“I don’t appreciate distractions within minus thirty hours. Just leave me alone.”
There was no reply. She sensed an odd presence from the other side of the door. It felt like a small animal being hunted by a pack of wolves, or a woman being stalked down a dark alley. It could only be Shasta.
Rita pressed the button. The glass cleared to reveal the petite Native American woman standing at the door. First Lieutenant Shasta Raylle was older than Rita and, technically, outranked her, but the Valkyrie didn’t have to bend over backward for any engineer. Still, Rita found Shasta’s deference and politesse endearing.
Thud.
Shasta bumped her forehead against the glass. She’d mistaken the suddenly transparent glass for an open doorway and walked right into it. She was holding something in the hand she pressed to her head. She crouched on the ground, trembling like a leaf. It was hard to believe the brain in that head could be so brilliant. Then again, maybe that’s how geniuses were. Some people called Rita a military genius, and she wasn’t all that different from everyone else. The only thing about her that was especially unique was her ability to focus. Shasta’s thoughts were probably consumed by whatever it was she held in her hand, just as Rita’s were by the coming battle.
Rita opened the door halfway. Shasta’s glasses were still askew from the impact with the glass. She adjusted them as she stood.
“I’m sorry to bother you. But there was something I just had to show you. I’m really, really sorry.” Shasta lowered her head and bumped it against the door that still blocked half of the entryway. This time she hit the corner.
Thud.
“Ow.” Shasta squatted on the ground again.
“No need to apologize. You’re always welcome, Lieutenant. Without you, who would look after my Jacket?”
Shasta sprang to her feet, eyes moist with tears.
“You called me lieutenant again! Call me Shasta, please.”
“But, Lieutenant-”
“Shasta! I just want everyone to talk to me like a normal person.”
“All right, all right. Shasta.”
“That’s better.”
Rita smiled. “So… what was it you wanted to show me?”
“Right,” Shasta said. “Look at this. You won’t believe it.”
Shasta opened her hand. Rita looked intently at the strange object resting in her tiny palm. Only slightly larger than a 9mm bullet, it was intricately shaped and painted bright red. Rita had heard of people who painted the tips of their bullets a separate color to distinguish between types of ammunition, but never the entire casing.
She picked it up. It was shaped like a person.
Shasta raced on. “This is supposed to be secret, right? Someone on the base told me about them. I went all the way to Tateyama to get it. It took almost all the money I had on me to win it.”
“Win it?”
“You put money in the machine, turn the knob, and one of these figures pops out in a little plastic bubble.”
“Is it some kind of toy?”
“Oh no, it’s a valuable collector’s item. The rare ones can trade for over a hundred dollars each.”
“A hundred dollars for this?”
“That’s right.” Shasta nodded gravely.
Rita held the tiny figure up to the white lights of the room. Upon closer examination, it was clearly meant to resemble a soldier wearing a Jacket. That it was painted red and wielding a battle axe could only mean it was supposed to be Rita’s Jacket. “They did a good job. Even the fins look just like the real ones. I guess military secrets aren’t what they used to be.”
“They use professional modelers. All they need is a glimpse to make something almost exactly like the original. The models made in Japan are the best. They can auction for a lot of money.”
“What a waste of perfectly good talent.” Rita flipped the figure over in her hand. Etched across the feet were the words MADE IN CHINA. “China still has time to make toys? I heard they can’t even keep up with the production of the Jacket control chips.”
“They’ve got a bigger workforce to go around. Remember that senator who was forced to resign after he said China could afford to lose as many people as there are in the entire United States and still have over a billion left? Well, they actually have lost millions of people down in the south, but they’ve been able to throw enough resources at it to hold the line.”
“It’s hard to believe we come from the same planet.”
“America’s at war, and we still find the time to turn out terrible movies.”
Rita couldn’t argue with that.
The UDF existed to protect a world obsessed with creating worthless piles of crap, Rita thought. It was amazing how people could pour their hearts and souls into such trivial things. Not that this was necessarily a bad thing. No one appreciated that more than Rita, whose only skill was killing.
“I have lots more.” Shasta pulled a handful of figures from her overalls.
“What’s this? Some sort of pig-frog from the dark reaches of the Amazon?”
“That’s a Mimic.”
“So much for your professional modelers.”
“This is what they look like in the movies. So it is the real thing as far as the public’s concerned, anyway. Believe me, this is what’s in the movies, down to the last wrinkle.”
“What about this one?”
“You should know. It’s Rita Vrataski-you!”
The figure was lean, prodigiously endowed, and sported curly blonde hair. It was hard to find a single feature that even remotely resembled Rita. As it happened, Rita had actually met the actress cast to play her in the movies once. It was difficult to say she didn’t fit the role of a Jacket jockey, since Rita herself hardly did. But the woman they picked for the part was far too glamorous for a soldier fighting on the front lines.
Rita compared her figure with that of the Mimic. Suddenly, the Mimic modeler wasn’t looking so far off.
“Mind if I hold on to this?” Rita picked up the Full Metal Bitch figurine that bore her no resemblance.
“What?”
“You won’t miss one, will you?”
Shasta’s reaction was somewhere between that of a sleeping cat kicked out of its favorite spot in bed and a five-year-old whose aunt had denied her the last piece of chocolate macadamia nut toffee because she’d been saving it for herself. The look on her face would have sent applications to MIT plummeting if prospective students had known she was an alumna who had graduated at the top of her class.
Rita reconsidered her request. People like Shasta who went to hyper-competitive upper-crust universities were probably more likely than most to randomly explode if pushed. “Sorry, bad joke. I shouldn’t tease you like that.”
“No, I’m the one who should apologize,” Shasta said. “It’s just that it’s kind of, well, really rare. I mean, I bought every single bubble in the machine, and that was the only one that came out.”
“Don’t worry. I wouldn’t dream of taking it from you.”
“Thanks for understanding. I’m really sorry. Here, why don’t you take this one instead? It’s supposed to be pretty rare too.”
“What is it?”
“It’s the engineer assigned to Rita’s squad in the movie. So it’s basically… me.” A nervous laugh escaped Shasta’s lips.
It was the worst cliche of a female engineer Rita had ever seen. Rail thin, freckled, exaggerated facial features at the extreme edge of the probability curve. If there were ever a ten-millimeter-high perfectionist who would never misplace so much as a single screw or run the risk of kissing a member of the opposite sex, this was it. Of course the real, brilliant engineer it was supposedly based on probably hit her head on her own locker at least twice a day, so it just went to show that you never knew.
