The Mech Touch

by Stayrr

Humanity has conquered half the galaxy and the Age of Mechs reigns supreme! Ves Larkinson lacked the genetic aptitude to become a famed mech pilot. Fighting against his fate, he studied mech design in order to express his love for mechs as a builder instead of a soldier. When Ves graduated from college, he returned to a new but empty boutique. Left with a small, newly founded mec

8. 151 - 175

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The sky over Bentheim never slept. Even at night, millions of aircars, shuttles and other vehicles roamed the invisible lanes above the metropolis of Dorum. Ves looked up at the busy traffic at an office in the middle of a Planetary Guard base.

"This is not how I envisioned my first assignment." Raella muttered as she scratched her back. Her back had been raked with debris when a railgun strike barely missed. Fortunately, the Guard medics easily treated her wounds, though they still stung like hell. "How many enemies have you made?"

Even Ves didn't know. He still found it hard to believe that someone might actually wish to kill him due to some trivial offense. Of course, what he found trivial might not be so small to whoever arranged the attack. While the attempt obviously involved the much-maligned Bentheim Liberation Movement, he found it to be a little too sophisticated to pin the blame on the rebels alone.

"We're going to have to adopt some tighter security protocols from now on." Melkor said as he crossed his arms. "Guard duty has always been a hazardous assignment, but the risks we're exposed to is beyond all reason."

"Don't worry, I'll make sure to remunerate you properly. You won't be making a loss under my employ."

Ves didn't wish to scare his cousins away. He could already see the doubt in their expression. As long as he offered enough compensation, then they wouldn't cut and run.

He also didn't hold back on his mistakes. "The biggest mistake we've made is that we haven't brought our mechs along. Everyone took for granted that we'd only stay on Bentheim briefly, so we left them in their containers to be shipped to Cloudy Curtain. I made the decision because it was the most efficient choice, since I only expected to stay in Bentheim for a day."

"You're going to need a permit if you want to pilot a mech in a heavily populated area. It's almost impossible to get one these days. They're exceedingly rare in Rittersberg and I don't expect any different here in Bentheim." Melkor pointed out.

Anyone could flatten an entire neighborhood with a single mech. Ves looked down at the streets and spotted only a dozen mechs or so. The vast majority of them sported the black-and-blue Guard colors. The rest used corporate colors as they escorted the aircars of senior executives.

"I got an answer for that." The front door slid open. Melinda entered the lounge with a smirk.

Besides Raella, everyone possessed the same raven hair that marked them as a Larkinson. She walked over to Ves and handed over a datapad.

"What's this?"

"Your grandpa's present. I contacted him as soon as I learned how much trouble you stirred." She looked at Ves as if he was a delinquent. "It's a good thing he's willing to bail you out. Bentheim will cover some of the costs. Whatever insurance the affected businesses fall under will cover another part. Grandpa will shoulder the rest."

The Larkinsons along with their pursuers did a number on the warehouse and storage yard. Though the Planetary Guard declared that they had been acting in extreme self-defense, that still left them open to getting sued by angry businessmen with damaged goods in their hands.

Ves read the official document on the datapad. He realized he received a permit to travel around in most of Bentheim with a restricted mech escort. He could only employ one mech, and it had to adhere to a strict guideline of loadouts. For example, carrying a flamethrower in an urban area was asking for trouble.

The permit came as a timely gift. "This is extremely helpful. Did you vouch for me, Melinda?"

"Yup." She nodded and looked around for Lucky. She spotted the disheartened-looking cat and bent down to pet his undamaged surface. "Frankly, the Planetary Guard is too short-handed right now and we can hardly spare the manpower to keep an eye on you whenever you drop by for a visit. I didn't need to do much convincing, though. The Larkinsons name is good enough."

It paid to be known as a Larkinson. Though some of the rival families disparaged their reputation, the Larkinsons have never acted excessively for several hundred years.

"Alright. I'll be sure to make use of this permit the next time I visit this planet. How's the interrogation going?"

Melinda's smirk turned into a frown. "Difficult as usual. The groundside component of the BLM largely consists of petty criminals and disillusioned workers. I doubt they can count past ten. The handful of cadre have already fled their underground bases by the time we obtained their locations."

The BLM drew their ranks from the large mass of low income workers. They worked hard and earned only a pittance. When the rebel propagandists pointed out that the Bright Republic siphoned away a large portion of the planet's revenue, the workers easily swayed over to their mindset.

"What about the mercenaries? Their gear is way too sophisticated."

"It's a dead end. They've been conditioned into killing machines. The details of their mission has been physically scrubbed from their brains. They're probably dark mercenaries who've been kidnapped and brainwashed into becoming untraceable pawns."

In the end, the Planetary Guard found nothing. The whole affair had been dismissed as a failed attempt at kidnapping and assassination by the Bentheim Liberation Movement.

"Are we free to go now, Melinda?"

"Sure. Don't forget to retrieve your gear before you go."

"Ah, one more thing cousin. Do you know a place where I can buy a good pistol?"

Everyone turned to Ves. Raella laughed at him. "Are you sure you want to play with a gun?"

While Melinda, Raella and Melkor hadn't been trained as infantrymen, their mech pilot training didn't skimp out in these areas. Mech pilots had to keep their body in shape and engrave their fighting skills into their muscle memory in order to make the most out of their mechs.

"I'm not looking for an expert's gun." Ves replied while raising his hands as if he was a naughty child who wanted to take a shuttle out for a joyride. "I just want something that can play a role in the hands of an amateur like me."

While Ves received some firearms training when he studied mech design, he couldn't call himself an expert. It took talent and perseverance in order to become a proficient marksman. He didn't delude himself into thinking a few dozen hours of practice turned him into a commando.

"Do you have money?"

He thumped his chest with his palm. "Who do you think you're talking to? I'm a mech designer!"

"Hmmm." Melinda tapped her chin with her finger. "You should pay a visit to Old Jimmy's. It's a classy place that tailors their weapons to their customers. They also offer smart guns that offer a variety of conveniences such as aim assistance. As long as no one hacks your gun, you're good to go. The only problem is that they take weeks to fulfill an order."

The place sounded like a good fit for him, though he lacked the time to wait. "I'll settle for a generic weapon for now."

Everyone left and headed downstairs. They retrieved their comms and weapons and left for the spaceport under the watchful company of a pair of mechs. Ves had the feeling that the Planetary Guard was glad to see him go.

They paid extra for an immediate passage to Cloudy Curtain. The Larkinsons still had to spend the night at a hotel before they took a shuttle to the space station and boarded their transport.

Three days later, they finally Cloudy Curtain. As their shuttle touched down at the rural planet's old and shabby spaceport, Ves took a deep breath of his home planet's air.

"Home sweet home. I can finally get back to work."

"Hopefully we left most of the craziness behind." Raella remarked, though she quickly sneered at Orinoco's pathetic skyline. "Hopefully there's some entertainment to be found in this place."

In contrast, Melkor maintained his vigilance. His blue visor neatly scanned every corner of the spaceport. "This place is more than fifty years old. Its security could use an update. Do we need to watch out for anyone on this planet?"

Ves grimaced at the question. "Some of the local politicians have a beef with me. They're not as powerful and unscrupulous as the BLM, but they're certainly bad news."

They didn't have permission to pilot a mech in Cloudy Curtain, though hardly anyone bothered to ask for it. Walter's Whalers frequently showed off their mechs without a permit. While Ves was tempted to ignore the local laws and have his cousins unpack their mechs, he didn't wish to give more ammunition to his enemies.

Instead, he compromised by renting a reinforced shuttle from Sanyal-Ablin. Ves spent the rest of the trip explaining what he learned about the White Doves and the Greens and what they should watch out for. Most of all, he emphasized his relationship with Walter's Whalers.

"Aren't you afraid they'll bite the hand that feeds them one day?" Melkor asked with a warning in his voice. "Gangs like these normally don't last very long. Once they fall, their patrons fall with them. You know our family doesn't like to associate with these kinds of people."

"This isn't Rittersberg. The Larkinsons have no influence here. I might not have much in common with the Whalers, but we share some interests. That's enough to trust their sincerity."

Though Melkor found it to be a bad idea, he didn't argue the point. Ves ran the show now. He could make all the bad decisions he wanted as long as he was willing to suffer the consequences.

Once they touched down at his workshop, everyone sighed in relief. His workshop's sturdy walls, menacing turrets and state-of-the-art security bots certainly impressed his cousins.

"This setup must cost quite a lot."

"Not as much as hiring a mech to stand guard. That's what you two will be in charge of." Ves noted with a firmer voice now that he returned to his home. "I don't expect you two to stand guard at all times, but you should at least be ready to enter a mech to respond to emergencies. I'll let the two of you arrange the details yourself."

The previous attack should have made it clear that Ves faced very real threats. He could at least count on Melkor to be dutiful enough to take his job seriously. With both of them watching over Raella like hawks, she wouldn't be able to drag her feet either.

"Anyone home?!"

Carlos quickly arrived. Since the time Ves departed for Rittersberg, his friend grew a beard. It made him look a little more mature, though Ves had to grow used to the new look.

"Let me introduce you to my cousins. They're both qualified mech pilots and will hopefully be patrolling around with their mechs."

"Oh, nice to meet you guys!" His fabricator smiled and shook their hands. They babbled a bit but found out they shared nothing in common besides their interest for mechs. Instead, he turned back to his employer. "Boss, I did it! I practiced hard while you left and managed to crank up my success rate to ninety-nine percent!"

"That's great news!" The ratio relieved Ves. Carlos hadn't been slacking off. "I already made the arrangements with my mech broker. You'll be in charge of fulfilling orders for the silver label Mark II's from now now. For now, I'll supervise your work closely."

Once Carlos proved his mettle, Ves intended to let him work without hovering over his shoulder like an overprotective mother. He had his own projects to take care of, the most immediate of which awaited his attention for quite some time.

As his cousins slowly settled in, Ves started to deal with his paperwork. He called Calsie for a meeting. Ves was bound to make a fool of himself if he approached the local government himself. Calsie should certainly be able to help with applying for a mech permit and registering a corporation.

"I'll prepare the groundwork in the evening." She chirped over her comm.

"Good. See you tomorrow then."

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Ves met with Calsie the next morning and discussed a lot of business. She spent most of her efforts preparing to apply for a mech permit. Such a thing might be hard to obtain for a private individual, but as soon as he incorporated his business he'd be able to take advantage of looser provisions.

As for registering his business, his family's lawyers already laid the groundwork. Calsie only had to dress it up and rearrange some data in order to comply with the local standard.

"It's not that difficult to start up a corporation in the Bright Republic. Even the local politicians can't be too excessive." She explained to her employer. "Cloudy Curtain is relatively rare among rural planets in that it doesn't offer any incentives for doing so. Most underdeveloped planets do their best to attract more commerce."

"That's fine. I don't expect any favors nor do I need any. As long as we don't encounter any obstacles, I'm content."

After she promised to handle the filing and registration, they turned to a thornier subject. With the Planetary Assembly about to go back in session, the tax reform bill became a looming threat to Ves. If the White Doves and the Greens succeeded in imposing excessive demands to businesses like the Living Mech Corporation, then Ves would be forced to relocate his assets.

"The assemblymen have been busy trading favors. They've added in a lot more exemptions to the people who are willing to play along with the ruling coalition. Opposition is too scattered right now. Whoever is left out is of no importance to Cloudy Curtain's economy."

Calsie regularly reported her observations, so Ves already knew about it. "So there's no use in trying to unite. We're not part of their network."

It galled him a bit that the politicians treated him like an insect. They didn't need to take his opinions into account when they formulated their policies. Well, he'd show them up sooner or later.

"The coalition is doubling down on boosting the agricultural sector. They're even drafting a complimentary bill that will indirectly subsidize the consortiums along with the other farming concerns. Normally, the ruling coalition wouldn't be able to make this pass, but with the Bright Republic preoccupied with the terror attacks and the impending war, a small case of self-enrichment doesn't really ping on their radar."

They truly picked the best timing. Having first-hand experience of a terror attack on his own had made Ves aware that the Republic were at their wits end. They had to devote a huge amount of manpower in order to keep a lid on the BLM.

Ves turned his palm to her. "I understand you've been working on a plan. Let's hear it. I've been racking my brain myself but I haven't figured out a way to stop the coalition."

She twirled her straight blond hair and smirked at him. "You haven't been spending much time in town, have you?"

"If I'm not holed up in my workshop, I'm often off-planet."

"Then you aren't aware of today's sentiment. If you walk down the streets of Freslin, you'll note that you've become a local celebrity of sorts, especially among the young. While no one really knows what mech designers actually do, it doesn't change that you're Cloudy Curtain's very first mech manufacturer. Your physical mechs might be unattainable to the masses, but your virtual mechs have made quite a splash."

His virtual mech sales had indeed increased lately, though not to the point of earning him lots of DP. His popular 3-star Young Blood stopped providing him with DP, while his other designs only modestly sold more.

Still, it didn't change that more potentates piloted his mechs. According to Calsie, his brand recognition had grown to the point where at least half of the people on the streets knew his name.

She continued her story. "Once I started hearing your name being bandied about by my fellow students, I suddenly had a thought. What kind of era are we living in these days? This is the Age of Mechs!"

Ves scrunched his face. "Huh?"

"You've lived a fairly privileged life, so you've been able to pursue a career with mechs without a problem. What about the rest? Do you know how much the local youths worship mechs? Everyone is a fan of mechs! However, not many people are able to get in touch with one. After the local potentates graduate from the junior academy, they're often forced to move off-planet or abandon their piloting career!"

Cloudy Curtain only hosted a handful of grassroots academies that only offered a limited curriculum. If potentates wish to develop their skills to the point of becoming a qualified mech pilot, they often had travel to a different planet in order to attend a more advanced academy. Not everyone could afford to do so.

Slowly, Ves started to understand her point. "I see what you mean. My sudden entry into Cloudy Curtain is a portent to a livelier mech scene. A single mech manufacturer can function as the central node of a nascent mech community. All the mech fans should be thankful of me for opening this door."

"Do you know which organization is the most popular among the young? It's actually the Whalers! They're the only game in town with lots of mechs. They also recruit heavily among the locals. This is why they've never lost support even if they've made a nuisance of themselves over the years. They're our very own folk heroes!"

In other words, even if the politicians detested them, they would never dare to chase them away. First, they couldn't beat them on the battlefield because the Whalers had way too many mechs, even if their quality left much to be desired.

Second, the Whalers were actually more popular than the Greens, White Doves and the Pioneers put together. Cloudy Curtainers generally never bothered with politics because it was boring as hell. In contrast, Walter's Whalers constantly flaunted their exploits with mechs. Ves had to admit that Mr. Walter acted very shrewdly by being so flamboyant.

"So you think we should adopt the same strategy as the Whalers? That sounds very expensive."

Even if most people knew he existed, that didn't mean anything on its own. Turning this awareness into action required a lot work. A publicity campaign could easily run into the billions of credits.

Still, Calsie kept her confident smile as she passed him a datapad that outlined her plan. Ves quickly skimmed over the documents. It contained two ambitious motions that could turn the tables on the rotten politicians who wanted to drive him away.

"As you can see, my outline calls for applying pressure to the ruling coalition from both the top and bottom. Pressure from any one direction won't affect them too much, but if they have to fight on multiple fronts, they'll be starting to feel the squeeze."

"I see that your first plan calls for partnering up with the gaming centers."

In order to play the best mech sims, potentates had to use an extremely expensive simulator pod. Gaming centers offered a convenient place for potentates to practice their skills without saddling them up with loads of debt. Most of the local gaming centers were actually franchises of established entertainment companies.

"Right." She nodded. "The most popular game at the moment is Iron Spirit. It turns out it offers an extensive set of privileges to game center operators. Every establishment has the right to designate a handful of mechs at each star tier as their trial mechs. Pilots are able to try them out without limit even if they haven't purchased them. This is is a great way for you to become an indispensable figure to the young."

"What about the operators? Will they agree to such an arrangement?"

Calsie leaned over and called up an appendix. "I've already made a call to all of the game centers in Orinoco and Freslin. About a third of them are willing to put your Young Blood as a promotional mech. As for the others, they're not allowed to decide this on their own. Still, if they see that the game centers that are promoting your models are doing well, they might start to change their mind."

Her initiative really came as a welcome surprise. He hadn't expected her to sound out so many game centers. It must have cost a lot of time to canvas so many operators. "If this is true, then we're off to a great start. Still, that doesn't mean much on its own."

"Oh, we still need to do a publicity campaign, but it doesn't cost much if we limit our reach to the game centers. Once you tell your fans that some evil backstabbing politicians are trying to drive you away, they'll cry to their mommies and daddies. Once this phenomenon reaches a certain point, the adults can't sit still. After all, most of them also appreciate mechs."

The most popular broadcast on Cloudy Curtain consisted of the mech games. Almost a quarter of the population regularly tuned into the live matches.

While the plan still sounded nebulous at certain points, Ves approved of the plan. He allowed Calsie to draw a limited amount of funds in case she needed to grease the wheels. He also tasked her with forming up a publicity campaign. She intended to leave the work to her friends who studied Marketing.

If the first prong of the plan intended to poke the masses, the second prong was definitely meant to poke something bigger. As Ves read the second set of documents, his brow rose in alarm.

"You actually want to petition the Republican Commissioner? Are you insane?"

Major planets such as Bentheim hosted a substantial amount of bureaucracy that answered directory to the central government in Rittersberg. A backwater like Cloudy Curtain wasn't entitled to such treatment. The low population and stagnant economic growth only led to the establishment of a single office.

While the Republican Commissioner reported directly to Rittersberg, he mainly supervised the local governmental organs. In extreme cases he could fire the entire Planetary Assembly and rule the entire planet by decree, thought that never happened.

"Think of the Bright Republic's plight." She responded patiently. She turned on her comm and visited a random news portal. "Look at the headlines. Half of them are talking about the war that everyone is convinced will break out soon. When the Republic is dealing with all of these matters, what do you think it values more? Peace, or power?"

Power, of course! Of all the things the Republic asked of its people, it mostly demanded strength! They needed more pilots, more enthusiasm, more loyalty and above all else, more spirit!

In its agonizing journey to become a state, the Bright Republic learned to cast off its naive notions of peace. In times of war, it couldn't afford to see some of their planets acting timidly.

The Greens and the White Doves might rule Cloudy Curtain, but they only get to call the shots as long as they didn't step on the Republic's toes. In times of war, every planet mattered! Who knew if Cloudy Curtain's melancholy could spread one day?

Ves let out a deep breath once he read through the brief proposal. "The Republican Commissioner is always a senior statesman. They're wily old foxes who will instantly see through my intentions. They aren't supposed to favor selfish people."

"If you approach him by yourself, that might be the case." She smirked at him again. "The story is different once the masses are riled up. If the mech fans are starting to make noise, the the ruling coalition will find themselves at the opposite side of both central policy and popular opinion. It'll become obvious that the cowards intend to spend the entire war with their heads buried in the sand."

She certainly painted a very devious scenario. He doubted the Greens and White Doves would take it lying down. They'd certainly counter-attack before it got to that point.

Still, it did not change the basic facts. Once a significant part of the population spoke out, the Republican Commissioner could use that as an excuse to smack the politicians. A public rebuke could easily stop the tax reform bill in its tracks.

"The crucial challenge here lies in provoking the public while tying my company's interests with their own. Both will not come easily." He stated after some thoughts. "I think we'll need some help with this. It's too much to expect you to do this in your spare time. I want you to look for a publicist who can manage relations with the game centers and take care of the publicity campaign."

"I can find plenty of those on campus."

"Make sure they don't have any ties to any of the scum who sit in the Planetary Assembly. I don't want them to realize our intentions before it's too late."

They ended their discussion with a solid course of action. Ves admired Calsie's boldness. Hopefully her devious plan worked. If not, Ves could always investigate the shady farming consortiums.

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Chapter 153: Publicist

"When you told me you mastered ninety-nine percent of my design, you weren't lying. You did an adequate job." Ves nodded with satisfaction. "I expect you to focus on the remaining one percent. You've taken the wrong approach at some turns that has led you into a dead end. Even I can't resolve this issue without spending a lot of effort."

A tired looking Carlos pleaded at him. "Can you show me how to fix this first? It's been nagging me for weeks."

With his superior skills, Ves deftly threaded the needle. He emplaced the right components through a fairly congested portion of the half-built silver label mech. Carlos did a decent job with his first real attempt at fabricating the Mark II, but he made a few strange decisions during the assembly process that tightened the noose once he finalized the internals.

"It should pass certification." He judged. He should know, since he supervised the entire session, all seven days of it. "Don't worry about the speed. Perfect your techniques. Any flaws you pass on might prove catastrophic."

At its current scale, the nascent Living Mech Corporation couldn't afford to fail a single product. Not only would a failure throw his balance sheet into disarray, it also affected his reputation. The MTA kept track of every mech designer's performance. Customers paid a lot of attention to the ratio between failed certifications and total mech sold.

After overseeing the handover of the freshly fabricated mech, he turned back to his own work. The new year prompted him to catch up on his paperwork. The LMC's recent incorporation forced him to expand his administrative scope. He couldn't work in a slapdash manner like he used to. Nowadays, he had to track every material that came in and out of his premises.

Fortunately, a relatively small company like his who employed only a handful of people didn't require much overhead. For now, Ves could take it easy and implement some simple off-the-shelf systems.

He also had to segregate his finances into a number of different accounts. The majority of his money rested in the LMC's balance sheet. Ves wasn't allowed to draw on this massive pile of cash without a justifiable reason.

Not that it mattered, because he only answered to his shareholders. Currently, Ves was his own majority shareholder. After spending a fair amount of money getting the Barracuda to work, he also had to cough up about a million credits to cover his running costs and pay some miscellaneous taxes. The LMC only had about 50 million credits left in savings.

The 250 million credits he received from selling some of his shares technically belonged to him rather than the company. At this stage, it the distinction hardly mattered. He was the company, and the company was him. For now, Ves reserved the money for a future license purchase.

"I should hire a clerk." He thought as he installed a commercial tracking program onto his bots. With their new programming, the bots gained the new task of tallying up his inventory. "At least I've already hired a publicist."

Calsie found an interesting student at her university. When Ves first met Gavin Neumann, he thought he met an assertive nerd. Ves had read the senior student's CV and became impressed by his excellent grades and extracurricular activities. Since Ves wanted to find someone flexible, talented and independent, Gavin looked to be an excellent prospect.

He should have been studying at a much more prestigious university, to be honest.

Gavin started his job interview with a very surprising declaration. "I hate mechs."

"Excuse me?"

"I just thought I should let you know. I hate mechs."

"...Okay. Why are you applying to be my publicist if you don't think much of mechs?"

"Would you rather have someone working for you who's slavishly brainwashed into worshipping mechs? Love and obsession often clouds your judgement. I can guarantee you that as long as I'm in charge, I won't be fooled by the hype. As a marketer, it's my job to be the trendsetter, not the follower."

Once Ves understood Gavin's point, he had to admit it made sense. Still, letting someone who hated mechs take charge of his public relations could also backfire on him. Gavin might not fully understand the nuances the in-crowd took for granted. Also, his motivations also drew suspicion. Why work for the LMC if it didn't match his interests?

"That's because your company is at a stage of rapid growth. I've done my research. Despite the incredible risks, there's a lot of money to be made with mechs. I don't care if I have to sell mechs, dung or female sanitary products, as long as it has potential, it's worth my time.

"So basically, you want to work for me because there's lots of promise in my sector. Why not apply for a job at the Raleigh Consortium or something?"

"Pff, where else am I going to work? My talents will be going to waste if I apply for a job at the farming consortiums! Every year, they harvest the exact same crops and sell them to the exact same wholesalers from Bentheim. They're so stodgy and conservative that even a single change of color on their packaging requires an entire conference!"

Tragically, Cloudy Curtain didn't offer much in commerce. Even a high performer like Gavin couldn't compete against graduates from Bentheim and Rittersberg.

Ves eventually decided to hire Gavin. The assertive student might lack experience, but he had an abundance of enthusiasm. Gavin looked forward to be an integral part of the LMC's rise.

A mere week after he went to work, Gavin proved his worth by successfully getting the gaming centers to adopt the Young Blood as a promotional mech. The usage rate of his training mech had skyrocketed. Once Gavin and Calsie finished designing a publicity campaign, Ves looked forward to twisting public opinion against his political opponents.

"That will take some time, however." He sighed and looked back to the half-assembled Dortmund. When Ves hadn't been supervising Carlos, he had already started to reconstruct the frame of the massive industrial printer.

Ves made decent progress in the early stages of his reconstruction project. The blueprint and the repair manual he obtained from the Clifford Society proved its utility by allowing him to assemble the salvaged and reprinted components in the correct order.

Even if he didn't grasp each component's purpose, the printer should work as long as he handled them appropriately.

In fact, he assembled the printer a lot faster than he originally thought. Despite its immense size, the Dortmund's complexity lay mostly in its irreplaceable components. Starting from an inventory of salvaged parts allowed Ves to skip the most difficult phase and put together the Dortmund with relative ease.

Another week went by as Ves immersed himself with the reconstruction. It started to look more and more like one of those shiny new machines he saw back when he went on a school trip to a major mech manufacturer.

The good times ended when Ves hit a snag at ninety-eight percent completion. Most of its advanced components had already taken their places, but if Ves didn't do something about its processors, the massive block of machinery might as well be scrap.

This last stumbling block constantly gnawed at him like a bone stuck in his throat. The questionable legality of the project prevented him from contacting support.

He tried asking Dietrich to find a hacker on the black market, but Ves only received a couple of dubious offers so far. The main problem with trying to do business with shady hackers was that he couldn't trust them. What if they slipped in some backdoors on the sly?

"Even the System is of little help."

Learning to hack to the point of being able to tamper the processors required too many skills. Ves couldn't afford to divert his precious DP into exploring a side path. As for the Store, it sold all kinds of utilities, but Ves couldn't operate them without the required proficiency. As for the processors themselves, the System disdained selling such materials.

"I guess the only way to resolve this is through the Clifford Society."

Transactions between Society members had to adhere to the organization's rules. If everyone constantly scammed each other, its marketplace could never grow to so big.

Besides hiring a trustworthy hacker, Ves also wanted to purchase several essential machinery to upgrade his workshop to a fully functional operation.

"I guess I'll have to take a trip after all."

It might take one or two weeks until the shipyard back in Bentheim repaired his corvette. Marcella also expected it to take some time assembling a crew for the luxurious ship. She still had to do her job after all, so she left the grunt work to her assistants. Nevertheless, Ves appreciated her aid.

This meant that before he went on his way to earn merits, he had enough time to design a virtual mech. Ves wanted to stock up on DP and enhance his ability to survive another fight. While these missions aren't supposed to put a mech designer into the frontlines, they often entailed many unforeseen risks.

After coming back from his ordeal in Bentheim, Ves reflected on the best way to keep him alive. He realized that enhancing his stealth might be the most practical way to go. He could leave the fighting to others.

He left the giant workshop floor and the incomplete Dortmund and reached a spare workplace that his cousins turned into an improvised gym. Ves splurged on a couple of simulator pods along with some advanced workout equipment in order to pay them back and to alleviate their boredom.

Right now, Melkor and Raella engaged in some sparring. Their athletic physiques glistened with sweat as they jabbed and kicked at each other while appearing to dance. Ves didn't pretend to understand their moves, though he noted that Raella's momentary bursts of power unsettled Melkor.

After their session wound down, they left the improvised sparring ring and replenished their fluids.

"How are you two settling in?"

"It's kind of boring here." Raella remarked. "There's nothing to do around here. The people here are hicks and I don't have my friends to keep me company."

Melkor shook his head and tutted at his niece. "An assignment is not the time to have fun. We're on the clock now so you better keep sharp."

"That's all fine and dandy but how long do we have to wait until we can flex our mechs?"

Their mechs currently rested in a pair of containers in his workshop's backyard. Raella piloted a light skirmisher while Melkor brought a medium laser rifleman with him. Together, they made for a rounded pair.

Unfortunately, Ves had to leave a mech behind if he went on a trip. His corvette only fit one unpacked mech.

"I should be getting a permit back this week, but I've come to talk about something else. What do you think about taking another trip?"

Ves briefly explained the possibility to accompany him on an expedition. Raella jumped on the opportunity.

"Take me, take me! I'm so bored right now I could die! I can't even relax outside due to all of the weird clouds."

A stoic like Melkor didn't mind holding the fort. With his rifleman mech standing guard, Ves didn't have to worry about the safety of his very valuable workshop.

With all of his current matters taken care of, Ves could finally devote some time on coming up with a new design. He wanted to replicate the commercial success of his Young Blood, though this time he had to do it without borrowing the momentum of his public debut.

"I should also design something that will compliment my current strategy. Only older teenagers are able to pilot a 3-star mech like the Young Blood."

While Ves had also designed a couple of 2-star mechs like the Mist Prowler and the Speed Demon, they lacked the refinement of his later works. Their specifications couldn't match the dominant models.

Even if Ves had to regress back to the 2-star tier, he still wished to round out his catalog of virtual mechs. He started to think what kind of training mech might sell well among the younger teens who usually piloted these mechs.

Since he already designed a knight, he should begin to design a ranged mech instead. Besides a rifleman, Ves could hardly think of a better choice.

Best of all, Ves also had immediate access to an expert. "I need your help Melkor."

"What's up, Ves?"

"I'm planning to design a rifleman mech. Please tell me your thoughts on this archetype. What do you see in this kind of mech and what made you decide to pilot one?"

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The security guard yawned as he closed the hefty coffer. Its antrigrav modules sprung back to life and took up position behind its sharp-faced owner.

"Everything checks out. It's a false alarm." The guard declared and waved the new arrival away. "Off you go. Enjoy your stay at Cloudy Curtain."

The middle-aged man nodded and sauntered to the exit. Bypassing the security of this dreary spaceport had taken a lot more effort than he thought. For some reason, the spaceport recently received a massive upgrade in its security suite. It took some quick thinking for the man to respond to the alarms.

As he walked outside the building, he looked up at the dreary clouds that constantly shrouded this planets. The few sheens of color, akin to flattened rainbows, hardly cheered up his day. He hailed an aircar and set his destination to the opposite side of the planet.

After several hours of flight, the man departed from the aircar and looked at the quiet neighborhood he'd be living in for the time being. He glanced at the sturdy walls of the guarded compound a few blocks away and whistled appreciatively.

"This is going to require a lot of patience."

His client had already prepared a house for him. Outwardly, it looked identical to the many other homesteads on the street. In fact, the house incorporated many dampening materials that suppressed signals and blocked unwanted spying.

After entering the home, the man ignored the furnished house and the closet full of clothes. He directly climbed to the attic at the top and approached a camouflaged window that could not be spotted outside.

The coffer dropped to the spotless floor and opened by itself. Instead of the mundane clothes the man showed to the spaceport's security guard, the coffer held a dizzying array of alloy components.

The man took each of the components and methodically assembled them until the entire construction resembled a metal tree sitting on its sides. Its intimidating size and shape resembled a railgun, only scaled up to the point it could threaten mechs.

The main laid down behind the complicated weapon and swept over its systems. The railgun's muzzle aimed straight at the entrance of the guarded compound that could barely be seen through the attic's window.

"You got away once, but I've seen your tricks now." The man whispered as recalled his previous failure. He never expected to come up short due the presence of a mythical miniaturized shield generator.

He made some adjustments this time. As long as his target left the compound, his railgun would never miss.

He simply had to be patient.

Back at the workshop, Melkor expressed his views on rifleman mechs with a very simple premise. "Why do mechs wield rifles? Why don't all of them come in the style of frontline mechs?"

For humanoid mechs, the main difference between a standard mech and a frontline mech had to do with their arms. A frontline mech replaced its arms with gun barrels, while a standard mech retained its human-like arms capable of manipulating external gear like mech-sized rifles.

"A skilled pilot can manipulate the limbs of their mechs with great precision." Ves repeated the standard answer found in textbooks. "A frontline mech is largely reliant on its hardware and software to aim, which can shore up the aim of an average mech pilot. A standard mech on the other hand combines the use of its systems along with its pilot's intuition to deliver better results."

A lot of mech designers thought that adding arms and a rifle to a mech wasted a lot of resources. Yet on an actual battlefield, a standard mech often outperformed its frontline mech counterpart. Many factors played a role, from the increased range of motion afforded by its arms, to the ability to make better use of a pilot's real life marksmanship.

"You mentioned plenty of reasons, but you forgot the most fundamental one. We simply like the feel of a gun in our hands." Melkor tapped the side of his head. "You're not a potentate, so you don't know the feeling of piloting a frontline mech. The first time I immersed myself into such a model, I felt as if someone amputated my arms and crudely welded a pair of gun barrels in their place. No matter what, I never regarded them as my own limbs."

No one liked to pilot an amputated mech! Those who piloted frontline mechs often fell behind in skill, work ethic and genetic aptitude. More than half of the mech pilots of the Bright Republic fell under this category.

"What makes piloting riflemen so special then?"

"It's the most basic archetype besides knights. A mech pilot who masters the rifleman can pilot every ranged mech. Skill matters the most. A great pilot can easily ruin a rifleman while a great pilot can mow down an entire squad before he succumbs."

Ves started to understand Melkor's perspective. "In short, it comes down to skill. How do you describe your learning experience when you were in your early teens?"

"Everyone started polishing their marksmanship with their own bodies. A Larkinson like me enjoyed a great amount of tutoring, so I easily passed the early courses. I jumped straight into mech marksmanship and adjusted my habits to fit the mech scale. It was kind of boring, but necessary to go through this process. Not everyone succeeded in time to take the follow up classes. These guys always end up piloting the frontline mechs."

"If unlearning the habits learned through shooting a gun in your own hands is so difficult, why not jump to practicing mech marksmanship directly?"

"It has to do with foundation. Anyone who tries to learn a fundamental skill with mechs will only ever master the process with that model alone. Once the mech pilot switches to another model, he'll find out his marksmanship has to be broken down entirely before it can accomodate the new mech. Remember that humanoid mechs are meant to reflect the human form."

"I see. If you master the skill with your own body, you will always be able to adjust your marksmanship with every mech you come across."

Melkor smiled at Ves. "That's right. The skill transference always works best if your mind and body has already been imprinted with the habits that work best for you. The real challenge a young mech cadet faces is to transfer his physical marksmanship to mech marksmanship. The first time is always the hardest, but once someone is capable of doing it once, it takes a lot less time to do it again with another model."

Mech academies measured how much time it took for each mech pilot to transfer his shooting proficiency. They kept scores separately for both laser and ballistic weaponry, as both types had their own nuances.

"Since your very first breakthrough matters a lot, I can imagine the academies pays a lot of attention to its training mechs. What kind of models have you worked with?"

His cousin chuckled. "My experiences aren't typical. My aptitude is quite high and my talent in marksmanship is pretty impressive. Furthermore, the family offered a lot of after-school training so I gained my proficiencies five years ahead of everyone else. You should ask Raella what she thinks about those mechs."

"Pff." The woman blew as she finished her drink nearby. "Don't get me started on those machines. All of the models boast that they're easier to breakthrough than others. You can pick between light mechs, medium mechs, fast mechs, slow mechs, tall mechs, short mechs, whatever you want! Most people pick the models that closely resemble their own bodies, but I don't think it matters really."

Raella's opinion echoed the studies conducted by academics. Not a single consistent factor had been detected that could increase the odds of breakthroughs. It appeared to everyone that rather than mechs, the key point of focus should be the mech cadet in question.

"Rather than try anything fancy with the training mechs, the academies just offer us the least complicated mechs. There are many things a cadet has to take into account when piloting a multiton machine that could easily crush a house. Too many distractions can hinder the learning experience."

This was also why mech cadets started their training with older, outdated mechs. Modern designs incorporated many features that could easily overwhelm a young and immature mind. A good training mech focused on simplicity first and performance next.

Ves had already done the same with the Young Blood, but the stakes were higher this time. Proficiency in melee combat always transferred easier than proficiency in ranged combat. No holy grail existed that could shrink this disparity, and Ves didn't delude himself into thinking he could accomplish what millions of mech designers failed to achieve.

As Ves kept asking for stories, he caught an important difference between Raella and Melkor. His niece never enjoyed the training. She only grudgingly kept up with her academy's demanding curriculum, but spent most of her spare time mastering knife fighting.

This gave Ves an opening if he employed his unique insights into the X-Factor. He might not be able to stumble upon the holy grail, but perhaps he could make do with fruit juice. Compared to the bland water that no one really liked, perhaps he could entice the kids to drink a little more.

All in all, his talk with Melkor proved useful in shaping the concept of his next design. In his opinion, the way forward did not rest on coddling the kids.

"Simple mechs don't make very fun mechs."

A lot of training mechs went overboard in terms of simplicity. One of the reasons why his Young Blood drew so many teenagers was because it featured a couple of interesting gimmicks. It spiced up the boring knight concept and made it a lot more interesting without demanding an excessive amount of skill.

Those who ascended from piloting 1-star mechs sought to pilot more powerful mechs. They've already achieved the minimum amount of proficiency in marksmanship. In his mind, a training mech should have a soul.

When Ves left the gym and reached his terminal, he browsed the galactic net to see some examples of rifleman mech meant for training. As expected, most tended to be built for simplicity and ease of use. Other designs chose the other extreme and spiced up the design in order to generate more interest.

"They're too much like toys." Ves shook his head. He didn't agree with the notion of treating the mech cadets like kids suffering from a short attention span. "

Now that he established a direction, Ves considered what kind of rifleman mech he should design. He chose to go for a medium weight class due to the additional power and capacity it afforded over training mechs designed to be as cheap as possible. In any case, Ves didn't need to consider the costs when designing a virtual mech.

"Properly speaking, a rifleman mech is all about its rifle. I should begin with the weapon."

He recently acquired the Directed Energy Weapon Optimization II sub-skill, so he knew a thing or two about laser rifles. He chose to go for laser rifles which many mech pilots mastered first. Energy weapons demanded a little less consideration compared to ballistic weapons, though those who mastered the latter first all turned out to be prodigies.

Still, even with the optimization skill, Ves did not fully understand the full nuances of laser weapons. When he thought about his inadequacies, he suddenly reminded himself that he once made off with research notes on a certain kind of laser.

Ves looked around and saw that no one was present. His cousins likely entered the simulator pods while Carlos already worked on their company's next order.

He turned on his comm and turned on his Privacy Shield. Now, even the security cameras and other sensors wouldn't be able to spy on him. He navigated to his files and after inputting a couple of passwords, he reached the folder labeled 'Gamma Laser Rifle Research and Development'.

If anyone from the MTA could see him now, they'd shoot him on sight. Ves knew he had a poisoned chalice in his hands, yet he couldn't bear to delete the files. Radioactive or not, gamma lasers worked on much of the same principles as regular laser rifles.

He stood to gain a lot of understand in the workings of a laser rifle if he gleaned some insights from the research notes. While Ves didn't have enough time to decipher the complete collection, he only needed a few pointers to elevate his next design.

"It might not be a holy grail, but a poisoned chalice shouldn't bring any harm as long as I don't take a sip."

Whether he'd be able to resist the temptation, no one knew.

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Joshua followed his friends to the game center today. While he didn't need to rent a simulator pod since he owned one himself, he still preferred to play with others. They entered one of the closest game center to their school and greeted a few other classmates as they waited in line. After paying for the entire afternoon, they entered the common room.

Large groups of teenagers lingered in the lounge. Some of them discussed their strategies, while others talked about the news. Several projections of matches gave them something else to talk about. Several ads aired in between each match.

"Introducing the Young Blood, Cloudy Curtain's pride! Pilot our homegrown mech designer's training mech for free!"

When one of them showcased the game center's promotional mechs, Joshua squeezed his fists. As a fairly newly ascended player in the Silver League, Joshua still lacked the qualifications to pilot a 3-star mech. An average player had to spend at least a year to meet the requirements to unlock this tier.

Short ads like these became a conversation starter since they first aired in a couple of game centers. Most of the teenagers gained a new appreciation for knights once they gave the model a try. It left younger potentates like Joshua green with envy.

He had been one of Chasing Clouds' earliest fans! Why did Cloudy Curtain's homegrown mech designer suddenly move to 3-star mechs? It left most of his starting fanbase in the dust!

Joshua hadn't given up. He took on his training with renewed passion, working harder than practically every other classmate in his mech classes in order to climb up in the Silver League. He made some gradual progress, but at his current rate, he might as well be a snail.

"Hey, speaking about the Young Blood, have you heard the latest news?"

"What's up? Did our hometown mech designer finally develop a new design?"

"Pff, nah. That lazy bum is probably lying dormant again. I heard some of my mates that he might be moving away from Cloudy Curtain?"

"No way! He's ours! I'll beat him up if he's defecting to Bentheim!"

"Nah, it's not like that. Mr. Larkinson wants to stay, but some corrupt politicians are trying to chase him away. They're cooking up a new law that will hike up his taxes to ninety percent or something."

"What?! Even I would take a hike with those rates. They can't do that! Ever since Mr. Larkinson has made a splash, our mech scene is actually showing signs of life. It'll die if he's gone!"

Joshua frowned to the side. He approached his older seniors. "Is what you're saying true? Is the Planetary Assembly really trying to chase our only mech designer from our home planet?"

"Sure as hell. Just talk to the folks around here, half of us have already heard about it. My older brother who's studying finance says you can even look up the dirty details on the galactic net. Those dirtbag politicians aren't even hiding their crimes!"

The news truly alarmed Joshua. Like many locals, he was proud of his heritage and his birth planet. Cloudy Curtain might not be the most developed planet in the Republic, but they stubbornly stuck to their own.

While his well-off family insured he'd have the pick of academies once he graduated from his local school, he didn't wish to let go of his roots. Joshua intended to go back to his parents and give them a piece of his mind once he returned home. They'd better not be complicit in this rotten conspiracy.

As for the mech designer in question, Ves had taken an entire day to skim the forbidden research notes.

The bloodstained documents fascinated him in a horrifying way.

It started off rather clinical and dry. The lead scientist, Dr. Samuel Kawasaki, likely copied over a bunch of important documents whenever his team made a breakthrough.

Much of the content consisted of extremely dense reports filled with incomprehensible jargon or massive tables of measurements. It might take many weeks for Ves to puzzle out the meaning of these documents. Luckily, Dr. Kawasaki included a handful of progress reports that had obviously been written for his superiors.

The senior researcher had been a little more legible in this case, though Ves could sense the contempt dripping through the words. Kawasaki must not have enjoyed dumbing down his words.

The opening statement of Kawasaki's very first progress report caught his eye.

"The purpose of weapons is to kill. Why do we have to shackle them with artificial limits? We live. We eat. We die. We are but animals uplifted into space. Let us reacquiant ourselves with the long-forgotten art of butchery that our race excels in."

Despite his eccentricities, Kawasaki led his team of researchers into what they thought of as reinventing the wheel. While they were aware of the basic principles of a gamma laser, they possessed no real experience in developing an actual rifle around a graser.

Much of the researchers in Kawasaki's team had previously worked on regular laser rifles, so they competently listed the problems they had to solve. The researchers faced two major problems.

First, the graser rifle had to endure extreme conditions. It sucked up a lot more power each time the rifle emitted a beam. The team had to go back to the drawing board and develop an extremely robust design that could efficiently transfer large amounts of power at once. It also had to divert much of the heat in order to prevent the weapon from melting up.

This design problem went in hand with choosing the right materials. Regular alloys and cheap exotics couldn't handle the stress. In order to be effective on the ground and in space, the weapon also had to be paired with incredibly advanced energy cells.

The problems might seem unsurmountable, but Kawasaki and his people took a shortcut. Without any sense of shame, they pirated existing licences and otherwise procured restricted blueprints from the black market. They borrowed from the best practices of renowned senior mech designers in order to address every issue.

Ves had to admit the researchers picked well. The first prototypes performed badly, but after many intensive tests, they slimmed down the design and cut back on its cost. While it still cost abundantly more than a regular laser rifle, the latest iterations of the forbidden weapon finally worked well enough to be produced en masse.

"If these figures are correct, the hidden base had already sold more than a thousand graser rifles."

The thought of swarms of pirate mechs armed with graser rifles chilled him to the bones. Such a terrible force could paralyze the shipping lanes of half the Republic.

If that hadn't been enough, Dr. Kawasaki requested live testing. He hadn't been content with using cloned human tissue like any other conventional research outfit. His successes swelled his clout, and once he demanded his weapons to be tested on living humans, his masters were eager to comply.

The data gathered from these sadistic tests laid out Kawasaki's cruel imagination. Somehow, his masters had no trouble procuring an abundant amount of captives. They'd been subjected to an endless series of cruel experiments, from irradiating them directly, to studying the long-term exposure of intermittent radiation behind a thick alloy wall.

No matter the specific experiment, any captives subjected to a graser eventually died in gruesome manners. Their cells degenerated due to the damage the gamma rays inflicted onto their DNA.

"There's no point to human testing."

Modern science already established the effects of radiation damage. Kawasaki didn't have to confirm these well-established facts by himself. Ves realized that the doctor simply commissioned the lurid tests because he could. The rest of the research team went about it with as much enthusiasm as a group of kids at a zoo.

Perhaps these researchers merely expressed their human nature. They wanted to see the results of their work in the most direct and visceral fashion. The static experiments they performed on sterile pieces of cloned flesh simply couldn't beat the desperate screams of a man slowly melting from inside.

Ves had no idea something like this had been going on. It explained some of the weird spaces on the bottom floor of the abandoned base. They'd been prisons.

As his comm started to fizzle out due to the excessive power draw of the Privacy Shield, Ves closed the final page and turned everything off. He leaned back on his chair and sighed.

"Even a scientist can fall to such a depth."

The dreary research notes had given Ves a sobering wake up call. The darkness that hid inside each person's hearts had never been eradicated. Even as humanity conquered half of the galaxy, the darkness continued to proliferate.

Ves momentarily felt unsafe. Despite his cozy security arrangement, he felt awfully exposed. The base might be destroyed, but the design was already out there. The pirates already owned several thousand graser rifles, and more might still be on their way once the shadowy corporation who funded the research resumed their production elsewhere.

The Komodo Star Sector might face a reckoning one day.

"It's not like I can do anything about it. I don't even dare to inform the MTA."

No matter how many precautions he took, he didn't underestimate the pan-galactic organization. They're one of the very few organizations in the galaxy that could match the Mech Designer System's capabilities. Even their branches out in the rim posed a significant threat.

Reading Kawasaki's words caused Ves to fall into a melancholic mood. The knowledge that so many people died to satisfy a researcher's whim made him reconsider what he should do.

Though Ves had no use of the results that arose from unethical experiments, he nonetheless gained quite a bit of very practical knowledge.

He learned what kind of designs worked best with energetic lasers. He got to know many unique design quirks that could massively improve the performance of any directed energy weapon, though Ves had to watch out for licenced designs.

He also learned what kind of materials fared best in a compact rifle design. Some of the conventional alloys that normal rifles used tended to perform catastrophically once a threshold had been reached. Knowing what materials he should watch out for was already a massive gain to Ves.

Eventually, he came to a decision. "What's done is done. I'm not responsible for these atrocities. All that matters is that I'm currently holding a copy. Since it's already in my hands, I might as well make use of them. Perhaps I can redeem the lives that died unjustly."

His somewhat noble aspirations lifted his spirits and pushed him along a strange state of mind. Ves threw away his considerations and started to compose the myth he'd use for his rifleman design.

"It must have a heart."

Dr. Kawasaki and his ilk had behaved in a cruel and heartless fashion. Ves wanted his laser rifleman to be a design that invoked justice and compassion.

"A bounty hunter. A hunter of criminals."

Such a profession brought death to those who sinned. They might not enjoy the most stellar reputation, but they at least contributed to society by removing the filth that stained it. Ves came up with the concept of a compassionate bounty hunter.

He already started to fill out the bounty hunter's imaginary biography.

Ves named him the Dogged One, for his harsh youth as a fugitive and later for his relentless pursuit of his prey.

He lived in the same medieval fantasy world of the Instructor. Whereas the latter lived among the righteous and powerful, the Dogged One eked out a sparse existence where he donated most of his money to support the families of his target's victims.

A survivor of a gruesome incident himself, the Dogged One made it his life's mission to see every murderer brought to justice. His favorite means of punishment entailed the use of his enchanted crossbow. He nailed down his targets with unerring accuracy. No matter how many bolts his weapon fired, they all hit their mark.

He initially hadn't been very good with his weapon. It took lots of persistent practice in order to get to this point. Ves wanted to use this backstory to shape his X-Factor into a dogged persistence for improvement.

"It's not about fun anymore. It's about redeeming yourself by delivering justice."

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The Dogged One was no saint. He pursued the scum of the world for selfish reasons instead of contributing to society. He wanted revenge, plain and simple. Exacting justice was only a side effect of his endless pursuit to kill every murderer.

Ves put it this way. "Even victims are marked by the darkness in their hearts. Some find a healthy means of coping with their trauma. The Dogged One can only sate his thirst by inflicting the same torment to those who resembled his tormentors."

In a dog-eat-dog world, refined notions of justice had no place.

In fact, Ves mirrored the Dogged One's tendency to seek revenge to Dr. Kawasaki's urge to see others suffer from his inventions.

Such was human nature, no matter much others liked to argue otherwise. In fact, many aliens exhibited the same tendency, but that was another story.

"Am I going astray?"

He originally planned to design a training mech. Coloring his design with an intensive myth like the Dogged One might be counterproductive.

"It's a strong image, for good or ill." Under the influence of a special mood, Ves came up with it spontaneously. It carried an authentic spark of life, unlike many of his other figments of imagination. Ves was loathe to abandon such a valuable gem.

He still feared the consequences of employing the image. Will he be twisting their morals and worldview? "There's a limit to the X-Factor in virtual mechs. I doubt much will bleed over if it's possible in the first place."

To be honest, Ves had no proof either way. He never tested most of his assumptions involving the X-Factor. Perhaps the lack of formal study prevented the System from granting him the appropriate skills and sub-skills regarding this nebulous field.

"What may come will come." Ves decided. "It's not entirely bad if students gain some perspective in their lives. With the onset of war, there's a chance they'll be fighting in the frontlines."

The Bright-Vesia Wars generally lasted around five to seven years. Historically, there had been cases where certain groundside conflicts grew to such an extent that the defenders conscripted barely trained teenagers to fill up their spare mechs.

Such an act of borrowing from the future to quench a crisis in the present never really worked out for the planet in question. Veteran mech pilots often tore them apart.

After the war had ended, the entire planet suffered the consequences. Every planet and star system had to contribute to the defense of the Bright Republic. A generational gap of qualified mech pilots reduced their clout and gave them less of a voice in matters of policy and national security.

The future of the Bright Republic lay in its youth!

For a moment, Ves imagined what it would be like to influence Cloudy Curtain's young potentates. Anyone from the age of ten to eighteen had to learn how to operate mechs. Even those who never wished to set their foot on the battlefield learned how to kill.

What was it like to possess the power to influence these impressionable youths? Ves could potentially make them smarter, bolder and more confident by incorporating these virtues in his work.

Ves shook his head. "It doesn't feel right to start over with a different inspiration."

Despite its problematic elements, Ves continued to flesh out the Dogged One's backstory. He carefully envisioned his troubled youth as a persecuted thief and slave, his growth period as a crossbowman in a conscripted army, to his eventual desertion from a military disaster.

Throughout all of these events, the Dogged One's capacity for stubborn survival allowed him to pick up the skills that set him on the path of a bounty hunter and executioner.

The details of the story mattered a lot, as Ves wanted his design to emphasize the conscious layer over the primal layer of the X-Factor.

Great instincts helped experienced pilots more than trainees due to their ability to respond to a crisis faster.

On the other hand, the low-level battles the trainees often engaged in were less intensive. Sound judgement and measured decision making mattered more. If the pilots of a mech influenced by the myth of the Dogged One adopted some of his habits, that might not be an entirely bad thing.

Ves deliberately chose to make the Dogged One a specialist in the crossbow. A mundane non-repeating crossbow could only fire one bolt at a time. It took a lot of time to pull back the string in order to arm another bolt.

The Dogged One couldn't afford to miss. His sword-fighting skills paled in comparison to his marksmanship, so any enemy that came close could easily butcher him. Thus, the Dogged One unceasingly practiced with his crossbows until his marksmanship became unparalleled.

"Now that I have this image, should I add another?"

This led to the larger question whether every design benefited from multiple images. His Marc Antony Mark II used three images at once, and it hadn't suffered for it. Yet Ves instinctively rejected the notion for several reasons.

First, maintaining too many images strained his concentration. Second, his Young Blood design performed well enough without a multifaceted construction. Certainly, it rated a little lower in terms of X-Factor, but did it make any difference?

Finally, Ves also had to take his own circumstances in mind. He only reserved three weeks at most to design his training mech. If he tried to maintain multiple images at once, he'd be taking frequent breaks. If he only focused on a single intent, then he'd easily be able to accomplish a lot of work in a single stretch.

He decided to keep it simple. "Let's move on and select a base model."

With an appropriate image in mind, he headed to his terminal and visited Iron Spirit's market section. After opening the catalog, he turned to the list of 2-star medium rifleman mechs and leisurely browsed the list.

Rifleman mechs came in many different shapes and sizes even in the mediumweight classification.

Generally, they could be classified as all-rounders or specialists. The former featured stronger artificial musculature in order to leverage more strength when wielding melee weapons. The latter gave up on melee combat and optimized their designs for precision and coordination.

Since Ves aimed for a training mech, he did not not have to consider any alternatives and chose to go for specialist designs. He quickly found out that these rifleman mechs could be further divided into mobile and precision mechs.

Mobile riflemen mechs basically functioned like skirmishers. They optimized their legs for speed and mobility. They're designed to battle in complex conditions where battle lines may be fluid. They specialized in taking down fast-moving targets such as light mechs and their targeting systems reflected this role.

Precision mechs focused on medium to long-ranged fire from a static position. People often considered these rifleman as snipers, though the moniker did not apply to every mech of this type.

They differed from mobile rifleman mechs in several ways. Their arms were smaller and more fragile, but gained the ability to wield a rifle with extreme precision if the pilot possessed the skill. Their targeting systems might have problems tracking fast-moving targets, but they aided considerably in increasing the odds of a hit at longer ranges.

Ves narrowed his choice to this sub-type of mechs. The Dogged One pursuit the path of delivering death with a single shot. A commando-like run-and-gun battle did not suit the image.

He let his mind sway a bit when he scrolled over the designs. He suddenly stopped when he faintly imagined a resonance between the Dogged One and the projected design.

[Rickshaft Conglomerate TOC-1 Tryops: 500,000 bright credits

He never heard of the Rickshaft Conglomerate. Ves quickly browsed the galactic net and it turned out the company used to be a fairly big deal in several non-mech related industries such as real estate and fuel refining.

One day, the company decided to jump in on then-developing mech craze and released the TOC-1 Tryops.

The concept of the mech sounded simple. The Tryops drew its name for its unique but glitchy main optical sensors. Basically, it had three eyes, and every eye saw the world in a different way. Specialized processors took in the sensory data and fed an enhanced image to the mech pilot.

Though it sounded daunting, the designers employed by the Rickshaft Conglomerate made sure to simplify the composite footage. The few mech pilots who experienced the Tryops in person praised its highly developed sensory feed, which was very advanced for its time.

The rest of the mech performed fairly poorly. Besides the sensors, the Tryops played it fairly extreme. The designers envisioned their product to be employed as base defenders. They increased the Tryops accuracy at the cost of armor, mobility and endurance.

The only other redeeming feature of the design was that it came with a pretty good laser rifle. The Rickshaft Conglomerate obviously splurged quite a bit of money to license a premium model from a specialist designer or manufacturer.

Fortunately for Ves, the rifle suited his purposes. Its default settings caused the weapon to fire a powerful sustained beam capable of melting through thin layers of armor in a single shot. Afterwards, the rifle required a fairly long cycle time in order to vent its immense heat.

Overall, the entire Tryops design presented an extreme in mech design that later proved to be a waste of money. While the concept of the design had some good points, the market decided otherwise.

In the chaotic advent of the Age of Mechs, conventional doctrines weren't fully established. Few mech pilots appreciated piloting what was essentially a sitting duck. The whole concept of mechs at the time focused on its superior mobility in any kind of terrain over other alternatives such as tanks.

"If a mech can't move fast enough, it should at least be able to take some hits. If a mech can't even do that, who would want to pilot it in the first place?"

The war mongers at the time expected every mech to come under fire. The Tryops performed admirably in its offensive aspects but came up short when considering its paper-thin defenses.

Might as well install a cheap turret!

The entire Rickshaft Conglomerate ultimately went bankrupt.

Despite its checkered history, Ves did not turn away from the Tryops. Its strengths and weaknesses already meshed fairly well with the Dogged One. He could save quite a bit of time if he didn't need to redesign too much.

Ves also looked forward to the challenge of coming up with a successful variant of this failed design. Its first incarnation failed miserably, and that affected its current embodiment in Iron Spirit.

Hardly anyone bought the virtual mech. Many mech designers also eschewed the unpopular design. Few of them dared to gamble with half a million credits. This suited Ves fine as he wouldn't be dealing with excessive competition.

By now, Ves built up a fairly strong brand in Cloudy Curtain. Even if he wasn't a big deal in the rest of the Republic, he could still rely on his nucleus of loyal fans to try out his virtual mechs no matter the quality.

He bought the virtual license and imported its design into the System. Using the System's own Designer module, Ves started to envision his variant.

Besides updating its outdated methods and implementation, Ves wanted to make the model viable in a wider variety of terrain. When he thought of the Dogged One, he envisioned a patient hunter who ambushed his targets from the bushes.

"I should focus on stealth and firepower."

The Tryops variant should never be the vanguard. Like the Dogged One, his design should choose a good position beforehand and wait for its prey to come into view. Once its target was in its crosshairs, he should be able to deliver crippling damage in a single strike.

"I'll also have to beef up the laser rifle."

His recent foray into gamma lasers taught Ves a lot of tricks on how to handle high-powered lasers.

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Ves began to design his variant in earnest. First, he began with his usual ritual of focusing a desired image into an intent. He only had the Dogged One in mind, so his practiced mind easily slipped into his desired state.

As a habit, Ves started with the weapon first. The Tryops came with a fairly excellent laser rifle that had already been integrated in the base model's targeting systems. It came with two default modes, one meant for power and precision and another one for close-to-medium range strafing.

While the laser rifle adequately fulfilled both roles, the mech itself fared poorly on the latter front. Ves had to consider whether he wanted to keep this shooting mode. Just because the mech fared poorly at closer ranges didn't mean that the rapid-fire mode had no use.

Yet when he envisioned the Dogged One, he imagined a complete dedication to the crossbow. Even if the weapon only excelled in one single aspect, the Dogged One always made it work by choosing the right battles.

"Limitations shapes behavior. Rifleman mechs always let the enemy come to them. They can choose to engage or retreat at will."

Ves kept his goal of designing a training mech in mind when he chose to remove the rapid-fire mode. While its absence might not make his model very popular, it nevertheless enhanced its focus. Mech pilots promoted their mastery faster if they dedicated their training to a single aspect rather than flitting around between different styles.

He proceeded to extensively overhaul the laser rifle. He wanted to turn it into a compact laser cannon in a way. The weapon should be extremely precise at medium-to-long ranges and its laser beam should cripple any mech when it struck a weak point.

He tore out many redundant and outdated components. In their place, he quickly designed a couple of revised components made of different alloys that improved the rifle's maximum power and heat emission. Ves had to make sure the weapon wouldn't melt when it fired a couple of shots, though he estimated the weapon could only handle five shots at a time before it required an extensive cooldown.

"Five shots isn't much for a normal rifle." He thought. If anyone else heard that Ves wanted to redesign a rifle that could only shoot this much in a single encounter, they'd call him crazy. "Once they see it in action, they'll see why it doesn't matter."

By converting the rifle into a high-powered compact laser cannon, Ves completely transcended the 2-star domain. He borrowed heavily from the insights gleaned from Dr. Kawasaki's research notes. Studying the forbidden material had taught him much on how to make gamma lasers workable, though he lacked the foundation to design a graser rifle from scratch.

Furthermore, he also borrowed some design elements from the Caesar Augustus' wrist laser cannons. The weapon system employed an extremely compact arrangement that allowed the hybrid knight to fire off a substantial amount of firepower, though its accuracy left much to be desired. The practical example allowed Ves to slim down his rifle design to a reasonable size.

Compared to the jumbo-sized laser cannons, his own version still looked like a regular rifle. It only massed a little bit more than the base model. By sacrificing the rapid-fire mode, Ves freed up sufficient space to soup up its precision mode to a ludicrous level.

It only took one-and-a-half days to complete the redesign, but Ves wasn't done. He spent four more days subjecting the weapon to a large variety of tests.

He uncovered a large amount of flaws. His implementation of borrowed knowledge had been awfully rough, which indicated that he hadn't fully mastered the theories behind these elements.

Ves expected something like this to happen, so he simply shrugged and plugged the holes whenever he encountered them. Through this constant iterative process of testing and fixing, the rifle gained a more refined appearance, though it also boasted significantly more mass.

He had no other choice. He underestimated the amount of buffers a high-powered laser rifle demanded. Many simulations frequently ended badly due to minute unintentional heat dispersion. Some of the rifle's more sensitive components had a tendency to melt into a puddle if that happened.

The materials he had to work with limited his options. While Dr. Kawasaki had the luxury of working with modern materials, Ves could only choose from a small selection of exotics. What he couldn't accomplish with quality, he had to substitute it with quantity. Hence the added bulk.

The only good thing that came out of it was that the rifle could now handle six shots at a time.

"Now that I'm done with the weapon, let's move on to the mech."

He already completed one major modification. The next phase entailed modifying the frame to compliment its intended fighting style. In order to be an effective mech right out of the gate, it had to avoid enemy detection and pursuit.

"Didn't I already own a license for a particle generator?"

His Mist Prowler threw up a cloud of vapor and particles in order to obscure his surroundings. While the Mist Prowler used the cloud offensively, it could also be used as a tool for escape.

He browsed his existing licenses and saw that he owned the virtual license of the Relix Systems Valhalla Particle Ejection Module 1st Edition.

"It'll do."

Before he integrated the particle generator into his design, he first had to revamp the entire frame. He did his usual routine of updating and optimizing the mech's internal layout. His previous experience along with his broad if somewhat shallow knowledge allowed him to make many minor modifications.

As a stationary mech employed strictly behind a defensive line, the base model suffered from an abysmally low RF and CF. Anything that penetrated past its relatively lackluster armor could easily cripple the Tryops.

While Ves considered doing nothing, his professional attitude forced him to at least give his variant a chance to survive. He spent quite a bit of time increasing the mech's redundancy, but focused mostly on increasing its internal compartmentalization.

His design was not meant to be a tank, and he didn't wish to compromise on the mech's offensive capabilities. This forced him to make a lot of compromises in order to insure his design possessed enough high capacity energy cells and solid heat sinks in order to complement its demanding weapon.

As the days went by, Ves continued to tweak and redesign the mech's internals until he became satisfied with what he had. The mech's survivability was never going to break any records, but now it could at least withstand a couple more potshots.

That left his variant's armor.

If Ves wanted to turn his design into a viable long-ranged ambusher, then he would have to make it much more difficult to detect. Even in a thickly forested environment, mechs could still detect other mechs.

If you thought about it, mechs were giant hunks of metal that generated a lot of power and heat. This gave a lot of mech designers headaches because an early detection could easily ruin an entire mission.

"The particle generator is no use in this case. It's hard to stay hidden if there's a giant cloud of sensor-blocking particles hovering over your hiding spot. It's like holding up a giant 'I AM HERE' sign."

Ves had to turn to Iron Spirit's catalog in order to find another answer. He entered the armor section and filtered out everything he didn't want. Nothing too heavy, nothing too light, nothing too obvious, he briskly threw away anything that failed to meet his standards.

He only came up with a couple of choices in the end. Ves simply picked the most effective one in dampening signals and containing heat. It also happened to be the least durable armor system, but you couldn't have everything.

[ArnodSys Co. GS Formula 15: 250,000 bright credits

It cost a decent amount of credits, but Ves could afford it with Carlos constantly pumping out a Mark II every week. He'd been supervising his employee's work from time to time. Besides helping him out of a few tight spots, Carlos did a decent job in fabricating his silver label mechs.

The newly incorporated Living Mech Corporation charged around 30 million credits for each silver label mech. To be honest, for a lastgen mech with uncompressed armor that might have been a little much.

Still, without another production line, he couldn't ramp up his production. As long as Marcella kept the orders coming, Ves didn't mind pricing out the majority of his audience.

"The good times won't last." He reminded himself with a grim expression.

The prices of many raw materials already started the rise on the open market. Many suppliers already strained themselves by keeping up with the rising demand from their existing customers.

If the total cost rose by thirty percent, Ves would have to stop selling his silver label mechs. While he could still earn some profit with his gold label mechs, he'd be forced to lower his asking price over time.

"There's no future in lastgen mechs. I'll have to make the most out of the current buying spree."

Ves was essentially on the clock. He had to gather enough credits and merits in order to reconstruct the Dortmund and purchase all of the production licenses required to design a fully original mech.

He estimated that he only had two years at most, though the war could easily throw a wrench in his plans. Hopefully the Vesians would have the decency to delay their invasion until Ves finished his original design.

"Hah, fat luck that will happen." He laughed.

He resumed designing his training mech. He easily slipped back into the appropriate mood and shaped its armor using the newly purchased GS Formula 15.

As an armor system focused on stealth, it essentially focused on two fronts. First, it prevented the frame from leaking heat. Its inner layers cleverly absorbed excess heat and prevented it from radiating outwards. At the time of its invention, such a system didn't work too well in active battles.

"It's good enough if it works on a stationary mech. The armor system only needs to hide my mech before it fires a shot."

Second, it performed its most basic task of dampening various kinds of signals. It naturally took on a matte dark brown shade and hardly brightened up when someone flashed a light at it.

Besides dampening electromagnetic signals, it also limited the effectiveness of other kinds of systems such as sonar, motion and gravitic sensors. Naturally, it only worked up to a point. Since Ves intended his design to fight at a distance, it should be adequate for its purposes.

This allowed Ves to build up quite a stealthy mech. The rifleman mech took on a dirt-colored angular design that frankly didn't look very pretty. It carried a strange but intimidating demeanor that made it clear the mech meant business. Ves opted not to add any flourishes in order to avoid ruining the effectiveness of its stealth coating.

"Now I'll have to add the particle generator."

Ves borrowed from his earlier implementation of a particle generator backpack module. He didn't recycle his earlier work but started from scratch. He managed to slim it down a bit even as he added in the familiar Festive Cloud Generator. Together with an outer shell of Formula 15, hardly any sensors should be able to pick it up.

Now that Ves completed the basic design, he subjected it to a whole barrage of tests. He never worked with stealth armor before, so the simulations exposed a lot of errors. Certain ways in which he shaped the armor turned out to limit the effectiveness of the dampening. Ves spent quite a lot of time revising the faulty sections.

He continued on with his work until Marcella finally called back.

"Good day Ves. I'm calling you in order to tell you that your ship is on her way to Cloudy Curtain."

"That's great news!" He cheered as he paused putting the finishing touches on his design. "I thought it would take a little longer in order to repair my ship."

"Me too, but the shipyard worked overtime. The boss decided to get involved in person. He practically fell in love with your state-of-the-art corvette."

They both chuckled a bit. Ves could understand the sentiment. He'd likely drool for hours if a cutting edge nextgen mech rolled into his workshop.

"What about the crew?"

"Your ship is staffed and ready to go, but…" Marcella's words trailed off.

"Is there something wrong?"

"Maybe."

Great. Ves wondered what Marcella pulled off. It sounded fairly serious if a smooth talker like her stumbled upon her words.

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While Marcella's comment about the crew aroused some worry, Ves decided to deal with it later. His newly hired crew used the trip to Cloudy Curtain as the Barracuda's shakedown cruise, so Ves expected them to arrive a bit later than usual.

First, he had to finalize his latest design. He mainly dedicated his time with testing his semi-finished mech's stealth systems. After optimizing its stealth armor as best Ves could manage in a few days, he turned his attention to the detachable particle generator.

Ves intended to employ the particle generator as a smoke generator. Once the rifleman mech fired its high-powered laser rifle, it exposed its position. Even the most ramshackle thermal sensors would be able to sense the incredible amount of heat projected by the laser beam and track it down to its origin point. His mech might as well be waving around a gigantic signal flare.

Once its enemies zeroed in on its position, the rifleman mech would have to flee. Throwing up a giant cloud of interfering particles at the right time should allow the vulnerable mech to evade pursuit.

Ves mainly had trouble with getting the particle generator to disperse its cloud quickly. If it released its payload too slowly, then the mech's opponents could catch up before the module hit its stride.

His handy Jury Rigging sub-skill came to use as Ves employed a handful of unconventional means to enhance the spread of the particles. He also tinkered with the Festive Cloud Generator, forcing it to release a massive cloud of black vapor once activated.

Once he put the latest iteration to the test, the entire area within fifty meters became engulfed in a soot-like black miasma.

"It's like an exploding ancient chimney." Ves noted as he nodded his head in satisfaction. The speed, reach and density of the miasma finally met his standards. Unless the rifleman mech ran too hot, it should be able to use the cloud to withdraw.

Such a clever means conformed to the Dogged One's methods. Unlike the Instructor, the Dogged One lacked the fortune and destiny that could elevate him into a pinnacle fighter. He only managed to survive through stacking the deck in his favor by making his preparations beforehand.

"Honor is a luxury for the strong. The weak can only fight the strong through dishonorable means."

So what if it was shameless? All's fair in love and war! Different from the standard rifleman mechs, his mech only truly showed its strength when it had the initiative. The moment his variant lost its advantage, it should immediately run and shake off its enraged pursuers.

Once he became somewhat satisfied with the design, he put the finishing touches on its appearance. He left the coating alone but added in a diminished version of the LMC's logo.

While Ves might not have spent a lot of time on this design, he was proud of his work. He almost finished this project. It just needed a name.

He didn't think too much about it. He tried a few conventional ones but when he thought back on the Dogged One, they didn't fit. Ves spent half an hour wracking his mind on the issue before he ultimately settled on Old Soul.

"It contrasts nicely with the Young Blood."

As an immortal, the Instructor might be older than the Dogged One, but in terms of mentality and life experience the bounty hunter had an edge over the pampered former knight.

The name also reflected the Dogged One's lack of apprentices. He had never taught anyone the tricks of the trade, mostly because he couldn't teach others to survive without putting them through torment. He was destined to live out his life without family or friends.

Ves shook his head. He kept getting the feeling he went a bit too far with these myths. Even though they didn't exist for real, he still felt somewhat bad for giving the Dogged One such a joyless life. He couldn't come up with anything better with his average creativity.

He considered upgrading the attribute since he suspected it might come in handy when he designed more complex mechs. "Let's sit on it for now. First I have to increase my ability to survive."

Among other reasons, he designed the Old Soul to acquire some toys. While he might have to wait a few weeks or months until his DP earnings reached its cap, Ves was determined to purchase a permanent augment to his handy Privacy Shield.

"The Privacy Shield is pretty much a life saver. A good enough Privacy Shield will allow me to escape any threats once my shield generator fizzles out."

He still wore his partially depleted shield generator on his body. Its extremely compact energy cell only retained an eighty percent charge, and Ves had no way of topping it back up. His master had already warned him of the consequences should he tamper with it in any way.

Ves activated the Privacy Shield and rubbed his hands. "Well, let's get to it. System, please evaluate the Old Soul for me."

[Design Evaluation: Old Soul.]

Variant name: TOC-1S Old Soul

Base model: TOC-1 Tryops

Original Manufacturer: Rickshaft Conglomerate

Weight Classification: Medium-Light

Recommended Role: Ambush Rifleman

Armor: D

Carrying Capacity: D-

Aesthetics: C

Endurance: D

Energy Efficiency: D

Flexibility: A

Firepower: A-

Integrity: C-

Mobility: D

Spotting: B

X-Factor: C

Deviance: 65%

Performance improvement: 17%

Cost efficiency: -17%

Overall evaluation: The Old Soul is an extreme ranged ambusher variant of the Tryops. It eschews frontal combat entirely in favor of ambushing unsuspecting enemies from a healthy distance. Its firepower and accuracy peaks at the extreme end of medium range, but it is also able to pose a threat at longer ranges. Its passive and active stealth systems provides the Old Soul with much-needed survivability.

[You have received 75 Design Points for completing an original design with a performance improvement of over 10%.]

[You have received 500 Design Points for designing a mech with a moderate presence of X-Factor.]

The initial DP reward lifted his mood, but he didn't particularly pay a lot of attention to it. With his growing fanbase, he mainly relied on sales to increase his points.

Now that he finished a virtual mech, he uploaded it to Iron Spirit and filled in the required paperwork. Ves held off on publishing it onto the game's virtual catalog. Instead, he leaned back in his chair and hailed his publicist.

"Gavin Neumann here."

"It's Ves. How is our publicity campaign doing so far?"

"It's going fairly well, though I'm starting to encounter some pushback. Around twenty-four percent of all game centers have adopted your training knight as a promotional mech. That's less than I thought but it's proven to be an effective draw for those businesses. The other game centers will budge sooner or later."

"What about this pushback you're mentioning?"

Gavin sighed over the comm. He sent a few documents over the link. Ves read through the messages and found that they contained all of the responses sent by the game centers.

"You can see that they are trying very hard to sound polite about it. Reading between the lines, the local managers know the value of the Young Blood to the locals. It's their superiors in Bentheim or Rittersberg who are putting a stop to their moves."

His publicist listed the parent companies involved and found that quite a few of them had connections to the Ricklin Corporation. "It's the stupid Ricklins again. They really hate my bones."

They couldn't do anything about the invisible suppression. As long as the Ricklins kept blaming Ves for what their wayward descendant had done, they'll just keep finding ways to inconvenience him. He also suspected they had a hand in the kidnapping and assassination attempt on him, but he couldn't prove anything.

"It's too difficult to come up with an explanation why the BLM and the Ricklins coordinated with each other. They should be enemies."

Or were they? The Ricklin Corporation was a quintessential Bentheim tech behemoth. Though it had ties throughout the entire Bright Republic, its headquarters and its main production facilities operated in the Bentheim region.

Thinking about it gave Ves a headache, so he stopped speculating about matters beyond his head. If anything fishy went on, the Republic would surely have their eyes on it already. Despite his minor prestige, Ves still remained a private citizen in the eyes of the Republic. People like him should keep their heads down.

"Why did you call me, boss?" Gavin prompted when Ves fell silent.

"Ah, I wanted to inform you that I've finished designing a virtual mech. It's a training mech that will round out my modest portfolio of training mechs."

Ves proceeded to introduce the Old Soul to his publicist. He particularly emphasized its extreme and somewhat unconventional fighting style.

"What are your thoughts, Gavin? Is it viable enough?"

His publicist paused to consider the matter. Ves already expected him to be taken aback. The concept of the Old Soul truly stretched the definition of a training mech.

"To be honest, the Old Soul doesn't sound like a training mech." Gavin finally replied. "It's too niche and one-dimensional, but perhaps you have a point that limiting the pilot's options will enhance their immersion. The only way to tell for sure it to release it onto the market."

"You hated mechs, right?"

"Yeah. That's why I know your mech will sell. I don't know if you'll only sell a couple of thousands or if it will catch on like the Young Blood and surpass a hundred thousand sales. Whatever the case, I'm sure you already have a brainless following of fans who eagerly snap up any design you publish, even if it's shaped like a walking turd."

As much as the mech industry focused on specifications and performance, the people who piloted them remained human. Gavin indirectly disparaged their irrationality when it came to deciding what kind of war machine they'd like to use.

"Be glad that mech pilots are human." Ves responded with a light reprimanding tone. "If every customer behaves rationally, they'd only purchase the mechs sold by the trans-galactic corporations. Small-time companies like mine don't stand a chance in this aspect."

Even if Ves charged less for his mechs, he still couldn't have pulled off so many sales in normal circumstances. Through a variety of good publicity, Ves managed to carve a small niche in the notoriously hostile mech industry.

Ves proceeded to give out his instructions to Gavin. He wanted to maximize the early sales of the Old Soul in order to obtain DP quickly. He increased his publicist's discretionary funds for this purpose so that he could start promoting his latest design.

"I don't care how you do it, but try to drive sales as fast as possible within a month. I don't care about its long-term performance in the sales charts, so don't hesitate to pull off a trick or two."

Once Gavin understood his intent, Ves hung up. Now that he finished his work, he should get around to accepting a mission.

He entered Clifford Society's Mission Hall after logging in to the organization's virtual portal. Its interior evoked a martial feeling. From the bare walls to the flickering torches, everything seemed primal. Clusters of Society members had gathered in the giant hall. They all looked at the large displays and engaged in heated discussion on which mission to take.

A lot of missions allowed for teams. Many Society members banded together when they faced a challenge they could never complete alone.

Unfortunately, the Society's heartless Mission Hall refused to adjust its merit payout whether a single person or a massive twelve-man team completed the mission.

For example, if a mission rewarded a hundred merits, then if one person completed it, he received the entire amount. If a team of five happened to complete it, then they'd only get twenty each.

Sometimes, the teams decided on a different merit distribution. A team of four Squires and a single Knight might reserve eighty merits to the leader and only five merits each to the Squires. This highly unequal distribution illustrated the power of a Knight. Ves truly appreciated the opportunity of starting out with this lofty rank.

As an apprentice of a Master Mech Designer, Ves stepped forth in public with a measure of confidence. Even as other Society members started to note his presence, he approached one of the displays and browsed the missions suitable for Knights.

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Missions generally came in two flavors. Ves could either accept a risky but rewarding mission or a safe but less worthwhile one. The latter often took up more time so many of the less talented mech designers took up these tasks.

As for Ves, he'd been eyeing the riskier missions. Though he cherished his life like any human being, he knew he couldn't get anywhere without taking calculated risks. The Clifford Society's whole advancement structure encouraged their talents to temper their skills in exotic adventures.

"A mech designer who holes up in his workshop all day will only stagnate." Horatio had told him once when he guided Ves around the Society. "Even if they managed to advance by some fluke, their designs lack an essential spark. The mech industry has no need for clones."

In other words, a mech designer has to seek out the untold wonders of the galaxy and survive experience. Only then would they be able to find their own paths.

Ves didn't know what to make of this theory. Leemar strongly subscribed to the idea that the best mech designers were those capable of surviving under the most adverse conditions.

"It's more likely that mech designers who thrive under danger are already outstanding."

Whatever the case, many people paid well to enlist the services of a competent mech designer.

As long as they had access to the right facilities, they could easily design or modify a mech tailored to the situation at hand.

They also served as consultants, able to deconstruct any design and explain its inner workings to their clients.

Ves wanted to finish a mission quickly, so he ignored any mission that lasted more than three standard months. He also wanted to avoid antagonizing more people, so he drew his attention to join an expedition into the unknown reaches of space.

Despite humanity's dominance in the galaxy, vast swathes of space had never been explored. Even if an unexplored star system fell under the borders of a certain state, it might take decades before they sent a survey ship to catalog its planetary bodies.

This applied even more to the Komodo Star Sector, which had only been colonized for over half a millenia. Many of the sparser regions unclaimed by even the poorest fourth-rate states might hide some gems. If some of these star systems happened to contain some deposits of extremely valuable exotics, then an follow-up expedition would swing by sooner or later.

"Hi there!" A cheerful girl chirped at him from behind. "You're a Knight, right?"

"That's correct."

"Great! Our team of five is thinking about taking the Hudson-Fairfax mission." She gestured at a couple of men and women a few steps behind. "We'll split the merits equally as long as everyone is doing their fair share of work. So what do you say?"

"Hold on a minute, let me study the mission."

Ves quickly called up the mission in question. It turned out to be a rather thorny job that involved mediating a conflict between two rival fourth-rate states in the middle of nowhere. Instead of going to war, they decided to hash out their differences by holding duels.

He admired such a solution, but didn't wish to enter these muddy waters. Who knew if someone powerful had something to gain from the results. The three-hundred merit reward looked nice, but Ves could only look forward to receiving fifty merits if he had to work in a team.

"I'm sorry, but I'll have to decline."

"That's a shame." The girl replied, her smiles all gone. "Goodbye then."

A handful of other Society members asked if Ves wanted to join their teams before someone told him to stand elsewhere.

"If you aren't looking for a team, then don't stand in the center!"

It turned out the Society had a tradition where if you stood at the center, you expressed an interest in working together. Ves quickly stepped to the side of the hall in order to put a stop to the incessant questions.

He went back to the list of missions and zeroed in on risky expeditions to newly surveyed star systems. After a few minutes of uninterrupted browsing, he found something of interest.

Something called the Groening mission stood out from the list. Different from many other missions, the Groening mission explicitly called for a single mech designer. Ves wouldn't have to share his merits with anyone else if he accepted this task. He eagerly pulled up the details of the mission in question.

"Four-hundred merits. That's a lot, even for an expedition."

The mission immediately noted its peculiarities. It kept most of its details mum, including the expedition's route and destination. Anyone who accepted this mission had to trust in the expedition leader's judgement as he or she led the entire fleet into uncharted space.

Ves didn't mind the risk. He planned to tag along this trip with his newly crewed Barracuda. If anything happened, he could always get away with one of the fastest interstellar ships in the star sector.

"The expedition must be looking forward to an extremely valuable haul." He noted to himself. "Why hasn't anyone accepted this mission yet?"

Lots of value meant lots of risk. Evidently, the mission had already been posted for a couple of months. No one took the bait. Who would be crazy enough to go in blind? The obscenely high reward aroused everyone's vigilance instead of their greed.

There must be some kind of catch for the mission to demand a single mech designer instead of an entire team. There was safety in numbers, after all.

"Still, if the Clifford Society is willing to offer this mission, then it should be an authentic request."

Ves could do a lot with four-hundred merits. His shopping list was small, but all of the items cost a huge amount of money if expressed in credits. If he could earn a huge sum of merits at once, he'd be able to speed up his already fast-paced timetable.

He gulped down his saliva. After considering the pros and cons, he decided to accept the Groening mission. His comm instantly beeped an alert.

"Report to the Mancroft Independent Harbor within twenty days. Forfeiting the mission is not allowed. If you are delayed or indisposed, then please inform the Mission Hall."

Ves frowned at the message. He knew about the Mancroft Independent Harbor. It was an independent star system that pretended to be a fourth-rate state. It wasn't even a port system, which made it fairly difficult for ships to reach the star system. It only enjoyed a modest amount of traffic because the Common Fleet Alliance maintained a small fueling station.

"Twenty days will be cutting it if I take a conventional ship." Fortunately, a swift corvette could reach Mancroft from Cloudy Curtain in about nine to eleven days. "I still have some time."

From the sound of it, the so-called Groening mission required a lot of preparation. While Ves had already packed some stuff, he didn't feel confident at all.

"Hopefully my latest design is catching on. I need a lot of DP to buy some extra goodies."

His latest release was met with mixed reaction. Many of his fans ran to the game centers in order to try out the training mech. Others held off as they questioned the mech designer's sanity.

Joshua happened to be one of the fans. As soon as he left school, he returned home and hopped into his private simulator pod. He immediately bought the Old Soul with credits and entered the massive 100v100 Wartorn Instance with his newly purchased virtual mech.

He still took in the strange vibe that radiated out of his machine. Somehow, he felt as if the Old Soul was as eager to try out its capabilities as him. He certainly looked forward to trying out this eccentric mech.

"Training mech or not, you exist for a reason." Joshua whispered to himself and his virtual mech. "I don't believe Chasing Clouds has gone crazy."

Its release came as a bombshell. Cloudy Curtain's own mech designer suddenly published a new virtual mech, and it was a 2-star training mech! As soon as everyone heard those words, they got excited.

Once they looked at the Old Soul's specs, their enthusiasm quickly dashed. Almost all of his fellow classmates scratched their heads at the many limitations.

"You're not able to dial down the power of the rifle? Why don't you call it a cannon then! More importantly, even cannons won't stop after firing a measly six shots. How can this retarded design kill any mech with just six opportunities?"

"It's only able to fire once every two seconds. Do you know how long that is? By the time my next shot is ready, a skirmisher is already in my face!"

"This mech is completely helpless in melee! Only a wimp who never stepped into a cockpit in his entire life can come up with something so pathetic. It can't even win a knife fight against a 1-star mech!"

A lot of his classmates disparaged the mech, but Joshua had faith in his idol. Many of peers missed the Old Soul's incredible stealth, precision and power. Sure, it only excelled as a sniper, but wasn't that a great way to learn the ropes of a rifleman?

Of course, Joshua didn't need to play along. Due to his extensive tutoring, he already mastered the basics of marksmanship. His Old Soul leisurely stepped onto a heavily urbanized battlefield.

The battle this time entailed battling over a research institute. Both sides had to fight to maintain possession over the structure. Whoever occupied its grounds for ten minutes won the match.

"Let's find a good position."

Joshua separated from the crowd and lugged his mech towards the sides. He ducked down his mech or hid behind a corner whenever an enemy scout flew over his head. The Old Soul's passive dampening armor insured the scouts never noticed the sneaky mech.

"It's a lot better than I thought."

The welcome surprise emboldened Joshua to seek out a forward position. His fingers already itched the pull the trigger.

After several minutes of skulking he found a collapsed structure that looked over a burning spaceport. Joshua carefully controlled the Old Soul to crouch behind the debris. The mech settled in as best it could for a giant machine and waited for its prey to approach.

The massive conflagration released a huge amount of constant heat. The abundant thermal energy helped mask his Old Soul's presence.

His patient wait paid off when a trio of mechs came into view. One medium knight and one regular rifleman mech escorted a heavy four-legged artillery mech. It appeared the four-legged crawler wanted to find a good angle to bombard its enemy's rear.

"That just won't do." Joshua whispered to himself. After a brief moment's thought, he pivoted his rifle at the enemy's rifleman.

The rifleman posed the greatest threat to Joshua while also boasting the least armor. The knight and artillery mech on the other hand employed substantially more armor, to the point where Joshua doubted he'd be able to penetrate past their layers.

Joshua calmed down and regulated his breathing. His marksmanship tutor already hammered home the importance of maintaining control. His rifle poked out a low depression of fallen rubble and aimed straight at the wary rifleman mech accompanying the artillery mech.

The Old Soul came to life. Joshua vaguely sensed some bloodlust as he waited for the rifleman mech to come into medium range. Advanced targeting systems went to work, providing Joshua with a prediction of his opponent's movements and its weak points.

A tiny shift caused the rifle to be pointed over the enemy rifleman's left chest. The Old Soul's sophisticated sensors detected marginally higher heat at that position.

Thirty seconds, twenty seconds, ten seconds…

The procession neared Joshua's position. Once they came into medium range, Joshua pulled the trigger.

The air thrummed as a narrow gout of light and heat blasted through the air and impacted close to intended target's chest. Only a small portion of of the laser beam could be seen with the naked eye. Most of the energy fell outside the visible portion of the electromagnetic spectrum.

This basically meant that the Old Soul's laser beams looked deceptively weak. Unlike the more conventional laser cannons which blazed forth its payload with a visible swathe of violence, the Old Soul's highly modified laser rifle poked a narrow hole into its target like an unexpected crossbow bolt.

Seconds later, the stricken rifleman mech suffered a catastrophic explosion! The two accompanying mechs were caught completely off-guard as their companion's power reactor lost containment.

"Sniper!" The knight suddenly yelled and held its shield close to the startled artillery mech. "He's close! Shoot!"

The artillery mech's pilot quickly regained his composure and fired off an immediate volley in the direction of the laser beam's origin. The explosive shells covered a large swathe around the pile of rubble, turning the entire area into hell.

As soon as the first shells landed, Joshua triggered panic button. The Old Soul's particle generator quickly exploded into action and spurted out a huge amount of particles along with dark-colored vapor.

"Damn it! This smoke is in the way!" The pilot of the artillery mech cursed. "My sensors aren't picking up anything!"

While the enemy pilot considered bombarding the entire area with shells, Joshua had already made his getaway and waited for his rifle to shed its heat. He only fired a single shot, so it did not take too long for the rifle to become an unremarkable prop in the Old Soul's hands.

Joshua slowly circled his bewildered opponents. He set up his mech for his next attack. As long as his opponents failed to spot his mech, he insisted on pressing his advantage.

His rifle aimed at the bewildered knight's back. His skills and judgement combined with the Old Soul's targeting system made him target the lower back.

His rifle fired again. The narrow beam struck the knight square in its weaker rear armor and punched through until it struck the engine. The knight lurched as its movements hitched up. The attack hadn't killed the mech, but it succeeded in slowing it down.

The third, fourth and fifth shots exploited the vulnerability and took down the hapless knight.

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Joshua took down the enemy rifleman in one shot. The knight endured three more shots but fell after suffering another. The isolated artillery mech panicked after losing its companions and scurried back to base as fast as possible.

Sadly, heavy mechs tended to run at a crawl. Despite its lack of escorts, Joshua prudently slipped away. He shot five times in a single engagement and built up quite a bit of heat. His mech's internal heat sinks absorbed most of the heat so far, so his mech maintained a low profile.

"All of that heat will spill out if I stress the Old Soul's heat capacity."

The mech came with a very loud warning to never exceed this limit. Even if he had to let go of a juicy target, Joshua pretty much had no other choice.

He bunkered down his mech and waited patiently for the heat to disperse. Even as every other mech threw themselves into battle, the Old Soul stood as rigid as a statue, as if it knew its time hadn't come.

"It's different. It's the same." He muttered. The feeling of piloting any mech designed by Chasing Clouds always enchanted him. Other models felt cold and static compared to his home town mech designer's work. "It's like comparing a stuffed animal to the real deal. They're completely different even if they look the same."

While he didn't have the luxury of experiencing the Young Blood, the Old Soul felt like an unfeeling father. Sometimes Joshua shifted his actions without explanation, or start to question things when they didn't make any sense.

In hindsight, taking out two mechs in a matter of minutes should have been beyond him. Even with an overpowered laser rifle, a young potentate like Joshua wouldn't be able to kill a knight so easily.

He shook his head. "This rifle is amazing. It's able to melt through light armor in a single shot."

Every other weapon with comparable power weighed at least twice or thrice as much. The Old Soul's highly compact laser rifle allowed Joshua to wield it with much greater ease. Compared to all of these advantages, he completely didn't mind its limited heat capacity and enormous power drain.

Joshua resumed his hunt. He stalked towards the research institute, ignoring the couple of allies who wanted him to cover their backs. While it might help him out if he worked together with others, he kept longing for solitude.

"No one else will die if I screw up." He rationalized to himself. He frowned soon after. "It's just a game. Who cares about others."

Regardless of the reason, Joshua preferred to move alone. He slowly reached an open park. Above the trees, a couple of aerial mechs harassed each other with largely ineffectual rifle shots. Considering the skill level of the average Silver Leaguer, Joshua expected the stalemate to continue.

"They're not much better than I was when I started out with the Seraphim."

The main issue he had with the fight was that none of the flying mechs had the guts to close in. Joshua always learned from his tutors to be decisive and eschew battles of attrition. None of these dolts in the sky had learned proper aerial mech tactics.

His Old Soul found a convenient pile of crashed shuttles that gave it some cover against magnetic sensors. As the rifleman mech settled in, it aimed its weapon at the sky.

A minute passed by as the mech kept still. Every time Joshua wanted to pull the trigger, an impulse held him back. He somehow knew he wouldn't be able to take out his target. They moved too fast for him to land an accurate strike. Even the Old Soul's targeting systems strained to predict the movements of these idiotic fliers.

"My mech isn't meant to hunt this kind of prey." Joshua painfully admitted. "They'll swarm my position as soon as I shoot."

Flying mechs should be the Old Soul's fatal nemesis. They moved too fast to insure that any of its rifle's precious shots hit the mark. Even if Joshua activated the particle generator, his mech would easily be sniffed out by these perfect scouts.

Still, Joshua pushed back his unease and patiently waited for the fight to wind down. He knew that these mechs expended a lot of energy in their highly intense clash.

Just as he predicted, his side broke away first after one of their number fell. A trio of haggard-looking aerial mechs gave up on the duel and fled back to base.

The enemy team refused to let their opponents slip and chased after their prey. All of the fliers involved smoothed out their flight trajectories as they prioritized speed over evasion.

Joshua calmly tracked the opponent who lagged behind a bit due to battle damage. Once it crested over an apartment block, he fired.

The laser beam flicked out like a dark and struck the aerial mech's flight system. A veteran pilot would never fly his mech in a straight line, but Joshua's unfortunate victim obviously forgot that other enemies might be lurking on the battlefield.

The damaged mech lost altitude and crashed a block away from Joshua. All of the structures in the way prevented him from finishing the job. Instead, he patiently waited out the two seconds for his laser rifle to finish cycling and aimed the weapon at the faltering pursuers.

Just as they came around to the fact that they'd lost a companion, the Old Soul fired its rifle yet again. The laser beam struck the aerial mech square in its chest. Previous battle damage had already peeled away half of its layers. The beam burned through the remainder and carved a hole into the cockpit.

The dummy pilot inside the cockpit couldn't withstand the massive amount of energy. The dummy tragically evaporated into dust.

"You cowardly sniper!" The surviving enemy pilot raged from his mech. "I know where you're hiding. Prepare to die!"

Joshua fired twice at the incoming mech but failed to land a hit. Unlike his earlier victims, this guy remembered to dodge.

If the Old Soul possessed a normal laser rifle, then Joshua would be able to dial down the power setting and turn his rifle into a spitter. A rapid barrage of low-powered laser beams would enable him to track his opponent's flight.

Just as the enemy flier came into spitting distance, the Old Soul's particle generator released another charge. The thick and blurry cloud of black engulfed the flight mech in an instant. The pilot panicked a bit but quickly wrangled his mech back into control.

He guided his mech straight up in order to shake off the cloud. After gaining back some vision, the pilot tried to track down his hated opponent in order to avenge the death of his comrades.

"Where are you?!"

Had the sniper snuck away while he lost his vision? Or had the sneaky coward stayed in place, confident in the fact that no one could lay a hand on him under all of this smoke?

"Screw you!"

Just as the aerial mech flew away, a thin but deadly laser beam struck its vulnerable back and damaged the main power conduit that fed its hungry flight system.

It turned out that Joshua had lingered at the edge of the miasma. The Old Soul strained its sensors through the diminished concentration of particles and managed to pick up its opponent as soon as it ascended above the miasma.

With his prey losing altitude, Joshua directed his mech back into the miasma. With three shots left, he wanted to finish off the forcibly landed mech with a single shot. He carefully scoured the miasma and headed vaguely towards the middle.

He bumped into the crippled flight mech a few minutes later. The aerial mech incurred substantial damage from its harsh landing. While it tried to turn its rifle towards its hated opponent, the Old Soul moved first and fired straight through its damaged armor.

"That's four now." Joshua whispered to himself as he calmly dismissed his latest kill. "There's still another grounded mech."

The Old Soul hadn't reached its maximum heat capacity yet, so Joshua moved away from the dissipating miasma and tracked down his other prey. He found the crash site of the first aerial mech he shot and followed the debris to a shuttle garage where the wounded mech took stock of its damage.

"It's you!"

Joshua instantly silenced the enemy mech by shooting its cockpit. He didn't even need to adjust his aim in order to eliminate a sitting duck.

Cold satisfaction enveloped his being as he realized he shot down five mechs without suffering a single scratch. The Old Soul was a powerful mech in the right hands.

"This isn't a training mech. It's a killing machine."

He spent the next few minutes cooling down his mech before trudging towards the research institute. The match had reached its zenith as both sides tried to occupy the institute grounds.

Joshua lurked at the flanks and waited patiently for prey to come. He picked off three additional mechs in succession when they fled the carnage. The damaged mechs were easy pickings as Joshua took them out with grim satisfaction. His remarkable contribution titled the balance against his opponents, and his team succeeded in winning the match.

As the battlefield winked out, he leaned back against his pod. He thoroughly stomped the enemy team. None of them had expected to face a sniper on the battlefield. That might change once this model gained more popularity.

His virtual body left the cockpit now that the match had ended. Before he returned to the lobby, a strange message popped in front of his face.

[An agent of the designer of your mech requests permission to utilize your battle footage for promotional purposes. No credits or in-game gold will be exchanged. Do you wish to accept or deny this request?]

It took a few seconds for Joshua to parse the request. If he understood it correctly, then someone who worked for his favorite mech designer wanted to use his footage in a commercial.

"Oh yes! I accept!"

In the game centers throughout the planet, a new set of ads appeared. It showcased the best moments of the Old Soul in action. Curious visitors looked up at the projections as the distinctive mechs started to carve their enemies to pieces in just a couple of shots.

"Is that the new mech?"

"What the? Is that a rifle? It packs more power than a cannon!"

"Those stealth systems are unreal! They're walking right past that mech without a clue!"

Gavin Neumann looked on as the action-packed footage started to sway the crowd. He smirked contemptuously at the people who disparaged the same model an hour earlier. He hadn't even edited clips himself. Instead, he left it up to an automated program, which selected the most intense moments out of every battle record it received permission to borrow.

"I don't even have to lift a finger at this rate." He noted as some of the potentates started to hop inside their sim pods in order to emulate the incredible feats. "How can these idiots be trusted to defend our borders when they're easily misled by some cherry-picked footage?"

He opened his comm and pulled up the sales record of the Old Soul. As a publicist working for the LMC, he obtained a limited amount of jurisdiction in the company's virtual account. The numbers started to pick up from the dozens into the hundreds, and this was only the first day.

"They're all sheep."

The publicist knew that he had to promote his employer's latest design with a different approach than the Young Blood, which possessed a heroic bearing.

The rifleman mech's boring appearance and extreme specs turned off many potential customers. Thus, Gavin set out to ignore the masses and instead focus on the handful of talented pilots who knew what they were doing.

As expected, those who employed the Old Soul's advantages to the fullest racked up an incredible score. If he served them up to the skeptical masses, they'd start to question their first impressions and try out the mech for themselves.

Sadly, not everyone got the hang of the rifleman mech's quirks. Gavin took a look at the statistics and saw that its win rate ranked near the bottom of the pile.

The Old Soul required a specific mindset and set of skills to make to most out of it. Forget about skill level, most of the teenagers who tried out the mech lacked the patience to employ an ambush strategy.

He shook his head at their predictable behavior. "Musclebound idiots."

Even if a handful of angry customers started leaving bad reviews on the model's sales page, it didn't diminish its growing momentum. At this early stage, none of the game centers selected the Old Soul as their 2-star promotional mech. Everyone who tried out the mech this time had spent their hard-earned credits or gold to purchase the trending mech.

"This is all I can do for now, boss. We'll see whether your variant catches on as a training mech."

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Chapter 161: Molgon

No matter its actual sales performance, the Old Soul succeeded in rousing the locals. It turned into a ready-made conversation starter as people started to argue against or in favor of the so-called 'training mech'.

Many people who tried it out fell flat. Some walked away discouraged, while others persisted in their efforts and tried to master their new purchase.

Those like Joshua who trained rigorously were able to showcase the Old Soul's incredible potential. They gave hope to the masses that the model held a lot of potential. The mech's notoriously high learning curve turned from an impassable obstacle to a cliff that could be scaled.

Gavin's ads accelerated this trend by celebrating the most amazing plays. A few local prodigies even piloted the Old Soul for the sole purpose of showing up in a globally aired ad. Anyone worthy enough to appear in one of these ads enjoyed a lot of renown.

Thus, in a warped way, a lot of potentates began to polish their marksmanship after school. Anyone who failed to kill five mechs in a single Wartorn Instance match did not deserve to be called an elite.

Whatever the case, the DP started rolling in for Ves. He might reach the cap of 50,000 DP by the end of the month at this rate. "Too bad my model hasn't caught on abroad."

Only a few hundred virtual mechs got sold outside Cloudy Curtain. Beyond the initial sales, its momentum stagnated as the Old Soul's unimpressive specs and bad reviews left a foul impression.

In any case, the controversy surrounding the virtual mech succeeded in raising the profile of the Living Mech Corporation. Even the most remote villagers learned about the new mech manufacturer. Its modest catalog of virtual and real designs showed that the company had a lot of promise.

Almost everyone rooted for the company and its talented owner. No one wanted to see Ves fail in his ambitious venture. He became his home planet's sensation, to the consternation of some of the established powers.

"Events are proceeding in an unfavorable direction. The rising tide of military fervor will hinder our plans to ride the waves of the coming war."

"We are only two-thirds done with our preparations. We can ill afford a new variable."

"Let us wait until we convene the full group. We need to decide on a proper strategy to tackle this thorny problem."

Unaware of these shadowy threats, Ves invited everyone involved in his business. Ves sat on a sofa, cradling a still-recovering Lucky. His gem cat slowly repaired the battle damage suffered from their last encounter by consuming half of his mineral feedstock.

Calsie and Gavin sat together on another sofa. The two students chatted comfortably with each other. Raella and Melkor stood nearby, keeping a wary eye on Dietrich, who Ves had invited to the meeting on a whim.

Dietrich responded with a charming smile. "I don't know why you're looking at me this way, babe. I'm Ves' bosom friend. I even saved his scrawny ass from pirates!"

"I'm not interested in lowlife like you." Raella snorted at him before turning to Ves. "We've waited long enough. Let's get this show on the road, please."

"Alright." Ves responded, looking at each of his friends and employees in turn. "You're all here because I want you to know that I'll be gone for a few months. I've accepted a high-risk mission which will likely take me beyond chartered space. The highly confidential nature of my assignment leads me to believe that communication will be highly restricted for the duration."

"Woah, sounds like serious danger. Do you even know what you're facing?"

"Not yet, but the high remuneration leads me to believe that the risk of death may be real."

Dietrich looked more and more impressed. "You sure grew some balls last time we travelled together. Even I would step back if I'm faced with such a vague offer."

"It might be a little stupid of me to throw myself headlong into danger, but I'm confident that I'm up to the challenge." Ves explained. His bulging DP account gave him quite a few options should he face some sort of setback. "Besides, the organization I'm part of won't send me out to die."

The entire group digested his news with mixed emotions. His cousins already knew about his plans but underestimated the threat level Ves was willing to face. Even Raella started having second thoughts on her decision to accompany him on this expedition.

"What will happen to the workshop?" Carlos asked with an uncertain tone.

"You'll be proceeding with business as usual. I've been checking your work, and I'm satisfied with how far you've come. Keep coordinating with Marcella to fulfill her orders. In exchange, I'll be opening up my database for you. As long as you fulfill your daily quota of work, I'll allow you to peek at some of my books."

Carlos lit up at that news. While Ves learned most of his knowledge from the System or from the Clifford Society's exclusive libraries, he also purchased a handful of extremely expensive textbooks. Ves wouldn't get into trouble if he let one or two people borrow these virtual books.

"I won't fail you, Ves."

"Good. Coordinate with Melkor if the workshop is in danger. You're both in charge of the workshop's safety while I'm gone."

Ves turned to Calsie and Gavin. "The two of you will be in charge of our public relations. I don't want to return three months later facing a hostile crowd and taxes that have been jacked up through the roof. When will you approach the Republican Commissioner?"

"We can schedule an appointment with his office a week in advance." Calsie informed him. "Will you stick around to meet with him in person? This will go a lot easier if you talk to him face to face."

"I'm short on time. You're young, but you don't need my presence to back you up. Your work so far has impressed me a lot. Once you graduate, you're welcome to take up the mantle as my company's lawyer."

The offer certainly impressed the young girl. To be honest, Ves knew little about law outside of what he learned in his business classes, but he pretended otherwise in order to instill more pride.

A lot of things might happen in three months. He discussed the possible worst case scenarios with his friends and made sure they understood his intentions when formulating a response.

"What about me?" Dietrich asked. "So far, you've all been talking as if you're playing a business sim. Where's the exciting the part?"

Ves composed his face as he considered his friend. "We're friends, right?"

"Sure we are! Didn't I mention that earlier?"

"Then I'd like you to do me a favor." Ves requested and pulled the so-called Little Boss closer before summoning up his Privacy Shield.

The pair discussed something discreetly for a minute before Ves pulled down the Shield.

Dietrich slapped his back and smiled. "Don't worry Ves. I'll keep my eyes out."

With nothing else on the agenda, everyone dispersed. Ves and Raella had already packed their luggage. Everyone knew what they were doing and they'd be able to keep his Living Mech Corporation afloat without his presence hovering over their heads.

Once they stepped outside, a small armed convoy of shuttles awaited them in front of his workshop. Ever since the last attack, Ves decided to stop travelling on an unsecured commercial aircar.

"Perhaps I'll have to design my own shuttle." He idly wondered as he stepped inside the vehicle while holding Lucky.

Raella followed him inside and gazed at the sturdy armor fittings. "This looks pretty impressive."

"SASS always delivers, though I'm paying out of my nose to keep them happy."

Once they settled in, the procession ascended into the air. Just as they started to accelerate towards Cloudy Curtain's spaceport, Ves felt a familiar sensation brush against his sixth sense.

It tasted like a dark blizzard that raged across an entire continent. The force of this destructive wind engulfed everything in its way in an unstoppable avalanche of wind and frost.

Though the flavor had changed, it still brought the specter of death. "Sniper! Attack! Get down!"

Sanyal-Ablin's professionalism kicked into gear. Even as Raella looked at Ves as if he lost his mind, the escorting security officer immediately activated an unknown protocol.

Every shuttle descended with force, just as a flaming projectile slammed into the vehicle transporting Ves. The entire upper section of the shuttle tore apart from the incredibly powerful collision. The stricken vehicle lurched in the air as the pilot bled out of his ears.

The split-second descent had saved Raella's life. Ves had already jumped on top of her body in order to envelop her fragile body within his shield generator. They hadn't escaped danger, though, as his antigrav suit suddenly morphed into a vacuum suit.

"Poison!"

Ves cursed a bit because he knew his Shield Generator had to let in some air. His assassin came up with a clever solution to counter his strongest protection. If he didn't own a highly advanced and extremely expensive antigrav suit, he'd already be choking in his breath.

Instead, Raella remained exposed!

For all of her complaining and rebellious attitude, the woman was a Larkinson. She recognized the danger as soon as Ves mentioned poison. She clung to him while shutting her eyes and pressing her palms against her ears. She also held her breath, which allowed her to escape the worst of the effects so far, but that didn't help much if the poison spread through skin contact.

Lucky had also sprung into action. The alarmed cat activated his energy claws and tore out much of the damaged sections. This gave Ves enough of an opening to jump out of the slowly crashing shuttle while carrying her cousin.

Everyone else had already started to respond to the threat. One of the shuttles exposed a nozzle and sucked in all of the surrounding air, hopefully taking much of the poison with it. Another shuttle picked up the VIPs and brought them back behind the safety of the workshop's walls.

The workshop's entire security suite had flared to life. One of the turrets swung in the railgun's direction and fired off a destructive volley of shells.

The projectiles exploded upon impact, shattering the entire house in a shower of splinters and debris. The few residents present nearby screamed and ran away. A large stream of bots flew into the air before fanning out. Even as SASS began to sweep in the direction of the house, they also kept their eyes peeled for other threats.

Meanwhile, the shuttle carrying Ves flung open its doors, allowing a security officer with medical training to hose down the entire interior. Ves deactivated his shield generator, letting the fluid splash over his full-bodied suit.

He still fussed over Raella who started to show a lot of worrying signs. Despite her quick reaction, the poison had obviously found purchase in her body.

"What's going on with her?!"

"She's inhaled a significant dose of Molgon." The medical officer replied as he affixed some kind of tool over her mouth. Ves couldn't figure out what any of his instruments did. The lack of understanding scared him quite a bit.

"Is she dying?!"

"She's in a bad place but she'll make it. Whoever wanted to poison you stayed within the limits. Molgon isn't instantly fatal and can't be absorbed through skin contact, though it's extremely difficult to synthesize an antidote. However, I've stabilized her body. I have to bring her back to our branch office immediately."

The panic died down a few minutes later. SASS hadn't found any trace of the culprit, but they found pieces of a high-powered railgun in the wreckage of the house.

A heavier convoy of shuttles and mechs descended onto his workshop a moment later. They departed moments later. A handful of doctors already worked over Raella's reddening body.

Ves had to stay and let a bunch of experts isolate his body and take away his antigrav clothes. His worry was tempered by the fact that whoever ordered the hit didn't go too far.

One of the security officers informed him that if the assassin used something more dangerous, he'd be violating the MTA's guidelines against the use of nuclear, biological and chemical weapons. Once the MTA got onto anyone's tail, they usually suffered a brutal end.

He gritted his teeth at the thought of losing a family member. Perhaps he'd been too soft lately. He was tired of being someone else's punching bag.

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The journey to the Mancroft Independent Harbor had to be delayed. Ves along with the entire attack site had to be scrubbed clean in order to remove every trace of Molgon. As soon as he checked out, he boarded a more heavily armed shuttle along with Melkor and travelled to Sanyal-Ablin's headquarters.

Seeing Raella's still and vulnerable body being scanned and prodded by various kinds of medical instruments brought their moods to a low point.

"Will she be okay?" Ves asked softly.

One of the doctors nodded. "Miss Raella is a resilient mech pilot. Her implants and gene treatments have also contributed to her survival. It's a good thing your various countermeasures have activated so early. She'll make a full recovery after half a year of therapy."

Various coincidences allowed Ves to survive this attack unscathed, but he couldn't say the same to Raella. He resolved to gift his cousins at least one set of spare antigrav clothes. He already had a closet full of them so it hardly made a dent.

Ves had to cough up two million credits to pay for Raella's treatment, and that included a heavy discount. SASS must have felt a bit sorry for being caught off-guard by the assassination attempt. In any case, it was money well-spent as Miss Robyn assured him they treated Raella with Coalition-standard technology.

"Now that Raella is out of action, do you need me to take her place?" Melkor asked with a tone that suggested that he'd rather watch over of his cousin.

"No. I'm sure my client arranged his own security arrangement. You're better off keeping watch over my workshop. I don't want people messing around with my stuff while I'm gone."

Even if Ves forced Melkor to go along, the mech pilot would constantly worry about Raella. He decided to leave him at home and bring someone else. The only problem was that Ves didn't know anyone else who could take Raella's place.

Surprisingly, Melkor rejected his suggestion. "Your premises are already quite secure, and I'm confident nothing will happen to Raella. I know you need someone to watch your back, so don't refuse my presence."

"Alright. I'll arrange your mech to be moved to my corvette."

A few moments later, they entered a press room. A number of local reporters gathered here after passing stringent security checks. Their camera bots hovered behind their heads, ready to stream the upcoming press conference to the entire planet.

The attack at his workshop was one of the most dramatic events that had happened in recent history. Every citizen of Cloudy Curtain feverishly spread their gossip as they awaited some sort of official response.

The anemic local police services only issued a perfunctory statement while they were running around like headless chickens. This inadvertently gave Ves the chance to shape the narrative, according to Gavin's media savvy instincts.

Ves nodded at Gavin as he walked over to him. "How's the public taken it so far?"

"They're restless, excited and outraged." Gavin grinned, as if the assassination attempt actually pleased him. "The media aligned to the ruling coalition is already pressing for calm, but almost no one but their diehard supporters are paying attention to those channels. We've got a large portion of the population ready to cling to your words."

While Ves found it distasteful to take advantage of this situation, necessity compelled him to follow Gavin's suggestions.

They were in the light and their enemies were in the dark. No one stepped up to claim responsibility for the attack. In addition, events that happened in Bentheim and beyond might as well be on the other side of the galaxy as far as Cloudy Curtain was concerned.

"Good afternoon." Ves greeted the cameras as he stepped up to the podium. "Thank you for attending this press conference. My name is Ves Larkinson. I am an Apprentice Mech Designer under the tutelage of Master Carmen Olsen of the Vermeer Group. I recently founded the Living Mech Corporation here in my home planet of Cloudy Curtain."

All of the reporters already knew his background, but many of his viewers might not be aware. He deliberately mentioned his master's name in order to borrow some of her prestige. It forced those who normally dismissed low-tier mech designers to regard him seriously.

"Can you tell us what happened this morning?"

"Certainly."

Ves gave a brief and factual account of the sequence of the events. Various recordings had already leaked onto the galactic net, so no one learned anything new. He also left his shield generator and antigrav clothes out of his story. No need to give his enemies any ideas.

"Who is responsible for this terrible attack?"

Ves tried to maintain a composed expression. "I don't know, but I can think of several possibilities. Various people would like to see me gone. For instance, the ruling coalition has worked hard to ram a new tax bill through the Planetary Assembly that will drive me out of business."

Technically, he didn't lie. He let the reporters and the viewers who watched the broadcast connect the dots themselves. Even if it was on spurious grounds, everyone loved a conspiracy theory.

The Greens and the White Doves could issue as many denials as they wanted. It didn't change the fact that they regarded him with hostility. Could they have been responsible for the attack? Ves didn't think so, but he was willing to drag them through the mud anyway. Let the public decide the final verdict.

He continued to spin a misleading narrative that Gavin had carefully constructed. Ves had already received some coaching on what to say and what to leave out. Everything he said rang true, and thus should pass scrutiny should someone employ a sophisticated lie detector program.

Once he reached the end of the conference, he left behind a final statement. "I survived today not because of luck, but because this is my home. Don't believe in the naysayers and pessimists that we're only good for feeding Bentheim. The Living Mech Corporation's presence here represents my belief that we can be strong."

His words took everyone by surprise. Ves left the reporters behind as they digested his eloquent response. He nodded to Gavin who smirked like a cat who got the canary.

"You did an excellent job, boss. You didn't stumble on your words at all. The only fault I can find is that you've been acting a little too lively for someone who survived an assassination attempt."

"I can't help it." Ves chuckled a bit. "I keep thinking about how many mouthfuls of wine those loathsome politicians will spurt once they see my performance."

It thoroughly burned any bridge he had between him and the ruling coalition, but Ves didn't care. He bought himself some time. According to Gavin and Calsie, his performance should thoroughly pull the wind out of the sails of the tax reform bill.

One day later, a heavily armed convoy escorted by two aerial mechs landed inside a cordoned-off section of the spaceport. Several security officers accompanied by many bots kept their eyes peeled for trouble.

One of the central shuttles opened its hatch, allowing Ves, Melkor and Lucky to step outside. He turned to an escort and nodded his head. "Thanks for the ride."

Ves turned to the other side of the field and walked towards the parked corvette. The Barracuda regained her former glory after undergoing repairs. Her rear thrusters looked as pristine as the first day she came into his possession.

He also met the Barracuda's crew for the first time. A group of five stunning-looking women greeted his eyes. Even Melkor halted for a moment after seeing them together. Even as they dressed themselves in a formless blue uniform with the logo of the LMC plastered to their sleeve, they still looked like angels.

"Hello." Ves awkwardly said. "I'm your new boss."

"We know who you are." A redhead with the only hat replied. "Captain Amber Silvestra, at your service."

"First Class Engineer Ushra Jacobson, at your service." A dusky-skinned woman said.

"First Class Pilot Miranda Pham, at your service."

"Ship Security Officer Angie Sipos, at your service."

"Able Spacer Jenn Malcom-Stahl, at your service."

The way they spoke 'at your service' revealed they received extensive training. Ves could tell that they used to say those same words with charming voices and enticing smiles.

None of the women composed themselves as anything other than professionals today. Ves already got the lowdown from Marcella.

Evidently, the women worked for a company that operated luxury yachts. Among their regular duties of keeping the ships afloat, they also pampered their clients. A severe dive in fortune for the sleazy company forced them to let go of half of their employees, which included this tight-knit group of highly trained women.

Ves should feel lucky for snapping them up without giving up too many concessions. The total monthly salary they drew only amounted to thirty-five thousand credits a month, plus some extra hazard pay. He spent a lot more money keeping the Barracuda in tip-top shape.

Captain Silvestra gave him enough time to regard his new crew before speaking out again. "Just to be clear, sir, we expect to be treated with decorum. The prevailing employment laws gives us the right to refuse any unlawful or inappropriate orders."

"I have no ulterior motives." Ves sheepishly replied while raising his hands. All of the confidence he exuded during the press conference left his body. "The only thing I expect from you is to run the Barracuda."

Your corvette is an amazing ship. She's in the right hands. Let's get you all aboard."

As they entered the hatch, Silvestra reported the ship's condition. Ves barely understood the significance of her words. Still, they came fully stocked and prepared for a trip that might take them far from civilized space.

"How's our fuel situation?" He asked once they entered the central corridor. The crew dispersed to their stations.

"We're fully topped with high-grade fuel. Our mutual friend Marcella arranged a channel that we can use to procure a limited amount of fuel. It's not fully condoned so don't spread the word."

He nodded and let his strange crew do their jobs.

Captain Silvestra took the captain's seat while Ves and Melkor sat on the observer's seats. They strapped themselves in case of a bumpy ride.

"Do I have permission to lift off?"

"Go ahead, captain."

Under the expert control of their pilot Miranda, the corvette retracted her landing gear and slowly flew up into orbit. The well-built ship hardly shook as its thrusters worked hard to escape Cloudy Curtain's gravity well. A larger ship might have trouble accomplishing such a task in standard gravity conditions, but the small and sleek corvette possessed ample thrust.

"We've currently reached orbit, sir. Your orders?"

"Set course for Mancroft Independent Harbor. We're due in eighteen days."

Silvestra turned her seat to look back at Ves. "Do you wish to save fuel? We can save up to thirty percent of our fuel expenditure if we make short but frequent hops, though our FTL drive will also wear down faster."

Ves took a minute to mull over the question. Previously, he only needed to set the autopilot, allowing the ship make all the choices. "I'm not an expert, so I'll defer to your judgement. However, I can't arrive late, so I think it's best to play it safe."

"Very well, sir."

Captain Silvestra turned back to instruct Miranda to plot a course to Mancroft. The pilot cross-trained as a navigator so she expertly plotted a series of FTL transitions that took them through safe and well-known star systems. Unfortunately, the closer they got to Mancroft, the less settlements they'd find.

"The border regions are highly chaotic. Pirates as well as alien raiders frequently appear in this part of space."

"That bad?" Ves responded with a frown. "I thought the Common Fleet Alliance is supposed to keep a lid on the border."

Both the captain and the pilot looked at him like an idiot. "Space is big. Unimaginably big. To put it simply, it's a giant space which largely consists of nothing. There's no way any fleet can intercept an incursion."

"I heard the CFA possesses sensors capable of detecting any FTL transitions across many light-years of space."

"Even if they're able to detect them, they don't have the numbers to pursue every probe. They only muster up a couple of warships if they encounter a strong enough signal. The handful of corvette and frigate-sized vessels that routinely pass through the border practically do so with impunity."

It turned out the fleet assigned to the Komodo Star Sector possessed a lot less functional warships than their propaganda always suggested. It couldn't hold a candle to the core fleets stationed in the center of the galaxy.

"So in short, we're constantly at risk of encountering something dangerous."

"That's correct, sir. However, the Barracuda is one of the swiftest corvettes in this star sector. We can outrun any threats as long as we don't travel along a predictable course."

Ves nodded ruefully. He once navigated straight into a pirate ambush.

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Miss Miranda plotted a brisk course that brought them to Mancroft within seventeen days. She wanted to alternate between short and long hops in order to test and calibrate the brand new FTL drive.

"The core of the galaxy is familiar with this generation of FTL, but it's new technology to us. We need to establish a baseline so that we'll know how far we can push it. Corvette-class ships are especially known to have a generous threshold."

"And a threshold is?"

"How near we can transition into a star system. The threshold is mainly dependent on the relative mass between the ship and the destination's star."

"That sounds kind of dangerous." Ves apprehensively noted.

"Good thing we have a First Class Engineer, sir. Ushra has plenty of experience with pushing FTL drives to their very limits. Our former clients liked the thrill of jumping in deep."

Ves took her word for it. He hired them on exactly because he wanted more options in case they ran into any trouble.

While all of the crew engrossed themselves with their tasks, Ves and Melkor had a lot of time in their hands. Melkor sighed as he followed Ves out of the bridge.

"Raella probably would have loved to befriend your crew."

As the only two men on the ship, they both felt a bit out of place. Ves sighed. "I guess we're relegated to passengers. Let's prepare for the upcoming expedition. I don't know what kind of role you'll be able to play, but make sure you're ready to roll out if needed."

They passed the time in peace. Melkor spent most of his time down in the cargo bay. He used the cockpit of his rifleman mech as a simulator pod and feverishly trained his ability to shoot in zero-G conditions.

Unlike Dietrich's Harrier, Melkor's Stanislaw model lacked a flight system. Unlike the Old Soul, Melkor's rifleman was meant to fight a running battle. It featured a robust and powerful engine, allowing the Stanislaw to weave around various obstacles while spoiling the aim of its opponents. Its rapid-fire laser rifle excelled at wearing down mechs at medium range.

"Whoever was in charge of its maintenance did a great job." Ves declared once he finished going over the mech. It hardly required any tweaks.

"The Larkinsons know their mechs. We employ some of the best mech technicians in Rittersberg, you know."

Since Ves didn't have anything else to do at the moment, he returned to his stateroom and lazily browsed the galactic net. A bored Lucky jumped on his lap and made himself comfortable.

The ship's quantum entanglement node allowed Ves to keep in touch with the rest of the galaxy. He closely followed current events on Cloudy Curtain. The recent happenings along with his first press conference left people scrambling for answers.

The complacency on the part of the White Doves and the Greens left them ill-prepared to the sudden shift in public opinion. A large swathe of neutral citizens who never paid attention to politics became passionately involved once one of their own got hurt.

Ves found it rather funny that he ranked higher than the leaders who ruled the planet for many generations. The pacifists along with the consortiums standing behind them founded Cloudy Curtain and built it up into a quiet and idyllic farming planet over more than two centuries. Even now they directly or indirectly employed over half the population.

Despite all of their efforts, the founding elites garnered very little appreciation of the common folk. Their greed and their attempts to stall the development of what they thought was their own private playground worked against them this time.

All because of mechs. The current zeitgeist of this era revolved completely around the majesty of mechs. Even the lowliest of farmers and menial laborers were swayed by their primal urge to worship these gods of the modern age.

"Why does Bentheim attract all of the attention? We don't even have our own mech arena!"

"I told you that the man keeps pushing us down! The fat cats up in their towers drink their million credit wines every day while average folk like you and me can't afford a house!"

"Mechs! Mechs! Mechs! I want to see more mechs! I want to see them with my own eyes!"

"All of these mech heads have gone crazy! I can hardly walk my dog these days without hearing constant discussions on mechs."

Even the Pioneers started to join the bandwagon. They self-servingly took up his cause as if they never attempted to take advantage of him. Ves didn't know what to make of their support, but he welcomed their efforts anyway.

In any case, the White Doves and the Greens started to push back against the rising tide. Perhaps aware for the first time that ignoring the masses was a bad idea, they started talking about their upcoming plans to increase the planet's infrastructure spending.

In their words, the tax reform bill is needed to pay for better schools and hospitals. Every wealthy business has to make some sacrifices in order to increase the planet's quality of life.

Mysteriously, a lot of exemptions disappeared. In exchange, the bill subjected many industries to a less outrageous maximum tax rate. The clever maneuvering made it more difficult to say that the White Doves and the Greens favored their own little circle of friends over an outsider like Ves.

That didn't change the fact the Living Mech Corporation had to pay forty percent of its profits to the planet's coffers. While this sounded a little more reasonable compared to the previous rate, it still exceeded Bentheim's rate.

"These guys just don't know when to give up."

Hardly anything could compete against free goodies. Even the allure of mechs might lose out to personal benefits.

"We should strike while the iron is hot." Ves concluded, and his employees concurred. They already arranged an appointment with the Republican Commissioner. Hopefully his obligation to ready the planet for war won out against his restraint to favor one side over another.

The only time when everyone came together was when Jenn served dinner. As the most junior spacer on the ship, she generally handled the miscellaneous duties that didn't require a specialist, which also included cooking.

Jenn certainly knew her stuff, as every dinner had been sumptuous and filling. Everyone loosened up a little at this time, enough for Ves to pry open their mouths on why they decided to take up this post. He learned that they all earned generous tips in their previous jobs.

"It's never meant to be permanent." Ushra said. "We knew what we were getting into. It's one of the few opportunities commoners like us can afford our training. Do you know how expensive my engineering courses are? I'm thankful my old boss paid for it all."

All the other women had similar stories. Even if they possessed a small amount of talent, they lacked the opportunity to get into a decent school.

"You don't have to feel sorry for us. Our previous boss took great care of us. It's a shame he got caught taking bribes. When a bunch of us got laid off, we decided to quit the service industry."

"Why choose to crew the Barracuda instead of something larger or more professional?"

Captain Silvestra smiled at her crew. "We like to stay together. Our experience with pleasure yachts has left us with very few job opportunities. We don't have the qualifications to take up senior positions in passenger ships or transports. Those who offered to take us on all expect us to take up our former duties again."

Angie, their security officer, snorted in irritation. "Those slimeballs are ten times worse than our old boss. At least he ran a clean ship because he wanted to cozy up with the bigwigs. The other bosses in the service industry have powerful gangs backing them up. That lets them get away with certain things."

No one gave any examples, but Ves could make a few guesses. The major gangs that ruled most of the Bright Republic's underbelly didn't behave anything like Walter's Whalers. These weren't the cuddly ruffian hometown heroes who only beat up people once every month.

No, these shady enterprises ruled over a vast underground network that earned them billions of credits each year. With this much money at stake, none of these organizations pulled their punches.

"Well, I'm glad to have you with me." Ves admitted, feeling the need to reassure his crew that he didn't intend to operate in the same way as the service industry. "I don't expect to be travelling a lot with the Barracuda, but whenever I do, we might be heading towards danger."

"We don't have a problem with that." Silvestra replied with a casual expression. "Our training combined with the capabilities of your Arkon-class corvette will see us through."

Ves had the feeling they might even come to embrace any crisis that might pop up. Resolving difficult situations would certainly prove that they were good for something more than flirting with the rich.

Personally, he didn't mind if they wanted to pad their resumes. As long as they stuck around for a few years, Ves was willing to grant them several allowances. He knew he wouldn't be able to motivate them with his charm, so he could only use obvious incentives to motivate his crew.

"Do you happen to be familiar with the Mancroft Independent Harbor?" Ves asked.

"It's a typical frontier den out here in the most remote corner of the galaxy. A bunch of ex-pirates, mercenaries and desperate merchants have made themselves home there. They make their living by exploring the uncharted stars on both sides of the border."

"What about the sandmen?" He pressed, this time mentioning the aliens who occupied the stars just over the border next to Mancroft. "Those silicon-based lifeforms are known to be extremely aggressive against humans. I'd figure they'd be livid if a bunch of fortune seekers rummage around their territory."

"You aren't wrong, but the situation is a bit more complex." Silvestra replied with a serious expression. "The human race has a tendency to look at space as something we own or something that other races own. It's an incredibly simplistic way of looking at the effective territory we own."

"How do you see space, then?"

"A vast sea of unimaginable distances, dotted with the occasional islands. Every island is a star. Every race can only really exert their influence on solid ground. No one is able to claim the vast seas."

"I see. So the sandmen have a different perspective on the border than us?"

"They're pretty weird in many ways. What else can you say about a huge collection of tiny sand-like creatures? In any case, we suspect that the sandmen don't even know their own borders."

No one knew how the sandmen organized themselves. Only a bit larger than a grain of sand, they acted much like insect hives. Individually, they were weak and inconsequential. They grew much scarier once they clumped up into a gathering the size of a mountain.

Researchers have found that the sandmen combined their processing power into hive minds when that happened. The larger the group, the scarier their thoughts. Sadly, they never appear to possess emotions, and could hardly outthink a six-year old human child.

Their native, incomprehensible technology was the only reason why humanity took them seriously. Certain anomalous sandmen centered around a core of various kinds of exotic materials somehow managed to develop a workable form of FTL.

This turned the race into a menace, as each major invasion saw entire planets engulfed in waves of sandmen who propagated easily. They normally multiplied slowly by absorbing the energy of a sun, but whenever they encountered an active power source, they ballooned in numbers.

"The sandmen normally don't bother with most small vessels. The CFA thinks that they are constantly weighing the amount of energy they have to expend compared to what they might gain if they catch an intruder. Anything that results in a net loss of energy means that they won't lift a finger."

Ves found Captain Silvestra's explanation fascinating. Despite the state of total war between their two races, the sandmen didn't often pose a threat. Outside of their major extinction-level invasions, they were content to hold on to their existing territories.

"It's likely my mission will take us into sandmen space. Do you have any advice you'd like to share?"

"Yeah. Take a good look at the fleet you're going to be a part of. The larger the ships, the higher the chance you'll provoke a reaction from the sandmen. No one knows why, but they're just as capable of detecting ships in FTL as the CFA. The little creepers probably took over a CFA flagship and reverse engineered our technology."

That sounded fairly important. Perhaps the Barracuda would be able to outrun the sandmen, but if his client wanted Ves to stay on his own ship, then he might be stuck with the rest.

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According to the CFA, the sandmen thought on an entirely different level. To these intelligent clumps of sand, everything consisted of either matter or energy. They viewed the human race and their many ships and settlements in the same way as a rock or a tree.

Though humanity only had a limited glimpse on what went on in their core territory, it appeared they lacked a complex society. Their culture was nonexistent and their society consisted of a one-dimensional hierarchy based on the value of their composition.

"They're not a race we can talk to." Captain Silvestra said as everyone finished their dessert. "It's either kill or be killed. Energy weapons aren't very effective but high impact damage will do the job."

"Since they're so dangerous, why do people keep invading their space, if you can call it that?"

"As a silicate-based lifeform, they're extremely obsessed with rare and valuable minerals. Their higher castes have a tendency to hoard exotic minerals for years before processing them or shipping them to their core territories. As long as you're not afraid to die, a strike group can easily overwhelm a smaller colony and make off with a large amount of exotics."

While the larger conglomerations of sandmen posed a great threat, the smaller groups tended to be slow and stupid. As long as the raiders left before reinforcements arrived, they stood to gain a handsome profit.

Everyone dispersed after dinner. Ves got a lot more stuff to think about. The dangers and opportunities one could find in the border region could easily enrich a daring prospector.

Much of the space in the core regions of the galaxy had already been mapped out and claimed by various powers. Only at the vast rim of the galaxy could someone change his fortunes after stumbling across an untapped windfall.

Midway into their journey to Mancroft, Ves received a surprising call.

Master Olson personally summoned him to her virtual abode. He immediately dropped whatever news program he idly watched and connected to the one-time address he'd been given. His stateroom's top-quality projectors strained to portray the majesty of her surroundings.

Ves beheld the famed Titanium Garden for the very first time. It existed both in real space and in virtual space, and both looked magnificent in different ways. The virtual version looked like an endless three-dimensional titanium garden.

The virtual garden had no up or down. Small plots of soil rested atop titanium enclosures which themselves connected to other plots via various vine-shaped titanium lattices. The mixed orientation and the fact that the water that flowed between them never fell outside their channels made it clear that gravity worked inconsistently in this space.

Despite the mind-boggling complexity involved in its construction, the entire garden appeared to exist in harmony. Ves did not get a headache even after he tried and failed to derive some pattern out of the random environment.

A soft clap interrupted his thoughts. He moved his body and saw that his master rested on a divan in the center of an alien garden. Blue grasses and red leafs swirled around her position like how planets revolved around the sun. The moving foliage presented him with an enchanting sight, especially when the plot appeared upside-down in his perspective.

"Come on down." Master Olson said, gesturing her carefully manicured hand towards another bench that appeared from the grass. "There are a couple of matters that we must discuss."

It took some time for Ves to figure out how to flip his perspective and land on the bench. He looked up at Master Olson like a schoolkid eager to begin his first lesson.

"How are you today?"

"I'm good. I'm currently on my way to Mancroft."

"I am aware of your mission." She responded in an elegant fashion, the many jewels adorning her head tinkling with a distinct melody. Her brilliant blond locks flowed with the wind, which markedly contrasted with the blue and red foliage. "It is not to be taken lightly."

If his master went out of her way to call him directly, then Ves might be in danger. "Is the Groening mission that dangerous?"

Her cool eyes continued to bore down on his sitting form. "Do you know that I have been nurtured by the Vermeer Group for more than eighty years?"

He nodded.

"I started my training in a batch of thousands. In order to meet the expectations of the Vermeer Group, we competed directly against each other for resources and attention."

Ves hadn't heard about this at all. Her public biography only briefly mentioned a dry statement that she had been nurtured by the Vermeer Group in a secretive experimental training program. Ves wondered why she narrated her own back story.

"Compared to my brothers and sisters, I was not the most intelligent nor did I make the most friends. Yet after eighty years, only I am able to reach the Master level. Do you know why?"

He shook his head.

"I treated myself harshly. Where my rivals studied five courses, I studied ten. When they gained some experience by taking an easy mission, I took an assignment that sent me straight to an active battlefield. I never slacked off in my pursuit for knowledge and power."

Ves started to understand why she told him this story. "Every great mech designer has worked hard to reach their positions."

"Hard work is not sufficient." She gently chided him. Her eyes grew chillier by the second. "Ruthlessness is needed above all. Everyone starts the same. Only by subjecting yourself to pressure will you be able to break and reforge yourself into something more than human. Only by reaching beyond the limits imposed by our flesh will you be able to reach the Senior and Master level and craft many wonders from your mind."

It sounded like she referred to some great secret or truth. Ves started to get a little lost. "So is it a good or bad thing that I'm taking the Groening mission?"

"Let me put it this way. Your current chances of survival is less than twenty percent."

Ves wanted to argue her estimate. It sounded exaggeratingly low and likely didn't take into account his System-derived advantages. Yet even with a couple more tricks, how much of a difference did they make?

"To be frank, this mission is rather ill-conceived." She heartlessly continued. "Your client is relies too much on borrowed intelligence, and therefore instinctively assumes no other threat exists. Unfortunately for you, it is too late to forfeit the mission."

It sounded like even Master Olson became concerned. "What are your intentions? Do you want me to back out anyway?"

Backing out of a mission that he already accepted pretty much ruined his standing with the Clifford Society. Ves would suffer a heavy blow, but at least he'd be able to survive. Unlike the other Society members, Ves had access to other channels such as the System and Master Olson's own organization.

She looked at him with disappointment. "Have you been listening?"

Ves started to sweat as he put his mind on her words. What did she mean? She started telling him that she began her training program along with many chosen. In the end, only she had been able to reach the eminent status of a Master Mech Designer.

"I see." The answer became obvious. "The greater the pressure, the more you gain."

"As long as you survive."

"I won't back out then." He replied with a firmer tone. Even if he lacked some confidence in himself, he still believed in the power of the System.

Master Olson smiled as if he gained her approval for the first time. "Very good. Now that you have shown your resolve, I'm willing to pass on some of my teachings. You will find it very useful in your upcoming mission."

His eyes shone wide at her boon. He never expected his master to teach him this early. The value of a single session from a grand Master Mech Designer was immeasurable!

"Before I start my lecture, there is one more lesson you need to learn."

"Yes?"

"Do you know what happened to my rivals once I reach the Master level?"

Ves never heard of anyone who rose up in the Vermeer Group in the last couple of decades. Had the Vermeer Group forced them into obscurity?

"I killed whoever remained alive. Even the Vermeer Group had to stand aside." She responded with a modest grin that hinted at a great amount of enjoyment. "Do make sure to deal with your enemies thoroughly if you ever find yourself in a position of power."

Her words aimed right at his heart. Ves made quite a lot of enemies, from Carter Gauge to the Ricklin Corporation. Many of these influences completely dwarfed his own. Even if they constantly threatened his life, Ves could only keep his mouth shut.

That might not hold true in the future. When he eventually rose up to become an influential mech designer, he'd be able to contend with the most powerful influences on an equal level.

That was when he should retaliate in earnest. Master Olson wanted him to never forget a slight.

Still, Ves couldn't quite believe that all of her competitors deserved to die. He refrained from following up with another question. Best not to provoke her any further.

Once she made sure that Ves understood her lesson, she began to lecture him about mechanics and the connection between force and energy.

After a brief introduction, she changed tack. "Let me ask you a question. Why do mechs still resort to low-tech armament such as swords and shields? In human history, there was a time when melee combat has phased out. Much of our current non-mech technology such as tanks and spaceships rely exclusively on the power of their ranged weapons. Why do mechs operate on a different paradigm?"

Ves already learned the answer in his previous studies. "Because mechs possess enough armor and mobility to circumvent a force that completely relies on fighting its opponents at a distance. When an enemy gets close enough to punch you in your face, a railgun won't be of much help."

"The key here is to recognize that the confluence of unique properties allow for the anachronism of melee weapons to play a role. Do not disdain their use. So long as mechs are fast and resilient enough to withstand a number of laser beams or kinetic projectiles, there will always be a use for close quarters combat."

Many experts once predicted that the need to resort to primitive weapons would phase out with the development of deadlier firepower. Mechs would become more civilized just as humans evolved from using clubs to using guns.

Over the past couple of centuries, the power of lasers, ballistics and missiles had indeed grown in power.

The difference between the first generation and the current generation of weaponry was substantial. Even the cheapest currentgen laser rifle could bore a hole through the sturdiest first generation mechs.

Yet those who developed better armor systems never fell behind for long. After they exhausted the means to develop more resilient armor with conventional alloys, they resorted to developing incredibly resilient armor through the use of exotic materials and techniques like alloy compression.

"Since the level of firearms and armor has advanced to significant heights, how are melee weapons able to keep up?"

Ves knew the answer, though he didn't learn this from any of his courses. He possessed a decent amount of experience working with various generations of mechs, from the 1-star Fantasia to the 5-star Caesar Augustus. That gave him a lot of perspective on the gradual evolution of mechs.

"The amount of force exerted by mechs have also increased over many generations. The average size and mass of mechs increases bit by bit every year. The power of their engines and the effectiveness of their artificial musculature has also experienced several breakthroughs."

"That is correct." Master Olson nodded. She sprinkled her fingers, which summoned up a projection of various designs. They all focused upon the methods in which they provided the limbs with mechanical force. " Now, let me open your mind to the power of battle mechatronics."

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Ves learned a great deal from Master Olson's personalized lecture. She tailored her teaching to him in a way that constantly challenged his assumptions while never straying beyond his capabilities.

She loved to illustrate her point through examples. Many times, she brought up various designs and noted what they did right and what they did wrong. Then she changed to a different but somewhat similar design and prompted Ves to do the same.

While he didn't always answer correctly, the speed in which he internalized her lessons surpassed her expectations. His rapid progress allowed him to go through a lot more topics.

"Battle mechatronics is the study and application of machines purposed for war." She noted at the start. "In the mech industry, this specifically refers to designing and optimizing a mech for melee combat."

Any mech designer with ambitions to design an original mech required some knowledge of battle mechatronics. It provided them with a number of approaches on how to design and shape the overall frame in a way that maximized its power and efficiency.

Ves learned many different methods on how to apply his new knowledge. He learned to look at mechs with a different eye. He could tell how fast a mech could run by the length and configuration of its legs. He could also estimate the amount of power a mech would be able to exert from the proportions of its various limbs.

Besides refreshing the basics, Master Olson focused much of her valuable time on teaching him how to toughen up a mech. Ves already learned to increase a mech's integrity through increasing its redundancy and compartmentalization. Those worked best at mitigating ranged damage.

No matter how much he increased a design's RF and CF, it all meant nothing if a huge impact shook the fragile internals. Certain sensitive parts such as processors and tiny mechanical components wore out really fast if subjected to heavy shock.

Master Olson therefore taught him how to mitigate these impacts by hardening the most sensitive components. Besides adding a large amount of buffer materials, he also learned few clever design tricks that could dampen and negate heavy impacts.

At the end of the session, his master looked at him with a tired but satisfied expression. "You have a very bright and focused mind. You're a perfect pupil. It is unfortunate that you have passed the optimal age for me to induct you as a core disciple. You must walk your path on your own."

Ves didn't mind her regretful words. He cherished his freedom. Becoming her core disciple meant he'd be able to obtain a lot of opportunities as well as frequent tutoring from one of the greatest mech designers in the star sector. Anyone else would kill their mothers for such a chance.

"I'm grateful for your efforts, master. Your teachings have truly opened my eyes."

The specific content of her lecture went beyond the basics of what he might learn from a course in Leemar. Master Olson added quite a bit of personal insights in her teachings.

As a specialist in mechanics and engine design, she possessed a unique design philosophy on how to design a mech. Master Olson heavily favored designing mechs that were built to last. Experiencing such a perspective from an eminent master was a privilege enjoyed by very few mech designers. He essentially started with a leg up from his competition.

Once Master Olson cut off the call, Ves sat back in his stateroom and internalized what he learned. His master had also passed on a supplementary textbook that provided him with the underlying data and formulas to apply the various methods.

Fortunately, it didn't come with the ridiculous security measures that the Clifford Society liked to use on its more valuable books. As Ves already understood the essence of the field, he only required a week to master its contents. He called up his Status.

[Status]

Name: Ves Larkinson

Profession: Apprentice Mech Designer

Specializations: None

Design Points: 33,216

Attributes

Strength: 0.8

Dexterity: 0.8

Endurance: 0.8

Intelligence: 1.8

Creativity: 1

Concentration: 1.7

Neural Aptitude: F

Skills

[Assembly: Apprentice - [3D Printer Proficiency III] [Assembler Proficiency III]

[Battle Mechatronics: Apprentice

[Business: Apprentice

[Computer Science: Incompetent

[Electrical Engineering: Apprentice - [Structural Pathway Configuration II]

[Mathematics: Journeyman

[Mechanics: Journeyman - [Jury Rigging II] [Speed Tuning III]

[Metallurgy: Journeyman - [Alloy Compression II]

[Metaphysics: Incompetent

[Physics: Journeyman - [Directed Energy Weapon Optimization II] [Lightweight Armor Optimization I] [Mediumweight Armor Optimization III] [Melee Weapon Optimization II]

Abilities

[Superpublish: Available. Can be activated once a year.

Evaluation: A young but foolhardy mech designer who braves danger like a moth drawn to flame.

His Status hadn't changed much. He mainly noted that he earned a fair bit of DP. His virtual mechs sales continued to grow apace since he departed from Cloudy Curtain. While the sale of the Young Blood had already slowed down, the Old Soul started to gain a cult-like status.

"The mech trainees consider your rifleman model to be a milestone that they need to master." Gavin told him in a regular report. "Anyone who isn't able to employ the Old Soul in its intended role is regarded as trash."

Ves didn't know what to think about his words. He knew that Gavin had a hand in encouraging this behavior. His task was to drive up the model's sales.

In any case, it didn't sound very serious and it might benefit the young potentates in the future if they mastered the Old Soul's patient piloting style.

What Ves noted next on his Status was that Battle Mechatronics turned out to be a main skill. Technically, it incorporated many insights from Mechanics, Electrical Engineering and even Computer Science in order to provide it with a foundation on how to design a mech from scratch.

Thus, Ves considered it to be a fusion skill of some sorts. Without a sufficient foundation in the three foundational skills, he'd never be able to master Battle Mechatronics so easily. Still, even if his Computer Science skill fell behind, his current focus on hardening the internals required little knowledge in that field.

He considered sparing some of his ample DP into shoring up this lacking skill, but shook his head. "I don't think I'll need to mess with the programming of a mech anytime soon. It'll be important once I begin to design an original mech, but for now there's little use."

A day after he reached Apprentice-level in Battle Mechatronics, the Barracuda finally made its way to the Mancroft System.

A dim red dwarf star in the center of the system provided pathetic amounts of light to its anemic pair of planets. Red dwarfs were considered the runt of the galaxy, the cheap mass-produced version of a star that burned extremely slow but lasted quite a long while as a result.

None of this mattered much except to illustrate the star system's overall lack of value. The only true satellite of any consequence was its gas giant. The yellow pearl-like planet contained significant traces of an essential ingredient in the synthesis of high density ship-grade fuel.

The fact that such a common red dwarf possessed such a valuable gas giant caused plenty of people to scratch their heads. It was as if an old farmer had married a gorgeous supermodel.

"That's the CFA's fueling station. Best not to go anywhere near that place." Silvestra noted as she switched the main display to a close-up to the station in question. It orbited lazily over gas giant. A fair number of harvester vessels flew down to the upper layers of the gas giant and gently scooped up some gas before returning home.

A small patrol of warships made sure that nobody would have any ideas on the station. It consisted of two destroyers and a small flotilla of frigates, enough to threaten any casual pirate incursion. No matter how many mechs swarmed the patrol, the warships would quickly tear them to pieces with its abundant rapid-fire cannon turrets.

It took only a couple of hours for the Barracuda to traverse past the orbit of the gas giant and enter the inner system. A red dwarf massed fairly light, which meant that ships of any kind would be able to transition closer to the center. This saved everyone a lot of time.

"We're thirty minutes away from the Mancroft Independent Harbor. Whatever poses as their traffic control is already hailing us." Captain Silvestra reported to Ves.

"Has anyone else sent a message to us?"

"Besides the usual unwanted solicitations, no, sir."

"Then do what you think is best."

She nodded to him and turned back to send a brief reply. "We'll take up orbit around Mancroft I and keep our distance from others. I suggest you make sure your pilot cousin is ready to enter his mech at any time. We might need to show some muscle from time to time in order to deter the scum from having any ideas."

The ramshackle space station acted as the only other populated presence in the system. No one bothered to colonize the ugly grey planet it orbited, so every ship in the neighborhood flocked to the so-called independent harbor.

The space station had a mundane history. Shortly after the CFA built its fueling station, a gang popped out of nowhere and funded the construction of a passable space station. Led by the Bosey Clan, this group possessed enough strength and foresight to hang on to power and turn their little space station in a regular stopping point for fortune seekers.

"All kinds of people flock to the galactic rim." Silvestra explained with a patient tone. Ves would just keep asking if she didn't answer. She summoned a couple of auxiliary projections that showed the other ships in orbit. "The line between scavenging and pirating is often blurred this far out from any central authority. Even the CFA can't do much about to enforce the law in these parts."

The galactic rim encompassed billions of stars and many light-years of space. The portion that fell under the purely administrative borders of the Komodo Star Sector already encompassed many millions of stars. Even if the regional density of stars was low, many treasures could be found so long as you picked the right star.

"How are the Boseys still in power?" Ves curiously asked. Some of the vessels in orbit looked large enough to field entire companies of mechs. If every ship in orbit disgorged their mechs, they'd surely be able to overwhelm the space station.

"They never pushed the line. The Boseys know that people can easily choose to go somewhere else to perform their trades, so they don't even bother taking a cut. They make a decent living by buying low from treasure hunters and selling high to their contacts back in civilized space."

It sounded smart. Their generous treatment allowed them to make lots of friends.

"The Mancroft System is fairly close to the border. Has the space station ever been attacked by the sandmen?"

"Never. Red dwarfs are a dime in a dozen. They're dim, so they don't provide the sandmen with a lot of energy. Its low mass also makes it hard to navigate. Furthermore, they're also poor in resource endowments. Therefore, sandmen rarely bother to visit red dwarfs like Mancroft."

No wonder the Boseys chose to construct their space station in this system. It not only has easy access to premium fuel, it also provides safe harbor against the sandmen.

Since no one else hailed his ship, it meant his client must be somewhere else at the moment. With a few days to spare, Ves considered paying a visit to the space station. This was the true frontier of human space.

"Is it safe to visit the harbor?" He asked, gesturing towards the large but aging space station and the handful of ships currently docked in its piers.

"Not without an escort or some assurance." The captain replied. "The Boseys might control the station, but for all their pretenses of declaring the harbor a fourth-rate state, it's still a den of thieves."

"That's a shame." Ves knew better than to tempt fate. Already he could feel invisible eyes staring at his brand-new ship. A shiny Arkon-class corvette presented a very valuable prize to those who valued absolute speed. "Keep me posted on any incoming hails."

With nothing else to do than wait, Ves returned to his stateroom and resumed his preparations. Ever since his master warned him about the dangers, he stopped treating the mission like a vacation.

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Two days later, the Mancroft System welcomed an intimidating fleet of vessels. Over ten different spacecraft of various sized revolved around a sizable ship the size of a jumbo transport.

The flagship was a bona-fide mech carrier. Her mech carrying capacity surpassed all the other ships in the system. Like a queen returning to court, the carrier trudged slowly towards the inner system with her escorts leading the way.

Ves received an alert from Captain Silvestra and entered the bridge. "That's a really big ship."

"She's a military surplus fleet carrier. She's meant to carry over two companies of mechs."

Her length from bow to stern reached two kilometers. She took on a long but fairly stubby profile, which reduced her efficiency when transitioning to FTL but allowed her to carry large amounts of mechs and goods in her abundant holds.

"Frankly, she's not a ship that should thrive out here in the rim." Silvestra added, disapproval apparent on her face. "Three or four civilian large transports can carry the same load as that carrier with a fraction of the cost. The amount of money that you have to spend on fuel and crew to keep this boondoggle running day by day must run in the millions of credits."

That made Ves regard the former fleet carrier in a different light. Her flamboyant orange and pink coating made it clear that no government authority currently commissioned the ship. A private outfit must have snapped up the vessel and turned her into a mobile base.

There must be thousands of people crewing the ship and her many mechs. Even in a heavy populated system such as Bentheim, the large amount of mechs could certainly pose a threat.

About half an hour after the emergence of the carrier fleet, the Barracuda received a new hail. The flagship directly sent some codes along with the message that made it clear that the newcomers had some connection to the mission.

"Accept the hail. Let's see if they're the ones I'm supposed to meet."

The central projector lit up and displayed the upper body of a uniformed bridge officer. "Greetings. Am I speaking to Mr. Larkinson of the Barracuda?"

"That's correct."

"Lord Jeremiah Kaine has been expecting your arrival. We'd like to cordially invite you to attend a banquet aboard the Ark Horizon. Our ship will dispatch a shuttle at the appointed time, so please maintain your current orbit."

"Understood. I'll be ready to attend the banquet."

The communications officer cut off the hail after a perfunctory goodbye. Ves stared at the display and counted the number of escorts that flew around the Ark Horizon. How many more ships would join the fleet in the coming days?

"Your thoughts, Silvestra?"

His captain shook her head in disapproval. "A conventional fortune seeker rarely needs an entire fleet carrier to explore the frontier. You can't make a profit if you are saddled with too many assets. This doesn't look like a normal expedition at all. It seems to me that they're prepared to conduct a full-blown raid into hostile territory."

That made some sense, but Ves believed there had to be another reason. "Lord Kaine requires the services of a mech designer, and I doubt it's because he wants me to optimize his mechs against the sandmen. There are plenty of specialized mechs on the market that do a better job."

Not anyone would hire a mech designer on a whim. For a mech designer to do a good job, the client has to provide him with an intimate understanding of their current disposition of mechs. If their blueprints and other essential data fell into the wrong hands, they'd be vulnerable to targeted attacks.

In any case, his boss summoned him to his ship, so Ves had no choice to attend. He left the bridge and informed Melkor that he should dress appropriately.

Ves planned to bring his cousin along as a guard. To be honest, it was pointless for Melkor to act as a guard because as soon as they entered the belly of the beast, they'd be completely at the mercy of Lord Kaine's security contingent.

"I just want to make a statement to my client. Wherever I go, you'll be following closely behind. If I'm supposed to work on Lord Kaine's mechs, then I will likely stay aboard the Ark. I'll request your Stanislaw be moved to the Ark Horizon if they still have space."

"What about the Barracuda?" Melkor asked with a touch of concern. "She's an extremely expensive ship. I don't think it's a good idea to lose her only deterrent against bad intentions."

While his cousin might have a point, Ves had other considerations. "Your rifleman mech lacks a flight system, so it won't be of much use in defending my corvette. The Barracuda is fast, nimble and observant. She won't be letting anyone get close in the first place."

Besides having a trustworthy family member at his side, Ves also wanted to borrow his keen perception. Perhaps his cousin might pick up on something.

"They'll confiscate my visor if I bring it aboard their ship. It's customary for guests to bring in only a minimal amount of electronics when they visit someone else's spacecraft. I will replace my current visor with a low-tech version that will pass their inspection."

Ves didn't even know that Melkor owned another visor. "If that's what you think, then go ahead."

They returned to their own rooms to prepare for the upcoming banquet. Ves already wore his antigrav clothes, so he simply changed its setting to a fancier looking outfit. After that, he sat on his bed and petted Lucky who wandered over his lap.

"I'll have to bring you along as well." He told his cat. "Stick close to me and don't nose around too much. I doubt our hosts will appreciate your presence if you make a stink."

Lucky meowed at him indignantly, but quickly resumed his purring when Ves stroked his back.

Although he appeared calm, Ves actually had a lot of concerns. A major expedition made a lot of noise wherever it traveled. "One thing is for sure. Lord Kaine has a lot of money to throw around."

His client must have promised the Clifford Society a lot of things in order to offer the mission to its Knights. This gave Ves an idea of what kind of returns Lord Kaine was aiming at. You don't fund a massive fleet carrier in order to pick up a few rocks.

Ves could speculate all day, so he busied himself with rereading Master Olson's latest textbook. Even if he mastered most of the theory, he still wished to brush up on its more abstruse concepts. The book hinted at many possible directions a mech designer might choose to pursue.

For example, Master Olson pursued the limits of endurance. Ves didn't have a good grip on her exact design philosophy, but from the examples he browsed from the galactic net, she obviously preferred to design mechs that lasted long and could take a beating.

As a fairly recently ascended master, she only just started to spread her wings in the upper echelon of the mech industry. Ves knew that once a master reached the pinnacle of their field, they shored up their other skills in order to broaden their knowledge.

Master Olson hadn't yet finished that stage, so most of her models remained fairly one-dimensional in their properties.

Nevertheless, her extreme focus on this aspect bled through to Ves. Having experienced a lecture and reading through a textbook that she personally penned, he gained a lot insight on how to prolong the operating time of a mech.

Considering the vast undertaking this expedition represented, Ves had a feeling he might be hard pressed to apply his new methods.

Time slowly passed as the procession of ships reached Mancroft I and took up a high orbit around the lifeless planet. A dozen different shuttles disgorged from one of the carrier's hangar bays and approached the ships that continued to guard over the capital ship.

One of the shuttles approached the Barracuda. The slim short-ranged spacecraft smoothly came to a stop next to the docking hatch of the corvette. A thin collapsible jet bridge extended from the sides of the hatch and carefully mated with the hatch on the shuttle's sides.

Ves and Melkor made their way to the docking hatch. Melkor figured out the functions of his recently gifted antigrav clothes and adopted a similar look as Ves. As promised, he also exchanged his tricked out visor for a more basic model which nonetheless did a decent job at obscuring his face.

Lucky came along for the ride as well. Currently, he lounged over Ves' shoulders.

Angie Sipos, his ship security officer, stood by on the other side of the reinforced hatch. She donned an armored vacsuit and held a menacing shotgun.

"Whoa there. We're not going to war today."

"Sir, I'm just making sure. This is how I earn my paycheck."

Ves understood the precaution but he didn't expect any trouble this time. Once the jet bridge finished connecting the two spacecraft together, the inner hatch slid open, allowing the two Larkinsons to enter.

Once they left the ship proper, the inner hatch closed and the outer hatch opened. This allowed the pair to slide along the bridge. Ves momentarily felt surreal, especially when his body ceased to be subjected to artificial gravity.

The jet bridge offered transparent windows out into open space. As Ves floated in zero G, he felt as if he never truly understood deep space until now.

"It's not natural for humans to live in space."

"The spaceborn argue otherwise." Melkor responded as he allowed his antigrav clothing to whisk him forwards towards the other end of the bridge. "Humanity rules over half the galaxy. Our race has ceased to become dependent on land and soil in order to survive."

Humans born in space possessed a different perspective than others. The most extreme among the spaceborn had never set foot on a planet or even a moon. Most of them formed a phobia of large planetary masses. They constantly worry about getting crushed by a planet's immense mass, even the laws of physics wouldn't allow such an absurdity to take place.

Ves shook his head and patted Lucky's head. The cat curiously stared out into the window as well. "There's nothing wrong with being a primitive landborn. No matter how far we've come, we can't forget our roots."

His short passage ended when he reached the other side of the shuttle. Its outer hatch opened, letting the two Larkinsons inside. Once the outer hatch slid shut, the air started to cycle while a large host of scanners went to work. Both of them expected the scans and allowed them to perform their tasks without a fuss.

Some of the scanning modules beeped and focused on Lucky before moving on. Once the scans had ended, they finally entered the shuttle. The air and temperature abruptly changed as they stepped inside.

A security officer garbed in a familiar blue uniform greeted Ves with a salute. "Mr. Larkinson and Mr. Larkinson, I'm pleased to meet you two. Please enter and take a seat. It will be a short journey to the Ark Horizon."

"Thank you. I look forward to meeting Lord Kaine in person."

As the Larkinsons strapped into their seats, the security officer received another message. "Ah, my apologies, sir, but I have just been informed that your mechanical pet is capable of posing a threat to others aboard the Ark Horizon."

"My cat is here for my safety." Ves replied in a firm tone. "He has saved my life several times. I don't wish to be separated from him."

"I assure you that we have the safety and security of our ship well in hand. My colleagues aboard the Ark wishes to inform you that your cat will have to wear a specialized harness that our technicians are fabricating at this very moment. It won't affect your pet's movements, but it will restrict its claws and allow us to track the creature."

Ves accepted the compromise. He had faith he could dismantle the harness if he ever needed Lucky to show off his deadly prowess, but it would take some time. For now, Ves had no choice but to accept the reasonable restrictions.

As the shuttle departed from the Barracuda, Ves looked around and noted that the shuttle approached another ship. The shuttle could comfortably carry around sixteen passengers in its current configuration.

Over the next hour, a small number of oddly dressed men and women entered the shuttle. They wore a mix of flamboyant garments over skintight vacsuits. In space, no one dared to live without wearing a vacsuit or something similar. In the event of explosive decompression, you'd still be able to survive in harsh vacuum space once the vacsuit enclosed your head.

Most of the newcomers appeared to be the ship captains and corps commanders of the various escort forces. Their hardened gazes bore down on Ves and dismissed him as a threat once they took in his physique. He didn't carry himself as a soldier or a mech pilot.

Ves had mixed feelings at being dismissed so easily. Instead, they turned a wary eye towards Melkor. His cousin met their gazes with a cool expression, or at least that was what Ves imagined it looked like behind his visor.

Both sides continued their wordless standoff to the point that everyone stopped their idle conversation.

A grizzled female corps commander nodded first, prompting Melkor to nod in return. Everyone turned their heads and resumed their friendly chats.

"What was that all about?" Ves whispered furiously.

"We mech pilots have ways to measure each other's strengths. I acquitted myself well." Melkor responded with pride. "I'm not a Larkinson for nothing."

As an elite who grew up in a military dynasty, Melkor stood head and shoulders above the rabble who only received standard training. Despite his relative youth, his deep foundation allowed him to match many older mercenaries in a duel.

Ves suspected he'd be seeing lots of situations like this aboard the Ark Horizon. Even aboard a capital ship, the mech pilots still reigned supreme.

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After the shuttle picked up a full load, it flew back to the Ark Horizon. As the shuttle neared the immense fleet carrier, Ves got a new appreciation of her incredible construction. Although her armor looked fairly scuffed and worn out, it didn't detract from the majesty of a two-kilometer capital ship.

The CFA and MTA maintained a monopoly on warships. No other ships under any human power were allowed to carry fixed weapons. Supposedly, the main reason why they forbid arming ships was because they'd be capable of an incredible amount of destruction otherwise.

This had indeed limited the massive amounts of death and destruction prevalent in internal conflicts. It also left the human polities scratching their heads on how to enforce their power in space.

Eventually, they switched over to the combat carrier doctrine. Staring off from a basic mech carrier design, they enhanced its structure and massively piled up the armor. In place of fixed hardpoints, they added in armored enclosures akin to bunkers on the sides of the carrier design.

A rear entry allowed mechs to enter these bunkers from within the ship and fire out into space from its narrow gaps. Thus, they turned the carrier into an improvised warship.

Over time, the bunkers grew more sophisticated to the point where mech designers came up with specialized defensive mechs that excelled in the role. They gave up almost all pretenses of mobility in favor of enhancing their power, endurance and targeting systems.

Both the CFA and MTA turned a blind eye to the phenomenon. The limitations of the mech frame insured that they could never increase their firepower beyond the level of what a mech would be able to wield. It would be like a fly trying to shoot a human-sized pistol. It couldn't be done without cheating.

This imposed a limit on an armored carrier's capacity for destruction, which suited their purposes. As long as no one flung around nukes or planet-cracking mass drivers, everyone got along fine.

From an engineering perspective, Ves admired the Ark Horizon's ability to carry and field over a hundred mechs. The floating citadel housed an extremely complex ecosystem in order to keep the mechs and the people who serviced them running.

The shuttle passed through a translucent energy screen and entered one of the smaller hangar bays meant for shuttle traffic. Once it landed at its designated spot, the hatch slid open, allowing the passengers entry to the carrier's busy deck.

"This way, please." A uniformed attendant greeted the guests and led them to the exit of the hanger.

Ves looked around and noted that all of the shuttles in the hangar bay looked brand new. This contrasted sharply with the slightly worn and used look of the rest of the carrier.

Once they entered the corridors and navigated through several decks, everyone could sense the age of the Ark Horizon. Lord Kaine hadn't spent too much time and effort in refurbishing its utilitarian interior.

He wondered why Lord Kaine went to the trouble of procuring such an expensive ship in the first place. The crew seemed attentive enough, but as Ves walked past several hangars and mech stables, he noted that at least half of the mechs were owned my mercenaries.

As his mind roiled with questions, they finally arrived at a large and expansive dining hall. Its wood-paneled interior along with the colorful banners draped over the walls gave the room a classy look.

Floating little suns of light provided moody lighting. The balls of light whirled around lazily above everyone's heads as if swept by a tide.

Various large circular tables awaited the guests. It became evident that the dining arrangements had been split in two. The first tier had been reserved for the mech pilots while those who took up other professions seated themselves at the lower tier of tables.

A strange situation emerged where Melkor had received an invitation to sit closer to the seat of power.

"Go ahead, Melkor." Ves urged his cousin. "Observe the other guests and try to figure out their origins and motivations. I have a bad feeling about this mission, so I need you to keep your eyes peeled."

Melkor nodded and patted Ves on the back. "I'll see you later then."

That left Ves with a grumpy-looking Lucky. A security officer had attached a series of shackles and harnesses on his cat that prevented him from employing his energy claws. Lucky looked like a prisoner with all of the extra hardware attached to his limbs. Since the harness limited his pet's mobility, he had to be carried around.

Once the pair found their seats, they waited for the other guests to take their places. Low conversation hung about in the air as everyone started to familiarize themselves with their fellow colleagues.

"Hello there." A middle-aged woman bearing the uniform of a ship captain greeted him from his left. "You look rather young to be invited to this banquet. Are your parents around?"

The question threw him off for a bit. Ves regarded the woman with a wary look. Her question sounded innocuous, but had the effect of undermining his qualifications.

Ves didn't wish to give away too much information, so he only replied with a single sentence. "I am a mech designer."

The captain raised an eyebrow. "Are you now? That explains your presence. My, oh my, Lord Kaine finally managed to reel in a mech designer, and so young as well! You must be a great talent if the lord decided to settle on you. This expedition has been delayed for several months due to Lord Kaine's insistence on bringing on a competent mech designer."

That sounded worrisome. Ves might have to play a critical role to the success of the expedition. He wasn't sure he'd be up to the task. He expected to take part in a more modest expedition.

Even as doubt started to swirl in his mind, their host finally made an appearance. An elderly man with neatly trimmed grey hair glided from the air like a god descending amongst mortals. Even the soft bulbs of light stopped illuminating the room in order to shine a spotlight onto his purple robed form. Various emblems marked his many folds of clothes, one of which Ves recognized as a noble crest.

No one spoke a word as Lord Kaine traversed above everyone's head. Once he neared the ground, he smoothly turned around and seated himself at a throne-like seat at the head of the foremost table. Kaine lifted a wrinkly hand, which caused the lights to turn back to normal.

The man glanced slowly around the room and nodded in satisfaction. "Everyone is here. Good. I have waited so long for this expedition to come together. Now, the final pieces of the puzzle have fallen into place. This banquet represents the official start of our venture!"

Some of the guests sighed in relief. Evidently, they had been looking forward for the delays to be over. Ves went over these people and saw that most of them wore the same blue uniform as the regular crewmen aboard the Ark Horizon.

"Many of you may know me as Lord Jeremiah Kaine, the former patriarch of House Kaine. I fought in the trench lines as a mech pilot in my younger years and took up leadership of my noble House in my later years. Under my inspired leadership, I elevated my House from a purely commercial family concern into ruling over star systems in the name of the Constance Grand Kingdom."

Over half of the the guests showed clueless expressions. Constance Kingdom?

"The Constance Grand Kingdom is an established second-rate state in the Grey Willow Star Sector, which is a couple of sectors away. The Ark Horizon has come a long way in order to reach the Komodo Star Sector. Even after we have arrived, we have faced several setbacks, from equipment failure to the abrupt departure of our resident mech designer."

Lord Kaine growled those last words that made it clear that he took it as a personal betrayal. Ves raised his guard. As the mech designer who took up his ignomous predecessor's role, he'd likely be subjected to additional scrutiny.

Several minutes went by as the elder noble meandered into a tale about the Ark Horizon. It had a storied history half a decade ago. It acquitted itself well in a war that no one present cared about. House Kaine snapped up the ship in a secretive deal that their host quickly glossed over.

More importantly, Lord Kaine detailed the number of people that would be part of the expedition. The core crew of the Ark Horizon consisted of around nine-hundred spacers, mech pilots and mech technicians. They were all directly employed by House Kaine and enjoyed the highest amount of trust in the expedition.

Secondly, Lord Kaine introduced the three trusted mercenary corps he brought with him from the Grey Willow Star Sector. They were also in charge of the Ark Horizon's perimeter security and were also tasked with watching over all the other mercenaries. They also took charge of the Ark Horizon's perimeter security with seven different ships of varying sizes.

"Of course, there's also you, the local help." Lord Kaine said and turned to the rowdier and less professional looking mercs at the table. "While we have little in common, we share at least some common goals, the most important of which is to earn a fortune and retire with our lives intact."

One merc who blatantly sipped a smuggled flask rose from his seat. "Hear, hear!"

Kaine glared at the offending merc. Evidently, the former patriarch did not appreciate the interruption.

"I am aware that the Komodo Star Sector is one of humanity's youngest settled regions. I can make some allowances for frontier culture, but I appreciate it if you let me finish."

"Uh, sorry boss."

With that incident done with, Lord Kaine resumed his speech. "Everyone of you will play the leading role in our upcoming expedition. I have spent many days pouring over every available mercenary corps. Only those who are present here today have made the cut."

All of the local mercs puffed themselves up like peacocks showing off their feathers. Lord Kaine had offered extremely generous conditions to every mercenary corps. They stood to gain a massive amount of wealth if the expedition panned out.

"Those with keener eyes will recognize that most of your fighters specialize in close quarters mech combat. There is a good reason for that which will become clear in the coming weeks. Make no mistake. You will have to earn your paycheck."

Lord Kaine spoke on for ten more minutes, but Ves hardly learned anything of true import. The elderly man kept bragging about what he experienced in his two-hundred year long life. He proudly shared some anecdotes on his most famous war exploits.

All of the mech pilots lapped it up. They eagerly hung on to their employer's every word. The non-mech pilots like Ves paid a lot less importance to his stories. Most of them impatiently clamored for a meal.

Ves already suspected something like this might happen. Despite his age and many accomplishments, Lord Kaine exhibited the typical behavior of a self-centered potentate. His formative years as a successful mech pilot had made a mark on the rest of his life.

The main characters would always be the mech pilots. The norms didn't matter as much. They only existed to serve the privileged class who always played the main role in every conflict. The older and more solidified society in the Grey Willow Star Sector probably had it worse in this aspect.

"The old fart has a tendency to blabber for hours." The female ship captain whispered to Ves. "Personally, I think his doctors botched up his life-prolonging treatment. Sometimes, he acts way too senile. You'd expect that kind of behavior from five-hundred year olds, not two-hundred year olds."

They both sounded fairly old to Ves, who until recently never dared to hope he would get to live just as long. A modern day human with sufficient access to medical services could expect to live around 150 years.

His seat neighbor's words prompted him to regard Lord Kaine with a critical eye. Ves had to admit that the man appeared to be in much worse shape than you'd expect. Perhaps some old war wounds interfered with his life-prolonging treatment. Such a thing happened more than once.

All of this meant that Ves might have his hands full very soon. The prospect of working for an unreasonable boss did not fill his life with joy.

Those four-hundred merits better be worth it, he silently thought. He already started to see the basic setup for their expedition, and it appeared that the local mercenaries would have to take on most of the burden while Lord Kaine and his trusted men made sure no one ran off.

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Lord Kaine suddenly halted in his retelling of a story of how he bested three knights in a melee duel. "Ah, enough about my modest achievements. Let me introduce to you the true purpose of my expedition."

The flying bulbs of lights started to merge into a vivid projection of a large and stormy terrestrial planet.

"This is Groening IV, our ultimate destination. It is the fourth planet of a fairly significant star system out here in the frontier. Before you try, don't try to extrapolate its coordinates. My subordinates have carefully wiped all traces that can be used to determine its exact location."

While Ves knew little about planets, Groening IV looked incredibly active. Dark storms raged about the gleaming surface of the planet. It looked highly metallic in appearance and the temperature must be fluctuating wildly as well.

"A single survey ship stumbled upon the mineral-rich planet. She surveyed the planet for several days and found out that it held a vibrant underground world filled with life. Unfortunately, most of the time it is impossible for any ship pass through the relentless storms. The metallic shards in the hurricane can wear down most vessels before they get through."

Even a corvette or a frigate might get chewed up by this ever-present metal storm. Ves wouldn't wish to plunge his valuable Barracuda through this raging force of nature.

"Thus, the survey ship left the system. The captain of the ship kept the location and details of this peculiar system to himself. Months later, after he returned to civilization, he processing the data recorded by his ship and found that the storm is constantly strengthening and weakening in a cyclical fashion."

The projection of Groening IV calmed down. Many storms started to abate while some portions even saw clear sky for the first time in decades.

"Once every twenty-seven years, the storm enters its leeward period. For roughly forty standard days, any ship will be able to land onto its surface and seek an entrance to the planet's promised underground domain. The captain of the survey ship knew he might have some gold in his hands, so he sold it to an experienced group of treasure hunters."

Lord Kaine carefully left out the details of the people involved. He didn't want anyone to track down their identities and sniff out the coordinates of the Groening System behind his back.

"After obtaining this priceless knowledge, they waited for the right time and sent an expedition to explore the underground world. What they found changed their fortune."

A couple of recordings played out in the central projection. Everyone paid attention to the vast metallic flora. It looked like a jungle dyed in silver, green and blue. The indigenous life forms on this planet had developed in a way that made use of the abundant minerals in the extremely hardy soil.

No natural light from the local sun reached this underground bounty, but several strange luminescent minerals lit up various portions of the vast region. They shone with a vast amount of power.

"The light that illuminates the caverns are radioactive, but that is not enough to provide sufficient light. Once the expedition took some samples, they discovered that the glowing minerals are laced with low-value exotics."

Everyone shook at those words. A planet that contained traces of low-value exotics might possess deposit of higher value exotics as well.

"Further surveys has found that the various plants have extracted trace amounts of exotics from the soil. Unfortunately, the concentration is too low to really matter. While they surveyed the terrain in search of a substantial deposit of exotics, they encountered their first native beasts."

Recordings of six-limbed hexapods played out in the projections. At first, the animals seemed wary and alarmed at the new human arrivals. Most of the animals possessed a rigid metallic exoskeleton and their sizes ranged from dogs to elephants.

Once the expedition tried to kill a smaller hexapod, they encountered their first casualties. The dog-sized hexapod withstood a substantial amount of laser beams. Its metal shell absorbed and dispersed the heat with far more efficiency than what was possible. In the end, a mech had to intervene and stepped over the creature, finally squashing it flat.

"The sudden aggression changed the disposition of the native beasts in the area. They suddenly whipped up in a frenzy, causing scores of animals to storm the group. Many people on foot perished due to their inability to threaten the hexapods."

Over half of the guards died without damaging a single hexapod. Their laser rifles did no damage at all. In some cases, the animals even enjoyed the free bursts of thermal energy.

Even the mechs got beaten up by the larger animals. It took a lot of physical wrestling and stomping to put down these incredibly tough beasts.

"I will spare you the details of the aftermath. Suffice to say, once the expedition performed autopsies on the beasts, they found to their surprise that they all possess a strange and wondrous organ laced with an exceptionally valuable mix of exotics. This organ is the means in which these hexapods are able to thrive. It absorbs heat from the environment and provides them with energy to move their heavy limbs."

A chart appeared that outlined what kind of exotics these heat organs incorporated. The name at the top provoked a substantial response from the crowd. Even Ves sat up straight when he glimpsed the name.

"Many of the exotics found in the heat organs possess special properties, but are not too valuable in these low concentrations. The only exception here is monoexurite."

Most people who attended the banquet knew the value of monoexurite. A mere pinch of monoexurite would instantly devolve this entire gathering into a slaughterhouse. According to the current market price, one gram of monoexurite was worth around two billion bright credits.

"I am certain that everyone is familiar with monoexurite. Fifty milligrams of monoexurite is enough to enhance the range of an FTL drive by fifty percent. Smaller amounts of monoexurite is also used in the fabrication of top-quality mech components."

All of the mech pilots present already dreamed about hunting down these beasts. In their eyes, they were nothing but walking bags of credits.

Even Ves had to hold back his insatiable greed. One reason why the Barracuda cost so many coalition credits was because its powerful FTL drive incorporated a substantial amount of monoexurite. He experienced the power of monoexurite first-hand whenever he travelled with his corvette.

"The hexapods seem to accumulate monoexurite from their diets. They accumulate the exotics over time. The expedition conjectured that the amount of monoexurite determines their size. Only when they reach the size of an elephant will it be worthwhile to harvest their heat organs."

Once the expedition learned from their previous encounter, they switched their gears. They drew back everyone on foot and sent out squads of mechs armed with melee weapons and ballistic cannons. They tracked down every major hexapod in the region and harvested over twenty heat organs in three weeks.

According to the chart, every heat organ contained around two-hundred milligrams of monoexurite. The expedition already paid for itself many times over. While they hadn't found any major deposits of monoexurite, the several grams of monoexurite they harvested so far would set them up for life.

Lord Kaine shook his head. "Unfortunately, the expedition lost its discipline. Every squad of mechs focused on hunting the hexapods above all else. They lost themselves to their greed and forgot that they are operating on alien soil."

The projections changed into short incidental recordings of mechs getting ambushed by dinosaur-sized hexapods. These animals might not be much bigger than the elephant-sized ones, but their gleaming metallic scales withstood a large number of cannon shells without problem and could even deflect many sword strikes.

A massacre ensued as the kings of the metallic forest systematically hunted down the mechs. Many scientists and guards quickly packed up their gear and escaped to their shuttles. As they ascended into the air, a small tide of winged hexapods the size of bats emerged from the forest.

The entire swarm started to pelt the shuttles. They dented the shuttle's thin armor and started to wreak havoc on its systems. Many of the shuttles never made it out.

"In the end, the expedition lost over ninety percent of its ground personnel. Furthermore, they lost all of their valuable mechs as well as the monoexurite they harvested so far. The motherships orbiting Groening IV dispatched several shuttles in order to retrieve the harvested monoexurite, but found to their dismay that the hexapods have already taken it away."

Perhaps a single lucky hexapod gulped the entire fortune. Ves couldn't even imagine how big that hexapod might grow to once it digested all of that monoexurite.

Lord Kaine came to the conclusion of his retelling. "The loss of all of their ground assets bankrupted the expedition and forced them to sell all their remaining assets. An agent of my House happened to win the logs of their ill-fated journey to the Groening System at a private auction. Now we are here, twenty-seven years later."

Everyone knew what kind of opportunity this expedition represented. As for Ves, he finally knew why Lord Kaine asked for a mech designer. The exact details still eluded him, but he probably figured he'd be tasked with optimizing everyone's mechs to be able to withstand a battle against these peak-level hexapods.

Ves already started to gulp. The awesome power of these beast kings scared him witless. They were as strong as heavy knights but moved as fast as light mechs. Their incredible strength couldn't be overcome by any single mech.

"I will meet with everyone of you one by one after dinner. In order to safeguard the coordinates of the Groening System during this expedition, we must take several precautions. Every ship that intends to take part will have to accept restrictions to their quantum entanglement nodes and FTL drives. Furthermore, you will also have to accept a liaison who will be in charge of coordinating with my fleet."

A lot of the ship captains looked outraged, but they had no other choice but to accept. Such an arrangement happened all the time. While it left the mercenaries vulnerable should the liaison choose to sabotage their ships, in practice they only resorted to such drastic means when threatened.

Everyone present had already signed a couple of non-disclosure agreements and restrictive contracts enforced by the CFA. Anyone who willfully defied would be regarded as persona non grata in civilized space.

That might not stop some of the mercenaries present, hence Lord Kaine partnered up with three professional mercenary corps from his native Grey Willow Star Sector. Together, they possessed the largest ships and the strongest mechs.

Ves didn't know why the local mercenaries went along with these arrangements. The man blatantly intended to treat them like cannon fodder. Perhaps their greed took over their common sense.

Once their meals flew to the tables, everyone started to dig in. While Ves leisurely sipped his soup, the female captain by his side started to chatter with him for some reason.

"Hey, I never got your name. Can you tell me who you are? I'm Captain Rose Wilson, by the way. I run a cozy converted transport. My husband leads our mech contingent."

The woman didn't recognize his name nor any of his recent mech designs. "I'm also an apprentice to Master Olson."

That startled her a bit. "That posh little doll from the Friday Coalition? I've seen her once or twice. Her outfits are worth more than my ship!"

"A Master Mech Designer is a strategic resource to any state." Ves briefly explained. "If she wanted to, she can earn as much as a planet makes in a year by developing a single design."

"Why are you here then?" She frowned.

"Good question. To experience new horizons, I suppose." And hopefully remain alive, but Ves didn't mention that. "My master is able to reach the heights she enjoys today because she worked really hard throughout her entire career. I'm merely following in her footsteps."

"That applies to everything. I didn't get where I am today by taking it easy. She's a sensible girl, alright." Rose chuckled as if she didn't acknowledge that Master Olson was likely twice her age. "Lord Kaine must be expecting a lot from a genius like you. That, or he must be scraping the bottom of the barrel."

Regardless of what his client intended for Ves, he'd meet the man himself after dinner.

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Ves enjoyed the varied dishes with relish. The dishes had been enhanced by a lot of unique spices that only a well-developed state like the Constance Grand Kingdom could come up with. It caused a lot of the locals some consternation when their mouths exploded in an unexpected burst of freshness or heat.

The only thing he didn't enjoy was Captain Wilson's constant chatter. While she disparaged him a lot, she also mentioned useful information whenever she talked about the mercenaries. She certainly loved gossiping.

"You need to eat more meat! You're too flimsy to impress the girls. A good boy like can use some time in the gym."

"The three mercenary outfits who partnered up with our boss are all professionals. They fill up half the Ark Horizon's hangar and they brought even more mechs aboard their own transports. They've got so much firepower that even Lord Kaine can't order them around."

"Frankly, the Grey Willow mechs outnumber the locals, but they aren't geared towards fighting the hexapods. I'm seeing a lot of ballistic cannons and even a couple of railguns, so they're likely there to fend off any sandmen incursion."

That drew his attention. "Do you think we'll get hit by the sandmen?"

"They'd be blind not to. The Ark Horizon is so big and fat that her FTL transition will radiate for many light-years away. The sandmen will definitely respond."

Ves had only heard about the sandmen but already developed a lot of apprehension about them. They sounded and behaved in a simple fashion most of the time, but whenever their higher leaders got involved, they made perplexing decisions. Lord Kaine might be biting off more than he could chew.

"Will your ship be participating in the fight directly?"

"Heavens, no. Our mechs are solely kitted out for melee combat. My husband and his men will go groundside and hunt some game. My ship is a sitting duck without mechs so I'm probably expected to keep her close to the Ark."

The courses kept on coming so they both went back to eating. Ves turned around for a moment and looked at Melkor.

His cousin drew some attention due to his youth and his insistence on wearing a visor, but he acquitted himself decently among the mercenaries. They lived in two different worlds, so Melkor had little in common with the men and women who clawed their way out of mediocrity through hard work and grit, but they respected his background as an elite brought up by a military family if nothing else.

Captain Wilson followed his gaze and whistled. "I saw you come in with that fellow. My oh my, he's got a lovely physique for a man so young. So limber and compact. He must have some really dense muscles."

"He's my cousin."

"Your family is truly blessed to have a clever designer and a dashing pilot in their midst. Where are you two from?"

"We're both citizens of the Bright Republic."

"That's not too far away from here. I heard about your little Republic."

"Hopefully you heard some good things."

"Not really. Everyone who mentioned your state expects it to be thrashed by the Vesians, who have a lot of fighting spirit."

Ves had no way to retort. In truth, while their nobility often descended into infighting, their working class citizens always fought with passion. They hoped to distinguish themselves on the battlefield in order to be granted knighthood, which was the first step on the road to nobility.

Compared to the highly motivated Vesians, the Brighters treated the generations-long conflict as a defensive war. Any planet that fell in their hands often didn't resist too hard. As far as the average citizen was concerned, they merely switched landlords.

The only reason why the Bright Republic lasted so long was because it invested a lot in a professional military.

"I believe in my state. We've fended off the Vesians many times. This time will be no different."

Wilson shrugged. "If that's what makes you happy. By the way, speaking of Vesians, you should watch out for Keller's Blades."

She gestured to a mercenary commander sitting quietly at the end of the principal table. The man must be Keller himself. The Vesian had a dark complexion and possessed a tall, robust body. Only a couple of other mercenaries could match his sheer bulk and strength.

"What do you know about Keller's Blades?"

"Oh, nothing much besides the usual. They've been operating out of Mancroft for a few years. I heard he pissed off some petty noble and got chased away from his home. He's been eking out a decent living among the stars protecting prospectors and researchers looking to cross the borders."

"That doesn't sound so scary."

Wilson shook her head. "Don't underestimate the Blades. The scary thing about their group is that they are always sporting better gear despite fulfilling low-paying missions. Who knows where they get their money?"

That sounded a lot more suspicious. Either Commander Keller had a backer or he earned a lot of additional income through less respectable means.

Even a gossip like Captain Wilson didn't know much more, so they both turned back to their meals. After a sumptuous dinner, their host returned to his stateroom and left his guests with wine and orders to wait until they received a summons.

Everyone waited patiently as Lord Kaine called up the guests by pair. Captain Wilson noted that he called up the most prestigious mercenaries first, and worked down the list according to their reputation.

Commander Keller and his ship captain received their summons midway, so he must be sporting a decent amount of mechs.

Captain Wilson received a summons near the end when the dining hall had mostly emptied out. Ves nodded to her politely. Even if she never shut her mouth, she mentioned a lot of useful things. Ves now had a better picture on the mercenaries who signed up for this expedition.

If she didn't warn him, he might never know that Keller's Blades came from Vesia.

After all of the local mercenaries left, the non-combatants started to get called up. Before Ves had his turn, a couple of scientists went ahead. Ves learned that they were exobiologists of some renown. They'd likely be put in charge of dissecting the hexapods and determining their weaknesses.

Fifteen minutes after the scientists left, an attendant entered the largely empty hall and finally called up Ves. "Mr. Larkinson, Lord Kaine would like to see you now."

He nodded and rose from his seat. Melkor also pushed off the wall he was leaning against and picked up Lucky. Ves thought it might be rude if he held his pet while speaking to the former patriarch.

The attendant led them through a couple of corridors before they reached a secured hatch. A couple of security officers scanned their bodies and they both came up clean, though Lucky couldn't say the same.

"Please hand over your comms and leave your pet outside. He'll be safe while you meet with Lord Kaine."

Ves knew he couldn't refuse the request. They took their employer's security very seriously. He very reluctantly detached his wrist comm and placed it on a tray. He trusted the upgraded comm's security so the security officers shouldn't be able to access the Mech Designer System. Still, he felt awfully naked without its presence.

Melkor put up less of a fuss. He acted like he didn't have anything to hide on his comm and simply threw it on the tray in a small but impressive feat of accuracy. As for Lucky, he got to sit on the deck in a grumpy mood.

"You're cleared to enter."

Lord Kaine occupied a stateroom meant for admirals. The entire room took up as much space as a house, and represented an extravagant use of space on a spaceship that normally made full use of every cubic meter. Like the dining room, Kaine changed the interior into one befitting a classic mansion.

A lot of trophies and mementos took up the available space. Banners of fallen mercenary corps hung on the walls while broken pieces of mechs encased in glass hovered before them in a monument to worthy opponents.

Ves and Melkor slowly traversed the room and sat down on the high-backed chairs facing the elevated desk. The wooden furniture granted the one who sat behind the desk a lot of gravitas. Though Kaine hadn't aged very gracefully, his impeccable purple dress and immaculate grooming enhanced his dignity.

"Mister Larkinson. You brought a companion."

"He's my cousin acting as my guard."

Despite his senile appearance, Kaine possessed a strong gaze. He bore down on Melkor with the force of a former warrior and commander, but Melkor didn't flinch.

"You have an impressive cousin. What's your name?"

"Melkor Larkinson."

"I will take note of you."

Once Kaine finished acknowledging Melkor, he turned back to Ves. "Let us get on to business, shall we? You see, you are not the first mech designer to sign on to my expedition. House Kaine obtained logs of the previous expedition to the Groening System and so we are well aware of what we will find on the ground."

Ves could imagine how much time and money they spent on preparing for the expedition. The Ark Horizon alone must have drained a lot of their resources.

"We courted a number of promising mech designers, and finally managed to attract a singular talent with connections to one of the planets ruled by our House."

The former patriarch declined to mention the mech designer's name. "The mech designer happily made use of my House, borrowing a large amount of funds and skilled personnel to build up his own homegrown enterprise. Up until the expedition commenced, I assumed we had an understanding."

"Then he disappeared! He abandoned us!" Lord Kaine suddenly shouted and slammed his fist against his desk. "He dissolved most of his assets and disappeared just as the expedition almost reached the Komodo Sector!"

Both of the Larkinsons had to endure their employer's tirade for several minutes. Ves tried to stay impassive, but the betrayal affected Lord Kaine on a very deep level. What was worse, he trusted the mech designer a lot, to the point where he granted the fellow access to a lot of the logs of the previous expedition.

This meant that the previous mech designer might be able to figure out the Groening's System's coordinates. Even Ves didn't have to think very far on what a disaster that might be.

Eventually, Lord Kaine ran out of steam. "Enough about the past. Let's go over your responsibilities."

He summoned up a small projection of a familiar recording. It showed several mechs getting torn apart by one of the hexapod kings.

"We are bound to encounter these highly developed beasts. They will need to be tackled. Due to the difficult atmospheric conditions even when the storm is at its most placid state, we are limited in the amount of hardware we are able to deploy."

The projection changed into a complicated chart.

"Our analysts also strongly believe that overly strong power fluctuations will attract a tsunami of beasts, so we will not be able to deploy anything heavier than a handful of heavy mechs."

Lord Kaine finally went on to how he planned to tackle the kings. "None of the mercenaries are willing to confront these apex predators. Not even my partners from the Grey Willow Star Sector have the courage to hunt these majestic beasts down. So be it. Our House has nurtured a number of elite mech pilots and matched them with mechs that can bring out their full potential."

He waved his hand, causing the projection to change to a dozen men and women training together. Their ages varied, but most of them looked to be around thirty to forty years old.

Ves paid more attention to their mechs. The platoon consisted of two heavy knights, six medium melee-oriented mechs and four medium mechs armed with cannon-sized railguns.

All of the melee mechs eschewed swords in favor of blunt weapons such as staffs and maces. The weapons had a lot of heft to them, allowing them to strike with great momentum even if it took a while for them to land their blows.

"These are very impressive mechs." Ves remarked, impressed by the performance exhibited by the mechs as they performed several live fire exercises. "I don't recognize the models, but they all look like advanced currentgen mechs. They are already in a very high state of optimization. Still, I'm not sure if they can withstand the largest hexapods."

Even mechs had limits, more so now Ves had some insight into battle mechatronics. The mechs shown in the projection exhibited larger than usual strength, but the hexapods showed off much greater strengths in the old recordings. Even a prepared group of mechs might not survive an encounter.

"It is your job to make sure they make it out alive." Lord Kaine decisively declared. "If even one of the pilot dies, I will make sure you will regret you were born!"

The sudden aggression pushed Ves back against his seat. The command was too outrageous! Why did Lord Kaine prioritize the lives of his mech pilots all of a sudden? Ves turned back to the projection and tried to find some clues.

Ves found what he was looking for when the mech pilots dove into their simulator pods. Their bodies appeared in a virtual space with their names hovering above their heads.

One of them bore the name of Felicity Kaine.

"My great-granddaughter leads the hunting platoon. This is to be her first hunt."

Oh.

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Afterwards, Lord Kaine discussed the finer details. He wanted to keep Ves close in order to avoid another desertion.

Ves didn't object to Kaine's strongly worded suggestion, but he wanted Melkor to stay with him. He already found his cousin's presence to be a boon. Even if the other mech pilots didn't respect him, they acknowledged Melkor's strength.

"The Ark has a berth available for your cousin's mech." The leader of the expedition answered after a few seconds of thoughts. "I'll allow him to accompany you, but you'll have to leave behind your weapons."

"Very well."

They hashed out an elaborate set of responsibilities and conditions. Ves would transfer to the Ark Horizon and work full-time on improving the hunting platoon's mechs. The fleet carrier came with a compact but modern mech fabrication workshop, outfitted by his predecessor.

Treachery aside, the man spent his ample budget well. The 3D printer in particular almost matched the Dortmund in speed and precision. For now, the mech technicians used the printer in order to fabricate new replacement parts, but hopefully Ves would make much better use of the machines.

Along with access to the workshop, Ves also had the right to draw on the carrier's well-stocked raw material reserves. In order to make sure he didn't squander his reserves, Lord Kaine assigned a minder who kept watch over his activities.

"I'm okay with that." Ves replied. He knew that Lord Kaine didn't trust him very much. He'd keep a close watch on Ves anyway, so they might as well get it out of the way.

They also discussed the deployment of the Barracuda. As a fast and fairly modern corvette, she would function as an ideal scout. Lord Kaine wanted to bolster her crew with his own men but Ves put his foot down on that point.

"I don't want too many foreigners on my ship. She's extremely valuable."

Ves suggested that Lord Kaine post a single liason on the Barracuda. He acceded to the demands to restrict the FTL drive and the quantum entanglement node with special hardware as long as they didn't permanently disable the modules.

"Very well. We shall have to leave it at that." Lord Kaine finally conceded. The Barracuda wouldn't be straying too far from the main fleet as a consequence.

After coming to an understanding on his role, Ves bid Lord Kaine farewell and left the stateroom. As they came out of the reinforced hatch, they returned their comms to their wrists and picked up Lucky.

A young uniformed attendant greeted the pair as they wondered where to go. "Mr. Larkinson? I'm Ensign Jules D'Amato, and I've been assigned to be your guide."

Ves expected some kind of grizzled old veteran who took no bullshit from anyone. Instead, he got a polite and friendly minder who behaved suspiciously friendly.

"Can you take us to our quarters? We brought some luggage but we left it behind in the hangar bay."

"Your luggage is already brought to your new quarters. This way, please."

They traversed the corridors and went down to the bottom decks. Overall, most of the ship's operations happened in the upper decks. The activities pertaining to mechs occurred at the lower decks.

The Larkinsons started to see more crew members donning various different uniforms. Ensign D'Amato explained who they were. "Half of the Ark Horizon's complement of mechs are owned by mercenaries."

"Why isn't Lord Kaine filling up the hangar bays with his own mechs?"

Ensign D'Amato adopted a pensive look. "House Kaine is currently burdened by many obligations. Lord Kaine is unwilling to draw away too many mechs on a lengthy voyage to the galactic rim."

His words sounded reasonable, but came off as an excuse. If Ves was in charge of the expedition, he wouldn't have been nearly so liberal in hiring so many mercenaries.

After ten more minutes of navigating deeper into the ship, they finally reached the lower officer quarters. The Ensign led them to a modestly furnished quarters with barely enough room for two.

"This will be your quarters. Your comm is already keyed into the lock, but I don't recommend you store any valuables or sensitive data inside. Please get rested. I will pick you up tomorrow morning for breakfast before introducing you to Lady Felicity."

Once D'Amato left the quarters, the hatch slid shut, giving the Larkinsons the illusion of privacy. Ves sighed and sat down on the lower bunk while Melkor checked his luggage to see if it was still intact.

"They went through our luggage." He stated.

"That's to be expected. House Kaine has grown quite paranoid."

Ves expected a difficult assignment due to his predecessor's untimely withdrawal. That might become a larger hindrance in his task to make sure the hunting platoon made it out alive and intact.

"What are your thoughts about the mission?"

"Lord Kaine is light on the details." Melkor leaned against the bulkhead once he went through his luggage. "One of the major uncertainties so far is his plan to deal with the sandmen. It's clear that the Groening System falls in their sphere of influence."

"Anything else? What are your impressions on the mercenaries?"

"The local mercenaries are fairly competent, but they're lacking in discipline. Half of them are quick to anger while the other half are quietly scheming their own plans. I'm not impressed. On the other hand, the three mercenary corps from the Grey Willow Star Sector behave a bit more competent than you might expect of soldiers for hire."

"Isn't that a good thing?"

"George's Cavalry behave like they're still part of the military. Adila's Chosen is bound by a common religion. As for the Stray Phantoms, they try their best to appear normal, but my senses tell me that they're spooks."

This sounded a lot more complex than he initially thought. Ves scrunched his face in thought. "Could it be that different factions of the Constance Grand Kingdom have a stake in this expedition?"

"I'd put my money on that bet. House Kaine had probably made too many movements. Once the Constance Grand Kingdom found out about his intentions, they probably imposed their own conditions."

The truth might be different, but from what Ves had gathered it appeared to be true. The foreign mercenaries treated the ship as their own and took no notice of the officers from House Kaine.

The situation grew more complex by the minute. He already had to contend with traitors and leakers. "Their true identities doesn't matter. My only concern should be to work on the mechs of the hunting platoon."

They had nothing else to share. When Ves asked if Melkor had an impression of Keller, his cousin responded that he wasn't even aware that Keller came from the Vesia Kingdom.

"Well, we won't be interacting much with each other. Keller and his men will likely be sent down to the ground. Let's go to sleep."

They tucked in their beds early after taking a short shower. Lucky painstakingly climbed next to Ves as the light dimmed in the quarters.

"Careful, Lucky. I don't want your butt pressing on my face!" He hissed.

The next morning, they both woke up fairly early. Ves scratched his face and sent a resentful glare at his cat. Lucky must have poured out his frustration at his lack of mobility. Melkor had to carry him around like a baby.

"Good morning, Mr. Larkinson. The officer's mess has already opened its doors. This way, please."

Ensign D'Amato brought them to the officer's mess where they all enjoyed a light breakfast. Ves still felt a bit full from last night's banquet so he limited his breakfast to toast and coffee.

After filling up their stomachs, their guide brought them to a hangar bay filled with mechs bearing the livery of House Kaine. Now that Ves had a closer look, he noticed that the quality of the mechs fell short on what a second-rate state should normally field. While they all appeared to be currentgen mechs, they already bore the marks of age.

The quality of mechs only went up once they entered the section that housed the hunting platoon. While Ves had already seen the models in a projection, seeing them up come gave him a much stronger impression on their capabilities.

A large amount of men and women stood in neatly composed rows. A familiar-looking woman with autumn brown hair stood before her subordinates with her arms crossed before her chest.

When Ves came closer, he didn't know how to greet the platoon. He merely signed on as an outside consultant, so it wouldn't be appropriate to respond with a salute.

He must have failed some test, because Felicity Kaine's expression soured. "Are you our new mech designer?"

"That's correct. I hope to have your cooperation in this matter, miss Kaine."

"That remains to be seen, and don't call me that! I'm the commanding officer of the hunting platoon. My House affiliation has nothing to do with my current position, so I expect you to address me as Captain Kaine or ma'am."

"Yes… ma'am."

Ves didn't know if she hated mech designers in general or if he simply pissed her off in some way. Captain Kaine didn't waste anymore time and promptly dismissed her crew before walking away.

An older, barrel-chested man stepped up from the dispersing crew. "Don't mind her attitude. The success of the expedition rests on her shoulders, so she's bearing a lot of responsibilities right now."

"I take it she took the betrayal of the previous mech designer hard."

"Don't you know it. Your first task is to check and audit the workshop and its stores. My men have already checked the records and found nothing out of place, but it will help if you lend a hand. You'll also be able to familiarize yourself with what you have to work with while you're double-checking our records."

The man led the way as he introduced himself as Lance Ramirez, but everyone simply called him Chief Ramirez. As the senior NCO in charge of maintaining the hunting platoon's mechs, Ramirez had taken up the duty of orienting Ves.

"My men and I are very familiar with the mechs of the hunting platoon. Hopefully you'll be working on four different models."

Chief Ramirez brought him up close to each of the mechs resting in their stables.

First up was the two heavy knights. "The Ajax Olympian are variants of a popular model back home. They're great at absorbing impacts with their shields, but they don't possess enough arm power to threaten a well-armored hexapod without building up momentum."

"Why choose a variant over the base model?"

"The regular Ajax is a standard heavy knight meant to soak up damage from a distance. The Ajax Olympian on the other hand is great against threats up close. It specializes in grappling and locking down any threats up close."

Ves looked dubious at the mech as he heard the claim. He could see that the knight worked well enough if he had to grapple a regular mech. He couldn't say the same if it tried to wrestle even the weakest hexapod kings.

"Next up is the Volmar. It's a weapon specialist platform that possesses a good balance of speed, armor and power. While the two heavy knights hold down the big ones, the five Volmars will attempt to crush their eyes and other vulnerable parts of their bodies. They should possess sufficient force to grind down the massive sixlegs."

"Are you certain about that? From the recordings I've seen so far, none of the mechs in the previous expedition have ever made them flinch."

"Those mech pilots were idiots. Half of the time, they panicked and lashed out blindly. They also piloted lastgen mechs that lack many innovations. This time, we know what's coming, so Lord Kaine picked the very best mechs for the job. The Volmars will crush the beasts, you can count on that."

He didn't expect Chief Ramirez to have so much faith in his own models. The hexapod kings were clearly not to be trifled with. Ves faintly thought that Chief Ramirez had grown too attached to the mechs under his charge.

As an outsider, Ves possessed a more sober perspective. He considered the Volmas to be a well-made armsmaster design. However, this wide compatibility came at a cost. He thought they needed a lot more power to finish off a hexapod king without dragging out the fight.

Lastly Ramirez showed off railgun mechs. "The Empyrean is a mainstream model dedicated solely to wielding railguns. Every aspect of the Empyrean is slanted towards powering and providing the best targeting to its railgun cannon. It's able to fire a slug every five seconds at full charge."

"How many shots can it fire?"

"With an extended backpack module, it's capable of providing ammunition and power for sixty shots. That's more than enough to soften up four of the big lugs before they close in or run away."

Of all the mechs shown so far, Ves put most of his hope on the Empyreans. Their sophisticated railguns packed a lot of punch, though their firing rate didn't particularly impress him. A hexapod king might close the distance in the time the Empyreans fired off a single volley.

"I notice that you've only shown me three models so far when I distinctly remember there's supposed to be four."

"Ah." Chief Ramirez scratched his head. "Captain Kaine pilots a customized mech. She gave out strict orders to not let you get anywhere near her baby."

Great. Ves knew he had to make an effort to break the ice with Captain Kaine. He hadn't ignored some of dirty looks. His predecessor certainly poisoned the well around here. No one trusted mech designers anymore. How could he prove to the hunting platoon that he didn't intend to scam them all?

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Ves spent the first day going over his available assets. First, he checked the terminals as well as the machines he had to work with. The Ark Horizon possessed multiple workshops, many of them meant to repair or replace large amounts of broken components over the course of a campaign.

"A fleet carrier serves as a central staging point for a planetary invasion." Chief Ramirez explained to Ves. "If we wanted to, we can stuff more mechs inside the Ark Horizon, but as soon as they incur major damage, we won't be able to use them again until we bring them back to a usable condition."

In other words, the fleet carrier offered any substantial mech force a large boost in staying power. With the Ark Horizon as the backbone of the fleet, Lord Kaine could squeeze every bit of value out of his mechs.

"The workshop servicing the Hunting Platoon is the smallest one aboard the ship, but it has all of the basic necessities."

Ves widened his eyes as he beheld the workshop in its entirety. He only briefly glanced at the 3D Printer and assembly system. Instead, he turned his full attention to the other machines in the open space.

"Is that an alloy compressor and a chemical treatment machine?"

"Aye. The previous guy hand-picked the models himself. He might be a self-serving coward, but he knew his stuff."

Chief Ramirez quickly shut his mouth once Ves tried to ask more about his predecessor. It appeared the previous mech designer became something of a taboo existence in the expedition.

If Ves had access to the galactic net, he could find more information about House Kaine and the mech designers they contracted. Unfortunately, Lord Kaine had already taken measures in restricting every quantum entanglement nodes aboard every ship in the fleet. They hadn't even left the Mancroft System and already they were cut off from the rest of the galaxy.

"When will we depart and how long will it take to reach our destination?" Ves asked, curious about his timetable.

"I'm not privy to the full details, but word around the grapevine is we'll be setting off as soon as our fuel tanks are topped off. That will take half a day. After that, the fleet will be following a roundabout path to the Groening System. That might take a couple of weeks or so."

Ves grew alarmed. "A couple of weeks isn't enough to improve all of those mechs! There's not enough time!"

Time waited for no one. Groening IV's metal storm only subsided at a fixed schedule. No matter how much Ves wanted to delay the expedition, he could do nothing against the forces of nature. The expedition already wasted a lot of time and they only received a new mech designer at the very last second.

"Lord Kaine waited a long time to recruit a talented mech designer." Ensign D'Amato suddenly spoke up by his side. "In truth, he cast his net fairly wide. He received a large amount of offers, but rejected them all. They lack the qualifications to work on something important as his great granddaughter's first command."

"I can understand why he would reject the lowest tiers of mech designers." Ves replied. "But surely there must have been more qualified mech designers knocking on his door."

"I am not aware of how the negotiations went between the applicants and Lord Kaine. In any case, he rejected their terms."

Journeyman Mech Designers often presided over a growing business empire. They didn't lack for money if they possessed enough sense. They'd only sign up for dangerous expeditions if they got something substantial out of it. Lord Kaine must have rejected their excessively greedy demands.

As for the Apprentice Mech Designers like Ves, Lord Kaine must have had some reservations. Apprentices were always fairly young and thus lacked practical experience. In truth, Ves possessed a flimsier resume than other apprentices, especially the core disciples who had been groomed to take over their master's legacies.

Did Lord Kaine go with Ves because the deadline of the expedition forced him to accept any candidate? It would certainly explain the cold shoulders he received so far. No one really expected him to make any difference in the coming weeks.

With a glowering expression, Ves resolved to prove them all wrong. His first task was to see what he had to work with. He spent a couple of hours going over the systems and inventory he had at his disposal. He expedited his checks because he didn't believe his predecessor went through the trouble of sabotaging the gear in the first place.

As someone who cross-trained in hacking, Melkor also lent a hand by checking over the software. "I haven't detected anything wrong with these systems. That's not to say they are clean, but whatever bugs they carry is beyond my capacity."

Chief Ramirez smiled. "Don't worry about it, our ship doesn't lack for computer specialists. My men will be happy to hear they can stop borrowing the other workshop's facilities."

Just as Ves wanted to discuss his tentative plan, a shipwide alert stopped everyone in their tracks. A strange tone sounded out that prompted everyone on the deck to stow away their gear and secure any loose pieces of equipment.

"What's that?"

"The expedition is about to set off." Ensign D'Amato answered.

After they finished sweeping anything that hadn't been bolted down, D'Amato and Ramirez guided Ves and his silent companions Melkor and Lucky to a set of crash seats placed to the sides. Everyone strapped themselves in.

"It's customary to button down the entire ship once the Ark is about to go underway." The ensign explained as he activated a projector installed next to his seat. He fiddled with the settings until the display showed the entire fleet. "We'll be departing the Mancroft System very soon."

Ves saw that the smaller ships left their orbits and paved the way for the Ark Horizon. The huge fleet carrier engaged her thrusters and slowly ascended from her stable orbit over Mancroft I.

Despite the awesome power propelling the two-kilometer ship forward, Ves only sensed a tiny vibration from his seat. The ship's inertial dampeners and artificial gravity systems worked in tip-top shape to ensure no one got splattered by the shift.

Such a major movement must have attracted the eyes of everyone in the Mancroft System. Some of the treasure hunters must be wondering about their final destination. The escort ships did a good job scaring them away when they dipped close.

The excitement on the lower decks the quickly died down once the brass gave the all-clear. Everyone resumed their current tasks.

As for Ves, he led Ramirez, D'Amato and Melkor to an empty office. "I think I've got a decent picture of what's going on right now. I've already formed a plan. The question is, who do I have to convince to implement any changes?"

Ramirez and D'Amato looked at each other before the ensign replied. "I'm mostly present as an observer. I'll step in when I think you are going astray, but other than that I'll leave you be."

"The buck stops with Captain Kaine. She's in command." Chief Ramirez answered after a thought. "I'll listen to your proposals and If I think they won't piss her off, I'll pass it on to the captain."

If Ves had to convince Captain Kaine, then he had to start small. He already adjusted the plans formulating in his mind. "What about this. Let me work on the Ajax Olympian. The heavy knight is the largest but also the simplest models of the three. It's the lynchpin of our hunting strategy so it requires extra attention. It also has the fewest numbers available so I'm confident that we can improve both frames before we arrive at the Groening System."

All of his reasons had merit. Even Chief Ramirez nodded at some of them. Still, would he trust Ves to do a good job?

"Well, the big man did hire you in the end. It'd be stupid to let you sit around doing nothing during the entire expedition. I won't let you make any changes immediately, but if you come up to me with an updated design, I'll let you try and convince the captain."

Ves immediately went to work after receiving the chief's permission. He first sat down in front of a terminal and called up the design of the Ajax Olympian.

While he studied the design, the entire expeditionary fleet had reached one of the Mancroft System's Lagrange points. Several scouts jumped in first before the Ark Horizon transitioned into FTL. Her movements immediately sent ripples throughout the higher dimensions. Anyone with access to sophisticated technology would know that a capital ship had crossed the borders.

Every mercenary vessel had to operate under strict conditions. The men Lord Kaine stationed on their vessels made sure that all means of communicating with the outside universe were clamped down. Even the relatively tiny Barracuda had to put up with a stone-faced security officer who kept a careful watch over the female spacers.

The expedition's grand departure attracted a lot of unwelcome attention. Various shady forces had already sent scout ships ahead to keep track of the Ark Horizon. The leaders of these forces justifiably believed that Lord Kaine grasped the coordinates of an extremely resource-abundant planet. Everyone wanted a piece of the action.

During the Ark Horizon's first hop, everyone aboard the carrier worked quietly to prepare her mechs. Once they entered sandmen space, they had to be ready to deploy against both sandmen and pirates. Only the people attached to the hunting platoon had it easy for now. Their time to shine came later.

While Ves looked up the design of the Ajax, Chief Ramirez went back to supervising the mech technicians. He couldn't spend all day watching over the shoulders of their new mech designer, so Ves only had Melkor, D'Amato and Lucky for company.

He might as well pick their brains if they were here. "What do you think about the Ajax Olympian?"

Since Ensign D'Amato came from the Grey Willow Star Sector, he should know a thing or two about the mech.

"The standard Ajax is a mainstay in many local forces. As you know, heavy mechs are extremely expensive, so House Kaine has opted not to purchase a model from the top segment of the market."

In other words, the Ajax and most of its variants tried to offer the most bang for your buck. It became a popular model among many middle-sized influences due to this reason.

As a dependent of a second-rate state, House Kaine couldn't afford to underinvest in their mechs. All of the models Ves had seen so far could beat any model used by the Bright Republic's Mech Corps in a direct clash.

"How would you describe the Ajax Olympian's strengths and weaknesses?"

The ensign had to think about his answer. "I'm not a specialist in mech design, but from what I know, the Ajax has an almost unbreakable shell. Its compressed armor has a reputation for weathering a storm. On the other hand, its internal structure can't keep up in prolonged engagements. It always breaks down long before the armor is breached."

"So that's why the expedition uses a variant." Ves remarked. "I suppose this version has implemented some measures to improve its shock-absorbing capacity."

"Right, but it has also driven up the cost and difficulty of repairs."

Ves referenced the design of the Olympian and found how they solved the problem. "The internal frame is reinforced by supports made out of compressed alloys."

A heavy knight possessed a lot of volume due to its extravagant size. The alloys used by the model also used up a lot of exotics.

Once Ves thought things through, he decided upon a course of action. "Cost should not be a concern. The Ark has an ample store of raw materials. I think it's best if I attempt to strengthen its shock resistance even further while lengthening its operating time under difficult conditions."

The Ajax Olympians were expected to operate for forty days straight. Any time taken away for repairs would prove extremely detrimental to the task of hunting down the hexapod kings. Without keeping these giant beasts in check, the other mercenaries wouldn't be able to hunt the regular hexapods in peace.

The only problem was that Ves had too little time. Heavy mechs required a lot of time to refurbish, so Ves had to submit a new design as soon as possible.

"A week. I only require a week."

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In the coming days, the expedition set off with a tumultuous fanfare. The main thrust of the fleet encountered several scouts from other forces along the way. In order to avoid leaking out the location of the untapped Groening System, Lord Kaine employed the mercenary ships to chase away the snooping scouts.

"Destroy every ship that doesn't make way!"

Some of the bolder scouts tried to play games, but they couldn't outfox the swift corvettes owned by the Stray Phantoms. They possessed a decisive technological edge against the riff raff of the frontier. Even the advanced Barracuda couldn't match their performance, which proved the Grey Willow Star Sector's strength.

Under Lord Kaine's arrangements, Captain Silvestra jumped ahead of the main fleet. As a civilian corvette, the Barracuda wasn't suitable to be employed as a combat vessel. Instead, she functioned as the expedition's own scout and provided advanced warning to the main fleet via a limited transmission through her restricted quantum entanglement node.

Overall, the expedition had a rocky start. House Kaine severely underestimated how much eyes they attracted when they arrived in the Komodo Star Sector.

Back at home, a fleet carrier in the hands of a noble house might be ostentatious but not too rare.

At the frontier, such a phenomenon instantly turned the expedition into the talk of the of the town. Especially considering that everyone knew that to take a capital ship into sandmen space was asking for trouble.

Thus, the first week of the expedition bogged down due to Lord Kaine's insistence on removing each and every scout. While his measures might have scared away the ships, even he could do nothing against covert sensors hidden throughout every star system in the way.

Still, the amount of stars in the galactic rim couldn't be counted. No matter how many sensors they planted, they couldn't have seeded every star, especially the ones deeper into sandmen space. While passive sensors were nearly undetectable in deep space, they lacked the resolution to determine the precise coordinates of the main fleet's route.

In addition to chasing away the scouts, House Kaine and their mercenary partners employed many methods in order to obscure their route. As an outsider in charge of improving a small number of mechs, Ves didn't have the right to know anything more.

His minder, Ensign D'Amato, might know more, but the young man carefully kept his lips sealed. Over time, Ves noticed that D'Amato understood a fair amount of engineering principles. He likely specialized in engineering or some or related field. This meant that Ves couldn't hide too many things from his watchful minder.

Due to his constant company, Ves didn't dare to access the Mech Designer System. He started working on the Ajax Olympian using the workshop's existing design suite, which impressed him with its extensive features. It might not match the System in sheer breath and versatility, but it provided a fair amount of conveniences that helped save some time.

After familiarizing himself with the variant's design, he started asking other people's opinions on the Ajax. Ves followed Ramirez's advice and approached the mech technicians who worked on the two heavy knights for years.

Not all of them opened up to him. Captain Kaine still didn't trust him, so the mech technicians assigned to the hunting platoon adopted the same mistrustful attitude. It took a lot of pestering in order to convince the friendlier ones to throw him a bone.

"The Olympian is a steady mech. It's built to last. If something happens to break, it takes a lot of effort to replace because the armor isn't meant to be removed that often."

"All the flashy marketing states that the Olympian variant excels in wrestling, but they're exaggerating its flexibility. There's no way a heavy mech is capable of performing even the simplest acrobatics. The Olympian can barely grapple another mech and force it down against the ground."

"Heavy knights don't focus much on speed but the Olympian is slower than the original Ajax! You can't imagine how many times the mech pilots of the hunting platoon are grumbling about their speed. Chief Ramirez tweaked the Olympians in our hands as best he could, but he's no miracle worker."

The feedback from the humble mech technicians proved to be a boon to Ves. Even if they only possessed a shallow technical background, they were well-versed in the Ajax Olympian's many quirks. They possessed an intuitive understanding of its design that was worth gold to a mech designer like Ves.

Ves heard enough. He considered the hunting platoon's mission profile and compared that with the current Ajax Olympian's capabilities. Normally, he'd discuss his findings with Chief Ramirez and Captain Kaine in order to take advantage of their input, but their attitudes made him feel unwelcome.

No matter. He still had Melkor and D'Amato. First, he explained his most critical observation.

"The way I see it, the role of the hunting platoon is a critical one. They're the only group of mechs that stand a chance of winning against a hexapod king. As the tanks of the platoon, the Ajax Olympians perform an essential role in their hunting strategy. It's natural for the platoon and the mech technicians to treat is like a treasure, but they're valuing the heavy knights way too much."

Ensign D'Amato frowned at this strange remark. "We only have two Olympians in our entire contingent of mechs. Even I know that heavy mechs are very difficult to get ahold of. It would be an unimaginable loss if we lose one of them during this expedition."

Ves knew what D'Amato hinted at. On average, heavy mechs weighed five times as much as a medium mech, so they normally cost five times as much as well. They could only be fabricated with specialized, expensive machinery and cost even more to maintain.

As a design catered to second-rate states like the Constance Grand Kingdom, the Ajax Olympian came with an unimaginably high price tag. Ves made the calculations himself and found that the Ajax Olympian cost around five billion bright credits!

Five billion credits! Ves could fabricate over two-hundred Marc Antony Mark II's with that much money! Most of that money had been spent on fabricating the Olympian's highly sophisticated armor system which consisted of various layers of exotic alloys.

"That is why this entire unit are taking the wrong approach. Mechs are meant to be used. How many hexapod beasts are running around in the underground world? How hard will it be to make up for the loss of an Olympian? What I'm telling you is that everyone is making a mistake by deifying the heavy knights."

Ves pressed on. "A high-class mech like the Ajaxes are ordinarily built to last several campaigns. It's hopeful if you think you can keep these big mechs intact, but they'll be facing extremely hostile conditions on Groening IV. Currently, the Ajax Olympians aren't optimized to withstand the incredible amount of abuse for forty days straight."

"What are you suggesting, then?"

"Treat the heavy mechs as disposable tools. I know several ways of increasing their power and speed. It won't take too much time for me to come up with a modified design that won't take too much time to implement."

This shook D'Amato's mind. As a young officer who aspired to be an engineer, he had always been taught to eschew short-term gains in favor of maximizing stability, reliability and longevity. Ships always cost vastly more than mechs, so everyone expected them to last decades. Ves suddenly introduced a different perspective that went directly counter to what he learned.

"What kind of performance boost are you expecting then? And how long will the models last?"

"I can easily boost its performance by twenty percent. This performance will slowly degrade over time, but the first measurable drop won't happen in months under normal conditions. Heavy combat will accelerate this breakdown, but even I'll make sure they'll last the entire forty day window."

What Ves proposed frankly astounded the ensign. It took a lot of effort for him to get a grip on the radical suggestion, but once he thought it over, he thought it might have some merit.

"I can accept that the expedition will increase their odds of success if the Olympians gain a short-term boost. However, it won't be easy to cover the loss of two heavy mechs. I'm not so sure that Lord Kaine will allow such a travesty to happen."

Ves started to smirk. "It seems to me that Lord Kaine is gambling everything on a single throw of the dice. It's impossible to succeed every time. Besides, it's not like the mechs are worthless if they have drawn their last breaths. As long as you can salvage the wrecks, you can recycle most of the exotics used in their construction."

He eventually convinced D'Amato of the merits of his plan, but he was merely the gatekeeper. A decision of this magnitude went above Felicity Kaine's head. Only Jeremiah Kaine himself could give the green light on this plan.

When the ensign notified Lord Kaine directly, they waited for hours before they received a simple reply.

"Show me a design."

Ves took that message as an encouraging sign. While he hadn't received definite approval to mess around with the Olympians, he finally pried open the door.

In addition, his radical suggestion bypassed Captain Kaine and Chief Ramirez. While he did no favors by going over their heads, he also wouldn't have to deal with their irrational obstinance.

Once he got the okay, he immediately went to work. Due to the fact that he'd likely be letting the mech technicians do most of the work, he didn't spend too much effort on nurturing the X-Factor.

After all, he intended to produce a variant of a variant of another design. Not only that, he also planned to modify existing mechs that already possessed an identity of its own. Ves did not wish to spend an excessive amount of time on fostering an X-Factor that would only end up stillborn when he finished he finally laid down his tools.

"It's better to focus on the hardware this time."

Ves unintentionally drew on Master Olson's teachings, but in the opposite direction this time. Her extensive lecture on battle mechatronics obsessed on how to prolong the service life of a mech.

Put simply, he intended to invert these methods in order to squeeze out every bit of latent potential out of the Ajax Olympians.

Many of these methods involved tweaking the performance of a design so that it flattened out. This lowered the maximum capacity of its systems but prevented them from being strained by short but excessive bursts of power.

A normal mech designer striving to build up a solid reputation always designed mechs that were intended to last. No one wanted to acquire a mech that only promised to perform up to spec for a year. Even heavy knights meant to take a beating incorporated many excessive buffers and failsafes in order to prevent a premature breakdown.

By going in reverse, Ves insured that the mechs would be able to exert much more power. While the excessive stresses reduced the effective lifetime of the mechs in question, the sacrifice was worth it if Ves insured the models maintained their peak performance during the mission.

He chuckled a bit to himself. "I don't think my master thought I'd apply her teachings in this fashion. She's probably slap me to death if she can see what I've cooked up."

He spent a fruitful week whipping up a hasty but effective design. He kept it fairly simple and avoided any major redesigns. Instead, he tore out a lot of duplicate components that raised the Olympian's redundancy but only really came into being at the end of the model's life cycle.

Certainly, Ves risked condemnation for reducing the redundancy of a mech that sorely needed it. Therefore, he tested the design himself and gathered the data to back up his decision.

Once he freed up some space, Ves started to rearrange the internal architecture. He increased its capacity to deliver a higher performance by widening some channels, bulking up the artificial muscles, adding in some amplifiers and tweaking the programming of some of the components.

He ended up with an Ajax on steroids.

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Finishing the design only meant that Ves fleshed out a plan. It didn't mean anything if his client denied him the opportunity to implement his changes.

Ves believed his redesign had a lot of merit. The reworked Ajax Olympian lasted a bit longer under heavy pressure and could exert a lot more force through its limbs. This helped the heavy knight contend against the hexapod kings in terms of brute force.

Still, nothing came for free. Maintaining a constant level of peak performance severely degraded the longevity of the frame. Running all of that excess power through systems that hadn't been rated to handle them meant that the mechs would slowly burn themselves out.

Its pristine layers of armor could still be salvaged, but the internals would have to be torn apart entirely.

"The cost is worth it." Ves tried to convince himself as he prepared to meet Lord Kaine in person again. "As long as the expedition can recover the heavy knights, they'll only end up with a temporary loss."

Melkor, who always accompanied him by his side, shook his head. "The hunting platoon won't see it that way. You don't know mech pilots like I do. The pilots assigned to the heavy knights have trained with their individual frames for years. They're practically lovers at this point."

What Melkor said momentarily worried Ves. Mech pilots indeed developed a bond with their mechs. This was natural human instinct. Right now, he pushed out a proposal that basically kidnapped their lovers and injected them with highly lethal stimulants. Such a naked violation of their partners would deal a heavy blow to their psyches.

"Tough luck then." Ves eventually replied, his eyes as cold as steel. "The expedition doesn't revolve around their interests. All of the mechs serve at the pleasure of Lord Kaine. If they have to be used up in order to increase the odds of success, then so be it. It's a fair tradeoff."

House Kaine invested an incredible fortune to put this expedition together. Even then, they could only nurture a small number of hand-raised elites to tackle the awesome hexapod kings. Everyone of those mechs played a critical role, but that didn't mean they should be treated as heirlooms.

With the way Lord Kaine obsessed over the expedition, Ves expected him to make the smart decision.

"Pissing off the pilots of the Olympians is the least you've done. You completely disregarded the hunting platoon's leadership. Captain Kaine will only think worse of you."

"There's no way I can negotiate with her in the first place. Not with so little time."

If Captain Kaine and the hunting platoon approached him with a genuine desire to cooperate, then he might be able to make some compromises. Too bad they hadn't recovered from the betrayal of the previous mech designer.

In any event, Ves didn't come here to build up a relationship with these foreigners. After finishing his mission, he'd return to Cloudy Curtain while the Ark Horizon went on her merry way back to the Grey Willow Star Sector.

Like a lawyer making a case before a judge, Ves stood before Lord Kaine behind his imposing desk. "If I'm allowed to implement my design, the Ajax Olympians will be able to perform beyond their regular parameters by around twenty percent."

"Downsides?" Lord Kaine asked idly while he browsed through the extensive notes that Ves had written up.

"Besides the obvious degradation that won't really matter, the mechs will drastically increase their energy consumption by around fifty percent or so. I've already tried my best to preserve as much efficiency as I can, but you always have to pay a huge price to squeeze out a little bit more performance."

"Hm, we'll have to increase the supply of spare energy cells."

An experienced leader like Lord Kaine always knew the right questions to ask. Even if he held some animosity to Ves, he was capable of putting it aside in favor of advancing his cherished expedition.

However, just as the meeting drew to a favorable conclusion, the main hatch slid open and an angry wildcat entered the stateroom.

"Grandpa!" Felicity growled and stomped over to Ves. She abruptly grasped his collar and used her prodigious strength to lift him up. "I just heard what this bastard intends to do. He wants to butcher the Ajaxes!"

"Sit down Miss Kaine!" The older gentlemen roared, forcing Felicity to halt her impending tirade. "Remember your duties. We are not playing games right now!"

Felicity let go of Ves, allowing him to breathe. She slowly calmed down and squeezed her fists. "Sir! I respectfully wish to issue an objection to Mr. Larkinson's stupid idea. The men assigned to pilot the Olympians have trained with the heavy knights for years. Abruptly implementing major changes will throw away their familiarity with their mechs. I can't guarantee they will be able to perform up to standard when everyone is counting on them!"

She certainly adjusted quickly. Ves admired her excuse. It sounded quite plausible. "Captain Kaine has a point, but the redesign will not offer a vastly different piloting experience. The new Olympian is still the same, it just has higher limits now."

"We don't have the time to indulge in your flights of fancies! You spent so little time on this design. I don't believe you eliminated all of the flaws! Besides that, it also takes an incredibly long time to reconfigure a heavy mech, let alone two. There's no way you can finish converting the Olympians to your new design!"

"I think you underestimate my assembly skills." Ves shook his head. "Under my supervision, I'll be able to direct the mech technicians in your department to take the best paths. I can guarantee you that I'll be able to get it done in ten days."

"Ten days? This is not a flimsy light mech you're talking about. These are heavy mechs!"

Just as it seemed the argument would go on, an alarm suddenly blared. A brief but complex tone sounded out that caused the faces of both Kaines to pale.

Lord Kaine immediately activated his intercomm. "All hands prepare for action! Set condition yellow!"

Felicity already left the room in order to lead her hunting platoon. As for Lord Kaine, he frowned as he studied the incoming data sent to his terminal. He gritted his teeth.

"Opportunists!"

Then, he suddenly remembered that Ves hadn't left. "Mr. Larkinson, you have my permission to implement your design. Begin your work immediately and don't report back until you have finished the overhaul."

"You want me to convert the Olympians right now?"

"A naval battle can drag on for days. The expedition can't afford to keep you idle. Corral the mech technicians assigned to the hunting platoon to assist your efforts as long as it doesn't interfere with the defense of my fleet."

Ves acknowledged the order and promptly got kicked out of the office. The entire fleet carrier transitioned into condition yellow, which was better than condition red but worse than condition green. Basically, the Ark Horizon raised her guard and prepared for battle, even if there might not be an imminent threat.

"What's going on?!" He asked.

Ensign D'Amato studied his comm for a moment. "A large fleet has arrived in our current star system. Considering the remoteness of our current location, the new arrivals are likely targeting our expedition. While they can't match our numbers, they possess enough ships and mechs to pose a threat to Ark Horizon."

"Is the Ark in danger?"

"I'm not quite sure. Our force is bigger so it will be strange if they decide to commit their forces. We still don't know what they're hoping for that's giving them so much confidence." The ensign turned to Melkor. "Do you wish to contribute to our defense?"

The fleet carrier offered a large amount of reinforced bunkers that allowed mechs to shoot against approaching enemies. Melkor's Stanislaw might prove useful.

He shook his head. "I'll only be in the way. It's better if I keep an eye on Ves."

Melkor didn't fit in their chain of command and never trained to take up a defensive position aboard a fleet carrier. In this unfamiliar environment, the last thing he wanted to do was to attract suspicion.

"We'll hole up in the workshop." Ves declared. He wanted to be out of the way in case something dangerous happened. "Lord Kaine has given me his orders, so I best get to work."

The hangar bay where the hunting platoon holed up turned into a hive of activity. Ves, Melkor and D'Amato had to make way for important people going on important business. Their imposing stances revealed that they expected the worst.

Even the hunting platoon had begun to mobilize. Captain Kaine corralled her subordinates to ready every mech. Mech technicians hurriedly cancelled their routine maintenance tasks in order to free up the mechs.

The Empyreans readied themselves to be employed in one of the Ark Horizon's bunkers where they could employ their railguns to the fullest.

The Volmars stayed in their stables. Their mech pilots sat close, ready to hop in if they were needed to repel any boarding parties. Their relatively relaxed faces showed that they didn't think it would come to that. The Ark Horizon possessed a lot of teeth.

As for the Ajax Olympians, no one prepared them for deployment. Felicity Kaine had already been notified that they'd be modified and she had no time to waste on the matter now that the fleet had been set to condition yellow.

This provided Ves with an unexpected boon. Many mech technicians assigned to the hunting platoon had nothing to do for the moment. The story might be different once a battle erupted, but from what everyone surmised, the fleets were out of range and stayed that way for at least several hours.

"Has the Ark Horizon ever been tested in battle?" Ves curiously asked Chief Ramirez.

"Not since House Kaine got their hands on her. We've received excellent training, but we've never been tested in actual battle."

That didn't sound encouraging. Hopefully, the Ark Horizon's impressive capabilities and her abundance of mechs deterred the pirates from testing the expedition's readiness.

In order to prevent any leaks, the entire ship locked down on any form of communication. When Ves activated his comm, he found he couldn't view the current disposition of the fleet. For all he knew, the fleet was flying straight into a star.

The lack of information caused him to feel slightly claustrophobic. It was as if he was trapped in a space elevator that suddenly descended uncontrollably.

Ensign D'Amato patted his back. "It's nothing unusual to feel uneasy about what's going on outside. Trust in our crew. They've got our backs. It's better if you focus on your own duties."

Indeed. One good thing that came out of this course of events was that Ves received permission to go ahead with his plans without coming to blows with Captain Kaine. Even though she probably hated his guts, her feelings on the matter didn't matter. The entire ordeal proved that the young scion of the Kaines possessed little actual power.

Together with D'Amato and Ramirez, Ves delegated the difficult assignment of converting the Ajax Olympians to a new design. This was his first time working with a large number of subordinates, but through the help of his two liaisons, they came up with a workable schedule.

"Jobs like these are split up in two. First, you've got to fabricate the new parts. As far as I see it, there's nothing challenging in fabricating these extra parts. I'm not familiar with half of them, but they're not too complex."

"Just because they're simple doesn't mean you can slack off." Ves quickly warned. "In order to make sure they're able to withstand the shocks they're likely to face, they have to be reproduced exactly according to specs. We absolutely can't afford to cut corners in this matter. The tolerances have to be extremely tight."

"I'll make sure my men won't slip." Ramirez promised with fiery eyes. "We all know what's at stake. I won't forgive anyone if he thinks he can get away with sloppy work."

The chief's supervision lifted a weight off Ves. "That's good. If you can insure the parts are fabricated without faults, I'll make sure the technicians know how to go about and reassemble the Olympians. They have to open up the entire frames and carefully remove the right parts. Then, they have to install the freshly fabricated parts in the right order. I expect this won't go so smooth."

Ves didn't trust the low-class mech technicians to know the correct order. He directly took charge of the most difficult aspect of this conversion project.

"I'll tell the men to listen to your orders. If they give you some lip, just smack them around."

Everyone nodded. Ves felt relieved that Chief Ramirez didn't put up any roadblocks. He knew when to follow orders. Since the current project had been authorized by the big man directly, Ramirez certainly knew he couldn't fob off his responsibilities.

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Even if every channel of communication had been shuttered, it didn't stop people from talking. While most of the crew possessed some propriety, a small number of loudmouths couldn't help but pass on gossip. Of course, everything they said happened hours ago and didn't relate to the current condition of the expeditionary fleet.

"The expeditionary fleet avoided a minefield. They put some really nasty ones out in space. I heard that they had some impressive homing capabilities and their movements are stealthy enough to sneak up on us to about a hundred kilometers. After that, it activates this enormous booster than propels it straight into the biggest ship it can find!"

"Some of the merc ships in our fleet are dragging their heels. I heard Lord Kaine has been shouting their butts off for refusing to meet the enemy. I told you guys the local mercs are scum! They're good little soldiers as long as nothing happens, but they're acting as scared as rabbits as soon as actual combat is involved!"

"The brass keeps arguing on how to handle the pirate fleet. Lord Kaine directly butted heads with the Big Three! Even the three big mercenary groups don't agree on what to do. George's Cavalry want to conduct a pitched battle, while the Stray Phantoms is hoping to drag out the engagements."

"What about Adila's Chosen?"

"The hell if I know what those religious nuts are thinking about. They're praying to themselves half of the time."

"The Stray Phantoms raked their vanguard! I heard they chewed up dozens of mechs at once in a single pass! The attack caused the entire pirate fleet to pause!"

The constant chatter apprised Ves and the others of the situation and gave them some perspective of what went on in space. Though he didn't know how the lower ranks got their news, it sounded as if the entire engagement had just begun.

Ves slowly got used to working under an elevated alert level. He had to watch his actions and make sure he didn't get up to anything suspicious. Ensign D'Amato kept a laser-like gaze on him while he directed the partial disassembly of the two Ajax Olympians.

As heavy knights were meant to absorb damage, they possessed an extremely complex armor system. Every layer and every plate connected to another one, and untangling them took a lot of care and effort.

Fortunately, the mech technicians in this department possessed plenty of experience in peeling back the armor. They expertly stripped away the dense and heavy plates and set them aside. Ves didn't even have to get his hands dirty.

"Alright, we've opened up the Ajaxes." Ves announced the the technicians that Chief Ramirez had placed under him. "Now, carefully dismantle the components marked in the chart according to the order I set out."

The feeling of leading an entire work crew made Ves feel like a queen among a hive of bees. It helped that the bees all possessed their own competences. As an influence from a second-rate state, House Kaine would never hire idiots.

Ves also gained an unexpected benefit in this process. He personally witnessed the various methods the mech technicians used to coordinate with each other and keep track of their progress. All of their sophisticated means had been laid bare before his eyes. If he ever wanted to expand his production capacity, he wouldn't be starting from scratch.

"Even if I don't gain much on this trip, this experience is already worth it. I should start hiring some mech technicians once I return home."

Over at the workshop, Chief Ramirez had already begun to fabricate the new components. Ves didn't worry too much because the design mostly demanded auxiliary components that didn't possess any complex functions. Neither did they incorporate a lot of finicky exotic materials.

The Ark Horizon's workshops all came stocked with powerful but compact 3D printers. It possessed similar qualities to the gigantic Dortmund but took up half the space. With the help of these advanced machines, the production of the parts proceeded on schedule.

A change happened in the third day. The Ark Horizon vibrated briefly, interrupting everyone's work. Ves looked up from the diagram he studied and frowned. "What's going on?"

Ensign D'Amato looked concerned. "That's the thrusters of the Ark Horizon. The ship is accelerating at its maximum speed!"

The alert light that everyone previously ignored turned from yellow to red. Everyone quickly received a new set of orders.

"Stop your work and secure everything in sight! Change into your hazard suits and ready your gear!"

The hunting platoon started to rouse. Every mech except for the Ajaxes came online. The Volmars gathered together and lumbered towards the center of the hangar bay while the Empyreans gathered their railguns and headed towards their assigned bunkers.

The mech technicians split in two. The first half remained in the hangar bay and waited to receive damaged mechs. The other half joined various damage control parties that stood by to mitigate the damage the Ark might incur.

Ves started to get very concerned. From what he gathered so far, the expeditionary fleet acted cautiously in front of the pirate fleet. An abrupt course change and full acceleration meant the Ark was either running away or turning headlong into the enemy.

Ensign D'Amato kept trying to find out the current situation, but his junior rank stopped him from obtaining anything solid. Ves shook his head and stormed directly to Captain Kaine. The woman had already changed into an armored piloting suit and started to head for her private mech stable.

"Please wait a moment!"

"What do you want?" Captain Kaine spat out as she look at him as if he was a worm.

"Tell me what is happening!"

Though she wanted to brush him off, she glanced at Melkor who always stood by his side and reconsidered. "Another round of treachery occurred. Some of the local mercenary outfits turned coat and ambushed the ships that belong to the mercenaries who are still on our side. The opening round alone devastated dozens of mechs and crippled three small transports!"

Ves felt as if he had been struck by lightning. "I thought House Kaine had a handle on the mercenaries!"

"They somehow conspired to betray House Kaine from the start. The traitor mercs hid a number of assets aboard their ships and attacked our security officers who had been placed aboard their ships to prevent any mutinies. Some of them are still holding out!"

The expeditionary fleet possessed a lot of assets, so the betrayal hadn't managed to threaten the Ark Horizon. However, the pirate fleet led by a menacing pirate gang called the Dragons of the Void had begun to swoop in for the kill.

Instead of shying away from a fight, Lord Kaine decided to directly put his powerful fleet carrier into play. The entire expeditionary fleet redirected their course in a direct heading towards the pirate fleet.

Lord Kaine intended to bull right through the enemy's formation!

Ves wanted to curse at his client's recklessness. "Let me help! I'm a mech designer. I'm good with anything that involves mechs."

"I'm sorry Larkinson, but the last thing we need is another outsider butting in where he doesn't belong. Your place is here. If you want to help, then ask Chief Ramirez for something to do. Whatever you do, don't leave this department."

The woman turned around before Ves could say anything else. He missed his opportunity to make a difference.

He wanted to cross over to the other side of the hangar bay and help work on the spaceborn mechs that started to deploy into space. Ves had never come close to seeing an actual spaceborn mech, let alone perform any maintenance on these special mechs.

An hour went by as more than half of the mechs in the hangar bay had left. The mechs that remained all waited for their turns to deploy.

Over time, damaged mechs started to fly back into the hangar. Their damaged frames passed through the security screen that acted as a membrane to keep all of the air and pressure inside the hangar stable.

Even if the security screens malfunctioned, everyone had already changed into hazard suits, including Ves and Melkor. These hardened vacuum suits provided their wearers with a lot of protection against explosions, shrapnel and radiation. Their boots possessed a strong magnetic sole that helped everyone stay on their feet even at zero-G.

Ves spent most of his time helping Chief Ramirez securing the workshop and mech stables for any loose ends. The two Ajaxes especially remained vulnerable. Most of its heavy armor plating that protected its delicate internals had been placed to the side.

If a pirate happened to drop by and fired a volley of shots from a regular infantry rifle, he'd be able to do a massive amount of damage.

"Keep attaching as much armor as you can!" Chief Ramirez frantically yelled at his henpecked technicians. "I'll dock your pay if I see a single exposed section in an hour!"

Everyone frantically raced to put some measure of cover on the exposed Ajax frames. Even though it might not help that much if a missile went off, it would at least limit some of the shock damage.

Throughout all of this chaos, Melkor stood largely forgotten. As a mech pilot and bodyguard to Ves, he lacked access to both a mech and a personal firearm. The expedition's admittedly justified caution towards outsiders relegated him to the role of an observer. His only job these days appeared to be keeping hold of Lucky.

The cat happened to detect something strange. He loudly meowed and tried to catch his owner's attention. Melkor tried to stifle the cat due to the commotion he caused, but Lucky remained undeterred.

Ves had learned to trust his mechanical companion. "What's wrong, Lucky?"

The cat stretched his paw towards one of the entrances of the hangar bay. The harness prevented him from utilizing his full range of motion.

"Okay, enough of this crap!" Ves turned around and borrowed a cutting tool from a work table. He turned it on and carefully cut apart the restrictions that kept Lucky largely immobile. Once all of the shackles broke, the cat quickly lunged in the direction of the nearest entrance.

"Hey, what are you doing? That pet is not allowed to roam free!" Ensign D'Amato yelled and pulled out his laser pistol.

Even if D'Amato hadn't aimed his pistol at anyone, Ves still raised his hands. "Hey, I don't mean any harm! My cat has a really good nose. He might have detected something fishy!"

"That's ridiculous!" The ensign exclaimed with an incredulous expression. "The Ark Horizon is the flagship of this fleet! Every compartment and every corridor is monitored day and night. Nothing that can threaten the ship and her crew can ever get close!"

It all came down to trust. Ves hoped that his stay aboard the Ark had proved he could be trusted to advance the interests of the expedition. Ensign D'Amato went beyond his job as an observer and frequently helped out Ves by providing his own insights.

Yet as soon as Ves crossed the line, D'Amato acted like someone pressed his reset button. It hurt a bit to be treated like a stranger and a potential threat after so many days of camaraderie.

Melkor already stood in front of Ves. "Calm down, the both of you! Ensign, Lucky is not a toy. I believe in Ves when he states that Lucky is capable of sniffing out any threats. I suggest you warn whoever is in command on this deck to prepare for the worst."

Just as Ensign D'Amato was about to reply, a large explosion near the entrance interrupted his words. The blast knocked all of the spacers off their feet and blew away various pieces of junk in the vicinity. Some of the mech technicians who still remained standing even got hit by cabinets and unsecured tools!

Another explosion triggered close to the security screen, instantly disabling it. The entire hangar bay suffered from explosive decompression as all of the air inside the massive bay departed into space. A few more loose components flew off into vacuum.

"Lucky!" Ves called as his hazard suit sent out an alert. His suit came with two hours of oxygen, but his stress caused him to deplete his reserves faster. "Lucky, where are you?!"

Vacuum transmitted no sound. Ves couldn't call out for his cat. He disregarded the wounded and hobbled over towards the first blast site.

A shiny bronze cat appeared from nowhere. The cat appeared frazzled.

"There you are!"

Ves grasped Lucky's body and inspected him for damage. He sighed in relief once he saw his cat only suffered a glancing blow from a random piece of shrapnel.

Melkor and D'Amato raced to his position and beheld the carnage around them. The blast hurt a fair amount of unsuspecting mech technicians.

Just as it appeared that things couldn't go worse, a strange, damaged mech coated in red descended onto the hangar bay.

"Pirate mech!"

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Before switching to condition red, the two fleets danced around each other.

The expeditionary fleet centered around the Ark Horizon kept trying to transition into FTL.

In order to bar their way, the Dragons of the Void kept bombarding them with miniature gravity bombs. These bombs did nothing much but radiate a strong local gravity field that quickly tapered off. However, they were cheap to make so thousands of these bombs rained over the expeditionary fleet at any moment.

At its current state, the expeditionary fleet's FTL drives couldn't handle the disturbance. The constant ejection of the bombs was like throwing stones into a formerly placid lake. The ripples that ensued when the stones touched the water prevented the ships from going into FTL.

However, the Dragons of the Void miscalculated. In order to disturb the expeditionary fleet, their own pirate ships had to come fairly close. When Lord Kaine decided to turn his ship straight into the pirates, he surprised everyone but putting the Ark Horizon in the vanguard.

Putting his flagship in the heart of the offensive thrust exposed the valuable ship to significant enemy fire, but also allowed him to use his best ship in the best possible way.

The expeditionary fleet's maneuvers had caught the Dragons of the Void off-guard. Lord Kaine ordered the fleet to close up its formation and assemble into an arrow. The man wanted to pierce straight through the dispersed formation of pirates before they could do the same.

Their disparity in strength became evident after the two fleets collided. The vast distance between each ship ensured no actual collision occurred. However, many spaceborn mechs came into medium or close range to each other, which allowed House Kaine to flex its superior ships and mechs.

The pirates fell short on both firepower and armor. Many pirate vessels simply consisted of civilian transports converted into improvised mech carriers. These ships generally didn't possess exceptional armor and their keels and support structure were never rated to handle heavy abuse.

On the other hand, the ships controlled by House Kaine and their partners boasted thick layers of exotic armor. Each ship cost a fortune, but all of them made it through the thick of the fight with nothing but scratches.

In terms of offense, House Kaine chewed up the pirate fleet with its abundant number of riflemen and cannoneer mechs. They had been equipped to handle the sandmen, so they possessed a large amount of kinetic weaponry such as ballistic rifles and railguns. These weapons possessed a very large punch and were capable of crippling any small-to-medium sized ships in a couple of volleys.

Yet the pirates didn't go down without a fight. After experiencing the ferocity of the forces from the Grey Willow Star Sector, they shifted the bulk of their firepower towards the mercenaries who remained loyal to House Kaine.

The mercenary ships already had to deal with their colleagues who turned their coats. They suffered heavy casualties once they became the focus of the enemy mechs, especially considering that most of them carried mechs kitted out for melee combat.

While George's Cavalry eventually swooped in and came to their rescue, even they couldn't cover every direction. The mercenaries sustained casualties up to around thirty percent.

In the meantime, some pirates went crazy and plunged straight towards the Ark Horizon. The massive ship utilized both her broadside bunkers to lay down a massive field of fire in two directions. Her prodigious firepower disrupted the pirate formation and softened them up to follow-up blows.

While many pirates valued their own lives and tried to fly away, some daredevils running on stimulants dove straight towards the behemoth. The defenders aboard the Ark Horizon focused their fire towards these dangerous lunatics, but some of them managed to get through.

The pirate mech that sneaked into one of the hangar bays made for a sorry sight. It lost an entire arm and much of its torso lost its armor plating. Despite the catastrophic damage, it held on to its laser rifle with its remaining arm and tried to raise it towards a group of bewildered mech technicians.

The mech suddenly crunched into pieces as a dazzling white mech fell on top of its prone form. The newly arrived mech featured a light feminine contour with marvellous red streamers hanging from its head. From the way it collapsed a pirate mech merely by stomping on it, the white mech must be a highly advanced mech.

The white mech flourished its spear, the tip of which glowed in a mysterious white glow. The mech transmitted Captain Kaine's voice to everyone's hazard suits. "Lock down the hangar bay! Close the ramp and man the defense turrets!"

Everyone sprung into action. The huge opening that exposed the hangar bay to space started to close up. Just as the ramp covered the giant gap, another pirate mech appeared and slammed a sword through one of the mechanisms.

The ramp abruptly stopped midway, leaving enough space for more intruders. A handful of pirate mechs that survived the initial barrage flocked to the opening and tried to squeeze into the vulnerable hangar.

The pitfalls of deploying a fleet carrier straight into the fray finally became apparent. In the end, the Ark Horizon lacked the armor coverage and anti-mech defense systems of a true warship.

"Mechs, hold your ground! Repel the invaders!"

A significant amount of House Kaine's mechs remained on standby. All of them mobilized at this moment in order to respond to the new threat.

In the meantime, Melkor raced towards his own mech which had been stowed in the corner since their arrival. His Stanislaw wielded a deadly mid-range laser rifle which could wreak havoc if he recklessly fired the weapon. Thus, as soon as his mech came online, he dialed down the power and aimed carefully before firing at the pirate mechs making a mess of things.

Internal defense turrets came online at this moment and helped repel the pirates. Some enemy mechs collapsed after suffering a couple of blows, while other mechs required much more effort to defeat. All of the latter mechs carried the emblem of a white-and-black dragon's head.

"Turrets, focus on the rabble. Leave the Dragons of the Void to us!"

As the mechs started to fight around the broken ramp, Ves hurriedly sought out Chief Ramirez. The man had hunkered down behind a control terminal. He hastily tried to activate various settings only to encounter error messages.

Ramirez cursed. Everyone on the local channel heard his frustration. "The pirates knew where to strike! The earlier explosion wrecked the primary power channel to the ramp. The damage the pirate mech inflicted to the mechanism shouldn't be able to cripple the ramp if it still had full power!"

Perhaps the random attacks hadn't been so spontaneous. All of the evidence so far pointed out that the local mercs weren't the only ones dealing with questionable loyalties. Still, Ves shook his head. Now was not the time to sniff out any traitors. Ramirez just pointed out an area where he could be of use.

"Calm down!" Ves demanded and put his hands over the chief's broad shoulders. "We have to repair the broken power channel!"

"What? Now?"

The repair work had to be done out in the open where almost any mech could fire a stray shot at the location. Chief Ramirez didn't dare to send out any men to fix the broken channel. Even if he cut every possible corner, the work would still take over ten minutes of frantic working!

"If the ramp stays open, the pirates will keep pouring in! The longer this goes on, the higher the chance our Ajaxes will suffer damage! I don't need to tell you how much it will set back the expedition. Chief, make a decision. We have to get that ramp moving again!"

Ves had a very good point. Even as the Ark Horizon threaded her way out of the pirate formation, the large amounts of reckless pirates deployed in space ensured that a trickle of enemies would always squeeze through the opening.

The chief gritted his teeth. "Fine!"

The man finally got his head back together and ordered a team of his most solid mech technicians to grab some tools. Meanwhile, Ves and Ramirez entered one of the storehouses and retrieved the materials to replace the broken power channel. They couldn't lift the load by hand, so they piled it on top of a loader bot and brought it with them back to the main hangar.

"Let's go, boys!"

The group of technicians tried their best to remain inconspicuous. They slowly neared the main entrance of the hangar and entered the area affected by the initial explosion. The wounded had already been retrieved while the dead still lingered where their breaths snuffed out.

Most of the dead wore simple vacuum suits covered with simple work coveralls that provided them with an abundant amount of pockets. They provided little protection against a serious blast like the one that broke the power channel. Ves felt a little queasy walking past the unfortunate dead.

Lucky on the other hand revelled in his newfound freedom. The harness had irritated him for weeks, preventing him from running around without restriction. Now that Ves had cut off his bonds, he eagerly took the lead and made sure that the repair team encountered no other threats.

Too bad he couldn't help if a pirate mech decides to shoot in their direction. Ves might survive on account of his shield generator, but everyone else only had their hazard suits to protect their bodies.

Once they reached the affected portion, Ves and a number of competent technicians turned on their plasma cutters and separated the wrecked portion of the power channel.

They worked for several minutes, trusting their comrades to cover their back. Melkor in particular shot at every mech who turned their weapons to the work team, drawing attention away from their vital effort to secure the hangar.

Captain Kaine also intervened with her top quality machine. Unfortunately, her mech lacked a flight system and had to borrow a spare ballistic rifle in order to fight back against the pirates.

While she might be an excellent warrior with a spear, her marksmanship barely sufficed. Many of her shots missed her target and traveled on to hit the deck or bulkhead. Despite her abysmal hit rate, she succeeded in distracting the pirates, causing them to forget about the puny humans who worked out in the open.

Everyone in the repair team made brisk progress trying to improvise a new channel. They couldn't afford to go through a checklist of procedures. They merely settled for a crude and improvised channel that would hold up to the stress of channeling a significant amount of power. It already sounded good if it lasted for an hour before burning out.

"Skip the safeties! Work faster! Don't wait for the couplings to settle in. Just skip to the next part!"

While Ves possessed a vast amount of theoretical knowledge, the best mech technicians surpassed him in handling the tools and conducting the actual repairs. The mech designer had been pushed in a supervisory capacity and made sure the mech technicians took the right actions to repair the power channel quickly.

Several minutes flew by as the ugly-looking kludge took shape. Once the power channel finally took shape, Ramirez raced to the nearest console and forcibly tried to order the ramp to close.

The half-broken ramp shook, then abruptly moved as its remaining mechanisms powered through. The few remaining pirate mechs tried but failed to sabotage the ramp again. Reinforcements arrived just in time to contain the rogue mechs.

The ramp finally slid shut and powerful locks kept the heavy cover in place. The hangar bay now enjoyed as much protection as the rest of the ship.

The repair team led by Ves and Chief Ramirez collapsed on the ground. The stress of working under fire completely drained their energy. After giving everyone a minute of rest, Ramirez started to kick his men up their feet.

"Get up! This is no time to sleep! We still have work to do!"

The battle wasn't over yet. The Ark Horizon paid a significant price in her attempt to cut the pirate formation in half. While the expeditionary fleet succeeded in disintegrating the enemy formation, a lot of ships and mechs suffered various amounts of damage in turn.

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