipsy Danger’s shoulder.
Raiju pulled back for another bite and Gipsy Danger spun them both around and rammed the kaiju against the mountainside, holding it there with a forearm under its elongated jaw.
“Can we get the Plasma Cannons ready?” Raleigh asked.
“They might not function under these pressures,” Mako said. “Tendo?”
The response from the LOCCENT was garbled. Did these new kaiju have some kind of built-in jamming ability? Raleigh didn’t know, but after Leatherback and Otachi he wouldn’t be surprised. Then he had more pressing problems because Raiju had another trick up its sleeve... or, more accurately, up its jaw.
Its skull split open in three sections, peeling back to reveal an interior head, complete with its own set of jaws, snapping forward on an elastic column of muscle to tear at Gipsy Danger’s shoulder plating—they managed to hold it just far enough away that it couldn’t bite all the way down. It was like a snake’s head inside a crocodilian skull helmet. Nightmarish, flashing through different moves and strikes, in and out of the illuminated shafts from Gipsy Danger’s running lights.
“Chain Swords might not work under these conditions,” Mako said
“Want to deploy them and see?” Raleigh asked.
“Opening the compartment might cause all kinds of damage to the hyper-torque nodes,” Mako said. She didn’t have to add that if the nodes in Gipsy Danger’s forearms were damaged, the Jaeger’s hands would be compromised. It was quite a risk to take.
Scunner flashed out of the silt and headed for Striker Eureka, which had stopped and turned to assist Gipsy Danger. It was moving fast enough that at first Raleigh thought it was a copy of Raiju. Data relays from remote sensors and both Jaegers’ onboard arrays corrected that impression. Scunner was longer and thinner, a collection of sharp edges and armored protrusions.
The original plan had called for Gipsy, Cherno Alpha, and Crimson Typhoon to engage Scunner and Raiju, drawing them away from the Breach far enough that Striker Eureka could get there before the third kaiju—if there was going to be a third kaiju—came out.
With Cherno and Typhoon down, that plan was out the window. Now Gipsy Danger had to hold the kaiju off on its own while Striker Eureka made a beeline for the Breach.
“We got this, Striker! Run the ball home!” Raleigh shouted.
He hoped it was true.
***
Pentecost hesitated. “Mako...”
“This is our window!” Chuck yelled. “Sir!”
He was right. There was too much at stake. If Raleigh and Mako couldn’t handle their assignments, all of them would be dead anyway.
Striker Eureka surged ahead, with Scunner coming close behind. It massed slightly less than Raiju, fourlegged with a forked tail and armored protrusions on either side of its head that came to lethal points. Another armored point stuck several meters out from the center of its torso, making any grappling approach a suicidal act. But Striker Eureka had her orders, and they weren’t to stand and fight. The fastest Jaeger around, she covered a hell of a lot of ground considering the density of the water and the sludgy seafloor. Still, she was running and Scunner was swimming, propelling itself largely with its tail and staying right on Striker’s heels, no matter what evasive action Pentecost and Chuck took.
The kaiju closed the distance between them and snapped with double sets of jaws.
“It’s trying to catch the payload,” Chuck growled.
Onboard sensors detected multiple small points of damage to Striker Eureka’s back and shoulders. They dodged and wove, taking full advantage of their Jaeger’s agility and speed. Scunner couldn’t land a clean shot, but Pentecost knew they wouldn’t be able to dodge forever. Striker Eureka couldn’t turn and fight, and even if she could have, they couldn’t open the K-Stunner ports this far underwater without causing fatal damage to Striker’s internal mechanisms.
“Almost there,” Pentecost said. The silt cloud was clearing as they neared the cliff that dropped straight down to the floor of the Marianas Trench. Currents generated by seafloor subduction drew the silt away. It poured over the cliff face, which Pentecost could see at the distant edge of Striker Eureka’s spotlights.
Chuck looked around and saw that they had suddenly put some distance between themselves and Scunner.
Pentecost saw it too.
“Wait. It’s stopping. Why is it stopping?” he asked.
“I don’t give a damn,” Chuck said. “We’re a hundred meters from the jump!”
They kept moving, approaching the edge of the cliff. When they were three long strides from their final jump, chaos erupted in the LOCCENT.
***
Newt and Gottlieb stormed into the LOCCENT disheveled, out of breath, and stinking like kaiju guts.
“It’s not going to work! It’s not going to work!” Newt shouted.
Herc held up both hands and the two scientists skidded to a halt in front of him.
“What’s not going to work?” he asked.
“Blowing up the Breach!” Newt panted.
Herc looked to Gottlieb for confirmation.
&n
bsp; “Newt’s right!” Gottlieb said.
For a moment everyone in the LOCCENT was speechless. Newt and Gottlieb had agreed on something. Stacker Pentecost’s voice came over the comm from the ocean floor two thousand miles away.
“LOCCENT, Scunner has broken off pursuit. We are less than one hundred meters from the jump location to the Breach. What’s the problem there?”
Newt ran to Tendo’s workstation so Pentecost would be able to see him.
“Sir, even though the Breach is open, you still won’t be able to get a bomb through! There was another reason DNA strands were repeated from kaiju to kaiju!”
Gottlieb picked up when Newt ran out of breath.
“The Breach genetically reads the kaiju... like a barcode! It only lets them pass if they scan correctly!”
“You have to fool the Breach into thinking you have the same code!” Newt cut in.
Tendo watched readouts from Gipsy Danger’s containment and reactor systems. The fight with Raiju was putting a lot of strain on the old Jaeger. He had a bad feeling that if they didn’t get the payload delivered pretty damn quick, there wasn’t going to be any delivery at all... and if the Kaiju Science squints were right, their delivery plan was DOA.
From Striker Eureka there was stunned silence.
Then Chuck asked, “How the hell are we supposed to do that?”
Newt and Gottlieb looked at each other. They’d worked something out, and Tendo was afraid he knew what it was.
“You have to lock up with a kaiju,” Gottlieb said, confirming Tendo’s worst suspicion. “Then ride it into the Breach and detonate the payload!”
There was a pause as the implications of this sank in. Before, they had all believed that there was a tiny chance some of the Rangers would survive.
Now there was none.
“Are you sure?” Pentecost asked.
Newt nodded. “Yes.”
“Well...” Gottlieb looked to his colleague.
Then both of them said, “We think.”