Pacific Rim: The Official Movie Novelization Read Online Free Page B

Working Group’s designated speaker said. “And cities. Lima, Seattle, Vladivostok... this is no longer a battle or a strategy. It’s a slow, painful surrender. And we can’t surrender. I can’t surrender.”
    Each member of the Group, a standing subcommittee of the United Nations since 2016, gazed at Pentecost from their individual monitors, their faces carefully arranged masks of professional, diplomatic regret. Around Pentecost, LOCCENT was silent. They had no more funding to keep it going. The bureaucrats were fleeing, and the first thing they always took on their way out was the money.
    The only other people in the room were Tendo Choi, in his standard bowtie, suspenders, and ducktail haircut, and one of Pentecost’s veteran Rangers, Herc Hansen. Both stood out of view of the monitors.
    “The kaiju evolved,” the British UN representative said. Pentecost didn’t know him. “The Jaegers aren’t the most viable line of defense anymore.”
    “I am aware,” Pentecost began, then stopped himself. He reconsidered his approach. “It’s my Rangers who die every time a Jaeger goes down. But I’m asking you for one last chance. One final assault, with everything we’ve got—”
    A fight, he said to himself. Instead fleeing just so we can die somewhere else.
    “Marshal Pentecost,” the Australian rep cut in, “we’ve been through this before. The simple fact is the Breach is impenetrable.”
    “With our current assets, perhaps,” Pentecost said. “But just as the kaiju have evolved, we are evolving as well. We have the Mark V-E Jaeger through the design phase and ready for prototyping. It’s ready to go as soon as the funding is released.”
    “That just isn’t on the table, I’m afraid,” the Australian said.
    Pentecost felt his last glimmer of hope disappear. The 5E was supposed to be built in Australia. If their own representative wasn’t going to stand up for it, how could it survive?
    But they needed it. They kaiju were getting bigger and stronger. The Jaegers needed to match them, hell, exceed them. Not only that, they needed to make a push toward the Breach.
    “My Kaiju Science researchers have made enormous strides toward understanding the physics of the Breach. You have their report. The more we understand about the Breach, the closer we get to being able to destroy it... if we have the combat assets to take the fight to the kaiju,” he said.
    Pentecost had a savage dream of leading a force of Jaegers through the Breach to whatever lay on the other side, and doing to the kaiju exactly what they had done to humanity. He would need a hell of a lot more in the way of Jaeger tech and combat support if he was ever to make that dream a reality. There also didn’t seem to be any way to get into the Breach, but that was a matter of building tougher Jaegers that could withstand the electromagnetic storm it created.
    They were getting closer. They couldn’t stop now. Not after so many had died.
    “Nothing is impenetrable,” he continued. “We just have not yet discovered the tool that will penetrate the Breach. That is why our mission has grown even more critical. The Mark V-E Jaeger is the centerpiece of the next stage of that mission. It is crucial that we be able to continue developing to meet the threat.”
    “The Group feels otherwise, Marshal Pentecost,” said the member from Panama.
    Pentecost wasn’t surprised. Her country had just received an enormous windfall, billions of dollars to construct a barrier to the Pacific entrance of the Panama Canal. The kaiju had not found the Canal yet, but they had hit Guatemala and Ecuador. It was only a matter of time. The money for the Canal barrier had come straight out of the final-phase prototype funding for the Mark V-E Jaeger. The thought made Pentecost furious.
    Picking right up as if the whole thing had been rehearsed—which Pentecost didn’t doubt it had—the American put in, “The world appreciates what you and your Rangers have done,