I found no peace in sleep. A Mimic would snuff out my life, or I’d black out in the middle of battle. After that, nothing. Then without warning, the nothingness gave way. The finger that had been squeezing the trigger of my rifle was wedged three quarters of the way through my paperback. I’d find myself lying in bed, surrounded by its pipe frame, listening to the high-pitched voice of the DJ read the day’s weather. Clear and sunny out here on the islands, same as yesterday, with a UV warning for the afternoon. Each word wormed its way into my skull and stuck there.
By “sunny” I had picked up the pen, by “islands” I was writing the number on my hand, and by the time she’d gotten to “UV warning” I was out of bed and on my way to the armory. That was my wake-up routine.
Sleep on the night before the battle was an extension of training. For some reason, my body never grew fatigued. The only thing I brought with me were my memories and the skills I’d mastered. I spent the night tossing and turning, my mind replaying the movements it had learned the previous day as it burned the program into my brain. I had to be able to do what I couldn’t the last time through the loop, to kill the Mimics I couldn’t kill, to save the friends I couldn’t save. Like doing an iso push-up in my mind. My own private nightly torment.
I awoke in battle mode. Like a pilot flipping through switches before takeoff, I inspected myself one part at a time, checking for any muscles that might have knotted up overnight. I didn’t skip so much as a pinky toe.
Rotating ninety degrees on my ass, I sprang out of bed and opened my eyes. I blinked. My vision blurred. The room was different. The prime minister’s head wasn’t staring out at me from atop the swimsuit model. By the time I noticed, it was too late; my foot missed a platform that wasn’t there and my inertia sent me tumbling from the bed. My head slammed into a tile-covered floor, and I finally realized where I was.
Sunlight shone through layers of blast-resistant glass and spilled across the vast, airy room. An artificial breeze from the purifier poured over my body as I lay sprawled on the floor. The thick walls and glass completely blocked out the sounds of the base that were usually so loud in my ears.
I was in the Sky Lounge. In a base of exposed steel and khaki-colored, fire-retardant wood, this was the one and only properly appointed room. Originally an officers’ meeting room that doubled as a reception hall, the night view of Uchibo through its multilayered glass would have fetched a good price.
As nice as the view was, it was a lousy place to wake up, unless you were a mountain goat or a dedicated hermit with a love of heights. Or you could be Yonabaru. I’d heard he had some secret spot up here one floor higher than even the officers were allowed to go. “His love nest,” we called it.
More like a love aerie.
Looking out across the ocean I could see the gentle curve of the horizon. Uchibo beach was dimly visible through the morning mist. Triangles of waves rose, turned to foam, and faded back into the sea. Beyond those waves lay the island the Mimics had made their spawning grounds. For a moment, I thought I saw a bolt of bright green shoot through the surf. I blinked my eyes. It had only been a glint of sunlight on the water.
“You certainly slept well last night.” Rita stood over me, having walked in from the other room.
I looked up slowly from the tile floor. “Feels like it’s been years.”
“Years?”
“Since I had a good night’s sleep. I’d forgotten how good it is.”
“That’s crazy time-loop talk.”
“You should know.”
Rita gave a wave of her hand in sympathy.
Our savior, the Full Metal Bitch, looked more relaxed this morning than I had ever seen her. Her eyes were softer in the cool morning light, and the sunlight made her rust-colored hair glow orange. She gave me the sort of look she might give to a puppy who’d followed her home. She was placid as a Zen monk. She was beautiful.
The room suddenly grew too bright, and I narrowed my eyes against the glare. “What’s that smell?”
An unusual odor mingled with the clean air coming from the filter. It wasn’t necessarily a bad smell, but I wouldn’t have gone so far as to call it pleasant. Too pungent for food, too savory for perfume. Quite frankly, I didn’t know what the hell it was.
“All I did was open the bag. You’ve got a sharp nose.”
“In training they told us to be wary of any unusual odors, since it could mean there was a problem with the Jacket filter-not that I’m in a Jacket right now.”
“I’ve never met anyone who confused food with chemical weapons before,” Rita said. “Don’t you like the smell?”
“Like isn’t the word I’d use. It smells… weird.”
“No manners at all. Is that any way to thank me for boiling a morning pot of coffee for us?”
“That’s… coffee?”
“Sure is.”
“This isn’t your way of getting back at me for the umeboshi, is it?”
“No, this is what roasted coffee beans picked from actual coffee trees that grew in the ground smell like. Never had any?”
“I have a cup of the artificial slop every day.”
“Just wait till I brew it. You ain’t smelled nothin’ yet.”
I didn’t know there were any natural coffee beans left in the world. That is, I suspected real coffee still existed, somewhere, but I didn’t know there was anyone still in the habit of drinking it.
The beverage that passed for coffee these days was made from lab-grown beans with artificial flavoring added for taste and aroma. Substitute grounds didn’t smell as strong as the beans Rita was grinding, and they didn’t fight their way into your nose and down your entire respiratory tract like these did, either. I suppose you could extrapolate the smell of the artificial stuff and eventually approach the real thing, but the difference in impact was like the difference between a 9mm hand gun and a 120mm tank shell.
“That must be worth a small fortune,” I said.
“I told you we were on the line in North Africa before we came here. It was a gift from one of the villages we freed.”
“Some gift.”
“Being queen isn’t all bad, you know.”
A hand-cranked coffee grinder sat in the middle of the glass table. A uniquely shaped little device-I’d seen one once in an antique shop. Beside it was some kind of ceramic funnel covered with a brown-stained cloth. I guessed you were supposed to put the ground-up coffee beans in the middle and strain the water through them.
An army-issued portable gas stove and heavy-duty frying pan dominated the center of the table. A clear liquid bubbled noisily in the frying pan. Two mugs sat nearby, one chipped with cracked paint, and one that looked brand new. At the very edge of the table sat a resealable plastic bag filled with dark brown coffee beans.
Rita didn’t seem to have many personal effects. There was nothing in the way of luggage save a semi-translucent sack at the foot of the table-it looked like a boxer’s heavy bag. Without the coffee-making equipment to support it, the bag had collapsed, nearly empty. Soldiers who had to be ready to ship out to the far corners of the earth at a moment’s notice weren’t permitted much cargo, but even by those standards Rita traveled light. That one of the few things she did bring was a hand-powered coffee grinder didn’t do anything to lessen the perception that she was a little odd.
“You can wait in bed if you like.”
“I’d rather watch,” I said. “This is interesting.”
“Then I guess I’ll get grinding.”
Rita started turning the handle on the coffee grinder. A gravelly crunching sound filled the room and the glass table shook. Rita’s curls quaked atop her head.
“When the war’s over, I’m gonna treat you to the best green tea you ever had-in return for the coffee.”
“I thought green tea came from China.”
“It may have started there, but it was perfected here. It was a long time before they’d even allow it to be exported. I wonder what kind we should have.”
“They serve it for free in restaurants?”
“That’s right.”
“ After the war…” Rita sounded just a little sad.
“Hey, this war will be over someday. No doubt about it. You and I’ll see to that.”
“You’re right. I’m sure you will.” Rita took the ground beans and spread them on the cloth covering the funnel. “You have to steam them first.”
“Oh yeah?”
“Completely changes the flavor. Something an old friend once taught me. Don’t know how it works, but he was right.”
She moistened the freshly ground beans with a little not-quite boiling water. Cream-colored bubbles hissed to life where the water touched the grounds. A striking aroma woven of threads bitter, sweet, and sour filled the air surrounding the table.
“Still smell weird?”
“It smells wonderful.”
Using a circular motion, Rita carefully poured in the water. Drop by drop, a glistening brown liquid began filling the steel mug waiting beneath.
A thin line of steam had begun to rise from the mug when an earsplitting sound pierced the thick walls and blast-hardened glass of the Sky Lounge. The tile floor shook. Rita and I were on the ground in a heartbeat. Our eyes met.
There was no chandelier tinkle of shattered glass, only a sharp concussive sound, as though someone had thrown a thick telephone book onto the ground. Spiderweb fractures spread through the window glass, a sand-colored javelin sticking from the middle of the web. Deep purple liquid crystal seeped from the cracks and onto the floor below.
Too late, sirens began to blare across the base. Three plumes of smoke rose outside the window. The water off the coast had turned a livid green.
“An-an attack?” My voice was shaking. Probably my body too. In all 159 loops there had never been a surprise attack. The battle was supposed to start after we landed on Kotoiushi Island.
A second and third round impacted the window. The entire glass pane bulged inward but somehow held. Cracks crisscrossed the window. Pinpricks of light swam before my eyes.
Rita had gotten to her feet and was calmly returning the frying pan to the top of the portable gas stove. She killed the flame with a practiced hand.
“This glass is really something. You never know if it’s all just talk,” Rita mused.
“We have to hit back-no, I’ve got to find the sergeant-wait, our Jackets!”
“You should start by calming down.”
“But, what’s happening!” I hadn’t meant to shout, but couldn’t help it. None of this was in the script. I’d been looped so long that the idea of novel events terrified me. That the novel event in question happened to involve Mimic javelins exploding against the windows of the room I was standing in didn’t help.
“The Mimics use the loops to win the war. You’re not the only one who remembers what’s happened in each loop.”
“Then this is all because I screwed up the last time?”
“The Mimics must have decided this was the only way they could win. That’s all.”
“But… the base,” I said. “How did they even get here?”
“They came inland up the Mississippi to attack Illinois once. They’re aquatic creatures. It’s not surprising they found a way through a quarantine line created by a bunch of land-dwelling humans.” Rita was calm.
“I guess.”
“Leave the worrying to the brass. For you and me, this just means we fight here instead of Kotoiushi.”
Rita held out her hand. I clasped it and she helped me to my feet. Her fingers were callused at the bases-rub marks from the Jacket contact plates. The palm of the hand she’d been holding the frying pan with was much warmer than my own. I could feel the tight apprehension in my chest begin to ebb.
“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.