Anne of Green Gables Goes to War.

I figure the book would be a spin-off set around World War I. Mongolia makes a land grab, and there’s Anne, machine gun tucked daintily under one arm. Her hair was the color of rusted steel, faded to a dull red. Some redheads conjured up images of blood, fire, deeds of valor. Not her. If it weren’t for the sand-colored shirt she was wearing, she’d have looked like some kid who’d come to the base on a field trip and gotten herself lost.

The others were fanned out around this girl who barely came up to their chests like awed, medieval peasants gawking at nobility.

Suddenly it hit me. That’s Rita!

It had to be. It was the only way to explain how this woman, who couldn’t have looked less like a Jacket jockey if she had been wearing a ball gown, was in the company of the spec ops. Most women who suited up looked like some sort of cross between a gorilla and an uglier gorilla. They were the only ones who could cut it on the front lines in the Armored Infantry.

Rita Vrataski was the most famous soldier in the world. Back when I signed up for the UDF, you couldn’t go a day without seeing the news feeds sing her praises. Stories titled “A Legendary Commando,” “Valkyrie Incarnate,” that sort of thing. I’d even heard Hollywood was gonna make a movie about her, but I was already in the UDF by the time it came out, so I never saw it.

About half of all the Mimic kills humanity had ever made could be attributed to battles her squad had fought in. In less than three years, they’d slaughtered as many Mimics as the whole UDF put together had in the twenty years before. Rita was a savior descended from on high to help turn the odds in this endless, losing battle.

That’s what they said, anyway.

We all figured she was part of some propaganda squad they were using to make inroads into enemy territory. A front for some secret weapon or new strategy that really deserved the credit.