Callie strutted into the shatterdome with more confidence than she felt. She'd thought her piloting days had ended with Mark's injury, but last week Webber called the base in Baja to ask about recalling her to service. They had matched her with another pilot.
In the early days of the jaeger program, pilots were paired with siblings or other family members. But it soon became apparent that familial relation was not always the best measure of drift compatibility. Five years after the first kaiju attacked, the jaeger program announced a new screening method to find and match the best pilots. Every country implemented their own system for selecting those to be screened. Some only registered members of the military; others, everyone of fighting age. The US ran it like the draft. If your number came up, you reported to the nearest recruitment center for a battery of physical, mental, and psychological tests. Those results were entered into an international database to scan for drift-compatible matches.
Callie and Mark agreed early on that if either of them was called up (women had been eligible for the draft since 2017) the other would volunteer as well. Sure enough, two years in, Mark was summoned to appear. Callie went with him that first day and they both got a stern voice mail from Chief Bailey when she found out they each passed the initial round and would be kept on base for several weeks of combat training and more intense tests. Technically Callie could have been exempt from service: orthopedic surgeons were in higher demand than ever, especially in coastal cities. But when the results came back that she and Mark were drift-compatible, the thought of going back to the hospital never crossed her mind.
In seventeen months of piloting Baja Boomer, Callie and Mark took down eight category 3 kaiju. Then Mark's plane crashed on the way home from a trip and he could no longer take the neural load of co-piloting a jaeger with her. He stayed on with the jaeger program - he couldn't pilot a jaeger from his wheelchair, but he could run the control room - and Callie went back to the hospital. Until now. Until the Marshal of the Seattle shatterdome called to say they had matched her with another pilot.
"Torres." Webber called her over and Callie nodded in acknowledgement, striding across the slick tarmac with her duffel slung over her shoulder. It was raining. Callie shouldn't be surprised that it was raining; this was Seattle after all. Webber stood somber in full uniform, a dreary black umbrella overhead. Next to him, a woman stood at parade-rest in similar uniform, her strict military posture somewhat belied by the effervescent perkiness of her demeanor.
Callie slowed on the last few steps before approaching. She'd known Mark for years and was hardly surprised when they turned out to be drift-compatible. But this was a stranger. A complete stranger who would soon be in her head.
The other woman took the initiative, stepping ahead of Webber and sticking out her hand. "Callie, right? Arizona Robbins. I've heard a lot about you."
Callie wanted to be able to say the same, but to be honest she hadn't paid much attention to the jaeger program since going back to the hospital. Even when she talked with Mark, they didn't spend a lot of time on his work. While many people fixated on jaeger pilots and adopted them as heroes or cultural icons, Callie preferred to focus on the work at hand and leave her jaeger days behind her. Which meant that she was now at a disadvantage in meeting her new co-pilot.
"Good to meet you." Callie returned her handshake. Arizona smiled and Callie could have sworn the rain stopped and the sun came out.
"We have you two scheduled for training all afternoon," Webber said. "I want to get you into Sentinel Tide by tomorrow. Not to rush things, but we don't have an active jaeger in Seattle, so until you two are up and running, we're relying on Juneau and San Francisco to cover the Pacific Northwest. Our experts believe we'll have another kaiju attack in less than a week, and we need you to be ready. Torres, Robbins can show you to your bunk and then once you're settled in, we'll get started."
Callie pulled her attention away from her new co-pilot and looked at Webber. "Yes, sir," she replied. San Francisco to Juneau was far too large a stretch of coastline to leave undefended. They needed to get her and Arizona in a jaeger together and fast. She turned to Arizona. "Lead the way."
Once away from Webber, Arizona's military posture melted away and she walked with an easy lope as she led Callie through the maze of metal hallways.
"So you've piloted before." Callie didn't know anything about the currently-active jaeger pilots, but she did know that no Marshal would put an untested pilot in a jaeger the day after meeting their new partner.
Arizona turned, taking Callie down a new hallway. Callie wasn't sure if it was intentional or not, but Arizona picked up her pace on the turn, moving a half-stride ahead of Callie so that her face was hidden. "My brother and I. We ran Mexicali Raptor out of San Diego for three years. My dad's the Marshal of the shatterdome down there. He put in a call to Webber when he heard Seattle needed new pilots, got me in the program up here."
A weight dropped in Callie's stomach. Jaeger pilots didn't split up for just anything. For Arizona to be a single pilot now meant that… "And your brother?"
Callie had caught up to Arizona now and she saw how her face tightened before she answered. "We had an unbroken record against the category 3s. Twenty-four drops and not one kaiju made landfall. But then our first cat 4 showed up and tore into our jaeger like it was nothing. Ripped Tim clear out of the cockpit."
"I'm sorry."
Arizona shrugged. "You would've found out tomorrow anyway if I didn't tell you now." She nodded to a door. "502. This is you. I'm right across the way here," she said, indicating the door behind them. "And actually someone else who wants to see you is right next door. Normally the controllers bunk in the south wing, but their elevator was broken."
Callie perked up at the word as soon as she heard "controllers". "Mark's here?"
"He's upstairs running the tech crews ragged. Sentinel Tide has been up in drydock for repairs since the Yang & Grey got taken out by a cat 4 a few months ago. Sloan is making sure everything is ready for our test run tomorrow."
Callie pushed open the door to her room and dumped her duffel on the bed. "I'm surprised he didn't tell me he was getting transferred," she remarked.
"From what I hear, it was a last minute thing. Initially Yang and Grey's controller was going to stay on for the new pilots to come in, but rumor has it that he quit and moved to a trailer in the middle of the woods."
Callie laughed. It wasn't really funny, but it caught her off guard. "So you've got all the gossip on this place."
Arizona smiled. "What can I say? People talk." They stepped out of Callie's room and Arizona hooked one arm through Callie's. "Ready to hit the mats?"
"What are you talking about?" Callie feigned horror. "I'll have you know that the only one hitting the mat here is going to be you."
"That's a lot of talk for someone who hasn't seen the inside of a jaeger in two years. How about you put your money where your mouth is?"
"Deal," Callie answered easily. Their footsteps fell in perfect sync as they headed toward the training facilities. "If you can put me on my back, I'll let you take me out to dinner."
"At the shatterdome's finest mess hall," Arizona promised.
Arizona took Callie to the locker room, where they found standard-issue gym clothes waiting for them. Arizona slipped into one of the curtained-off changing areas, while Callie stripped in the middle of the locker room.
When Arizona re-emerged, Callie was tugging a tight grey t-shirt down over her chest. "You ready?" Callie asked, pulling her hair out from the back of her shirt as she turned to face Arizona.
"When you are," Arizona replied. She wore the same grey t-shirt as Callie, with a faded jaeger program logo on the front, and a pair of black running shorts. Below her shorts, one leg ended at mid-thigh, where it met a pink prosthetic with pastel butterflies stenciled onto the surface. She saw Callie's eyes dip down and tensed. "The kaiju that took out Tim did some damage on both sides of our jaeger," she explained.
"Guess you'll be the pilot?" While the neural load was evenly shared between jaeger pilots, there was always a designated primary. Callie had always been the pilot with Mark, and had assumed it would be the same with Arizona. But her left leg injury meant that Arizona would need to run the right side of the jaeger; leaving Callie in the co-pilot seat.
"I am a bit of a control freak," Arizona confessed. "You mind taking second chair?"
Callie considered. "No," she said, with a bit of surprise in her tone. "I really don't."
"Good. Then let's do this."
They found an audience waiting for them in the gym. Webber watched as they picked up their staffs and assumed a ready stance. "Remember," he ordered. "It's not just neural connection, it's also about physical compatibility."
Arizona swung first, whipping the end of her staff directly toward Callie's face. Callie didn't blink. She moved at the last possible instant, shifting just enough to feel the wood cut through the air as it whistled past her. Her own staff swung around toward Arizona's side, prodding for holes in her defense. Arizona snapped her staff down, striking Callie's and knocking it away. She dropped the top end toward Callie and stopped, the end hovering a quarter-inch above Callie's collarbone. "Concentrate," she admonished.
Callie grinned and lunged forward. Her staff moved with unsurpassed dexterity, wriggling in though Arizona's defenses. She slashed forward with a vicious blow that halted in front of Arizona's throat. Arizona could feel the wood against her skin as she swallowed. "Better watch it," Callie retorted.
They matched each other blow-for-blow. Arizona held a two-one lead for almost a minute before Callie took her twice in quick succession and then it took her nearly two minutes to regain the point and tie them at three-three.
They circled on the mat, eyes locked. Callie knew the tip of Arizona's staff hovered in her peripheral vision, just like her own staff stayed out of Arizona's line of sight. Watching the staffs wasn't important. Everything they needed to know was in the eyes, in the face and neck, in the microscopic tells that rippled through the shoulders long before the staffs ever moved.
When Arizona struck, she exploded forward with a fury, driving Callie back to the very edge of the mat. Callie growled and pushed back. Arizona blocked each of her attacks and backed away, dropping the tip of her staff as she caught her breath. Callie stepped in to strike and Arizona pulled the end of her staff up and in, hooking the back of Callie's knees and pulling them out from under her. Callie hit the floor with a thud and Arizona slammed the butt of her staff down directly over her sternum. They both froze. Callie sucked in a deep breath and felt the staff brush her t-shirt as her chest rose.
"Enough," Webber spoke, breaking the silence. "I've seen what I need to see. Report to the shatterdome at 0600 for the first test run in Sentinel Tide."
Arizona eased back and rested on her staff as Callie got to her feet.
"Guess you're buying tonight," Callie said.
"Guess I am." Arizona took Callie's staff from her and went to put them both back on the rack. Now that the fight was over, everyone else drifted out, leaving them alone in the training room. They walked together back into the locker room and Arizona didn't bother with the curtained changing room as they stripped off sweaty clothes.
A wide shelf ran along the back of the communal showers, stocked with a variety of shampoos, body washes, and clean towels. Arizona sat on a shower bench, removed her leg, and placed it up on the shelf before turning the water on.
Callie joined her at the adjacent showerhead. "So," she mused, "drift-database aside, what do you think?" She flicked one hand underneath the water, waiting for it to turn warm. "Are we drift-compatible?"
"Really there's no way to be completely sure until after we've gone through a neural handshake," Arizona said. She reached out and caught Callie by the hand, tugging her over to stand in front of her. "But -" Arizona ran her hand up the length of Callie's arm and over her shoulder. She cupped the back of Callie's head and pulled her down for a kiss. "I think we already know."