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.