Chapter 311 311 Weddings Are Fun
Name:Humanity's Greatest Mecha Warrior System Author:
+ - Turn on Reset
311 311 Weddings Are Fun
Isabella Tarith and General Pell took their places on opposite sides of the stage, flanked by the rest of the wedding party, to wait for the couple to arrive.
Right on schedule, the Imperial March began to play, and the happy couple started making their way down the aisle.
[Don't miss the recording of the moment that they realize we found them two guests of honor for their ceremony.] Max reminded Nico, who had a perfect view of the event from inside Enduring Rage.
Most of the Regiment would be interested in seeing that footage later, so it was important that it was captured from as many angles as possible.
They were so captured by the scene around them that they were over halfway down the aisle before they noticed that the wedding party wasn't standing in the formation that they had expected.
The smiles were impossible to hide, and it didn't take long for all the guests to realize that someone on the stage was a surprise guest, that they hadn't expected to be able to make it for the wedding.
They did manage to keep their pace though and strode gracefully between the Line Mecha up to the front of the chapel. Once they were at the altar, the Line Mecha retreated to the back of the congregation so that they weren't blocking anyone's view and stood guard over the ceremony.
While the two Generals were sharing a proper hug, poor Gwen was being admonished by Isabella for crying and making her makeup smudge before the ceremony.
As far as Max could tell it was a running thing between them because every complaint only led to more hugging and crying until eventually General Ming cleared his throat.
"Welcome everyone to the blessing of the union between Abraham Yaakov and Gwen Tarith. If anyone has a good reason why this wedding should not happen, speak now or be branded a coward for complaining later." Inquisitor Ming started the ceremony.
That wasn't the beginning that Max was familiar with, or the one he was expecting from studying the rituals, but nobody objected, and the Inquisitor continued the ceremony as Max scanned the room for dangers.
That was somewhat pointless since basically everyone in the area had a gun or sword on them, but it was still a habit that he couldn't break so easily.
The ceremony wasn't a long one, as neither culture put a lot of merit toward organized faith systems, but there were a number of rituals included, beginning with the couple exchanging rings and getting the fun part of the ceremony started.
"With the promises made, this assembly needs proof of your devotion." Inquisitor Ming spoke the ritual words.
Both parties of the wedding would be expected to exchange something that would prove their devotion to the other, to the satisfaction of the audience, whose job it was to weed out weddings of opportunity and unfaithfulness.
Max had no idea how such a tradition had started, but it was now a time-honored tradition.
"General, you may go first." Inquisitor Ming informed them.
"The gift is still en route, as it had a long way to come for you, but I present to you the deed to the Cargo Frigate Yaakovian, my family's fastest interstellar vessel." General Yaakov told his new bride with a smile.
A roar of approval accompanied by stomping feet shook the ground so much that Max was worried that the stage would collapse, as the Reavers present showed their approval for the gift. The fastest ship you own was an incredibly good wedding gift, in their estimation.
"Madam Yaakov, you may now present your gift." Inquisitor Ming continued the ceremony.
One of the bridesmaids brought out a small golden stasis box and handed it to Gwen, who smiled fondly at it before passing it over.
"I know it might be a bit late to salvage most of your sons' futures, but I have a gift of consolation for you. The Company collected the testicles of the Rebel Duke who turned your family against your wishes for their future." Gwen informed him, making all the guests laugh.
Now that was a strangely appropriate gift for the occasion.
The General had chosen to retire here because most of his family had turned Rebel, which led to him meeting Gwen and falling in love, but his retirement did leave that one bit of revenge as a loose end that she had now solved for him.
Max looked up into the upper boxes where the kids were, along with Dave and Molly, who were desperately trying to find a way to explain that gift to a pair of confused three-year-olds who didn't actually understand what it was that he was given. The toddlers had it easy, they were simply munching on popcorn in their stroller, uninterested in the proceedings when there was food nearby.
"With the gifts exchanged, it is time for the first dance. Mister and Missus Yaakov, please step to the floor and show the assembled guests how it is done." Inquisitor Ming called out, and the crowd up front parted to open up the dance floor, which had been covered in guests who wanted the best camera angles.
Both of them were from Noble families with a long history, and both had been properly trained from childhood for public dancing. Max had one set of lessons before the one and only formal recruitment ball that he had attended, but he would be up in the next round.
The Best man, General Pell, would be dancing with the Maid of Honor, so Max would be with the woman next to her, who turned out to be Isabella Tarith.
"I hope you can forgive my poor footwork, I never learned to dance," Max whispered to the old woman.
"We can fix that. Do you know the Kepler Knife Dance?" Isabella asked.
It was a paired martial arts pattern, where the two participants went through a set of attacks and blocks in a predetermined order to practice basic knife skills, almost every soldier at least knew it.
"Of course." Max agreed.
"Don't let go of my hands, and we will do it at one-third speed. It matches the rhythm of the next song." The old woman told him.
Even at one-third speed, the dance would still need a lot of physical agility that he wasn't sure a woman nearing five hundred years old was capable of, but if nothing else, he could support her through the deeper dips and more complex movements.
Chapter 312 312 Dancing Fools
Name:Humanity's Greatest Mecha Warrior System Author:
+ - Turn on Reset
312 312 Dancing Fools
The song changed to a fast and upbeat one, and Max took Isabella's hand, letting her lead him to the middle of the dance floor.
The old woman was incredibly agile, and Max suspected that she had rather high-ranked system compatibility in her youth to still be able to move like that.
The dance would normally look rather erotic, the way the two dancers entwined bodies when their hands were locked, but the age difference made it more comical than anything, and the Reavers were all cheering him on by the time Max finished the dance, carrying Isabella back to her chair since the Elder was exhausted from the effort of such a physical dance.
"Who knew that a Regimental Commander actually knew how to have fun?" Mary Tarith laughed, clapping Max on the back and pulling him back to the dance floor while whispering the moves to another dance into his ear.
The ceremony was only over for five minutes before the crowd was doing shots straight from rum bottles and losing clothes for a less formal type of dancing. The men and women of the Regiment were being hauled to the dance floor, and chairs were being folded and tossed over the wall to make more room for more dancing.
The dinner was scheduled for three hours from now, and Max wasn't entirely sure anyone would be in fit shape to actually eat at the rate that they were drinking. But they certainly intended to try. The word that quality steaks from Kepler Terminus had been procured for the dinner had already spread, and a lot of the Reavers had never tried them.
The food was served outside the compound, due to space constraints, and the wedding party began to spread out into the field around the venue, leaving only the close family and Senior officers inside to eat.
That was probably for the best, as Max could see personnel carts coming from the city loaded high with more liquor, so this party was not going to end any time soon.
"Now, where is the Young Lady of the Tarith Family? Nico, I believe her name was." Isabella asked as she sat beside Max to wait for her children to bring her dinner.
"Look up and to your left. She volunteered to be the honor guard today, so that is her Piloting Enduring Rage." Max explained.
"Hmm, that granddaughter of mine said that was your Mecha," Isabella asked, a bit annoyed at the contradiction.
"It is. During regular operations, Nico is my Technician or copilot inside Enduring Rage. Though possibly not for much longer, as we are reorganizing to fill the vacancy that General Yaakov's departure left.
After that, we will either be out of the Mecha, or we will have to build another to fill the spot if we want to keep it as a Command Mecha." Max explained.
"Or you can let me make you something extra cool. We don't have to worry about Imperial Command approving designs here." Uncle Lu told him, coming over with a tray of plates and a bottle of strong brandy.
"What brought you here anyhow? Weren't you in charge of Kepler's new Mecha development?" Max asked.
"I was, but that project no longer exists. After the Lab was raided by the Rebels and I scrubbed all the data, the project was mothballed. They don't plan to begin it again until after the Rebellion is dealt with, the risks were deemed too high to attempt to continue.
So I came here to have some fun. I couldn't sit in the Lab, which is now a Museum, as the Curator for the rest of my life.
Here I can start over, assuming you can find me a secure Lab again and not one that will be compromised or raided." Uncle Lu asked hopefully.
"There is a huge void in the middle of the Moon Base that isn't being used for anything. It would make a rather nice development Lab, and the station moves so much material that nobody would ever notice your orders moving from the storage rooms to the Lab." Mary Tarith suggested.
A floating city in the sky worked pretty well until the Rebels found out about it, but a Moon base with the firepower to defend against an attack fleet would be so ridiculously obvious that no sane man would ever think that they would actually put a super secret base there.
You didn't put the super secret base in the ultra-obvious murder star, you hid it somewhere that it wouldn't be noticed, like deep in the mountains. At least that is what common sense said.
"You can finally build the Samurai Pattern Line Mecha." Max laughed.
"I've got a pattern made for a God Class Mecha. There hasn't been a new one built in a thousand years, and each is unique, but Miss Nico sent me all the design specs for the Engines on Terminus, looking for advice on how to improve them, and it gave me an incredible idea." Uncle Lu whispered, so only the four of them could hear.
That would be a shock to every system that they dealt with. Most small empires didn't even have a weapon that deadly, so if the Reavers and their single-system nation did, it would totally break the balance between Empires in the region.
But in a good way for the Reavers. It would become too dangerous to attempt to attack them, even for Kepler.
"So what will we need?" Max asked.
"Well, two Pilots with a unique set of skills that complement each other when designing Mecha, to begin with, but after that, we will need time with Terminus to analyze the Warp Drive and come up with a much faster-moving version. Then we will need a collection of rare materials to actually do the construction." Uncle Lu sighed.
"That doesn't sound so bad." Mary Tarith shrugged.
"Right? It should be easy once we have everything that we need. The design is almost complete, except for the power plant and the outer shell. It's a good thing that Terminus has huge cargo bays though." Uncle Lu agreed.
"And why is that?" Isabella Tarith asked.
"Well, it is a God Class Mecha. Its main structure is seventy meters tall, and carries enough firepower to purge a planet." Uncle Lu shrugged.
"Seventy Meters tall? And how did you plan to send it into combat? There's a reason the ones that exist aren't used much. You can target them from across a continent." Mary Tarith pointed out.
"Well, I did consider camouflage. Like this one. See, when it crouches it looks like a Cathedral." Uncle Lu said proudly.
"Vetoed. No enormous walking Cathedral. No matter how incredible the architecture is." Max objected.
"Well, we can talk about that later."
Chapter 313 313 Domestication
Name:Humanity's Greatest Mecha Warrior System Author:
+ - Turn on Reset
313 313 Domestication
Now that everyone was getting settled into their new homes, and Uncle Lu had a wonderful new Mecha Design project that the entire Rae 5 system would benefit from, there really was no choice except to make themselves comfortable for an extended period on the planet.
It was much safer to examine Terminus' engines while they were powered down and the ship was on the ground and not in space, so Uncle Lu was making the best of his time here to get the essential study done.
He hadn't been slacking on his original designs, but he needed a much smaller power plant that would be capable of the energy output that he required for his weapons and travel designs, which the Terminus promised to provide him, assuming that he could understand enough about its design to engineering a miniaturized version of it for the Mecha.
"You know, I've seen something similar to this before. One of the Intergalactic cultures on the Northern side of the Galaxy uses a form of Crystals to power their drives. Unfortunately, we've never seen one of their large ship drives, only the one on a crashed shuttle that Kepler Engineers studied before the mother ship came to retrieve it, but I suspect that they were the origin of this ship.
The technology is too similar not to be, but it looks like this one is at least fifty thousand years out of date, from their first wave of colonization in the Galaxy.
"So what you're saying is that this design has the promise to reach speeds that would make intergalactic transport possible?" Nico asked hopefully.
"No, as I understand it they use a version of stabilized wormhole to travel to distant galaxies, getting close to their perimeter with the wormhole then using the Warp Drives to travel the rest of the way in. Even getting the travel time to a decade would take a warp factor in the thousands, and that's just not practical." Uncle Lu sighed, wishing that he could actually find a way to do exactly that.
"Even if we could get this old ship up to modern Kepler standards it would be a huge victory for us. In the role of a cargo freighter, we are slow but acceptable. As a frontline attack ship, we are laughably slow to respond, and the Reavers are going to need all the firepower that they can get once the Tapani either rebuild their military force or arrange enough alliances to return." Max suggested.
"We will start with new engines for one of the Cutters. Once it is up and functional, we can do the testing and start on a version of the Colony Ship's engines that will help it keep up." Uncle Lu agreed.
Taking their research subject offline for modifications was the last thing that he wanted to do, even if the colony ship needed to be faster.
For an entire week, Max organized training drills for the Regiment, making sure everyone was still in top shape in case of attack, while Nico worked on the recipes for the Replicators, and Uncle Lu reverse-engineered the ship's main engines.
It was starting to feel like home here on Rae 5, even though his actual family was moving out in the next few days.
They hadn't made anything official, but Max had seen the housing request for the children and Molly, but Dave's name was also on the tenant list for that unit. It looked like his old friend had found himself in a mighty fine new situation after all the hardships he had gone through.
[Commander, we have an update from Imperial Command. The rebellion in this sector has been officially put down, and the Civil War on Kepler Terminus is over, with the Loyalists victorious. How loyal the planet remains is still in question, since the forces on the planet were allied under the local authority and not the Fleet, but for now, things are stable, and they are allowing Refugees to begin to return to a number of their homeworlds.] Inquisitor Ming informed Max.
[So the flow of them here to Rae 5 is nearly over then?] Max asked.
This week they had seen at least two ships every day, after the initial influx, and it had gone a long way to filling the other two cities that had been built on the planet so far.
[I wouldn't say that it is over. A lot of ships are still making inquiries about coming here, but as with the ones that have already arrived, vetting all their passengers and crew for Rebel sympathies takes a lot of time.]
That was the Reavers' biggest challenge these days, looking into everyone who arrived and making sure that they weren't here to take down the new Reaver stronghold before it could even be properly established.
For that reason, they limited the number of visiting ships in the system and put everyone in quarantine until their credentials could be verified.
There were still three large ships that had to be cleared before they could either unload their refugees or leave the system, but the progress moved along fairly smoothly, with cooperation from the Captains and the planets that they had been evacuated from.
Some had indeed been full of Rebels, though they were civilians, and the refugees were not happy to find out that they were being turned away because the leadership of the Rebellion had turned on the Reavers.
The Reavers were a sign of freedom to most of the Rebel Civilians, people who lived outside the rigid constraints of the system, and out from under Imperial Rule. But to know that the so-called freedom fighters had attacked the people's heroes for sheltering former soldiers that the news on most of their planets had been calling deserters and traitors for half a year now, went against everything that the Rebellion was supposed to stand for.
Instead of being allowed on the planet, those groups were mostly split up between the Reaver Companies, so they could keep an eye on them. Sending them back to Kepler was a death sentence for most, and kicking them entirely out of the system would only give propaganda ammunition to the Reavers' enemies, but isolated on mining stations and outlying space stations, they could be vetted for problematic individuals before the rest were given a free pass to move on, or work under lower supervision.
In essence, they were prisoners. Well-paid prisoners, but prisoners nonetheless.
Chapter 314 314 Breakthrough
Name:Humanity's Greatest Mecha Warrior System Author:
+ - Turn on Reset
314 314 Breakthrough
It only took Uncle Lu ten days to have a working prototype of the miniaturized Crystal based warp generation engine ready for testing. The hull to be used was a former Kepler Cutter, heavily damaged during the battle but patched back up to basic functionality by the crews of the Terminus Trading Company.
The technicians saw a great opportunity in this phase of the designs. They were making huge repair facilities for visitors and Reavers, but they could repurpose some for full construction since they had the materials. If they could come up with an entirely new design of Cutter, they could make a killing selling them to mercenaries and others who were always short on vessels.
New ships weren't easy to come by, especially small ones that were capable of faster-than-light travel. They were strictly regulated by most nations, and the designs that could be reproduced elsewhere were limited to older technologies that were much better understood, so the actual number of fast Cutters that were available was very small.
The Kepler Cutter was a diamond-shaped vessel, narrow in the front, and wide in the rear, for more rear storage room, sufficient for a Battalion of Mecha, but the Engines on the Kepler Design took a full third of the ship.
That was a huge loss of space in a small vessel, and these ones could barely sustain a warp field, being better used inside a system than to travel between them.
The vessel had currently been gutted, and the parts were put into storage for the next person who came by and needed them. The ship was little more than a bare structure now, with exterior shielding hastily patched and an experimental Warp Drive mounted in the back.
Obviously, testing it in the atmosphere was out, so the ship would be sent into orbit with a freighter that was leaving the surface, carrying only a minimal crew.
Nico was going for her System Skills, along with five other Technicians, and a single Interstellar Pilot from the fleet side of the crew. All were wearing armored exosuits, and the ones that the Technicians had picked were particularly unique.
Following Nico's lead, they had built the Tech Adept Harness into the armor, so that they had four flexible dendrite arms and one rigid lifting arm attached. It limited their abilities to get into small spaces, but they could now do almost anything that they needed in the safety of a protective suit, and with or without atmosphere.
Max had voiced his objection to sending Nico into orbit, as the second in Command was impossible to replace, but she was too valuable to their research to keep on the ground. So instead he would be watching the entire thing from the sensor rooms of Terminus along with Uncle Lu.
There were dozens of shuttles on standby, as well as cleanup and damage prevention crews, so if something should happen, the researchers were instructed to bail on the vessel and wait to be rescued.
[Reaper 1 to Terminus Base, come in Terminus.] Nico called happily over the radio after they made orbit.
[Go ahead. We are ready for you to begin initial testing.] Max replied, wondering when Nico had made up a code name for the experimental vessel.
[Power up successful. Power generation at 60 percent of nominal capacity and rising. Power stabilized at 85 percent. Initial data sent.] Nico replied.
"Oh that is wonderful, it is just as great as I had hoped with the slight alteration to the shape and the material of the crystals." Uncle Lu cheered.
"Well, fill me in here, I haven't been following the design work," Max asked.
"Current engine output is 85 percent of the designed maximum, but that is roughly six times the output of the original engines in the Cutter. With a vessel that compact, both the firepower and the speed should be close to what we need in order to progress with the new Mecha design.
The engine will still need to come way down in size of course, but we can work on that later. For now, we need to see if the new engine design can actually sustain the warp field that it was designed for." Uncle Lu explained.
[Power up the warp field for stability tests.] Uncle Lu ordered.
There was a long pause, then Nico responded. [Field Stabilized. Taking it back offline for adjustments.]
There were ten minutes of silence, then her voice came back again.
[Adjustments successful. My System Function says that this is the best level of adjustment that the current design is capable of in terms of stability and reliability while maintaining output.]
And that was why she was in space right now. She couldn't analyze or make those adjustments from the ground, they needed to be done inside the ship. Max could optimize them later for usability, but as far as technically correct, they were at their peak right now.
[Warp Generation back online. Power output increased 36 percent from initial attempts.] Nico added happily.
Everything in the data that they were sending down showed that the field was not only much more powerful than expected, but it was also incredibly stable. The last question was if it was properly adjustable so that they could regulate it to take them to faster-than-light speeds.
This was the really dangerous part and one that Max wasn't looking forward to. The first test of a new FTL drive design was risky. If the field had a flaw, it could let debris through, punching holes in the ship and tearing it apart in an instant.
But Max did have faith in this team, and his System said that the field was good, and gave him suggestions on how to alter it for adjustability.
Max sent those up to Nico and waited while they checked every power system again before they tried to actually move the ship.
[All Green. Let's blow this popsicle stand.] Nico informed them a few minutes later.
[Exellent, excellent. Prepare for transition.] Uncle Lu responded with a big smile on his face.
"What is a popsicle stand and why does she want to blow it up?" The researcher asked Max quietly.
Max burst into laughter and grabbed the Mic.
[Transition in 5, 4, 3, 2, NOW]
The Novel will be updated first on this website. Come back and continue reading tomorrow, everyone!
Chapter 315 315 Need For Speed
Name:Humanity's Greatest Mecha Warrior System Author:
+ - Turn on Reset
With a flash of light, the Warp Drive transitioned them from a dead stop toward light speed and beyond.
[Sensors indicate the warp field is steady. Reports from the outlying Companies are coming in, and no issues reported with the warp field.
We will be moving to maximum speed once we are clear of the boundaries of the Solar System] Nico informed them.
There was an odd delay in the transmission that Max wasn't used to. The Kepler messaging system was much more high-tech than their vessels were and should be capable of communication at a Warp factor of 6, or the speed of light to the power of six.
Inside a solar system, that was essentially instant transmission, so if there was a delay, either they were really far out, or they were already moving faster than the transmission, causing distortion. That seemed a bit farfetched since the fastest of Kepler Ships currently struggled to make it above Warp 5, but they did say that the new engines were a number of times more powerful than anything that had come before them.
The design of the warp field was all new as well. Theoretically, it was an improvement based on alien technology from Terminus that Uncle Lu had improvised and adapted. The design was proving its worth now, and the sensor data that Max was getting from other vessels in the system showed that the ship had currently exceeded a Warp Factor of ten.
That was a theoretical breakpoint, where either a change in design or an immense amount of energy would be needed to surpass the limit, much like breaking the sound barrier inside an atmosphere, which was once considered impossible during the early days of humanity's development.
They watched the sensor data for over an hour, before seeing that the vessel was returning. The data was all garbled, as they were moving faster than the transmission, but the ship was doing a good job of making sense of it, even now that it was coming in on top of itself, with the ship closing the distance faster than the transmission was coming.
Near the edge of the system, they dropped back to less-than-light speeds, and glided back toward the planet, sending victorious messages even as the data that they had sent earlier continued to arrive.
That communication issue was going to be trouble later since they couldn't warn anyone of their arrival if they were traveling faster than the message, but it would also make for a very stealthy attack craft.
[Uncle, your changes to the formation of the warp field were incredible. Power usage surged 300 percent at warp 10, but the field was stable and made the transition without any issues. If we can increase output even further, I think that we can actually sustain much higher speeds. The increase dropped back to the expected nominal rate once we passed the second transition.] Nico laughed, and Max could hear the other technicians celebrating in the background.
[And how is the ship? Have you done a structural analysis yet?] Uncle Lu asked.
[Mostly fine? We will have to make a few adjustments to the design if we're going to take more ships past the second transition.] Nico dismissed his concern but sent the data anyhow.
The ship had taken moderate damage from the journey and had stress fractures everywhere. Some of them might be from a life of military service, but it was clear that a lot of them were new and that it wouldn't be a wise idea to try that test again without fully rebuilding the cutter.
[That design isn't going to cut it at all. But I think that there might be a reason for the curved shape of Terminus, even in its interior structures. See where the stress fractures are? They're all on straight surfaces, not at the joints where we would have expected them. The damage must be from the change in the warp field.]
Uncle Lu began to rant about ship design as the Cutter returned to the planet's surface, so Max went out of the room to grab lunch for the researchers.
They were bound to be hungry and ready for a drink after that wild ride, and there were hundreds of Reavers on their way over, sent by their bosses to try to find out when the new technology used to send a Cutter to such speeds would be available.
Each Warp Factor was an exponential increase on the one below it, so even at Warp 6 or 7, it would be impossible to intercept their vessels with any of the currently in use standard attack vessels. There were some experimental and classified designs that might do the job, but running into one of those on a mission would be an incredibly bad bit of luck.
But beyond the safety considerations, moving from warp 4 to warp 6 would cut their travel time from one side of Kepler to the other by over a month. For urgent shipments, that was a selling point that couldn't be ignored.
It would also make the Death Wind Territory more accessible, as they would be able to bypass the defense fleets of the nations that had an interest in keeping them isolated and starved for resources. In short, it was a win all around, once they could redesign the Cutters to actually survive that sort of abuse.
The Reavers were approaching at a flat-out run now, so Max headed out to greet them with a bottle of Rum in his hand.
"Welcome everyone to the first round of testing for the new Reaper Class Warp Drives. I'm sure you all saw that our proof of concept performed nearly as well as we had hoped, but I do have some bad news for you. The old Kepler Cutter we bolted it to did not. Before we can do the final testing on the drive, we will have to design a ship capable of taking that level of stress, and we all know that isn't going to happen this afternoon."
That made the Reavers laugh, but they were here as much to celebrate as they were to try to influence him to get early access to the drives.
"I don't suppose you have a lighter version of that, do you? Something in the Warp 7 range that doesn't tear apart anything you mount it to with raw power output." One of the new arrivals asked.
"We had considered making such a practical design at the start, but you see, the engine design was under the supervision of Uncle Lu and Tarith Rage, so all forms of moderation were tossed into the trash along with such silly thoughts like [This is insane] or [We're all going to die]." Max laughed.
Among the Reavers, it was no secret that Uncle Lu had designed the Super Heavy Mecha that the Regiment was using, so clearly, his thoughts on what was necessary and moderate were questionable, and any Reaver who would name herself Rage had a dodgy grasp of moderation to begin with.
"Fine then, we will let you complete the tests. Just the fact that it tore the ship apart too much to do another round of tests is enough information for the bosses." One of the Reavers agreed, pulling out another bottle of liquor.
[Can someone from supply please bring us a light lunch for a little over one hundred to the main reception area outside Terminus?] Max sighed into his communicator, knowing that they wouldn't be going anywhere for a while.
Reaver Politics might be more fun than usual, but they weren't any faster.
Chapter 316 316 Expanded Product Line
Name:Humanity's Greatest Mecha Warrior System Author:
+ - Turn on Reset
"So, what did you think of the new warp drive design? With these few small changes, we should be able to make Cutters that can take the punishment." Uncle Lu explained later that week at a meeting with Max and a select group of influential Reaver leaders.
"Impressive, but looking at the materials list, it won't come cheap or easy. Everything we need is in this star system though, which is a good start." A Reaver Admiral nodded, looking over the lists.
"Can you retrofit an older ship to that sort of speed? Or even Warp 7 to outrun the border patrols?" Another asked hopefully.
"We ran the calculations, and with an upgraded shield, plus a modified structural support field, it would take roughly three million man-hours of labor to retrofit a ship the size of Terminus to sustain that sort of speed.
We can safely get most designs to Warp 4 or 5 with a simple drive retrofit in under a month, but anything beyond that is extremely hard on the structure, especially in areas of turbulence, or during impact with larger debris. The fluctuations are simply too much for the Lowest Bidder construction model that everyone has used for millennia to keep their fleets fighting."
Uncle Lu was visibly pouting about that fact still, but the work to retrofit Terminus for Warp 5, which they could both withstand, and fit a drive to sustain within the existing structure, was well underway already since it was only a small modification to the existing Warp Drives that didn't pose serious risks to the vessel.
The entire crew was stoked to find out that they were no longer going to be the galactic slowpoke, and that they were getting all-new attack craft.
The first four Reaper Pattern Cutters would be designated for the Regiment, so that they could deploy wherever they were needed, using Terminus as a Mothership.
The great advantage of all this additional power was twofold. Not only could they respond in record time, but they were also going to be a more formidable force when they arrived. The Warp Drive was the primary source of energy for a ship's weapons, and with the output on their cutters exceeding most Fleets' Cruisers and some Destroyers, they would absolutely obliterate a light response fleet in a fight.
Part of that had been Max's idea, to give the ship orbital lances to soften targets before the Company landed, but the design team had taken it a step further and mounted the weapon with a variable angle turret so that it could be adjusted for use during combat without moving the ship.
It was deemed too much structural work to modify Terminus to have weapons, but with the new drives, their shielding capabilities would skyrocket, making them impervious to most attacks.
At least the first few strikes.
The second greatest selling point of the new cutters wasn't their Orbital Lance though, it was the fact that the design team had mounted over a hundred launch bays for modified Orbital Insertion Drone Fighters.
These had the upgraded weapons everyone had expected, thanks to the new power output, but more importantly, they now had a small cargo hold. They could either pack four regulation-sized soldiers in for use as an escape pod, or they could be launched with supplies for ground troops.
Combat Capable escape pods were possibly the most Nico thing that Max had ever heard of. You were fleeing from a destroyed main ship, supposedly running for your life, but the escape pods that the new ships carried would have more firepower than most light Mecha.
The ships were being constructed at the Moon Base, which was still under construction itself, but they provided the camouflage for Uncle Lu to begin his final projects.
The mass production of the Samurai Pattern Line Mecha, and finally the new God Class Mecha project, which only these select few were going to know about.
The new Warp Drive was deemed sufficiently powerful to power the Mecha, and the numbers that Max had been presented with on the theoretical damage output, using current technology, were completely insane.
It was supposed to use the same drive configuration as the Cutters, but at seventy meters tall and humanoid, instead of a two hundred meter long spaceship, the unused portion of the power when it was moving either on a planet or within the low orbit area was much higher.
The only issue they had left was the design. Uncle Lu really, really wanted it to be an enormous stomping cathedral with guns. It was ridiculous, impractical, and completely insane, but the old man simply loved the aesthetic.
Max was trying to convince him to make it a standard humanoid pattern, but the consensus among the team was that basic humans had been done, so unless Max wanted to go Hyper Realistic and make it look like an actual statue, his vision lacked creativity.
"Rage, back me up here. Humanoid is Mecha tradition. Walking buildings with guns is out of the question, right?" Max practically begged Nico to side with him.
"Yes, I have a humanoid design to present," Nico replied happily, putting her design up on the 3D projector.
It was definitely a humanoid Mecha, with organic body lines, making it look like a shirtless man. But with cloven-hoofed feet, clawed hands, and a horned, demonic face. The weapons were mounted as wings, fully adjustable for multiple target acquisition which would be incredible for Max, and a large cannon in the chest, with a retractable armor plating over it for transport.
It had chains hanging across its chest and wrapped around its waist, presumably for the storage of trophies, and a large sword hung on one side.
"What do you think? Since we can't camouflage it, why not go all out and remind everyone who sees it in action why you don't mess with us?" Nico declared proudly, while the whole room stared at the incredibly well-detailed design in wordless shock.
Chapter 317 317 Nico The Artist
Name:Humanity's Greatest Mecha Warrior System Author:
+ - Turn on Reset
"You know, I was leaning for the Cathedral, but this, this is incredible. With the Samurai Line Mecha, it would be like a whole demonic army charging the enemy lines. Even the bravest of soldiers would mentally break when they saw that army in combat." Admiral Drake sighed in longing, staring at the evil-looking Mecha.
Trying to inject common sense into this group was like herding cats through a field of catnip.
"You mentioned the Samurai Pattern Line Mecha, do we have a design for the God Class Mecha to be an enormous Samurai Statue?" Max asked hopefully.
"Oh, yeah, I made one of those as well. It lacks the single target oomph of the Rage Class Mecha design, but if you look here, I mounted Thunder Guns on both forearms that will still let it use the sword, as well as what I like to call the Hundred Points of Enlightenment, a Pulse Laser Array on par with a hundred Crusader Class Mecha's Pulse Lasers."
The lasers were mounted as focusing lenses on the edges of every armor plate, so only half of them could actually be trained on a target at a time, closer to third in most situations, but not many targets needed thirty Crusaders' worth of combined firepower to take them down.
This seemed to be the most practical version of the design that anyone had come up with so far, though that wasn't saying much, and the reception was very good.
"Who could even pilot that though? A hundred and six simultaneous targets are way beyond any Pilot that I've heard of." Mary Tarith pointed out.
"Me. She designed it for me to pilot, and I can target over a hundred points at once, with perfect accuracy." Max responded, making all the Reavers smile in barely hidden joy.
"So we have an agreement then? We will go with the huge Samurai and not the walking Cathedral?" Max asked hopefully.
"For a Mecha that glorious, we can compromise on aesthetics. I vote for the last design presented." Uncle Lu finally relented, breaking the stalemate in the room.
With his agreement, the final decision was made in only a few minutes, while a few design changes were suggested. An energy barrier for the blade, so that it could be used to hack holes in enemy vessels, minor changes to the armor design to match armor that the Reavers were familiar with, instead of the design that Nico had pulled out of memories of her past life, and the possibility of an Orbital Lance Cannon, to be made handheld and stored on the back when not in use.
That was more contentious since it would block a lot of the lasers, but it would give the Mecha that initial oomph to really get its point across when it arrived on a battlefield.
Uncle Lu would work on something to make the design more practical, he insisted, and the Mecha was sent back to the drawing board for the modifications needed to make the new outer appearance work with the necessary structural elements.
With that, the meeting was dismissed, and Max had to return to the daily drudgery of actually running his Regiment. Keeping everyone training and in top form, installing the new training simulators that they had acquired, and negotiating with the other Reaver Captains.
[Commander Keres, there is an incoming ship requesting you personally.] Admiral Drake reported from the bridge.
[Patch it through to the office next to the meeting room.] Max agreed, waving goodbye to the others so that he could take the call from the unknown vessel.
[Go for the Terminus Trading Company. This is Commander Keres.] Max confirmed, opening a video link so he could see who he was dealing with.
The face on the other side of the screen was one he never thought he would see again though.
[Major Payne? What are you doing here?] He asked, too startled to wait for her to speak.
[Good to see you again, Commander. We were out on a training mission and we seem to have run into a bit of trouble that I was hoping you could help us with. Nothing too dangerous, at least not all the way out here, but urgent.] His old Dorm supervisor replied.
[Your vessel looks sturdy enough for planetary landing, but if you need, we can shuttle you and your team down from the orbital station. It is under construction, but there are landing bays already complete.] Max offered.
[With permission, I would prefer to land next to that monstrosity of a Colony Ship you seem to have acquired. We don't have much, but it would be easier to transfer while on land.] She replied, and Max sent through a request for a flight path to the Capital's flight controllers.
[See you soon.] Max replied, then pulled up the sensors from Terminus to take a good look at the new arrivals.
They were in Kepler Terminus Royal Academy's private vessel, a small cargo ship modified for sending graduates to their first deployments. If they had mecha with them, there weren't many, and the ship was only designed to carry about a thousand people, plus rations and gear.
It wasn't a large vessel, and barely Warp Capable, since it was never intended to go much further than the Military bases in the surrounding systems at the lowest possible purchase price.
They might well have been on their way here for an entire month at this point and had only just made it due to their slow travel speed.
Still, a friendly face from the past was always welcome, and Max assumed that she had brought them some more refugees to be settled in the city. If they weren't planning to leave, the sale of the little ship could net them a pretty comfortable life here on Rae 5 as well.
Max pinged the ship and then hacked through the Academy's laughable security as soon as they stopped talking. They hadn't even updated the passwords since he left.
What he found was that the ship was at twice capacity, which was unexpected for an Academy vessel, but as he looked he found that every person other than the Major aboard that ship had their Personal Data altered to make them appear to be Academy Dropouts bound for the Infantry.
Why they would do that when it was a death sentence for the Cadets was a mystery to Max, but if the Major had gotten wise early, she might actually have a very good surprise for him.
Chapter 318 318 Old Friends
Name:Humanity's Greatest Mecha Warrior System Author:
+ - Turn on Reset
The small Academy vessel, barely more than a Shuttle by Military standards, landed in the clearing with Terminus between it and the city.
Max, along with a wing of Corvette Class Mecha from the Regiment met them at the door to their ship, and Major Payne came out smiling at their caution.
"I like your instincts, but this group has been carefully vetted already. The most outspoken allies of the Empire were sent on a mission together, then we found ourselves all demoted to infantry soldiers and branded deserters. We borrowed this shuttle from the Academy's fleet after a short discussion with the Rebel Inquisitor who was piloting it, and well, here we are.
The Rebels obviously know who we are, and the Loyalists aren't going to believe that we didn't desert our planet so easily, so the only real option that we had was to divert and make a run for you out here in the middle of nowhere."
Her explanation made sense, so Max brought up the stolen vessel's flight logs. It was indeed being flown by a local inquisitor. Not someone grand and powerful like General Ming, the planetary version, loyal to the local government, not the Emperor directly.
Still, General Ming would be interested in this information, since it would help shed light on how deep the corruption went. There should have been someone from Imperial Command supervising all of the Inquisitors on Kepler Terminus, and it would be suspicious if they had never reported anything about the problems.
This wasn't the first incident of corruption on the planet either. General Tennant had fled the planet with them at the start of their career so that he could avoid their attempts to strip his mecha from him.
"Do you have the original data files for the Cadets?" Max asked.
"Right here. I made hard copies and a backup, in case something happened. The whole mission felt off, even before we left, but it wasn't like we could just ignore orders to deploy, since all these kids just graduated." Major Payne explained.
So they were fresh graduates. Max flipped through the information and found that they were mostly unremarkable, nobody from the Special Forces Class, but all qualified on the Line Mecha.
Two thousand trained Line Mecha Pilots would be a pretty significant fighting force if they could equip and deploy them, and with the System, most of the Reavers would want a bit of that action. Even Gamma Ranked Pilots were still well above the human average and valued by other nations.
[Terminus, open the cargo bay doors to the refugee area. We have a couple of thousand Pilot Candidates on this shuttle that I think might be a good match for Terminus.] Max ordered.
"If you bring everyone out, we can get them a proper meal, since I'm sure you've all been eating rations since you left. Once they are on Terminus we can discuss their future. There is a lot to explain about what has gone on here, but I would like to know how you knew to look for me here?" Max asked.
"That part was easy. I tried finding a safe harbor as soon as we took over the ship, and got ahold of a friend on Kepler Terminus Station. He told me that you had taken away a load of the loyalists, and what the Commander's names were.
From there it wasn't hard to put two and two together and hope that I hadn't actually come up with five. As soon as the Admiral answered my call I knew I was right. He was a frequent visitor to the Academy in the past, and I recognized his voice." Major Payne explained.
"Well then Major, welcome home. As much of it as we have brought with us." Max agreed.
They would have to get a voice changer installed for the Admiral if he was going to keep interacting with the incoming ships from Kepler. Who knew how many other people would recognize the likable old Ship's Captain?
Two thousand soldiers in Academy Uniform drew the attention of everyone on Terminus, and a lot of them came over to see what was going on, bringing loads of food from the Replicators, as requested.
A Reaver planet wasn't the sort of place they had expected Academy Cadets to make a layover, no matter how strange their mission was. It was only when they recognized the emblems as being from Kepler Terminus, whose civil war had just ended, that they understood why these Cadets were there.
They were so far from home that they couldn't turn around when the news made it to their ship. They didn't have the supplies to make it back, even if they trusted the broadcast.
[Someone post up the crew listings with real names on the Refugee board. If anyone in the city is looking for their kids, they should get an alert that someone with a matching name is here on Terminus.] Max ordered once everyone was aboard the Colony Ship.
"You have a rather evil smile on your face, Commander. Care to share?" Major Miller asked as he entered with the crew bringing the food.
"You know how Uncle Lu wanted to do some testing on the new Samurai Pattern Line Mecha, right? I think I just found us two thousand volunteers to join the mission." Max replied with a smile.
It was a tradition in the Regiment after all. They had all been transferred from their units without a clue, only to end up testing Uncle Lu's new Mecha designs for the foreseeable future. Recruiting a couple thousand more to the Regiment was just carrying on business as usual.
"Well, I guess we are a Mixed Mecha Regiment now. Should we tell Nico to make the procurement order, or should we wait until she comes running in to ask permission to do it?" Major Miller asked.
"I will tell Nico. She's likely excited to see Major Payne anyhow, so she will come here on her own." Max agreed, then waited for the elusive woman to appear.
Chapter 319 319 Is That A Job Offer?
Name:Humanity's Greatest Mecha Warrior System Author:
+ - Turn on Reset
Max was exactly right, it took less than two minutes for Nico to make it to them with a data tablet in her hand and a smile on her face.
"Amanda. It's good to see you again. You can call me Rage these days. Relax, there is no need to stand at attention, it makes my back hurt and I don't even have bones anymore." Nico greeted her, making the Major wince at the informality before she adapted to the reality of the situation and the new standards.
She wasn't officially part of their organization at the moment, and all of them were in some sort of administrative limbo as the war played out in the Empire.
Nico continued her happy spiel, giving Major Payne a one-armed hug and showing her the data tablet she was holding.
"Some of the former Cadets have family here, and so do you. Namely, your Mother and two sisters are here on Rae 5, they arrived with one of the other Reaver ships, so they're living on the coast right now. We can ask that they are transferred, but from what I can see, they seem happy with a beachfront life."
"That's good to hear, but I'm more concerned about my own future at the moment." Major Payne told her while smiling at the picture Nico had pulled up from the immigration logs.
"That's easy enough. We can put you in the Logistics department, or move you to one of the Mecha groups. As I recall, your skills were more based on analysis and logistics, right? That was why you ended up at the Academy."
Major Payne nodded at Nico. "Yes, that is correct. I will happily take a logistics position, but I am also skilled in repairs. Perhaps not as much as you, but I do still have repair-related talents." The Major replied.
Nico turned to Max. "What about the First Battalion? Since Major Miller is being promoted from adjutant, and he handled Battalion Logistics, they could use another skilled set of hands in the command structure."
That wasn't a bad idea. With the loss of a Super Heavy mecha team, as well as the promotion of their logistics genius of an adjutant, the First Battalion was certainly short on talent at the top.
"We can give it a try. Call Major Miller over and he can welcome our new member to the Battalion." Max agreed.
"I should talk to your official Commanding Officer as well shouldn't I?" Major Payne asked.
"Commander Keres is our official Commander right now. The General just retired and passed the Regiment to him, as much as it is a Regiment anymore. For all intents and purposes, we are the Terminus Trading Company at this point, and we are under official orders from the Emperor to remain beyond Vermillion Classified." Nico informed her.
Major Payne gasped. "If it's that much of a secret, why did you tell me at all? Shouldn't you have been putting on your best Reaver act, making it look like you had departed the Kepler Military entirely?"
Max chuckled at her response. "You actually thought you had an option to not accept? Welcome to the Terminus Trading Company, Major. You have been volunteered. If you need, we can make it official with a signature from a General in the Imperial Inquisition."
"What is all this logistics Chaos that I'm seeing on my sheets?" Major Miller asked as he came into the room.
"We picked a new adjutant for you, so you will only need to find yourself a technician for your new Super Heavy Mecha once the experimental design for the new Command Unit is ready. Meet Major Payne, a former dorm supervisor at the Kepler Terminus Academy." Max informed him.
"A dorm supervisor? If you can deal with children that well, you should fit right in with the rest of our unit. I don't know if you're aware, but the entire Regiment is a bunch of oddballs whose units volunteered them for experimental Mecha programs.
They're incredibly skilled, but not exactly the most orderly of Battalions that you could be assigned to. I keep the logistics extremely well run though, and I expect that will continue under your supervision." Major Miller informed her.
"That's the first half of the Chaos. We also requisitioned two thousand experimental Line Mecha from the manufacturing facilities in the orbital base. The two thousand freshly graduated Cadets are about to be informed that they have been assigned to test the Samurai Pattern Line Mecha and the orbital insertion drones." Max told him with a wink.
"Voluntold is it? That's the best way to deal with fresh green pilots. Just give them orders until they know enough to think for themselves. Four hundred Line Mecha per unit is a lot for a Heavy Mecha Regiment though, so I guess we will have to adapt tactics. It shouldn't be hard." Major Miller agreed.
"I am glad you see it our way. Light Mecha are better suited to city operations, and pure numbers count for a lot sometimes. The new Cutters will also be large enough to accommodate the changes and still take a full Battalion without issues, so that isn't a concern.
The last thing we will need though is more staff. We have enough for basic operations, but we have to pull from that for Drone Piloting, so I suggest that we only add three hundred fifty Line Mecha Pilots to each Battalion, and make the last fifty of them drone Pilots, which should be enough to keep the drones on the Cutters operational without stealing from maintenance." Max clarified.
They needed staff to actually Pilot the Cutters as well, but those could be acquired easily from the Reavers. There were more children than adults this generation, thanks to tactical changes in their routes reducing losses, so the planet had a fair number of trained spaceship pilots, even if they didn't have systems to enhance their skills.
They could recruit those once they got all their new toys built though.Chapter 320 320 Signature Style
Name:Humanity's Greatest Mecha Warrior System Author:
+ - Turn on Reset
The basic outlines for the new Cutter Hulls were done quite quickly, and the work had begun before Max even had time to get all of the crews arranged to start training on the new systems.
These ships would use a translated version of the navigation system on Terminus, which was of a higher quality and resolution than the ones in most of the vessels available to the Reavers, so there would be some adjustment time needed before they would be ready to actually take it into space.
Then there was the crew who actually had to maintain and repair these vessels, assuming that the theoretical numbers held true and they didn't discover any flaws during initial testing that would require another round of extensive overhauls.
Max expected that there would be at least some work that needed to be done to them after the initial tests since they were breaking new ground in space travel for their quadrant of the Galaxy, but after the Mecha testing with Uncle Lu and his team, he had pretty high levels of confidence that they wouldn't be absurd to the point of a full redesign.
The man was eccentric, but his work was amazingly grounded in reality and not in theory, so Murphy's Law never seemed to bite him too hard. Little things, like breaking the first hull, were the sort of negative probabilities that he ran into, not like most design teams who missed a variable or two and failed dozens of times before they realized their mistake and managed to compensate for it.
The graceful curves that marked the outside of Terminus were also going to be used on the new Cutters, though the shape would be very different, keeping the diamond shape of the previous cutters to maximize cargo space.
That would serve the secondary purpose of making them more agile inside an atmosphere since Cutters were often deployed for planetary combat operations and didn't carry drop pods for any mecha troops that they might be carrying. They weren't even designed to accommodate them.
While they finished, Max had to spend his days doing interviews with potential applicants. Nico and Major Miller had vetted them before they were sent to him, so he had a good feeling that they would be capable, but finding a personality match for each Battalion Commander was also important.
Therefore, all five of them would be in the room with him and Nico when they did the interviews for Cutter Pilots, which were normally a team of four, either all on duty for combat or taking solo watches in six-hour shifts.
The ship design could take a larger crew without crowding, but even sorting out twenty Pilots in one hiring was going to be a nightmare, Max didn't want to try to make it twenty-five or thirty if he didn't have to.
They had all been arranged to arrive at once so that everyone in the Command Staff could see how they interacted, and how they got along with the Commanders.
The first part of the interview wasn't a formal interview, for that reason. Instead, Max had arranged a lunch buffet and told everyone to get to know each other, in case they would be working together in the future.
A lot of them already did know each other and had grown up together, but that didn't always mean that they would make a good team together, or even a better one than with people that they had just met today.
They let them mingle for half an hour before Colonel Lucci, their only female Battalion Commander, sent Max a message to call four applicants in for testing. She liked their chemistry and wanted to see how they would work together as a team, and how fast they could adapt to the new system with only the VR simulations guidance tooltips.
The simulation was very good, Max had checked it himself, so he called the four to go to the testing room, and the energy in the waiting room spiked. Since the Commander had called four at a time, and nobody else had left yet, it must be the first round of preliminary testing, in the opinion of the applicants.
Major Miller was the next to call for a group, and then the others until finally, Colonel Klinger called four very shocked young women from the corner of the room, where they had snuck a whole tray of snacks and were splitting a bottle of Rum.
Those were his type of people. They cared enough to show up when they were told and they could clearly work together, but everything else was just a waste of energy. They would all get called eventually. That was just how interviews worked.
Coordination in the meeting room didn't always translate to chemistry in the cockpit though, and in the second round of tests, once these Applicants had been tested in random groups of four would rearrange those who didn't have great initial scores into teams by their personality profiles, as determined by the AI, a benefit of having Major Payne around.
With her they could see everyone's Skills, and have Personality Types analyzed on the spot, making this task much easier on Max's patience.
Once everyone had been tested in groups, Max left them waiting a while before the second round, to see how they did under stress. These were all children of Reavers, but some of them were likely coddled all their lives and only sent here because their parents wanted them to do something more productive than work a retail shop front in the city, or whichever random job they had managed to find, despite their training.
The second round had the teams rearranged, and five short simulations were done by each team, one each by the Battalion Commanders to test them. Each was a disaster of some sort. An asteroid, a botched enemy firepower analysis, mechanical failure, and most interestingly, Major Miller had set them up for a rescue boarding action, which involved extremely skilled piloting to dock with the enemy vessel and get the Mecha deployed without getting destroyed.
"Did everyone find a team that they are happy with?" Max asked the Command team once the tests were done and the applicants were back in the waiting room.
"Yeah, though there are a couple of others who I think could be very capable teams, if the others don't take them." Colonel Klinger agreed.
"Alright, mark your top three on the data tablet and we will see what we get."
The initial team that Klinger had picked ended up on everyone's top 3 list, and not everyone got their top pick, but in the end, they did find five teams that everyone could agree were very capable Pilots, suitable for training to take Command of the new Cutters.
"Were any of the other Companies looking for Pilots for their smaller vessels? I know a lot of them are refurbishing the reclaimed ships from the battle." Max asked.
"More than I can conveniently count. There are a lot of uncrewed vessels in the system right now." Nico informed him.
"Good, send the test results of the ones that we're not hiring to everyone else who needs Piloting teams. It should be a good reference, none of the applicants was actually bad at the job." Max ordered, glad to finally be done with one more round of hiring.
The Novel will be updated first on this website. Come back and continue reading tomorrow, everyone!