The Mech Touch

Ves thoroughly enjoyed his morning as he and his immediate family rose from their bed.

They washed up and dressed themselves up in their own outfits before enjoying a rich and sumptuous breakfast.

Gloriana had managed to hire even more skilled chefs from Davute lately. The quality of food prepared for the most important family of the Larkinson Clan had improved even further as the new hires knew exactly how to work with different specialized ingredients.

Ves, Gloriana and their children all possessed different dietary requirements.

Though Ves and Gloriana wouldn't die if they ate regular food, their children required a lot more energy as well as foodstuffs that were laced with different exotics while their bodies were still growing.

Fortunately, the chefs always managed to make the food look nice and taste even nicer. The hungry little children eagerly devoured their breakfasts before Gloriana brought them to kindergarten.

Ves kissed his wife and children goodbye before he headed over to the underground complex built underneath the surface of the Cat Nest.

He smiled and nodded at the many clansmen who he met along the way before he reached a tightly guarded underground hangar complex.

This was one of the sites where a handful of Larkinson expert mechs could be found. The clan always made sure to station at least three of them at the Larkinson Branch while the remainder protected the main fleet.

Several notable expert mechs graced his sight. Ves was intimately familiar with each of the frames considering that he personally designed and upgraded them over the years.

He spared a brief glance towards the Shield of Samar and the Promethea before he headed over to the Dark Zephyr.

The mech had undergone a fairly extensive overhaul recently. Ves still wasn't entirely accustomed to its beefier and deadlier form.

Whereas the initial version of the Dark Zephyr boasted a sleek and tidy shape, the upgraded version looked a bit busier but considerably better armed!

The entire expert mech had been improved inside and out. Pretty much its entire internal architecture had been renewed. Ves and his wife had ripped out most of the internal architecture in order to put much more powerful heartland-level components into the machine.

The Larkinson Clan did not spare too much money in order to obtain the most powerful high-end mech systems for the Dark Zephyr!

Ves even approved the decision to exchange small quantities of phasewater to various development companies in order to obtain the most cutting-edge mech parts and mech systems!

A lot of different performance parameters experienced drastic improvements as a result. The sensor suite, the ECM suite, the power reactor, the mech engine and most notably the flight system performed several times better than before.

Of course, this was not the extent of the changes made to the Dark Zephyr.

Venerable Tusa had complained so many times on how he was unable to make meaningful contributions in certain scenarios that Ves and Gloriana had made a few additions to address these issues.

The most obvious of them was the new modular armored grenade holsters. Four of them were mounted on the Dark Zephyr by default, though they could always be removed if Tusa felt they were unnecessary and weighed his mech down.

Each holster possessed enough capacity to accommodate 5 mech-grade grenades, which meant that the Dark Zephyr was able to sortie with 20 of them in total!

Naturally, the grenades at Tusa's disposal weren't the cheap and boring explosives handed out to regular mech forces.

The Larkinson Army invested quite a bit of money and resources to build up a sizable reserve of high-end grenades. Some of them were even custom-made by the Design Department in order to equip the Dark Zephyr with grenades with more exotic payloads!

The point of equipping the Dark Zephyr with these grenade holsters was to change its role and increase its versatility in the face of different threats.

Unlike energy-based weapon systems, grenades were incredibly useful because people were able to choose the power and effect of the payloads before deploying into battle.

The ability to carry 20 potent grenades into battle completely elevated the offensive power of the expert light mech!

Tusa could pick and choose different types of grenades to handle different jobs.

For example, if he needed to clear out a dense formation of mechs, the Dark Zephyr could toss out a bunch of incendiary grenades that spread flames over larger areas!

If he needed to breach the armor of a well-protected bunker, he could opt for a directional explosive grenade that excelled at punching through layers of dense materials.

If he needed to defeat an expert mech, he could equip his Dark Zephyr with high-explosive grenades, plasma grenades, or even phasewater grenades!

Of course, the latter should only be brought out when the Larkinsons faced a truly overwhelming opponent. The cost of building a grenade with a payload that was laced with phasewater was not cheap to say the least!

Venerable Tusa eagerly embraced the grenades when he received his upgraded Dark Zephyr again. In his initial live practice sessions, he went mad with joy by tossing the wildest and most powerful grenades at different practice targets!

He had been repressed by his lack of firepower for too long!

Ves quickly had to rein in his overenthusiastic cousin before he single-handedly bankrupted the Larkinson Clan!

"If you want to toss around high-end plasma grenades and phasewater grenades, then go do that in the MSTS! I know it's not as real as you would like, but you can experience the effects of all of those grenades against many different types of simulated opponents."

The Dark Zephyr used to be the cheapest and least resource-intensive expert mech to maintain.

Now that it was equipped with consumable equipment, Ves anticipated that the expert light skirmisher would impose a much higher financial burden on the clan.

This was no problem, though. With the success of his business ventures, he had more than enough money to pay for this burden.

He would rather lose a lot of money than to lose a lot of mechs and combat assets in situations where he needed to preserve as much strength as possible.

There was no way to defeat enemies on the battlefield with stacks of MTA credits! All of the money accumulating in his bank accounts would not help him when a giant phase whale was about to crunch his entire fleet into pieces!

As much as Venerable Tusa was ecstatic with all of the upgrades and additions to his expert mech, he did raise a point of concern a few days after receiving his renewed machine.

"I'm happy with the Dark Zephyr Version 2.0, Ves. I really am." He said. "There's just one issue that is bothering me. When I fought with it during the more difficult battle scenarios of the MSTS, my expert mech has a tendency to get shot a lot by powerful opponents. If my Dark Zephyr got struck, then I could always rely on its Unending alloy armor plating to withstand the blows. This time is different. If my expert mech gets saturated with incoming attacks, and if enough of them strike a grenade holster…"

"Most of the grenades are designed to stay inert when they are struck." Ves responded.

"That is not always the case. There have been times where the grenades inflicted at least some damage to my mech when the holsters that held them got blown apart. Look, these grenades are great when at shorter ranges when I can actually use them to blast my targets apart, but they're not as helpful when my enemies are thirty kilometers away. I've actually stopped carrying the grenade holsters in the training scenarios where I know that I will face a lot of enemy fire. It simply isn't worth the risk to bring the explosives along."

Ves did not look too surprised by this. He already accounted for the problem of trying to protect the volatile payloads under heavy fire.

"There is one more upgrade that I haven't shared with you yet." He told the expert pilot. "Did you notice the new slot at the back of your Dark Zephyr? We upgraded and strengthened it so that your expert light skirmisher can mount an optional new backpack module."

Venerable Tusa became a lot more enthusiastic all of a sudden!

"Are you saying…"

Ves grinned. "Your suspicions are correct. Your expert mech will be the first Larkinson machine to gain access to a minidrive!"

Tusa was overcome with so much joy at hearing this news that his force of will made a metaphorical dance!

Obtaining a minidrive had been his greatest wish. The Dark Zephyr was all about mobility, and nothing could enhance its combat effectiveness more than the ability to zip through the battlefield at vastly greater speeds than before!

While it was true that the massively upgraded flight system already allowed the expert light skirmisher to push its acceleration to another level, it simply wasn't enough when squaring off against a squadron of nunser warships.

A minidrive significantly reduced the time that the Dark Zephyr was underway, which meant that it would be exposed to far less intercepting fire!

Being able to approach his destination faster also allowed Venerable Tusa to take out priority targets earlier, thereby preventing the enemy from dealing as much damage as before.

"Where is it? When can I test it out?!"

"Whoa there! Don't be in such a hurry. Our clan commissioned a new combat drive for your Dark Zephyr from Morton Tech. The developers suffered a brief delay, hence why we couldn't bring it to you when we completed the upgrade to your mech. The good news is that it should be arriving straight from the laboratory of the development company today."

Morton Tech was the company that the Larkinson Clan ultimately chose to obtain a few combat drives. While the company was fairly new, it was staffed by numerous powerful researchers who had already made a lot of strides in figuring out alien warp drive technology.

The company had managed to develop numerous powerful new transluminal travel solutions in a short amount of time. It was able to supply the most well-off groups in Davute with different varieties of superdrives, warp drives and minidrives.

"The Stiletto AS-1 Combat Drive is a fairly compact minidrive that is able to generate a warp field that can effectively allow your expert mech to traverse more distance in a shorter amount of time." Ves briefly explained. "That classifies it as a combat drive. It does not function as a cruise drive, which means you can't effectively use it for interstellar travel. You won't be able to travel from one star system to another star system. This might become possible in an updated version of the Stiletto Drive, but don't count on it. The sole purpose of this expensive module is to speed up your travel time on the battlefield."

"I'm already happy with that, Ves. How much faster will my Dark Zephyr be able to travel with this new combat drive?"

"We still have to test that, but we have worked together with Morton Tech to make sure your new Stiletto Drive will do its utmost to speed up your Dark Zephyr. That said, you should take into account that it is only a first-generation product that is based on brand-new technology. Everything will be a bit rough at first. According to our simulation results, your expert mech should be able to travel up to 50 times faster at most. However, it takes a lot of time for your combat drive to ramp up to this degree of warping. Your mech should still be able to reach 10 times amplification in a short amount of time."

"T-Ten times!" Tusa gasped!

As a veritable speed freak, being able to move an order of magnitude faster was already a revolutionary change!

He had so many new ideas on how to fight his enemies if his mech was able to sprint an order of magnitude faster!