“Shit, it’s started! Don’t get your balls blown off, gents!”
Battle 159.
I dart forward, my Jacket’s Doppler set to max.
I spot a target, fire, duck. A javelin whizzes past my head.
“Who’s up there? You’re too far forward! You wanna get yourself killed?”
The lieutenant said the same thing every time. I wiped sand from my helmet. Thunder erupted from the shells crisscrossing the sky. I glanced at Ferrell and nodded.
This time the battle would end. If I stood by and watched as Yonabaru and Ferrell died, they wouldn’t be coming back. It all came down to this. There was no repeating this battle. The fear that clawed at my guts wasn’t fear of death, it was fear of the unknown. I wanted to throw down my rifle and axe and find a bed to hide under.
A normal reaction-the world wasn’t meant to repeat itself. I grinned in spite of the butterflies in my stomach. I was struggling with the same fear everyone struggles with. I was putting my life- the only one I had-on the line.
“You’re not actually caught in a time loop,” Rita had explained to me. My experiences of the 158 previous battles were real; it was me who didn’t really exist. Whoever it was that had been there for the excruciating pain, hopelessness, and the hot piss in his Jacket, he was only a shattered memory now.
Rita told me that from the point of view of the person with the memory, there was no difference between having had an actual experience and only having the memory of it. Sounded like philosophical bullshit to me. Rita didn’t seem to understand it all that well either.
I remember reading a comic, back when I still read comics, about a guy who used a time machine to change the past. It seemed to me that if the past changed, then the guy from the future who went back in time to change it should have disappeared-like the guy in those old Back to the Future movies-but the comic glossed over those details.
I had become an unwilling voyeur to the dreams of the Mimics. In my very first battle, the one where Rita saved my life, I had unknowingly killed one of those Mimics she called “servers.” In every battle since then, from the second right up to the 158th, Rita had killed the server. But the network between me and the server had already been established the instant I killed it, meaning I was the one trapped in the loop, and that Rita had been freed.
The Mimics used the loop to alter the future to their advantage. The javelin that missed Yonabaru in the second battle had been meant for me. My chance encounter with a Mimic when I ran from the base hadn’t had anything to do with chance. They’d been hunting me all along. If it hadn’t been for Rita, they would have had me for breakfast, lunch, and dinner.
The fighting continued. Chaos stalked the battlefield.
I slid into a crater with the rest of my squad to avoid getting ventilated by a sniper javelin shot. The squad had moved a hundred meters nearer to the coast since the start of battle. The conical hole we had taken cover in was courtesy of the previous night’s GPS-guided bombardment. A stray round landed near my feet, spraying sand into the air.
“Just like Okinawa,” remarked Ferrell, his back pressed against the wall of earth.
Yonabaru squeezed off another round. “Musta been a helluva fight.”
“We were surrounded, just like now. Ran out of ammo and things got ugly.”
“You’re gonna jinx us.”
“I don’t know-” Ferrell sprang up from the cover of the crater, fired his rifle, then sank back against the wall. “I got it in my head that this battle’s going somewhere. Just a feeling.”
“Shit, Sarge is talkin’ happy talk. Better watch out we don’t get struck by lightning.”
“You have any doubts, just watch our newest recruit in action,” Ferrell said. “Wouldn’t surprise me to see him get up and dance the jitterbug just to piss the Mimics off.”
“I don’t know the jitterbug,” I said.
“No shit.”
“Maybe I’ll give that pretty battle axe of yours a try.” Yonabaru nodded at the gleaming slab of tungsten carbide in my Jacket’s grip.
“You’d just hurt yourself.”
“That’s discrimination is what that is.”
Same old, same old. Everyone talking over each other, no one listening.
“Bogies at two o’clock!”
“Our thirty-fifth customer of the day!”
“Which one of you assholes just sent me this huge-ass file? We’re in the middle of a fuckin’ war, if you haven’t been keepin’ up!”
“Man, I need some smokes.”
“Shut the fuck up and shoot!”
The front line edged out of cover and leveled their rifles at the approaching throng. Bullets pierced the air, but the Mimic blitz kept coming. I gripped the handle of my axe.
Without warning, a bomb fell from the sky. The laser-guided precision munition smashed the bedrock, digging deep into the earth before detonating. The Mimics tumbled into the crater.
A crimson Jacket appeared amid the downpour of earth and clay. Tungsten carbide slashed away at flailing limbs and those thick, froggy torsos. After a few minutes, nothing was left moving. Nothing alien anyway.
Static filled my ears, then her voice came through. “Sorry to keep you waiting.” The Full Metal Bitch stood, hefting an enormous battle axe, amid our sand-colored platoon. Her gunmetal red armor glistened in the sun.
I lifted my hand so she could pick me out of the crowd. “We just got here ourselves.”
“What’s the Full Metal Bitch doin’ here?” Yonabaru forgot all about taking cover and stared stupidly at her Jacket. I would have paid good money for a look at his face.
Rita addressed Ferrell. “I need to talk to whoever’s in charge of this platoon. Patch me in.”
Ferrell opened a channel between Rita and the lieutenant. “You’re good to go.”
“This is Rita Vrataski. I have a request for the officer in charge of the 3rd Platoon of the 17th Company, 3rd Battalion, 12th Regiment, 301st Armored Infantry Division. I need to borrow Keiji Kiriya. That all right with you?”
She didn’t state her rank or division. In a military culture where the sky was whatever color your ranking officer said it was, only the Valkyrie was free to operate outside the chain of command. Even back in that first battle, it hadn’t been the Full Metal Bitch who cradled my head as I lay dying. It was Rita Vrataski.
The lieutenant’s reply was unsure. “Kiriya? Maybe you’d like someone with more experience, someone-”
“Yes or no?”
“Well, uh, yes.”
“I appreciate your help. Sarge, how ’bout you? Mind if I borrow Kiriya?”
Ferrell shrugged his approval, his Jacketed shoulders rising like an ocean wave.
“Thank you, Sarge.”
“See that he doesn’t do any jitterbugging near our squad.”
“Jitterbugging? That some sort of code?” Rita asked.
“Just a figure of speech.”
“Keiji, what’s all this about?”
“Sorry, Sarge. I’ll explain later,” I said.
“We’ll hit ’em from twelve o’clock.”
“Uh, right.”
“Hey, Keiji! If you see a vending machine, pick me up some smokes!” Yonabaru called out right before I disconnected from the comm link.
Rita chuckled at Nijou’s wisecrack. “You’ve got a good squad. You ready?”
“Be gentle.”
“I’m always gentle.”
“That’s not the way I hear it.”
“Just worry about the Mimics, okay?”
Slamming against the sides of the impact crater, scrabbling, and finally climbing over one another, Mimics had begun to push out from the hole Rita had blasted in the ground. We dove into the pack headfirst. It was wall-to-wall bloated frogs.
Run. Fire. Retreat. Fresh magazine. Run some more. Fire. Breathe.
Precision bombs hunted for the Mimics where they hid. Smoke spiraled skyward where they had found their quarry. Sand and dirt followed the smoke into the air, and chunks of Mimic flesh weren’t far behind. We rushed into the crater and took out everything the bombs left. Root ’em out, mow ’em down.
Even when you were just repeating the same day over and over, life on the battlefield was anything but routine. If the angle of your swing was off by so much as a degree, it could set off a chain of events that would change the entire outcome of the battle. A Mimic you let slip through one minute would be mowing through your friends the next. With each soldier that died, the line grew weaker, until it eventually collapsed under the strain. All because your axe swung at forty-seven degrees instead of forty-eight.
There were more Mimics than I could count. Dots filled the Doppler screen. The rule of thumb was that it took a squad of ten Jackets to bring down one Mimic. Even then, to make it an even match the squad had to be fanned out to spray the damn thing with bullets until there weren’t any bullets left.
Rita was in constant motion. She swung her axe with the ease of a child swinging a plastic toy sword. The air was thick with Mimic parts. Another step, another swing, another limb. Wash, rinse, repeat.
I’d never seen anything like it. Javelins carried death through the air. I was close enough to reach out and touch half a dozen Mimics. In spite of the danger all around me, I felt an uncanny calm. I had someone to watch my back. Rita was a filter that distilled and neutralized the fear. I was in the valley of the shadow of death, no two fucking ways about it, but I had Rita at my side.
I learned to survive by mimicking Rita’s skill with the axe, and in the process, I’d come to know her every move-which foot she’d take the next step with, which Mimic she’d strike first when surrounded. I knew when she would swing her axe, and when she would run. All that and more was hardcoded into my operating system.
Rita sidestepped danger and moved through the enemy ranks, carving a path of perfectly executed destruction. The only things she left standing were targets she couldn’t be bothered to kill. I was only too happy to mop up after her. We’d never trained together, but we moved like twins, veterans of countless battles at each other’s side.
Four Mimics came for Rita at once-bad odds, even for the Valkyrie. She was still off balance from her last swing. With my free hand, I gave her a gentle nudge. For a split second she was startled, but it didn’t take her long to understand what I’d done.
She really was a master. In less than five minutes, she’d learned to work in tandem with me. When she realized I could use a free arm or leg to knock her clear of an attack, she turned and faced the next enemy head on, without any intent of dodging. A Mimic foreleg came within a hand’s breadth of her face and she didn’t even flinch.
We worked as a single unit. We tore through the enemy with frightening power, always keeping the other’s Jacket in the corner of our eyes. We didn’t need words or gestures. Every motion, every footstep said all that needed to be said.
Our enemy may have evolved the ability to rewind time, but humanity had evolved a few tricks of its own. There were people who could keep a Jacket in tip-top condition, people who could conjure up strategies and handle logistics, people who could provide support on the front lines, and last but not least, people who were natural-born killers. People could adapt themselves to their environment and their experiences in any number of ways. An enemy that could look into the future and perceive danger fell victim to its own evolutionary atrophy. We learned faster than they could.
I had passed through death 158 times to emerge at heights no creature on this planet could aspire to in a single lifetime. Rita Vrataski had ascended even higher. We strode ahead, far from the rest of the force, an army unto ourselves. Our Jackets traced graceful clockwise spirals as we pressed on-a habit I’d picked up from Rita. Twitching mounds of carrion were all we left in our wake.
Forty-two minutes into the battle, we found it. The Mimic at the root of the whole motherfucking loop. The thread that bound us. If not for this server, I would never have drowned in my own blood, watched my guts spill onto the ground dozens of times over, wandered aimlessly through this Hell with no way out. If it weren’t for this server, I would never have met Rita Vrataski.
“This is it, Keiji. You have to be the one to bring it down.”
“With pleasure.” “Remember: antenna first, then the backups, then the server.” “And then we go home?” “Not quite. When the loop ends, the real battle begins. It’s not over until there isn’t a Mimic left moving.” “Nothing’s ever easy.”
Genocide was the only way to win this war. You couldn’t shave their forces down by 30 percent and claim victory. You had to destroy every last one of them. Take down the server, and the war would go on. All Rita and I could do was free our troops from the quagmire of the Mimics’ time loops. A lasting victory would require more force than two soldiers alone could ever bring to bear. But on the day we did win, I could die, Rita could die, Yonabaru, Ferrell, and the rest of our platoon could die, even those cunt-lipped assholes in the 4th could die, and time would never repeat again. A new day would dawn on Earth.
Rita said taking out a Mimic server was as easy as opening a tin can. All you needed was the right opener. Catch was, up until then she’d been the only person on the planet who had one.
People of Earth, rejoice! Keiji Kiriya just found another can opener! Act now, and for every Rita Vrataski-brand can opener you purchase, you’ll receive a second Keiji Kiriya-
brand can opener at NO ADDITIONAL CHARGE!
Of course, you couldn’t buy us separately if you wanted to. I suppose Rita and I wouldn’t have made very honest salesmen. What this nightmarish time loop from the bowels of Hell hath joined together, let no man put asunder. Only Rita and I understood each other’s solitude, and we would stand side by side, dicing Mimics into bite-size chunks until the bitter end.
“Antenna down!”
“On to the backups.”
“Copy that.”
I raised my battle axe and brought it down in a swift, clean stroke-
I opened my eyes. I was in bed.
I took a pen and wrote “160” on the back of my hand. Then I kicked the wall as hard as I could.