by Greg Keyes
Contents
Cover
Also Available from Titan Books
Title Page
Copyright
Dedication
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Acknowledgments
About the Author
Also available from Titan Books:
Pacific Rim Uprising:
The Official Movie Novelization
FROM DIRECTOR
STEVEN S. DEKNIGHT
NOVEL BY
GREG KEYES
TITAN BOOKS
Pacific Rim Uprising: Ascension
Print edition ISBN: 9781785657665
E-book edition ISBN: 9781785657672
Published by Titan Books
A division of Titan Publishing Group Ltd
144 Southwark Street, London SE1 0UP
First edition: March 2018
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This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
© 2018 Legendary
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FOR TERRI SHAW
1
2035
MOYULAN SHATTERDOME
CHINA
FOR OU-YANG JINHAI, SHATTERDOMES WERE OLD news. He had spent most of the first seven years of his life in family housing in the Hong Kong Shatterdome, and he had visited several others. In Hong Kong he had been one of only a handful of kids living in the dome, and generally kids were meant to stay out of the way, and usually they did.
But sometimes, when nothing much was going on, he and his little group of friends would sneak to see the Jaegers, the giant mechs that fought the nightmares from the deep, the Kaiju. They stared up in wonder at Cherno Alpha, Crimson Typhoon – and his favorite, of course, Shaolin Rogue. They made Jaeger and Kaiju costumes of cardboard boxes and fought their own battles; they played in dead storage and explored Mechspace, where transports and Jumphawks were stored and repaired, and spare Jaeger parts were kept ready.
And then everything changed. The Kaiju – which had been attacking the human race since before he was born – were defeated. He remembered the night it happened, the muted celebrations among the J-Techs and mechanics, their joy subdued by profound loss.
After that, his parents moved away from the Shatterdome, to one of the nicer inland suburbs, and the smell of ozone and machine oil became a distant memory. Ten years passed. He grew up. The world changed.
But it was all coming back now, as he and the others looked up and down the Jaeger bays, the immense man-shaped machines that stood in them, the thirty-story tall ocean doors through which they could be taxied to deploy.
Of course, Jinhai had never been in this, the Moyulan Shatterdome. It was only recently built, and a bigger, shinier, more modern place than what he remembered from Hong Kong, which – by the time he came around – was dingy, rundown and more than a bit rusty. Still, on many levels it felt more like home than the sprawling, quiet, nearly empty house in the suburbs.
What was clear to him from the beginning was that none of these other cadets had ever seen the inside of a dome. Doubtless they had seen images and videos, but until you stood at the foot of a two-hundred-fifty-foot plus Jaeger – and realized you were in a space that housed six of them – you couldn’t truly get a grip on the scale. He remembered the first time his mother had shown him Shaolin Rogue. It had made him feel little, of course, but it also – for the first time – made him realize that his mother wasn’t that big, either. Or Dad. Or even Marshal Pentecost. No one looked big next to a Jaeger. The difference in degree between a child and an adult seemed trivial in comparison.
He watched the others gape up at the mighty frame of Titan Redeemer with amusement and a certain amount of disdain.
Get over it, he thought. I have.
They were all – him included – cadets. They were all within a year or so of his age – seventeen – and all of them hoped to one day climb into one of those metal behemoths and go off to save the world.
Most of them, anyway. He was over that, too. He was here for his own reasons.
Only one of the other cadets wasn’t all open-mouthed and wide-eyed, and that was Viktoriya Malikova, a Russian girl who didn’t outwardly express much of anything except perhaps annoyance. He liked that about her, right away.
Most of the cadets had arrived the day before, but Viktoriya had arrived a little later, just in time for the orientation. They had begun in a conference room, where they turned in all of their personal electronics and were given PPDC-approved devices. Then they had been orally refreshed on all of the stuff they and their parents had signed concerning the rules and expectations of the Pan Pacific Defense Corps Jaeger Training Academy. Now that that was out of the way, two Rangers named Lambert and Burke were giving them a tour.
It wasn’t as if nothing had changed since he was seven – technology had come a long way since the Jaeger program had begun, back in the mid-teens. The Mark-6 series impressed even him, although he wasn’t going to admit that out loud. Or ooh and ahh like a groupie. But they were cool.
“Don’t get used to this,” Lambert told them. “You’ll go through a lot before you ever pilot one of these. Some of you never will. After today, we start with the basics – Kwoon combat drills, basic Pons training to evaluate your Drift compatibility – then eventually you will fight simulated battles in the Mock-Pods. If all of that goes well, you’ll get a turn in Chronos Berserker, here.”
The Jaeger bay was a huge, circular space; Jaegers stood in niches along the walls. Chronos Berserker was an older Mark-5 that had never met a Kaiju, although it had done its part in law-enforcement and rebuilding efforts.
“As you can see, Chronos doesn’t have a head,” Burke said. “It’s there, up above.”
He pointed to the dark recesses of the dome’s high ceiling, where a mess of gantries, walkways, scaffolds, head clamps and the like obscured the shadow that was Chronos Berserker’s control pod.
“The head – in this case, a Conn-Pod – is being prepared for a test run by two of our graduating cadets,” Lambert went on, “soon-to-be R
angers Braga and Vu. You’ll meet them tomorrow. Meantime, we’re going to take the lift up to CB’s Conn-Pod, which I’m sure all of you know is where the pilots control her from. You’ll go in twos. Everything important is offline, but don’t mess with anything. It isn’t a toy, and this isn’t kindergarten. The reason we’re doing this at all is because I want you to be able to visualize what it will be like to be inside one of these magnificent things and know you’re ready and equipped to battle anything. This training will be hard, and at times you’ll want to quit, I promise. When you feel like giving up, I hope this experience will give you something to motivate you.”
They took the lift to the very top of the dome, where a head clamp was positioned to drop the Conn-Pod to Chronos Berserker and thus complete her. There they waited their turns to go inside.
He noticed Viktoriya step away from the others and look out over the rest of the place. After a moment, he followed her.
“These guys are easily impressed, aren’t they?” he said, sotto voce.
“It is impressive,” she replied, although her diffident tone seemed to belie her words. “Many of them never dreamed that they would be here. Some of them, probably, should not be.”
The way she said it, the little flicker of a glance from the corner of her eye, suddenly made him feel defensive.
“You don’t know me,” he said.
“I know you arrived in Fuding in a PPDC executive jet,” she said, “while I arrived in third class on the train from Vladivostok.”
“Look,” he said. “I didn’t mean to rile you up. I was just making conversation.”
“I didn’t come here to make conversation,” she said. “I came here to train, and learn. To become a pilot.” She lifted her chin toward the Conn-Pod.
“It’s your turn.”
* * *
Lambert gave the two cadets a final inspection before escorting them to the Jaeger bay. Braga, as usual, was trying to suppress a big grin. There was still a lot of kid in him, but in the best way. His sense of wonder didn’t interfere with either his focus or his drive; in fact, it propelled both. His thick, wavy black hair was a little disheveled, and bordering on being too long for regs. Typical, but he never let it go over the line.
Next to Braga’s six-foot frame, Vu looked diminutive. She was just under five feet and weighed less than a hundred pounds, but he had never seen anyone perform better in the Kwoon. She was all business, Vu, and very contained.
“I shouldn’t say this,” Lambert told them, “but I’m proud of you guys. You’ve both worked hard, and you deserve to be Rangers. I know this feels like it will be a big deal, but the fact is, it’s not all that different from being in the Mock-Pod.”
“With all respect, Ranger,” Braga said, “actually being in a Jaeger – that’s got to be different.”
“It’s a little different,” he admitted. “But it’s the Drift that’s important, and you guys have demonstrated your ability many times. Just stay cool, and don’t get excited, and everything is going to be fine, right?”
“Right, Ranger,” they said in unison.
“Great. Let’s take a swing through the cadets so they can see what they’re working toward.”
“I’ve met most of them already, Ranger,” Braga said. “Seems like a good bunch.”
“Don’t get too attached to them,” Lambert warned. “Just think about the attrition rate in your cadre.”
“Nearly sixty percent,” Vu said.
“Closer to seventy, in our class,” a new voice said.
“Ranger Burke,” Vu said.
Burke was a little shorter than Lambert, but they weighed about the same due to the other Ranger’s impressively muscled upper body.
“Well, there he is,” Lambert said. “Where’ve you been, buddy?”
“Oh, out and about,” he said. “I guess I’m not too late, though.”
Lambert tried to hide his irritation. He liked Burke, and they were excellent Drift partners, but lately he’d been a little squirrely. Not unreliable, exactly, but it felt like things were edging in that direction.
“We were just headed out to see the new recruits,” Lambert said. “Why don’t you come with us?”
* * *
“These kids look really young this year,” Lambert whispered to Burke where the two Rangers stood in a corner, largely ignored. The cadets were focused on Braga, who was giving an encouraging little speech about dreams and persistence.
“I was just a street kid in Rio,” he was saying. “And Vu here, she’s the daughter of a fisherman and a seamstress. The PPDC doesn’t care where you come from – rich or poor, high or low. It’s who you are that matters…”
“That’s because you’re old,” Burke said.
“Last time I checked, twenty-seven wasn’t considered ‘old’,” Lambert replied.
“It’s relative, isn’t it?” Burke said. “When you were in your twenties, you still sort of felt like you were one of them, right? Like there isn’t a huge difference between seventeen and twenty-one, or twenty-one and twenty-five. It’s the difference in, well, everything else. Listen to Braga. Can you imagine being that fresh, that idealistic, ever again? I mean, think about how we were at that age. We had dreams.”
“I’ve still got dreams,” Lambert protested.
“Not like they do, you don’t. They seem young because you really aren’t one of them anymore. We’re almost a different species from those guys.”
Never shy about the hyperbole, Burke. But he had a point. When Lambert looked at cadets, he had to recognize that his feelings weren’t friendly, or even brotherly, but much closer to what he thought a father might feel.
Oh, God, I am getting old, he thought.
They finished up with the cadets and headed on to the main event.
Even after more than a decade, the Jaeger bay still gave Lambert goosebumps; it was just the sheer size of it, the magnitude of the accomplishment. Humanity had stared into the face of extinction and then built this.
Currently, five Jaegers stood against the walls, including his own ride, Gipsy Avenger. An homage to the Mark-3 that Mako Mori and Raleigh Becket had piloted into the Breach, his Gipsy was a Mark-6, a true thing of beauty. A very deadly beauty.
One of the Jaegers stood ready for deployment. It was the older model he’d mentioned to the cadets, the Australian-built Mark-5 known as Chronos Berserker. The Conn-Pod was still up in the “rafters” so Braga and Vu could board her.
Braga looked up. “Heard you let the kids climb around in there yesterday,” he said.
“Yes,” Lambert replied. “Don’t worry, we gave her a full diagnostic run as soon as they were done. Not that there was anything for them to really mess up.”
“No, it’s not that,” Braga said. “I just – I remember when you took my bunch up there. It really inspired me, sir. I’d like to thank you again.”
“Thank me when you pin on your Ranger patch,” he said.
He shook hands with Braga and Vu, and watched as they rode the lift to their Conn-Pod.
Then he went into LOCCENT Control to help monitor what amounted to the final exam of two very promising cadets.
He nodded at Xiang, the new LOCCENT controller.
“How are they doing?” he asked.
“Getting situated like old pros,” she replied. “Braga is in a bit of a rush, Vu is taking her time.”
That was good. He couldn’t help but think that they had it a little easier than when he had started, and they still used the old-style “Pinocchio” rigs, where a pilot’s arms and legs directly manipulated machinery that then translated their motion to the Jaeger. Chronos Berserker had been upgraded to the newer system, in which pilots were actually suspended over pads via magnetic levitation. It gave them – and thus the Jaeger – a much greater and more fine-grained range of motion.
“Okay,” Xiang said. “Ready for the drop.”
“Ready,” Braga said.
The head descended briskly from its gantry,
guided between Chronos Berserker’s shoulders, where it latched into place.
“Oh yeah,” Braga whooped with glee. “That is way better than a Mock-Pod. Let’s do that again!”
“Okay,” Xiang said. “Settle down, Braga. Ready to engage pilot-to-pilot protocol.”
“We are ready, Control,” Braga confirmed.
“Hemispheres calibrating,” Xiang said. “Left, yes, right, yes. Initializing neural handshake.”
She pushed back a strand of onyx-black hair that had escaped her queue. Lambert didn’t know her all that well. They had been through three LOCCENT controllers since Moyulan was founded – Xiang had only been in Moyulan for a few weeks. She had trained under the famous Tendo Choi, which meant she was probably okay – but you never really knew how someone was going to perform until they came under pressure, and things had been quiet lately.
“Neural handshake engaged,” she said. “They’re drifting.”
The earliest Jaeger prototypes were built to be controlled by one person. That hadn’t gone well. The neural load was just too much for a single pilot to bear. Nor could two people, working independently, control half of the machine and achieve anything approaching the coordination necessary to actually battle a Kaiju.
But two people, bearing the neural load together – their minds “bridged” by the Pons technology – could.
So, Jaegers were designed to have two – in some cases, three – pilots.
This meant that Jaeger pilots were different from other people who controlled machines; like, for instance, the pilot of a plane. In addition to all of the intellectual and physical qualifications, there was one more necessary ability that stood out above all the others – Drift compatibility. Some people had it, some people did not, and few were compatible with everyone. Drift partners were often siblings, or lovers, people who had already shared a lot of mental territory. Others just got lucky in training, and came across someone they really clicked with.
It had happened to Lambert, twice.
Braga had been compatible with several other cadets, but Vu was only able to successfully Drift with Braga. But as a team they were so good together, there hadn’t been any question that they would be partners.
