The Mech Touch

A hero mech was supposed to be a hero.

It sounded stupidly obvious, but mech designers had a tendency to disregard this truth.

This was mainly because hero mechs played exaggerated roles in action dramas. The stars of the shows always piloted mechs that could do everything and were able to put up a good fight against many different villainous mech pilots.

One of the parts about these shows that Ves loved in his youth but abhorred when he grew older was how the hero mech always fought on the enemy's home court!

All signs of intelligence usually went out of the window as the protagonists got so caught up in their passion that they forgot about basic tactics. They boldly dueled against melee mechs with swords and fought against ranged mechs with rifles!

While these battles were unrealistic, they often produced thrilling battles where the heroes were always at a disadvantage but managed to gain the upper hand through superior skill or luck.

"That is what it means to be a hero." Ves recognized.

A hero was an anomalous combatant that was able to defy the odds and produce results outside common sense.

A hero was larger than life, able to inspire even the most desperate allies and evoke fear from the hearts of their enemies.

A hero was the final savior, a warrior who never gave up and always found a way to pull off the most improbable successes.

Did this mean that Ves wanted to turn Venerable Joshua into one of those braindead protagonists who yelled their entire life stories during battle and telegraphed all of their big moves in advance?

Not at all. This wasn't a game, nor a story. This was reality and it was better if the Larkinson Army was able to win its battles in a conventional manner.

"What if the conventional manner is not enough, though?"

What if the enemy outnumbered the Larkinsons by three-to-one?

What if another unbeatable ace mech decided to take fault?

What if the enemy had brought the perfect counters to the Larkinson Clan's solutions?

In those cases, Venerable Joshua might have no choice but to fight in a stupid manner. The Chimera Project's vaunted adaptability might not be able to play a role when the enemy was able to force it into a fight where it wasn't able to leverage its strengths against its opposition!

Though Ves never wanted to see this happen, battles were inherently unpredictable and his foes weren't stupid enough to allow Venerable Joshua to have his way all the time.

The Chimera Project had to step up in those cases. Out of all of the expert mechs that Ves designed so far, this expert hero mech possessed the greatest potential to overturn an adversity.

Part of it was due to the Iridescent Mercury integrated into the mech. This amazing resonating exotic had the potential to extend the range of a glow by several kilometers. This was not an excessive range in terms of space combat but could potentially encompass hundreds of mechs on busy battlefields!

Another part of it was how the Chimera Project was able to receive assistance from any design spirit. Ever since he started using design spirits, this project was the first mech design that was expressly designed to accommodate any of them in equal measure!

Ves designed the base model of the Chimera Project in a way that hopefully produced the least amount of bias possible. Of course, true neutrality was impossible to achieve and his work doubtlessly favored some design spirits over others, but this was only a minor fault.

The essential operation should still be valid. Depending on the current battlefield circumstances, Venerable Joshua could swap to any suitable design spirit and be able to leverage different powers depending on various factors!

One of the side effects of this ability was that Venerable Joshua could take part in any battle formation powered by a design spirit. He no longer had to pilot a Hexer-specific mech to lead a Penitent Sister battle formation or switch over to a Transcendent Punisher to channel an Eye of Ylvaine battle formation.

Joshua just needed to slot in the right design spirit before he lent his power to a battle formation!

Although these capabilities unquestionably fell under the adaptation category, Ves believed it had the potential to become something greater.

"Only a hero can exert the power of an ace mech with an expert mech." He whispered to himself.

In summary, the Chimera Project was designed according to a new and different paradigm than the previous expert mech design projects.

Whether it was the Amaranto or the Shield of Samar, each of them were designed to fulfill a single role to the best of their abilities. They embodied both the strengths and weaknesses of specialization and were implicitly designed to combine forces with each other to achieve greater power through synergy.

The Chimera Project was different. While it could fight as part of a team as well, it was a lot more capable of operating independently due to its adaptable nature.

The expert mech was not particularly strong in any area, but its comprehensive nature made up for its lack of specialization. The powerful machine truly embodied the meaning of chimera and in more ways than one. Just like Venerable Joshua, his upcoming expert mech was able to take on multiple forms and possessed a stubborn amount of vitality!

"This is an innovative expert mech design." Ves declared with a smile.

"You mean it's a risky expert mech design." His wife corrected as the baby in her arms started showing signs of waking again.

…Miew…

One of the typical indicators of little Aurelia waking up again was that her tiny companion spirit popped up again. The curious white kitten poked out of the baby's head and curiously looked up at Gloriana.

"Oh, you little cutie. Do you want your mommy? I'll bring her out right now."

With a slight effort, Alexandria emerged from Gloriana's head. The red cat hovered over to Mana and began to lick and hug the innocent kitten.

Maow. Maow. Maow.

…Miew!…

"Hey, don't leave daddy out of the picture."

Blinky zipped from Ves' mind and began to approach the pair of cats. Yet as soon as the purple cat got close, Alexandria interrupted Mana's bath and began to hiss at Ves' companion spirit!

Mrow mrow.

Maaaooow!

Mrow mrow mrow!

…Miew…

Ves grew less and less amused at the sight. Why did this picture look so uncomfortably familiar?

"…Whaa… wwaaaah!"

"Aurelia is hungry again." Gloriana said. "The Chimera Project is as complete as it can be. I don't think we can add anything further to the design of the base model. Let's just finish it here and get ready to fabricate it at a convenient date."

Ves nodded in agreement. "It's a pity that the development of some of its mounted wargear hasn't gone as smoothly."

He underestimated the difficulty of designing large equipment for mechs. The increased scale and power generated a lot of new and additional problems that resulted in a huge workload for the assistant mech designers.

There were also problems related to their spiritual design and how to combine it with the spiritual design of the base mech.

Although this functionality was similar to the modular capabilities of the Quint, the actual concept was rather different. Ves had to come up with different solutions in order make the expert mech harmonious, particularly when it came to harmonizing true resonance.

As a result, some of the mounted wargear loadouts were more functional than others.

The lancer loadout was the most optimistic one. Its design was the simplest as it was only meant to exert its formidable power in a monotonous manner.

Although this loadout probably wasn't strong enough to threaten an ace mech, Ves had high hopes that it was able to pose a significant danger against other high-value targets such as alien warships and high-tier expert mechs!

Ves was less certain about the so-called 'meatsuit'. The biggest problem was that its development largely depended on Doctor Perris and a large team of Lifer biotech experts who didn't possess a background in mech design.

The development team was based in the Dragon's Den rather than the Spirit of Bentheim and had to solve completely different problems that were specific to organic machines.

Although the abundant amount of development time allowed the inexperienced biotech team to design a tentative version of a meatsuit, no one was able to determine whether it was sound.

It could either become a revolutionary loadout that could turn the Chimera Project into an innovative cyborg mech or end up as a major flop as the two elements failed to merge into a harmonious whole!

This was mainly because Ves lacked too much expertise in biomech design. Although his idea of combining the advantages of organic and metallic components sounded ambitious, he still underestimated the logistical and developmental challenges of this side project!

"Well, there isn't any hurry to fabricate the mounted wargear. For now, I should focus on delivering the base mech first. As long as the most essential machine is functional, Venerable Joshua at least has something to work with after waiting so many months for his own machine."

Ves didn't want to bite off more than he could chew. His critical goal was to make another masterwork expert mech, which was an extreme challenge as he had already accomplished this just before. It was hard for him to hold high expectations just after he had recently reached an ambitious target.

"I'll have to make do one way or another."

After they decided to settle with the current iteration of the expert mech design, Ves and Gloriana spent the rest of the day finalizing the ambitious project.

Since the Design Department had no more active projects in development, Ves generously gave every assistant mech designer a break. What happened next didn't require their involvement.

Hundreds of Apprentice Mech Designers cheered and began to discuss how they wanted to spend their next weeks of free time.

The more hard-working, disciplined and ambitious mech designers didn't intend to leave the design lab. They wanted to stay and either work on their personal projects or invest their time in improving their skills and knowledge base.

Others were more casual. All of the months of persistent work on the challenging expert mech designs had taken a toll on them. Ves did not begrudge any of them for going on a vacation. Working hard was important, but only if they were able to keep up. He didn't want any of them to burn out prematurely and squander all of the investment that he and his clan had put into their individual development.

After consulting the schedule, Ves decided to fabricate the Chimera Project a couple of days later. That was when the Larkinson fleet arrived at the same star system where a couple of shipyards had already completed the clan's next capital ships.

Ves already began to grin at the thought of receiving the long-awaited vessels.

Unlike most of the other capital ships of the Larkinson fleet, the Gorgoneion and the Diligent Ovenbird were both brand-new hulls that were designed and configured according to the needs of his clan!

That meant that they were just as good as the Spirit of Bentheim in their respective roles. They were also able to last longer as they were both at the start of their lengthy product life cycles.

The upcoming acquisition of the Chimera Project, the Gorgoneion and the Diligent Ovenbird represented the last major additions to the Larkinson fleet.

"We probably won't be able to acquire any further capital ships after we move on from this stop." Ves regrettably said.

The Larkinson fleet was still lacking in fleet carriers, but these happened to be the capital ships classes that every pioneer wanted. Since Ves and his clan were complete outsiders to the Sticky Pernois and the Tarnished Crown Star Sectors, there was no way they were able to skip the extremely long waiting list.

Ves was not too depressed, though. "Nine capital ships is already formidable enough… There are many other groups that can't even scrounge up half of that number."