smiling, topless blond stared up from its pages. I would know those prodigious breasts anywhere. The guy in the bunk next to mine had been looking at them during all those heart-to-heart talks I’d had with Yonabaru in the barracks. It was Nijou.
“Poor bastard died looking at porn,” I said.
“Keiji, you know what we have to do.”
“Yeah, I know. There’s no going back this time. No matter who dies.”
“There’s not much time. Come on.”
“I’m ready.” I thought I was, for that one second. “Fuck! This isn’t a battle, it’s a massacre.”
The hangar door stood open. There were marks where someone had jimmied the lock with something like a crowbar. Rita thrust one of the battle axes into the ground and unlatched the 20mm rifle slung on her back.
“You’ve got five minutes.”
“I only need three.”
I ran into the hangar. It was a long narrow building with Jackets lining either side of the passage down the middle. Each building housed enough Jackets for one platoon, twenty-five to a wall. The air inside was heavy and moist. The lights set into the walls flickered off and on. Most of the Jackets still hung from their hooks, lifeless.
The overpowering stench of blood almost knocked me off my feet. A huge dark pool had collected in the center of the room, staining the concrete. Enough to fill a bird bath. Two lines that looked as though they’d been painted with a brush extended from the pool toward the other entrance at the far end of the hangar.
Someone had been horribly wounded here, and whoever dragged them away didn’t have the manpower or equipment to do it neatly. If all that blood had leaked out of one person, they were already dead. A handful of Jackets were strewn in disarray on the ground, liked the desiccated molts of some human-shaped beast.
A Jacket was a lot like one of those ridiculous cuddly suits employees dress up in at theme parks to look like some maniacally grinning mouse. When they’re empty, they just hang on the wall with gaping holes in the back waiting for someone to climb in.
Since Jackets read minute muscular electric signals, each one has to be custom made. If you were to wear someone else’s Jacket, there’s no telling what would happen. It might not move at all, or it might snap your bones like twigs, but whatever the result, it wouldn’t be good. No one made it out of Basic without learning at least that much. The Jackets on the ground were clear evidence that someone had ignored that basic rule out of desperate necessity. I shook my head.
My Jacket had been left unmolested in its berth. I climbed in. Of the thirty-seven pre-suit-up checks, I skipped twenty-six.
A shadow moved at the far end of the hangar where the blood trails led-the end of the hangar Rita wasn’t watching. My nervous system jumped into panic mode. I was twenty meters from the door, maybe less. A Mimic could cover the distance in under a second. A javelin even faster.
Could I kill a Mimic with my bare hands? No. Could I deal with it? Yes. Mimics moved faster than even a Jacketed human could, but their movements were easy to read. I could dodge its charge and press tight against the wall to buy enough time to work my way to Rita. Unconsciously, I assumed a battle posture, rotating my right leg clockwise and my left counterclockwise. Then the shadow’s identity finally clicked: It was Yonabaru.
He was covered in blood from the waist down. Dried blood caked his forehead. He looked like a sloppy painter. A smile replaced the tension in his face and he started running toward me.
“Keiji, shit, I haven’t seen you all morning. Was startin’ to worry.”
“That makes two of us. Glad you’re all right.” I canceled the evasion program my body was running and stepped over the clothes I’d left on the floor.
“Whaddayou think you’re doin’?” he asked.
“What’s it look like? I’m going to kill some Mimics.”
“You crazy? This isn’t the time.”
“You have something better to do?”
“I dunno, how about a nice orderly retreat, or findin’ a place the Mimics aren’t and goin’ there. Or maybe just runnin’ the fuck away!”
“The Americans are suiting up. We need to join them.”
“They’re not us. Forget ’em. If we don’t leave now, we may not get another chance.”
“If we run, who’ll be left to fight?”
“Have you lost it? Listen to yourself!”
“This is what we trained for.”
“The base is lost, dude, it’s fucked.”
“Not while Rita and I are here it’s not.”
Yonabaru grabbed my Jacketed arm, actually trying to tug me along like a child pulling with all his weight on his father’s hand to get to the toy store. “You’re talkin’ crazy, dude. There’s nothin’ you or me can do that’ll make a difference,” he said with another tug. “Maybe this is your idea of duty, honor, all that shit. But believe me, ain’t none of us got a duty to get ourselves killed for nothin’. Me and you are just ordinary soldiers. We’re not like Ferrell or those guys in Special Forces. The battle doesn’t need us.”
“I know.” I shook off Yonabaru’s hand with the slightest of twitches. “But I need the battle.”
“You really mean it, don’t you?”
“I don’t expect you to understand.”
Rita was waiting for me. I’d taken four minutes.
“Don’t say I didn’t warn ya.”
I ignored Yonabaru’s glib comment and ran out of the hangar. Rita and I weren’t the only soldiers wearing Jackets now. My HUD was sprinkled with icons indicating other friendlies. Clustered in groups of two or three, they’d taken cover in the barracks or behind overturned vehicles where they could spring out at intervals to fire short bursts with their rifles.
The Mimic surprise attack had been flawless. The soldiers were completely cut off from command. Even those wearing Jackets weren’t fighting like a disciplined platoon-it was more like an armed mob. For armored infantry to be effective against a Mimic, they had to fan out from cover and throw everything they had at the enemy just to slow them down. One on one, even two on one, they didn’t stand a chance.
Friendly icons blinked onto my display, then winked out. The number of friendlies was holding steady solely thanks to
U.S. Special Forces. The number of Mimic icons was steadily increasing. Half the comm traffic was static, and the rest was a mix of panicked screams and “Fuck! Fuck! Fuck!” I didn’t hear anyone giving orders. Yonabaru’s dire predictions didn’t look far off.
I opened a comm channel to Rita. “What now?”
“Do what we do best. Kill some Mimics.”
“Anything more specific?”
“Follow me. I’ll show you.”
We joined the battle. Rita’s crimson Jacket was a banner for our fragmented army to rally behind. We moved from one lone soldier to the next, herding them together. Until the last Mimic was dead, we’d keep at it.
The Valkyrie flew from one end of Flower Line to the other at will, carrying her unspoken message of hope to all who saw her. Even the Japanese troops, who’d never seen her Jacket in person, much less fought at her side, gained a renewed sense of purpose at the sight of that glittering red steel. Wherever she went, the heart of the battle followed.
In her Jacket, Rita was invincible. Her sidekick, yours truly, might have had an Achilles’ heel or two, but I was more than a match for any Mimic. Humanity’s enemy had met its executioners. It was time to show the Mimics just how deep into Hell they’d fallen.
Lifting energy packs and ammo from the dead, we kicked and stomped a jitterbug of death across the battlefield. If a building got in our way, we carved a new path through with our battle axes. We detonated a fuel depot to destroy an entire mob of Mimics. We wrenched off part of the antenna tower’s base and used it as a barricade. The Full Metal Bitch and the squire at her side were steel death incarnate.
We came across a man hidden behind the burning hulk of an armored car. A Mimic was bearing down on
