Heavy Metal

The smell of hot metal filled the air as I walked through the hangar to the ops room. Didn't look like too much action today; a couple of semis up on lifts, a ground-effect shuttle with its guts spilled out in front of it, and a couple of one-man tanks getting what looked like routine maintenance tweaks. It was even quiet enough to hold a conversation, a rare state out on the floor. I mentioned it to Dex and he nodded agreement.

We carded in through the security door to ops and dropped our gear bags by the lockers. Dex went to check the duty rosters and I wandered over to where a couple of noncoms were doing system checks on Omni - the usual stuff, sensor feeds, network connections, clean self-diagnostics - all the things that kept our computerized coordinator running in prime order. I peered over their shoulders and got a quick strobe-view of a half-dozen active patrols - system status, vid from hull-mounted cameras, crew biometrics. Looked like a pretty quiet day out there.

The sound of maintenance work got briefly louder and I checked behind me and saw that Wilkes had come in. He walked straight to me with a suppressed smile on his face.

"When I was ten my brother hid a snake in my bed," I ribbed him, "He had that same look on his face while we were changing into our pjs."

"Well, sir, I have to say that you always provide me an opportunity to challenge my professional skills," he said in a broad Tidewater drawl. When Dex first met Wilkes he talked to him for a good ten minutes, after which he confided to me, "I think I understood maybe one word out of ten from that guy." The accent sounds curiously like a New England fisherman's speech, but it's all Virginia. Wilkes had spent his entire life in the Norfolk area, and had cut his teeth working on the big warships, carriers and the like. We had him now, and there wasn't an urban patrol vehicle he couldn't spank into shape.

"So is she ready?" I asked. I knew the answer, just wanted to give him the satisfaction of saying it.

"Only one way to find out," he replied.

I called Dex and the three of us headed back out onto the floor, down the corridor into the big bays, and out into one of the monster hangars where she was waiting for us.

I don't know whether or not Wilkes had told us to be there at that specific time because he knew the light was going to be just right but if he had I admired his sense of drama. Dex whistled low when he caught sight of her and we just stood there for a few minutes admiring her glowing in the hazy sunlight that slanted down through the high bay windows.

If your kid made a drawing of an MPAC-15 Urban Pacification Chassis you might guess it was some kind of bug - a sand flea, maybe, something along those lines. But the only bug you'd find this big would be in an old '50's horror movie where some atomic accident had bred giant, mutated ants. The MPAC stood about 22 feet at the crest and had six heavily armored legs that kept it moving and stable. She took the largest crew of the any vehicle in the force and at top speed she could go in one side of any building and out the other like pig fat through a goose and that wasn't even if she used any of her eight weapons systems.

She was beautiful, a monstrous metal work of art. And the last time I'd seen her she'd been about as bad off as I'd ever seen a vehicle that was still capable of moving under its own power - vast swaths of scorched metal, countless divots where shells had impacted the armor - and far too many holes where some of those shells had penetrated.

And, of course, the blood. Most of it not ours, but some of it Parker's. That thought brought my reverie of admiration up short.

"You've done the full diagnostics?" I grilled Wilkes, "Not just the system reinstall routine?"

"Sure did, Cap, and she checks out green on all boards."

Dex said, "Well, she sure looks fine."

"Anyone with a welding torch and a can of wax can make it look fine," I grunted.

Wilkes looked slightly miffed. "I can run another set of routines if it'll make you feel better Cap." He'd do it, too - but he'd be cranky about it. There's a right time to make your chief engineer cranky, but this wasn't it.

I sighed and said, "No, I know you've already checked her over. Besides, if I know you you've already taken her over the course, haven't you?"

The look in his eyes confirmed what I'd guessed; he'd already taken her out for a spin through the training and obstacle course out behind the hangars - probably wasn't hard to crew her up either, just offered a few of the other mechanics a chance to take her out for a jaunt.

He grinned a bit and drawled, "Well, had to make sure she was shipshape, y'know Cap?"