“I came to borrow that.” I jabbed my finger straight at the axe.
“Unless my eyes have gotten worse than I thought, that’s Rita’s battle axe.”
“Bingo.”
“So… you’re in the Armored Infantry too?”
“Japanese Corps.”
“This isn’t easy for me to say-I don’t want to be rude-but trying to imitate Rita will only get you hurt.”
“That mean you won’t loan it to me?”
“If you really think you’ll need it, I will. It’s just a hunk of metal- we have plenty of spares. When Rita first asked me for one, I had them cut from the wings of a decommissioned bomber.”
“So why the reluctance?”
“Well, because frankly, you’ll be killed.”
“With or without it, I’ll die someday.”
“I can’t change your mind?”
“Not likely.”
Shasta grew quiet. The wrench hung in her hand like an old rag, and her eyes lost focus. A lock of unkempt hair stuck to the sweat and grease smeared across her forehead. “I was stationed in North Africa before,” she said. “The best soldier of the best platoon down there asked me for the same thing as you. I tried to warn him, but there were politics involved, things got complicated, so I let him have it.”
“And he died?”
“No, he lived. Barely. But his soldiering days were over. If only I could have found some way to stop him.”
“You shouldn’t blame yourself. You didn’t make the Mimics attack.”
“That’s just it, he wasn’t injured fighting the Mimics. Do you know what inertia is?”
“I’ve got a high school diploma.”
“Each of those battle axes weighs 200 kilograms. A Jacket’s 370 kilogram grip can hold on to it, sure, but even with enhanced strength that’s a tremendous amount of inertia. He broke his back swinging the axe. If you swing 200 kilograms with the amplified power of a Jacket, you can literally twist yourself into two pieces.”
I knew exactly what she meant-the inertia she was talking about was exactly what I was after. It took something massive to shatter a Mimic endoskeleton in one hit. That it could kill me in the process was beside the point.
“Look, I’m sure you think you’re good, but Rita’s no ordinary soldier.” Shasta made one final attempt to dissuade me.
“I know.”
“She’s extra ordinary, really. She never uses her auto-balancer. And I don’t mean she turns it off before battle. Her Jacket isn’t even equipped with one. She’s the only member of our squad without it. In an elite squad, she’s more than elite.”
“I quit using an auto-balancer a long time ago. I never thought about removing it entirely. I’ll have to do that. Less weight.”
“Oh, so you’re the next Rita, I suppose?”
“No. I couldn’t hold a candle to Rita Vrataski.”
“You know what she told me the first time I met her? She said she was glad she lived in a world full of war. Can you say the same?” Shasta appraised me from behind her thick lenses. I knew she meant what she was saying. I returned her stare without a word.
“Why are you so hung up about her battle axe?” she asked.
“I wouldn’t say I’m hung up about it. I’m just trying to find something more effective than a pile driver. I’ll take a spear or a cutlass, if you have one. Anything I can use more than twenty times.”
“That’s what she said when she first asked me to cut her the axe.” Shasta relaxed her grip on the monkey wrench.
“Any comparison with the Full Metal Bi-uh, Valkyrie is high praise.”
“You know, you’re very…” Her voice trailed off.
“I’m very what?”
“Unusual.”
“Maybe so.”
“Just remember, it’s not an easy weapon to use.”
“I have a lot of time to practice.”
Shasta smiled. “I’ve met soldiers who think they can follow in Rita’s footsteps and fail, and I’ve met some who recognize her for the prodigy she is and never even try to match her. But you’re the first person I’ve met who realizes the distance between themselves and Rita and yet is prepared to run it.”
The more I understood war, the more I knew just what a prodigy Rita was. The second time through the loop, when Rita joined us in the PT session, I’d only stared at her the way I had because I was a new recruit who didn’t know any better. Now that I’d been through the loop enough times to call myself a real Jacket jockey, the gap between her and me seemed even greater. If I didn’t have, literally, an infinite amount of time, I would have given up.
With a magnificent leap, Shasta plucked the silicon chip from my hand. “Hang on. Let me give you some papers for that axe before you go.”
“Thanks.”
She made to leave for the papers, then stopped. “Can I ask you something?”
“Shoot.”
“Why do you have the number forty-seven written on your hand?”
I didn’t know what to tell her. On the spot, I couldn’t come up with a single believable reason a soldier would have to write a number on his hand.
“Oh, was that-I mean, I hope I didn’t say anything I shouldn’t have?”
I shook my head. “You know how people cross off days on a calendar? It’s something like that.”
“If it’s important enough to write it on your hand, it must be something you don’t want to forget. Forty-seven days till you go home, maybe? Or the days until your girlfriend’s birthday?”
“If I had to put a name to it, I’d say it’s the number of days since I died.”
Shasta didn’t say anything else.
I had my battle axe.
3
0600?Wake up.
0603?Ignore Yonabaru.
0610?Steal silicon chip from armory.
0630?Eat breakfast.
0730?Practice basic body movement.
0900?Visualize training during fucking PT.
1030?Borrow battle axe from Shasta.
1130?Eat lunch.
1300?Train with emphasis on correcting mistakes of previous battle. (In Jacket.)
1500?Meet Ferrell for live battle training. (In Jacket.)
1745?Eat dinner.
1830?Attend platoon meeting.
1900?Go to Yonabaru’s party.
2000?Check Jacket.
2200?Go to bed.
0112?Help Yonabaru into his bunk.
