by Greg Keyes
* * *
Rest was easy enough, but sleep proved more troublesome. There was too much to sort through, to try and come to terms with. Jinhai dozed in and out of dreams of Kaiju, distant voices, and a baby with blue eyes. A few hours before dawn, he woke and realized he wasn’t going to be able to sleep anymore. The nightly curfew was already lifted, so he went to the commissary. They weren’t serving breakfast yet, but a dispenser held hot tea; he got a cup and went into the Jaeger bay.
Vik was already there, sitting cross-legged, staring up at the huge machines.
“Think we’ll ever really pilot one of those?” he asked her.
“Yes,” Vik said.
“Me too,” he said. “I didn’t even used to care, but now…”
“It’s different now,” she said.
“Yeah. You live your whole life – or at least, your life up until now – and you think you know who you are. You tell yourself stories about why you do what you do. And then one day you find out that you were wrong. That nothing is what you thought it was, and you aren’t who you thought you were.”
Vik nodded.
“Yes,” she said. “I got that. You worked to come here, Jinhai, because you hoped to drift with someone. You believed you wanted what your parents have. The kind of bond they have. But that’s not what you want at all, is it?”
Jinhai shook his head, and realized to his shame that he was starting to cry.
“No,” he said. “I just wanted – them. When I was little, they loved me so much. We did everything together. We were a family. And then – they drifted. At first it was a little, and then it was a lot. And after Huo Da – when both of them nearly died in the Drift – it was like no one else was really real to them anymore, including me. They’re real to each other – they’re everything to each other – but the rest of us are just kind of ghosts to them. It’s not like they never try, it’s just – I can tell they don’t feel it.”
He took a sip of his tea.
“I thought it was my fault. I thought that if I could just learn how they felt, feel that way about someone, I could somehow step into their world. Be a part of it the way I… I want to be.” He sighed. “I’m sorry. I know this must sound sappy to you.”
She shook her head.
“For a long time, I thought my parents were the Kaidanovskys. My grandmother told me they were. Deep down, I always knew they probably weren’t. But I wanted to believe. I told myself I did. When I let my doubts come up, I felt stupid, and I beat myself up.” She tapped her head. “Mentally,” she said. “I’m not that flexible.”
He actually laughed at that. It felt good.
“I didn’t remember Grandpa taking me to see those graves,” she said.
“You were really little. You were just a baby when Raythe came. I’m surprised you remember anything at all.”
“I didn’t,” she said. “I mean, maybe in a nightmare now and then. I didn’t know it was real. And I dreamed of my mother’s face, but I didn’t know it was her.”
“Who were they really? Your parents?”
She held up a file folder.
“I didn’t know until last night. I never tried to find out. Mako Mori gave me this after the simulation.”
She opened it.
“My father was Piotr Malikova,” she read. “My mother was Valentina Krupin. He was a foreman at the petrochemical plant in Tomari. She taught history and mathematics at the school there. They were both in town when Raythe came; my mother died trying to get her students to safety. My father was killed trying to shut off a chemical leak. I was with my grandmother while they were at work; when the attack started she got me to safety. My grandmother lied to me, and my grandfather went along with it.”
“Do you know why?”
“To make me think I was somebody. To give me aspirations. And it did, at first, but then it just became confusing.”
“Your parents may not have been famous or piloted Jaegers,” Jinhai said, “but it sounds like they were heroes.”
“Yes,” she said. “I figured that out, at last, although I wasn’t completely at peace with it. Now I think I am.”
“That’s good,” he said.
“And what about you?” she asked.
“I’m… working on it,” he said.
42
WHEN LAMBERT AND BURKE RETURNED TO Moyulan, they found the on-down waiting for them; Xiang, some of the junior controllers and a gaggle of J-Techs had dragged some tables outside onto the edge of the staging area, hung some paper lanterns, set up some sound, and loaded some plastic tubs with ice and beer.
The on-down was about rehashing, about going over every detail of the fight. The techs and controllers weighed in with their own remarks and questions, but Lambert and Burke were the stars, and as such were forced time and again to stand up on their chairs and make some sort of speech about the other, about the support crew – or whatever.
It should have been fun, but even after way too much beer, Lambert wasn’t feeling it.
And at a certain point, and after too much beer, that wasn’t enough. When they demanded he make another toast, he climbed and stood unsteadily on his chair and raised his glass.
“To all of you,” he said. “To the PPDC. You give me purpose, you give me a reason to get up in the morning, to pull on my boots and go to work. I believe in what I do, which is the greatest thing a man can ask for. The second-greatest thing a man can ask for is that those standing with him believe in the same thing, have his back, will never let him down. But I guess that’s too much to ask sometimes, isn’t it? Loyalty. Commitment. I used to feel like I knew what those words meant. But what the hell, huh? They’re just words, random syllables…”
He nearly lost his balance, as the chair wobbled dangerously beneath him. Burke reached to steady him, but Lambert swatted his hand away.
“Just…” he said.
“Hey, buddy,” Burke said. “Why don’t you come down? You’re gonna hurt yourself.”
“Now you’re looking out for me?” Lambert snapped. “Screw you, ‘buddy’…”
“Hey, Ranger,” someone said. “Come on. Let’s go get some air.”
He looked down and saw Jules, holding her hand up to him. Then he looked around at all the faces, which a moment before had been laughing, smiling, but which now looked shocked and confused.
“Yeah, okay,” he said.
He took the offered hand, and she led him away from the light.
“I like a man who can hold his drink,” she said, as behind them the sounds of revelry began again.
“That’s too bad,” he said.
“I’ll tell you the truth,” she said. “I’m a little drunk myself.”
Once beyond the harsh floods, they could see the stars above the mountains. A warm breeze came through, and Lambert was acutely aware that they were still holding hands.
“You were right, by the way,” he told her.
“Yes? Right about what?”
“They did switch Chronos Berserker’s Conn-Pod. It was the spare I took the kids into. I didn’t think of that. I should have.”
She smiled. “The spare wasn’t fully functional,” she said, “so I didn’t think of it at first, either. But then I realized it didn’t have to be. So I did a little checking. For my Ranger pal. And I found out that not only did someone switch them, they tried to be sneaky about it.”
“Yeah,” he said. “Thanks for checking on that.”
He looked out at the night. Somewhere an owl called – a distant, lonely sound.
“What was all that?” Jules asked. “Back at the on-down?”
“Burke,” he said. “My buddy, my chum – my Drift partner. He’s leaving.”
“Leaving Moyulan?”
“Leaving the PPDC. Going into the private sector. He didn’t want to tell me. Almost got us killed.”
“I wouldn’t want to tell you either, if I was him,” she said.
“What’s that mean?”
“You’re a
true believer,” she said. “Burke isn’t. He’s a good guy, but he’s not you.”
“It’s just – it’s not the first time my Drift partner has left,” he said. “I can’t seem to… Is there something wrong with me?”
She turned to face him. In the starlight, her eyes were – impossible.
“Ranger,” she said. “Nathan Lambert. There is not a thing wrong with you.”
Later, he honestly couldn’t remember who made the first move, which would become a bit of a problem. But now it didn’t matter, and he became lost in her lips, her eyes, the warmth of her against him.
* * *
Mako smiled at Lambert as he joined Quan and Gottlieb at the conference table.
“Are you feeling well, Ranger?” she asked.
He was not. His head hurt, his stomach was queasy, and he had a head full of half-memories which he was pretty sure would be embarrassing when – if – he got them sorted out.
“Tip top,” he lied.
“I’m sorry I didn’t make it to your – debriefing,” she said. “I hope everything went well.”
“The on-down?” he said. “Not my idea…”
Quan surprised him by stepping in.
“Everyone worked very hard,” he said. “The Ranger most of all. Order is important, but everyone needs to blow off a little steam, now and then. I approved the on-down.”
“You’ll get no argument from me,” Mori said. “But I think we can do with a more formal discussion of what happened.”
“I agree,” Lambert said, although he really wanted to be back in his bed, with a pillow over his head.
“We’ll get to the breakdown of the action in a moment,” Mori said. “But I’ve been in communication with Sydney, and I’ve made my recommendations. With some caveats, my suggestions have been accepted.
“The events leading up to the sabotage of Chronos Berserker, the murders of Braga and Sokk, the abduction of cadets Ou-Yang and Malikova, the battles in the Philippine Sea and the destruction of the island are all now considered to be part of an ongoing investigation into the Akumagami Front and any other individuals or organizations which may pertain. As such, all of these events are considered classified, and as such are not to be discussed by members of the PPDC. This includes cadets.”
“Are you giving out a story about what happened in the Philippines?” Lambert asked. “After all, the island did sort of explode.”
“A number of press outlets have already reported it as a natural eruption, similar to any number of volcanic eruptions that have occurred in that part of the world. We have encouraged this theory without actually endorsing it.”
“Understood,” Lambert said. “I’ll have a talk with the cadets. But it’s hard to keep news like this down.”
Quan shrugged. “We can’t stop what is already out there,” he said. “But we can seek to contain it, at least for a while, until we can determine whether this was a one off, or part of a much more serious, widespread threat.”
“The threat is very real,” Gottlieb said. “We must be more vigilant than ever. From what I can tell, Morales believed that her ‘K-Bomb’ would trigger a catastrophe so large it would re-form the world to Precursor specifications. If she was right, and their plan had gone ahead, the world would at this moment be beset by tectonic action the like of which no human being in any era has ever experienced. We could expect extinction of animal and plant life on an unprecedented scale. It might, indeed, be greater than the mass extinction at the end of the Permian period, which up until now had the dubious distinction of being the greatest in Earth’s history. Also, I might add, probably caused by volcanism.”
“But she did not succeed in detonating the entire bomb,” Quan said.
“No,” Gottlieb said. “She did not, thanks to the Ranger here and the efforts of many others. Nor am I certain her calculations were correct. I think her bomb might have done a great deal of damage, but perhaps not wreaked the global havoc she aimed to inflict. Still, this ‘bomb’ is a quite simple device. Anyone with a sufficient quantity of Kaiju blood and an oil rig could create one.”
“Your recommendations, Dr. Gottlieb?”
“From a scientific point of view? We must expand the mission of K-Watch to cover all of the deep-sea trenches, not just the deepest and most active. I myself will immediately begin research on the range of interactions between Kaiju blood and the various rare earths. But we absolutely must limit access to the blood itself. The supply should be finite, with no Kaiju coming into our world. We must try to obtain what remains for the PPDC.”
“I have already proposed preliminary measures to the council along those lines,” Mori said. “Let me have any further recommendations in writing, so I can pass them along.”
By the time the meeting was finally over, the worst of Lambert’s hangover had passed. He just wished he had a clearer memory of the night before. He kept meeting people in the halls who seemed to be suppressing smiles, as if they knew something he didn’t.
He stopped to have a look at Gipsy. It hurt to see her banged up, but he knew that was a temporary condition; she would be ready to go again in a few weeks, probably even sooner. But even after she was fixed – once again, he no longer had a Drift partner. Where was he going to find another – one of the cadets? The thought was more than a little depressing.
He was just about to leave when he saw Jules approaching. She – like so many others he had met today – had an odd look on her face.
“Ranger,” she said. “How are you?”
“A little shaky,” he said. “Too much beer, I guess.”
“Great on-down,” she said.
“Yeah,” he said. “Just great.” He kept trying to rearrange the blurry events of the night before. He remembered yelling at Burke, and Jules pulling him away. And – something else? Had they…?
Jules cleared her throat. “So,” she began, “did we – do you remember… um…”
“What?” he said.
“Nothing,” she said. “Just – never mind. I better go, I’ve got this – work to do.”
“Yeah,” he replied. “Me too.”
Then they hurried away in opposite directions.
* * *
Mako Mori stepped once again into the Kwoon. This time she selected no weapon at all. She took six long, centering breaths, and began to move, feeling her breath, the blood in her veins, her bare feet sliding on the floor.
She contemplated Jinhai and Vik’s Drift; she had seen their recording and was still absorbing what she had learned. She had been wrong about Jinhai, projected her own feelings for her adopted father onto him. Vik’s tangled history with her own identity was not entirely resolved, but what she’d seen was promising.
She had believed she could help them, and that in doing so she might find her own answers. Now she doubted that she had helped them at all, but they had helped her.
She had always been propelled by ghosts, she understood now. The ghosts of her parents, of the Tokyo that was, had pushed her along until she finally got revenge for them. Then she had lost her adoptive father and Raleigh, for whom no vengeance could ever be had, not really. So instead, she had carried them as a burden, seeking them in the Drift. Usually she found Raleigh, sometimes her father.
But somewhere along the line, she had become terrified of being alone, of just having herself in her head. She had become attached to memories, which in the Drift was a fatal mistake. So she punched and blocked, kicked, dodged, turned her way through the kata, the imaginary battle.
And then, as he often was, Raleigh was there, behind her closed eyes, sparring with her. It was wonderful, and it was sad, and it was as real as any Pons-generated Drift. Real, but… less.
Raleigh stopped sparring and stood back.
Mako. All you have to do is fall, he said. Anyone can fall.
“I know,” she said. “I understand, now… Goodbye, Raleigh.”
He smiled, and then she was once more fighting alone.
She could
still find Raleigh and her father in the Drift if she needed them – but she no longer needed them.
She would never truly be at peace; life was not peace, it was struggle, and ideally it was growth.
She still had much to do. What she had learned from the wreck of the Akumagami Front plot was that there were more questions than there were answers – about who was behind them, where their funds came from, what other plots they might be fermenting. And there were several other disturbing strands that she thought might bear pulling on, strands that might not lead her to the Kaiju worshippers at all, but in other directions. She felt, somehow, that something big was coming, perhaps something without precedent, unanticipated – not merely another Breach, but something even worse. The Precursors learned. They adapted. They wouldn’t make the same mistake twice. She didn’t know what was coming, but she feared they might not be ready for it when it came.
And there was another thing; something that she had pushed aside for far too long.
It was time to find her brother. Time to find Jake.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
Thanks to my editor, Cat Camacho. Also at Titan, I am grateful to Natasha MacKenzie for design and Hayley Shepherd for copy editing. To the folks at Legendary, thanks for letting me explore a corner of a fascinating imagined universe, and specific credit goes to Lisa Lilly, Jamie Kampel, Barnaby Legg, and George Tew. George was invaluable in helping nail down particulars about the world of Pacific Rim. Much appreciation to Evgeniya Mukharyamova for helping with a fine point of colloquial Russian, and David Dunlap for lending me a small bit of his expertise in Japanese.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
GREGORY KEYES was born in 1963, in Meridian, Mississippi. When he was seven, his family spent a year living in Many Farms, Arizona, on the Navajo Reservation, where many of the ideas and interests which led Greg to become a writer and informed his work were formed. His first published novel was The Waterborn, which was followed by a string of licensed and original books. He has a BA and Masters in Anthropology and lives in Savannah, Georgia with his wife, Nell, and two children, Archer and Nellah. He enjoys writing, cooking, fencing, and raising his children.
