voices calling in the empty wind
They speak of old fights against the kaiju, old grief, their stories blowing through them from the blustering winds off the bay.
My heart was torn from my breast, but I saw the young one take down the beast. It was magnificent.
It crushed my leg as it lumbered past, but we tore off its head when it came back for a second try.
The wind sings through the holes in their chests where teeth and talons rent them apart, the lost and lonely sound of emptiness, broken only by their mourning. And their number grows – slowly at first, then faster, faster.
He called to the other and then he was gone— I felt his pain.
I sank and they sank with me. I was to keep them safe and I could not. When they raised me from the ocean, there was nothing left of them.
We're dying, says one, softly, new-come to their number. His voice keens with the cracks of emptiness, abandonment. They're dying, and we can't stop it. We were made to stop it. They counted on us…
How many, asks Eldest, deep blue and scraped raw, the cavity of his chest still burning, burning until the end of time. How many left?
Twelve, comes the reply from the newest among them, broken alloy and weary muscle-strand, empty-eyed and empty-soulled. Only twelve.
Those twelve have shrunk to eight the day the Sikorskys crest the horizon.
Planes fly past, swift and sure overhead, and they feel the eyes of the small-kin upon them, pity in their gazes as they stare out on their way to elsewhere.
But the thunder of the helicopters echoes against metal skin – bringing the memory of salt water and thick oil, of battle rattle and fiery fights, of will-strength and spirit-heart in the soul-kin that propelled them against the kaiju, time and again.
Who comes? Asks the Ronin. What need have they of us now?
The Matador creaks. Does it matter? Would you not answer them if they called?
Yess, comes the hiss from the crevices of their broken bodies. Yesssss...
For a moment they tremble – with memory, with purpose, as the helicopters circle this way and that, seeking something that they can't find.
It will not happen, says Eldest as the choppers flit against the sky.
She rouses from the corner where she sits up against the Brave, whose broad shoulders block the winds off the bay, keeping her long silent. But the air stirred by the Sikorskys sings through the gaping cracks of her visor, across the connector psynapses of her missing arm. Would you not go if they asked? Would you not fight if they gave you soul-kin again?
They would not, Eldest says, empty and hollow. Not me.
I would fight. Her murmur rises to a shout as the helicopters draw closer. One more fight with soul-kin within me! One more fight, to go out burning...
You may have your chance, child. Coyote howls as the downdrafts stir the wind through his joints. They are coming for you...
The small-kin drop from overhead – so tiny and in need of protection, and yet so powerful when sheltered within their hearts, connected to them, body and soul. Booted feet echo on her shoulders as they attach cables and stability lines, as they report to others of the small-kin.
"She's gonna be hell to get back to working order. You're sure about this, Mori?"
"I am sure," comes the reply, steel and sweetness all at once. "So is the Marshal."
"All righty then. Let's get her to the barge and get the hell out of here. This place gives me the creeps."
"It is too sad," says Steel Sweetness, and they hear her through the receptors that once chattered with conversations, and still sometimes pick up voices, distant and dim. "They saved us so many times, and yet they sit here, waiting and alone."
"Mori, I like you, but sometimes you freak me out. Like right now. We're in a goddamned Jaeger graveyard for fuck's sake. Don't start giving these things personalities."
"They have personalities," she says, sharp and chiding. "Their pilots say."
"Yeah, well, anyone who climbs into a Conn-Pod and shares their brain out is nutso by definition. Even the Marshal, much as I respect him. And you want to be a Jaeger pilot? That's the last anchor connected, by the way. Gipsy Danger is ready for transpo."
The small-kin pack up and clamber nimbly up. The Sikorskys rise in careful unison, and Gipsy's voice rises like a song as their collective power lifts her body from Oblivion Bay.
One more fight to avenge my dead, she promises. One more fight to fight, perchance to win...
May you succeed, comes the dying whisper as the winds of her going lifts echoes from them all. May you succeed where we all failed...
Her shadow drifts across them briefly, then she is gone and the Jaegers fall silent and still beneath the bright sun and sharp sky, above the earth forever stained with kaiju blue.
fin