Author's Notes: A thousand apologies for the delay in updating, dear readers! My new job had a particularly-major deadline, and I was working right through last weekend. (Don't become lawyers unless you're prepared for long hours and long stretches without a day off, children!) I'm going to try my hardest to keep updates coming each weekend, but can't promise there won't be some taking longer on occasion. This story is fully-drafted, and its sequel/co-prequel, Aurora Australis, is about 2/3 finished. Updates for Tales From The Front Lines will be a bit longer, since that fic is really a series of stand-alone, one-chapter ficlets. Many thanks to you all for your continued reviews and support, and please keep the feedback coming! Remember, there are also previews and discussion available on my Tumblr, 3Fluffies, linked in my profile, under the tag Generation K.
Chapter Thirty-Four: Somebody's Eyes
October 2018…
Lima Shatterdome…
The Jaeger Program: A HotBed of Incest?
Oh... my... god. Without that headline, Raleigh might have assumed this was another fluff piece. Those pictures were all so innocent.
There was one of him and Yancy on the beach in LA, arms around each other's shoulders. There were Bruce and Trev, with Bruce leaning around Trevin to look at something or reach for something... Vic Tunari on Gunnar's back, yelling, just being rowdy... Devi and Suze Hassan, with Dev's arms around her younger sister's neck, grinning for the camera... Scott Hansen, giving his older brother what was probably a big, sloppy raspberry on the cheek, Hercules pulling a hilarious face as he yelled. The cousins who piloted Chrome Brutus, Ilisapie and Zeke, hugging on their launch day, and Silver Lion's pilots, Yan-Jie and Fang, – they were cousins too – snoozing on a cot somewhere like a couple of puppies.
The Wei triplets, posed all fierce and serious like the fighters they'd reportedly been, but physically right up against each other. Carlos and Jordana Chen of Puma Real, they were fraternal twins… and the picture in the very center of that collage between the Chen twins and the Gage twins was Cersei and Jaime Lannister from Game of Thrones.
Har-de-fucking-har. Aren't you reporters hilarious? His blood began to boil... and freeze at the same time. How dare some bastard muckraker imply something like this... but what if, in even one case, it was true?
They'd been warned, back in second term, by Bruce and Trevin themselves that strange things, strange impulses came out in the drift. "The human imagination can do fucked-up things. If you want to be Rangers, you just have to accept that and not think it makes you some kind of unnatural pervert - or your partner... You have to learn not to judge."
Those had been warnings well-taken and sometimes there were... moments. Moments where something whispered in the drift, something that was wrong and messed-up and it was so, so hard not to slam up the walls that would break the handshake. Early in full drift training, those had been the moments they'd needed the buckets next to the rig, stumbling out of the simulator avoiding each other's eyes, mortified and revolted and trying to fathom how they could possibly make it stop.
It had never stopped. That was the bottom line of what the Gages had warned; strange things came up in the drift and always would. It had gotten easier; Raleigh and Yancy had learned to let it float by, to stop cringing and trying to hide or turn away from it, just let it go and keep focused and refocus on their job.
And yet things had changed between them, the Becket brothers. They touched more than they ever had before, first those fierce, desperate hugs after stressful drifts. Then had come combat and drift shock, hanging on to each other for dear life and sharing a bed because not being in physical contact felt like drowning. A kiss on top of the head, a hand holding his when he hurt, fingers running through his hair - dammit, it wasn't like this stupid headline said, it wasn't...
But what if people thought it was?
They'd been drifting so long, spent all their time around people who knew about drifting. They'd let their guard down. A couple of years ago, they'd have been self-conscious of cuddling in public, or even in private. All that had just... stopped. All the Rangers seemed to be that way. Looking at those pictures, there wasn't a single pose between any of the pilot pairs that Raleigh and Yancy hadn't been in. Or Bruce and Trevin, Vic and Gunnar, or Devi and Suze, for that matter.
Someone moved closer to them; Raleigh blinked and became aware of his surroundings again. Carolina had a hand under Yancy's chin, lifting it to make him meet her eyes. "Don't you hang your head, Yancy Becket. Or you, Raleigh. The same goes for the two of you," she admonished the Gages, who looked no less dazed than Raleigh felt.
"It's not true," Yancy mumbled.
"Hell, of course, it isn't," Romeo's PR liaison said. What was his name? Darrell something. "That whole article is nothing but insinuations. If they had any facts, we'd know. They don't. Rangers are physically demonstrative, and somebody decided to create a scandal."
"We didn't think," one of the twins admitted. "How other people would look at it - "
" - Gentlemen." Pentecost stood up. Raleigh cringed, but although the Marshall looked a tad exasperated, his words surprised them all. "I haven't called you in to reprimand you. On the contrary - you've done nothing wrong." Raleigh couldn't keep the surprise off his face. "This is going to be unpleasant, and the entire Corps has to deal with the fallout, but it is in no way your fault."
"Thanks," Trevin murmured, and shot Raleigh and Yancy a weak smile. "So... what can we do? If anything."
Carolina smirked. "Well, I'm afraid punching the reporters in the face is still frowned upon."
A laugh burst out of Raleigh. Amazing by itself, since a few seconds ago he hadn't felt like he could ever laugh at anything again. But the PR reps were laughing too, the twins and Yancy were starting to grin, and even Pentecost had cracked a smile.
Darrell winked at Carolina. "We're gonna be giving that lecture a lot around here for the next few weeks, not just to you." He went on more seriously to the four Rangers. "Your crews are going to be furious, your fellow unrelated Rangers are going to be outraged, and understand this: the majority of the public will be disgusted, not with you but with the authors of this trash."
"Amazon's pilots are being informed now; the next step will be the crews," said Carolina, to Pentecost as much as to them. "We'll have to hold some training sessions, make sure no one is caught by surprise."
Yancy was looking at the article again. "It says... they have sources. They quote people 'in the PPDC.'"
Raleigh's stomach lurched, and the other sobered again. "It may be true, it may not," said Pentecost. "We will find out."
"Don't let bullshit like this make you distrust people," Bruce told him. "It happens. It's happened in the military before. Paparazzi, they have all kinds of sneaky shit they pull. Maybe they got a quote from someone, but it might've still been innocent. Just an offhand comment, 'aww, the siblings are so cuddly,' or 'the drift is weird and creepy' - remember your ghost handshake? We all talk about that. We let our guard down. Reporters distort things, mix and match, or just make it up if they don't get the angle they want to sell."
Like with Nikki Harris, Raleigh mused, starting to relax again. We danced, we hooked up a few times, just casual, not even exclusive, and the press said I was her boyfriend, she was cheating on me and getting investigated for misconduct.
Yancy wasn't completely convinced. "What if someone did... from inside the Corps?"
Pentecost's eyes went dark and hard as if they were talking about the best way to slice and dice a kaiju. "Then we will deal with those persons."
Yancy thought it really must've sucked for the pilots of Echo Saber, who was launching from Nagasaki right as the shit hit the fan about the incest accusations. Japan's newest Rangers were sisters: Ami and Rena Tanaka, four years apart in age.
A lot of the Rangers kept to their bases as the story broke, able to hide behind the launch preparations and the brief window for Jaeger movement. But, naturally, some of the media muckrakers insisted this was only further evidence of somebody's guilt.
And it could only be guilt that makes any of us not bloody WANT to field questions about whether we've been diddling our siblings, Devi Hassan told him over IM during a chess game. Herc's words, actually. For once I think even Scott is shocked.
They spent a lot of time fuming and commiserating with their comrades as the story broke. "Did you hear where that picture of the Silver Lion guys came from?" Cady Spencer told them. "Admiral Yamamoto's son."
"What?! Are you kidding?"
Tendo was pacing around the lounge fiddling with the table map. "He didn't even mean anything by it. Just saw his pilots being cute, napping during a long alert, took a picture on his phone, put it on Facebook. Damn it, you know, I almost did that after Yamarashi!"
"Then why's he getting reprimanded?" Raleigh protested.
"'Unauthorized publication.' It is against the rules," Brandon Pines sighed. "This is the reason. I'm sure he feels horrible."
Chloe Warner called her brother from Hawaii, completely hysterical, to report that somebody had pointed the finger at her as being one of the sources. Christian was nervous as hell when he approached Yancy and Raleigh to tell them. "She didn't, guys. You know Chlo, we all know her, she never let anybody go there! She'd never say something like that to someone she couldn't trust, let alone to a stranger or a reporter!"
It took them about thirty seconds to reach a consensus on what to do. "I believe you, man. Get her on the phone; we'll talk to her," Yancy said. Raleigh nodded firmly.
It took both of them and Carolina and the Gages to talk Chloe down. "I don't even use Facebook!" she sobbed on the vidcomm.
"Chlo, Chlo, breathe!" they all exclaimed. It was pretty shocking in its own right; Chloe was always so level-headed and contained.
Yancy was seething, but not at her. How dare those bastards do this to people? "Listen," he said urgently, smacking the webcam directly as if he could reach through and shake her. "We know. We believe you. It's okay."
Carolina nodded. "All the liaisons are receiving reports on the investigation, Chloe. Someone said that a source came from K-Watch, so they are pulling everyone's records, not just yours."
"I did drift testing. That's what the investigators said," she muttered, wiping her face, but finally starting to calm down.
"Almost half of K-Watch's employees came out of the Academy, and even more in the other departments. Maybe there's a real leak, but more likely, someone just said, 'hey, drifting was kind of creepy,'" Bruce told her. "We've all said things like that."
"We're not going to believe a 'mole' claim about any of our people unless there's a serious smoking gun," Yancy confirmed. "We trust you. We trust Chris, we trust everybody else who came out of 2016-B. We went through too much together, and we'll get through this too. It'll be okay."
They could console themselves with the awareness that although the mainstream media outlets did pick the story up, it was more in the guise of exclaiming over how very inappropriate it was. "This way they get the sensationalism while disclaiming the actual sensationalists," Carolina snorted. "Typical."
But the outpouring of public support for the Rangers and outrage over the "libel" was nice. Bruce and Trevin decided to dare the actual discussion of drifting with family, and everyone crowded around televisions all around the Pacific when they went on the air.
"Yes, it's true, people who drift are very physical. That's a direct result, it's actually therapeutic. After being mentally connected, you come out of the drift disoriented. Touching physically sort of... brings reality back."
The interviewer, vetted within an inch of her life by PR, was cautious and sensitive. "Is it true that if one of you is hurt, the other feels it?"
"It's always true when we're in the Jaeger or the simulator. After actual combat, when the adrenaline is at its peak, you can get drift shock. That's where you really can't focus on the real world because your mind is still floating around in it."
They were casual about it, as if mind-melding was the most normal thing in the world, but people responded to that. "There's a reason they were an easy public relations assignment," Carolina observed. "Bruce and Trevin have been around; they understand how people think. They also know how to bend the truth."
The interviewer did ask some probing questions. "Have you ever... seen anything in the drift that is sexual?"
"Sure. Have you ever walked in on somebody? Awkward stuff happens," said Trevin with a shrug.
Bruce laughed and thumped him. "Not that it's not embarrassing as hell, but you don't have to be traumatized. We're adults. Just 'oops, my bad,' and turn away."
Everyone who had ever drifted full-on knew that it was far, far more complicated. But Yancy realized that no one who had ever drifted full-on would contradict what the Gages were saying - and the public would believe the twins. It was a simple, logical explanation for something that, in reality, was damn near impossible to explain - and they really shouldn't have to explain it to begin with, because it was nobody's damn business!
"Is it different for the Rangers who aren't related, in a romantic relationship?"
"It must be. You'd have to ask them, though, we've never drifted with anyone but each other. Everyone gets closer as Rangers, but not only because of the drift. Whenever you're partners, depending on each other, you have to trust. You have to know each other."
Finally, the interviewer did delicately Go There. "So do you believe there is any truth to the rumors in that story?"
The answer was one word, dead-serious, with complete conviction: "No."
Police officers, plane co-pilots, other team workers in other industries bombarded the media with tweets and Facebook posts and opinion letters in support of the Rangers.
My partner and I have been patrolling this community for eleven years! We're best friends, but that doesn't make it creepy!
If you can't trust the other guy helping load artillery with you, who can you trust? The authors of that slander should be fired!
Thanks for implying I'm a pervert because my sister and I are a pro dancing couple, assholes!
The PPDC ended up not suing over the misuse of the pictures of the Rangers - but the producers of Game of Thrones did sue over unauthorized use of their photo. Even George R. R. Martin came down on the Rangers' side. "It's FICTION, you morons!"
"Man, when that author says you're fucked up, you know it's bad!" Cady Spencer hooted.
While most of the related teams had been keeping a low profile, dreading the possibility of questions, some of the Ranger pairs just didn't give a damn. Like Tanisha and Caleb. Some reporter actually had the balls to shove his microphone in Tanisha's face and ask if she'd ever seen any signs of incest between the sibling pilots. Tanisha just stared him down, and finally drawled out, "You are one sick puppy."
She made the TV Tropes "Crowning Moment of Awesome" Real Life example list right under Buzz Aldrin belting the moon landing conspiracy theorist. "Yance, I wanna be like Tani when I grow up!" Raleigh sighed.
"Don't we all, kiddo. Don't we all." Yancy slung an arm around his neck and ruffled his hair, leaning against him without either of them being self-conscious anymore.
The experienced public relations crew had warned that the inflammatory incest article was merely a "threshold moment" for the Corps, and that more invasions of privacy and affronts to decency would follow. Stacker had been around long enough to know they were right.
He wasn't surprised by the next tack that the muckrakers and conspiracy theorists took - redoubling their efforts to dig up dirt on the Rangers' families. Nor was it just the Rangers; any relative of Corps personnel was fair game, the more high-ranking, the better.
Carolina Olivares once again sounded the warning, or rather, brought the warning from Los Angeles where Yankee Star's liaison had sent up the flag. "Marshall, would you speak with Ranger Davis? There's been a new security breach concerning her family, and I thought you might be able to advise her."
Olivares knew about Mako. Stacker wasn't troubled by that; he knew immediately what help she thought he could give, and he was glad to offer it. Tanisha Davis was as composed as ever when he connected to her on the video conference. "Ranger Davis."
"Marshall. Mrs. Olivares suggested I speak to you about my problem on a secure line." She didn't admit outright that she didn't have a clue why, but she trusted her crew's PR rep and probably Olivares too.
He nodded. "I'm told there's been a security breach concerning your family."
"Yes, sir." Only a small change in her tone betrayed the rage she undoubtedly felt. "They've started staking out my son's school, and my mother thinks they know where they live. His teachers are trying to protect him, but I'm not sure they can. It's not like they get a lot of high profile people there."
"I understand. I know you would rather have him live near you and your family's home, but you may have to move him to a more secure location."
"I know. Mrs. Olivares thought... you could recommend something."
"I can." He stepped off the ledge without hesitating. Tanisha Davis was trusting him with her greatest treasure, and deserved to know she was being met halfway. "My daughter is thirteen." Davis's eyebrows shot up, to his amusement. "The Corps has an arrangement with a secured K-12 boarding school in central Pennsylvania. The security is excellent for the physical and online campus, and the costs are covered by your benefits. Your son will be safe there, and his identity will not be shared. Even my daughter doesn't know which of her classmates are related to Rangers."
She mulled over that, and he knew her dilemma all too well. "That's a long way," she murmured.
"It is, but there are secured channels of contact that I use regularly. And it's also a long way from anywhere that a kaiju will set foot even if all the Jaegers stop working tomorrow." That wasn't something he would admit to anyone outside this conversation. But this wasn't the first such conversation he'd had, nor would it be the last. "I'll send you a secured transmission of the information, including their contact information. You'll want to think about it."
"Thank you, Marshall." It came from the heart.
After he ended the call with Davis, he contemplated his interface for a few minutes, then put in another call to Sydney. "Afternoon, Marshall! Or, I guess evening in your case," said Herc Hansen. "More Game of Thrones fallout?"
"Not quite, but I wanted to pass along a warning. The dodgy ones are turning their attention to Rangers' children again."
Herc's entire bearing changed. He stared off into the distance and muttered, "Damn."
"Is he still on-base with you?" Stacker had already urged Hansen to get his son into a secure school, but so far, the man had refused. Granted, the Dome itself was about as secure from media intrusion as they could get, but PPDC Psych felt that the environment wasn't healthy for a traumatized teen or his Ranger father.
"Yeah, the fuckers sniff around the fence, but Chuck doesn't go near them." Herc visibly braced himself for the same old argument. "I'm not doing it. Not as long as I've got a choice. Has it come down to that?"
"No. No one's ordering you to do anything. You know my position, not just as a Marshall." As a father. Do you think it's easy knowing she's thousands of miles away? I've only known her for two years. I thought I didn't have a paternal bone in my body before that, but now the sun rises and sets with her.
Herc sighed and shut his eyes. "Yeah, I know. I'm not judging you or any of the others who've made a different call. Maybe you are the decent ones. Definitely the sensible ones. Stacker, I can't."
Was it different for Herc Hansen? Probably. Stacker knew the story of Sydney; everyone did. Scott Hansen was a playboy and gambler, a hooligan that even three years of drift hadn't straightened out, but he snarled like a rabid dog when anyone questioned his brother's priorities. "You all stand there in your bunkers giving orders from ten thousand miles away, but don't tell him he's not allowed to keep someone to fight for!"
Some personnel kept their children on-base at the Domes or Academy housing, just a handful here and there, but most had made the same call as Stacker and Tanisha. Herc Hansen was definitely the only Ranger trying to raise a child on-site. But his brother wasn't wrong. Who the hell were the commanders to tell him to send the boy away? Would Chuck be safer? Maybe. Maybe not. Would Hansen be any less distracted by thoughts of him? Definitely not.
"I understand, just thought you should be warned. You know you have our full support no matter where he is. If anyone targets him, we'll make them answer for it."
In the mess hall that evening, he heard a murmured conversation between Yancy Becket and Olivares. "D'you... know if my sister's okay?"
"I know where she is. She changed her name before your launch, and that's... probably not a bad thing. I had the records sealed so the vultures can't track her down so easily, though she doesn't know that."
"Thanks."
"Do you want to contact her, Yancy? I can help if you do."
There was a long silence. Finally, the elder Becket murmured, "No. She's better off."
November 6, 2018…
J-Tech Southern Hemisphere Assembly Facility, Sao Paulo, Brazil…
Raleigh and Yancy paid a visit to Gipsy in early November. "She's looking great, sir," Yancy told the Chief Engineer, Gabe Morais.
"She's a beautiful lady," Morais replied, smiling. "We're going to miss her. The crews call her Elsa the Snow Queen."
Raleigh exchanged a grin with Yancy, and decided not to point out that Frozen was set in Scandinavia, not Alaska. "Better Elsa than Sarah, right?" he murmured in Yancy's ear. His brother chuckled. "So what's next?"
"She and Diablo Intercept will trade places, so we can examine Diablo and Dr. Schoenfeld can make sure we've done well by Gipsy. You'll test her on the Proving Grounds back in Anchorage, her home turf. After the next engagement, command will decide who stays where."
"How soon can we take her home?"
"We're very close to finishing final checks, so we should have her ready for lift before this orange alert, barring any emergencies - "
- the sirens went off. This was Sao Paulo, closer to the Atlantic Ocean than the Pacific, but it was still a PPDC base. Even so, all the personnel just stared at each other, including Raleigh and Yancy. Morais blinked, bemused, and finished, "An emergency such as an extremely early Breach event."
"I think you jinxed us, Chefe!" laughed one of the other engineers.
Yancy pulled out his phone and checked the date. "Gotta be a false alarm." It had only been nine weeks!
ATTENTION. ATTENTION. YELLOW ALERT. MOVEMENT IN THE BREACH.
But then, someone's voice came over the coms. "This is not a drill! Attention, personnel, this is not a drill! Movement in the Breach!"
"Shit!" Raleigh looked at his brother. "Can we even get back to Lima?"
"Gipsy's here," Yancy sighed. He was right. Either way, this was another attack they'd be sitting out. Within ten minutes, they had a message from Pentecost. "He says stay put."
Raleigh had to chuckle when he got the same message, but an added PS text that was apparently for him alone: And I mean it, Ranger.
He supposed he deserved that. He texted back: Understood, sir.
The response to Yellow Alert was a lot less dramatic in Sao Paulo than it was in the Shatterdomes, though the Engineers still had jobs to do, and work on their current projects stopped. "Come with me, Rangers. I'll give you the grand tour of alert operations for Engineering," said Morais. He winked at them. "And I have orders to sit on you if you try to leave."
They had to laugh. Raleigh supposed he deserved that too.
It really was a kaiju, the earliest attack on record. Codenamed Raythe, Category III. Sao Paulo Assembly Facility and K-Science Laboratories was located near the headquarters of Embraer, a big aerospace engineering company that had built planes and space vehicles before K-Day. It was smaller than Kodiak's facility, but Diablo Intercept, Solar Prophet and Amazon Delta had all been built here, and two of the three had now been proven against the kaiju.
Their crews were a lot like the crowd in Anchorage; brilliant, enthusiastic, and delightfully nerdy. With an alert in progress, they cleared projects out of the repair bays and pulled up the schematics of all the Jaegers currently in service, and crowded around the monitors. All the K-Science crews were examining the data about all the previous kaiju. One of them came over from the labs looking for Raleigh and Yancy.
"My wife told me you were here. I'm Victor Faison."
"Nice to meet you, Doctor!" They'd seen his name on a lot of K-Science reports, but hadn't met him until now. Raleigh grinned. "I can guess what she told you."
"Vic, please, as long as you don't confuse me with Tunari." Dr. Faison's husband was a lot more outgoing than she was, and he grinned easily back. "She said you're almost as obnoxious as the Gages."
Yancy snorted and ruffled Raleigh's hair. "Dunno, Doc. This one is a lot worse."
They hung out with him and Morais and the other senior officers for much of the alert. "I was in Seattle when Karloff drew a beat on us," Vic told them.
"We were in Anchorage. Did you go or stay?"
"We went, but it was messy, trying to break down our labs and get our data and samples packed up. I was surprised when Brazil chipped in so much funding and manpower."
"It's not just bragging rights," said Morais. "To the north or the south, it's only a hop, skip and a jump from the Pacific to us. If the kaiju aren't contained, they will find their way to us. Argentina feels the same."
The bogey went almost due north, heading towards Japan again. "Can't the poor bastards catch a break?!" one of the other engineers muttered. "Crap, Coyote's clear, but Tidal Dragon's down, Tacit Ronin's still under repair in Anchorage, and Echo Saber's only been on-site for eight days!"
"There's a very good reason they've got two Shatterdomes," Yancy remarked. "And that deal with China and Russia."
China deployed Crimson Typhoon to Tokyo and Silver Lion to Hokkaido. "Coyote Tango's going to Sendai, Echo Saber to Misawa. The Russians are putting all three of theirs along the Kuril Islands."
"Nice perimeter," Raleigh mused, tracing a finger over the map.
There were high winds and interference that prevented the usual real-time broadcast from the choppers, and even the radio transmissions were spotty. Raythe passed most of Japan by, then Crimson Typhoon and Silver Lion were deployed to the eastern-most points of Hokkaido.
Even as far inland as they were, it was hard to sleep easily, and Raleigh and Yancy made use of the cots spread around the war rooms. Sao Paulo had rotating crews of "remote engineers" who could look at damage reports from an engagement, and an alert woke everybody up the next morning.
"Silver Lion's hit!"
"Do we have a transmission?"
"Figures, the first time Typhoon gets action and we can't watch."
"Typhoon wasn't deployed - wait, now she is. I didn't think Lion had made contact!"
"Shut up, shut up, I'm getting something!" A couple of the engineers were tapping into the local channels in Hokkaido. "Jodame. Not good." Raleigh shook Yancy's shoulder, and his brother sat up as one of the guys pressed his headset to his ears and shot them all a grim look. "It's a mayday."
"Fuck," Yancy hissed.
The actual defeat of Raythe was anti-climactic. Cherno Alpha took it down somewhere along the chain of islands to the northeast of Hokkaido after it ran from Crimson Typhoon, but the radio contact was so full of static that nobody in Sao Paulo could make out what anyone was saying up there. Everyone was anxiously waiting for word on what had happened to Silver Lion, but they all breathed a little easier once Hong Kong's commander officially confirmed that the pilots had been rescued.
"Mind if I hitch a ride back to Lima with you, Rangers?" Vic Faison asked.
"Be our guests!"
The K-Science crews were stoked. "It's probably bad form, but we were hoping one of these guys would head north during the winter. Now it'll be easy to keep his carcass on ice!"
November 10, 2018…
Lima Shatterdome…
Raythe changed more than just schedules. The event was another "low-casualty attack," celebrated and praised in the public eye. But within the Jaeger Program, it was different. The pilots of Silver Lion died seventy-two hours after the mayday call, along with nearly everyone on their drop crew. That brought all intra-PPDC partying to an abrupt halt.
Even before the memorial services began, Stacker got a phone call from Tamsin. "I'm afraid our bad news is coming in threes, Stacks. Kaori Jessop just died."
Damn it. "Oh, Tam. Where's Duc?"
"He's here. Do you think you could come?"
"I'll be there as soon as I can."
"Don't bring Mako, love, not for this. After, maybe for Christmas, but not this."
Before he departed Lima, Tendo Choi and Cady Spencer asked for another private meeting. This time, it wasn't about trying to help their on-base buddies, and the subject was serious as a heart attack. "Sir, you know we're working on the Engagement Investigation? We've been comparing the instrument reports to the K-Watch tags."
Oh, God. He had already harbored some suspicions about the timing of that mayday. Now Spencer and Choi confirmed them. "Go on."
The two men exchanged anxious glances and Choi lowered his voice still more. "Silver Lion didn't engage Raythe. The last instrument readings we have are forty seconds after the handshake completed. He was still in the process of calibrating, and Raythe was still forty miles away when the mayday went out. I don't… sir, the instruments picked up massive electrical discharges, but it wasn't lightning. The Jump Hawks never reported the drop complete either – by the timing of the mayday, even if they had to rush due to the weather, they would still have been carrying Silver Lion."
There were very disturbing blanks in the material provided to the investigators. A Mark-2 Jaeger had exploded, and her support choppers had all crashed from a massive power surge. Six months ago, another Mark-2 had experienced a power surge in her conn-pod that had injured her pilots and the support crew.
He was impressed to discover that Choi had made that connection too. "You know there was an electrical incident with Yankee Star earlier this year? She wasn't at full power when it happened; the drop was still in progress. If she'd been fully online…"
Stacker nodded grimly. "I rather doubt it's a case of foul play, if that's your concern. But it does suit some people to declare this a glorious death in combat rather than a tragic accident that needs public scrutiny."
"Thirty-two people died without the kaiju ever getting near them," murmured Spencer. "Can we do anything?"
"Continue with your investigation as usual, but make a personal copy of your data." He handed them a set of non-network flash drives. "Submit it to me also as usual. If there is a hue and cry to be raised, I'll raise it." Don't worry, gentlemen. The buck doesn't stop with you, as the Americans would say.
The investigation within the PPDC did proceed, and all of the lower-level staff reached the same conclusion: something had gone wrong with Silver Lion. A massive malfunction had spiked electricity through her conn-pod and her drop gear, fatally injuring her pilots and the chopper crews. Between the electrocution and the crash of the still-airborne Jaeger, no eyewitnesses lived to tell the tale. Four of the Shatterdome commanders, including Stacker and Admiral Yamamoto, whose son had died in the accident, pushed for it to be declared openly. The other four insisted there wasn't positive proof, and Silver Lion's pilots and drop crews should be "properly honored" by being declared killed in action doing battle with Raythe.
Secretary General Krieger made the final call: Silver Lion was declared destroyed in combat.
To be continued...
Coming Soon: Even before Knifehead, the Jaeger Program took some brutal blows. Our heroes mourn another Mark-1 pilot, and quietly wonder at the unanswered questions surrounding Kaori's death and the death of Silver Lion's pilots - and the next movement in the Breach brings a battle that pushes some of our heroes to their limits in Chapter Thirty-Five: Hardship.
PLEASE don't forget to review!
Original Character Guide
Carolina Olivares: Gipsy Danger's Public Relations Representative, Mexican-American, mid-60s, crew den mother.
Darrell Sullivan: Romeo Blue's Public Relations Representative, African-American, late-30s.
Christian Warner: Gipsy Danger drivesuit technician, late 20s, African-American from Atlanta, GA, attended academy with Beckets and his sister, Chloe, who is now in K-Watch.
Chloe Warner: K-Watch worker in Honolulu, transferred after she and her brother Christian failed to become Rangers at Academy. Age 25.
Cady Spencer: Gipsy Danger LOCCENT Technician (along with Tendo Choi), Filipino-American, age 27 from Portland, Oregon.
Devi and Susanti Hassan: Rangers, pilots of Vulcan Specter, Australia's Mark-3. First-generation daughters of Indonesian immigrants to Australia, ages 27 and 25, graduated Jaeger Academy in the same class as the Beckets.
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.
Yan-Jie Lim and Fang Lao: Silver Lion: Chinese air force pilots in their late 20s, first cousins.
Chief Engineer Gabriel Morais: Senior J-Tech engineer in the Southern Hemisphere, also one of the senior Jaeger deployment strategists. Mid-50s, retired Brazilian Air Force officer.