Pacific Rim: The Official Movie Novelization (23 page)

The Jaeger was taking a pounding. She could barely keep up with Otachi’s clawing forelimbs, and the kaiju’s tail snapped forward with deadly timing to cut holes in Crimson Typhoon’s armor at vital junctures. The saw blades retracted, save one which was too badly bent to get back into its housing. The Weis were trying to get their I-22 Plasmacaster warmed up, but already Otachi had damaged the channels that fed the plasma reservoirs.

Where was Leatherback?

Cherno Alpha was only then able to close and engage Otachi.

“Double hook, Aleksis!” Sasha commanded in Russian. She threw a sweeping right hook and Aleksis mirrored the motion with his left arm. Cherno Alpha reflected the command with a smashing pincer hook as the energies of the SparkFist bloomed across the knuckles of each gauntlet. Otachi reacted faster than they would have thought possible, blocking the strike with such ferocity that Cherno Alpha rebounded backward.

Crimson Typhoon, released from Otachi’s grasp, began to sink, leaning at an angle with both arms dangling limp. One of the twinned gauntlets on the left was gone. From the other hung the bent and useless saw assembly, all of the saw’s teeth broken off. Plasma energies bled weakly from the deployed barrels of the Plasmacaster, but it was too badly damaged to reach any kind of full charge. Crimson Typhoon’s skull frame was partially torn open and seawater was beginning to short out its motor arrays. The Weis, steady to the last, kept running self-repair protocols and trying to reroute energy from nonessential systems.

“Typhoon is no longer combat-operational,” Tendo Choi said.

The readouts coming from Crimson Typhoon were all bad news. Everyone in the LOCCENT could see that she was doomed.

Otachi struck at Cherno Alpha, knocking the Russians away. Sasha and Aleksis staggered in their Conn-Pod, and Cherno Alpha flailed to regain her balance. With the time gained, Otachi turned back to the immobile Crimson Typhoon.

In the Conn-Pod feed, the Wei triplets watched it come. They stood proud and firm, bowing their heads in unison as Otachi seized Crimson Typhoon’s head in its forelimbs, hooking one of its leg claws into the center of the Jaeger’s torso to hold it steady. With a deafening grind of tearing metal, accompanied by the flare of ruptured energy conduits, Otachi tore Crimson Typhoon’s head off and crushed it. It heaved and threw the head an incredible distance across Hong Kong Bay, releasing the decapitated Jaeger torso to topple slowly over and disappear under the water.

The feed from inside Crimson Typhoon still flickered sporadically on Tendo’s monitors, revealing the stop-motion horror of shattered fixtures and the Wei triplets crushed among the wreckage of their motion-capture rig. Then, at the moment Crimson Typhoon’s head hit the water, the Conn-Pod feed went black.

“Crimson Typhoon is down,” Tendo Choi said unnecessarily.

Pentecost nodded. It was protocol to make the announcement even when the fact was plain for all to see.

Otachi was already turning to go after Cherno Alpha.

Herc Hansen’s voice boomed through the feed from Striker Eureka.

“LOCCENT, Typhoon and Alpha are in trouble. We’re moving in.”

“You are to hold your ground,” Pentecost answered. “Do not engage. Hold your position!”

Chuck swore, but Striker Eureka held her position. Out in the bay, Leatherback rose from the water near where the lower half of Crimson Typhoon had sunk. True to the initial sensor outline, it was hulking and heavily armored, with forearm carapaces that extended well beyond the elbow joints to form pointed plates like twin shields. Along its spine was some kind of animated fluorescence, extending down a bony ridge from the back of its skull to the just above the base of its stubby tail.

Cherno Alpha was barely holding her own against Otachi.

No,
Pentecost thought. The Russians were losing. They were doing it slowly and bravely, but they were losing. There was no way they would survive a two-on-one engagement. The Kaidanovskys discharged the Incinerator Turbines directly into Otachi’s face, searing away the kaiju’s flesh and driving it back, but only for a moment. There was no respite for Cherno Alpha: the moment Otachi released its grip, Leatherback moved in.

“Recovery team, can you reach the site of Crimson Typhoon’s impact?” Pentecost asked. One of the Jumphawk pilots called back in the affirmative. “Keep a prudent distance from the fight,” Pentecost instructed. “Sweep for survivors. There was a breach in Crimson Typhoon’s cranial hull. One or more of them might have survived.”

A long shot, but one worth taking. Tendo had not detected an escape-pod release, but it was possible one of the pilots had escaped through the hole in Crimson Typhoon’s Conn-Pod into the open water. All Rangers could swim.

The Jumphawk peeled away from the formation returning from the deployment and headed toward the impact site, swinging in a wide arc around the spot where Leatherback and Otachi were tag-teaming Cherno Alpha. The Russian Jaeger’s Incinerator Turbines had gone dark. Leatherback had crushed them both, shattering their fans and overloading their command systems. The overpressure from that would eventually detonate Cherno’s reserves of incendiary fuel.

Leatherback was now riding on Cherno Alpha’s shoulders, digging through the cylindrical outer housing of the Jaeger’s fuel reservoirs. The combined weight of the two kaiju drove Cherno Alpha down into the water.

Tendo tried desperately to remotely disable the turbines, but Cherno Alpha’s systems were already a mess.

“Screw this,” Herc said. “LOCCENT, we’re moving in.”

STRIKER EUREKA WAS SOMETHING ELSE IN A
fight. Whatever Raleigh thought about Chuck Hansen, he had to admit that the Jaeger was a beauty. It moved faster than Gipsy Danger, hit harder than Cherno Alpha, and made moves that even Crimson Typhoon couldn’t have kept up with. Those Mark Vs were incredible machines. Raleigh wanted to pilot one—and then as soon as he had that thought, he felt a strange guilt, as if he was being disloyal to Gipsy Danger.

Striker took on Otachi before it could deliver a killing blow to Cherno Alpha, hitting the kaiju with a barrage of punches that staggered it and forced it away from the distressed Russians. Blows to Otachi’s head beat it down toward the water, and before it could recover, Striker caught it flush with a knee.

Already Striker had dealt more than enough punishment to kill off most of the previous kaiju they’d encountered. But Otachi gathered itself and came right back at Striker. They were close enough to the Shatterdome that the dome’s searchlights could pick out the battle. Simultaneously they watched Herc and Chuck, wordless and in perfect Drift, ripping through their gunslinger moves in Striker’s Conn-Pod.

They were knocked off-balance by Otachi’s brutal counterattack, but Striker didn’t go down. Jaeger and kaiju hammered away at each other, blood spraying from Otachi to crackle on Striker Eureka’s armor and boil on the surface of the churning sea. Striker had activated its thermal blades and was using them to deadly effect.

Maybe,
Tendo thought.
Just maybe Striker can still save the day.
The Hansens had done it before.

Inside Cherno Alpha’s Conn-Pod, Sasha and Aleksis were fighting for their lives... and losing. Leatherback had finished what Otachi had started, ripping away pieces of Cherno Alpha’s armor and puncturing its torso-centered cockpit in several places. The Russian Jaeger could no longer lift its arms. It was crippled, and after a final blow from Leatherback it toppled and began to sink.

The Conn-Pod feed showed water surging over both Kaidanovskys, who struggled to break out of their harnesses. Drowning was the single most common cause of death for Jaeger pilots, and the waters of Hong Kong bay were about to claim two more as Leatherback stomped Cherno Alpha deeper under the surface.

***

Looking out from the Shatterdome, Raleigh watched Cherno Alpha disappear beneath the waters of Hong Kong Bay. Leatherback roared, limbs spread in triumph. Cherno Alpha’s Conn-Pod feed went dark, but Raleigh knew that somewhere out there, two Rangers were drowning. He’d seen their faces through the churning water inside the Jaeger. They had known they were going to die, but they were still fighting.

A moment later, a huge underwater explosion raised a churning dome on the surface, illuminated from below by the fire of Cherno Alpha’s incendiary tanks exploding.

Leatherback dove and disappeared.

“Cherno Alpha is down,” Tendo Choi said without inflection. “Striker, repeat: Cherno Alpha is down. Leatherback has sounded.”

“Got it,” Herc said.

At the same time, Striker Eureka stunned Otachi with a double-fisted blow to the top of its head. The Jaeger lifted Otachi and flung it away, gaining time.

“Engage missiles,” Herc said.

In their Conn-Pod feed, Raleigh watched Chuck spawn a virtual launcher holo.

“On it,” he said. A missile bay ratcheted open on Striker Eureka’s chest, exposing the stubby tips of K-Stunner ramjet missiles.

“Ready salvo one,” Chuck said. “Say good night, Otachi.”

Leatherback surged back to the surface, barely two hundred yards from Striker Eureka, which was angled away from it toward Otachi.

“Warning, Striker Eureka,” Tendo said. “Leatherback on your flank, eight o’clock.”

“Salvo one—” Herc began, but the rest of his order was drowned out by the atmosphere-splitting crackle of an electrical shockwave bursting from Leatherback. It raked across the surface of the ocean, the energy of its passage bulldozing a trench through the water before it hit Striker Eureka. The sound of its impact was almost as loud as Leatherback’s generation of the wave, which surrounded Striker Eureka in a writhing cage of electrical tendrils.

Striker Eureka went dark, its missiles unfired.

“What the hell is this?” Chuck yelled.

Herc unlatched himself from the control platform and went to the port side of the cockpit, looking around to see what had happened. They saw Leatherback come into view, and through the feed Raleigh heard Chuck say, slow and a little awed, “Damn...”

Then the LOCCENT went dark, too. Through the windows Raleigh watched Otachi, under the spotlights of circling Jumphawks, swimming almost casually through the shallows of Hong Kong Bay toward the city.

“It’s some kind of EMP,” Tendo cried. “It jumbled the Jaeger’s electrical circuits!”

“They’re adapting,” Gottlieb said. His voice was part horror and part admiration. “This is not a defense mechanism. It’s a
weapon!”

Emergency power kicked in and the LOCCENT came back to life.

“Striker?” Pentecost said.

“Nothing, sir. The Mark Vs are all digital. It’s fried. In fact, all the Jaegers are digital.” Tendo Choi looked like he was on the edge of panic. Two Jaegers down, one bricked by EMP, and still two kaiju running around just offshore from Hong Kong.

“Not all of ’em,” Raleigh said.

Everyone turned to look at him. Some already knew what he was about to say. Some were just hoping he would say something miraculous. Raleigh saw himself registering in their minds again. He was no longer the washout, the Ranger who couldn’t handle his return to duty.

At the moment, he was the only Ranger they had left.

And...

“Gipsy Danger’s analog,” he said. “Nuclear.”

***

Newt watched the kaiju appear over the line of buildings nearest the water. It hauled itself onto dry land, bracing its incredible bulk against a high-rise parking lot as it stood and sniffed the air. It was a quadruped, though with obvious capability to stand on its hind legs. Its head, a blunt arrowhead, sprouted two hooked battering protrusions above the nose.
They would protect the eyes,
Newt thought,
and make it difficult to land a square shot on the kaiju’s face.
Its front legs were much longer than the rear, so when it walked on all fours its elbows—also with armored protrusions—stuck up and out to the side.