Alex Irvine - Pacific Rim

“Aren’t they all?” Raleigh said, nodding. “Saw you on TV yesterday. Another tough fight.”

Herc’s son Chuck whistled and Max swaggered back to him, the way only a bulldog can happily swagger. Raleigh could tell right away that Chuck didn’t like him. He hadn’t come over to join the conversation, he’d pulled the dog out of it, and now he was sitting at one of Striker Eureka’s gigantic feet glaring at his father. And at Raleigh.

“I heard about your brother,” Herc said. He clapped Raleigh on the shoulder. “Sorry. It’s brave of you to be here after that, son.”

Raleigh nodded. He felt awkward and embarrassed, the way he always did when people offered sincere sympathy about Yancy. What were you supposed to say? Thanks? Yeah, it sucks? Yeah, I’ll never be the same because I felt my brother die inside my brain at the same time as I watched that goddamn monster tear him out of the head of our Jaeger? How’s that for symbolism, Jack? You like it? Because I live with it every day, and I don’t. I don’t like it. But it’s mine. It’s all I’ve got left of him is the memory of how it felt when he was leaving.

No, you couldn’t say that.

“Sergeant Hansen, shall we?” Pentecost prompted.

Herc nodded. “Good to have you back, Raleigh,” he said. They fell into step together, Mako with them as well.

Raleigh didn’t know where they were going, but he knew he couldn’t go very long without asking the question burning a hole in his mind.

“Sir, about the bomb run,” he said. It was supposed to be a cue for Pentecost to tell him more, but Pentecost didn’t bite, so Raleigh went on. “It’s not gonna work,” he said. “We’ve hit the Breach before. Nothing goes through.” Pentecost kept walking. Raleigh kept pace. He felt Herc’s eyes on him, measuring, assessing… “What’s changed?”

Pentecost stopped. He and Herc looked at each other. If a signal passed between them, Raleigh didn’t see it, but after a moment Pentecost said, “We have a plan. It even has a name: Operation Pitfall. I need you ready.” Then he glanced at Mako and said, “Miss Mori will show you to your Jaeger. Herc and I have to attend a briefing. We’ll reconvene shortly.”

Raleigh tried to fight it, but he couldn’t. Your Jaeger. The words got him, right in the part of his soul that had once been a Ranger. And maybe would be again.

January 3, 2025. Big day. Happy New Year to me, Raleigh thought.

NAMEHermann Gottlieb, PhD

ASSIGNED TEAMKaiju Science, ID S-HGOT_471.20-V

DATE OF ACTIVE SERVICEMay 28, 2015

CURRENT SERVICE STATUSActive; based Hong Kong Shatterdome

BIOGRAPHY

Born Garmisch-Partenkirchen, Germany, June 9, 1989. Married to Vanessa. First child due April 2025. Third of four children; older brother Dietrich and sister Karla, younger brother Bastien. Parents scientists. Father, Dr. Lars Gottlieb, participated in Jaeger Project (q.v.) and is now overseeing Pacific Perimeter Program of Wall construction and civil defense infrastructure improvement. Displayed early aptitude for abstract mathematics, completed studies at TU Berlin in engineering and applied sciences. Wrote programming code for first-generation Jaeger operating systems. Has constructed highly accurate models predicting frequency of kaiju attacks. Also responsible for advances in understanding the physics and structure of the Breach itself. Refer Operation Pitfall dossier (highly classified). Psych evaluation reveals fundamental need to create distance between self and any problem, using data and mathematics as buffer. Obsessive neatness of person and workspace also reveals this impulse to maintain controlling distance. Currently estranged from father due to differences of opinion about value of Jaeger project as opposed to Pacific Perimeter Program.

NOTES

Inveterate filer of complaints, primarily against Kaiju Science colleague Dr. Newton Geiszler (q.v.). PPDC psychological staff recommends accepting but not acting on these complaints.

HERC HANSEN COULD NEVER GET COMFORTABLEin science labs. Workshops? Sure. Garages? Dozens of them, tinkering with everything from bicycles to Jaegers. He knew the smells of machine oil and hand cleaner. Labs were different. His impression of them came from high school, when he‘d been an average student, the kind teachers tended to characterize as personable but unmotivated. He remembered labs as being the province of the nerd, the place where chalk dust and white coats and Erlenmeyer flasks were not oddities but the rule. The place where weirdness was normal and normal people were viewed with scorn and disdain.

This lab was even weirder than that.

Herc had been in the Kaiju Science lab a few times, and his first thought every time he walked in was that it was like two halves of a brain. One side was neat, efficient, sparkling clean, and generally so perfectly arranged that Herc instinctively wanted to avoid it for fear of messing something up. The other side was like the bedroom of a teenager obsessed with monster movies.

No surface was uncluttered. Jars and tubes of strange materials and fluids were stacked and scattered everywhere, sitting on top of computer monitors that displayed images of kaiju together with complicated helical patterns Herc took to be DNA. From the ceiling hung an inflatable kaiju and an inflatable Jaeger, facing each other down over a lab table where something was bubbling next to a sink. Herc instinctively wanted to avoid that side, too, but for fear of catching something.

Down the middle of the space, from the center of the doorway to the back wall, where it disappeared under a refrigerator, was a line of hazmat tape. Two halves of a brain, maybe, but it was also like a bedroom shared by two siblings who couldn’t live a minute without finding something to fight about.

Of course, it wasn’t only siblings who fought all the time. Herc thought of his son, Chuck, and then refocused on the matter at hand.

At the moment, Gottlieb was blazing away on a chalkboard so big he had to stand on a ladder to get to the last un-scribbled-upon area. He was writing so fast that even if Herc had known the scientific shorthand he used, the pace still would have been too much for him. Beyond him, the clean half of the lab looked like the backdrop for one of the instructional videos Herc had sat through during his first Ranger testing.

“In the beginning, the kaiju attacks were spaced by twelve months,” Gottlieb was saying. “Then six. Then three. Then every two weeks.” He paused to look down at Herc and Pentecost from the top of the ladder and tap the tip of his chalk hard on the board. Bits of the chalk sprinkled away to the floor near the hazmat tape.

“The most recent one, in Sydney,” Gottlieb said, “was a week.”

He paused to let that sink in. But he was on a roll, the way Herc knew scientists got, and he couldn’t pause for long no matter how much he wanted the dramatic effect.

“In four days, we could be seeing a kaiju every eight hours until they’re coming every four minutes,” Gottlieb continued.

Herc watched Pentecost receive this news. The old soldier took it hard. Some of the tautness, the crusader’s resolve, left his face—only for a moment, but it was a visible moment. Herc wondered, not for the first time, if something was wrong with him. Other than the impending demise of the human race.

“We should witness a double event within seven days,” Gottlieb finished.

“Should?” Pentecost echoed. “I need more than a prediction.”

“He can’t give you anything better than that—” Newt cut in.