by Greg Keyes
He thought he was going to vomit. She sounded so sincere, so absolutely sure of herself. He had once seen a guy on a train telling everyone that his fingers were talking to him. He asserted it with utter conviction. He even did the voices of his different fingers, so everyone could hear. His pinky had been a baritone, which was surprising.
He had also been sporting the round part of a banjo for a hat, wearing boxers with no pants, big yellow boots, and an old Quell t-shirt. The whole package. It made sense.
But this woman didn’t look crazy. She looked normal, just a regular person dressed for work.
But maybe that was because he wasn’t really looking at her. Dustin had told him once that usually you only looked at another person’s face once, so you’d know it next time. After that you recognized it by a sort of neural shorthand that sorted salient features. And his neural shorthand was telling him something was seriously wrong.
And now that he was really looking at her, when he let his gaze extend beyond the surface of her expression – which was sort of sincere and almost serene – her eyes looked like holes drilled into stone, empty and without bottom.
He fought down his panic and tried to think.
“They’ll find us,” he said desperately. “Lambert and the rest.”
“They may,” the woman agreed. “Anything is possible. But our voyage is almost complete.”
“Voyage?” Jinhai said.
“Of course,” the woman said. “We left Moyulan more than a day ago, by helicopter, with you in the cargo area. It was a scheduled flight, nothing that will attract attention. Just a respected scientist, her job complete, flying home. And yes, now we’re on a ship.”
“Where are we going?” he asked.
She smiled. “The future.”
Then she turned back to her work.
When the woman stopped talking to them, Jinhai tried to reassure Vik that things would be okay, but she had slipped into herself, and for a time it was as if he was alone. After a little while the woman excused herself and left. A moment later, a bald guy with a gun took her place. He wore a sleeveless shirt, probably to display the various Kaiju tattooed on his arms.
“What’s your name?” Jinhai asked the guy. The man smiled slightly.
“Don’t bother,” he said. “No matter what you say, or do, our course is set. If you only knew what glory awaits, you would be content.”
“Why not explain it to me then?” Jinhai asked. “I wouldn’t mind being content.”
But the man just shook his head, gave him a pitying look, and went to stand in the corner.
“I’m sorry about this, Jinhai,” Vik said, after a few minutes.
“Hey,” he said. “Glad to see you’re back with us.”
“Not for long, I think,” she whispered.
Time passed, Jinhai wasn’t sure how much. Then more men came, and unstrapped them from the chairs. Vik snapped into action the instant she was free, punching one of the men in the jaw. Jinhai tried to do the same, but he didn’t even manage to connect – there were far too many of them, and they clearly knew what they were doing. In moments, they had also subdued Vik. Then the two cadets were more or less carried through the metal corridors of the ship.
After a few turns and some steep stairs, Jinhai found himself on deck.
Jinhai didn’t know a lot about ships; he thought it was probably some sort of freighter, maybe a few hundred feet in length. It had a battered, worn, twentieth-century feel to it.
Around them was – nothing. Ocean all the way to the horizon. The sky was cloudless, the air hot. A few gulls followed them and perched now and then on the rails. He thought that meant they weren’t too far from land, but again, his nautical knowledge was pretty limited. The woman said that they had left the Shatterdome in a helicopter, but not how far they had flown. What distance could the ship sail in a day?
What he should probably be focusing on, he figured, was what was happening on deck, but he really didn’t want to. Whatever it was it seemed kind of religious. Smoke floated up from several tall censers, and an altar of some sort had been set up close to the bow of the ship. The altar was oddly irregular – it took him a moment to realize that it was a vertebra, maybe six or seven feet across; way bigger than any vertebra ought to be.
Around all of this, a crowd gathered; a lot of them wore robes of one sort or another, and Kaiju tattoos seemed to be a pretty standard feature. Two women and a man stood behind the altar, singing; now and then the crowd chimed in. The music was shrill, weird, and discordant.
“The bloody Rite of Spring,” he muttered aloud.
“What’s that?” the woman said.
“The Rite of Spring,” he said. “It’s a ballet, by this Russian composer—”
“I know Stravinsky,” she said. “I just wasn’t sure I heard you right. Most people don’t appreciate that sort of music anymore. But yes, this is very much like that, although you won’t be forced to dance to death. That would just be cruel.”
30
2034
HONG KONG
CHINA
JINHAI
JINHAI WAS A COWARD WHEN IT CAME TO THE break-up. He couldn’t find the words to tell Xia that it was over, that it had to be over. Instead he just started finding excuses not to see her. It was easy – he was busy after all. He thought that eventually she would break up with him. That would be great, because he wouldn’t feel guilty about it.
Only she didn’t do it. But she wasn’t happy. Their time together became less and less pleasant as their connection frayed.
“I know what you’re trying to do,” she said one evening. “But I won’t let you.”
She started kissing him, and for a few hours he convinced himself it would all work out. He told her he loved her, that he was sorry he had been distant.
But he knew better, and he knew, finally, that he was going to have to say the words, no matter how hard or unpleasant it was.
When he finally worked up the nerve, a few weeks before leaving for the Moyulan Shatterdome, she didn’t even seem surprised.
But she was angry.
“I was wondering if you would even have the guts,” she said. “I figured you would just leave, and I would never hear from you again.”
“I’m sorry,” he said.
“No you aren’t,” she said. “Not yet. But you will be. When you realize this drifting, fantasy lover of yours is just that, and that you pushed the one person that might have come close…” She was crying now, but she was still angry.
“Xia –”
“Don’t say anything else,” she said. “I’m done with this.”
31
2035
PHILIPPINE SEA
PHILIPPINES
“TO BE HONEST, I FIND A LOT OF THESE formalities pointless and tiring,” the woman said, as the preparations for their imminent sacrifice continued below. “It’s all sort of gilding the lily. But any group needs an identity, and ritual is an important part of that identity.”
While she was talking, he craned his neck to make eye contact with Vik. Vik looked more angry than scared which was probably a good thing. He wished he could say the same, but he was terrified.
He wanted to threaten the woman, to resist somehow, but despair was starting to take hold. This was all so crazy it didn’t seem real.
“Why are you doing this?” he asked. “Can you at least tell me that? I mean, if I’m gonna die—”
“You are going to die,” she said, a little angrily, the first genuine emotion he felt he’d seen from her. “We all are – today, tomorrow, a few decades – it makes no difference when, does it? How can it? But you, you’re going to be elevated. Your life will have meant something.” She paused and waved at the singing crowd below. “You know. Sort of.”
He sighed. “You really are just crazy, aren’t you?”
“I was crazy,” she corrected. “When I was your age, and for years after. And for a long time after that, I lived in a pit so deep and dark I ha
rdly remember the years passing. But then I understood what I was meant to do, found my purpose. And very soon now, that purpose will be complete. And so will I.”
“Killing Vik and me is your whole purpose in life?”
It wasn’t the craziest thing she’d said, but he was starting to see how hard that would be to sort into a list.
“Oh,” she said. “That’s silly. No. Do you know anything about western marriage ceremonies?”
“I’ve been to a couple,” he said.
“Often a little boy and girl are chosen to participate. The girl is the flower girl, and she lays a trail of flowers. The boy is the ringbearer, and he brings the wedding rings to the couple. It is all very cute, and people like it. I mean, neither child is critical or even necessary – the marriage is the important thing. It can happen without a flower girl and a ringbearer.” She smiled and patted his shoulder, and then Vik’s
“But it’s nice to have them, anyway.”
Jinhai was about to say that he didn’t recall – in the weddings he had attended – either child being killed.
But something else weird was happening, and he became distracted.
Just in front of the ship, a wave was rising; but it didn’t break over them, it just kept going up, shining from within with golden light.
Kaiju, was all he could think. She bloody did it somehow. She summoned a Kaiju back into the world.
The people down below knew it, too, and just lost their minds.
Then the wave broke, and its maker stood revealed. And it was very, very large. But it wasn’t a Kaiju.
People began to scream now, but not Jinhai.
Because it was Gipsy Avenger.
Coming toward them, growing nearer and taller as if walking up an underwater staircase.
“You know what?” Jinhai told the woman. “I think the wedding has just been canceled.”
* * *
Once they realized Morales was behind Sokk and ultimately the sabotage of Chronos Berserker, things moved pretty fast. They discovered she had been picked up – along with some of her equipment – by a company helicopter from her employer, Geognosis. Checking the registered flight plan revealed the chopper had never reached its intended destination, so they went to satellite data, which showed the chopper headed southeast, ultimately rendezvousing with an old break bulk ship near the Philippines.
Twenty minutes later, Lambert and Burke were strapping into Gipsy Avenger and under tow of Jumphawks, following her trail. The Jumphawks had circled wide of the ship and set them down in deep water, directly in her path, and there they had waited until she was within striking distance. After that, it was a simple matter of walking up the slope of the continental shelf to take them by surprise.
It had all gone perfectly, except for one thing: from the moment they had engaged pilot-to-pilot protocol, something had been wrong. Not with Gipsy, but with her pilots.
With Burke.
For the two pilots to function as one, their thoughts had to be joined to the point that it was hard to know who was thinking what. This was almost never absolutely true or completely stable – it was one reason why a Jaeger could only be piloted for a limited time before the neural handshake fell apart. But this time – it was rough. Burke was fighting him, for some reason. He wasn’t all in or even close to it.
He was hiding something. And Burke knew that Lambert knew he was hiding something, which set up a dangerously low level of Drift – and that was causing glitches: things weren’t always lined up. Once, climbing up the slope from the edge of the shelf, they had nearly stumbled.
What could be so bad Burke needed to hide it? Unless he and Morales were somehow in this together…
Not going there.
Because if he did, and he was right, Burke would know.
“Burke,” he said, as they emerged in front of the ship. “Tighten up.”
“Aye, aye, skipper,” Burke said.
Lambert tried to ignore that, and instead watched with a certain amount of pleasure as the people on the deck of the ship abandoned whatever kind of Kaiju-worshipping weirdness they were up to and began to run around pellmell. That was inevitably followed by small-arms fire which had about the same chance of stopping them as a handful of gnats had of taking down an elephant.
It wasn’t impossible – just very, very unlikely.
Gipsy began wading forward.
“Any sign of big guns?” Lambert asked.
“That’s probably a rocket launcher,” Burke said. “Right there.”
A part of the holographic display suddenly zoomed in on a largish piece of equipment that had just been unveiled from beneath a tarp.
“Yep, that would be a rocket launcher,” Lambert said. “Engage Gravity Sling.”
“Gravity Sling engaged,” Burke said.
Gipsy Avenger was more than an upgraded version of Gipsy Danger; she had equipment that no Mark-3 or 4 could have dreamed of. One of the neatest was the Gravity Sling Gipsy’s right hand immediately reconfigured to form. Just as it finished, the first of the missiles fired.
The air between Gipsy’s Gravity Sling and the rocket launcher suddenly rippled as if seen through high heat as the gravitic beam reached across the intervening space. It caught the missile in flight, the launcher, and two operators. For an instant, it held them and then – as the name implied, and with a motion of Gipsy’s arm to create the trajectory – slung the whole lot far out to sea. Just as it was nearly invisible with distance, the rocket exploded, a blinding flash of blue-green light that sent shockwaves through their systems.
“What the hell was that?” Burke yelped.
“I guess it’s a good thing it didn’t hit us,” Lambert replied.
It was time to stop playing around. There was no telling what these nuts had up their sleeves.
* * *
Jinhai cheered aloud when the rocket launcher went sailing off into the air. Then an explosion seemed to fill the sky. He watched it expand, awestruck, and belatedly realized that had been his chance to try and break away. He had missed it. The Kaiju cultists all had firm grips on him again.
The woman turned to the men holding him and Vik and pointed out one of them.
“You,” she said. “Go tell the captain to destroy navigation and all of the onboard computers. Everything. Don’t just wipe them, destroy them. Use the charges. We cannot let them know our destination. And tell him not to send any messages out. Our brothers and sisters will know how to act on our silence. Do you understand?”
“Yes, Sister,” one of them said.
“The rest of you, drag these two up front,” she said. “Make sure the Jaeger sees them. They won’t destroy the ship if they know these two are on board.”
The men started to pull Jinhai forward.
Gipsy grabbed the ship by the prow.
Everyone flew off their feet as the ship ground to a sudden halt.
Jinhai fell like everyone else, but he was free of grasping hands, so when he hit the deck he rolled, jumped up, and ran back down into the ship. Vik was just ahead of him, leaping over his captors as they made a grab for her. He felt a sudden rush; gravity went strange and a wind rose; a backward glance showed him Gipsy was lifting the ship completely out of the water. He also saw one of the Kaiju worshippers coming after him, a red-headed guy, almost on top of him.
His natural instinct was to back up, get some distance and look for an opening, but the little bit of Vik in him said otherwise; he stepped closer, planted his feet, kidney punched the man with his left fist and drove his right fist hard into his armpit, then brought his left elbow back around, connecting with his opponent’s chin.
The guy dropped like a sack, and Jinhai scrambled on as, belatedly, an alarm began to blare. The ship shuddered again, tilting wildly, but Jinhai managed to brace himself against the bulkhead to keep from falling. A quick look back showed no other pursuers; the rest of his minders must have reprioritized their life-templates or whatever.
“Vik!” he shoute
d. He’d lost her – she had gotten too far ahead. There was almost no one down here, now, but the alarm was still loud enough to make it hard to hear.
He turned a corner and found himself almost face to face with one of the guys who had been holding them earlier, the bald guy with the tattoos.
Before Jinhai could do anything, something hit him in the gut, and a bolt of electricity raced through him. He stumbled back, trying to stay on his feet, but it was no use. He fell, and the man hit him with the Taser again. He fought for consciousness as his own muscles tried to break his bones; through the red filter of agony, he made out Vik in the room beyond, doubled up on the floor. Then the man kicked him in the head, and Jinhai flopped over and fetched against a bulkhead.
“It’s over,” Jinhai managed to groan. “That’s Gipsy Avenger out there. You’re done.”
“No,” the man said. “This changes nothing. The blood of the Sea Angels will cleanse the earth. It can’t be stopped.”
“You’re nuts.”
“The bomb isn’t on board, you see,” the man said, kicking him in the chest. “They won’t find it in time. Or you.” He turned and walked back toward Vik, brandishing the Taser.
Stay down, his body told him. You’re not a hero. Not like Mom and Dad.