PACIFIC RIM UPRISING ASCENSION

by Greg Keyes

  She caught up with Anna, and almost ran past her. If she reached Andrei in time, warned him what was about to happen, she might prevent it.

  She never found out what she would have decided, because at just that moment, the charges went off.

  “Faster,” she told the other girl. “Faster.”

  Anna tried. The concentration was clear on her face. She was going as fast as she could.

  Maybe she was wrong. Probably. What did she know about these things?

  But then she heard the screams behind her, sounds she didn’t know a human voice could make, and without another thought she grabbed Anna’s hand and practically dragged her along as the shrieking continued, and now she heard a rushing sound, like the sound of water going down a storm drain, but louder. She looked back and saw blue light racing down the walls.

  They made it to the great cavity and halfway across it before the cyan flood reached them; the smell was incredibly strong, so intense she thought her breath would close up in her chest. Her eyes were burning. And then it hit her in the back of the legs, and she knew they were done, but she slogged on, anyway, still holding the screaming Anna by the hand, expecting at any moment to be overwhelmed.

  But then she realized that the gut hollow was big enough that the flow had spread out, and was now no deeper than her calves. Still, she felt a tingling sensation beginning, and ran for the exit.

  Outside was bedlam; crews were suiting up, vac hoses that hadn’t been used in years were being prepped. She saw Andrei arguing with Chandra and several foremen as she struggled to get the hysterical Anna into the chemical shower.

  Stripping out of her own suit, Vik saw blisters were developing on her legs, and on Anna’s as well.

  “You saved me,” Anna said. “I would have died.”

  “Come on,” Vik said.

  “Where are we going?”

  “Away from here.”

  “But my pay…”

  The run after the explosion had been the most sustained panic of her life. But something was coming out of the other end of it.

  Anger. Certainty.

  She was nothing to Andrei, and working for him – or someone like him – she would always be nothing. Even if she kept getting promoted until she was Andrei, she would be nothing, because in the grand scheme of things, Andrei was nothing. A user. An exploiter. He contributed nothing to the world, and neither did she, as things were now.

  It had been easy to quit, once she was certain she was not a Kaidanovsky. Easy to think she was nothing. But now she remembered the conversation with her grandfather, the night she nearly froze to death, the night the Kaiju she had just come out of had been slain by Cherno Alpha. How he had reacted when she said her parents were the Kaidanovskys. How it seemed he wanted to tell her it wasn’t true. He hadn’t, because – like Grandmother – he thought if she believed, she might rise to excellence.

  But she didn’t need to be a Kaidanovsky to be somebody. Her grandfather had been somebody. She needed no more than that.

  She wanted to pilot a Jaeger. She wanted to be someone of consequence.

  As she stood there, thinking that, it was like she was in the eye of the storm. Andrei was mobilizing his people not to search for survivors, but to capture the blood before it lost its potency. Was it really Kaiju blood, preserved in that heart, sheltered in a vault of bone? Or was it merely water that had collected from snowmelt and become toxic?

  She didn’t know. She didn’t care. But she noticed that the door to Andrei’s office was ajar.

  She didn’t even try to sneak. No one was watching. She just walked in, went through his desk, came up with a double handful of rubles, and walked out. She took Anna to her mother, gave her a hundred rubles, and told her to leave town if she could.

  * * *

  Sensei came to the door, looking sleepy and cross. She had been pounding on it for several minutes. When he saw who it was, his eyebrows rose. He evaluated her for a moment.

  “This is my home,” he said.

  “I didn’t know what else to do,” she said.

  “Downstairs,” he said. “In the dojo.”

  She went back down the stairs and waited as he unlocked the dojo. It wasn’t warm inside, but it wasn’t freezing either.

  He listened to her story without comment. When she finished, he sighed.

  “What do you want me to do?” he asked.

  “When I don’t come back, Andrei will figure out it was me,” she said. “If he doesn’t know already. If someone saw me. And he will kill me, I’m sure of it. I must leave town. And I must take my grandmother with me. But I don’t know where to go, or – or how to get there. I’ve been on one train in my life.”

  He nodded, and stared off at nothing for a minute or two.

  “How much money did you take?” he asked.

  She handed it over to him.

  His eyes sharpened. “Well, that will help,” he said.

  “I’ll get your grandmother,” he said. “In case Andrei already knows. What can I tell her? How can I get her to leave?”

  “Tell her the Kaiju know her name, know where she is, and they’re coming for her. Tell her Vik sent you to help.”

  In a way, she thought, it wasn’t even a lie. Maybe her grandmother wasn’t as crazy as she seemed.

  28

  2024

  YELLOW SEA

  CHINA

  SHAOLIN ROGUE

  THE KAIJU GRAPPLED ONTO THEIR INJURED ARM and began to torque. Metal screamed in protest; renewed pain knifed into Ming-hau’s shoulder. Deep inside of Shaolin Rogue, cables began to strain and then snap, as the tail struck the Conn-Pod repeatedly, until cracks began to spiderweb across the viewport.

  They fought for control, but were overwhelmed by the sheer savagery of the attack.

  Then, suddenly, above, the water broke as something plunged through – and the Kaiju was off them. Gone.

  “Hope we didn’t need an invitation,” a new voice said. It was one of the Wei brothers, he couldn’t tell which.

  “No, please,” Suyin said. “Come in, sit down, have some tea.”

  Crimson Typhoon had arrived.

  It was good timing; as Shaolin Rogue came back to her feet, they could clearly see the towers of Shanghai. They hadn’t realized how far toward shore the fight had taken them.

  Crimson Typhoon was a Mark-4, and one of the most technically advanced Jaegers in existence. It was the only Jaeger with three pilots – triplet brothers, Cheung, Jin, and Hu. They were intense, standoffish toward strangers, extremely competitive among themselves.

  And incredible Jaeger pilots.

  Typhoon had been tailored to the Wei brothers, to take full advantage of their abilities; she had three arms, and all of them were now in motion; they had deployed their vortex blades – essentially gigantic circular saws – and were now in what the triplets called Thundercloud Formation. Huo Da submerged as if trying to avoid the attack but then exploded from the sea, wrapping its remaining limbs around the Jaeger. Typhoon chopped its vortex blades down on the heavily armored back; they sparked and sheared off.

  This was the first time Ming-hau had had a clear view of the Kaiju out of the water – it was thicker than he thought, closer to cylindrical than flat.

  “No,” Suyin said, in response to his unspoken observation. “It is changing, blowing up like a balloon.”

  The Kaiju whipped out its two long tentacle arms in another attempt to grapple Typhoon, but with almost blinding speed the three arms whirled and the vortex blades keened through armor and bones, and one of the Kaiju’s arms fell writhing to the ocean.

  “Why is it inflating like that?” he wondered. “To fight better out of water? If so, it’s not working too well.”

  Any speculation on that had to wait, as Typhoon kicked its knee up into Huo Da’s underside and the Kaiju suddenly lunged low, toppling the crimson-and-gold giant with pure mass.

  Shaolin Rogue’s left arm remained connected but was now useless. But their right
arm was still fine.

  “Meteor Chain!” Ming-hau said, aiming the arm. From the center of the fist, a steel ball shot forth, pulling a chain of titanium alloy a hundred and fifty feet long at maximum extension. Rogue whipped it in a circle over her head, three times, then sent it arcing toward Huo Da, just as the Kaiju reared up to crash down upon Crimson Typhoon again. As intended, the ball went past the monster but the chain caught it below the head and then spun to wrap around it. Rogue deepened her stance and heaved.

  The razor-sharp titanium chain went tight enough to sing an almost subsonic note. Huo Da fought the pull, straining back until blue stripes appeared on its armor. It jerked back and forth, like a fish on a line, yanking them toward it, but as they drew nearer, motors inside the Jaeger pulled the cable in to keep it from going slack.

  Crimson Typhoon rose back up from the sea, got back in Thundercloud Formation, and charged.

  Huo Da suddenly leapt high, pulling Shaolin Rogue off her feet, and twisted contrariwise to the pull of the chain, unwinding in midair before splashing back into the sea, sending minor tidal waves out to push both Jaegers back a step.

  Now free, the Meteor Chain began retracting.

  Crimson Typhoon turned about, searching for the Kaiju.

  “There,” Suyin said, pointing toward shore, where Huo Da’s back was just visible above the waves. Confronted by two Jaegers, it seemed to be running.

  Typhoon went after it, taking long strides, emerging from the water as the continental shelf grew ever shallower. Shaolin came after, although they weren’t quite able to match Typhoon’s speed. When the water was a little more than knee deep to a Jaeger, Typhoon leapt free of the water, the rocket assists on her legs blazing. She came out of the water with such grace, Ming-hau was reminded of a dancer. She landed just behind the Kaiju, gripping it with two hands on the right flank with digits designed specifically to latch onto Kaiju, and delivered an enormous blow with the much bigger, heavier third fist.

  Shaolin Rogue was catching up, but it looked like the battle might be over before they got there. The sea bottom rose up to form a shoal; they were now only a little more than ankle deep.

  Huo Da wasn’t looking so good; it was bleeding in many places, and its long torso was now bloated and misshapen, as if it was hemorrhaging massively within, its guts ruptured and rearranged by Crimson Typhoon’s savage punches. The Mark-4 lifted the beast out of the water and hurled it – not directly at them, but in their general direction, toward the shelf they stood on. The shallow water did nothing to cushion the Kaiju’s fall; it landed with a jarring crunch, then struggled to rise back up.

  Shaolin deployed the Meteor Chain again, and this time just swung the heavy weight into the Kaiju’s head as it tried to recover. It went down, hard, and with a ragged cheer they started toward it.

  The water was too shallow for Huo Da to completely submerge; its water jets were more or less useless, so it was reduced to crawling with its remaining forelegs. Ming-hau wondered how it had planned on attacking Shanghai in the first place, when it was so thoroughly aquatic. In general, the Kaiju seemed to have been getting better, adapting somehow to Jaegers and other human technologies.

  This one seemed more like a mistake.

  It lay there, writhing, probably dying. Typhoon started forward for the kill.

  Before the Jaeger got there, Huo Da split open, blue ichor spurting from the rupture.

  “That’s right,” one of the Weis said. “Go ahead and die. You don’t want any more of this.”

  Ming-hau relaxed in his harness. He glanced over at Suyin, feeling her relief as well. He breathed in slow, out slow.

  But then something pushed up out of the Kaiju, wriggling through the blood and bile, unfolding into the atmosphere, like a cicada coming out of its skin, or a butterfly from its cocoon – but much more quickly.

  Before either Jaeger could react, three pairs of wings opened to the sky. In any other context, he might have thought them pretty; they were translucent, shot through with faint blue strands, reminding him very much of dragonfly wings. Eight long, clawed legs unfolded beneath it as it stood from its discarded skin. The rear pair were particularly enormous, resembling the jumping legs of a grasshopper, and it now used them to leap forward and kick Crimson Typhoon in the face.

  Shaolin Rogue was still retracting the Meteor Chain, but they nevertheless rushed forward to aid Typhoon. Huo Da saw them coming and climbed into the air, the wind from its wings rippling the water, then dove down at them. Rogue threw up their arms to block the attack. Even as they did so Ming-hau saw that the powerful legs each ended in a foot with six clawed toes, two of which were opposable.

  The first ever flying Kaiju. What luck.

  Huo Da caught Rogue’s good arm; they pulled back, but they’d never imagined how strong its wings were; Shaolin Rogue felt herself pulled up; for a moment, the inertia of their considerable mass kept them in place, but then one foot came up from the sea bed, and then another.

  And then, impossibly, they were airborne. They saw Crimson Typhoon splashing desperately toward them, but the other Jaeger was too late; in moments, they were far out of reach.

  “Shoot it down,” Suyin yelled. “Typhoon, use your plasma cannon!”

  “We might hit you!” Crimson Typhoon replied. “Fight free, give us a clear shot.”

  Huo Da was holding them by their only good arm, so it was impossible to punch or grab it, so they tried to swing up and kick it, but they simply didn’t have that much mobility in their waist.

  “We can jettison the arm,” Ming-hau said. “Use the explosive bolts.”

  “Shaolin Rogue,” Tendo broke in. “You won’t survive the fall.”

  “We might, if we do it now,” Suyin said. “The sea will break our fall.”

  “It’s less than fifty feet deep, where you are.”

  “We have to give Typhoon a clear shot,” Suyin said.

  Their eyes met. They didn’t have to talk. There was no argument to be had.

  “Firing the bolts,” Suyin said.

  The jolt of the explosions was tiny, but they were instantly in free fall.

  “I love you,” he told his wife.

  “I love you, too,” she said.

  He remembered the first time he had ever seen her. They had been twelve, the first day of school – she was the new girl in class; everyone thought she had a funny accent, because she was from Yunnan. He wanted to put his arm around her, shield her from the others, but he had been too scared of what they might say. The other boys also said she had a big nose and thick legs, and she wasn’t very pretty.

  But she was to him.

  Four days later, when he finally worked up the courage to sit next to her at lunch, she looked at him, and then leaned forward.

  “It’s about time,” she whispered.

  Ming-hau closed his eyes.

  29

  2035

  PHILIPPINE SEA

  PHILIPPINES

  JINHAI WOKE IN A BOX, OR PERHAPS THE DREAM of a box. His mind seemed to float in and out of being, as if he was stuck at the fine edge between sleep and waking. He knew he ought to be freaking out, but it was as if his emotions were wrapped in a big, fuzzy blanket. It wasn’t dark: the walls of the box glowed softly.

  Time blurred away from him. He slept. When next he woke, the box was opened, and someone pulled him out of it. He realized that his vision was hazy; he couldn’t quite make anything out. Faces moved before him as ovals with dark patches for eyes and mouths. Now and then someone said something, but not in English or Mandarin.

  Eventually, his sight began to sharpen. As everything gradually came into focus, he saw someone sitting, back slightly turned toward him. In front of her – he saw it was a woman – was a hologram display. As he watched, she manipulated some of the images.

  Then he became much more concerned with his condition. He was in a chair – well, not just in it, but strapped to it with narrow plastic bands. He didn’t seem to be in the Moyulan Shatterdome
, either, or at least no place he had been. The room had an odd shape, with one curved wall, and was painted an unpleasant pale green.

  He turned his head and saw Vik was there, and likewise restrained. He also felt a sharp pain in his ribs.

  “Ouch,” he said. “What the hell—”

  The woman turned at the sound of his voice.

  “Ah,” she said. “There you are.” She pointed at his side. “I hope that doesn’t hurt too much. We had to remove your transponder, of course. I wonder why you even had one. Very peculiar.”

  “Help!” Jinhai hollered.

  “Don’t get hysterical,” the woman said. “If yelling would help, do you really imagine I would have left you the ability to speak?”

  “Who are you?” Vik demanded.

  “That’s not all that important,” she said. “You two. You’re the important ones.”

  “You know us?”

  “Only recently,” she said. “You’ve been a very convenient distraction.”

  “You’re the one who framed us? You killed Braga?”

  Her face fell, slightly. “Of course I didn’t mean for Braga to die,” she said. “All of that was merely a diversion, you know. Since he did die, they made more of a fuss, so it worked to my advantage, but it wasn’t my aim. But these things happen, and we move past them.”

  “Distraction from what?” Jinhai demanded. “Why did you frame us? What are we doing here? What’s happening?”

  “What must happen, of course,” she replied.

  “Wait,” Vik said. “If you wanted the sabotage blamed on us, why kidnap us?”

  “At the moment, you seem guiltier than ever,” she said. “You’ve killed again and fled the Shatterdome by boat. By the time the truth is discovered, no one will really care who reprogrammed a Jaeger or killed a minor-grade J-Tech. Least of all the two of you.”

  “What, you’re going to kill us too?” Jinhai asked. He jerked at the plastic bonds, knowing it was hopeless.

  “Among other things, yes.”

  “Something is wrong with you,” Jinhai said.

  “Something is wrong with all of us,” the woman said. “We’re all born broken, already dying, and if that were the end of it, all would be well. But instead we’re taped and wired together with lies and gibberish and false hope and turned out into the world with mutilated senses. We see beauty in all the wrong things, the things that don’t last: the soap bubble in the sun, the cherry blossom in the wind, the flare of a shooting star. Illusion. But there is an underlying reality. You can see it in the numbers. You believe the quantum fields that make you possible care that you believe you have a soul? You are nothing, Jinhai. I am nothing. We are nothing. Epiphenomena. But we can be made real. Through Them. Fighting Them was our biggest mistake. Fighting Them took my love. It took my life. I wanted to die for so long – but then I realized I could do better than die. I can deliver myself to them. Deliver everyone to them. Give them their world. I will rectify our mistake.”