“I’m gonna have to cast my ballot for Yonabaru.”

“I’ve set this thing to filter out your jokes, so stop wastin’ your breath.”

“Sounds like Kiriya’s gonna have to step up his training if he doesn’t want Yonabaru to take the piss out of him so easy.”

“Sir! I think I need to reboot my Jacket, sir! I don’t want it crashing during the battle!”

“Aw man, I’d kill for a cigarette. Musta left ’em in my other Jacket.”

“I thought you quit smokin’?”

“Hey, keep it down! I’m tryin’ to get some sleep!”

And so it went. Back and forth through the comm link, like it was an Internet chat room. All Ferrell could do was sigh and shake his Jacketed head.

When you’re so nervous you’ve run out of nails to bite, thinking about something you enjoy helps take the pressure off. They taught us that in training too. Of course, you get a bunch of animals like these together, pretty much the only thing they think about is sex. There was only one girl I could think about, my sweet little librarian whose face I could hardly picture anymore. Who knew what she was doing. It’d been half a year since she got married. She was probably knocked up by now. I enlisted right after I graduated from high school, and she broke my heart. I don’t think the two things were related. Who can say?

I had signed up thinking I could make some sense of this fuckedup world by betting my life in battle and seeing what fate dealt me. Boy was I ever green. If I was tea-green now, I must’ve been lime-green back then. Turns out my life isn’t even worth enough to buy one of those pricey bombs, and what cards fate has dealt me don’t have any rhyme or reason.

“Nuts to this. If we’re not gonna dig trenches, can’t we at least sit?”

“Can’t hide if we’re diggin’ trenches.”

“This active camouflage ain’t good for shit. Who’s to say they don’t see better’n we do, anyhow? They aren’t supposed to be able to see the attack choppers either, but they knock ’em out of the sky like balloons in a shootin’ gallery. Made for a helluva time at Okinawa.”