Alex Irvine - Pacific Rim

Raleigh had heard this spiel before, from other people who romanticized the kaiju even as the kaiju set about destroying human civilization.

“Trust me, you don’t want to,” he said.

That didn’t stop Newt.

“Well, they are the most immense, complex living entities to ever walk the earth,” he said, in a tone that indicated his certainty that nobody had ever thought of this before. “Way I see it, if you wanna stop the kaiju, you have to understand them.”

“Or you just blow ’em to chunks,” Raleigh said.

Newt pursed his lips and clutched his sample jar more tightly. Raleigh was glad when the elevator door opened and Pentecost escorted him out.

“This way,” he said, pointing down a hallway. Holding the door briefly, he looked back at Newt and Gottlieb, who weren’t coming out. “Debrief in ten, gentlemen.”

Gottlieb saluted as the door closed. Newt transferred his patronizing disapproval from Raleigh back to his partner, where Raleigh figured it spent most of its time.

Through the closing doors, Raleigh heard Newt say, “What, are you an officer now, too?”

Scientists, Raleigh thought.

“Our Research Division, Kaiju Science,” Pentecost said, referring to Newt and Gottlieb as they walked along the hall with Mako. “Unorthodox, but very effective.”

“That’s your whole research division?” Raleigh couldn’t believe it.

Pentecost saw what he was thinking. Five years ago…

“Geiszler and Gottlieb were the first two we brought in. Now things have changed, and they’re the last two we’ve got left,” he said. “We are not an army anymore, Mr. Becket. We’re the resistance.”

Interesting , Raleigh thought. The resistance. He kind of liked the idea. Mako leaned ahead of them and pressed a code into a keypad, opening a double sliding door at the end of the corridor. Raleigh looked through, and his pulse quickened.

“Welcome to the Shatterdome,” Pentecost said.

You mean welcome back, Raleigh thought.

Completed November 23, 2016. Decommissioned October 12, 2024. Sold with Kodiak Island academy facilities to private buyer.

Completed November 25, 2015. Remains active. Current site of Mark III Restoration Project under direction of J-Tech leader Tendo Choi. Active Jaeger assets: Cherno Alpha, Crimson Typhoon, Striker Eureka. Inactive: Gipsy Danger.

Completed August 9, 2016. Decommissioned October 18, 2024. Sold to Peruvian government.

Completed July 11, 2017. Decommissioned December 20, 2024. Incorporated into Long Beach Anti-Kaiju Wall segment.

Completed November 23, 2017. Decommissioned November 9, 2024. Deeded to consortium of Central and South American government kaiju-response authorities.

Completed May 25, 2017. Decommissioned December 29, 2024. Disposition pending. Partially destroyed during attack of kaiju Mutavore, December 27, 2024. Striker Eureka seconded to Hong Kong Shatterdome.

Completed December 15, 2016. Decommissioned October 29, 2024. Sold to private buyer.

Completed December 4, 2016. Decommissioned December 11, 2024. Deeded to Russian government in exchange for landing, refueling, and airspace rights. Cherno Alpha seconded to Hong Kong Shatterdome.

THE DOME ITSELF WAS MAYBE FIVE-HUNDREDfeet high at its peak. Its ceiling was constructed to open up and out like the petals of a flower, but at the moment it was closed. From a central staging area, seven tracks radiated out. Six led to Jaeger bays, tall enough to accommodate the huge robots and framed with catwalks and platforms allowing access to any part of a Jaeger from any angle.

The seventh spoke led to Scramble Alley, the ramp a deploying Jaeger took to the ocean doors. Outside the ocean doors, just like at the Anchorage and Lima Shatterdomes where Raleigh had previously been stationed, was a staging pad where Jumphawk helicopters could hook up a waiting Jaeger and fly it to its drop point.

The spaces outside the marked spokes and their conveyor platform tracks were a tangle of equipment, spare parts, and work crews. It all looked like home to Raleigh and now that he’d had five-plus years to stew on it, he couldn’t figure out what he’d been thinking when he left. This was where he belonged.

Opposite Scramble Alley, a mezzanine stuck out over the floor. It contained the Hong Kong LOCCENT, the Shatterdome’s nerve center, wall-to-wall monitors, holodisplays, and workstations. Everything that happened in the Shatterdome or any of its Jaegers was represented on a screen in the LOCCENT. Behind it, Raleigh guessed, would be the mess hall, living quarters, lab facilities… all the stuff a Jaeger resistance needed to keep itself fed, fit, trained, and ready to save the world.

Looming over the interior of the Shatterdome was a huge clock. Not even a digital clock, an old-fashioned flip clock. Only it was twenty feet across and each of the flipping panels must have been as big as a movie poster. That was different. It wasn’t showing the local time, and Raleigh didn’t remember seeing anything like it at previous Shatterdomes he’d seen.

Pointing up at it, Pentecost said, “War clock. We reset it after every kaiju attack. Helps keep everyone focused on a common goal.”

“That time’s Sydney?” Raleigh asked. Pentecost nodded. Raleigh took a moment to consider that. Fourteen hours before, he’d been standing in the frozen mud at the base of the Wall. Now he was in the Hong Kong Shatterdome, ready to be a Ranger again. “How long until the next reset?”

“A week,” Pentecost said. “If we’re lucky.”

He led Raleigh and Mako along a raised portion of the Shatterdome that looked down on maintenance bays and the radiating array of deployment tracks. Some kind of thumping synth beat boomed through the space, echoing so Raleigh couldn’t tell where it came from at first.

“This complex used to lodge six Jaegers, and you’ll remember there were seven other Shatterdomes,” Pentecost said. “Now they’ve all been mothballed and we have only four Jaegers left.”

“Is it really that bad?” Raleigh asked. Maybe being the resistance wasn’t all it was cracked up to be.

“It is,” Pentecost replied.

They got to a railing and Pentecost pointed.

“Crimson Typhoon, out of China.”

Raleigh recognized the unique design, with its bifurcated lower left arm giving the Jaeger three effective hands. He’d seen Crimson Typhoon before—but he also remembered that Stacker Pentecost was a big believer in doing things by the book whenever possible. In this case, reintegrating a Ranger after a five-year absence called for a full guided tour. A lot had changed.

“Piloted by the Wei Clan,” Pentecost went on. “Triplets, the only ones we’ve ever been able to get to Drift together. They have successfully defended Hong Kong Port seven times. They use the Thundercloud formation. Very powerful. Hong Kong was Crimson Typhoon’s home base from its first mission.”

At the base of Crimson Typhoon the Wei triplets were doing something complicated with a basketball, dribbling and passing it in an intricate pattern near a hoop bolted to a stanchion. They shot once in a while, but the point of the game didn’t appear to be scoring. There was an ease and fluidity about it that was all the more surprising when Raleigh noticed that most of the time none of the three were looking at either of the other two.