by Greg Keyes
She thought about enemies. When she was little, they had seemed simple, almost grotesquely so – a giant monster had destroyed her city and killed her parents. She had grown up believing that one day she would climb into a Jaeger and kill those enemies. And she had, and so doing she had found something infinitely precious.
Raleigh.
People who hadn’t drifted didn’t understand. They thought when they said “love” they were somehow talking about the same thing she and Raleigh had experienced. Attraction, connection, trust – these were words that could not quite carry freight for what two people felt when they had a link of some kind to begin with, and then literally joined their minds together. The things most hidden often appeared first, things that in a normal relationship might take years to come to light – or might never surface at all. Honesty had almost no meaning when you drifted.
She and Raleigh – and her adoptive father Stacker Pentecost, and others – they had beaten the enemy, killed the Kaiju, and destroyed the portal by which those monsters entered the world. And everything was fine. The world was saved.
In ten years, nothing had come out of the Breach.
But they had taken Raleigh anyway, hadn’t they?
Both of them had been poisoned by the radiation from the Anteverse; she remembered days in bed, blood transfusions, highly experimental treatments for both of them. Still they had been together in a sense, going through the same thing, victims of the same affliction. She drew strength from him and he from her.
But then she started to get better.
Raleigh did not.
The scientists called it the throat, a sort of interdimensional tube through which the Kaiju emerged into their world. She and Raleigh had gone down the throat, and Raleigh had ejected her before rigging the atomic core of their Jaeger – Gipsy Danger – to melt down.
Once she was out, he descended further. As she rode, unconscious, in her escape pod, he and Gipsy drifted out the other end of the throat, into the Anteverse itself. Raleigh used Gipsy’s nuclear vortex turbine to propel the Jaeger back into the throat, and then ejected himself, seconds ahead of the detonation. He’d spent a handful of heartbeats in the Anteverse, but those were seconds longer than she had been there. He tried to describe to her the things that he saw there, but they didn’t make that much sense, even to him.
Poisoned by the radiation of another world, he fought, as he always fought.
She was holding his hand when he died. She heard his last words. He had been asleep, but when he opened his eyes, the old brightness was still there. He was still there.
“Mako,” he whispered, squeezing her hand. “All you have to do is fall. Anyone can fall.”
And then he wasn’t there. Not in a rush, not in battle, but in a quiet moment that did not seem nearly big enough for the weight of his person. Raleigh had been cheated. She had been cheated – of Raleigh, of her adoptive father, of her life as a pilot.
And even if she could still pilot a Jaeger, even if she could climb into one and make it go, who would she fight? Where was her revenge for Raleigh?
4
2035
MOYULAN SHATTERDOME
CHINA
THE APPROACH TO THE MOYULAN AIRFIELD WAS steep; the PPDC’s newest Shatterdome was built into a mountainous speck of rock in Qingchuan Bay, off the rocky east coast of China’s Fujian province. The view from the approach of mountains and countless fractal inlets of the sea was quite beautiful. Far from any really large population centers like Hong Kong, it had never been attacked by Kaiju; the shoreline was pristine and the small city of Fuding a little inland. Once resort towns and spas had dotted this coast, but that was long ago. Even without a direct Kaiju threat, beachfront property was no longer seen as… premium.
Moyulan also filled an important gap, putting the island of Taiwan and the mainland cities of Shanghai and Hangzhou within easy deployment range and reinforcing the Japanese capacity to protect the region.
Quan and Lambert met her at the airfield. Marshal Quan was in his early forties; his compact, fit frame carried a great deal of authority, as well as a certain amount of style. Lambert was more than a decade younger and had what Mako couldn’t help but think of as an all-American sort of look, with his chestnut hair and steel-blue eyes and a bearing that bordered on – but was not quite – arrogant. She knew him well; he was a true believer in the PPDC and its mission, and had little patience with those whom he perceived as not having the same level of commitment. He and her adoptive brother Jake had once been close friends and Drift partners, but they were now estranged. She hadn’t seen her brother in many years, either, but that was more… complicated.
The two men first escorted her, at her insistence, to the Jaeger bays to review the damage.
It wasn’t as bad as she had feared. The Jaegers had suffered only minor dings, and that included Chronos Berserker. The damage to the interior of the dome was a little more extensive. Even without warheads, the missiles had made quite a mess of some of the gantry and loading equipment, and it would take some time before all their standing Jaegers could be deployed at once. Still, most of the harm was cosmetic.
Except, of course, for the death of one of their most promising cadets.
Before they left, she let her gaze linger on one of the Jaegers, Gipsy Avenger. It was all Mark-6, gleaming and beautiful, but it reminded her – as it was meant to – of the old, refurbished Mark-3, Gipsy Danger. Raleigh’s Jaeger. The first and last she had ever piloted.
“She is a beauty, isn’t she?” Lambert said.
“Yes,” she said. “She is. And she has an excellent pedigree.”
“I hope one day to live up to that,” Lambert said. “It’s an honor to be given the chance.”
“You’re a good pilot, Ranger,” she said. “Probably the best we have. I’m sure when the time comes, you will acquit yourself quite well.”
Lambert looked uncomfortable; she felt the awkwardness, too, and lowered her voice.
“It is good to see you, Nathan,” she said. “Now is not the time, but later, when you have a moment, I should like to catch up.”
“I would like that too,” he said.
But she wasn’t sure he meant it.
* * *
In Quan’s office, Dr. Gottlieb joined them. The room was neat, professional, balanced; an excellent reflection of the Marshal himself. She waved off an offer of tea.
“What do we know?” she asked.
Dr. Gottlieb cleared his throat. “I’ve put several of our best people on the problem,” he said. “I’ve been correlating their reports. What I’m telling you now is what we know for certain.”
“I understand,” Mako said. “Go on.”
“What the pilots of Chronos Berserker experienced was essentially a Mock-Pod training program with some modifications. The Kaiju was entirely made up, and was essentially unbeatable in any scenario involving any Jaeger we have. The program also targeted all of the safeguards put in place to prevent something like this.”
“Could it have been inserted remotely?”
“No,” Gottlieb said. “I don’t think so, and no one I’ve talked to does, either. After all, we can’t have someone remotely reprogramming our Jaegers while they’re in the middle of a fight. Like those people in Serbia tried to do a few years ago. No, the most plausible explanation is that someone manually inserted the code.”
“And we have this,” Quan said. He lifted a plastic evidence bag. Inside was a small pen drive.
“That’s one of our own drives,” Mako said.
“Yes. More specifically, it’s the kind we issue to the cadets on their first day, when they turn in all of their personal electronics.”
Mako frowned. “You think either Braga or Vu did this to themselves?”
“No,” Quan said. “All of the new recruits were in Berserker’s Conn-Pod yesterday. This drive was issued the same day, to one of the cadets.”
“The recruits?” Mako said, surprised. “You think one o
f them did this?”
“The evidence points that way,” Gottlieb replied.
“No,” Lambert said, shaking his head. “No. I take the new recruits up there every year. Then the J-Techs do their final check – after they leave. There’s no way – if one of those kids left so much as a piece of gum stuck under the Drift harness, it would have been noticed. There’s no way they would miss a pen drive lying around.”
“Obviously they did,” Gottlieb replied.
“Uh-uh. It had to have happened later, at night or early that morning.”
“The security data disagrees,” Quan said. “Once the Conn-Pod was sealed that night, it wasn’t opened again until just before Braga and Vu stepped in.”
“Then maybe it was one of the J-Techs that did the final inspection,” Lambert said.
“Or maybe all of the cadets are not what they seem,” Gottlieb said. “When two or more solutions are suggested to a problem, it is usually the most simplistic which is correct.”
“I’m familiar with Occam’s razor, Doctor,” Lambert said.
“The pen drive was issued to Ou-Yang Jinhai,” Gottlieb said.
“It could have been stolen from him. When would he have had time to transfer a program from one of his personal devices to a drive he was issued yesterday?”
“In any number of ways, while he was turning his things in, Ranger. Jaegers are resistant to wireless reprogramming. But pen drives are not. And I believe he had outside help.”
“Your theory is getting more complicated, Doctor,” Lambert said. “I think your Occam’s razor is getting dull.”
Mako had been listening without comment, but now the conversation seemed to be becoming unproductive.
“So either one of the cadets did it,” she said, nodding at Gottlieb, “or someone wants us to think a cadet did it.” This time her gaze shifted to Lambert.
“Are any of the cadets capable of creating a program like this?”
“Unlikely,” Gottlieb admitted. “That’s what I was getting at a moment ago. It would have been possible for one of them to access a Mock-Pod scenario and modify it, and at least one of the cadets – Ou-Yang Jinhai, as it turns out – has a record of successfully subverting security procedures.”
“Ou-Yang,” she murmured. “That’s the son of Suyin and Ming-hau. Is he really a suspect? Even if the pen drive was his, as the Ranger noted, it could have been stolen by any one of the other cadets or someone else in the Shatterdome.”
“He’s shown a certain disregard for authority in the past, I’m sure you recall.”
“Yes,” she said. “I reviewed his entrance materials. I didn’t want him. I was overruled. But I wouldn’t have thought he would do something like this.”
“If he did,” Gottlieb said, “he didn’t do it alone. He might have inserted the program, but the features of it that over-wrote our fail-safes were – in my opinion – far too complex for any of our cadets to have accomplished. Whoever created it had inside information about our systems that no new recruit could have obtained. In addition, certain segments of the code resemble some we’ve intercepted from the Akumagami Front. The likelihood is that whoever planted it in the Jaeger was merely a delivery boy – or girl.”
“You’re saying one of our cadets is a Kaiju worshipper?”
Probably from the moment Trespasser – the first Kaiju – appeared, there were people who believed it had been sent by God or the gods to punish humanity for its sins. Over time those people had found each other and organized religions around those beliefs, building temples inside the skulls of dead Kaiju, creating hymns, devotions, and ceremonies. When the Kaiju stopped coming, the cults remained. Most of them, though – however deluded and objectionable Mako found them – were not dangerous. They prayed and chanted and took drugs made from Kaiju body parts. A few committed suicide through means of an elaborate tea ceremony, where the tea was made of dehydrated Kaiju fluids.
The Akumagami Front was different – they were violent extremists, dedicated to destroying the PPDC and somehow bringing the Kaiju back into the world. They had made dozens of attempts to destroy or sabotage Jaegers – although none of them had succeeded remotely as well as what had just happened in Moyulan.
“It’s not impossible,” Quan said. “Our checks are good, but some of these kids come from questionable backgrounds.”
“Some of our best Rangers come from ‘questionable’ backgrounds too,” Lambert said.
“What I mean,” Quan said, “is that they often come from places where records are incomplete, due to the widespread chaos in the aftermath of Kaiju attacks. To a certain extent, we have to take their word about their history.”
“What about their psych evaluations?” Gottlieb said.
Quan shrugged. “Irregular psych profiles are almost a trademark of good Rangers. It’s not like we’re looking for the best-adjusted individuals on the planet. Anyway, their psych evaluations are necessarily incomplete until they finish their training here.”
For a moment, the conversation paused, as if everyone was trying to think of something to say and coming up empty.
“I’ll look into this,” Mako said.
“Secretary General,” Quan objected, “I’m sure you have far more important matters to occupy you. I assure you, we can mount an internal investigation, and we will discover the truth.”
“The cadet program as it stands is the legacy of Stacker Pentecost,” Mako said. “And for the last decade it has been a particular project of mine. If there is a problem with one of our cadets – or with the way the program is formulated and administered – it is certainly my concern. Marshal Quan, if you can make an office available to me and provide me with dossiers on the cadets, I will begin immediately.”
5
2024
SAKHALIN ISLAND
RUSSIA
VIK
WHEN THE FIRST BITTER FLAKES OF SNOW BEGAN to fall, Viktoriya’s toes were already numb, despite her boots and three layers of socks. The day had fooled her; it had begun in sunshine, cool but not cold, a warm day for April – spring days could be like that. But now the sky was like the old chalkboard in her schoolhouse. The wind was from the sea, smelling of salt but thick with wet and chill. She knew she must be close. She even thought she could hear seagulls. Yet the stands of Jezo spruce and Sakhalin fir here were young and thick, and even from the hilltop, she could see nothing. But she was sure that if she went just a little farther, she would. It would be there, like she had seen in pictures, white-capped waves coming into the shore, an immense blue plane of water.
But as the snow fell harder, and the brown needles of the forest floor began to vanish beneath an ashen pall, she found she couldn’t walk any further, not without a rest. She was only seven, after all, and not used to walking so far. It was getting dark, too, and she was starting to feel sleepy. Her jacket and pants were stiff, rubbing her uncomfortably with each step. And it seemed to be snowing harder every moment.
She sat down on a fallen log and huddled into herself. She would rest, she told herself, just for a moment, and then continue on to the coast.
Or maybe she should go back. But Babulya would be so angry, and anyway, the sea couldn’t be far. Another few minutes, over the next hilltop, and it would be there. And then maybe she could see him, them…
It grew darker, and her limbs became heavier, and she was so sleepy she could barely keep her head up. But she knew she had to go on. She had a reason.
Taking a deep breath that seemed to bite deep into her lungs, she used the trunk of a fir tree to push herself up. She took a step, but now her pants felt completely frozen, and she cried out in pain as her already chafed skin felt like a knife had cut into it. Her eyes stung, so she closed them, gritted her teeth, and with all of the determination in her small body, took another step. Then she felt all dizzy and swirly, and she seemed to fall onto a bed, a soft, cozy bed warmed by the little cube heater back home.
The next thing she knew, someone was trying to
shake her awake. She wanted to be left alone, and tried to say so, but whoever it was wouldn’t stop. She felt herself pulled up, and she finally opened her eyes to find a bright light shining in them.
“Viktoriya,” a rough voice grated. “Come along.”
She couldn’t see his face – everything was darkness and the one bright light. But it sounded like her grandfather.
Later, she realized he must have carried her. She didn’t recognize where they were; a little wooden room, a small fire flickering in a little metal stove connected to the low roof by an aluminum pipe. She was on the floor, wrapped in several blankets.
“Dedulya?” she murmured.
He looked old in the firelight, with his scruff of black-and-white beard. The hood of his coat covered his balding head.
“Where were you going, Vnuchka?” he asked.
She didn’t want to tell him, so she said nothing. After a moment, he sighed and pushed another few sticks into the fire. Sparks twirled up the flue.
“Where are we?” she asked.
“I was on a logging crew here, years ago,” he said. “We cut most everything, and now it’s growing back – that’s why the trees are all so small. But we built some shacks and such so we didn’t have to trek all the way back to town every night. A few of the shacks are still here. We were lucky this one still had a sound roof on it. I suppose we might have made it back home. Probably not – with my bad back. You’re lucky I even found you. In another few minutes, your tracks would have been completely covered. Even so, if you hadn’t yelled…” he shook his head.
“Babulya will be mad,” she said.
“Oh, yes,” he replied. He looked at her. “Was it because of the boy? The one you hit with the rock?”
“Maksim is bigger than me,” she said.
The faintest grin turned his lips up.
“That’s smart,” he said, so quietly she almost didn’t hear it.
Maksim had made fun of her, and she’d hit him. But he was nine, and big for his age, and it hadn’t hurt him at all. He’d pushed her down and started to walk away. But her hand found a rock, and she’d called his name. When he turned around, she smacked him right in the forehead with it. She’d been surprised by all the blood, and how loudly he screamed, but soon all she could think was how much trouble she would be in.
