The silence was starting to get uncomfortable and it was broken by Mike who cleared his throat and commented, “He doesn’t like having to deal with the brass, does he?”
Gampy Bob shrugged and throw another stick on the fire. “It’s got to be something serious if Fuller is involved. Maybe we should look at heading back to base?” The suggestion was half hearted at best, and he looked around at the others waiting for somebody to disagree.
Kev obliged. “If it was that bad all our comm links would be going off. We’ve still got time for another round of steaks at least while he takes that call. If we need to know about it, he’ll tell us.”
They set about getting more meat cooking and those who had emptied their beers were passed fresh ones.
Pulling the ring pull on his can open with a hiss and a small amount of foam, it was Peter who remarked to Kev, “Hey, I meant to ask. There were a few names I thought I recognized in those stories. When he was talking about ‘The Don’, was that Don Fugate, the Torrent ace from Zeon?”
Kev chuckled. “Yeah, that’s him. He was making a name for himself already when he was with us, and he first started in Torrents when he was a Hero.”
With that news the group became far more animated and questions were flying thick and fast from all quarters; So what was he like? Did you go up against him? Is he as good as they say?
Kev waved his hands in an attempt to bat down the enthusiasm and get a word in edgeways. “Ok, one at a time!” he declared loudly, then once they had simmered down he continued in more normal tones. “Yeah, he’s a good guy, generally easy going unless you manage to get up his nose. Did I go up against him? Sure, we all did. We trained and sorted out our formations against each other the same as everyone does. Just with Don it was more a case of how much you could scrape his paintwork rather than actually doing some damage.”
Peter beat the rabble to the next set of questions by a hairsbreadth. “He’s really that good? Could any of you beat him?”
Kev shrugged in a matter of fact manner. ”Oh sure, I mean this was before he had enough skill to use the really big mechs… The Colonel could hold his own. Fuller, Chong and Big Col were out of his league. It was the rest of us that had the problems.”
“So none of the rest of you could take him?” asked Mike, his eyes intent, glancing around at the Heroes who would have been around at that time.
“No,” Kev shook his head, then frowned and added, “Well, actually that’s not quite true. The Retherfords were still with us then, and they could go toe to toe with him. And Mac beat him.”
People choked on beer and gasped in disbelief and once more the clearing was in uproar.
“You’re Kidding!” declared Pete.
“No Way!” exclaimed Pete.
“He beat the Torrent Ace?” demanded Mike.
Even Gampy Bob looked dubious. “Do tell youngster… We didn’t hear anything about it down in H2, and we generally managed to get hold of most of the gossip thanks to the Retherford clones.”
Kev chuckled and lent forward to stir the coals with a stick. “Yeah he did. Just once, and it was the only full on honor duel they ever had so it was pretty heavy stuff, but Mac took him. Promised to keep it secret too afterwards, but hey, I’m not Mac and I didn’t promise.” He glanced over at Gampy Bob. “Probably why you didn’t hear about it.”
Gampy Bob crossed his arms and leaned back. “So how the hell did he do it?” he demanded.
Kev laughed wryly and shook his head. “The thing to remember about Mac,” he said, “is that he doesn’t play fair. I mean, he doesn’t cheat, but he’ll take any advantage he can and even more that you can’t even dream of. Not just hardware, but he can get inside your head… that’s what he did with Don.”
He put the stick to one side and shifted his buttocks into a more comfortable position on the ground. “It was back around the time of the Specialist wars. We’d just taken gold and there was still a lot of discontent in the pilot community about being forced to fight against specialists instead of just fielding the best mechs you possibly could. The Don was firmly in the heavy camp, where Mac was very much pro specialist. It started off with Mac going on and on about how brilliant Red Ants were and how everyone should get some. Don said no thanks, he’d stick with his Torrents. Then Mac said it was probably just as well, since a Red Ant would only make Don’s ass look big, but Don let that one slide too. Like I said, he was pretty easy going.”
Kev twisted his face into an ironic expression before continuing. “The thing is that once he sets his mind to it, Mac can make a saint swear and Don is a lot of things but a saint isn’t one of them. There was a lot of snide comments to start with, but Don just kept saying that if he did get Ants, he would wipe the floor with Mac because his weapons were far better quality.”
“So Mac escalated things even more. He started getting drunk with the Retherfords, then would load up some Ants with potato cannons, break into Dons hanger and start firing potatoes at his Torrents. Of course that set off all the alarms, the Torrents auto defense protocols would kick in, they’d shoot the place up and Don would get woken up and have to come and clean up the mess.”
“The third night Mac pulled that stunt, the Don just lost it completely. He went out and got himself a couple of dozen Red Ants, stripped all the weapons off his Torrents and the rest of his heavies, loaded up the Ants and marched them out onto the honor field. He called Mac out.”
Kev paused and smiled at the memory. “So Mac turned up with his own Ants and proceeded to hand Don his ass on a plate. Don ended up just sitting there in the middle of the honour field surrounded by a couple hundred ton of Red Ant scrap. He couldn’t believe it. It took about five minutes, then he just burst out laughing… seriously, we thought he was going to either wet himself or do himself an injury.”
The audience looked skeptical. They were well aware of the Zeon reputation in general and all had at some stage in their career been on the receiving end of the amount of niode weaponry the likes of which their pilots were reputed to pack. It was Stan that asked the obvious question.
“So what was the story then?”
“Simple answer,” snorted Kev. “Mac had wound him up so bad that all he was concentrating on was getting Ants on the field with the biggest weapons he could get. He’d completely forgotten about other systems, so he’d been running with stock engines and stock chassis. Not even a cup holder in the cockpit. So even though his weapons were twice as powerful as anything Mac had, Mac was firing twice as fast, with greater accuracy and when Don did get a shot off, most of the time Mac was dodging it.”
He scanned the faces of the others, resting for a few brief seconds on the newer members of the clan to let the cautionary tale sink in.
“Mac had baited the Legend into losing his cool, and Don ended up making a stupid rookie mistake.” Then he straightened and carried on in a more matter of fact tone. “Of course they had a rematch later and Don came out on top, but by that time it was just a training run. But, meh, too late. The Don had been beaten. Just goes to show that even legends can have a bad day at the office.”
Just then the ambient noise of the jungle was interrupted with the rustle and footfalls of somebody approaching. The pilots stared in silence as Mac returned and moved from the undergrowth into the fire’s dim glow. He stopped at the edge of the light and took in the fact that all eyes were on him.
“What?” he scowled as he held his hands open to invite an answer. “You’re all looking at me as if I’ve just said that I got paid more than the cost of a liquid torch for a job on Novum Dolorum. Or something else equally impossible.”
Kev tried to put on his most innocent smile and failed miserably. “Nope, just chewing the fat and waiting to see what the General wanted. Anything we need to worry about?”
Mac narrowed his eyes, but let the obvious lie go… at least for the time being.
“Worry? No. We do need to get back to barracks though, and that’s on the complete understanding that as far as Fuller is concerned I have neither seen you, nor do I know where you all currently are, even though most of you are apparently AWOL from barracks and snuck out here without disabling your location transponders. Fuller’s about to ship us to a larger base. We’re expanding…”
Submitted by David McCallum # 701548