“How about last night, huh? That shit was tight.”
“You said it.”
“With reflexes like that, that girl must be hiding springs in that little body of hers. I could feel it all the way into my abs.”
“She hears you talkin’ like that, best watch out.”
“Who doesn’t like a compliment? I’m just sayin’ she was good.” As he spoke, Yonabaru thrust his hips.
Seeing someone move like that in a Jacket was pretty damn funny. An everyday gesture with enough power behind it to level a house.
Our platoon was on the northern tip of Kotoiushi Island, waiting to spring the ambush, Jackets in sleep mode. A screen about half a meter tall stood in front of us, projecting an image of the terrain behind. It’s what they called active camouflage. It was supposed to render us undetectable from an enemy looking at us head on. Of course, we could have just used a painting. The terrain had been bombed into oblivion, so any direction you looked, all you saw was the same charred wasteland.
Most of the time, the Mimics lurked in caves that twisted deep under the seabed. Before a ground assault, we fired bunker buster bombs that penetrated into the ground before detonating. Eat that. Each one of those babies cost more than I’d make in my entire lifetime. But the Mimics had an uncanny way of avoiding the bombs. It was enough to make you wonder if they were getting a copy of our attack plans in advance. On paper we may have had air superiority, but we ended up in a drawn-out land war anyhow.
Since our platoon was part of an ambush, we weren’t packing the large-bore cannons-massive weapons that were each the size of a small car fully assembled. What we did have were 20mm rifles, fuel-air grenades, pile drivers, and rocket launchers loaded with three rounds apiece. Since it was Ferrell’s platoon, we were all linked to him via comm. I glanced at my Jacket’s HUD. It was twenty-eight degrees Celsius. Pressure was 1014 millibars. The primary strike force would be on the move any minute.
Last night, after that endless hour of PT, I’d decided to go to the party. It wasn’t what I remembered doing from the dream, but I didn’t really feel like rereading that book. The part about helping Yonabaru up to his bunk after he stumbled back to the barracks stayed the same.
Word around the platoon was that Yonabaru’s girlfriend was a Jacket jockey too. With the exception of Special Forces, men and women fought in separate platoons, so we wouldn’t have run into her on the battlefield anyway.
“If-and I’m just talkin’-but if one of you got killed…” I ventured.
“I’d feel like shit.”
“But you still see each other anyway.”
“Heaven ain’t some Swiss bank. You can’t squirrel away money in some secret account up there and expect to make a withdrawal. You gotta do what you can before goin’ into battle. That’s the first rule of soldierin’.”
“Yeah, I guess.”
“But I’m tellin’ ya, you gotta hook yourself up with some pussy. Carpe diem, brother.”
“Carpe something.”
“What about Mad Wargarita? Y’all were talkin’ during PT, right? You’d tap that, I know you would.”
“Don’t even go there.”
“Tiny girl like her-I bet she’s a wolverine in the sack. The smaller they are, the better they fuck, you know.”
“Show some respect.”
“Sex ain’t got nothin’ to do with respect. From the lowest peon to His Majesty the general, everybody wants to do a little poundin’ between the legs. All I’m sayin’ is that’s how we evolved-”
“Just shut the fuck up,” I said.
“That any way to talk to me in front of the sergeant? I’m hurt. I’ve got a very sensitive disposition. I’m just talkin’ trash to keep my mind off things. Same as everybody else.”
“He’s right,” someone else chipped in over the comm link.
“Hey, don’t I get a vote?”
It was like this was the excuse everyone in the platoon had been waiting for. Everyone started talking at once.
“I’m gonna have to cast my ballot for Yonabaru.”
“I’ve set this thing to filter out your jokes, so stop wastin’ your breath.”
“Sounds like Kiriya’s gonna have to step up his training if he doesn’t want Yonabaru to take the piss out of him so easy.”
“Sir! I think I need to reboot my Jacket, sir! I don’t want it crashing during the battle!”
“Aw man, I’d kill for a cigarette. Musta left ’em in my other Jacket.”
“I thought you quit smokin’?”
“Hey, keep it down! I’m tryin’ to get some sleep!”
And so it went. Back and forth through the comm link, like it was an Internet chat room. All Ferrell could do was sigh and shake his Jacketed head.
When you’re so nervous you’ve run out of nails to bite, thinking about something you enjoy helps take the pressure off. They taught us that in training too. Of course, you get a bunch of animals like these together, pretty much the only thing they think about is sex. There was only one girl I could think about, my sweet little librarian whose face I could hardly picture anymore. Who knew what she was doing. It’d been half a year since she got married. She was probably knocked up by now. I enlisted right after I graduated from high school, and she broke my heart. I don’t think the two things were related. Who can say?
I had signed up thinking I could make some sense of this fuckedup world by betting my life in battle and seeing what fate dealt me. Boy was I ever green. If I was tea-green now, I must’ve been lime-green back then. Turns out my life isn’t even worth enough to buy one of those pricey bombs, and what cards fate has dealt me don’t have any rhyme or reason.
“Nuts to this. If we’re not gonna dig trenches, can’t we at least sit?”
“Can’t hide if we’re diggin’ trenches.”
“This active camouflage ain’t good for shit. Who’s to say they don’t see better’n we do, anyhow? They aren’t supposed to be able to see the attack choppers either, but they knock ’em out of the sky like balloons in a shootin’ gallery. Made for a helluva time at Okinawa.”
“If we run into the enemy, I’ll be sure to give ’em an eye test.”
“I still say the trench is man’s greatest invention. My kingdom for a trench.”
“You can dig all the trenches you want once we get back. My orders.”
“Isn’t that how they torture prisoners?”
“My pension to the man who invents a way to fasten your-shit, it’s started! Don’t get your balls blown off, gents!” Ferrell shouted.
The din of battle filled the air. I could feel the shudder of distant shells exploding.
I turned my attention to Yonabaru. After what happened in PT, maybe my dream was just a dream, but if Yonabaru died by my side at the beginning of the battle, I’d never forgive myself. I replayed the events of the dream in my head. The javelin had come from two o’clock. It had flown right through the camouflage screen, leaving it in tatters, all about a minute after the battle started, give or take.
I tensed my body, ready to be knocked down at any moment.
My arms were shaking. An itch developed in the small of my back. A wrinkle in my inner suit pressed against my side.
What are they waiting for?
The first round didn’t hit Yonabaru.
The shot that was supposed to have killed him was headed for me instead. I didn’t have time to move a millimeter. I’ll never forget the sight of that enemy javelin flying straight at me.