PACIFIC RIM UPRISING ASCENSION

by Greg Keyes

  But it wasn’t about being a hero. It was about not letting the man get back to Vik.

  So, doggedly, he pushed himself up, using the wall.

  “Hey, jerk,” he grunted.

  The man had taken a few steps away from him, but now he turned back.

  “Idiot,” the man said, and thrust the Taser at him again.

  Jinhai blocked. Or tried to, but nothing seemed to be working right. The man batted aside his hand, and again he felt the body-jolting sting of voltage coursing through him. This time he smelled something burnt, and he bit his tongue, painfully. He began whiting out, but before everything bleached completely away, he thought he saw something behind the man. It looked like an angel, an angel with eyes of fire holding a chair over her head.

  * * *

  As Mako Mori’s helicopter settled on the deck of the Akumagami Front ship, she saw up close what a bloody business it had been. Gipsy Avenger had carried the ship to nearby Kabani Island, where it was greeted by a contingent of Philippine-based peacekeeping marines.

  Three quarters of the ship’s crew had died fighting, and most of the rest were wounded. The marine colonel in charge of the mission – Ferand Ocampa – greeted her as she disembarked. She’d met him on another occasion and remembered him as someone who laughed easily. But he was frowning now.

  “Secretary General,” he said. “I don’t think you should be on board.”

  “The fighters are subdued. You swept for bombs.”

  “We might have missed something.”

  “I am sure you didn’t,” she said, “and time is of the essence, Colonel.” She swept her gaze over the carnage: medical teams covered much of the deck, and another detail was moving the bodies of those who no longer needed medical attention to a PPDC marine transport.

  “Your people fought fiercely, and well,” she said.

  “The Philippines suffered greatly from the Kaiju,” Ocampa said. “Hundun, Gyakushu, Taurax. It seemed we were cursed. When I was young Manila was such a jewel…” He sighed. “The Kaiju cannot pay for what they did to our homeland. It is a pity men and women had to die today, but for the Kaiju worshippers, I shed no tears. And my marines – they will sleep well.”

  Mako remembered the need for revenge. It had once driven her almost completely, or so she thought. There had always been other things – love, respect, honor. But she hadn’t really appreciated that until she really understood how hollow and… incomplete revenge could be.

  “What of my cadets, Colonel,” she asked. “I’m told they are alive?”

  “They’re okay,” he said. “Some bumps and bruises, but nothing serious.”

  “And Dr. Morales?” Gottlieb inquired, anxiously.

  “She’s alive,” Ocampa said. “It appears that they blew up their navigation console and fried their computers. None of the survivors are talking about where they were going, or why. My suspicion is that none of them know, except for Morales. The captain and all of the officers are dead.”

  “I want to talk to Dr. Morales,” Mako said.

  “We found her in her office,” the colonel said, “destroying her computer and files. We detained her there.”

  “If they are medically able, have the cadets brought to her office as well,” Mako said.

  A marine escorted her and Gottlieb through the ship to where Morales waited. The scientist seemed very calm as she watched them enter.

  “Dr. Morales,” Mako said. “I wonder what you’re up to.”

  “Not very much, Secretary General, as you can see.” She held up her cuffed hands.

  “Good Lord, Ysabel,” Gottlieb exploded. “What is this about? Why are you involved with these Kaiju extremists? Do you know the sorts of atrocities the Akumagami Front has perpetrated?”

  “Yes, Hermann,” she said. “I’m more than aware of the things they’ve done. I was involved in quite a few of them. I am sorry to have involved you too, old friend, but it was unavoidable.”

  “I really do not understand,” Gottlieb said. “You have one of the greatest minds the world has ever known—”

  “Then perhaps, Hermann, you should trust that what I’ve done is for the best.”

  “But what have you done?” he demanded.

  “You will find out soon enough,” she said. “I’m only sad I won’t be around to see it myself.”

  “What do you mean? See what?” He put his hand to his chin, and looked away before swinging back to her.

  “Why won’t you see ‘it’?”

  “We call it crossing the Breach,” she said. “I’ve taken steps to assure I cannot be questioned by more… invasive methods.”

  “You’ve taken poison,” Mako said. “The same poison you gave Sokk?”

  “Sokk was pitiful,” she said. “His faith wasn’t pure. When he learned the full measure of our mission, he failed. I had little choice but to kill him.” She smiled thinly.

  Mako heard a sound behind her and saw that Vik and Jinhai had been brought, as she asked.

  “Cadets,” she said.

  Jinhai bowed, low. “Secretary General…” he began.

  “There’s a bomb!” Vik blurted.

  Everyone turned to her, but Mako looked instead at Morales. For an instant, the scientist’s calm veneer broke, and Mako saw a strange kind of anguish there. It was an expression she would never forget.

  “Go on, cadet,” Mako said.

  “There was a guy – he called it the blood of the Sea Angels. That it was a bomb, but that it’s not on the ship.”

  “Morales?”

  “You are not the scourge,” Morales whispered, her gaze searching somewhere beyond them. “You are the salvation. We fall to our knees in your infinite shadow, and raise our hands in awe and admiration. Let the blue blood of the Archangels wash away our iniquity that we may start life anew in the world before.”

  She kept going, but her voice grew weaker.

  “Tell us about this bomb,” Mori demanded.

  The scientist shook her head. “You are left with nothing,” she said.

  “Ysabel,” Gottlieb said. “I beg you. Help us stop whatever you’ve begun here. Explain it to us.”

  She shook her head. Mako noticed a single red tear leaking from the corner of one eye. When she spoke, the strain was evident, and her words were pinched and somewhat difficult to understand.

  “Our… time… is over, Hermann. I’ve… accepted it, as I accept my death. As I… am finally… at peace with… Sean’s death.”

  “Ysabel,” Gottlieb said. His voice shook. “I am so sorry that this is what you believe to be peace. So sorry.”

  32

  2034

  VLADIVOSTOK

  RUSSIA

  VIK

  FIVE YEARS AFTER HER FLIGHT FROM YUZHNO-Sakhalinsk, Vik sat on the roof of a warehouse, staring across Golden Horn Bay at the Vladivostok Shatterdome, heart hanging in her chest like a stone. Although the PPDC allowed the public to take extremely limited tours of the facility, this was as close as she had ever gotten to the place where her parents once trained and fought from; she was determined that if she ever went in, it would be as a Ranger, or at least a Ranger-in-training.

  But now she thought that maybe she would never see the inside of the place, or any Shatterdome.

  Not for lack of trying. That last night in Sakhalin had changed her life. Sitting in the dojo, waiting for Sensei to bring Grandmother, she’d had a moment of clarity. It began when she realized how ashamed Sasha and Aleksis Kaidanovsky would be of her if they saw the path she had started down – the path of victimhood, of being a little person living at the whim of forces that could crush her at any moment. Both of them had had difficult lives, especially Sasha. They met in a prison, for God’s sake. But they became two of the greatest Jaeger pilots to ever live. And when they died, they died fighting, not as hapless casualties of a world that didn’t care about them. They might not have been her parents, but she had all but worshipped them. Not because they had been born special, but becau
se they had become special, and made her believe she could do the same.

  She often thought of that night. Sensei had some connections in Kholmsk, and had bribed someone there to let them cross to the mainland on a railway ferry. From there, they had taken the train to Vladivostok, where Sensei had a sister, Evgeniya, who managed to register Babulya for a disability stipend and got Vik work cleaning and painting ships and dock equipment down at the shipyards. She was technically underage for such work, but the authorities pretty much looked the other way – a lot of her coworkers were no older. It was sort of like mining in the Kaiju – kids could get into places adults had difficulties with, and they could scramble up and slide down ladders like monkeys. Some complained, but to Vik it felt like real work, something her parents would be proud of. That she was also near the Shatterdome was a bonus, and when she was fifteen she was trained in the use of scuba gear so she could work more efficiently underwater. She liked the wetsuit; she thought of it as preparation for wearing a drivesuit.

  She worked weekends and summers and sometimes after school, and at school she studied hard. She learned English, even though she hated the very sound of it, because it was more internationally useful than Russian or Korean. She found a coach who taught Systema, a martial art which emphasized knife-fighting, unarmed combat, and firearms. She ran seven kilometers most mornings, before school.

  “You didn’t get in, did you?”

  She’d heard Kolya approaching. She didn’t look at him as he settled down cross-legged next to her, but she did hand him the rejection letter.

  “Does it say why?” he asked.

  “No,” she said. “They don’t tell you that. They want me to figure it out, I guess.”

  “You can try again.”

  “I can,” she said. “I will.”

  “Crap,” he said. “You’re crying.”

  “It’s just the wind in my eyes,” she told him.

  “Oh, that’s right,” he said. “You’re too tough to cry. I forgot.”

  “You want me to push you off this roof?”

  “No. Look, I thought you seemed upset. I know how hard you’ve worked for this; how much it means to you. Thought you might need a friend.”

  “Thanks,” she said. “That’s nice. I’m just upset, and I don’t usually work through things with people.”

  “You want me to leave?”

  She shook her head. “It’s okay.”

  “How about I get us a bottle of vodka?”

  “You know I don’t drink,” she said.

  Everyone drank, usually starting at around ten years old, with their parents. At sixteen, you could legally buy alcohol. She had never done it, though, probably because of the way Grandmother got sometimes.

  “Okay,” he said. “A soda, then. And something to eat. We can have a picnic – my treat.”

  “That sounds good,” Vik said.

  So she and Kolya got some drinks, some pirozhki and sweet pastries, went to Minny Gorodok Park, settled on the green lawn, and dug into their small feast.

  She had met Kolya not long after the move to Vladivostok. He had been quite the pest at first, never seeming to get the hint that she liked to keep to herself. Eventually she’d gotten used to him, though, and even occasionally laughed at his dumb jokes.

  But when he suddenly leaned over and kissed her, she was shocked to her core.

  If she hadn’t been so surprised, the kiss wouldn’t have lasted more than a second. As it was, it took her two or three to react; then she slammed her open palm into his chest, sending him sprawling back onto the grass.

  “What the hell?” she snapped.

  Kolya coughed and felt his chest as if he thought something might be broken.

  “Sorry!” he said. “Look, I don’t know, I just thought…” He looked down, then slowly drew his gaze back up.

  “I’m in love with you, Vik,” he said. “You have to know that.”

  “No!” she shouted. “No, I don’t ‘have’ to know that. I had no idea.”

  “You really don’t feel anything for me?”

  “You’re my friend, Kolya,” she said. “Or I thought you were. One of the few. I thought I could trust you.”

  “You can trust me,” he said.

  “I don’t do this,” she said. “The kissing and the hugging and the making out. I don’t have time for it, there’s no place for it.”

  “Yeah,” he said. “No place in your life for anything that’s not a Kaiju or a Jaeger, is that it? Saving yourself for your Drift partner? Well, tough. You flunked out. Maybe you should have had a Plan B.”

  She stared at him for a moment, then stood.

  “I don’t have a Plan B because I’m going to get in,” she said. “I’ve had enough experience with backup plans. I’ll take the test again, and this time I will pass. No Plan B. But I do have a Plan B as far as you’re concerned,” she said. “Goodbye, Kolya.”

  As she walked away, she realized she actually felt better. Without knowing it, Kolya had done exactly what she needed. He had called her a loser, a quitter, and she was neither. Of course she would try again. There could be no question. She had been through too much. And anyone who thought differently was just a drag at her heels.

  33

  2035

  PHILIPPINE SEA

  PHILIPPINES

  LAMBERT AND BURKE SAT ON TOP OF GIPSY, ONE on either side of the hatch, looking out at the ship, the sea, the islands below.

  “Nice view,” Burke said.

  “Yeah,” Lambert replied.

  He’d been turning it over in his head how to go about this, but he figured that when in doubt, blunt was the best approach.

  “Are you going to tell me what was going on back there, Burke? If that had been a really serious fight…”

  “But it wasn’t, was it? Just another law enforcement action. Hell, they didn’t even need us. A few helicopters and a gunship or two could have pulled them over and handled this.”

  “Casualties would have been a lot higher on our side,” Lambert said. “Those missiles—”

  “I get it, I get it,” Burke replied. “Look, I’m just going through some things right now. Personal stuff. I’ll let you know when it’s relevant.”

  “Right,” Lambert said. But now the thought was in there. The ship below him was owned by a businessman tied to the Akumagami Front. Sokk and Morales clearly hadn’t been working alone. Maybe they weren’t even the only ones inside the Shatterdome.

  What if Burke was in on it, and now that everything had gone bust was just trying to cover his butt?

  But he had been in Burke’s mind before. They usually drifted well together. If he was an agent of the Akumagami Front, Lambert would know by now, wouldn’t he?

  Mako Mori’s voice was suddenly in his ear.

  “You have new orders,” she told him.

  “We’re not returning to Moyulan?”

  “No. Remain deployed here until you hear from LOCCENT. I’ll send you a brief on what we’ve learned. There is something out there, something potentially very dangerous. We don’t know where it is, but given the heading of the ship, there’s a good chance Gipsy is closer to it than any other Jaeger.”

  “Will do,” he replied. “How are Vik and Jinhai?”

  “Shaken, but I think they are well.”

  “That’s good. In that case, can you do me a favor?”

  * * *

  Jinhai watched the gray sea below as the helicopter returned them to the Shatterdome. Mako was still questioning Vik about the bomb.

  “He said so many things,” Vik said. “Something about the blood of dark angels, that kind of thing.”

  “But he said the bomb wasn’t on the boat?”

  “No, it wasn’t. I’m sure of that. He said they were going to meet it. They were going to be there when it exploded, the first to die in rapture.”

  “Then perhaps they were planning on detonating it themselves,” Gottlieb said. “In which case, we may have ample time to discover it
s whereabouts.”

  “The first to die,” Mako repeated Vik’s words. “From what this man said – from what Morales said – they believe this bomb will bring about the end of the world, at least as we know it. Could they be attempting to open a new breach themselves? Dr. Gottlieb, I know the data she gave you wasn’t real, but she might really have been investigating the deep-sea trenches.”

  “Yes,” he said. “Of course, she may have been. That is a great deal of what Geognosis does. I just don’t understand what sort of bomb would open a breach.”

  “He said it would make the world ready for them,” Vik said. “For the Kaiju.”

  “The atmosphere,” Gottlieb whispered. “The climate. It isn’t right for them. Closer to what they would like than in times before, but not exactly right.” He seemed to be getting steadily more excited.

  “Newton’s data. Everything Morales did – distracting us with Chronos Berserker, creating false evidence implicating the cadets – it was all so she could see his data. The answer must be there. I have to review it at once.”

  “Jinhai,” Mori said. “Do you have anything to add? Did Morales say anything that might be useful?”

  Jinhai thought about it, and about the hollow feeling in his gut.

  “There was this one thing,” he said. “She was comparing whatever was going to happen – the bomb exploding, I guess – to a wedding. She said, ah, that I was going to be the ringbearer, and Vik was going to be the flower girl. But she said we weren’t needed for the wedding, that it could go on without us. But the way she was talking, I had a feeling about it. I don’t think she thought she was necessary, either. Or anyone on the ship. I think she believed it was going to happen, no matter what.”

  The Secretary General pursed her lips.

  “Well,” she said. “Let us hope she is wrong. Now. I need both of you to pay close attention for a moment. When we return to the Shatterdome, there will be questions. But until this is all resolved, and any investigations settled, I must ask you to refrain from speaking of anything classified. Most specifically, you will not mention the Akumagami Front, or Kaiju worshippers, or the situation occurring at the moment. You needn’t lie – just tell anyone who asks you’ve been instructed not to talk about it. The other cadets have been informed that you have been cleared of any wrongdoing. I’m certain that by now everyone in the Shatterdome is aware Gipsy Avenger has been deployed, so it’s okay to acknowledge that, but no more. Is this all understood?”