Pacific Rim by Travis Beacham

Author:Travis Beacham [Beacham, Travis]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Titan Books
Published: 2013-07-08T22:39:00+00:00

***

After the scrap outside Pentecost’s office, Herc allowed himself precisely fifteen minutes to get his temper under control and decide what he was going to say. Then he went looking for Chuck in Striker Eureka’s maintenance area. He found his son working with a three-foot wrench on a single bolt whose head was bigger than Herc’s fist. Though compared to the size of most of the machined parts of Striker Eureka, it was a sliver.

“He’s grounding Mako,” Herc said over the sound of whatever turn-of-the-century guitar hero was playing on the radio. It all sounded the same to him.

“Well, that’s half of the right decision,” Chuck said. He wiped his hands and added, “But I want him off the mission even more than the bird.”

Something about the moment—Chuck’s flip attitude set against the immensity of the task before them, or his knee-jerk impulse to destroy an ally because he thought he might be a rival when the Pan-Pacific Defense Corp needed every warm body Hannibal Chau’s market share could finance... Whatever it was, it tipped Herc over an edge that he’d been moving toward for a long time.

He reached down and turned the radio down. Not off, but down.

“Hey, I was listening to that,” Chuck said.

“Who are you?” Herc asked his son.

Chuck looked confused and belligerent at the same time, like it irritated him not to know the answer to a question, but it irritated him even more that his father would ask him a question he couldn’t answer.

“What?”

Herc smashed the radio into the floor. A few small pieces of it bounced away, but it was a shop-floor model, designed to take a beating. He hadn’t wrecked it, but it made an impression on Chuck. Got his full attention for the first time in Herc’s recent memory.

“Who are you?” he demanded, stepping up into his son’s face.

“I’m the only chance we’ve got to deliver that bomb, is who I am—” Chuck started.

“Not the point,” Herc said.

“—but I’m stuck with two prison guards, the basketball triplets, Tokyo pop, and a washout.”

“Not the point!” Herc said, louder.

Chuck got louder, too. “Pentecost may be a good man, but he hasn’t seen combat in, what? Ten years, maybe? More? The only chance we’ve got at a future is delivering that bomb, and I am the one doing it—”

“That’s not what I’m talking about!”

“That’s who I am!”

“I know,” Herc said, dialing it back just a notch. “I know you’re a great Ranger, and I’m proud of that. But dammit, kid... why are you not a better person? Why didn’t I make you a better person?”

“A better person?” Chuck echoed, as if he couldn’t believe this mattered to Herc. “Don’t blame yourself. It’s not like you really brought me up anyway. After Mom died, I spent more time with these machines than I ever did with you.” He tapped the wrench fondly against the chassis of Striker Eureka.

Herc remembered the mushroom cloud rising over Sydney. The second one. The first had been out at the islands, an hour before, and had slowed the kaiju down.

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