Alex Irvine - Pacific Rim

*Precise physical location of this kill uncertain, and all evidence was destroyed at Gipsy Danger’s self-destruction during the course of Operation Pitfall.

OPERATING SYSTEM

BLPK 4.1 with liquid circuitry neural pathways (upgraded to custom May 1, 2023)

POWER SYSTEM

Nuclear vortex turbine (upgraded and restored 2023)

ARMAMENTS

• I-19 particle dispersal cannon, biology-aware plasma weapon, forearm mounted (retractable)

• S-11 dark matter pulse launcher (internal mount)

• Upgraded as of Mark III Restoration Project: GD-6A Chain Swords, dual-mode: segmented chainwhip or cable-reinforced nano-edged single blade

NOTES

Remains never recovered. Jaeger presumably vaporized by reactor overload. Any remaining components are presumed to be in the Anteverse.

Opposition from three kaiju, including the first and only known Category V (Slattern [qv]), disabled Striker Eureka early in Operation Pitfall. Its crew (S. Pentecost, C. Hansen) detonated the nuclear payload, sacrificing themselves to open a path for Gipsy Danger to successfully close the breach. Striker Eureka’s last confirmed kaiju kill, Scunner, occurred at the moment of their self-destruction.

IN THE LOCCENT, TENDO CHOI STOOD STARINGat the Breach graphic, with its trumpet-shaped mouths on either end of the long narrow passage in the middle. There was no signal from Gipsy Danger. Around him stood Newt and Gottlieb, Herc, and all the rest of the command techs. Nobody spoke. Even Max looked up because all of the humans were looking up.

It seemed like it had been a long time since Gipsy Danger had entered the Throat and vanished. Tendo started to think again what he had thought from the beginning, which was that this whole bomb-the-Breach idea was noble but doomed.

Then the electromagnetic signature of the Breach changed. At first Tendo Choi thought another kaiju was coming through. The intensification pattern looked like that… but it grew until the energy discharge outstripped any kaiju passage by a factor of a thousand.

And just as quickly, it dwindled away to nothing. On the display, the physical structure of the Breach disintegrated, swirling away into random sparks.

“The Breach has collapsed!” an officer shouted.

The LOCCENT erupted in cheers, and tears of exhausted relief. Newt and Gottlieb embraced, and Gottlieb even consented to a high-five. The ranks of techs behind them jumped and shouted. Tendo couldn’t blame them. After Hong Kong, he hadn’t thought they could win either.

But they had.

Herc cut through it all.

“The pods,” he said. “Do we have the pods?”

Tendo looked back at the feed from Gipsy Danger’s subsystems.

“One,” he said. “Just emerging. Full oxygen, occupant vital signs strong and stable…” He paused, waiting, then admitted, “No sign of the second one.”

“Send the choppers,” Herc said.

The Pacific sky was high and blue and visibility was unlimited south of Guam, over the deepest waters on Earth. Super Sikorskys swept in a search pattern over a grid centered on the spot directly above the Breach. One of them heeled over as its pilot spotted an escape pod breaking the surface. It was not much bigger than an ornate coffin, a steel-and-polycarbonate shell containing a Jaeger pilot and a small amount of oxygen, ringed with floats that drove it to the surface… or, in case of an aerial release, acted as shock absorption when the pod fell to earth.

The pod rolled over and settled in the waves, green tracing dye spreading in an irregular patch around it. Its hatch popped open and a plume of vapor escaped as the pressurized dry air inside met the humid Pacific atmosphere.

Mako Mori hoisted herself up onto the top of the pod, rocking with the motion of the waves caused by the pod’s surfacing. She blinked in the sunlight and looked around, scanning the horizon in all directions.

She was alone.

One of the Sikorskys closed on her, approaching low and fast. She looked up at it, then resumed her search of the still seas around her. There was an eerie calm. No wind, no waves, the only sound the small slap of the water on the pod’s hull and the approaching beat of helicopter rotors.

Then she saw the second pod breach and roll over and spill its own canister of dye.

Mako cried out and plunged into the water, swimming toward the second pod. It was scorched and dented. Its hatch had not opened. Under the beat of the approaching Sikorskys she reached the pod and hauled herself up over its floats to the hatch, which had not opened automatically. There were manual latches on the outside and she snapped them open one by one, flinging the hatch open and leaning over to look inside.

Raleigh was there, silent and still.

She leaned in and down, shaking him, slapping his face. Still Raleigh didn’t move. Mako pulled him upright and hugged him, remembering how he had cradled her in the terrible aftermath of their first Drift together.

“No,” she murmured. “No, don’t go.”

It didn’t seem possible, didn’t seem right, that they should have destroyed the Breach and gotten all the way back to the surface. How could they have gotten all this way and Raleigh be dead?

Not when we did the hard part, Mako thought. No.

She held him tighter.

Then Raleigh coughed and opened his eyes.

“You’re squeezing me too hard,” he said softly.

Mako laughed, a short bark of joy and relief. She was crying as she kissed him, as she had wanted to since she first saw him scarred and alone in his room the night he’d arrived at the Shatterdome. He returned the kiss and they held each other tightly, each feeling the other release all the desperation and fear and loss they had felt during the day just past. Had it only been a day?

Raleigh climbed out on top of the pod. One of the helicopters was circling around them, lowering an emergency ladder with a medic dangling on the bottom rung. Around them, a formation of Super Sikorskys hovered, none of their pilots wanting to miss out on the moment when the pilots of Gipsy Danger, disgraced and then redeemed, returned to the sunlit world after destroying the Breach and keeping the kaiju and the Precursors trapped in the dying world they had made.

It was a sunny day. The world was not going to end.

In the LOCCENT, Tendo Choi turned to Herc.

“Sir?”

Herc leaned toward the desktop comm and said, “This is Marshal Hercules Hansen. Stop the clock.”

In the Shatterdome, empty of Jaegers, the great flip clock rattled over to zero. And stopped.

Thanks to Guillermo del Toro and Travis Beacham for giving me so much to work with; to Tomoyuki Tanaka, Ishiro Honda, and the gang at Toho Pictures for all the kaiju that filled my head when I was a kid; to WXON, Channel 20 in Detroit, for the Thriller Double Feature where I saw so many of those Toho movies, as well as Johnny Sokko and His Flying Robot (or was that Channel 50?); and to Lindsay, Ian, Emma, and Avi for being my own family of monsters.

ALEX IRVINEis the author of many tie-ins to popular franchises including the Transformers novels Transformers: Exodus and Transformers: Exiles, and the Iron Man novels Iron Man 2 and Iron Man: Virus. His first novel won the Crawford Award for Best New Writer. He has also won awards from Locus Magazine and The International Horror Guild and was a finalist for the Campbell Award for Best New Writer.