To the Joys of Volunteering and the Beginning of the Future
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Mount Kunimi, Fukui, 18 October 2024
“Ma’am, let me get out there. You have inbound, you have spare bots, and I’m a pilot.”
“Our Tornado Troop can handle this. You should have stayed in Komatsu. It was foolish of you to come here.”
“Okay, fine, I’m not arguing any of those points, but don’t you think it would be best to put every asset you have at your disposal out there? You’re down two pilots. Or three actually, your full roster is twelve. If the nine you have left can handle the Eschatos, then ten could handle them better, with reduced risk to your city and, more importantly, to your pilots. Let me out there.”
Around me, Kunimiyama Defense Station was filled with the wail of sirens announcing an Eschatos attack was imminent, and hundreds of fatigue-clad GSDF soldiers were rushing this way and that, making last-minute preparations before the Mount Kunimi area became a battlefield. There had been talk about the Oceania Alliance and the New Brazilian Republic letting the attacks on Japan die down in favor of consolidating their power in South Asia and the Mideast, but so far, I had seen little evidence of it. Tôkyô had not been targeted by the Eschatos in years, but the outlying regions like Fukui Prefecture were still attacked episodically. I had not heard any reports of the Eschatos in India or Saudi Arabia.
Kunimiyama Defense Station’s chief of titan operations was Captain Shimoda, a stern, round-faced woman clad in neat fatigues. Despite her short height, she walked so fast I had to all but run to keep up with her. The decision of whether or not to utilize my availability to support the local titan pilots fell to her, but Captain Shimoda clearly did not like the idea. Just outside the station’s titan hangar, she stopped to regard me with undisguised distrust. “This is highly irregular, Lieutenant.”
I could not blame her for having doubts about me. She did not know me, and no doubt she feared I would be unmanageable, like so many other titan pilots tend to be. Managing titan pilots was often likened to herding cats, and I knew exactly what it was like first-hand. Adding a new personality to the mix, even for a short time, even in an emergency like this, was an exercise fraught with danger. The fact that I was a commissioned officer did nothing to alleviate any of that. If anything, it made it worse. If I was in her shoes, I would have had my reservations, too. “I’m not some hotshot glory-hound, Captain. I’m a soldier. I know how to follow orders.”
Captain Shimoda considered this for a moment. “What’s your specialization?”
“Precision cannon.”
“How good are you?”
“Better than an empty bot sitting in the hangar gathering dust while your kids get chewed up.”
“Watch it, pilot,” Captain Shimoda said, stepping closer to me. Her invasion of my personal space was deliberate. This was one of those things I had learned during Officer School from my instructors, who used psychological tricks like these, partly to teach us how it was done, but mainly to assert their authority. Captain Shimoda was doing the same thing, or trying to. Given that I was a good twenty centimeters taller than her, towering over me was not an option for her. Hands on her hips, she stood close enough to me that I could feel the warmth of her breath. “I want you in Unit Five.”
“Does it have a clean sync hub?”
Captain Shimoda frowned. “We’ll get you one.”
Which meant that it did not.
“Mount up, and stand by. Use the time to get familiar with the maps. Last thing I need is for you to get lost out there.”
Her attempt to intimidate me had failed, but still, I had to step back in order to salute her without hitting her. “Yes, ma’am.”
Captain Shimoda seemed pleased with this. No doubt she had interpreted my stepping back as a victory on her part. I hate these stupid alpha-dominance games. “Move it, pilot,” she ordered me.
“Ma’am.” I headed into the hangar ahead of her. Inside were the eleven titans of Tornado 91, nine of which were being prepped for deployment. Fatigue-clad mechanics swarmed over the twenty-meter-tall war machines, and I spotted a couple of the pilots standing up on the catwalk, looking at me with a mix of curiosity and suspicion. I ignored this, and stopped the first mechanic to pass within arm’s reach. “Where’s Unit Five?”
“Back there, sir,” the mechanic said, pointing. “It’s one of the ones under the tarp, on the right.”
Oh, man. They’ve tarped it. Hopefully this doesn’t mean what I think it means. “Where are the mechanics assigned to it?”
“Aren’t any, sir,” the mechanic said, confirming my fears. “Not any more.”
“Tell your chief I need at least a couple people to help me get that thing running.”
“Will do, sir.” With that, the mechanic hurried on the way he was going.
I walked up to where Unit Five was berthed, secured to its support frame. There was no point in running. Sure, the Eschatos were coming, and would attempt to blow up everything once they got here, which would have deleterious effects on our well-being, but they were still a couple hours out. Running unnecessarily was a waste of time and energy. Rookies waste time and energy. I needed to conserve what I could for the real challenge before me.
Even with the drab olive tarp covering its head and torso, I could tell that Unit Five was an old machine, a fourth-generation Atlas without the 2018 operational upgrade package which was mandated to be added to every fourth-gen Atlas by the end of 2021. The configuration of the knees and the shape of the shoulder armor were sure giveaways. Further, it did not look like it has so much as been touched since its pilot had chosen to move on a few weeks before. Some of the titan’s armor plates were still laying stacked on a forklift near the foot of the titan.
Yeah, Unit Five was tarped, which is to say that when it no longer had a pilot assigned to it, they just threw a tarp over it and never bothered doing any further maintenance on it. What sort of slipshod operation were they running here?
It did not matter. Over the hangar’s loudspeaker, Captain Shimoda announced, “All units: report from Topwatch has Eschatos making landfall in one hour forty minutes, between Ryôhashiyachô and Ayukawachô, targeting this base and Mount Kunimi Daiichi Power Plant. All units will deploy to the Tower Line at Itosakichô and await for further instructions.”
One and a half hours is not a lot of time. “Well, this is going to be fun.” I undid my tie, set my uniform blazer and shirt aside, and set to getting Unit Five operational wearing my olive service uniform pants and shoes and a white a-shirt. Like I said, I am a titan pilot. We play the hand we are dealt. Whining about how life is unfair is for children. I grabbed Unit Five’s dance card and climbed up on the skyjack.
Getting Unit Five’s power running was my first order of business. The palladium-thorium reactor had been cold for a couple weeks, but at least it had been shut down properly. With my pocketknife I cut the tarp free, and popped the cockpit hatch. Looking inside, I could see that the sync hub cover was off, laying in the cockpit seat. The sync hub itself was missing. Well, that was a good thing, actually. The last thing I needed was for the neural feedback off the old tainted hub screwing with my mind. I climbed down into the cockpit, pushing the sync hub cover to one side, and began the start-up sequence. I did not need a sync hub for that.
“Sir?”
I glanced up to see a pair of mechanics standing above me. They both saluted. The woman, who was about the same age as me and wore a pair of completely unflattering thick-framed glasses, was the one who addressed me. “I’m Corporal Imabashi, sir, and this is Private Hayama.” She gestured to the man, who did not look old enough to be out of high school. “We’re your support.”
“You ever work this bot before?” I asked.
“No, sir,” Imabashi said. “We were assigned to Spring Archer.”
I looked up at her.
“Sorry, sir,” she said with a smile. “We’ve nicknamed all the titans. This one is Winter Princess.”
Irrelevant. “Okay, Imabashi-kun, it’s just the three of us?”
“Yes, sir.”
Figures. We were pressed for time, so... “We’re skipping most of the pre-op list. I need a clean sync hub, a 120 millimeter precision cannon and at least a hundred rounds of M7583 Daigoro, a jumpsuit and helmet, a topographical map of the Fukui area, and the current radio codes. Then we need to do a function diagnostic, get all the armor segments reattached, and get our Winter Princess out the door.”
“Yes, sir!” Imabashi and Hayama both saluted, and hurried off to set about the tasks set before us.
I continued getting the titan’s systems booted up. A titan is a complicated machine. Even skipping most of the steps, it would take me a solid fifteen minutes to make sure Unit Five or Winter Princess or whatever you wanted to call this titan was running reliably enough that I could feel confident taking it into combat.
I do not mind putting myself in harm’s way, but here, hundreds of kilometers from my assigned base, fighting on mostly unfamiliar territory in a borrowed titan with a group of pilots who I do not know, I am not going to cut any more corners than I have to. The fact that with only two mechanics helping me get my titan set up, I am going to be doing quite a bit of the work myself doesn’t bother me. Too many pilots confuse foolhardiness for bravery, and for too many, that is their final mistake.
So, why was I here? This will sound strange, but I was here because I did not have to be here, because I could have chosen to sit this battle out. I recognize that may sound a bit odd, but it is the truth. I had been on my way to a speaking engagement at my old junior high when the alert was announced, and I should have just turned around and headed back the way I came, but I did not. Regardless of everything else, it was my choice to be here, and I did not get that many opportunities to make a choice that mattered. I had to take advantage of the opportunities that presented themselves, and so I had volunteered, genuinely volunteered, to help Tornado Troop with the imminent Eschatos attack.
I suppose it would help if I backed up a bit, and began my story a couple weeks prior to the Battle of Mount Kunimi...