All You Need Is Kill

1

A brilliant sun traced crisp shadows on the ground. The air was so clean you could have gotten a clear sniper shot from kilometers away. Above the field, the 17th Company's flag snapped in a moist southerly breeze blowing off the Pacific.

The sea air held a scent that snaked its way down your nose and tickled your tongue on its way to your throat. Rita knitted her brow. It wasn't the stench of a Mimic. More like the slightly fishy fragrance you got from those bowls of nuoc mam sauce.

Wartime tensions and the constant threat of death aside, the Far East really wasn't so bad. The coastline, so difficult to defend, afforded beautiful sunsets. The air and water were clean. If Rita, who had about one tenth the refinement and culture of an average individual, thought it was wonderful here, an actual tourist might have considered it paradise. If there were one mark against it, it was the cloying humidity.

The weather that night would be perfect for an air strike. Once the sun had set, bombers laden with GPS—guided munitions would take to the sky in swarms to blast the island into a lifeless moonscape before the next morning's ground assault. The beautiful atoll and the flora and fauna that called it home would all share the same fate as the enemy, if everything went according to plan.

"Beautiful day, don't you think, Major Vrataski?" An old film camera dangled from the man's thick neck, a redwood trunk by comparison to the average Jacket jockey's beech—tree. Rita casually ignored him.

"Great lighting. Days like today can make even a steel—and—rivets airplane look like a da Vinci."

Rita snorted. "You doing fine art photography now?"

"That's hardly any way to speak to the only embedded photojournalist in the Japan expedition. I take great pride in the role I play conveying the truths of this war to the public. Of course, 90 percent of the truth is lighting."

"Pretty slick talk. They must love you over at PR. How many tongues you figure you have?"

"Only the one the Lord saw fit to bestow Americans with. Though I hear Russians and Cretans have two."

"Well I hear there's a Japanese god who pulls out the tongues of liars. Don't do anything to get yours in trouble."

"Perish the thought."

The corner of the training field Rita and the photographer were standing on caught the full force of the wind coming off the ocean. In the middle of the giant field, 146 men from the 17th Company of the 301st Japanese Armored Infantry Division were frozen in neat rows along the ground. It was a kind of training called iso push—ups. Rita hadn't seen it before.

The rest of Rita's squad stood a short distance away, their thick, bristly arms jutting out before them. They were busy doing what soldiers did best, which was mocking those less fortunate than themselves. Maybe this is how they practice bowing? Hey, samurai! Try picking up a sword after an hour of that!

None of Rita's squadmates would go near her within thirty hours of an attack. It was an unspoken rule. The only people who dared approach her were a Native American engineer who couldn't hardly see straight and the photographer, Ralph Murdoch.

"They don't move at all?" Rita seemed doubtful.

"No, they just hold that position."

"I don't know if I'd call it samurai training. Looks more like yoga if you ask me."

"Is it odd to find similarities between Indian mysticism and Japanese tradition?"

"Ninety—eight!"

"Ninety—eight!"

"Ninety—nine!"

"Ninety—nine!"

Staring into the ground like farmers watching rice grow, the soldiers barked in time with the drill sergeant. The shouts of the 146 men echoed in Rita's skull. A familiar migraine sent wires of pain through her head. This was a bad one.

"Another headache?"

"None of your business."

"I don't see how a platoon worth of doctors can't find a cure for one headache."

"Neither do I. Why don't you try to find out?" she snapped.

"They keep those guys on a pretty short leash. I can't even get an interview."

Murdoch raised his camera. It wasn't clear what he intended to do with the images of the spectacle unfolding in perfect stillness before him. Maybe sell them to a tabloid with nothing better to print.

"I'm not sure that's in very good taste." Rita didn't know a single soldier on the field, but she didn't have to know them to like them better than Murdoch.

"Pictures are neither tasteful nor distasteful. If you click on a link and a picture of a corpse pops up, you might have grounds for a lawsuit. If that same picture appears on the homepage of the New York Times, it could win a Pulitzer Prize."

"This is different."

"Is it?"

"You're the one who broke into the data processing center. If it weren't for your slip—up, these men wouldn't be here being punished, and you wouldn't be here taking pictures of them. I'd say that qualifies as distasteful."

"Not so fast. I've been wrongly accused." The sound of his camera shutter grew more frequent, masking their conversation.

"Security here is lax compared to central command. I don't know what you were trying to dig up out here in the boondocks, but don't hurt anyone else doing it."

"So you're onto me."

"I'd just hate to see the censors come down on you right when you land your big scoop."

"The government can tell us any truths they please. But there are truths, and there are truths," Murdoch said. "It's up to the people to decide which is which. Even if it's something the government doesn't want reported."

"How egotistical."

"Name a good journalist who isn't. You have to be to find a story. Do you know any Dreamers?"

"I'm not interested in feed religions."

"Did you know the Mimics went on the move at almost exactly the same time you started that big operation up in Florida?"

The Dreamers were a pacifist group—civilian, of course. The emergence of the Mimics had had a tremendous impact on marine ecosystems. Organizations that had called for the protection of dolphins, whales, and other marine mammals died out. The Dreamers picked up where they left off.

Dreamers believed the Mimics were intelligent, and they insisted it was humanity's failure to communicate with them that had led to this war. They reasoned that if Mimics could evolve so quickly into such potent weapons, with patience, they could develop the means to communicate as well. The Dreamers had begun to take in members of a war—weary public who believed humanity could never triumph over the Mimics, and in the past two to three years the size of the movement had ballooned.

"I interviewed a few before coming to Japan," Murdoch continued.

"Sounds like hard work."

"They all have the same dream on the same day. In that dream, humanity falls to the Mimics. They think it's some sort of message they're trying to send us. Not that you needed me to tell you that." Murdoch licked his lips. His tongue was too small for his body, giving the distinct impression of a mollusk. "I did a little digging, and it turns out there are particularly high concentrations of these dreams the days before U.S. Spec Ops launch major attacks. And over the past few years, more and more people have been having the dream. It hasn't been made public, but some of these people are even in the military."

"You believe whatever these feed jobs tell you? Listen to them long enough and they'd have you thinking sea monkeys were regular Einsteins."

"Academic circles are already discussing the possibility of Mimic intelligence. And if they are, it's not far—fetched to think they would try to communicate."

"You shouldn't assume everything you don't understand is a message," Rita said. She snorted. "Keep on like that, and next thing you'll be telling me you've found signs of intelligence in our government, and we both know that's never going to happen."

"Very funny. But there's a science here you can't ignore. Each step up the evolutionary ladder—from single—celled organism, to cold—blooded animal, to warm—blooded animal—has seen a tenfold increase in energy consumption." Ralph licked his lips again. "If you look at the amount of energy a human in modern society consumes, it's ten times greater than that of a warm—blooded animal of similar size. Yet Mimics, which are supposed to be a cold—blooded animal, consume the same amount of energy as humans."

"That supposed to mean they're higher than us on the ladder? That's quite a theory. You should have it published."

"I seem to recall you saying something about having dreams."

"Sure I have dreams. Ordinary dreams."

To Rita, looking for meaning in dreams was a waste of time. A nightmare was a nightmare. And the time loops she'd stumbled into in the course of the war, well, they were something else entirely. "We have an attack coming up tomorrow. Did any of the people you interviewed get a message?"

"Absolutely. I called L.A. this morning to confirm it. All three had had the dream."

"Now I know it's not true. That's impossible."

"How would you know?"

"This is only the first time through today."

"That again? How can a day have a first time or a second time?"

"Just hope you never find out."

Murdoch made a show of shrugging. Rita returned her gaze to the unlucky men on the field.

Jacket jockeys didn't have much use for muscle. Endurance was the order of the day, not stamina—draining burst power. To build their endurance, Rita's squad practiced a standing technique from kung—fu known as ma bu. Ma bu consisted of spreading your legs as though you were straddling a horse and maintaining the position for an extended period of time. In addition to strengthening leg muscle, it was an extremely effective way to improve balance.

Rita wasn't sure what benefit, if any, the iso push—ups were supposed to have. It looked more like punishment, plain and simple. The Japanese soldiers, packed together like sardines in a can, remained frozen in that one position. For them, this probably ranked among the worst experiences of their lives. Even so, Rita envied them this simple memory. Rita hadn't shared that sort of throwaway experience with anyone in a long time.

The stifling wind tugged at her rust—red hair. Her bangs, still too long no matter how many times she cut them, made her forehead itch.

This was the world as it was at the start of the loop. What happened here only Rita would remember. The sweat of the Japanese soldiers, the whoops and jeers of the U.S. Special Forces— it would all be gone without a trace.

Maybe it would have been best not to think about it, but watching these soldiers training the day before an attack, sweat—soaked shirts sticking to their skin in the damp air, she felt sorry for them. In a way, this was her fault for bringing Murdoch along with her.

Rita decided to find a way to shorten the PT and put an end to this seemingly pointless exercise. So what if it instilled a samurai fighting spirit? They'd still wet themselves the first time they ran into a Mimic assault. She wanted to stop it, even if it was a sentimental gesture that no one but herself would ever appreciate.

Surveying the training field, Rita chanced upon a pair of defiant eyes staring directly at her. She was accustomed to being looked on with awe, admiration, even fear, but she'd never seen this: a look filled with such unbridled hatred from a complete stranger. If a person could shoot lasers from their eyes, Rita would have been baked crisper than a Thanksgiving turkey in about three seconds.

She had only met one other man whose eyes even approached the same intensity. Arthur Hendricks's deep blue eyes had known no fear. Rita had killed him, and now those blue eyes were buried deep in the cold earth.

Judging by his muscles, the soldier staring at her was a rookie not long out of boot camp. Nothing like Hendricks. He had been an American, a lieutenant, and the commander of the U.S. Special Forces squad.

The color of this soldier's eyes was different. His hair, too. His face and body weren't even close. Still, there was something about this Asian soldier that Rita Vrataski liked.

2

Rita had often wondered what the world would be like if there were a machine that could definitively measure the sum of a person's potential.

If DNA determined a person's height or the shape of their face, why not their less obvious traits too? Our fathers and mothers, grandfathers and grandmothers—ultimately every individual was the product of the blood that flowed in the veins of those who came before. An impartial machine could read that information and assign a value to it, as simple as measuring height or weight.

What if someone who had the potential to discover a formula to unlock the mysteries of the universe wanted to become a pulp fiction writer? What if someone who had the potential to create unparalleled gastronomic delicacies had his heart set on civil engineering? There is what we desire to do, and what we are able to do. When those two things don't coincide, which path should we pursue to find happiness?

When Rita was young, she had a gift for two things: playing horseshoes and pretending to cry. The thought that her DNA contained the potential to become a great warrior couldn't have been further from her mind.

Before she lost her parents when she was fifteen, she was an ordinary kid who didn't like her carrot—top hair. She wasn't particularly good at sports, and her grades in junior high school were average. There was nothing about her dislike of bell peppers and celery that set her apart. Only her ability to feign crying was truly exceptional. She couldn't fool her mother, whose eagle eyes saw through her every ruse, but with anyone else she'd have them eating out of her hand after a few seconds of waterworks. Rita's only other distinguishing feature was the red hair she'd inherited from her grandmother. Everything else about her was exactly like any other of over three hundred million Americans.

Her family lived in Pittsfield, a small town just east of the Mississippi River. Not the Pittsfield in Florida, not the Pittsfield in Massachusetts, but the Pittsfield in Illinois. Her father was the youngest child in a family of martial artists—mostly jujutsu. But Rita didn't want to go to a military academy or play sports. She wanted to stay at home and raise pigs.

With the exception of the young men who signed up with the UDF, life for the people of Pittsfield was peaceful. It was an easy place to forget that humanity was in the middle of a war against a strange and terrible foe.

Rita didn't mind living in a small town and never seeing anyone but the same four thousand people or so. Listening to the squeals of the pigs day in and day out could get a little tiresome, but the air was clean and the sky wide. She always had a secret spot where she could go to daydream and look for four—leaf clovers.

An old retired trader had a small general store in town. He sold everything from foodstuffs and hardware to little silver crosses that were supposed to keep the Mimics away. He carried all—natural coffee beans you couldn't find anyplace else.

The Mimic attacks had turned most of the arable land in developing countries to desert, leaving luxury foods like natural coffee, tea, and tobacco extremely difficult to come by. They'd been replaced with substitutes or artificially flavored tastealikes that usually failed.

Rita's town was one of many attempting to provide the produce and livestock needed by a hungry nation and its army.

The first victims of the Mimic attacks were also the most vulnerable: the poorest regions of Africa and South America. The archipelagos of Southeast Asia. Countries that lacked the means to defend themselves watched as the encroaching desert devoured their land. People abandoned the cultivation of cash crops—the coffee, tea, tobacco, and spices coveted in wealthier nations—and began growing staples, beans and sorghum, anything to stave off starvation. Developed nations had generally been able to stop the Mimic advance at the coastline, but much of the produce they had taken for granted disappeared from markets and store shelves overnight.

Rita's father, who had grown up in a world where even Midwesterners could have fresh sushi every day, was, it is no exaggeration to say, a coffee addict. He didn't smoke or drink—coffee was his vice. Often he would take Rita by the hand and sneak off with her to the old man's store when Rita's mother wasn't watching.

The old man had skin of bronze and a bushy white beard.

When he wasn't telling stories, he chewed the stem of his hookah hose between puffs. He spent his days surrounded by exotic goods from countries most people had never heard of. There were small animals wrought in silver. Grotesque dolls. Totem poles carved with the faces of birds or stranger beasts. The air of the shop was a heady mix of the old man's smoke, untold spices, and all—natural coffee beans still carrying a hint of the rich soil in which they grew.

"These beans are from Chile. These here are from Malawi, in Africa. And these traveled all the way down the Silk Road from Vietnam to Europe," he'd tell Rita. The beans all looked the same to her, but she would point, and the old man would rattle off their pedigrees.

"Got any Tanzanian in today?" Her father was well versed in coffee.

"What, you finish the last batch already?"

"Now you're starting to sound like my wife. What can I say? They're my favorite."

"How about these—now these are really something. Premium Kona coffee grown on the Big Island of Hawaii. Seldom find these even in New York or Washington. Just smell that aroma!"

The wrinkles on the old man's head deepened into creases as he smiled. Rita's father crossed his arms, clearly impressed. He was enjoying this difficult dilemma. The countertop was slightly higher than Rita's head, so she had to stand on tiptoe to get a good look.

"They got Hawaii. I saw it on TV."

"You're certainly well informed, young lady."

"You shouldn't make fun. Kids watch way more news than grownups do. All they care about is baseball and football."

"You're certainly right about that." The old man stroked his forehead. "Yes, this is the last of it. The last Kona coffee on the face of the earth. Once it's gone, it's gone."

"Where'd you get ahold of something like that?"

"That, my dear, is a secret."

The hempen bag was packed with cream—colored beans. They were slightly more round than most coffee beans, but they looked ordinary in all other respects.

Rita picked up one of the beans and inspected it. The unroasted specimen was cool and pleasant to the touch. She imagined the beans basking in the sun of an azure sky that spread all the way to the horizon. Her father had told her about the skies over the islands. Rita didn't mind that the skies in Pittsfield were a thin and watery blue, but just once she wanted to see the skies that had filled those beans with the warmth of the sun.

"Do you like coffee, young lady?"

"Not really. It's not sweet. I prefer chocolate."

"Pity."

"It smells nice, though. And these ones definitely smell best of all," Rita said.

"Ah, then there's hope for you yet. What do you say, care to take over my shop when I retire?"

Rita's father, who until then hadn't looked up from the coffee beans, interrupted. "Don't put any ideas in her head. We need someone to carry on the farm, and she's all we've got."

"Then maybe she can find a promising young boy or girl for me to pass on my shop to, eh?"

"I don't know, I'll think about it," Rita answered with indifference.

Her father set down the bag of coffee he'd been admiring and kneeled to look Rita in the eye.

"I thought you wanted to help out on the farm?"

The old man hastily interjected, "Let the child make up her own mind. It's still a free country."

A light flared in the young Rita's eyes. "That's right, Dad. I get to choose, right? Well, as long as they don't make me join the army."

"Don't like the army either, eh? The UDF isn't all bad, you know."

Rita's father scowled. "This is my daughter you're talking to."

"But anyone can enlist once they turn eighteen. We all have the right to defend our country, son and daughter alike. It's quite the opportunity."

"I'm just not sure I want my daughter in the military."

"Well I don't wanna join the army in the first place, Dad."

"Oh, why's that?" A look of genuine curiosity crossed the old man's face.

"You can't eat Mimics. I read so in a book. And you shouldn't kill animals you can't eat just for the sake of killing them. Our teachers and our pastor and everyone says so."

"You're going to be quite a handful when you grow up, aren't you."

"I just wanna be like everybody else."

Rita's father and the old man looked at each other and shared a knowing chuckle. Rita didn't understand what was so funny.

Four years later, the Mimics would attack Pittsfield. The raid came in the middle of an unusually harsh winter. Snow fell faster than it could be cleared from the streets. The city was frozen to a halt.

No one knew this at the time, but Mimics send out something akin to a scouting party before an attack, a small, fast—moving group whose purpose is to advance as far as possible then return with information for the others. That January, three Mimics had slipped past the UDF quarantine and made their way up the Mississippi River undetected.

If the townspeople hadn't noticed something suspicious moving in the shadows, it's doubtful the scouting party would have taken particular notice of Pittsfield, with its livestock and acres of farmland. As it turned out, the shot fired from the hunting rifle of the night watch led to a massacre.

The state guard was immobilized by the snow. It would be hours before a UDF platoon could be lifted in by helicopter. By then, half the buildings in town had burnt to the ground and one out of three of the town's fifteen hundred residents had been killed. The mayor, the preacher, and the old man from the general store were among the dead.

Men who had chosen to grow corn rather than join the army died fighting to defend their families. Small arms were no use against Mimics. Bullets only glanced off their bodies. Mimic javelins ripped through the walls of wooden and even brick houses with ease.

In the end, a ragged bunch of townspeople defeated the three Mimics with their bare hands. They waited until the Mimics were about to fire before rushing them, knocking the creatures into each others' javelins. They killed two of the Mimics this way, and drove off the third.

Dying, Rita's mother sheltered her daughter in her arms. Rita watched in the snow as her father fought and was killed. Smoke spiraled up from the flames. Brilliant cinders flitted up into the night. The sky glowed blood red.

From beneath her mother's body, already beginning to grow cold, Rita considered. Her mother, a devout Christian, had told her that pretending to cry was a lie, and that if she lied, when God judged her immortal soul she wouldn't be allowed into Heaven. When her mother told Rita that if Mimics didn't lie they could get into Heaven, the girl had grown angry. Mimics weren't even from Earth. They didn't have souls, did they? If they did, and they really did go to Heaven, Rita wondered whether people and Mimics would fight up there. Maybe that's what awaited her parents.

The government sent Rita to live with some distant relatives. She stole a passport from a refugee three years older than she who lived in a run—down apartment next door and headed for the UDF recruiting office.

All over the country, people were getting tired of the war. The UDF needed all the soldiers they could get for the front lines.

Provided the applicant hadn't committed a particularly heinous crime, the army wouldn't turn anyone away. Legally, Rita wasn't old enough to enlist, but the recruiting officer barely even glanced at her purloined passport before handing her a contract.

The army granted people one last day to back out of enlistment if they were having second thoughts. Rita, whose last name was now Vrataski, spent her last day on a hard bench outside the UDF office.

Rita didn't have any second thoughts. She only wanted one thing: to kill every last Mimic that had invaded her planet. She knew she could do it. She was her father's daughter.

3

On the next clear night, look up in the direction of the constellation humanity calls Cancer. Between the pincers of the right claw of that giant crab in the sky sits a faint star. No matter how hard you stare, you won't see it with the naked eye. It can only be viewed through a telescope with a thirty—meter aperture. Even if you could travel at the speed of light, fast enough to circle the earth seven and a half times in a single second, it would take over forty years to reach that star. Signals from Earth scatter and disperse on their journey across the vast gulf between.

On a planet revolving around this star lived life in greater numbers and diversity than that on Earth. Cultures more advanced than ours rose and flourished, and creatures with intelligence far surpassing that of H. sapiens held dominion. For the purposes of this fairy tale, we'll call them people.

One day, a person on this planet invented a device called an ecoforming bomb. The device could be affixed to the tip of a spacecraft. This spacecraft, far simpler than any similar craft burdened with life and the means to support it, could cross the void of space with relative ease. Upon reaching its destination, the ship's payload would detonate, showering nanobots over the planet's surface.

Immediately upon arrival, the nanobots would begin to reshape the world, transforming any harsh environment into one suitable for colonization by the people who made them. The actual process is far more complicated, but the details are unimportant. The spacecraft ferrying colonists to the new world would arrive after the nanobots had already completed the transformation.

The scholars among these people questioned whether it was ethical to destroy the existing environment of a planet without first examining it. After all, once done, the process could not be undone. It seemed reasonable to conclude that a planet so readily adapted to support life from their own world might also host indigenous life, perhaps even intelligent life, of its own. Was it right, they asked, to steal a world, sight unseen, from its native inhabitants?

The creators of the device argued that their civilization was built on advancements that could not be undone. To expand their territory, they had never shied away from sacrificing lesser life in the past. Forests had been cleared, swamps drained, dams built. There had been countless examples of people destroying habitats and driving species to extinction for their own benefit. If they could do this on their own planet, why should some unknown world in the void of space be treated differently?

The scholars insisted that the ecoforming of a planet which might harbor intelligent life required direct oversight. Their protests were recorded, considered, and ultimately ignored.

There were concerns more pressing than the preservation of whatever life might be unwittingly stomped out by their ecoforming projects. The people had grown too numerous for their own planet, and so they required another to support their burgeoning population. The chosen world's parent star could not be at too great a distance, nor would a binary or flare star suffice. The planet itself would have to maintain an orbit around a G—class star at a distance sufficient for water to exist in liquid form. The one star system that met these criteria was the star we call the sun. They did not worry for long that this one star might be the only one in this corner of the Milky Way that was home to intelligent life like their own. No attempt was made to communicate. The planet was over forty years away at the speed of light, and there was no time to wait eighty years for the chance of a reply.

The spacecraft built on that distant planet eventually reached Earth. It brought with it no members of their species. No weapons of invasion. It was basically nothing more than a construction machine.

When it was detected, the interstellar craft drew the attention of the world. But all Earth's attempts to make contact went unanswered. Then the ship split into eight pieces. Four of the pieces sank deep under the ocean, while three fell on land. The final piece remained in orbit. The pieces that landed in North Africa and Australia were handed over to NATO. Russia and China fought over the piece that landed in Asia, but China came out on top. After much arguing among the nations of Earth, the orbiting mothership was reduced to a small piece of space junk by a volley of missiles.

The crèche machines that came to rest on the ocean floor began carrying out their instructions quietly and methodically. In the depths, the machines chanced upon echinoderms—starfish. The crèche—produced nanobots penetrated the rigid endoskeletons of the starfish and began to multiply in symbiosis with their hosts.

The resulting creatures fed on soil. They ate the world and shat out poison. What passed through their bodies was toxic to life on Earth, but suitable for the people who had sent them. Slowly, the land where the creatures fed died and became desert. The seas where they spread turned a milky green.

At first it was thought that the creatures were the result of mutations caused by chemical runoff, or perhaps some prehistoric life form released by tectonic activity. Some scientists insisted it was a species of evolved salamander, though they had no evidence to support their conclusion. Eventually, these new creatures formed groups and began venturing out of the water. They continued their work to reshape the earth with no regard for the society of man.

When they first appeared on land, the alien xenoformers were not weapons of war. They were sluggish, and a group of armed men could easily dispatch them. But like cockroaches that develop resistance to pesticides, the alien creatures evolved. The crèche machines that created them concluded that in order to fulfill their objective of xenoforming the planet, they would have to remove the obstacles standing in their way.

War engulfed the world. The damage wrought was swift and massive. In response, a worldwide United Defense Force was established. Mankind had a name for the enemy that had brought the world to the brink of ruin. We called them Mimics.

4

Rita Vrataski joined U.S. Special Forces after the battle that earned her the Thor's Medal of Valor. The medal, which bears a likeness of said deity brandishing a hammer, is awarded to any soldier who kills ten or more Mimics in a single battle. The Mimics had emerged as the only foe capable of standing against a platoon of fifty armed infantry raining a hail of bullets. Few Thor medals needed to be struck.

The officer who hung the gleaming medal around Rita's neck praised her for joining the elite ranks of those who could claim to have taken down a double handful of Mimics. Rita was the first soldier in history to receive the honor on her second battle. There were some who wondered aloud, to her face, how Rita could have possibly acquired the skills needed to accomplish such a feat by what was only her second field operation. Rita answered them with a question of her own:

"Is cooking dangerous?"

Most would answer no. But what is a gas range but a short—range flame thrower? Any number of flammable materials might lie waiting beneath the average kitchen sink. Shelves lined with pots could weaken and fall in an avalanche of iron and steel. A butcher's knife could kill as easily as a dagger.

Yet few people would consider cooking a dangerous profession, and indeed, the actual danger is remote. Anyone who has spent any time in a kitchen is familiar with the inherent risks, such as they are, and knows what can be done safely and what can't. Never throw water on an oil fire, keep the knife pointed away from your carotid artery, don't use rat poison when the recipe calls for parmesan cheese.

To Rita, war was no different.

The Mimics' attacks were simpleminded. They reminded Rita of the swine she'd raised back in Pittsfield. Soldiers would single out a Mimic to attack, but Mimics did things the other way around. Like a broom sweeping dust off the floor, Mimics attacked entire groups of soldiers at once. As long as you knew how to avoid the broom, no matter how many times the Mimics attacked, you wouldn't get swept away. The secret to fighting the Mimics wasn't avoiding danger, it was running headlong into it.

Try it yourself next time. It's easy.

That was usually enough to get them to leave her alone. They'd shrug and stumble away, dumbfounded.

Rita, who'd only just turned sixteen, didn't understand why she was so gifted in battle. She'd have been happier having a knack at baking meat pies, or knowing just where a sow wanted scratching, but apparently God had a sense of humor. He must have noticed her dozing during the sermons all those Sundays her parents had taken her to church.

Special Forces was a place for individualists, for people with authority problems. Everyone in the squad was supposedly a vicious murderer who'd been given the choice between the army and the noose. They were guys who'd as soon shoot a person as talk to him, and they didn't discriminate between friendlies and Mimics when they were letting fly with 20mm rounds. It was hard duty, and they were always looking for more warm bodies to fill the spots left by all the KIAs.

In fact, Rita's unit turned out to be a squad full of battle—hardened vets. If you melted down all the medals earned in that squad, you could have made one hell of an Olympic—class weightlifting barbell.

The squad was full of badasses who had been through Hell and back so many times they were on a first name basis with the Devil. When shit started flying, they started telling jokes. Not the kind of jokes you told your mother over dinner, either. Contrary to their reputation, however, there were some good guys in the bunch. Rita took to her new comrades immediately.

A first lieutenant by the name of Arthur Hendricks held the squad together. He had gleaming blond hair, piercing blue eyes, and a beautiful wife so delicate you had to be careful not to break her when giving her a hug. No matter how minor the operation, Hendricks would always give his wife a call beforehand, for which he was constantly derided by the rest of the squad.

In a squad where everyone, men and women both, used language that would have sent a nun into cardiac arrest, Hendricks was the only man who never uttered a single profanity. At first he treated Rita like a little sister, much to her consternation. She'd never admit it, but she grew to like it.

Rita had been in the squad for about half a year when she became trapped in the time loop that had dictated the rhythm of her life ever since. The battle that would turn Rita Vrataski into the Valkyrie was a special operation even by U.S. Special Forces standards. The president was up for reelection, and he wanted to deliver a military victory to secure his own.

Over the objections of his generals and the media, he poured it all into the operation, every tank with treads, every attack chopper that could stay airborne, and over ten thousand platoons of Jacketed soldiers. Their goal: to regain control of the Florida peninsula. It was the most dangerous, most reckless, and by far the hardest battle Rita had ever seen.

Special Forces had a lot of four—letter words in their vocabulary, but fear wasn't one of them. Even so, it took more than one squad to turn around a hopeless war against a superior enemy. A Jacket granted superhuman strength, but that alone didn't turn people into superheroes. During the Second World War, Erich Hartmann had shot down 352 planes on the Russian Front, but Germany still lost the war. If the brass drafted plans that called for the impossible, the mission would fail, simple as that.

After the battle, derelict Jackets littered the Florida peninsula, their shattered shells serving as coffins for the corpses inside.

Rita Vrataski had somehow managed to toe the piano—wire—thin line that snaked between life and death. She had bent her pile driver before losing it entirely. She was low on ammo. She clutched her 20mm rifle so tightly it might as well have been welded to her hand. Fighting back the urge to vomit, she stripped batteries from the bodies of her fallen friends. She cradled her rifle in her arms.

"You look like you're having a bad day."

It was Hendricks. He sat down next to Rita where she was squatting in a hollow on the ground and looked up at the sky as though he were trying to pick shapes out of the clouds. Right in front them, a javelin, screaming its high—pitched wail, shot into the ground. Thick black smoke billowed from the impact crater. Images of Pittsfield burning against a red sky filled Rita's thoughts.

Hendricks knew he had to walk Rita back from wherever she was. "My mother once told me that in parts of China, they mix animal blood with their tea."

Rita couldn't speak. Her throat was sandpaper, and she doubted whether she could even manage to swallow.

Hendricks went on. "The nomads there can all ride horses. Men, women, even the children. In the Middle Ages, it was their mobility that enabled them to conquer the bulk of Eurasia. Not even Europe was spared. They came from the east, moving through one country after another—savage foreigners who sipped blood from teacups— drawing nearer and nearer. It's enough to give you nightmares. Some people think it was actually those Chinese nomads who gave rise to the vampire legends of Eastern Europe."

"… Lieutenant?"

"My little story boring you?"

"I'm all right now, Lieutenant. I'm sorry. It won't happen again."

"Hey, we all need a break sometimes. Especially in a marathon like this. Just a little more, it'll be time to hit the showers. I promise." He finished speaking and moved on to the next soldier. Rita rejoined the fray.

And then she saw it. One Mimic that stood out from the rest. It didn't look different from the others—another bloated dead frog in a sea of waterlogged amphibians. But there was something about this one that set it apart. Maybe spending so much time in such proximity to death had sharpened senses she didn't know she had, revealing secrets that lay hidden from normal sight.

When she killed that Mimic, the time loop began.

There was always one Mimic at the heart of the network, a queen of sorts. Its outward appearance was the same as the others. Just as all pigs looked alike to someone not in the business of raising pigs, the difference between that Mimic and the rest was one only Rita could see. Somehow, as she fought and slew countless Mimics, she began to tell them apart. It was something subliminal, bordering on instinct. She couldn't have explained the difference if she tried.

The easiest place to hide a tree was in the forest.

The easiest place to hide an officer was in among the grunts.

The Mimic at the heart of each pack was hiding in plain sight. Think of it as the server of the network.

When you kill the server, the Mimic network emits a specific type of signal. The scientists would later identify it as a tachyon pulse, or some other particle that could travel through time, but Rita didn't really understand any of that. The important part was that the signal emitted by Mimics that had lost their server traveled back in time to warn them of the imminent danger they faced.

The danger appeared in the memory of the Mimics as a portent, a window into the future. The Mimics that received this vision could modify their actions to safely navigate the pending danger. This was only one of many technologies discovered by that advanced race from a distant star. The process, built into the design of each crèche machine, served as a warning system to prevent some freak accident from upsetting a xenoforming plan that had taken so long to place in motion.

But the Mimics weren't the only ones who could benefit from these signals. Kill a Mimic server while in electrical contact with it, and a human would receive the same gift of foresight meant for the network. The tachyon signal sent into the past doesn't distinguish between Mimic and human, and when it came, humans perceived the portent as a hyperrealistic dream, accurate in every detail.

To truly defeat a Mimic strike force, you have to first destroy their network and all the backups it contains, then destroy the server Mimic. Otherwise, no matter how many different strategies you try, the Mimics will always develop a counterstrategy that ensures their survival.

1. Destroy the antenna.

2. Massacre every Mimic being used as backup for the network.

3. Once the possibility for transmissions to the past has been eliminated, destroy the server.

Three simple steps to escape to the future. It took Rita 211 passes through the loop to figure them out.

No one Rita told would believe her. The army was used to dealing in concrete facts. No one was interested in far—fetched stories involving time loops. When Rita finally broke out of the loop and reached the future, she learned that Arthur Hendricks had died. He was one of twenty—eight thousand killed in the battle.

In the two days Rita had spent in an endless circle of fighting, she'd managed to research the history of war, scour the feeds for information about the Mimics, and enlist a goofball engineer to make her a battle axe. She had succeeded in breaking the loop, in changing her own future, yet Hendricks' name still ended up with the letters KIA printed beside it.

Rita finally understood. This was what war really was. Every soldier who died in battle was nothing more than another figure in the calculus of estimated casualties. Their hardships, joys, and fears never entered into the equation. Some would live, others would die. It was all up to the impartial god of death called probability. With the benefit of her experience in the time loop, Rita would be able to beat the odds for some and save certain people in the future. But there would always be those she could not save. People with fathers, mothers, friends, maybe even brothers, sisters, wives, husbands, children. If she could only repeat the 211th loop, maybe she could find a way to save Hendricks—but at what cost? Rita Vrataski was alone in the time loop, and in order for her to make it out, someone would have to die.

Hendricks made one last phone call before that battle. He learned he had just become a father, and he was upset that the picture of his kid he'd printed out and taped inside his Jacket had gotten dirty. He wanted to go home, but he put the mission first. Rita had heard the phone conversation 212 times now. She knew it by heart.

Rita was awarded a medal for her distinguished service in the battle—the Order of the Valkyrie, given to soldiers who killed over one hundred Mimics in a single battle. They had created the honor just for her. And why not? The only soldier on the entire planet who could kill that many Mimics in a single battle was Rita Vrataski.

When the president pinned the gleaming medal on Rita's chest, he lauded her as an angel of vengeance on the battlefield and declared her a national treasure. She had paid for that medal with the blood of her brothers and sisters.

She didn't shed a tear. Angels don't cry.

5

Rita was redeployed. The name Full Metal Bitch and the awe it inspired rippled through the ranks. A top secret research team was created to study the time loop. After poking, prodding, and probing Rita, the lab coats drafted a report claiming it was possible that the loops had altered Rita's brain, that this was the cause of her headaches, and half a dozen other things that didn't actually answer any questions. If it meant wiping the Mimics off the face of the earth, she didn't care if their space—feeds split her skull in two.

The president had given Rita authority to act with total autonomy on the battlefield. She spoke less and less with the other members of her squad. She had a rental locker in New York where she stored the medals that kept pouring in.

6

Rita was stationed in Europe. The war went on.

7

North Africa.

When Rita heard their next assignment would be on some islands in the Far East, she was glad. Asian corpses would be a fresh change from the usual blacks and whites of the Western front. Of course, no matter how much raw fish they ate over there, the blood still came gushing out the same shade of red when a Mimic javelin ripped up a man and his Jacket. When all was said and done, she'd probably tire of seeing them, too.

8

Rita was familiar with cormorant fishing, a traditional Japanese technique. The fishermen tie a snare at the base of the trained cormorant's neck just tight enough to prevent it from swallowing any of the larger fish it catches, and then play out enough rope to enable the bird to dive into the water and fish. Once the cormorant has a fish, the fishermen pull the bird back and make it spit out its catch. Rita felt that her relationship to the army was a lot like a cormorant's relationship to a fisherman.

Rita was in the army because that was how she made her living. Her job was to go out and kill Mimics and bring their corpses back to her masters. In return, they provided her with everything she needed to live and took care of life's little annoyances without her ever having to know they were there. It was a give and take relationship, and in her mind it was fair.

Rita took no pleasure in the notion of being the savior of the earth, but if that's what the army wanted, so be it. In dark times the world needed a figure for people to rally behind.

Japan's quarantine line was on the verge of collapse. If the enemy managed to break through at Kotoiushi, Mimics would swarm the industrial complex on the main island. With the cutting—edge factories and technologies Japan brought to the table lost, there would be an estimated 30 percent drop in the effectiveness of the Jackets they used to wage the war. The ramifications would be felt throughout the UDF.

Without someone to interrupt the tachyon transmissions, the battle would never end. Technically it was possible to drive them back with an overwhelming show of force. After several loops the Mimics would realize they couldn't win, and they would withdraw with as few casualties as possible. But that wasn't the same as defeating them. They would simply retreat beneath the ocean, out of humanity's reach, and gather their strength. Once they had assembled an insurmountable force, they would attack again, and there would be no stopping them a second time.

Fighting a war with the Mimics was a lot like playing a game with a child. They had decided they were going to win before the game had even started, and they wouldn't give up until they won. Little by little, humanity was losing ground.

The duration of the Mimic time loops was approximately thirty hours. Rita repeated each loop only once. The first time through a battle she assessed the casualties her squad sustained; the second time through she won. In that first pass she could see what the strategy was and learn who died. But the lives of her friends were in the merciless hands of fate. That couldn't be changed.

Before each battle, Rita secluded herself to clear her thoughts. One of the privileges of her station was that Rita had her own private room that no one was allowed to enter.

Rita's squad understood that the thirty hours before a battle were a special time for her. The average soldier in the squad wasn't aware of the time loop, but they knew that Rita had her reasons for not wanting to talk to anyone in the time leading up to battle. They kept their distance out of respect. Even though space was exactly what Rita wanted, it still made her feel alone.

Rita was admiring the sparkling waters of the Pacific from her perch in the sky lounge. The only structure on Flower Line Base taller than Rita's tower was a nearby radio antenna. The tower was practically begging to be the first target when the Mimics came ashore. You could only laugh at the audacity of locating an officers' lounge in such a vulnerable location. This was the trouble with countries that hadn't been invaded yet.

Japan had largely managed to escape the ravages of the war. If the island had been located a little further from Asia, it would have been reduced to desert long ago. If it had been any closer, the Mimics would have invaded before moving on to the continent. The peace Japan enjoyed all came down to luck.

The area set aside for the officers' lounge was needlessly large and almost completely empty. The view it afforded of the ocean was fit for a five—star hotel. By contrast, the heavy duty pipe—frame bed that stood in the middle of the room seemed to have been chosen as a joke.

Rita pressed a button. The liquid crystal embedded in the blast—resistant glass opacified, obscuring the view. She had chosen the officers' reception room for her quarters because it was a place the other members of her squad weren't likely to visit. The operating systems embedded in the bodies of her squadmates had been programmed for war. They wouldn't set foot in a building that made for such an ostentatious target. Rita didn't care for it much herself.

To allay her fears, a Japanese tech had explained that the glass was interwoven with carbon fibers, giving it strength on par with the shell of a Jacket. If the stuff was so great, Rita wondered why it didn't seem to work that well on the front lines. At least here she was alone. The next day she might have to watch one of her friends die. She didn't want to have to look them in the eye.

A soft knock roused Rita from her thoughts. The glass at the entrance to the lounge was also embedded with liquid crystal. It was set to opaque with the rest.

"I don't appreciate distractions within minus thirty hours. Just leave me alone."

There was no reply. She sensed an odd presence from the other side of the door. It felt like a small animal being hunted by a pack of wolves, or a woman being stalked down a dark alley. It could only be Shasta.

Rita pressed the button. The glass cleared to reveal the petite Native American woman standing at the door. First Lieutenant Shasta Raylle was older than Rita and, technically, outranked her, but the Valkyrie didn't have to bend over backward for any engineer. Still, Rita found Shasta's deference and politesse endearing.

Thud.

Shasta bumped her forehead against the glass. She'd mistaken the suddenly transparent glass for an open doorway and walked right into it. She was holding something in the hand she pressed to her head. She crouched on the ground, trembling like a leaf. It was hard to believe the brain in that head could be so brilliant. Then again, maybe that's how geniuses were. Some people called Rita a military genius, and she wasn't all that different from everyone else. The only thing about her that was especially unique was her ability to focus. Shasta's thoughts were probably consumed by whatever it was she held in her hand, just as Rita's were by the coming battle.

Rita opened the door halfway. Shasta's glasses were still askew from the impact with the glass. She adjusted them as she stood.

"I'm sorry to bother you. But there was something I just had to show you. I'm really, really sorry." Shasta lowered her head and bumped it against the door that still blocked half of the entryway. This time she hit the corner.

Thud.

"Ow." Shasta squatted on the ground again.

"No need to apologize. You're always welcome, Lieutenant. Without you, who would look after my Jacket?"

Shasta sprang to her feet, eyes moist with tears.

"You called me lieutenant again! Call me Shasta, please."

"But, Lieutenant—"

"Shasta! I just want everyone to talk to me like a normal person."

"All right, all right. Shasta."

"That's better."

Rita smiled. "So… what was it you wanted to show me?"

"Right," Shasta said. "Look at this. You won't believe it."

Shasta opened her hand. Rita looked intently at the strange object resting in her tiny palm. Only slightly larger than a 9mm bullet, it was intricately shaped and painted bright red. Rita had heard of people who painted the tips of their bullets a separate color to distinguish between types of ammunition, but never the entire casing.

She picked it up. It was shaped like a person.

Shasta raced on. "This is supposed to be secret, right? Someone on the base told me about them. I went all the way to Tateyama to get it. It took almost all the money I had on me to win it."

"Win it?"

"You put money in the machine, turn the knob, and one of these figures pops out in a little plastic bubble."

"Is it some kind of toy?"

"Oh no, it's a valuable collector's item. The rare ones can trade for over a hundred dollars each."

"A hundred dollars for this?"

"That's right." Shasta nodded gravely.

Rita held the tiny figure up to the white lights of the room. Upon closer examination, it was clearly meant to resemble a soldier wearing a Jacket. That it was painted red and wielding a battle axe could only mean it was supposed to be Rita's Jacket. "They did a good job. Even the fins look just like the real ones. I guess military secrets aren't what they used to be."

"They use professional modelers. All they need is a glimpse to make something almost exactly like the original. The models made in Japan are the best. They can auction for a lot of money."

"What a waste of perfectly good talent." Rita flipped the figure over in her hand. Etched across the feet were the words MADE IN CHINA. "China still has time to make toys? I heard they can't even keep up with the production of the Jacket control chips."

"They've got a bigger workforce to go around. Remember that senator who was forced to resign after he said China could afford to lose as many people as there are in the entire United States and still have over a billion left? Well, they actually have lost millions of people down in the south, but they've been able to throw enough resources at it to hold the line."

"It's hard to believe we come from the same planet."

"America's at war, and we still find the time to turn out terrible movies."

Rita couldn't argue with that.

The UDF existed to protect a world obsessed with creating worthless piles of crap, Rita thought. It was amazing how people could pour their hearts and souls into such trivial things. Not that this was necessarily a bad thing. No one appreciated that more than Rita, whose only skill was killing.

"I have lots more." Shasta pulled a handful of figures from her overalls.

"What's this? Some sort of pig—frog from the dark reaches of the Amazon?"

"That's a Mimic."

"So much for your professional modelers."

"This is what they look like in the movies. So it is the real thing as far as the public's concerned, anyway. Believe me, this is what's in the movies, down to the last wrinkle."

"What about this one?"

"You should know. It's Rita Vrataski—you!"

The figure was lean, prodigiously endowed, and sported curly blonde hair. It was hard to find a single feature that even remotely resembled Rita. As it happened, Rita had actually met the actress cast to play her in the movies once. It was difficult to say she didn't fit the role of a Jacket jockey, since Rita herself hardly did. But the woman they picked for the part was far too glamorous for a soldier fighting on the front lines.

Rita compared her figure with that of the Mimic. Suddenly, the Mimic modeler wasn't looking so far off.

"Mind if I hold on to this?" Rita picked up the Full Metal Bitch figurine that bore her no resemblance.

"What?"

"You won't miss one, will you?"

Shasta's reaction was somewhere between that of a sleeping cat kicked out of its favorite spot in bed and a five—year—old whose aunt had denied her the last piece of chocolate macadamia nut toffee because she'd been saving it for herself. The look on her face would have sent applications to MIT plummeting if prospective students had known she was an alumna who had graduated at the top of her class.

Rita reconsidered her request. People like Shasta who went to hyper—competitive upper—crust universities were probably more likely than most to randomly explode if pushed. "Sorry, bad joke. I shouldn't tease you like that."

"No, I'm the one who should apologize," Shasta said. "It's just that it's kind of, well, really rare. I mean, I bought every single bubble in the machine, and that was the only one that came out."

"Don't worry. I wouldn't dream of taking it from you."

"Thanks for understanding. I'm really sorry. Here, why don't you take this one instead? It's supposed to be pretty rare too."

"What is it?"

"It's the engineer assigned to Rita's squad in the movie. So it's basically… me." A nervous laugh escaped Shasta's lips.

It was the worst cliché of a female engineer Rita had ever seen. Rail thin, freckled, exaggerated facial features at the extreme edge of the probability curve. If there were ever a ten—millimeter—high perfectionist who would never misplace so much as a single screw or run the risk of kissing a member of the opposite sex, this was it. Of course the real, brilliant engineer it was supposedly based on probably hit her head on her own locker at least twice a day, so it just went to show that you never knew.

Shasta looked up at Rita with worry in her eyes. "Don't you like it?"

"It doesn't look anything like you."

"Neither does yours."

They looked at each other.

"All right, thanks. I'll keep it. For luck."

Shasta lifted another figure when Ralph Murdoch, the requisite camera hanging from his thick neck, walked in.

"Good morning, ladies."

Rita cocked one rust—red eyebrow at the arrival of her unwelcome guest. Her face hardened to steel. The sudden change in Rita's demeanor startled Shasta, who looked as though she couldn't decide whether she wanted to hide from Rita behind this strange hulk of a journalist or the other way around. After a few awkward moments of hesitation, she opted for taking cover behind Rita.

"How did you get in here?" Rita made no attempt to hide her disdain.

"I'm a registered member of your personal staff. Who would stop me?"

"You're your own staff, and we both know it. You can leave now." Rita didn't care much for this man and his never—saw—a—speck—ofbattlefield—mud running shoes. People like him and Shasta could meet and talk in total safety whenever the mood took them. His words were never limned with the dread of knowing you would have to watch your friends die in the next battle. It was that dread, that certainty, that kept Rita away from her squadmates, the only family she had left. Nothing this rambling fool would ever have to deal with in his entire life.

"That'd be a shame after coming all the way up here," Murdoch said. "I happened upon an interesting piece of news, and I thought I'd share it with you."

"Send it to the New York Times. I'll be happy to read all about it."

"Trust me, you'll wanna hear this."

"I'm not all that interested in what you find interesting."

"The Japanese troops are going to have some PT. Punishment for troublemaking last night."

"I asked you to leave. I'm never in a good mood before battle."

"Don't you want to come watch? They're going to do some sort of samurai—style training. I'd love to hear the Valkyrie's take on the whole affair."

"Your mother must have been disappointed when the abortion only killed your conscience," Rita said.

"Such talk from a nice, sweet girl like you."

"I'd say it next time too, but I can't be bothered."

"Come again?"

"Believe me, I'd rather not."

Murdoch raised an eyebrow. "Okay, so you talk trash and nonsense. Two for one."

"I guess it must be catching."

"Fine, so I have no conscience and I'm going straight to Hell. You told me the same thing in Indonesia when I took those pictures of the crying kid running from a pack of Mimics."

"Hell's too good for you. You'd just find a way to get a picture of Satan and use it to worm your way through Heaven's back door."

"I'll take that as a compliment."

A smile spread across the Valkyrie's lips. It was the same smile that came to her in those dark hours on the battlefield, when it was at least hidden behind her helmet. Shasta's body tensed. Murdoch took a step back without even realizing it.

"Well," the Full Metal Bitch said, "I'm about to step into Hell. And until I do, I don't want to see your face again."

9

Rita ended up going to watch the PT. Shasta didn't. The only person near Rita was that damned Murdoch. The rest of her squad maintained a respectful distance.

That was when Rita's eyes met that challenge from the field, that gaze bearing the weight of the world. There was something about the kid that Rita liked. She started walking toward him.

She strode with purpose, each step a perfect movement designed to propel a Jacket across a battlefield with total efficiency. She advanced across the field effortlessly and without a sound. To get 100 percent out of a Jacket, a soldier had to be able to walk across a room full of eggs without cracking a single one. That meant being able to perfectly distribute their body weight with every step.

The soldier was still staring at Rita. She walked right to him, then made a ninety—degree turn and headed toward the tent where the brigadier general was sitting. She gave him one regulation salute.

The brigadier general cast a doubtful glance at Rita. Rita was a sergeant major by rank, but she was also in the U.S. corps, so their actual relative places in military hierarchy were a little muddy.

Rita remembered this man. He had been attached at the hip to the general who had made a beeline to shake Rita's hand at the start of the frivolous reception held to welcome the Special Forces. There were plenty of officers who had climbed the ranks without ever fighting on the front lines, but this one seemed to have a special love for grandstanding and ass—kissing.

They spoke briefly, the general seemingly bemused and Rita's stance and body language well—practiced. Then Rita returned to the field, walking past the ranks of men who seemed to bow before her. She chose a spot beside the soldier who'd been staring daggers at her and started her iso push—up. She could feel the heat of his body radiating through the chill air between them.

The soldier didn't move. Rita didn't move. The sun hung high in the sky, slowly roasting their skin. Rita spoke in a low voice only the soldier beside her could hear:

"Do I have something on my face?"

"Not that I can see."

Other than a slightly odd intonation, the soldier's Burst was clear and easy to understand. Nothing like back in North Africa. People from the former French colonies couldn't speak Burst to save their lives.

Burst English, or simply Burst, was a language created to deal with the problem of communication in an army comprised of soldiers from dozens of countries. It had a pared—down vocabulary and as few grammatical irregularities as possible. When they drafted the language, they deliberately struck all the profanities from the official vocabulary list, but you couldn't keep a bunch of soldiers from adding "fuck" in its various noun, verb, and adjective forms to everything anyway.

"You've been staring at me for a while now."

"I guess I have," he said.

"There something you want from me?"

"Nothing I want to discuss like this."

"Then let's wait until this is done."

"Shit—for—brains Kiriya! You're slipping!" the lieutenant barked. Rita, with the disinterested expression of someone who'd never had a need for human contact her entire life, continued her iso push—up.

Iso push—ups were a lot rougher than they looked. Beads of sweat formed along your hairline, streamed past your temples, ran into your eyes—making them burn from the salt—and traced the line of your neck before falling from your chest. Having to endure that itch as it makes its way down your body was a lot like what a soldier had to endure encased in a Jacket. This samurai training isn't completely worthless after all, Rita decided.

When things got too hard to bear, it was best to let your mind wander. Rita let her thoughts drift from her own body's screams of protest to the surroundings. The brigadier general from the General Staff Office looked baffled by the intruder in his proceedings. For him, a man who had never experienced a moment of real armed conflict, maybe this training field, with its gentle ocean breezes, was part of the war. To people who had never breathed in that mixture of blood, dust, and burning metal that pervaded a battlefield, it was easy to imagine that deployment was war, that training was war, that climbing some career ladder was war. There was only one person for whom the war extended to that tranquil day before the battle: a woman named Rita Vrataski and her time loops.

Rita had often dreamt that someday she would come across another person who experienced the loops. She'd even come up with a phrase they could use to identify themselves to each other. A phrase only Rita knew. A phrase the two of them would share.

For another person to be caught in a time loop, it would mean that someone other than Rita had destroyed a Mimic server by accident. Just as Rita was forced to leave people outside the time loop behind, this person would have no choice but to leave her behind. He would be alone.

She might not be able to travel through the time loop with him—though she also might be able to, and the thought terrified her—but she could give him advice either way. Share his solitude. Tell him how to break out of the loop, knowledge it had taken Rita 211 deaths to learn. He would fight through his doubts, the way Rita had. He would become a great warrior.

Deep in a quiet corner of Rita's heart, she was sure no one would ever come to tell her the words only she knew.

The Mimic tachyon signal was the pinnacle of an alien technology, a technology that had enabled them to conquer the vastness of space. Rita's entrapment in the time loop during the battle to recapture Florida had been an impossible stroke of luck for humanity. If not for that chance occurrence, the earth would have fallen to xenoforming. Not just humans, but virtually every species on the planet, would already be extinct.

Rita's fame grew with each battle, and her loneliness with it. She had broken out of the time loop, but she felt as though she were still reliving the same day. Her one hope was that humanity's victory, the day when every last Mimic had been blasted to extinction, would somehow rid her of her terrible isolation. Until then, she would continue to play her unique role in the conflict.

Rita didn't mind the battles. She didn't have to think to fight. When she climbed into her red Jacket, the sadness, the laughter, the memory that haunted her more than the rest—it all slipped away. The battlefield, swirling with smoke and gunpowder, was Rita's home.

PT ended less than an hour later. The general, the bile in his mouth forgotten, hurried off to the barracks.

As Rita stood, the man beside her staggered to his feet. He wasn't particularly tall for a Jacket jockey. He was young, but he wore his fatigues as though he'd been born in them. His clothes looked as though they'd just come from the factory, so there was something strangely jarring about his appearance. His lips were twisted in a Mona Lisa smile that did a good job of concealing his age.

The number 157 was scrawled in Arabic numerals on the back of his hand. Rita didn't know what it meant, but it was an odd thing to do. Odd enough that Rita didn't think she'd be forgetting him anytime soon. She had heard of soldiers taping their blood type to the soles of their feet in the days before Jackets were standard—issue, but she'd never heard of a soldier who kept notes in ballpoint pen on the back of his hand.

"So you wanted to talk. What is it?"

"Ah, right," he said.

"Well? Get on with it, soldier. I'm a patient girl, but there's a battle tomorrow, and I have things to do."

"I, uh, have an answer to your question." He hesitated like a high school drama student reading from a bad script. "Japanese restaurants don't charge for green tea."

Rita Vrataski, the savior of humanity, the Valkyrie, the nineteen—year—old girl, let her mask slip.

The Full Metal Bitch began to cry.