Author's Notes: My deepest apologies for the long delay! I didn't like how this chapter turned out and was trying to rewrite it amid several work crises. Been a very rough couple of months. Thank you all for the amazing feedback and for sticking around!
Chapter Fourteen: Less Talk, More Action
Hong Kong Shatterdome…
Everyone who could immure themselves in the Shatterdome did so in the weeks after the Joint Committee on the Jaeger Program ended. The first thing the returning delegates did was have a meeting and work out a list of all the journalists who were trustworthy – and all the ones they knew of who weren't. Then a lot of coins got flipped and a lot of games rock-paper-scissors ensued for the job of actually giving statements to the reporters.
"We must do at least some speaking," Sasha told them. "We must maintain control of the narrative."
For the most part, Mako and Raleigh were able to delegate the job of giving interviews to the other crew, who took written statements from them so they didn't actually have to be on camera. Cheung and Jin were willing enough to remain the public faces of the program, though every Ranger alive probably noticed them sometimes looking around for their third brother.
Raleigh knew at some point, he should probably give an actual interview. So did Mako. He just…wasn't ready.
With Herc back, Jin and Cheung went off to the hospital for the first of Jin's many surgeries. To Raleigh's surprise, Jin approached them shortly before leaving. "Come with us. Stay with Cheung while I'm under."
It might have been surprising, but Raleigh didn't have to think twice before answering. "Sure. How long're you under?"
"About twelve hours, they say. Chuck is coming too. I don't want Cheung to be alone."
Raleigh got it all too clearly and managed not to shiver. The Wei triplets had taken some nasty hits in the past that certainly would've meant surgery, but they'd probably never had to be alone in the waiting room without at least one other brother.
It wasn't fun fighting their way through a swarm of reporters to get into the hospital, but once in the waiting area, security kept the place clear. Raleigh tried not to pay too much attention as Jin and Cheung said goodbye before Jin was wheeled off into the surgery unit. Mako was tucked under his arm, her arms around his waist. Chuck stayed a little closer to Cheung.
Their aunt Lui was there too, so the group of them camped out in an empty lounge that the hospital staff obligingly provided. Obviously, Hong Kong's civilian medics were very familiar with the special needs of Rangers when a co-pilot was in surgery.
Raleigh could tell when Jin was under, because Cheung got confused and emotional. He curled up into a ball on the couch and talked more than Raleigh could ever recall from him - and a lot of it was talking to himself. Lui sat with her arm around him, rubbing his shoulders, and Chuck sat on his other side, a little more hesitant. Raleigh couldn't follow much of anything they said, and even Mako, whose Mandarin was pretty good, looked baffled at times.
Recalling his and Yancy's experiences with sedation, Raleigh figured Cheung probably wasn't making much sense even in his own language.
But Cheung murmured Hu's name over and over, and it was all Raleigh could do not to run out of the room.
He made himself stay. People did this for me once, and I barely remember. I owe it to him.
Once Cheung turned tearfully to Raleigh and choked out something in Mandarin. Lui wiped her eyes and said, "He asks...how do you live?"
Raleigh swallowed hard and pulled his chair closer to the couch. "One day at a time," he said. Lui translated. "One hour at a time. Sometimes one minute at a time."
Cheung blinked, frowning to himself, then slowly smiled. "I remember," he murmured in English. "You told us." Raleigh nodded. "One second." He looked up at the clock on the wall, and they all watched the seconds tick by. He sighed. "No basketball allowed here. No dogs." He and Chuck exchanged a rueful smile. "I don't like it."
"It will pass," Mako promised.
Cheung was asleep in his aunt's lap, and Mako and Raleigh were dozing, squeezed into one armchair together (Mako was mostly in Raleigh's lap) that evening when a nurse slipped in and whispered, "They are finished. All went well."
Chuck nodded, texting his dad confirmation. "How long 'till Jin wakes up?"
"A few hours more. Let him sleep." Chuck nodded.
An hour or so later, Cheung woke up, and the nurses gave approval for him and Lui to join Jin in his recovery room. "Thank you," he told Chuck, Raleigh, and Mako.
"Anytime," Raleigh said. "You want any of us to stay?"
Cheung shook his head. "It's okay now." But he paused and looked back at Chuck. "You and Herc...you should take Typhoon."
"What?"
Cheung still looked a little drugged, but there was something determined in his eyes that Chuck hadn't seen since before Hu died. "We talked, my brothers and me. We want you and Herc in Typhoon. We want someone who remembers."
What he meant by remembering, Chuck wasn't quite sure, and couldn't bring himself to ask. So he just said carefully, "I'll talk to my dad, then." Cheung nodded, and let Lui and the nurse usher him out.
After the three of them got back to the Shatterdome and gave the obligatory report that Jin was fine and Cheung was already calming down, Chuck hunted his dad down. Sitting on the floor with Max, he told Herc was Cheung had said. "He was still kind of out of it, but...it sounded like they've been thinking about it a lot."
Herc nodded, leaning down thoughtfully to scratch Max's head. "A few of Typhoon's crew have come to see me. Since Aleksis isn't likely to be mobile enough to pilot again either, they want it to be us. They want it to be pilots who rode during the war, that knew their brother."
"You can't be commanding officer and an active-duty pilot at the same time, as those dipshits in the U.S. pointed out."
Herc snorted. "I'd be a happy man to give this job up and get my old one back - well, preferably without kaiju laying waste to cities again, but you know what I mean." Chuck grinned. His old man smirked. "Y'know, Raleigh may have the last laugh - a big area the national programs are thinking about for Jaegers is construction aid."
"Gaahhh!" Chuck threw himself backwards, only to have Max come slobber all over his face. "Is that the best they can come up with?! Shit, Ray'll never let me hear the end of it!" Herc just laughed. It was the easiest, fullest laugh they'd both had in...a long time.
It felt good.
"Yeah, well, if it's a choice between that and Jaegers fighting each other, sign me up to build walls," said Herc. "I'm tired of war."
Funny. Chuck supposed he'd known that for a long time too, but Herc had loved fighting in Striker even as the war had gone bad. Of course, it'd been a couple of months since they'd drifted, with Stacker Pentecost as Chuck's partner in Pitfall and the drift broken...memory crashed down, and Max crawled onto Chuck's chest. Good old Max doesn't need the drift. He always sensed when Chuck was getting upset.
Herc was silent for a few minutes, then asked, "You up for it?"
Drifting again? Piloting again, a Jaeger other than Striker? Not having kaiju to fight, just...lifting and carrying things? Maybe search and rescue - that was appealing. Saving lives more directly than they usually could during the war.
If not piloting, then what? Herc was old enough to retire. Chuck was twenty-one. He'd have to figure out something to do with the rest of his life. I've actually got a "rest of my life." Even when I was giving Raleigh and Mako shit about it, I never really believed that. It'd seemed impossible to fathom an "after."
But just to walk away and leave the Jaeger Program behind, just as it was going through a transition like this? When Cheung and Jin had asked for Herc and Chuck to take Typhoon on, to be the first post-war pilots?
No. I couldn't just walk away from that. Even if I really wanted to. If it still felt hard to wrap his mind around this new world of "after," he didn't really want to run out into it and find something different. Maybe...later. Not now. "Yeah," he murmured, wrapping his arms around Max while staring at the ceiling. A Shatterdome ceiling full of pipes and concrete was more familiar than the sky. "I'm up for it."
With the surviving Wei brothers and Typhoon's crew at their backs, getting approval from the Chinese government for Herc and Chuck Hansen to take over as Crimson Typhoon's pilots took less time than they anticipated.
It was a little weird - some combination of nostalgic, happy, and painful, being in that red conn-pod for tests. But there was another outpouring of public rejoicing like this was the best outcome anyone could hope for.
"Who will take command of Hong Kong Shatterdome?" a reporter asked at the press conference.
"Cheung and Jin Wei will be Marshals of the Shatterdome and the Hong Kong Jaeger Academy," said one of the Chinese officials proudly. "Hercules Hansen and Chuck Hansen will pilot Crimson Typhoon!"
That caused an explosion of questions that Mako and Raleigh were glad they didn't have to face. Herc and Chuck stood stoically in front of all the shouting and let the Chinese spokesman field the questions. Naturally, some people protested: they wanted Chinese citizens in a Chinese Jaeger, not a couple of Aussies. But Cheung and JIn stood by the Hansens as their choice, out of the few remaining experienced pilots who could still get back into a conn-pod.
Mako and Raleigh watched from the twins' side as Herc and Chuck got into another conn-pod. "This'll be Herc's third Jaeger," Kyrra Taior mused. "Chuck's never been out of Striker."
Raleigh looked startled. "Didn't you guys do sims in other mechs than your own?"
"Oh, yes," Jin said. "Chuck liked riding Typhoon. He and Herc used to take turns with Devi and Susanti so they could have three and do thundercloud formation."
Mako felt Raleigh's heart skip through the ghost drift. "You rode with them many times. I remember, reporters called you, Vulcan, and Coyote Tango the dream team." From the way they looked down, and the way Raleigh cringed, nobody was in the mood to reminisce today.
"The new pod will still take some getting used to," Kyrra said quickly. "And now we'll see if Chuck is predisposed to Jaeger-head."
Cheung and Jin hissed in unison along with Raleigh. "Aw, come on, you two wouldn't have gotten it," Raleigh said lightly.
"Most of our battle group did," Cheung retorted, grinning.
It was weird, testing in a new conn-pod. The testing itself went fine, apart from the entire Dome placing bets on whether (or when) Chuck would come down with Jaeger-head. Typhoon and Striker's crew had to disable some of Typhoon's neural pathways that had needed a third pilot to operate, like the third-axis rotation, but the pod itself was rebuilt for two.
There was a lot less red in this pod than the one the triplets had occupied. Chuck couldn't help noticing there was also a lot of khaki – homage to Striker and the Aussies' colors. He knew enough Chinese lettering to work out the little homage to Hu Wei painted in an inconspicuous part of the wall.
Typhoon's former crew were in the habit of touching it when they passed while working in the pod. Chuck and Herc started doing the same.
Chuck had never felt awkward taking Striker outside for maneuvers before, but the first time they went down Scramble Alley with Typhoon, he wished they'd closed the Dome grounds to the public. All those people, all those cameras watching, some cheering, some quiet. It mirrored the churning morass of emotions in Chuck's mind.
All these years and he'd never not been proud to be out in his Jaeger. Now all he had was ambivalence. Maybe because this wasn't his Jaeger and never would really feel like it.
You all right? Herc asked in the drift.
Chuck sent back a mental shrug. Fine. Not much more than fine – Herc couldn't miss that in the drift, so Chuck didn't bother pretending. I'll get it done. Whatever "it" was in a world without kaiju to fight.
They'd been training for four months and winter was well and truly setting in, bright and crisp, when the earthquake hit.
In Hong Kong, it was little more than light shaking and shouts of "Woohoo!" through the Dome halls. Cheung and Jin and most of the locals agreed: "That wasn't us. It may have been somewhere else. We should be on tsunami watch."
Then the thought occurred to everyone at once. "What's the Breach doing?!"
Oh, shit, shit, shitshitshitshit, it's not possible we only got a reprieve of a few months. But as the crews and Rangers crowded into LOCCENT, Tendo breathed, "Breach is still inactive. No seismic activity at all in the Marianas Trench outside normal parameters."
"Could a breach open somewhere else?" demanded Mako.
"There is absolutely no reason to discount that possibility," said Hermann Gottlieb, and he and Geiszler rushed off to the K-Science lab. "I need a line to Liling Gáo at K-Tracker Industries!"
"Should we go to pre-dep?" Herc asked the Weis. The brothers only needed a second before nodding and sending the base onto yellow alert.
"Even if it's just an earthquake, maybe Typhoon can be helpful," said Cheung.
Most of their simulations had involved things like ocean rescues and building collapses. Chuck had been bored, but…the idea of the Breach reopening – anywhere – wasn't exactly making him happy. I have no idea what I want. Watching the crews bringing Typhoon online and preparing the strike troop choppers always sent adrenaline rushing through him before. Now it was like a dull memory.
Gottlieb called while Herc and Chuck were hanging out in the war room with the Weis, Mako, and Raleigh. "No Breach. This appears to be a garden-variety earthquake, though I use the term loosely. It was a category 8.2 on the Richter scale and the epicenter was just north of Shanghai."
Cheung and Jin cursed in unison. "You want Jaeger support? Or should we just send a first responder squad?" Herc offered.
Regular media coverage was coming in, and for the first time, seeing elevated roads fallen and several taller buildings looking disturbingly off-balance, Chuck felt his heart rate start to rise. Cheung and Jin looked at each other, then at the Hansens. "Send Typhoon and all available strike troops for civilian first responder aid. Deploy."
"Yes, sir!" Herc moved faster than Chuck. "Team Typhoon, we're go for deployment. All first responders, to your stations!"
By the time they were suited up and in the conn-pod, the first orders were coming in. "Yangpu Bridge has experienced major damage. Waibadu Bridge is partially down."
"Got it," said Chuck. "Have we got trapped civilians on either?"
"Waibadu Bridge evacuation still in progress – there are trapped civilians and vehicles still trying to get off Yangpu. That bridge is long," said Jin. "Start with Yangpu."
It had to be stupid to be this nervous. There was no kaiju laying waste to the smoking city ahead of them. But you can't fight an earthquake.
"Says who?" asked Chuck's old man.
Chuck had seen bridges break before. Striker had held roadways up before so the cars and drivers could get clear, often while looking over their shoulder for the approaching kaiju. They'd caught buildings in danger of falling.
We can do this.
Some of the massive steel cables suspending the bridge had already snapped and were waving like snakes above the buckling roadways. People scrambled like ants across the surface, but the bridge was long. They'd need to buy at least a half-hour for the stranded drivers to get to safety on foot.
The HUD pulled up a schematic of the bridge, marking the weakest points that'd make the bridge fall in less than ten minutes unless Striker - no, Typhoon - could shore it up.
Left hand under the girders...right hand under the south tower - that'll put the weight back down the supports long enough to get everyone off.
They charged forward and stretched their arms out, lowering Typhoon's body to become a new weight carrier, taking the sagging bridge's midsection through their iron arms, torso, and legs into the riverbed. It left them directly at eye level with the road; stunned travelers scurrying from their cars stared directly into their face before running through the snarled mess of traffic for the nearest shore.
As the minutes ticked by, the bridge creaked and metal groaned as even Typhoon's support wasn't enough to keep the cables from fraying under the strain. Herc swore as one of them snapped and whiplashed past his face. "Good thing Typhoon doesn't have ears, or we'd have lost one. LOCCENT, how're we looking? This fucker's not gonna hold much longer!"
"I'm not seeing any more occupied cars," said Chuck, scanning with his instruments.
"We've got a few left on the far end, but you should be clear within five minutes!" Tendo reported. Then he added, "And you'll want to get clear really fast after that, because the whole superstructure's going to come down hard as soon as you let go."
"Yeah, noticed," said Chuck. The HUD was picking up the last few people running for their lives, but more and more cables were snapping free, ripping out supports and lashing at the remaining pillars as they whipped in every direction.
Time hadn't flown by so bloody fast since Herc had flown a stolen Bell Kiowa to Chuck's school. Time had never seemed to matter so much in any of their engagements in Striker. But those poor pedestrians seemed to be moving in slow motion as cable after cable snapped and the concrete and steel in Typhoon's arms turned to gelatin.
"She's gonna give out!" Tendo yelled. "Typhoon, you need to back off!"
"Are all the civilians clear?" Chuck demanded.
"...almost."
Fuck. "We're staying!" they chorused. They'd been thrown through bridges before, and so had Typhoon in more than one fight. They'd survive. They turned Typhoon's face away, tilting their head so the thickest part of the pod helmet was aimed toward the bridge.
With a series of sickening cracks, the shriek of bending and warping steel, and the crumbling of thick concrete, the enormous bridge finally failed. Huge slabs bent and broke on the section opposite the bridge's central support from Typhoon - but then the whole northern tower tilted and collapsed in a series of thuds, almost straight down. The south tower tilted dangerously towards Typhoon. "Fuuuuck, fuck, fuck, fuck!"The bridge was screwed, so Chuck pulled back; Herc planted his foot and they threw themselves backward, falling into the river as the south tower came down sideways right where they'd been.
The remainder of the bridge went down with it, shattering as pieces collided, and Chuck managed to get his arm up in front of their face, spitting profanity as cables and bars and chunks of road bit into their body.
"LOCCENT, LOCCENT, is everyone clear?!" Herc panted. They twisted and crab-walked backward. Even with only two pilots, Typhoon was more flexible than Striker'd been, they had to admit.
"Looks good, Typhoon! Some debris casualties, but everybody got to shore!"
"Right." They got to their feet and staggered out of the water. "What's next?"
THE JAEGER PROGRAM LIVES!
Chinese authorities hailed Crimson Typhoon as savior of as many as 2,000 lives in the aftermath of the 8.3 magnitude Hangzhou Earthquake!
Veteran pilots Hercules and Chuck Hansen inherited Typhoon with the blessing of former pilots Jin and Cheung Wei, and spent twelve hours after the quake assisting in rescue and recovery operations, most notably holding up the Yangpu Bridge for more than thirty minutes after engineers expected the entire span to collapse.
"There were as many as 500 people traveling on that bridge when the quake struck, and vehicles were stranded by the shaking and road damage and panic. Every one of them made it to the shore including those who left their cars at the very center of the bridge!"
After Yangpu Bridge fell, Crimson Typhoon moved on to several smaller bridges in the river and even managed to reinforce one with debris long enough for emergency services to extract a trapped family from their partially-crushed car. The Jaeger and his valiant pilots also caught several multi-story buildings in danger of immediate collapse, and held them up until victims inside could be evacuated.
Thirteen hours in the drift and not a kaiju to be seen. Strange. Herc and Chuck were dog-tired by the time the LOCCENT said, "Stand down, guys. That's about all the heavy-lifting that can safely be done, and the search and rescue wants to get in deep. Come meet the lift crew on the river docks."
They were less than a mile from the riverbank, absently watching only for helicopters or stray civilians when Chuck's tired mind wandered back to the edge of the Breach.
"You can always find me in the drift," Stacker had promised Mako.
And Mako and Raleigh had hinted it was the literal truth after their illicit post-Breach drift.
It is true. Chuck turned in the drift so sharply that Herc had to pull back hard to keep Typhoon from copying the move. But out of the corner of his eye, he saw him: Stacker? Good God - no - wait - "Chuck, no," he said, reaching out physically to catch his son's arm. "Not here. We're still deployed."
But... Chuck could hear/see other faces in the drift, faces he missed, and he wanted...
It's okay, boyo. Herc's heart lurched. It's okay, we'll wait. You've got a job to finish. It'd been over a year since he'd heard their voices, and even longer since he'd heard Angela's...
Not now, Herc. Go home first. We'll be here. There was Stacker too, reminding him of his job, and Angela even though she'd never lived to see a Jaeger, let alone know her baby would pilot it.
"Herc? Chuck? You guys okay? You're on the edge of alignment," said an alarmed-sounding Tendo.
Shit... "Yeah," Chuck croaked, and they turned their back on the memories. "We're good, just tired. On our way to the lift point."
Dad...when we get back...
I know, kid. We'll see then. If the medics really think there's no harm... Then they could see everyone they thought they'd never see again.
As they disconnected from the drift, Herc heard Stacker's voice again. We'll be waiting.
Jesus Christ. Talk about a ghost drift.
To Be Continued...
Coming Soon: Chuck and Herc drift back into their past, hoping for the same closure Mako and Raleigh had with the many people they left behind, and find Stacker's promise to Mako, "you can always find me in the drift," holds equally true for Herc and Chuck in Chapter Fifteen: Those Words I Said!
PLEASE don't forget to review