by Alex Irvine
Right now, the kaiju’s blood was up. It had destroyed one Jaeger today, and had another one nearly in its grip.
Newt skidded around a corner and saw Otachi charge into Gipsy Danger, snapping and raking its talons across Gipsy’s armored exterior. It spat and drooled constantly, splattering gobs of acidic saliva across the Jaeger and everything else in range.
Gipsy Danger wrestled free and leapt to the top of Hong Kong’s municipal palace. Otachi followed and the fight took on a strange neon glow from the saturating glare of Hong Kong’s downtown. Gipsy Danger ducked and counterpunched, dodged and weaved, barely staying free of the kaiju’s grip.
Otachi pivoted and swung its tail, spiked at the tip... Stegosaurus, Newt thought. Yes. Stegosaurus was a first draft of this. With a flash he realized that the Cat-4 from Manila in 2019 had been the second draft. It had also fought with a barbed tail. Whoever was creating the kaiju, they were iterating on them the way programmers iterated on code... or laboratory personnel iterated on experiments, always improving.
Gipsy Danger avoided the attack and caught the tail in both hands as it swung back.
Otachi thrashed and pulled, roaring its fury, but Gipsy Danger held tight... and then braced itself and heaved up with both hands balled around the kaiju’s tail.
Otachi screamed as Gipsy Danger ripped its tail off.
Losing its balance, the kaiju toppled onto the street. It recovered quickly and Newt saw that Gipsy Danger had another problem.
The tail had come to life.
It coiled around Gipsy Danger’s forearms and revealed itself to be a trilaterally symmetrical set of pincered jaws, which snapped and spat at Gipsy Danger’s face.
The second brain, Newt thought. Here’s one reason why an organism would need a second brain. Amazing. He could hear the sound of cracking and groaning metal as the tail squeezed more tightly on Gipsy Danger. Then it wriggled out of Gipsy Danger’s grip and the pincers bit deep into the Jaeger’s shoulder. Oil and lubricant spurted, taking on strange colors in the ambient wash of neon. Newt’s single brain ran away with him and he could almost envision the endless chain of incremental improvements that led from Stegosaurus through Otachi. Strands of kaiju DNA danced in his head.
While Gipsy Danger grappled with the tail, Otachi had gotten its balance back. It folded its arms tightly, tucked its head down, and Newt saw its throat start to heave. It made a sound like a dog about to puke—a three-hundred foot tall dog. Newt put two and two together: the kaiju’s corrosive interior fluids, the way this one constantly drooled...
It was about to spit.
And if Newt was any judge of kaiju, which he was, the gob of bile Otachi spat out would eat right through Gipsy Danger’s armor. Perhaps fatally.
Otachi kept heaving and gulping. The tail dug at Gipsy Danger’s shoulder. Gipsy Danger pulled with its other arm, keeping the tail from getting a better grip.
A hissing blast of white vapor from Gipsy Danger’s side momentarily obscured both Jaeger and—sentient?— tail. At first Newt thought something had gone wrong, that the tail had punctured a vital system. Then the plumes of vapor dissipated and Newt understood.
The tail was still, and glittering with ice.
The coolant tanks! Raleigh, or Mako, or whoever was piloting Gipsy Danger, had vented one of the flank coolant reservoirs. Good move, thought Newt... as long as the Jaeger didn’t have to stay in the field much longer, If it did, soon it would overheat. That was the downside to the old nuclear Jaegers. The fission reaction produced so much waste heat that practically the entire Mark III had to be engineered just around the problem of conducting and dissipating heat.
This time it had worked out, because like the irritating cowboy he was, Raleigh Becket had found a combat technique that wasn’t in any manual. Newt was sure it was Raleigh. None of the other Rangers knew Gipsy Danger well enough to even think of that maneuver.
Well, except Mako. Tendo Choi had taught her everything he knew about Mark IIIs, which was at least as much as Raleigh Becket knew...
The tail shattered and fell to the street in fragments as Gipsy Danger shook it off and stepped toward Otachi.
The kaiju gulped, heaved one last time, and unloaded a giant acidic loogie—that was the only way the dazed Newt could think of it. Spattering Gipsy Danger’s torso and legs, the bile quickly dissolved the exterior armor. In some places Newt could see the hyper-torque motor relays and liquid-synapse conduit shielding within seconds. For the moment they were holding their system integrity, it seemed.
But Otachi was heaving and gulping, ready to do it again.
Gipsy Danger lunged forward and grabbed the kaiju’s neck sac, squeezing off the bile supply. The flash-freezing of the tail had also sealed the wound in Gipsy Danger’s shoulder, enabling the Jaeger to get a chokehold on Otachi. The kaiju thrashed and clawed at Gipsy Danger. Twisting at the bile sac, which glowed bright blue in the falling dusk, Gipsy Danger tore it right out of Otachi’s throat and flung it away back toward the harbor, trailing gobbets of skin and glowing blue droplets of acidic bile.
Otachi roared in agonized fury and pounded Gipsy Danger down to the ground, using its superior size to overpower the Jaeger. It raised its arms, and Newt got another surprise as it unfolded its wings—they were much larger than the failed version he had seen in his Drift. That kaiju had looked like a child’s drawing of a flying kaiju, done with a child’s idea of things like lift and load-bearing balance. These wings spanned twice the kaiju’s height and when they began to beat, cars blew away underneath them. They beat slowly at first but quickly gathered speed until their motion was a blur. Newt found it uncanny how much the progression reminded him of Jumphawk rotors powering up.
Otachi even behaved like a Jumphawk, lifting away from the ground with Gipsy Danger gripped in its rear claws. Gipsy fought and pounded at the kaiju’s lower body, but couldn’t get any power behind its blows while dangling in space. Otachi rose above the Hong Kong skyline and disappeared into the low rain clouds, leaving no trace. Taking Gipsy Danger and its pilots with it.
* * *
PAN-PACIFIC DEFENSE CORPS
REPORT ON IMPACT TESTING AND PILOT-SAFETY SYSTEMS, MARK III JAEGER INTERNAL CRANIAL FRAMING
MARCH 22, 2017
ARVID INZELBRUCKEN, LEAD ENGINEER LEVERKUSEN JAEGERWERKE
Early engagements with kaiju have shown that the two primary dangers to Jaeger pilots are crushing/impact injuries and drowning. New iterations of the Jaeger incorporate improvements to address both of these dangers and lessen Ranger field mortality. They are as follows:
INTEGRATED OXYGEN RECIRCULATION
The marine-combat environment was addressed in early-phase Jaeger design sequences by creating sealed environmental systems within each Jaeger Conn-Pod. These have proven resilient, and existing failsafes are performing as expected, but the Mark III has added individual recirculating oxygen systems for each Ranger, integrated into the drivesuit helmet and fed from a supply separate from the internal atmospheric maintenance of each Jaeger as a whole. These systems should provide for increased survivability of battlefield encounters in which the integrity of the Conn-Pod hull is breached in a marine environment.
ENHANCED IMPACT RESISTANCE
A number of Rangers experienced battlefield fatality within unbreached Jaeger cranial Conn-Pods due to the impact of falling as their damaged Jaegers lost balance. The Mark III now has updated and enhanced gyroscopic stability as well as internal enhancements to the cranial framing. In testing, these cranial architectures survived falls from distances far exceeding the height of a Mark III. Ranger survivability is increased by the inclusion of motion-dampening resistance mechanisms within the motion-capture rig. Together, these improvements should markedly improve Ranger survivability of falling and high-impact events.
PRESSURIZED ESCAPE POD SYSTEM
New to the Mark III is an automated escape-pod system capable of ejecting each Ranger individually. This system is integrated into the control-arm assembly
that forms each Ranger's interface with the motion-capture rig. It is triggered through commands given either to the holographic HUD or manually through switches on the gauntlet-interfacing control panel. Upon activation, the system encloses a Ranger within an individual escape pod, which is then ejected through an aperture in the upper hull of the cranial structure. Each escape pod provides full life support for up to one hour and incorporates homing beacons, visual location assistance, and flotation devices.
* * *
26
ON THE HORIZON, WITH THE STORM SYSTEM engulfing Hong Kong far below, dawn gleamed like an empty promise. Raleigh and Mako kept one arm wrapped around Otachi’s torso. The other was working overtime deflecting Otachi’s claws and trying to land a shot of their own once in a while, maybe damage the wings and force Otachi into a controlled descent back to terra firma.
Raleigh was glad they’d already torn Otachi’s tail off. No way they could have held off attacks from three different sources and still kept the kaiju from puking more of its napalm bile all over Gipsy Danger. More of the nasty blue gunk was leaking from the hole in Otachi’s throat where Gipsy Danger had torn away the bile sac. Otachi seemed to have an endless supply.
The feed from the LOCCENT was full of worried faces.
“You’re at seven miles,” Tendo Choi said.
“At least we won’t overheat,” Raleigh said. The temperature outside was well below zero and Gipsy Danger was shedding waste heat through the holes Otachi’s bile had melted in her armor.
“Funny,” Tendo Choi said. “We’ve got... shit. Raleigh, we’ve got nothing. We can’t help you.”
“I’ve always been the self-sufficient type,” Raleigh said. Mako was... what was she doing? He could feel her mind working at a problem but he didn’t have the conscious bandwidth available to figure out what it was.
She spoke. “Surprising that it can still breathe this high. Also that its wings can give it enough lift.”
“Yep, surprising. Kaiju are full of surprises,” Raleigh said. “Now how are we going to kill it? Both plasma cannons are shot. We’ve got no—”
“There’s still something left,” Mako said. “One of my upgrades.”
“One you didn’t tell me about?” Raleigh asked.
“You would have seen it if you’d looked,” she answered. She hit a switch on the motion rig’s command console and a glowing sword appeared.
“This is irony, right? Because Otachi is a kind of sword, isn’t it?” he said.
Mako ignored his joke. “Like I said, my father was a swordmaker.”
“Altitude coming up on fifty-thousand feet,” Tendo Choi said.
Mako flicked her wrist. Raleigh felt the motion and duplicated it.
From Gipsy Danger’s right gauntlet, a long whip made of serrated metal segments woven together with a high-tension cable spilled out into the stratosphere. Mako clenched her fist. Again, feeling and anticipating the motion, Raleigh did the same, even though he didn’t know what she was up to.
The whip stiffened and its links knit together and drew taught with a rattling clank that vibrated throughout the Jaeger. Otachi kept hacking away, and with her wounded arm Gipsy Danger kept parrying.
“What the hell is that?” Tendo Choi asked.
“Ask Mako,” Raleigh replied.
“Are you really going to—”
Tendo never got to finish his question. Mako pivoted on the command platform, and their perfect Drift drew Raleigh into the motion as well. He could feel the weight of the sword in his hand, balanced and deadly.
“Kamei no tame ni!” Mako cried out. For my family’s honor!
They let go of the kaiju, shoving away for a few meters of critical space.
The sword was so thin and moved so fast that all Raleigh saw was a line of reflected sunlight passing diagonally down through Otachi’s body. The kaiju’s wings curled, one of them coming loose and fluttering away. A long moment later, Otachi’s upper torso divided cleanly in two, the halves peeling apart and beginning their long tumble back to Earth.
Seven, Raleigh thought.
Two, Mako answered.
“What do you call that thing?” Raleigh asked. She shrugged. The words “Chain Sword” floated into Raleigh’s head. Plain but descriptive. Okay, he thought. Chain Sword.
Then the last of their upward momentum dissipated. They were weightless for long enough that Tendo Choi could say, “Beautiful.”
In the background of the feed from LOCCENT, they heard Pentecost ordering recovery teams and choppers to scramble.
“Hawks launch! All crews to the roof!”
Gipsy Danger began to fall.
The math was pretty clear. They were a little over fifty-thousand feet. Call it fifteen-thousand meters. Given that distance and the good old formula of nine-point-eight meters per second, plus some fiddling because of atmospheric resistance, they would hit the ground in approximately one hundred seventy-seven seconds. A hair under three minutes.
At which point they would be moving right about two-hundred miles per hour. Maybe a little less if they decided to take the fall spread-eagled to maximize resistance. Both of them immediately adopted that stance, stabilizing Gipsy Danger in a horizontal descent posture. Below them, they could see the storm churning from Hong Kong well out toward the Philippines. It was a huge system.
One sixty-five. The pieces of Otachi fell with them, tumbling, trailing clouds of vaporizing blood.
“Gipsy. Listen to me.” They both looked at Pentecost, who had come up close to Tendo in the LOCCENT feed. “I’ve done this before.”
You have? Raleigh thought. He could sense the same question in Mako’s mind, along with some irritation, like she should have known this already.
One fifty. Otachi’s body parts were no longer visible.
“Loosen every shock absorber,” Pentecost instructed. Raleigh put the command through, maximizing the amount of give in each of Gipsy Danger’s hundreds of hydraulic shock-management assemblies.
“Done,” he said when the readouts showed full loosening of every assembly that had survived Otachi’s attacks.
One thirty. Raleigh and Mako stood spread-eagled again, slowing their fall as much as they could. They hit the top of the storm system and the Jaeger started to buck and shudder. The heads-up displaying time to impact read 1:29. Eighty-nine seconds.
“Use the gyroscope to balance,” Pentecost said. “Ball up and hold on. I’m sorry. It’s going to hurt.”
Use the gyroscope, Raleigh thought. Duh. Gipsy Danger had a number of balance systems, but it wasn’t designed for operating in the air. Raleigh swiped through a series of quick commands engaging the gyroscopes to keep them steady in midair. That took almost a full minute. Then he and Mako crouched together on the command platform, and Gipsy Danger tucked into a ball.
The next twenty seconds were the longest of Raleigh’s life. Their passage through the lower reaches of the storm raised a freight-train roar, and neither of them dared to look up at the holodisplays, much less out the Conn-Pod’s windows. Raleigh heard someone counting down and thought it was him. Then he realized it was Tendo.
Jesus, Tendo, he thought. Shut up, already.
***
From the LOCCENT, Gipsy Danger’s impact looked like a meteor strike. It hit Hong Kong Stadium, collapsing one entire side and the nearest corner. Debris rained down for hundreds of meters in every direction, and a mushrooming cloud of dust and smoke rose from the site into the rainy night.
The Conn-Pod feed from Gipsy Danger was dark.
“Tendo,” snapped Pentecost. “Get that feed live.”
Tendo tried everything he knew, but the feed stayed dark.
“Jumphawks,” Pentecost said. “What can you see?”
Jumphawk searchlights stabbed into the cloud of dust.
“Not a damn thing, sir,” one of the pilots radioed back. “Too much dust. No visible motion.”
“Gipsy Danger, report,” Pentecost said over the open command frequency.
“Mr. Becket. Ms. Mori.”
Nothing. The dust around the stadium started to clear thanks to the rain and swirling winds. Camera feeds from the circling Jumphawks picked out one immense mechanical leg.
“Come in closer,” Pentecost said. “Blow some of that dust away.”
The Jumphawks edged nearer to the impact site, the beat of their rotors clearing away the spreading column of dust. There was Gipsy Danger...
Standing up!
Cheers exploded in the LOCCENT. Even the notoriously taciturn Jumphawk pilots whooped before peeling away from Gipsy Danger as the Jaeger’s operating lights came on again and the Conn-Pod feed lit up over Tendo Choi’s workstation.
“Report,” Pentecost ordered.
Raleigh looked at Mako.
“You okay?”
“Yeah,” she said. Around them, the interior of the Conn-Pod was a wreck. But it didn’t seem to bother either of them. Mako, in fact, looked like she’d never been happier or more alive than at that moment.
“That... felt... good,” she said.
Pentecost closed his eyes and allowed himself a three-count to be proud of her. Proud of both of them. Happy at their survival, gratified that Hong Kong was still standing.
Then he opened his eyes again and turned to Tendo Choi.
“I want the two remaining Jaegers back to one hundred percent functionality within eight hours,” he said. “Sooner.”
* * *
KAIJU AND THE MARKETPLACE
PREPARED FOR PAN-PACIFIC DEFENSE CORPS BY [REDACTED]
The worldwide market in kaiju parts is certainly a multibillion-dollar industry. Practitioners of traditional medicines have made unsupportable claims about the powers of kaiju organs to cure various afflictions. Among the remedies sold on the black market are the following:
