by Alex Irvine
Among the crews, a strange fatalism prevailed. They had to trust Gottlieb and Shao, so they did. There was no point worrying about what would happen if the thruster pods didn’t work, because that wouldn’t change the ultimate outcome for any of them. They could either die in an explosion on the tarmac, or die of starvation after the Precursors re-engineered Earth’s climate. This was a time to take chances.
Amara, Jinhai, and Vik got settled in Bracer Phoenix’s Conn-Pod. The three Drift cradles were arranged with two in the front and one in the back, attached to a rail that dropped down to the railgun turret. That was Vik’s chair. Amara and Jinhai had the two front ones, responsible for moving Bracer and handling the other weapons systems—including the newly installed Morning Star Hand. They had all used it in simulations, but on Titan Redeemer’s left arm. Jake and Lambert had warned them it would feel different in Bracer Phoenix. They accepted this warning the same way they accepted the possibility that the thruster pods wouldn’t work. In other words, they shrugged it off, because they either had to make it work or they would die.
Each of them stood in the holographic rectangles marking the points where their boots would lock into the maglev field.
“Initiating neural handshake,” Amara said.
They felt the psychic swirl of the Drift reaching through them and binding them together. Amara felt cool and resolved, Jinhai a little giddy, Vik excited at the prospect of combat. Jinhai grinned at the readout on his display as the floor dropped away and they hung in the maglev field. “Neural handshake strong and steady,” he said. They could all feel it. They were a team. Jinhai and Vik had spent more than a year training for this. Amara was new to it, but her hard work with Sarah had paid off. Almond Joy, she thought, and she felt the other two react to the joke.
“So,” Vik said. “How’s it feel to be in a real Jaeger?” The joke was playful, not hostile like it would have been just a few days before.
“Bigger’s… not bad,” Amara allowed. She had a wide grin on her face just from the rush of the Drift, and the realization that she was in the Conn-Pod of Bracer Phoenix. It wasn’t long at all since she’d been climbing out of Scrapper, figuring she was on her way to jail.
Now she was on her way to saving the world instead.
* * *
Renata and Ryoichi relaxed into their Drift, feeling the connection like an extension of the rapport they already had from countless hours of sparring and drilling together. Saber Athena felt like an extension of themselves, a perfect match to what they were already good at. “Strong and steady,” Renata said, eyeballing the readout of their neural handshake.
“Just like me,” Ryoichi said.
They reached out and tapped fists, careful to keep Saber Athena motionless in the launch gantry. Weapons systems checked out, the readings from the thruster pods were all green.
“A Kaiju is going to be all like, ‘Not in the face!’ Just like you, Ryo,” Renata said. “But I’m gonna pop it in the face anyway.”
“I knew my suffering would pay off,” Ryoichi cracked back. They were both nervous, but they also couldn’t wait to get rolling. Riding the Drift and experiencing the power of Saber Athena, they felt like they were born for this moment.
* * *
Suresh felt his pulse hammering as the neural handshake kicked in, but Ilya steadied him as he always did. Ilya took a deep breath, relaxing into the Drift. Suresh calmed too. Guardian Bravo felt solid and steady around them. Their neural handshake wavered for a moment, then settled into a strong equilibrium. They ran weapons checks. The Arc Whip had twin monitors: one for the plasma feed that energized its electrical discharge and the other for the integrity of the graphene strand of the whip itself. Both read out perfectly. The Drone assault hadn’t touched them. A missile had hit the cradle near the left shoulder intake turbine, knocking it slightly off center, but Shao Industries tech crews had gotten it shipshape. All in all, Guardian Bravo was ready for duty. Suresh and Ilya didn’t talk much as they got ready. Ilya didn’t have much to say, and Suresh knew he had a tendency to start rattling on if he didn’t keep his mouth shut when he was nervous. So they kept it low-key, checking everything out and waiting for their final launch orders.
Man, I can’t believe I’m doing this, Suresh thought.
Ilya was right there. Be cool, Suresh. You and me, we’ll handle it.
* * *
Jake and Lambert leaned into the Drift, just like the old days, running the checks on Gipsy Avenger and taking brief note of the changes the techs had made since the second encounter with Obsidian Fury. Jake felt none of the nerves from the first fight in Sydney. Then, he hadn’t been inside a Jaeger for ten years. Now, with two combat deployments in the last ten days, he felt like he’d never been away. Lambert, whose training and conditioning ran back uninterrupted to when he was fourteen, rode the Drift like it was second nature.
They’d gotten a last status report on the location of the Kaiju before entering the Conn-Pod. Just as Jake’s fingertip extrapolations had suggested, Raijin, Shrikethorn, and Hakuja had converged off the east coast of Kyushu, the southernmost of Japan’s four main islands. From there they were covering the last four hundred miles or so together, apparently aiming to come ashore in Tokyo. That wasn’t a direct approach to Mount Fuji, which had Gottlieb confused. He had developed a theory that they could not detect the location of Fuji while they were underwater, and so were guided by what seemed to be a Kaiju instinct to approach the largest city they could find. Whatever the cause, the Kaiju were holding steady on their course. Submarines from the Chinese, Russian, and American navies had attacked them with every torpedo they had, with little effect. The Kaiju either ignored the subs or destroyed them if they got too close. They were due to enter the Uraga Channel and then Tokyo Bay within the next hour or so.
This was grim news, because it meant the Jaegers wouldn’t be there in time to stop the Kaiju from attacking Tokyo. Already the city was being evacuated ahead of the expected attack. Those who could were getting out of the city, heading north because the PPDC had briefed Japanese authorities on the Kaiju’s expected path. But evacuating a city of twenty million took days if not weeks, and those who could not leave in time were filling Tokyo’s hundreds of Kaiju shelters. The shelters had a decent track record from the Kaiju War. A big Kaiju intent on getting into one could do it, but the shelters were strong enough to withstand buildings collapsing on top of them, and provisioned with enough supplies to feed people trapped inside until rescuers could dig them out. In this case, if Gipsy Avenger and the other Jaegers didn’t stop the three Kaiju, it wouldn’t really matter whether the shelters survived or not.
Making an effort to look on the bright side, Jake realized that if the three Kaiju had made a beeline for Mount Fuji via Suruga Bay, a hundred miles to the west, the Jaegers wouldn’t have been able to intercept them in time.
As it was, they were cutting it very close.
Within the next two hours, Gipsy Avenger would be toe to toe with the Kaiju, and that battle would only end with one of them dead. That was what mattered.
“All Jaegers,” Lambert said over the commlink. “Sound off. Go/no-go for launch.”
“Guardian Bravo, go,” Ilya said.
Renata, almost simultaneously: “Saber Athena go.”
“Bracer Phoenix,” Amara said. “Let’s go already.”
“Copy that.” Jake took one last look at the thruster pod readings, making sure there were no fuel leaks or pressure warnings. He didn’t see any. “Command, we are go for launch.”
* * *
In the War Room, Gottlieb surveyed the main holo screen, watching the data readouts from the four Jaegers. Everything looked good as far as he could tell, but the proof would come when the thruster pods ignited. Jules Reyes hurried in from the Jaeger bay, scooting past War Room techs at support terminals. She stopped next to Gottlieb, spawning a holo screen at a terminal of her own to monitor the internal effect of the thrusters on the Jaeger’s systems and hull
integrity. She glanced over at Gottlieb, who acknowledged her and leaned into the comm. “Roger, Gipsy Avenger. Ignition in ten seconds. Nine… eight…”
Inside each Conn-Pod, Rangers and cadets alike stared a little harder at their HUD readouts, apprehensive but eager, willing everything to work. Suresh hummed a little song to himself. Amara clenched and unclenched one fist until she noticed Bracer Phoenix was doing the same. She forced herself to remain calm. Ryoichi counted down under his breath along with Gottlieb, wondering if his life was going to end on the word ignition. Renata laughed, and in the Drift he heard her thinking, No way—you have to live long enough to beat me sparring at least once.
“…two… one…”
Jake tensed. This was it.
“Ignition!”
30
THE JOURNAL OF EXPERIMENTAL BIOTECHNOLOGY
Volume 27 Issue 1, forthcoming
NOTES ON THE REACTIVE AND COMBUSTIVE PROPERTIES OF KAIJU BLOOD IN CATALYSIS WITH LANTHANIDE ELEMENTS
Gottlieb, H., K-Science Division, Pan Pacific Defense Corps
ABSTRACT
Kaiju blood is widely understood to have corrosive properties when in physical contact with terrestrial organic material, as well as most known metallic and plastic compounds. Further investigation has revealed a related property: large amounts of potential thermal energy. Initial experiments conclude that Kaiju blood reacts with excess thermal energy in the presence of lanthanide elements. Potential research pathways appear fruitful in the areas of propulsion and navigation, if significant obstacles related to the blood’s chemical instability can be overcome. These obstacles include: the narrow window of controllable combustion and resultant danger of explosion or combustion failure; the difficulty of containing Kaiju blood in a vessel that will not corrode during storage and use; the difficulties in synthesizing Kaiju blood, a necessary step if the technological applications of these results are ever to achieve widespread practical use.
Further investigations are ongoing.
With a boom that echoed out across Qingchuan Bay, the four thruster pods ignited. Smoke and blue-tinged flames blasted out across the tarmac, wreathing the gantries in smoke. Slowly, each Jaeger began to rise on a pillar of fire. Gottlieb held his breath. The thruster pods had passed their first test by not exploding at ignition. But could they generate enough thrust? The mathematics said they could, but the mathematics had never been tested against these materials in this situation. That was the second test: whether the machines could withstand the liftoff. Jaegers were designed to absorb tremendous amounts of force via direct impact, but vibrational energies were different. Gottlieb had kept quiet about this, but he was haunted by the possibility that the thruster pods would work and the Conn-Pods would shake themselves to pieces due to the Jaegers’ lack of aerodynamic design.
Video feeds from inside the Conn-Pods heightened his fears. They shook so violently that the pilots’ vital signs registered spikes in pulses and breathing rates. He heard warning alarms blaring from inside Guardian Bravo’s Conn-Pod. Suresh couldn’t help himself. “That’s not a good sound!”
Inside Gipsy Avenger’s Conn-Pod, Jake and Lambert shared a nervous glance. Jake looked up at the top of the Conn-Pod, violently shaking even though the maglev field held him and Lambert fairly steady. “Come on, girl,” he breathed. “Hold together…”
The Jaegers reached an altitude of fifty feet… then a hundred… then five hundred… and gradually their momentum took over and the shaking diminished. All four together arced across the sky to the east, trailing plumes of smoke and the sound of receding thunder. Gottlieb watched them, then looked back at the monitors. The pods were holding together. The Jaegers were holding together.All alarms had switched themselves off as self-analytic subroutines determined there was no systemic damage.
Cheers echoed through the War Room. Gottlieb slumped into his chair, utterly drained. With a weak grin in Jules’ direction, he said, “Knew it would work.”
* * *
According to Gottlieb’s projections, the Jaegers would cover the distance from the Moyulan Shatterdome to Tokyo Bay in about ninety minutes. Half an hour in, he asked them for a status update. “From here it appears the thruster pods are working as designed,” he said. “Please advise if you are seeing anything different.”
“We’re flying,” Lambert said. “That’s the important thing.”
“Vibrations are way down since liftoff. Everything is smooth,” Jake added. “Guardian Bravo, Bracer Phoenix, Saber Athena, let Dr. Gottlieb know if you’ve got any problems.”
“Is there going to be an inflight meal?” Amara joked.
Vik chimed in from Bracer Phoenix, stopping Amara before she joked again. “We are flying stable and steady. All systems appear normal.”
“Here too,” Ryoichi said from Saber Athena.
The Jaegers, holding formation, passed over the coast of Kyushu. Ahead of them stretched the mountainous mainland of Japan, green and streaked with clouds. Soon they would get a visual on Mount Fuji, but they wouldn’t be stopping there. As expected, the Kaiju were coming ashore in Tokyo Bay.
“Ranger Lambert.” It was Ilya on the comm. “No problems on Guardian Bravo. Should some of us divert and set up a defensive position at Mount Fuji?”
Lambert considered this, but not for long. “Negative. We’ve got three Kaiju in Tokyo. The sooner we can get there and engage them, the more lives we’re going to save.”
“I don’t understand why they didn’t go ashore in Suruga Bay,” Gottlieb was complaining. Irrational behavior bothered him almost as much as the fact of the Kaiju trying to end the world.
“Thought you had a theory about that,” Jake reminded him.
“Yes. But I have no way to test it, so it remains an unsatisfying conjecture,” Gottlieb said.
“We’ll make sure to ask Geiszler when we track him down,” Lambert said. “Any news on that front?”
“No,” Gottlieb answered. “That worries me. Newton enjoys gloating, as you know, and the presence of the Precursors in his mind exacerbates that character flaw. The longer he goes without showing himself, the more I begin to fear he has another… what is the expression? Trick up his sleeve.”
“I hope you’re wrong about that, Doc,” Lambert said. “We’re not playing with a full deck as it is.”
“I don’t—ah, I—yes. Full deck.” Gottlieb forced a polite chuckle. “I too hope I am wrong. We shall see.”
31
KAIJU MAKE LANDFALL IN JAPAN
City Largely Evacuated; Preparation Hailed
The three Kaiju that appeared through multiple Breaches less than twenty-four hours ago made a rendezvous at the eastern end of the Tsugaru Strait and turned south together toward Tokyo. Kaiju have never been observed to work together in this way before, so scientists in the Pan Pacific Defense Corps and elsewhere have been at a loss to explain the behavior.
Anticipating a Kaiju incursion, every sizable city in Japan has been evacuated. Those who could not get inland have found space in the island nation’s numerous Kaiju shelters, said to be able to withstand a pressure of ten thousand tons and offer accommodations to nearly five million people just in the greater Tokyo-Osaka area alone.
Information from the site of the Kaiju landfall is scarce, though it is known they have destroyed parts of the Rainbow Bridge and numerous other structures at the edge of Tokyo Bay. Jaegers from the Moyulan Shatterdome, the nearest PPDC facility with active Jaegers after the devastating Drone failure, are said to be deploying soon, but observers in the area report none have arrived so far.
It is reported that the Kaiju have inflicted widespread damage on the city center and are moving to the southwest, but due to the mandatory evacuations, reliable information from the area is difficult to find.
Where the Kaiju intend to go—or whether they have any intent at all—remains to be seen.
Raijin, Hakuja, and Shrikethorn rampaged through Shibuya. Behind them, a path of destruction a half-mile wide stretch
ed back to the famed Rainbow Bridge, its curling approach ramp collapsed into the bay where they had come ashore. A thousand fires burned in the crushed remains of buildings. Near the Kaiju, those who had not yet gotten to a shelter fled in desperate throngs through the streets; in the wake of their passage, rescue operations were already beginning.
Raijin paused and reared up on its hind legs. It roared, drawing the attention of Hakuja and Shrikethorn. All three Kaiju swung around and saw the white-capped peak of Mount Fuji looming in the distance to the west. They changed course and plowed forward, destroying whatever was in their path.
“Did you see that?” Gottlieb said over the comm. “They are communicating. Raijin spotted Mount Fuji and relayed that information to the others. This is extraordinary.”
“Extraordinary, got it.” Jake was looking down as Gipsy Avenger streaked toward the Kaiju. They were nearly close enough, and closing in fast.
He took the brief moment they had to get a visual sense of the three Kaiju and how they moved. The images Gottlieb had captured from their individual Breach passages were sketchy, and didn’t show much about how they moved. Now Jake soaked up every detail he could, knowing any one bit of information could mean the difference between victory and the end of the world. This was part of Ranger training, to study Kaiju and draw terrestrial equivalents as a way of anticipating how an individual monster might fight. It was an inexact science, but Jake knew of cases from the Kaiju War where it had saved Ranger lives.
Raijin was the biggest of the three, and Jake thought Gottlieb was right that it was intentionally leading the other two. At a glance Jake pegged it to be a hundred meters tall or so, but that was hard to guess with any precision because of the bony plates on its head and the way it leaned forward as it ran. It was bipedal, with heavy bony structures at its hips and a long tail that balanced the weight of its head. Its paws, each with two fingers and a hooked shorter thumb, were tipped with claws that glowed blue even in the bright sunlight. Whenever they touched something else, some kind of destructive energy flared. But its head was the unusual thing about it. Heavy armor plates tipped with spikes ringed its face and jaws, but the spikes faced inward. Between the plates, its brain glowed an angry red over an interior bony structure including fanged jaws big enough to swallow a school bus. There were rows of bright blue eyes on both the outside armor plates and the central face, under the infernal glow shining through the top of its head.