The Mech Touch

"Patriarch Ves!"

The observation room of a private testing facility became a lot more boisterous after Ves, Lucky and his usual entourage of guards stepped inside. The members of the design team monitoring the current testing session all looked up from their consoles and stood up to convey their respect.

Ves casually waved his hand. "Proceed with your work. Don't stop on my account. Who is in charge at the moment?"

"That would be me, sir." Catherine Evenson remained standing.

"Give me an update on the latest iteration of the Blinding Mech. How is it performing?" He asked as he approached the front of the room.

She proceeded to do so. Catherine summoned various projections of graphs and tables filled with data to detail the current performance of the mech design in question.

The large transparent windows looked down at an extensive pit where over fifty mechs moved according to a predetermined plan.

All of the mechs belonged to the Larkinson Clan. An entire mech company's worth of prototypes moved in formation.

Each of those late-stage prototypes carried the thick and ungainly form of the Blinding Mech. Its utilitarian, masculine appearance lacked the elegance of female Hexer mech models.

What made the model look even more remarkable was that it did not wield any weapon at all. Neither its arms nor its frame boasted any armaments of any kind.

The Blinding Mech was actually quite capable of wielding weapons in battle, but that was not its primary responsibility. Its performance with either melee weapons or ranged weapons was rather poor due to budget constraints.

Auxiliary mechs didn't necessarily need to be armed. Their primary purpose was to support other friendly units in battle. If they were forced to carry the battle, then something must have gone horribly wrong.

The materials needed to fabricate the mech consisted of ubiquitous low-grade exotics and ordinary metals. The bulk of the Blinding Mech was deceptive as an ordinary knight mech of the Hex Army could easily withstand several times more damage!

Even the mech pilot was supposed to be disposable. Ves already received word that the Hexadric Hegemony were in the process of conscripting hapless male potentates whose genetic aptitudes were too low to qualify for regular military service.

It would have been great if the Hexers were on the winning side, but since the opposite was the case, the state could no longer afford to squander its resources. Boys had to be put to work no matter the cost!

Being aware of this reality hadn't made it easy for Ves to design this mech. Yet it was the only way he could think of to counter the unfair advantage the Friday Coalition held. As the Battle of Reckoning had brutally emphasized, it was incredibly costly to resist an opponent who brought additional expert mechs!

Ves did not wish to see the Hexadric Hegemony collapse. The state was the Superior Mother's greatest backer at the moment. Gloriana would also become hysterical if the Hexer people became homeless all of a sudden.

He also did not wish to let the Friday Coalition enjoy the satisfaction of winning an existential war. The Fridaymen targeted him several times and a lot of good clansmen had died due to their aggression.

The bad blood between him and the Coalition ran very deep! There was no way Ves was going to allow something as inconsequential as his conscience get in the way of his revenge!

In order to fulfill this greater goal, Ves simply shut out his complaints and diligently designed the Blinding Mech without adding any additional frills, which was exactly what the Hex Army sought.

The Blinding Mech was not like the Blessed Squire. While the latter was also a male Hexer mech, its design was a lot more noble and benign towards its mech pilot.

The Blinding Mech could only put up a shield and pray that an armed Hexer mech came to the rescue.

The Blessed Squire was able to tank quite a decent amount of damage, which was pretty different from the Good Boy that it was originally meant to supplant.

The Blinding Mech was a fake defensive mech. It possessed the bulk but not the defensive capabilities to withstand aggression from hostile military-grade mechs.

The Blessed Squire was designed to be deployed as an individual mech supporting a larger unit of mechs. In turn, the other mechs would automatically do their best to coddle and protect the supportive knight mech so that its valuable glow would be preserved.

The Blinding Mech was supposed to be deployed in mass formations numbering hundreds of identical copies or more. This was all necessary because a single mech was not enough to achieve the desirable effect.

This last point was the most disturbing aspect about this mech design. No good would come from grouping so many flimsy, slow and pathetically-armed mechs together.

If even a single Fridayman mech company entered their midst, then a massacre would quickly ensue!

Ves could only hope that the Hexer military commanders weren't heartless enough to deploy so many Blinding Mechs without providing adequate protection to them. With a production cost of 145 million hex credits a copy, it still cost billions of valuable hex credits if entire squads got trashed at once!

While Ves looked down at the Blinding Mech exposing the luminar crystals embedded on the surface of their uncovered tower shields, Catherine finally concluded her report.

"...as it stands, a mech company of Blinding Mechs has only proven to be marginally effective at debilitating ordinary mech pilots but has not been able to hinder any expert pilot. I do have to mention that these are only preliminary results that are subject to several caveats and limitations."

Ves glanced at the former Sentinel noble. "Tell me about the caveats."

"As you can see right now, we have only been able to fabricate 40 copies of the current iteration of the Blinding Mech. While we have never fabricated so many prototypes of any single mech design before, this is still a sparse amount when you consider how it is meant to be fielded."

"That's true. How long will it take for additional Blinding Mechs to be shipped to this testing facility?"

"I'm afraid it will take at least three more days, sir. Due to confidentiality requirements, it is irresponsible to outsource the production of the prototypes to any mech company in the Prosperous Hill System. It is prudent to produce the needed mechs from the Spirit of Bentheim herself, but…"

Ves grimaced. "The Spirit of Bentheim's main priority is to mass-produce as many Bright Warrior IB's as possible. Her production halls have recently been configured to optimize the fabrication of the new standard mech of the clan as much as possible. Temporarily switching over to fabricate a hundred Blinding Mech prototypes won't go smoothly."

"Correct, sir. It doesn't help that we have to ship raw materials and finished mechs back and forth from the outer system to Prosperous Hill VI by relying on a single transportation service. The PHTS has proven to be a severe bottleneck that imposes considerable delays."

There wasn't much they could do about this problem, so Ves mentally shrugged and accepted that it would take time for more Blinding Mechs to arrive.

Still, even if the testing facility became host to over three mech companies of Blinding Mechs, he doubted whether the results would become any different.

This was why he dropped by the testing facility. Only Ves was able to troubleshoot the mech design when its spiritual aspects failed to deliver on their promises.

"Miss Evenson, I'd like to witness some of the basic tests in person." Ves commanded as he got down to business. "Please suspend the current testing program and deploy the test mechs according to my direct instructions."

"Uhm, it will only take another hour to complete the schedule."

"Don't bother. We've already collected enough data on the Blinding Mech's physical performance characteristics. Even if a few parameters differ from the previous iteration, no one cares about a few percentage points worth of deviations."

The Blinding Mech revolved completely around its ability to repel enemy expert pilots. Everything else was secondary. Ves saw no point in fiddling with its physical configuration at this late stage.

It took a few minutes for the test mechs to suspend the current test and 'reset' them so that they were ready to act according to instruction.

"Which group of mech pilots are helping us with the prototypes?" Ves suddenly asked.

"Commander Ingvar dispatched some of her Living Sentinels mech pilots to us. We originally approached the Penitent Sisters, but they do not have any males among their mech pilot roster."

It wasn't a big deal in this case. The Blinding Mech's design spirit was the Ill.u.s.trious One. Ves refrained from adding the Superior Mother to the mix because she wouldn't be able to contribute to the performance of the mech in any meaningful way.

In fact, Ves was afraid that her strong presence might interfere with the Ill.u.s.trious One's role!

"Let's start with pitting a single Blinding Mech against a single regular mech."

Once the upper layer shifted out of the way, the shield exposed an entire grid of flat luminar crystals!

There were even more luminar crystals hidden inside the frame of the Blinding Mech. They didn't really serve any obvious purpose as far as other mech designers were concerned, but Ves thought differently.

Luminar crystals interacted with the Ill.u.s.trious One in interesting ways, so there was nothing wrong with adding more to a mech.

"Begin with blinding the opposing mech."

The Blinding Mech in question activated its main function. The blinding attack was actually a combined attack.

As Ves switched to his spiritual vision, he could see that the mech pilot mentally activated the Blinding Mech's triggered ability. The design spirit became stimulated, causing it to interact with the luminar crystals embedded in the shield in a mysterious fashion.

Whatever the Ill.u.s.trious One did somehow caused the luminar crystals to become charged with a minute amount of spiritual energy!

At the same time the design spirit made its move, the circuitry and other components of the shield began to channel electrical energy into the same crystals.

This caused the front surface of the tower shield to dazzle all of a sudden!

If any human stood in front of the Blinding Mech while it engaged its Blinding Pulse ability, that person would probably be blinded from all of the flashes!

In fact, the intensity of the flashes was deliberately controlled to avoid inflicting permanent retinal damage. It would have been too easy for the Blinding Mech to harm lots of civilians if this precaution wasn't in place.

There was no way that a few bright flashes of light was capable of overloading the sensors of any modern machine.

The bright light flashes were only there to compliment the spiritual flashes channeled by the same luminar crystals!

Yet as an ordinary commercial mech standing opposite to the Blinding Mech got exposed, it remained absolutely stable!

The telemetry from the mech pilot on the receiving end of the Blinding Pulse only jumped a bit before going right back to normal.

While this was just a single attempt, the lack of any meaningful result did not bode well for the Blinding Mech!

Yet the mech did not do anything. Ves clearly observed the prototype channeling some sort of spiritual emission towards the target.

The problem was that it was too weak!