by Alex Irvine
Trailed by the dog, Chuck swaggered off in the direction of the dishwashing station.
After a moment, Herc cleared his throat.
“You can blame me for that one,” he said. “I raised him on my own. Smart kid, but I never knew when to give him a hug or a kick in the ass.”
Raleigh took his time enjoying a mouthful of the delicious bread. When he had finished chewing, he said, “With respect, sir, I’m pretty sure which one he needs.”
***
The sun had barely peeked over the Jaeger bays when Mako found Marshal Pentecost in the LOCCENT.
“The candidates are ready,” she said. “We will commence the trials immediately, sir.”
She had gone to his quarters first, the spare quiet space that doubled as his personal office. Sensei—she had begun calling him that when he had first taken an interest in her, in Tokyo—had begun keeping unusual hours. Sleeping poorly, eating irregularly. He said nothing and Mako had not asked, but she could see others in the Shatterdome starting to glance uneasily at each other after he passed in the corridors. What was wrong with him? Was he sick? Everyone under Pentecost’s command was asking the same question, none of them out loud.
She had to remind herself to call him Marshal. He had ordered her not to call him Sensei since her admission to the Jaeger Academy in 2020. For the last five years she had held her tongue. Someday she would call him Sensei again.
“Good,” Pentecost said to her.
In the dimly-lit LOCCENT, to her he appeared distracted and worn down. She owed this man everything, and seeing him like this worried Mako deeply.
But she had not come to meet him just to inform him that his orders had been followed. Stacker Pentecost was not the kind of commander who needed constant reassurance. He chose good people and let them be good at what they did, as long as they understood the rules from the beginning. Overcommunicate. It’s better to tell someone something they already know than to not tell them something they needed to hear. Do your job and let your colleagues do theirs. Once a decision is made, it is made for the entire team.
Mako was here in violation of that last principle. She was going to broach a difficult subject, and not for the first time. She already knew what he would say. He had said it before. It made no difference. She would keep trying.
“There’s one more thing,” Mako said.
He turned to look at her, anticipating her question.
“We’ve talked about this, Mako. We are not talking about it again.”
She ignored his warning.
“You promised me,” she said. Then she switched to Japanese. “Gipsy no noru kata ga jibun na no.” I should be the one riding Gipsy.
“Mako. The kaiju took everything from you, but vengeance is like an open wound. You cannot take that level of emotion into the Drift.”
“What level of emotion is Raleigh Becket taking into it?” she countered. “Has he forgotten about his brother?”
“You are not responsible for Raleigh Becket,” Pentecost said. “I am. As I am responsible for you.”
“For my family,” she said. “I have to do this.”
“Motto jikan ga areba,” Pentecost said. If we had more time.
“But we don’t,” Mako said.
Pentecost turned away from her, looking out over the Jaeger bays, where the future of the human race stood catching the first rays of the sun. Mako knew that move. She had seen it more times than she cared to remember. When Stacker Pentecost turned his back, that was all there was to say.
For the moment, thought Mako.
She went to finish preparing for Raleigh’s trial.
11
IN THE KWOON, RALEIGH BOUNCED ON THE BALLS of his feet, waiting. He was up, ready, a light sheen of sweat on his skin and the first tingle of the internal fight groove in his brain. His irritation with Chuck Hansen was already fading. He owed nothing to a guy like that, except to do his duty in a fight, and Raleigh would have done that for anyone.
He balanced his hanbō, getting a feel for it. He hadn’t touched one in more than five years, but he didn’t think he’d forgotten everything. It was about three feet long and an inch thick. Just a stick, unless you knew what to do with it.
Somewhere back in the early days of Ranger training, someone—maybe it was Pentecost—had figured out that a good way to predict Drift compatibility was to see how two people fought. The logic wasn’t obvious at first, but it had come to make sense in Raleigh’s mind. First: The more a fighting pair could anticipate and counter each other’s moves, the more likely they were to be able to anticipate each other’s thoughts... which strengthened the neural handshake. Second: If you could kick someone’s ass easily in a fight, how could you take that person seriously as an equal when you had to share your inner-most thoughts with them and trust them with your life? There was also the question of style and temperament. That would have been the basis of Mako’s initial screening of Raleigh’s potential co-pilots.
Five of them stood across the fighting mat. Holding an actual paper clipboard and standing at the side of the mat nearest the door was Mako. Raleigh wondered if she had in fact, by gripping it too hard, snapped her tablet in two.
A little behind Mako, stood Stacker Pentecost. No doubt here to see for himself whether his gamble on Raleigh was going to be a disaster right from the start.
Mako nodded and Raleigh stepped out onto the mat. The first of the five candidates met him. The two men nodded to each other and assumed their stances.
“Go,” Mako said.
Number One came right at Raleigh with a series of aggressive strokes: slash, butt, slash. No finesse, no attempt to feint or draw Raleigh out. What that meant to Raleigh was that Number One didn’t respect him.
Okay, pal, he thought.
Flicking aside the initial sally, Raleigh pivoted and tapped Number One on the back of the knee, just as he was putting his weight down to reset and defend. He went down, springing back up as Mako checked a box on the clipboard.
Raleigh squared up, Number One came at him again, and Raleigh set him down again, this time with a little hook sweep inside the ankle. He hadn’t even tried to hit the kid yet.
“Two to zero,” Mako said.
Number One came at him a little slower now, probing, trying to get a sense of how he could provoke Raleigh into a rash attack. He was learning already. Raleigh decided to take him out before he learned too much. He stepped hard ahead and to his right, but as Number One shifted his weight to anticipate a strike from that direction, Raleigh had already swapped the hanbō to his left and slipped it under Number One’s guard to poke him in the ribs.
Three.
Four was much the same as two, since Raleigh’s opponent was getting angry.
The fifth point was over before it started. Number One took a step and Raleigh saw his lunge coming a mile away. All he had to do was catch the outside of the lead foot and give it a little tug.
Bam, down went Number One for the fifth and final time.
“Five point wins to zero,” Mako noted.
Raleigh had been watching her out of the corner of his eye. She didn’t look happy about something. He shook a little tightness out of one shoulder and waited for Number Two.
Thirty seconds later, Mako said, “Four points to one.” She still looked... not angry exactly, but disappointed. Disgusted, even.
Number Three made Raleigh work a little harder, touching him twice because Raleigh was getting a little bored. None of the three had posed the least challenge.
“Three points to two,” Mako said. She looked even more disgusted now.
Raleigh waved at her.
“Hey,” he said, taking a couple of steps toward her. “You don’t like them?”
She looked at him over the clipboard.
“Excuse me?”
“Every time a match ends you make this little...” Raleigh didn’t know the word, so he imitated the way her mouth pursed as she counted up the scores. “Like you’re critical of their
performance.”
He was feeling a little sorry for the candidates. None of them was remotely in his league, but that wasn’t their fault. He didn’t want them to get flak from Mako or Pentecost just because they weren’t as good as he was. Not too many people were.
Mako looked to Pentecost as if seeking permission for something. Pentecost nodded.
“Frankly,” Mako said as she looked back to Raleigh, “it’s not their performance. It’s yours. You could have taken all of them two moves earlier.”
Oh, Raleigh thought. Interesting. He suddenly understood that they’d never intended for him to compete against these five. Rather he was competing against Mako and Pentecost’s idea of what Raleigh Becket ought to be.
“Two, huh? You think so?”
She held his gaze, the set of her face combative. Raleigh got a prickle on the back of his neck. She wanted to fight. He could see it in the way she was holding her body.
“I know so,” Mako said. “Your choices are not poor, just adequate. You do just barely enough to win.”
Raleigh nodded. It was a fair assessment.
“You know what? Let’s change this up,” he said. He looked over at Pentecost. “How about we give her a shot?”
Mako’s eyes widened, but before she could take up the challenge, Pentecost said, “We stick to the cadet list we’ve got, Ranger. Only candidates with Drift compatibility...”
Mako, surprisingly, cut him off.
“Motteiru, Marshal. Jibun no pataan ga Becket to durifuto suru koto ga dekiru nouha no genkai inai no ni.” Which I have, Marshal. My patterns are inside the EEG parameters that would allow me to Drift with Mr. Becket.
Speaking Japanese, Raleigh thought. She knows I can understand her. She’s deliberately making this a conversation among the three of us. Nicely played, Ms. Mori.
“This is not all about the neural connection,” Pentecost said, almost lecturing her as one would a bright but overreaching child. “It’s also about physical compatibility. Instinctive responsiveness.”
Raleigh couldn’t stand it anymore.
“What’s wrong?” he asked. “Don’t think your brightest can cut it in the ring with me?”
Now both he and Mako were looking at Pentecost. They were on the same side. Pentecost saw it, and Raleigh saw him recognize what was happening. After a moment, Pentecost extended a hand, palm up, toward Mako: Okay, then, get in the ring.
Raleigh stepped to his side of the mat. Mako squared up to him.
Beyond Pentecost, Raleigh noted that Chuck Hansen had just walked in. Part of him immediately wanted to suggest to Chuck that they have a little hanbō dance... but first things first.
“Just so you know,” he said to Mako, “I’m not going to dial down my moves.”
Mako nodded. “Okay. Then neither will I.”
They closed and Mako threw a first strike, a formal move to start the fight. Raleigh blocked it and came back overhand, loose and easy, thinking they were still in the early formalities. But Mako caught the end of his hanbō and cracked Raleigh hard in the ribs under his stick arm.
“That’s the Shibata block,” she said, and flipped the end of his hanbō back at him. “The Marshal taught me that.”
Oh, did he? thought Raleigh. That plot was certainly thickening.
“One-zero,” Mako said.
While she was still gloating a little, Raleigh flicked a sideways swing over her dropped guard and popped her on the left shoulder before she could block. Just like that, her gloating turned to a venomous stare.
“One-one,” Raleigh said. He barely resisted the urge to wink.
Embarrassed at her lapse, Mako glanced over at Pentecost.
She sure doesn’t behave like an ordinary Ranger or PPDC staffer, Raleigh thought with part of his brain. She acts more like a...
But he cut the thought off with the other part of his brain, which saw an opening in the glance. He twirled his hanbō, reversed his grip, and tapped her on the left shoulder.
“Two-one,” he said, and this time he did wink. “Concentrate, now.”
He got a glare of pure fury back. Raleigh could see her thinking: You gave the others a chance to reset.
Yeah, he continued the dialogue in his head. But they needed it. You shouldn’t have.
And sure enough she turned the tables right back on him with a straight thrust into his gut. Raleigh whoofed out air and doubled over, but Mako wasn’t done. She kicked his legs out from under him and as he went down, she fell with him into a crouch, winding up for a blow to the face that would have broken his nose. At the last moment, she held back... and gave Raleigh a light, teasing slap on the cheek.
“Mori-san, motto seigyo shinasai,” Pentecost said. Miss Mori. More control.
Hovering over Raleigh, her face close to his, Mako smiled. Well, she bared her teeth, anyway.
“Two-two,” she said.
The next point would decide the fight. Mako got up and Raleigh hopped to his feet, fully on guard.
After that he really started to feel it happen. Every strike of hers, he saw coming... but it still came fast enough that he could barely parry it. Every counterstrike of his, the same thing on her end.
Raleigh had thought before that she moved like an athlete, and now he was seeing it. He outweighed her by maybe eighty pounds and had decisive edges in reach and strength, but he could hardly touch her. Together they covered every inch of the mat, hanbōs snapping into each other and tearing through the spaces vacated by the opponent’s ankle or shoulder an instant before. Every fall became a rolling spring into a defensive posture, every parry became a strike, every advance met its perfect countering retreat.
It became a dance. It became a kind of union. Mako and Raleigh were breathing in unison, finding the same rhythm in their steps and postures. They struck and parried and dodged, and it was a... not a game. It was like fighting yourself, when the other you could read your mind because your mind was his mind.
Or, in this case, her mind.
It was like the Drift.
And Pentecost’s whole rationale for creating Jaeger Bushido and the Kwoon trial training program was to see which of his Ranger cadets would do exactly what Raleigh and Mako were doing right now.
“Enough,” Pentecost said.
They halted, still wary and eyeing each other.
“I’ve seen what I need to see,” Pentecost said.
“Me too,” Raleigh said. “She’s my co-pilot.”
Pentecost shook his head.
“It’s not going to work.”
Looking over at him, Raleigh noticed that Chuck had disappeared sometime during the fight. That was all right. They’d pick up their own little dispute in their own good time.
“Why not?” Raleigh asked. “You think my brother and I didn’t go at it? He pissed me off faster than anyone I ever knew, but we had an energy out there, in the fight. She has it, too.”
What he wanted to add but didn’t, because even Raleigh Becket had a little bit of discretion once in a while, was: You could see it. We connected. We practically Drifted right there, with everyone watching. It was even tighter in some ways than he and Yancy had been, because with Yancy, he’d expected to know what his partner was going to do. With Mako, there were no expectations. He was completely in the moment, riding the present, feeling each second of time...
She was his co-pilot. Anyone could see that.
“Miss Mori is not a candidate,” Pentecost said. His tone and demeanor did not change.
Stupid, Raleigh thought. They were a match. Any idiot could see it.
“Will you at least tell me why?” he asked.
“I will review all the data,” Pentecost said.
Raleigh bridled at the word “data.” Data didn’t win battles with kaiju. Rangers did.
“Report to the Shatterdome in two hours to meet your co-pilot,” Pentecost continued. “And Mr. Becket? Dress the part.”
With that, he left the Kwoon. Raleigh looked to Mako, shaking his head. He
thought they had a real connection and he didn’t want to lose it, whatever Pentecost thought.
But Mako wasn’t looking at him. She was looking only at where Stacker Pentecost had been, her face tight and angry. She didn’t speak as she followed Pentecost out, leaving Raleigh confused and uncomfortable as the other co-pilot candidates looked on.
12
NEWT FINISHED HIS BREAKFAST AND SHOVED THE sandwich wrapper and potato salad cup out of the way. He set up the recording software and took a deep breath. Go time. Newt Geiszler was about to reach for immortality.
He hoped that when his biographers took up the task of memorializing this moment, they would make sure to point out that Newt had spent all night cobbling together a Pons setup from bits of junk-room scrap and various components littering his side of the lab. He was a tinkerer in a lineage of tinkerers that led back through Edison and Tesla to da Vinci, all the way to whichever caveman had first decided that if he put a rock in a piece of hide, he could throw it farther.
As of this moment, he was ninety-five percent sure it would work.
Those were good enough odds for him. Hell, he’d done riskier things with the stats against him... well, no. He hadn’t. But what the hell.
Newt started a portable recorder.
“Oh eight hundred hours,” he said. “Kaiju/Human Drift Experiment. Take one.”
Newt picked up the squid cap from the tabletop. He worked it down over his head and checked the fit of the liquid-core trunk cable that led to the processor. It was solid.
Next to the chair he’d selected to be his Drift pilot’s seat was the makeshift Pons, an aggregation of cables and switches that he hoped would approximate the more polished setups in each Jaeger’s Conn-Pod. The jar of kaiju brain put him in mind of an old movie with Erich von Stroheim. He couldn’t remember the title, which irritated him momentarily until he reminded himself that he had more important things to do. He picked up the recorder again.
“Brain segment. Frontal lobe. Chances are the sample is far too damaged to Drift with. However, neural activity is still detectable.”
