The Mech Touch

After he concluded his 'delightful' talk with the Shield of Samar, Ves visited the final third order living mech on his list.

Fortunately, his conversation with the Minerva didn't go nearly as deep as with the last living mech he visited.

While the Shield of Samar was the oldest and most experienced of the bunch, the Minerva was practically a newborn baby at the moment!

It was so new that it had only fought a single proper battle, and that was against a horde of fish-whales that hardly challenged its command capabilities.

In addition to that, the Minerva's experiences were much different from that of other mechs. As an expert command mech, it was not only bound to a powerful legion commander who was fully preoccupied with leading the Living Sentinels, but also got into contact with many different mechs and mech pilots through the Command Field.

All of this led to the shaping of a third order living mech that was much more closely bound to the Larkinson Army than its peers!

MECHS ARE EXPECTED TO SERVE, JUST LIKE MECH PILOTS. I HAVE FEW COMPLAINTS ABOUT THE TREATMENT THAT WE HAVE RECEIVED. THAT SAID, I SUPPORT THE CHANGES THAT YOU HAVE MENTIONED. IT WOULD BE GOOD FOR LIVING MECHS SUCH AS OURSELVES TO BE SEEN ON A MORE EQUAL LEVEL TO EVERY MECH PILOT IN THE CLAN. WHILE WE ARE WILLING TO SACRIFICE OURSELVES FOR THE GOOD OF THE CLAN, WE WILL BECOME MORE MOTIVATED TO SERVE OUR DUTY IF WE RECEIVE BETTER TREATMENT.

"Those are my thoughts as well." Ves nodded. "I have been thinking about what kind of changes I will make in the near future. There is no time to implement the reforms that I have in mind right away, but I will promise I will see this through once our stay in the Garimel System has come to an end."

YOU DO NOT HAVE TO GIVE US RANKS, BUT IT WOULD BE A LOT MORE CONVENIENT FOR US MECHS TO COMMUNICATE WITH EACH OTHER AND WITH FELLOW HUMANS IF WE CAN GAIN ACCESS TO THE INTERNAL NETWORK. THIS IS A SAFER OPTION THAN GIVING US ACCESS TO THE GALACTIC NET RIGHT AWAY. NOT EVERY LIVING MECH WILL BE AS PRUDENT AS WE WISH.

The Minerva made a good point. It appeared that it was developing into quite a responsible mech. The strong influence had already shaped its personality in a direction that allowed it to be entrusted with greater responsibility.

Of course, it was still too young and inexperienced to take up any leadership positions. It was too difficult for the Minerva to convince the other powerful living mechs with its lack of development.

Even so, the Minerva was already proving to be a useful, helpful and insightful expert mech in the short time it had come into service.

Once it reached the age of the current Shield of Samar, its sophistication would definitely surpass any other living mech!

Ves had a good chat with the Minerva. He even discussed other topic with the friendly expert mech.

"How is Commander Casella faring these days, in your opinion?" He asked.

MY HUMAN PARTNER IS CONTENT AND BUSY. SHE ENJOYS PILOTING ME AND IS EAGER TO MASTER MY CAPABILITIES. TOGETHER, WE ARE WORKING TOWARDS OPTIMIZING AND REFINING OUR VARIOUS TECHNIQUES. MY ONLY REGRET IS THAT SHE MUST SPEND TIME ON OTHER LEADERSHIP DUTIES IN ORDER TO LEAD THE LIVING SENTINELS.

That was much as he expected.

"Has she encountered any troubles that is slowing her down?"

THERE IS ONE. HER BROTHER IS TRYING TO IMPOSE TOO MUCH ON HER. THOUGH THEY ARE SIBLINGS WHO CARE FOR EACH OTHER, THEY ARE BOTH ADULTS WITH DIFFERENT RESPONSIBILITIES. WE UNDERSTAND THAT IMON HAS THROWN HIS LOT WITH HER, BUT IT IS ALREADY ENOUGH FOR CASELLA TO BE ABLE TO COUNT ON HIM ON THE BATTLEFIELD. THERE IS NO NEED FOR HIM TO BOTHER HER OUTSIDE OF COMBAT.

He had heard about Venerable Imon's persistence in trying to get close to his sister. This was a worrisome pattern of behavior.

If Imon was an ordinary mech pilot who wasn't related to Casella, then a mech officer would have already disciplined him by now. This kind of obsessive conduct was not appropriate and completely set the wrong example.

However, Imon's status was more sensitive than that. He was Casella's blood relative so his motives weren't impure. His conviction was also related to protecting his sister, so it wasn't odd for him to act so weird even during his off-hours.

This was why the clan had not taken any strong measures against Venerable Imon thus far. Expert pilots were known weirdos and eccentrics, and the behavior of the newest Larkinson expert pilot was somewhat tolerable.

The clan still needed to do something about him, though. Ves was well aware of how difficult it was to change the minds of expert pilots, but he did not think it was impossible for him to persuade Imon to find a better way to occupy his time.

"I will have a good talk with him once we are done with Purgatory." He promised to the living mech. "For now, the mission comes first. We are almost ready to depart for the Evolution Kingdom. Be ready to deploy."

I AM ALWAYS PREPARED TO BE OF SERVICE. THIS IS WHAT I WAS MADE FOR. CASELLA WILL NEVER HAVE A REASON TO DOUBT MY READINESS.

After he concluded his talks with the Minerva, Ves retired to an office in the headquarters building and summarized his findings and observations.

"The sample size is too small."

Although he collected a variety of opinions from different third order living mechs, he did not feel he gained a complete understanding of their population group. All of their opinions were colored by both their individual mech pilots and the Larkinson Clan as a whole.

Any future third order living mechs that Ves sold to other parties would probably grow up into substantially different entities!

Would they be as patient and willing to serve humanity as the Larkinson living mechs? Ves could not give a straightforward answer to this question.

"This is the potential of life. All sentient and intelligent life forms are able to choose their own destinies. They can develop into humanity's greatest protectors and partners, but they can also degenerate into scourges that can pose a real threat to people."

This was the inherent duality and chaotic nature of life. No one was perfect and there were always malignants in every group.

Ves was actually quite fascinated with the concept of living mechs gone bad. The Devil Tiger was originally meant to serve as an early experiment in this regard.

Unfortunately, his plan to observe how a mech with a less-than-proper attitude towards humans interacted with those very same people were dashed. Ever since his mother hijacked his first prized masterwork mech and handed it over to his father, the Devil Tiger had been transformed into a completely different machine.

He suddenly came up with an interesting idea.

What if he restarted this experiment in a different form?

The rougher and more remote parts of the new frontier were nearly just as dangerous and chaotic as the Nyxian Gap!

No one who roamed those parts could say no to free mechs that also happened to be powerful in their own ways.

Ves briefly imagined this scenario. He could secretly design and build a batch of 'bad boy' mechs that contained a few controversial design elements that were sure to generate a lot of uncomfortable questions if exposed!

The hardest part about this operation was to prevent the MTA or other snooping organizations from finding out about his involvement. This was rather hard to accomplish as his living mechs were so unique and iconic that there was only one mech designer in the Red Ocean who could possibly design such machines!

He frowned. "If I want to go through with this, I need to solve this problem first and foremost."

It was a lot harder to camouflage his design philosophy now that he had developed it further. He was pretty much 100 percent certain that someone like the Polymorph would immediately be able to deduce his traces if she got her hands on one of his experimental machines!

Still, the chances that a figure as high-ranked as hers would deign to study a trivial mech designed by some forgettable figure was miniscule!

Ves would just have to put a lot of extra effort into making his mech less obviously valuable than normal.

Designing his mechs for third-class mech pilots should do the trick. Having been a third-class mech designer himself once upon a time, he already figured out that the mechers paid much less attention towards the weakest and most poor-performing mechs in use. They were too limited and rarely offered innovations and design solutions worth recording.

This meant that the chances that he could get away with designing a series of third-class 'dark mechs' was much higher!

Coming up with a workable design was only the first step, though.

He couldn't fabricate the mechs within the Spirit of Bentheim or any other ship in the fleet because the risk of exposure was too great.

He needed to fabricate the bad boy mechs in a completely different mech workshop. Davute or any other major port system was out of the question because they were too public and densely populated. He would have to veer to a more remote and shady settlement that hired out its workshops, but that brought its own risks.

After that, he needed to make sure they were being shipped to the right places without suffering a mishap of some kind.

This was not too difficult of a job, but the troublesome part was removing every trace of their origin.

"I'll think about this later."

Although the risks were great, the opportunity to gather a lot of interesting data on the growth and performance of deviant mechs was too attractive!

His design philosophy centered around growth and evolution, so it was best if he could observe the progression of different styles of living mechs.

Although his mech designs were all unique in their own way, they all possessed a lot of common elements that kind of got stale after a while.

Working on a completely different interpretation of living mechs would definitely light up his passion again!

He recalled that the process of designing and making the Devil Tiger was his first successful attempt at making a masterwork mech. Even if he did not aim for it, his abundant passion and enthusiasm were so great that he was able to transform it into a qualitatively better mech with a little bit of help!

Even if he didn't need to rely on designing extremely off-beat mechs to make masterwork mechs anymore, Ves was too passionate about mech design to overlook this additional opportunity to diversify his work and learn new facets about his design philosophy.

"This isn't the time to think about new mech design projects."

He recalled his current priorities and quickly suppressed his desire to experiment with new mech design concepts.

He returned to handling various arrangements and making sure that the mechs that were about to accompany him to the Evolution Kingdom were in order.

Once the time had come, over a thousand mechs had assembled.

Mechs hailing from the Avatars of Myth, the Flagrant Vandals, the Penitent Sisters and the Swordmaidens made up the main body of the task force.

Additional mechs hailing from the Glory Seekers and the Cross Clan also joined the task force.

Though the mech models were all different, none of them were too slow and sluggish. The ability to run away was one of the most important criteria for this mission. There was no way to fight against an entire fish-whale kingdom, so if hostilities ever broke out, mobility was a critically important factor!

This was also why the Shield of Samar did not take part in this mission. It was just too slow and heavy!

Aside from all of these mechs, a bunch of cargo shuttles carrying additional energy cells and other supplies joined the task force as well.

Although the supply train was a bit meager and inadequate to sustain the mechs over a long campaign, they at least ensured that the mechs wouldn't run dry after fighting one or two battles.

"Everything is in order, sir!"

"What are you waiting for, then? Let's set off and meet some fish-whales!"