The Mech Touch



There was no better venue for Ves to experiment on his promising new design application than the Twin Weapons Tournament.

Even though Ves had only come up with it recently, he possessed a lot of confidence in his ability to develop a working application of the so-called Twin Souls System in a short amount of time!

The mechanics of it weren't all that complicated. Ves could copy and paste many of his existing design solutions that he had previously employed in spiritual networks and battle networks.

In his opinion, the new Twin Souls System was a specialized spiritual application that sat between a spiritual network and a battle network.

A normal spiritual network was quite loose and relaxed, but it lacked the intimacy and strength to add much value in combat. They were much more useful in non-combat situations as they were meant to subtly increase the kinship between large groups of people.

A battle network could produce extremely powerful effects, but its requirements were way too high. Specific groups of people such as the Penitent Sisters and the Swordmaidens were extremely homogeneous and already forged a close camaraderie for many years.

While there was a chance that the mech pilots assigned to Ves and Juliet's team already trained and fought alongside each other for several years, there was no point in forming a battle network between just two individuals.

What Ves sought to create was a middle option that was strong enough to forge a closer understanding between the two mech pilots without going overboard. If he made his Twin Souls System any stronger, then the requirements to effectively make use of it would become too excessive.

The entire point of introducing the Twin Souls System was to create a more accessible and less troublesome method of enhancing the teamwork and coordination of small groups of mech pilots.

It was fine if the level of teamwork produced by mechs loaded with the Twin Souls System never came close to the efforts of Master Huron or the Gemini Family.

There was no way that Ves could catch up to over a century of advanced research and lots of trial and error with a single invention.

Juliet fell into thought yet again as she tried to imagine how their competition mechs would fare with these changes.

"I know you well enough that I shouldn't doubt your promises." She said. "If you believe you can do it, then I am inclined to assume you can do so. My concern is that the mech pilots may not be able to adjust to your work as well as you think. We know nothing about the mech pilots or how the Federal Military selects and trains its mech pilots for that matter. They can be best friends or they can be pilots who are assigned to separate units. It greatly helps if they are part of the same mech regiment, but if that is not the case, they will have to start cooperating without an existing basis."

Ves confidently smirked. "That is fine. In fact, I would say that is great. If our pair of mech pilots are unfamiliar with each other, then the other pairs of mech pilots assigned to other teams will be no different. The tournament is supposed to be as fair as possible when it comes to the allocation of mech pilots, so there shouldn't be any major differences in this regard. Do you know what this means? It means that it takes much less time and effort to progress the teamwork of our assigned mech pilots! The first match will be the roughest as the dummies from the Federal Military have to get used to all of the new stuff. So long as they get over this hurdle, they should quickly be able to master the new possibilities introduced by my Twin Souls System."

It was a major gamble, but also a calculated one. Ves might not like Davute, but he had to admit that the Clive Consortium and all of the other big players truly put a lot of work and effort into building up the fundamentals of their state.

The core military organization of the Colonial Federation of Davute consisted of consummate professionals who were already reserved in a similar capacity back in the old galaxy. Davute had already indoctrinated them to see each other as close comrades and fellow servants of the state.

In fact, perhaps Ves could make use of this patriotism and tie it into his competition mechs.

The two Larkinson mech designers continued to discuss and argue about their plans. There were plenty of areas that sounded dubious, but they didn't have the time to discuss every single matter of concern.

"Stop." Ves raised his palm. "We have already spent way too long arguing about this and that. Normally, we have lots of time to conduct research and perform calculations in order to figure out whether our plans are viable or not, but this is a tournament. We don't have the time to be so thorough. Let us start with our design work and go from there. We can still use the following hours to think about our plans and make adjustments on the go if we think it is necessary. Is that okay?"

The female mech designer reluctantly nodded. "Very well. How do you want us to design these two mech designs? It is clear that I am the most suited to design the light mech while you are much more capable of designing the hybrid mech. However, we cannot work on them separately if we want them to carry both of our strengths. Should we employ a design network?"

Ves needed to stop and think about that. A design network would help a lot with making sure that the two mech designs remained in harmony with each other. It cut down on the friction and enabled the two mech designers to easily become aware of each other's intentions towards their ongoing work.

This sounded perfect for a mech design tournament that was centered on cooperating duos!

His only objection was an ethical one. Would employing a design network constitute an unfair advantage that would taint his results in this competition?

After all, none of the other teams could employ anything remotely as effective as the design network!

Ves thought about how the other teams of mech designers might fare.

He recalled that Sara Voiken and Dulo Voiken had also signed up for this tournament. Ves could vaguely sense through the Larkinson Network that they were working diligently on their mech designs a fair distance behind his position.

The two siblings possessed a much closer relationship with each other than the relationship that Ves had with Juliet.

The two grew up together and studied the same subjects. They learned from the same mentors and teachers in the Voiken Family and worked under the same circumstances.

They may not have gone as far as the Geminis and outright married each other, but their deep familiarity with each other should not be underestimated!

Then there was the Power Pair. Janassa Pellier and Tifi Coslone might not have been together as long as the Voiken siblings, but they apprenticed themselves to the same Master Mech Designer and even developed highly similar design philosophies. That enabled them to work concurrently on the same pair of mech designs with exceptionally low friction!

All of this prior history constituted distinct advantages that Ves and Juliet simply could not match.

Ves had also taken a good look at his other competitors. Since the Twin Weapons Tournament did not set an age limit, there were numerous pairs of older Journeymen in the running who had collaborated together for over half a century!

With that sort of teamwork in the mix, the advantages bestowed by a design network did not seem that impressive anymore.

"We will employ the design network, but not now." He told her. "Blinky has grown stronger as of late, but he cannot maintain the design network on a continuous basis like Alexandria. We need to spare this option for the times where we can make the most use out of it, which should be in a few hours. For now, we don't need to collaborate so closely with each other when we are selecting our parts and designing the basic frames of our designs."

"Very well."

The two began to work on their assigned mechs while occasionally paying attention to what their partners were doing.

This was harder than it sounded as they needed to be able to complete their work in a much shorter timeframe than before.

Juliet clearly struggled to complete her tasks despite the fact that she was mainly responsible for designing a smaller and much less complex mech.

On the other hand, Ves comfortably split his focus and ran multiple parallel thoughts that each worked on different aspects of his hybrid mech design.

The collection of tech, parts and materials made available by the tournament organizers were fairly restrictive and specific. There were large gaps in what the database had available. The mech designers were further restricted from what they could design due to applying an extensive set of restrictions.

For example, Ves discovered to his dismay that he was not allowed to equip his mechs with any explosive weaponry. Grenades and explosive missiles were not an option.

This forced Ves to alter the configuration of his hybrid mech. He originally intended to equip it with detachable shoulder-mounted missile launchers.

The idea behind it was to let the hybrid mech fire a single volley of missiles at the enemy at the start of the match. Once the payload went away, the mech would purge the missile launchers and carry on without as much weight on its shoulders as before.

"Will you remove the missile launchers entirely, Ves?"

"No. I still think it can be of use. I will just load them with utility missiles instead. We can still equip the hybrid mech with EMP missiles or smoke missiles that can help our machines intercept the opposing mechs without receiving as many attacks."

Perhaps it was better this way.

Ves continued to select the mech parts he needed to form the basic building blocks of his competition mechs.

Just as he expected, the quality and overall performance characteristics were not that impressive. They were so disappointing that they could only maintain parity with mechs designed roughly 200 years ago. He understood that this was necessary in order to ensure the teams of mech designers could fabricate the mechs in a short timeframe.

While most of the technical standards were thankfully not as archaic, Ves still had to make a lot of regressive adaptations in order to account for the reduced performance of many parts.

This was another hidden challenge that tested the adaptability of every mech designer.

Fortunately, Ves started off as a third-class mech designer, so he possessed much more experience than anyone else in designing relatively low-performing mechs. He easily addressed these technical issues as they came up with hardly any slowdown.

His productivity along with his deftness started to attract even more attention than before.

Ves could feel all of the eyeballs directed to his body. He was more than sensitive enough to detect when people were paying close attention to him and noticed all of the staring from the start.

This was despite the fact that the energy screens had completely isolated him and Juliet in their own little space!

Some of those pairs of eyeballs belonged to powerful mech designers. This did not cause him to grow nervous or self-conscious as he was too confident to let his nerves interfere with his work.

So what if all of those Masters dissected his design choices? Let them watch! Ves was not afraid of showing off his design process, or else he wouldn't have agreed to take part in this tournament in the first place!

He smirked. He could tell from numerous signs that a lot of people were becoming increasingly more impressed with his performance.

"This is just the beginning."