All You Need Is Kill (3 page)

“No, man. It’s always been tomorrow. But our secret mission to get hammered starts tonight at nineteen hundred hours. We drink ourselves blind and wake up with a helluva hangover in the morning. A plan not even HQ could fuck up.”

Wait.
We’d broken into the PX last night. I remembered the whole thing. I was nervous about it being my first battle, so I’d decided to duck out a bit early. I had come back to my bunk and started reading that mystery novel. I even remembered helping Yonabaru up to his bed when he came staggering in from partying with the ladies.

Unless—unless I had dreamed that too?

Yonabaru smirked. “You don’t look so good, Keiji.”

I picked the novel up off my bed. I’d brought it along to read in my spare time, but I’d been so busy drilling formation that it had stayed stuffed in the bottom of my bag. I remember thinking how appropriately ironic it was that I hadn’t had any time to start reading it until the day before I was probably going to die. I opened the book to the last page I’d read. The American detective who was supposed to be an expert on the Orient was discussing the finer points of green tea, just like I remembered. If today was the day before the battle, when had I read the book? Nothing was making any sense.

“Listen. There’s nothin’ to tomorrow’s operation.”

I blinked. “Nothin’ to it, huh?”

“Just get yourself home without shooting anyone in the back, and you’ll be fine.”

I grunted in reply.

Yonabaru curled his hand into a gun and pointed his index finger at his head. “I’m serious. Sweat it too much, you’ll turn into a feedhead—end up losing your mind before they even get a chance to blow your brains out.”

The guy I’d replaced had gone a little haywire, so they pulled him from the front lines. They say he started picking up comm feeds about how humanity was doomed. Not the kind of shit you want heavily armed UDF Jacket jockeys listening to. We might not lose as many to that as we do to the enemy, but it’s not pretty either way. In battle, unless you’re sound of body and mind, you’re a liability. I’d only just arrived on the front lines—hadn’t even seen any action—and already I was having hallucinations. Who knows what warning lights were going off in my head.

“You ask me, anyone come out of battle not actin’ a little funny has a screw or three loose.” Yonabaru grinned.

“Hey, no scarin’ the fresh meat,” I protested. I wasn’t actually scared, but I was growing increasingly confused.

“Just look at Ferrell! Only way to make it is to lose whatever it is that makes you human. A sensitive, caring indiv’dual like myself ain’t cut out for fightin’, and that’s the truth.”

“I don’t see anything wrong with the sergeant.”

“Ain’t a question of right or wrong. It’s about having a heart made of tungsten and muscles so big they cut off the blood to your brain.”

“I wouldn’t go that far.”

“Next you’ll be tellin’ us that Mad Wargarita is just another grunt like the rest of us.”

“Yeah, well, the thing with her is—” and so the conversation went on, back and forth like we always did. Our badmouthing of Rita was just hitting its stride when the sergeant showed up.

Sergeant Ferrell Bartolome had been around longer than anyone else in our platoon. He’d lived through so many battles, he was more than soldier, he was the glue that kept our company together. They said if you stuck him in a centrifuge, he’d come out 70 percent big brother, 20 percent ball-busting drill sergeant, and 10 percent steel-reinforced carbon. He scowled at me, then looked at Yonabaru, who was hastily bundling up our liquor confessions. His scowl deepened. “You the soldier who broke into the PX?”

“Yeah, that’s me,” my friend confessed without a trace of guilt.

The men on the surrounding beds ducked under their sheets with all the speed of cockroaches scattering in the light, porn magazines and playing cards forgotten. They’d seen the look on the sergeant’s face.

I cleared my throat. “Did security, uh . . . run into some kind of trouble?”

Ferrell’s forehead knotted as though he were balancing a stack of armored plating on his head. I had a strong feeling of déjà vu.
All this happened in my dream!
Something had gone down, unrelated, at the exact time Yonabaru and his buddies were breaking into the PX. Security had gone on alert, and the robbery had come to light ahead of schedule. “Where’d you hear that?”

“Just, uh, a lucky guess.”

Yonabaru leaned out over the edge of his bunk. “What kind of trouble?”

“Someone stepped in a knee-deep pile of pig shit. Now that may not have anything to do with you, but nevertheless, at oh-ninehundred, you’re going to assemble at the No. 1 Training Field in your fourth-tier equipment for Physical Training. Pass the word to the rest of those knuckleheads you call a platoon.”

“You gotta be kidding! We’re goin’ into battle tomorrow, and you’re sending us off for PT?”

“That’s an order, Corporal.”

“Sir, reporting to the No. 1 Training Field at oh-nine-hundred in full fourth-tier equipment, sir! But, uh, one thing, Sarge. We been doin’ that liquor raid for years. Why give us a hard time about it now?”

“You really want to know?” Ferrell rolled his eyes. I swallowed hard.

“Nah, I already know the answer.” Yonabaru grinned. He always seemed to be grinning. “It’s because the chain of command around here is fucked to hell.”

“You’ll find out for yourself.”

“Wait, Sarge!”

Ferrell took three regulation-length paces and stopped.

“C’mon, not even a hint?” Yonabaru called from where he was taking cover behind the metal bed frame and bundled confessions.

“The general’s the one with his panties in a bunch about the rotten excuse for security we have on this base, so don’t look at me, and don’t look at the captain, either. In fact, you might as well just shut up and do what you’re told for a change.”

I sighed. “He’s not gonna have us out there weaving baskets, is he?”

Yonabaru shook his head. “Maybe we can all do a group hug. Fucking asshole.”

I knew where this ended. I’d dreamed all this, too.

After their defeat a year and a half ago at the Battle of Okinawa Beach, the Japanese Corps made it a matter of honor to recapture a little island perched off the coast of the Boso Peninsula, a place named Kotoiushi. With a foothold there, the Mimics were only a stone’s throw away from Tokyo. The Imperial Palace and central government retreated and ruled from Nagano, but there wasn’t any way to relocate the economic engine that was Japan’s largest city.

The Defense Ministry knew that Japan’s future was riding on the outcome of this operation, so in addition to mustering twentyfive thousand Jackets, an endless stream of overeager generals had been pooling in this little base on the Flower Line that led down Boso Peninsula. They’d even decided to allow Americans, Special Operators, into the game; the U.S. hadn’t been invited to the party at Okinawa.

The Americans probably didn’t give a damn whether or not Tokyo was reduced to a smoking wasteland, but letting the industrial area responsible for producing the lightest, toughest, composite armor plating fall to the Mimics was out of the question. Seventy percent of the parts that went into a state-of-the-art Jacket came from China, but the suits still couldn’t be made without Japanese technology. So convincing the Americans to come hadn’t been difficult.

The catch was that with foreign troops came tighter security. Suddenly there were checks on things like missing alcohol that base security would have turned a blind eye to before. When the brass found out what had been going on, they were royally pissed.

“How’s that for luck? I wonder who fucked up.”

“It ain’t us. I knew the Americans would be watchin’ over their precious battalion like hawks. We were careful as a virgin on prom night.”

Yonabaru let out an exaggerated moan. “Ungh, my stomach . . . Sarge! My stomach just started hurtin’ real bad! I think it’s my appendix. Or maybe I got tetanus back when I hurt myself training. Yeah, that’s gotta be it!”

“I doubt it will clear up before tonight, so just make sure you stay hydrated. It won’t last until tomorrow, hear me?”

“Oh, man. It really hurts.”

“Kiriya. See that he drinks some water.”

“Sir.”

Ignoring Yonabaru’s continued performance, Ferrell walked out of the barracks. As soon as his audience was gone, Yonabaru sat up and made a rude gesture in the direction of the door. “He’s really got a stick up his ass. Wouldn’t understand a good joke if it came with a fucking manual. Ain’t no way I’m gonna be like that when I get old. Am I right?”

“I guess.”

“Fuck, fuck, fuck. Today is turnin’ to shit.”

It was all playing out how I remembered.

The 17th Armored would spend the next three hours in PT. Exhausted, we would listen to some commissioned officer, his chest bristling with medals, lecture us for another half hour before being dismissed. I could still hear him threatening to pluck the hairs off our asses one by one with Jacket-augmented fingers.

My dream was looking less like one by the minute.

3

There’s an exercise called an iso push-up. You lift your body like you would in an ordinary push-up, then you hold that position.

It’s a lot harder than it sounds. You can feel your arms and abs trembling, and eventually you lose your sense of time. After you’ve counted something like the thousandth sheep jumping a fence, you’ll beg to be doing ordinary push-ups, anything but this. Your arms aren’t designed to be pillars. Muscles and joints are there to flex and bend. Flex and bend. Sounds nice just thinking about it. But you can’t think about it, or you’ll feel even worse.
You’re pillars, hear me? Pillars! Nice strong pillars.

Muscle isn’t really all that important for a Jacket jockey. Whether a person’s grip is thirty kilos or seventy, as soon as they put on that Jacket, they’ll have 370 kilos of force in the palm of their hands. What a Jacket jockey needs is endurance and control—the ability to hold one position without twitching a muscle.

Iso push-ups are just the thing for that. Wall sitting isn’t half bad, either.

Some claimed iso push-ups had become the favored form of discipline in the old Japan Self-Defense Force after they banned corporal punishment. I had a hard time believing the practice had survived long enough to be picked up by the Armored Infantry Division—the JSDF had joined the UDF before I was even born. But whoever thought of it, I hope he died a slow, painful death.

“Ninety-eight!”

“NINETY-EIGHT!” we all cried out.

“Ninety-nine!”

“NINETY-NINE!”

Staring into the ground, we barked desperately in time with the drill sergeant, sweat streaming into our eyes.

“Eight hundred!”

“EIGHT HUNDRED!”

Fuck OFF!

Our shadows were crisp and clear under the scorching sun. The company’s flag snapped and fluttered high above the field. The wind that buffeted the training grounds reeked of salt and left a briny layer of slime on our skin.

There, motionless in the middle of that gargantuan training field, 141 men from the 17th Company of the Armored Infantry Division held their iso push-ups. Three platoon leaders stood, as motionless as their men, one in front of each platoon. Our captain watched over the scene with a grimace from the shade of the barracks tent. Sitting beside him was a brigadier general from the General Staff Office. The general who’d opened his mouth and started this farce was probably off sipping green tea in an air-conditioned office.
Cocksucker.

A general was a being from the heavens above. A being perched on a gilded throne, higher than me, higher than Yonabaru, higher than Ferrell, higher than the lieutenant in charge of our platoon, the captain in charge of our company, the lieutenant colonel in charge of our battalion; higher than the colonel in charge of our regiment, higher even than the base commander. The generals were the gods of Flower Line and all who trained, slept, and shat within its walls. So high, they seemed distant and unreal.

Generals didn’t steal liquor. They were early to bed, early to rise, always brushing their teeth after every meal, never skipping a morning shave—goddamned messiahs. Generals went into battle facing death with their chins held high, calm as you please. Hell, all they had to do was sit back in Nagano drawing up their battle plans. One order from them and us mortals on the front lines would move like pawns across a chessboard to our grisly fates. I’d like to see just one of them here with us in the mud. We had our own rules down here. Which is probably why they stayed away. Hell, if one of them showed, I’d see to it a stray bullet put them on the KIA list. This was the least damning thought running through my head, any one of which would have been enough to send me to a firing squad.

The brass in the tent weren’t the only spectators around to watch our torture.

The guys in 4th Company were really laughing it up. A while back we beat them in an intramural rugby match by more than thirty points, so I guess they felt this was some sort of twisted payback. The liquor we’d swiped was for them too, so this display of solidarity was touching. What a bunch of assholes. If they got into trouble on Kotoiushi, I sure as hell wasn’t going to bail them out.