Pacific Rim: The Official Movie Novelization Mass Market Paperback (24 page)

On the other hand, if there were four kaiju at once next week, or whatever Hermann’s geometric progression predicted, the world would belong to the kaijus’ masters in a month. Or sooner.

Giant footsteps boomed closer. Their echoes rang in the vaulted space over the refugees’ heads. People screamed, prayed, said random things in Chinese and various other languages. Babies, picking up on the adults’ fear, started to cry. The footsteps grew closer. Mothers covered their children’s mouths out of a strange—but to Newt perfectly understandable—fear that out of all the noises in the shelter, the cry emitting from their particular child would be the one that brought the kaiju down on them.

Gradually things quieted. The refuge shook from the weight of the kaiju, now almost directly above. Newt realized he was talking, because he couldn’t stop himself and because he didn’t figure too many people in the crowd would understand him... especially if he kept his voice down. Which he hadn’t known he was doing, but anyway.

“It stopped,” he whispered. “Right above us. It knows I’m here. It knows I’m here...”

Something touched Newt’s lips and he jumped before realizing that it was a small Chinese girl, shushing him with one tiny finger across his lips.

“It knows we’re all here,” she said in perfect English.

“No, you don’t understand,” Newt said. “It’s looking for me...
me!”

Why he said it, he would never know, but the effect on the little girl was immediate. Her eyes got wide and she leaned to the closest adult and whispered. The whispers spread as the kaiju’s footsteps shook dust from the shelter’s ceiling. There was a ping in the middle of the whispers as a rivet popped out of an overhead beam and somehow found its way straight down through the mass of human flesh to the floor. People started to stare at Newt. They started to point at Newt. Newt did not like the attention.

“What?” he asked the girl. “What are you saying?”

“Guaishou yao laowai!”
the girl cried out suddenly.
The kaiju wants the white guy!

Uh oh,
Newt thought. He shouldn’t have said it, okay, sure, but she shouldn’t have taken him seriously, either! How could she take him seriously? Didn’t matter. Her one shout was all it took to tip the apprehension in the crowd over into full-blown panic. People started to scream. They rushed away from Newt...

And at the same time, the kaiju tore the shelter ceiling away.

Debris collapsed down through the ragged hole in the street above. A car teetered on the edge of the hole and fell end over end to smash down along the wall, people scattering around it. The dim emergency lighting inside the shelter gave way to the searchlight beam from a patrolling helicopter, its beam shafting through swirls of dust.

The searchlight beam also silhouetted the hulking upper body of the kaiju. It flung away the concrete and iron ceiling of the shelter like a frisbee twenty yards in diameter, demolishing a row of small office buildings and the street vendors in front of them.

Then it bent its head down toward the hole, and inhaled, deeply. A growling sound louder than thunder came from somewhere inside it.

Newt Geiszler had always wanted to get close to a living kaiju... but now that it was happening, he was starting to reconsider.

IN HONG KONG BAY, LEATHERBACK WAS POUNDING
Striker Eureka to pieces and there was nothing anyone in the Shatterdome could do about it. Inside Striker’s Conn-Pod, Herc and Chuck were on their own. They were just about reduced to fighting with bare hands, and keeping Striker going with flashlight batteries.

“Emergency power erratic,” Herc growled. “I’m only getting a second or two at a time.”

It was enough to keep them upright. Every so often they could even avoid one of Leatherback’s blows, though Striker Eureka couldn’t counterpunch. But sooner or later, Leatherback was going to drive them down under the waters of Hong Kong Bay, and that was going to be a one-way trip.

“We’ve got to bail,” Chuck said.

“No, I’ve nearly got it,” Herc replied. He tried to disentangle himself from the rat’s nest of cables that had fallen across the cockpit platform, at the same time working his boots loose from the clamps that held him and Chuck in the neural-handshake beginning stance. He got one boot free of both the clamp and the cables just as Leatherback spun Striker Eureka around and flung Herc across the Conn-Pod into a support beam.

In his youth, before the monsters showed up to destroy the world, Herc had played Aussie rules football. He still considered it the only real man’s sport on the planet, though he made an occasional allowance for rugby. At seventeen, he’d been legged at midfield, simple play, but he’d gone down a little wrong. The sound his collarbone had made snapping then was exactly the same sound it made now.

Herc cried out and tumbled across the floor as Leatherback attacked Striker Eureka’s head again. Chuck got himself loose and skidded across the floor toward his father.

“Come on,” he said, catching Herc around the waist. “Get up, old man.”

“Don’t call me that!” Herc snarled. As soon as he was on his feet he shook Chuck’s grip loose and held his arm cradled against his gut. With his good arm he jerked open a steel door set into the Conn-Pod wall.

Inside were two flare guns whose projectiles were said to be visible through a driving rainstorm at a distance of five kilometers. Herc had no idea whether or not that was true. They were huge flare guns, though.

“Son, we’re not going anywhere,” he said. “But we are the only thing standing between that ugly bastard and a city of ten million people. So, we’ve got a choice here. Sit and wait... or do something really stupid.”

Through Striker Eureka’s cracked and leaking windows, the light of the Shatterdome searchlights swept over the Hansens.

“You know me,” Chuck said. “I’m
always
up for something stupid.”

It took them less than a minute to get up the maintenance stairs that led from the Conn-Pod to the closest emergency hatch. Chuck cranked the door’s hatch mechanism, unbolting it with a whoosh of escaping pressurized air, and they stepped out onto the crown of Striker Eureka’s head.

Leatherback was taking a brief break from the hard work of battering Striker Eureka into scrap. It saw the two humans appear. It cocked its head and looked at them with what Herc could have sworn was curiosity.

“Hey!” he shouted. “You dented my ride, you mealy-mouthed motherf—!”

Chuck fired before Herc could get his whole line.

Damn that boy,
Herc thought in a flash.
Always jumping the gun
.

Then he fired too, a split second after Chuck, and the two enormous flares burrowed into one of Leatherback’s eyes.

The kaiju roared in agony and surprise, ducking away and thrashing its head in the water to quench the flares burning inside its eyeball. The waves nearly tipped Striker Eureka over, but the Jaeger was designed to keep its balance in a combination of hurricane, tsunami, earthquake, and kaiju attack all at once. It did not go down.

Herc looked at Chuck. He couldn’t decide whether to be proud of Chuck’s bravery, irritated that Chuck had jumped ahead of him, or disappointed the way all fathers were disappointed when their sons were too much like they had been at the same age.

But he never got to say anything, because Leatherback was recovering, and now they were going to die.

“Might as well swim for it,” Herc said. Bad joke, even if he hadn’t had a broken collarbone, but it was the only joke he had.

“Nah, bring it back over here,” Chuck said. “I’m not done yet.”

Herc couldn’t help it. He laughed.

***

Over the noise of the storm, and the sound of Leatherback’s building rage, they heard the Jumphawks. Out of the dark angry sky hove the immense figure of a Jaeger...

But there weren’t any Jaegers left, except...

“I’ll be goddamned,” Herc breathed. “Stacker’s going all in.”

The Jumphawks let Gipsy Danger go. Its feet hit the surf, the Jaeger’s lights went on, and it was standing eye-to-eye with Leatherback.

Gipsy assumed a fighting stance.

“A show for the condemned men,” Chuck said.

“If you don’t like it, you can jump,” Herc said.

They both looked down. It was more than a hundred feet to the water, and the surf was probably eight, ten feet.

They both back looked up just as Gipsy Danger pivoted away from the charging Leatherback and tore the EMP emitting organ off the kaiju’s back. Leatherback roared and churned around in a tight turn. Gipsy Danger threw away the organ and met Leatherback’s return charge with a crushing punch to the face.

“Yeah!” Chuck said.

Gipsy Danger followed up with a pummeling series of punches and kicks that Chuck recognized from the Kwoon a couple of days before. He was seeing Raleigh Becket fighting. Mako probably had her own style, but right then it was Raleigh driving the bus. Gipsy Danger drove Leatherback straight to the pilings of one of the bridges that spanned the narrow neck between the two arms of Hong Kong Bay. Then the Jaeger’s grip slipped just for a moment and Leatherback picked Gipsy Danger up and flung her away.

Sailing perhaps three hundred yards in the air, Gipsy Danger landed at one end of a huge container port, smashing through rows of cartons and construction vehicles.

Leatherback surged through the shallows as Gipsy Danger got to her feet and met the kaiju right at the edge of the pier, grinding and snapping pieces of Gipsy Danger’s fuselage away. Jaeger and kaiju crashed up onto dry land and straight through more piles of shipping containers, scattering them like Lego blocks.

A finishing shot from Gipsy Danger sent Leatherback skidding on its dorsal carapace across the port, knocking over cranes and crushing small buildings along the way.

Leatherback flipped itself over and rose to meet Gipsy Danger. The Jaeger tore loose a crane and swung it like a cricket bat at the kaiju’s head. Chuck saw the windup and the stroke, and he was already anticipating the impact when Leatherback ducked and rammed a clawed fist into Gipsy Danger’s midsection. Chuck realized at that moment that he had anticipated Gipsy Danger moving at the speed of Striker Eureka. The differences between generations of Jaegers had never been clearer to him.

Another blow from Leatherback dropped Gipsy Danger to one knee. Pressing its advantage, Leatherback closed and hammered at Gipsy Danger, beating the old Jaeger down bit by bit.

The euphoria Chuck had felt a moment before evaporated.

“So much for those two,” he said.

His father didn’t respond.

So much for the world,
Chuck thought.
If we lose all our Jaegers today and the eggheads are right that the kaiju are going to start coming faster...
Humankind couldn’t nuke its way out of the problem. Earth would be unlivable, and fast.

Leatherback bore down on the staggering Gipsy Danger.

This is it,
Chuck thought.
Kaiju four; Jaegers zero.

But Gipsy Danger leaned just far enough to the side that Leatherback’s reckless swipe missed. Now the Jaeger brought crane around again and this time Leatherback didn’t get out of the way, taking the blow straight across its reptilian face. A spray of corrosive blood spattered and smoked across the wrecked port.

Leatherback reeled away, stunned, and Gipsy Danger leapt after it, grabbing a fifty-foot metal container in each hand and smashing them together on either side of Leatherback’s head. Again Leatherback stumbled, and Gipsy Danger also took a step back to gain the precious time its Rangers needed to warm up their plasma cannons.

“Spoke too soon, maybe,” Herc said.

Leatherback charged.

Gipsy Danger unloaded the plasma cannons with an air-splitting roar. Every raindrop within fifty feet of the cannons evaporated, covering the battle in a sudden fog that burned away almost at once.

Leatherback took the salvo and kept coming.

Gipsy Danger fired again. Pieces of Leatherback’s shell blew away and the force of the plasma detonations tossed containers around like they were Styrofoam.

Still Leatherback kept coming.

It locked arms with Gipsy Danger in a wrestler’s grip. Herc and Chuck saw the concrete at Gipsy Danger’s feet buckle from the immense force.

Gipsy Danger’s plasma cannons fired a third time. This salvo blasted away part of its anterior carapace and knocked Leatherback away to land on its side and roll to a halt. Charred and smoking pieces of kaiju littered the container yard. A gaping hole exposed part of the inside of Leatherback’s shell and the strange organs that still pulsed within.