“I just got us out. Get off! Hey!”
They stopped struggling as a huge bogey appeared on Scrapper’s HUD. It wasn’t as fancy as a full-scale Jaeger’s heads-up display, but it was a pretty slick piece of work for a teenager working with scraps. She skidded Scrapper to a halt, throwing Jake to the floor.
“Oh my God,” she said, as they got a visual. Straight in front of them was a huge Mark VI Jaeger, one of the newest in the fleet. Steely gray, with black accents and a blue tinge to its exterior running lights, it looked every bit the part of the law-enforcement Jaeger—which it was. Jake recognized it. So did she. “That’s November Ajax!”
A moment before, Jake had been trying to get her away from the controls, but now there wasn’t time. November Ajax was the PPDC’s designated patrol Jaeger for the whole of the devastated area from Santa Monica down through Long Beach. Occasionally it was called into service to handle social unrest, but the PPDC typically didn’t send November Ajax out unless there had been an attack on a PPDC installation… or a theft of PPDC property. This meant the PPDC had tracked the theft of the plasma capacitor just as Jake had, and decided it warranted a full response. If they were caught, there would be serious consequences. They’d use them as examples to other would-be thieves, and put them away for a long time. “You’re gonna get us nicked!” Jake said, his voice tight. “Keep moving!”
“Pilots of unregistered Jaeger.” The voice boomed from November Ajax’s external speakers, shaking the two of them in Scrapper’s small Conn-Pod. “This is the Pan Pacific Defense Corps. Power down and exit your Conn-Pod.”
The girl raised her hands.
“That’s it?” Jake was disappointed. “You give up way too easy, kid.”
“That’s what they think,” the girl said.
She clenched her fists and smoke canisters shot out of sockets in Scrapper’s arms. Clouds billowed around November Ajax’s legs, hiding Scrapper—who shot between the larger Jaeger’s legs and barreled down the street.
Jake got a grip on one of the cables connecting the Conn-Pod capsule to the counterweights inside Scrapper’s torso. They were there to deaden momentum shifts and prevent the pilot from getting knocked around when Scrapper made sudden movements. A primitive solution, but a workable one—as long as you were in the gyro cradle. Jake wasn’t, so just had to take his lumps and hang on for dear life.
“Hang on!” she yelled as November Ajax turned and caught up to them with one long stride.
“I am hanging on!”
“Hang tighter!” She was working her command array, and she punched a final command.
The next thing Jake knew, he was upside down. Then right side up again, then rolling over and over and bouncing hard off the inside wall of the Conn-Pod.
Scrapper had apparently curled into a ball and was rolling in tight figure eights around November Ajax’s feet. The girl stayed upright and level the whole time—Jake had to hand it to her, she’d done the cradle design just right—but Jake slammed around until he got himself jammed into one of the counterweight alcoves. It wasn’t a dignified solution, but it would keep him from getting knocked out or breaking an arm while they escaped November Ajax.
If they escaped November Ajax.
November Ajax swiped down at Scrapper, but the girl had seen it coming. She ducked her body to one side and Scrapper careened that way, crashing off palm trees and over burned-out cars. She rolled Scrapper fast up a high pile of rubble and it came crashing down through the wall of a partially collapsed building.
For a moment everything was silent except the sound of debris shifting around them. Jake started to get himself back together now that he knew which way was up again.
“See?” the girl said triumphantly. “I just out-piloted November Ajax.”
Jake shook his head. “You didn’t.”
“Did,” she insisted.
With a huge rumble, November Ajax tore away one wall of the building Scrapper was hiding in.
“Didn’t,” Jake said.
The girl froze. He could see she wasn’t sure what to do next. “Okay. What do you got? And I’m not getting out.”
This was a point where it paid to have plans go wrong all the time, Jake thought. It meant you were always ready to come up with a new one on the fly. He glanced around the Conn-Pod, figuring there must be something in there he could use. To do what, he didn’t know—but Jake was an optimist, at least when it came to his ability to get out of tight situations. He’d find something.
There.
He pointed at a pair of ion cells set into the Conn-Pod’s wall. “One of these ion cells redundant?”
The girl frowned. “No.”
Jake figured Scrapper could run for a little while without it. Ion cells usually weren’t mission-critical, since they were normally wired to different yields than the plasma capacitors that powered the mainframe and systems. They handled things like reserve power, backup systems.
In other words, things you didn’t really worry about when November Ajax was chasing you down.
He primed the subroutine that would eject one of the ion cells. The eject chute was on the outer hull. Cells were typically only ejected when their power reserves were exhausted. There was a reason for that, as November Ajax’s pilots were about to find out.
“Is now,” he said. “Get us close to Ajax’s head. Go!”
She was steamed, but she did it. The girl gunned Scrapper forward and climbed straight up November Ajax’s arm, which was maybe three times as long as Scrapper was tall. The minute they got level with the Jaeger’s head, Jake hit the eject button. “Go! Go!” he shouted.
Scrapper leaped away from November Ajax. Jake was not looking forward to the two-hundred-foot drop, but the girl piloting Scrapper was ahead of him. She aimed for the roof of a building across the street. It looked like it might once have been a bank.
Behind them, the ion cell clanged off November Ajax’s head and ruptured, releasing a
