“A Jacket jockey’s job is to kill every Mimic in sight. Right?”
“Yeah. Yeah, that’s right.”
“We’ll go to the U.S. hangar first. I’ll put on my Jacket. We’ll get weapons for both of us. I’ll cover you on our way to the Japanese hangar. Got it?”
“Got it.”
“Then we hunt down the server and kill it. End the loop. After that, just need to mop up whatever’s left.” I stopped shaking. Rita flashed an ironclad grin. “No time for our morning cup o’ joe.”
“Just gotta finish this before it gets cold,” I said, reaching for a cup.
“That an attempt at humor?”
“It was worth a try.”
“That would be nice though. Coffee never tastes the same when you reheat it. And if you leave the natural stuff sitting out, after about three days it starts to grow mold. That happened to me once in Africa. I coulda kicked myself.”
“Was it good?”
“Very funny.”
“If you didn’t drink it, how do you know it wasn’t?”
“You can drink all the moldy coffee you like. Don’t expect me to clean up after you when you get sick. Come on.”
Rita moved away from the table, leaving behind the freshly brewed, all-natural coffee. As we started to walk from the room, a small woman who’d been pressed up against the door came tumbling in, feathered headdress and all. Her black hair was braided into a ponytail that flopped behind her bizarre choice of headgear. Everybody’s favorite Native American, Shasta Raylle.
“We’re under attack! We’re under attack!” she shouted, nearly breathless. Her face was streaked with lines of red and white warpaint. I began to wonder if the whole loop thing was just me going crazy for the last few seconds of life in a steaming crater somewhere.
Rita took a step back to appreciate one of the brightest minds MIT had to offer. “Which tribe’s attacking?”
“Not a tribe! The Mimics!”
“This how you always dress for battle?”
“Is it that bad?” Shasta asked.
“I’m not one to criticize someone’s customs or religion, but I’d say you’re about two hundred years late to the powwow.”
“No, you don’t understand!” Shasta said. “They forced me to dress up like this at the party last night! This sort of thing always happens when you’re not around.”
I suppose everyone has a cross to bear, I thought.
“Shasta, why are you here?” Rita said, with surprising patience.
“I came to tell you your axe isn’t in the hangar, it’s in the workshop.”
“Thanks for the heads-up.”
“Be careful out there.”
“What are you going to do?”
“I can’t fight, so I figured I’d find a nice place to hide—”
“Use my room,” Rita said quickly. “The javelins can’t make it through the walls or the glass. It’s tougher than it looks. You just need to do me one little favor.”
“A . . . favor?”
“Don’t let anyone in here until either he or I come back.” Rita jabbed a thumb in my direction. I don’t think Shasta even realized there was anyone standing next to Rita until then. I could almost hear her big eyes blinking from somewhere behind her glasses as she stared at me. I hadn’t met Shasta Raylle yet in this loop.
“And you are. . .?”
“Keiji Kiriya. A pleasure.”
Rita stepped toward the door. “You’re not to let anyone in, no matter who they are or what they say. I don’t care if it’s the president, tell him to go fuck himself.”
“Yes sir!”
“I’m counting on you. Oh, and one other thing—”
“Yes?”
“Thanks for the good luck charm. I’ll need it.”
Rita and I hurried to the hangar.
4
By the time Rita and I had made the relatively long trip from the Sky Lounge, U.S. Special Forces had established a defensive perimeter with their hangar at its center.
Two minutes for Rita to put on her Jacket. One minute forty-five seconds to run to Shasta’s workshop. Six minutes fifteen seconds to put down two Mimics we encountered on the way to the Nippon hangar. In all, twelve minutes and thirty seconds had passed since we left the Sky Lounge.
The base had descended into chaos. Tongues of flame shot into the sky and vehicles lay overturned in the roads. Smoky haze filled the alleyways between the barracks, making it difficult to see. The firecracker popping of small arms fire, useless against Mimics, rang through the air, drowned out by the occasional roar of a rocket launcher. Javelins met attack choppers as they scrambled into the sky, shattering their rotor blades and sending them spiraling toward the ground.
For every person running north to flee the carnage, there was another running south. There was no way of knowing which way was safe. The surprise attack had smashed the chain of command. No one at the top had any better idea of what was going on than anyone at the bottom.
There were hardly any Mimic corpses, and of the ten thousand plus Jackets on the base there was no sign at all. Human bodies were scattered here and there. It didn’t take more than a glance at a crushed torso to know they were KIAs.
A dead soldier lay face down on the ground thirty meters in front of my hangar. His torso had been shredded to ground beef, but he was still clutching a magazine with both hands. Beneath a thin layer of dust a 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 s
kipped 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 him, and I knew without being told that this one was mine to take care of. I struck, and the Mimic fell. Quickly, I put myself between the Mimic’s corpse and the man to protect him from the conductive sand spilling out of its body. Without a Jacket to filter the nanobots, the sand was deadly.
Rita secured a perimeter around the wounded man. Smoke billowed from the car, reducing visibility to next to nothing. Ten meters away, at about six o’clock, lay a steel tower that had fallen on its side. Beyond that, our Doppler was swarming with white points of light. If we stayed here we’d be overrun by Mimics.
The man’s leg was pinned beneath the overturned vehicle. He was well-muscled, and an old film camera hung from a neck which was much thicker than my own. It was Murdoch, the journalist who’d been snapping pictures at Rita’s side during PT.
Rita kneeled and examined his leg. “I thought you tried to stay out of battle.”
“It was a good shot, Sergeant Major. A Pulitzer for sure, if I’d managed to take it. Didn’t count on the explosion, though.” Soot and grime fouled the corners of his mouth.
“I don’t know whether that makes you lucky or unlucky.”
“Meeting a goddess in Hell must mean I still have some luck,” he said.
“This armor plate is dug into your leg pretty deep. It’ll take too long to get you out.”
“What are my options?”
“You can stay here shooting pictures until the Mimics crush you to death, or I can cut off your leg and carry you to the infirmary. Take your pick.”
“Rita, wait!”
“You have one minute to think it over. The Mimics are coming.” She rose her axe, not really interested in offering him the full sixty seconds.
Murdoch took a deep breath. “Can I ask you something?”
“What?”
“If I live—will you let me take a proper picture of you? No tongues sticking out, no middle fingers?”
The Japanese and U.S. troops met up just over two hours after the attack had begun. In the time it had taken the sun to climb out of the eastern sky and shine down from directly overhead, the soldiers on the ground had cobbled together something you could actually call a front. It was an ugly battle, but it wasn’t a rout. There were plenty of men still alive, still moving, still fighting.
Rita and I ran across the remains of the base.
5
The front ran down the middle of Flower Line Base, cutting a bulging half-circle that faced the shoreline. U.S. Special Forces anchored the center of the ragged arc where the enemy attacks were most fierce. Soldiers piled sandbags, hid among the rubble, and showered the enemy with
bullets, rockets, and harsh language when they could.
If you drew an imaginary line from the U.S. soldiers to Kotoiushi Island, the No. 3 Training Field would be smack dab in the middle. That’s where the Mimics had come ashore. Generally, Mimics behaved with all the intellect of a piece of gardening equipment. Surprise attacks weren’t in their military repertoire. And you could be sure that their weak point—the server calling the shots—would be heavily defended, surrounded by the bulk of the Mimic force. Missiles that dug under and shattered bedrock, cluster bombs that fragmented into a thousand bomblets, vaporized fuel-air bombs that incinerated anything near them. All of mankind’s tools of technological destruction were useless on their own. Defeating the Mimics was like defusing a bomb; you had to disarm each piece in the proper order or it would blow up in your face.
Rita’s Jacket and mine were a perfect match, blood and sand. One axe covering the other’s back. We dodged javelins, sliced through Mimics, blasted holes in concrete with tungsten carbide spikes. All in search of the Mimic whose death could end this.
I knew the routine well enough: destroy the antenna and the backups to prevent the Mimics from sending a signal into the past. I thought I’d gotten it right on my 159th loop, and it wasn’t likely Rita had screwed things up. But somehow everything had reset again. Getting to know Rita a little more intimately on this 160th loop had been nice, but in exchange Flower Line had taken it on the chin. There would be heavy noncombat personnel casualties and a lot of dead when the dust had finally settled.
I could tell that Rita had an idea. She’d been through more loops than I had, so maybe she saw something I didn’t. I thought I’d turned myself into a veteran, but next to her I was still a greenhorn fresh out of Basic.
We were standing on the No. 3 Training Field, barbed wire barricade overturned to one side, chain link fence trampled flat along the other three. Mimics packed into the area, shoulder to shoulder—as if they had shoulders. Unable to support the massive weight of the Mimics, the concrete had buckled and cracked. The sun had begun to sink lower in the sky, casting complex shadows across the uneven ground. The wind was as strong as it had been the day before, but the Jacket’s filter removed all trace of the ocean from its smell.
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