The Mech Touch

"By the Great Prophet! This mech is greater than we have ever hoped!"

As soon as Ves unveiled the Deliverer to his Ylvainan envoys and guests, they immediately collapsed onto their knees and supplicated in front of the mech!

Their hysterical babbles and spontaneous displays of worship disturbed the others currently present in the hangar bay of the carrier used as the testing base.

From the Tovars to the mech technicians, all of them looked at the prostrating Ylvainans as if they were aliens!

It couldn't be helped. Open displays of worship had become so rare in the Bright Republic that it was as if a relic of the past had come back from the dead!

Ves whacked the Tovars on their heads. "What are you gawking at?! The galaxy is full of people of faith! Aren't you familiar with Gloriana!?"

"She normally doesn't express her beliefs." Miles Tovar excused himself.

"That's because she is being mindful to you all! These Ylvainans probably haven't left Protectorate space until now, so they aren't fully aware of our cultural norms. Don't be shocked if they act like this. As long as their actions are harmless, just take them into stride."

Despite his words, the Tovars still couldn't help but regard the Kronon marksman mechs with odd expressions.

Perhaps Ves used to be this way too. Fortunately, the time he spent in the Ylvaine Protectorate allowed him to get accustomed to these kinds of displays.

It was much worse in the Protectorate, that was for sure.

After a few minutes of fanatical worship, the Kronons finally remembered themselves and rose up to their feet.

"Our apologies, Bright Martyr. We.."

Ves waved his arm. "I understand. This mech is similar to the Transcendent Messenger in character. I already expected you to respond in this fashion."

Dominic, Edward and Jezebel all looked incredibly ecstatic. The fact that they were about to test the prototype was an incredible honor!

The reaction of Sergeant Jezebel Kronon was the most pronounced of all. She was practically slobbering over the mech! Her gaze locked onto the mech so strongly that she didn't even bother to pay attention to Bright Martyr!

Ves scratched his head. Was his mech really that great?

As a nonbeliever, Ves merely perceived the Deliverer's glow just like any other aura. While each flavor had their peculiarities, they all fell in the same category to him. If their strength was taken out of the equation, then no glow was more exceptional than others.

This was obviously different for the Kronons. As devout believers in the Ylvainan Faith, their entire attitudes underwent huge shifts the moment they came in touch with the mech!

In fact, they were so unsettled that Ves made a controversial decision.

"Let us begin the initial tests with Avatar mech pilots." He told everyone before turning to the Kronons. "The three of you are too excited right now. Don't forget the purpose of your stay here. I need sober and focused test pilots to demonstrate the strengths and abilities of my prototype."

The Kronons each looked remorseful. As disciplined soldiers, they recognized how bad it was for them to lose their composure.

Ves decided to console them a little. "You still have an opportunity to pilot my Deliverer, but not immediately. Remember that piloting my prototype is a privilege. I need to collect data, and if you aren't able to help me with that, you're not useful to me as test pilots."

After this incident, he moved on to a compartment converted to a makeshift control room.

Some Avatar mech pilot stepped into the mech and started to boot up the mech. Ves paid close attention to the reaction of this mech pilot and the telemetry of his neural connection.

Gloriana, who understood this data better than Ves, soon spotted some issues.

"There are problems with the neural connection."

"What?" Ves looked startled. He had already seen some strange deviations from the norm, but he didn't fully understand what they meant. "Is the mech pilot at risk?"

The Avatar mech pilot currently sitting in the cockpit was Yaric Nolan. He was one of the newer Avatars who was slated to join the second group about to deploy to the front.

The reason why he'd been chosen to test pilot the mech was because he specialized in piloting spaceborn rifleman mechs.

While he didn't pilot marksman mechs, he was proficient and trained in their use. This made him the closest thing to a dedicated marksman mech pilot among the Avatars.

"Not quite." Gloriana shook her head. "It's just that Mr. Nolan is psychologically holding himself back from deepening his immersion in the mech. The fit between the two is rather poor."

It didn't take much guessing to find out the reason why. Yaric Nolan was repelled by the Deliverer. Whether it was just his bias at work or his mind putting up its guard against the Deliverer's glow, the result was that the neural connection was a lot weaker than normal.

"How much weaker is the connection, exactly?"

"I'd say.. thirty percent."

Oof. a thirty percent drop in responsiveness, data transmission and other parameters was a very severe handicap!

It was the same as if a top athlete suddenly changed into the body of a normal human! Even though many of the functions were still the same, the severe drop in performance in so many areas completely rendered the athlete useless in his role!

After consulting with Gloriana and some of the testing personnel, Ves saw no further health issues. "Proceed with the test, but skip the ones involving more intensive motions. Instruct Mr. Nolan to take it easy and avoid any drastic movements."

The mech flew out of the hangar bay and slowly emerged into space. With the clouds of Cloudy Curtain as a backdrop, the Deliverer's first sortie seemed remarkably unexceptional.

The mech started to undergo basic motion tests. It raised its arms, kicked its legs, flew in every direction, spun around on its axis, aimed its gauss rifle from one side to the other side and so on.

These tests not only verified the integrity of the mech and its assembly, but also allowed the mech pilot to slowly familiarize himself with his machine.

Gloriana hummed as she continued to observe the pilot-based telemetry.

"It's rather peculiar. Normally, mech pilots slowly increase their immersion and deepen their connections with their mechs after settling into the cockpit. Nolan's connection is actually decreasing!"

"What?!"

Ves had never heard of this instance happening! The only times such a travesty ought to happen was if the mech was heavily damaged or if the neural interface was malfunctioning!

He immediately manipulated the terminal in front of him and called up the current condition of the mech, which was all green. He then shifted to the condition of the neural interface, which was completely green as well.

In order to be sure, he activated an internal diagnostic that thoroughly swept the neural interface for any damage or corruption.

Nothing was amiss.

After ruling out any errors on this front, Ves could only conclude that Nolan was extremely incompatible with the Deliverer's design spirit.

In truth, it already made sense to Ves. The X-Factor was a double-edged blade. It could enhance the mech pilot's effective performance if he fit well with the X-Factor of the mech.

In the same way, the mech pilot's effective performance could also tank if his personality was a poor fit with the X-Factor of the mech!

This was an instance of anti-synergy, where the outcome was less than the sum of its parts.

Of course, he couldn't say as much to the testing personnel and observers, but that didn't matter. All of them were under the mistaken impression that the prototype was heavily flawed or that its design was an abject failure.

Only Ves and Gloriana knew better. They shared a sheepish look with each other.

"I've never tested the Transcendent Messenger or Holy Soldier with non-Ylvainan mech pilots." Ves realized. "The idea never really came up to me before. They were always aimed at Ylvainan mech pilots, so I didn't bother trying to figure out if they were effective in the hands of Brighters or people of different faiths."

Evidently, pairing mechs with incompatible mech pilots was a very bad idea. Though the mech pilot did not seem to incur any damage, the drop in battle effectiveness was so severe that Yaric Nolan piloted his mech as if he possessed an E-grade genetic aptitude!

Gloriana became increasingly more irked at the jerky and awful movements of the prototype.

"I can't take this any longer. Why don't we end this session and switch to another mech pilot?"

"No." Ves shook his head. "We should see this session through, if only so that we can understand the consequences of incompatibility more."

"Urgh! Suit yourself, but you better do it without me! I can't stand this ugly sight!"

Gloriana left the control room in frustration, leaving Ves alone to supervise the remainder of the session.

He didn't mind. Nolan's deteriorating performance made him want to bash his head against the bulkhead. His Deliverer may not be the most graceful mech he designed, but he never meant for it to resemble a fat clown!

Suffice to say, despite Nolan's specialization, the Deliverer performed exceptionally poorly in the basic marksmanship tests.

The carrier released a number of cheap target bots in space, which flew out straight downwards of the orbital plane.

Naturally, there was no way they would allow the Deliverer to shoot in the direction of Cloudy Curtain or any other planet or star system for that matter. Who knew if a gauss rifle round would hit a transport ship that was on her way to deliver a batch of materials to the Mech Nursery tomorrow?

To Nolan's credit, the Deliverer did not have much issue in hitting stationary targets at close to medium range.

Due to their small size, it became incredibly hard to hit them at long range.

It was only when the target bots started to move that Nolan's accuracy went downhill. The Deliverer completely failed to exhibit its Guided Aim ability as the mech achieved an incredibly poor hit rate of 9 percent!

By the time the Deliverer expended its half-filled ammunition stores, almost everyone involved in the test regarded either the mech or its mech pilot as a failure!

"I'm sorry, Mr. Larkinson." Nolan apologized directly to Ves over the comm. "I tried my best, but this mech is just..!"

"You don't have to excuse yourself. Your performance was within my expectations." Ves said. "The Deliverer is an explicitly Ylvainan mech. It shouldn't be any surprise for your strength to drop while you're piloting it. I'm sure you will get right back to normal as soon as you pilot a Desolate Soldier or Dawnbreaker. In fact, when you return, why not hop into a spare Desolate Soldier and see whether your piloting fluency has restored?"

Ves initially wanted to move on to testing the mech with another test pilot, but he had to pay some extra consideration to his Avatars. As one of his future elites, he couldn't let Nolan wallow in his failure today, especially since it wasn't his fault.

Once he offered Nolan a way to restore his confidence, the second testing session proceeded soon after.

The second Avatar to step into the cockpit exhibited a nearly-identical drop in connection strength and battle performance.

It was as if the mech had become rusty and damaged all of a sudden. It was so dramatic that Ves suspected that the attitude of the mech pilot towards the mech was not the only factor.

Was Ylvaine's spiritual fragment actively trying to repel the non-believers from piloting the mechs under its purview?

It made a lot of sense to Ves. After all, the design spirit had only ever come in touch with believers after becoming the design spirits of the Transcendent Messenger and Holy Soldiers.

After the second testing session was a bust, the third session with a non-Ylvainan mech pilot commenced soon after.

Different from last time, the telemetry showed a very different circumstance this time!

Even though Gloriana wasn't here, Ves understood the changes enough to determine that the connection quality was a lot higher! It was as if a devout Ylvainan was in the cockpit instead of a faithless Brighter!

"Who is the third test pilot?!"

One of the testing personnel provided an immediate answer.

"Joshua King!"