The Mech Touch

"The Carmine mechs all appear to be sound." Jovy reported as he studied the results of the deep scans conducted on the recently completed machines. "They show no obvious defects or other concerning signs. That does not rule out the possibility of other errors. Our scanners cannot determine whether the Carmine Systems of these three machines will even work."

"lam not too worried about that." Ves spoke as he stroked his palm across the metallic surface of the Carmine Raider. "1 have performed multiple examinations on them. The Carmine Systems show no obvious signs of mutations or deviations that I can detect. Their E energy structures are all working properly."

That caused Jovy to "My Eye of Providence has noticed that your mechs are actively absorbing a small amount of E energy radiation in the local environment. That is going to raise a lot of eyebrows, you know that? I am decently certain that you are not the only mech designer who has managed to create a mechanism where mechs can fortify their properties by themselves over time, but the group is bound to be small."

Ves already knew this, but he did not really care about what kind of signal he sent to the higher ups. It was hardly a secret considering that tens of thousands of living mechs had begun to cultivate a variation of the Larkinson Metal Guardian Mantra.

"This feature is an important part of my current design approach. These Carmine mechs may only be experimental mechs that we could only develop in haste, but they are still proper living mechs from my perspective. Three human lives will forever be bound to them. I am sure that you Survivalists will ultimately upgrade them all into proper first-class multipurpose mechs once you are done with most of your tests. I want to set these machines up for success to better serve their pilots down the line."

"That is kind of you, but 1 am not sure our superiors will appreciate the additional variables and complications."

Ves shrugged and continued to examine the spiritual foundations of all three Carmine Mechs.

It was important for him to ensure that the spiritual settings for each individual Carmine System were all in order.

Ves had yet to meet with the candidates chosen to serve as the permanent test pilots for these experimental machines.

However, he was able to prime his products for their intended users with the help of blood samples and a huge amount of recorded information.

There was no way to be absolutely certain that his Carmine mechs could safely be piloted. The tech was simply too new and Ves did not have enough existing cases to draw upon.

The only way to find out whether he and Jovy did a good job was to see them in action.

He looked at the time and saw that he roughly had four hours left before the deadline had passed.

There was one more design that he had to deliver to the Survivalist Faction. It was by far the oddest and most excessive request of the four.

Juggernauts had gone out of vogue centuries ago! The mech industry deemed them to be far too wasteful and inefficient to employ in any serious capacity.

The mech designers of old had already formed this conclusion in a time of relative abundance and optimism. The availability of resources back in the Milky Way Galaxy was much greater than in the Red Ocean, and even then people chose to set juggernauts aside for conventionally sized mechs!

Still, as ridiculous as this request may seem, the potential benefits if they worked out were massive!

"Do you think it is plausible that a juggernaut piloted by an ace pilot with the help of both a neural interface and a Carmine System will be able to approximate the power of god mech?"

Ves frowned in thought. "I seriously don't know. It is you guys who came up with this notion, not me. I suppose there is a thin basis to this hypothesis that makes it plausible, but... there are too many uncertainties to know for certain. I think it is way too premature for any of us to think that far ahead. This juggernaut request isn't meant to be paired with a high-ranking mech pilot, right?"

"No." Jovy shook his head. "The candidate chosen to test pilot the juggernaut once we have fabricated it in a different facility will only be a standard mech pilot. Don't worry about his qualifications. He has received special training and served as the test pilots of numerous experimental juggernauts of different sizes. Just because our industry has condemned this extreme mech variation doesn't mean we have forgotten about it entirely. There are always a few curious mech designers within our Association that developed the ambition to revive these giant machines for one reason or another."

Only the mechers had the enormous amount of resources and facilities to spare on frivolous experiments at this scale.

Ves crossed his arms. "You guys don't happen to have a few textbooks or manuals lying around that can give me a crash course on how to design a juggernaut mech, do you? I am pretty confident in my ability to design super-heavy mechs as they are not too far removed from what I am usually working on. I do not share the same degree of confidence anymore if the machine has to be as tall as dozens of mechs stacked on top of each other."

Jovy nodded in agreement. "I am in the same position. 1 have already taken the liberty to search and pull up several articles and textbooks related to this subject. They are all written by reputed Masters who have personally designed and produced juggernauts over their careers."

Once Ves received a package of virtual documents, he quickly skimmed through their initial pages and roughly understood the gist of juggernaut design.

"Some of these texts are really old. Centuries old."

"Many of the references may be out of date, but the overall theory should still be sound."

"Mmhmm. We'U see. I have already spotted a couple of helpful tips."

There was no time for Ves and Jovy to thoroughly read and internalize all of the theories contained within all of this academic literature.

The best they could do was to skim over the minutiae and take note of the most relevant and salient points.

Fifteen minutes passed before Ves spoke up again.

"We will have to make a few design choices right away. Juggernauts designed to operate in space are vastly different from ones that are also rated to operate on land. The designs of landbound juggernauts are extremely bottom heavy. Their legs and lower torsos are absurdly thick compared to what goes on top. It makes sense as you don't want their center of mass to be too high and make it easy for them to tip over. Spaceborn juggernauts don't share the same concern depending on their overall design and layout. What do the bigshots want from me? I don't want to waste my time on designing the wrong variation."

Jovy frowned for a moment. He called up the list of requirements and saw that it did not mention any specific demands in these aspects.

This was not an oversight. It was impossible for the likes of Master Wintress and Master Goldstein to make such a trivial mistake.

"Compared to the previous three Carmine mechs, we don't have to meet as many specific criteria as before. The message here is that we can decide for ourselves. Whether it is strictly landbound or spaceborn doesn't matter. Our Association can make either of them work. We can always overhaul the enormous machine at a later date."

"Okay." Ves said. "If that is the case, then let us go for a landbound juggernaut mech."

"Are you sure about that? Landbound mechs are normally simpler to design than any other alternative, but this rule does not necessarily apply to juggernauts anymore. At this scale, there is so much mass that you will have to take so many additional variables and relationships into account. You need to prevent the feet from sinking far too deep in softer soil. You need to ensure that the mechanical parts will work properly and in a predictable fashion at varying levels of local gravity. We'U be able to reduce a lot of these problems if we set out to design a quadruped or octoped juggernaut."

Ves shook his head in rejection. "I don't have a lot of experience in designing four-legged or eight-legged beast mechs. I am by far the most comfortable with working on humanoid mechs, so let us stick to two legs despite how precarious this choice may be for juggernauts. Having less limbs will at least reduce the complexity of the giant machine, which will result in less work for us and less strain on the candidate. That last part is extremely important given how even a simple juggernaut is reported to be at least an order of magnitude more data intensive to pilot."

One of the reasons why humanity originally phased out juggernauts was because they imposed huge demands on the pilot.

Only elite mech pilots with A-grade or B-grade genetic aptitudes were able to handle the enormous demands of a juggernaut without overloading their brains.

Even though the raw firepower of a juggernaut was awesome to behold, the vast majority of highly talented mech pilots preferred to stick with conventional mechs.

The latter offered a lot more skill expression. Juggernauts were far too slow and heavy for mech pilots to fully showcase their piloting skills. Their ability to maneuver and outplay opposing mech pilots was much greater if they were paired with mechs that were faster and nimbler.

This reminded Ves that he needed to adopt a completely different set of priorities in order to design his first real juggernaut.

"Do you have a length in mind?" Jovy asked.

Ves briefly thought about the few juggernauts he encountered throughout his career.

The most iconic and memorable one was the Uranus, the failed magnum opus of the Supreme Sage.

It was a demented attempt by a foolish human biotech researcher to attain supreme power and physical immortality in a single giant leap!

With the knowledge that Ves possessed today, he believed that the Supreme Sage had a much better chance to pull off his taboo experiment if he scaled down his work by a couple of hundred meters.

The old man who founded the Life Research Association had been too greedy in the end. With his lifespan starting to run out, the Supreme Sage ultimately decided to make an enormous gamble and attempt to turn himself into a god with a single leap of faith.

The Uranus was around half a kilometer meters long. While that made the titanic biomachine exceptionally powerful, it was also way too much for a first attempt.

"Let's settle for 200 meters."

"200 meters is too conservative." Jovy lightly pushed back. "The purpose of this request is to test how employing your Carmine System alongside a conventional neural interface can improve the operation of a juggernaut. The juggernaut needs to be more challenging to pilot in order to properly conduct this study. We should go for 400 meters."

That length was a lot closer to the infamous Uranus!

"1 don't think we can handle a juggernaut of this size. Let's settle for 300 meters. 1 don't want to risk failure due to committing basic design errors."

Jovy let out an exasperated breath. "Very well."

He and Jovy huddled together and quickly sketched their first draft of a humanoid juggernaut.

They tried to keep it as simple as possible. They could always add more complexity later on if necessary, but it was a lot harder to simplify a design when it had reached a more advanced phase.

After a short discussion, the two Seniors decided to add a basic weapon loadout to their juggernaut. They paired up their juggernaut with an enormous mace and a simple but extremely large caliber laser rifle.

The shoulder-mounted weapons were a little special. Ves found it funny to mount a pair of formidable secondary gun batteries on the shoulders of the juggernaut!

Although this design choice caused the machine to become a lot more top heavy as a result, the balance hadn't been thrown completely out of whack, and that was good enough for Ves.