Caterpillar Without A Callsign by Isaac Hooke Read Free Book Online Page A

anyway, this, my dear readers, was my first deployment.
    Out here, in the mountainous war zone between Mongolia and Russia, we were working with the Marines, trying to flush out the insurgents who had taken over Baganuur City. Lui had shipped out a couple of months ahead of me and already got his callsign. Because he'd earned his name, when a position opened up for ATLAS 5 mech operators, he got it. I guess it helped that he had the highest Advanced ATLAS Warfare qualification scores of anyone on the platoon.
    The ATLAS 5. The latest and greatest in the ATLAS line of mechs. We're talking three meters of pure, towering war machine here folks. A thousand hydraulically actuated joints with closed-loop positions and force control. Head-mounted sensor package with built in LIDAR, night vision, flash vision, zoom. Crash protection. Jump jets. Active protection countermeasures. Swappable weaponry for each arm (gatling gun, serpent rocket launcher, incendiary thrower). Deployable ballistic shield.
    The mechs we built in school were toys in comparison.
    Lui, that lucky bastard.
    As for m e, because I still didn't have a callsign and hadn't yet proven myself, I was stuck in a communications role, carrying around this heavy rucksack of comm equipment on my back while Lui got to pilot an ATLAS 5. I'd only been in two firefights since I arrived—I'd taken cover, fired off some shots, but that wasn't really enough to earn an official callsign. The others still called me by my real name, Mason, or just CWC. Caterpillar Without a Callsign. Well, that and Midget.
    I hated all three.
    There was another comm o in the platoon. Fret was his callsign. This tall guy with a neck like a giraffe. The dude towered over me because as I said I was 134 cm (4'5"), and he was 195 cm (6'5"). Nice. I practically looked like his kid when we were on duty together. Sort of how we all looked when standing beside an ATLAS. Anyway, somehow Fret the giraffe had ended up coming with our squad today. Don't ask me why. I just follow orders around here. If the Chief wanted two commos on the squad, I guess he had good reason.
    So there I was, hiking with my squad up into the mountains of Khentii Province to check the validity of a rumor that said one of the tribes was harboring a handful of insurgents from Baganuur city. The local gossip had it that there might even be an insurgent leader among them, one of the warlords who had masterminded several guerilla attacks in the region. A man named Gansükh Tömörbaatar. "Steel-Ax Iron-Hero." Whatever that was supposed to mean...
    "Hey, Midget, pass me the thermos would you?" Fret told me.
    He'd made me carry his thermos of coffee. Because I hadn't earned my callsign, I still wasn't considered a full member of the team. A newbie caterpillar, a baby moth, in service of those with the callsigns.
    Maybe I should have just dumped the thermos out, but I dutifully handed it over to Fret. I'd been hazed enough times already to know that when those with the callsigns told you to do something, you obeyed.
    "Don't worry," Lui had told me one time after a particularly bad hazing. "They're just testing you. Want to make sure you'll watch their backs when they really need you."
    "How does pushing me around and hazing me and making me do whatever they want prove that I'll watch their backs?" I had asked him.
    "It will. Trust me. It's just Team culture. You'll get used to it. And once you've got your callsign, most of that stuff will end. Because then you can stand up for yourself. But only then."
    I hoped so.
    Speaking of Lui, right now he was clambering along the rocky escarpment at the head of our squad, acting as our point man (or point mech). The giant steel feet of his ATLAS just ground the rock underfoot, leaving behind these crushed, powdery footsteps. His callsign showed up in bright green letters above the mech, thanks to the Implant I had in my head, which tapped into my neocortex and fed my brain all the visual and auditory