Alex Irvine: Pacific Rim

Raiju closed. Scunner broke off its patrol, sensing an advantage, and dove in toward the vulnerable Striker Eureka.

“Both kaiju are converging on Striker,” Tendo Choi said.

Yeah , Raleigh thought. We know .

The giant kaiju, Slattern, bit down on Striker’s damaged arm, cracking it again before it let go and clamped down across Striker’s torso. Striker threw a punch straight down into the monster’s eye, leaving a visible dent in the orbital bone. The kaiju let go, a bubbling plume of blood gushing out into the water. Striker got free and onto her feet just in time for Scunner to land on her from another angle, torquing Striker’s good arm and biting down on the edge of Striker’s torso, where the larger kaiju had just let go.

Raiju came in for the kill on Gipsy Danger, and at the last moment Raleigh and Mako raised the arm they had left, whipping out the Chain Sword and hoping against hope that the tensioning mechanisms would still work.

The crocodilian Raiju weighed nearly three thousand tons, and was moving at close to sixty miles an hour. The tip of its muzzle hit the blade of the sword just as the tensioners had racked it into full utility with a spill and crackle of overflowing energy. Raiju’s momentum carried it forward, its body dividing in half with incredible smoothness around the blade of the sword.

Your father’s daughter was a hell of a swordmaker, Raleigh thought to Mako. Her pride flashed back at him, colored by grim determination to see the mission through.

Bisected almost perfectly lengthwise, Raiju fell apart, the two halves’ cross-sections glowing with the plasma energies of the Chain Sword and the organic illumination of Raiju’s vital fluids boiling out into the oceanic depths.

Sensei, Mako thought.

Raleigh was right there with her. They needed to get to Striker before the other two kaiju tore it apart and the whole mission went up in smoke. Gipsy Danger limped across the seafloor, with Raleigh and Mako doing everything they could to mitigate the damage inflicted by the kaiju. Gipsy was ambulatory—barely—and combat-ready—barely, with one plasma cannon possibly still functional and the Chain Sword a definite maybe after abyssal pressure and corrosive salt had already started to chew away at the sword housing and inner works.

They were ready to fight, but Gipsy Danger wasn’t fast, and for Striker Eureka, time was running out. The kaiju tore at Striker Eureka and pounded her, Slattern seemingly toying with the Jaeger and allowing the smaller Scunner to do most of the damage.

“Defenses down!” Chuck shouted. The sounds of kaiju blows boomed through Gipsy Danger’s Conn-Pod from Striker’s feed.

“Hull is compromised,” Pentecost said, more calmly. “LOCCENT, we cannot deliver the payload.”

“Hold on!” Raleigh called out. “We can still get to you!”

He was crying, but they were Mako’s tears.

“Listen to him!” she cried. “We are coming for you!”

“No,” Pentecost said. “Listen to me—”

The feed cut out as Scunner landed a monstrous blow to the back of Striker Eureka’s head. Then it came back.

“—Raleigh,” Pentecost said. “You know what you have to do.”

And Raleigh did. He flashed, though the Drift, back into the memories all Rangers carried in common with any Ranger who had ever Drifted. He remembered himself saying, Gipsy’s analog. Nuclear.

Mako realized it too.

Gipsy Danger ground to a halt and started backing away from Striker Eureka and the kaiju.

“I hear you,” Raleigh said. “Heading for the Breach.”

“What the hell are they doing?” Newt said, two thousand miles away.

Herc answered what Raleigh would have.

“Finishing the mission.”

“Cannons not responding! Arms offline!” Chuck shouted over the alarms going off in Striker Eureka’s Conn-Pod. “We can’t do anything!”

Pentecost spoke calmly, but his commanding tone cut through. Everyone in the Shatterdome heard it. As did Raleigh. Most importantly, as did Mako.

“We can clear a path for the lady,” he said.

“Marshal,” Mako said. “Sensei. No…”

Pentecost looked directly up at Gipsy Danger through his Conn-Pod feed.

“Mako. You can finish this. I’ll always be here. You can always find me in the Drift.”

A tearing blow from Scunner burst Striker Eureka’s Conn-Pod open. Water flooded in and circuits started to go dark. Both kaiju stood over the fallen Jaeger, tag-teaming it, tearing and hammering it into pieces. The video from Striker Eureka went out, leaving only the sound of Chuck’s voice.

“My father always said: if you have the shot, take it. It’s been a pleasure serving with you, sir.”

Silence from LOCCENT.

A moment later, Stacker Pentecost detonated the nuclear payload.

IN THE LOCCENT, STRIKER EUREKA’S READOUTSwent dark.

Through one of the Super Sikorskys’ belly cameras, they watched a dome of water rise from the ocean, pushing the fog back as the blast wave from the nuclear payload breached the surface. Pieces of kaiju were visible in the churning base of the mushroom cloud that broke through the mist before the Sikorsky peeled away in evasive maneuvers.

Tendo Choi looked at Herc Hansen, who knelt beside his dog, head down, mechanically scratching Max’s ears. All of us are mourning, Tendo thought. But only Herc is mourning the loss of a child.

On the seafloor, Gipsy Danger got back to her feet. A huge scalloped gap in the face of the cliff was the only sign of the explosion. Radiation readings ticked higher than normal, but Raleigh ignored them. It wouldn’t matter, where they were going. With the one arm Gipsy Danger had left, they picked up half of Raiju and started dragging the corpse toward the cliff. Gipsy Danger wasn’t moving too well with the damage to her leg. It wouldn’t be long before seafloor pressures put the leg out of commission entirely. After that, the clock would really be ticking, because having sustained this kind of damage, Gipsy Danger was looking catastrophic collapse right in the face.

They had to get moving and make sure they could take care of business before business took care of them.

“Dropping into the Breach,” he said.

Gipsy Danger jumped off the cliff. They sank, seeing the radiance of the Breach below them. Maybe the scientists were right. Maybe they wouldn’t be able to get all the way in. But maybe the scientists were wrong. There was only one way to find out, and if they didn’t find out, the kaiju would just keep coming. Raleigh and Mako didn’t speak as Gipsy Danger sank toward a ledge in the cliff, just above the Breach. That would be as good a spot as any to start the reactor-overload sequence.

It was something he’d learned way back during his first training on Gipsy Danger, when nuking the kaiju was still part of the standard response protocol. Way down in one corner of the HUD console were toggles to activate the self-destruct response and trigger the escape-pod mechanism. Raleigh had hoped he would never have to use either one, but life was like that.

He could feel Mako, stunned and withdrawn. She operated Gipsy Danger mechanically, without feeling. It was easy to stop feeling when all you could control was the way you were going to die.

An alarm went off in the Conn-Pod. Raleigh and Mako looked at each other, then at the heads-up.

It showed a bogey, closing fast. But nothing had come out of the Breach.