Pacific Rim: The Official Movie Novelization (30 page)

NEWT PLUGGED IN THE LAST OF THE CABLES
leading from the electrodes driven into Baby Otachi’s brain to the customized Pons, which he was already mentally designating the Geiszler Array. He went outside and asked some of the PPDC marines guarding the area what was going on back at the Shatterdome. They didn’t know.

“Well,” Newt said, “I’m about to do a kind of hairy experiment in here. You mind pulling the plug if it looks like things aren’t going as planned?”

One of the marines looked at the Geiszler Array and Baby Otachi, with Hermann standing at attention like an undertaker. Then he looked back at Newt.

“Are you kidding me?” he asked. “How the hell will we know if things aren’t going as planned?”

Well,
Newt thought.
That was a good point.
He went back into the tent and tapped the squid cap into the Geiszler Array. Hermann had his own squid cap on already.

“Okay,” Newt said. “You ready?”

Hermann sniffed and said, “Of course I’m ready.”

They both took deep breaths. Newt started the sequence.

“Neural handshake initiating, in three... two... one...”

***

Then they were in full Drift together... with the brain of Baby Otachi Junior right there with them. Gottlieb had never Drifted, and his mind went through a moment of screaming dislocation before the Geiszler Array took over and performed the neural handshake. Newt had a complete tour of Hermann’s mind, within a faction of a second.

numbers language of the universe and they will hide me I can hide behind them because they are never angry they are never wrong they choose no sides and expect nothing they are purely themselves and will never betray me

Newt had mud between his toes at Lake Como. Gottlieb was soldering together a robot
can I build an intelligence that will pass a Turing test and if I could of course I can I must never say anything about it until it is done or Father will

Something triggered a response deep inside Baby Otachi’s species memory. The light around them grew strange, watery and distorted, the Anteverse seen through amniotic fluid, Baby Otachi perceiving its world through Otachi’s senses, aware in the womb, waiting knowing hungry

Precursor

Hermann had never seen one. Newt felt his mind unhinge and put itself back together.
Is that what happened to me
—

The Precursor knew it was being watched. It looked at Newt, right at him. It knew who he was. It did not care, but it knew. For a hundred million years this being had waited for Earth to be ready. Now it was done waiting. It looked at Hermann too, sizing them up, knowing them for what they were. It had nothing to hide from them because it did not consider them worth hiding anything from.

die all of you will die it is already over you are feeling the last dying impulses in a brain already too far gone to decay we are coming for you and you cannot touch us we have waited and now you will wait for the end we bring you

***

Newt tore off the squid cap and waited for the world to settle into place around him again. He looked around and saw that Hermann didn’t look any better than Newt felt. One of Hermann’s eyes looked like one big internal hemorrhage.

“Ugh,” Newt said. “Are you okay?”

“Of course. I’m completely fine,” Hermann said. “But you saw it. Didn’t you?”

Then he leaned over and puked violently on the ground between them. Newt sighed and waited for him to finish. Then he stepped around the mess and handed Hermann a handkerchief.

“I did,” he said. “We have to warn them. Their plan...”

“It’s not going to work,” Hermann said.

As soon as Newt was sure Hermann could stand, they both ran out of the tent shouting for someone to get them a helicopter.

***

Raleigh and Mako were already in Gipsy Danger’s Conn-Pod running their pre-deployment checklist and integrating their Drift. Pentecost was at the elevator door, waiting. Time was short, but he had to be patient because Herc Hansen was sending his son off to die.

Pentecost had sent a lot of people off to die in the years of the Kaiju War, but had had no children. The closest he knew to the experience of fatherhood was his relationship with Mako and he’d found it virtually impossible to permit her to deploy. Herc and Chuck had assumed they would be together whatever happened, but even a tough old bastard like Herc Hansen couldn’t run a Jaeger with a broken clavicle.

He stood a little way off from Pentecost, the fat bulldog Max sitting at his feet as he regarded his son for the last time.

“When you Drift with someone,” Herc said quietly, “you feel like there’s nothing to talk about.” He hesitated, trying to master his emotions and failing. When he spoke again, his voice quavered and the sorrow on his face was impossible for Pentecost to look at. He dropped his gaze to the dog, who looked up at Herc and then around the room, searching for the source of his master’s sadness.

“But I don’t want to regret all the things I never said out loud,” Herc said.

“No need,” Chuck said. “I know them all.”

He wrapped his father in a crushing farewell hug, then took a step back. Pointing down at Max, Chuck said, “Take care of him for me.”

Herc nodded, his expression grave. Technicians approached and guided him back from the deployment areas as over the comm an automated synth voice started the countdown to Gipsy Danger’s Conn-Pod drop.

“Engaging drop in ten... nine...”

The elevator doors opened. Pentecost entered and held the door for Chuck, who did not look him in the eye and did not look back at his father. Over Chuck’s shoulder, Pentecost met Herc’s gaze.

“Stacker,” Herc said. “That’s my son you’ve got there. My son.” Herc gave him a nod. Pentecost nodded back. Farewell.

***

“...Eight... seven...”

The drop countdown continued. Mako and Raleigh Drifted together, the initial rush there and gone in an eyeblink. Something about her thoughts sparked a realization in Raleigh’s Drifting mind.

“All these years, I’ve been living in the past,” Raleigh said.

Of all the people in the world, Mako was maybe the perfect one to create the thought. She’d been there. She wasn’t judging, only observing. Around them, Gipsy Danger’s command and control systems came online. The Conn-Pod heads-up showed the Jaeger’s body reading green across the board. The Shatterdome techs had done some immortal work in the past hours.

“I never really thought about the future,” he went on. “Until now.”
There’s irony for you,
Raleigh thought.
Nothing like a suicide mission to make you think about the future.

He reached out and touched Mako’s hand.

Gipsy Danger’s head dropped down the shaft toward the deployment bay, the roar of the guide rails overwhelming whatever Raleigh would have said out loud. But he didn’t need to speak in the Drift. Mako could hear loud and clear what he was thinking.

No turning back now.

***

In the LOCCENT six hours later, Tendo Choi fiddled with his suspenders and kept one eye on the monitors showing the neural handshake strength in Gipsy Danger and Striker Eureka. He wasn’t worried about Gipsy— Mako and Raleigh were tight—but Striker was a concern. Chuck Hansen was an emotional mess, a stew of anxieties and grudges related to his father, and also grappling with the fact that he was probably never going to see his father again, so would not have a chance to make any of it right. That was not a recipe for the kind of focus a Ranger needed for a solid Drift. Mako Mori could tell you all about that.

Marshal Pentecost was also a concern. Tendo had looked over Pentecost’s brain scans before the initiation of his neural handshake with Chuck, and he knew one thing. Whether Striker Eureka delivered its payload or not, Stacker Pentecost was on his last mission. The three-hour solo he’d done in Coyote Tango ten years before had carved enough damage in his brain that Tendo couldn’t see how Pentecost could still tie his shoelaces. He was one exceptional human being. Also doomed, suffering from long-term radiation sickness as well as the blood-vessel damage that came from treating the radiation sickness. Again, not exactly an ideal recipe for a solid Drift.

Yet somehow, he was looking at both neural-handshake readouts and they were perfect.

“Both neural handshakes at one hundred percent,” he said, for the benefit of the rest of the LOCCENT crew.

His other eye, figuratively speaking, was on the remote satellite view tracking the Super Sikorskys that carried Gipsy Danger and Striker Eureka southeast into the open ocean. Striker had the nuke strapped to it, shielded inside pressure-resistant casing that made it look like a backpack. The warhead inside that casing carried with it enough potential energy to level an entire city centre. If Gottlieb’s numbers were right it would also be enough to collapse the Breach.

If they could get there before more kaiju came pouring out.

If they could get through the two kaiju already patrolling.

If the Jaegers could operate in the unthinkable pressures of the Marianas Trench for long enough to make the run and deliver the payload.

That was a lot of ifs. But balanced against them was the absolute certainty that if it didn’t work, they would all die.

Both Sikorsky teams were making good time, well within the mission parameters. They hit a fog bank and disappeared from visual, so Tendo glanced over at the large holoscreen showing the whole of the Pacific Rim. The Breach glowed near the center of the screen, with two red dots circling it slowly. Tendo brought up another display, showing the feed from the Sikorskys’ belly cameras. Everything looked good to go.

Herc Hansen, relegated to command (at least Tendo figured that’s how he would think of it), called out the kind of update Pentecost had always insisted on.
Overcommunicate
, Pentecost always said.

“Two actives still in circle formation in the Guam quadrant,” Herc said. “Code names Scunner and Raiju.”

The two Jaegers appeared on the enlarged inset showing just the immediate area around the Breach.

“Jaegers,” Tendo Choi said. “Time to seal up and get ready to go swimming.”

He watched the Jaeger status screens as both Ranger teams shut all external ports. Jaegers had ports for intake and exhaust all up and down their torsos, especially near their power plants. Tendo was a little worried about Gipsy Danger’s operational window with ports sealed. The reactor heat would build up fast... although the deep ocean water would draw a lot of the heat away. It might all work out.

Also, what with Scunner and Raiju, they probably had more immediate problems than worrying about Gipsy Danger’s ability to cycle out waste heat.

Over the noise of the Sikorskys’ rotors bleeding into the feed, everyone in the LOCCENT could hear Pentecost give a last pre-drop reminder.

“The Jaegers will hold the pressure long enough. Remember, this isn’t a battle. It’s a bomb run. You hold them off; we’ll get to the Breach.”

Simultaneously, Pentecost and Mako hit their cable release buttons. The two Jaegers dropped through the thick fog and hit the surface of the ocean with a titanic double splash. Tendo switched away from the Sikorsky feed and brought up twinned relays from each Jaeger’s cranial cameras. The Jaegers sank into the depths, their operating lights swallowed up by featureless darkness. Ocean depth at their target landing location was seven thousand meters.

It took the Jaegers almost fifteen minutes to touch down on the ocean floor, where they sank deep into the silt. Their slow-motion impact, at only five meters per second, stirred up a cloud of silt that reduced visibility to zero. Tendo could see that from the LOCCENT, and Raleigh confirmed it.

“Switching to instruments,” he said.

The two Jaegers moved out across the ocean floor, quickly finding that a forward-leaning half-jog was the best way to keep speed and balance on the sediment. It looked like slogging through heavy snow.

“Half a mile to the ocean cliff,” Pentecost said. “Then we jump, three thousand meters down to the Breach.”

“Half a mile?” Chuck said. “Can’t see a bloody inch.”

As Chuck spoke, Tendo saw one of the two kaiju bogeys make a move.

“Gipsy, you have movement on your left flank.”

“I don’t see it,” Chuck said.

Tendo’s eyes widened as remote sensors fed him data about the kaiju’s mass and speed.

“It’s moving fast,” he said. “Faster than any kaiju we’ve seen yet.”

He saw Raleigh and Mako looking around in Gipsy Danger’s Conn-Pod.

“We got nothing,” Raleigh said.

The kaiju was almost there.

“It’s Raiju,” Tendo said. “Left flank! Left flank!”

“I don’t see anything!” Raleigh shouted.

Tendo looked at Gipsy Danger’s instrument readouts. It was true. Tendo, looking via remote sensors beamed up to space and then back down, had a better look at the moving kaiju than Gipsy Danger did.

“Brace for impact, Gipsy!” Tendo cried.