by Alex Irvine
“No Drone program,” Lambert said. “No Shao Industries. Nothing but a prison cell.”
Quan wasn’t so sure about that. People with Shao Liwen’s money and clout usually avoided prison. But there was no question Lambert was right about the Drone program and the fate of Shao’s company.
“The attack on the Council, the Kaiju cults—all a smokescreen,” Jake said. “Misdirection.”
It was plausible. Quan had to admit that. But hardly airtight. “And the only proof is from a cadet I just drop-kicked over the moon?”
“Gottlieb’s reaching out to Newt to see if he can dig up anything more solid from the inside,” Lambert said.
Quan chewed on that for a while. He didn’t like the idea of involving Gottlieb, who was a solid and brilliant scientist but perhaps not the best person to involve in a discreet investigation. Particularly not if it meant informing Newton Geiszler of the PPDC’s suspicions. Marshal Quan, like most other staff officers who had ever worked with Newt, considered that he might well be a genius but was definitely an unreliable loose cannon when it came to protocols and rules. “All right,” he said. “We’ll patch through to the Council and see what—”
“I don’t think we should trust the comms,” Pentecost said. Quan was about to dress him down for interrupting a superior—he had lost the last of his patience for Pentecost’s mouth—but before he could, Pentecost added, “Mako didn’t, or she would have told someone before Sydney.”
This made sense to Quan. He considered it, looked for holes in the logic, found none. “Then we’ll take it to them in person. Meet me on the tarmac in fifteen.”
“What about Amara?” Pentecost asked. “She found the link to Shao Industries.”
“If you’re right about this, we have bigger problems, Ranger.” Quan left the two Rangers in the hall, entering the War Room to make arrangements for the trip to Sydney.
Out in the hall, Jake fumed, wishing he could do more for Amara. She had screwed up, yeah, there was no doubt about that. But if in the process of screwing up she had pinpointed Mako’s killer, and uncovered a dangerous program of illicit Kaiju-related biotech research? To Jake that was more than enough to give her a get-out-of-jail-free card on the injury to Jinhai and the unauthorized snooping inside Obsidian Fury. Rangers weren’t supposed to be robots. They were supposed to know when to take the initiative. Amara had done that, and as far as Jake was concerned, the Ranger corps would be better off with her than without.
But that was a conversation for another time. Specifically after they had discovered whether Amara’s discovery led where Jake was beginning to think it would.
* * *
Shao Industries was on target to hit its deadline of full Drone Jaeger deployment forty-eight hours from her first order. Shao herself had seen to this, berating and terrorizing the staff, from the lowliest tech all the way up to Dr. Geiszler. They might fear her, some might hate her, but they worked hard for her—and all that work was paying off. She strode through the lobby of Shao Industries’ research headquarters in Shanghai, watching results on a data pad in her hands. Chief Kang fell into step with her, fresh from a check on the building’s security systems. “The building is secure, ma’am.”
“No visitors without the proper credentials,” she ordered. That would mean closing the public areas of the Shao Industries building, but at this point Shao didn’t care. She was too close to the realization of a dream she had pursued since before the end of the Kaiju War, when she had seen dying pilots and each time thought, What a waste. Why do we send young men and women out in the Jaegers when they might as easily control them from a Shatterdome?
When the sun rose in the morning, that question would be answered: we don’t anymore. “I don’t want anyone interfering with deployment,” she added, in case Chief Kang hadn’t already gotten the point.
Her data pad chirped. She looked down at it and angled it away from Kang, frowning. “I’ll be in my office,” she said, dismissing him.
Kang nodded. “Ma’am.” He walked briskly off, leaving her to grapple with what she was seeing on her screen. It wasn’t possible. Was it?
21
CADET DISCHARGE REPORT
CADET: AMARA NAMANI
REASON(S) FOR DISCHARGE:
RECKLESS CONDUCT RESULTING IN INJURY
TO PPDC PERSONNEL
INTERFERENCE WITH PPDC INTELLIGENCE
INVESTIGATION
FAILURE TO FOLLOW TRAINING
REGULATIONS
SUMMARY
Cadet Namani encouraged fellow cadets to accompany her on an unauthorized foray into the remains of the destroyed rogue Jaeger Obsidian Fury. During the course of this activity, she evaded security and damaged the interior of Obsidian Fury. The damage resulted in the release of Kaiju blood and injury to Cadet Jinhai.
Cadet Namani exhibited contrition and did not attempt to evade responsibility, which speaks well of her character. Ordinarily conduct such as hers would result in a dishonorable discharge but her record will reflect dismissal without the further censure of a dishonorable designation.
Cadet Namani will be returned to her former home in Santa Monica, California. PPDC will suggest to local law enforcement that she not be prosecuted for her offenses there.
[SIGNED] MARSHAL QUAN
Amara did what Jake had told her to do. She stayed in the room until PPDC security came to get her. But whatever faint hope of mercy she’d still held onto evaporated when they led her out the door and then said, “By PPDC regulations you are permitted to observe as we clear your belongings out of your locker. If you have concerns about our handling of your personal items, you may register those concerns verbally. But under no circumstances will you approach security personnel who are performing the locker clear-out. Is that understood?”
She nodded without speaking so they wouldn’t hear the tremor she knew would be in her voice.
They led her to the barracks, where the rest of the cadets stood watching as security emptied Amara’s locker. They were competent and professional, even folding her clothes as they stowed them in her duffel bag. In a way this made Amara angrier than she otherwise would have been. If they’d been careless or deliberately destructive, at least she could have gotten angry about that, but no, they were treating her exactly by the book. She would miss that. Back in Santa Monica, there was no book. You got away with what you could until someone stronger or smarter than you put an end to it. Amara was only then realizing how much she was going to miss a world governed by rules.
“This isn’t fair,” Suresh said.
Amara looked up as Jinhai approached her. His arm was heavily bandaged from thumb to above the elbow. It was hard for Amara to look at, but she made herself do it. Actions had consequences. She had caused this and she didn’t have any right to look away because it made her uncomfortable.
“I tried to talk to my parents,” Jinhai said. “But they wouldn’t listen.”
“It was my mission,” Amara said, trying to let him off the hook. “This is on me.”
She appreciated his gesture, but regulations were regulations. She hadn’t caught a break because her parents didn’t have any influence, but if she had caught a break, that wouldn’t have been abiding by the rules, would it? You couldn’t have it both ways.
Her locker was empty and the security detail came to lead her out. “Amara,” Vik called. “The next Jaeger you build. Make it a big one.” She grinned, and Amara almost lost it then, at that gesture of support from Vik of all people. She remembered Vik taunting her: Bigger is better. God, how was she going to leave all these people and go back to the life she’d been leading before? Were they even going to let her keep Scrapper?
Security held the door for her as she left. Amara didn’t look back because she didn’t want the rest of the cadets to see the tears in her eyes.
* * *
Newt had been in the lab for almost twenty-four hours straight, cracking the whip over his tech crew as they slowly ticked off deployment
after deployment. The plan overall was to have demonstrations of Drone Jaeger teams at all the major cities around the Pacific Rim, from Vladivostok all the way around through Los Angeles and back up through Sydney, Shanghai, Tokyo… It was a lot of Drones, and that meant a lot of Drift-trained pilots Shao had hired away from the PPDC. Other Drone pilots weren’t veterans of Ranger service, and had gotten their Drift training from new cradles and simulation rigs of Newt’s own design—though of course because he was working for Shao, she held all the patents and got all the credit.
Sometimes that bothered him. She couldn’t have pulled this off without him, and she knew it, even though she would never have admitted it in front of him. But that was all right. Newt had a pretty good idea just how smart and capable he was. Sometimes that came across as arrogance, but what the hell, that was the price you paid for being honest.
Right now he didn’t have patents or credit on his mind. He was singularly focused—as focused as he’d been able to get in weeks, if not months.
In Santa Monica, there was one last tricky pair of Drones that were having trouble processing the signals from their Drift pilots here in the Remote Conn Lab.
It took up most of a floor in the Shao Industries tower, nearly a full city block of equipment and Drift cradles modified to operate solo without the immediate visual and tactile stimulus that came from working inside a Jaeger. Here everything was done virtually. One hundred pilots, in nice even rows of twenty, worked identical Drift rigs conveying their commands to identical Drones. Glancing over at them, Newt felt a flush of pride. This was so much better than relying on the two-pilot Drift to control a Jaeger. The interaction of two minds always caused unexpected emotional resonance, which complicated the task of handling thousands of tons of heavily armed steel. With a single remote pilot, not only were commands clearer, the pilots were safer. Kaiju—or any other enemy—couldn’t get them here in the Remote Conn Lab.
This was the next step in Jaeger evolution. Newt felt good about it, like he was about to change the world.
He worked the deployment screen, making sure the Drift connections were stable and the Drones were coming online according to the specified schedule. They were almost there…
The Drift rigs handling the Santa Monica Drones went from red to green. Stable Drift, good contact, Drones operational. They were flanking November Ajax, conveying a message of unity to the millions of people watching all over the world. At other Shatterdomes, and other cities, Drones marched out in formation with Jaegers. Where there were no Jaegers, Shao had made sure there were video feeds showing the lockstep presentation of Drones and traditional Jaegers. She very much wanted everyone to believe that the Drones weren’t replacing the Jaegers, even though Newt didn’t see how anyone could believe that for more than a split second after they saw the Drones in action.
The last two Drones were still being flown in to Moyulan Shatterdome, but their board readouts were also green. Even though the Jumphawks hadn’t dropped them yet, they were ready for service. Their pilots grumbled about being the last to actually take the field.
Newt decided he was calling it. Every Drone but Moyulan was up and running, and those last two were deploying at that moment. “Delivery at one hundred percent!” he crowed, setting off cheers from the techs in the lab. “That right there, that’s the way you do it.”
Almost as soon as he got the words out of his mouth, warning lights started to flash.
* * *
In the Moyulan Shatterdome LOCCENT, a technician noted strange energy signatures coming from the two Drones now approaching the Shatterdome tarmac.
* * *
In the Remote Conn Lab at Shao Industries, warning lights blazed across Newt’s command screen. The closest remote pilot was Shao’s favorite, Burke. He wrestled with his controls as the holo displays around him started to change color and deform. “Losing uplink to Drone 375!”
Other pilots echoed the warning. Newt spun back to the command readout. All over the Remote Conn Lab, warning lights flashed and the colors of the screens around the pilots coruscated and changed. Something about the sight was familiar to Newt, but he couldn’t think what…
22
VALOR OMEGA STOOD SENTINEL OUTSIDE THE Jaeger bay doors of the Moyulan Shatterdome, awaiting the arrival of the final Drones that threatened to make it and all the other human-piloted Jaegers obsolete. That was the feeling among the Rangers and J-Techs, despite Shao Liwen’s assurances to the contrary. The lights of approaching Jumphawks, together with the running lights on the Drones they carried, came steadily closer, approaching the Shatterdome from the south. Amara looked up at them as PPDC security escorted her to a helicopter that was going to take her… well, she didn’t know. Home? There was nothing there for her. What was she going to do next?
Jake caught her eye from across the tarmac, where he had been about to board another Jumphawk. Amara wondered where he could be going in such a hurry. She hoped it had something to do with the information she’d given him about the cables inside Obsidian Fury, but she couldn’t know. Nobody was talking to her about anything right now, except when they gave her commands to go somewhere. The sound of the Jumphawks was getting loud now, as Jake came trotting across the tarmac toward her. Was he going to tell security to let her go? Amara’s heart leaped at the possibility, but she knew it was more likely Jake was just coming over to say goodbye one last time.
* * *
Before Jake had taken ten steps, an urgent voice broke through the background noise in his commlink. One of the techs up in the LOCCENT was shouting in Mandarin. He stopped and looked back at Marshal Quan, who translated. “There’s something wrong with the Drones!”
Jake looked up just as vivid purplish energy crackled out from the Drones’ heads. Tendrils of pulsing Kaiju flesh bulged out at the seams in their armor plating, coiling into each other and fusing with the Drones’ electronic systems. The system overload made the Drones spasm and thrash their limbs, destabilizing the Jumphawks’ flight patterns. The Jumphawks spun into one another and the cables holding the Drones snapped. They fell the last few hundred feet to the tarmac as the Jumphawks spun down and disintegrated in a blast he could feel all the way across the tarmac.
As the Drones hit the ground near the hydraulic lifts providing water access to deploying Jaegers, they were already opening fire. A barrage of plasma missiles raked the tarmac, destroying vehicles and exploding at the edge of the Jaeger bay doors. Then the Drones turned their attention to the rows of parked Jumphawks and V-Dragons, methodically smashing their way through them. Some of the V-Dragons and smaller helicopters got into the air, but the Drones blew them out of the sky, their flaming wreckage falling to the waters of Qingchuan Bay. Those that got close enough to fire on the Drones were swatted down to the tarmac, where they burned amid the wreckage of Scramblers and forklifts.
“Get to Gipsy!” Marshal Quan ordered Jake and Lambert. They took off running as Quan issued more orders into his commlink. “All pilots! Man your Jaegers and engage hostiles!”
Inside the Jaeger bay, Rangers and J-Tech crews sprinted to their stations. Valor Omega was outside the bay, and the Kaiju Drones turned their attention in that direction. A double volley of missiles blasted Valor Omega apart before her crew could even get the Jaeger online. The violence of the explosion killed her crew and both of her Ranger pilots. Pieces of the destroyed Jaeger skidded across the tarmac and rained down for hundreds of yards in every direction, splashing into the bay and pinging off the outside of the Shatterdome. Valor Omega’s severed head bounced twice and then rolled, missing Amara by only a few feet as she dove out of the way at the last second. Her security escorts weren’t so lucky. The head smashed through them and demolished the chopper waiting to take her away before crashing to a halt against the outer wall of the Shatterdome. Still on the ground, she looked around, overwhelmed by the horror of the attack. Missile after missile blasted parked Jumphawks, J-Tech transports, clusters of fleeing Shatterdome personnel. The Drones
were working methodically across the tarmac, from the landing strips to the far side, where the deployment gantries still stood untouched.
Satellite feeds inside the LOCCENT showed the same unfolding catastrophe all over the world. Drones went rogue and attacked in Anchorage, Guam, Lima, Attu… and Santa Monica, where November Ajax burned against the backdrop of the Kaiju bones at the pier. Quan saw the Shatterdome at Fukuoka collapse, sending up a mushrooming ball of smoke. In the shallow waters of Lake Washington, a Jaeger lay face down, the ripples of its impact still spreading outward as a Drone pumped missiles into its back. In Manila, Drones strode up the Pasig River, the North Harbor waterfront ablaze behind them. The feed from Jakarta showed one Drone down, but the second stood over the inert remains of the defending Jaeger. All over the world, the scene was the same. Only on the Sydney waterfront, defended by the few anti-Kaiju cannons that had survived Obsidian Fury, did the PPDC appear to be winning. The cannon batteries pounded the Drones trying to follow Obsidian Fury’s path of destruction, saving what remained of the PPDC Council Building.
This was supposed to be a day of celebration, a new stage in the development of the PPDC and the Jaeger Corps. Instead, thought Marshal Quan, it was entirely possible that by the end of the night there would be no Jaeger Corps left at all.
23
PAN PACIFIC DEFENSE CORPS JOINT SECURITY DIRECTIVE
NOT FOR PUBLIC CONSUMPTION
TO ALL LOCAL AND REGIONAL AUTHORITIES IN PPDC OVERSIGHT TERRITORIES:
Drone Jaegers in their initial deployments are attacking Ranger-piloted Jaegers, Shatterdomes, and other PPDC installations. All Drone Jaegers should be destroyed on sight using any and all available weapons short of tactical nuclear options.
