“Malikova!” Lambert snapped. “Get Namani squared away and prepped for training.”
She didn’t look happy. “Yes, sir.”
“As you were,” Lambert said with a final nod. He turned to go. Jake followed, looking over the cadets one last time. He didn’t want to be here, and he didn’t care if it showed on his face. He would do the job because it was keeping him out of jail, but Jake would be damned if he was going to join in with all the cheerleading about Rangers saving the world. The Breach was closed. They were all just marking time.
* * *
When the door closed and Amara was alone with her new—colleagues? Was that the right word?—the first of them to speak was Ryoichi. “Pentecost! We’re gonna be trained by a Pentecost!”
“So?” Vik was apparently determined not to be impressed by anything. “Not like he was the one who died helping close the Breach.”
She went back to troubleshooting her practice helmet. Once she had the visor off and the contact points exposed, she started tracing each of them to the bundle where the cranial contacts transmitted brain signals to the Drift cradle. They looked all right on visual inspection, but something was obviously wrong, so she started touching each one with a small circuit tester. Amara walked up to her and stood awkwardly, waiting for Vik to look up. When she didn’t, Amara said, “Uh… hey, so where do I…”
Vik still didn’t look up. She hadn’t found a bad contact, so now she was opening up the housing on the bundle to see if there was a frayed or crossed wire there. “Heard you built your own little Jaeger.”
“Yeah,” Amara said, brightening. “Uh, Scrapper.” She was paying attention to what Vik was doing, and it got her thinking about how she’d figured out how to construct a helmet interface. “I operated her, too. With this solo rig I—”
She was pointing at something in the bundle of wires when Vik stood and interrupted her. “You want to put junk together, be a mechanic. Moyulan is for pilots.” Without another word, Vik moved off toward the far end of the barracks.
Amara stood there, not knowing what to do. Wasn’t this the person Ranger Lambert had told to help her get settled? She had to train tomorrow! She didn’t even know what the training would be, where her cadet gear was, where she was going to sleep…
“Come on, I got you,” another cadet said. He picked up her duffel bag and led her toward another part of the barracks.
“Thanks,” Amara said. “Um…?”
“Jinhai. Ou-Yang Jinhai.”
“Ou-Yang? Like the pilots from the war, Ming-hau and Suyin?” Amara was starting to feel like she was the only person in the Moyulan Shatterdome who didn’t have a connection to a famous Ranger.
“I just call ’em Mom and Dad,” Jinhai said with a grin. “So you and Vik are already buddies, huh?”
“Vik?”
“Short for Viktoriya,” another cadet said. He’d been sparring when they walked in. Amara hadn’t caught his name. “But you don’t want to call her that.”
“What’s her problem?” Amara asked. She was starting to get her feet under her and see which of the other cadets were going to be cool.
“Took her three shots to pass the entrance test,” the other fighter said. “I’m Renata. This is Suresh.”
“Don’t think she likes how you landed here,” Jinhai said, talking about Vik again.
“Not my fault,” Amara said. “Recruiters never come around back home.”
“Heard you were from the coast,” Jinhai said. “Why didn’t your folks move inland, like everyone else? They poor or something?”
“They didn’t make it,” Amara answered quietly. “When Santa Monica got hit.”
The other cadets had moved on. It was just her and Jinhai. He saw it hurt her to talk about her parents. “Vik lost hers, too,” he said. “In the Tomari attack. Hey, know any Russian?”
Amara shook her head.
“I’ll teach you some. Calms her down. Let’s stow your gear and get you a uni.”
They moved off together, and Amara was already feeling more at home. Maybe this was going to work out after all. She had Scrapper, she had a chance to prove herself… maybe she would even have a friend.
6
FINAL COUNCIL DEBATE ON DRONE PROGRAM
WIRE SERVICE REPORTS
The Pan Pacific Defense Corps’ governing council will take up the question of Shao Industries’ Drone proposal at its next meeting, PPDC spokesperson Edwina Oglethorpe announced today.
The meeting, to take place at the main Council headquarters in Sydney, will be a highly symbolic moment in the organization’s history. Sydney was the site of a main battle during the Kaiju War, during which Jaegers proved capable of stopping a Kaiju when all other defensive measures—notably the city’s much-heralded anti-Kaiju wall—failed.
Council observers seem divided on the question of whether the Council will approve Shao’s plan. Some Councilors are said to be concerned that the Drone program puts too much responsibility for PPDC Jaeger readiness in the hands of a single company. These security concerns are countered by other perspectives arguing that Shao Industries’ security is the equal of the PPDC’s, and the needs of the PPDC would be better met by a cheaper, lower-maintenance Drone fleet.
Sydney authorities are bracing for massive demonstrations both for and against the program. Much of downtown Sydney in the area of the Council building will be closed off from ordinary pedestrian and vehicle traffic.
This story will be updated.
Jake went into his quarters and found them just like he remembered. Everything utilitarian; the bunk over the desk, the small bathroom, the even smaller closet.
On the outside of the closet hung a Ranger uniform. The name badge said PENTECOST. Jake reached out and felt the material of it, also feeling the weight of a past he wasn’t proud of—a legacy he couldn’t escape—and now maybe a second chance, a future he wasn’t sure he deserved.
But he couldn’t escape it. Not the weight of that name, the example of that sacrifice. Who could?
And who could ever hope to live up to it?
* * *
Jake wanted to give Amara a
