The Mech Touch novel Chapter 778

"The Devil Razors are the mainstay of our mech force." Ketis explained as she led Ves to the Swordmaiden mech workshops via the scenic route. "Mayra designed them as dependable work horses that can be deployed on most planets without malfunctioning."

The medium swordsman mechs with their broad, flat swords and their iconic red stripe running down the center of their front lifted up the hearts of every Swordmaiden that spotted them. They made for an inspiring sight.

"What are the properties of its design?" He asked. While he formed his own impression from observing them in person, he was curious whether they tallied up with the truth. "I take it these are designed to be versatile?"

"Yup!" Ketis nodded. "Mayra told me that her biggest priorities for the Devil Razors is to design a mech that can last the Swordmaidens for a while. Therefore, she hasn’t added too many bells and whistles to its design. It’s a basic medium swordsman mech with a reliable and robust internal architecture. Only after she completed that did she thought about increasing its other capabilities."

"That is a good starting point, especially if Mayra is designing a mech that is supposed to be a mainstay for a pirate force."

"Ordinarily, the Devil Razors are rather light and quick on their feet. Mobility is one of their strong suits. That and they can add a lot of force to their strikes even with just a little momentum built up."

"They don’t look very tough, though." Ves remarked. He knew that pirates generally didn’t make use of mechs with compressed armor. It took a lot of expertise to work with the complicated armor formulas and fabricate compressed armor without any cracks or imperfections dragging down their defensive capabilities. "Since they’re quicker and lighter on their feet than other swordsman mech, I take it they can’t take much of a beating."

"That’s true." Ketis admitted. "Adding better armor would slow down its other advantages, and we have knight mechs and other mechs that can focus on defense on their stead. Most of our Swordmaidens prefer to go on the attack rather than remain on the defense."

"Another advantage that is probably relevant here is that because they are lighter than average, their gravitic backpacks won’t have to strain themselves as much. They’ll certainly last longer than any of the heavier mechs."

"Yeah, I forgot to mention that. The Devil Razors aren’t the most efficient mechs, but they don’t guzzle them up as much as the heavier mechs."

"Still, as remarkable as the Devil Razor sounds, I doubt it serves as the signature mech of the Swordmaidens."

"We also have the Silver Valencia." She mentioned. "We don’t have a lot of them, but some of our best mech pilots have earned the right to pilot them. It’s a swordsman mech that has all of the advantages of the Devil Razor but also makes up for their weaknesses by incorporating compressed armor. While we can’t fabricate them on our own, we had them made at Malligan’s Pitstop."

"Are there any Silver Valencias nearby that I can observe?"

Ketis shook her head. "Not at the moment. Right now, we’re working on tweaking them to make sure they can run smoothly on this planet. Since they’re our most expensive mechs, we don’t want them to fail in the middle of a battle. Mayra and I were working on the final tweaks just earlier. I’ll show you how they look like!"

They reached the sloppy row of prefab workshops and brushed past the slaves who had been conditions to stand aside at the approach of each Swordmaiden. Ves felt very uncomfortable passing by what should have been kin to him. These poor sods didn’t look like they deserved to be brainwashed and turning into human-shaped bots for the Swordmaidens.

"Have you Swordmaidens ever tried to make do without the slaves?"

Ketis looked at him with an expression that told him he didn’t know anything about the frontier. "Are you kidding me? I thought we had gone over this. There’s way too many technicians or people trained to service mechs and ships for us to rely on volunteers. I know the slaves bother you civilized people a lot, but don’t try to pretend we have any other choice. I don’t like them more than you do."

Her tone brokered no argument on this matter. To be fair, Ves knew a lost cause when he saw one. Trying to divest the Swordmaidens of their slaves when they really needed on this mission would be to cripple one of their limbs just as they were about to step into the arena.

He would only do more harm if he harped on this point, not that the Swordmaidens would listen to him in the first place.

Once they walked past the entrance, the entire interior darkened up as the bare metal prefab walls blocked out all of the radiance from the astral winds. His eyes adjusted quickly, though at some points he found the workshop to be too dark.

"Here they are. The Silver Valencias!"

The handful of mounts in this workshop currently lifted up four largely identical mechs. To say that they were upgraded Devil Razors was to do them a disservice. Due to their partially disassembled states, Ves caught a good glimpse of their insides.

Visually, their appearance and profile resembled the Devil Razors like how cousins resembled each other. He could definitely tell that both designs had been developed by the same mech designer, and all by herself to boot!

Their internal architecture looked a lot more sophisticated than that of what a simpler mech like the Devil Razor made use of. Premium materials along with a focused design towards combining power and flexibility turned these Silver Valencias into offensive powerhouses that could lop off the limb of any mech with a single heavy chop!

If the Devil Razors focused on mobility, reliability and endurance, the Silver Valencias focused less on the latter two in exchange for a greater amount of raw power and a bit more protection.

While it was true that the Silver Valencias incorporated compressed armor, both their thickness and their quality didn’t appear to be of good quality.

The thinness of their plates cut down the weight, allowing the Silver Valencias to maintain their advantage in mobility, while the average quality of its composition pushed down the costs and made it possible for them to be produced in the frontier.

Ves liked to estimate the selling price of a mech even if they had never been commercially sold, but he found it difficult to pin down the exact value of the Silver Valencia. They looked deceptively simple, so simple in fact that he couldn’t believe that this was all a Journeyman Mech Designer was capable of designing.