by Alex Irvine
Chuck fired before Herc could get his whole line.
Damn that boy, Herc thought in a flash. Always jumping the gun.
Then he fired too, a split second after Chuck, and the two enormous flares burrowed into one of Leatherback’s eyes.
The kaiju roared in agony and surprise, ducking away and thrashing its head in the water to quench the flares burning inside its eyeball. The waves nearly tipped Striker Eureka over, but the Jaeger was designed to keep its balance in a combination of hurricane, tsunami, earthquake, and kaiju attack all at once. It did not go down.
Herc looked at Chuck. He couldn’t decide whether to be proud of Chuck’s bravery, irritated that Chuck had jumped ahead of him, or disappointed the way all fathers were disappointed when their sons were too much like they had been at the same age.
But he never got to say anything, because Leatherback was recovering, and now they were going to die.
“Might as well swim for it,” Herc said. Bad joke, even if he hadn’t had a broken collarbone, but it was the only joke he had.
“Nah, bring it back over here,” Chuck said. “I’m not done yet.”
Herc couldn’t help it. He laughed.
***
Over the noise of the storm, and the sound of Leatherback’s building rage, they heard the Jumphawks. Out of the dark angry sky hove the immense figure of a Jaeger...
But there weren’t any Jaegers left, except...
“I’ll be goddamned,” Herc breathed. “Stacker’s going all in.”
The Jumphawks let Gipsy Danger go. Its feet hit the surf, the Jaeger’s lights went on, and it was standing eye-to-eye with Leatherback.
Gipsy assumed a fighting stance.
“A show for the condemned men,” Chuck said.
“If you don’t like it, you can jump,” Herc said.
They both looked down. It was more than a hundred feet to the water, and the surf was probably eight, ten feet.
They both back looked up just as Gipsy Danger pivoted away from the charging Leatherback and tore the EMP emitting organ off the kaiju’s back. Leatherback roared and churned around in a tight turn. Gipsy Danger threw away the organ and met Leatherback’s return charge with a crushing punch to the face.
“Yeah!” Chuck said.
Gipsy Danger followed up with a pummeling series of punches and kicks that Chuck recognized from the Kwoon a couple of days before. He was seeing Raleigh Becket fighting. Mako probably had her own style, but right then it was Raleigh driving the bus. Gipsy Danger drove Leatherback straight to the pilings of one of the bridges that spanned the narrow neck between the two arms of Hong Kong Bay. Then the Jaeger’s grip slipped just for a moment and Leatherback picked Gipsy Danger up and flung her away.
Sailing perhaps three hundred yards in the air, Gipsy Danger landed at one end of a huge container port, smashing through rows of cartons and construction vehicles.
Leatherback surged through the shallows as Gipsy Danger got to her feet and met the kaiju right at the edge of the pier, grinding and snapping pieces of Gipsy Danger’s fuselage away. Jaeger and kaiju crashed up onto dry land and straight through more piles of shipping containers, scattering them like Lego blocks.
A finishing shot from Gipsy Danger sent Leatherback skidding on its dorsal carapace across the port, knocking over cranes and crushing small buildings along the way.
Leatherback flipped itself over and rose to meet Gipsy Danger. The Jaeger tore loose a crane and swung it like a cricket bat at the kaiju’s head. Chuck saw the windup and the stroke, and he was already anticipating the impact when Leatherback ducked and rammed a clawed fist into Gipsy Danger’s midsection. Chuck realized at that moment that he had anticipated Gipsy Danger moving at the speed of Striker Eureka. The differences between generations of Jaegers had never been clearer to him.
Another blow from Leatherback dropped Gipsy Danger to one knee. Pressing its advantage, Leatherback closed and hammered at Gipsy Danger, beating the old Jaeger down bit by bit.
The euphoria Chuck had felt a moment before evaporated.
“So much for those two,” he said.
His father didn’t respond.
So much for the world, Chuck thought. If we lose all our Jaegers today and the eggheads are right that the kaiju are going to start coming faster... Humankind couldn’t nuke its way out of the problem. Earth would be unlivable, and fast.
Leatherback bore down on the staggering Gipsy Danger.
This is it, Chuck thought. Kaiju four; Jaegers zero.
But Gipsy Danger leaned just far enough to the side that Leatherback’s reckless swipe missed. Now the Jaeger brought crane around again and this time Leatherback didn’t get out of the way, taking the blow straight across its reptilian face. A spray of corrosive blood spattered and smoked across the wrecked port.
Leatherback reeled away, stunned, and Gipsy Danger leapt after it, grabbing a fifty-foot metal container in each hand and smashing them together on either side of Leatherback’s head. Again Leatherback stumbled, and Gipsy Danger also took a step back to gain the precious time its Rangers needed to warm up their plasma cannons.
“Spoke too soon, maybe,” Herc said.
Leatherback charged.
Gipsy Danger unloaded the plasma cannons with an air-splitting roar. Every raindrop within fifty feet of the cannons evaporated, covering the battle in a sudden fog that burned away almost at once.
Leatherback took the salvo and kept coming.
Gipsy Danger fired again. Pieces of Leatherback’s shell blew away and the force of the plasma detonations tossed containers around like they were Styrofoam.
Still Leatherback kept coming.
It locked arms with Gipsy Danger in a wrestler’s grip. Herc and Chuck saw the concrete at Gipsy Danger’s feet buckle from the immense force.
Gipsy Danger’s plasma cannons fired a third time. This salvo blasted away part of its anterior carapace and knocked Leatherback away to land on its side and roll to a halt. Charred and smoking pieces of kaiju littered the container yard. A gaping hole exposed part of the inside of Leatherback’s shell and the strange organs that still pulsed within.
Behind Herc and Chuck, the emergency hatch was still open, and from inside Striker Eureka they heard the open comm channel on one of the speakers distributed throughout the Jaeger’s interior.
“It’s down,” Mako said.
“I made that mistake once before,” Raleigh said. “Let me check for a pulse.”
Gipsy Danger’s plasma cannon angled down to the prone Leatherback. Plasma salvos tore into the kaiju, one after another, until the barrels of the plasma battery glowed on the edge of overheating and Leatherback had been scattered over the better part of the container yard.
They heard Raleigh’s voice float out from inside Striker Eureka.
“Nope, no pulse.”
Then Gipsy Danger looked away from the smoking mess that had been Leatherback, toward the city of Hong Kong proper.
“That I-19 is a fine weapon,” Herc said.
Chuck said nothing. Sure, the I-19 was great, if it was all you had and you were riding a steam engine.
He heard Raleigh’s voice again.
“One down, one to go.”
* * *
PAN-PACIFIC DEFENSE CORPS
ZNN Asia Live Feed 06
Are you getting that, Ming? No, I want to start with the angle on the bay. Then we... yeah, then we sweep in to catch the... no, I want to see both of the Jaegers going down. What the hell are we doing out here if two Jaegers go down and we don't get it? You were on Crimson Typhoon, right? Okay... what? No, we need confirmation of what PPDC is calling them before we can do that Who's our guy inside the Shatterdome? Ping him and find out, they must have a code by now. Okay...
This is Grace Ohashi, ZNN Asia, live on the scene of the first double-kaiju attack the world has seen. Four Jaegers have responded to this attack. Two of them have been destroyed and one has been incapacitated by some kind of electrical attack. The fourth
—and oldest—is a retooled Mark III, Gipsy Danger. It has just killed the first of the two invading kaiju, right down on the waterfront near the mouth of Rambler Channel. The dead kaiju is in the container port on Stonecutters Island, near the Tsing Sha Highway approach to the Stonecutters Bridge. Emergency crews are already on the scene trying to hold back scavengers. This is, as you know. one of the peak danger times for Kaiju Blue.
We’re watching from the top of a crane at a shipyard across on the other side of the island. This kaiju, which we now understand is code-named Leatherback, is down for good. Gipsy Danger has hit it several times with plasma cannons and you can see from the shots we’re getting that Leatherback is not about to get up again.
Now we’re going to swing you around to the southwest, where the second kaiju. we’re hearing it’s code-named Otachi... is headed straight into the heart of Kowloon. These are two of the biggest kaiju we have seen yet. As we’ve just mentioned, Otachi and Leatherback have already destroyed two Jaegers and left a third damaged but still standing in the middle of Hong Kong Bay. Can we get a shot of that, Ming? There, you can see Striker Eureka out in Victoria Harbor. It looks like rescue helicopters are just now picking up Striker’s two Ranger pilots. We’ll have more on that as it develops. Right past Striker, you can see the Hong Kong Shatterdome, last of the Pan-Pacific Defense Corps’ Jaeger facilities.
With only two Jaegers left. maybe only one. you just have to wonder how long they can go on.
We’ll be back with more as we track Otachi into the center of Old Kowloon and report to you live. Grace Ohashi, for ZNN.
* * *
25
FRACTURED CONCRETE FELL INTO THE KAIJU shelter and the refugees pressed away from the hole toward the shadowed corners where the kaiju could not see them. Up close, it was too much to believe. Even Newt, who had devoted every waking moment of his life to studying kaiju since Trespasser first tore apart the Golden Gate Bridge— even he couldn’t believe it.
The kaiju’s head thrust down to street level. Newt could see the individual scales that covered its cranium, the beagle-sized parasites that crept between the scales, the broken and scorched places where the valiant Jaegers had hit it with everything they had.
And failed to stop it.
It lowered its snout into the shelter, sniffing at the crowd. Newt realized that he wasn’t moving—and realized a moment later that the entire population of the shelter had gotten as far away from him as it possibly could. He was still near the exit door, some distance away from where the kaiju had torn the shelter’s roof off. But around him, in every direction, there was empty space. Nobody wanted to be near the white dude the kaiju was after.
He was seeing double again, the kaiju’s sensory spectrum superimposed over his, and Newt found himself paralyzed at the sight of himself through the kaiju’s eyes.
An immense claw swept down and tore away more of the roof. More debris fell, burying dozens of the refugees. The rest fled to the other side of the shelter, screaming and shouting with panic and fear, to huddle under the remaining overhang of the street and the shelter’s roof.
A glowing blue tendril wriggled down through the opening, sprouting smaller appendages and scraping along the debris-littered floor. It stopped in front of Newt, tasting the air around him. Newt gaped at it, astonished. What an organism this was. Bioluminescent, working with an incredible sensory spectrum way beyond that of a human, capable of extreme plasticity of tissue but also highly robust and armored... It was a perfect organism— almost. And it was created. It was the latest version.
The next one would be even better.
Newt realized he was hearing a version of the kaiju’s mental processes. Not telepathy, exactly, but—Sweet Jesus, he realized. It’s the Drift hangover the Rangers are always talking about. A neurophysiological shadow of the Drift, or an echo. The neural pathways created don’t just go away when the Drift stops. The kaiju’s mental processes were leaking into Newt’s brain by a kind of synaptic osmosis. And it was a two-way street, as Hannibal Chau had immediately figured out.
The thought radiating from the kaiju—or no, through the kaiju from somewhere else, from one of the beings overseeing them, controlling them, killing them without whim or conscience—that thought galvanized Newt.
No freaking way pal, he thought, not knowing if the kaiju could hear him or not. You are not going to learn anything from me, no sir. Not the way I figure you’d ask questions. He was suffering visions of his synapses, delicate little axons and dendrites, shearing apart and frying under the fatal pressures of the Precursors’ attention. Nope. Not Newt Geiszler. He liked his synapses just the way they were.
Now he did move, scrambling away over the fallen debris and tumbling over. His glasses cracked against a ridged piece of concrete. He looked up and saw the kaiju’s—what? Tongue? Palp? Tentacle? What did you call that kind of organ?—pass over him, close enough that he could have reached out and caught it. In the gaps between its scales, he saw parasites which looked different from those on its face, as if its sheer size created individual ecosystems on different parts of its body. He saw scoring and chipping from the kaiju’s fight with the defending Jaegers on the way in.
Were any of the Jaegers still functional?
As if the kaiju was responding to his question, Newt sensed a series of images. Crimson Typhoon, coming apart in the kaiju’s claws. Cherno Alpha, sinking to explode beneath the surface of Victoria Harbor. The flare of the electromagnetic pulse from the other kaiju, engulfing Striker Eureka and leaving it silent and still. It wasn’t communicating with him, he realized. It was communicating with the other kaiju and he was eavesdropping via the hangover of the Drift.
EMP as an organic battlefield weapon? Newt was astonished. Amazed. Admiring, too, yes.
Also terrified.
How could humanity fight an enemy that evolved from week to week?
Rain fell throughout the shelter as the kaiju dug away more of the roof. It had started to drool. Great acidic gobs of kaiju-spit splashed on the concrete, which began to melt. Nobody was moving now. There was nowhere left to go. The last bit of the shelter roof went spinning away into the storm-filled Hong Kong night.
I should give myself up, Newt thought. Do the kaiju want to kill me or do they want to meet me? No human has ever had a connection with the kaiju like I did. I might be of interest to them. The Precursor had said as much. Also, it would save a number of lives, which is a salutary thing... even if one of those lives would be that little girl who first outed me to the crowd.
He took a small step forward. The kaiju hunched over the hole it had torn in the street. It was looking right at Newt.
Yes, Newt thought. This is the right thing to do. Would it have to eat him before the conversation with the Precursor could begin? Newt was trembling. He did not want to die. He was still reconsidering his oft-articulated desire to see a live kaiju up close, but perhaps it was a bit late in the day for such regrets.
A searchlight pinned the kaiju, the beam spilling down into the shelter as well. Newt blinked against it. He could get by without his glasses, barely, but between the cracked lenses and the blinding light he was having trouble figuring out what was going on...
Oh, he thought then. It must be a Jaeger. But they were all...
The bone-shaking sound of a foghorn blew away Newt’s thoughts. He knew that sound. He’d know it anywhere. It was every bit as individual as a Jaeger’s insignia or armaments, and Newt could not believe he was hearing it.
Was Pentecost that desperate already?
He ran out into the open as two things happened at once. The kaiju turned at the sound of the horn and Gipsy Danger loomed over the edge of the XZ.
Newt starred, the Jaeger held what appeared to be— through the blur of his cracked glasses—an oil tanker. The huge container was gripped in Gipsy’s massive hands like a hundred-meter baseball bat. An oil tanker! Had to be several times Gipsy Danger’s mass. Newt was no engineer, but he could appreciate how ama
zing it was to create a machine that could take kaiju batting practice with an oil tanker.
Gipsy Danger leveled the kaiju with a blow of the tanker, then dropped it and squared off against the kaiju, horn still thundering out its challenge.
The kaiju recovered from the blow and reared up on its hind legs, brandishing its taloned forelimbs. Gipsy Danger saw it tense and rocked into a defensive pose as the kaiju charged, slamming the Jaeger into a row of buildings, driving it down the street in a storm of shattered stone and brick until both kaiju and Jaeger buried themselves in a glass and steel tower. Shimmering broken glass cascaded around them and then they were out of sight.
Newt glanced back at the shelter door. It was still closed. He needed to get out, and fast. The only way to do that was to climb the debris, so that’s what he did, and he wasn’t the only one. People flooded up onto the street, thunderstruck at their last-minute reprieve. The name Otachi started to circulate and for a minute Newt couldn’t figure out why they were talking about swords... then it hit him. Tendo Choi’s codename must have been broadcast already. It never took long for those names to go public. Tendo was secretly proud of this.
Newt’s face stung and he realized he had been scraped and cut in several places from flying debris, or the fall. He didn’t care. When he got to street level he saw that Otachi had driven Gipsy Danger straight through the lower part of a glass tower, leaving a hole he could see through. The view only lasted for a moment, however, because as Newt got both feet under him out on the street, the undermined skyscraper collapsed. A rolling storm of dust overwhelmed the refugees. They ran away from it, again getting as far away from Newt as possible, although this time he doubted that was their intention.
He went another way, doubling away around the broken edge of the hole torn in the street and cutting through side streets to follow the battle. Newt was running and out of breath, seeing the world through cracked lenses, giddy and terrified and utterly absorbed by what he was seeing and hearing and experiencing inside his head. The kaiju knew where and how to find him because they were connected.
