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

Herc again. There was a lot in that look. Skepticism and worry and doubt, mostly... but also a little bit of hope. He was also looking to Herc to see if he thought Newt was actually proposing what he seemed to be proposing.
    “Let me see if I understand,” Herc said slowly, incredulous—horrified. “You are suggesting we initiate a Drift with a kaiju?” It sounded crazy to him. Drifting with another human was hard enough.
    “A piece of its brain, yes,” Newt said. “And a few pieces of equipment.”
    “A few pieces?” Herc said. His tone was sharper now. Ah, here’s where the rubber meets the road.
    “Just enough to create a Pons,” Newt said. “A neural bridge. There’s—”
    Pentecost shook his head.
    Herc took his cue from the Marshal.
    “The neural surge would be too much for a human brain. Trust me, we can barely handle each other. What do you think a kaiju would do to us?”
    “I agree,” Pentecost said. “Dr. Gottlieb, I want all your data on my desk as soon as possible.”
    He turned to leave. Herc hung back a little, knowing Stacker would wait for him down the hall and wanting to get a brief sense of how Newt was reacting to the brushoff from his commander.
    Newt looked angry and frustrated and crestfallen, like a kid who thought he’d had a great idea only to have all the grownups tell him they’d all thought of it before. Gottlieb looked like he might be the slightest bit sympathetic.
    Because he didn’t rush out, Herc heard the two scientists talking quietly, as if he wasn’t there.
    “I know you want to be right, so you’ve not wasted your life being a kaiju groupie,” Gottlieb said. “But it’s not going to work.”
    Newt stomped back through the drifts of lab equipment, samples, and whatever else, on his side of the floor.
    “Fortune favors the brave, dude,” he said, defiant again.
    That’s the spirit, kid, Herc thought. Channel that frustration. Someone tells you you can’t do something, you go and figure it out just to prove them wrong.
    Come to think of it, Newt’s attitude reminded him a bit of the kid Raleigh Becket. Seemed to Herc that both of them came at life with a bit of a chip on their shoulders. To hear Stacker tell it, that’s what had brought Raleigh back into the Ranger service. Same thing kept Newt’s fires burning when the higher-ups took Gottlieb seriously and not him.
    “You heard them,” Gottlieb was saying. “They won’t give you the equipment, and even if they did, you’d kill yourself.”
    Herc had heard enough. Time for him to catch up with Stacker before the conversation in the lab took a turn for the incomprehensible. But before he got out the door, he heard Newt say, “Or... I’ll be a rock star.”

PAN-PACIFIC DEFENSE CORPS
RESEARCH REPORT—KAIJU SCIENCE
Prepared by
    Dr. Newton Geiszler
    Dr. Hermann Gottlieb
EXECUTIVE SUMMARY
    Subject: Nature and possible vulnerability of Breach
    Study of the bio-electromagnetic signature of the energies radiating from the Breach, as well as remote analysis of the Breach's physical structure, indicates a potential vulnerability.
    The Breach requires the energy of Earth's tectonic activity to maintain cohesion. Though a powerful and persistent phenomenon, it is also fragile, existing both on Earth and in what we have called the Anteverse. It is believed that the Anteverse is another planet, and presumably some energy source there also contributes to the function of the Breach.
    Harnessing the fundamental energies necessary to the creation of a passage such as the Breach—which essentially folds space-time around itself to bring two distant points into proximity—requires technology far beyond current human capabilities, as well as focused energies equivalent to the entire output of human civilization during the last century.
    Destroying the Breach, however, is likely easier than creating one.
    The universe fights against disruptions in its fabric. Our analysis suggests that a powerful release of energy