Chapter Text
Will feels Lecter’s steady, solid presence half a step behind him all the way to the Command Center, and it helps calm the anxiety fluttering in the pit of his stomach. The two arrive to find the large room bustling with activity, but it’s the small huddle of pilots to the left they head for. As Will joins the group, he looks over Beverly’s shoulder to see the small screen on which everyone’s attention is fixated. Even through the grainy, black-and-white video feed, he can make out the movements of two massive shapes in the water.
“So much for celebrating,” Beverly murmurs to him, “I didn’t even get to open any of my beers.”
One of the brothers piloting Romeo Blue suddenly points to the screen at one of the Kaiju. “’The hell is that, some kind of fin?”
Beverly turns sideways to let Will manoeuvre his way closer to the centre of the group. He squints at the screen at the blurry edges of the Kaiju’s back, but before he can offer his input, Lecter’s voice rings out beside him.
“Wings. Could be vestigial, from this view, but we shouldn’t take any chances.”
The other red-haired brother looks at Lecter, then back at the screen. “Shit,” he mutters.
Will finds himself inclined to agree. Less than five percent of sighted Kaiju have had the ability to fly, but none of them have ever been brought down without casualties. Facing the two Kaiju together underwater, with possibly more coming through the Breach any second, would likely be a suicide mission. But Jack’s announcement had made it clear: code blue means deployment. They’re making their move.
“Alright, people,” the hustle and bustle of the room slows at the sound of Jack’s voice; he’s standing on a chair in front of the control panels, elevated so the grim expression on his face can be seen across the room. “At approximately twenty-one twenty-three this evening, another Kaiju signature was detected emerging from the Breach. Our analysts have confirmed that we are now dealing with two category five’s.”
Will tenses, and sees the pilots around him do the same. The only category five ever recorded in human history was at the battle of the Breach, at the end of the last Kaiju War. Since then, the data from that incident has been analyzed the world over, but since the carcass was never recovered no one knows much about the creature, or others presumably like it. Will realizes with a wry smile that they’ll be making history tonight.
“As you know, the preliminary strike team was set to engage the first target, code name Slithertail, tomorrow morning. In light of recent events, our timeline has changed; the strike team will move out in one hour, and proceed with the original plan of attack. All other pilots are to be on standby for possible assistance.” For a moment, Jack’s face is overcome with an expression the word “exhausted” cannot come close to describing. “As of this moment, ladies and gentlemen, we are at war.” Without another word, the Marshal steps off his makeshift pedestal and weaves his way through the crowd, which has begun to move with the fluidity of a well-oiled machine.
Will exchanges a look with Beverly beside him, his look of barely masked dread mirrored on her face. He turns to look for Jack among the sea of moving heads around him, but someone on his right beats him to the chase, bellowing across the room.
“Hey, Marshal!”
He barely has time to look back before someone pushes past him in a flurry of red hair and fury; the other one trails after his brother with a pained expression on his face.
It turns out they only have to walk a few paces before the crowd parts like the red sea to reveal Jack, turning around calmly. “Mr. Jacobs?”
“You’re orderin’ us to fight two level five Kaijus with a team that was meant to fight one!” Jacobs hisses, his voice dangerously level.
“I’m well aware. That’s why all other pilots are on standby, should you need any assis-”
Jack raises his hands in mock surrender as Jacobs grabs the lapels of his coat, “Oh, everyone in this god damn room knows we’re gonna need assistance.”
The other brother lays a hand on Jacobs’ arm and tries to draw him back. “Pete, come on…”
Peter Jacobs turns back to give his brother a withering look, “You stay outta this, Cal. Understand me?” Another moment of tension later, Cal relinquishes his hold, and Peter returns his attention to Jack. “No one’s ever fought a category five and come out of it happy, Marshal. You’re already askin’ too much of us to go in there first. Now, I know my pops and I were the diehard types back in the day, but there is no way in hell,” his voice has dropped to a stage whisper, so Will has to strain to hear properly, “I’m dragging my little brother into a suicide mission.”
The man gives a surprised grunt when his younger brother yanks him back in a burst of furious strength; he staggers and almost crashes into Will as Calvin Jacobs faces Jack with a defiant expression on his face. “I apologize for the insubordination, sir. My brother does not speak for us both, and we will report to the conn-pod as assigned, sir.” He even finishes with a little salute, which Jack returns before walking away.
As the crowd disperses, Peter Jacobs rounds on his brother with a snarl. “What the fuck are you doin’? For God’s sake, I was tryin’ to-” He lets out an exasperated sigh. “We never should’ve come.”
“I don’t need you to take care of me, Pete. Not anymore.” Calvin says, and after a brief but terse silence between the two, they move off toward the changing rooms; Nova Hyperion’s pilots follow them momentarily, hunched together and speaking in hushed voices.
Will is still staring after them when someone behind him whistles low. “That was quite the show.” The young man making his way through the flow of people sports a mop of flyaway brown hair and blue eyes that widen just enough to be disconcerting as he turns back to address someone behind him. “Eh, Margot?”
“You’re the Vergers.” Will says before he can help himself. The brother and sister team stationed at Anchorage rose to fame after Will’s time, but even he had been mildly impressed at the two category three’s they managed to fight off in 2024.
“Mason Verger; Pavlov’s Maze, left hemisphere.” The man grasps Will’s hand in a surprisingly firm grip. “And the surly one’s my sister, Margot.” The wide-eyed young woman beside him, who had been glancing at Lecter, snaps to attention at Mason’s hand on her shoulder. Will tries hard not to think about the wince on her face at the touch. “Say hi, sis.”
Margot Verger’s eyes travel to Will and his co-pilot, and for a second she looks like she wants to speak; but the moment passes and with one last pointed glare at her brother, she turns on her heels and follows the other members of the strike team out.
Mason shrugs nonchalantly. “Sorry about that, she can be a little…prickly.” He says. “But I do need to get going. I’ll see you on the other side, Mr. Graham.” The smile he levels at Will as he moves away is dauntless, and perhaps a little manic. Will supposes it’s not uncommon in their line of work.
In fact, he’s thinking about Mason so intently it takes him a few seconds to realize he never gave his name.
“So that’s our first response team.” He blinks as Lecter speaks up next to him. “Intersting mix.”
Will looks back at the monitor, where the two Kaiju are gliding through the waters around the Breach. The wings on the smaller one are unmistakable this time. “Peter Jacobs is right.”
“And what would you have our friend Jack do?” When he looks at Lecter, the latter is wearing a surprisingly severe expression. “Send all of us out at once and hope for the best?” When Will stays silent, Lecter promptly turns on his heels and marches out of the command center.
He’s still staring after his co-pilot with a frown when he feels a nudge on his arm. “How about that shitshow, eh?” There’s a hard edge to Beverly’s voice that hadn’t been there the day before, and when Will looks over at her and Alana, he sees identical grim sets to their mouths.
“It’s not fair.” Alana says, “I can’t believe Jack is going through with this.” She shakes her head, and Beverly lays a reassuring hand on her arm. “What are you thinking, Will?”
He chooses his next words carefully, deliberately. “I’m thinking if none of those people come back alive, we’re all going be in a lot of trouble.” The heavy silence that falls between them is interrupted when a technician stumbles by Will and almost crashes into him, barely hanging on to the massive box of headsets he’s carrying.
“Hey, watch it, Zeller!” Beverly calls after him with a quirk of her lips; the young man doesn’t look back, but gives her the middle finger over his shoulder. She rolls her eyes. “Come on, let’s get to the observation room. Those guys are gonna need us on red alert if they need back-up.” Beverly turns to Will as they start to make their way across the room. “What happened to your co-pilot?”
Will shrugs. “He took off.”
The Asian woman raises a dark eyebrow while Alana frowns. “Well, wherever he is, he better get his ass ready when we need him.”
The observation room, Will decides, is really nothing more than a glorified bunker. The room had likely been an interrogation chamber before the Pan Pacific Defense Corps took over; low, bare walls of reinforced steel, a wide table bolted into the floor in the middle of the room, and a single hanging incandescent lightbulb that doesn’t quite light up the entire room. It’s more crowded than Will expected; most of the pilots are congregated in front of the table, just under a massive screen showing feeds from several cameras at once, one of which is the same image he’d seen earlier with the two category fives. The rest of the room is filled out with a dozen non-essential personnel.
Will trails after Alana as Beverly manoeuvres them unapologetically through the crowd. Someone passes out a handful of squeaky metal folding chairs, and Will takes a seat to the left of the screen, one of the corners of the table digging uncomfortably into his back.
The murmur in the room dies down almost immediately as the screen changes; the image from the Breach stays on the left, while the rest of the screen is divided vertically into three different feeds from the point of view of each of the Jaegers in the loading dock. Nova Hyperion’s head is being lowered onto the body just as Jack’s voice comes through on the intercom.
“All teams, report.”
A slightly accented female voice is the first to answer. “Nova Hyperion, ready for launch.”
“Pavlov’s maze, ready for take-off.” Mason drones over the intercom.
There’s a short pause, followed by a heavy sigh that fills Will’s ears with static, before Peter Jacobs answers, “Let’s get this over with.”
A deep metal groan resonates from the feed just as Will feels the floor vibrate under his chair. “Eastern bay doors open; carrier cables secured. We are go for launch.”
“Here we go,” Beverly whispers behind him, but Will’s gaze doesn’t stray from the screen. The whole compound seems to be shaking as the three Jaegers are wheeled across the atrium and out through the loading platform, where the cables are secured to series of carrier aircrafts which will take them to Challenger Deep. The night is dark and stormy, with rain battering the hulls of the Jaegers; the only thing visible during the occasional flashes of lightning are the endless black waters of the Apra Harbour. Will realizes he’s been holding his breath, and lets air whistle out between his lips slowly, just as the team begins to move. The 150-mile journey to the Breach takes less than twenty minutes on the new carrier crafts, but the tense silence that settles over every corner of the observation room seems to stretch the minutes into hours. It makes Will think eerily of death row prisoners marching to the electric chair.
No one speaks over the roar of engines and crash of waves from the intercom. “We are now 1000 meters away from the Breach,” a tech says, “Initiating drop in three, two, one.”
Within moments, the three Jaegers are fully submerged. “Switching to instruments and engaging thrusters.” The left hemisphere pilot of Nova Hyperion, Yuna An, said, and the other two teams follow silently. The display screens flicker into a topographical map, with the three Jaegars as green blips and, at the very edge of the circle directly in front of them, are the two Kaiju in blinking red. The thrusters whirl to life and propel the Jaegers forward and up, moving them closer to their destination and slowing their descent all at once.
“Romeo, Nova, you guys all ready?” Mason’s voice drones, the only one in this whole operation who seems completely unperturbed by the situation.
“Affirmative.”
“Roger that, bearing northeast.”
Just as two of the green dots veer off to either side of Pavlov’s maze, Will hears Alana muttering to Beverly. “They’re splitting up, taking the Kaiju from multiple directions. Do you think that’s going to work?”
“It’d work better if they had more time to coordinate it, but it’s better than charging in head-on, I guess.” Beverly replies. “Jaegers are pretty conspicuous, but these Kaiju aren’t exactly the brightest tools in the shed, either. If Pavlov distracts them, the other two might be able to spring a surprise attack.”
“Prepare for landing.” The sound of Margot’s voice, steady and confident, surprises Will, as a muffled crash signals the Vergers’ Jaeger landing on the ocean floor. It only take a few steps forward, however, before a perimeter alarm sounds movement at the Breach. Will sits up a little straighter, hands clasping each other tightly; Pavlov is still 700 meters away from the Breach, and the other two Jaegers haven’t even landed yet, but the Kaiju are already on the move?
“Pavlov, you’ve got incoming!” the same tech from before says with a terse voice. “600, no, 500 meters!”
“Jesus, this thing’s fast.” Someone at the back of the room says, to a murmur of agreement.
“Control, do we continue to our designated locations?” Calvin Jacobs asks.
Jack takes to the microphone. “Listen to me, Rangers-”
“Keep going!” Mason actually sounds like he’s enjoying himself. “The other one’s still at the Breach. We’ll holler if we need help.”
There’s a slight pause before Jack speaks again. “You heard him, Rangers, proceed as planned.”
“Deploy the plasma cannon, Margot.” Will can practically see Mason smacking his lips. “Let’s see what Slithertail’s got in him.”
“100 meters...50 meters...!” Every eye in the room is fixed on the little red dot, blinking closer and closer to Pavlov.
“I see something!” Margot says.
Her brother goes to say “Shoot”, but the plasma cannon is already firing. Will winces and waits for the thunderous impact, but it doesn’t come. The whole room sits with bated breath as the seconds tick by silently.
“Pavlov’s maze, do you have a confirmed hit?”
It takes a few moments for Margot to answer, “Negative, sir. The target has...disappeared.” She’s right; the only red dot left on the screen is the one still hovering by the Breach. The first Kaiju seems to have vanished into thin air.
“What the hell?” Beverly’s words matches Will’s thoughts exactly. This must be some kind of new trick, a cloaking ability, maybe? But Margot had seen something in front of them with her own eyes; it can’t have just disappeared like that.
“Nova Hyperion, Romeo Blue, come in. Are you at Breach? Do you have eyes on the second target?”
“Nova Hyperion reporting. We have reached the designated location and we can confirm visual on the second Kaiju, code name Kaminari.”
“Yeah, roger that.” Peter Jacobs says. “It’s just swimming in circles around the Breach, I don’t think it’s noticed us.”
“Hold your positions for now.”
“And what about us, Marshal?” Mason asks, “What are we supposed to do when we don’t even know where-” He breaks off as the sound of screeching metal comes through the intercom. “Shit, we’ve been hit! We’ve made contact with target! System, assess damage!” The indistinguishable female voice of the operating system sounds in the background, but is mostly drowned out by a blaring alarm.
Will looks at the locator map; it’s still showing only one red dot, hovering around the Breach. The Vergers are surrounded by nothing but open water.
“Pavlov, do you have visual on the target?” Jack’s voice is as authoritative as ever, but it’s lined with a rim of anxiety now. “Pavlov, come in!”
For a few heart-stopping seconds, no one replies. Then the intercom crackles to life again as Mason’s voice breaks through, a little grainy. “I-I can’t see a fucking thing. Margot? Mar-” A deep groan echos around the observation room, and Margot shrieks.
“Mason? Jesus.” A few clicks and rustles while she presumably struggles to flip switches on the control board, and what sounds suspiciously like rushing water in the background. “The conn-pod has been compromised, I repeat, we’ve been compromised! Command center, we need to-”
Will hears the unmistakable crunch of breaking glass, the crackling of electricity, and a sudden, inhuman screech that has everyone in the observation room clasping their ears. The sound only lasts for a few moments, but the static that eventually cuts it off is even more horrifying. Will and a few others have risen to their feet; no one speaks, but someone is letting out shallow, wet breaths from the back of the room. Pavlov’s green dot on the map flashes once, twice, then disappears from view.
“Did we just lose Pavlov?” Calvin Jacobs says with noticeable dread in his voice.
“Jesus Christ.” Will turns back to see Alana sinking back down into her chair, her face buried in her hands. Beverly stands incredibly still beside her, eyes fixed on the screens.
“Command center? What are our orders?” Yuna An asks.
It’s the tech from before, not Jack, who answers. “Nova Hyperion, Romeo Blue, you are to hold your positions.”
“Hold our positions?” Peter Jacobs, ignoring the protests of his brother in the background, snaps into the microphone. “You want us to stay here and get picked off by whatever the fuck wiped Pavlov off the map?”
“Ranger Jacobs, you are to remain in your position while we reconfigure the tracking system-”
He scoffs. “Fuck this. We’re not gonna be sitting ducks while you guys fiddle with your machines. We’re moving in.” A distant whir of the weapons system engaging. “Nova, you with us? Just like we planned originally.”
“Nova Hyperion, engaging weapons systems.” The two female pilots reply in unison.
Peter Jacobs chuckles, “Let’s rock and roll.”
Surprisingly, no one in the command center protests; Will suspects Jack is holding them back.
“Releasing flares in three, two, one.” So-Yi Pang announces. “Flares deployed, target sighted." On the Breach feed, Kaminari starts to move away from the camera, eventually fading into the darkness of the water. The map shows the Kaiju moving north toward Romeo Blue, distracted by the flares.
“Readying grappling hook... come on, you little bitch, just a little closer...” Peter Jacobs mutters, and Will has to strain to hear as the red dot on the map blinks steadily toward the Jaeger. “Now!”
Will can’t hear the hook shooting out of the abdomen of the Jaeger, nor can he see it grasp the turtle-like Kaiju around the torso, but the images flash through his mind all the same as Calvin Jacobs says triumphantly, “Target hooked, reeling ‘im in!” Romeo Blue gets into defense position as the Kaiju is drawn toward it; the sounds of its struggle against the hold of the steel cables drifts through the intercom, but the Jaeger’s armor holds strong. “Nova, you’re up!”
The other Jaeger is already on the move. Striker Eureka, the first and only mark five ever made, was destroyed at the end of the first Kaiju War; Nova Hyperion has now taken its place as the fastest Jaeger in the world. It reaches Romeo Blue and Kaminari in seconds. “Engaging rotor blades.” Pang says, and one of the Jacobs brothers lets out an appreciative whistle.
“Rangers, do you have a hit?” The tech comes back, his voice hesitant. “Is the target down?”
Slowly, the silhouettes of the two Jaegers appear side by side at the Breach, something huge and bulky in one of the Romeo Blue’s hands. They stop over the Breach, and Romeo holds up the head of the Kaiju at the camera. “That down enough for you, control?” Peter Jacobs asks.
The observation room lets out a collective breath, and Jack comes back on the line. “Let’s get you back, Rangers.”
“Wait,” Calvin Jacobs says, “What is that flashing panel? Pete, look at this.”
“Romeo, on your twelve!” Yuna An barely gets the words out before a projectile-like object slams into Romeo blue, leaving a large gash in its lower back that seeps black oil into the water. Nova Hyperion’s rotor blades are back out in a flash, and just in time to engage the lizard-shaped Kaiju that has leaped onto the Jaeger. Again, Slithertail is nowhere to be found on the map.
“Romeo Blue, damage assessment! Come in, Romeo Blue!”
“It’s alright, we’re OK.” Peter Jacobs sounds shaken. “Don’t worry, Nova, we’re coming for you! Cal, get the gatling guns!” On the Breach feed, the mark one Jaeger struggles to get back on its feet; panels open in the chest, and three rockets are fired toward Slithertail. One of them manages to knock the Kaiju off Nova Hyperion, while the other crashes harmlessly into nearby rocks. As Romeo prepares to engage the target again, Will’s eyes turn to Nova. The Jaeger’s right arm is hanging by a thread at the elbow, yet he hadn’t heard a single noise of pain from either of the pilots.
Pang, when she speaks, does sound strained. “The target’s skin is armored. Our rotor blades could not penetrate its exterior.”
“Good to know, Nova.” Romeo grabs Slithertail by its shoulder blades and slams the creature down on the ocean floor. It struggles wildly against the arm and leg holding it down, while Romeo raises its other arm. “Looks like we’re bringing out the new plasma canon.” The canon morphs into shape and begins to glow a bright, electric blue. Romeo wastes no time in pressing the canon against the Kaiju’s chest and firing once, twice, until it lies completely still against the sand.
Nova steps closer to the body. “Is it down?”
“Think so,” Calvin Jacobs says, surveying the motionless creature. Someone behind him clasps their hands together in relief, but Will, still focused on the screen, narrows his eyes at the body. A twitch in the fingers-- He opens his mouth in a fruitless warning as the Kaiju flails to its feet heedless of the hole it now sports in its shoulder, its tail whipping around in deadly arcs in the water until it finds its mark; Nova Hyperion’s connection is instantly cut off as the tail spears the conn-pod. The Jaeger falls to its side and doesn’t get up again.
“You fucking-” Peter Jacobs’ curse breaks off into a cry as the Kaiju sinks its teeth into Romeo’s leg. The arm on his side curls into a fist and slams into the side of Slithertail’s jaw; the creature moves off, but the finger joints on the Kaiju hang limp and useless. “Shit, the gatling gun’s jammed.” A strange hiss of air comes through the intercom. “I have to go set off the manual override.”
“Pete, don’t-!” With the same screech Will heard from Pavlov’s Maze’s feed, the Kaiju pounces on Romeo, its claws digging into the neck of the Jaeger. “PETE! NO! Ranger down! Control, my brother is- god, I think he’s dead-” His voice breaks.
“Ranger, this is your Marshal speaking.” Jack’s voice is calm but urgent. “You’ve got a hostile tearing your circuits to shreds right now, you need to eliminate the target. Reach over and take your co-pilot’s control pad.”
“I...”
“Do it, Ranger!”
“Pete, he’s-”
“Now!”
With an anguished roar from Calvin Jacobs, Romeo Blue’s right arm moves up, the plasma cannon glowing blue once more. The left arm wraps around the neck of the Jaeger tightly to hold it in place, as the canon is shoved between its teeth. One blast that makes the creature glow from the inside out, and the body finally falls over into the sand.
Jacobs is heaving in great big gulps of wet breath as he chokes out, “Target eliminated.”
“Good work, Ranger. We’ve got rescue choppers on their way.”
Will brushes a hand through his hair and turns back to the other pilots. Beverly stares at the screen stiffly, and Alana’s eyes are glistening. The rest of the room is thick with whispers.
“That was less than ideal.” Will looks up to see Hannibal Lecter making his way over from the doorway. Had he been there the entire time?
Beverly grimaces. “That’s one way to put it.”
“What the hell was that? It didn’t show up on our sensors.” Alana taps her fingers on her arm nervously. “How are we supposed to fight these things if we can’t even see them coming?” All four fall silent as the observation room slowly empties, everyone’s faces mirroring Alana’s devastation. Despite himself, Will is inclined to sympathize; every pilot has come here with the assumption that if they’d lived through one war they’d survive another, but while time and peace has dulled their senses, it’s only made the Kaiju stronger. These Category Five’s weren’t like anything they’d ever seen before, and with this new-found power to evade their detection system, pilots would have to learn to fight without any assistance from home base.
“Come on, let’s get out of here.” Beverly stands with Alana in her wake. At the doorway she looks back at Will and Lecter, but eventually leaves without another word.
“What are you thinking about?” Lecter says, taking a seat beside Will, somehow managing to look refined and sophisticated lounging in a metal folding chair.
Will searches in his mouth for more elegant words, but opts for truth instead, “How fucked we are.”
This earns him a chuckle from his co-pilot. “You mustn’t lose hope, Will.” He muses.
“Why not? I’m not a very hopeful person to begin with.”
Lecter shrugs his shoulders a little, “Hope and fear are inseparable; and no one should think they are to survive this war without fear.”
“Oh, I don’t think I’ll ever have to worry about that, Dr. Lecter.” Will says. “I deal with a tremendous amount of fear on a daily basis.”
“And what are you afraid of?”
Crackling electrical circuits. Snow drifting onto his face. A scream, cut off midway-
“Dr. Lecter?”
They both turn to find Jack in the doorway. Will remains seated while Lecter stands. “Yes, Marshal?”
“There’s a...situation we could use you on.” He steals a glance at Will hesitantly.
Will sighs. “Are you going to make my co-pilot keep even more secrets from me, Jack?”
The look he earns back from Jack is none too kind, but the Marshal beckons them both forward after a moment, setting a brisk pace down the hall. “About 5 minutes after we made contact with the first Kaiju, we got an SOS from the surface near the Breach; rescue just came back.”
Will frowns, “Who-?”
“The Vergers. Apparently they managed to eject before Pavlov’s Maze went down; Margot’s the one who sent out the signal after they reached the surface.” The three turn left down the hallway toward the infirmary. “We’re patching them up right now. She’s ok, just shaken up. The brother... well, our doctors are doing their best.”
“Jack, what does any of this have to do with us?”
“Margot was almost catatonic when we rescued her. We only managed to get one coherent thing out of her since.” He looks back and addresses Lecter directly. “She asked for you.”