Alex Irvine - Pacific Rim

The last thing Raleigh had felt, as he slumped to the frozen sand, was the empty space in his mind where Yancy had once been.

Now Gipsy Danger towered over him into the floodlit night sky, her hull flickering with the light cast by welding sparks, as if none of that had ever happened.

“She looks like new,” Raleigh said.

“Better than new,” Mako said. “She’s one of a kind now.”

“Solid iron hull,” someone else said from behind Raleigh. It took him a moment to reset and place the voice. Then he turned and saw Tendo Choi coming across the repair deck with a big welcoming grin on his face. “No alloys,” Tendo went on. “Forty engine blocks per muscle strand. Hyper-torque drivers in every limb and a new fluid synapse system. And this little lady,” he pointed to Mako, “oversaw it all.”

“Tendo!” Raleigh exclaimed. They clapped each other into a bear hug. Raleigh held it, feeling suddenly that perhaps he belonged here after all. Not everything had changed. He took a stop back and said, “So what’s going on?”

Tendo popped open a small tin and handed Raleigh a pill.

“Metharocin,” he explained. “New precaution. It’ll shield you from radiation while you’re out of your suit.” Pointing up at Gipsy Danger’s torso, he added, “Exposed core is still fuel rod.”

Raleigh took the pill.

“No, I meant with you,” he said. He pointed at Tendo’s left ring finger, which bore a gold band that hadn’t been there last time they’d seen each other.

“Um, well, remember Alison from munitions? We got married. Got a one-year-old son.” Tendo grinned proudly, but just as quickly his happiness was tempered and his tone wavered. “Haven’t seen him in six months. You know Pentecost, got me on Breach watch. Night and day, day and night; I am a caffeine-driven low-rider, my friend!” Having gotten his Tendo-bonhomie back, he watched Raleigh studying Gipsy Danger. “The Drift’s going to stir it all up, man. Memories. You sure you’re ready for this?”

That was the question, wasn’t it? Raleigh figured he could remember the moves. He could pilot a Jaeger. He could kill kaiju. He’d done it five times. But could he allow another person to enter the space in his mind where Yancy had once been? Tough one. He was going to have to go right through those last moments again, feel Yancy’s terror and the blast of frigid salt air and the predatory roar of Knifehead shaking its way through Gipsy Danger’s frame and Raleigh’s own bones.

In one way, he’d never stopped going over those memories. He was in Olympic physical shape because one of the few ways he’d found to push the recollections away was grueling sessions of sweat and focusing deep into his body instead of his mind. But at some point the workouts always had to stop, and the memories were always waiting.

So he didn’t know. He didn’t know if he was ready or not, and he wouldn’t until he Drifted with another human being again.

Raleigh looked at Tendo, down to the floor, over at Mako… She was looking back at him. He coughed and pulled himself together.

“I should unpack,” he said.

Tendo understood.

“Yeah,” he said. “Mako will show you your quarters. Tomorrow’s the big day. First of many. You’re back where you belong, man. Good to have you.”

Raleigh cracked a smile.

“You too, buddy,” he said. Big day, yep. That’s what they’d always said to each other every morning when they thought there would be a kaiju attack. It had spread and become one of those little memes that they passed back and forth.

His room was nothing special, a pale-colored rectangle with a bunk and a few pieces of furniture. Raleigh dropped his duffel on the bed and took it all in for a minute.

In the doorway, Mako said, “If you need anything, I’m right across the hall. You’ll meet the candidates at six hundred hours. I’ve tried my best to match them to your Drift pattern.”

Six hundred, Raleigh thought. He had just enough time to clock eight hours in the sack and get a shower and some toast. Pentecost was throwing him right into the fire. Looking, no doubt, to see if the five years away from the Rangers had softened him up, made him weak.

And Mako had pre-screened his potential Drift partners.

“You did?” he asked as he unzipped his duffel. He didn’t have much in it. “Personally?”

She nodded. “I did, Mr. Becket.”

He wished she wouldn’t call him that, but he didn’t say anything.

Instead he asked, “What’s your story? Restoring old Jaegers for combat, showing has-beens like me around… that can’t be it.”

She met his gaze but said nothing. Her grip on the little pad she carried tightened. In there somewhere, Raleigh knew, was a detailed dossier on him and equally detailed assessments on all of the candidates to be his partner. He had no desire to see any of it. Data and pre-action analysis maybe helped to frame big generalizations about people, but Raleigh didn’t think they predicted much about how real flesh-and-blood human beings would react in realtime situations.

He opened a drawer and stuffed some socks into it.

“Are you a pilot?” he asked.

“No. Not yet. But I want to be one. More than anything…” She hesitated, and Raleigh saw her change her mind about something she’d been ready to say. “I want to be one.”

Something was going on here. Mako Mori was a puzzle, and she didn’t seem to be interested in letting anyone solve her.

“What’s your simulator score?” Raleigh asked.

“Fifty-one drops, fifty-one kills,” she said evenly.

“And you’re not one of the candidates tomorrow?”

Digging in the bottom of his duffel, Raleigh came up with the one possession that meant something to him: an old photo of him and Yancy, taken shortly after they finished Ranger training and made their first kill. Leaning into each other, bright and strong and invincible.

Mako answered but he didn’t hear her right away. He looked up at her, lifting an eyebrow.

“I am not,” Mako repeated. “The Marshal has his reasons.”

“Fifty-one simulated kills, though… what can they be?”

Mako looked him right in the eye and dodged the question.

“I hope you approve of my choices. I’ve studied your fighting technique and strategy. Every one of your victories… even Anchorage.”

“Really? And what did you think?”

“Mr. Becket. It is not my place to comment.”

Oh, but you want to, don’t you? Raleigh thought.

“The Marshal isn’t here, Miss Mori. You can say it. And you could stop clutching that pad so hard. Looks like it’s gonna snap in half.”

The briefest shadow of irritation crossed Mako’s face. She put the pad in her pocket and took a breath.

“I think… you’re unpredictable,” she said.

Oho, thought Raleigh. A genuine, unfiltered statement. What next?

And he found out, because Mako wasn’t done.

“You have a habit of deviating from standard combat techniques. You take risks that endanger yourself and your crew. I don’t think you are the right man for this mission—”

With that, she caught herself and looked down. Raleigh looked away from her at the same time.

“Wow,” he said. “You may be right, Miss Mori. About that, and about my past. But in real combat, Miss Mori— outside the simulator, in the real world, with the Miracle Mile at your back and millions of people just beyond it praying for you to save them—in real combat, you make decisions and you live with the consequences.”

It was a little sharper than he’d meant to be, but Raleigh didn’t appreciate someone waving her perfect simulator record in his face and then telling him about what he did wrong fighting real kaiju. He turned away from her and went back to his unpacking. He heard her footsteps crossing the corridor to her own room. Raleigh caught a whiff of himself. It had been a long trip from Alaska, and he’d left at the end of a long sweaty workday. He stripped off his shirt just as Mako started to speak.