the training is faster then they expect, merely six months of course work and another three in the simulator. When mechs were being proposed it was supposed to take years, years of grueling work, of practice, of getting to know your machine, but in the end there wasn't time. They were a rush job, and corners had to be cut. The machinery was simple, hydraulics, pneumatics, actuators, large steel plates and heavily jacketed wiring, building the body was the easy part. The corners they cut were on the interface. physical controls weren't enough, and the sensor helmets were inefficient. The nerve ports wired into the spinal column were the best long term solution, but they were five, maybe ten years from field testing, and there just wasn't time. we never had enough time.
Instead, mech pilots are trained in secret. Their fatalities are muddled into the infantry numbers. they take nine months to train, and we get six hours out of each. But it's worth it. it's the only way to fight an enemy like this. The pilots don't know that, of course. and every soldier whose stood out on the battlefield with nothing but a steel helmet and a few ceramic plates around their vitals would rather fight from the inside of a mech. We get a lot of volunteers. they don't know. If they did, we wouldn't stand a chance of winning.
It's disgusting, really. i threw up the first time i watched it happen, watched that bulbous probe smash through that poor girls skull, her excited smile twitching at the corners of her mouth, her trusting eyes fixed on mine, that expression frozen on her face as her consciousness was obliterated too fast for signals to crawl down her nerves to the muscles in her cheeks. She just kept smiling, as it used her. as the tendrils of the probe extended out, snaking through the folds of her brain to find their purchase, before locking in, and joining her simulated experience with the onboard systems. The clock ticked down. five hours, fifty nine minutes, fifty three seconds. Enough time for one short field mission, before her brain burned out, and the steel body would hunger for a new one.
I got used to it. got used to wishing them good luck, to sharing their smiles as they climbed into those cabs. I knew what the training videos said. "You're a triad, your machine, your mechanic, and you". Every single one thought I was there to be their friend. their support. The one who kept them going. I just did tune ups between each run. And I dragged their bodies to the chute. and cleaned their skull chips out of the cabin.
They say mech pilots aren't human. The rumors go that they're something far more... animalistic. some fusion built organic machine, divorced from humanity by their melding with the mechs, their prowess on the battlefield, and their unquenchable bloodlust. It's half true. They're not human, not by the time I meet them. They're bullets. I just load them into the gun.
2087
blakekathryn
ellievsbear
areudirty
