Gipsy Danger’s head dropped down the shaft toward the deployment bay, the roar of the guide rails overwhelming whatever Raleigh would have said out loud. But he didn’t need to speak in the Drift. Mako could hear loud and clear what he was thinking.
No turning back now.
In the LOCCENT six hours later, Tendo Choi fiddled with his suspenders and kept one eye on the monitors showing the neural handshake strength in Gipsy Danger and Striker Eureka. He wasn’t worried about Gipsy— Mako and Raleigh were tight—but Striker was a concern. Chuck Hansen was an emotional mess, a stew of anxieties and grudges related to his father, and also grappling with the fact that he was probably never going to see his father again, so would not have a chance to make any of it right. That was not a recipe for the kind of focus a Ranger needed for a solid Drift. Mako Mori could tell you all about that.
Marshal Pentecost was also a concern. Tendo had looked over Pentecost’s brain scans before the initiation of his neural handshake with Chuck, and he knew one thing. Whether Striker Eureka delivered its payload or not, Stacker Pentecost was on his last mission. The three-hour solo he’d done in Coyote Tango ten years before had carved enough damage in his brain that Tendo couldn’t see how Pentecost could still tie his shoelaces. He was one exceptional human being. Also doomed, suffering from long-term radiation sickness as well as the blood-vessel damage that came from treating the radiation sickness. Again, not exactly an ideal recipe for a solid Drift.
Yet somehow, he was looking at both neural-handshake readouts and they were perfect.
“Both neural handshakes at one hundred percent,” he said, for the benefit of the rest of the LOCCENT crew.
His other eye, figuratively speaking, was on the remote satellite view tracking the Super Sikorskys that carried Gipsy Danger and Striker Eureka southeast into the open ocean. Striker had the nuke strapped to it, shielded inside pressure-resistant casing that made it look like a backpack. The warhead inside that casing carried with it enough potential energy to level an entire city centre. If Gottlieb’s numbers were right it would also be enough to collapse the Breach.
If they could get there before more kaiju came pouring out.
If they could get through the two kaiju already patrolling.
If the Jaegers could operate in the unthinkable pressures of the Marianas Trench for long enough to make the run and deliver the payload.
That was a lot of ifs. But balanced against them was the absolute certainty that if it didn’t work, they would all die.
Both Sikorsky teams were making good time, well within the mission parameters. They hit a fog bank and disappeared from visual, so Tendo glanced over at the large holoscreen showing the whole of the Pacific Rim. The Breach glowed near the center of the screen, with two red dots circling it slowly. Tendo brought up another display, showing the feed from the Sikorskys’ belly cameras. Everything looked good to go.
Herc Hansen, relegated to command (at least Tendo figured that’s how he would think of it), called out the kind of update Pentecost had always insisted on. Overcommunicate, Pentecost always said.
“Two actives still in circle formation in the Guam quadrant,” Herc said. “Code names Scunner and Raiju.”
The two Jaegers appeared on the enlarged inset showing just the immediate area around the Breach.
“Jaegers,” Tendo Choi said. “Time to seal up and get ready to go swimming.”
He watched the Jaeger status screens as both Ranger teams shut all external ports. Jaegers had ports for intake and exhaust all up and down their torsos, especially near their power plants. Tendo was a little worried about Gipsy Danger’s operational window with ports sealed. The reactor heat would build up fast… although the deep ocean water would draw a lot of the heat away. It might all work out.
Also, what with Scunner and Raiju, they probably had more immediate problems than worrying about Gipsy Danger’s ability to cycle out waste heat.
Over the noise of the Sikorskys’ rotors bleeding into the feed, everyone in the LOCCENT could hear Pentecost give a last pre-drop reminder.
“The Jaegers will hold the pressure long enough. Remember, this isn’t a battle. It’s a bomb run. You hold them off; we’ll get to the Breach.”
Simultaneously, Pentecost and Mako hit their cable release buttons. The two Jaegers dropped through the thick fog and hit the surface of the ocean with a titanic double splash. Tendo switched away from the Sikorsky feed and brought up twinned relays from each Jaeger’s cranial cameras. The Jaegers sank into the depths, their operating lights swallowed up by featureless darkness. Ocean depth at their target landing location was seven thousand meters.
It took the Jaegers almost fifteen minutes to touch down on the ocean floor, where they sank deep into the silt. Their slow-motion impact, at only five meters per second, stirred up a cloud of silt that reduced visibility to zero. Tendo could see that from the LOCCENT, and Raleigh confirmed it.
“Switching to instruments,” he said.
The two Jaegers moved out across the ocean floor, quickly finding that a forward-leaning half-jog was the best way to keep speed and balance on the sediment. It looked like slogging through heavy snow.
“Half a mile to the ocean cliff,” Pentecost said. “Then we jump, three thousand meters down to the Breach.”
“Half a mile?” Chuck said. “Can’t see a bloody inch.”
As Chuck spoke, Tendo saw one of the two kaiju bogeys make a move.
“Gipsy, you have movement on your left flank.”
“I don’t see it,” Chuck said.
Tendo’s eyes widened as remote sensors fed him data about the kaiju’s mass and speed.
“It’s moving fast,” he said. “Faster than any kaiju we’ve seen yet.”
He saw Raleigh and Mako looking around in Gipsy Danger’s Conn-Pod.
“We got nothing,” Raleigh said.
The kaiju was almost there.
“It’s Raiju,” Tendo said. “Left flank! Left flank!”
“I don’t see anything!” Raleigh shouted.
Tendo looked at Gipsy Danger’s instrument readouts. It was true. Tendo, looking via remote sensors beamed up to space and then back down, had a better look at the moving kaiju than Gipsy Danger did.
“Brace for impact, Gipsy!” Tendo cried.
RANGER MEMORIAL PROJECT
31
RAIJU WAS THIRTY-FIVE HUNDRED TONS OF MUSCLE and hate, crocodilian in shape save for longer and better articulated arms and legs. Its back, legs, and shoulders were a forest of spikes and knobbed plates. It barrelled into Gipsy Danger moving at perhaps forty miles per hour. There was an incredible discharge of kinetic energy when the kaiju appeared from the silt cloud and slammed into Gipsy Danger’s left side.
Raleigh and Mako staggered. Systems were shocked offline as the impact caused ripples in the fluid-core synapse systems, but they kept Gipsy Danger upright as they grappled with Raiju and emergency shunts restored Gipsy’s neural-pathway cohesion.
Jaeger and kaiju rolled across the seafloor, crashing into a subsea mountainside a few hundred meters from the lip of the last drop toward the deepest part of the Marianas Trench: Challenger Deep, where the Breach glowed and poured out energy that baffled the Jaegers’ instruments. Raiju pinned Gipsy Danger and snapped at her head. Moving in unison, Raleigh and Mako dodged to the left on the motion rig and Raiju’s jaws scraped along the side of Gipsy Danger’s shoulder.
Raiju pulled back for another bite and Gipsy Danger spun them both around and rammed the kaiju against the mountainside, holding it there with a forearm under its elongated jaw.