Mech Pilot who was the first to successfully engage with a melee weapon.
War, Og thought, as the enemy fightpack slunk from the treeline. War never changes.
From the days long-before-Og, when protohominins long dead had stood where he stands and punched each other, to the days before-Og, when a Thinker first led one of them to a hollow tree and squeezed them inside, fingers curling into soft rotting wood and reaching out with the will and the ever-presence of All-The-Spirits to make it serve as bigger arms with which to punch, to now. Fast, gnarled scouts circled, keeping him in visual, hooting to lead the squat trunks of heavies to him.
And for what? For what? For the best sunning rock by the water hole? For the tree with the tastiest fruit? It was a very good tree, but—
"We same," he said softly into his cockpit, for only the chewing beetles to hear. "We same. Enough fruit."
It was too late for words. Too late even for punching. As the heavies crashed through the last line of underbrush, he reached down, the hand of his Mobile Log clenching around what had once been a simple sapling. It was time to end this; and if he couldn't do it by peace, he'd have to do it by showing them war's unendurable ultimate form.
It was time to end war by demonstrating the terror of Large Rock On Stick.
