At Shao Industries, Gottlieb eyed the blinking circles that indicated the Kaiju. They were already on the move!
Jules hustled through the devastation at Jaeger Bay. Techs assessed damage while medics tended to the wounded, including Meilin. Jake and Nate helped Amara, Jinhai, and Vik lift the hunk of concrete that was pinning down Tahima. Jules rushed over.
“Medic!” screamed Jules.
A medic dashed to Tahima’s side.
Nate looked at Jules. “What do you got?”
“Reports are still coming in, but drones took out Jaegers and Shatterdomes across the Rim,” said Jules.
“How many Jaegers we have here?” asked Jake.
“Operational? Gipsy Avenger. Barely.”
“That’s it?” asked Nate.
“Have to get more up and running or it’s gonna be a short fight,” said Jake.
“Even if we can, all our other pilots are—” said Jules.
“One disaster at a time. Let’s focus on those Jaegers,” said Nate.
Jake looked at Amara. “Think you can help with the repairs?”
“Me? Thought I was kicked out,” she said.
“I’m kicking you back in. Nobody has more experience turning junk into Jaegers,” said Jake. Then he looked at Nate. “You good with that?”
Nate eyed Amara and grinned in support. He knew how valuable she was to the corps. “Outstanding,” said Nate.
Amara felt a rush of strength from the rangers’ support. Then Jinhai interrupted. “We got incoming!” he said, pointing at the tarmac.
The group rushed to the tarmac to see a small army of high-tech aircrafts land. The Shao Industries logo was written across them. A beaming Gottlieb leapt out with Shao Liwen right behind him. Chief Kang and his men followed. They were all battered and bruised from their run-in with Newt.
“I brought some help!” said Gottlieb.
An army of Shao Industries technicians and equipment poured out from the V-Dragons. Jake grinned, relieved to see backup. The group headed to the war room.
There, they gathered around a holo screen, tracking the destructive path of the three Kaiju.
“Hakuja. Shrikethorn. And the big fellow, Raijin. I took the liberty of assigning designations,” said Gottlieb.
“Yeah, great names. Sound like real jerks,” said Jake.
“Shrikethorn and Raijin are moving away from the cities, toward the ocean,” said Nate.
“Maybe they’re trying to link up with Hakuja in the East China Sea,” said Shao.
“Newt would know what they’re up to, if we could get it out of him,” said Jake.
“Have to find him first,” said Nate.
Shao’s eyes darkened at the mention of the man who betrayed her—and all of humanity.
“He escaped in a Shao V-Dragon,” she said. “My men are trying to track him, but he disabled the transponder.”
“Then that’s off the table. Any Jaegers closer to those Kaiju than us?” asked Jake.
“What was left from the Chin-do and Sakhalinsk ’domes tried to intercept. Emphasis on tried,” said Gottlieb.
“There’s gotta be something there. Something in the East China Sea,” said Nate.
Jake tensed as he realized what was happening. “Maybe that’s not where they’re headed. Pull up a map of Kaiju movement from the war,” he said to Gottlieb.
“You know something we don’t?” asked Nate.
“You said you have to understand your enemy’s objective to know you’ve beaten them,” said Jake. A map displaying Kaiju incursions from the war appeared. “What if the Kaiju weren’t blindly attacking our cities during the war?” Jake worked the screen, extrapolating where the Kaiju would have gone if they hadn’t been stopped. “What if we were just in their way?”
The extrapolation lines intersected at a single point!
“Mount Fuji, Japan,” said Nate.
Gottlieb extrapolated the lines for the three Kaiju out there: Hakuja, Shrikethorn, and Raijin. Their paths also intersected at the same coordinates.
“Mount Fuji. But why?” asked Shao.
Gottlieb stiffened in horror, suddenly understanding. “Rare earth elements. Mount Fuji is a volcano rich in rare earth elements. Kaiju blood reacts violently with them. It’s the basis of my thruster fuel experiments.”
“That sounds bad. That’s bad, right?” asked Nate.
“Very. Mount Fuji is active. A geological pressure point,” said Shao.
Gottlieb worked the holo screen. “Based on the blood to mass ratio of the Kaiju . . . the reaction would cause a cascade event, igniting the Ring of Fire around the Pacific Rim.”
Graphics showed all the volcanoes compromising the Pacific Rim’s Ring of Fire erupting in succession. A massive cloud spread over the entire earth.
“Billions of tons of toxic gas and ash will spew into the atmosphere, wiping out all life,” said Gottlieb, swallowing hard.
“And finish terraforming Earth for the Precursors,” said Shao.
“This doesn’t make any sense. Why not just open a breach right over Fuji and drop the Kaiju in?” asked Nate.
“Or send one so big nothing could stop it?” asked Jake.
“From the data we recovered from Dr. Geiszler’s files, the Precursors can only penetrate dimensional ‘soft spots’ between universes. Every location the drones chose corresponded to one of these,” said Shao.
“And a Category V is theoretically the largest Kaiju they could send through, since the energy it takes to widen a breach exponentially quadruples—” said Gottlieb.
“Yeah, science is our friend, we get it,” said Jake.
“We can’t let them reach Mount Fuji,” said Nate.
“I’ll check with Jules, see where we are with the Jaeger repairs,” said Jake.
“Even if you had a hundred, there’s no way to intercept in time. The drones destroyed your Jumphawks, and my V-Dragons aren’t built to carry that kind of load,” said Shao.
“What about your thruster pods?” Nate asked Gottlieb.
“They’re not ready,” said Gottlieb.
“Can they be?” asked Shao.
“In theory, maybe, with your help,” said Gottlieb.
“What does that mean, in theory?” asked Jake.
Gottlieb straightened with determination. “Today it means yes.”
A huge carrier truck hauled a gigantic container of Kaiju blood from a bay across from where the Jaegers were housed. Gottlieb oversaw the transfer.
Jules directed an enormous crane as it lifted Titan Redeemer’s mace arm into the air to be used as parts to repair damaged Jaegers.
Inside Bracer Phoenix’s head, Amara and Jinhai wrestled to get Bracer’s inner “ear” mechanism back in place. It almost tumbled, but Vik rushed in and helped them secure it. Jinhai worked an impact wrench to bolt the piece in place as Amara exited through
