“Two, huh? You think so?”
She held his gaze, the set of her face combative. Raleigh got a prickle on the back of his neck. She wanted to fight. He could see it in the way she was holding her body.
“I know so,” Mako said. “Your choices are not poor, just adequate. You do just barely enough to win.”
Raleigh nodded. It was a fair assessment.
“You know what? Let’s change this up,” he said. He looked over at Pentecost. “How about we give her a shot?”
Mako’s eyes widened, but before she could take up the challenge, Pentecost said, “We stick to the cadet list we’ve got, Ranger. Only candidates with Drift compatibility…”
Mako, surprisingly, cut him off.
“Motteiru, Marshal. Jibun no pataan ga Becket to durifuto suru koto ga dekiru nouha no genkai inai no ni.” Which I have, Marshal. My patterns are inside the EEG parameters that would allow me to Drift with Mr. Becket.
Speaking Japanese, Raleigh thought. She knows I can understand her. She’s deliberately making this a conversation among the three of us. Nicely played, Ms. Mori.
“This is not all about the neural connection,” Pentecost said, almost lecturing her as one would a bright but overreaching child. “It’s also about physical compatibility. Instinctive responsiveness.”
Raleigh couldn’t stand it anymore.
“What’s wrong?” he asked. “Don’t think your brightest can cut it in the ring with me?”
Now both he and Mako were looking at Pentecost. They were on the same side. Pentecost saw it, and Raleigh saw him recognize what was happening. After a moment, Pentecost extended a hand, palm up, toward Mako: Okay, then, get in the ring.
Raleigh stepped to his side of the mat. Mako squared up to him.
Beyond Pentecost, Raleigh noted that Chuck Hansen had just walked in. Part of him immediately wanted to suggest to Chuck that they have a little hanbō dance… but first things first.
“Just so you know,” he said to Mako, “I’m not going to dial down my moves.”
Mako nodded. “Okay. Then neither will I.”
They closed and Mako threw a first strike, a formal move to start the fight. Raleigh blocked it and came back overhand, loose and easy, thinking they were still in the early formalities. But Mako caught the end of his hanbō and cracked Raleigh hard in the ribs under his stick arm.
“That’s the Shibata block,” she said, and flipped the end of his hanbō back at him. “The Marshal taught me that.”
Oh, did he? thought Raleigh. That plot was certainly thickening.
“One-zero,” Mako said.
While she was still gloating a little, Raleigh flicked a sideways swing over her dropped guard and popped her on the left shoulder before she could block. Just like that, her gloating turned to a venomous stare.
“One-one,” Raleigh said. He barely resisted the urge to wink.
Embarrassed at her lapse, Mako glanced over at Pentecost.
She sure doesn’t behave like an ordinary Ranger or PPDC staffer, Raleigh thought with part of his brain. She acts more like a…
But he cut the thought off with the other part of his brain, which saw an opening in the glance. He twirled his hanbō, reversed his grip, and tapped her on the left shoulder.
“Two-one,” he said, and this time he did wink. “Concentrate, now.”
He got a glare of pure fury back. Raleigh could see her thinking: You gave the others a chance to reset.
Yeah, he continued the dialogue in his head. But they needed it. You shouldn’t have.
And sure enough she turned the tables right back on him with a straight thrust into his gut. Raleigh whoofed out air and doubled over, but Mako wasn’t done. She kicked his legs out from under him and as he went down, she fell with him into a crouch, winding up for a blow to the face that would have broken his nose. At the last moment, she held back… and gave Raleigh a light, teasing slap on the cheek.
“Mori-san, motto seigyo shinasai,” Pentecost said. Miss Mori. More control.
Hovering over Raleigh, her face close to his, Mako smiled. Well, she bared her teeth, anyway.
“Two-two,” she said.
The next point would decide the fight. Mako got up and Raleigh hopped to his feet, fully on guard.
After that he really started to feel it happen. Every strike of hers, he saw coming… but it still came fast enough that he could barely parry it. Every counterstrike of his, the same thing on her end.
Raleigh had thought before that she moved like an athlete, and now he was seeing it. He outweighed her by maybe eighty pounds and had decisive edges in reach and strength, but he could hardly touch her. Together they covered every inch of the mat, hanbōs snapping into each other and tearing through the spaces vacated by the opponent’s ankle or shoulder an instant before. Every fall became a rolling spring into a defensive posture, every parry became a strike, every advance met its perfect countering retreat.
It became a dance. It became a kind of union. Mako and Raleigh were breathing in unison, finding the same rhythm in their steps and postures. They struck and parried and dodged, and it was a… not a game. It was like fighting yourself, when the other you could read your mind because your mind was his mind.
Or, in this case, her mind.
It was like the Drift.
And Pentecost’s whole rationale for creating Jaeger Bushido and the Kwoon trial training program was to see which of his Ranger cadets would do exactly what Raleigh and Mako were doing right now.
“Enough,” Pentecost said.
They halted, still wary and eyeing each other.
“I’ve seen what I need to see,” Pentecost said.
“Me too,” Raleigh said. “She’s my co-pilot.”
Pentecost shook his head.
“It’s not going to work.”
Looking over at him, Raleigh noticed that Chuck had disappeared sometime during the fight. That was all right. They’d pick up their own little dispute in their own good time.
“Why not?” Raleigh asked. “You think my brother and I didn’t go at it? He pissed me off faster than anyone I ever knew, but we had an energy out there, in the fight. She has it, too.”
What he wanted to add but didn’t, because even Raleigh Becket had a little bit of discretion once in a while, was: You could see it. We connected. We practically Drifted right there, with everyone watching. It was even tighter in some ways than he and Yancy had been, because with Yancy, he’d expected to know what his partner was going to do. With Mako, there were no expectations. He was completely in the moment, riding the present, feeling each second of time…
She was his co-pilot. Anyone could see that.
“Miss Mori is not a candidate,” Pentecost said. His tone and demeanor did not change.
Stupid, Raleigh thought. They were a match. Any idiot could see it.
“Will you at least tell me why?” he asked.
“I will review all the data,” Pentecost said.
Raleigh bridled at the word “data.” Data didn’t win battles with kaiju. Rangers did.
“Report to the Shatterdome in two hours to meet your co-pilot,” Pentecost continued. “And Mr. Becket? Dress the part.”
With that, he left the Kwoon. Raleigh looked to Mako, shaking his head. He thought they had a real connection and he didn’t want to lose it, whatever Pentecost thought.
But Mako wasn’t looking at him. She was looking only at where Stacker Pentecost had been, her face tight and angry. She didn’t speak as she followed Pentecost out, leaving Raleigh confused and uncomfortable as the other co-pilot candidates looked on.