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  Pentecost heard him out, but he wasn’t quite ready to acquiesce in this Hansen rush to judgment. They didn’t have all the facts. A clipboard on his desk held a fat sheaf of printed readouts from Gipsy Danger’s trial.

  “We’re still examining Gipsy Danger,” he said. “There might have been a mechanical failure—”

  “Stacker,” said Herc. He was probably the only person in the Shatterdome or its associated facilities who called Stacker Pentecost by his first name, and then only in private. “I am a father. I know how you feel. But we both saw it. We both know it.”

  Pentecost let the clipboard fall. He looked up to meet Herc’s gaze.

  “I saw it. I know it. That doesn’t make it any easier.”

  “Oh, I know,” Herc said. “Remember, Stacker. You and me, we go all the way back to the beginning. We piloted Mark Is, we stood up against the first kaiju, and we watched the next generation of Rangers come up and stand on our shoulders. That’s the way of it. Now we have to face up to two things about this next generation. One, they might not be as good as we were. Two, they’re going to take over for us either way.

  “But the thing is, boss,” Herc went on, “if we let ’em go out too early, all we’re doing is killing ourselves quicker.”

  “Sounds like conversations I’ve had with myself,” Pentecost said. “But ask yourself whether you’d rather have Gipsy Danger with a less-than-optimal pilot—or no Gipsy Danger at all.”

  “Hoping that’s not the only choice,” Herc said. He might have said more, but right then they both heard shouting in the hall.

  ***

  Raleigh and Mako had been summoned to Pentecost’s office as soon as they’d gotten initial clearance from the on-site medics. They’d spent a few minutes standing uncomfortably together, listening to the unmistakable voice of Chuck Hansen ranting. And when Chuck emerged and came face-to-face with Raleigh, he knew it.

  “Looks like you heard me,” he said, coming right up to Raleigh until they were nose to nose. “Good. Saves me from repeating myself.”

  Inching even closer, he stared Raleigh down, daring him to move.

  “It’s been five years since you jockeyed a Jaeger?” he continued. “That’s a bloody lifetime in Jaeger tech and you know it. And here’s the thing. I actually want to come back from this mission. I want a life. So.” He stuck a finger in Raleigh’s face. “You, why don’t you do us all a favor and disappear, yeah? Seems like that’s the only thing you’re good at.”

  Mako had stayed out of it until then, but Raleigh almost felt it in his head when she’d had enough.

  “Stop,” she said, taking a step forward. “Now.”

  Raleigh put his hand out to hold her back. He didn’t doubt that she’d take a swing at Chuck, and he’d put the odds at fifty-fifty that she could take him down—but he was damned if he was going to lose his partner because of a fistfight with a kid who had daddy issues.

  Mako stopped. Chuck didn’t.

  “That’s right, hold back your girlfriend,” he sneered. “One of you bitches needs a leash.”

  That was it.

  Raleigh punched him in the face.

  The punch rocked Chuck, but he wasn’t made of glass. He counterpunched and popped Raleigh in the mouth.

  Then it was on.

  This was no exercise in the Kwoon, with designated techniques and routines. This was a brawl. They locked up and hit the wall. Raleigh cracked Chuck with a flurry of rights square to the face, and Chuck answered with a series of shots working up from Raleigh’s ribs to the side of his head.

  The sound of it carried down the corridor and caught the attention of everyone within earshot. It didn’t take long before the fight had an audience, with techs and a pilot or two gathering to watch the two men have it out. Anyone who had been in the mess hall when Chuck and Raleigh had had their first encounter had seen it coming, and now they gathered to see which way the balance would turn.

  Raleigh didn’t care about that. He had a sense that people were watching, but he just wanted to pound Chuck Hansen until he could never open his mouth again. He landed a shot to Chuck’s gut and thought, You never watched your brother die. He landed a left to the corner of Chuck’s eye and thought, You never walked a Jaeger back to shore by yourself.

  Chuck gave nearly as good as he got, bloodying Raleigh’s nose with a straight right that Raleigh knew would leave him with a black eye in the morning. Another of Chuck’s overhand shots caught him right on the ear. In the ringing of his ear, Raleigh heard the echo of everything that had surged through Mako’s mind when their Drift had gone haywire.

  Chuck got him again and Raleigh literally saw stars— he’d never known that was a real thing.

  The fight turned when Raleigh got his weight under Chuck and drove him into the wall. At the impact all the air went out of Chuck’s lungs, but even that didn’t stop him from shooting a forearm straight into Raleigh’s mouth. But Raleigh took the shot, went with it, and rebounded like a spring, driving an elbow straight into the hinge of his opponent’s jaw, just below the ear.

  Chuck went slack for the slightest moment and Raleigh slammed him into the wall again. Chuck tried to spin away but Raleigh caught his arm and twisted it, feeling the shoulder joint tense against its limits. One little twist and it would pop right out of the socket, easy as you please. It was all a matter of applying the right pressure in the right place...

  “Stop!”

  Raleigh obeyed. He didn’t know who had spoken until he turned and saw Herc, who was steaming over toward them with a father’s thunder in his eye.

  “What the hell are you two doing?”

  Raleigh shoved away from Chuck, raising both hands. But Chuck wasn’t done yet. He took one more shot, and Raleigh ducked it as easily as he’d ducked the hanbō strikes from the cadets in the Kwoon. Even if he hadn’t, Herc was there to intercept, shoving his son against the wall again and growling straight into his face.

  “This is over!”

  Chuck struggled but Herc didn’t let go and Chuck wasn’t so far gone that he was going to take a shot at his father.

  Father and son held each other’s gaze, neither willing to back down.

  Raleigh was already starting to breathe a little easier. He’d gotten it out of his system. He looked around to make sure Mako was all right. She was standing a little away from where the fight had ended, but Raleigh could see in her posture that she’d been ready to jump in. Her weight was a little forward, and she was bouncing on the balls of her feet. He could have reached out and touched her. He wanted to.

  As it turned out, their proximity made it easier for Marshal Pentecost to drill them both with a single set of commands.

  “Mr. Becket! Miss Mori!” he barked. “In my office, now!”

  Raleigh and Mako did as they were told. As they passed the Hansens, Herc let Chuck go, as if daring him to take another shot at Raleigh in full sight of both his father and Pentecost.

  All Chuck did was stare hard, first at Raleigh and then at Herc. Then he turned and walked slowly away down the hallway until he had broken through the perimeter of onlookers and disappeared back in the direction of the Shatterdome.

  * * *

  PAN-PACIFIC DEFENSE CORPS

  PERSONNEL DOSSIER

  NAME

  Hercules Hansen

  ASSIGNED TEAM

  Rangers, ID R-HHAN_832.84-G

  DATE OF ACTIVE SERVICE

  November 28, 2015

  CURRENT SERVICE STATUS

  Active; based Hong Kong Shatterdome

  BIOGRAPHY

  Born November 10, 1980, Sydney, Australia. Parents Donovan and Tess. Younger brother Scott. Son Charles born 14 August 2003. One of the first wave of Rangers, contemporary with Stacker Pentecost, continued in an active role after Pentecost transferred to leadership role within Jaeger Project. First Jaeger, Lucky Seven, destroyed.

  Hansen's wife was killed in the kaiju attack on Sydney, September 2, 2014.* Hansen saved his son Chuck, then twelve
years of age (and now his co-pilot on Striker Eureka), and transitioned from Air Force to Jaeger program in 2015, as the Jaeger Academy was opening. He is credited with eleven kaiju kills, most recently Mutavore, Sydney, December 27, 2024 (eight of these kills with C. Hansen in Striker Eureka; q.v. Jaeger dossier for full list).

  * Her cause of death is unknown due to uncertainty in the aftermath of the twin tactical nuclear strikes that brought the kaiju down. Hansen was told she died due to kaiju activity rather than either nuclear strike. This is the official record.

  NOTES

  PPDC medical staff suggest that Hansen's number of deployments and advancing age are eroding his reaction times and neural-handshake strength. Operational readiness does not yet appear to be affected. Hansen's readiness must be observed closely, however. Hansen will be a valuable command asset when his combat readiness lapses below acceptable thresholds.

  PPDC psychological staff suggest that the tension between Hansen and his son Charles also might affect the strength and duration of their Drift. (See dossier on Charles Hansen.) The younger Hansen is loyal to his father but also constantly seeks to supplant him and assume a dominant role in Striker Eureka's operation. Hansen carries a burden of guilt over difficulties in raising his son after his wife's death. This too is expected to affect the father-son Drift, if it has not already.

  The Hansens should be monitored very closely and reassigned if necessary for Jaeger readiness.

  * * *

  17

  AFTER THAT, THE ONLY THING RALEIGH AND MAKO could do was go into Pentecost’s office face the firing squad. It was going to hurt, they knew that.

  At least they were going down in a serene and beautiful setting, which Stacker Pentecost’s office-quarters sanctum surely was. It was done in dark-gray stone, maybe slate or some kind of polished marble—Raleigh was no expert. As you entered in front of you was a path between two rectangular pools of still water. Before you reached the water, was a short path to the right which led to a bathroom. On the left was an open closet and a door that Raleigh assumed led to Pentecost’s sleeping area. If he ever did sleep, that is. Raleigh noted that the closet shelf held eight identical blue shirts. On the rod below the shelf hung five identical suits.

  On the other side of the water was Pentecost’s office area, containing a single desk and wall-mounted holoprojector. The whole thing was a strange setup for a British guy, Raleigh thought. It was more like a Zen garden, as if Pentecost was the leader of an army of giant robots but aspired instead to be a monk. From a single window, you could see Hong Kong Bay. Raleigh drank in the view from where he stood, so beautiful that it almost made up for the disaster the morning had thus far turned out to be.

  Raleigh and Mako waited just inside the door as Pentecost paced back and forth, quiet after his initial outburst following the fight. Raleigh could take that. He’d had officers yell at him for fighting before. Officers, teachers, the occasional cop. They all knew that sometimes you had to take a swing at someone, but because they were officers they had to give you a hard time about it. That part of the whole thing was by the book.

  The rest... the part about the blown-up Drift... that was going to be a little harder to tap-dance around. There wasn’t much good about the situation except that before it went wrong, it was as strong a neural handshake as Raleigh had ever experienced. He knew Tendo would know that, and would probably have told Pentecost already. Whether it would make any difference, he didn’t know. He thought probably not.

  Raleigh walked onto the bridge and across the water, then took a deep breath, stepped up and got the first word in.

  “I went out of phase first,” he said, because it was true and might do some good. “My memories must have triggered hers. It was my mistake.”

  “No,” Pentecost said before he could go on. “It was mine. I never should have let you two in the same machine.”

  He spoke as if he knew something they didn’t. Several things, perhaps. Raleigh didn’t care at the moment, though.

  “What?” he said, challenging the Marshal. “So you’re grounding us?”

  Pentecost looked him right in the eye, answering the challenge and forcing Raleigh back down.

  “Not you,” he said.

  Raleigh’s boiling point had already been reached once in the past ten minutes. He didn’t want to reach it again, especially not in front of Pentecost, but this was bullshit. Mako was going straight under the bus, and it wasn’t her fault. He looked over at her and saw that she was standing at perfect attention, eyes gleaming with tears she refused to shed. She threw a textbook salute.

  “Permission to be dismissed, sir?” she asked.

  Pentecost nodded.

  “Permission granted, Miss Mori.”

  Mako glanced at Raleigh, briefly. The glance communicated everything that had passed between them during the Drift. It said: I know you and you know me and both of us know that we should be piloting Gipsy Danger together.

  Then she was gone.

  Raleigh could tell Pentecost was not enjoying this, but in the end it didn’t matter whether he enjoyed it or not. He was making the wrong decision and Raleigh had to make him see that.

  “She has a clear connection to that Jaeger,” Raleigh said. “She has the strongest neural handshake I’ve ever felt. Even stronger—”

  He caught himself. Considered what he was going to say. Decided it was true.

  “Even stronger than Yancy.”

  Pentecost did not look impressed.

  “Don’t let my calm demeanor fool you, Ranger. This is not a good moment for your insubordination.” Pentecost moved past Raleigh on his way to the door. Raleigh swung around and followed. “Mako’s too inexperienced to rein in her memories during combat.”

  This was evidently true, and Raleigh didn’t bother to challenge it. But it was also a bullshit excuse, and Raleigh did want to challenge that.

  “I don’t think that’s why you grounded her,” he said.

  “I didn’t ask for your opinion,” Pentecost said.

  Time to level with the man in charge, Raleigh thought. No point in letting him think he’s still keeping a secret.

  “Look,” he said, walking fast to keep up with Pentecost, who was headed for the LOCCENT. “You rescued her when she was a little girl. I saw that.” Some kind of exercise was going on, and the hallway was full of crews scrambling toward the Shatterdome. “You raised her, but you’re not protecting her now. You’re holding her back.”

  Those last four words might have set Pentecost off all by themselves, but just in case, Raleigh broke every rule of military and paramilitary protocol and grabbed Marshal Pentecost by the shoulder as he said them.

  Pentecost stopped and spun on Raleigh, stopping him dead. People passing down the halls or heading for the elevators saw what was about to happen and gave them a wide berth.

  “First: never touch me again,” Pentecost said, his voice low and tight. “Second: never touch me again. Third: you have no idea where the hell I came from and I am not about to tell you the story of my life.

  “I, on the other hand, know the story of yours. All I need to be to you and everyone in this dome is a fixed point. The last man standing. I don’t need your admiration or your sympathy. All I need is your fighting skills and your compliance. And if you don’t give me that... well, then, you can go back to your damn wall.”

  This is bullshit, Raleigh thought again. Raleigh had just Drifted with Mako, and knew all about Pentecost adopting her. He knew all about Pentecost protecting Mako from the backward hicks on her father’s side of the family who blamed her because Masao Mori had no sons to carry on the family tradition of sword-making. He knew Pentecost had adopted her and put her through school. He knew Pentecost had let her into the Jaeger program to keep her close to him, and had put her on the Mark III Restoration Project because he didn’t want her in a Jaeger.

  Raleigh knew all that because he’d been in Mako’s mind. Pentecost knew that he knew, and evidently didn’t car
e. What he wanted from Raleigh, as he said, was compliance.

  And he would get it, because Raleigh Becket was a good soldier when he needed to be... but he also knew that if this was anyone other than Marshal Pentecost, they’d be throwing punches.

  Pentecost watched him thinking all this.

  “Is that understood?” he asked. The unspoken challenge hung in the air. Pentecost was daring Raleigh to step further over the line.

  Raleigh waited long enough to let Pentecost know he was aware what was going on, and was conceding because he was a good soldier.

  “Yes, sir,” Raleigh said.

  “Good,” Pentecost said, and entered the elevator. Raleigh needed to go that way too, but decided to wait.

  You had to pick your battles.

  ***

  After the scrap outside Pentecost’s office, Herc allowed himself precisely fifteen minutes to get his temper under control and decide what he was going to say. Then he went looking for Chuck in Striker Eureka’s maintenance area. He found his son working with a three-foot wrench on a single bolt whose head was bigger than Herc’s fist. Though compared to the size of most of the machined parts of Striker Eureka, it was a sliver.

  “He’s grounding Mako,” Herc said over the sound of whatever turn-of-the-century guitar hero was playing on the radio. It all sounded the same to him.

  “Well, that’s half of the right decision,” Chuck said. He wiped his hands and added, “But I want him off the mission even more than the bird.”

  Something about the moment—Chuck’s flip attitude set against the immensity of the task before them, or his knee-jerk impulse to destroy an ally because he thought he might be a rival when the Pan-Pacific Defense Corp needed every warm body Hannibal Chau’s market share could finance... Whatever it was, it tipped Herc over an edge that he’d been moving toward for a long time.