The Mech Touch

Josh truly won the Fey Fianna in a prize raffle.

Before he signed up for this suicidal defense mission, he worked for one of the many mercenary organizations that had emigrated to the Red Ocean.

The pay was good, and he was able to sponsor his daughter's education and augmentations with his income, but it did not leave him with enough capital to afford his own mech.

In truth, most mech pilots did not develop a great yearning to buy their own mech. It was nice if they had one, but owning one came with a lot of additional costs and responsibilities.

Although experienced mech pilots of Josh Ketter's skill level earned a lot better than average, this income was far from being able to purchase a decent mech, especially one that was fresh from the factory!

Even if Josh had an inheritance or something, the economic burden of owning his own mech did not end at that point.

Every mech needed to be certified on a regular basis. They needed regular maintenance by mech technicians who knew what they were doing. Repairs could also get exceedingly expensive if the machine ever suffered any serious harm.

An entire infrastructure had to be formed around an independent mech. While there were many services available on developed planets and space stations that allowed independent mech pilots to forgo the need of building up an entire crew, the cost of relying on third parties often exceeded the profit that could be earned from solo mercenary contracts!

In fact, the best way for mercenaries to take advantage of owning a personal mech was to negotiate a deal with an existing mercenary outfit.

All of that was beyond Josh Ketter. As a mech pilot who graduated from the mech academy and served as an ordinary soldier in various mech organizations, he did not learn how to set up an independent business, manage his own crew or maintain a positive balance sheet.

He never even set out to buy his own mech. What would he do with it anyway?

That was why he became completely dumbfounded when he heard when he won an actual mech in a raffle.

The raffle was part of a promotion from a mech magazine that he subscribed to for a long time.

The virtual publication regularly held these raffles, and it was quite easy for readers to sign up. They merely had to check a few boxes before pressing the confirm button.

Josh had been reading this magazine for over 15 years. He signed up for every raffle with the attitude of not missing any opportunity, but he never won any prizes during these years.

He did not even receive a plushy for his efforts!

After realizing that these sweepstakes were no different from the lotteries where the chances of winning anything were infinitely close to zero, Josh no longer held any expectation for them anymore.

He did not stop signing up for the raffles that appeared on the projected pages from time to time, but he became so dismissive of them that the act of checking the boxes and pressing the confirm button became a subconscious instinct.

[CONGRATULATIONS MR KETTER! YOU HAVE WON THE GRAND PRIZE OF THE RAFFLE INCLUDED IN ISSUE #6136! PLEASE CONFIRM YOUR SHIPPING ADDRESS AND OTHER CONDITIONS SO THAT WE MAY DELIVER YOUR VERY OWN FEY FIANNA, COURTESY OF THE LIVING MECH CORPORATION!]

When he received the announcement one day, Josh still could not believe that he had won the raffle, and managed to obtain the greatest prize worth 3 MTA credits!

It truly did not sink in until the mech actually got delivered to a warehouse close to his home at the time!

He even thought about selling the Fey Fianna as he had always been accustomed to using company mechs. The money he could earn from selling a second-hand but completely unused mech could easily fund his daughter's tuition and other expenses for many years!

Yet from the moment he visited the warehouse in person and took a close look at his new possession, he instantly discarded his plans to get rid of the machine.

"So this is a living mech."

LMC mechs had become well-known for making unforgettable first impressions. They outright manipulated the minds of anyone who went close to them, and somehow the Red Assocation still permitted the so-called living mechs to do so despite the potential for abuse.

In any case, once Josh started to try out the Fey Fianna for himself, he couldn't help but fall in love with the popular drone mech.

"No wonder all of those mech pilots became fans of this model. This mech is so easy to pilot!"

The Fey Fianna at the start had not yet grown smart enough to speak to Josh, but the living machine could already convey its feelings and emotions through the man-machine connection.

Josh changed his plans. He decided to stick with this machine.

If he obtained this fantastic mech a few years ago, he probably would have tried to make it work by signing a contract with a mercenary outfit.

However, times had changed, and Josh was not a young mech pilot anymore.

He fought against alien raiding fleets enough times to comprehend that red humanity had not yet fought against the real war machine of the native alien civilizations.

When the dreaded offensive finally erupted, human civilization would suffer a huge amount of damage that would cause a lot of collapses and breakdowns!

Even if red humanity managed to block the assault, the damage to human society would be so great that the lives of the people at the bottom of the pyramid was about to become a lot worse!

This was why Josh Ketter decided to sign his life away by volunteering for this exceedingly dangerous mission.

He wanted to fight to keep his daughter safe. Already, his decision allowed his girl to transfer to a much safer and more developed colony in the rear of human space.

Being able to provide his mech saved the defenders a bit of effort and also allowed him to negotiate additional compensation.

What Josh found important was that his Fey Fianna was better than most of the second-class mechs stationed in this doomed star system.

Perhaps it didn't matter too much as the native aliens would eventually kill all human mech pilots regardless of the quality of their mechs, Josh still wanted to go down swinging if possible.

There was only one big problem with utilizing the Fey Fianna as his combat mech.

Josh specialized in melee combat.

He was not a particularly talented or skillful mech cadet back during his academy days. His advisors told him that he needed to choose his specialization early if he wanted to keep up with his training.

This was why he only completed the bare minimum of ranged combat courses before he happily focused his efforts on becoming a qualified knight mech and spearman mech pilot.

Josh never lacked for opportunities to pilot melee mechs since then. He steadily developed and polished his fighting skills, and also became competent in piloting swordsman mechs.

He never held any desire to improve his marksmanship. A number of his company mechs had occasionally been equipped with ranged secondary weapons, but he never made use of them in his 30-year career.

This left him in an awkward position as the Fey Fianna was heavily slanted towards ranged combat!

The most effective offensive fey were all mounted with ranged weapons. Josh was not able to land his shots when wielding an ordinary rifle. He had even less of a chance of hitting anything when trying to aim with his fey!

It seemed like the Fey Fianna was profoundly unsuitable to a melee mech specialist like Josh.

Though he thought about exchanging his Fey Fianna for a good melee mech, the problem was that the infamously slow LMC had yet to add a modern second-class spaceborn melee mech model to its product catalog!

There were plenty of rumors that claimed that the LMC was working on it, but it had yet to release a good melee mech model that conformed to the standards of the Hyper Generation.

The thought of swapping the Fey Fianna for a melee mech produced by another mech company never entered his mind.

Once Josh experienced the comfort and pleasure of piloting a living mech, he refused to go back to steering those lifeless lumps of metal!

If he was about to fight one last battle before he perished, he wanted to enjoy the experience to the fullest!

Fortunately, the mech technicians working in the orbital space fortress offered Josh a convenient solution.

"We can modify it into a melee mech configuration." The chief technician gruffly told Josh. "We normally have to wait for a mech designer to come and work out the modifications for us to implement, but you're in luck. The Standard Edition of the Fey Fianna is such a popular mech model that plenty of mech designers have already developed many different variants and modification kits. We can obtain one of the off-the-shelf schematics and begin the modification work right away."

Josh was no stranger to aftermarket modifications to mechs, but he gazed skeptically at his relatively skinny Fey Fianna.

Without the fey mounted on the back, the mech did not look like it possessed the physical power and structural strength to be able to hack at enemies at point-blank range!

The chief technician grimaced. "We are short on personnel here for obvious reasons. We don't have the time or manpower to spare for a complete overhaul. We should look at the catalog for one of the less radical modification kits. We won't be able to turn your Fey Fianna into a real melee mech, but once we are done, it should get close enough that the limitations are not too crippling. You can even rely on the fey to compensate for most of the shortcomings."

"It looks like the Fey Fianna needs a complete redesign in order to become a good melee mech."

The chief technician grimaced. "We are short on personnel here for obvious reasons. We don't have the time or manpower to spare for a complete overhaul. We should look at the catalog for one of the less radical modification kits. We won't be able to turn your Fey Fianna into a real melee mech, but once we are done, it should get close enough that the limitations are not too crippling. You can even rely on the fey to compensate for most of the shortcomings."

Josh Ketter became impressed by this plan. "How much will it cost?"

"Nothing. We are short on personnel, and our budget is not endless, but we still have enough spare materials on hand. We'll cover the expenses. This will be an interesting distraction for us. If we are about to die soon, then I at least want to work on at least one of the LMC's famous living mechs."

The two proceeded to sit down behind a desk terminal and browse through an extensive product catalog.

Josh eventually settled for a spear-wielding variant.

The modification kit was fairly small and did not require a lot of work to apply to the Fey Fianna.

Much of the modification work went into the arms and the upper shoulders. The arms needed to become a lot thicker and stronger.

The limbs lost the precision and fine control that enabled them to land accurate shots with a rifle as a consequence.

In exchange, the heavier arms were able to maintain a much more solid grip on a two-handed spear and thrust it forward with decent power!

"This won't be a full spearman mech." The chief technician warned the pilot and owner of the modified Fey Fianna. "The limitations of the arms and torso structures make it so that your mech is only truly good at stabbing. It is very slow at swinging a polearm in wide sweeping horizontal or vertical motions. The mech cannot respond fast enough to block any incoming swings of other melee weapons."

"I can live with that." Josh said. "The native aliens don't make use of anything resembling melee mechs. A simple stab is enough for me to kill any alien fighter craft within my reach."

"You're right. Let me warn you that this modification kit has only barely turned your Fey Fianna into a spearman mech. Do not mistake it for a lancer mech. High impact charges are not recommended unless you want to damage the arms and lose your only weapon."

"Noted."

"Now let us finalize your selection of fey."

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