“Well done,” she tells me. “You can power down.”
Outside, a relief unit is coming to meet us. I check the visual feed to make sure they’re imperial forces. Even though they’re wearing our uniforms, I can’t be sure they aren’t just disguised as our troops. The major doesn’t seem troubled and exits.
Poet says, “I’m going to write one helluva poem about today,” before hurrying out.
Orwell waits for me. I await some smart-ass crack and will punch him in the face if he makes one. Instead, he bows to me.
The unexpected gesture doesn’t erase the brand. But I signal for him to exit first. He climbs out. I rush back to the scans and check again. No biomechs, no NARA vehicles. I should head down. But I’m afraid of leaving the safety of the tank. Not even our own mechas can protect us against that Nazi goliath. I strap myself back into my seat, shaking. I want to run away in the Crab as far as possible.
Medics climb in, spot Chieko, and carry her out.
“Fujimoto-san,” a soldier says. “We have an ambulance waiting for you.”
I remember Spider, Sensei, and Wren, all dead. Nothing seems real. I hate this feeling.
“He’s in shock,” I hear someone say. “We’ll be applying a sedative. You’ll feel a sharp prick, and—”
I should be dead, not them.
08
A Dr. Takeyama does a quick check on me, running her medical diagnostic. She examines my eyes, checks inside my mouth, performs a live X-ray over my body that shows up on her portical display. She asks how I’m feeling.
“I’m alive,” I answer her.
“You have muscle damage and minor burns that should heal quickly. I’m ordering a special gel bath for you. There was also a burn mark the Nazis left on you. I had it removed. You stay in the bath for eight hours every day for the next four days, and you’ll be all better.”
After Dr. Takeyama leaves, a string of officers come by with questions about what happened during my mission, what I witnessed, how I survived. I try to answer, but I abhor the attempt to recall details. Anything I’m unclear on, they ask over and over, trying to ascertain whether I missed anything. They’re mostly respectful and polite, but I don’t have the appetite for it.
It’s the official from RAMDET who really irks me by asking, “Who authorized you to self-destruct the Crab tank that led to the destruction of the train?”
I glower at the older man, who looks like an office clerk wearing a suit and oval glasses. “Who authorized putting our lives at risk so the army could draw out the biomech?” I ask back. “There wasn’t even anything on the train. Sensei tried to abort the mission, but you insisted the cargo was important even though you knew we were bait. All my friends are dead because of it. Don’t talk to me about the stupid train. I’d blow it up again if I could!”
He is stunned. “E-everything you said is unsubstantiated,” he stutters.
“Then why are you bothering to ask me?”
I’d sock him and all his colleagues if I weren’t stuck naked in this gel.
The next day, they send another RAMDET official. I expect more dumb questions, but instead, he asks me, “Are you excited about graduation?”
I’d completely forgotten about it. The idea of even going through with it feels like a farce. In our class, only three of us are alive. Are we supposed to celebrate? The official rambles awkwardly when I don’t answer, telling me how happy I should be about future opportunities. “You’ll get to drive your own vehicle for sure,” he informs me.
I wish he’d disappear.
But that gets me thinking about the future. The idea of being a full-fledged RAM seems ridiculous now. Spider was right. We’re just a glorified security force. We shouldn’t have been out there in the first place. I can’t get over the fact that we were sent out as bait. My life was that meaningless to them.
As I float in the vat of regenerative gels, I realize this stupid dream of wanting to be a mecha pilot is the root of my problems. That dream has brought me only suffering, ridicule, and misery. RAMDET exploited my desire, knowing that I’d do almost anything if it got me into a mecha. I’ve wasted so much of my life in pursuit of something that is clearly beyond my grasp.
RAMDET officials keep on wanting a better account of what happened. They even send an accountant to explain the cost of my actions, going over every bill and the expense of intentionally destroying the train.
“What is it you hoped to achieve by doing this?” the woman asks.
“I told you, I wanted to destroy as many of the terrorists as I could.”
“Our cost-ratio analysis indicates you would have been better off trying to flee, considering so few of them were destroyed. I can go over the numbers with you.”
“I don’t want to go over the numbers,” I tell her.
“You don’t have anywhere else to be anyway, and as long as you’re in the hospital, you’re on the clock.”
She uses her portical to calculate, telling me the cost of the Crab tanks, artillery shells, fuel, human resources, train parts, and more. It’s the way she taps on her portical screen as she inputs the numbers that gets on my nerves.
“Everything we do is about money?” I ask her.
“This is a business, not a vanity project,” she replies in confirmation.
I’m going to quit RAMDET as soon as my body recovers.
* * *
• • •
They have a portical for patients to help pass the time. I avoid reading the news. I have very few personal messages. I try to distract myself flitting through the streets of Cat Odyssey, but its digitized world seems too fake to give me solace.
The gel treatment is like being in a warm tub except it isn’t as hot and there are other gelatinous chemicals in there that make my skin tingle. I’m required to stay in it all day to recover.
This means I can’t attend the official funeral. It’s a national ceremony presided over by Shinto priests, with most of the city’s key officials attending. Even the new governor will come to mourn the dead. Representatives from the Imperial Japanese Headquarters (aka Tokyo Command) are coming in droves. War Minister Kotohito has issued a special message honoring those who were killed in the kogun, though there’s no mention of RAMs like me outside of the Imperial Army. I watch part of the proceedings on my portical. I’ve seen national funerals before. But now it’s different because I was at the battle.
“How long must we allow their tyranny to endure?” Colonel Yamaoka asks in a speech similar to the one I heard him give on the train trip to Texarkana. “This was a brazen attack on civilians, and our brave soldiers in the mecha corps had to pay the price.”
I overhear the nurses discussing if war with the Nazis is inevitable. I wonder how Chieko and Poet are doing. I try to listen to music on the portical. Depressing choral music chanting about the end of the world appeals to me.
The gel treatment has the side effect of helping me to sleep soundly. I don’t get the nightmares I’ve heard mar the sleep of many veterans, reliving their experiences in a nocturnal display that feels as vivid as the actual event.
What bothers me is when I see people, I imagine them with bullets in their heads, their insides flipped out, their skin and tissue burned. It’s like they’re the NARA’s walking corpses, regenerating with every cycle. They cling to trivialities to help themselves endure, but human life isn’t special. It’s a biological process that can be terminated all too easily.
I have to keep my mind diverted. I try not to rethink the battle, what mistakes I made, how we could have avoided losing almost everyone. I go through emotional swings, angry at Sensei for not having defied orders and retreating, at Spider for having gotten hurt and not being in the pilot’s seat, at myself for not navigating more carefully right before we were attacked. I scrub my hands incessantly, but they feel like they’re still covered with blood. My skin get
s dry and peels off my fingers. I miss Hideki and all my fellow RAMs.
* * *
• • •
On the last day of my treatment, I hear a knock. I’m surprised to see Chieko. She’s pale, has lost weight, and there’s a deadness in her eyes I can relate to.
“How you doing?” she asks.
“Been better. You?”
She sighs. “I, uh . . . I was out of line, uh, back, back on the field.” I can see how much pain the memory brings her.
“No you weren’t.” I want to apologize to her for everything, but I don’t have the right. Her words still sting and the enormity of my mistake weighs on me. “I—I shouldn’t have told you to leave.”
“I chose to go. I can’t blame my decision on you.” She looks at me. I have a hard time meeting her gaze. “Besides, it wasn’t you who attacked us. It was the Nazis and the NARA.”
I do my best to control the surge of emotion that overwhelms me, and I’m grateful to her for her generous words. “Thank you,” I tell her. “I know it doesn’t mean much, but I got the NARA members who did this.”
“I heard,” she replies, and I see her blink back tears. “I didn’t see you at the funeral.”
“They wouldn’t let me go. You went?” I ask her.
She nods. “I met Wren’s parents. They kept on asking me how he passed. I didn’t know what to tell them.”
“Our superiors knew.”
“Knew what?”
I tell her the major’s confession that the whole operation was a trap for the German biomech and how RAMDET collaborated with them on it.
Chieko shakes her head. “How could they be so stupid?”
“They didn’t know how powerful the biomech was.”
“Heads should roll for this.”
“I don’t know if they will.”
“What are you going to do next?” she asks.
“I’m quitting RAMDET.”
She doesn’t question why I’m quitting. Instead, she says, “I’ve fought so hard to be a pilot. I’ll try to continue on.”
“You’re the best pilot they have.”
“Thanks,” she says.
It’s by no means an absolution.
I don’t think that’s ever possible.
But her forgiveness releases part of the guilt that’s been bearing down on me.
* * *
• • •
My vat treatment is done and I’m to be released in the morning. I’m writing my letter of resignation when a military officer enters my room. I prepare myself for a flurry of questions, but the visitor says, “You’ve been summoned for a meeting.”
His name tag reads UGAKI and he’s from the army, based on his uniform and markings. “Summoned by who?”
“Colonel Yamaoka.”
He can’t be talking about the war hero, can he? “The Colonel Yamaoka?” I have to confirm.
“Yes.”
“W-what’s he want?” I stammer because I have no idea why he’d want to talk to me.
“He’ll inform you when he sees you. Are you ready?”
“Um, yes.”
* * *
• • •
I’m driven to the Nogi Maresuke Opera Center, which is in the middle of a massive artificial lake. Ugaki accompanies me across the southern bridge. The main lobby has a huge marble statue of the famous general and a Kanshi poem he wrote right after the Russo-Japanese War in 1905, lamenting the death of the soldiers under him.
The workers are dressed in fancy red robes, and there are clay statues inspired by the opera, The Delusion of Butterfly-san. It’s directed by Hideki Inouye, who pulled off the amazing Water Geisha a few years back.
We walk up the stairs to the second floor and head for an opera box. One of the attendants at the door informs us, “Sorry, there’s no entry before the intermission.”
“He’s a guest of Colonel Yamaoka,” my escorting officer states.
The attendant becomes noticeably embarrassed. “Excuse me, sir. Please enter.”
Ugaki does not join us. I enter the box, and there are twelve people present. They are all wearing kabuki masks. There is no seat for me, and I stand in the back. All of them have cuff links with insignia marking them as military.
I watch the show. It’s a dazzling spectacle with the two-stage format, most of the activity happening in the central area. Dancers run along the glass bridge to the islets in the audience and side characters provide a contrast. It appears to be a Buddhist wedding, though the main character, Butterfly-san, is inexplicably pining for a boorish “Yankee” soldier. Paper petals are falling like snow, and the stage splits into many colored partitions. She haughtily rejects Japanese suitors, which seems preposterous considering the Yankee officer is a stranger who openly admits to his consul friend that he’s interested in only a casual liaison. The delusion part of the title makes sense. The only thing that makes the opera bearable is the beautiful music and outlandish visuals. Lights are creating smoky flower mirages all around us.
When the intermission arrives, one of the masked people stands up and calls me over. I go and take his seat. The person across from me removes his mask. It’s Colonel Yamaoka, ethnically Japanese, with the commanding look of a war hero. I stand to bow to him, and he says, “The original version of this opera was a scathing indictment of Western colonization.”
“Sir?”
“The Yankee sailor seduces a young Japanese girl and claims to marry her for nine hundred ninety-nine years but breaks her heart by leaving. She longs for him, rejecting everything Japanese, giving up her family and her country for his sake. When he returns three years later, he’s remarried an American woman and they coldly take her child away from her. Butterfly kills herself.”
“It sounds aggravating,” I tell him, my tone making clear I’m understating my irritation.
“That’s why it’s been updated. Now, when Butterfly realizes she’s been duped, she takes her hara-kiri knife, kills the Yankee’s entourage: the consul and his new wife. She beats her husband close to death but keeps him alive so he can work to provide a living for them. But not before she takes his manhood so he can’t cheat again. Butterfly lives in luxury, and her son has a good life. I greatly respect our Italian allies, but this play has so many stereotypes about our people, even in its updated form, it makes me cringe. There are those in the Empire who want it banned, but I think it’s an important reminder of how poorly imperial citizens and our culture were portrayed in Western media before the war.”
A discussion of opera is the last thing I was expecting. I feel ignorant because I know so little.
“I heard about what you did out there,” the colonel continues. “Major Mizukami spoke very highly of you. She was a very picky officer. Very impressive that you caught her attention.”
“Thank you, sir,” I reply, though I notice he refers to her in the past tense. “What do you mean, was?”
“Shortly after writing her last testament and her death poem, she committed jigai. Would you like to hear her tanka?” The summation of a life in exactly thirty-one syllables.
I’m shaken to hear the news that she carried out the ceremony of putting a knife through her throat. “Respectfully, no, sir. I thought this kind of ritual suicide was outlawed?”
“It is,” he laments. “That’s why I think about the old Butterfly and its misunderstood glorification of suicide. Soldiers can learn from their mistakes. What they gain in experience is invaluable to help us avoid repeating similar errors, which was why ritual suicide was outlawed in the USJ. But the major couldn’t bear the thought of living when those dearest to her were dead.”
I rustle uncomfortably in my seat, relating all too well. “I can understand,” I state, but do I? Did she possibly feel responsible for what happened to the RAMs and was she driven by that guilt as well?
“She gave a very interesting report about the strength of their new biomech and their collaboration with the terrorist group, the NARA, with whom you’ve dealt before,” the colonel says.
“Yes, sir. Back in school, they carried out an attack. Are we going to war with the Nazis?” I ask him, but it’s more an angry plea for confirmation as I want to destroy them.
“The Germans are denying involvement, saying it’s a rogue element working with the NARA who carried out the attack. They’re even offering to help us.”
“You can’t believe them.”
The colonel gazes sternly at me. “Do you have proof otherwise?”
“But at the funeral—”
“I said what I needed to, just as you did what you had to so that you could destroy your enemies. We should respond decisively, show them we mean business. But that’s the governor’s decision, not mine.”
“You would respond differently?”
“It only takes one bad decision for an empire to fall,” the colonel says.
I know I should probably be discreet, but I’ve lost the desire to give face to whichever idiot planned this whole debacle. “Whoever set us up got almost all of us killed. We were sacrificed, but it didn’t even work. All my friends died for nothing.”
“I know what’s going through your mind.”
“Respectfully, sir, I don’t even know what’s going through my mind.”
Yamaoka laughs but in an empathetic way. “I appreciate your honesty. That plan was the brainchild of an inexperienced general who has been duly punished for his disgraceful part in this. He never should have been listened to in the first place, but his plan was accepted out of respect for his position as part of the governor’s personal coterie.”
The idea outrages me, but before I can lash out, I realize I’m just as culpable. “I think all of us made bad decisions out there.”
“You took the extreme measures necessary to win,” the colonel says. “You were willing to put aside weaker convictions to achieve the ultimate goal.”
Mecha Samurai Empire (A United States of Japan Novel) Page 20
