Pacific Rim: The Official Movie Novelization (21 page)

Newt nodded and asked, “And you?”

Chau laughed. “I believe kaiju bone powder is five hundred bucks a pound. Why are you here? You’re not after powder to keep your girlfriend happy. A guy like you doesn’t have a girlfriend. You’re married to your lab.”

“Oh, I need access to a kaiju brain,” Newt said. The request was so ridiculous he had decided to just spit it out. “Intact if possible.”

Chau was already shaking his head.

“Seriously? No can do. Skull is plated so dense, by the time you drill in—”

“Yeah, yeah, it’s rotted away. I know. But there’s always the secondary brain,” Newt said.

That’s what he’d meant from the beginning. The main cranial brain would be too unwieldy to work with. How could you transport and Drift with something the size of a small whale? But the secondary brain...

“Like dinosaurs had the secondary brain back at the base of their spines, by the pelvis,” Newt continued, remembering when he’d been a little kid and first read that Stegosaurus had a second brain down by its hips. The idea had blown his mind, and maybe, as much as any single other thing, that had set him on the road to where he was today. “They’re—”

He almost told Chau that he thought the dinosaurs were an earlier, cruder version of the kaiju, but he just barely held himself back. Instead he started talking about different kinds of kaiju tissue and the way their silicon-based anatomy enhanced certain processes of neural activation, which let them move so fast and nimbly despite their immense size.

“That’s where they’re, um, different from dinosaurs,” he said, just to have some kind of conclusion. He knew he’d reached a point where he was supposed to stop and let Chau talk, but it was really, really hard.

One thing about the Drift hangover,
Newt thought.
It makes everything seems weirdly doubled. Secondary brains... spawning pools... controlled mutations...

Hannibal said, “You really know your kaiju anatomy, don’t you, little guy?” He was thinking about something. “I can get that for you... if I can have legal claim on every fallen kaiju in the Southern Hemisphere.”

This threw Newt off balance, but only for a moment. He hadn’t thought of himself as empowered to make deals on Pentecost’s behalf, but what the hell. Pentecost could complain later; he was the one who had sent Newt here. Also, considering that Newt had no power to enter into arrangements with Chau, he could say whatever he wanted and Chau would still have to get it through Pentecost later.

“Considering the world is about to end, I’d say we have a deal,” Newt said. Then his inner kaiju-nerd self got the better of him and he added, “But can I at least keep a tooth?”

Hannibal Chau shook his head. “Nope.”

“What about a gland? A tiny gland?”

“Not a one,” Chau said.

Newt sighed. Hard bargain. But the primary objective, which was to get a kaiju brain, was met. The rest of it would have been gravy.

“Fine,” he said. “You got it.”

They shook hands, but in the middle of the grip Hannibal said, “Not so fast. What the hell do you want the lower brain for anyway? Every part of the kaiju sells. Cartilage, liver, spleen—even the crap. A cubic meter of kaiju poo has enough phosphorous to fertilize acres of field. But the brain—too much ammonia. Can’t consume it, can’t even process it into anything useful. It decays so fast that by the time I can figure out what I might use it for, it’s rotten mush.”

Chau loomed over Newt, the fires from the streets of Kowloon reflected in the lenses of his goggles, and even on the metalwork in his teeth.

“What do you think you know that I haven’t figured out yet?”

“Well, that’s classified,” Newt said. “But it’s
pretty cool.”

Hannibal held onto his hand. It was part intimidation, part encouragement, and all calibrated to set Newt’s boastful-nerd side against his Kaiju Science responsibilities. This was a deadly combination.

Newt wrestled with himself and lost.

“Okay, okay. Here. I’ve worked out the parameters to Drift with a kaiju,” he said conspiratorially. “Only for a few minutes so far, and the handshake wasn’t perfect, but it was enough to figure a couple of things out. Only problem is, I was using an old bit of brain, just barely alive. Now I’m fresh out of brain tissue. That’s where you come in. Theoretically, if I can go in deeper, I might be able to understand the inner Breach... and end the war.”

Hannibal’s face was slack and incredulous. His scar pulsed redder than the surrounding skin.

“I know, I know,” Newt said. “Full neural handshake with a kaiju.” He was pretty amazed by it himself. No wonder a non-scientist type like Chau couldn’t believe it.

“You did this?” Hannibal said.

“Yeah,” Newt said with a big grin. “Awesome, right? Their brains, they’re all linked. Like a common core, a hive brain...”

Chau exploded.

“You goddamn moron!”

And all over Hong Kong, alarms started to blare.

THE LOCCENT WAS BARELY CONTROLLED CHAOS,
with the command systems still not fully checked out from the morning and now a brand new escalation of the kaiju threat. Screens on the walls over the main command center platform displayed a map of the Pacific Rim, with the Breach glowing near the center and two dots moving toward Hong Kong—and moving fast.

Tendo Choi had been doing everything he could to get the systems back online, and when Pentecost entered, with Gottlieb and the two Hansens in tow, Tendo called to him. Mako and Raleigh stood a little apart from everyone else like it was a high-school formal and they were waiting for someone to ask them to dance.

“Marshal,” Tendo said. “Breach was exposed at twenty-three hundred. We have two signatures.” This was all rote, the protocol of the LOCCENT. Pentecost already knew what Tendo was telling him, but he wanted things done a certain way, and Tendo was not going to break any rules at that moment.

“I love being right,” Gottlieb said.

Tendo wanted to smack him.

Sensing this, Pentecost shot him a warning look.

“What size are they?” he asked.

“Both Category IVs,” Tendo said. He brought up visual approximations of the two kaiju based on their signatures from the deep ocean. One appeared blocky and round in profile, with a surface density reading suggesting a heavy carapace. The other was all jagged angles and claws, with a long spiked tail. “Codenames: Otachi and Leatherback. They’ll reach Hong Kong within the hour.”

“Evacuate the city. Clear the cargo docks, close the bridges,” Pentecost said. “I want every citizen in a refuge, right now. Ships in the harbor?”

“Coast Guard’s evacuating all crews,” Tendo said. Pentecost, despite his lack of UN authority as of a week ago, still had a pretty good working relationship with the local authorities, who had seen the kaiju up close, rather than only through the numbers in the cells of a spreadsheet. Pentecost paused, weighing his options.

All of the Jaeger crews were crowded into the LOCCENT, and the Weis were the first to speak up.

“We are going out there,” one of them said. Tendo thought it was Hu, but they were the most identical siblings he’d ever seen. Hu was usually the one to speak first. “No matter what.”

“So are we,” said Sasha Kaidanovsky. She pointed at Raleigh. “But not with them.”

“Well said, Red sister,” Chuck said with a smirk.

Pentecost cut them all off with a flattening motion of one hand.

“Sir,” Gottlieb said, stepping into the pause. “You have to hold off. My parabola was right. We may lose a city, but we must preserve the Jaegers for the mission. We need to hold ground.”

That was the problem, wasn’t it? They were going to need all the Jaegers they had for Operation Pitfall. The kaiju kept getting stronger and recent engagements were costing more and more Jaegers. They’d lost eight in 2024, and only taken out fourteen kaiju. The trend was not good.

On the other hand, could Pentecost stand by and watch kaiju destroy Hong Kong while they finished their preparations for the operation? Tendo was glad it wasn’t his decision to make.

“Hey,” Herc said. “It’s a city of ten million people against
numbers on your chalkboard.”

“My numbers are correct,” Gottlieb said stiffly. “A city of ten million or the world? We cannot save everyone. If we do not have the Jaegers to deliver the bomb, protecting one city will not matter.”

There was a pause. Tendo saw Raleigh looking at Pentecost, who was refusing to look back at him. But Tendo remembered another version of this conversation, albeit on a smaller scale, five years ago off the coast of Alaska, and he could tell both Raleigh and Pentecost remembered it, too. What was the name of that boat?

“You can’t save everyone,” Raleigh said. “Right?”

Pentecost said nothing. Tendo saw the weariness in him, and wondered again just how ill he really was.

“Sir,” he prompted. They needed to decide. “Do you want to deploy?”

Another long moment went by. Then Pentecost turned to the seven pilots who weren’t Raleigh and Mako.

“Crimson Typhoon, Cherno Alpha,” he said. “Frontline the harbor. Stay on the Miracle Mile.”

To Herc and Chuck he added, “Striker Eureka, stay in the back and guard the coastline. We cannot lose you, so only engage as a final option.”

This made Tendo nervous. Well, even more nervous than he usually was before a kaiju battle. He’d seen four-dozen kaiju go down, just about, and he still got the jitters before every fight... Because he’d also seen seventeen Jaegers go down. Pentecost was right—they couldn’t lose Striker Eureka. She was faster, more agile, and tougher than any of the other remaining Jaegers, which made her by far the best bet to execute Operation Pitfall, even though Cherno Alpha’s armor plating was rated slightly higher. Tendo could see why Pentecost wanted Striker in the field, but he didn’t like it.

“Right, sir,” Herc said.

Pentecost then turned to Raleigh and Mako, studying them for long enough that Tendo wondered if he was relenting. Unlike the other three teams, they hadn’t been ordered to suit up, but it wouldn’t take long if Pentecost gave them the word.

But all he said was, “You two stay put.”

The Russians and the Chinese had already left to do pre-deployment linkage checks in their respective Conn-Pods, but Chuck and Herc were there to hear Pentecost’s words. Chuck had a gloating grin on his face as he and his father headed out the door. Tendo watched Raleigh and Mako for a moment, wondering if there was anything he could say.

But there wasn’t, not really. And he had three Jaegers to get out the door so they could save Hong Kong. He put Gipsy Danger out of his mind and turned to his task.