"Mason, we gotta get out of here, now!" the mech pilot transmitted over the comm. Never open a story with a battle scene, the editors used to tell me. You have to give time for the reader to get invested in the characters, time to care about them. All right. I'll give you some background first, then. My name's Mason. I was born in Knoxville, Tennessee. Got my Bachelors of Science in Engineering from the University of Tennessee. I'm a mechie. That's mechanical engineer. Got my girlfriend from the same University. She's one of them artsy types, but I love her to a fault. Well, when I'm actually in town that is. Yeah. I used to build remote-controlled model mechs when I was a kid. Ah, the flighty days of youth. I squandered more than one summer locked away inside a shed building those mechs. Once I was done, I'd send them out exploring. Empty culverts, tight crevices, underwater passageways—if it was some hard-to-reach place, sooner or later I'd be sending my mechs in, just for the challenge of it, the feeling of exploring some place no one else could.
What do You think about Caterpillar Without A Callsign?
