This opponent was tougher than a practice dummy, though. The punch connected with an echoing boom that blew out nearby windows and sent the hostile Jaeger flying down the broad avenue. It slowed itself down by thrusting the plasma saws out to either side, using them to drag itself to a halt as they gouged through several blocks of office towers. Immediately it had arrested its slide, the other Jaeger unleashed a fresh missile salvo. Some of the missiles hit Gipsy Avenger, but most streaked by and exploded across a large expanse of Sydney’s downtown. Civilians who thought they were safely away from the battle fled anew as the missiles collapsed buildings and parking structures.
One of the missiles hit high on a skyscraper near Mako’s helicopter. The blast wave jolted the chopper, cracking its fuselage windows and sending it into a crazed spiral. Electrical fires sparked to life in the cockpit.
Jake saw Mako’s helicopter dropping, its tail spinning around as it lost control. “She’s going down! We need to move!”
Lambert was right with him. “Activating Gravity Sling!” he called back.
Gipsy Avenger’s right hand reconfigured itself into a force-projecting assembly that could manipulate gravity in its limited cone. The Gravity Sling swept up a cascade of falling cars from a collapsing parking garage, and whipped them in a single mass at the hostile Jaeger. The force of the impact punched it over backward into an uncontrolled tumble.
Before it had even hit the ground, Jake and Lambert had Gipsy sprinting across the distance between them and Mako’s spiraling helicopter. Jake tried to get the gravity sling to redeploy and catch the chopper, but it wasn’t responding after its initial use. “Come on!” he shouted, straining in the Drift cradle, pushing Gipsy Avenger to maximum speed.
He and Lambert leaned forward as one, and Gipsy Avenger dove forward, covering hundreds of yards in the air, hand outstretched to catch the falling helicopter.
Through the Conn-Pod window, Jake saw Mako, frantically tapping something into her data pad. She looked up at their approach, putting a hand flat on the inside of her window as the helicopter scraped off Gipsy Avenger’s fingertips. Jake was screaming, maybe just in his mind, as the chopper spun down at an angle and smashed into the pavement below. It tumbled, shedding broken rotors and pieces of its fuselage, crashing off parked cars and finally rolling to a halt in a smoking ruin.
A moment later Gipsy Avenger smashed down from her desperate leap, the impact bouncing debris up into the air and shattering nearby windows. Glass was still showering down as Jake disengaged himself from the Drift cradle and threw open the hatch on the side of Gipsy Avenger’s head.
“Jake, wait! Jake!” Lambert called after him. But in that moment, Jake didn’t care about the hostile Jaeger, or Sydney, or the PPDC. All he cared about was his sister. He ripped off his helmet and sprinted the stretched-out length of Gipsy Avenger toward the wreckage of the helicopter. He knew what he was going to find. He’d seen the impact, and he knew no human being could have survived it. But he wasn’t going to believe it until he called for his sister and she did not answer.
Far behind him, the rogue Jaeger started to approach Gipsy Avenger… then it paused. Coming in from the north, a formation of Jumphawks was bringing three Jaeger reinforcements. The Jaeger watched them, seeming to assess its odds. Then it turned around, moving fast and low back toward the harbor. By the time the Jumphawks were close enough to drop the reinforcements, it was gone beneath the waters.
11
We who have seen the divine truth celebrate this glorious strike against the heretics of the Pan Pacific Defense Corps and their mechanical forces of darkness. The would-be dictators of the PPDC Council have paid the ultimate price for their heresy, and the power of the Anteverse is on the rise. Sydney chose its fate, failing to learn the lesson of Mutavore when it consented to be the site of the Council citadel.
Our forces have struck a decisive blow against the unbelievers. We rejoice in the destruction of those who would hide the true nature of God and rebel against the Kaiju who are its truest evidence.
We will continue our crusade against the forces of blind humanist arrogance. We call on all humanity to repent of its sins, acknowledge the divine nature of the Kaiju messengers of God, and humbly pray that the Breach will open again, showing us the way to Paradise.
In the name of God and His Kaiju messengers,
We Who Have Seen
Jake had been back at Moyulan for less than an hour, after debriefing on the flight and then sitting through a short after-action follow-up session with Marshal Quan. Then they had let him go, sensing that he needed some time to grapple with his personal loss before he would be able to help them figure out where Obsidian Fury, the rogue Jaeger, had come from… and who might have created it.
He had wandered through the halls, not meeting anyone’s eyes, until he found himself in the so-called Hall of Heroes. A plaque on the wall read IN HONOR OF THOSE WHO GAVE THEIR LIVES IN THE SERVICE OF THEIR WORLD. Beyond it, lining both sides of the corridor, were digital memorials to fallen Rangers. The Becket brothers, Yancy and Raleigh. Chuck Hansen. The Wei Tang triplets. Sasha and Aleksis Kaidanovsky.
Jake was standing in front of the memorial to his father. On the screen, Stacker Pentecost stood in full Marshal dress uniform, looking sternly out at his prodigal son, at last returned to his Ranger duties.
Just past Stacker Pentecost was a new memorial. Jake hadn’t expected there to be one so quickly, but there it was: Mako Mori, Secretary General and former Ranger, in full uniform, beaming out from the screen next to her adoptive father. The floor near Mako’s memorial was piled with flowers and candles, little tokens and handwritten testimonial
