There’s a knock on my door. It’s Minako, smiling. “She seemed like a nice gal. You stayed with her last night?”
I nod. “We watched some portical shows and went to sleep.”
“You sly badger,” she says.
“Nothing happened.”
“So say the guilty. Can I show you something cool?”
“What is it?”
“You’ll see.”
I follow, realizing I’m not going to get any studying done. She leads me down two floors to a training room/dojo. As I enter, I realize too late that there are five others in there. One of them strikes me hard with a Shinai kendo stick. I stumble to my knees, scraping them against the wooden floors. Three more blows hit me in my back. I look to Minako, but she’s turned away with a guilty expression. Approaching me is Orwell, the irascible soldier from last night.
He snarls at me, “You turned your back on us for a Nazi!” He elbows me in the upper cheek, and my eye starts bleeding again. “You want to serve the Empire, but you can’t even think straight when it comes to your loyalties. Do you think we would ever allow anyone like you into our ranks?”
“The Germans are our allies,” I remind him.
“The hell they are. They’re waiting to attack us. The only reason they haven’t is they know we’d wipe them clean with our mechas. They’re looking for idiots like you they can trick into betraying the Empire. You think your Nazi friend is so innocent? What is she even doing in the USJ?”
I don’t like his insinuation, and inform him, “She’s been my friend since high school.”
“Your friend?” he states, with a scoffing snort. “Where is your friend right now?”
I stay quiet.
“She humiliated me in front of everyone. You have a simple choice. Stand by your country. Or betray it for a Nazi.”
“It’s not that simple.”
“Yes it is,” Orwell states. Someone hands him what appears to be a branding iron with a swastika sign on it.
“You can’t do that!” Minako yells.
“I’ll leave his face alone. But I’ll brand you so that every girl knows where your heart really belongs.” The iron heats up automatically, and they take off my shirt. “Or, you tell me her address, and we let bygones be bygones. What’ll it be?”
“Minako,” I plead. “You can’t let him.”
She lowers her head. “I’m really sorry,” she says, and looks miserable.
“Her hands are tied,” Orwell tells me. “She’s loyal to her boyfriend, which means she’s not going to help you. Not if she doesn’t want him to be reported to the MPs for the illegal trading he does on the side.”
Minako glowers at him, but Orwell ignores her.
“I don’t know her address,” I state. “We didn’t go back to her plac—”
“I’m going to count to five, and if I don’t get an address . . .” He clicks his teeth together. Two of his friends grab my arms. “Five.”
“Please—please don’t,” I beg him, struggling to break free. “I’m sorry on her behalf. I—”
“Four, three.”
“Please, you can’t do this. Y—”
“Two, one.”
I feel pain on my stomach even stronger than when my skin burned off during the mecha attack at school. It lasts a few seconds, and I want to scream, but I restrain myself. I won’t let them know I’m in pain. I grit my teeth, do my best not to show any weakness. The branding ends, and they let me fall to the floor.
Orwell puts his boots on my neck. “You’re pathetic, Nazi lover.” He spits on me, and I flinch when I feel it hit my neck. The saliva drips slowly down my back.
Two others spit on me too as they file out. Even though the branding hurts, it’s the insult of the act that stings more.
Minako remains after they leave. “I’m so sorry,” she says. “I—I—”
She cries. I tell myself she had no choice. She tries to give me patches to heal me, but I refuse them. “It’s going to hurt the whole night,” she warns.
I don’t care, and I refuse to speak to her. I hate her and her friends. At least I stayed true to Griselda. At my stubborn silence, Minako gives up and leaves. I eventually pick myself up and go to my room. I take a hot shower, wipe my back. I peer down at the red swastika imprinted on the side of my stomach.
I get out of the shower and dry myself. I lie in bed, deeply upset. I can’t sleep the whole night. I feel like I’m going to explode and wish there was some way I could have fought back. Orwell’s sneering scorn makes me bristle. I have no idea what to do about the sign. It’s a big red welt that I know is going to get me into a lot of trouble if I don’t deal with it. Just a few more hours and back to training. I give up on sleep, try to read up on mechas. None of the words register. I exit and grab a taxi.
* * *
• • •
It’s four in the morning. I know Griselda is asleep. But I knock on her door anyway, hoping not to annoy her. She looks through the peephole, sees it’s me. “Mac?” She opens the door.
“I’m sorry to come here so late. I—I didn’t know where else to go, and the guys from last night. They . . . th—” I fight back bitter tears, refusing to let my anger get the best of me.
She helps me in, puts her arm around me. Her hand gently presses my stomach, which causes me to wince.
“Are you okay?”
“I’ll be fine,” I answer. “They might be looking for you.”
“I can handle them. What happened to you?”
“It’s nothing.”
She’s not convinced, and she touches my stomach again. It stings. She lifts up my shirt before I can stop her and spots the swastika.
“They did this?” she asks grimly.
I don’t answer her.
“Because of me?”
“No, no, they’re assholes, and—”
I see Griselda’s face become cold and mean. “We’ll get them back.”
“Even if we wanted to, there’s no way we could find them in time. I have to report to my shuttle in three hours.”
She eyes my branding. “You have to get that fixed.”
“I will.”
I’m surprised when I see her eyes get wet with tears. “I’m sorry,” she offers, confusing me.
“You didn’t do anything.”
“Do you know how hard it is to be an Asian in the Third Reich?” she asks.
“I’ve heard stories.”
“Being mixed like me is worse. Neither side accepts you. People are always questioning where my loyalties stand. At least you belong in the USJ. I don’t even know where I can call my home,” she says.
The USJ has always been my “home,” so I’m struck when I realize even a sense of place remains elusive for her.
“My mom was a soldier serving near the Fargo Wall,” she continues. “They were on a patrol when they came across a tent of civilians in the Quiet Border. She was ordered to fire on them. But she refused. Maybe it’s because half of them were of Asian descent. She never told me.”
“What happened to her?”
“Arrest and reeducation to wipe out any ‘defects’ in her mind. When mom finally came back home, she was a different person. There were times I swore she didn’t recognize me. I’d ask her a question, and suddenly, she’d quote Mein Kampf and cry about how much she loved the Fuehrer.” She lifts up my shirt, touches the swastika, bites her lower lip. “I can’t ever say what I really feel. None of us can. But don’t think all Germans believe the same thing.”
“I know they don’t.”
She sighs, looks at my brand again. “I wish people weren’t so cruel to each other . . . It’s the world that forces us into this.”
“Or human nature.”
“Would you have done this to them?”
“Right now, yes and mu
ch worse.”
She gives me a weak smile. “If anyone did that to me, I’d burn them alive.”
“I guess that’s an option,” I say, surprised by the venom in her tone.
“Do you want some tea?” she asks, mainly to break the tension.
“Sure.”
She sets the water to boil.
I realize I don’t want to part from her. But I know I have to report back soon. I wish I didn’t have to go.
“Mac,” she says.
“Yeah.”
“You should sleep.”
“I can’t.”
She nods. “Dolphins only sleep with half their brain. The other half of their hemisphere stays awake and keeps them breathing and alive.”
“I could use that in training tomorrow.”
“I wish I could do that too. Did you know the new Cat Odyssey update got released? They added some cool features. Want to check them out?”
05
By the time I report for my shuttle, fatigue has caught up with me. I doze the whole trip back in both brain hemispheres.
When I arrive, everyone is doing judo practice. Sensei lets me ease in and has me running for the next four days I’m back. I have to lug my heavy backpack only for the last two. The palliatives do their work. On the final day, my arm feels like new. Normally, the training is torture. But I keep on thinking about Griselda, and somehow, the days seem more tolerable. The constant exercises help clear my mind, diffuse my rage at the memory of what Orwell and his friends did.
At the end of the week, they bring in physical armor.
“You want us to wear that?” Wren asks incredulously.
“Do you think I brought it here for you to look at?” Sensei asks, annoyed, which usually results in a long run.
I realize the armor weighs about the same as all the equipment we’ve been lugging around, and the training we’ve endured begins to make sense. There are only twenty-seven of us remaining. I knew Chieko was going to get through. But I’m glad Wren persisted as well.
There’s also an old-timer we call Spider because he has tattoos of arachnids all over his arm. He’s thirty-two, is of Australian descent, and is the oldest in our group. Nothing fazes him, and he’s usually leading the pack.
Chieko asks him, “What you doing here, old man?”
“I served aboard the Shirokuma in the Arctic looking for U-boats. It was freezing, even with the heaters, and I was typing communications all the time, so I got something called repetitive stress disorder. Basically, it screws up your nerves since you repeat the same motion over and over. They discharged me because I was pretty much worthless, but civilian life was worse. I don’t know how people go to an office for decades of their life. They had me overseeing traffic porticals in Melbourne. My boss was five years younger than me. He lorded over us, and I couldn’t take it when he’d yell at us. So I punched him and got exiled to the USJ.”
“That’s why you’re here?”
He stretches out his arm. “My hands are a lot better.”
Spider usually leads all the runners, and today is no exception. Jogging in the armor is like carrying around a portable version of a sauna. The plates are heavy, and the heat amplifies the weight. It makes many of us short-tempered, and even the smallest annoyances cause us to snap at one another.
Sensei punishes us all if anyone falls behind on a fifteen-kilometer run. “Another three kilometers!” she’ll yell. “Another!” if the person straggling behind doesn’t catch up.
One day, it’s the recruit we call Poet because he always spouts poems to us. He’s falling way behind, and we’ve already accumulated ten extra kilometers.
“I swear on the USJ if you don’t catch up, I’m going to kill you,” Chieko yells at him. We all share her sentiment.
Poet feels bad, but he’s sporting stomach woes from a case of food poisoning. Eventually, he can’t hold it and craps in his pants. That at least makes him feel better, and he catches up, running on pace the rest of the way.
“What is that smell?” Sensei demands when we line up.
His answer isn’t what poets aspire to, though there is something poetic about the climax.
* * *
• • •
The pounding sound wakes us up. I recognize the sound of a light mecha. It’s a Crab class, a six-legged beast used by the RAMs for security. Each Crab fits five of us, and there are a total of five Crabs in the field. We’re not allowed inside the first few days, but it hovers over us as motivation. No one slacks off that week, and everyone is doing their best during exercises.
I gaze over at the Crab every chance I get. I haven’t studied its specs as closely as the bipedal mechas, but in many ways, it looks like one of our supertanks, only with six legs rather than tracks. In its stationary pose, the limbs are folded up, jointed at the shoulder (which has a flex-armored skirt), merus, leg, and tip just like a crab. Rather than claws, though, it has a 120mm cannon that can be swapped for other compatible armaments. There are also missile launchers to the side of the hull as well as two auxiliary gun turrets. While it doesn’t have the bumpy spines of a crab, it has shocks to protect itself. Entry is from the cupola hatch, and there are detachable wheels on the limbs of the Crabs to ease transportation. If I’m correct, the circular orifice just above the missile launcher is an experimental heat gun that propels a concentrated laser to melt opposition. I don’t know how powerful it is, but there’s an Amitani logo, usually a sign of excellence. The Crabs are colored desert tan for camouflage, though I’m sure they come in different colors depending on location of deployment.
We’re given company-issued porticals, and they have training tutorials on them ready for our perusal. The program details the basics of Crab control through a simulation. We’re required to spend two hours every day practicing on the portical to prepare for actual driving. I steer, and the back four legs follow. I can take individual control of any leg at any time. But the automated kinematics are sufficient ninety-nine percent of the time.
“Then why do we need to learn how to use the rest of the legs?” Wren asks Sensei.
“Because winning battles is about that last one percent when you’re under fire and some stray missiles blow up your automation. Fifteen kilometers, everyone, for asking such a stupid question!”
We would be angry at Wren if each of us hadn’t at one point or another caused the whole company to run. The only thing is, the sun is blazing in all its glory, and I wish it would take a break. Amaterasu, don’t you need sleep?
It’s another week of baby steps as we switch among the roles. One day I’m pilot; the next, navigator; and after that, communications officer. Munitions requires making sure the cannons don’t overheat, which doesn’t happen often as they are self-regulating. Since the weapons are customizable, the majority of my work is selecting the best weapons before the battle based on intelligence reports. Engineering is the most difficult position and the one I struggle most with. It’s still all simulated, and when we finally go aboard, we don’t actually get to drive the Crab ourselves. It’s one of Sensei’s assistants who takes the controls as we watch. It’s more spacious than I’d thought, looking at it from the outside, even though Spider complains, “I feel cramped in here.”
When the Crab turns on, the first thing it does is uncurl its legs, raising the hull. The interior actually has an independent stabilizer to try to keep it steady despite the motion of the legs. When our instructor speeds up the Crab’s motions, we’re surprised at how fast it moves. It’s almost like a roach scurrying at quick speeds. Maneuverability is where it excels, able to turn quickly, traversing uneven terrain with ease.
There are manual gauges, but those are for backup. Everything is overlaid on an interface from a portical display we wear over our eyes to obtain visuals from exterior sensors. That way, there’s no direct opening, and the hull is technically impenetrable. T
here is an optional periscope for emergencies.
“A good pilot with good reconnaissance can single-handedly defeat a battalion of tanks,” Sensei tells us. “It’s been done twice in Afghanistan and once on the Quiet Border.”
I gather from the constant simulation tests that Sensei and her assistants are determining where each of us is most adept. At the end of the week, we’re split into groups of five, and I’m with Spider, Wren, and Botan, who still beats everyone at cards. Our final crew member is Olympia, who’s of Mongolian descent, though I haven’t interacted with her much. She’s a very fast runner, which is why Sensei gave her “Olympia” as a nickname.
“Cream!” Sensei calls.
I hope for pilot but would be happy with navigator. Even munitions officer would be great.
“Communications,” she says.
Communications? My job is to get orders and relay them. It’s almost a redundant position because, technically, anyone else can do it.
“Is there a problem, Cream?” Sensei asks.
“I didn’t join RAMDET to become a communications officer.”
“You got a problem, quit.”
Chieko and Spider both get pilot. Wren and Olympia are the gunners on my Crab, handling left/right-rear/front cannons as needed. Olympia will also cover engineering. Botan acts as navigator to check the terrain via sensors. I take over communications and assist everyone as needed.
When we’re on board, I’m frustrated by my situation. I sit in my chair, check messages. There aren’t any. Spider laughs at me.
“What?” I ask, irked by his levity.
“You realize what happens if a pilot gets hurt or misses their mission for whatever reason?”
Mecha Samurai Empire Page 13