The Mech Touch

Minidrives were expensive additions to any mech. Ves could foresee many scenarios where a miniaturized warp drive could make the Firestarter Project a lot more useful, but the rationale wasn't as strong as with the C-Man Project.

The C-Man Project's case was stronger because Vincent wanted to turn it into a pure melee mech. This meant that it could not function at its full potential if it wasn't at point-blank range with its targets.

This imposed a heavy limitation on its use and made it all the more important for the proposed expert brawler mech to be good at moving around.

The need for rapid traversal was much less for ranged mechs. As long as the ranges weren't extreme, it was perfectly viable for ranged mechs of many different varieties to inflict effective damage against distant targets.

However, that did not mean that it was useless to equip the Firestarter Project with a combat drive.

Venerable Isobel could perform all kinds of tactical and strategic maneuvers as long as her effective range gained an enormous boost. Whether on or off the battlefield, it was much easier for her Firestarter Project to be at the right place at the right time!

"I can see how a minidrive can be useful." Isobel's eyes lit up as Ves shared a few thoughts about this subject. "I never dared to imagine this before, but now that we have left with a lot of phasewater in our reserves…"

Ves grinned. "We are no longer in a position where minidrives are unavailable or way past our budgets. We can choose to incorporate minidrives on many mechs. Of course, we don't intend to equip them on all of our machines, but there is a strong case for adding them to all new and existing expert mechs as external backpack modules. This way, we can add them to the machines when needed and leave them out when long-ranged, ultra-fast mobility is not necessary."

After thinking about this matter further, he figured that it was best to employ minidrives as external modules for every compatible mech in his lineup.

He might even acquire a standardized model that was universal for every expert mech. This way, the logistics of procuring and maintaining the minidrives became a lot simpler. There was no need to overcomplicate this feature any further than necessary.

He could apply the same treatment to the Phaser fish-whale organs as well, if they could even be utilized in conjunction with mechs.

After he finished exploring the possibilities of adding warp capabilities to the Firestarter Project, he bid goodbye to Venerable Isobel and departed from her recovery room.

Now that he had finished checking up on the new expert candidates and expert pilots of the Larkinson Clan, he decided to check up on a couple of other ongoing projects taking place within the Dragon's Den.

He met with Dr. Perris who was supervising the growth of an important bioconstruct over at the Scarlet Garden Department.

"Patriarch, welcome back to the Scarlet Garden." The Lifer biomech designer rose from her chair and greeted. "Are you here to inspect the Titan-3 Project?"

Ves nodded. "That is one of my goals for today, yes. Bring me to wherever it is being cultivated. I want to see how close it is to maturity."

"Very well. Please follow me to the main cultivation chamber."

They entered a large hall that was slightly dimmed. Various bots and other machines tended to several enormous pools filled with different mineral and nutrient-rich solutions.

When Ves took a closer look at a couple of the pools, he spotted that several white fleshy limbs were submerged inside of them. The liquids were just opaque enough for Ves to get a good glimpse of their enormous shapes.

He took a deep breath. "Impressive. Their sizes should already be close to what I envisioned. It's a shame that we haven't been able to finish the meat suit in time for the Purgatory Campaign. I think the Everchanger can actually brawl against the fish-whales if it was equipped with this organic wargear."

Dr. Perris looked regretful. "We feel the same way, but the production of large organic products cannot be rushed. This is especially the case for the Titan-3 Project which possesses considerably more mass than biomechs."

This was the biggest downside of biotechnology. It just took too much time to complete the growth process. Dr. Perris and the other biotech experts had already implemented many measures to accelerate the growth of the Titan-3 Project, but it was hard for them to implement more extreme measures without compromising the health and longevity of the meat suit.

These were all old and familiar problems to Ves, so he did not blame the Scarlet Garden or express any frustration.

He still felt peeved that the completion of the Titan-3 Project came at a time when he planned for the Larkinson Clan and the Golden Skull Alliance to lay low for a couple of years.

While it was not impossible for detachments of Larkinson mech troops to go out and complete various missions, the chances that the Everchanger would end up in a major battle like before should not be high.

"Since there aren't any immediate opportunities to see the Titan-3 Project in action, we should change our goals and adjust our approach towards it." Dr. Perris suggested. "Instead of growing it with the expectation of putting it to use in battle, we can use it as a prototype and a platform to test our attempts of combining conventional mechs with biotechnology."

Ves looked at the eager biomech designer. "The cost of doing all of this shouldn't be low. The budget of the Titan-3 Project is already considerable. It's hard to justify all of the money, resources and effort put into it, only for us to use it as a testbed."

"Money shouldn't be a problem now that we have obtained large quantities of phasewater, sir. I think it is worth it to perform further research in combining the organic tissue we have harvested from the Titania with the fish-whale organs that Task Force Fisherman has retrieved from Purgatory into an even stronger mounted wargear model. If the Everchanger can pilot an upgraded version of the meat suit with warp travel capabilities, it can single-handedly pose an enormous threat towards hostile fleets."

Dr. Perris had put a lot of thought in how to justify the additional resources put in this ongoing project. She painted an attractive picture of the meat suit's potential.

Ves looked at the limbs that were close to reaching the point where they could be grafted together into a single whole.

"Well, since we are about to undergo a years-long period of upgrades, expansion and reconstruction, it makes sense for us to iterate on the Titan-3 Project further. I don't want us to proceed with introducing a rushed product only for it to fail and fall apart in front of an actual opponent."

Now that he thought about it, the Titan-3 Project was still a bit of a rushed project. Ves was so eager to boost the Everchanger's immediate combat power that he prioritized speed over performance and stability.

The circumstances had changed, which meant that Ves also had to readjust his various priorities.

"Okay. Let's go with your proposal. However, before we start any further projects of this nature, I first want you to complete this meat suit so that I can see for myself how it performs in reality. Even if there aren't any good opponents in the vicinity, we can still get a good impression of its combat power. If the Titan-3 Project's potential is high enough, then I won't say no to a Titan-4 Project."

Ves continued to ask about the state of the current meat suit. According to the current estimates, it shouldn't take too long for him to see the meat suit in action. Dr. Perris had opted to slow down the growth rate of the various elements of the meat suit in order to make sure they grew properly and without any of the faults that usually plagued fast-growing organic products.

Once he finished with this part of his inspection, he bid goodbye to Dr. Perris and visited another laboratory department.

He peered through the transparent window to see a dozen or so money trees blooming under the abundant light shining down from above.

Each of them had already grown taller than his body, but the trunk and branches looked far too skinny for his liking.

Just like in the last case, the biotech experts responsible for supervising the growth of the Titania money trees recommended that they should slow down the growth pace.

Ves was tempted to do so, he didn't think it was worth the wait.

"Just keep growing them as usual. They don't look too bad to me and I just want to see whether they live up to my expectations. Once we have gathered enough data about this batch of money trees, we can revise their designs and grow a proper batch the next time."

The long period of time he intended to spend in the safer parts of Krakatoa had given him a lot more patience than before. He was no longer in a hurry to achieve quick success. He felt it was fine to take a more long-term approach to his projects.

Once he had his fill of staring at young and hastily-grown trees, he left the department and moved all the way to one of the more central biomes.

There, he briefly inspected the tens of thousands of pakklaton captives that he intended to utilize as test subjects for his 'humane' experiments.

Now that Ves had forged an agreement with the MTA Transhumanist Faction, the T Institute should soon open up for business.

The researchers would definitely take advantage to the abundance of test subjects available on the Dragon's Den!

Although Transhumanists such as Master Dervidian were not discreet at all when it came to experimenting on captive humans, no one dared to criticize the MTA.

Ves could not say for certain whether the public would forgive the Larkinson Clan for doing the same!

Even if Master Dervidian showed that Ves didn't need to be so circumspect about human experimentation, it still wasn't wise to cross this line.

The availability of a large population of captive aliens that spiritually resembled humans was a safer and less controversial alternative!

Unlike human test subjects, there were few human organizations that would ever advocate for the rights of alien beings!

Any of them that did attempt to do so would quickly be labeled as cosmopolitans and be regarded as traitors to the human race!

Ves smirked. "We're going to have a very good time in the following years."

The bird-like aliens that were perched on the tree branches did not understand his words at all. However, that did not stop them from staring at the human on the other side of the transparent cage.

Ves activated a command that caused a few bots to seek out and bring over the test subjects of one of his ongoing experiments.

Much to his surprise, the blank companion spirits that he had initially implanted into Subject 1 and Subject 2 had gained a lot of definition in the last few weeks!

They were no longer as generic and empty as before. Days of living among the pakklatons had caused the companion spirits to take on the shape and character of this race.

It was similar to how Sharpie evolved into a more human form. This reflected the inherent feature of companion spirits to grow in a direction that best fit the needs and circumstances of their hosts.

"Interesting."

It remained to be seen where this was heading towards, but Ves already felt this experiment might yield a lot of interesting research results.

As Ves completed his inspection and sent the two test subjects, he grew dissatisfied that he only made use of two pakklatons.

The Dragon's Den contained over 40,000 alien prisoners! This was a massive collection of untapped research materials. Ves was wasting their utility by keeping them in their biomes while doing nothing special!

"I need to come up with a lot more experiments. These test subjects are just waiting to contribute to science!"