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The first drift is always the chanciest.
Even in a simulation, it's too easy to get lost in the other's memories, or to fight the connection and flee into the darker places of your own mind. Jean had been skilled, once, in doing neither. She isn't certain that's true any longer. The thought of any connection feels strange, after so long alone, and the dark places seem so much darker.
She feels Clare squeeze her hand briefly as the conn pod ascends, seeking and offering reassurance. There's no time for simulations and training now. The enemy is through the breach and closing fast, and they have to trust each other to make it through.
They run through the pre-combat checks together: drivesuit connectivity, neural interface and feedback, all good to go. The techs know their business, even for a hurried launch like this. The old routine is comforting in its familiarity, and for all the time Jean has spent trying to forget this, the lurch of fear and exhilaration in the pit of her stomach as the conn pod drops and locks into place atop Orion Blade’s shoulders is exactly as she remembers.
They hit the water with a thunderous splash, jarring even in the cradle of the motion rig. Clare stumbles and rights herself, and they share a quick grin, as much nervous anticipation as humor. Renee’s voice comes through the com link, loud and clear above the low rumble of machinery.
“LOCENT to Orion Blade. Ready to initiate neural handshake, pilots?”
“Ready to initiate,” Clare says, and Jean confirms. "Let's go.”
The ten second countdown begins, and Jean breathes in once, and out, closing her eyes and reaching for her yoki. She hasn’t done this in years, and though it comes back effortlessly, there’s a moment when scares her more than the drop ever did – the thrilling flood of power through her veins, strength and speed and everything that goes along with it.
The soul link, they’d called this, back before the stabilizing system of the PONS was a blip in some neuroengineer’s dreams. The only way to use a monster’s power without losing yourself to it, body and mind. It feels like too great a chance to take again, but Jean has to trust it, and that means she has to trust herself.
Easy to say that, she thinks, but there’s a Category III with Pieta in its sights, and that means no backing out now. She lets her aura settle into the pattern set by Orion’s biofeedback monitors, then reaches out with her mind, sensing, seeking synchrony.
Five, a computerized voice intones. Four. Three.
She can feel Clare’s yoki, burning with a steady flame that seems to mask a deeper, wilder blaze, and the subtler energy of the jaeger surrounding them both. There’s a life to them, some pilots claim, a composite consciousness, something that lingers after the drift is gone. Jean doesn’t know the truth, but it’s hard not to believe it.
Two. One.
The link engages. Just like always, it’s sudden as a light switched on in a dark room, impossible to prepare for no matter the warning. Sensory impressions flicker through her mind, someone else's memories mingled with her own: the smell of baking bread, the pleasant chill of snowflakes melting on her upturned face, the rising wail of warning sirens and the taste of fear in the back of her throat as the earth trembles beneath heavy footsteps. A monster's shadow falls over broken glass and abandoned cars, and then she's running through rubble-strewn streets, half-blinded by tears and the memory of her brother gone in the first attack, and certain at the same time that she never had a brother...
The scene shifts seamlessly into the sensation of running barefoot across the kwoon's practice mats until she's lifted and swung up into a woman's waiting arms, and Jean catches the briefest impression of long, wavy hair and a smile that doesn't seem gentle until, suddenly, it is. Another shift, and she's standing at the Shatterdome's rooftop railing and staring out to sea, watching and waiting as the sky grows dark and the temperature starts to drop, until someone indistinct and faceless comes to lead her back indoors. She lives through moments of her own life again: her first kiss, her first taste of alcohol, the first time she sees someone die.
Then it's over – only a few seconds in real time, lives flashing between them at the speed of thought – and the real world comes flooding in again. She's in her body now, not mind and memory, but it isn't only her own, and she isn't only her body. She's steel skin and shared mind, two heartbeats and two sets of lungs and the machine that binds them both, neural handshake strong and holding. In the drift there's no difference, every motion and sensation reflecting or reflected by Clare beside her: the pre-combat jitters, the rush of adrenaline and yoki, an awe and apprehension that never fully fades – and beneath that, the ache of grief, her own and Clare's interwoven, and the steady burn of focused rage. That's Clare alone, she realizes, in a moment of separation too brief to interfere with the drift. It's dangerous, but hers or not, she understands it too well.
They have time time to breathe before the kaiju hits them, time to acclimate themselves to the data fed from sensors tracking proprioception and force, temperature and salinity. They can feel the wind, and the motion of water against metal plating. And there's the manual interface too, providing information on jaeger function – chassis, reactor core, weaponry, all in good condition – and tracking the kaiju's speed and position underwater.
They ready the particle cannon to fire as they track the blinking light that marks the enemy's position on the scan: thirty miles out from the coast and closing fast. Twenty-five. Then it's in visual range – a ripple beneath the waves, a tidal swell of displaced water. Its aura rolls over them like an advancing storm, a wave of dark and cold like a pilot's yoki magnified a thousandfold and stripped of anything human. Jean shivers, and feels Clare shiver beside her, unable to still a flash of awe and fear at the sheer alien power of the thing. It's hard not to wonder sometimes how much there is to them, beneath the surface. It's hard not to think of them as beautiful – but so is wildfire, or a nuclear sunset. Beautiful doesn't mean it doesn't need to be stopped. And that, more than any drift tranquility, is what clears her mind for the battle ahead. This is who they are, and what they're meant to be doing.
Hammerfall rises from the waves two miles out from their position, crested with spines, draconic and alien at the same time. Water sluices off its bioluminescent skin in waves, and it roars, tossing its head from side to side and sounding its rage to the sky. For an instant, machine and monster stand mirrored against each other, each waiting for the other to move. Then the kaiju propels itself forward, tail lashing, churning the water.
Jean and Clare breathe in synchrony, aim with one mind, then fire. The cannon beam flashes the ocean to steam where it hits, and sears a cauterized hole through the beast’s armor-plated shoulder – enough to hurt it. Not enough to slow it down. There isn’t time for another shot before it’s on them, four heavy arms raised to grapple and drag the jaeger beneath the water. If it can manage that, they're dead, but Jean catches Clare’s eye with a sharp-edged smile and a thought sparks across the link between them: we’re not such easy prey as all that. Step forward, then, into the closing teeth of the trap. Duck low, engage arm blades and slash up across the monster’s belly, then out to break free of the encircling grip. Hammerfall howls – more rage than pain, Jean thinks, but there’s pain there too, one arm hanging useless and blue blood splashed across Orion’s chestplate.
The damage is barely enough to slow it. Kaiju fight until they fall, and this one lashes out, swinging armored fists heavy as the hammers that gave the beast its name. They block a downward blow with crossed arms. The impact forces them back, gouging a deep trench in the ocean floor – fall back another pace, then, let its balance slip, and return in a whirl of blades. Another punch barely clips them, harmless but for pain and superficial damage, but the next strikes home, and sends them staggering.
Then Jean feels a ripple in the stillness of the drift, not disunity but a shift in focus. Time slows, and for a moment, she’s looking through Clare’s eyes, past the sensors to the surge and flow of the kaiju’s own aura, sharper than she’s ever sensed it. Orion weaves to the side, evading a crushing punch, and steps back out of reach of another. As they fall into a defensive dance, strike and dodge and counterstrike, Jean readies the particle cannon again. It’s a slow weapon, but with time to charge and a clear shot, a single beam can put a kaiju down for good.
A pity the monster seems less than inclined to give them that time or that shot. Worse yet, it’s figured out that letting them keep their distance isn’t smart, and with three working arms and a tail that tries to snake around their legs and pull them down, it takes all their concentration to counter.
We need to finish this.
Clare’s thought, shot through with impatience, but Jean can’t help but agree. Untouchable though they are, they’re accomplishing nothing but evasion, and that’s a fool’s game against a creature that might tire but won’t stop. The cannon isn’t ready yet, but if they can end this faster...
Her hands fly across the interface, activating shoulder launchers, and a volley of missiles rains on Hammerfall’s pitted hide. It recoils from the explosions, swinging its huge head from side to side in stunned confusion, and they strike with one mind and bladed arms flashing.
Hammerfall rears up as they close in, not stunned at all but fast and sharp. Realization hits too late – This one is smart enough to set a lure – and before they can adjust, claws pierce Orion’s sides, pinning the jaeger in place. Metal creaks and groans beneath the strain, alarm lights flash, but the plating holds. Still, they’re caught, and recklessly so.
Katea died like this, she thinks, too late to catch herself, and feels the echo of another memory – not Katea but the smiling woman, gone and not returning. Yoki flares like gasoline spilled on flame, and with it a violence that goes deeper than anger, closer to bloodlust, resonating through all the parts of herself that she needs to keep in check.
Steady, she thinks to herself and Clare, hold steady, and she feels the noise of rage-fear-power-hunger that fills the drift subside back into silent focus. They’re caught. That doesn’t mean they’re trapped.
Hammerfall’s jaws open wide, revealing jagged teeth each as tall as a person.
Fifty-eight, fifty-nine...
Jean raises her arm, and Orion Blade moves with her, aiming the cannon down the black pit of the kaiju’s throat.
Fire.
The beam flashes white-hot, vaporizing flesh and armor alike, leaving nothing but smoking ruin where Hammerfall’s head had been. Still, even pilots fresh from the Academy know that sometimes the body keeps fighting when the primary brain is gone. Best to take no chances. She isn’t sure if it’s she who moves or Clare, but they angle the beam down, slashing diagonally like they’re wielding a blade – there’s a flash of something there, like the drift but not of the drift, deja vu and muscle memory vanishing before she’s even sure it’s real.
No matter. It’s over, fight and memory and all of it. What’s left of the kaiju falls beneath the waves, and doesn’t rise again. They stand still a moment longer, watching the empty horizon, then turn back to shore and safety.
The return trek is a short one. Orion moves easily through the waves, damage minimal, and Jean feels light in the aftermath despite the jaeger’s tonnage. Relief floods her, the weary joy of a successful fight, and she feels it mirrored in the pilot beside her. She almost doesn’t want to step down from this – sun on water, wind and waves translated through the network of Orion’s sensors and the bright steel-edged intensity of Clare’s mind, all of it so vivid that it’s easy to think of nothing but the moment. But all too soon, they’re back, waiting for retrieval as LOCCENT hails them.
“Good to see you back in one piece, pilots,” Renee says. It sounds a bit too much like I was expecting you to get your asses kicked out there, but Jean has to admit that with one new pilot and the other a few years out of practice, she’s not entirely unjustified, and besides, the relief in her voice sounds genuine.
“You two ready to disengage neural handshake?”
“Ready,” Jean says, and Clare with her. No countdown this time, only a second passing, and just like that the drift fades to an echo, a dissipating trace of yoki, then nothing. All that’s left is to wait as machinery lifts the conn pod back to the Shatterdome’s upper level. She’s one person again, a single body, but a trace of the connection lingers like a spiderweb stretched between their minds, and she doesn't know whether she wants to brush it away or hold on until it fades to nothing.
"You alright?" Clare asks, before Jean has a chance to shake herself out of it.
"I've been out of the game for a while," she says. "It takes some readjustment, that's all. Are you?"
"Fine," Clare says. “Better than fine.” Her eyes gleam as she tugs the helmet off, shaking out her hair, and her voice is fierce with triumph; if not for the just-ended drift, Jean might not have caught the trace of shakiness beneath.
It's something most pilots guess without even really needing to be told: the aftermath of drifting with a new partner can be more difficult than the event itself. There are things you have to get used to – feeling another's emotions alongside your own, knowing that your secrets are each other's for the keeping and trusting that they've seen you, like you've seen them, without judgment or disdain. It becomes easier with time.
There are things she could have said – That was Teresa of the Faint Smile in your head, and I'm sorry for your loss – but she knows without having to ask just how private those memories are, and how little such words might hold up outside the fragile consonance of the drift. She's sure Clare knows things about her now, too, that she has no wish to see brought to light.
"I didn't know you were a shatterdome brat," she settles for instead, and Clare offers her a quick smile in return, the expression suddenly very familiar.
"I learned from the best."
There's that, then – a gesture of trust, a bridge built outside the neural handshake.
"She wouldn't have been happy to see me in a drivesuit," Clare says softly. "She wanted a normal life for me. But after – "
"I know," Jean says. She does. There's no need to say it. Still, she reaches out, feels Clare take her hand and clasp it; ghosts, like jaegers, are easier to bear together.
Then, with a lurch, they’re there. Cables detach from their drivesuits, and then Jean is pushing open the hatch and stepping out with Clare beside her, onto the catwalk and into the huge, echoing space of the hangar.
Techs swarm around them on the way to the conn pod, filling the empty space with orders and chatter. Most are intent on their own work, but a few exchange greetings with Clare, and even one ambushes her with a punch on the shoulder, which she returns forcefully enough to leave him wincing. The young man takes no offense, just laughs and hurries on. Jean, feeling a little more reserved, is content to let the noise of humanity and machinery wash over her. She doesn’t yet fit into the rhythm of life in this Shatterdome, not like Clare does, but she thinks she could.
She takes off her helmet and wipes the sweat from her brow, feeling the aches of battle catch up to her as she stretches and rolls her shoulders back. It’s an odd feeling, being back in her own small flesh-and-blood body, at once too real and not real at all. She needs to run, or spar, do something to ground herself again until she can get comfortable enough in her own skin to feel – well. Almost human.
“Hey,” she says, and Clare turns to her, quietly intent in a way that leaves Jean feeling unexpectedly self-conscious or just too aware of everything. She shakes it off. “Meet me in the kwoon for practice, after?”
A nod, and that smile again, there and then gone but brilliant enough while it lasts to leave the dimly lit shatterdome a little warmer and brighter in its wake. It doesn’t take the drift to realize that this part of Clare is as true as the drive and anger she buries beneath it, and Jean can’t help but hope that with time, she’ll know the one as well as the other. And there will be time, she promises herself, for them and for humanity, however many beasts she must fight to ensure it.
They’re not quite free to go yet. There will be mission reports and debriefing, a check-in with K-Sci for brain scans and blood tests, all the usual protocols. But after that, there will be coffee with a splash of whiskey, a chance to rest and a city safe for another day. It’s worth it, she thinks, and though she knows that the dreams of monsters have a way of lingering, this time there’s no doubt hiding in the back of her mind. It’s all worth it.
It’s good to be back.