The Mech Touch

Not only did he manage to complete the Ghost Project in the best possible fashion, he also earned 3,000,000 MTA merits and received a lot of insights on masterwork mechs.

The information he squeezed from Professor Gina Cavendish alone was easily worth at least ten times as much as the merits he had earned!

He almost felt regretful when the representative of the Meeh Supremacist Faction bid the Larkinsons goodbye and teleported back to the MTA frigate lingering in orbit.

"I need time to process everything that I have learned." Gloriana told her husband. "Combined with my latest research, I am confident that I can prepare a new solution in time for the Bloodripper Project and the Greenaxe Project."

The two remaining ongoing expert mech design projects were due to complete in two months.

Ves thought it was anything but certain that they would be finished at that time. He and his wife had harvested so many gains in the last couple of weeks that they would definitely make a lot of changes to the Bloodripper Project and the Greenaxe Project!

"Go ahead." He told his wife. "I need to address a few matters myself. We still haven't tested the Dullahan Project and the Phobos as of yet, and I also have to design a new test mech in order to conduct a quick experiment in relation to the Carmine System. Aside from that, I've received a notification that the Spirit of Bentheim will enter into orbit of Davute VII in a week."

The Golden Skull Alliance would finally be able to resume its Trailblazer Expedition once again!

The expeditionary fleet probably needed another week or so before it could actually leave the Davute System.

Ves was aware that it would take the crew of the factory a bit more time to complete their retraining and familiarize themselves with all of the upgraded ship systems.

Fortunately, the crew had not been staying idle all of this time. They had already undergone months of simulation training in order to learn how to operate the MTA-installed equipment and control systems.

·ƈθm After a brief chat, Ves waved goodbye to his wife and settled in his workshop to start a new side project.

His goal was to design a quick stopgap mech to reignite his grandfather's spark of life.

Speed was of the essence. There was no need to invest many months into designing a strong expert mech comparable to the Dullahan Project.

Ves could take care of that later if the need arose. For now, he needed to whip up a hasty solution to stop the deterioration of his grandfather's health. There was no point in considering any other plans centered around Benjamin Larkinson if his life couldn't be preserved!

Since the mech that he intended to design was just meant to become a carrier of the Carmine System, it did not actually matter whether it was good or even original.

It was faster and more efficient if he took one of his existing designs and modified it rather than designing a mech from scratch.

The downside was that all of his mechs were designed with a different purpose in mind. It would be troublesome to add the Carmine System to them as their internals needed to be completely redesigned.

Ves shook his head. "It is better to start from scratch with a basic mech. I can easily build it up over time."

It was best not to start with a mech that was too shabby. His grandfather sounded as if he was eager to leave his old life behind.

If Ves wanted to remedy this condition, then he had to introduce Benjamin to a mech that could make him feel alive again!

"The piloting experience has to be fun and exciting! My grandfather must feel as if he has gone back to the past where he was in his prime!"

Ves dove deep into the archives of the Larkinson Family. He called up a bunch of decades-old footage.

His grandfather looked a lot younger and more handsome at the time. It was easy to see where Ark and Ryncol inherited their optimistic bravery and dashing charm.

Benjamin used to pilot a third-class expert landbound knight mech called the Ember Star.

There was nothing particularly special about the Ember Star. While it could fight in space in an emergency with the help of a floater platform, it was especially designed to function as an offensive knight mech during planetary campaigns.

Knight mechs tended to get beat up the most, and the Ember Star fought in plenty of pitched battles.

It was due to the frequent exposure to high intensity combat situations that Benjamin Larkinson's luck finally ran out. The Vesians eventually succeeded in destroying the Ember Star on the battlefield!

Though the expert knight mech's cockpit managed to eject in time, its pilot still couldn't escape the powerful forces and the destructive feedback of feeling the Ember Star crumble after enduring catastrophic damage!

Ves understood that this deeply traumatic event haunted his grandfather to this day.

Should he 'reunite' Benjamin with a knight mech that closely resembled the Ember Star, or was it better to design a fresh machine that had no relations to his long and turbulent past?

"Hmmm... my grandfather isn't the sort of person to run away from his past. For better or worse, he needs to confront it and make peace with his past regrets."

The best way to do so was to design a facsimile of the Ember Star.

Ves began to sketch out a mech design that closely copied the appearance of the Ember Star.

Though Ves did not have any precise design schematics or spec sheets to reference from, he could still make his own estimations based on the archival footage of the old Ember Star in action.

It did not take that much effort to reproduce the mass, dimensions and much ot the basic performance parameters ot the old third-class expert mech.

As a second-class mech designer with lots of funding and resources at his disposal, Ves could easily find materials with many different properties that loosely matched the properties of the materials used to construct the original Ember Star.

The biggest deviation was that Ves did not include any resonating exotics to the design. He was unable to do so as he had no idea what locally available resonating exotics his grandfather could resonate with. There was no way to test this considering Benjamin's bedridden condition!

He also wasn't sure whether it was possible to attune an expert mech to an expert pilot with a broken will. Ves may have recently learned the right ritual from Master Vayro Goldstein, but he had never pulled it off under normal conditions.

"I guess I will settle for designing a standard mech and go from there. It will have to be a second-class mech in order to imitate the improved performance of a third-class expert mech."

It would also be easier for his grandfather to adapt to contemporary mech combat if he started out with a second-class mech.

Ves could upgrade it step-by-step so that Benjamin would slowly attain the combat effectiveness of a modern Larkinson expert pilot.

This was destined to be a long process. Even if Benjamin's body and willpower recovered faster than Ves expected, there was no denying the fact that the old man had already retired for too many decades!

Not only that, but Benjamin's training and combat experience only prepared him to fight in wars between two third rate states.

There was no way his grandfather would ever be able to keep up with the Larkinson mech pilots of today!

"Well, it is not as if I have to push him to the battlefield right away."

His grandfather likely had to go through a long and extensive recovery and retraining process.

Ves believed it would be best to keep his old man busy by assigning him the responsibility of teaching mooh cadets ot the Larkinson Clan's academy.

The design already started to take shape after a day. Ves had focused on designing the Carmine System shortly after he put the basic frame together.

"I need to design the organic components first so that the Larkinson Biotech Institute can grow them in advance."

Fortunately, the Carmine System did not impose a lot of demands. Ves could make it as cheap or expensive as needed.

This time, he copied much of the work that he had already done for his stalled Blood Knight Project and adapted it so that it would take less time to grow to completion.

Once he was happy with the design of his current project's Carmine System, he sent off his instructions to Director Ranya Wodin and went back to designing the rest of the frame.

Ves imagined that he was designing a successor of the Ember Star.

Just as he had done with the Dullahan Project, Ves did not want to give his grandfather the false impression that he could reconnect with his old battle partner.

"I can't engage in falsehoods."

Ves merely wanted to give his grandfather the feel of piloting a familiar mech while also tempting him with the many benefits of modern machines.

The Dawn Star Project increasingly carried the grandson's hopes and dreams for his grandfather.

Despite its old and outdated shape, the mech design was filled with vitality.

Ves injected a bit of youth into its air in order to counter Benjamin's fatalistic mindset.

He also intertwined the Golden Cat as deeply into the design as possible. The design spirit had to take the lead in brightening Benjamin up and instill a deeper sense of intimacy and commitment to the Larkins Clan!

Though Ves did not really focus too much on strengthening its design, the Dawn Star Project could still put up a decent fight against most of his other mechs on land.

The combination of speed, defense and attack power turned it into a versatile machine that could serve a variety of roles just like the Ember Star of old.

Defense was still its strongest aspect, and Ves made sure to strengthen it as much as he could reasonably accomplish.

Hie grandfather already Buffered a life-changing accident once when hie Ember Star crumbled.

Ves did not want his old man to experience anything similar a second time!

The Dawn Star's internals became a lot more robust. The cockpit received an insane amount of strengthening that was far in excess of any second-class standard mech.

Ves still wasn't fully satisfied with the safety parameters of his mech design, but he would have to spend a lot more time if he wanted to strengthen its frame even further.

Altering the design to such a degree also made it harder for Benjamin to sync up with the Dawn Star Project.

Ves couldn't stuff the mech design with all kinds of advanced tech for fear of overwhelming his grandfather.

"The bandwidth of the Carmine System shouldn't be too good, especially for a mech and mech pilot as weak as this. Who knows whether the Dawn Star can even be controlled."

Ves needed to conduct at least one live testing session with the Dullahan Project to test whether Jannzi could pilot her machine without making use of the neural interface.

This could at least give him an indication on the viability of letting other mech pilots control their machines through their Blood Pacts.

The problem was that Ves could only conduct this test in a highly secure environment. The Cat Nest simply wasn't good enough according to Master Goldstein.

Ves began to smirk. "It's a good thing that the Spirit of Bentheim is already on the way!"

Enough time had passed for his flagship to arrive in the Davute System!

The MTA's skeleton crew were already in the process of moving the transformed factory ship to the inner system. The Spirit of Bentheim would soon link up with the expeditionary fleet again!