by Greg Keyes
“No, not – it was a kind of toy – never mind. My point is this – a month ago you, so far as I can tell, you were doing everything you could not to get into the Ranger training program. Now you’re all gung-ho about it – but you don’t think you’ll ever see any real action. What gives?”
“I’m complicated,” Jinhai said.
* * *
The doorbell rang so seldom that Jinhai wasn’t sure what it was, at first. He looked up from the calculus problem he was working on and asked the door to show him who was there.
To his surprise, what it showed him was a girl. An attractive girl, wearing a knee-length black-and-white checked skirt, a yellow pullover and stockings of the same color.
She looked familiar, but it took him a few beats to recognize her without her fencing outfit.
“Hey!” he yelped. He was starting for the door when he saw that Dustin was way ahead of him.
“No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no…” he muttered under his breath as he ran down the stairs.
Dustin was just closing the door when Jinhai got there.
“Where is she? Where did she go?”
“J…”
He yanked the door open and saw she was about ten meters away.
“Hey!” he called.
She turned around.
“Your babysitter said you weren’t home,” she said.
“This is not cool,” Jinhai hissed to Dustin.
“And this is a bad idea,” Dustin whispered back. “Very bad.”
“What did you want?” Jinhai asked the girl.
“I just – I thought I would see how you were,” she said.
“Would you ah, like to come in?”
“I don’t know – is your spook going to shoot me?”
“No. He only shoots people on even-numbered days. Odd-numbered days he uses his garrote.”
She crossed her arms. “You know what,” she said, “you seem to be okay. So I’ll consider my mission accomplished.”
“No, wait – please come in. I’d like to talk to you.”
She hesitated. “It was kind of a long walk,” she said. “I could use a glass of water, I guess.”
“Just FYI,” Dustin said, his voice dropping to the faintest of whispers as she approached. “It wasn’t a long walk. A car dropped her off just up the road.”
“Go clean some guns or something,” Jinhai said.
To his embarrassment, Dustin searched her for weapons, even though most anything dangerous would be detected before anyone was even close to the house.
Her name was Xia, and she took a glass of water from him.
“So this is where the famed Ming-hau and Suyin live,” she said. “Impressive.”
“Well, sometimes,” he said. “Not that often these days. Very busy people, you know. Heroes and all that.”
“Is that why you left your nice house to get your ass kicked?” she said. “Bored?”
“Something like that,” he said. “Do you want to see what you did?”
“You’re just looking for an excuse to take your shirt off,” she said. “Impress me with your manly muscles.”
“Wow,” Jinhai said. “You see right through me.”
“Right. On account of the holes I made.”
“Ouch.”
Her smile faded a little. “Seriously though – I hope you’re all right. I get – carried away sometimes.”
“I asked for it,” he said. “Almost literally.”
“Yeah, you did,” she said. “I’m not sure street fencing is your thing.”
“You guys must have had such a laugh about me,” he said. “Little rich kid comes down into the city, thinks he’s so big…”
Her eyes widened, and then she burst out laughing.
“What?” he asked.
“Those guys you saw me with?” she said. “One of them has a father who is the CEO of Xelofirm. The guy who started our fight? His mother is a neurosurgeon. What, you thought we were street kids or something? Who but a bunch of upper-class punks would come up with something as doofy as street fencing in body armor?”
That made a good bit of sense, but it took a little of the sheen off his memory of the whole thing. He actually had sort of thought they were street toughs.
“I guess I didn’t think about it that much,” he said. “So how long was your walk again?”
She smiled and looked a little embarrassed. “Yeah, you got me,” she said. “A friend dropped me off.”
“So are you still doing it?” he asked. “The street fencing thing?”
“No,” she said. “Or at least not too much. I prefer the sport, really. And foil to épée.”
“I can totally beat you in foil,” he said.
“I wouldn’t count on it,” she replied. “But come to my salle next week. You can bring your spook. He won’t need a first aid kit this time.”
* * *
Xia was better than Jinhai with a foil, too, but he loved fencing her, even if he lost, which was usually. And the more he fenced her, the better he liked it.
A lot of fencers – most of them maybe – didn’t really interact with their opponents; they just sort of threw out their best chops and hoped they would stick. One fencer did his thing, the other hers, and that was sort of it.
But it wasn’t like that with Xia. It was really more like dancing, an improvised ballet in which each partner was trying to anticipate what the other would do so as to respond appropriately. Winning was… secondary.
She felt it too. It was intense, and soon it was clear their feelings would not be confined to the piste.
Kissing, as it turned out, could also be pretty thoroughly interactive. He had kissed before, and been kissed, but looking back on it, he wasn’t sure he and anyone had kissed together, to solve the kiss like an equation, to meet each movement of the lips and tongue with a suitable reply.
So fencing went to kissing, and kissing to long walks and late nights on the phone, and spending every moment they could steal from their schedules.
And Jinhai began to feel… harmony. Balance. Or at least that such a state might exist and be within reach.
And yet, at the same time, he couldn’t avoid thinking about the future. He saw the year before them: a flat sea as autumn arrived, but in the distance, it began to curl up, first a little wave, then bigger, until it formed a tsunami that would – in the end – crash down upon them.
He had applied to the PPDC Ranger training program; he had already been accepted. Xia was going off to Beijing, to begin her studies toward a career in medicine.
He tried not to think about it. She never brought it up. But as the year moved on, the wave began to blot out the sky.
But they still had beautiful, perfect days, and it was on a day that was at least going that way that he decided to have the conversation he had been practicing at night, when he was alone, and the whirr of his brain wouldn’t slow down, much less stop so he could sleep.
It was after a swim in the lake, and they lay on a blanket underneath the branches of a willow, looking up at the blue-porcelain sky through its leaves, where a pair of eagles lazily danced upon the winds.
“You could qualify for Ranger training,” he said, as if it was something that had just occurred to him.
But she wasn’t buying it. She rolled on her side so her gaze was directly on him.
“How long have you been thinking about that?” she asked. “A while, I bet.”
“I love you,” he said. “I’ve been trying to think of a way—”
“For us to be together. I know. But I’m not going to Ranger training, Jinhai. Why would you want me to? Really?”
“Because…” He tried to get his thoughts together. “Because we know each other. The way we are together. The way we fence, kiss, dance, cook…”
“You think we’re Drift compatible,” she said.
He felt his face reddening. He nodded.
“I’ve met your parents,” she said. “I see how it is. And yes, I know yo
u. I understand what you want. And I love you too, Jinhai. And if you want to stay together – if you want to do the hard work of a long-distance relationship, I’m willing to try. A few years of our lives apart, and then we could be partners for life. But I want love to be enough for you. Regular, normal, human love. I don’t want to drift with you. I don’t want our minds all mixed together by a machine. That should happen with time, caring. Communication. It comes with patience, and growing old together. That’s what I want, Jinhai.”
“Okay,” he said, and he kissed her. “I’m sorry I tried to—”
She laughed. “I knew you would bring it up,” she said. “That’s why we don’t need to drift. We already have so much more than other people have. We both know it. What we have isn’t the usual, Jinhai. It’s special.”
And it was, and for a little while longer he was able to tell himself that it was enough.
But it wasn’t.
24
2035
MOYULAN SHATTERDOME
CHINA
IN THEIR NEXT MOCK-POD DRILL, JINHAI AND Vik found themselves in the legendary Coyote Tango, accompanied by Mexico’s Matador Fury and their ride from the day before, Striker Eureka, right in the middle of a fight with Ceramander, a slimy, eight-legged newt with a flaring skull plate and a mouth full of razors. By this time, Jinhai didn’t think he could be surprised, but when he tried to use Tango’s Ballistic Mortar Cannons, he got one. They didn’t work.
“We’ve got no missiles,” one of Eureka Striker’s pilots reported. It was a familiar voice, not a simulation of one of the original pilots.
“Renata?” Jinhai said. “Is that you?”
“Jinhai?”
“Yeah, me and Vik are in Coyote Tango.”
“Oh no,” Suresh’s voice came from Matador Fury, just as Ceramander smashed into the Jaeger.
“Joint mission,” Vik said. “Great.”
Jinhai shared her reservations. The other cadets had barely spoken to either of them for days; they all clearly believed he and Vik were guilty. But right now, there were other things to worry about. As everyone reported in, their Jaegers all worked fine – but not any of their weapons systems or special attacks.
They would just have to slug it out, then.
Jinhai and Vik started forward to help Matador Fury, but Striker Eureka moved in front of them.
“Just – stay back, Tango,” Renata said. “We’ll let you know if you’re needed.”
Jinhai suddenly felt a furnace light in him, and realized that it wasn’t just his anger, but Vik’s much brighter fury coursing through him. Ceramander and the other Jaegers faded, replaced by a man’s face. The man was angry, yelling at Vik, telling her to do her job. They were running in a dark place, driven by equal parts anger and terror. Then he was in her room; she was tearing a poster of Cherno Alpha off of the wall. There was a woman, and Vik was screaming at her, demanding to know if her parents were the Kaidanovskys –
Then everything came back, and he realized they were in the process of punching Striker Eureka in the side. It felt good, but part of him knew it was anything but. They hit Eureka again, this time lunging forward, sending the other Jaeger staggering from their path. Then they rushed toward Ceramander, which was savaging Matador Fury. Suresh was freaking out, yelling incoherently as one of the huge mech’s arms came off and the Jaeger toppled into the sea. Then the Kaiju’s huge maw was right in their face. They sidestepped, grabbed the monster with their left arm around its neck and the right arms under its front legs, and heaved it through the air toward an outcrop of black basalt.
Then Striker Eureka slammed them from behind. Vik let out a stream of Russian curses as they hit the same rock formation as Ceramander. They turned to face Striker.
“You don’t want to do this,” Vik said, her voice low and dangerous.
“What are you going to do,” Renata said, “smother me in my sleep?”
“Vik,” Jinhai said. “Cool off.”
Then Ceramander leapt back up, and with a swing of its tail, knocked them off their feet. Sirens wailed.
“Crack in the reactor!” Jinhai shouted. “We have to –”
Then Vik was out of his mind as the link shut down. Ceramander, the other Jaegers, and Hawaii vanished, and were soon replaced by a very, very angry Lambert.
“Get out here, all of you!” the Ranger shouted.
They did as he said, trying not to look at each other.
“This is not a video game,” he said. “This is a very expensive, cutting-edge battle simulator. It was not built for children to have playtime in. Are you children, cadets?”
“Sir, no Ranger sir,” they replied in unison.
“Well then you fooled me completely,” he said. “Because that is how you were behaving. You cannot have differences with your fellow pilots. You all just died right now, and because of that, so did a lot of other people. People you are sworn to protect. You have problems with someone, you leave that outside of the Conn-Pod, so you understand me?”
“Yes, Ranger,” they replied.
Suresh raised his hand.
“What?” Lambert said.
“Ranger, none of our weapons were functioning.”
“Exactly right, they weren’t. Do you remember how Ceramander was beaten, cadet?”
“Didn’t they, um, throw him in a volcano?”
“Yes, they did, cadet. Because their weapons weren’t having much of an effect. But you know what they did have?”
“More experience, Ranger?” Renata said.
“Cooperation,” he replied. “Even without weapons, the three of you could have worked Ceramander back to the caldera and knocked him in. One of you couldn’t have done it. Two of you couldn’t have done it. Three of you could have. Instead, you chose to waste my time and the precious resources of the PPDC on a playground spat. If this happens again – if anything remotely in the ball park of this happens again – those involved will be out. Done. Do you understand me?”
“Yes, Ranger,” they replied.
“You all fail this one. No redo. Hit the track and give me forty laps. Your next liberty is canceled.”
“What about Tahima and Meilin, Ranger,” Renata said. “They weren’t involved.”
“They are now,” Lambert said. “You can explain to them why while you run your laps.”
* * *
“It’s another group drill,” Vik muttered the next day, as they were entering their pod.
“Yeah,” Jinhai said. “I think Lambert wants us to screw up again so he can bounce us. So let’s punch Kaiju and not Jaegers this time, okay?”
Vik nodded, but still didn’t look happy. She didn’t feel happy when the Drift started, either, but once the handshake firmed up, he felt her spirits rise. He understood why.
Drifting with Vik worked. They were a pretty good team.
What he and Vik had wasn’t what his parents had, but he was starting to think that what they had was deeper and weirder than what most pilots experienced. Lambert and Burke sometimes didn’t seem to like each other very much at times. The other cadets had been paired up before the Mock-Pod drills began, based on their performance in the Kwoon and Pons training, but none of them seemed to have a bond any deeper than he and Vik had.
He wasn’t in love with Vik, or anything goofy like that, and he could tell that – even though she liked him better than she had when they met – she didn’t have any amorous feelings toward him either. It just wasn’t who they were as pilots.
He had to face the possibility that what he was looking for was something that for him would never exist.
Still, they were good together, and it made both of them feel better. But deep down he had the nagging suspicion that they could be better. She was still holding back; there was still a shadowy part of her he couldn’t quite feel or see into.
Vik looked over at him and shrugged, and he realized she had probably followed a good part of what he’d been thinking.
“Clear your mind,”
she said. “We want to do it right this time. And yeah, I know it was me that got us off-game last time. But this time I’m really gonna try, okay?”
“Okay,” he said.
They had a few minutes to get their bearings this time.
Once again, there were three of them, standing a few miles off shore. He and Vik were in Puma Real, a Mark-2 Panamanian Jaeger, as lithe and nimble as any Mark-2 ever built, a little less armored than some. She had eight missiles mounted on her shoulders, earlier versions of the anti-Kaiju rockets Striker Eureka had carried. Her torso could rotate three-hundred-and-sixty degrees, and she had retractable tungsten-carbide claws on the ends of her arms.
Renata and Ilya were in Diablo Intercept, also a Mark-2, built in Chile, the country Renata called home. She looked squat and powerful, her Conn-Pod painted dark red. Not having access to Diablo’s controls, he wasn’t sure what her capabilities were, although he remembered she had some sort of long-distance flame throwers that ran up her arms, which were bulky enough to hide any number of nasty surprises for Kaiju.
Romeo Blue, piloted by Tahima and Meilin, completed their trio. Romeo was a Mark-1 built in the United States, and like several of that first generation of Jaegers, a bit on the experimental side – the first and only tripedal Jaeger. Mounted on its three legs was a torso that ventured toward spherical and deeply armored. Her protruding Gatling chest could produce a withering sleet of armor-piercing rounds, but mainly she was built to stand her ground, a fortress rather than a brawler.
Something was rising out of the sea.
“This is Ecuador,” Renata said. “That’s Ceptid, I’m willing to bet.”
“The Living Sewer,” Meilin said. “This is going to be so much fun.”
“They didn’t really beat Ceptid,” Renata said. “Diablo Intercept tried to go toe-to-toe with it and it blew up. It’s basically a walking acid bomb.”
“How do we handle it?” Ilya asked.
“I think –” Vik began, but Renata interrupted.
“We don’t let it get close,” the Chilean said. “We stay out of its range and pound it with whatever long-range weapons we have. Romeo Blue, you set up just offshore. Puma Real, flank it on the south; we’ll take the north. If it makes a drive for someone, try to draw it back out to sea. But do not close with it. If we lose a Jaeger, it’s bound to deduct points from the group as well as whoever buys it.”