The Time Loop

Sergeant Ferrell -4

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 recognise her for the prodigy she is and never even try to match her. But you’re the first person I’ve met who realise 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.

0600 Wake up.

0603 Ignore Yonabaru.

0610 Steal silicon chip from armory.

0630 Eat breakfast.

0730 Practice basic body movement.

0900 Visualise training during f*****g 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-lobbying 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 b***h was the Full Metal b***h.