The Mech Touch

5982 Difficult Maintenance

The return of the Dark Zephyr was a great occasion for the Design Department.

Many mech designers knew about the living mech's return eagerly suspended whatever they were doing and moved straight to the private workshop where the machine had been moved.

A lot of eager Journeyman Mech Designers wanted to witness the oldest and earliest Larkinson expert mech to see how much he had grown since his birth. The 25 mech designers originally recruited during the Fey Shaper Contest and afterwards were particularly eager to witness one of the most celebrated and admired mechs of the Larkinson Clan!

Ves allowed them to pass through the entrance so long as they knew how to behave. They were all core employees of the Larkinson Clan, and had proven themselves trustworthy and capable enough to participate in all kinds of Larkinson mech design projects. It was not a bad idea to introduce them to the more advanced and high-end projects in advance, especially since they may be invited to contribute to a future expert mech design project one day.

Many of these young and eager Journeymen looked enviously at Adrien Marceau and Ariana Roux. The two had been lucky enough to contribute to development of the Dark Zephyr Mark III Project shortly after they started to work in the Design Department!

Adrien Marceau had worked alongside Ves, Gloriana and many other engineers to develop a

very high-end combat warp system for Tusa's expert mech.

Mobility was paramount for the expert light skirmisher, and the advantages of Marceau's quirky combat warp system sounded perfect for the occasion.

If all went well, the archetech-adapted combat warp system should allow the Dark Zephyr to generate powerful warp bubbles with minimal delay, enabling the living machine to alter his vector in an instant. The evasive characteristics of an already agile mech would become even more ridiculous!

Ariana Roux's contribution was also pretty significant. She worked alongside Gloriana to upgrade and optimize the new computing systems for all of the archetech parts and systems.

More importantly than that, she also applied a major upgrade to the Dark Zephyr's ECM capabilities. The new Electronic Gremlin System allowed the Dark Zephyr to hack many different machines within its range.

So long as the virtual projection of enemy computing systems were not sophisticated enough, poorly designed by modern human standards, horribly outdated to the point of missing too many security updates or simply too weak to withstand brute force hacking, any human or alien computing system could be hacked!

Even if the Electronic Gremlin System focused on quantity over quality, the Dark Zephyr would already have an easier time running circles around a lot of opponents so long as the latter's offensive systems experienced disruptions.

Ves and Gloriana had a clear goal in mind when they permitted Adrien Marceau and Ariana Roux to participate in the development of the Dark Zephyr Mark III.

The expert light skirmisher needed to become as difficult to pin down as possible!

By enhancing the Dark Zephyr's mobility and ability to cope with crowds of lesser opponents, Venerable Tusa and his battle partner would gain a much larger chance to dive in the middle of an enemy formation alone.

No standard mech was able to keep up with the Dark Zephyr!

Venerable Tusa had long become accustomed to operating by himself. He and his battle partner always attracted a huge amount of enemy fire as a result, and the Dark Zephyr's resonance shield always incurred heavy impacts as it was impossible to evade every single attack launched in the machine's direction.

Hopefully, the comprehensive upgrades combined with the contributions made by the two new Journeymen should allow the Dark Zephyr to get hit much less frequently in the future!

Both mech designers looked inordinately proud and happy to see the Dark Zephyr in the flesh.

They had both grown incredibly familiar with the expert mech's old and new designs. They frequently inspected the machine by remote.

Yet none of those examinations could compare to seeing the actual living mech in person!

The two had already gone ahead and touched the metallic surface of the old and proud expert mech.

The maintenance crews took excellent care of the Dark Zephyr while he was under their care, but there were still plenty of unmistakable signs of wear and tear.

Subtle metal warping, new replacement parts taking the place of destroyed ones, worn and scratch coating and other physical signs all showed that the Dark Zephyr not only existed for a number of years, but also experienced regular action throughout his life!

All of that had led to a lot of accumulation, both physically and spiritually.

When Ves joined up with Adrien and Ariana, they all stopped to appreciate the Dark Zephyr's accumulation of age.

"You've grown so much." Ves sighed as he could feel the richness of the Dark Zephyr's tempered spiritual foundation. "Fourteen Ascension Runes. That's pretty good. I see that you have embraced the concept of freedom with great enthusiasm."

The eyes of the black-and-gray expert mech briefly flashed. "TO STOP IS TO DIE. MOVING IS LIFE. TO STAY ALIVE, I NEED TO POSSESS THE POWER TO DICTATE MY OWN MOVEMENTS. NO ONE HAS THE RIGHT TO THREATEN MY FREEDOM TO MOVE."

"That is understandable. Don't worry. The coming upgrades will strengthen your mobility even further. The experimental Dark Wind Module that I have recently completed shall become your strongest guarantee. No enemy warship will be able to stand in your way once you activate your trump card."

A visible wave of excitement radiated from the Dark Zephyr. Even though the machine was technically inactive, that did not stop the living mech from looking forward to gaining so much power.

Just like Tusa, the Dark Zephyr had long grown tired of lacking enough offensive power to land a fatal blow on powerful enemies!

Although the Dark Zephyr was slated to receive a lot more features than the Dark Wind Module, Ves' new design application was by far the most exciting and impactful addition.

The expert mech understood extremely well that his male progenitor was by far the best possible choice to upgrade his combat capabilities further.

While Gloriana also contributed a lot to the Dark Zephyr design and creation, the living expert mech did not value her work as much.

That might change once the Dark Zephyr converted into an archemech. The comprehensive technical performance of archetech was so much better that it shouldn't belong to this mech generation!

As the four mech designers continued to examine the Dark Zephyr in a more thorough and systematic fashion, they detected many small issues that the maintenance crews failed to resolve.

This was normal. The mech technicians and low-ranking mech designers assigned to service and repair the Larkinson expert mechs did not possess the full skills and technical acumen to fix every issue.

They need the assistance of Gloriana or another highly competent mech designer who happened to be familiar with the expert mech in question in order to perform deeper repairs!

Though these small issues never became serious enough to threaten the safety of machines such as the Dark Zephyr, Gloriana grew more and more upset when the deep scans exposed more and more signs of inadequacies.

Wear and tear, imperfect repairs, ad-hoc modifications and simple mistakes all added up to slightly reduce the Dark Zephyr's performance.

Any normal mech force would have accepted the reality of this situation. The cost to repair all of these subtle shortcomings far exceeded the benefit of doing so. It was uneconomical to pursue all of these faults.

Gloriana did not agree with that mindset. To her, even a 1 percent drop in performance was enough for her to kick up a fuss!

Fortunately for everyone involved, she did not let her anger get the better of her and blame the maintenance crews for being too lazy and incompetent to restore the Dark Zephyr to a better state.

"Ves."

"Yes?"

"Our expert mechs are not getting the care they need and deserve. We should retrain the maintenance crews and hire additional technical personnel with superior qualifications. The problem may not seem too serious to you, but this is only the prelude of a greater fault. The current version of the Dark Zephyr is already among the simplest expert mechs in the Larkinson Army. Once we are done with him, the expert light skirmisher will reach an unprecedented degree of technical complexity."

Ves' expression changed. "That is indeed a serious issue."

"I can already tell you now that none of the mech designers and mech technicians will be able to learn how to properly service and repair an archemech." Gloriana flatly stated. "They do not have to understand the ins and outs of archetech, but even a superficial understanding of its working principles is already too much for their limited intellects to bear. We need to hire the graduates from the best second-class and ultimately first-class mech design universities in order to keep the Dark Zephyr and every future archemech in good condition."

That sounded like overkill at first, but it was actually not. Archetech was just too difficult and alien for humans to understand in a hurry. Gloriana only managed to get this far by relying on a couple of exceptional circumstances. How could ordinary mech designers do any better even if all they needed to do was to maintain, repair and possibly fabricate new archetech parts?

The exponentially greater burden of servicing highly advanced mechs was one of the most important constraints that prevented a lot of forces from fielding mechs beyond their usual means.

So what if a group obtained a supremely powerful machine?

A few years of moderate usage would steadily cause the advanced mech's parts to wear out or incur significant damage!

Without money and connections, it became far too difficult to purchase expensive materials, acquire the right production machines and hire the highly skilled workers to preserve such an expensive machine!

Ves realized that the Larkinson Clan had already reached this awkward stage. The clan grew too quickly to adjust the standards for maintenance crews upwards and hire more capable mech technicians to complete all of the more complicated tasks.

"I am satisfied with how you have handled the reorganization of the Design Department and the initiative to found several new R&D groups for our clan. I will leave this matter to you as well, Gloriana. Just make sure you coordinate your actions with Commander Casella Ingvar. Many of the old-timers who have enjoyed the honor of servicing our expert mechs for many years will grow upset when we attempt to replace them with better personnel. You need to take care of their feelings, but not in a way that compromises your goal, do you understand?"

His wife maintained a serious expression as she nodded. "I will address this issue immediately after completing this project."

"There is no acute need for the time being, so you don't have to push yourself. I think that fabricating your first full archemech will sap most of your concentration."

"I suppose you are correct, but I can still transmit preliminary instructions. This issue needs to be handled fast enough to prevent the Dark Zephyr from lacking the treatment that he deserves. Our living expert mechs have fought hard alongside our clansmen and experienced great dangers while fulfilling their missions. We cannot and should not accept any form of mistreatment and neglect towards them. The better they are taken care of, the harder they will fight when we need their protection in return."

"Well said." Ves smiled.

He fully agreed with her sentiment. Living mechs could not be treated as ordinary commodities. They possessed their own thoughts and feelings, so gestures such as excellent care did not more than fix their physical ailments.

The earnest care made the Dark Zephyr feel loved and welcomed in the Larkinson Clan.

The benefits of showering them with additional care and attention could not be measured, but Ves believed it could make a great difference during crucial moments!

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