The Mech Touch novel Chapter 130

Calsie walked past the newly installed walls and turrets with a nervous gait. No one stayed calm when they had to face those ferocious defenses. Various bots patrolled the grounds, making sure to inspect the college girl when they hovered close.

After receiving a final inspection from a uniformed security officer, she finally got to enter her new employer’s workshop. Compared to the deadly gleaming turrets, the interior appeared much more down to earth.

She quickly reached a living area where a handful of couches, tables and even a drinks dispenser occupied the room. Ves already sat at one of the couches and gestured her to take a seat while he petted a marvellous-looking mechanical cat.

"Please take a seat."

"Mr. Larkinson, I have your report for the month." Calsie said and slid over a secure datachip. She could have sent it through the galactic net, but considering the sensitivity of the information she put it in a hardcoded form first.

"Give me a summary. Anything going on that I should know about?"

"There are hints that another player from Bentheim has entered the field. A very wealthy corporation is making inroads with the White Doves."

"Have you determined their identity?"

"From what my contacts in the Pioneers have inferred, it’s likely to be the Ricklin Corporation."

Ves stopped petting his cat, causing the animal in question to meow in indignation.

"The Ricklins. Sure enough, they’re thinking about taking revenge." He sighed, and scratched Lucky’s head in order to placate his cat. "A traitor used my second-ever fabricated mech to wipe out at least half of their upper echelon. Shouldn’t they be consolidating their assets and reorganizing their ranks?"

"Turmoil is still wracking the Ricklin family, but support is building up around a young genius of the family. The chaos is expected to end as soon as the last holdouts accept a compromise."

"Great. So I’ll have to deal with two sources of outside pressure. Not only do I have to worry about the tiger next door, but I also have to guard against the distant meddlers from the Friday Coalition."

Calsie tried to reassure her employer. "Don’t underestimate the central government. Cloudy Curtain is one of the many satellite planets that surround Bentheim and keeps their influence in check. Rittersberg will not allow Bentheim to take effective control over one of their critical food sources."

The Bright Republic benefited a lot from the Bentheim System. The population on its only inhabited planet swelled to ridiculous proportions, to the point where its own domestic agriculture couldn’t feed their hungry mouths.

"Hopefully you’re right, but you never know what might happen in the future."

With all the unrest and terrorist attacks, no one cared about improper influence. If Ves wanted to ensure his safety on the political front, then he might have to bring in outside influence on his own after all.

"Bringing in my family will still tarnish the Larkinson name." Ves concluded. "Involving the Whalers should be my nuclear option."

With nothing else to report, Calsie left after a short talk with Ves with new instructions. Since his troubles only started, Ves expressed interest in joining the Pioneers.

"I can’t remain half-hearted and ignore political realities. If I don’t join their circle, I’ll remain vulnerable to their whims."

Despite what went on, he still had a job to do. Ves resumed his work on the redesign project. He spent a week on developing a highly adjusted armor scheme. To be frank, he could not find many opportunities to improve over the original design. There were only so many ways he could employ the HRF armor plating with his current skills.

Even with his improved skills, Ves was not able to raise any parameters without making tradeoffs. For example, if he wanted to increase the flexibility of the arms, then he could shave off some armor, thus increasing their vulnerability.

If he lost more than he gained, then he simply needed to reorient his goal. More armor? More speed? More flexibility? Not possible! Then what if Ves focused on something he hadn’t paid attention to? After a few minutes of consideration, he settled on reducing the armor’s complexity.

His current armor scheme consisted of many complex shapes. A flat square plate was the simplest piece of armor a fabricator could produce. What about a plate with a curve? The person who fabricated this plate had to reproduce the curve to its exact contours down to the millimeters.

Ves tried to simplify these shapes as much as he could without affecting the armor’s overall performance. It worked up to a point, as Ves never took complexity into consideration before. Though the design unavoidably lost a bit of performance, he successfully reduced the failure rate of fabricating most of its parts.

This might not matter too much to Ves. He knew his design intimately and could fabricate its parts with sufficient confidence. He did it so others were able to do the same without falling flat.

"I’ve already untangled much of the internal structure. With this, Carlos shouldn’t have too much trouble."

After finishing his draft, he subjected the schematic to a barrage of simulated tests. The reduced complexity opened vulnerabilities in his design that slightly lowered the armor’s ability to withstand certain kinds of damage.

Ves easily patched most of the holes. Only some needed more attentive care as Ves had to reintroduce some complexity.

When Ves finally reached the end of the armor phase, he sighed and relaxed his concentration. "Armor is supposed to be one of my secondary specialties. It’s disgraceful if I can only bring up the armor to this extent."

He was in no shape to design a mech. Ves took a day off in order to clear up his mind. He never enjoyed a full day of relaxation, so he made the most of it. While Carlos diligently mastered the last of his virtual designs, Ves played around with Lucky and browsed the news.

Much of the news revolved around the recent chaos and the steps the Merc Corps took to respond. They increased their procurement and called in some of their reserves. Everyone knew this was just the prelude.

"This is the time when mechs are selling like hot cakes. I have to push my product out as fast as possible if I don’t want to miss out."

The next day, Ves returned to his work with a renewed sense of urgency. He spent the next week making adjustments to the self-contained parts. Due to his lack of expertise, he only brushed through most critical components like the engine or power reactor.

Instead, he spent an entire day on customizing the cockpit. Ves wanted to stimulate a better response to the X-Factor by setting the right mood. He changed the shape of the chair and adjusted the displays. He also carved the entire metal compartment with ancient-looking sculptures that alluded to the inspirations for the design.

If nothing else, his customers might appreciate the luxury.

With that done, he turned his attention to the mace and shield. His new Melee Weapon Optimization sub-skill allowed him to recognize that he made a lot of mistakes with the weapon. He deleted the mace and brought back the CA-1’s original sword.

"I can’t use the same sword shape that’s optimized for compressed alloys when I’m actually using an uncompressed alloy."

Ves drastically modified the basic sword shape until he made it shorter but thicker. Without access to a compressor or better performing alloys, he had to resort to various tricks in order to make the most out of the uncompressed HRF alloy.

After finishing the sword, he touched up the shield. He introduced a moderate amount of complexity by applying some creative layers, but other than that it remained a simple rectangular slab of metal.

He tweaked the other weapon systems as last. He adjusted the contours of the missile launchers so that they meshed a little better with the shoulders.

The wrist laser cannons required a lot more work. With his newly acquired Directed Energy Weapon Optimization sub-skill, he recognized various vulnerabilities.

The laser cannons faced a major issue. The HRF’s heat capacity simply couldn’t compare to the original armor system. Ves had to thicken the wrists in order to prevent the wrists from overheating too quickly. It took two entire days to graft new heat channels in order to spread out the excessive heat generated from a rapid fire rate.