* * *
Like most of the other great cities ringing the coasts of the Pacific Ocean, Sydney had been hit hard during the Kaiju War. But unlike, say, Southern California, Sydney had been largely rebuilt because it was the home of the Pan Pacific Defense Corps Council. Individual Marshals and other high-ranking officers exercised control over what their Shatterdomes did, and how their resources were deployed in their specified coastal territories. Here in Sydney, the entire organization chose its directions and presented a unified front to the world. The Council headquarters loomed, gleaming and new, at the center of the city, visible from anywhere in the harbor. Massive anti-Kaiju cannon emplacements ringed the harbor and the outer coastline, from Middle Head all the way into Potts Point, in the shadow of the rebuilt harbor bridges. A tighter ring of cannons protected the Council Building complex itself. Sydney was a symbolic place now, the nerve center of the PPDC and the Jaeger defense forces—and more broadly, the symbol of international cooperation that had defeated the Kaiju invaders and thrown the Precursors back into their Anteverse.
Around the Council Building, the streets were swarmed with crowds of demonstrators and curious onlookers. Every group on Planet Earth, from Jaeger fan clubs to the Kaiju-worshipping cults, had staked out a spot in the plaza surrounding the Council Building. A cluster of Kaiju-worshipping monks, solemn and imposing in their robes, stood praying in the center of a circle formed by other Kaiju zealots. They shouted and waved signs, preaching the cult gospel that the Kaiju had been sent by God to purge humanity of its sins.
Jake caught all this on a feed from inside Gipsy Avenger as a pair of Jumphawks ferried them across the harbor toward the Council Building. Scattered fights were breaking out between knots of demonstrators, and PPDC security had its hands full keeping a lid on the situation.
As Gipsy Avenger came into view, many of the hostile demonstrators stopped tangling with each other and turned their attention to the Jaeger. Fans cheered and chanted slogans. Some of them tried to rip signs out of the hands of the Kaiju worshippers, and security forces tried to keep them apart without escalating the situation. It was a powder keg, waiting for someone to really lose his temper and light the fuse.
The Kaiju cults had gotten a lot bigger since the beginning of the Kaiju War. Their doctrine was that any resistance to the Kaiju was an affront to God, and therefore the Pan Pacific Defense Corps was an abomination. Crazy times bred crazy people, was Jake’s opinion on the topic. Anyone who thought the Kaiju were divine had a real strange idea about God. He’d heard all the sermons—you couldn’t avoid them in any of the coastal ruins. The cults sent preachers out looking for converts among the poor and displaced, and sometimes it seemed like they were on every street corner in California. You could argue with them, reason with them, it didn’t matter. The best thing to do was ignore them.
And in any case, Jake had more important things on his mind right now. He was in a Drift cradle for the first time in years, paired with Nate Lambert, who radiated hostility. In the internal feed from the LOCCENT back in the Moyulan Shatterdome, Marshal Quan kept checking with techs to make sure he and Lambert were maintaining a steady neural handshake. It didn’t feel all that steady to Jake, but it was holding. They were both trying to be professional about a situation that neither of them liked.
“All you have to do is stand there and look pretty,” Quan said over the comm. “Stay focused and try not to fall over.”
“Roger that, sir,” Lambert said—but Jake could hear him thinking that they would be lucky if Jake didn’t screw things up. That made Jake even more nervous than he already was at being dropped into a Jaeger without any prep after years of trying to forget he’d ever been a Ranger.
“Go for drop in three… two… one… drop!” Quan’s command echoed in their ears, and the Jumphawks released the cables holding Gipsy Avenger. The Jaeger dropped from an altitude of less than two hundred feet, landing with a thunderous boom on the reinforced drop pad near the Council Building. The shockwave of the impact raised a cloud of dust that billowed over the crowd—and helped obscure the fact that Gipsy nearly lost her balance on landing.
In the Conn-Pod, Lambert shot Jake a look. Jake tried to play it off. “It’s all coming back. Relax.”
The closer Kaiju worshippers, outraged at the presence of a Jaeger, started throwing bottles and trash at Gipsy’s legs. PPDC security waded in and started making arrests as the situation threatened to get out of hand.
“Got some fans, huh?” Jake commented.
“Kaiju nuts are always stirring it up,” Lambert said dismissively. “And hey—we’re in each other’s heads, so I’d appreciate it if you’d stop thinking about Jules. Not gonna happen.”
“How about you stop thinking about kicking my ass,” Jake shot back. “Not gonna happen either.”
Mostly Jake was thinking about handling the Jaeger gear that had changed and updated since his last time in a Conn-Pod. Back then, they had stood on an actual floor, with their drivesuit boots locked into fixtures and physical instrument podiums in front of them.
But now the Conn-Pod and the operating system were largely holographic and virtual. Each Ranger locked boot soles onto a glowing rectangle on the floor. Then, once the Jaeger’s operating AI had measured their initial location so it could interpret motions, the floor dropped away, leaving them suspended in a maglev field that also held the Drift cradles. Every motion within the field accompanied by a direct thought from the Ranger caused an immediate response, with less lag and more powerful signal transmissions than previous versions of Jaeger operating systems had allowed. It was a more
