Author's Notes: Wow, thank you all for the amazing response to last chapter! Please keep the feedback coming; it means everything. The events in this chapter are based on the description in the novelization of Gipsy Danger's battle with Yamarashi.
Chapter Twenty-Three: This Is For Real
Half of Raleigh's mind was in a frenzy, spinning and whirling no less than when the sirens had gone off in Anchorage for Karloff in 2015. But muscle memory took over, and he found himself next to Yancy in the drive suit room, going through the motions for suiting up, following every step and movement as if he were perfectly calm.
We're being deployed. It was like the grinding, blaring alert sirens had taken up residence in his skull and were repeating that sentence over and over. This is it. We're being deployed.
It wore down as he had to focus on his movements, and the others also calmed down from the shock of the alert. They could hear Marshall Ramirez giving orders over the intercom, and even heard Tanisha chiming in from Bay 01 about the LA evacuation. She wasn't supposed to do that, but... Fuck protocol, this is her home. These are her people, her cities. She knows this place.
A couple of the techs monitored the updates from LOCCENT as they suited up. "Bogey now making landfall on Santa Catalina Island, moving through Two Harbors. We have spotters on him... quadruped, estimated length six hundred feet, estimated height two hundred feet. Heavy scaled armor, forming spines on the back, four eyes, elongated head."
"Picture!" someone called, and Raleigh and Yancy paused from taking their helmets to get a look.
"Yamarashi? More like hedgehog-o-saurus," Yancy remarked. In the time it took them to take a glance, the kaiju was back in the water and out of sight. "C'mon, let's hurry it up."
Christian wound up in front of Raleigh, helping him into the battle armor, and gave him a small smile. "You're ready for this, bro. Kick his ugly ass."
Raleigh grinned, and looked at Yancy. Ever the restrained one, his brother just nodded.
"How fast's he swimming?" Raleigh asked as they put their helmets on and let the neural gel finish linking them up.
"Gipsy One, online. Gipsy Two, online."
They walked quickly in their armor for the conn-pod door as one of the techs hurried past them with his rig kit. "Estimated speed forty miles per hour," he told them, and Yancy shot Raleigh a sharp look and quickened his pace.
Unless it slowed down or really changed direction, Yamarashi'd be in Los Angeles before either Jaeger could get in front of it. Don't panic. You know your job, just do it. He wrenched his attention off everything except the pre-deployment checks. Rig connections, harness and input cradles, pre-link drift analysis. Feel out the systems, they'd been drilled in training, especially the neural ones. It was internal awareness that would more likely give the warning if something was wrong.
"Right harness checks complete. Rig fully locked," announced Yancy's pod team.
"Gipsy One, all clear," Yancy confirmed.
"Left harness checks complete. Rig fully locked," said Raleigh's team.
"Gipsy Two, all clear," said Raleigh. One of the guys met his gaze and made a quick gesture as he walked away. Raleigh thought it was some kind of blessing.
"Securing conn-pod," said Gipsy's mission controller. "Preparing for drop."
Raleigh's hand went automatically to the command console, and his eyes found Yancy's also hovering over his release button. "Ready."
"Release for drop."
Gravity plummeted away with the conn-pod, and metal shrieked as they sped up, then slowed on the approach. In the background, he heard the drop commands being given for Yankee. Raleigh watched and felt the gears and locks fall into place, sealing them into Gipsy's shoulders. Gipsy's turbines and engines roared to life as Yancy confirmed the lock was complete, and the command console and HUD activated the handshake prep sequence.
Gipsy's lift gears were already active, and the display showed the LOCCENT radar indicating the two Jumphawk fleets already in formation outside with their rigs lowered.
The internal Dome display flashed white as the first crawler guided Yankee Star out of Bay 01 into Scramble Alley. Raleigh felt only a faint shudder as Gipsy's crawler started after them. The west-facing bay doors opened to glaring light, making them wince from the afternoon sun and dim the external screen.
"Where's our bogey?" Tanisha asked.
"Right on the Avalon-Long Beach Ferry Route, Yankee One, direction north-northwest. Estimated time to landfall, thirty minutes. Forecast location, Long Beach."
It was all Raleigh could do not to fidget as they rolled out into the sunlight, and the choppers came down to pick them up.
"This is Drop Crew Alpha. We have Yankee Star locked and ready for liftoff," said the hawk crew leader.
They heard the clunks and grinding of the lines and magnets connecting outside the pod. "Drop Crew Beta, Gipsy Danger locked and ready for liftoff."
"Drop crews, this is Marshall Ana Ramirez, you are cleared for takeoff." The pod swayed gently around them as the ground dropped away. "Rangers, prepare for neural handshake."
The handshake display took over the front screens, two brains and all the connections with Gipsy's systems. "Gipsy, this is Beta station. Initiating handshake in fifteen...fourteen..."
Raleigh looked at Yancy. "We're ready, kiddo," his brother said firmly.
Raleigh smiled. "Yeah, we are." Here we go.
They plunged into the headspace.
Incoming kaiju... extreme red alert...
"Codename Yamarashi..."
How'd it get so close without us seeing it?
Little Jaegers and kaiju on a map - "Hey, Rals, look what just came in the mail!" Gipsy Danger in miniature. Now in pride of place next to Yankee in Los Angeles...
"I think I like being famous."
Yankee Star was built for sharpshooting... Gipsy Danger was built for brawling...
..."Two completely untried Jaegers and crews to defend the entire West Coast!"
We're ready we're ready readyreadyready...
"Gipsy, you with me? Neural handshake strong and holding." There was one brain on the screen now. They were two hundred sixty feet tall, with skin of iron and muscles of steel and arms loaded with plasma generators. They were flying, vibrating slightly from the motion of the Jumphawks.
"Right hemisphere, calibrating," said Yancy, in Raleigh's ears and also in his head.
"Left hemisphere, calibrating," he answered automatically.
Careful of calibration maneuvers in mid-air, don't jolt the choppers. They'd practiced it plenty of times. Ahead of them, Yankee Star was moving her arms, bringing her hands carefully together as the skyline of Los Angeles and Santa Monica spread out below them.
There was already smoke over the beach front on the south side. "Yankee Star and Gipsy Danger, you're being deployed to the mouth of the Los Angeles River for intercept," Marshall Ramirez announced. "Your orders are to repel and destroy the target by any means necessary. Terminal Island evacuation is eighty-five percent complete. Mainland evacuation is fourteen percent complete."
"Mother fuck. What's our ETA, LOCCENT?" Tanisha asked.
"Nine minutes. Kaiju has made landfall on the Long Beach waterfront, moving west parallel to the beach."
Let's make our game plan now, Yancy said/thought at him. "Call it, Yankee."
It didn't take them long. "Deploy on our left flank, Gipsy. Try and cut him off if he runs north into the city, but do not cross in front of us, understood?"
"Copy that." Raleigh pulled up a map schematic to overlay the display. "Target's still going parallel to Ocean Boulevard heading towards the arena. We can intercept before he goes much further inshore."
"LOCCENT, tell law enforcement to get everyone underground south of Sixth Street, keep evacuating to the north," Tanisha ordered. "We're firing as soon as he's in range."
"Roger that, Yankee Star. Strike troops are online with civil defense."
Closer... closer... closer, they descended over the city. Yancy pulled up the harbor display. "What ship is that?" he asked, both of them focusing at once on a silhouette much bigger than most of the other watercraft traffic.
"Queen Mary, actually a hotel," said a familiar voice. It was Tendo, sounding impressively calm. They were probably at all-hands-on-deck ordering the evacuations from LOCCENT. "She's fully evacuated, thank God."
"Definitely thank God. Bogey's heading right at her."
Sucked to be the White Star Line or whoever owned ocean liners nowadays, but Raleigh hoped Yamarashi would get himself distracted with the big ship long enough for the Jaegers to get themselves in front of him. Man, Antwan's gonna have a fit. The kaiju plowed right through the ship, splitting it in half like a matchstick toy.
"We're releasing you over the river in ninety seconds, moving into position," the Hawk crews announced.
"Horn silence, Gipsy!" Tanisha ordered. "I don't want that bastard running before we're in position."
"Copy that," Raleigh withdrew his hand from the rescue horn controls. He loved blasting them (and by now, everybody knew it) but Tanisha had a point.
They came down over the river past the ship terminals and finally got a clear view of the kaiju, which did resemble some kind of hybrid turtle-porcupine-dinosaur. It was ripping its way through the waterfront buildings, glass and metal glittering in the late-afternoon sun and flashing off the water. Smoke billowed along the path it had left behind, and for a split-second, Raleigh knew, knew this was no sim, and there were people down there -
Focus, Rals, Yancy urged.
Nothing else, he had to block it all out. Just him/Yance/Gipsy and Yankee Star and that big ugly monster. He felt the wash of Yancy's approval, warm and steady and driven, and heard their Jumphawk crew start the final countdown for release. "We're ready."
They plunged into the shallow water between two bridges with Yankee Star in front of them, just in time to see Yamarashi blunder straight through the bridge to the south. This was a good spot. The kaiju was moving westward onto the island occupied by shipping terminals and equipment, not hotels and condos. Lower buildings, less obstruction for Yankee's missiles, clearer spaces for Gipsy to maneuver.
"Gipsy, keep north, cut him off if he runs! We're engaging!"
Then there wasn't time to talk or even really think, just move. Yankee Star was bottom-heavy for stability, equipped with everything from missiles to mortars to bona-fide lasers, but she wouldn't be able to move very fast if the target made a run for it. She unleashed a barrage that set off some impressive fireworks against the kaiju's side, but although it roared and blundered away, they all knew it once it wasn't injured. Bastard was built like a turtle with overlapping armor plates.
This is a problem. They stayed outside Yankee's line of fire and strode ahead towards the port to cut Yamarashi's escape off. If he got across the island, he'd be in the heavily populated area again. Yankee's laser sizzled a groove into the kaiju's flank, but he ducked his head and sped up. This was a very big problem.
Tanisha and Caleb knew it. "Gipsy, move in!"
"Intercepting."
They charged. Yancy was swinging his fist even as Raleigh began charging the left cannon, and the impact against Yamarashi's head made their teeth rattle. But they did knock the kaiju off balance, and Raleigh scanned up and down his neck, looking for the most vulnerable spot. "Belly. Get him up!"
Yancy swung and caught the bony chin, pushing, pushing, the momentum and weight of the monster sending them lurching back and forth, but its underside was exposed, and the plasma sizzled through Raleigh's arm, building and building -
"Firing plasma cannon!" The cannon discharged, a blazing bolt hitting the plates, then another, then another, and the kaiju's roar was deafening. But as it was thrown backwards and rolled away, although its belly was blackened, they could already tell they hadn't penetrated.
This was going to be very close combat. They were lunging after it on pure instinct, grabbing for the stubby tail and nearly getting thrown themselves when they caught him. Raleigh locked his fist around one of the horny spines and pulled, Yancy dug his leg back into the ground, ripping up concrete and dirt and the foundation of a building - the kaiju's armor gave and tore, and the beast roared. It was in pain, and that was wonderful. But the wound wasn't big, and probably not near any vital organs.
On the edges of their/Gipsy's vision, Yankee was catching up, but Yamarashi wasn't about to make it easy for two attackers to give him a pounding. He wrenched free, and tried to surge towards the big freeway full of cars. They threw themselves forward and simply tackled him.
"Gipsy, down!"
They ducked, using the kaiju's own body as their shield and felt another round of shells from Yankee blast against Yamarashi's wounded underside. The impact nearly put him on top of them, but they scrambled free and pivoted around to get in front of him again and give Yankee another clear shot.
Another red laser line streaked through the air and slashed along Yamarashi's neck. Again, it left a burned groove, and the kaiju roared in pain, but the damned armor held. They were moving parallel to the freeway now, smashing through oil tanks - there was an idea. "Yankee, the tanks!"
"We got you!" It took both of them two tries to get Yamarashi on his side and enough force to overbalance him, and both Jaegers took some powerful dents from the blows. Throwing the kaiju onto the huge tanks set off a massive explosion that knocked Gipsy over backwards, but Yamarashi was already clambering free. "You guys okay?" Yankee caught him from the side and threw her full weight into his neck to knock him away from them.
"We're fine!" Raleigh grunted, and they scrambled to their feet. Yamarashi was more black than green now, bellowing in pain, but still very much alive and mobile.
Yancy didn't bother with trying to charge the cannons again, just grabbed a slab of steel wreckage, and they swung it with all their strength, aiming for the thick neck. It put another gash in the armor, but still wasn't giving them any blue. "We gotta pin him," he panted.
"We see it." Yankee was trying to close again, but the bastard was trying to run.
Gipsy had to more or less dive in front of him, and he pile drove them into a cargo terminal. A crane snapped off as they fell together, and Yancy just managed to get the armor of their right shoulder up to keep it from hitting the pod - the thick steel wire still bit into Raleigh's/Gipsy's hand, OW! That hurt.
Wire. Raleigh was never sure after whether he or Yancy thought of The Godfather first, but their eyes fell on the groove that Yankee's laser had cut into the kaiju's thick neck, on the thin points of overlap for the bony plates - yes.
Raleigh slammed his elbow into the kaiju's face, driving it backward into the churned-up mud - Yancy grabbed another crane, gripping its supports and ripping it free. "Gonna garrote this bastard!"
Yamarashi wrenched his face away as they fought to hang on and get the crane around his neck, and then - "GIPSY, FREEZE!"
They planted their feet, sinking into the mud, and Yankee's laser passed directly over Raleigh's arm, so close that he could feel it singe, and burned straight into one of the four blazing eyes. The kaiju's screaming recoil nearly flipped them over his head. Its front leg slashed at theirs, catching their right knee with its claws, and slicing through the iron into the hydraulics.
"AH! FUCK!" They buckled, pain lancing through Yancy's knee, and Raleigh instinctively leaned to take the weight to the left, but they both felt it, the crane shifting in their hand, the kaiju's tortured throes putting him right where they needed him - they swung and Raleigh got his arm around the thing's neck, feeling the spines and bones bruising into his shoulders, but he had the other end of the crane, and they pulled -
Another laser fire from Yankee singed across Yamarashi's face, dangerously close to their own, but it put out another eye. The wire slipped down the smooth bones into the grooves of scales and laser burns, and the kaiju's dense flesh finally began to tear. "You got him! You got him! Hang on!"
Raleigh and Yancy were yelling from the sheer effort of hanging on, straining as Kaiju Blue began to gush, sizzling their hands and arms - the kaiju's head was being pulled back as they slid to the side, digging their legs deeper into the mud. "Duck!" Caleb shouted, and they did, and another mortar round hit Yamarashi in the face, knocking his head away and giving them still more pressure on the wound they were opening in his neck.
Blue, blue, blue everywhere, burning and sizzling, and there were alarms starting to blare as it cascaded over their head, but they could hear Caleb and Tanisha shouting, "Almost there! Almost there!" and LOCCENT in their ears, urging them to hang on -
Then they had nothing to brace against and fell on their hands and knees, the crane and that wonderful wire still in their hands, bent and warped and smoking, and blue everywhere, fountains in front of their face, and a mountain of flesh and bone split and fallen in front of them -
"Warning: conn-pod structural failure imminent."
Kaiju Blue all around them, over their head, sizzling, burning, dissolving - it hurt -
"GIPSY, GET IN THE WATER!" Tanisha's roar was impossible to ignore even with alarms screaming and LOCCENT yelling and their own heads pounding. They staggered away, blundering and limping on Yancy's damaged leg, but the water was there. They simply fell into it, past the shattered wrecks of boats and ships, and they rolled, over and over as it washed cool and soothing around their iron skin, taking the burning, sizzling heat away.
It was close, too close, and they kept rolling until the burning stopped, sweeping their arms up to shake it all loose. "Gipsy? Raleigh, Yance, you okay?!" Caleb called.
They fumbled through wreckage and grease, swaying as they pulled themselves upright, senses reorienting. Terminal Island, the cargo port smoldering rubble and shattered steel, and a massive, blackened, bony thing still gushing blue, Yankee Star coming around it towards them, helicopters hovering overhead, sparkling in the sun.
In front of them, the HUD display showed no kaiju signature. That thing wasn't moving. It wouldn't move again.
No signature. They'd killed a kaiju.
Dazed, exhilarated, Raleigh blinked and looked to his right. Yancy looked back and just shrugged, pure cool. "Job's done."
Alarms shrieked - they blinked, still panting - "Warning: Left side oxygen compromised."
"Raleigh, you've got Blue in your oxygen, disconnect!" LOCCENT yelled. "Disconnect now!"
Blue. His eyes flew to the line that connected him to his O2 - blue. Blue in his line.
Half-drained adrenaline roared back to life. "RALS!" Yancy shouted, both in his ears and in his head, but Raleigh moved on autopilot.
His left hand slapped down on the tube - turn/twist/pop - "Oxygen Disconnected," said the pod calmly, the only calm voice anywhere. Everyone else was yelling in his ears and in his head. His right hand slammed down on the console to deactivate the handshake and release him from the rig.
Sixty seconds from emergency disconnect to get to the portable tank. Muscle memory. The drift surged like a wave, then flooded away as if a dam had broken. Then Yancy was gone from his head, and Gipsy was gone from his body, and he was just Raleigh in the harness again.
There was a gap between the rigs and the pod floor; he disengaged - "Malfunction: Motion Rig controls. No hydraulic pressure."
There were things going wrong, faults in the electronics from the Blue that had compromised the outer hull. The rig unlocked, but not completely. He had sixty seconds to get to the portable tank. Yancy wasn't gone, he was stuck too, the hydraulics and electronics that operated the conn-pod motion rig were still failing from the Blue - but Raleigh was mostly free.
His eyes locked on the portable tank, and he braced with his good leg and jumped. Something popped, and he fell, grunting, the remaining wind left him as he hit the floor, but he was there. One hand yanked off his helmet, the other popped the mask free of the portable tank and pulled it to him -
With a soft, soothing hiss, the mask sealed around his face, and he could breathe. Breathe. In and out, head swimming, vision blurry with sweat in his eyes.
He blinked it away, and there was Yancy. Not cool anymore. Eyes wide and wild, trying to get his harness unlocked. "Raleigh? Rals?!" For the first time all day, Yancy sounded flat-out scared.
"I'm okay," he croaked.
"Gipsy Danger! Report, what's happening?!" It was Marshall Ramirez.
Raleigh fumbled to reach for the com above the emergency supply and OH, FUCK, that hurt, something was not right with his leg.
And... he could smell something. That acrid, sulfuric, nasty stench that had been duplicated for them in training just so they'd know, just so they'd be warned what Kaiju Blue smelled like - and how very, very bad it could be if they were close enough to smell it. If you could smell it, you could inhale it.
The line on the floor against his rig was tinged blue. It had sealed automatically. But the line from his mask to the portable tank, fogged with his breath... tinged blue. The portable tank was sealed.
The blue vapor was coming from him.
"Stay calm if you inhale it," the instructors had said in emergency training. "Rapid breathing increases lung and blood contamination."
Pain shot up his right leg as he shifted his weight to reach the comm. "LOCCENT, my O2 line got Kaiju Blue in it." His voice sounded so level. "I'm - " he glanced at the tank clock. " - Ninety seconds into the portable. No distress, but I'm exhaling blue vapor." He heard a chorus of hisses on the speakers. "And I've injured my leg, the rigs are locked. Yancy's still in; I don't think I can walk."
"Hang on, Gipsy. We're going to med-evac you immediately. Can you reach the monitors from where you are, Raleigh?"
"Yeah." He fumbled for it and got his glove off to slip one onto his hand.
"Okay, your vitals are stable. Keep it together, you're doing perfect - Yancy, stop struggling. We'll have you out in minutes."
Yancy couldn't get loose; Raleigh knew that without even having to look.
"What can we do?"
"Back off for us, Yankee, we need to get in close. This is Whiskey Gamma Rescue/Recovery, coming in to hover on your shoulder."
"Rals?" He felt… odd. As if Yancy was still echoing in his head even though the handshake was disconnected. He was there on the floor, but also stuck in the harness. He was trying to stay calm, but he was scared. He was hurting; he hated seeing him hurt. He was scared; he hated seeing him scared. He was still afloat in drift space and couldn't reach his brother to ground them.
Clunks and thuds echoed as something hit them from the outside; they both jumped. "External hatch entry," the conn-pod AI informed them.
They'd never imagined this. Being in the same pod and not able to reach each other. His brother was hurt - his brother was scared, and they were meters apart and still couldn't reach – had to stay calm, had to, but this was worse, worse than anything…
Rattling sounds made them turn dizzily towards the hatch, then the door unsealed and air rushed around them, light streamed in. White-suited figures floated in like ghosts and everything was moving too fast for either of them to process. They both focused on breathing, trying to ignore that wrong, wrong color in the vapor on his mask.
"Raleigh? Raleigh, look at me." He blinked.
He needed to get loose – "Yancy, stop it, hold still!"
"We may need to take Raleigh and go if he's got it in his lungs - "
"Are you shitting me?! You break that rig if you have to; you do NOT leave Yancy behind!" Tanisha was awesome. They needed to tell her that.
"Pilots stay together after combat, Whiskey Gamma, especially when there's injury." Caleb was awesome too.
"They're right; we have to get them both. How we doing?"
"Raleigh's stable; we've still got nineteen minutes on his tank. Don't want to pop it if we don't have to."
Something went CRUNCH, and he was falling – he gasped – arms caught him – he/they reached –
"Well, that worked."
"Doesn't matter, the whole pod's going to have to be rebuilt – whoa, Yance, Yancy, easy!"
Raleigh… "Raleigh - "
Yance? Were they talking out loud? If they were thinking… how were they still hearing?
"Okay, let's move!"
They were pulling him up , and at first all he could think of was reaching his other half, but then he tried to stand and white-hot pain shot through his right leg. Someone yelled, and awareness flickered on and off like channel surfing through reality, too fast to catch anything but a few images and sounds – if channel surfing could include pain.
"Whoa! Get under him - "
" – blood pressure - "
Hurt – Yance – Rals – where – Light, wind and cold sweat drying on his face, his breath foggy on the mask of his helmet – painpainpain – he blinked – reaching, still reaching – floating, rising away – nononowhere –
Contact. Through the shoulder of armor under the hard surface of his glove, but they touched, and plummeted out of the space back to reality and GOD, Raleigh's leg hurt.
Yancy was inches from him now, in arm's reach at last, and they'd finally connected again. His eyes were wild, and Raleigh wondered whose heart was pounding so hard. It… was Yancy's. Yancy was scared.
Out of everything he'd seen and done and felt today, that was the worst.
He hated it so much when Yancy was upset.
To be continued...
Coming this weekend: There's a big difference between training and the real world, and it's finally dawning on Yancy. The Beckets have bagged their first kill, but the aftermath of the battle with Yamarashi is like nothing they anticipated in Chapter Twenty-Four: First Blood!
PLEASE don't forget to review!
Original Character Guide
Tanisha Davis and Caleb Mitchell: The pilots of Yankee Star, America's Mark-2 Jaeger. Former US Marines, late 20s. Tanisha is African-American from south central Los Angeles, while Caleb is white from a small, rural town in central Oklahoma.
Christian Warner: Gipsy Danger drivesuit technician, age 26, African-American from Atlanta, Georgia, brother of Chloe Warner.
Antwan Ferrier: Personnel Coordinator of Whiskey Gamma, a team of Gipsy's strike troopers. Age 39, Jamaican national.