Twenty three years ago, when I first joined the Brotherhood as an apprentice mechanic, I worked for an old wrench slinger named Charles Cockrin. "Sergeant Corky" as he was better known, ran a tight outfit and tended to compartmentalize his subordinates so that they had a very specific duty area. This was a bit monotonous and the tedium and boredom of it could drive you insane at times, but you learned every single nut, bolt and washer that had anything to do with your work area and that led to a level of precision and attention to detail that serve me well even to this day. My assignment was as primary mechanic to a Warhorse Mecha run by a pilot named Lieutenant David "Mick" O'Donnel. We affectionately called that old warhorse, Paint, for the reason that every time he brought that hunk of metal back to the bay we had to repaint the whole damn thing, from top to bottom, because he took so much flak and chaff during combat. Mick was a damn good pilot, but I don't think he had a single bone in his body that contained any sense of his own mortality. Whenever he jumped into a hot zone, he was the first one to charge the breach, leap into a hailstorm of enemy fire, or take on a pack of enemy heavy mechas solo so that his squad could flank them. The man was a lunatic, but he was a good mate and a damn fine pilot.
During the first clan wars, Sgt Corky sent me front line, to do spot repairs for Mick on Paint, so that we could continue to push other clans back without having to do as many full pull outs after each battle during the ongoing fights. One evening after several days of fighting on the third moon of some planet so obscure it only had a number for a name, Mick brought Paint into field hanger we had set up. Paint was in bad shape. Her cockpit was so mangled, I couldn't figure out how the hell Mick made it out of the damn thing intact, let alone alive. Grabbing a luke warm cup of coffee out of the thermal jug on my bench, he told me about the engagement. It was the usual story, outgunned, outnumbered, and low on both ammo and sleep, he and his squad managed to pull a victory out of fate's ass and come home to tell the tale. The downside was that, tho they had won the engagement, the enemy had managed to push forward on both flanks and as soon as I could get Paint functional enough to move and fire, Mick needed to take her back out to augment our forces to the northeast.
I patched her up as best I could, filled a thermos with the sludge we called coffee, put it in the cockpit with Mick, and cleared them for departure. As he walked Paint out the hanger doors, Mick saluted me with his right hex canon and I flipped him the bird. The last words I heard from Mick were garbled by his laughter. I like to think that, if nothing else, I gave him his last laugh.
I listened to the battle over the com's as it played out. Mick led multiple charges against the rebel clan forces, driving them back, time and again, solo. The battle read outs indicated that he took a total of forty two hits that normally would have been critical and that's not counting the other thirty plus hits he took in non-critical locations. For all intents and purposes, Paint should have blown out after the first hit, but she kept on going anyway. Finally, just as our boys took the enemy HQ, Paint went offline, taking Mick with her, as her engines blew out, taking his projectile and missile ammunition reserve pods up in a massive internal explosion.
He was awarded a stack of medals, posthumously. Their was a grand wake for him. It was an empty casket affair, but we sent him out with all the honor and respect we could muster.
That night, as I was putting up my tools and cleaning my work area, Corky came to see me. He was a pale bloke to begin with, but when I looked at him then, I swear, he was so white I could almost see thru him. He tossed his hat on the bench, sat down, took a hit from a flask out of his pocket, and passed it to me. After I had a good slug, I looked back up and said, "Go ahead. Tell me. I'm ready."
Corky was silent for a bit, then he croaked out these words, "I was in the rear echelon primary bay listening to the battle on the com's speakers, while I was patching up as many offline mechas as I could that had been sent back from the lines. Monk.......I swear to you, as God is my witness........the mecha I was working on, was Paint. I found Mick in the cockpit, dead as stone." He took another hit from his flask and went on, "I turned to look at the radio, cause I thought I was crazy. When the com's said that Paint went up, I looked back and it wasn't there anymore." He paused, then finished up by saying, "I didn't tell anyone, cause the last thing I want is to discredit the man for what he did. He was a hero, and there's no denying that. My only question is, was he a hero that went out fighting, or a hero that came back from the dead to make one last stand."
I still don't know the answer.
Do you?
Submitted by Monk Malone/Ron Frye#879655