The Mech Touch

"We originally sought out a Terran Senior Mech Designer that possessed a Class IV design philosophy." Jovy Armalon stated. "The Terrans tend to be fairly good in designing fast and mobile mechs. Their slight preference towards melee combat creates a large demand for mechs that can catch up to enemies. The presence of the Light of Sol also generates a large amount of pride among the Terrans for being able to design the fastest mech in existence. Many mech designers have become inspired by the Radiant god mech and chose to enter the mech industry by dedicating their work to related specializations."

Ves nodded in understanding. "That is a sensible approach. How did you guys manage to get so far off-track that you stumbled on a mech designer as eccentric as Lady Romanda Devos?"

"We came across her name when we studied another Senior Mech Designer from the Devos Ancient Clan. Master Laila Rebecca Devos has been particularly accommodating towards our search. We could not divulge the reason why we wanted to obtain detailed internal data on her ancient clan's Seniors, but she shared all of the files she was permitted to transfer without question."

"I see."

The Devos Ancient Clan had been hosting the Larkinsons in their port system for a while now. Ves had also taught at the Eden Institute of Technology & Business for a longer period of time.

The Devosans most definitely paid a lot of attention to Ves and his work. They must have gotten wind that Ves may be working on a hugely impactful project, and wanted to get in any way possible.

That must be when the pair of mechers came across Lady Romanda's name and specialization.

It was pretty obvious why Jovy and Vector came to an instant agreement about the suitability of inviting her to participate in the Swarm Project.

Professor Vector Loban changed the projection to show one of the old Carmine mechs that Ves designed for testing purposes. It was a pretty generic machine with balanced but unexceptional performance.

"As a mech designer with a biotech specialization, I have been thinking about how to improve and optimize your initial implementation of your Carmine System. One of the aspects that is rather detrimental about your initial invention is how the utilization of space and volume is not optimal. It not only requires the mech design to reserve space in every part and limb to make room for blood veins, but there is also a notable lack in redundancy. If the key biological components of the Carmine System are destroyed, the Carmine pilot is unable to interface with his machine despite the fact that the rest of the mech still remains functional."

Ves furrowed his brows. He had not bothered to find out what happened if a Carmine mech's biological systems got destroyed. He supposed the mechers had already completed this particular study.

"Can the Blood Pact persist if the Carmine System gets destroyed?" He decided to ask.

"According to our studies, which are not rigorous enough to make any definite conclusions, the evidence suggests that the Blood Pact can still hold even if all of the biological components of the Carmine System have been destroyed or separated from the mech." Vector factually explained. "The Pact is sustained by the lives, or rather the spirits, of the mech and living mech. As long as one of them remains alive, the Pact can persist. The Carmine pilot only loses the ability to control his machine. This means that the Carmine mech pilot can still make a comeback and pilot his Carmine mech as before if it gains a new Carmine System."

That was good to know. Ves grew a little more reassured after hearing that the Carmine System had not turned into a giant weak point for his mechs.

"If this is the case, then why…"

"Lady Romanda's design philosophy is still important because of the circumstances that I have previously mentioned." The Transhumanist said. "As long as the Carmine mech remains alive, the Blood Pact between the two parties shall persist. Now, one of the greatest disadvantages of a Carmine mech is the fact that it locks in the Carmine mech pilot to a single Carmine mech for the rest of his or her life. Even if the former is a potentate that can utilize a normal neural interface instead of a Carmine System to interface with a mech, our tests have shown that the pilots are mysteriously unable to pilot any conventional mech at all. This is despite ascertaining that their brains are physically capable of forming a man-machine connection through the neural interface."

When Ves invented the Carmine System, he hadn't actually experimented all that much with it. He failed to follow up on his initial creation by conducting rigorous tests to understand how it behaved in different scenarios and edge cases.

As a mech designer and a spiritual engineer, he felt rather ashamed that he had to depend on his buddies within the Association to tell him important stuff about one of his core inventions, one that he intended to rely upon to realize his design philosophy!

Though Ves wanted to remedy this shortcoming right away, he painfully reminded himself that he did not have the time to conduct or supervise all of these tedious tests and examinations. He was much better off if he let the mechers continue to figure every possible angle of his Carmine mechs and send him the end reports of their insightful studies.

In any case, in the absence of a better solution, Lady Romanda's design philosophy promised to extend the value of Carmine mech pilots by a large margin.

Vector Loban continued to make his case. "Unlike the development strategy that the Red Fleet has chosen for its Starfighter Corps, we do not think that it is right or appropriate to treat human pilots as cannon fodder or consumables. Just because the subordinate mechs of the Swarm Project are relatively cheap and fragile for their respective classes does not mean we should design them with the expectation that they, along with their pilots, are bound to fall in a handful of battles. One of the characteristics that separate starfighter pilots from mech pilots is that the latter always have a chance to ascend to greatness. Mechs are just about the human as the machine. If we do not make this differentiation in the design of the Swarm Project, then we will only be making the same mistake as the fleeters."

The starfighter models employed by the Starfighter Corps were predominantly flimsy and lacking in protection. The complete absence of phasewater alone caused them to fall incredibly far behind in comparison to the alien phasefighters!

The subordinate mechs of the Carmine mechs did not exactly promise that much better performance, but they had one advantage that starfighters lacked.

They were mechs.

However, the necessity to preserve the Carmine mech in order to retain the value of the Carmine mech pilot was a massive downside.

What was a Carmine mech pilot supposed to do after his mech got wrecked in combat?

If the individual in question successfully managed to preserve his life after the battle, then there was no way to break a lifelong commitment that restricted his spirit.

The only way he could come close to getting back into the action again was by piloting a human starfighter!

This was clearly not a desirable result. While starfighter pilots could at least be assured that the Starfighter Corps would assign them a replacement fighter craft if their original ones got blasted to pieces, the same could not be said for Carmine mechs!

Although the theoretical manpower pool for Carmine mechs was gigantic compared to the much more limited manpower pool for conventional mechs, the reality was that a lot of existing professionals such as Ves could not afford to abandon their current vocations and hop into the cockpit.

He needed to make a greater effort into preserving the Carmine mech as well as the Carmine pilot to extend their usefulness.

The design philosophy of Lady Romanda Devos promised to give him a great way to do so if his assumptions were correct.

"Are you thinking that the ultra-large cockpits can retain enough of the living mech that as long as they survive, it doesn't matter if the rest of the mech frame gets wrecked?"

Vector smiled. "Yes. I have tried to model this approach. Let me give you a sketch that shows one of my examples."

The projection shifted to display a draft design of a first-class subordinate mech. Many details about the wasp-shaped mech were still vague and undefined, but it already looked clear that much of the upper half of the subordinate mech comprised the 'ultra-large cockpit'!

So long as the subordinate mech remained whole, the special cockpit served no meaningful purpose.

It was only when the subordinate mech incurred a lot of damage to its exterior components and lost its outer shell that the Carmine mech 'ejected' its cockpit.

In reality, it looked more as if the ultra-large cockpit purged all of the exterior components that were previously attached to it in order to free up its liberated form.

What remained after purging all of the damaged and useless mech components was a very small and compact fighter craft.

Unlike the more robust cockpits of Lady Romanda's previous works, the light mech frame of the Carmine mech did not leave much room for strengthening the enhanced cockpit. It clearly eschewed weapon systems as well as many other redundant components.

The only goal of this ultra-large cockpit was escape. Nothing else. Its small size and mass allowed it to boost away at an impressive rate.

Even if the thrusters operated on a very limited charge, as long as they were powerful enough, their efforts should be enough to separate from most battlefields and return to a friendly base of mothership relatively intact!

To facilitate the escape, the ultra-large cockpit also had the option of mounting a 1-use hyper energy shield generator. The device sacrificed repeatable activations in favor of generating a very strong hyper energy shield that could last long enough to shield the cockpit from most incidental opportunistic attacks.

"This is a pretty nice concept." Ves said. "The premise is that the ultra-large cockpit retains enough of the living mech that it can 'preserve' the Carmine mech. As long as this condition is true, then I am more than willing to take Lady Romanda onboard."

"We have conducted tests related to cockpits in the past." Vector mentioned. "Alas, the cockpits alone are usually not enough to preserve the life of the Carmine mech, and thereby allow the Carmine mech pilot to remain useful in this capacity. As far as we can tell, when the pilot ejects the cockpit from the Carmine mech, the living mech remains attached to the latter rather than the former. What we aim to accomplish is to borrow Lady Romanda's assistance in designing a Carmine mech so that its essence is anchored in her ultra-large cockpit as opposed to the rest of the mech frame. I expect that we will all have to adjust our perspectives on our work as well. We need to consider the ultra-large cockpit to serve as the core of the Carmine mech. The remaining armor plating, limbs and other modules are all 'accessories' that we have decided to attach to the core mech frame. Do you understand what I am trying to convey?"

"I get it, Vector. This is not too dissimilar to some of my previous modular mech designs. The biggest difference here is that it is taken to a different extreme. I can see how it can work, but the premise is that the ultra-large cockpit possesses enough of the features of a mech that it can preserve the Carmine mech upon ejection. We will need to conduct tests in order to confirm that it is fruitful to cooperate with her. A lot of Carmine mech pilots will be grateful for giving them a better chance of preserving their only opportunity to fight with a real mech."

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