by Alex Irvine
Herc and Chuck Hansen sat together at the edge of the maintenance bay overseeing the work but staying out of the way of their crews. Raleigh knew Herc a bit from his first tour, but had only seen Chuck on TV. They were cool and professional. Techs did the maintenance. Pilots did the piloting. Didn’t do anyone any good to get those roles confused. Chuck was tossing a ball for a bulldog, who happily left strings of drool on it at every exchange back to his master.
“You know Sergeant Herc Hansen and his son, Chuck,” Pentecost said. “They’ll be running point. The dog is Max.”
“Running point?” Raleigh asked. It wasn’t a term common to Jaeger deployments. Usually only offensive operations needed someone to run point, and it had been a long time since humanity had been on the offensive.
“We’re going for the Breach,” Pentecost said. His voice was determined but matter-of-fact. “We’ll strap a thermonuclear warhead on Striker’s back. Twenty-four hundred pounds, with a detonation yield of 1.2 million tons of TNT. You and the other two Jaegers will run defense for them.”
Raleigh was still hung up on the first revelation of the plan. He couldn’t quite process the operational details of his role yet.
“Where’d you get something like that?”
“Did you see the Russians?” Pentecost asked. “They can get just about anything.”
Nuke the Breach? Could that be done? Raleigh hadn’t kept up on the Kaiju Science briefings when he was active, and now he was five years out of date. From what he remembered, though, the energy fields outside the Breach repelled any kind of approach. Also, after spreading fallout all over Hong Kong, Sydney, and northern California, the world’s governments had lost their appetite for any more nuclear detonations. What was Pentecost doing here? Was this what it meant to be part of the resistance?
Too many questions. And no answers forthcoming. Again he looked at Mako for a cue. She didn’t seem disturbed by the idea that they were going to nuke the Breach. Maybe everyone here knew something Raleigh didn’t.
They went down a short set of steps to the floor level just as Chuck threw a ball for Max. Instead of going after it, the bulldog came galumping up to Mako, who knelt to receive his drooly adoration. Her hair fell around her face, and Raleigh noticed right then that the glossy black mane was dyed a deep blue where it framed her jawline. Which was, in truth, an excellent jawline, equaled if not surpassed by the rest of Mako. She moved like an athlete, she had blue tips, and she could rebuild decommissioned Jaegers.
Very interesting.
“Hey, Max!” Herc called out, following to make sure the dog didn’t get carried away. “Don’t drool over Miss Mori, you,” he said. Then looked up at Mako with a shrug. “He sees a pretty girl, gets all worked up...” Herc trailed off with a shrug and a grin that was half pride and half embarrassment.
Pentecost gestured from Raleigh to Herc.
“Raleigh, this is Herc Hansen. Best damn Jaeger jockey that ever lived.”
Standing, Herc cocked his head as he extended his hand.
“I know you,” he said. “We rode together before, yeah?”
Raleigh took Herc’s hand and nodded.
“Raleigh Becket. We did, sir. My brother and I. Six years ago. In a three-Jaeger team drop.”
He was a little surprised that Pentecost hadn’t remembered that. It was a big operation, touch-and-go even with the three Jaegers. Striker Eureka and Gipsy Danger had just barely managed to save the lives of the Rangers in the third Jaeger, Horizon Brave, after it was pinned by the kaiju’s barbed tail.
“That’s right,” Herc said. “Manila. Three of us against a Category Four, right? That was before my son joined up. Tough fight.”
“Aren’t they all?” Raleigh said, nodding. “Saw you on TV yesterday. Another tough fight.”
Herc’s son Chuck whistled and Max swaggered back to him, the way only a bulldog can happily swagger. Raleigh could tell right away that Chuck didn’t like him. He hadn’t come over to join the conversation, he’d pulled the dog out of it, and now he was sitting at one of Striker Eureka’s gigantic feet glaring at his father. And at Raleigh.
“I heard about your brother,” Herc said. He clapped Raleigh on the shoulder. “Sorry. It’s brave of you to be here after that, son.”
Raleigh nodded. He felt awkward and embarrassed, the way he always did when people offered sincere sympathy about Yancy. What were you supposed to say? Thanks? Yeah, it sucks? Yeah, I’ll never be the same because I felt my brother die inside my brain at the same time as I watched that goddamn monster tear him out of the head of our Jaeger? How’s that for symbolism, Jack? You like it? Because I live with it every day, and I don’t. I don’t like it. But it’s mine. It’s all I’ve got left of him is the memory of how it felt when he was leaving.
No, you couldn’t say that.
“Sergeant Hansen, shall we?” Pentecost prompted.
Herc nodded. “Good to have you back, Raleigh,” he said. They fell into step together, Mako with them as well.
Raleigh didn’t know where they were going, but he knew he couldn’t go very long without asking the question burning a hole in his mind.
“Sir, about the bomb run,” he said. It was supposed to be a cue for Pentecost to tell him more, but Pentecost didn’t bite, so Raleigh went on. “It’s not gonna work,” he said. “We’ve hit the Breach before. Nothing goes through.” Pentecost kept walking. Raleigh kept pace. He felt Herc’s eyes on him, measuring, assessing... “What’s changed?”
Pentecost stopped. He and Herc looked at each other. If a signal passed between them, Raleigh didn’t see it, but after a moment Pentecost said, “We have a plan. It even has a name: Operation Pitfall. I need you ready.” Then he glanced at Mako and said, “Miss Mori will show you to your Jaeger. Herc and I have to attend a briefing. We’ll reconvene shortly.”
Raleigh tried to fight it, but he couldn’t. Your Jaeger. The words got him, right in the part of his soul that had once been a Ranger. And maybe would be again.
January 3, 2025. Big day. Happy New Year to me, Raleigh thought.
* * *
PAN-PACIFIC DEFENSE CORPS
PERSONNEL DOSSIER
NAME
Hermann Gottlieb, PhD
ASSIGNED TEAM
Kaiju Science,
ID S-HGOT_471.20-V
DATE OF ACTIVE SERVICE
May 28, 2015
CURRENT SERVICE STATUS
Active; based Hong Kong
Shatterdome
BIOGRAPHY
Born Garmisch-Partenkirchen, Germany, June 9, 1989. Married to Vanessa. First child due April 2025. Third of four children; older brother Dietrich and sister Karla, younger brother Bastien. Parents scientists. Father, Dr. Lars Gottlieb, participated in Jaeger Project (q.v.) and is now overseeing Pacific Perimeter Program of Wall construction and civil defense infrastructure improvement. Displayed early aptitude for abstract mathematics, completed studies at TU Berlin in engineering and applied sciences. Wrote programming code for first-generation Jaeger operating systems. Has constructed highly accurate models predicting frequency of kaiju attacks. Also responsible for advances in understanding the physics and structure of the Breach itself. Refer Operation Pitfall dossier (highly classified). Psych evaluation reveals fundamental need to create distance between self and any problem, using data and mathematics as buffer. Obsessive neatness of person and workspace also reveals this impulse to maintain controlling distance. Currently estranged from father due to differences of opinion about value of Jaeger project as opposed to Pacific Perimeter Program.
NOTES
Inveterate filer of complaints, primarily against Kaiju Science colleague Dr. Newton Geiszler (q.v.). PPDC psychological staff recommends accepting but not acting on these complaints.
* * *
7
HERC HANSEN COULD NEVER GET COMFORTABLE in science labs. Workshops? Sure. Garages? Dozens of them, tinkering with everything from bicycles to Jaegers. He knew the smells of machine oil and hand
cleaner. Labs were different. His impression of them came from high school, when he‘d been an average student, the kind teachers tended to characterize as personable but unmotivated. He remembered labs as being the province of the nerd, the place where chalk dust and white coats and Erlenmeyer flasks were not oddities but the rule. The place where weirdness was normal and normal people were viewed with scorn and disdain.
This lab was even weirder than that.
Herc had been in the Kaiju Science lab a few times, and his first thought every time he walked in was that it was like two halves of a brain. One side was neat, efficient, sparkling clean, and generally so perfectly arranged that Herc instinctively wanted to avoid it for fear of messing something up. The other side was like the bedroom of a teenager obsessed with monster movies.
No surface was uncluttered. Jars and tubes of strange materials and fluids were stacked and scattered everywhere, sitting on top of computer monitors that displayed images of kaiju together with complicated helical patterns Herc took to be DNA. From the ceiling hung an inflatable kaiju and an inflatable Jaeger, facing each other down over a lab table where something was bubbling next to a sink. Herc instinctively wanted to avoid that side, too, but for fear of catching something.
Down the middle of the space, from the center of the doorway to the back wall, where it disappeared under a refrigerator, was a line of hazmat tape. Two halves of a brain, maybe, but it was also like a bedroom shared by two siblings who couldn’t live a minute without finding something to fight about.
Of course, it wasn’t only siblings who fought all the time. Herc thought of his son, Chuck, and then refocused on the matter at hand.
At the moment, Gottlieb was blazing away on a chalkboard so big he had to stand on a ladder to get to the last un-scribbled-upon area. He was writing so fast that even if Herc had known the scientific shorthand he used, the pace still would have been too much for him. Beyond him, the clean half of the lab looked like the backdrop for one of the instructional videos Herc had sat through during his first Ranger testing.
“In the beginning, the kaiju attacks were spaced by twelve months,” Gottlieb was saying. “Then six. Then three. Then every two weeks.” He paused to look down at Herc and Pentecost from the top of the ladder and tap the tip of his chalk hard on the board. Bits of the chalk sprinkled away to the floor near the hazmat tape.
“The most recent one, in Sydney,” Gottlieb said, “was a week.”
He paused to let that sink in. But he was on a roll, the way Herc knew scientists got, and he couldn’t pause for long no matter how much he wanted the dramatic effect.
“In four days, we could be seeing a kaiju every eight hours until they’re coming every four minutes,” Gottlieb continued.
Herc watched Pentecost receive this news. The old soldier took it hard. Some of the tautness, the crusader’s resolve, left his face—only for a moment, but it was a visible moment. Herc wondered, not for the first time, if something was wrong with him. Other than the impending demise of the human race.
“We should witness a double event within seven days,” Gottlieb finished.
“Should?” Pentecost echoed. “I need more than a prediction.”
“He can’t give you anything better than that—” Newt cut in.
Everyone turned to look at him. Whatever Newt had been about to say, the momentum was lost when Gottlieb shot out an accusing finger and said, “No kaiju entrails on my side of the room! You know the rules!”
Edged over the hazmat tape was a gallon-sized jar containing something organic. Newt reached out and slowly pushed it until an imaginary vertical line rising from his side of the hazmat tape would have run parallel to the jar’s edge, at a distance of perhaps one millimeter.
Sensing that the two scientists were moving toward the latest chapter in their saga of bickering and recrimination, Herc said, “On point, gents.”
Both of them looked to Herc. Newt inclined his head. Gottlieb cleared his throat, shot his colleague a disdainful look, and went on.
“Numbers don’t lie, sir. Politics, poetry, promises... those are lies. Numbers are as close as we get to the handwriting of God.”
Muttering just loud enough for everyone but the elevated Gottlieb to hear, Newt said, “You’re officially the most pretentious man I’ve ever met.”
Herc silenced him with a look.
“There will be a double event,” Gottlieb said. “Not might. Will. And then, shortly thereafter, three kaiju and then four and then...” he trailed off.
“We’re dead,” Pentecost finished for him. “I know.”
“Alas,” Gottlieb said.
Apparently his show wasn’t over yet. Out of the corner of his eye, Herc could see that Newt was starting to twitch from the desire to trump Gottlieb and wrench the presentation around so everyone was looking at him.
“This is where the good news comes,” Gottlieb continued, circling the number 4 he’d scrawled on the chalkboard and coming down from the ladder. “This is our window to destroy the Breach.”
He crossed to a holographic model of the Breach, left spawned and running on one of the perfect workstations in his perfect half of the lab.
“Here is our universe,” he said, pointing at the top of the model, “and here is theirs.” He pointed at the bottom.
In between was a narrow passage, represented in oranges and reds.
“And this is what we call ‘The Throat.’ It’s the passage between the Breach and us. Every time a kaiju—or two, or three, or however many —passes through, the Breach remains open for a short time before and after the passage. And there seems to be a correlation between how many kaiju traverse the Breach and how long it stays open before and after they have finished their journey. More precisely, I believe the correlation is between the mass of the kaiju and the length of time the Breach remains open after their transit. Think of the traffic lights at freeway on-ramps. They turn red and green at predictable intervals, but everyone has to stop for a moment. That slows everything up. If the light just stayed green a little longer, two or three or four cars at a time—or one long tractor-trailer truck— could go through with no blink of red in between. A crude example, but it suffices.”
With a fingertip, Gottlieb dragged a tiny avatar representing an explosive device into the Breach.
“I predict the increased traffic, and larger kaiju, will force the Breach to stabilize and remain open long enough to get a device through and break the structure.”
In the hologram, the explosive went off. The blast wave propagated through the Breach and the Throat. They collapsed in a granular spray across the face of Gottlieb’s holo-display, and the two universes were severed from each other. Everyone watched the collapse and imagined what it would mean for human civilization if they could make it happen in the real world.
Herc looked at the faces around him: Newt, sullen and boiling with more intellect than he could handle; Gottlieb, like an oversensitive child needing approval for his brilliance; Pentecost, the one who had to make the decision, resolute but clearly weary. Not the kind of weary you felt when you got a short night’s sleep; the kind you felt when you’d devoted ten years to saving humanity and been thrown aside in the name of cowardice and saving money.
Herc wondered what he looked like to them. Old, probably. Washed up. But he wasn’t done quite yet.
“We have one shot at this,” Pentecost said. “We must be sure.”
That was a problem as far as Herc could see. They’d never seen two kaiju come through, let alone three. How could Gottlieb have modeled that? The kaiju were getting bigger, that was true. Maybe he’d gotten solid data on that, but Herc didn’t care. This was a hell of a flimsy conclusion to base an operation on.
Newt appeared to feel the same way. He’d listened with what passed in him for politeness, but now he could no longer contain himself.
“It’s not enough to know when or for how long the portal will be open,” he said, waving at the holo like it was a third-gra
de science project. “Anyone can chop the numbers and figure that out. I mean, Hermann’s math is good. It always is. But math isn’t going to win this fight. Understanding the nature of the kaiju will. And on that front, I have a theory.”
Gottlieb, primly offended, sniffed.
“Please. Don’t embarrass yourself.”
To Gottlieb’s visible irritation, Pentecost indicated that Newt should continue.
“Why do we judge kaiju on a category system?” Newt said, adopting the lecturer’s tone. “Because each of them is different from the next. It’s almost as if each of them is an entirely new species. There don’t appear to be any family relationships among individuals that would give us a classification system, so we do it by size and mass instead.”
“Get to your point,” Pentecost said.
Newt stomped through the flotsam on his side of the lab and held up a piece of a dissected kaiju gland—The one, Herc thought, he’d been hacking at when we came in.
“Despite the highly individuated appearance of each kaiju, there are some fundamental structures and systems they all seem to have in common. I’ve noticed the repetition of patterns in certain organs. See? This is a piece I collected from the glands harvested in Sydney.”
Everyone looked. It was a gland, sliced across its crosssection, with a clear pattern to the striations of tissue and patterns of... whatever those dark lines were. Veins? Nerves? Herc wasn’t an anatomist.
Newt placed the gland next to another sample on a tray and shoved tabletop debris away from the tray.
“This was harvested in Manila, six years ago.”
