by Greg Keyes
Right now, Lambert knew, they were experiencing one another’s fears, dark secrets, traumas; settling into each other’s heads, and into the artificial nerves of the machine that surrounded them, trying to find silence, to ignore the memories, let them go, not latch on to any of them.
And now they were ready.
“Chronos Berserker, move your right arm,” Xiang said.
After the briefest of pauses, the right arm shot up. Scattered applause could be heard from the engineers and J-Techs on the floor.
“Good. Now, left arm.”
Up went the left.
“Now your right leg. Just one step.”
Nothing happened.
“Chronos Berserker, right leg, please.”
Again, no response.
“Braga? Vu?”
“Meu Deus!” Braga suddenly screamed. Then Vu started yelling, too.
“Dab tsi, dab tsi?”
Then the two cadets abruptly went silent.
“What’s happening?” Lambert snapped.
“I don’t know,” Xiang said. “We just lost the feed from Chronos.”
“Lost the feed? Everything? How—”
All heads turned as Chronos Berserker suddenly lurched forward, threw an air punch, then another.
What were they doing? Braga liked to kid, sure, but he wasn’t so dumb to not know he was already crossing the line on this. And Vu, she would never tolerate this sort of horseplay.
Chronos turned, ran four steps, and crashed into the wall.
“What the hell?” Lambert yelped. They weren’t messing around. Something was wrong. Really wrong.
“Shut it down!” he told Xiang.
“I can’t,” she said. “The fail-safe system has been overridden.”
“By who? By what?”
“Ranger, I do not know. Oh, crap.”
Lambert saw it, too. Chronos Berserker carried two hammerhead missiles, one in each arm. The port in the right arm had just raised out of its frame.
“No, no—”
“All personnel, evacuate to safety,” Xiang snapped.
Everyone knew it was too late for that, and were jumping for the nearest cover. He didn’t see the point of even that. Hammerheads contained the most powerful non-atomic warheads available. One of them could do a very decent job of hollowing the Shatterdome out.
With a flash and the roar like a jet taking off, the missile leapt from Chronos Berserker’s arm.
It slammed into the bay wall, about halfway up, narrowly missing Gipsy Danger. He watched the wreckage expand and fall, stunned, only then remembering that while the missiles could be fired for training purposes, their payloads had been removed.
Which for everyone in the building was a very, very good thing.
What was going on? Something in the Drift, obviously. They thought they were fighting something. What? Why?
Chronos threw another punch; this one hit Valor Omega, visibly damaging the other Jaeger’s shoulder.
There had to be something…
“Wait,” Lambert said. “You said all of the fail-safes. What about the Pons Intercessor?”
Xiang’s eyes widened, and she shook her head.
“That’s a separate system,” she said. Her hands flew over the controls. “It’s still intact.”
The intercessor was designed to allow an outsider to drift with those in the Conn-Pod. It was a safety precaution – useful, for instance, if one of the pilots passed out for some reason. A third party could enter the Drift to help stabilize the situation.
But maybe he could use it to shut things down.
“Put me in,” he said.
2
HE ENTERED NOT A DRIFT, BUT A MAELSTROM. Braga and Vu were both utterly panicked, nourishing each other’s terror in a feedback loop that was already so strong, Lambert had trouble not caving in to fear himself.
Of course, now that he was in, he saw they had a reason to be afraid. His field of vision was all Kaiju, a monster so gargantuan and so close he could only make out parts; he got a sense of Gila monster and ground sloth as three huge claws ripped through the right side of the Conn-Pod.
He knew it wasn’t real, couldn’t be real.
But it seemed real. And Braga and Vu were utterly convinced. He couldn’t see them, of course, because he wasn’t really in the Conn-Pod – but he could feel them, the bright mental stuttering of total panic.
But even though they were terrified, they were fighting, or trying to.
The Kaiju swiped at them again with those black claws; Chronos countered with a double high block, then brought both fists back down on the monster’s head. It staggered a bit, but shook it off, and then its muzzle filled the screen as its jagged teeth closed on the Conn-Pod and started worrying it like a dog with a bone. Chronos responded with an uppercut and began warming up the other missile, stepping back to give her room to fire.
Lambert tried to force his thoughts into the whirlpool theirs had formed, but it was hard to make headway; if there was a downside to their compatibility, it was that they were so strongly connected he couldn’t get through to them; the strength of their bond was shutting him out. He couldn’t reach both of them at once.
He had to pick one.
Of the two, it felt like Vu still had the most control, so in a split-second decision, he went for her.
It’s not real. This is just a training sim. Snap out of it, Vu. Let’s shut this down.
She wanted to believe him. But it was just so real, and the Kaiju was coming back…
Think. Before you started to drift you were in the bays; Chronos never went outside…
He felt suddenly dizzy as the Kaiju lifted Chronos Berserker into the air. He saw the sea below, sheeted in ice, land in the near distance, mountains covered in snow.
Ice, Vu, see? Snow! We’re at the Moyulan Shatterdome. China. Late summer. No ice for a thousand miles…
They slammed into the water. Braga screamed and thrashed wildly as the Kaiju drew them into the depths. Water started pouring through a tear in the Conn-Pod, and it was cold, shockingly cold.
Vu!
Noicenoicenoicenoice, Vu repeated. NO. ICE.
“Yes, Ranger!” Vu shouted, aloud.
He felt her go, suddenly, explosively. She must have ripped off her headgear. Braga’s mental scream rose, peaked in utter anguish and despair as the Conn-Pod seemed to flood with icy water.
Lambert broke contact. Braga couldn’t drift by himself. With Vu gone, the neural handshake would not hold, the illusion would end, and everything would stop.
Out in the bay, Chronos Berserker hit the wall again, took three steps back, and then became very still.
The feed from inside the Jaeger was still cut off; all Lambert could do was watch helplessly as the emergency crew descended from the ceiling and opened the Conn-Pod. When they finally got in there with the medical team, there was a long moment of silence.
“Vu is unconscious,” the medic reported, finally.
“And Braga?” Lambert asked.
“I’m sorry, Ranger – he’s gone.”
* * *
Dr. Ysabel Morales had always intimidated Hermann Gottlieb. It was nothing she meant to do, and came from no deficit in her character. His feelings were entirely derived from comparing himself to her. Her early work in the PPDC – her equations that outlined the first intimations of what scientists would call the Anteverse – were sheer genius, the kind of forward leap in mathematical thinking that only came along once in a century or so. In the old days, when they had been colleagues in the research division of the PPDC, she always seemed to reach the answers before he did. Along with that she had been social, and funny, able to easily converse about anything from Victorian literature to the contents of a Sazerac cocktail or the string theory with equal enthusiasm and aplomb. She had exuded confidence and self-reliance without seeming conceited or stand-offish. In short, she made him and most of the other scientists look rather… inferior. Even so, he had always liked her.
Now she was in his lab. It was the first time he had seen her in almost a decade, and he was starting to fear she was going to cry.
She didn’t, but she must have read something in his expression.
“I know,” she said. “This is much harder than I thought. It’s the first time I’ve been back in a PPDC facility since… well, since not long after Sean died.”
“Ah, yes,” he said. “I had forgotten. Not – not that he died, you understand. It was tragic. I didn’t know him all that well, but I know that you did…” he trailed off, realizing that things were going wrong, as they often did when he spoke. Of course she had known him better. They had been engaged.
“It’s okay,” she said. “I’m just not as at peace with it as I thought I was.”
“I never understood—” he began, but then realized that once again he was about to intrude on her grief, and didn’t finish the sentence.
But she knew where he’d been going.
“Why I blamed myself?” she said. “Because it was my fault, Hermann. I was responsible for the containment system.”
“But we knew so little back then,” he said. “And it was important work. Transforming our mathematical theories – your mathematical theories, really, since you first saw the implications in the data and wrote it into equations – into practice – we were able to build generations of better technology. Ultimately, those experiments were also the start of what let us close the Breach.”
She shrugged. “He was going to be my husband,” she said. “He died – in – in agony. Knowing it was me that failed him. I could see it in his eyes.”
“Nonsense. I can’t believe he would have blamed you. No one else did.”
She tilted her head down, and now he understood she was weeping. He stood frozen, unsure what to do. But after a moment, he gave her an awkward side-hug and patted her shoulder, hoping she did not misinterpret his intentions.
Perhaps a change of subject.
“It’s going to be fine,” he said. “Listen, why don’t you tell me what brings you here. You’re still employed by Geognosis?”
“Yes,” she said, wiping her eyes. “You’re right. I should focus on doing something. That’s how I got through it. I’ll get through it this time.”
She smiled thinly. “After I left the PPDC I went back to university, but it didn’t – well, after a few years it didn’t fulfill me the way I hoped. So, yes, I found a job in the private sector, with Geognosis. They’ve just taken a contract with PPDC to design the plasma cells for a new generation of energy refineries. I’ll be heading up our team, here, in the dome. I’ve been provided facilities in Mechspace.”
“I can think of no one better suited for the job,” he said. It was an understatement; the job actually seemed well beneath her, or at least beneath the woman he had known. But the person before him seemed considerably more fragile than the one he remembered.
“And if you need anything at all, please – do not hesitate to come to me.”
“That’s very kind of you,” she said.
There followed an uncomfortable silence, in which he began to wonder if there was something she was expecting him to say, or do. He did empathize with her, but of course there was a lot to do. It was good to see her, but at work there was – work. Should he invite her over? He would have to check with his wife first, of course, but he might at least suggest a more social, after-hours setting if she needed more emotional support.
He hadn’t quite formulated how to say that when her eyebrows lifted.
“I’m sorry, Hermann,” she said. “I quite forgot. I brought something to show you.”
She reached into her bag, removed a small memory stick, and handed it toward him.
“What’s this?” he asked.
“I’m not sure,” she told him. “The last project I was on involved building better predictive models for locating geological assets – oil, natural gas, rare earths and the like. We used a wide range of data sets, and some things jumped out at me. Inside the tectonic data there are some very subtle rhythms which increase and decrease in frequency and amplitude over a six-month span, but they generally trend up. Which I might not have noticed if there wasn’t a similar upward trend in neutrino emissions from the Earth’s upper mantle. It’s not exactly an Anteverse signature, but it – well, it reminded me of one. I didn’t have time to give this the attention I think it might need, and frankly, this field has left me way behind. I haven’t read a paper on the subject since – since I left here. You’re the expert on this, Hermann. It might be nothing. It probably is nothing. But I wanted to afford you the opportunity to give it a look.”
He took the stick and synchronized it into his workstation; the data began appearing instantly. He hunched over it.
“Yes, I see,” he murmured. “Very interesting. This is like nothing I’ve ever seen before. I will certainly have a look at this.”
He stared back at the data uneasily. Lately he had had his own worries about such things. He hated the very idea of intuition, but occasionally it was hard to deny its value.
The building suddenly shuddered, violently, and again. Alarms were going off. He checked the status matrix.
“Something is going on in Jaeger bays,” he said. “Ysabel, I’m afraid you must excuse me.”
“Of course, Hermann,” she said. “Do what you need to, I’ll talk to you later…”
He hardly heard her as he hurried toward the door.
3
2035
PPDC AD MOBILE COMMAND
NORTH POLAR AIRSPACE
“SECRETARY GENERAL MORI?”
Mako didn’t turn right away, because she was transfixed by the sunset and because “Secretary General” still didn’t sound like it went with her name. It felt too big for her, like a coat made for someone else. At the same time, it felt small, considering that when she was a Ranger she stood two hundred and sixty feet high. That had seemed just right.
And like so many things, that had been taken from her.
And there was the sunset seen from fifty thousand feet – beautiful, almost too big to grasp, layer upon layer of clouds soaked in light, each higher heaven a little brighter. But the sea below, that was already dark. Tonight and yesterday seen all at once.
“What is it, Airman?” He was a young man, his uniform so crisp it seemed like he’d ironed it after he put it on.
“You’ve got an urgent message from the Moyulan Shatterdome. They’ve been trying to get through to you.”
“Thank you,” she said.
Once the airman was gone, she sighed and checked her redline comm. She had only meant to turn it off long enough for a moment with the sunset, but since they were chasing the sun, that moment had stretched on and on. What was wrong with her? She felt a little out of it. Not fatigued, exactly, but more attenuated. She knew her work was important, she just wasn’t sure she was important to the work. But someone did, obviously, or they wouldn’t be calling her.
LOCCENT.
She returned the call and asked the controller for Marshal Quan. There was a bit of shuffling, then Quan’s voice was in her ear.
“Secretary General,” he said. “I hope you are well.”
She almost smiled, knowing that translated to “where the hell have you been?”
“I’m well,” she replied. “What is it?”
“We’ve had a problem here,” he said. “In the Jaeger bay.”
She listened with growing horror as he gave the details. It took her back to a place and a moment she did not care to remember: her own Drift gone bad. This time it was worse: one person was dead and another would never pilot again. But it could have been far worse still.
“Was anyone else injured?” she asked. “Are the cadets all okay?”
“They are, Secretary General. No other injuries, in fact.”
That was good. Okay, take a breath.
“Let me talk to Ranger Lambert,” she said. “He’s there, isn’t he?”
&
nbsp; “He’s practically standing on top of me. Here you go.”
“Lambert here.”
“I just want to get this clear in my head,” Mako said. “You cut into their Drift, and they thought they were fighting a category V Kaiju?”
“Yes, Secretary General.”
“We’ve only ever seen one category V.”
She should know. She had sudden remembrance of Slattern, appearing from the watery void, a monster so large that it seemed to have no end to it…
“That’s true, Secretary General,” Lambert said. “And this wasn’t it. This was a new Kaiju. An imaginary one, I guess.”
She let that sink in. When she had first drifted with Raleigh, he had experienced again his fight with the Kaiju Knifehead, and the loss of his brother. His violent memory had triggered her, and she had slipped into a memory she thought was real: the recollection of the Kaiju attack on Tokyo that had killed her parents. It had very nearly been a disaster – she had begun the process of firing Gipsy’s plasma cannon inside the Hong Kong Shatterdome.
But the two trainees – Braga and Vu – neither of them had ever fought a Kaiju, not unless they had done it when they were nine, so what memories could they use to conjure up such a situation?
“Were either of them in Kaiju attacks?” she asked.
“No,” Lambert replied. “Braga was from outside of Rio and Vu from Houston, and neither traveled to any city that was attacked.”
“So, this didn’t come out of their heads.”
“No. It was like Mock-Pod simulation but more… real.”
“Then this was not an accident of some sort.”
“I don’t see how it could be,” Lambert said. “This was sabotage – and murder.”
“I assume you’ve locked the place down?”
“Of course. Marshal Quan gave the order immediately.”
“I’ll be there in five hours,” Mako said. “I’ll put the other Shatterdomes on high alert. If someone is attacking us, this may just be the first strike. We should be prepared for follow-ups.”
She kept the phone on this time, but turned her attention back to the sunset. The sun was winning their race; only a sliver of it remained. All but the highest clouds were dark now.
