“Nate! C’mon, stay with me, brother—” He could see Lambert struggling, and feel it in the Drift. Nate’s eyes fluttered closed and Jake felt his presence disappear from the Drift.
“Warning,” an AI voice said. “Neural handshake lost.”
Jake suddenly felt the whole neural load of piloting Gipsy Avenger. He staggered, and the Jaeger did, too. The Mega-Kaiju dug its claws into Gipsy’s armor. Jake tried to fight back, but he couldn’t break the Mega-Kaiju’s grip. He heard blood roaring in his ears and his mind started to fragment. Old memories that he had shared in the Drift came back, superimposing themselves on the present moment. He heard his father’s voice, the click of Sonny’s gun; when he looked out through Gipsy Avenger’s shattered face shield he saw Mako, over and over, slipping away on the other side of a window, just beyond his grasp. When she fell away he saw her younger, grinning, her face beaded with sweat and her hands wrapped around the staff she’d just used to flip Jake onto his back. He felt Gipsy Avenger moving around him. The maglev field flickered and caught him again. He blinked, trying to remember where he ended and Gipsy Avenger began. You’ll never be a pilot, his father said. Rage flooded through him, snapping him back into focus. Through the cognitive haze of trying to handle Gipsy Avenger on his own, he saw the world tip sideways as the Mega-Kaiju threw Gipsy out of its way. Gipsy Avenger hit the ground hard enough that Jake blacked out for a moment. The next thing he saw was the Mega-Kaiju loping away through the outer reaches of Tokyo, heading for Mount Fuji and the end of the world.
34
JaegerWatch:
DID YOU SEE THAT!?!?!!?!?!?
If you do not have the drone feed that I have, bro and sis and cuz, I pity you, because the things I am seeing from Tokyo defy the imagination. I am seeing four Jaegers take on three Kaiju… then the three Kaiju get run over by an insane horde of tiny little robot monster things that, what, like chew them all up and turn them all into one giant MEGA-KAIJU and it’s like nothing I’ve ever seen.
I have to remind myself people are dead, and I’m posting this online from a safe place like a thousand miles from the nearest place where a Kaiju ever appeared.
But that giant Kaiju was something. Is it still there? The drone feed from Tokyo cut out and I haven’t been able to find another one. Most of the city’s evacuated, and whoever that brave soul was who stuck around long enough to fly a drone out into the middle of a fight between Jaegers and Kaiju, I salute you.
Give me more.
But don’t forget that these are real people out there. I try not to forget that. It’s easy when you only see them on a screen, but they’re real. You only ever think of them because they’re inside giant machines, but they’re real.
And they save the world for us. I’m going to try to remember that more. You too, okay?
“Yes!” Newt cheered. “Get up from that, you pile of junk!”
All of the Jaegers were down. The Ripper experiment had paid off perfectly, forcing the Jaegers into close combat where they were vulnerable to the Mega-Kaiju’s superior physical force. Now the Mega-Kaiju was passing close by the rooftop where Newt had watched the whole battle unfold. He fell silent as the looming bulk of the Kaiju drew close. The rooftop was about level with its head. The Mega-Kaiju looked over toward him, a deep rumble coming from its throat. Newt watched it observing him, and he had the fleeting thought that it would be one world-class irony if it killed him on its way to end the human race.
The Kaiju’s head swung closer, and it paused on its way. It was close enough that Newt could see the damage inflicted by the Jaegers: burns, open slashes through its limbs, layers of its dermal armor sheared away. Blood ran down its flanks and dripped from its tail, leaving a trail of sizzling spots on the street. The monstrous muzzle was close enough to touch, its twenty-foot teeth towering over Newt as it inhaled his scent. It lingered for another moment, then turned away and resumed its steady progress toward Mount Fuji.
Newt blew out a long sigh. Then he chuckled. There had never been anything to worry about. And he hadn’t really been worried after all. “Bye!” he called after it.
* * *
In the Moyulan War Room, Gottlieb thought furiously. If their last Jaeger was out of commission, their only possible option was Shao Liwen’s little basement project. “Liwen!” he called into the comm. “Is there anything you can do to help?”
“I need more time!” she snapped.
“We don’t have any.” The Mega-Kaiju was picking up speed as it skirted the foothills around Mount Tanzawa and emerged into the wide plain surrounding Mount Fuji. “If hostile reaches Mount Fuji—”
Jake Pentecost’s voice crackled over the comm. “Gipsy to Command! Lambert’s down.”
Gottlieb eyeballed calculations he’d been running since the three Kaiju appeared and he was able to get good data on them. The results were not good. He told Pentecost even though there wasn’t anything Pentecost could do about it. “Command to Gipsy. If my calculations are right, the amount of blood in that Cat-Five is just enough to ignite the Ring of Fire.”
* * *
Jake registered this. Lambert was out, and Gipsy Avenger was the only Jaeger left even able to stand. “Understood,” he said. “Not gonna let that happen.”
He was going to stop the Mega-Kaiju. Or die trying. Better to go out via a stroke than sit there watching as the Mega-Kaiju climbed Fuji-san and ended the world.
“Jake, you can’t operate Gipsy without a copilot—” Gottlieb insisted.
But unless Gottlieb had another idea, that was exactly what Jake planned to do. He still felt the Drift, and could still link
