Callie's Call

Callie's Call
Product information
Type Short story
Author Victor Milán
Pages 20
Interior Artwork Brad McDevitt
Publication information
Publisher BattleCorps
First published 22 October 2005
Content
Era Succession Wars era
Timeline 3039

Callie's Call is a story by Victor Milán that was published online on BattleCorps on 22 October 2005. It was also published in print in the second BattleCorps print anthology, First Strike, in 2010.

Teaser text[edit]

Though just thirteen summers old Callista MacDougall knew about death and loss. You didn't come up in the wildlands of Galisteo without seeing plenty of it up close.

Plot summary[edit]

Ranchhand AgroMech (implied to be Callista MacDougall's) and a herd of Range-bulls

Having lost her father to cancer two years ago, young Callista "Callie" MacDougall returns to her family's farm in a Ranchhand AgroMech to learn that her mother has married again. Callie's stepfather, Rance Mason, forbids women on "his" farm from working or driving the 'Mech, and the farm subsequently deteriorates while Rance Mason sexually assaults young Callie and voices interest in her much younger sister. The situation comes to a head in 3039 when a band of marauders appear who count a dilapidated Locust BattleMech among their forces. Callie has an argument with her stepfather and refuses to defend him with her father's rifle; her mother will hear nothing about Mason having assaulted Callie. Callie runs off with her little sister and hides. While the raiders kill her mother and stepfather, she mounts the Ranchhand, attacks the Locust with it and flees towards a herd of Range-bull cattle where she invokes a stampede that brings down the Locust. She then proceeds to kill each and every marauder on the farm with the AgroMech's machine gun.

In the aftermath, a deputy mispronounces "Callie" as "Kali", which she decides to adopt as her new name.


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