PLASMA CANNON OVERLOAD
All of Gipsy Danger’s remaining control systems rededicated themselves to the single task of lifting and angling the Jaeger’s arm. Knifehead tore another piece from Gipsy Danger’s skull frame. Raleigh looked it right in the eye, and it looked back.
It knew we were in here, he thought. How did it know? When did they figure that out?
Knifehead roared, long and triumphant. It saw the plasma cannon pointed at it, and swiveled to bite down on Gipsy Danger’s arm, tearing at the cannon’s barrel housing and still roaring.
Raleigh roared back, and fired.
Dawn was breaking. Raleigh had never been cold like this. He moved Gipsy Danger step by step. He could hear random snatches of incoming comm traffic, morning news radio out of Anchorage, amplified sounds of surf and wind from the shore just ahead. Another step. Yancy was gone. He could not feel Yancy.
Gipsy Danger stepped onto dry land. Someone somewhere was shouting for recovery teams. Closer by he heard voices, too; chatter over Saltchuck’s radio. The boat had survived.
Gipsy Danger stumbled on the shoreline. Raleigh bent, and Gipsy Danger bent, within sight of the Anchorage skyline. He saw two figures, an old man and a boy, gaping at his approach. Sensors picked up the beep of a metal detector.
Raleigh had nothing left. He couldn’t feel his arm because it had been cut off. No, that was Gipsy Danger’s arm. The Jaeger’s joints squealed and began to freeze up from loss of lubricant through the holes Knifehead had torn in it. Its liquid-circuit neural architecture was misfiring like crazy. Raleigh’s head hurt and he also couldn’t really feel parts of his mind. Something was burning on his skin but if he looked down at it he would lose control of Gipsy Danger and the Jaeger would fall on the old man and the boy. He couldn’t stand upright again.
Gipsy Danger dropped to its knees and fell forward. Raleigh barely got his arm up and out to stop from going face first into the beach. The Jaeger’s hand was ten feet deep in the frozen sand. Snow blew across the beach, settling in the scalloped patterns carved by the winter wind. Gipsy Danger’s sensors picked up the beep of the metal detector again, faster.
Shut up, he thought.
Raleigh disengaged from the motion rig and blacked out for a moment. When he knew where he was again, he was standing on the sand and could hear the sound of approaching helicopters. He looked up. How had he gotten out onto the beach?
Climbed out. He realized that he’d climbed out through the shattered cranial viewport, climbed out the same hole Yancy had disappeared through. Cold stung his skin, blood was slick under his suit. The old man with his metal detector caught Raleigh as he started to fall and shouted something at the boy, who ran away down the beach.
Raleigh stared up into the sky.
There was blood in Raleigh’s eyes and a hole the shape of his brother in his soul.
“Yancy?” he said. His drivesuit was shredded. It was cold. The blood in his eyes felt cold. He blacked out again.
17 APRIL 2020
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Effective immediately, the United Nations Subcommittee on Kaiju Defense and Security, Pan-Pacific Breach Working Group, is reassigning funding from the Jaeger program.
The costs of the Jaeger program have proven unsustainable in view of the limited returns the program offers. In the last three years we have spent trillions on Jaegers. A number of those Jaegers have been destroyed and losses to life and property are devastating.
It could be argued, and has ably been argued by Marshal Pentecost, that our situation would be much worse were it not for the Jaegers. Perhaps so. Yet this is a hypothetical argument, and we are faced with the real-world problem of bankrupting the economies of the developed nations to continue a program whose successes—however notable—no longer justify such an outlay.
We will sunset the Jaeger program in a manner that continues to prioritize the safety and security of the people of the Pacific Rim nations. While we do this, we will redirect funding toward the following initiatives:
No kaiju has attacked a currently standing Wall. The building of these fortifications is the simplest and most cost-effective tool humanity has to combat the kaiju threat.
Citizens of Pacific coastal cities will be receiving further information as new housing is constructed farther inland, prioritized according to progress on the Wall.
The kaiju must be contained at all costs, and under no circumstances will they be allowed to break out of the Pacific and threaten Europe, India, or the East Coast of the Americas.
The Working Group’s members wish to thank Marshal Pentecost, his Rangers, and the entire staff of the Jaeger program for their courageous service.
3
STACKER PENTECOST FELT BESIEGED ON ALL sides. He had just lost two promising Rangers, the incoming class of new Jaeger academy graduates was bringing with it a particular set of problems, and the Jaeger graveyard at Oblivion Bay near San Francisco was acquiring new occupants at an ominous rate. Yancy Becket was dead, his body lost at sea. Raleigh Becket had quit the Jaeger program, suffering from clear post-traumatic stress, compounded by his mercurial temperament and survivor’s guilt. Gipsy Danger was crippled and would have to be scrapped.
On top of that, there was young Mako Mori to deal with. She was ready to stop being his student and start being a Ranger… or so she thought. Pentecost thought differently
But that was a personal issue. Pentecost put it aside and set his mind to the difficult task before him.
He stood in the Anchorage LOCCENT looking at a bank of monitors, each displaying the face of a different member of the United Nations Pan-Pacific Breach Working Group, a portion of the Subcommittee on Kaiju Defense and Security. From their expressions, he knew how the conversation would go, and he wasn’t going to like it. He’d seen the press release, and more importantly, he’d been part of the Group’s internal conversations for the past several months. Pentecost was dealing with frightened people, and frightened people always did one of two things: fight or flee. Since these frightened people were bureaucrats, they were just about guaranteed not to fight.
But Stacker Pentecost was not a bureaucrat. If he was going to go down, he was going down fighting.
“We are losing Jaegers faster than we can make them,” the Working Group’s designated speaker said. “And cities. Lima, Seattle, Vladivostok… this is no longer a battle or a strategy. It’s a slow, painful surrender. And we can’t surrender. I can’t surrender.”
Each member of the Group, a standing subcommittee of the United Nations since 2016, gazed at Pentecost from their individual monitors, their faces carefully arranged masks of professional, diplomatic regret. Around Pentecost, LOCCENT was silent. They had no more funding to keep it going. The bureaucrats were fleeing, and the first thing they always took on their way out was the money.
The only other people in the room were Tendo Choi, in his standard bowtie, suspenders, and ducktail haircut, and one of Pentecost’s veteran Rangers, Herc Hansen. Both stood out of view of the monitors.
“The kaiju evolved,” the British UN representative said. Pentecost didn’t know him. “The Jaegers aren’t the most viable line of defense anymore.”