Three tours, eleven major operations, four units, two field promotions, one field demotion, one award citation, and a total of fifteen years on the float. Granted, most of that was spent in cryo, but hey, still counted for my contract, right? Otherwise, I wouldn't be here now, waiting to get my DD-214 so I can go back to...something or other. Not sure what to do with myself, honestly.
Mechs? Yeah, I served with a few. Mostly INF-C frames, given my position in an orbital marine battalion. I like to think I got along pretty decently with the pilots, but I'm no handler or anything. I was just nice to them and they were always there to bail my ass out of the fire when I needed them to. You tell one of 'em "good job" and ruffle their hair in the mess hall after an op instead of hitting them for revving their boosters too close to the LZ or some shit, and it works wonders for their attentiveness in the field. Who knew?
Honestly, I never found pilots to be that weird or intimidating or problematic or anything like that. They're just people. Not like you and me, sure, but they're people nonetheless. Never really got along with the other guys in my ptoon, but there'd be those nights where I'd be on watch and one of them would just wander up and sit next to me, like they could tell I needed someone there. One of the most beautiful nights I ever experienced was on Epsilon Eridani, goofing off and watching the stars because one of the LCAV pilots trotted her frame out to the tower. No need for the Mk I eyeball when you've got a whole-ass ARGUS system sitting there next to you scanning with thermal, IR, and some other shit I don't know nor care to think about. We didn't say anything to one another, just sat there staring at the rest of the gaxy and taking in the moment. At one point, she popped the hatch, held my hand. First time anyone had done it for me since I was a stupid teen telling my ex I was pnning to enlist.
Never really talked to that LCAV or any other pilots. Figured whatever I had to say wouldn't be anything they could connect with, but if I've got one real regret about my time in service, it's that I didn't talk to them more. To tell you the truth, I found myself a little jealous of them. The rest of my ptoon trusted me, but it always felt like there was some kind of "wall" between me and the other drop troops. Moment we were "off the clock," nobody wanted anything to do with me, probably because I didn't buy into the macho bullshit dick-measuring contests and stories they all bonded over. Like, c'mon man, we're billions of miles from home, fighting a war where you could be turned to ash mid-drop because some squid plotted the drop pod trajectory half a milliradian off where it was supposed to be and threw you in range of an AGD IADS, and I'm supposed to give half a shit about how many women or men I fucked during Fleet Week? Fuck off.
The pilots though? Always happy to have me around, or at least kind enough to welcome me. Snuck out of my bunk to sleep in the pilot nests a few times because of it. They're almost universally soft because of the muscle atrophy they get from sitting in their frames all the time, and they absolutely crave human connection because they don't take the psychotropics that keep everyone else emotionally sedated on the float for years at a time. Turns out I have a resistance to the emotional suppressants they ced our food with, so I kinda needed it too. Got in trouble with their handlers once or twice, but we sorted it out pretty quickly, and it became our little secret, a tiny little oasis of humanity in an emotionless steel tube hurtling through the stars. First time I'd ever felt like I belonged somewhere.
Those nights - days? Who knows, time is fake on the float - I would y there, caressing the pilot I'd snuck into bed with, and I'd ask if I was really where I wanted to be in my life. Sure, being an orbital marine has prestige, but it's sterile. There's a mold you're pressed into, and you'll never be anything more than that. Cut away all the moto shit, all the culture around drop troopers that's been built up because of a hundred years of shitty action films and games, and you're left with a career where you are conditioned not to care about yourself or your fellow man, because all you see in the field are the horrors of war, and you're not supposed to talk about it or ask questions about the nature of man. Sarge might have a chute failure, your battle buddy might get fsh-fried in his pod by a surface-to-orbit ser, and you might just die of pin old bullet wounds. Death happens. You're only human, and humans are expendable.
That's the real revetion I had over the st decade and a half of my career. Handlers aside, the UGS officer corps has a habit of talking about pilots like they're materiel. I noticed that most of them only had maybe one or two personal affects, and on rare occasion, their old names were on them. Names they didn't use anymore, because they'd been given a new one with their new life. It's really easy to think about them as nothing more than serial numbers inside a machine, but the reality is they're tracked and cherished more than we are. Someone like me eats shit, and all that happens is our next of kin gets notified that that particur genetic branch of the Hernandez name has come to an end in service to his country. A week ter, fresh meat shows up in the ptoon, and the war machine marches on. Your ptoon doesn't even grieve; drugs keep 'em from thinking about it.
But a pilot? Make no mistake, they might be serial numbers and callsigns instead of names and faces, but FLEETCOM cares a hell of a lot more about them. Even if FLEETCOM didn't, the other pilots do. Every pilot is like their serial number - unique. One of the handlers told me that their augmentations link them into a wireless "neural network." Even when they're on their own, when there's no other pilots around, they never have to feel alone. When you lose a pilot, everyone notices. Everyone remembers them.
That was the whole reason I signed up to be an orbital marine. I wanted to be a hero, to be remembered. More I think about it, the more I think I shouldn't have walked out of the mech corps intake room in BMT, when they asked me if I'd ever thought of being something more than I already was, something different, something defined on my own terms. I've always wanted to push past the limits that had been imposed upon me at birth, just like they did. Maybe I have two regrets about my time in the service.
...actually, is it too te for me to re-enlist?
-Exit Interview, PFC Andrew HernandezIntake Interview, ACAV "Tiresias"
