Why?
The question preoccupied him long after he’d left the lab. Mako had known she was going to die when the chopper was going down. She wouldn’t have expected Gipsy Avenger to save her. Actually, trying to save her had been a stupid idea, Jake thought. It was never going to work, and it took Gipsy away from the main objective: stopping Obsidian Fury. The rogue Jaeger had slunk away into the ocean when it saw reinforcements coming, but Jake couldn’t help but think he might have been able to find a hole in its technique if they’d been able to analyze it a little longer. Gipsy had taken a beating, that was for sure. Techs were working her over in the Shatterdome right now. But Jake had learned a long time ago that sometimes you had to take a punch to give one… so you had to make sure your punches counted when you got the chance to throw them.
Now he was spoiling for the chance to meet Obsidian Fury again and land that final punch.
But the truth was, they’d never seen anything like that speed and fluidity in a Jaeger. There had been other rogue Jaegers, sure. People built them once in a while, with discarded tech and cobbled-together armor. Jake could remember one in Serbia, and he thought he’d heard Lambert mention others in Uzbekistan and somewhere in South America, too. It was rare but not unheard of. Oh, and there was also Scrapper. It was a lot smaller than your average Jaeger, but Amara had good instinct. She had built something impressive, considering the obstacles.
Drifting with Amara had helped Jake understand her. A gearhead, into all things with engines as a kid—but was that her, or was that because her dad was into that stuff and she did whatever he did?
That was a question Jake had often asked himself about the Jaeger Corps. Had he gone into it because he believed in it, or because his father was Stacker Pentecost?
He didn’t have the answer right then, and maybe it didn’t matter. However you got yourself into a place in life, you were there, and had to deal with it as it was. Earlier that day, when he’d watched the Drone presentation, Jake had been ready to walk away from the Jaeger service, put the whole Pan Pacific Defense Corps in his rear-view mirror. Then he’d felt the tug of the Drift, and realized how much it meant to him to be in a Conn-Pod again… and then came the fight against Obsidian Fury, and Mako…
He wasn’t going to leave now. He’d come close, but it wasn’t going to happen. This was as close as Jake Pentecost would ever get to believing in destiny. He was going to get back into Gipsy Avenger, and he was going to find Obsidian Fury, and put that evil rogue down. The day was coming—soon—when he would see the pilots coming out of Obsidian Fury’s Conn-Pod, defeated, and he would know he had begun to answer for Mako’s death.
Until then, he would look at the drawing his sister had left for him, and he would try to understand.
14
MEMO
PRIVATE TO SHAO LIWEN
Pursuant to your orders we have undertaken off-hours surveillance of Dr. Newton Geiszler, and a general program of intelligence collection concerning his personal behaviors. Observations:
Dr. Geiszler frequently drinks to excess at bars near his apartment.
The electricity bills at his apartment are much higher than any others in that building or others similar to it in the same district. None of his other expenses are notable apart from a large amount of money spent on expensive wines.
He has not been observed to keep company with any other scientists or engineers employed by Shao Industries’ competitors, or with any Pan Pacific Defense Corps personnel.
He has not been observed to speak about his work with anyone in public, no matter the degree of his intoxication.
He has not been observed in public with a romantic partner despite frequent overheard references to a woman named Alice. Her identity is unknown.
Provisional conclusion: Dr. Geiszler is not a security risk at this time, though continued surveillance is likely warranted and will continue.
—Kang
Newt knew that Shao kept an eye on him when he wasn’t at work. He didn’t especially like it, but he saw why. She didn’t like uncertainty, or surprises, and she didn’t understand Newt. He had lived his life skipping from flash of brilliance to flash of brilliance, suffering through the periods of stagnant frustration in between. She was another kind of genius, taking a particular brilliance and ruthlessly applying it, like it was a kind of math she could use to solve the problem of life. She’d gotten rich, and after joining Shao Industries Newt had, too. They sure paid a lot more than the PPDC. Newt didn’t mind if she had him followed when he hit the bars or went out on the town. That was fine. She could disapprove, make disparaging comments to Chief Kang or whomever else. Newt didn’t care. As long as he was in the lab making the Drones better, Shao would leave him alone.
All this was running through Newt’s mind when he walked into his lab at Shao Industries, late at night after the shocking attack of Obsidian Fury on the PPDC Council Building that day. It was too bad about Mako, he thought. He’d always liked her. He’d seen her develop from a shy, jumpy cadet to the Secretary General of the PPDC, keeping the flame of the old Rangers alive after the rest of them were all gone. Newt hadn’t thought about it that way until just then, but Mako was the last of them. Only she and Raleigh had survived the Breach, and Raleigh had been gone for… well, Newt wasn’t sure, but it was years. He’d
