The Shatterdome kitchen was empty at this hour, maybe two thousand square feet of stainless steel and tile floors. Jake found the restricted Rangers-only part of the fridge, and sure enough there were a few beers in there. Probably the number was mandated by PPDC. There would be a report and a document somewhere in a file articulating the reasons why there should be x number of beers in that fridge, no more and no less.
It wasn’t until Nate Lambert walked in that Jake considered the fact that he was in flip-flops and his bathrobe. Maybe that was a little casual for the Shatterdome public spaces, but Jake was still adhering to the dress code of his ruined Malibu mansion. You had to bring yourself wherever you went, and this was Jake Pentecost, sipping a beer and rooting around in the freezer for ice cream while he considered whether his job was worth doing.
“Classy,” Lambert commented.
Jake stood up from peering into the freezer and saw who it was. “Jules loves it,” he said. “Told me it’s nice to finally have someone with style around here.”
He opened the fridge and tossed one of the beers to Lambert, who nodded his thanks. “Ice cream’s in the bottom left drawer, behind the frozen burgers.”
Of course it is, Jake thought. He found it and pulled it out, a gallon of precious frozen sweetness. “Cheers,” he said, and started to gather all the supplies he would need for a sundae.
Lambert sipped the beer for a while, and then said what was on his mind. “So one more time around to prove Daddy wrong?”
Jake was feeling pretty good at the moment, so he didn’t take the bait. “Nah, I just came back to see if your chin implant ever settled in.”
He saw a muscle jump in Nate’s jaw… and then saw his former partner crack a smile. “Looks good, doesn’t it?”
“Very commanding,” Jake said with a smile of his own. “The kids must love it.”
It felt good to be comfortable around Nate. Jake didn’t want the tension. Not with someone who had once been a close friend.
Lambert’s smile faded but didn’t completely disappear. “They look up to us, man,” he said. “We need to set an example. Show ’em how to work together.”
Jake loudly sprayed whipped cream. Then he set the can down on the table and said, “The war ended ten years ago.”
Lambert shook his head. “You have to understand your enemy’s objective to know you’ve defeated them. We still don’t.”
Jake pretended to think hard, then said, “I’m guessing it had something to do with sending giant monsters to kick the crap out of us.”
“The Precursors wouldn’t send Kaiju to flatten a few cities if they were trying to wipe us all out,” Lambert said. “That’s not a plan, genius.”
Like a lot of things Nate said, this sounded right but didn’t match Jake’s reality. But he wasn’t going to argue about it. He was going to try to do what he had to do to get by, and if that meant he had to go along with whatever Nate Lambert said, well, it was better than being in jail or having Sonny shoot him.
“Look, I got no beef with you, Nate,” he said. “I’m here because you and your squint was a better deal than some big hairy dude in a tiny little cell.”
“I’m touched,” Nate said.
Jake wasn’t done. “Cadets got what, couple of months before they graduate?”
“Six,” Lambert corrected.
“Six?” This was longer than Jake had guessed, or planned for. “Okay. Six. Tell you what. From now on, whenever you say something soldiery to the kids, I’ll nod all like, ‘Yeah, what he said,’ and before you know it they get to be pilots and I get to go back to my life.”
If he’d been trying to get under Lambert’s skin, it didn’t work. “May happen sooner than you think,” Nate said evenly.
“How’s that?”
“Big dog and pony show tomorrow. Shao Industries is pushing some kind of new Drone tech. Could make all us pilots obsolete.”
Jake considered this. No pilots meant no cadets, which meant no need for trainers, which meant no need for Jake Pentecost to be stuck in a Shatterdome when he could be living it up in California. Was it possible? Amara seemed to think Shao Liwen could do anything. Maybe she could. Either way, the Breach had been sealed for ten years and the world was starting to wonder why it spent so much money keeping the Jaeger program alive. Sooner or later, bureaucrats would win out over soldiers, the way they always did.
“Well,” Jake said slowly, “that sounds like my get-out-of-jail-free card.”
Nate could tell what was going on. He didn’t react to Jake’s attempts to provoke him, and just sauntered toward the door. But as he went, he said, “Front all you want, Pentecost, but you know you could’ve been great if you’d stuck around.”
“I didn’t bail. I was kicked out.”
“And whose fault was that?” Nate didn’t wait for Jake to answer. He knocked back the rest of his beer and tossed the can in a recycling bin on his way out.
Then Jake was alone again in the kitchen, staring at his sundae. Nate got to him a little sometimes. They had always taken shots at each other, out of a natural rivalry. Sometimes it spilled over into something a little more intense. Sometimes, Jake had to admit, he overreacted. A little. Maybe. Now…
Well, Jake wasn’t sure how to feel about it. But one thing hadn’t changed since the last time he was inside a Shatterdome.
He was real, real sick of people telling him what he could
