Pacific Rim: The Official Movie Novelization Mass Market Paperback (17 page)

“We’re still examining Gipsy Danger,” he said. “There might have been a mechanical failure—”

“Stacker,” said Herc. He was probably the only person in the Shatterdome or its associated facilities who called Stacker Pentecost by his first name, and then only in private. “I am a father. I know how you feel. But we both saw it. We both know it.”

Pentecost let the clipboard fall. He looked up to meet Herc’s gaze.

“I saw it. I know it. That doesn’t make it any easier.”

“Oh, I know,” Herc said. “Remember, Stacker. You and me, we go all the way back to the beginning. We piloted Mark Is, we stood up against the first kaiju, and we watched the next generation of Rangers come up and stand on our shoulders. That’s the way of it. Now we have to face up to two things about this next generation. One, they might not be as good as we were. Two, they’re going to take over for us either way.

“But the thing is, boss,” Herc went on, “if we let ’em go out too early, all we’re doing is killing ourselves quicker.”

“Sounds like conversations I’ve had with myself,” Pentecost said. “But ask
yourself
whether you’d rather have Gipsy Danger with a less-than-optimal pilot—or no Gipsy Danger at all.”

“Hoping that’s not the only choice,” Herc said. He might have said more, but right then they both heard shouting in the hall.

***

Raleigh and Mako had been summoned to Pentecost’s office as soon as they’d gotten initial clearance from the on-site medics. They’d spent a few minutes standing uncomfortably together, listening to the unmistakable voice of Chuck Hansen ranting. And when Chuck emerged and came face-to-face with Raleigh, he knew it.

“Looks like you heard me,” he said, coming right up to Raleigh until they were nose to nose. “Good. Saves me from repeating myself.”

Inching even closer, he stared Raleigh down, daring him to move.

“It’s been five years since you jockeyed a Jaeger?” he continued. “That’s a bloody lifetime in Jaeger tech and you know it. And here’s the thing. I actually want to
come back
from this mission. I want a
life.
So.” He stuck a finger in Raleigh’s face. “You, why don’t you do us all a favor and disappear, yeah? Seems like that’s the only thing you’re good at.”

Mako had stayed out of it until then, but Raleigh almost felt it in his head when she’d had enough.

“Stop,” she said, taking a step forward. “Now.”

Raleigh put his hand out to hold her back. He didn’t doubt that she’d take a swing at Chuck, and he’d put the odds at fifty-fifty that she could take him down—but he was damned if he was going to lose his partner because of a fistfight with a kid who had daddy issues.

Mako stopped. Chuck didn’t.

“That’s right, hold back your girlfriend,” he sneered. “One of you bitches needs a leash.”

That was it.

Raleigh punched him in the face.

The punch rocked Chuck, but he wasn’t made of glass. He counterpunched and popped Raleigh in the mouth.

Then it was on.

This was no exercise in the Kwoon, with designated techniques and routines. This was a brawl. They locked up and hit the wall. Raleigh cracked Chuck with a flurry of rights square to the face, and Chuck answered with a series of shots working up from Raleigh’s ribs to the side of his head.

The sound of it carried down the corridor and caught the attention of everyone within earshot. It didn’t take long before the fight had an audience, with techs and a pilot or two gathering to watch the two men have it out. Anyone who had been in the mess hall when Chuck and Raleigh had had their first encounter had seen it coming, and now they gathered to see which way the balance would turn.

Raleigh didn’t care about that. He had a sense that people were watching, but he just wanted to pound Chuck Hansen until he could never open his mouth again. He landed a shot to Chuck’s gut and thought,
You never watched your brother die.
He landed a left to the corner of Chuck’s eye and thought,
You never walked a Jaeger back to shore by yourself.

Chuck gave nearly as good as he got, bloodying Raleigh’s nose with a straight right that Raleigh knew would leave him with a black eye in the morning. Another of Chuck’s overhand shots caught him right on the ear. In the ringing of his ear, Raleigh heard the echo of everything that had surged through Mako’s mind when their Drift had gone haywire.

Chuck got him again and Raleigh literally saw stars— he’d never known that was a real thing.

The fight turned when Raleigh got his weight under Chuck and drove him into the wall. At the impact all the air went out of Chuck’s lungs, but even that didn’t stop him from shooting a forearm straight into Raleigh’s mouth. But Raleigh took the shot, went with it, and rebounded like a spring, driving an elbow straight into the hinge of his opponent’s jaw, just below the ear.

Chuck went slack for the slightest moment and Raleigh slammed him into the wall again. Chuck tried to spin away but Raleigh caught his arm and twisted it, feeling the shoulder joint tense against its limits. One little twist and it would pop right out of the socket, easy as you please. It was all a matter of applying the right pressure in the right place...

“Stop!”

Raleigh obeyed. He didn’t know who had spoken until he turned and saw Herc, who was steaming over toward them with a father’s thunder in his eye.

“What the hell are you two doing?”

Raleigh shoved away from Chuck, raising both hands. But Chuck wasn’t done yet. He took one more shot, and Raleigh ducked it as easily as he’d ducked the hanbō strikes from the cadets in the Kwoon. Even if he hadn’t, Herc was there to intercept, shoving his son against the wall again and growling straight into his face.

“This is over!”

Chuck struggled but Herc didn’t let go and Chuck wasn’t so far gone that he was going to take a shot at his father.

Father and son held each other’s gaze, neither willing to back down.

Raleigh was already starting to breathe a little easier. He’d gotten it out of his system. He looked around to make sure Mako was all right. She was standing a little away from where the fight had ended, but Raleigh could see in her posture that she’d been ready to jump in. Her weight was a little forward, and she was bouncing on the balls of her feet. He could have reached out and touched her. He wanted to.

As it turned out, their proximity made it easier for Marshal Pentecost to drill them both with a single set of commands.

“Mr. Becket! Miss Mori!” he barked. “In my office, now!”

Raleigh and Mako did as they were told. As they passed the Hansens, Herc let Chuck go, as if daring him to take another shot at Raleigh in full sight of both his father and Pentecost.

All Chuck did was stare hard, first at Raleigh and then at Herc. Then he turned and walked slowly away down the hallway until he had broken through the perimeter of onlookers and disappeared back in the direction of the Shatterdome.

AFTER THAT, THE ONLY THING RALEIGH AND MAKO
could do was go into Pentecost’s office face the firing squad. It was going to hurt, they knew that.

At least they were going down in a serene and beautiful setting, which Stacker Pentecost’s office-quarters sanctum surely was. It was done in dark-gray stone, maybe slate or some kind of polished marble—Raleigh was no expert. As you entered in front of you was a path between two rectangular pools of still water. Before you reached the water, was a short path to the right which led to a bathroom. On the left was an open closet and a door that Raleigh assumed led to Pentecost’s sleeping area. If he ever did sleep, that is. Raleigh noted that the closet shelf held eight identical blue shirts. On the rod below the shelf hung five identical suits.

On the other side of the water was Pentecost’s office area, containing a single desk and wall-mounted holoprojector. The whole thing was a strange setup for a British guy, Raleigh thought. It was more like a Zen garden, as if Pentecost was the leader of an army of giant robots but aspired instead to be a monk. From a single window, you could see Hong Kong Bay. Raleigh drank in the view from where he stood, so beautiful that it almost made up for the disaster the morning had thus far turned out to be.

Raleigh and Mako waited just inside the door as Pentecost paced back and forth, quiet after his initial outburst following the fight. Raleigh could take that. He’d had officers yell at him for fighting before. Officers, teachers, the occasional cop. They all knew that sometimes you had to take a swing at someone, but because they were officers they had to give you a hard time about it. That part of the whole thing was by the book.

The rest... the part about the blown-up Drift... that was going to be a little harder to tap-dance around. There wasn’t much good about the situation except that before it went wrong, it was as strong a neural handshake as Raleigh had ever experienced. He knew Tendo would know that, and would probably have told Pentecost already. Whether it would make any difference, he didn’t know. He thought probably not.

Raleigh walked onto the bridge and across the water, then took a deep breath, stepped up and got the first word in.

“I went out of phase first,” he said, because it was true and might do some good. “My memories must have triggered hers. It was my mistake.”

“No,” Pentecost said before he could go on. “It was mine. I never should have let you two in the same machine.”

He spoke as if he knew something they didn’t. Several things, perhaps. Raleigh didn’t care at the moment, though.

“What?” he said, challenging the Marshal. “So you’re grounding us?”

Pentecost looked him right in the eye, answering the challenge and forcing Raleigh back down.

“Not you,” he said.

Raleigh’s boiling point had already been reached once in the past ten minutes. He didn’t want to reach it again, especially not in front of Pentecost, but this was bullshit. Mako was going straight under the bus, and it wasn’t her fault. He looked over at her and saw that she was standing at perfect attention, eyes gleaming with tears she refused to shed. She threw a textbook salute.

“Permission to be dismissed, sir?” she asked.

Pentecost nodded.

“Permission granted, Miss Mori.”

Mako glanced at Raleigh, briefly. The glance communicated everything that had passed between them during the Drift. It said:
I know you and you know me and both of us know that we should be piloting Gipsy Danger together.

Then she was gone.

Raleigh could tell Pentecost was not enjoying this, but in the end it didn’t matter whether he enjoyed it or not. He was making the wrong decision and Raleigh had to make him see that.

“She has a clear connection to that Jaeger,” Raleigh said. “She has the strongest neural handshake I’ve ever felt. Even stronger—”

He caught himself. Considered what he was going to say. Decided it was true.

“Even stronger than Yancy.”

Pentecost did not look impressed.

“Don’t let my calm demeanor fool you, Ranger. This is not a good moment for your insubordination.” Pentecost moved past Raleigh on his way to the door. Raleigh swung around and followed. “Mako’s too inexperienced to rein in her memories during combat.”

This was evidently true, and Raleigh didn’t bother to challenge it. But it was also a bullshit excuse, and Raleigh
did
want to challenge that.

“I don’t think that’s why you grounded her,” he said.

“I didn’t ask for your opinion,” Pentecost said.

Time to level with the man in charge,
Raleigh thought.
No point in letting him think he’s still keeping a secret.

“Look,” he said, walking fast to keep up with Pentecost, who was headed for the LOCCENT. “You rescued her when she was a little girl. I saw that.” Some kind of exercise was going on, and the hallway was full of crews scrambling toward the Shatterdome. “You raised her, but you’re not protecting her now. You’re holding her back.”