by Greg Keyes
“I’m not sure,” he said. “There is surveillance in the really sensitive areas. That can be messed with, of course, but not easily, and not without leaving a trace, unless you were really, really good. Way better than me.”
“What we need to figure out,” she said, “is not how they didn’t do it, but how they did.”
He had an idea then, and a kind of wild idea.
“You know,” he said. “I think I might know where to look. It’s a long shot. And it will probably get us in trouble.”
“Yeah,” she said. “What else is new? Let’s go.”
“No, it’s not that easy. It could be a while before we get a chance.”
* * *
They certainly didn’t get a chance the next day; that was when they started training in the Mock-Pods.
“We’ve paired you up,” Lambert said. “Each team will get a different scenario based on a fight that really happened in the past. You will be awarded or deducted points depending on what choices you make and how resourceful you are. If you lose your Jaeger – if you ‘die’ – big deduction. Civilian casualties count against you. I leave it up to you to figure out the rest. Now go to your pods.”
* * *
Jinhai paused at the entrance to the Mock-Pod. It was shaped a lot like a Jaeger’s head, with a large curved window in the front. But what caught his attention was inside.
“Well, that’s interesting,” he said.
“It’s old school,” Vik said. “A Pinocchio rig.” She seemed almost excited.
“I know what it is,” Jinhai said. “It’s like the one my folks used, more or less. But why? Do they think we might actually ever fight in one of these?”
She shrugged. “They built Mark-5s for a few years after the Breach was closed. I think a few of them are still in service. So I guess it could happen.”
“Yeah,” he said. “Or maybe it’s just a history lesson.”
She frowned, but didn’t say anything.
A couple of techs came in to help them clip the boots of their drivesuits into the mechanical actuators and otherwise get them situated.
Whatever this is, it won’t be real, Jinhai told himself. Whatever happened to Vu and Braga won’t happen to us.
And he believed that. The Mock-Pods were built for simulation. They didn’t have the same intense feedback loops as real Jaegers. They were safe. Nobody had ever been killed in a simulator, and since the sabotage of Chronos Berserker, he knew every piece of equipment had been gone over ten times. But it was a worry he couldn’t quite put out of his mind. All he could do was push it down and try to focus on the checklist as they prepared to drift.
“Engage neural handshake,” someone said.
For an instant, nothing changed; and then everything did. He gasped involuntarily as memories that weren’t his suddenly flooded through him, but this time they were more familiar, memories that almost seemed to belong in his head. The hard, dark, hidden place in Vik was still there, but it felt more relaxed, somehow. He wouldn’t quite call it trust, but it was better than before.
And then he felt big. That hadn’t happened in Drift training. He heard Vik bark out a little laugh, and he knew why; because with the impression of size came a feeling of power, of invincibility.
Around them, beyond the holo-controls and instruments, the world came alive; they were standing in a shallow sea, beneath a bright morning sky, gazing out toward a large city. Off to their left, giants were fighting.
One of them was instantly recognizable by its massive cylindrical “head”.
“Cherno Alpha,” Vik gasped. “It is Cherno.”
It was indeed the Russian Jaeger, and it was in bad shape. Steam was boiling from a crack in her energy refinery, and one of her arms hung as if it didn’t work anymore. She was still fighting, though, leaning into her Kaiju opponent, her good arm trying to get a lock around the monster’s neck, not quite managing it.
“No!” Vik shouted.
“It’s not real,” Jinhai said. “Focus. What Jaeger are we in? What are our capabilities?”
He was trying to stay calm, but despite his words, it felt real, and it was all happening too fast. Shouldn’t they have at least been briefed on what Jaeger they were piloting?
And Vik already had them in motion, slogging through the water toward the fight.
Crap. He desperately ran his eyes over the unfamiliar controls.
“The Kaiju is Reckoner,” Vik said. “I think the city must be Hong Kong.”
For an instant, he looked out at the city skyline.
“Yeah,” he said. “It is. We’re just southeast of the Island. That’s Cape D’Aguilar over there.”
Reckoner was a crouching heap of ugly. At first glance it resembled a bat on all fours, with long, webbed forelimbs that rose and bent above its bunched shoulders and shorter, thicker reptilian hind legs set just behind.
There was nothing bat-like about its head though, which was a horrifying mish-mash of crawfish, gar, and crocodile. Two grasping claws grew from its mandibles.
He tried not to look, to keep his eyes on the instruments. He used his hand to visually scroll through their weapons systems.
“We have Cryo-Cannons mounted on our shoulders,” he realized. “I think we’re Horizon Brave!” A Chinese Jaeger. He’d met the pilots before they died – was this the fight they got killed in? No, no, that was Bangkok, not Hong Kong. But this was a simulation. They could be destroyed, which Lambert said would result in massive deductions from their point total.
Probably best to avoid that.
They hadn’t reached the fight before the damaged Cherno Alpha dropped to one knee. Reckoner spun with amazing speed and slammed the Russian Jaeger with its thick tailfin. Cherno toppled, and the Kaiju pushed past it and sprinted for the city, trailing sea-spray.
“Good you’re here,” a woman’s voice said. “We held it at the Miracle Mile as long as we could…”
Jinhai felt a little chill. The voice was that of Sasha Kaidanovsky, now ten years dead, drowned in the waters off Hong Kong.
“We’ve got it now, Cherno,” he said. He felt slightly ridiculous, talking to a simulation, but he was getting into it.
Vik, on the other hand, seemed to be struggling a little; he felt her anger, and sadness and something he didn’t quite understand. She rattled off a few sentences in Russian, which he was pretty sure contained at least a few obscenities.
“Vik,” he said. “Snap out of it and let’s go kill a Kaiju.”
“Yeah,” she said. “Let’s do that.”
Horizon Brave was a Mark-1 Jaeger, the same as Cherno Alpha, powered by a nuclear reactor and not nearly as versatile as later models. But whereas Alpha had been designed to be an immovable object, Horizon Brave had been built to optimize maneuverability. They pushed the Jaeger to full speed and began gaining on the monster, but even from here it was clear that it would reach the city before they caught up.
“Use the Cryo-Cannons,” Vik urged.
“I don’t think we’re close enough,” he said, “but it’s worth a try.”
He sighted in on Reckoner as the cannons powered up. Then he cut loose.
Two jets of super-cooled liquid blasted out ahead of them, and for a moment, Jinhai felt jubilant. But as he’d feared, they were out of range.
Worse, their energy level plummeted, and Horizon Brave dropped from a fast run to a moderate jog.
Vik muttered again in Russian. “Stupid,” she said. At first he thought she meant him, and was about to remind her that it had been her suggestion, but then he realized it was self-recrimination.
Their power came back up after a few minutes, but by that time Reckoner had made landfall on Shek O Beach and had already begun plowing a trail north, through the beachside condominiums and hotels. Fortunately, the eastern half of the Southern District was lightly populated compared to where it was headed. They needed to stop it before it got much further. If they could turn it uphill, onto the high, rocky ridge known as the D
ragon’s Back, they might be able to keep casualties pretty low.
Reckoner seemed oblivious to their approach, and he thought they might actually catch the Kaiju unawares, but the thing had eyes scattered all over its head, and some of them apparently looked backward, because as they drew near it slammed them with its tail, cutting through a twenty-story condo in the process. Brave tried to sidestep, but they still caught most of the force of the blow, and their hydraulics whined as they fought to stay on their feet. They punched the monster in the back, but that was nothing but a mass of muscle, and he wasn’t sure the Kaiju even felt anything. They reached for its head, but it suddenly sprang up half their height, stretching its not-quite wings high before hammering down onto their shoulders. One of their Cryo-Cannons exploded, sending a spray of subzero fluid all over the beast. It trilled out an awful, alien scream as ice formed over half its body.
“Jettison the cannon,” Vik shouted. He did, but they had already lost a lot of their cryogenic solution. Meanwhile, they punched Reckoner in the face, hard, and then brought a double-fisted blow down on its iced right limb, hoping to shatter it.
The ice broke and fell off in huge flakes, but Reckoner seemed undeterred, and with another spinning blow of its tail, sent them backwards off of their feet to destroy several buildings.
“How do we kill it?” Vik asked, as they pushed up from the rubble. “How did Horizon Brave kill it?”
“Electricity,” Jinhai said. “Remember? The ‘Blackout Knockout’? They threw it into the Fong power plant.”
“Where is that?” Vik asked. “You lived here, right?”
“Yes. It’s where the Bone Slums are now. North and West of here.”
“Let’s get it there, then.”
“But this is before the fight. That’s the Kowloon district. Lots and lots of people. Unless we can keep it in the water, or drive it though the hills, so it doesn’t have waterfront to chew up the whole way.”
“We’ve got to try something,” she said. “And it seems to be headed that way anyway.”
“Yeah. It’s worth a try.”
So now they had a goal; each engagement was intended to drive the Kaiju toward the power plant.
Reckoner didn’t want to play along. No matter what they did, they couldn’t get it to climb up into the highlands. But when they reached the juncture between the Junk and Kowloon Bays, where everything opened up, they were able to force it West, toward Kowloon.
It wasn’t easy, and it seemed to take forever, but the Kaiju wasn’t all that bright; it didn’t seem to know it was being herded, nor had it picked up on the fact that Horizon Brave wasn’t really able to inflict any damage on it. They punched, wrestled and even threw the beast a few times. Jinhai surrendered to Vik’s instincts in close-quarters fighting. They slammed it in the side of the head with their Sub-Zero sucker punch, but as when their cannon exploded, the cold didn’t seem to bother the thing.
But they were doing a good job of staying in one piece, too. The only thing he was worried about was how long he and Vik could keep their connection; they had never been tested beyond a few minutes, and it had been two hours now. If they lost their handshake, the whole thing was over.
“There it is,” Vik said, as they fought the monster to the top of the hill.
They were squarely in the Kowloon District now, the old part of Hong Kong that lay on the mainland, and the trail of damage they’d left behind them was horrific. But they had reached their goal. The Fong power plant lay below them.
The plant had been built as part of China’s coastal defense, powering not only most of the city but also providing back-up power to the Shatterdome, if necessary. The reactor was deep in the rock of the hill, but the site was surrounded by a vast field of transformers and high-tension lines, circumscribed by reinforced concrete walls eighty feet high to protect it from storm surges.
“Come on,” Jinhai said.
They took five explosive strides forward, ducked down, and crashed into the Kaiju, pushing their arms beneath and lifting its forelimbs off of the ground. Its hideous face was almost all they could see; its mandibular claws struck furiously at their head, but they were too small to have much effect. They heaved, and sent the monster flipping toward the power plant.
It landed on its back and skidded, but stopped when it hit the wall. As both of them shouted, Horizon Brave charged down the hill and landed a haymaker that lifted the Kaiju up and sent it over the barrier and thrashing into the transformers. Sparks engulfed it, and again it bleated out its harrowing call – but this time it was a death scream. It blackened and split; blue blood spurted, and dark smoke rose. It struggled to rise, leveling the retaining wall, and dragging itself into the city beyond, not understanding that it was already dead.
For a moment, they stood there, watching its last feeble movements.
“Well,” Vik said, after a moment. “That was satisfying.”
He nodded, as he felt their connection begin to dissolve. The drill was over: they’d won.
* * *
“How was that?” Jinhai asked Lambert as they stepped out of the simulator. He felt drained and weak, ready for a shower and a meal and his bunk, in that order, but he felt good.
“You failed,” Lambert said.
“What?”
“How can that be?” Vik exploded. “Ranger, we killed it.”
“That you did,” Lambert said. “Go outside and run twenty laps around the deployment platform. I’m docking you each two rec chits. Tomorrow you can tell me what you did wrong. If I like your answer, you get to try again. Now, go.”
“Yes, Ranger,” they said in unison and then started toward the Ocean Doors. Jinhai had serious doubts as to whether he could do one lap, much less twenty.
22
WHEN HE FINALLY MADE IT TO HIS BUNK, JINHAI was about three steps away from crawling. It was early, and he was alone in the barracks – the rest were doubtless out cashing in the rec chits he didn’t have. Of course, Vik had been shorted, too, and he wondered briefly where she was before closing his eyes.
He was nearly asleep when someone nudged him.
Vik.
“Hey,” she said. “What are you doing?”
“Is this a trick question?” Jinhai murmured. “Go away.”
“We have to figure this out,” Vik said. “If we don’t, we’re screwed.”
“I’m too sleepy,” he said.
“I brought coffee,” she told him.
“So thoughtful,” he replied.
He wasn’t fond of coffee, but with a fair amount of sugar it was bearable. And it did wake him up, a little. He watched Vik, sitting cross-legged on Tahima’s bunk, right next to his, working at her pad.
“So I went back and got our sim data,” she said. “We maintained Drift for more than two hours. The real fight took more like three – we finished faster.”
“Sure,” Jinhai said. “Because we had the cheat sheet. The original pilots probably didn’t really plan what they were doing the whole time. More likely they spotted the plant after they’d been fighting for a while and got inspired. We just copied what they did. Obviously, that wasn’t the right answer for Lambert. What was our casualty count?”
“Right around seven thousand killed, four times that many injured,” she said.
“And in the original attack?”
“About the same,” she said. “At least initially.”
“What do you mean by that?”
“A lot of the injured died in the next week.”
“I’ll bet some of that was from lack of power, right? They had to do everything on generators at the hospitals.”
“Yes,” she said. “So obvious.”
“What?”
“Lambert probably knew we would recognize the scenario. I mean, you lived in Hong Kong, you knew where the power plant was and what happened. Clearly, we weren’t meant to repeat the old fight. We were meant to do better. Fewer casualties. No damage to the power plant.”
“How?
” he said. “Nothing else we did made a dent in that thing.”
She took a sip of her coffee.
“Well,” she said. “We’ve got all night to figure it out.”
He suppressed a groan and nodded.
* * *
Lambert listened to their explanation about what went wrong in their drill with a face so neutral that at first Jinhai thought they must have blundered again. When they finished, he continued to stare at them for a few moments.
“Okay,” he said. “You can saddle back up. Try not to disappoint me this time.”
“Yes, Ranger,” he said, relief flowing through him like a cool stream.
* * *
Once more they were Horizon Brave, standing in the waters of the South China Sea, facing Hong Kong, watching Reckoner beat down the worn-out Cherno Alpha. Jinhai had looked up the fight the night before; what they were seeing here was the tail end of a magnificent effort by the Russian team. Fighting alone, Cherno Alpha had managed to keep the Kaiju at sea for nearly six hours, first by slugging it out and finally, as some of her systems began to fail, by grappling with the beast and anchoring herself to the sea floor with spikes deployed from her legs, enduring the constant punishment for more than an hour before the Kaiju finally damaged one of her arms and broke her grip. Historically, that was when Horizon Brave had arrived, and that was how the simulation was set up.
This time there was no hesitation; they started their run at Reckoner immediately, opening with a volley of shells from their chest-mounted guns. Jinhai knew from experience that wouldn’t do anything but distract the beast, but that was all they wanted. The Kaiju turned from the disabled Jaeger and charged at them, dealing Cherno a blow from its tail in what seemed to be either an accident or an afterthought. Jinhai saw the Jaeger stagger as it came unpinned from the continental crust, and despaired. Then he couldn’t see the Russian machine; Reckoner’s incoming bulk blocked the view.
“Now!” Vik shouted.
They fired both Cryo-Cannons – not at Reckoner, but at the sea it moved through.
The water instantly seized up in sea ice several meters thick, trapping Reckoner. They continued to fire the cannons until they had discharged most of their cryogenic solution.