The Mech Touch

It took an entire hour for Gloriana to explain all of the dazzling functions of her new Arachne 01 cranial implant.

Of course, both of them took occasional pauses when their children acted fussy or demanded their attention.

To them, all of this talk about cranial implants was too far away for them. Their brains were still in a rapidly developing state, so it was highly unsuitable for them to obtain their own ones at this time.

Ves was also worried that hastily installation of cranial implants might mess up his children's development as partial primordial humans. Perhaps they could develop a level of cognitive power one day that could easily allow them to match the performance of cranial implants by themselves.

In any case, it was not until Gloriana completed her exhaustive explanation that she talked about what else she experienced while she was visiting the Vulit Central Star Node.

"When I was recovering from one of the precursor operations, I established contact with many new mech designers. Vulit attracts many second-class mech designers, each of whom have different ways to extend their stay in the central star node. Each of them are smart and insightful in their own ways. I managed to befriend several of them, especially after I have made use of my connection to the Mech Supremacist Faction."

"Did you learn anything good from exchanging with all of these mech designers?"

Gloriana smiled. "I did. I received invaluable feedback on some of my existing ideas. I have even received crucial inspiration that is helpful in the development of one of my new design solutions. I have managed to produce an important breakthrough with the help of the powerful capabilities of my Arachne 01.1 cannot wait to flesh it out and apply my latest innovation to one of our expert mechs!"

That certainly made Ves a lot more curious.

"Can you share your idea with me? What did you come up with that has made you so excited?"

"Be patient, Ves. This is not the time for me to share the results of my latest research. I will show you the results of my efforts once we embark on another expert mech design project. It will be much more helpful for you to understand the effects and the significance of my work when I have a real example on hand."

"Okay."

Ves could certainly wait a little longer. He was already happy with Gloriana with her new cranial implant. A useful new design application that was related to her specialization was icing on the cake as far as he was concerned.

"I see you have already begun to lay the groundwork in upgrading the Dark Zephyr." He remarked.

"The time has come to revise our first expert mech design." Gloriana stated in a more serious tone. "In the years after we have initially designed it, I have become more and more embarrassed by its crude and rudimentary design elements. The choices we made at the time are frankly embarrassing compared to how we have approached our later expert mech design projects. It is no wonder that the Dark Zephyr never turned into a masterwork mech. If we do not want to embarrass ourselves in a time where we are receiving much more public scrutiny than before, then we must address this issue. We should upgrade our other early expert mechs such as the Amaranto and the Riot, but Venerable Tusa Billingsley-Larkinson machine takes precedence."

He did not disagree with her argument. The other expert mechs had various powerful gimmicks and other advantages that enabled them to reluctantly keep up with the growing scope of battles.

The Dark Zephyr on the other hand had become a definite drag on Venerable Tusa.

While his cousin had developed a fantastic ability to completely bypass transphasic energy shields, thereby allowing his expert light skirmisher to destroy heavily defended warships without breaching their first line of defense, the mech did not complement this operation well enough.

This irritated Gloriana the most. The fit between Tusa and the Dark Zephyr continued to decrease over time. This was the opposite of what she aspired to make!

As such, she had grown particularly motivated to correct all of the perceived inadequacies of her first expert mech and bring it fully in line with the Hyper Generation.

"I just brought back 25 new Journeyman Mech Designers from the Bortele System." Ves remarked. "I am sure that a handful of them can provide a lot of technical support on how to better utilize specific mech systems. Their feedback and contributions will allow us to elevate the Dark Zephyr to a higher level."

"That is another reason why I believe the time is right. I shall have to inspect each and every Journeyman to ensure that you have made the right selection, but I would be happy to consult their opinions if they meet my expectations."

They talked a bit more on how to arrange all of the new Journeymen in the Design Department. It was clearly not appropriate anymore to call them all lead designers. Their status also needed to be lowered in order to reflect the changing circumstances in their workplace.

"Do you remember the Exemplar Plan that you instituted years ago?" Gloriana asked.

"Oh, that. I do. It's a profit-sharing plan that rewards the best performers in our Design Department."

"We can continue to make use of it as a means to distinguish our more capable Journeymen from the less capable ones. We can even expand it in order to add more granularity to the scheme later on, but for now it is enough to set our veterans apart from the rookies."

She was right. The original Exemplar Plan designated 8 of the best-performing mech designers as Exemplars. They had the right to receive 1 percent of the share of the dividends issued by the Living Mech Corporation.

It was essentially a way to give his best mech designers a share of the profits of the mech company without owning actual shares in the LMC.

Though Ves originally set it up so that he did not have to give away any of his precious shares, it worked well enough that no one issued a word of complaint.

There were way more benefits to working for the Larkinson Clan than earning money!

As Ves continued to rise in status and means, he gained increased access to all kinds of goodies that were ordinarily reserved for members of high society.

For example, there was no way that most of the existing lead designers could undergo EdNet training as the quotas were usually reserved for the mechers themselves!

The fact that Ves was able to give them access to an exclusive benefit like this was worth far more than earning thousands of MTA credits a year!

However, that did not mean that the dividends were useless. Ves knew that Ketis and Juliet had invested much of their earnings into strengthening the Swordmaidens and the Penitent Sisters respectfully.

"I'll leave you in charge of this since you are willing to deal with it." Ves decided. "Just make sure that the new Journeymen know their place, while at the same time understand that there are still ways for them to climb up and gain more rights if they happen to excel. Once more of the old guard has managed to advance to the rank of Senior, we should strip the position of lead designer from Journeymen. After all, it is a bit dubious to entrust them with such a heavy responsibility now that the LMC has grown to this point."

Gloriana had plenty of questions of how Ves managed to hoodwink the Rubarthans into giving him 20 percent ownership of a mech company as massive as Isthmus Manufacturing, but that could wait. Both of them had plenty of time to get each other up to speed of what they had done when they were apart from each other.

"I agree, Ves. I will likely begin to introduce changes tomorrow morning. The Design Department needs to be in order before I am comfortable with resuming work on our mech design projects."

Once they completed their discussion on personnel-related issues, they turned their attention to a lighter subject.

"Did you spend a lot of time shopping while you were at Vulit?"

Gloriana immediately became more enthused. "There is so much prosperity in Vulit that it is incomparable to Davute. Many of the products there are not as good as the ones available on New Constantinople VIII, but the variety of goods is much greater! Vulit is not only a central hub for second-raters, but also the Red Two. Their material warehouses are particularly well-stocked. They have even begun to expand their wings in order to accommodate the emergence of many new hyper materials."

The mention of hyper materials certainly perked Ves up. One of his regrets during his stay in Bortele was that he was unable to browse and inspect all of the diverse goods for sale in the local material warehouses.

As a port system where a lot of human mech forces made a pitstop in order to dump their salvaged goods, a lot of alien junk became available for sale.

The native aliens were much slower to adapt to hyper technology, so many of their starships had yet to incorporate hyper materials in a systematic manner.

However, there were always exceptions and anomalies. Since a lot of alien starships were originally built elsewhere with different materials, they occasionally produced hyper materials with properties that were unfamiliar to red humanity.

Ves really wanted to take a look at those samples because the written descriptions and projected images did not do them justice.

Alas, Ves had to leave Bortele III, causing him to miss out on this opportunity.

He was happy that Gloriana did not experience this difficulty. She avidly highlighted numerous samples that had caught her interest in one way or another.

"The most hyper material that I have seen is so special that it is locked in a vault located on the underground floor of an auction house." Gloriana mentioned. "I had to leverage my connections in order to obtain permission to view it in person. The visit was worth it. From what I can tell, the value of this powerful new hyper material should be no less from a whole Mentalist Crystal."

That sounded interesting!

More powerful hyper materials could be used in so many different applications. They could make anything a lot stronger as long as they were correctly used.

"What is it, and what can it do?" Ves eagerly asked.

"It is a newly discovered hyper that was only known by its codename until recently. The hyper produced a strange fire that continually burned without any external input."

"It's... on fire?"

"In a manner of speaking." Gloriana answered. "It is a strange exotic. It clearly produces a real flame, but it does not actually produce a strong exothermic reaction. Instead, whenever it touches anything, it actually causes an object to lose heat and freeze until it has reached a temperature that is close to absolute zero."

"Wow! It can do that by itself without being put into a freeze weapon or whatever?"

She grinned. "Yes. It sounds amazing, does it not? Its freezing potential can be magnified by at least an order of magnitude if it is properly integrated in an appropriate weapon system. This is only one of the many wonders that I have discovered in Vulit. The prices for the rarer exotics and hypers are high, but they are all worth the expense."

"Oh? How much did the ice fire rock sell for eventually?"

"1,300,000 MTA credits." Gloriana succinctly answered.

"That is an astronomical sum for second-raters."

"It is not a particularly high sum for first-raters." Gloriana retorted. "There are still a few visitors to Vulit that possess the financial strength to raise the necessary funds."

"I guess you're right."

"By the way, are you curious to see what I have brought back from Vulit as your first gift?"

"I do admit that I have been wondering about this for a while now. Please do not tell me that you bought an expensive handbag for me, Gloriana."

"Of course not. I bought them for myself." His wife responded. "I know your tastes. Your gift is much more practical."

She called over a bot that carried a metal box with a decorative red ribbon wrapped around its surface.

Once the bot had reached the center of the room, the gift box automatically unwrapped and unfolded.

The present happened to be an icy blue rock that happened to produce a silent blue flame that was so chilling that it already started to lower the temperature in the room.

It took a few seconds for Ves to make the connection.

"What do you think, Ves? Are you happy with my gift to you? This hyper has so many useful applications."

"..."