Submitted by fhangrin t3_123jpgg in WritingPrompts

OP-(https://www.reddit.com/r/WritingPrompts/comments/11yxala/wp_mech_pilots_with_ptsd_often_experience_a_kind/)

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Tank-Borne

“State your name for the record please?” The voice, almost mechanical in nature seems to emanate from the walls of the holding cell. Four walls seem to press in even tighter than the slurry-filled tank she’d previously spent the last four years occupying. A name? The question seems like an errant thought; something that would have come up during Indoc almost two decades ago. As far as the room’s occupant was concerned, she was a serial number more than a name.

“TB-84172, callsign Spitfire.” Her own voice sounds synthesized, which, given the amount of augmentation her tank-borne body has undergone to synchronize with electrical and mechanical systems for the machines she operates is understandable. Her voice is projected from a vocal synthesizer around her throat and only carries the vaguest hint of anything resembling femininity, much like her flash-cloned flesh.

“Not your serial number. Your name.”

“Mk-82 Heavy Battlemech, Trenchman variant, melee to short-range loadout.”

“Not what you pilot. Your name.

A longer pause this time, memories flashing through the pilot’s mind as if she were watching it on an instrument cluster. Oddly enough, the memories didn’t feel like her own. She was removed. Objective. Dissociated, as though they were happening to someone else. “This unit was previously designated as ‘Cassandra Nocte.’

“I, Cassandra. ‘I am Cassandra Nocte.’ You, are Cassandra Nocte.”

More flashes of memory this time. Indoc. Machines tearing apart her home-flesh to make way for the implants that would make her what she was now. More machine than woman. More machine than human. The Imperium’s work, and now here she sat in a Consortium holding cell for ‘rehabilitation.’ Silence reigns supreme in the holding cell until finally several figures step into the room, presumably from a door outside her field of vision. She felt so crippled lacking her usual sensor clusters to feed her information about her surroundings.

What she wouldn’t give for some ground penetrating radar and a Truncheon.

“This is the twelfth pilot we’ve managed to recover from the wreckage on the battlefront. What’s the Imperium doing to them?” The first voice, undoubtedly male, asked.

“Indoctrination. Psychological manipulation. You recall the America’s attempts at ‘mind control’ using psychotropic drugs, Williams?” This voice was female, likely the one asking the questions earlier. “The Imperium’s taking advantage of the body dysmorphic population. Easier to get them to accept a new identity when their own identities are already in question.” The woman nods to the heavily modified flesh of the pilot. “That, with some flash cloning technology, and psychological template flashing, and they’ve got a supply of ‘immortal soldiers.’”

“Pilots,” Cassandra corrects. More dissociated memories. Honor. Duty. Loss of human life glorified in the perpetuation of the Imperium. Mechanized pilots like herself were invaluable assets to the Imperium. No reliance on multi-person crews to operate complex machinery. No reaction lag between thought, movement, and eventual mobilization of technology. Her ‘mech responded with a thought. Weapons reloaded like a simple twitch of the finger. “We are Pilots. We are the treads on the ground; the afterburners in the sky, the warp-trails in space.” Recited by rote memory. It felt right.

“Can they even be rehabilitated?” Cassandra had to assume it was the one designated Williams speaking this time.

“Are they even Human?”

“Of course they’re human, Johnson. A little genome mapping and we should be able to put her back in a perfectly normal human body”

“Is that… Wise? What’s going to stop her from commandeering something else to get herself back home?”

“Look at her,” the woman says, nodding once again to the mangled melding of machine and woman. “She pilots with a thought. The Imperium didn’t train her to pilot everything by hand. All she can do was tailored for her by the Imperium War Machine. A purpose-built killing machine.” The woman pats the two men she’s with on the shoulder. “And you gentlemen, have the unenviable task of trying to fix her. Body and mind, at least.”

Fix her? Then she would be repaired? She would see redeployment? Any hope of being returned to what she felt she’d been born to do was dashed when she remembered they were talking about making her human again. Now she struggled, trying to free herself from bonds that simply didn’t exist. Her body simply… Didn’t work. Her mechanical inputs were disconnected. She felt no soothing pump of hydraulic fluid powering twenty ton legs. No hum of the cold-fusion reactor powering her systems.

She was running entirely on backup systems. Hooked up to something that gave her no synaptic feedback.

“Her soul on the other hand… That’s between her and her Maker.”

645

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1

Inqeuet t1_jdv53xn wrote

Ooh this hits hard. I’d love to see more if you’re feeling inspired!!

47

fhangrin OP t1_jdv5jei wrote

Gonna be a little bit of a wait as I've got sleep and work required before I can put more words to screen.

Should be able to knock out a prequel segment prior to her salvage.

*leading up to her salvage

31

OnToNextStage t1_jdvbq9a wrote

This prompt reminds me of Zone of the Enders 2167 Idolo which basically had this as the crux of the plot. It’s a short and fun watch at only an hour long.

Or Getter Robo which has both psychological and body horror as the machines merge with their pilots turning what started off as ostensibly a kid friendly robot show into a masterclass in horror and exploring the human condition.

15

s-mores t1_jdws1f6 wrote

Jeez wow. Shadows from Babylon 5 feels. You took this prompt and pushed it to the extreme. Kudos!

4

Joey_218 t1_jdwx1s4 wrote

Love the prose and world building. Kinda reminded me a little bit of Lancer.

7

fhangrin OP t1_jdxwmwh wrote

If I'm being honest, I drew a little bit from Gunhed mixed with some Battletech, Cyberpunk, and a lot of worldbuilding. I've got a whole universe mapped out, but not enough skill to turn it into a viable book.

2

OnToNextStage t1_jdya6vm wrote

Try this idea

The sentience of the machine is not just a mechanical quirk or born from a mistake of science, but in fact a sentient cosmic horror way beyond the understanding of humanity that they accidentally tapped into when they made the robots. The energy is alive.

And for whatever unknown and unknowable reason, the force has chosen humanity and that is not a good thing.

2

ZeroTrousers3D t1_jdyle6i wrote

Kinda the right tone.

In the 40k lore, the big mechs (Titans) are piloted by heavily modified humans, in many cases ones that can't live outside a tank.

If you're interested, Titanicus by Dan Abnett is a great starting point.

5

fhangrin OP t1_jdzp486 wrote

As requested by a couple of folks, I give you the Prequel to Tank-Borne.

Upon the Shoulders of Giants.

​

Another warp-lane, another contested planetary system.

Another battlefield.

New Terra is far from a new battlefield. It isn’t even a new planet. What New Terra is, however, what it represents, is the a renewed cradle for humanity in an uncaring universe. One of precious few planets with no intelligent indigenous species to lay claim, no alien civilizations with an interest in what would, to them, be yet another deathworld.

But to the fleet belonging to the Imperium in low orbit above the planet’s surface, it was just another Consortium world that they didn’t have the strength to hold.

Alarm claxons rang out in what Imperium soldiers not-so-affectionately called ‘The Pit.’ Battlemechs in various states of disassembly were being repaired and reassembled, armaments being swapped out for more field-appropriate gear. Tanks bearing the barely-human bodies of the pilots having their slurry flushed and refilled. Chemical stimulant and maintenance packs to keep the pilots operating for what was sure to be a lengthy siege, rather than the quick hostile takeover that command had implied during the mission briefings.

The final hour of their approach to Hot-Drop saw hundreds of ‘mechs assembled, their pilots slotted into the central core of the titans of steel. Compared to the pilots themselves, the ‘mechs had a tendency to look far more animatedly human with their pilots slotted rather than the hulking colossi they truly were.

Frontline variants were armed with up-scaled rifles similar to their human counterparts, albeit scaled up to fit the between thirty and fifty foot armored frames of the massive bipedal models.

Smaller quadrupedal scout models bore racks of missiles across their backs along with advanced sensor and communication suites along with target designation hardware that would allow them to call battlefield support, provide enhanced radar and map coverage, and, ultimately, call in orbital support for surgical strikes upon hardened targets.

Rather than a heavier loadout as the name would imply, Assault variants with their heavier power plants carried every manner of electronic warfare and countermeasure imaginable. They had, by now, become the Imperium’s calling card, because when the Assault ‘mechs hit the ground, the blackouts would roll, plunging enemy forces into chaos when their communications suddenly ceased to exist.

And finally, the Trenchman variants; quickly becoming the relic of a bygone age. Operated almost exclusively by convicts and social undesirables, they were the bulk of the ‘footsoldier’ mechs. Heavy shocktroopers with piledriver shields, forty millimeter explosive chain-gun, and ammunition reserves enough to make even the most hardened veteran blush.

Lines were assembled on the drop floor. Pilots; those still able to think and feel for themselves began to shift their mechs from side to side in an eager show of pre-drop jitters. But, as before any operation such as this, the fleet Admiral made his appearance on the gargantuan holo-projector at the back of the bay. Always, the same four words.

“The Flesh is weak…” Soft spoken. A prayer, at least the first half of one.

The answering call of every man, woman, and battlemech was loud enough to shake the decks of the carrier as the drop-floor began to lower.

"BUT THE SPIRIT IS WILLING!"

————————————————————————————————————————————

Spitfire’s inertial dampeners fired perfectly. She was on target. The chemical cocktail coursing through her veins produced a simulacrum of manic glee that, had she a face within her pod, would be showing a rictus of teeth and bloodshot eyes. The last few hundred feet of her descent was little more than a spray of explosive rounds to clear and flatten her landing zone before her hundred-ton battlemech hit the ground.

Soften the ground, soften the landing.

Somewhere in the back of her consciousness, she ‘heard’ the scouts picking targets, the arm of the massive battlemech swinging in a wide arc and spraying ammunition without a care in the world for what- or more importantly, who she hit. Armored targets resisted the spray, but once she could get on the ground-

She ‘felt’ something smack into the dampener sled under her feet. Time seemed to slow even has her ‘mech began to pick up speed.

Hard earth shattered under her frame, the sled not so much shattering as crumpling, holes opening under her feet as she fell into a makeshift set of manacles binding her feet together. Around swings the pneumatic Pile concealed by her shield, jackhammering the twisted metal away from the feet of her battlemech.

The next impact she felt on her armored form landed squarely at the junction in her back and shoulder. A lucky shot that detonated her reserve ammunition.

Cassandra’s world was engulfed in flame. Her subsystems initiated a reactor dump to prevent an overload, flushed her system of the combat stimulants to simulate a crude hibernation, and her mech was put into recovery mode.

Her final lucid thought as her systems began a cascade of failures, and the first of it’s kind since she underwent indoctrination. Without eyes to cry, a mouth to scream, and control of her ‘mech wrenched away from her, she wondered if she’d finally be allowed to die.

9

ZeroTrousers3D t1_je1xity wrote

Dreadnoughts are piloted by mortally wounded Space Marines, essentially it's a life support pod in a big walker think tank big.

The smallest Titan is a Warhound - think three story house. Titan pilots are also (exceptional) baseline humans that have augments.

1

fhangrin OP t1_je47i24 wrote

With this particular short, the PTSD is a direct result of the indoctrination process for folks like the MC. The Imperium uses all kinds of nasty shit to produce what are essentially zealotous soldiers. For pilots, the machine is the only physical form they have that can express itself in any capacity, which is alluded to in the prequel I posted later.

I took the prompt a little literally in that sense. The true horror of what they are is something very few of them actually come to terms with and offset that horror by what their between fifty and two-hundred ton war machines can do.

1