Rita was familiar with cormorant fishing, a traditional Japanese technique. The fishermen tie a snare at the base of the trained cormorant’s neck just tight enough to prevent it from swallowing any of the larger fish it catches, and then play out enough rope to enable the bird to dive into the water and fish. Once the cormorant has a fish, the fishermen pull the bird back and make it spit out its catch. Rita felt that her relationship to the army was a lot like a cormorant’s relationship to a fisherman.
Rita was in the army because that was how she made her living. Her job was to go out and kill Mimics and bring their corpses back to her masters. In return, they provided her with everything she needed to live and took care of life’s little annoyances without her ever having to know they were there. It was a give and take relationship, and in her mind it was fair.
Rita took no pleasure in the notion of being the savior of the earth, but if that’s what the army wanted, so be it. In dark times the world needed a figure for people to rally behind.
Japan’s quarantine line was on the verge of collapse. If the enemy managed to break through at Kotoiushi, Mimics would swarm the industrial complex on the main island. With the cutting-edge factories and technologies Japan brought to the table lost, there would be an estimated 30 percent drop in the effectiveness of the Jackets they used to wage the
war. The ramifications would be felt throughout the UDF.
Without someone to interrupt the tachyon transmissions, the battle would never end. Technically it was possible to drive them back with an overwhelming show of force. After several loops the Mimics would realize they couldn’t win, and they would withdraw with as few casualties as possible. But that wasn’t the same as defeating them. They would simply retreat beneath the ocean, out of humanity’s reach, and gather their strength. Once they had assembled an insurmountable force, they would attack again, and there would be no stopping them a second time.
Fighting a war with the Mimics was a lot like playing a game with a child. They had decided they were going to win before the game had even started, and they wouldn’t give up until they won. Little by little, humanity was losing ground.
The duration of the Mimic time loops was approximately thirty hours. Rita repeated each loop only once. The first time through a battle she assessed the casualties her squad sustained; the second time through she won. In that first pass she could see what the strategy was and learn who died. But the lives of her friends were in the merciless hands of fate. That couldn’t be changed.
Before each battle, Rita secluded herself to clear her thoughts. One of the privileges of her station was that Rita had her own private room that no one was allowed to enter.
Rita’s squad understood that the thirty hours before a battle were a special time for her. The average soldier in the squad wasn’t aware of the time loop, but they knew that Rita had her reasons for not wanting to talk to anyone in the time leading up to battle. They kept their distance out of respect. Even though space was exactly what Rita wanted, it still made her feel alone.
Rita was admiring the sparkling waters of the Pacific from her perch in the sky lounge. The only structure on Flower Line Base taller than Rita’s tower was a nearby radio antenna. The tower was practically begging to be the first target when the Mimics came ashore. You could only laugh at the audacity of locating an officers’ lounge in such a vulnerable location. This was the trouble with countries that hadn’t been invaded yet.
Japan had largely managed to escape the ravages of the war. If the island had been located a little further from Asia, it would have been reduced to desert long ago. If it had been any closer, the Mimics would have invaded before moving on to the continent. The peace Japan enjoyed all came down to luck.
The area set aside for the officers’ lounge was needlessly large and almost completely empty. The view it afforded of the ocean was fit for a five-star hotel. By contrast, the heavy duty pipe-frame bed that stood in the middle of the room seemed to have been chosen as a joke.
Rita pressed a button. The liquid crystal embedded in the blast-resistant glass opacified, obscuring the view. She had chosen the officers’ reception room for her quarters because it was a place the other members of her squad weren’t likely to visit. The operating systems embedded in the bodies of her squadmates had been programmed for war. They wouldn’t set foot in a building that made for such an ostentatious target. Rita didn’t care for it much herself.
To allay her fears, a Japanese tech had explained that the glass was interwoven with carbon fibers, giving it strength on par with the shell of a Jacket. If the stuff was so great, Rita wondered why it didn’t seem to work that well on the front lines. At least here she was alone. The next day she might have to watch one of her friends die. She didn’t want to have to look them in the eye.
A soft knock roused Rita from her thoughts. The glass at the entrance to the lounge was also embedded with liquid crystal. It was set to opaque with the rest.
“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.
Shasta looked up at Rita with worry in her eyes. “Don’t you like it?”
“It doesn’t look anything like you.”
“Neither does yours.”
They looked at each other.
“All right, thanks. I’ll keep it. For luck.”
Shasta lifted another figure when Ralph Murdoch, the requisite camera hanging from his thick neck, walked in.
“Good morning, ladies.”
Rita cocked one rust-red eyebrow at the arrival of her unwelcome guest. Her face hardened to steel. The sudden change in Rita’s demeanor startled Shasta, who looked as though she couldn’t decide whether she wanted to hide from Rita behind this strange hulk of a journalist or the other way around. After a few awkward moments of hesitation, she opted for taking cover behind Rita.
“How did you get in here?” Rita made no attempt to hide her disdain.
“I’m a registered member of your personal staff. Who would stop me?”
“You’re your own staff, and we both know it. You can leave now.” Rita didn’t care much for this man and his never-saw-a-speck-ofbattlefield-mud running shoes. People like him and Shasta could meet and talk in total safety whenever the mood took them. His words were never limned with the dread of knowing you would have to watch your friends die in the next battle. It was that dread, that certainty, that kept Rita away from her squadmates, the only family she had left. Nothing this rambling fool would ever have to deal with in his entire life.
“That’d be a shame after coming all the way up here,” Murdoch said. “I happened upon an interesting piece of news, and I thought I’d share it with you.”
“Send it to the New York Times. I’ll be happy to read all about it.”
“Trust me, you’ll wanna hear this.”
“I’m not all that interested in what you find interesting.”
“The Japanese troops are going to have some PT. Punishment for troublemaking last night.”
“I asked you to leave. I’m never in a good mood before battle.”
“Don’t you want to come watch? They’re going to do some sort of samurai-style training. I’d love to hear the Valkyrie’s take on the whole affair.”
“Your mother must have been disappointed when the abortion only killed your conscience,” Rita said.
“Such talk from a nice, sweet girl like you.”
“I’d say it next time too, but I can’t be bothered.”
“Come again?”
“Believe me, I’d rather not.”
Murdoch raised an eyebrow. “Okay, so you talk trash and nonsense. Two for one.”
“I guess it must be catching.”
“Fine, so I have no conscience and I’m going straight to Hell. You told me the same thing in Indonesia when I took those pictures of the crying kid running from a pack of Mimics.”
“Hell’s too good for you. You’d just find a way to get a picture of Satan and use it to worm your way through Heaven’s back door.”
“I’ll take that as a compliment.”
A smile spread across the Valkyrie’s lips. It was the same smile that came to her in those dark hours on the battlefield, when it was at least hidden behind her helmet. Shasta’s body tensed. Murdoch took a step back without even realizing it.
“Well,” the Full Metal Bitch said, “I’m about to step into Hell. And until I do, I don’t want to see your face again.”