by Greg Keyes
“Go ahead.”
“Remember how I said my parents weren’t the first to pilot Shaolin Rogue?”
“I knew that already,” Vik said. “The first were Hong and Patel – they were murdered. I remember all of this. You said your parents got death threats.”
“Yeah,” he said. “But what I didn’t tell you was that the death threats weren’t just directed at my parents – they were directed at me, too. The PPDC started a protection program for the families of Jaeger pilots. But my mom and dad took the extra step of having me tagged.”
“I see,” Vik said. “They were trying to protect you. You should be happy about that.”
“Maybe,” he said. “But being tagged like a piece of property isn’t so fun, especially when you have things to do. So I figured out ways to beat it. It’s probably one of the reasons I’m a suspect.”
“Because you might be capable of disabling their security systems.”
“Maybe.”
“Could you?”
“I don’t know,” he said. “Something minor, maybe, but nothing like it would have taken to sabotage a Jaeger. If they think I could do that, they’re overestimating me by a lot.”
They were finished with their food. “What now?” she asked.
“Well, seeing as how we’re stuck together for a few hours, we might as well explore the town. There’s a place I was thinking about going to later on that’s supposed to serve a mean Buddha Jumps Over the Wall.”
“That’s some kind of food?” she asked.
“Oh, yeah.”
“Is that all you ever think about?”
“I wish,” he said.
19
2035
MOYULAN SHATTERDOME
CHINA
MAKO WENT TO THE KWOON EARLY, ALONE, IN her sweats. She inspected the armory, and after a moment, chose a bō staff. She took a deep breath, and then began moving, turning the staff in her hands, shifting stances, just warming up. She did the first kata she had ever learned, a formalized fight against an opponent that wasn’t there, designed to perfect form and timing. Then she did another, closing her eyes. She didn’t need sight for any of this.
And then, as always, he was there. Raleigh. She blocked his blow and cut toward his feet. He jumped over the pole and swung at her overhand.
She saw him now, in the dark behind her eyelids. And not just him, but the pale fragments of his memories, of practicing in the Kwoon with his brother Yancy, Yancy who had been yanked out of Gipsy Danger by the Kaiju Knifehead, leaving Raleigh incomplete. He hadn’t been complete again until he and she drifted together, piloted Gipsy as a single mind.
But now he was gone, and she was the one who was now incomplete. He was her ghost, the thing on the other side of the kata she was making up as she went along, trying to find a way to live, to be – without him.
But he was always there. And so they drifted, in a sense. Every day, every hour, but sometimes, times like this, the Drift was strong.
She thought about Vik and Jinhai. She had thought if the two were guilty they might do something during liberty to give themselves away – to connect them to whatever malevolence had entered the Shatterdome – but they hadn’t done anything unusual, according to their tracking badges. That didn’t mean they hadn’t done something, of course – just that they hadn’t been caught at it. According to many sources, Jinhai in particular was pretty good at fooling babysitters, human or electronic. He might well have manipulated their badges somehow. And that in itself suggested he might have also sabotaged Chronos Berserker. Feeding a badge false data and convincing a Jaeger crew that they were under attack were on the same spectrum of praxis, both in terms of conception and technology. She made a mental note to have their badges examined by an expert.
And Vik – she had pursued the Academy with a single-minded determination that was rare even among recruits. She was driven by pain and trauma and revenge, which Mako understood all too well.
Jinhai’s pain was subtler, but just as deep, and she wasn’t entirely sure what it was. But she thought she saw bits of herself there too. The child of a famous mother and father, held back, prevented from fulfilling his potential because his parents were afraid to risk him. Like her adoptive father had tried to hold herself and her adoptive brother back.
When you had faced a Kaiju, stared into the eyes of the walking death of thousands, you did not want your child to have to face that as well. She understood her father’s reticence, now.
But she hadn’t then, had she?
Maybe Lambert was right. Maybe it was Sokk who had committed the sabotage. His disappearance certainly added weight to that explanation. But even if Sokk was guilty, Vik and Jinhai may have played their parts as well. All three could have been involved. She hoped it wasn’t true for several reasons, not least of which was that she was starting to feel that if she could somehow help the two cadets come to terms with their mental wounds, it might help her to make peace with hers. She wasn’t quite sure why she believed that, but that was often the nature of belief, wasn’t it?
She finished, bowed to Raleigh, enjoyed his smile one more time. Then she opened her eyes.
He was, of course, not there.
* * *
Lambert backed quietly from the entrance to the Kwoon. He’d come down to set it up for the day’s training; he hadn’t expected to find the Secretary General working out. He almost stayed and waited for her to finish, but something about the way she moved and carried herself suggested that she was in the middle of something intensely personal, and he didn’t want to interrupt.
They had never exactly been friends, but she had helped train him, and she was the sister of his best friend and first Drift partner.
Ex-best friend. Ex-Drift partner. Those days were long gone. But having her here reminded him. And he would rather not be reminded.
As he walked away from the Kwoon, he ran into Burke.
“All set up?” Burke asked.
“No,” Lambert said. “The Kwoon is in use. By someone way above our pay grade.”
“Oh,” he said. “Her. I saw her in there the other day. Interesting moves. Almost like she’s fighting with someone. A little spooky.”
“Yeah, well she’s been that way since I’ve known her. Losing a Drift partner is… hard.”
“Well, especially when they die, I would guess,” Burke said.
“I’m sure that’s harder,” Lambert said. “I wouldn’t know. But to have one just walk away from you – that’s tough too. The loss is still there. And you start to realize that even though you’ve been in each other’s heads, you still don’t share the same values…”
“Brother,” Burke said. “You have very high standards when it comes to values. Anyone would have a hard time living up to them.”
“What’s wrong with high standards?” Lambert said. “It was men and women with high standards who got us through the Kaiju Wars. People who understand sacrifice and serving a higher cause.”
“The higher cause was fighting the Kaiju,” Burke said. “Last time I checked, there weren’t that many of those around.”
“Ten years is a blip for them,” Lambert said. “A pause. A reset. They’ll come back – and when they do, we’ll be ready.”
Burke clapped him on the back. “If you’re right, we’d better get this fresh meat into shape. They’re the future, not us.”
“Right,” Lambert said. “Because we’re such old men.”
“As Jaeger pilots go, we’re two of the oldest,” Burke pointed out.
Well, that made him uncomfortable.
* * *
Ranger Lambert seemed determined to make them pay for whatever fun they might have had on liberty. He and the instructors worked them in the Kwoon until Jinhai felt he couldn’t keep his legs under him anymore. Suresh and Meilin actually did have to take time outs, but there was no way Jinhai was going to do that until Vik did.
Today it was less about bonding and more about learning, and the specific topic was uppe
r-body wrestling, the sort of things a Jaeger could do at close quarters while standing waist-deep in water. Grappling, pushing, pulling. Shifting the hips, changing the balance of the situation with minimum footwork. As an added bonus, they spent the last three of their fourteen-hour session learning to fight two opponents at once.
For twelve years the Kaiju had attacked the world, and they had come one at a time. They got bigger, better adapted to fighting the huge machines that met them when they emerged from the depths, but in general one Kaiju faced one or as many as three Jaegers.
But in 2025, Leatherback and Otachi changed all of that when they appeared together in the first double event. Working together, they destroyed Crimson Typhoon and Cherno Alpha and temporarily disabled Striker Eureka in what seemed like a few heartbeats. Not long after, Striker and Gipsy had been forced to confront three Kaiju, one a category V. They hadn’t had a chance in a straight-up fight; only by detonating the nuclear bomb it carried had Striker Eureka been able to clear the way for Gipsy.
When the Kaiju came back, they might begin coming in the same way, one at a time. But what if they came in twos, threes, fours?
Toward the end of the day, trembling with fatigue, he and Vik got matched against Tahima.
Tahima had good chops; he was a well-rounded fighter, and his grappling skills were particularly good.
Tahima took the initiative, jogging quickly to Jinhai’s flank, probably hoping to deal with him quickly and then move on to Vik. He had earlier done this very thing against Renata and Suresh, and it had worked well.
Jinhai didn’t turn fast enough to meet him, but he did so intentionally. Tahima took him by the arm, slipped his foot behind Jinhai’s ankle and prepared to take him down. Jinhai lifted his foot and flipped backward with the force of the throw, and felt a grin turn his face when Vik came through where he had just been, sticking her leg behind Tahima and clotheslining him with a front-hand-ridge-hand. Both of Tahima’s feet left the floor, and he landed with a thud on his back a second after Jinhai stuck his landing.
He grinned at Vik, who almost – but didn’t quite – grin back.
But it hit him, then – he had known what to do, because he had known what she would do.
Tahima got up, slowly, and offered each of them his hand.
“Nice,” he said. Everyone else was quiet, and Suresh wouldn’t even meet his gaze.
Lambert stopped Jinhai and Vik as they were leaving practice.
“I don’t know if you felt that,” he said. “The connection you had. But I saw it. I don’t know what’s going on between you, but you need to work it out. Remember what we’re doing here – preparing for the job of defending humanity. If you have personal problems more pressing than that, I’d sure like to hear them. Or anything else you might like to get off your chest.”
Jinhai looked at Vik out of the corner of his eye.
“Truth is, Ranger,” Jinhai said, “I do have something to admit. I’m kind of ashamed of it, but, well – I actually kind of like old school seventies disco. It’s super catchy, you know? Even Barry Manilow.”
For the first time since they’d met, Lambert actually looked angry. He stepped forward, right into his face, and more than anything, Jinhai wanted to step back. But he stood his ground.
“Making a joke was the wrong call, son,” Lambert said.
“And thinking I’m a traitor is your bad call, Ranger, sir… I might be a screw-up, I might be a smart ass, but I am not a traitor. My parents—”
“I don’t give a damn who your parents are,” Lambert shot back. “It’s who you are or aren’t that matters to me. Or maybe who you could be. And to be clear, I haven’t accused you of anything.”
“No,” Jinhai said. “You haven’t. Not to my face. But I believe you think it. Either me or Vik, right? Or both. Well I can tell you for sure, it wasn’t Vik. So you can leave her out of this, right?”
“What are you saying?” Lambert demanded.
He stood straighter. “Permission to shower, Ranger, sir.”
Lambert glared at him for what seemed like a great while.
“Permission granted,” Lambert finally said.
He and Vik walked back most of the way in silence. But before they reached the showers, she did ask him a question.
“Do you really think I’m innocent?”
“Da,” he said. “Ya dumayu, chto.”
She blinked and then stuttered out a little laugh.
“What?” he asked.
“That’s not quite right,” she told him. “But I appreciate the effort.”
20
2025
JANUARY 6TH
CHRISTMAS EVE (RUSSIAN ORTHODOX)
SAKHALIN ISLAND
RUSSIA
VIK
IT WAS COLD; OUTSIDE THE SNOW STOOD IN drifts up to a meter deep. Inside it was cold, too. Their apartment was heated by warm water pipes in the floor, which was cheap and efficient, but not as nice as gathering around the ceramic heater they’d had back home. Seeing her shiver, Babulya gave Vik her Christmas present early: a black luftgel coat with lots of pockets. She was warmer the second she put it on, and when she closed the seal in front, it was like being wrapped in six blankets. It wasn’t one of the fancy ones, but it must have cost her grandmother half a month’s pay.
On Christmas Eve, they didn’t usually eat anything until the first star appeared in the sky. Vik was starving, and it was overcast, so as soon as it seemed dark enough, they ate what she had been smelling for a while – sochivo, a mush made from rice boiled with poppy seeds, honey, and walnuts. The first bites were heaven, but by the third she was starting to feel a little guilty, remembering the far richer, tastier paklava. She should have shared the last of her money with her grandmother, or at least bought her a present. As it was, she had nothing to give her but a picture, but she had worked on that all day. When she saw it, Babulya smiled and cried at the same time. She’d drawn a picture of her grandfather, inside a border of flowers.
“It’s beautiful, Vik,” she said. “I’ll put it on the wall, just over there.”
“It’s not as good as a coat,” Vik said.
“No, it’s better,” her grandmother said. “The coat warms your body, but this warms my soul.” She looked again at the drawing.
“I miss him so,” she said. “Did I ever tell you how we met?”
She had, of course, but Vik listened to the story anyway, hoping this time it would go past the point where she accepted his half-drunken apology and proposal. Grandmother was half drunk herself by the time she finished, from a mixture of lemon soda and vodka.
“What about my mama?” Vik asked. “How soon after you were married was she born?”
She had asked that question before, but her grandmother had never answered it. She didn’t seem like she was going to this time, but after taking another drink, she smiled sadly.
“Hard-headed,” she said. “Like you. Always trying to push ahead, to be seven before he was five.”
“He?”
Babulya looked a little flustered. “I’m drunk,” she said. “I meant she. Do you want to hear this or not?”
“I do.”
Her grandmother took another drink.
“I couldn’t keep up with her. I tried, but I couldn’t. And she just – slipped away from me.”
“What do you mean?”
Babulya’s face cleared, and her eyes sharpened. “She was just so young when she left home,” she said.
“And she ended up in jail,” Vik said. “That’s where she met Papa.”
Grandmother frowned. “You shouldn’t believe everything you see on vidiot,” she snapped. “Your mother was a good girl. They make things up, these people. And some of them…” Her voice lowered, became conspiratorial, and her eyes got that strange, faraway look they did sometimes.
“All Kaiju are not gigantic,” she whispered. “Some of them are no bigger than you, and they can look like anything – anyone. They come, and they lie, and they twis
t things; twist our hearts if we’re not careful.”
Her hand suddenly shot out and gripped Vik’s wrist. Surprised, she tried to pull away, but Grandmother’s fingers tightened, and it hurt.
“Have you been talking to them?” she asked. “Have you been with them? Are you still my Vikushka?”
She had always been a little scared of Babulya; but now it was dark, and the wind outside sounded like ghosts moaning, and her arm hurt. She felt trapped – and for the first time, truly terrified.
“Babulya,” she said. “It is me. It is me.”
Her grandmother stared at her for several long heartbeats, her expression like nothing Vik had ever seen before. It was like Grandmother wasn’t real anymore, but some sort of large doll made of plastic, with eyes of glass.
But then she let go, and leaned back, and poured some vodka – this time without the soda.
“You are my Vik,” she said. “Of course you are. I’ve done things, you know, things to keep the apartment safe. They can’t come in here. Even if they look like one of us.”
She suddenly smiled again, and seemed completely normal.
“I almost forgot,” she said. “I have something else for you.”
She went into one of the cupboards and brought out a long, tall bag, the kind vodka came in, and set it on the table.
“It’s really from Dedulya,” she said. “He was working on it when – well, open it.”
Vik took the bag, and felt something heavy in it. She reached in and lifted it out.
“Cherno Alpha,” she gasped.
It was carved from wood, and some of the details weren’t finished, but it was clearly the Jaeger her parents rode in, with its huge cylinder of a head and massive arms.
“Mater bozhya,” she breathed.
“Don’t swear, girl,” her grandmother said.
“Sorry,” she said. “I love it.”
“True love goes beyond the grave,” Babulya said. “Always remember that.”
“Yes, Babulya.”
They put the lights out early and went to bed. Vik kept the carving with her. She thought about Grandmother at dinner, and worried. Grandfather had always been there when Babulya was at her worst: when she started screaming for no reason, when she threw the pots and pans around – and he had also been there to reassure her when Grandmother took to her bed for days.