Pacific Rim: The Official Movie Novelization Mass Market Paperback (28 page)

RALEIGH AND MAKO CAME STRAIGHT OUT OF THE
Conn-Pod and headed for the mess hall, where word was the celebration was already beginning.

“Killing kaiju makes me hungry!” Raleigh bellowed, blowing off some steam on their way. Mako smiled, but stayed quiet. He wondered if she ever raised her voice. There was a lot of steel in her, but you had to look closely to find it... unless you were a kaiju, in which case she let you know pretty quick.

In the mess hall, there was indeed a celebration. Not a champagne-popping party, exactly, but this was a big day and everyone knew it... though everyone also knew the cost. They’d survived, they’d won... but they’d lost Crimson Typhoon and Cherno Alpha. Those were five good Rangers gone, and two fewer Jaegers that would take the field against the kaiju next time. In contrast to the last time he’d come into the mess hall, Raleigh got a full-on cheer and more than a few pats on the back. He had proven himself again. At least for now. And Mako had proven herself for the first time.

He saw Chuck Hansen over at a table across the room. Chuck gave him a nod, but didn’t approach.
Whatever,
Raleigh thought. He turned when someone called out to him and saw Herc heading toward them, arm in a sling and taped up tight to his body.

“You saved us out there, mate,” Herc said. He nodded in the direction of his son and added, “He won’t admit it, but he’s grateful. We both are.”

“All part of the job, Herc. You’d do the same for me.” Raleigh went to shake Herc’s hand, careful not to put too much into the shake out of concern for Herc’s broken collarbone. Raleigh had broken a few bones, but never that one. He’d heard it was one of the most painful.

A rustle passed through the crowd and Raleigh saw everyone looking back across the mess hall toward the main entrance. Marshal Pentecost was coming in. Everyone parted to give him room as he made straight for Raleigh and Mako. The two rangers snapped to attention.

For a long moment he looked at each of them in turn.

“In all my years,” he said, loud enough for the entire room to hear, “I’ve never seen anything quite like that.”

Raleigh cracked a grin. Mako smiled too, a different kind of expression. Pentecost gave each of them in turn an approving nod, which for him was the equivalent of a full-on bear hug. Raleigh couldn’t believe it. Pentecost had acknowledged them in front of the entire Shatterdome crew. Positive reinforcement from Pentecost? He wasn’t quite sure how to process it.

He didn’t have to look at Mako to know that she was experiencing a different version of the same delighted confusion. Both of them were proud, but Mako had just gotten the best kind of thumbs-up from the man who meant more to her than any other human being in the world. Raleigh had touched her feelings for Pentecost during their Drifts together. She would be walking on air. He thought he could sense it right now, in the persistent connection Rangers always felt after they’d Drifted together.

Pentecost turned and raised both arms. The mess hall fell silent.

“But as harsh as it sounds, there is no time to celebrate and no time to grieve.” He paused, to let the assembled crews adjust to the change in mood. “Rest assured, there is worse to come... and our only chance is to meet it head on. So please...”

A trickle of blood ran from Pentecost’s nose. He wiped it away and went on, but everyone in the room saw it.

“Reset the clock.”

In the LOCCENT, Raleigh knew, Tendo Choi had heard. Raleigh could picture the giant clock in the Shatterdome, suddenly clicking to 00:00:00... and then 00:00:01...

Pentecost nodded at his people, and walked out of the mess hall.

Raleigh looked at Mako. He could see that she knew what he was thinking. He set his tray down and followed Pentecost. It was time to get some things out in the open.

***

Raleigh got to Pentecost’s office and found the door open, so he went in. He heard water running before he saw Pentecost splashing his face in the office bathroom. Pentecost’s nose was still bleeding. He wiped the blood away as he noticed Raleigh standing in his office.

“Why didn’t you tell me?” Raleigh asked.

He’d already put the whole thing together. Part of it came from Mako’s memories that he’d absorbed during their first Drift together. Part came from just looking at Pentecost and knowing what he did about the early history of the Kaiju War. Part came from how quickly they’d gotten Raleigh on Metharocin, right off the chopper from Alaska. He knew about radiation shielding and the first generations of nuclear-powered Jaegers... well, he knew some of it. Now he needed Pentecost to tell him the rest, because if they were going to drop a nuke into the Breach without their leader, they needed to know about it now.

“What’s to tell?” Pentecost said. He set his pill box down on the edge of the bathroom counter and leaned against the counter himself. “The Mark Is... we scraped them together in fourteen months. The last thing on our minds was radiation shielding. When the end of the world is staring you in the face, radiation poisoning is a long-term problem. We had a lot of circuitry burns, that kind of thing. Lives were being lost. I ran nearly a dozen combat missions in Coyote Tango.”

Pentecost’s face relaxed a little as he remembered the early days when he was desperate and invincible and the greatest Ranger anyone had yet seen... But Raleigh realized that he also remembered that those early days had begun the process that now was accelerating toward its inevitable end.

“I was in a slow roast,” Pentecost continued. “I stayed under the radar with medical, but the last time I jockeyed was Tokyo...” He trailed off, and Raleigh could almost see what he was thinking, because he had seen it from Mako’s perspective. Coyote Tango and Onibaba, tearing each other apart in the streets of Tokyo.

“I finished the fight solo,” Pentecost said, with a look at Raleigh that said he knew Raleigh understood. “For close to three hours. I burned away.”

The brain damage, the radiation... Raleigh was amazed Pentecost was still alive. He’d piloted Gipsy Danger solo for maybe fifteen minutes, and he would wear the circuit burns for the rest of his life. Pentecost’s must have been much worse. The toll on an individual brain after a broken Drift, when a Ranger had to keep control over a systems array designed for brainpower not doubled but squared by the Drift... a lot of pilots wouldn’t have survived the three hours. Pentecost was still around ten
years
later.

It struck Raleigh that Pentecost had brought him back not because he was the only quality Ranger still out there, but because Pentecost saw something of himself in Raleigh.
Damn,
Raleigh thought.
My readjustment period might have been a little easier if I’d known that... but Stacker Pentecost plays his cards close to the vest, as the old guys used to say.

Of course, the next thing Pentecost said both confirmed and countered Raleigh’s line of thinking.

“I was warned that if I ever climbed into a Jaeger again, the toll would be too much. You and I, we’re the only two ever to run a solo combat. I called you here because I needed someone who would never stop. No matter what. Someone who would do the right thing. Regardless of the circumstances, your loss... or me.” Pentecost held out his hand. Raleigh shook it.

He wasn’t sure what to say next, and didn’t have to say anything because Tendo Choi’s voice came over the comm in Pentecost’s office.

“Marshal, I just got two signals,” he said. “But unprecedented dilation. A forty-meter spike.”

“Category?” Pentecost had slipped his pill bottle back in his pocket and was preparing to hit the LOCCENT again, less than three hours after deploying every Jaeger he had, and nearly losing them all.

“Looking at the rations... both Category IV,” Tendo said. “Mass displacements are big. Real big.”

“Where are they heading?” Pentecost asked. He moved toward the door. Raleigh followed.

“That’s the thing. They’re not headed anywhere. They’re staying above the Breach, like they’re protecting it.” Tendo double checked something on one of his readouts. “The Breach is still open, Marshal. Gottlieb’s idea about it staying open longer the more kaiju mass it passes seems to be correct.” Then he frowned. “Problem is, they’re staying so close to it that all of the energy wash from the Breach is killing my ability to get a good look at them. All I can tell is they’re big. And they’re not going anywhere.”

Pentecost looked at Raleigh. Did the kaiju know? Did they know that humanity was going to try to seal the Breach? Did they wonder if it was possible? Or were those two Category IVs just waiting for something else to join them?

Were they waiting for a third? If they were, then maybe Operation Pitfall needed to get going before Number Three showed up and made things even more complicated. Already Gipsy Danger was going to be holding off two Category IV kaiju all by herself while Striker Eureka made the run for the Breach.

Would it work?

He had to believe it would.

While he ran through all of those questions, Pentecost had gone to a closet on the far wall of his office.

“Striker and Gipsy on deck,” he said.

“But sir,” came Tendo’s voice, “Herc cannot fly. His arm... he—”

“You heard me,” Pentecost said.

Tendo acknowledged the order and signed off.

Poor Tendo,
thought Raleigh.
He heard Pentecost, but he couldn’t see him, so he couldn’t understand.

“Time to get moving,” Pentecost said.

He wore a shining black Ranger flight suit, and in both hands, he held a Ranger helmet, with the symbol of Coyote Tango proudly blazoned on the side.

FIREFIGHTING CREWS WERE BATTLING ALL OVER
Kowloon to save the city and prevent the fires from getting into the XZ, where the wood-frame buildings would go up like pine needles. A fire in the XZ would release radioactive ash to rain down all over everyone in the area. Heavy helicopters and cargo planes crosshatched the sky overhead, dropping fire-retardant foam. The candles on the kaiju skull were out. Patiently, the members of the Church of the Breach relit them one by one.

Emergency crews were working through rubble, using dogs and sonar equipment to locate survivors. There were always more than anyone expected after something like this, one more testament to the resilience of humanity.

In the middle of all this chaos, which had been going on all night, Newt Geiszler was hard at work. He had a kaiju brain, and nothing was going to stop him now.

It was morning, the weather clear and sunny. Newt felt brand-new, with new frontiers opening up before him. He was about to do something no human being had ever done, creating a new scientific discipline that could never have existed before him. He was going to be a rock star.

He had to use a heavy mallet to drive the iron electrodes deep enough into Otachi Junior’s skull that they would reliably conduct the signal necessary for the Drift. He was sweating by the time he’d finished the task, and his nose was bleeding again. The inconvenience of a bloody nose just made him more impatient. Already he’d had to wait more than eight hours to start the experiment while Baby Otachi off-gassed all of its most toxic volatile compounds, assisted by some of the late Hannibal Chau’s carbon-dioxide pumping systems. Then he’d had to file a report because even with the world coming down around their ears and two new Category IVs flitting around the bottom of the ocean by the Breach, Marshal Pentecost demanded reports.

Newt had some theories about why the kaiju had not advanced. He figured he’d be proven right or wrong sometime in the next few hours, so he hadn’t bothered sharing his ideas with anyone. Operation Pitfall was on its own timetable. The Shatterdome’s heroic crews, led by the extra-heroic Tendo Choi, had gotten Gipsy Danger and Striker Eureka ready to go again inside eight hours. Pitfall was a go as soon as everyone could get the nuclear payload field-ready for abyssal pressures, which would be pretty soon.

For his part, Newt did science. If Pitfall worked, great! The world would be saved and they could go back to fighting among each other, rather than a common enemy. If not, the PPDC would need everything Kaiju Science could give it, and Newt had a feeling this Drift was going to give him some very interesting insights.