The Mech Touch

Ves had to admit that the Storm Sword design concept sounded powerful enough to change the paradigm between mechs and warships.

One of the greatest advantages of warships was that they could always rely on their immense scale and abundant internal volume to stuff a lot of powerful systems inside their hulls.

An ordinary mech could never fit a potent shield generator that was several times its size!

Yet a warship that stretched for several kilometers could easily accommodate a couple of dozen of them with ease!

This was the fundamental reason why it was simply too easy for warships to overpower mechs. Their ability to pile up their technical capabilities was so high that they could break through practically all opposition by relying on brute force alone!

Mechs had never been a weapon platform that relied on brute force to win. Sure, first-class multipurpose mechs most certainly stretched the limits of what technology could produce, but even the most advanced MTA mech could not single-handedly defeat a single proper CFA warship.

Though many mech designers still clung onto the belief that extensive miniaturization and other technological innovations would one day give smaller war machines an edge over larger but much more inflexible vessels, that day was nowhere in sight.

For the time being, mechs needed to rely on other avenues of power in order to overcome the might of warships.

Teamwork was one of the most common ways that mechs outfought warships.

Since armed starships were inherently more expensive, no force could easily deploy hundreds if not thousands of them at a time.

In contrast, fielding mechs by the thousands was quite normal for groups above a certain level.

This enabled a mech force to build up a roster composed of many different models that all synergized with each other.

The power of teamwork combined with the power of synergy could produce astonishing results!

The best mech pilots and the most clever commanders could easily use their mechs to defeat opposing forces that may be ten times stronger than them in absolute terms!

These were just a few of the means that mechs could use to narrow the gap between themselves and other powerful opponents such as warships.

Now, Ketis wanted to pitch in with her own idea. The Storm Sword put forth a radical new means of countering the transphasic energy shields that the indigenous aliens often used to protect their warships from damage.

The new elite mech model did not have to be able to single-handedly disintegrate a transphasic energy shield or spatial barrier. Ves did not ask for a standard mech that could match the performance of an expert mech.

What Ketis presented instead was an expensive machine, but one that could be mass produced under the right circumstances!

"The Storm Sword does not have high specific material requirements." Ketis elaborated her vision for her ambitious new shield breaking machine. "The key elements that make it work are stormblade technology, a Swordmaiden mech pilot that has gone through specialized training and Venerable Dise's companion spirit. None of this would work without any of these elements missing. The first-class materials used to make the greatsword and the frame of the mech will help the mech survive on approach, but they are not essential. I can make a version of the Storm Sword with second-class materials if I have to. Oh, I can't forget about myself. My design philosophy and deep expertise are needed to merge all of the necessary pieces together into a single package."

As Ves continued to study the nuances of the draft design, he looked a bit uncertain.

"Those are steep demands, Ketis. You are imposing exceedingly high demands on your new mech design. This is not going to be a highly practical design. I can't see it being mass produced in greater numbers than a hundred or so machines. We will come a lot closer to bottoming out our reserves of salvaged first-class materials by then, and don't forget that you are not the only mech designer who wants to make use of all of those high-end materials for their pet projects."

The swordmaster merely held the hilt of her Bloodsinger and exuded an aggressive air.

"Then we'll go out on the frontier and smash a bunch of other alien warships! It will be like my old pirate days! Just think about it, Ves. We have almost everything we need to smash and build on the go. As long as you upgrade the recycling facilities of the Graveyard and the production facilities of the Spirit of Bentheim to the point where they can process first-class materials, we can slowly upgrade all of our mechs without paying a single MTA credit or MTA merit!"

That caused Ves to freeze. "Do you know how crazy that sounds? There are many aliens out there that are dangerous! While it may be nice if we can find an isolated enemy battleship or something, there is also a chance we might end up replicating Lord Pearian Yorul-Tavik's personal experience and bump into a powerful alien warfleet!"

Ketis remained undeterred. "Pearian was both careless and a fool. We regularly employ a lot of scouts, so we can detect powerful threats in advance. Besides, I already heard that you are thinking about expanding our alliance. It was about time. The Adelaides and the Boojays are both alright by my book. With two more ace mechs in our fleet, our ability to pound alien warships into scrap becomes a lot stronger!"

"Nothing is ever absolute in a warzone." Ves shook his head.

"Since when has uncertainty ever stopped you? You pushed for the Trailblazer Expedition because you recognize that staying in a safe and boring area won't do you as much good. You weighed the odds and figured that you had a much better chance of becoming a Master or a Star Designer if you tried your luck in the more dangerous parts of the frontier. Now that we are in a period where our strength is about to skyrocket, why are you becoming so timid all of a sudden? This is the opposite of what you really want! We should be out in the less civilized parts of the frontier where we can hunt alien warships to our heart's content!"

She knew him well, because the story she presented to him caused his imagination to go wild. He visualized the process of roaming the deeper parts of the frontier and encountering many new sights.

It was inevitable for the expeditionary fleet to pick up the whereabouts of alien ships or fleets. As long as the Golden Skull Alliance scouted its surroundings properly and did not stray into exceedingly risky regions, it should always be able to pick and choose its own battles.

The tonnage of a typical starship was high. Though not all of the alien races were luxurious enough to construct warships made out of first-class exotics, the major alien races fielded plenty of them, so it was not impossible to encounter another formidable battleship like the V'gahnt-Zezne or the Fractured House of the Collapsing Star.

Any capital ship was made out of a huge amount of materials! No matter whether the hull was partially or wholly made out of first-class materials, the expeditionary fleet was bound to secure a rich harvest upon achieving victory!

Perhaps Ves and the others might not be able to use all of these powerful materials to fabricate proper first-class mechs right away, but it should not be a problem to produce quasi-first-class mechs.

Designs like the Storm Sword would come in extremely handy in this situation, because it was powerful works like these that did a better job at drawing out the potential of the expensive materials!

Each production run added a lot of powerful new combat assets to the expeditionary fleet.

Once the Larkinson Army was able to field hundreds if not thousands quasi-first-class mechs at a time, then the expeditionary fleet might not even have to rely on its high-ranking mechs to defeat most warships.

Quasi-first-class mechs in sufficient numbers should be able to handle most warship threats up to cruisers under general conditions!

If a lot of quasi-first-class mechs worked together with the expert mechs and ace mechs of the Golden Skull Alliance, then Ves wouldn't necessarily be afraid of larger alien warfleets!

Though Ves felt that this mode of operation had a lot of potential to accelerate the growth of his forces, the risks were unpredictable. He could not afford to make a hasty decision on this matter.

"Let's not think too far ahead." He told the swordmaster after a short moment. "We have plenty of time to think and discuss our future plans. As far as your Storm Sword design is concerned, I guess that it will definitely be of use even if we can only produce small batches of it due to material constraints. Are you sure that stormblade technology in combination with all of that swordsmanship stuff will yield the promised result?"

"I am certain." Ketis affirmed. "I conducted enough experiments to know that it is possible. I can show you footage of me using different stormblade swords on several different energy shields."

"Show me. I am curious to see how the effect plays out in a different context."

She called up the relevant footage from her comm and projected them in the air.

Despite the many variations, the live tests proceeded in a similar fashion.

Each time, an armored form walked up to an active energy shield and lifted up a different sword that incorporated stormblade technology.

From a dagger to a greatsword, Ketis and Sharpie worked together to reproduce Venerable Dise's latest extraordinary sword technique.

The sight was astonishing! The electrified blades swung out, producing small rivers of crackling stars that seemed to agitate the energy shields a lot more than normal!

The damage to the shield integrity was always high, though Ketis never attempted to break the shields entirely due to safety reasons.

The swordmaster even tested out how much damage she could inflict without a stormblade weapon or without utilizing the new Phase Cutter technique.

The effective damage was not as exaggerated in those instances.

Stormblade weapons were designed to deal increased damage against energy shields, but their effectiveness was limited due to their fairly low technical specifications.

When Ketis performed the Phase Cutter technique with her Bloodsinger, the sea of stars looked a lot more anemic and a lot less energetic. The energy wave still hurt an energy shield a decent amount, but the lack of synergy from stormblade technology was too obvious.

The footage of all of the experiments led Ves to draw the same conclusion as the originator of this idea. Stormblade technology on its own was not that impressive, but when it was paired with an extraordinary sword technique, it could truly shred energy shields when employed in great enough quantities!

"Okay." Ves eventually said. "I've seen enough. I approve of your new initiative. If you think it is a good idea to start working on this Storm Sword Project, then I wish you good luck. Just make sure that you don't ignore your existing obligations. I am still waiting for the completion of the lower-end Samurai Project. This is supposed to be the original mech that is meant to prove the viability and effectiveness of stormblade technology in our hands."

"I am on track to complete the Samurai Project in a few more months. It is not that complicated of a mech design now that I have familiarized myself with stormblade technology."

The two talked a bit more about stormblade technology. Ves had the feeling that Ketis might be able to take it to the next level.

Not even the original developers of this tech would have imagined that an individual as unique as Ketis could draw out so much strength from electrified blades!

The technological principles of stormblade weapons weren't even advanced enough to be considered high technology.

If Ketis could truly succeed in her attempt to turn trash into treasure, then that would definitely progress her career and increase her recognition!