“He’s hurt!” Jake crowed.
Lambert leaned into a charge. “Go for his power core!”
Obsidian Fury parried the first blows of the chain sword, and Jake got a little too eager. He extended Gipsy Avenger’s arm in a thrust meant to destroy the exposed power core, but Obsidian Fury was still fast. It dodged to one side and the chain sword drove into its thigh. Planting its other leg, Obsidian Fury slashed a plasma saw down and amputated their chain sword.
The sudden loss of mass changed Gipsy’s center of gravity and sent her tumbling. Jake and Lambert barely got her up and turned around before Obsidian Fury came at them again with the saws. Gipsy Avenger caught Obsidian Fury’s wrists, but the plasma saws gouged into the side of Gipsy’s head.
The Conn-Pod shook and small electrical fires filled it with smoke. Jake and Lambert stopped the saws’ progress, grunting with the effort and slowly… painfully… beginning to push them back.
If they hadn’t already damaged Obsidian Fury, it would never have worked. But they had, and Obsidian Fury gave way, inch by inch, until Gipsy Avenger had twisted the saws away from her head. Jake and Lambert felt the rogue Jaeger’s balance shift, and they seized the advantage, torquing Obsidian Fury’s arms around and jamming its plasma saws straight into its own chest.
The energy discharge flared through Obsidian Fury as Gipsy followed up with a shattering head-butt straight into its face. They beat the rogue Jaeger down, batting aside its weakening defenses. Still dangerous, Obsidian Fury dragged the saws free and almost caught Gipsy with a desperate strike—but as Gipsy ducked the blow, Jake and Lambert reached out and yanked the broken chain sword out of Obsidian Fury’s leg. In the same motion, they reared up and drove the blade into Obsidian Fury’s neck. With one hand on the sword, Gipsy Avenger drove Obsidian Fury back. Her other hand punched into the Jaeger’s torso and tore out the power core.
The surge from the destabilized core burned through Obsidian Fury, frying its systems. Energy arcs flared out from its head and torso as its limbs spasmed out… and then went limp. Obsidian Fury crumpled to the ground. The ice floe rocked gently and stabilized.
Gipsy Avenger stood over the downed Jaeger and tossed away the smoking power core. Steam hissed away from the spot where it landed on the ice. Time to see who had done all this, Jake thought. Time to meet the people who killed his sister.
He reached down, and Gipsy Avenger lifted Obsidian Fury’s faceplate off.
Steam rose from the interior of the Conn-Pod as the warm air inside came into contact with the freezing Arctic air outside. As it cleared, Jake was stunned by what he saw. “What the hell is that…?”
There were no red-suited Kaiju cultists inside, no rogue mercenaries in pseudo-military rip-offs of the PPDC drivesuit… in fact no humans at all.
The interior of Obsidian Fury’s Conn-Pod was unlike anything Jake had ever seen. Where an ordinary Jaeger had an open, hemispherical space with the Drift cradle and consoles in the center and critical sensor equipment surrounding it, the inside of Obsidian Fury’s head was almost entirely filled by a pulsing mass of Kaiju brain tissue. Nerve tendrils webbed out by the hundred, woven into electronics with no human interface to be seen. The Kaiju brain was clearly damaged by the surge of energy from the failure of Obsidian Fury’s data core. Parts of it were scorched and inert. Black streaks marked the interior of the Conn-Pod where circuitry had overloaded and loose conduits dangled near nerve endings that hung in blackened curls from the wounded part of the Kaiju’s brain. The scene was beyond nightmarish, a perversion of everything the Jaegers stood for. Jake reeled with the implications of it. Someone, somewhere, had kept a Kaiju brain and redesigned a Jaeger from the ground up to use it.
As they watched, astonished and revolted, the brain tissue began to convulse and seep both Kaiju blood and other unidentifiable fluids. A minute later it was dead and cooling, leaving Jake frustrated and at the same time even more determined. He had eliminated the tool used to kill Mako, yet he hadn’t really found her killer.
But he would.
17
INVENTORY REPORT: KNOWN SAMPLES OF KAIJU BRAIN TISSUE
THIS REPORT COMPILES ALL KNOWN KAIJU BRAINS HELD BY PPDC PERSONNEL OR AFFILIATED CIVILIAN RESEARCH PROGRAMS. THE FOLLOWING INSTITUTIONS POSSESS LICENSED SAMPLES:
[LIST REDACTED]
At the request of Marshal Quan, urgent contact was initiated with all parties on this list to confirm the status of their samples. All parties reported their samples were present and intact. Further, all parties confirmed that they were not currently engaged in any effort to replicate existing tissue samples or grow new tissue. Parties provided evidence in the form of mass-spectrometer scans and visual documentation, as well as documentation of all experiments performed on individual Kaiju brains held. Inventory of Kaiju brain tissue was confirmed at one hundred percent, with no losses and no initial evidence of misuse or violation of research regulations.
Conclusion: Obsidian Fury brain tissue did not originate with any PPDC facility or affiliated civilian research program. Other possible origins include black-market sellers. PPDC Intelligence Division is pursuing this possibility.
Technician K. McKinney, Moyulan Shatterdome
They debriefed on the move from the Jaeger bay toward K-Science, Jake walking down long maintenance corridors alongside a heavy forklift with Lambert and Quan. The J-Tech driving the forklift looked sick from the smell. Obsidian Fury was at that moment being lowered onto the tarmac outside the Shatterdome—not far from where Jake and Amara had first disembarked from the PPDC transport. Was that only a few days ago? Life comes at you fast, Jake thought. He had already brought Quan up to date in broad strokes, talking about the visual on the factory, his realization that they couldn’t stand and fight with Obsidian
