Pacific Rim: The Official Movie Novelization by Alex Irvine Page B

ordered her not to call him Sensei since her admission to the Jaeger Academy in 2020. For the last five years she had held her tongue. Someday she would call him Sensei again.
    “Good,” Pentecost said to her.
    In the dimly-lit LOCCENT, to her he appeared distracted and worn down. She owed this man everything, and seeing him like this worried Mako deeply.
    But she had not come to meet him just to inform him that his orders had been followed. Stacker Pentecost was not the kind of commander who needed constant reassurance. He chose good people and let them be good at what they did, as long as they understood the rules from the beginning. Overcommunicate. It’s better to tell someone something they already know than to not tell them something they needed to hear. Do your job and let your colleagues do theirs. Once a decision is made, it is made for the entire team.
    Mako was here in violation of that last principle. She was going to broach a difficult subject, and not for the first time. She already knew what he would say. He had said it before. It made no difference. She would keep trying.
    “There’s one more thing,” Mako said.
    He turned to look at her, anticipating her question.
    “We’ve talked about this, Mako. We are not talking about it again.”
    She ignored his warning.
    “You promised me,” she said. Then she switched to Japanese. “Gipsy no noru kata ga jibun na no.” I should be the one riding Gipsy.
    “Mako. The kaiju took everything from you, but vengeance is like an open wound. You cannot take that level of emotion into the Drift.”
    “What level of emotion is Raleigh Becket taking into it?” she countered. “Has he forgotten about his brother?”
    “You are not responsible for Raleigh Becket,” Pentecost said. “I am. As I am responsible for you.”
    “For my family,” she said. “I have to do this.”
    “Motto jikan ga areba,” Pentecost said. If we had more time .
    “But we don’t,” Mako said.
    Pentecost turned away from her, looking out over the Jaeger bays, where the future of the human race stood catching the first rays of the sun. Mako knew that move. She had seen it more times than she cared to remember. When Stacker Pentecost turned his back, that was all there was to say.
    For the moment, thought Mako.
    She went to finish preparing for Raleigh’s trial.



11
    IN THE KWOON, RALEIGH BOUNCED ON THE BALLS of his feet, waiting. He was up, ready, a light sheen of sweat on his skin and the first tingle of the internal fight groove in his brain. His irritation with Chuck Hansen was already fading. He owed nothing to a guy like that, except to do his duty in a fight, and Raleigh would have done that for anyone.
    He balanced his hanbō, getting a feel for it. He hadn’t touched one in more than five years, but he didn’t think he’d forgotten everything. It was about three feet long and an inch thick. Just a stick, unless you knew what to do with it.
    Somewhere back in the early days of Ranger training, someone—maybe it was Pentecost—had figured out that a good way to predict Drift compatibility was to see how two people fought. The logic wasn’t obvious at first, but it had come to make sense in Raleigh’s mind. First: The more a fighting pair could anticipate and counter each other’s moves, the more likely they were to be able to anticipate each other’s thoughts... which strengthened the neural handshake. Second: If you could kick someone’s ass easily in a fight, how could you take that person seriously as an equal when you had to share your inner-most thoughts with them and trust them with your life? There was also the question of style and temperament. That would have been the basis of Mako’s initial screening of Raleigh’s potential co-pilots.
    Five of them stood across the fighting mat. Holding an actual paper clipboard and standing at the side of the mat nearest the door was Mako. Raleigh wondered if she had in fact, by gripping it too hard, snapped her