“I am aware,” Pentecost began, then stopped himself. He reconsidered his approach. “It’s my Rangers who die every time a Jaeger goes down. But I’m asking you for one last chance. One final assault, with everything we’ve got—”
A fight, he said to himself. Instead fleeing just so we can die somewhere else.
“Marshal Pentecost,” the Australian rep cut in, “we’ve been through this before. The simple fact is the Breach is impenetrable.”
“With our current assets, perhaps,” Pentecost said. “But just as the kaiju have evolved, we are evolving as well. We have the Mark V-E Jaeger through the design phase and ready for prototyping. It’s ready to go as soon as the funding is released.”
“That just isn’t on the table, I’m afraid,” the Australian said.
Pentecost felt his last glimmer of hope disappear. The 5E was supposed to be built in Australia. If their own representative wasn’t going to stand up for it, how could it survive?
But they needed it. They kaiju were getting bigger and stronger. The Jaegers needed to match them, hell, exceed them. Not only that, they needed to make a push toward the Breach.
“My Kaiju Science researchers have made enormous strides toward understanding the physics of the Breach. You have their report. The more we understand about the Breach, the closer we get to being able to destroy it… if we have the combat assets to take the fight to the kaiju,” he said.
Pentecost had a savage dream of leading a force of Jaegers through the Breach to whatever lay on the other side, and doing to the kaiju exactly what they had done to humanity. He would need a hell of a lot more in the way of Jaeger tech and combat support if he was ever to make that dream a reality. There also didn’t seem to be any way to get into the Breach, but that was a matter of building tougher Jaegers that could withstand the electromagnetic storm it created.
They were getting closer. They couldn’t stop now. Not after so many had died.
“Nothing is impenetrable,” he continued. “We just have not yet discovered the tool that will penetrate the Breach. That is why our mission has grown even more critical. The Mark V-E Jaeger is the centerpiece of the next stage of that mission. It is crucial that we be able to continue developing to meet the threat.”
“The Group feels otherwise, Marshal Pentecost,” said the member from Panama.
Pentecost wasn’t surprised. Her country had just received an enormous windfall, billions of dollars to construct a barrier to the Pacific entrance of the Panama Canal. The kaiju had not found the Canal yet, but they had hit Guatemala and Ecuador. It was only a matter of time. The money for the Canal barrier had come straight out of the final-phase prototype funding for the Mark V-E Jaeger. The thought made Pentecost furious.
Picking right up as if the whole thing had been rehearsed—which Pentecost didn’t doubt it had—the American put in, “The world appreciates what you and your Rangers have done, Marshal. But I’m not going to expend my country’s remaining military forces and weapons on futile attacks when I could be protecting my people. And those people feel safer behind a wall.”
The Wall, Pentecost thought. The goddamn Wall. Humanity’s monument to fear, to flight instead of fight.
“But they’re not safer,” he said. “The walls won’t hold. My research team says the frequency of attacks is about to reach a saturation point. They’re going to spike.”
“We’ve intensified the coastal wall program and moved citizens and supplies three hundred miles inland to the safe zones,” the British rep said. “That is the prudent course, and that is the course we will take.”
Pentecost wanted to ask the British rep where exactly in Britain was three hundred miles inland. For that matter, why did the British have a voice in this at all? He was British by birth himself, but he had also been a front-line Jaeger pilot. He had killed kaiju and had the scars to show for it, both inside and out. All of this flashed through his mind in a swell of anger. But he controlled himself and stuck to his theme.
“Safe zones that only the rich and the powerful can buy their way into,” he said. “What about the rest?”
“Watch your tone, Marshal,” the American rep said.
Pentecost looked at the man for a long moment. A number of responses went through his mind. Take the high road, he told himself.
“Fear and walls won’t save anyone,” he said. “You can huddle in caves with hope as a pillow, but it won’t work. When the last Jaeger falls and the kaiju take the shores, they will not stop. They’ll keep coming until east meets west. There will no longer be any safe zones. Nothing will be left.”
“You have your answer, Marshal,” the American rep said. “After the eight months needed to begin the decommissioning of the remaining Shatterdomes, the United Nations will no longer be funding the Jaeger program. You are free to continue it, and I’m sure that a man of your determination will find a way to keep Jaegers in the field. We will welcome their interventions when and if more kaiju appear. However, this body has decided that the best interests of the human race are served by acknowledging that our finite resources are more effectively applied to a sure defense than to a reckless offense. Good luck to you, Marshal.”
The monitors went dark.
That was that. The bureaucrats of the world had chosen flight.
Pentecost took a moment to gather himself. Concentrating on every motion, he removed a pill box from his uniform pocket and swallowed one of the tablets. He’d have to take care of himself if the next weeks and months unfolded as he expected.
“So that’s it?” Tendo Choi asked from the other end of the command platform.
Herc Hansen approached and the three of them stood in the darkened and quiet LOCCENT.
“Suits and ties and flashy smiles,” Herc said. “That’s all they are.”
Stacker Pentecost shot him a look. Herc was right, but Pentecost also believed in respecting authority.
Until, that is, the duly constituted authorities proved themselves unable to govern. Pentecost unclipped his Marshal’s wings from his uniform and set them on the table. If any of the UN reps had still been watching, the gesture would have been clear to them; as it was, the significance of it registered immediately with Herc and Tendo.
“We don’t need them,” said Stacker Pentecost.
He was free to continue the program, the Group had said. As long as he could find a way to keep it alive.
Well, he thought, there might be such a way. It was distasteful, perhaps, but this was war.
PART II
FIVE YEARS LATER
PAN-PACIFIC DEFENSE CORPS
PERSONNEL DOSSIER
NAME Raleigh Becket
ASSIGNED TEAM Rangers; ID R-RBEC 122.21-B
DATE OF ACTIVE SERVICE July 12, 2017
CURRENT SERVICE STATUS Inactive
BIOGRAPHY
Born December 11, 1998, second of three. Older brother Yancy (q.v., also an active-duty Ranger, KIA February 29, 2020), younger sister Jazmine. Parents deceased. Entered Jaeger Academy at Kodiak June 1, 2016, qualified the next year. Assigned with brother Yancy as Gipsy Danger’s inaugural crew. First deploy October 17, 2017, brought down kaiju Yamarashi in Los Angeles. Four subsequent kills, all in Gipsy Danger and all with Yancy Becket as co-pilot. Deployed to Lima Shatterdome in 2019, then Alaska in 2020.