Dead Belt: True Tales of the Gasping Frontier

Lockout (Part 1)

    Dead Belt: True Tales of the Gasping Frontier is a space-folk horror anthology podcast and as such may not be suited for all audiences. Listener discretion, is advised.

I wanna be mech cavalry if they send me off to war I want a nuke steed under me like my forefathers before Gimme a fifty ton mount when the bugle sounds and them autocannon roar I wanna be mech cavalry if I must go off to war

Give me the flank in a walking tank, we'll throttle up at dawn
Save for me a little gallantry that'll echo when I'm gone
And I beg of you cap, let my thunder clap when them battle lines is drawn
Lemme at least give the "weapons free" they'll remember loud and long

I'd not a good dirt-slogger make, them guns' to small to start And I'd be sick at the aerojock's stick and for space I lack the heart But I'll be first in line on the cockpit climb, if ya let me play my part Lope into the fray and firin' away like a violent work of art

Let me earn my name in the flash and the flame when the day is lost or won
Let me lead my lance where the titans dance and them corebies fire their guns
Missiles agleam, and a particle beam, and the ac-ten aspun
Reactors burn and the dirt's upchurned let me be a mech cavalryman

Through teeth aclenched never gave an inch, just plant me where I fall. Because I won't be back and the mech's all scrap, but just know I gave my all I wanna be mech cavalry if they send me off to war I wanna be mech cavalry but I won't ride home no more.

And a lot of them Indies never did, y'know. Ride home. And them that did, more'n a few of them anyway, found that all they brought on the road to the war they meant to win didn't catch the ride home with them. Just memories. And ghosts.

[Intro: Badboy]

    I was talkin' to Doc Burrel down at the canteen, you recollect. The old sawbones might be the only soul on this bird who's been out here in the Belt longer than I have, and he's seen his share of strangeness. You probably know his type. He's clipped and he's precise and he's got a hangdog sort of dignity that holds up his labcoat even though his shoulders are slumped by the weight and toil of years out here on the float. He's a patron saint in the infirmary, though, our merciful lord of the open fracture and the steady-handed suture. I ain't never seen him scared. But we'd turned in our ration cards and had ourselves a brew or two there in the canteen and he got to talking about one of the boys he'd known back when he was plying his bloody trade under the flag of the Independence League, back in the days of the Consolidation. It was old war stories and do or die stories until the name of Jesse Ford come up, then the look of the good doctor changed a mite.
    See he's got a dignity, our doc does, but it's not unfriendly. There's a shine to his eyes and a crinkling at their corners that speaks of a soul that was called to help keep flesh and soul together. It's the kind of...I dunno...bon homie that makes you think the man got into his line of work for the right reasons. But that wasn't what was showing under his beetled brows as he reached for the bulb of ship's degreaser that we were splitting. The look was far away, slack taken out of all the creases of his face. Haunted. "Did I ever mention, Jesse Ford?" he asked. I told him he didn't, and he pulled from the bulb direct-like until it was empty. "Go and get another," he told me.

It went like this.

Jesse Ford was mech-cav in the war; combat walkers, heavy fire support, always where the fightin's thickest. Working the yoke of 30, 40, 50 tons of armor and directing the interface-point of enough high-tech hate to boil lakes and pulverize a mountain. Badasses, y'understand. You'd have to be to want to be mech cav. There's no cover for mech-cav. You walk into enemy fire and trust that some lucky golden bb doesn't core through something vital and punch your ticket clean. You're strapped into a coffin, sitting with a lead-diaper between you and a fusion reactor burning right under the rudder-pedals like a star in chains.