Atlas Body, Locust Brain…

Have you ever wondered what would happen if you put a Locust pilot into an Atlas? I mean, when you were last so drunk that reason had abandoned you entirely?

Well if you never got that drunk, congratulations; you'll probably hold on to most of the c-bills you make. But here's what happened when that very situation arose and I'm sorry to say that all the protagonists were stone cold sober.

It happened in this way.

We had a Locust Pilot in as top condition as any of them ever are – which is to say physically fine apart from caffeine high and sugar hyped or whatever gets them that way – whose Mech was missing a leg and we were waiting for parts.

And then we had an Atlas which was more or less undamaged – well it was missing a few bits of armour, and one of the gyros was held together with spit and chewing gum or whatever – and an Atlas pilot down with food poisoning.

I TOLD him not to eat at that dodgy Capellan Café.

So Mack – our captain – says to Squatter – the Locust jock – that he needs to get his Locust-sized can into that big can and look menacing; because if you have an Atlas you have a morale advantage. And it's laid down in Nicholas Kerensky's rules of war that he wrote before he vanished that the moral is to the physical as three is to one. He was quoting some bloke called Napoleon but I don't know what kind of Mech this Napoleon geek had. That's all Squatter had to do; take out the Atlas – Gerry, its pilot calls it Ed – and make like he's mean.

Simple, right?

Wrong.

There we were up against whichever faction of the Free Words League was flavour of the month today - they change their factions more often than Squatter changes his underwear, which I fancy Gerry was going to moan about – with our lovely big Atlas looking like Hell scowling, and ready to hunge off a few LRM's on the principle that none of them ever hit anyway so it wouldn't show that Squatter had never fired them before.

I think he had taken one too many cups of coffee. And the way Squatter likes coffee is a cup of sugar with a caffeine concentrate and a little milk and water.

Anyway he charged.

If the lumbering trot an Atlas can manage might be called a charge. Somehow – the shade of Nicholas Kerensky alone knows how – he managed to break it into some semblance of a run; and the enemy start to get jittery.

Then the gyro has really finally had enough.

Have you ever seen – can you even IMAGINE – a drunken looking Atlas reeling and rolling around in an inebriated fashion waving its arms and randomly firing off all its weaponry? I have no idea how Squatter kept the damn thing upright for as long as he did. He was on the intercom shouting 'Ride 'em cowboy, whoooopdedooooo!'

The enemy thought it was some new battle tactic I swear; and they scattered. Then Ed took a nose dive.

Squatter was still whooping when he climbed out; we evacuated him to the psych unit. He was overexcited even for a Locust pilot.

Then one of us had to break it to Gerry, when he climbed off the pan, that his pride and joy was face down in the mud and we hadn't a clue how to get it out. We unanimously voted Mack to have that honour; he is our glorious leader after all.

Some people will tell you that a Mech Jock is a Mech Jock is a Mech Jock and the training enables him or her to adapt to any Mech.

It ain't true ladies and gents. There are two sorts of Mech Jocks.

There are sane Mech Jocks who might well adapt to any Mech; and then there are Locust pilots. Truth!