Alex Irvine - Pacific Rim

Knifehead swiped again, advancing through the water where Saltchuck had been, and Gipsy Danger ducked again, holding the boat out behind it and away from the kaiju. Over the scanner came the confused cries of the ship’s crew. In the back of his mind, Raleigh was thinking that he hoped Pentecost could hear.

“Yup,” Yancy said, which was his way of saying that the plasma cannon was ready.

The first shot hit Knifehead square in the midsection, right about where a human’s solar plexus would be. The kaiju staggered and the second shot knocked it further backward, twin charred craters in its torso. Its arms flailed and it screamed.

“Stay on it,” Raleigh said. The plasma cannon was recharging.

Didn’t look like they’d need it, though. The kaiju lost its footing and toppled sideways into the ocean, which boiled around the wounds, reacting to the mixture of salt water and the kaiju’s corrosive blood. The motions of its arms grew less coordinated and it sank slowly.

The last thing to disappear was the bridge of its bladed skull.

“I like this cannon,” Raleigh said.

“I know you do,” Yancy said. “Me too.”

“Better fire up the comm and tell Pentecost.”

“He already knows.”

“Sure, but he hasn’t heard us say it. You know how he is about following protocols.”

Raleigh toggled the comm back on, and the interior of Gipsy Danger’s Conn-Pod filled with Pentecost’s glowering face.

“Gipsy!” he barked. “What the hell is going on?”

Raleigh racked the plasma cannon back into its harness inside Gipsy Danger’s forearm. Turning to face the shoreline a few miles distant, he set Saltchuck down in the water and gave it a gentle push in the direction of dry land.

“Job’s done, sir. Lit it up twice and bagged our fifth kill.”

“You disobeyed direct orders, Ranger!”

Before Raleigh could say something wiseass and get them in trouble, Yancy cut in.

“Sir, we intercepted the kaiju, and… you know… saved everyone. Before the Miracle Mile and everything.”

“Plus nobody can get Kaiju Blue if it’s at the bottom of the ocean, right?” Raleigh added. Kaiju Blue was bad news, a kind of shock reaction the human body suffered when recently dead kaiju started to off-gas toxins in the hours after they died. It killed a lot of people when kaiju went down in populated areas. Today it would only kill fish, and who knew if they got Kaiju Blue, anyway?

Pentecost couldn’t contest the results, they knew that. But they also knew that he wouldn’t stand for the way they’d gotten there.

“Get back to your post,” Pentecost growled. “Now—”

It looked like he was about to say something else, probably along the lines of how he was going to have them busted down to permanent Boneslum latrine duty if they ever did something like that again, when Tendo Choi’s face appeared on an inset display. An alarm blared both back at LOCCENT and inside Gipsy Danger.

“Kaiju signature!” Tendo called out. “It’s rising!”

Raleigh swiped the LOCCENT feed off the HUD and spawned an area view. He and Yancy scanned and spun. Where was it? All they were seeing was open water and an iceberg.

Over the comm, Pentecost’s voice wasn’t angry anymore.

“Rangers, get out of there!” he commanded.

They felt it first, as the wave of its approach crashed into Gipsy Danger from behind. The Jaeger reeled. Before they could get their balance, Yancy’s side of the Conn-Pod collapsed inward.

Sparks shot from damaged wiring and water poured in through a ten-foot gap torn into Gipsy Danger’s head. Looking with his own eyes, no sensors necessary, Raleigh saw Knifehead swing around and down, severing Gipsy Danger’s left arm in a spray of hydraulic fluid and arcing showers of sparks.

Warning sirens went off at the same time as Raleigh registered that his brother was in crippling pain. It radiated through Raleigh, too, courtesy of the neural handshake that gave them the combined processing power to control Gipsy Danger. Emergency lights strobed in the Conn-Pod, cutting through the flickering images of the heads-up displays that still functioned.

“Arm’s gone cold,” Yancy said through gritted teeth. He was panting, trying to stay on top of the pain.

“Overriding now,” Raleigh said. He racked the plasma cannon and started to power it up again. It wasn’t supposed to fire this fast. They were going to be in a world of hurt either way.

He pivoted away from Knifehead as the wave from Gipsy Danger’s falling arm crashed over Saltchuck . The boat’s stern disappeared under the water but it righted itself and stayed afloat, tossed in the violent waves. Its fishing gear snapped off and was gone. Just like my arm , Raleigh thought. No, Yancy’s arm. The damage to Gipsy Danger was like damage to him. He was having a hard time thinking straight.

Raleigh put everything Gipsy Danger had into an uppercut that staggered the kaiju long enough for him to pull the arm back and lock in the plasma cannon… but not long enough to fire it!

Knifehead closed its jaws around the cannon itself and gnawed as it leaned forward, driving the weakened Gipsy Danger back. With an impact that momentarily blacked out all internal systems, Gipsy Danger slammed into the iceberg.

Raleigh exhaled in a whoof as if he’d had the wind knocked out of him. Before he could react, the kaiju put its head down and impaled Gipsy Danger, driving the point of its skull straight through the Jaeger’s torso and into the million tons of ice behind. Cascading failure alarms sounded as Gipsy Danger’s liquid-circuit neural pathways were interrupted.

The plasma cannon’s barrel glowed, still functioning despite Knifehead’s attempt to chew through it. They would only get to fire it once. Raleigh raised the arm high and bent at the elbow so the cannon was aimed back down at the kaiju’s head, just behind where its skull disappeared into Gipsy Danger.

It wouldn’t fire. Even overloading, it wouldn’t fire yet.

Knifehead reared up and smashed a single claw through the gap in Gipsy Danger’s Conn-Pod. The claw dug around, shredding metal and blacking out all electronics on that side.

It found Yancy.

“No,” Raleigh said quietly

There was no need to scream, Yancy could hear him. Yancy was looking at him, the raw terror of the moment cutting through the shock of the damage he had already suffered through Gipsy Danger…

“Raleigh, listen to me, you—”

And then Yancy was gone, torn away into the storm along with that entire side of Gipsy Danger’s head. Freezing rain slashed in through the hole and the Jaeger froze as the neural handshake was broken.

Raleigh hammered at a bank of manual switches, trying to engage the Crisis Command Matrix.

Yancy, man, no, don’t be gone, he was saying, or thought he was saying.

The CCM came online. Raleigh gave it a single command:

PLASMA CANNON OVERLOAD

All of Gipsy Danger’s remaining control systems rededicated themselves to the single task of lifting and angling the Jaeger’s arm. Knifehead tore another piece from Gipsy Danger’s skull frame. Raleigh looked it right in the eye, and it looked back.

It knew we were in here, he thought. How did it know? When did they figure that out?

Knifehead roared, long and triumphant. It saw the plasma cannon pointed at it, and swiveled to bite down on Gipsy Danger’s arm, tearing at the cannon’s barrel housing and still roaring.

Raleigh roared back, and fired.

Dawn was breaking. Raleigh had never been cold like this. He moved Gipsy Danger step by step. He could hear random snatches of incoming comm traffic, morning news radio out of Anchorage, amplified sounds of surf and wind from the shore just ahead. Another step. Yancy was gone. He could not feel Yancy.