Scientist Rayne Ryder has dedicated her life to studying Kaiju — the colossal beasts hell-bent on destroying the rest of humanity's twenty-one remaining cities. She just thinks they’re neat!
When her company discovers that she has an uncanny talent for piloting Machina, the giant robots used to fight the monsters one-on-one, her life is completely upended. Instead of staying in the comfort of the lab, she has to earn her place in the Crew of the best Machina operators Anchorage Protectorate has to offer. And her fiery new Shotcaller, Salem Voss, isn’t going to make things easy on her as she struggles to adjust to her responsibility to fight the monsters she loves.
Can she turn her knowledge of the Kaiju against them and bring herself to do what it takes to keep people safe — without losing herself in the process?
Vahn scrambled to his feet, hauling the titan of metal with him to face down a monster.
The blow from the 14-story creature had sent his Machina – an equally towering figure – staggering backward into what had been a charming hillside moments before. Not that anyone could see it to mark the landscape’s passing with the torrential rain battering the land in the dead of night. There was a constant buzz in Vahn’s ears, though he wasn’t sure if it was from the hum of rain on the hull or the force of that blow.
Lightning cracked, briefly illuminating the world before him. The flash painted texture and color upon the monstrosity before it returned to a wireframe silhouette. The monster – a Kaiju – was bipedal. A long flat tail draped across the terrain behind it. Vahn guessed that it helped the thing balance on those spindly legs. They were sharp and spiderlike, nothing but harsh angles reinforced with carapace. Its joints bent backward like a horse’s legs, supporting a lithe upper body and shockingly intelligent orange eyes. They caught the flash of lightning so brilliantly that Vahn swore he could still see them glowing through the dimness. The long arms looked intimidating, with sicklelike curves, but they were dull. They only seemed to be another tool to aid its balance as it leaped to use the massive carapace spikes on its knees to puncture. He knew all too well what they felt like, his heads-up display confirming precisely how much damage they had done to the Machina.
Vahn recognized that his mind was going down a rabbit hole when he needed to be ready to defend himself; he needed to leave the anatomy lesson to the researchers. He shook his head to clear the fog from his mind, the Machina mimicking his motions exactly. The creature circled him warily. They had exchanged enough blows over the last frantic minute for it to know Vahn and his Machina were no easy prey. Despite another shake of the head, every sense felt muffled through that constant ringing. His movements felt far more sluggish than usual, his vision blurry as if looking through frosted glass. Despite it all, he had to act because the Kaiju was coming.
Using those horrifying legs, it sprang out of his vision to his right. Fortunately, his Machina compensated by flashing a proximity indicator at the corner of his eye. The feedback had him wheeling, using pure muscle memory to bring the Machina’s armored forearm up in a guard position.
The shriek of carapace on metal pierced the night louder than any thunderclap as another springing knee from the Kaiju was narrowly deflected. Despite the creature’s size, it was damned fast. The momentum of the attack carried it well-past Vahn and out of reach, the distance between them punctuating the flow of the fight. They circled each other again, flesh and steel focused, on alert for any sign of weakness.
The buzzing in Vahn’s head was finally clearing as he forcibly stilled each breath. It resolved into…voices – voices over the speakers in his helmet.
“Vahn – Vahn! Dammit, you need to respond! Are you sure we didn’t lose comms?” a familiar voice said, the accompanying rasp making Vahn guess that they had been screaming.
“Yeah, I’m sure!” another voice, deeper but also familiar, piped up on the line. “I still have a signal! Comms weren’t affected by the hit!”
Those were his Crew. He wasn’t alone! “I’m here,” Vahn finally replied, startled by how shaky he sounded. “Sorry – I’m here, just, that last hit rattled me a bit.” The sound of a collective breath finally letting go filled his headset a moment later.
“That’s precisely why you need to follow the plan!” the first voice said, anger pushing through relief.
“Well, clearly I didn’t get the memo. In case you didn’t notice, I’m a little preoccupied!” he quipped back through gritted teeth. The Kaiju tested forward again with a quick lunge, attempting to hook its curved forearms around Vahn’s head and pull him off-balance. Getting the Machina’s hands up by his head, Vahn fell back on his footwork. He was able to duck the maneuver and back out of the creature’s reach.
Vahn could feel each footfall of the Machina in perfect synchronization with his own. Inside the gyroscopic Cocoon of the massive war machine, the line between man and metal blurred. He controlled each hydraulic vein, every tug of motor and muscle. In moments like these, Vahn could not tell where he ended and the Machina began. He felt every sensation as if he actually were the 51-and-a-half-meter-tall construction.
Capitalizing on his dodge, Vahn threw out a couple of quick right straights. They connected hard with the creature’s flank, and he could feel the thick carapace of the creature’s shoulder. The texture of the surface couldn’t be mimicked, but the pressure had been recreated almost exactly. When combined with its full suite of capabilities, the Machina’s Cocoon wove illusion into reality around him. This meant that unfortunately, he could tell its armor was thick at the shoulder. The Kaiju simply bounced back, widening the gap again.
The first voice again pierced his battle-quiet. “You were told to retreat! The monster has already crippled three other Machina in the area. We can’t take it alone. Now open up some distance and let us engage at range!”
“There’s no way we’ll ever hit this thing. The son of a bitch is way too fast.” He spoke with no filter, all attention trained on his opponent. Through the low visibility, he concentrated on the wireframe outline his HUD painted for the slightest hint of movement. The twitch of a muscle, any shift of the Kaiju’s weight, could give him a hint as to its next move.
“This isn’t up for debate. Now do it!” the Shotcaller spat back. The line flooded with chatter from the Crew as they all tried to voice their opinions. Vahn had to mentally shut them out as the Kaiju advanced again, as fast as the lightning that crackled above. The slight drop in its posture was all that tipped Vahn off – his boxer’s instincts took care of the rest. The attack came just as it had before, the wicked knee-spike concentrating the force of the blow onto a single point.
He ducked again and lurched to the right. He managed to avoid the strike head-on, instead colliding with the Kaiju’s center of mass. Vahn’s world shuddered again as the nerve feedback mimicked the collision throughout his whole body. The two hulks descended into a tangle of flesh and steel.
The Kaiju landed atop Vahn and his Machina with the decided advantage in the grapple. The completely articulated fingers of Vahn’s hands gave him an advantage in grip, but the tangle was too frantic for him to get a firm hold on it. He could only see spines, carapaces, and limbs flailing in the storm as he reached for an arm to pin. Vahn could feel every place the monster’s body touched the machine with perfect haptic feedback. Unfortunately for him, this also meant that he felt the machine’s pain.
The Kaiju managed to plant a knee and force itself back to its feet. A sudden white light flashed across Vahn’s vision. A moment later, the pain crashed into him, his body instinctively curling up. He felt the white-hot agony just below his ribs. In the sharp clarity of pain, Vahn suspected one of those knee spikes was driven right into his abdominal wall as the Kaiju stood to extricate itself.
He tried to rise on shaky legs, hand clutching his gut. No blood flowed underneath his armored suit, but Vahn swore he could feel it between his fingers. He was fairly certain the Kaiju hadn’t taken a blow in the exchange – it scrambled away without even a hint of a limp.
The monster pranced from one leg to the other, opening up distance again. But rather than launch into another reckless attack as it had before, the beast waited. It seemed somehow conflicted to Vahn, uncertain, as the next stroke of lightning flashed to illuminate it. Vahn didn’t care what the thing was up to; he’d take all the extra time he could get to recover. With a grunt of effort he finally rose to his feet, the Machina sinking meters into the storm-soaked ground beneath.
“Fluid loss detected. Several batteries leaking. Working to mitigate. Fighting capacity estimated at 46%,” a new Crew member spoke into the line. Despite the heat of battle and arguments, the voice was calm, soft, and silvery. That didn’t stop the words it spoke from stoking Vahn’s defiance.
“Bullsh–” Vahn started to retort but was swiftly cut off by his Shotcaller.
“It’s not bullshit! You’re outmatched and injured. Don’t–” the first voice spat back but then hesitated, words catching in their throat. “Don’t make me– order you.”
Silence fell over the line. Vahn’s racing heartbeat combined with the sounds of the storm in a thunderous cacophony. “Retreat. We need backup.”
Vahn’s jaw went slack, “And leave this thing to take out more Crews!? There’s nobody else around for at least 10 klicks – we are the Killer Kilo. If we retreat, then it will just disappear into the storm and ambush another Machina. We can’t!”
A short silence followed before the second voice came over the line, somberly confirming Vahn’s assertion.
The first voice spoke again. “We can figure something out…get it to follow at a distance and lead it towards another Crew–”
But it was too late. Vahn could read hesitation becoming agitation in the Kaiju’s movements. When he looked into the thing’s eyes, he swore they glowed with an inner luminescence, promising nothing but bloodshed.
“No can do. We stop it now…or never.” He began forming a plan when that same tell caught his eye – that subtle shift of weight and tensing of muscle that signaled the Kaiju was coming for him. Well, he was onto its game now, and he only had one more shot. Fool Vahn Wendt once, shame on you. Fool him twice and…well, he just hoped this would work. He knew an opponent that didn’t want to be taken to the mat when he saw one.
The Kaiju bunched and sprang. The distance between them was far greater this time, and that gave him and his Machina time to react.
“NO! I ORDER you to retreat!” blared in his ears. “Hey, don’t worry about it,” Vahn said, a smile coming unbidden to his lips. “After all, I’m a Deadman anyway.”
This time when the Kaiju arrived, murder in its orange eyes glinting as another stroke of lightning broke the sky…Vahn acted.
Pushing himself up with all his might, ignoring the screaming protest of an invisible wound, he met his enemy in midair. His arms locked around the creature’s back as he arched his body and twisted their now-combined fall into a drive.
The Kaiju held on, twisting itself behind the Machina as if putting Vahn in a chokehold. Vahn took advantage of the position, pushing backwards to bring the monster crashing to earth, and all 3,281 tons of weight directly atop the Kaiju’s legs.