Pacific Rim Uprising: Ascension by Keyes Greg

Pacific Rim Uprising: Ascension by Keyes Greg

Author:Keyes, Greg [Keyes, Greg]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Science Fiction, Mystery
Amazon: B07639PJ8Q
Goodreads: 36385331
Publisher: Titan Books
Published: 2018-03-13T07:00:00+00:00


22

WHEN HE FINALLY MADE IT TO HIS BUNK, JINHAI was about three steps away from crawling. It was early, and he was alone in the barracks – the rest were doubtless out cashing in the rec chits he didn’t have. Of course, Vik had been shorted, too, and he wondered briefly where she was before closing his eyes.

He was nearly asleep when someone nudged him.

Vik.

“Hey,” she said. “What are you doing?”

“Is this a trick question?” Jinhai murmured. “Go away.”

“We have to figure this out,” Vik said. “If we don’t, we’re screwed.”

“I’m too sleepy,” he said.

“I brought coffee,” she told him.

“So thoughtful,” he replied.

He wasn’t fond of coffee, but with a fair amount of sugar it was bearable. And it did wake him up, a little. He watched Vik, sitting cross-legged on Tahima’s bunk, right next to his, working at her pad.

“So I went back and got our sim data,” she said. “We maintained Drift for more than two hours. The real fight took more like three – we finished faster.”

“Sure,” Jinhai said. “Because we had the cheat sheet. The original pilots probably didn’t really plan what they were doing the whole time. More likely they spotted the plant after they’d been fighting for a while and got inspired. We just copied what they did. Obviously, that wasn’t the right answer for Lambert. What was our casualty count?”

“Right around seven thousand killed, four times that many injured,” she said.

“And in the original attack?”

“About the same,” she said. “At least initially.”

“What do you mean by that?”

“A lot of the injured died in the next week.”

“I’ll bet some of that was from lack of power, right? They had to do everything on generators at the hospitals.”

“Yes,” she said. “So obvious.”

“What?”

“Lambert probably knew we would recognize the scenario. I mean, you lived in Hong Kong, you knew where the power plant was and what happened. Clearly, we weren’t meant to repeat the old fight. We were meant to do better. Fewer casualties. No damage to the power plant.”

“How?” he said. “Nothing else we did made a dent in that thing.”

She took a sip of her coffee.

“Well,” she said. “We’ve got all night to figure it out.”

He suppressed a groan and nodded.

* * *

Lambert listened to their explanation about what went wrong in their drill with a face so neutral that at first Jinhai thought they must have blundered again. When they finished, he continued to stare at them for a few moments.

“Okay,” he said. “You can saddle back up. Try not to disappoint me this time.”

“Yes, Ranger,” he said, relief flowing through him like a cool stream.

* * *

Once more they were Horizon Brave, standing in the waters of the South China Sea, facing Hong Kong, watching Reckoner beat down the worn-out Cherno Alpha. Jinhai had looked up the fight the night before; what they were seeing here was the tail end of a magnificent effort by the Russian team. Fighting alone, Cherno Alpha had managed to keep the Kaiju at sea for nearly



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