PPDC Marshal Stacker Pentecost

Garage

Mon, 02 Mar 2015 01:03:27 GMT

The Milliways garage is stupidly large, and stupidly well-stocked, and a dozen other impossibilities. It makes Stacker's head hurt just to think about it. But it has two things going for it. One, unlike the front door, the door to the garage lets Stacker in and out every time. And two, it's got a Jaeger in it.

Where there is one Jaeger, there may very well be more. Even if, by all lights, one ought to be impossible.

Stacker doesn't much care about impossible at this point. If it gives him a chance of ensuring that the world survives Hansen's warning, he'll take it. The garage merits exploring.

But first he has a Ranger to check on. The fact that said Ranger is dead doesn't change anything.

comments

Sun, 01 Feb 2015 02:06:03 GMT

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 )

comments

Mon, 20 Jan 2014 17:32:34 GMT

Hong Kong's harbour is very nearly fogged in.

In the old days, the average temperature in the city was around fifteen degrees C this time of year, and January the driest month. But it was chill and wet and foggy when Pentecost left for Alaska, and there's mist swirling about the blades of the Sikorsky's rotors as it touches down. It's soaking wet out there.

(Stacker Pentecost, name to the contrary, has never been a religious man. But he remembers how King David mourned and wept endlessly when his child by Bathsheba fell ill, hoping to move the almighty powers to spare the child.)

(He remembers what made the king's weeping stop.)

(They have a week left.)

There's a bump as the helicopter touches down. Time is moving again, and they're going to be greeted.

comments

Tue, 07 Jan 2014 22:06:04 GMT

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.

comments

Sun, 08 Dec 2013 23:17:39 GMT

There was a time when Stacker Pentecost had access to enough aircraft to make Hugh Trenchard jealous. This is not that time; it hasn't been that time for nearly a year now. When the PPDC's funding was pulled and diverted to the Wall-building efforts, personnel transports were dropped from the list of things Pentecost felt it was necessary to find funding for almost immediately. he had priorities. He's always had priorities.

The helicopter he's in now isn't much by anyone's standards, a small single-rotor Sikorsky, but that's all it has to be. It just has to make it to Sitka.

Not his favorite part of Alaska by any means, but he doesn't plan on being there very long.

comments

Wed, 21 Aug 2013 15:48:40 GMT

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.

comments