“Bad.”
“Fuck me.” I looked up at the sky. “Looks like it’s starting to clear.”
“Yeah. I like the sky here.”
“Why’s that?”
“It’s clear. Can’t beat islands for clear skies.”
“Am I going to die?”
“Yeah,” she told me.
I felt tears well up in my eyes. I was grateful then that the helmet hid my face from view. It kept my shame a private thing.
The red Jacket maneuvered to gently cradle my head. “What’s your name? Not your rank or your serial number. Your name.”
“Keiji. Keiji Kiriya.”
“I’m Rita Vrataski. I’ll stay with you until you die.”
She couldn’t have said anything I’d rather hear, but I wasn’t going to let her see that. “You’ll die too if you stay.”
“I have a reason. When you die, Keiji, I’m going to take your Jacket’s battery.”
“That’s cold.”
“No need to fight it. Relax. Let go.”
I heard an electronic squelch-an incoming comm signal in Rita’s helmet. It was a man’s voice. The link between our Jackets automatically relayed the voice to me.
“Calamity Dog, this is Chief Breeder.”
“I read you.” All business.
“Alpha Server and vicinity under control. Estimate we can hold for thirteen minutes, tops. Time to pick up that pizza.”
“Calamity Dog copies. Running silent from here in.”
The red Jacket stood, severing our comm link. Behind her an explosion rumbled. I felt the ground tremble through my spine. A laser-guided bomb had fallen from the sky. It plunged deep into the earth, piercing the bedrock before it detonated. The sandy white ground bulged like an overcooked pancake; its surface cracked and sent darker soil the color of maple syrup spewing into the air. A hail of mud splattered on my armor. Rita’s battle axe glinted in the light.
The smoke cleared.
I could see a writhing mass in the center of the enormous crater left by the explosion: the enemy. Red points of light sprang to life on my radar screen, so many that every point was touching another.
I thought I saw Rita nod. She sprang forward, flitting across the battlefield. Her axe rose and fell. Each time it shone, the husk of a Mimic soared. The sand that poured from their wounds spiraled on the whirlwinds traced by her blade. She cut them down with the ease of a laser cutting butter. Her movements took her in a circle around me, protecting me. Rita and I had undergone the same training, but she was like a juggernaut while I lay on the ground, a stupid toy that had run down its batteries. No one had forced me to be here. I had dragged myself to this wasteland of a battlefield, and I wasn’t doing a damn bit of good for anyone. Better I’d gotten plugged alongside Yonabaru. At least then I wouldn’t have put another soldier in harm’s way trying to protect me.
I decided not to die with three rounds left in my pile driver.
I lifted a leg. I put a hand on one knee.
I stood.
I screamed. I forced myself to keep going.
The red Jacket turned to me.
I heard some noise over my headphones, but I couldn’t tell what she was trying to say.
One of the Mimics in the pack stood out from the rest. It wasn’t that it looked different from the others. Just another drowned, bloated frog. But there was something about it that set it apart. Maybe proximity to death had sharpened my senses, but somehow I knew that was the one I was meant to fight.
So that’s what I did. I leapt at the Mimic and it lashed out at me with its tail. I felt my body lighten. One of my arms had been cut off. The right arm-leaving the pile driver on the left intact. Lucky me. I pulled the trigger.
The charge fired, a perfect ninety-degree angle.
One more shot. A hole opened in the thing’s carapace.
One more shot. I blacked out.
2
The paperback I’d been reading was beside my pillow.
It was a mystery novel about an American detective who is supposed to be some sort of expert on the Orient. I had my index finger wedged into a scene where all the key players meet for dinner at a Japanese restaurant in New York. The detective’s client, an Italian, tries to order an espresso after their meal, but the detective stops him cold. He starts on about how at Japanese restaurants, they bring you green tea after dinner, so you don’t have to order anything. Then he veers off on how green tea goes great with soy sauce, and oh, why is it that in India they spice their milk tea? He’s finally gathered everyone involved in the case in one place, and he talks a blue streak about everything but whodunit.
I rubbed my eyes.
Passing my hand over my shirt I felt my stomach through the cloth. I could make out a newly formed six- pack that hadn’t been there half a year back. No trace of any wound, no charred flesh. My right arm was right where it should be. Good news all around. What a crappy dream.
I must have fallen asleep reading the book. I should have known something was up when Mad Wargarita started striking up small talk about mystery novels. American Special Operators who’d crossed the entire Pacific Ocean just for a taste of blood didn’t have time to read the latest best seller. If they had spare time, they’d probably spend it tweaking their Jackets.
What a way to start the day. Today was going to be my first real taste of battle. Why couldn’t I have dreamed about blasting away a few baddies, getting promoted a grade or two?
On the bunk above me a radio with its bass blown out was squawking music-some kind of prehistoric rock so ancient my old man wouldn’t have recognized it. I could hear the sounds of the base stirring to life, incoherent chatter coming from every direction, and above it all, the DJ’s over-caffeinated voice chirping away with the weather forecast. I could feel every word pierce my skull. Clear and sunny out here on the islands, same as yesterday, with a UV warning for the afternoon. Watch out for those sunburns!
The barracks weren’t much more than four sheets of fire-resistant wood propped up together. A poster of a bronze-skinned bikini babe hung on one of the walls. Someone had replaced her head with a shot of the prime minister torn from the base newspaper. The bikini babe’s head grinned vapidly from its new home atop a macho muscle builder on another nearby poster. The muscle builder’s head was MIA.
I stretched in my bunk. The welded aluminum frame squealed in protest.
“Keiji, sign this.” Yonabaru craned his neck over the side of the top bunk. He looked great for a guy I’d just seen get impaled. They say people who die in dreams are supposed to live forever.
Jin Yonabaru had joined up three years before me. Three more years of trimming the fat, three more years of packing on muscle. Back when he was a civilian he’d been thin as a beanpole. Now he was cut from rock. He was a soldier, and he looked the part.
“What is it?”
“A confession. The one I told you about.”
“I signed it yesterday.”
“Really? That’s weird.” I could hear him rifling through pages above me. “No, not here. Well, sign one for me again, will ya?”
“You trying to pull a fast one on me?”
