The Mech Touch

Ves didn't have much experience with working with light mechs. He considered humanoid medium mechs to be his home ground.

Medium mechs were the most mainstream variety of mechs for good reason. They were mobile enough to avoid getting pinned down by artillery attacks and they were tough enough to provide their pilots with plenty of margin for error.

The load-bearing capacity of medium mechs was also far superior to that of light mechs. Due to their volume, mass and other design properties, medium mechs were able to carry enough weapons and other gear to make it easy for any of them to contribute in battle.

Light mechs traded all of that in to gain more mobility. They were faster, but they paid a lot to secure this advantage.

The relatively thin chest armor of a light mech meant that the mech pilot had to brave a lot of dangers with insufficient protection. This was the biggest reason why most mech pilots would rather not pilot these challenging mechs.

One single mistake could easily spell death!

The casualty rates of light mech pilots were statistically the highest in every star sector the MTA surveyed. Ves could pull up centuries worth of studies that pointed at the depressingly high number of deaths for this group of mech pilots.

To be fair, many of those mech pilots would have rather piloted a medium mech if they had the choice. Light mechs were smaller and therefore cheaper than medium mechs, so plenty of struggling mercenary outfits attempted to fill up the available space in their carriers by purchasing some 'affordable' light mechs.

These outfits got what they paid for. Their inability or unwillingness to invest in larger mechs meant that the mech pilots of the outfit had very little choice.

This was something that Ves personally disapproved of, but what could he do? Not every organization was as flush with money as the Larkinson Clan. Journeymen such as him may not be as good as Masters when it came to creating value, but even the worst Journeymen were still capable of funding a couple of mech companies!

Ves showed off the design of the custom light mech to Tusa. The modification plan and all of its diagrams momentarily overwhelmed the light mech specialist.

While he didn't understand any of the finer details of the design schematics, Tusa still knew enough about light mechs to judge the approximate performance of certain aspects by their appearances.

"This mech.. Doesn't look light enough." He said.

Ves grinned. "This mech is faster than you think. Look, it's true that designing a light mech from the ground up is much better than stripping down an existing medium mech. However, we don't have the time to do the former, so I'm trying to implement the latter in the best way possible. In this case, despite our lack of time, we have an abundant amount of resources, much of which consists of rare and valuable exotics."

"You mean you…"

"Your guess is right. Any problem can be solved as long as I stuff enough high-quality components in your mech! To be honest, some of the components such as the flight system and the power reactor will be rebuilt to second-class standards. Do you know what that means? It's specs have surpassed the standard expected of a third-class mech or a bridge mech!

Though Ves still had to strip plenty of Breyer alloy and other mass, the stripped down Bright Warrior still retained much of its resilient structure! This meant that Tusa wouldn't have to cut it so close in battle. Compared to his current light mech, the defensive capability of his upcoming mech was at least an order of magnitude higher!

Giving his expert candidates more durable mechs was one of the main reasons why he went through the trouble of making them. Each and every expert candidate and expert pilot was valuable to Ves. How tragic would it be if any of them died before they managed to leave the Nyxian Gap?

Ves and the rest of the clan would definitely cry until they had no tears if someone like Joshua lost his life!

As for Tusa, Ves figured he wouldn't cry as much tears, but that didn't mean he was fine with this outcome. An expert candidate was an expert candidate, and Ves was not in the habit of squandering valuable assets.

"I don't need an excessive amount of defense." Tusa stated with a frown. "I appreciate your work in trying to increase the protective capabilities of my mech, but if I can sacrifice most of that to gain 10 percent higher acceleration, I can live with that!"

Ves doubted that. The pirate armada barreling down on their fleet possessed a lot of firepower. Even if Tusa piloted the most nimble light mech in the clan, the Gravada Knarlax merely had to instruct a hundred of its secondary gun batteries to saturate the surrounding space!

Therefore, Ves was pretty adamant in sticking to his current plan.

Tusa may make as many unreasonable demands he wanted, but according to his professional judgement, Ves had the obligation to protect his current client from his own stupid decisions.

Of course, he didn't put it that way to Tusa.

"The Bright Warrior mech is by nature a medium mech that heavily emphasises its armor. Converting it to a light mech can only go so far. The proper way to enhance its mobility from that point isn't to strip any further structure. I've already done that. It may not look this way, but the design that you're seeing right now is as barebones as I can make it. At this point, Gloriana and I looked at upgrading some of its core parts to speed it up. If you look at the spec sheet, you'll see that the end product is projected to be substantially faster than your current mech in almost every criteria."

This wasn't difficult to achieve as Tusa piloted a normal premium light mech up until now. The commercial mech that Tusa was accustomed to was a good, speedy machine, but its budget constraints meant that its materials and parts were highly constrained.

With light mechs, miniaturization was a very important concept. A part that accomplished the same job as another part but took half the amount of space was at least several times more expensive!

In fact, it was more common to see these smaller parts selling for eight, ten or even fifteen times the cost of something larger!

A commercial mech could never incorporate so much waste, but fortunately this was different. Ves had a sufficient amount of exotics at his disposal to cobble up some replacement parts that were lighter, took up much less space or delivered superior performance!

Though Ves was only able to apply this treatment to a couple of parts under the circumstances, this was already enough to turn Tusa's mech into an incredibly elusive mech!

Not even the light mechs of the Penitent Sisters could match the extravagant amount of expensive materials that Ves intended to use for this project!

After Ves parried every request to make the design faster, Tusa reluctantly accepted the current plan.

The work proceeded without issue. Ves may not have spent too much time on this project, but Gloriana made up for that. As long as Ves supplied a list of every exotic in his fleet's possession, she could licence any superior component that made use of these materials.

It actually took less than a week for Ves to put the custom mech together. Compared to a typical Bright Warrior, the mech reserved for Tusa looked like it had lost at least half of its mass. Its limbs were leaner and its torso looked like Ves had taken a knife and cut off a lot of the bulges.

Though it looked anything like a traditional light mech, to Ves the mech looked much more formidable. Due to all of the mass and volume retained in the modified mech, it possessed significantly higher arm strength and structural resilience.

In short, this light skirmisher was capable of hitting a lot harder than regular light skirmishers!

When Tusa inspected the finished mech up close, he placed his hand over the surface of his new machine.

"You should get rid of the gold coating." He spoke. "I don't want to pilot something that looks so ostentatious. If I am about to enter battle with this mech, I don't want to attract too much attention."

"Oh. I'll take care of that. What color scheme do you prefer?"

Tusa thought for a moment. "Go for sky blue. I like that color. It reminds me of the pristine blue skies of home."

To him, sky blue stood for freedom.

"Alright."

Ves finalized the mech by changing its coating. This didn't demand too much effort as Ves only had to instruct some bots and machines to perform this quick job.

As the mech changed color, Ves asked Tusa if he wanted to name the mech.

"I'll leave that up to you. I've never named my own mech before. I can't think of anything at the moment."

"Then let's call it the Blueshift." Ves casually chose. "There are two meanings behind this name. Your mech is blue, and if it moves fast enough, any enemies observing its approach will see it slightly bluer than usual."

In most battles, this effect was negligible. Ves still thought it was still a nice reference, though. Perhaps one day Tusa would be able to pilot a mech that was fast enough to make his enemies see blue before they perished!

After making sure that the mech's spiritual foundation was fully saturated, Ves ordered some men to ship it out of the Scarlet Rose. Ves gave a stern warning not to pilot his new mech until they confronted the pirate armada.

He had already passed on this instruction to every other expert candidate. It wouldn't do for them to advance prematurely.

Time quickly went by after this. Ves only had to modify two more mechs. He did his best to elevate the performance of the Shield of Samar and the Quint within his current time constraints.

"I don't have enough time!"

He received plenty of assistance from his Braves, and the Larkinson mech designers back in civilized space also pitched in by performing lots of tests and simulations.

Despite all of this help, Ves couldn't implement all of the improvements he wished into the mechs. Ves had to retain as much character as possible, so he couldn't afford to make any drastic alterations to the Quint and the Shield of Samar.

He still managed to make a lot of improvements. It was just that the difference was not as drastic for some of the other mechs.

Ves was much more concerned about fabricating some of the weapons and shields of his custom mechs. So far, he hadn't begun to make them. If he didn't begin work on them soon, he had no choice but to issue his mechs with gear made out of Breyer alloy!

"Breyer alloy is pretty good, but it's no longer good enough." He muttered.

Only Unending alloy met his standards!

In order to break down the statue of the Unending One, Ves had no choice but to turn to his cat.

He moved to his stateroom and stepped up to Lucky.

"Meowww..?"

"It's time, Lucky."

"Meeoooww…"

Ves picked up his cat. "No excuses. I don't care if you are still sick. You need to get back to work and earn your keep."

"Meowww!..."

If your stomach is really troubling you, then I have the perfect means of solving this problem!"

Uh oh. Lucky knew exactly what Ves was talking about. He began to squirm!

"Give up. You don't get to go until you complete your job!"

"MEOW! MEOW! MEOW!"

Ves opened up a drawer and retrieved an egg-sized chunk of B-stone. He especially prepared this sample for just this situation.

"Stay still! Don't fight so much! You'll feel better in no time!"

"Meow! Meow! Meow!"