The Mech Touch

At some point during the conversations, the cats left the desk and settled onto the laps of the visitors.

Ketis played host to Blinky. The spiritual cat laid his back onto her lap and offered up his starry belly for rubs.

Mrow~ Mrow~

Meanwhile, Venerable Joshua was pampering Lucky. The expert pilot rubbed the mechanical cat on the back and tickled his pointy ears. Though the gem cat's exterior was made of hard material, Lucky was still able to feel pleasure from his treatment.

"Meow~"

The pair of lovers quietly waited as Ves quickly sketched out a couple more mounted wargear loadouts. They didn't look real, but that wasn't the point. The sketches were merely supposed to direct their thoughts.

In a couple of minutes, Ves managed to draw two additional loadouts. When they were superimposed on top of the core mech, then they always seem to supersize Joshua's expert mech. The artillery loadout was the biggest one, but the other ones weren't that much worse off. They would have slowed down the expert mech to a crawl if they didn't come with thrusters and boosters.

"The purpose of mounted wargear is to add new powerful capabilities to existing mechs on a non-permanent basis." Ves explained as he put the final touches to his hasty wireframe drawings. "Some of them are meant to be worn near-permanently by their base platforms. This turns them into something akin to a modular mech platform but to a much bigger extent. If there are any situations where an enemy is able to cripple the wargear components, the expert mech can simply purge it all and free itself from its burden in order to continue its fight in a more conventional manner."

He tapped the projection and caused the expert mech mounted with artillery gear to drop all of its extra burden. When he tapped it another time, the gear attached itself to the expert mech again.

"So the best way to look at this gear is to treat it as additional equipment. The mounted wargear loadouts will give extra options, but due to the nature of how I plan to design them, they won't last long and they're not as durable as the core mech. It's no worth bringing them out when fighting against weaker opponents, but if we ever face something like the Fridayman ambush again, then having this option is a great way to fight against other expert mechs."

While it was an extravagant and wasteful solution, it had one redeeming factor.

A single expert pilot was fully capable of controlling all of those additional systems. The Larkinson Clan did not have a lot of expert pilots at the moment. While there were plenty of expert candidates, it was questionable whether they would break through anytime soon when there were no battles on the horizon.

This meant that Ves had a great interest in maximizing the power of every expert mech. Aside from stuffing them with high-quality resonating materials, making them bigger was a possible solution. Yet making mechs bigger reduced their mobility, which was something very critical to expert mechs when they dueled each other.

How could Ves increase the power of an expert mech yet simultaneously retain their mobility advantage in duels?

The solution he settled with was the best possible compromise in his opinion. He could already tell that the design challenges would keep him up day and night, but he was incredibly excited to realize this vision.

His passion had fired up. By diverting the Chimera Project from its original bland direction, he succeeded in becoming invested in its success.

Though Joshua and Ketis still exhibited some misgivings, Ves did not allow them to become skeptical of his plan.

He turned his attention back to his presentation. "Aside from this artillery variant, there are two additional mounted wargear loadouts that I think are interesting. As you all know, we are still lacking a powerful lancer mech. We need an expert mech that can charge straight towards the enemy and punch through any obstacle, whether it is an array of defensive mechs or a powerful capital ship. Remember the earlier phases of the Battle against the Abyss where we confronted the Gravidus Knarlax?"

"I remember." Venerable Joshua looked a bit grimmer as he stoked Lucky's back. "A lot of good Larkinsons died that day, and not just against those 'dark gods'. I never want to fight a pirate warship again."

"There is no guarantee that your wish will come true, Joshua. Do you understand the environment we will be entering soon? The Red Ocean is not as tame and regulated as regular human space. The Big Two may be sweeping the indigeonous alien empires that are rooted there, but I have heard plenty of tales of fish slipping through the net. According to the galactic net, these aliens don't have a tradition for using mechs. Instead, just like humanity in the past, their main war-making potential consists of warships. Alien warships."

The strengths of these warships varied wildly depending on the alien species and other variables. Some were beatable by third-class outfits while others were so powerful that they demanded the MTA and CFA to put in a serious effort to crush the alien fleets.

No one doubted that the Big Two would be able to wipe the dwarf galaxy clean of sentient alien inhabitants, but the problem was that conquering any galaxy took a lot of time, even if it was just a miniature-sized one. Since the Big Two could not afford to direct too many warfleets away from the Milky Way, it would probably take a few decades to an entire century to finish the job.

In the meantime, the Big Two's warfleets along with all of the pioneer fleets that traveled through the Red Ocean risked getting attacked by alien warships at any time!

Fortunately, the chance of encountering a large, intact alien warfleet was very low. The ones that lurked in the territories that were recently conquered by humans were mostly isolated warships that managed to survive one way or another.

Yet a single one of them could easily slaughter thousands of mechs in some cases!

"Don't we have another expert mech in the works that can do this already?" Ketis asked. "The Vanguard Project is supposed to fulfill this role to an extent."

"It's not enough." Ves shook his head. "The Vanguard Project is not a dedicated lancer mech. It needs to retain enough dueling capabilities, so we will have to implement a lot of compromises to its design. It's a spearman mech, not a lancer mech. You can think of it as a bigger and beefier version of the Valkyrie Redeemer."

"Sir?" Joshua briefly raised his hand.

"Yes?"

"I am wondering about the speed of this lancer loadout. There's quite a lot of bulk attached to it, and that big triangular spike isn't helping much either. Will I be able to build enough acceleration to build up enough momentum? And how can I ever hit anything if it looks so bulky? I bet its turning radius is awful!"

"In the beginning, Gloriana told us to focus on defeating other expert mechs. The lancer loadout doesn't align to this goal, but it is capable of taking out other high-value threats. More specifically, I think a large lancer loadout can do wonders against enemy starships. Unlike mechs, starships can't turn or evade incoming attacks that easily. This is why there is nothing wrong with placing all of the additional boosters and thrusters to the rear of the mounted equipment. They just need to push your expert mech forward as hard as possible."

To put it in simple terms, the lancer loadout transformed the expert mech into a giant self-propelled kinetic torpedo. There was a lot of bulk and mass that were primarily meant to increase the energy being transferred upon impact and to provide the core mech with enough of a cushion to survive a charge.

The most notable element to this fantastical-looking loadout was the large and long spike mounted to the front.

Ves didn't bother to equip the ensemble with a regular lance. A handheld weapon was too small and weak.

Instead, he simply added a large and thick 'lance' that was as wide as the length of a light mech at the rear end.

With such a big spike, the Chimera Project equipped with wargear loadout could inflict so much damage that it could even punch a huge hole through the Spirit of Bentheim!

This had the potential to turn into one of the ultimate assault solutions for the Larkinson Clan.

"Won't all of this equipment get lost upon impact?" Ketis pointed out a concerning issue. "If it doesn't get squashed after completing a charge, it has a high chance of breaking up, thereby flinging all of its broken parts in many different directions."

"It's not a problem. This is why all of the loadouts should be cheap and not too difficult to make. In addition, if our clan can solve the problem by other means, we don't have to resort to this wasteful solution."

Venerable Joshua eventually bought into this idea. The sketch that Ves had madee looked rather ridiculous, but he could easily imagine how many powerful ships he could fell by adopting this strange new mech.

It was too bad that a sluggish and agile machine like this was very hard to employ against mechs. Unless their formation was exceptionally tight, it was too easy for mechs to dodge a charging lancer mech that put all of its energies into going forward!

"If we can make this work, then we have a potential solution against warships that can shrug off regular mech attacks!"

Ves was already planning ahead. He needed to make the best use of the time that remained. Once he entered the Red Ocean, the chance that his fleet bumped into a superior force was too great.

Once Ketis and Joshua understood the intention and mode of operation of the lancer loadout, Ves turned to the third loadout he sketched.

"The two loadouts that I have proposed before will allow Venerable Joshua to output a lot of damage at range or punch through starships or other large structures with a single charge. Combined with its base hero mech form, this expert mech can retain a lot of battle effectiveness in many different situations. There is still something missing, though."

To be honest, when Joshua and Ketis saw the third loadout, they became absolutely stumped. Both of them thought that Ves had lost control or something. Did he grow mad with the possibilities opened up by making use of mounted wargear?

"Uhm… sir…" Joshua hesitated. "Why is this third loadout… made of meat?"

Ves grinned and leaned back on his chair. "Because I decided to do it. Because both my specialty and yours resonate quite well with organic matter. We've hired a lot of biotech experts when we stayed in the Life Research Association. We can borrow their assistant to develop and grow this organic loadout and see whether it is viable. There's little harm in trying. If it doesn't work out, then we can just drop it. Is that acceptable?"

The third loadout was a clear homage to Uranus. The simplest way to describe it was that it resembled a colossal meat suit. Once Joshua's expert mech became submerged by this organic loadout, it turned into a large and powerful brawler that possessed extremely high physical strength.

Though its mobility was predictably awful, its huge bulk and raw strength allowed it to rampage through large enemy mech formations. The giant meat suit could also brawl against other expert mechs as long as they weren't fast enough to evade this monstrosity. It was perfect against heavy space knights and heavy artillery mechs!

"…Uhm, Ves?"

"Yes Ketis."

"Maybe you should get some therapy. I heard that the stuff that happened on Prosperous Hill VI was bad, but I never thought that you would even get traumatized by it. What possessed you to design a loadout that reminds me of that biojuggernaut?!"

When Ves took a second look at the meat suit he designed, he reluctantly recognized that she might have a point.

But then again, Uranus proved that relying on size was a good way to attain greater power!

"Don't knock it until we try it. I know it looks grotesque, but I am absolutely confident in its battle effectiveness!"