1
I remember the smell of motor oil, the pungent sting of the Mech coolant fluid invading my nose and making my youthful eyes water. The cascade of sparks as a tech welded a plate of armor into place formed a halo of light around her head as if she had descended from some heavenly plane. I can still feel the rough calluses of my father's hand as I gripped it in awe. It was the hand of a MechWarrior and it dwarfed my tiny fist in its own. I remember how dry my mouth went when we came around the corner of the gantry propping her in place. The taste of a breakfast hastily eaten that day lingers in my mind when rations run out on battlefields years later.
She towered like a mountain over me, taller than even the neck-craning height of my father. I bent backwards trying to take it all in with my wide young eyes. Painted on her right side was the image of a beautiful woman. Grinning confidently this warrior-goddess stood with both hands wrapped around the handle of a hammer, the head of which encompassing the entirety of the cannon.
"Who is that?" I whispered to my father pointing one of my small fingers reverently. "That's Matilda son." I can still hear the smile in his voice, a ray of warm sun over a rumble of gravel. "She helps keep your Daddy safe from bad guys. Someday she'll do the same for you." If I loved her before that moment I worshiped her now.
I recall the ride up the gantry elevator, the dizzying height would have been terrifying if not for the closeness of her smile and the grip of my father's hand as we rose. I remember the weight of the cooling vest as they strapped it on my little shoulders. The laughter of the tech as he assured me I'd grow into it someday. The sight of my father's broad back as I followed him into the cockpit plays on repeat every time I open the hatch years later.
The backs of my legs still itch from the hard plactic of the fold down seat behind the command couch. When I close my eyes I can still recall the magic of the console lights as they lit the darkness. I jumped when I heard my mother's voice come in over the speaker. "Reactor online, sensors online, weapon systems on stand by." My father chuckled at my reaction. "I had one of the techs replace the audio when we were still courting." I nodded silently too awestruck for words. Years later I would rage for hours when a Free Worlder's lucky PPC shot damaged the cockpit and the recording was lost forever.
When she moved out of the gantry and towards the hangar doors I remember shrieking with delight. We were flying, a giant striding among ants. The vibration of each step turning my laughter into hiccups as I bounced up and down. There will never be a day as bright and sunny as that day ever again, the sapphire sky greeting us as we walked across the practice field.
I would have been content to just watch my father pilot Matilda for hours. His hands gently guiding the control stick and working the throttle. My chest still recalls the swell of excitement when he turned to me and said "Would you like to fire her cannon?" The well worn plastic of the joystick felt like the most natural thing in the world even in my inexperienced hands. "When the crosshairs change color just pull the trigger gently." My father said.
Even in the most hellish of firefights, surrounded by enemies with the screams of the dying echoing in my ear, my father's gentle advice will always cut through and guide my aim. The shuddering boom when I squeezed that trigger so long ago made me jerk the controls to the left. Rather than chastise me, my father simply regained control of the twisting torso and realigned the machine. "Control give me a read on the target." I heard him say into the mike, my face burning with shame. "Direct hit sir target destroyed." The radio made the cheers and applause sound small and metallic but to this day it is the sound that fills my ears whenever success found me later in life.
Now Matilda is mine, passed down from my father to me as is tradition going back hundreds of years. Her paint has changed a dozen times and her armor replaced a thousand fold. She has been burned by lasers, hammered by missiles, dropped from high places, smashed by cannon fire, scorched, frozen, drowned, and blasted into space. I have wept in the darkness of her cockpit, bled over her controls, screamed in rage at enemies through her viewscreen, and celebrated at her feet on far away worlds. No matter the adventure she keeps me as safe as she did that long ago day a young boy fell in love for the first time.
Edited by Bill Bullet, 11 May 2015 - 03:27 AM.
