All You Need Is Kill

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:

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?"

"Try to."

"Would you mind if I trained with you?"

"You attempting some kind of humor, Private?"

"Nothing funny about killing, sir."

"Well, there's something funny with your head if you want to stuff yourself into one of those damn Jackets the day before we head out to die. You want to work up a sweat, go find a coed's thighs to do it in." Ferrell's eyes stayed on his laces. "Dismissed."

"Sarge? With all due respect, I don't see you running after the ladies."

Ferrell finally looked up. His eyes were 20mm rifle barrels firing volleys at me from the bunkers set deep in the lines of his tanned, leathery face. I cooked under the glaring sun.

"You tellin' me you think I'm some sort of faggot who'd rather be strapped into a Jacket reeking of sweat than up between a woman's legs? That what you're tellin' me?"

"Tha—that's—not what I meant, sir!"

"Right, then. Take a seat." He ran his hand through his hair and patted the ground.

I sat down as a gust of ocean wind blew between us.

"I was on Ishigaki, you know," Ferrell began. "Musta been at least ten years ago. Jackets back then were cheap as hell. There was this place near the crotch—right about here—where the plates didn't meet quite right. Rubbed right through your skin. And the places that had scabbed over during training would rub through again when you got into battle. Hurt so bad some guys refused to crawl on the ground. They'd get up and walk right in the middle of a fight. You could tell 'em it would get 'em killed, but there were always a few who got up anyway. Might as well have walked around with targets painted on their chests." Ferrell whistled like a falling shell. "Whap! Lost a bunch of men that way."

Ferrell had a mix of Japanese and Brazilian blood in him, but he came from South America. Half that continent had been ravaged by the Mimics. Here in Japan, where high—tech was cheaper than good food, our Jackets were precision pieces of machinery. Still, there were plenty of countries where it was all they could do to send their troops off with a gas mask, a good old—fashioned rocket launcher, and a prayer. Forget about artillery or air support. Any victory they did happen to win was short—lived. Nanobots spilling from Mimic corpses would eat the lungs out of whatever soldiers that were left. And so, little by little, lifeless desert spread through the lands people once called home.

Ferrell came from a family of farmers. When their crops started to fail, they chose to abandon their land and move to one of the islands in the east, safe havens protected by the wonders of technology. Families with people serving in the UDF were given priority for immigration, which is how Ferrell came to join the Japanese Corps.

These "Immigration Soldiers," as they were known, were common in the Armored Infantry.

"You ever hear the expression kiri—oboeru?"

"What?" I asked, startled to hear the Japanese.

"It's an old samurai saying that means, ‘Strike down your enemy, and learn.' "

I shook my head. "Doesn't sound familiar."

"Tsukahara, Bokuden, Itou, Miyamato Musashi—all famous samurai in their day. We're talking five hundred years ago, now."

"I think I read a comic about Musashi once."

"Damn kids. Wouldn't know Bokuden from Batman." Ferrell sighed in exasperation. There I was, pure—blooded Japanese, and he knew more about my country's history than I did. "Samurai were warriors who earned their living fighting, just like you and me. How many people do you think the samurai I just named killed in their lifetimes?"

"I dunno. If their names are still around after five hundred years, maybe… ten or twenty?"

"Not even close. The records from back then are sketchy, but the number is somewhere between three and five hundred. Each. They didn't have guns. They didn't have bombs. Every single man they killed they cut down in hand—to—fucking—hand combat. I'd say that'd be enough to warrant a medal or two."

"How'd they do it?"

"Send one man to the great beyond each week, then do the same for ten years, you'll have your five hundred. That's why they're known as master swordsmen. They didn't just kill once and call it a day. They kept going. And they got better."

"Sounds like a video game. The more you kill, the stronger you get—that it? Shit, I got a lot of catching up to do."

"Except their opponents weren't training dummies or little digital aliens. These were living, breathing men they slaughtered. Like cattle. Men with swords. Men fighting for their lives, same as them. If they wanted to live, they had to catch their enemy off—guard, lay traps, and sometimes run away with their tail between their legs."

Not the first image that sprang into your head when you thought of master swordsmen.

"Learning what would get you killed and how to get your enemy killed—the only way to know a thing like that is to do it. Some kid who'd been taught how to swing a sword in a dojo didn't stand a chance against a man who'd been tested in battle. They knew it, and they kept doing it. That's how they piled up hundreds of corpses. One swing at a time."

"Kiri-oboeru."

"That's right."

"So why do they bother training us at all?"

"Ah, right to the point. Brains like that, you're too smart to be a soldier."

"Whatever, Sarge."

"If you really want to fight the Mimics, you need helicopters or tanks. But helicopters cost money, and it takes money to train the pilots, too. And tanks won't do you a lick of good on this terrain— too many mountains and rivers. But Japan is crawling with people. So they wrap 'em in Jackets and ship 'em to the front lines. Lemons into lemonade."

Look what happened to the lemons.

"All that shit they drum into you in training is the bare minimum. They take a bunch of recruits who don't know their assholes from their elbows and teach 'em not to cross the street when the light's red. Look left, look right, and keep your heads down when things get hot. Most unlucky bastards forget all that when the shit starts flying and they go down pretty quick. But if you're lucky, you might live through it and maybe even learn something. Take your first taste of battle and make a lesson out of it, you might just have something you can call a soldier—" Ferrell cut himself off. "What's so funny?"

"Huh?" A smirk had crept across my face while he was talking and I didn't even notice.

"I see someone grinning like that before a battle, I start worrying about the wiring in his head."

I'd been thinking of my first battle, when Mad Wargarita tried to help me, when my mud—stained guts were burnt to cinders, when despair and fear streamed down my face. Keiji Kiriya had been one of the unlucky bastards. Twice.

The third time, when I ran, my luck hadn't been what you'd call good either. But for some reason, the world kept giving me another chance, challenging me to find a way to survive. Not by luck, but on my own.

If I could suppress the urge to run, I'd keep waking up to a full day of training followed by a day on the battlefield. And what could be better than that? Almost by default, I'd keep learning, one swing at a time. What took those swordsmen ten years, I could do in a day.

Ferrell stood and gave my backside a slap with his hand, bringing my train of thought to a screeching halt. "Not much point worrying about it now. Why don't you see about finding one of them coeds?"

"I'm fine, Sarge, I was just thinking—" Ferrell looked away. I pressed on. "If I live through tomorrow's battle, there'll be another battle after that, right? And if I live through that battle, I'll go on to the next one. If I take the skills I learn in each battle, and in between battles I practice in the simulators, my odds of surviving should keep going up. Right?"

"Well, if you want to overanalyze—"

"It can't hurt to get in the habit of training now, can it?"

"You don't give up easy, do you?"

"Nope."

Ferrell shook his head. "To be honest, I had you figured for someone different. Maybe I'm gettin' too old for this."

"Different how?"

"Listen, there are three kinds of people in the UDF: junkies so strung out they're hardly alive, people who signed up looking for a meal ticket, and people who were walking along, took a wrong step off a bridge somewhere, and just landed in it."

"I'm guessing you had me pegged for the last group."

"That I did."

"Which group were you in, Sarge?"

He shrugged. "Suit up in first—tier gear. Meet back here in fifteen minutes."

"Sir—uh, full battle dress?"

"A Jacket jockey can't practice without his equipment. Don't worry, I won't use live rounds. Now suit up!"

"Sir, yes sir!"

I saluted, and I meant it.

The human body is a funny machine. When you want to move something—say, your arm—the brain actually sends two signals at the same time: "More power!" and "Less power!" The operating system that runs the body automatically holds some power back to avoid overexerting and tearing itself apart. Not all machines have that built—in safety feature. You can point a car at a wall, slam the accelerator to the floor, and the car will crush itself against the wall until the engine is destroyed or runs out of gas.

Martial arts use every scrap of strength the body has at its disposal. In martial arts training, you punch and shout at the same time. Your "Shout louder!" command helps to override the "Less power!" command. With practice, you can throttle the amount of power your body holds back. In essence, you're learning to channel the body's power to destroy itself.

A soldier and his Jacket work the same way. Just like the human body has a mechanism to hold power back, Jackets have a system to keep the power exertion in balance. With 370 kilograms of force in the grip, a Jacket could easily crush a rifle barrel, not to mention human bone. To prevent accidents like that from happening, Jackets are designed to automatically limit the force exerted, and even actively counteract inertia to properly balance the amount of force delivered. The techs call this system the auto—balancer. The auto—balancer slows the Jacket operator's actions by a fraction of a second. It's an interval of time so minute that most people wouldn't even notice it. But on the battlefield, that interval could spell the difference between life and death.

In three full battles of ten thousand Jackets each, only one soldier might have the misfortune of encountering a problem with the auto—balancer, and if the auto—balancer decides to hiccup right when you've got a Mimic bearing down on you, it's all over. It's a slight chance, but no one wants to be the unlucky bastard who draws the short straw. This is why, at the start of every battle, veterans like Ferrell switch the auto—balancer off. They never taught us this in training. I had to learn how to walk again with the auto—balancer turned off. Ferrell said I had to be able to move without thinking.

It took me seven tries to walk in a straight line.

2

Two sentries were posted on the road leading to the section of the base under U.S. jurisdiction. They were huge, each man carrying a high—power rifle in arms as big around as my thighs.

Their physiques made them look like suits of armor on display. They didn't have to say a word to let passersby know who was in charge. Cluster bombs could have rained from the sky, and these guys would have held their ground, unblinking, until they received direct orders to do otherwise.

If you kept them in the corner of your eye and headed for the main gate, you'd be on the path I'd taken when I tried going AWOL on my third time through the loop. Running would be easy. With what I'd learned, I could probably avoid the Mimic ambush and make it to Chiba City. But today I had another objective in mind.

It was 10:29. I was standing in the sentries' blind spot. With my eighty—centimeter stride, the sentries were exactly fifteen seconds from where I stood.

A gull flew overhead. The distant roar of the sea blended with the sounds of the base. My shadow was a small pool collected at my feet. There was no one else on the path.

An American fuel truck passed by. The sentries saluted.

I had to time my walk just right.

Three, two, one.

The truck approached a fork in the road. An old cleaning lady carrying a mop stepped out in front of the truck. Brakes squealed. The truck's engine stalled. The sentries turned toward the commotion, their attentions diverted for a few precious moments.

I walked right by.

I could feel the heat cast by their sheer bulk. With muscles like that, I had no doubt they could reach up my ass and yank out my spine. For an instant, I felt an irrational desire to lash out against them.

Sure, I might look like I'd blow over in a stiff wind, but you shouldn't judge a book by its cover. Want to try me? Who wants a piece of the little Asian recruit?

Would the skills I'd learned to pilot a Jacket translate to hand—to—hand combat against another human? Had I gotten any stronger, any better? Why wait for the Mimics, why not test myself on these fine specimens now?

The guard on the right turned.

Stay calm. Keep your pace steady. He's pivoting to the left. When he does, you'll slip into his blind spot behind the other sentry. By the time he looks around for any sign of Keiji Kiriya, I'll be part of the scenery.

"Did you see something?"

"Quiet. Captain's watchin', and he don't look happy."

"Fuck you."

And like that, I'd infiltrated U.S. territory.

My target was a U.S.—made Jacket. After a few times through the loop, I'd come to the conclusion that I needed a new weapon— something we didn't have in the Japanese Corps. The standard—issue 20mm rifles weren't very effective against Mimics. They walked a thin line of compromise between the number of rounds a soldier could carry, the rate of fire necessary to hit a fast—moving target, and the acceptable amount of recoil. They were more powerful than the weapons they used to issue, but if you really wanted to pierce that endoskeleton, 50mm was the only way to be sure.

The basic UDF strategy was to employ a line of prone armored infantry firing 20mm rounds to slow the enemy enough so that artillery and tanks could take them out. In practice, the support never came fast or heavy enough. It fell to us to finish the Mimics on our own.

The weapon of last resort for the old—timers, and one I'd used myself, was the pile driver mounted on the left shoulder. You could punch open a hole and spill a Mimic's guts with one of those babies. The rocket launcher could come in handy too, but it was hard to a score a hit with, and more often than not you'd be out of rockets when you really needed one. As I grew accustomed to the fighting, I relied more and more on the power of the 57mm pile driver.

But the pile driver had one major drawback: Its magazine only held twenty charges. Unlike our rifles, you couldn't change magazines, either. Once you fired that twentieth round, you were finished. At best, a soldier was going to punch twenty holes in something. Once the pile driver was out of charges, you couldn't even use it to drive a stake into the heart of a vampire. The people who'd designed the Jacket just hadn't considered the possibility that someone would survive long enough in hand—to—hand combat with a Mimic to use more than twenty rounds.

Fuck that.

Running out of charges had killed me plenty of times. Another dead end. The only way to avoid it was to find a melee weapon that didn't run out of ammo. I'd seen one, once, in the battle that had started this whole loop.

The battle axe. Rita Vrataski, a Valkyrie clad in a crimson Jacket, and her axe. It might have been more appropriate to call it a slab of tungsten carbide in the shape of an axe. A battle axe never ran out of ammo. You could still use it if it got bent. It packed plenty of punch. It was the perfect melee weapon.

But as far as the world was concerned, Keiji Kiriya was a new recruit who had yet to see his first battle. If I asked them to replace my standard—issue pile driver with a different weapon simply because I didn't like it, they sure as hell weren't going to listen. Yonabaru had laughed at me, and Ferrell actually threw a punch. When I tried taking it straight to our platoon commander, he ignored me completely. I was going to have to acquire the weapon I needed on my own.

I headed for the barracks of the supply division that had accompanied U.S. Special Forces. Five minutes after crossing into the U.S. side of the base, I came to a spot guarded by only one soldier. She was twirling a monkey wrench in her hand.

The pungent scent of oil drifted in the air, swamping the ocean's briny tang. The ever present drone of men bustling about the base had receded. In the darkness of the barracks, the steel weapons humanity used to strike down its enemies were enjoying a short nap.

The woman with the wrench was Shasta Raylle, a civilian tech. Her pay was at least on par with a first lieutenant. Way above mine, at any rate. I'd snuck a look at her papers: height, 152 centimeters; weight, 37 kilograms; visual acuity, 20/300; favorite food, passion—fruit cake. She had some American Indian blood in her and wore her black hair pulled back in a ponytail.

If Rita was a lynx on the prowl, Shasta was an unsuspecting rabbit. She belonged at home, curled up in a warm, cozy room watching vids and stuffing her face with bonbons, not smeared with oil and grease on some military base.

I spoke as gently as I could. "Hello."

Shasta jumped at the sound of my voice. Damn. Not gentle enough.

Her thick glasses fell to the concrete floor. Watching her look for those glasses was like watching a quadriplegic tread water. Instead of putting down the monkey wrench and feeling for them with both hands, she groped in vain with just the one. Not exactly what you'd expect from someone who'd graduated top of her class at MIT, developed some of the most advanced military Jackets at her first defense industry research post, and then, for an encore, leapt into the UDF as the crack technician assigned to a particular gunmetal red Jacket.

I bent over and picked up her glasses—more like a pair of magnifying lenses that had been jury—rigged together.

"You dropped these," I said, holding them up where I hoped she could see.

"Thank you, whoever you are."

"Don't mention it."

Shasta looked me over. The glass—bottle lenses made fried eggs of her eyes.

"And you are…?"

"Keiji Kiriya."

"Thank you, Keiji Kiriya. I'm Shasta Raylle." I had deliberately left out my rank and platoon. Shasta's head sank. "I realize this might look like a plain, ordinary barracks—well, it is, but that's beside the point. The point is, it contains highly sensitive military technology. Only people with the appropriate security clearance are allowed in."

"I know. I don't want in."

"Oh. Well! I'm glad we cleared that up."

"Actually," I said, taking a step forward, "I came to see you."

"Me? I—I'm flattered, but I'm afraid I can't—I mean, you seem very nice and all, it's just that I don't think this would be appropriate, and there are still preparations to be made for tomorrow, and—"

"It's not even noon."

"It will take the rest of the day!"

"If you'd just listen—"

"I know it looks as though all I've been doing is removing and reattaching this one part—and well I have, but I really am busy. Really!" Her ponytail bobbed as she nodded to herself, punctuating her sincerity.

She's getting the wrong idea. Got to steer this thing back on course—

"So the external memory unit on that suit's been damaged?"

"It has, but—how did you know that?"

"Hey, you and I both know that an external memory unit doesn't see a whole lotta use in battle. But since those custom chips contain sensitive military technology by the metric ton, you have to fill out a mountain of paperwork to requisition one of the damn things, am I right? And that bald sonofabitch over at the armory hitting on you no matter how many times you tell him you're not interested doesn't make the situation any brighter, I'm guessing. It's almost enough to make you consider stealing one off one of the Japanese Corps' Jackets."

"Stealing one of the—I'd never even think of it!"

"No?"

"Of course not! Well, the thought may have crossed my mind once or twice, but I'd never actually do it! Do I really look like the type to—" Her eyes widened as she saw what was in the sealed plastic bag I pulled from my pocket.

A sly grin spread across my face. "What if someone else stole one for you?"

"Could I have it? Please?"

"How soon we change our song!"

I raised the bag containing the chip high above my head. Shasta hopped as she tried to grab it, but she and her 158 centimeters were out of luck. The oil staining her clothes made my nostrils flare.

"Stop teasing me and just hand it over, would you?"

Hop. Hop.

"You don't know how much I had to go through to get this."

"I'm begging you. Please?"

Hop.

"I'll give it to you, but I need something in exchange."

"Something… in exchange?"

Gulp.

She clutched the monkey wrench to her chest, flattening the swells of her breasts that lay hidden beneath her overalls. She'd clearly gotten used to playing the victim after a few years with the animals in Special Forces. If it was this easy to get a rise out of her, I can't say I blamed them.

I waved the plastic bag toward the giant battle axe hanging from a cage at the rear of the barracks and pointed. Shasta didn't seem to understand what I was looking at. Her eyes darted warily around the room.

"I came to borrow that." I jabbed my finger straight at the axe.

"Unless my eyes have gotten worse than I thought, that's Rita's battle axe."

"Bingo."

"So… you're in the Armored Infantry too?"

"Japanese Corps."

"This isn't easy for me to say—I don't want to be rude—but trying to imitate Rita will only get you hurt."

"That mean you won't loan it to me?"

"If you really think you'll need it, I will. It's just a hunk of metal— we have plenty of spares. When Rita first asked me for one, I had them cut from the wings of a decommissioned bomber."

"So why the reluctance?"

"Well, because frankly, you'll be killed."

"With or without it, I'll die someday."

"I can't change your mind?"

"Not likely."

Shasta grew quiet. The wrench hung in her hand like an old rag, and her eyes lost focus. A lock of unkempt hair stuck to the sweat and grease smeared across her forehead. "I was stationed in North Africa before," she said. "The best soldier of the best platoon down there asked me for the same thing as you. I tried to warn him, but there were politics involved, things got complicated, so I let him have it."

"And he died?"

"No, he lived. Barely. But his soldiering days were over. If only I could have found some way to stop him."

"You shouldn't blame yourself. You didn't make the Mimics attack."

"That's just it, he wasn't injured fighting the Mimics. Do you know what inertia is?"

"I've got a high school diploma."

"Each of those battle axes weighs 200 kilograms. A Jacket's 370 kilogram grip can hold on to it, sure, but even with enhanced strength that's a tremendous amount of inertia. He broke his back swinging the axe. If you swing 200 kilograms with the amplified power of a Jacket, you can literally twist yourself into two pieces."

I knew exactly what she meant—the inertia she was talking about was exactly what I was after. It took something massive to shatter a Mimic endoskeleton in one hit. That it could kill me in the process was beside the point.

"Look, I'm sure you think you're good, but Rita's no ordinary soldier." Shasta made one final attempt to dissuade me.

"I know."

"She's extraordinary, really. She never uses her auto—balancer. And I don't mean she turns it off before battle. Her Jacket isn't even equipped with one. She's the only member of our squad without it. In an elite squad, she's more than elite."

"I quit using an auto—balancer a long time ago. I never thought about removing it entirely. I'll have to do that. Less weight."

"Oh, so you're the next Rita, I suppose?"

"No. I couldn't hold a candle to Rita Vrataski."

"You know what she told me the first time I met her? She said she was glad she lived in a world full of war. Can you say the same?" Shasta appraised me from behind her thick lenses. I knew she meant what she was saying. I returned her stare without a word.

"Why are you so hung up about her battle axe?" she asked.

"I wouldn't say I'm hung up about it. I'm just trying to find something more effective than a pile driver. I'll take a spear or a cutlass, if you have one. Anything I can use more than twenty times."

"That's what she said when she first asked me to cut her the axe." Shasta relaxed her grip on the monkey wrench.

"Any comparison with the Full Metal Bi—uh, Valkyrie is high praise."

"You know, you're very…" Her voice trailed off.

"I'm very what?"

"Unusual."

"Maybe so."

"Just remember, it's not an easy weapon to use."

"I have a lot of time to practice."

Shasta smiled. "I've met soldiers who think they can follow in Rita's footsteps and fail, and I've met some who recognize her for the prodigy she is and never even try to match her. But you're the first person I've met who realizes the distance between themselves and Rita and yet is prepared to run it."

The more I understood war, the more I knew just what a prodigy Rita was. The second time through the loop, when Rita joined us in the PT session, I'd only stared at her the way I had because I was a new recruit who didn't know any better. Now that I'd been through the loop enough times to call myself a real Jacket jockey, the gap between her and me seemed even greater. If I didn't have, literally, an infinite amount of time, I would have given up.

With a magnificent leap, Shasta plucked the silicon chip from my hand. "Hang on. Let me give you some papers for that axe before you go."

"Thanks."

She made to leave for the papers, then stopped. "Can I ask you something?"

"Shoot."

"Why do you have the number forty—seven written on your hand?"

I didn't know what to tell her. On the spot, I couldn't come up with a single believable reason a soldier would have to write a number on his hand.

"Oh, was that—I mean, I hope I didn't say anything I shouldn't have?"

I shook my head. "You know how people cross off days on a calendar? It's something like that."

"If it's important enough to write it on your hand, it must be something you don't want to forget. Forty—seven days till you go home, maybe? Or the days until your girlfriend's birthday?"

"If I had to put a name to it, I'd say it's the number of days since I died."

Shasta didn't say anything else.

I had my battle axe.

3

0600 Wake up.

0603 Ignore Yonabaru.

0610 Steal silicon chip from armory.

0630 Eat breakfast.

0730 Practice basic body movement.

0900 Visualize training during fucking PT.

1030 Borrow battle axe from Shasta.

1130 Eat lunch.

1300 Train with emphasis on correcting mistakes of previous battle. (In Jacket.)

1500 Meet Ferrell for live battle training. (In Jacket.)

1745 Eat dinner.

1830 Attend platoon meeting.

1900 Go to Yonabaru's party.

2000 Check Jacket.

2200 Go to bed.

0112 Help Yonabaru into his bunk.

This was more or less how I spent my day.

Outside of training, everything had become routine. I'd snuck past those sentries so many times I could do it with my eyes closed. I was starting to worry that I'd become a master thief before I made it as a professional soldier. Not that the ability to steal anything in a world that resets itself at the end of every other day would do much good.

The daily grind didn't change much from one pass through the loop to the next. If I strayed really far from the routine, I could force something different to happen, but if I didn't do anything it would play out the same as always. It was like everyone kept reading from the same script they'd been given the day before and ad—libbing was frowned upon.

It was 1136 and I was eating lunch in Cafeteria No. 2. The lunch lady served me the same amount of onion soup at the same time in the same bowl. I moved my arm to avoid the same splash as it traced the same arc through the air. Dodging calls from friends throughout the cafeteria, I sat in the same seat.

Rita was sitting three rows in front of me, her back to me as she ate. I hadn't chosen this time to eat because it coincided with her lunch; it just worked out that way. For no particular reason, I'd gotten used to watching her eat from this same angle each day.

Cafeteria No. 2 wasn't the sort of place a sergeant major like Rita would normally be expected to dine. It's not that the food was bad. It was pretty good, actually. But it didn't seem likely to impress someone who woke up in an officer's private sky lounge each morning and had half the base at her beck and call. I'd even heard that U.S. Special Forces had brought along their own cook, which only deepened the mystery of her presence. She could have swallowed a live rat and wouldn't have seemed more a snake in our midst. And so our savior ate alone. No one tried to talk to her, and the seats around her were always conspicuously empty.

For all her prowess in battle, Rita Vrataski ate like a child. She licked the soup from the corners of her mouth and drew pictures in her food with the tips of her chopsticks. Apparently chopsticks were something new to her. At 1143 she dropped a bean on her plate. It rolled, picking up speed, bouncing first to her tray, and then to the table. The bean flew through the air with a clockwise spin, careening toward the concrete floor. Every time, with lightning reflexes, Rita would extend her left hand, pluck the bean out of the air, and cram it into her mouth. All in under 0.11 seconds. If she'd lived back in the Old West, I imagine she'd have outdrawn Billy the Kid. If she'd been a samurai, she could have read every flash of Kojiro Sasaki's katana. Even when she was eating, the Full Metal Bitch was the Full Metal Bitch.

Today, like every day, she was trying to eat an umeboshi pickled plum. She must have confused it for an ordinary piece of dried fruit. After two or three attempts to pick it up with her chopsticks, she put the whole thing in her mouth.

Down the hatch.

Rita doubled over as though she'd taken a 57mm round right in the gut. Her back twitched. Her rust—colored hair looked like it was about to stand on end. But she didn't cough it back up. Tough as nails. She had swallowed the whole thing, pit and all. Rita gulped down a glass of water with a vengeance.

She must have been at least twenty—two years old, but you'd never guess it watching her. The sand—colored military uniforms didn't flatter her, but if you dressed her up in one of those frilly numbers the girls in town were wearing, she'd be pretty cute. At least I liked to imagine so.

What's wrong with this food? It tastes like paper.

"You enjoyin' yourself?" The voice came from above my head.

Holding my chopsticks without moving a muscle, I looked out the corner of my eye. A prehistoric face looked down at me from beneath a flattop haircut that leveled off about two meters above sea level. His features were more dinosaur than human. Definitely some velociraptor lurking in that family tree. My spirits fell when I saw the tattoo on his shoulder: a wolf wearing a crown. He was from the 4th, the company holding a grudge against us over that rugby game. I went back to lifting food to my mouth with machinelike regularity.

He raised his eyebrows, two plump bushes that would have been the envy of the caterpillar world. "I asked if you were enjoyin' yourself."

"How could I not enjoy myself in such fine company?"

"So how come you're gulpin' down your chow like it was something you found stuck on the end of a toilet brush?"

There were only a handful of soldiers sitting at the oversized tables in the cafeteria. The smell of something sweet wafted from the kitchen. Artificial light from the fluorescents in the ceiling washed over the fried shrimp heaped onto our heavy—duty plates.

If you had to categorize the food prepared in the UDF as good or bad, it was definitely good. There were only three things a soldier in the UDF did, after all: eat, sleep, and fight. If the food wasn't good you'd have a morale problem on your hands. And according to Yonabaru, the food on Flower Line Base was better than most.

The first time I tasted it, I thought it was delicious. That was about five subjective months ago now, maybe more. About a month into the loop, I started heavily seasoning my food. The intentionally mismatched condiments created a taste just horrible enough to remind me the food was there. And now, even that had stopped working. I don't care if you're eating food prepared by a four—star chef, after eighty days of the same thing, it all tastes alike. Probably because it is. By that point, it was hard for me to think of food as anything other than a source of energy.

"If the look on my face put you off your lunch, I apologize." No use trying to start a fight.

"Hold it. You tryin' to say this is my fault?"

"I don't have time for this."

I started shoveling the rest of the food on my plate into my mouth. He slammed a palm the size of a baseball glove down on the table. Onion soup splashed on my shirt, leaving a stain where the lunch lady's best efforts had failed. I didn't really mind. No matter how tough the stain was, it would be gone by tomorrow, and I wouldn't even have to wash it.

"Fourth Company grunts not worth the time of the mighty 17th, that it?"

I realized I'd unwittingly set a very annoying flag. This loop had been cursed from the get—go, really. I had accidentally killed Ferrell at the end of the last loop, and that had thrown everything out of whack this time around. From where I was, it hadn't even been five hours since he'd died vomiting blood. Of course I'd been KIA too, but that was to be expected. Ferrell had died trying to protect a fucking new recruit. It had been just the spur my migraine needed to kick into a gallop.

I'd planned to ease my mind by staring at Rita the way I always did, but my foul mood must have been more obvious than I realized. Clearly, it was bad enough to trigger something that hadn't happened in any of the previous loops.

I picked up my tray and stood.

The man's body was a wall of meat blocking my way. People started to gather, eager for a fight. It was 1148. If I lost time here, it would knock off my whole schedule. Just because I had all the time in the world didn't mean I had time to waste. Every hour lost meant I was an hour weaker, and it would catch up with me on the battlefield.

"You runnin', chickenshit?" His voice rang through the cafeteria.

Rita turned and glared at me. It was obvious she had just realized that the recruit who'd been staring at her during PT was eating in the same cafeteria. Something told me that if I returned her gaze, she'd help me the way she'd helped during PT—the way she'd helped in my first battle. Rita wasn't the type who could turn her back on someone in trouble. Her humanity was starting to show through. I wondered what her play would be. Maybe she'd start talking about green tea to cool this guy off. I laughed under my breath at the thought.

"What's so funny?"

Oops. "Nothing to do with you."

My eyes left Rita. The Keiji Kiriya standing in the cafeteria that day was no green recruit. My outward appearance may have been the same, but inside I was a hardened veteran of seventy—nine battles. I could deal with my own problems. I'd imposed on Rita once during PT and once more, indirectly, by smooth—talking my way into one of her spare battle axes. I didn't need to involve her a third time just to make it through lunch.

"You fuckin' with me?" He wasn't going to let this go.

"I'm sorry, but I really don't have time to waste screwing around."

"Whaddayou have hangin' between your legs? A pair of ping pong balls?"

"I never opened my sack to look. You?"

"Motherfucker!"

"That's enough!" A sultry voice cut short our argument. It wasn't Rita.

Salvation had come from an unexpected quarter. I turned to see a bronze—skinned woman standing beside the table. Her apron—bound breasts intruded rudely on a good 60 percent of my field of view. She stood between us holding a steaming fried shrimp with a pair of long cooking chopsticks. It was Rachel Kisaragi.

"I don't want any fighting in here. This is a dining room, not a boxing ring."

"Just tryin' to teach this recruit some manners."

"Well, school's over."

"Hey, you were the one complaining about how miserable he looked eating your food."

"Even so."

Rachel glanced at me. She hadn't shown the slightest hint of anger when I'd knocked over her cart of potatoes, so for this to have gotten to her, I must've been making quite the impression. A part of her probably wanted to embarrass anyone associated with Jin Yonabaru, widely regarded as the most annoying person on base. Not that I blamed her. I'd tripped the spilled potato flag, and now I'd tripped this one. The aftermath was my responsibility.

In a base dyed in coffee—stain splotches of desert earth tones, a woman like Rachel was bound to attract an admirer or two, but I'd never realized just how popular she was. This man hadn't picked a fight with me over some company rivalry. He was showing off.

"It's all right. I shouldn't have said anything." Rachel turned to face the looming giant and shooed me away with a gesture from behind her back. "Here. Have a shrimp. On the house."

"Save it for the penguins."

Rachel frowned.

"Doesn't this runt have anything to say for himself?" He reached one big, meaty arm over Rachel's shoulder and threw a jab.

I reacted instinctively. Subjective months in a Jacket had conditioned me to always keep my feet planted firmly on the ground. My right leg pivoted clockwise, my left counterclockwise, bringing me down into a battle stance. I parried his lunge with my left arm and raised the lunch tray in my right hand to keep the plates from falling, my center of gravity never leaving the middle of my body. Rachel dropped the fried shrimp. I snatched it from its graceful swim through the air before its tail could touch the ground.

The parry had thrown the guy off balance. He took two tottering steps forward, then a third, before tumbling into the lunch of the soldier sitting in front of him. Food and plates went flying with a spectacular crash. I stood, balancing my tray in one hand.

"You dropped this." I handed Rachel the fried shrimp. The onlookers broke into applause.

"Fucking piece of shit!" The guy was up already, his fist flying toward me. He was stubborn. I had a few moments to consider whether I should dodge his punch, launch a counterattack of my own, or turn tail and run.

Speaking from experience, a straight right from a man who'd been trained to pilot a Jacket definitely had some bite, but it didn't register compared to what a Mimic could do. This loser's punch would be strong enough to inflict pain, but not a mortal wound, unless he got extremely lucky. I watched as he put every ounce of his strength into the swing. His fist went sailing right past the tip of my nose. He was neglecting his footwork, leaving an opening. I didn't take it.

There went my first chance to kill you.

He recovered from the missed punch, his breath roaring in his nose. He started hopping around like a boxer. "Stop duckin' and fight like a man, bitch!"

Still haven't had enough?

The gap between our levels of skill was deeper than the Mariana Trench, but I guess that demonstration hadn't been enough for it to sink in. Poor bastard.

He came with a left hook. I moved back half a step.

Whoosh.

Another jab. I stepped back. I could have killed him twice now. There, my third chance. Now a fourth. He was leaving too many openings to count. I could have laid him out on the floor ten times over in a single minute. Lucky for him my job wasn't sending able—bodied Jacket jockeys to the infirmary, no matter how hotheaded they were. My job was sending Mimics to their own private part of Hell.

With each punch he threw and missed, the crowd cried out.

"Come on, you haven't even scratched 'im!"

"Stop prancin' around and take a hit already!"

"Punch him! Punch him! Punch him!"

"Watch the doors, don't want nobody breakin' this up! I got ten bucks on the big one!" Followed immediately by, "Twenty on the scrawny guy!" Hey, that's me! I thought as I dodged another punch. Then someone else cried out, "Where's my fried shrimp? I lost my fried shrimp!"

The wilder the crowd grew, the more effort he put behind his punches and the easier they were to avoid.

Ferrell had a saying: "Break down every second." The first time I heard it, I didn't understand what it meant. A second was a second. There wasn't anything to stretch or break down.

But it turns out that you can carve the perception of time into finer and finer pieces. If you flipped a switch in the back of your brain, you could watch a second go by like frames in a movie. Once you figure out what would be happening ten frames later, you could take whatever steps you needed to turn the situation to your advantage. All at a subconscious level. In battle, you couldn't count on anyone who didn't understand how to break down time.

Evading his attacks was easy. But I didn't want to trip any more unnecessary flags than I already had. I'd gone to a lot of trouble to shift my schedule, but if I kept this up the 17th would be in the cafeteria soon. I needed to bring this diversion to a close before they showed up.

I decided that taking one of his punches would waste the least amount of time. What I didn't count on was Rachel stepping in to try to stop him. She altered the course of his right punch just enough to change the hit that was supposed to glance off my cheek into one that landed square on my chin. A wave of heat spread from my teeth to the back of my nose. The dishes on my tray danced through the air. And there was Rita at the edge of my field of vision, leaving the cafeteria. I would make this pain a lesson for next time. I lost consciousness and wandered through muddy sleep…

When I came to, I found myself laid out across several pipe chairs pushed together into a makeshift bed. Something damp was on my head—a woman's handkerchief. A faint citrus smell hung in the air.

"Are you awake?"

I was in the kitchen. Above me an industrial ventilator hummed, siphoning steam from the room. Nearby, an olive green liquid simmered in an enormous pot like the cauldrons angry natives were supposed to use for boiling explorers up to their pith hats, except much larger. Next week's menu hung on the wall. Above the handwritten menu was the head of a man torn from a poster.

After staring at his bleached white teeth for what seemed an eternity, I finally recognized it. It was the head of the body builder from the poster in our barracks. I wondered how he had made it all the way from the men's barracks to his new wall, where he could spend his days smiling knowingly over the women who worked in the kitchen.

Rachel was peeling potatoes, tossing each spiral skin into an oversized basket that matched the scale of the pot. These were the same potatoes that had come raining down on my head my fourth time through the loop. I'd eaten the goddamned mashed potatoes she was making seventy—nine times now. There weren't any other workers in the kitchen aside from Rachel. She must have prepared the meals for all these men on her own.

Sitting up, I bit down on the air a few times to test my jaw. That punch had caught me at just the right angle. Things didn't seem to be lining up the way they should. Rachel caught sight of me.

"Sorry about that. He's really not such a bad guy."

"I know."

She smiled. "You're more mature than you look."

"Not mature enough to stay out of trouble, apparently," I replied with a shrug.

People were always a little high—strung the day before a battle.

And guys were always looking for an opportunity to look good in front of a knockout like Rachel. The deck was definitely stacked against me, though I'm sure the face I'd been making hadn't helped the situation any.

"What are you, a pacifist? Rare breed in these parts."

"I like to save it for the battlefield."

"That explains it."

"Explains what?"

"Why you were holding back. You're obviously the better fighter." Rachel's eyes stared down at me intently. She was tall for a woman. Flower Line Base had been built three years ago. If she'd come to the base immediately after getting her nutritionist's license, that would make her at least four years older than me. But she sure didn't look it. And it wasn't that she went out of her way to make herself look young. The glow of her bronze skin and her warm smile were as natural as they came. She reminded me of the librarian I'd fallen for in high school. The same smile that had stolen my heart and sent me happily to work airing out the library that hot summer so long ago.

"Our lives should be written in stone. Paper is too temporary— too easy to rewrite." Thoughts like that had been on my mind a lot lately.

"That's an odd thing to say."

"Maybe."

"You seeing anyone?"

I looked at her. Green eyes. "No."

"I'm free tonight." Then she added hastily, "Don't get the wrong idea. I don't say that sort of thing to just anyone."

That much I knew. She'd brushed Yonabaru aside readily enough. For an entire week I'd heard complaint after complaint about the hottest woman whose knees were locked together with the biggest padlock. "It's a travesty in this day and age," he'd tell me. And I had a feeling it wasn't special treatment just because Yonabaru was who he was.

"What time is it?" I still had a schedule to keep.

"Almost three o'clock. You were out for about three hours."

1500. I was supposed to be training with Ferrell. I had to make right what I'd done in the last loop—the move that had killed Ferrell and the lieutenant. They'd died protecting me because I was showboating. I could still see the charred, smoldering family pictures Ferrell had decorated the inside of his Jacket with fluttering in the wind. A shot of him smiling under a bright Brazilian sun surrounded by brothers and sisters burned into my mind.

I didn't possess any extraordinary talents that set me apart from my peers. I was just a soldier. There were things I could do, and things I couldn't. If I practiced, in time I could change some of those things I couldn't do into things I could. I wouldn't let my overconfidence kill the people who'd saved my life time and time again.

Under other circumstances I might have accepted her invitation.

"Sorry, but I'm not the guy you're looking for."

I turned and started running toward the training field where Sergeant Ferrell was waiting, reeking of sweat and pumped with adrenaline.

"Asshole!"

I didn't stop to return the compliment.

4

Attempt #99:

KIA forty—five minutes from start of battle.

5

Attempt #110:

They break through our line. Yonabaru is the weak link.

"Keiji… that mystery novel. It was that guy eating the pudding who…"

With those words, he dies.

KIA fifty—seven minutes from start of battle.

6

Attempt #123:

The migraines that had started after about fifty loops are getting worse. I don't know what's causing them. The painkillers the doctors give me don't work at all. The prospect of these headaches accompanying me into every battle from here on out isn't doing much for my morale.

KIA sixty—one minutes from start of battle.

7

Attempt #154:

Lose consciousness eighty minutes from start of battle. I don't die, but I'm still caught in the loop. Whatever. If that's how it's gonna be, that's how it's gonna be.

8

Attempt #158:

I've finally mastered the tungsten carbide battle axe. I can rip through a Mimic's endoskeleton with a flick of the wrist.

To defeat resilient foes, mankind developed blades that vibrate at ultra—high frequencies, pile drivers that fire spikes at velocities of fifteen hundred meters per second, and explosive melee weapons that utilized the Monroe Effect. But projectile weapons ran out of ammo. They jammed. They broke down. If you struck a slender blade at the wrong angle, it would shatter. And so Rita Vrataski reintroduced war to the simple, yet highly effective, axe.

It was an elegant solution. Every last kilogram—meter per second of momentum generated by the Jacket's actuators was converted to pure destructive force. The axe might bend or chip, but its utility as a weapon would be undiminished. In battle, weapons you could use to bludgeon your enemy were more reliable. Weapons that had been honed to a fine edge, such as the katana, would cut so deep they'd get wedged in your enemy's body and you couldn't pull them out. There were even stories of warriors who dulled their blades with a stone before battle to prevent that from happening. Rita's axe had proven its worth time and again.

My platoon crawled toward the northern tip of Kotoiushi Island, Jackets in sleep mode. It was five minutes before our platoon commander would give the signal for the start of the battle. No matter how many times I experienced it, this was when my tension ran highest. I could see why Yonabaru let his mouth run with whatever bullshit came out. Ferrell just let our chatter wash over him.

"I'm tellin' ya, you gotta hook yourself up with some pussy. If you wait until you're strapped into one of these Jackets, it's too late."

"Yeah."

"What about Mad Wargarita? Y'all were talkin' during PT, right? You'd tap that, I know you would."

"Yeah."

"You're a cool customer."

"Yeah?"

"You haven't even popped your cherry, and you're calm as a fuckin' whore. My first time I had butterflies beatin' up a tornado in my stomach."

"It's like a standardized test."

"What're you talkin' about?"

"Didn't you take those in high school?"

"Dude, you don't expect me to remember high school, do ya?"

"Yeah." I'd managed to throw Yonabaru off what passed for his train of thought, but my mind was on autopilot. "Yeah."

"Yeah what? I didn't even say anything." Yonabaru's voice reached me through a fog.

I felt like I'd been fighting in this same spot for a hundred years. Half a year ago I was a kid in high school. I couldn't have cared less about a war that was slowly drowning the earth in its own blood. I'd lived in a world of peace, one filled with family and friends. I never imagined I'd trade classrooms and the soccer field for a war zone.

"You've been actin' funny since yesterday."

"Yeah?"

"Dude, don't go losin' it on us. Two in a row from the same platoon—how would that look? And I been meanin' to ask: what the fuck is that hunk of metal you're carrying? And what the fuck do you plan on doin' with it? Tryin' to assert your ind'viduality? Workin' on an art project?"

"It's for crushing."

"Crushin' what?"

"The enemy, mostly."

"You get up close, that's what your pile driver's for. You gonna tell me you're better off with an axe? Maybe we should fill our platoon with lumberjacks. Hi ho, hi ho!"

"That was the dwarves."

"Good point. Well made. Point for you."

Ferrell jumped into our conversation. "Hey, I don't know where he learned how, but he sure as hell can use that thing. But Kiriya, only use it once they're up in your face and you don't have a choice. Don't go rushin' up askin' for it. Modern warfare is still waged with bullets. Try not to forget."

"Yessir."

"Yonabaru."

I guess the sergeant felt he needed to spread the attention around.

"Yeah?"

"Just… do what you always do."

"What the hell, Sarge? Keiji gets a pep talk and I get that? A delicate soul like me needs some inspiring words of encouragement, too."

"I might as well encourage my rifle for all the good it would do."

"You know what this is? Discrimination, that's what it is!"

"Every now and again you get me thinking, Yonabaru," Ferrell said, his voice tinny over the link. "I'd give my pension to the man who invents a way to fasten your—shit, it's started! Don't get your balls blown off, gents!"

I sprang into battle, Doppler cranked, the usual buzzing in my helmet. Just like the other moments.

There. A target.

I fired. I ducked. A javelin whizzed past my head.

"Who's up there? You're too far forward! You wanna get yourself killed?"

I pretended to follow the platoon leader's orders. I don't care how many lives you have, if you followed the orders of every officer fresh from the academy, you'd end up getting bored of dying.

Thunder erupted from the shells crisscrossing the sky. I wiped sand from my helmet. I glanced at Ferrell and nodded. It only took an instant for him to realize the suppressing fire I'd just laid down had thwarted an enemy ambush. Somewhere deep in Ferrell's gut, his instincts were telling him that this recruit named Keiji Kiriya, who'd never set foot in battle in his life, was a soldier he could use. He was able to see past the recklessness of what I'd just done. It was that sort of adaptability that had kept him alive for twenty years.

To be honest, Ferrell was the only man in the platoon I could use. The other soldiers had only seen two or three battles at most. Even the ones who'd survived in the past hadn't ever gotten killed. You can't learn from your mistakes when they kill you. These greenhorns didn't know what it was to walk the razor's edge between life and death. They didn't know that the line dividing the two, the borderland piled high with corpses, was the easiest place to survive. The fear that permeated every fiber of my being was relentless, it was cruel, and it was my best hope for getting through this.

That was the only way to fight the Mimics. I didn't know shit about any other wars, and frankly, I didn't care to. My enemy was humanity's enemy. The rest didn't matter.

The fear never left me. My body trembled with it. When I sensed the presence of an enemy just outside my field of vision, I could feel it crawling along my spine. Who had told me that fear had a way of seeping into your body? Had it been the platoon leader? Or was it Ferrell? Maybe it was something I'd heard during training.

But even as the fear racks my body, it soothes me, comforts me. Soldiers who get washed away in a rush of adrenaline don't survive. In war, fear is the woman your mother warned you about. You knew she was no good for you, but you couldn't shake her. You had to find a way to get along, because she wasn't going anywhere.

The 17th Company of the 3rd Battalion, 12th Regiment, 301st Armored Infantry Division was cannon fodder. If the frontal assault succeeded, the Mimics fleeing the siege would wash over us like a torrent of water surging through a dry gully. If it failed, we'd be a lone platoon in the middle of a sea of hostiles. Either way our odds of survival were slim. The platoon commander knew it, and Sergeant Ferrell knew it. The whole company was pieced together from soldiers who'd survived the slaughter at Okinawa. Who better to give this shit assignment to? In an operation involving twenty—five thousand Jackets, if a lone company of 146 men got wiped out, it wouldn't even rate a memo on the desk of the brass in the Defense Ministry. We were the sacrificial lambs whose blood greased the wheels of war's machinery.

Of course, there were only three kinds of battle to begin with: fucked up, seriously fucked up, and fucked up beyond all recognition. No use panicking about it. There'd be plenty of chaos to go around. Same Jackets. Same enemy. Same buddies. Same me, same muscles that weren't ready for what I was asking of them screaming in protest.

My body never changed, but the OS that ran it had seen a total overhaul. I'd started as a green recruit, a paper doll swept on the winds of war. I'd become a veteran who bent the war to my will. I bore the burden of endless battle like the killing machine I'd become—a machine with blood and nerves in place of oil and wires. A machine doesn't get distracted. A machine doesn't cry. A machine wears the same bitter smile day in, day out. It reads the battle as it unfolds. Its eyes scan for the next enemy before it's finished killing the first, and its mind is already thinking about the third. It wasn't lucky, and it wasn't unlucky. It just was. So I kept fighting. If this was going to go on forever, it would go on forever.

Shoot. Run. Plant one foot, then the other. Keep moving.

A javelin tore through the air I had occupied only a tenth of a second before. It dug into the ground before detonating, blasting dirt and sand into the air. I'd caught a break. The enemy couldn't see through the shower of falling earth—I could. There. One, two, three. I took down the Mimics through the improvised curtain of dust.

I accidentally kicked one of my buddies—the sort of kick you used to break down a door when both of your hands were full. I had a gun in my left hand and a battle axe in my right. It was a good thing God had given us two arms and legs. If I only had three appendages to work with, I wouldn't be able to help this soldier out, whoever he was.

As I turned, I cut down another Mimic with a single blow. I ran up to the fallen soldier. He had a wolf wearing a crown painted on his armor—4th Company. If they were here, that meant we'd met up with the main assault force. The line was giving way.

The soldier's shoulders were trembling. He was in shock. Whether it was the Mimics or my kick that had sent him into it, I couldn't tell. He was oblivious to the world around him. If I left him there, he'd be a corpse inside of three minutes.

I put my hand on his shoulder plate and established a contact comm.

"You remember how many points we beat you by in that game?"

He didn't answer. "You know, the one you lost to 17th Company."

"Wh… what?" The words rasped in his throat.

"The rugby game. Don't you remember? It was some kind of intramural record, so I figure we musta beat you by at least ten, twenty points."

I realized what I was doing.

"You know, it's funny, me talkin' to you like this. Hey, you don't think she'd charge me for stealin' her idea, do you? It's not like she has a patent on it or anything."

"What? What are you talkin' about?"

"You'll be fine." He was snapping out of it pretty quick—he was no rookie like I'd been. I slapped him on the back. "You owe me, 4th Company. What's your name?"

"Kogoro Murata, and I don't owe you shit."

"Keiji Kiriya."

"That's some attitude you got. Not sure I like it."

"The feeling's mutual. Let's hope our luck holds."

We bumped fists and parted ways.

I swept my head from left to right. I ran. I pulled my trigger. My body had long since passed exhaustion, but a part of me maintained a heightened sense of alertness impossible under normal circumstances. My mind was a conveyer belt sorting good apples from the bad—any piece of information that wasn't vital to survival was automatically shut out.

I saw Rita Vrataski. The rumble of an explosion heralded her arrival. A laser—guided bomb fell from a plane circling overhead, far out of reach of the enemy. It covered the distance between us in under twenty seconds, detonating precisely where the Valkyrie had called it down.

Rita was headed for the spot the bomb had struck, a shattered mix of debris, equal parts living and dead. Creatures streamed from the crater toward her swinging battle axe.

Even in the midst of battle, seeing Rita's red Jacket stirred something in me. Her mere presence had breathed new life into our broken line. Her skill was peerless, the product of U.S. Special Forces' efforts to make a soldier to end all soldiers. But it was more than that. She really was our savior.

Just a glimpse of her Jacket on the battlefield would drive soldiers to give another ten percent, even if they didn't have it left to spare. I'm sure there were men who'd see her and fall in love, like a man and a woman on a sinking ship spying one another between waves. Death could come at any moment on the battlefield, so why not? The wise guys who'd named her Full Metal Bitch had really fished around for that one.

I didn't think they had it right. Or maybe I was starting to feel something for Rita Vrataski myself. That suited me fine. Trapped in this fucking loop, I had no hope of falling in love. Even if I found someone who could love me in one short day, she'd be gone the next. The loop robbed me of every moment I spent with someone.

Rita had saved me once, long ago. She had kept me calm with her random talk of green tea. She had told me she'd stay with me until I died. What better target for my unrequited love than our savior herself?

My OS continued to respond automatically, despite the distraction my emotions were giving it. My body twisted. I planted a foot on the ground. I didn't have to think about the battle unfolding before my eyes. Thought only got in the way. Deciding which way to move, and how, were things you did in training. If you paused to think in battle, Death would be there waiting, ready to swing his scythe.

I fought on.

It was seventy—two minutes since the battle had started. Tanaka, Maie, Ube, and Nijou were all KIA. Four dead, seven wounded, and zero missing. Nijou had hung the poster of the swimsuit model on the wall. Maie was from somewhere deep inside China. He never said a word. I didn't know much about the other two. I etched the faces of the men I'd let die deep in my mind. In a few hours their pain would be gone, but I would remember. Like a thorn in my heart it tormented me, toughened me for the next battle.

Somehow our platoon had held together. I could hear the blades of the choppers in the distance. They hadn't been shot out of the sky. This was the best attempt yet. The platoon leader had no words for the recruit who'd taken matters into his own hands. Every now and then Ferrell would fire a few rounds my way to help out.

And then I saw it—the Mimic I'd fought in the first battle that had trapped me in this fucking loop. I'd fired three pile driver rounds into it that day. I don't know how, but I knew it was the one. On the outside it was the same bloated frog corpse as all the rest, but here on my 157th pass through the loop, I could still recognize the Mimic that had killed me the first time.

It had to die with extreme prejudice.

Somehow I knew that if I could kill it, I'd pass some sort of boundary. It may not break this loop of battle after battle after battle, but something would change, however small. I was sure of it.

Stay right there. I'm comin' for ya.

Speaking of crossing boundaries, I still hadn't read any further in that mystery novel. I don't know why that occurred to me then, but it did. I'd spent some of my last precious hours reading that book. I'd stopped just as the detective was about to reveal whodunit. I'd been so preoccupied with training I hadn't given it another thought. It must have been nearly a year now. Maybe it was time I got around to finishing that book. If I killed this Mimic and made it to the next level, I'd start on that last chapter.

I readied my battle axe. Caution to the wind, I charged.

Static crackled in my headphones. Someone was talking to me. A woman. It was our savior, the Full Metal Bitch, Valkyrie reborn, Mad Wargarita—Rita Vrataski.

"How many loops is this for you?"