"Yeah."
"Could I see it?"
"Since when are you a gun nut?"
"It's not like that."
His hand disappeared into the top bunk. When it returned, it clutched a glistening lump of black metal.
"It's loaded, so watch where you point it."
"Uh, right."
"If you make corporal, you can bring your own toys to bed and ain't nobody can say a thing about it. Peashooter like this ain't no good against a Mimic anyhow. The only things a Jacket jockey needs are his 20mm and his rocket launcher, three rockets apiece. The banana he packs for a snack doesn't count. Now would you sign this already?"
I was too busy flicking off the safety on the gun to answer.
I wrapped my mouth around the barrel, imagining that 9mm slug in the chamber, waiting to explode from the cold, hard steel.
I pulled the trigger.
8
The paperback I'd been reading was beside my pillow. I sighed.
"Keiji, sign this." Yonabaru craned his neck down from the top bunk.
"Sir, yes sir."
"Listen. There's nothin' to tomorrow's operation. Sweat it too much, you'll turn into a feedhead—end up losing your mind before they even get a chance to blow your brains out."
"I'm not sweating anything."
"Hey man, ain't nothin' to be ashamed of. Everyone's nervous their first time. It's like gettin' laid. Until you've done the deed, you can't get it out of your head. All you can do is pass the time jerkin' off."
"I disagree."
"Hey, you're talkin' to a man who's played the game."
"What if—just hypothetically—you kept repeating your first time over and over?"
"Where'd you get that shit?"
"I'm just talkin' hypothetically is all. Like resetting all the pieces on a chess board. You take your turn, then everything goes back to how it started."
"It depends." Still hanging from the top bunk, his face lit up. "You talkin' about fucking or fighting?"
"No fucking."
"Well, if they asked me to go back and fight at Okinawa again, I'd tell 'em to shove it up their asses. They could send me to a fuckin' firing squad if they want, but I wouldn't go back."
What if you didn't have a choice? What if you had to relive your execution again and again?
At the end of the day, every man has to wipe his own ass. There's no one to make your decisions for you, either. And whatever situation you're in, that's just another factor in your decision. Which isn't to say everybody gets the same range of choices as everybody else. If there's one guy out there with an ace in the hole, there's sure to be another who's been dealt a handful of shit. Sometimes you run into a dead end. But you walked each step of the road that led you there on your own. Even when they string you up on the gallows, you have the choice to meet your death with dignity or go kicking and screaming into the hereafter.
But I didn't get that choice. There could be a giant waterfall just beyond Tateyama, the edge of the whole damn world, and I'd never know it. Day after day I go back and forth between the base and the battlefield, where I'm squashed like a bug crawling on the ground. So long as the wind blows, I'm born again, and I die. I can't take anything with me to my next life. The only things I get to keep are my solitude, a fear that no one can understand, and the feel of the trigger against my finger.
It's a fucked—up world, with fucked—up rules. So fuck it.
I took a pen from beside my pillow and wrote the number "5" on the back of my left hand. My battle begins with this number.
Let's see how much I can take with me. So what if the world hands me a pile of shit? I'll comb through it for the corn. I'll dodge enemy bullets by a hair's breadth. I'll slaughter Mimics with a single blow. If Rita Vrataski is a goddess on the battlefield, I'll watch and learn until I can match her kill for kill. I have all the time in the world.
Nothing better to do.
Who knows? Maybe something will change. Or maybe, I'll find a way to take this fucking world and piss in its eye.
That'd be just fine by me.
Chapter 2
1
"If a cat can catch mice," a Chinese emperor once said, "it's a good cat."
Rita Vrataski was a very good cat. She killed her share and was duly rewarded. I, on the other hand, was a mangy alley cat padding listlessly through the battlefield, all ready to be skinned, gutted, and made into a tennis racquet. The brass made sure Rita stayed neatly groomed, but they didn't give a rat's ass about the rest of us grunts.
PT had been going on for three grueling hours, and you can be damn sure it included some fucking iso push—ups. I was so busy trying to figure out what to do next that I wasn't paying attention to the here and now. After half an hour, U.S. Special Forces gave up on watching our tortures and went back to the barracks. I kept from staring at Rita, and she left along with the rest, which meant I was in for the long haul. It was like a software if/then routine:
If checkflag RitajoinsPT =true, then end.
Else continue routine: FuckingIsoPush—Ups
Maybe this was proof that I could change what happened. If I stared at Rita, she'd join the PT, and they'd end it after an hour. The brass had convened this session of PT for no good reason; they could end it for the same.
If my guess were right, my cause wasn't necessarily hopeless. A window of opportunity might present itself in tomorrow's battle. The odds of that happening might be 0.1 percent, or even 0.01 percent, but if I could improve my combat skills even the slightest bit—if that window were to open even a crack—I'd find a way to force it open wide. If I could train to jump every hurdle this little track—meet of death threw at me, maybe someday I'd wake up in a world with a tomorrow.
Next time I'd be sure to stare at Rita during PT. I felt a little bad about bringing her into this, she who was basically a bystander in my endless one—man show. But there wasn't really much choice. I didn't have hours to waste building muscle that didn't carry over into the next loop. That was time better spent programming my brain for battle.
When the training had finally finished, the men on the field fled to the barracks to escape the sun's heat, grumbling complaints under their collective breath. I walked over to Sergeant Ferrell who was crouched down retying his shoelaces. He'd been around longer than any of us, so I decided he'd be the best place to start for help on my battle—training program. Not only was he the longest surviving member of the platoon, but it occurred to me that the 20 percent drill sergeant he had in him might just come in handy.
Waves of heat shimmered above his flattop haircut. Even after three hours of PT, he looked as though he could run a triathlon and come in first without breaking a sweat. He had a peculiar scar at the base of his thick neck, a token from the time before they'd worked all the bugs out of the Jackets and had had to implant chips to heighten soldiers' reaction times. It had been a while since they'd had to resort to anything so crude. That scar was a medal of honor—twenty years of hard service and still kicking.
"Any blisters today?" Ferrell's attention never left his shoes. He spoke Burst with a roll of the tongue peculiar to Brazilians.
"No."
"Getting cold feet?"
"I'd be lying if I said I wasn't scared, but I'm not planning on running, if that's what you mean."
"For a greenhorn fresh out of basic, you're shaping up just fine."
"You still keep up with your training, don't you, Sarge?"