Author's Notes: Thank you all for the feedback on the first chapter! It's amazing seeing so many readers who've followed this story for the past FOUR YEARS. (I never planned on this series lasting for four years.) As a reminder, a guide to the original characters can be found at the bottom of the chapter, though anyone who's read the previous fics will recognize most of them from Aurora Borealis and Aurora Australis. Translations from Mandarin are at the end of the chapter.
Canon Note: As a reminder, the relationship between Jake Pentecost and Mako and Stacker doesn't follow where the movie has hinted it's going. I took it a different way, and my retcon of him into the Generation K verse is found in Chapters 11-12 of Tales From The Front Lines!
Chapter Two: Salvage
A few days later, the salvage crews brought Crimson Typhoon back to the Shatterdome. Cheung and Jin didn't come out to watch, and Raleigh didn't blame them.
Typhoon was in relatively good shape, which was the reason the crews concentrated on him. But seeing the mangled conn-pod and knowing what had happened inside...Raleigh didn't want to think about it for too long, and knew it had to be ten times worse for Cheung and Jin.
Raleigh left the bay and found the brothers in the officers' lounge, surrounded by a group of their crew. There wasn't anything he could think of to say, so he just went to sit down next to them. The crew moved aside to make a place on the couch for Raleigh next to Jin. Raleigh was surprised, but decided it'd be rude to turn down the honor. So he sat, a few inches separate from the pair. The brothers were pressed into each other's sides like Raleigh'd once been with Yancy, the way he now sat with Mako.
They only looked at him for a few seconds before looking down again. "We should see him," murmured Jin. "It's not right to abandon him. Hu wouldn't like that."
Raleigh dared to say, "Hu'd understand that you need to wait awhile. Typhoon's not going anywhere now." Seeing Gipsy here had been hard enough even with all evidence of damage by Knifehead gone. Typhoon's scars from Otachi were still all too evident, only weeks after Hu Wei had died in that battle.
There wasn't much else to say. Mako came in a few moments later and lightly shoved Raleigh back into his seat when he tried to get up and give his spot to her. Instead, she perched on the arm rest, leaning over his shoulders with her chin on his head and an arm draped down his chest.
"The inquiries from the United Nations have started," said Cheung. "Who is to blame? Who is responsible? Who is in charge of Jaeger tech?"
Mako trembled against Raleigh's back. He reached up and squeezed her hand. They'll blame Sensei. That might have been his memories blended with hers, or maybe he really could still hear her that clearly through the ghost drift. Marshal Pentecost would be an all too easy target for cowardly bureaucrats who now needed to explain to their governments and their people how the Jaeger Program had succeeded with almost no official support.
"Your President wants the weapons," said Jin.
Raleigh stiffened. Then he sighed. Raleigh and the other workers hadn't paid much attention to politics, but Jerald Lunk had been a big supporter of the Wall and "America Protects Americans" and "make America safe again," had been his primary platform during the 2024 presidential campaign, and even showed up to some of the Wall projects, grandstanding that this was the way to handle the kaiju. He'd called the wall workers heroes and saviors - and promptly signed a bill within six weeks of taking office that erased the last few remaining salary protections and safety regulations, leaving Raleigh and the rest working for nothing but rations.
Of course, the posturing bastard would be desperately looking for ways to cover his ass now that the Australian Wall had fallen and the Breach closed by Jaegers.
Then again, what business did Raleigh Becket have complaining about elected officials? He hadn't voted since 2019.
Just like with everything else, I checked out, and other people paid the price.
Mako's grip tightened on his hand. Yeah, it didn't do any good thinking this way. What was done was done.
"Marshal Hansen and Sasha Kaidanovsky are responding to the demands on behalf of us all," said Mako. "They're more than capable of handling it." She didn't give voice to the twinge of anxiety and sorrow that reminded Raleigh through the ghost drift of how certain she'd been that Sensei could have handled it.
But one of Typhoon's crew shot Raleigh a reluctant look. "That will not be good enough for the Americans. They will want to hear the word of an American."
Mako glared, and Raleigh nudged her. Don't kill the messenger. Although...God, debriefing was bad enough.
Explaining to the Shatterdome engagement investigators what had happened down there, had been hard enough. The events that led up to the loss of Striker and Marshal Pentecost, the last, desperate choice to take Gipsy into the breach...to say nothing of what Raleigh had seen and felt as Mako's consciousness had left the drift and he'd been falling alone...alone...reactor meltdown...
"Raleigh?"
His vision blurred, then focused again. Cheung was sitting up, looking past Jin at Raleigh in concern. What was wrong with Cheung's...right. His arm. Raleigh shook his head and muttered, "Sorry. Got dizzy." Bullshit. Mako knew he was lying, and maybe they did too...triplets? Were they still the Wei triplets? What'd you call brothers who'd lost one?
What's it mean that I still wake up in the night looking for Yancy? I had a brother but I don't have a brother anymore, right? Or do I?
He just sat there, looking at nothing, trying to sift through the fractured past and present and figure out which was which without anybody realizing he couldn't remember. People talked around him. He didn't think they were talking to him, and he couldn't have answered if he'd wanted to.
Then someone came into the lounge. Raleigh saw her face, and... it was as if the fragments were paper, and they'd all been set on fire, dancing away from him in a whoosh like a torn newspaper he and Yance had tossed over a campfire to watch the embers fly, like little phoenix butterflies...
It was Hien Nguyen. Team Gipsy, Personnel Coordinator of Strike Troop Whiskey Alpha. She'd been there, she'd been part of Class 2016-B. She'd worn Gipsy's uniform, she'd worn a slinky green dress at the crew dance parties, she'd worn a string bikini in the Icebox Challenge polar bear plunge...
...she'd scowled when something made her mad...she'd laughed when Christian Warner and Tendo started punning...but she'd been so quick-thinking and calm during engagements...and she'd...she'd cried, when...
...she'd been crying hard and trying to hide it, sitting next to Raleigh's bed in a hazy, blurry room...then. Last time Raleigh had seen her was...he couldn't remember. All he could remember was that she'd been crying.
In front of him, like the middle of a kaleidoscope, she'd frozen in place, eyes darting from Raleigh to Yance - no, behind Raleigh wasn't Yancy, it was...Mako.
Raleigh turned his face sluggishly to look to the side, then up, and through the ghost drift, he reached through the fog until he found her. She was next to him suddenly, holding him, one hand on his cheek. "Look at me. Raleigh-chan, you can do it. It's August, 2025. The Breach is closed."
People murmured in the background.
"Duìbuqǐ! Wǒ bù zhīdào tā zài zhèlǐ!" she blurted.
"Méiguānxì, Hien, méiguānxì," someone answered.
Hien.
How could Hien be here but also Mako? Hien was...before. Mako was after.
Mako whispered in Japanese. "I told you, you have friends here from before, like Tendo. Hien works in Hong Kong now. She joined Striker Eureka's team."
Striker Eureka? Raleigh looked at Hien, who hadn't moved. She'd never looked at him like this before, even...then. With Mako whispering in his ear, Raleigh focused on Hien's uniform, the insignia of Striker Eureka, on the room around them, Hong Kong, not Anchorage, and gradually pulled reality and the present back together.
His voice was raspy when he tried to make himself talk. "Hey."
Hien opened her mouth, but nothing came out. Maybe Raleigh wasn't the only one having trouble hanging onto...everything. His limbs ran away from him then, and he scrambled off the couch to stand up and face her, and Hien reached out and caught his shoulder, staring at him as if she wasn't quite sure he was real.
"Hey," she croaked and tried to smile. "I missed you." Her face shook and she hurriedly looked down.
Raleigh cautiously pulled her toward him until she was hiding her face in his chest. She's spent five years, four months wondering if I was dead, he realized. How shitty had he been, acting like he was the only person in the world who'd lost Yancy?
Mako rose and put a hand on his back. Stop it. She didn't have to say it, and maybe she wasn't even thinking it. "There are a few more of your old friends here," she said gently. "We should call them."
Yeah. It's time. "Okay."
One of the triplets spoke up behind them. "You had friends who were part of Typhoon's crew. They waited to see you." Raleigh turned around in surprise, and Jin smiled. "Bao and Shun. You were together in the Jaeger Academy."
"Yeah," Raleigh murmured. He hadn't seen those guys since they failed the second cut back in 2016, but they'd kept in touch, via email and vidcomm, up until Yancy died.
Hien let go of him and stepped back, breathing heavy like she was still getting herself under control. "I'll page them. We...didn't want to make things harder, when you got back, but we were all thinking about you."
"Do you want us to go?" Cheung offered.
"No!" Raleigh exclaimed - in chorus with Mako and Hien. "I mean, unless you want to." He sure as hell wasn't going to ask the Weis and their crew to vacate their own fucking officers' lounge. The brothers looked at each other, then leaned back in unison, and the rest of their crew settled in. Incredibly, Raleigh felt a smile tug at his mouth. He vaguely remembered the triplets having a reputation, back in the day, for being wheelers and dealers in Corps gossip - but only on subjects outside their own Dome.
Some things are like muscle memory, no matter how bad things get.
Within five minutes, nearly a dozen familiar faces arrived in the officers' lounge with Tendo, and Raleigh felt overwhelmed again. After Team Gipsy had broken apart, he learned, the crew had had the choice to either resign or transfer to a new post. A few had gone much in the way Raleigh had, too heartsick to be near a Shatterdome and all its memories. But others had put in for transfers, and gradually, a few J-Techs, strike troopers, and other personnel had wound up in Hong Kong for the last stand.
Among them, Chloe and Christian Warner. Seeing them again hit Raleigh the hardest, and it was a long few minutes before he could talk. For that first meeting, nobody from the former Team Gipsy really managed to come up with much to say. Christian just cried while he and his sister sandwiched Raleigh between them, and Raleigh kept his eyes shut so he wouldn't have to look at anyone.
After Whiskey Gamma went down, we were suiting up...I saw you cry then too. Then I cried, then we all cried.
It was hard not to chase the rabbit right there and drift off into memories.
The funny thing was, though, every time Raleigh said he was sorry, all his former crew and classmates said the same thing: "Don't be. It's okay."
"We understood, kiddo. Everybody understood."
Once the initial high emotions of the reunion had calmed down, Mako left Raleigh alone with his friends and went for a walk outside. Now that Typhoon had been moved into the bays, Scramble Alley was empty again...of Jaegers, anyway.
When she spotted Chuck walking Max along the trampled grass at the edge of the pavement, she waited for him.
Chuck didn't make eye contact with her much anymore. This wasn't to say that he seemed sad or intimidated - perish the thought. He held his head as high as he ever had before Operation Pitfall, but now he seemed...distracted. Or even when he was paying attention, he seemed to look past people, focusing not just on what they were saying but on the implications of it.
Sensei used to do that. Sensei had only made lingering eye contact on a regular basis with a few people. Mako had been one, Tamsin another. Mako had once asked Tamsin about it, and she'd chuckled. "Men deal with things in different ways than women, especially commanders like him. You won't tell, and even if you did, hardly anyone would believe you, but your Sensei's shy, my love. Being formal and strict is a way to hide it."
Mako hadn't believed her at first. She'd never mustered the courage to ask Sensei herself - that was one of the few instances where she'd been unable to do it. But she had come to notice that Sensei didn't socialize with many people, apart from Tamsin and a few of the Mark-1 and Mark-2 pilots. Even then, he tended to be rather formal. He rarely laughed unless he was alone with Mako or Tamsin.
She'd wondered if that should make her sad or not. Mako knew herself to be a little shy. It had gotten better as she grew older and adjusted to life after Onibaba, and that had been goood because she'd been terribly lonely. But even some of her friends had been more solitary, reminding her of Sensei, and had insisted that they liked it that way. Introverts versus extroverts.
Watching Chuck approach, his injuries mostly healed but with his gait and bearing just a little different - and familiar at the same time - Mako was struck for the first time in the years she'd known him to wonder if Chuck had always been shy.
Men deal with things in different ways than women. Being formal and strict is a way to hide it.
Being brusque and aggressive could hide things too.
Now she got the sense that Chuck was mustering towards a question of his own, but he wasn't falling back on his old blunt, dismissive manner towards difficult subjects. So she waited.
Finally, he said, "I don't remember noticing during the drift...but there's a boy." Mako couldn't help the way she stiffened, and Chuck looked her in the eye. "I see him now, in drift memories. It's gotta be his."
"What do you see?" she breathed.
Chuck's gaze slid into the distance. "Just his face. Sometimes it's like pictures. He's a kid, young kid. Last I remember of him, he's still young. He saw him grow up...from a long way away. Who is it?"
"You don't know?"
"I don't...no."
Somehow, Mako was certain Chuck was lying. Why he'd lie about that, she couldn't say, but it didn't matter enough to press him. So she told him the truth. "Jacob. Jake. He's sixteen. He lived with his grandparents in London most of his life. My little brother." Sensei's son. She should've finished with that, but it caught in her throat. She was ashamed of that.
Max whined, and Mako and Chuck knelt automatically to scratch him. "I didn't know," he murmured. He looked at her. "Nobody knew, did they?"
"Not many people."
"Not even my dad, until he saw it in my ghost drift."
Mako shook her head. She was a little surprised that Sensei hadn't even told Herc, but of course, Herc would know now through Chuck. "He never told anyone he didn't have to, just as he did with me. Your father never shared a posting with Sens - with Marshal Pentecost. So it never came up."
"Where is he now? Where's he been?"
"With his grandparents." Mako tried to keep the contempt out of her voice. Sensei's relationship with Jake's maternal grandparents had been chilly at best, and tensions had exploded when Jake was fourteen and truly recognized how hard they were working to drive a wedge between Jake and his father.
Jake had chosen to believe in his father. Mako had privately compared Jake's faith in Sensei with Chuck's legendary animus for Herc on many occasions. Now she wondered if she'd been unfair.
In any case, "Jake emailed me the day after we returned from Pitfall. He's started the process of being emancipated. When it's done, he's coming here." She watched Chuck carefully, but to her surprise, Chuck betrayed no reaction.
The crews of Jaegers, current and former, gradually calmed down from the day's distresses, and when Herc arrived in the officer's lounge, it looked like old times. Cheung was playing table tennis against Tendo, and despite Cheung being off-balance due to his recently-lost arm, they were tied. Raleigh and the Kaidanovskys were engaged in a heated debate about regional rule variations in hockey - at least, Herc was pretty sure that's what they were talking about, because they were all speaking French.
Mako had managed to commandeer the Kaidanovskys' boom box to play J-pop instead of the usual Ukrainian hard house, and she was dancing with Christian Warner and a clutch of other crew. Bao Wang and Shun Thou from Team Typhoon were building a robot of some kind with a lot of obscene commentary from the other J-Techs - and Chuck, who was wrangling Max to stop him from starting the robot war early.
Herc waved down the few personnel who started to stand to attention and wove through the various conversations to the Kaidanovskys. "You know that crate of liquor you said you brought to celebrate? I think now's the time to break it out."
Aleksis and Sasha blinked, then grinned, and Sasha hopped out of her chair. "Ahhh, we almost forgot. You, Becket, with me. Stay, Sasha. Keep Marshal company." Raleigh obediently trotted out the door after her.
Within a few minutes, Mako was glancing around in concern, but Herc shook his head at her. "He's fine; he'll be back in a minute."
Upon Sasha and Raleigh's return, curious murmurs at the crate they carried gave way to whoops and shrieks of joy and a stampede of humanity to grab the best bottles. Before long, the party was spilling out into the mess hall and surrounding corridors.
The J-pop from the Kaidanovskys' boom box got louder (and somehow, Mako succeeded in wheedling them not to change it despite the fact that the whole crowd now owed the Kaidanovskys a favor for the booze). Somebody else brought another set of speakers into the mess hall, and a more universally-appreciated mix of J-pop, K-pop, American rock, and various Eurosong contestants soon blared through the Shatterdome.
Most of the pilots were still on medication for one injury or another and probably should not have been indulging in alcohol - ah, fuck it. Herc grabbed a bottle of excellent stout that had been contributed from someone else's stash, and settled himself with the crowd that had turned a football match on the television.
Chuck remained with the robot builders, and soon their creation went skittering across the floor squeaking like a Star Wars droid, and crew threw bottlecaps and wine corks into the basket it carried. (Chuck and Kyrra Taior were distracting Max with food.)
More crew retreated into the mess hall as the officers' lounge seemed to have turned into a dance club. Cheung came wheeling Jin into the mess hall at dangerously-high speed, and several of the bystanders made racecar noises.
Herc roared with laughter when some of the Russians tried (to no avail) to convince Sasha and Aleksis to do the same, but they stuck to their guns, now debating something about the contents of their bottle of wine with one of the Italian crew.
You could almost forget the last year ever happened.
It almost felt like the last five years, four months had never happened. At least, they were further in the distance than Raleigh could remember.
He and Mako staggered off the dance floor once they knew Mako wouldn't be able to walk for a week if they kept going, and a couple of crew made room for them to collapse on the couch. Mako landed in Raleigh's lap, laughing like he'd never heard, even in the drift. The bottle of sake they'd finished between the two of them probably had something to do with it. The sake probably also had something to do the fact that neither of them could get untangled.
Not in any hurry to climb off him, Mako pulled herself up on Raleigh's shoulders and demanded, "You can fight. You can pilot. But you can't dance?!"
Raleigh groaned in chorus with whoops of laughter from the onlookers. Christian Warner leaned over the back of the couch to pinch Raleigh's cheek. "Many have tried to get this guy some rhythm, and ain't nobody managed ever it yet!"
Former Team Gipsy personnel started chiming in with stories, and Mako remained draped across Raleigh, giggling in his ear, "Who's Nikki?"
Oh, you're going to try that, are you? "Who's Sebastian?" Raleigh whispered back.
That got them both giggling until they slid off the couch. A little sobering up was called for, so they staggered out of the lounge into the mess hall to find something non-alcoholic to drink, ignoring the ribbing. Eventually, the personnel went back to betting on Max-versus-Robot foot races, and Raleigh and Mako wound up under one of the tables to curl up, eavesdrop, - and occasionally flick stray bottlecaps at people and see who would get blamed.
"Nikki Harris tried to teach me to dance," Raleigh told her. "She was really good, but it never rubbed off on me." A pang of sadness went through him. "She was on Whiskey Gamma."
Mako crawled into his lap again, nuzzling his hair. "I remember that." She'd seen the crew of Whiskey Gamma Strike Troop in their drift; Personnel Coordinator Antwan Ferrier towering over the rest of the crew in his Gipsy Danger fisherman's cap, yelling "Muster drill, muster drill!" during deployment drills. EMT Nikki Harris dancing in her red dress or just in her crew jumpsuit. Brandon Pines, the candidate who'd failed drift compatibility but come back as a support chopper pilot. He'd flown Command Chopper Whiskey Gamma at Gipsy's side for every deployment and drill - and once over one of Romeo Blue's support crews during a prank war, while the crew pelted Team Romeo with glitter bombs and water balloons full of pink paint.
The YouTube videos of that prank war in 2018 had been so worth the demerits.
That had all ended in January 2019 with Hardship. The battle had laid waste to Concepción, Chile, ended the careers of Diablo Intercept's pilots, and nearly pushed Bruce and Trevin to the breaking point.
Just like always, the strike troop command choppers had moved in to help with the emergency relief after the kaiju was killed.
An explosion had torn one of Romeo Blue's choppers apart only a few dozen meters from where Whiskey Gamma had been hovering, waiting to land. Debris had torn through the windows and the rotors, and Whiskey Gamma had spun out of control and crashed.
All hands had been lost.
It'd been the first time Team Gipsy had lost anyone on their own team, let alone a crew of twelve that included some of Raleigh and Yancy's closest friends. Until Knifehead, those first weeks after Whiskey Gamma was lost had been the hardest of Raleigh's life.
Mako pulled him closer. "I know," she murmured. "Sebastian Rojas was an EMT too."
Raleigh winced. He'd tried not to pay too much attention during those five years and four months, but it was hard to miss that a lot of PPDC emergency personnel had died during rescue efforts in the last couple of years. Fighting to hang onto the light mood, he asked weakly, "He taught you to dance."
"Not dance, no."
Raleigh spat out a mouthful of water. They collapsed in a pile of arms and legs on the floor, gasping with laughter, until Tendo peeked down at them. "You two better not be doing what I think you're doing under there!"
"In your dreams, Tendo," Mako replied pertly. But she had her fist tangled in the hem of Raleigh's sweater…and it'd crept lower towards the edge of his pants without her really meaning to.
At first Raleigh didn't notice, then he looked at her and found their noses practically touching, and suddenly became aware of her hand low on his back and his on her leg. Heat rushed through both of their faces…and kept on going down.
Raleigh seemed paralyzed, but she felt him tremble when her hand slid up beneath his shirt along the muscles of his back. Tonight…it's time, say yes.
"You sure?" he murmured.
She breathed against his neck. "Very sure." His head fell back, eyes dark and big in the dim light, staring at her, trying not to let his gaze wander all over her. She bit her lip to hold back a smirk. Come on. My room. Now.
With the next rush of movement above, crews exchanging places to get at food or alcohol, people coming into or off of the "dance floor" or slipping out for the bathroom, Mako tugged Raleigh after her and they slipped as discreetly as possible through the throng of personnel off into the less-crowded hallway.
It was probably too much to hope that they'd make it to quarters without somebody seeing them and figuring out what was going on – but damn it, they almost made it. If only Newt Geiszler hadn't been scurrying down the hall with a couple of girlfriends of his own, a half-full bottle of whiskey in his head…and the wink he shot the two of them was all too knowing. Damn.
The whole Shatterdome would know by morning. To hell with it.
To Be Continued...
Coming Soon: Team Gipsy enjoys the fruits of victory. The support personnel enjoy the fruits of the will-they/won't-they betting pool. Herc begins making plans for the political onslaught of governments around the world who want their piece of the Jaeger Program in Chapter Three: Victory Dance!
Translations:
Duìbuqǐ! Wǒ bù zhīdào tā zài zhèlǐ – I'm sorry! I didn't know he was here!
Méiguānxì, Hien, méiguānxì – It's okay, Hien, it's okay.
Original Character Guide
President Jerald "Jerry" Lunk: President of the United States. Billionaire hotel mogul who ran on a campaign of "make America safe again" in 2024, proponent of the Wall, now arguing over who has the strongest Jaegers. Likes to use Twitter. No, he's not based on anyone in the real world. Seriously. No, really.
Hien Nguyen: Strike trooper formerly with Gipsy Danger, then transferred to Team Striker Eureka after Knifehead and Yancy's death, National Guard transplant, Vietnamese-American in her early 30s.
Christian Warner: drivesuit technician, African-American early 30s, classmate of Raleigh, Yancy, and Tendo's from Class 2016-B, close friend of our heroes from the beginning. Transferred to K-Watch to join his half-sister Chloe after Knifehead and Yancy's death, eventually wound up on Hong Kong's staff.
Chloe Warner: K-Watch officer, African-American, early 30s, classmate of Raleigh, Yancy, and Tendo's from Academy Class 2016-B. Stationed in Hawaii for most of the war, eventually wound up with the downsized K-Watch personnel in Hong Kong for Operation Pitfall. She and her half-brother drift tested, but were not drift compatible despite being very close.
Bao Wang and Shun Thou: J-Tech cousins from Beijing who were also in Class 2016-B. After failing the second cut at the Jaeger Academy, they returned to China to finish their tech degrees and became J-Techs for Team Crimson Typhoon. They kept in touch with their friends and classmates among the Americans over social media, and received leave in 2020 to attend Yancy's funeral in 2020.
Nikki Harris: EMT from Whiskey Gamma Strike Troop who had a casual relationship with Raleigh for several years before being killed in action when Whiskey Gamma Command Chopper crashed in the aftermath of Romeo Blue's battle with Hardship. Also from Class 2016-B, she failed the first cut but stayed on for rescue/recovery training.
Antwan Ferrier: Personnel Coordinator for Whiskey Gamma Strike Troop, also from Class 2016-B who failed the second cut drift compatibility, killed in action in the post-Hardship chopper crash, very close to Raleigh and Yancy.
Brandon Pines: Command Chopper pilot for Whiskey Gamma who fought in combat against Trespasser, remained with the US Air Force after failing the second cut drift compatibility, but joined the strike troopers. Close friend of Raleigh and Yancy, killed in action in the Whiskey Gamma crash.
Sebastian Rojas: EMT from Mako's class, 2023-A at the Jaeger Academy. Mako's first intimate partner, they tried but failed to establish drift compatibility, and Sebastian eventually chose to become a Strike Trooper and returned to his native Chile. He died of radiation exposure after Horizon Brave's destruction in Lima.