"Breach on the Pacific Rim" - Part Two

“Part Two”

            Thanks to Raleigh’s intel, Neas and Lauren had access to the exact coordinates to the Shatterdome in Hong Kong. According to him, the Shatterdome was the primary headquarters of the Pan Pacific Defense Corps and factories for the construction, repair and maintenance of the Jaegers.

            It was also the last remaining Shatterdome in operation.

            They materialized the T.A.R.D.I.S. in one of the available quarters.

            “Right, so, as we discussed, you’re staying here in the console room with Gizmo,” Neas told Raleigh. “Pop and I will stay in touch with you through our earpieces, and you’ll be able to see what we see through our video specs.”

            He and Lauren each wore horn-rimmed glasses.

            Lauren demonstrated a pair that projected a live feed through the Type-Z’s onboard view screen. Raleigh saw himself standing right where he was in front of her, and even the strands of her blond hair at the edges of the frame.

            The Time Lords met up with Pentecost on the helipad. Outside, in the cold rain, they tucked their hoods over to prevent contracting influenza.

            Arriving mere minutes before him came as a surprise to the marshal.

            “How did you two get here before us?”

            Neas shrugged. “Told you we had our own transport.”

            Pentecost could only accept this with a comprehending albeit doubtful nod.

            “This is Mako Mori, one of our brightest in charge of the Mach-3 Restoration Program,” he introduced of the young beautiful Japanese woman that accompanied him.

            Mako addressed Pentecost in her native tongue, though Neas was able to discern her address: “I was hoping Mr. Becket would have joined us.”

            “So was I,” Pentecost glumly responded in the language.

            Neas left the exchange private.

            The Shatterdome tour began as soon as the four stepped out of the rain and into an elevator. There, they found two large containers with alien specimens submerged in a light green fluid.

            “What in the world are these?” Neas questioned.

            “Step away from that, sir!”

            Neas blindly followed the order without knowing who gave it.

            He turned to see two men rush into the elevator before the doors closed.

            “Mister Neas, this is our research team – Doctor Hermann Gottlieb and Doctor Newton Geiszler,” Pentecost introduced.

            “Call me ‘Newt,’” Geiszler insisted. “Only my mother calls me ‘Doctor’.”

            Shaking the nerdy American scientist’s hand, Neas gestured to the specimens and asked, “So you two are the ones who brought these in?”

            “That is cor-rect,” Newt confirmed. “They’re Kaiju specimen and extremely rare, so look but don’t…” He paused as soon as he laid eyes on Lauren, who managed to keep her hair dry from the rain and look positively stunning in the eyes of Geiszler. “…touch.”

            Neas recognized the attraction, though it flew completely over Lauren’s head.

            “You must be a very brave man to catch specimens like these from actual Kaiju,” she commended Geiszler.

            “Actually, ma’am, he didn’t,” Gottlieb (the archetypal Englishman) said. “He bought them.”

            Geiszler brashly cleared his throat. “Not in front of the superiors, Hermann!”

            “I have asked you not to refer to me by my first name—!”

            The two scientists proceeded to bicker.

            “These yahoos are the only research team on Kaiju?” Neas and Lauren heard Raleigh say over their earpieces. “God help us.”

            When he managed to pry himself away from his colleague, Geiszler approached Lauren, rolling his sleeves to show the unique tattoos on his forearms. He pointed to one in particular. “Seen this guy? He’s called Yamarashi. He was one of the largest Category Threes ever to come out of the Breach. He was two thousand and five hundred pounds of awesome.”

            “Please excuse him,” Gottlieb said. “He’s a Kaiju groupie. He loves them.”

            “Shut up, Hermann,” Newt barked. “I don’t ‘love’ them. I study them. And, unlike most people, I want to see one up close one day.”

            Neas heard Raleigh scoff into the console microphone. “This guy…he doesn’t have a clue. My brother and I fought Yamarashi in 2017. If this guy really knew what he was like up close, he wouldn’t brag so much.”

            The elevator finally reached their floor, much to the relief of Neas, who could not take any more of Newt Geiszler’s serenading of Kaiju to Lauren. She, on the other hand, left him with parting remark that sent the groupie’s heart soaring…

            “I look forward to working with you and Dr. Gottlieb, Dr. Geiszler.”

            Newt was trapped in a trance of romance. “Me, too.”

            Hermann disapprovingly shook his head. Lovesick over eye candy with brains, he thought on the matter.

            Led into a large, busy hangar bay, Neas and Lauren were shown the Jaegers stationed in the Shatterdome – the only remaining mechs: “Crimson Typhoon,” which featured three arms and piloted by the Wei Tang triplets; “Cherno Alpha,” piloted by a pair of Russians, Sasha and Aleksis Kaidonovsky; and “Striker Eureka,” the only Mark-5, piloted by two Australians, Chuck and his father, Hercules “Herc” Hansen.

            Lastly, they were introduced to “Gipsy Danger,” the Mach-3 American Jaeger once piloted by Raleigh and his late brother, Yancy.

            Even seeing the faded blue Jaeger through Neas and Lauren’s video specs made Raleigh feel melancholy: “I forgot how beautiful she was. Hadn’t laid eyes on her since they decommissioned her after that day. I still remember it vividly. We were deployed on the Gulf of Alaska. A Kaiju Knifehead emerged out of the Breach. We went against Pentecost’s orders of keeping a fishing boat safe from the fight. The boat in one hand, our fist hitting the Knifehead with the other.

            We had it on the ropes, until the second it decided to take one last stab. I thought we could’ve finished it with the left Plasmacaster, but it knew what we had in mind before we even let loose. It amputated the arm and breached the right side of the pod, tearing away half of the head…and Yancy with it. After then, it was just it and me…and I wasn’t going to let it get away with what it took from me that night.”

            Raleigh’s recount of the incident left Neas and Lauren feeling sympathetic.

            Suddenly, his reasons for turning down Pentecost made a lot of sense.

            “Miss Mori has your candidates for partnering with the Gipsy picked,” Pentecost told Neas. “You’ll meet them soon.”

            “In the meantime, I will show you to your rooms,” Mako offered.

            “We’ve, uh, already picked one out, thank you,” Neas quickly told her.

-------------------

            “She’s a perfect candidate,” Raleigh said, the moment that the Time Lords returned to the T.A.R.D.I.S. (and, subsequently, their room in the Shatterdome).

            Neas frowned. “Who’s the perfect candidate for what?”

            “Mako,” Raleigh elaborated. “For the drift.”

            “Drift?” A baffled Lauren questioned.

            “It’s a type of mind meld where the Jaeger pilots share memories, instinct, and emotions,” Raleigh explained. “It’s meant for us to act as one and control the very movement of the Jaeger itself, one pilot controlling the right hemisphere, the other on the left hemisphere.”

            “And should something like this were to happen between a human and a Time Lord?” The tone in Lauren’s voice suggested protest in the very idea. “Neas, this whole idea is going from bad to worse!”

            “Pop…”

            “A Time Lord brain merging with a human one might overwhelm it!”

            “But I’m half human.”

            “Yeah, on your mother’s side.”

            “Just trust me. I’m confident it’ll be safe.”

----------------

            The next morning – the first one Neas and Lauren spent at the Shatterdome – Neas could not have felt more like an outsider than he did once stepping into the mess hall. He passed the more experienced Jaeger pilots, each of them side-eyeing him.

            Only one bothered to show a bit of courtesy.

            “Mister Neas, come sit with us,” Herc Hansen offered.

            The Time Lord wondered if the Jaeger veteran could sense the bit of Australian in him left from a previous regeneration by his friendly demeanor.

            He accepted, taking a place at a table where Chuck already sat with the Hansens’ pet bulldog, Max. Unfortunately, Chuck did not share in his father’s enthusiasm of the new pilot on the block.

            “So you’re the new guy, eh? Nice glasses,” he said of Neas’s video specs. “Hope you don’t plan on wearing those, once you’re inside a Conn-Pod.”

            Neas snickered. “No. They’re just for style. I don’t actually need them.”

            “Yeah, well, whatcha really need is experience, mate,” Chuck snapped. “Look at the other blokes ‘round here. They’re whatcha call real Jaeger pilots, not greenhorns like yerself. You’re a free agent, mate, and your inexperience is gonna bring the rest of us down with ya.”

            On that impression, Chuck left the table with Max in tow.

            “That’s one a ray of sunshine,” Neas heard from the opinionated Raleigh.

            “I apologize for my son,” Herc told Neas. “He’s a smart kid, but I never know whether to give him a hug or a kick in the—”

            Commotion arose within the mess hall, urging Herc and Neas away from their meal and to a television set where several other crewmen were beckoned by a newscast on a new type of Kaiju that emerged from the Breach.

            Through Neas’s video specs, Raleigh observed it clear on the view screen.

            A three hundred-and-fifty-four-foot amphibious reptile battling another Kaiju in Pacific waters. It ended in the reptile’s favor, killing it with the swipe of its long tail that snapped the Kaiju’s neck.

            “Since when do Kaiju kill one of their own?” An uneasy Raleigh questioned.

"Breach on the Pacific Rim" - Part One

Part One

            Neas just defeated Davros and his Dalek armada with an infinite number of his past and future regenerations that busted across space and time. It was a victory he only partially remembered, due to the crossovers within his own timeline. Nonetheless, it was the victory he remembered.

            So why couldn’t he catch one measly gremlin?

            It was just him and Lauren – the second regeneration of his father, Steven Curtsinger (a.k.a. “The Tinkerer”) – in the T.A.R.D.I.S., hunting Stripe through the endless Gallifreyan ship.

            “He could be anywhere,” Lauren said, holding their Mogwai companion, Gizmo, close to her bosom. “It’s already taken us hours to find him.”

            “We just have to focus on the dimmest, darkest areas,” Neas advised, tightening his grip on the large fly net he carried. “That’s where we’ll find him.”

            Lauren did notice how much dimmer it seemed the further they went.

            Perhaps he’s onto something, she thought.

            The atmosphere was so still and tense that they nearly jumped out of their skins at the sudden moment the cloister bell sounded.

            “Is that because of Stripe?” Lauren asked.

            Neas listened closely to the bell’s register. “No. That’s gotta be something outside the T.A.R.D.I.S.”

            They both rushed back to the console room, which took mere minutes with the shortcuts Neas led them through. As soon as they arrived, he checked into the console computer.

            “Something’s disrupted our navigation system,” he notified. “We’ll have to make an emergency landing.”

            With the pull of a lever, he brought his T.A.R.D.I.S. out of the dimensional corridor. It materialized on a snowy mountain range. Seeing it from the console room view-screen, Lauren knew it best to bundle up, taking a turquoise hoodie out of the wardrobe room and keeping Gizmo nestled in one of the front pockets.

            “According to the computer, we’re on Earth of 2025,” Neas said while stepping outside with Lauren. “And, by the looks, we’re somewhere in Alaska.”

            Neas kept his gaze towards the mountains, whereas Lauren’s eyes darted about the range. Her body suddenly turned rigid at one display horrifying enough to make her gasp.

            Neas turned her direction and immediately saw what she did…

            … the wreckage of a gigantic humanoid mecha…

            …and the remains of a long-deceased colossal monster.

            “Um…whoa,” Neas fearfully muttered. “We’d better get out of here.”

            “I agree with ya,” Lauren conceded.

            They rushed back inside the Type-Z and dematerialized from the Alaskan range.

            No less than a second later, it rematerialized – not in another dimension or another time, but in the same one, within the same radius.

            “We’re still here!” Lauren alarmingly exclaimed.

            “We’ve been grounded,” Neas said. “The T.A.R.D.I.S. can only materialize in the boundaries of this realm. All we can do is teleport from one spot to another.”

            Lauren frowned. “Some force inside of this world is interfering with the interdimensional energy we need to get out.”

            “Well, the only way to find out is to investigate.”

            “Which means we’ll have to go back out in all that cold and crazy.”

            Lauren was already shivering before she and Neas stepped back out into their new surroundings. Not far from them was a massive manmade wall, currently under construction.

            “How much you wanna bet they’re building that to keep those giant monsters out?” Neas wagered.

            Lauren scoffed. “From what we saw back on that range, it needs to be bigger.”

            A line of construction workers passed by, giving the two Time Lords the idea of blending in, donning the available jackets, goggles, and helmets. They followed the men inside the site.

            “This place is a dump,” Neas disgustedly observed.

            “You expected better from a construction environment?” Lauren said.

            The Time Lords noticed the workers gathered by a suspended television set, watching the news report of an epic battle that took place in Sydney, Australia between another giant monster and robot – not unlike the two found in the range.

            The behemoth was described in the report as a “Kaiju,” which – if Neas’s Japanese was correct – translated as “Strange Beast.”

            This one was placed in its own category: number four.

            “It’s like something out a monster movie – only more real,” Lauren said of the recorded footage on the report.

            It tore through the wall bordering Sydney, once believed to be unbreakable, in less than an hour, much to the anger of the Alaskan workers. “Why we even building this thing,” one furiously asked.

            The giant robot, a two-pilot mechanical marvel called a “Jaeger,” was the only thing capable enough to take the Kaiju down with an assortment of missiles and titanium muscle.

            “Man, would I love to meet the fella that built those things,” Lauren awed.

            The familiar sound of a chopper landing turned heads to the outside.

            Sure enough, one landed just near the entrance to the site.

            A man of African descent in a long black coat disembarked, flanked by armed soldiers. He carried a wave of authority that did not go unnoticed by Lauren. “That guy looks stricter than I ever did in my last body,” she said.

            One of the workers stepped out into the snowy, freezing atmosphere to meet up with the man. Together, they walked elsewhere within the construction site to have a private conversation.

            At least, it would have been, if two undercover Time Lords hadn’t decided to eavesdrop. From what they could hear, the worker’s name was “Raleigh” and the authoritative black Englishman was “Marshal Stacker Pentecost.” The initial purpose of his visit was to invite Raleigh back into the “Jaeger Program.” Unfortunately, to Pentecost’s dismay and fury, Raleigh refused for reasons unknown to Pentecost or the two eavesdropping Time Lords.

            He then returned to his work, leaving the disappointed Pentecost standing alone.

            Until Neas stepped forward.

            “He may not be interested, but we are,” Neas told Pentecost.

            Lauren’s crystal blue eyes widened in panic. What is he doing?!

            The marshal looked to him, scowling. “And who might you be?”

            “A couple of people willing to take part in your Jaeger Program,” Neas said. “I heard you say something to that guy back there about the end of the world? Well, I certainly wouldn’t want to just stand by and watch it happen.”

            Pentecost maintained his questioning scowl on Neas. “Are you familiar with Jaegers, Mister…?”

            “Neas,” he remarked. “And, yes, we are.”

            Lauren palmed her face in frustration. Whatever intentions Neas had – whatever plan this was, she wished he would’ve run it by her before opening his mouth.

            Pentecost looked at them in long and hard silence, and then he approvingly nodded. “Very well. Follow me, and I’ll have you both transported to Hong Kong in the chopper waiting outside.”

            “Actually,” Neas quickly said, “we have our own way of getting there.”

            Again, Pentecost nodded but in a more strict demeanor. “Don’t keep me waiting.”

            As the marshal left the premises, so had the two Time Lords, who argued back and forth on the way out while shedding their worker disguises.

            Unbeknownst to them, however, Raleigh had done a bit of eavesdropping himself, hiding out of sight behind a girder once he heard Neas address Pentecost. He followed him and Lauren out of the site and to a tall, rectangular black solid he had never seen around the property.

            “We can’t just jump into other world problems, Neas,” Lauren scolded her son. “What were you thinking telling that man we’d be interested in his program? We know nothing about these ‘Jaegers’ as they call them!”

            “Pop, you wanna find out why we can’t leave this dimension or not?”

            Hearing them bicker from a distance, Raleigh watched as they walked into the rectangular solid through a set of doors that materialized once Neas placed the palm of his hand against the marbled structure.

            Raleigh knew it was impossible for any space to exist inside the flat construct, but somehow there was a much larger area housed inside.

            Curiously, he stepped in before the doors could close.

            It had been years since Raleigh been inside the cockpit of a Jaeger. What he saw inside the solid was far more alien in design to one.

            “Whoa.”

            He failed to keep himself quiet in his awe, alerting his presence to the Time Lords.

            “Oh, now this is just wonderful,” Lauren groaned in witty exasperation.

            “Yes, it is,” said a surprisingly welcoming Neas, who went straight to Raleigh and shook his hand. “So glad you’re here. You’re just the guy who can help us on Jaeger technology.”

            Raleigh gestured around him. “You’re not telling me this is some kind of new Jaeger, are you?”

            “It’s called a T.A.R.D.I.S.,” an aggravated Lauren told him.

            “What’s a T.A.R.D.I.S.?” Raleigh puzzlingly questioned.

            “Something you shouldn’t be in,” Lauren snapped. “And yet here you are!”

            “We need him, Pop,” Neas said. “He’s the only one who can get us further into Pentecost’s program.”

            “Wait, no,” Raleigh refused. “I meant what I said to him. I’m not going back in.”

            “Don’t sweat about it,” Neas assured. “You’ll work in the shadows – stay hidden right here in the T.A.R.D.I.S. while keeping in touch with us through radio communication.”

            Lauren disapprovingly shook her head. “This is the most horrible idea.”

-------------------

            All was quiet out in the middle of the Pacific.

            The small crew of an equally small fishing boat just netted their greatest catch, ready to be brought back to shore.

            Then came an unexpected disturbance in the waves.

            They crashed all around the boat, knocking some of the crew off their feet.

            A few questioned the circumstance, feeling no wind or seeing any storm of any kind to unsettle the waters.

            That was when they saw it.

            A three hundred-and-fifty-four-foot amphibious reptile with an erect standing posture, scaly skin, an anthropomorphic torso with muscular arms, spikes on its back and tail, and a furrowed brow.

            It emerged from the sea, unleashing a deafening disyllabic roar that terrorized the unsuspected fishermen.

            They were thankful it had paid no mind to them as it headed for Hong Kong.