PPDC Marshal Stacker Pentecost

Every room in the Shatterdome has been designated for a purpose at some point. This one is normally set aside for the pilots who have to fly the Jaegers out to their oceanic drop points to plot their courses.

It seemed appropriate when Marshall Pentecost thought about it, really.

He's waiting.

( Dunno if it worked, sir )

I think I have a concussion. I should probably -- I'm dead.

Chuck Hansen will be dead in a week. Herc won't be. Stacker Pentecost will.

There's a dreadful stillness pooling in Pentecost's center, but that's not why.

He's known since Tamsin blacked out and the eigengrau flooded the Drift that his own end was coming. The clock in the Shatterdome counts up, seconds and minutes and hours and days since the last kaiju attack, but when Tamsin's diagnosis came in and the doctor turned to him and asked to speak to him alone, a different clock entirely started ticking in Pentecost's head. That one counts down, not up, and unlike the one in the Shatterdome, it doesn't get reset. It counts its time out in Metharocin capsules and physical examinations, in unexpected nosebleeds and moments of quiet nausea.

He's lived with that clock's tick since Tokyo. Hansen's words just made it clear what it was counting down to. The stillness comes from-

Most of Hong Kong made it, at least

Started as a double event, but turned into a triple

Took out the other two, hopefully

Dunno if it worked, sir

-elsewhere.

They've never had a double event before. They've never had two kaiju at once. In seven days there will be two, and then there will be three, and then he does not know. And he won't know, not before then, not after- assuming there even is an after. In seven days he has to see the world saved. He doesn't get an or.

If he doesn't see to it now, he never will. One kaiju is a horror, two an abomination, three an eschatological event that can only be followed by more. There will be no ever after.

He does not have time to get anything wrong. Not any more.

He and Becket are about to land at the Shatterdome, anyway.

He's not allowed back into a Jaeger. Hasn't been since Tokyo. It would kill him.

The basis of the Drift is the neural-handshake.

Here's the thing: he can't let that stop him.

The basis of the neural-handshake is psycholinguistic identification.

He's not trying to get back into a Jager. He has more sense than that. When Tamsin blacked out next to him and Coyote Tango's systems switched over to him alone he knew from the start that he'd be lucky to get out alive. He knew when he stepped out of the Conn-Pod and looked down at the wreckage Onibaba had wrought that he wasn't getting back in there. It'll kill him if he does, and he's not going to do that. His nervous system's accomplished one impossible thing. It won't survive two.

The basis of this identification is common experience.

He's on metharocin. Coyote Tango's reactor wasn't kind when it spared him. He only has so much time; he's already burning and one day there won't be anything left to burn. If they haven't defeated the kaiju by then-

The basis of common experience is training.

He's recommended Hansen to take the reins when he falls. It'll happen. He doesn't know when; Coyote Tango's reactor didn't give him a calendar. The only clock he has to go by is the one in the Shatterdome that ticks off the time since the last kaiju attack. Hansen might succeed. Might not. He doesn't know.

The basis of training is an invariable set of exercises within a single discipline.

The only way he'll know is if he sees the things destroyed and the Breach closed by human hands in his own lifetime. He has to live long enough to see that. Willpower alone won't get him there. Willpower needs more to work with. It needs support, it needs health, it needs strength, it needs discipline.

This discipline is the study of the Jaeger.

They think that when he practices in the Kwoon training room it's because he's refining the techniques the pilots have to practice, the fifty-two forms of Jaeger Bushido they'll be using when they go out there and face the monsters. He lets them. That's part of it, too; but he has his own reasons.