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I041
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I041
---
"We have an actual plan now." Philippe told his friends as they gathered. "Bolt has been given authorization codes for a facility nearby. We need to go there, hook up with the people if they are loyal, and then let him know. If we are lucky, they have more mechs."
"We only have three other pilots." Camille pointed out through her mech loudspeaker.
"Oui, but that's still more than what we had before, and that will have to mean something." The teen said with a grim shrug as they left the shelter.
Neither he nor Bolt knew what was going through the general's head. All they knew was that the designer now had full authority over the city, and requests that he resolve the situation to the best of his ability. So Bolt and Phillipe were running with it. Where they were running was up in question. Right now it was down the street and hopefully to someone with more more information.
The streets were quiet as they moved. Several buildings were scarred, and traffic was gone. A few terrified people gazed at them as they traveled down the streets, and then hid. Phillipe wanted to reassure people. He didn't. That decision felt more haunting than it should have.
For a long moment the only sound was the wheels of the trucks they were taking and the footsteps of the mech. Contact, when it came, was abrupt. The thudding of a mech running sounded first. Then Camille moved forward.
The opponent was a metal mech. That was Phillipe's first indication of trouble. Traditional mechs weren't banned from the city, but they most certainly wouldn't be used by anyone local. This opponent had two blades, one on each hand. It was pure black, and sleek in a way that radiated a sense of both speed and danger. Both of which it displayed by darting forward before Camille could even begin to react.
Fortunately for the girl, Bolt had prepared for something like this. The Lumberjack's back mounted weapons were heavy things. They weren't cannons, but only by technicality. They were designed to punch through heavy armor at short to medium range, and had poor tracking. Bolt had switched that to a grapeshot analog. His reasoning was that if there was going to be a fight, it would have been between mechs.
Camille's reflexively triggered those cannons and that grapeshot on the approach. The black mech was knocked off course and slammed into a nearby building as the impact turned its lunge into a spin. The structure cracked as the mech braced itself and got back to it's feet, armor mildly shredded.
"Go!" The girl shouted, and Phillipe and the others went.
Behind him the battle continued. Phillipe had a moment to see her fire off the back cannons again as she brought the axe up between them. In response the chest of the mech lit up and a laser lanced out to impact her armor. The teen couldn't see more. He just floored it in hopes that he could reach the facility in time.
In the normal order of things it would have taken a few minutes to get to his destination. He reached it in less than two. It was not a large structure. It was a squat thing with massive reinforced gates meant for mechs. Most of it was underground, and it was triply reinforced. There were no signs of battle damage, but Phillipe didn't take that as a sign of anything. He instead ran to one of the peripheral entrances. This one was for people, and had an automated lock. Phillipe tapped his comm to it and waited as patently as he could.
A long second passed. Then Bolt's gifted authorization went through and the door started to slowly open. The teen barely waited to try to get in. He wedged himself in the door and almost screamed as he saw a gun. The soldier that met him was dressed in a helmet and armor, so the young man couldn't tell what he was thinking, but it couldn't have been anything good.
"Who are you, and why do you have auth codes?!" The man demanded.
"Ack, my name is Phillipe, and we got them from ze general in charge of the barrier planets. We need to reestablish contact and get a situation update! I have a friend who was able to get through the jamming!" the teen could barely believe what he was spouting as he waved his hands. Behind him one of his friends choked down something.
"You have a line outside?!" The man asked before shaking his head and gesturing inside. "No wait, it doesn't matter. You have valid codes. In now! We need things unlocked and there's enemy's outside!"
"We know, our friend was fighting to buy us time." Phillipe said. "Do we have mechs?"
"A dozen locked, pending authorization codes, which you have. No pilots though, so I hope your hanger ons have training." The guard growled out. "We need that outside line more though. The chain of command iz fucked."
"What do you mean?" The teen asked with mounting dread as they ran deeper into the facility.
"Half of command is confirmed az dead, the rest are traitors, a full lock down of our systems happened, and for some reason there's a ten-year abomination past he barriers prowling around the streets." The soldier said grimly. "If you have someone with authority we can unlock the systems at least. Everyone with the proper codes are dead, so you're literally the only one that has it."
"Merde." Phillipe cursed and then gestured to his friends. "Run to the mech bays. Get them prepped and out there, bring our girl back and then run to Bolt. We need him here. Be quick, please."
"Don't know this Bolt, but if he gave you the codes then we'll need him." The guard agreed. "At the very least I don't want someone with that authority outside someplace secured."
"Of course." The young man muttered. "It couldn't be easy."
That got a very dark laugh as they entered the command center for the fortification. There were only a few people there and all of them had very black looks. Phillipe could guess why. The base was at minimum power. That attitude changed as several consoles lit up with Phillipe's entrance. For a moment the teen was confused, but then he realized that was because he technically had a general's authorization.
"How did..." A woman cut herself off. "No matter. You just cleared the lock." She noted as she typed at a console. "Its taking my commands now. I don't know where you got a general's codes, but you might have just saved the city."
"Get to the mechs and get our friend back." Phillipe ordered his allies and stepped forward. "I am Phillipe, and I have apparently been given authorization to unlock everything. Do we have a situation update?"
"Non. All we have is what some of us saw." The woman said. "It's not good. We got a general shutdown command in the night and then a few of our pilots got murdered trying to get to other facilities. I am just a designer, not someone with command, so I cannot say more."
"That is not good." The young man noted grimly.
"Not good iz an understatement." Was the reply. "The hard-lines should be able to talk with the other fortifications through the jamming, but there should have been more coordination than what we've observed. We must assume that there was a decapitation strike. Thankfully with the systems up we should know more shortly."
"Decapitation strike means everyone that should be in charge is dead right?" Phillipe had to confirm.
"Oui."
That sort of meant that Bolt was now in charge, which was quite insane. He wasn't even a citizen!
---
"We have an actual plan now." Philippe told his friends as they gathered. "Bolt has been given authorization codes for a facility nearby. We need to go there, hook up with the people if they are loyal, and then let him know. If we are lucky, they have more mechs."
"We only have three other pilots." Camille pointed out through her mech loudspeaker.
"Oui, but that's still more than what we had before, and that will have to mean something." The teen said with a grim shrug as they left the shelter.
Neither he nor Bolt knew what was going through the general's head. All they knew was that the designer now had full authority over the city, and requests that he resolve the situation to the best of his ability. So Bolt and Phillipe were running with it. Where they were running was up in question. Right now it was down the street and hopefully to someone with more more information.
The streets were quiet as they moved. Several buildings were scarred, and traffic was gone. A few terrified people gazed at them as they traveled down the streets, and then hid. Phillipe wanted to reassure people. He didn't. That decision felt more haunting than it should have.
For a long moment the only sound was the wheels of the trucks they were taking and the footsteps of the mech. Contact, when it came, was abrupt. The thudding of a mech running sounded first. Then Camille moved forward.
The opponent was a metal mech. That was Phillipe's first indication of trouble. Traditional mechs weren't banned from the city, but they most certainly wouldn't be used by anyone local. This opponent had two blades, one on each hand. It was pure black, and sleek in a way that radiated a sense of both speed and danger. Both of which it displayed by darting forward before Camille could even begin to react.
Fortunately for the girl, Bolt had prepared for something like this. The Lumberjack's back mounted weapons were heavy things. They weren't cannons, but only by technicality. They were designed to punch through heavy armor at short to medium range, and had poor tracking. Bolt had switched that to a grapeshot analog. His reasoning was that if there was going to be a fight, it would have been between mechs.
Camille's reflexively triggered those cannons and that grapeshot on the approach. The black mech was knocked off course and slammed into a nearby building as the impact turned its lunge into a spin. The structure cracked as the mech braced itself and got back to it's feet, armor mildly shredded.
"Go!" The girl shouted, and Phillipe and the others went.
Behind him the battle continued. Phillipe had a moment to see her fire off the back cannons again as she brought the axe up between them. In response the chest of the mech lit up and a laser lanced out to impact her armor. The teen couldn't see more. He just floored it in hopes that he could reach the facility in time.
In the normal order of things it would have taken a few minutes to get to his destination. He reached it in less than two. It was not a large structure. It was a squat thing with massive reinforced gates meant for mechs. Most of it was underground, and it was triply reinforced. There were no signs of battle damage, but Phillipe didn't take that as a sign of anything. He instead ran to one of the peripheral entrances. This one was for people, and had an automated lock. Phillipe tapped his comm to it and waited as patently as he could.
A long second passed. Then Bolt's gifted authorization went through and the door started to slowly open. The teen barely waited to try to get in. He wedged himself in the door and almost screamed as he saw a gun. The soldier that met him was dressed in a helmet and armor, so the young man couldn't tell what he was thinking, but it couldn't have been anything good.
"Who are you, and why do you have auth codes?!" The man demanded.
"Ack, my name is Phillipe, and we got them from ze general in charge of the barrier planets. We need to reestablish contact and get a situation update! I have a friend who was able to get through the jamming!" the teen could barely believe what he was spouting as he waved his hands. Behind him one of his friends choked down something.
"You have a line outside?!" The man asked before shaking his head and gesturing inside. "No wait, it doesn't matter. You have valid codes. In now! We need things unlocked and there's enemy's outside!"
"We know, our friend was fighting to buy us time." Phillipe said. "Do we have mechs?"
"A dozen locked, pending authorization codes, which you have. No pilots though, so I hope your hanger ons have training." The guard growled out. "We need that outside line more though. The chain of command iz fucked."
"What do you mean?" The teen asked with mounting dread as they ran deeper into the facility.
"Half of command is confirmed az dead, the rest are traitors, a full lock down of our systems happened, and for some reason there's a ten-year abomination past he barriers prowling around the streets." The soldier said grimly. "If you have someone with authority we can unlock the systems at least. Everyone with the proper codes are dead, so you're literally the only one that has it."
"Merde." Phillipe cursed and then gestured to his friends. "Run to the mech bays. Get them prepped and out there, bring our girl back and then run to Bolt. We need him here. Be quick, please."
"Don't know this Bolt, but if he gave you the codes then we'll need him." The guard agreed. "At the very least I don't want someone with that authority outside someplace secured."
"Of course." The young man muttered. "It couldn't be easy."
That got a very dark laugh as they entered the command center for the fortification. There were only a few people there and all of them had very black looks. Phillipe could guess why. The base was at minimum power. That attitude changed as several consoles lit up with Phillipe's entrance. For a moment the teen was confused, but then he realized that was because he technically had a general's authorization.
"How did..." A woman cut herself off. "No matter. You just cleared the lock." She noted as she typed at a console. "Its taking my commands now. I don't know where you got a general's codes, but you might have just saved the city."
"Get to the mechs and get our friend back." Phillipe ordered his allies and stepped forward. "I am Phillipe, and I have apparently been given authorization to unlock everything. Do we have a situation update?"
"Non. All we have is what some of us saw." The woman said. "It's not good. We got a general shutdown command in the night and then a few of our pilots got murdered trying to get to other facilities. I am just a designer, not someone with command, so I cannot say more."
"That is not good." The young man noted grimly.
"Not good iz an understatement." Was the reply. "The hard-lines should be able to talk with the other fortifications through the jamming, but there should have been more coordination than what we've observed. We must assume that there was a decapitation strike. Thankfully with the systems up we should know more shortly."
"Decapitation strike means everyone that should be in charge is dead right?" Phillipe had to confirm.
"Oui."
That sort of meant that Bolt was now in charge, which was quite insane. He wasn't even a citizen!
Luckless21
Versed in the lewd.
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That just makes him the best choice!
M147
New
lost star
Connoisseur.
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- 468,857
Things were a mess. That was putting it politely. If one wanted to be really truthful about it, one could say that it was a dumpster on fire. Bolt had no real sense of military matters. He didn't need any of it to tell that things were absolutely screwed. Thankfully it was less that they were screwed and more everything was screwed up.
"Have we made contact with anyone actually trained in this? Are they all dead?" Bolt asked the others in the command center soon after he entered.
"Maybe?" The woman who seemed to have taken charge said tentatively. "None of the officers that should be active are in contact. There should be a few still alive, but with the jamming and chaos they might not be able to reach us. A few of the people we can talk with have reported a significant amount of battles with equipment we don't have. Our tentative conclusion is that visitors objected to the events and fought back."
Bolt nodded slowly and looked over the tactical map of the city. There was a lot of red. That didn't indicate hostile forces. It just indicated places they knew there'd been conflict. It was not encouraging that most of the place was red.
"I don't think there were that many traitors or they were that successful." Phillipe offered from the side tentatively. "It just doesn't make sense."
His words got a nod from the female designer. "I do agree, even if we lack evidence. If they had the numbers they would be visibly trying to take control. Instead they are trying to ambush and hiding still. Our best bet for victory at the moment would be to find Venerable Odette I believe. She should be able to help us secure a proper rally point."
With a nod Bolt brought up a few pictures of the mech that had been fighting with Camille. It was one of the few pieces of actual fully trustworthy intelligence. "What information do you have on this? My initial thoughts are that it's a Lumberjack counter and it's likely what the enemy's using as their primary mech."
"Thoze trash heaps are called Tree-Wasps. The other Second Rate nation in the sector uses them as throw away garbage. You can get a hundred no questions asked in a minute on any black market in the sector." The woman sounded both enraged and irritated by that.
So the closest thing Second Rate mechs got to frontline mechs. Still expensive compared to Third Rate, but bottom of the barrel. Bolt had more appreciation for them than his compatriot. It was sleek, thematic, and surprisingly solid despite the cheapness. It felt like a mech that was despised because it was popular more than because it was bad.
He wasn't going to say that. Instead Bolt reviewed what they had again. There was little more. Right now the local forces were rallying thanks to renewed contacts, but the lack of officers was causing serious coordination issues. Nominally Bolt was in charge due to the general's decision to transfer him command codes. He really had no idea what to do with all of it aside from asking people to get into contact with more loyalists.
"Venerable Odette. Where would she be? Do we have reports about her?" Bolt asked with a tap on the display.
"She pilots a rather vibrant flying lancer. We have had no reports of it. Her position is classified and she has a full time guard that is explicitly loyal to her. Security wise if she is not in her mech she is in a safe spot." The woman explained.
"Hmm. Nifty." Lilly mused from the side.
"Nifty?" Bolt asked and then blinked at what his wife was looking at. "Oh, you have her records?"
"Bolt, honey, you have full access to all classified information thanks to yer codes." Lilly responded and flicked through a few things on his comm. "I don't even like dealing with this stuff and I found it. we have fallback information, points of contact, and her mech location."
"Ah," Bolt breathed out and took a deep breath and then realized something. "Let's try calling her." The man said with mild amusement and began the call.
It was mildly hilarious how powerful his comm was, but that was what you got when you got a First Rate device. How it was getting through the jamming and allowing calls was impossible to say. He was fairly sure it was running something robust though, because there was a trace amount of heat coming from it as it worked it's magic.
"Odette speaking. Verify yourself, this is an unknown number." The response was quick.
"Oh thank the founders. This is Debora." The woman designer breathed out as she took the comm from Bolt. "We have a line that can pierce the jamming." She rattled off a series of numbers and a few other details that seemed to convince the expert of her authenticity in short order. "What's your status?"
"Mech has been sabotaged. We're pinned down in safehouse three." The expert reported back. "Commands, reinforcements?"
"Phillipe. Take a few of the guards here and your friends and prepare to help the expert." Bolt interjected. "Your goal will be her and the mech only if you can get it. She's the priority. Do you recall the salvage tricks?"
"Yes Monsieur!" The teen gave a salute that almost looked right before running out.
"I do not recognize that voice." The expert on the call said.
"Bolt Silica." The man said with a smile that couldn't be seen by her. "I apparently have authorization codes and a way to talk thanks to my special comm."
There was a beat of silence before the expert almost audibly dismissed the strangeness of the statement. "Very well. We will need more than a few. They want me dead, and I believe one of ze great foe has stolen a mech. The movement of one of them makes me suspicious."
Bolt frowned. "We don't have more. That said..." He trawled through the information. "We do have something that can be very distracting and attention gathering." Now that he knew he had access, he could see other classified information. On thing in particular was interesting. "You were working on a mech here?"
"Classified-" The designer paused and winced at the very obvious blueprints on the general display. "Well, yes. It was a heavy code-named Woodpecker."
"Looks half finished." Bolt noted as he looked over the blueprint. "Ah, and I just realized we never exchanged introductions." He brought that up because he could see her name on the designer notes. Senior Debora.
"Oui, but I don't think it matters much here." The Senior said dryly. "We are past casual introductions Monsieur Silica."
"Yep," The man responded with a small laugh. "Ok, we have a half finished heavy biomech in the bay with a lot of parts. What was it trying to prove, because I know a prototype when I see it."
"The main focus was the twin Gatling Guns. My specialty is in heavy weapons for biomechs." Debora said as she highlighted several points. "The weapons are finished, but the were valid flaws in the overall design that makes me hesitant to deploy it."
"It's slow, the tracking is bad on the weapons, and you don't have additional ones installed yet." Bolt concluded quickly.
"Er, yes." Debora responded with mild surprise before she continued with more confidence. "The initial thought was to simply test out the chassis with the weapons first. They were personally designed with several new ideas and I desired data. Some imbeciles decided that they wanted a full mech instead of a testbed and the project was stopped halfway through the growth."
The words made Bolt pause and look at the Senior in confusion. "Is that common?" He had to ask.
"More than I like, but it does not happen with every design I work on with the military. I am thankful I am in the experimental division at least." The senior said with a brief look of exhaustion. "But that is neither her nor there. What are your plans?"
"There's enough here material to make an expert mech. Lilly is an expert." Bolt gestured to his wife.
"She iz?!" Debora asked with mild shock. "I didn't notice!"
"You have an expert?!" The still listening Odette asked. "Why is she not deployed!?"
"I can restrain my presence a bit." The woman said with a small wave as she did something that made everyone's eyes snap to her. "And I have a child on the way. Violent movement could damage him." She told the other woman.
"This won't be extremely risky I think. A heavy marksman that doesn't move wouldn't be anymore risky than being in a warzone, and we just need them to move people away from Odette." Bolt explained.
Lilly's eyes sharpened and she looked at the mech. "It could work, but that's still a sitting duck."
"Then I make that a feature." The man said as he began to look through the documentation he now had access to.
Debora hissed out a breath. "You are accessing far too many classified files."
"I know, but ya'll put me in this position. You can keep the mech after we make it. We just need a stopgap measure." Bolt opened up several documents and began to write up something on his own.
"What exactly, no, you're trying to crack the FTL? We've been trying that ever since we discovered they could do it." The senior muttered as she watched his work.
"Power requirements and immature specimens prevent us from getting data according to the reports I see. Looks like there was something like an attempt to let one grow here?" Bolt highlighted a particular line that seemed rather ominous in retrospect. "But FTL is really just bending reality in the end. We don't necessarily need a full example, or this... Phase Water?" He squinted at the notes for the exotic material. "That cost is insane. We also don't got any. What we do have is a lotta examples of aliens. If we trace how exotics form in their bodies, we can isolate what's probably key exotics and do something less than FTL but still useful."
"Study 901." The senior said back. "Also Study 1322A if I'm following what you want here."
"You might be. We want to grab that, and sort of use it to do this." Bolt brought up several FTL calculations that worked with how space warped and bent. "We're cribbing off their compact FTL to create something that warps space. It'll need a massive amount of power, but it will also really get some attention and give the mech an edge that negates its flaws."
"Those equations..." Debora winced as she looked at them. "That will be possible. It's also going to be one of the most expensive heavies I've seen and eat enough energy that we can't do anything else."
"For once, breaking the bank is in our best interest. I'm going to need you to handle a lot of the creation once we sketch this out. I lack the expertise in creating a mech." Bolt reasoned out. "And this is going to be rough if we want it done fast."
"As an emergency measure I feel like this will be doable." The senior had to agree. "It's the best option we have I think."
"It's a plan." Odette agreed with audible reluctance.
"Have we made contact with anyone actually trained in this? Are they all dead?" Bolt asked the others in the command center soon after he entered.
"Maybe?" The woman who seemed to have taken charge said tentatively. "None of the officers that should be active are in contact. There should be a few still alive, but with the jamming and chaos they might not be able to reach us. A few of the people we can talk with have reported a significant amount of battles with equipment we don't have. Our tentative conclusion is that visitors objected to the events and fought back."
Bolt nodded slowly and looked over the tactical map of the city. There was a lot of red. That didn't indicate hostile forces. It just indicated places they knew there'd been conflict. It was not encouraging that most of the place was red.
"I don't think there were that many traitors or they were that successful." Phillipe offered from the side tentatively. "It just doesn't make sense."
His words got a nod from the female designer. "I do agree, even if we lack evidence. If they had the numbers they would be visibly trying to take control. Instead they are trying to ambush and hiding still. Our best bet for victory at the moment would be to find Venerable Odette I believe. She should be able to help us secure a proper rally point."
With a nod Bolt brought up a few pictures of the mech that had been fighting with Camille. It was one of the few pieces of actual fully trustworthy intelligence. "What information do you have on this? My initial thoughts are that it's a Lumberjack counter and it's likely what the enemy's using as their primary mech."
"Thoze trash heaps are called Tree-Wasps. The other Second Rate nation in the sector uses them as throw away garbage. You can get a hundred no questions asked in a minute on any black market in the sector." The woman sounded both enraged and irritated by that.
So the closest thing Second Rate mechs got to frontline mechs. Still expensive compared to Third Rate, but bottom of the barrel. Bolt had more appreciation for them than his compatriot. It was sleek, thematic, and surprisingly solid despite the cheapness. It felt like a mech that was despised because it was popular more than because it was bad.
He wasn't going to say that. Instead Bolt reviewed what they had again. There was little more. Right now the local forces were rallying thanks to renewed contacts, but the lack of officers was causing serious coordination issues. Nominally Bolt was in charge due to the general's decision to transfer him command codes. He really had no idea what to do with all of it aside from asking people to get into contact with more loyalists.
"Venerable Odette. Where would she be? Do we have reports about her?" Bolt asked with a tap on the display.
"She pilots a rather vibrant flying lancer. We have had no reports of it. Her position is classified and she has a full time guard that is explicitly loyal to her. Security wise if she is not in her mech she is in a safe spot." The woman explained.
"Hmm. Nifty." Lilly mused from the side.
"Nifty?" Bolt asked and then blinked at what his wife was looking at. "Oh, you have her records?"
"Bolt, honey, you have full access to all classified information thanks to yer codes." Lilly responded and flicked through a few things on his comm. "I don't even like dealing with this stuff and I found it. we have fallback information, points of contact, and her mech location."
"Ah," Bolt breathed out and took a deep breath and then realized something. "Let's try calling her." The man said with mild amusement and began the call.
It was mildly hilarious how powerful his comm was, but that was what you got when you got a First Rate device. How it was getting through the jamming and allowing calls was impossible to say. He was fairly sure it was running something robust though, because there was a trace amount of heat coming from it as it worked it's magic.
"Odette speaking. Verify yourself, this is an unknown number." The response was quick.
"Oh thank the founders. This is Debora." The woman designer breathed out as she took the comm from Bolt. "We have a line that can pierce the jamming." She rattled off a series of numbers and a few other details that seemed to convince the expert of her authenticity in short order. "What's your status?"
"Mech has been sabotaged. We're pinned down in safehouse three." The expert reported back. "Commands, reinforcements?"
"Phillipe. Take a few of the guards here and your friends and prepare to help the expert." Bolt interjected. "Your goal will be her and the mech only if you can get it. She's the priority. Do you recall the salvage tricks?"
"Yes Monsieur!" The teen gave a salute that almost looked right before running out.
"I do not recognize that voice." The expert on the call said.
"Bolt Silica." The man said with a smile that couldn't be seen by her. "I apparently have authorization codes and a way to talk thanks to my special comm."
There was a beat of silence before the expert almost audibly dismissed the strangeness of the statement. "Very well. We will need more than a few. They want me dead, and I believe one of ze great foe has stolen a mech. The movement of one of them makes me suspicious."
Bolt frowned. "We don't have more. That said..." He trawled through the information. "We do have something that can be very distracting and attention gathering." Now that he knew he had access, he could see other classified information. On thing in particular was interesting. "You were working on a mech here?"
"Classified-" The designer paused and winced at the very obvious blueprints on the general display. "Well, yes. It was a heavy code-named Woodpecker."
"Looks half finished." Bolt noted as he looked over the blueprint. "Ah, and I just realized we never exchanged introductions." He brought that up because he could see her name on the designer notes. Senior Debora.
"Oui, but I don't think it matters much here." The Senior said dryly. "We are past casual introductions Monsieur Silica."
"Yep," The man responded with a small laugh. "Ok, we have a half finished heavy biomech in the bay with a lot of parts. What was it trying to prove, because I know a prototype when I see it."
"The main focus was the twin Gatling Guns. My specialty is in heavy weapons for biomechs." Debora said as she highlighted several points. "The weapons are finished, but the were valid flaws in the overall design that makes me hesitant to deploy it."
"It's slow, the tracking is bad on the weapons, and you don't have additional ones installed yet." Bolt concluded quickly.
"Er, yes." Debora responded with mild surprise before she continued with more confidence. "The initial thought was to simply test out the chassis with the weapons first. They were personally designed with several new ideas and I desired data. Some imbeciles decided that they wanted a full mech instead of a testbed and the project was stopped halfway through the growth."
The words made Bolt pause and look at the Senior in confusion. "Is that common?" He had to ask.
"More than I like, but it does not happen with every design I work on with the military. I am thankful I am in the experimental division at least." The senior said with a brief look of exhaustion. "But that is neither her nor there. What are your plans?"
"There's enough here material to make an expert mech. Lilly is an expert." Bolt gestured to his wife.
"She iz?!" Debora asked with mild shock. "I didn't notice!"
"You have an expert?!" The still listening Odette asked. "Why is she not deployed!?"
"I can restrain my presence a bit." The woman said with a small wave as she did something that made everyone's eyes snap to her. "And I have a child on the way. Violent movement could damage him." She told the other woman.
"This won't be extremely risky I think. A heavy marksman that doesn't move wouldn't be anymore risky than being in a warzone, and we just need them to move people away from Odette." Bolt explained.
Lilly's eyes sharpened and she looked at the mech. "It could work, but that's still a sitting duck."
"Then I make that a feature." The man said as he began to look through the documentation he now had access to.
Debora hissed out a breath. "You are accessing far too many classified files."
"I know, but ya'll put me in this position. You can keep the mech after we make it. We just need a stopgap measure." Bolt opened up several documents and began to write up something on his own.
"What exactly, no, you're trying to crack the FTL? We've been trying that ever since we discovered they could do it." The senior muttered as she watched his work.
"Power requirements and immature specimens prevent us from getting data according to the reports I see. Looks like there was something like an attempt to let one grow here?" Bolt highlighted a particular line that seemed rather ominous in retrospect. "But FTL is really just bending reality in the end. We don't necessarily need a full example, or this... Phase Water?" He squinted at the notes for the exotic material. "That cost is insane. We also don't got any. What we do have is a lotta examples of aliens. If we trace how exotics form in their bodies, we can isolate what's probably key exotics and do something less than FTL but still useful."
"Study 901." The senior said back. "Also Study 1322A if I'm following what you want here."
"You might be. We want to grab that, and sort of use it to do this." Bolt brought up several FTL calculations that worked with how space warped and bent. "We're cribbing off their compact FTL to create something that warps space. It'll need a massive amount of power, but it will also really get some attention and give the mech an edge that negates its flaws."
"Those equations..." Debora winced as she looked at them. "That will be possible. It's also going to be one of the most expensive heavies I've seen and eat enough energy that we can't do anything else."
"For once, breaking the bank is in our best interest. I'm going to need you to handle a lot of the creation once we sketch this out. I lack the expertise in creating a mech." Bolt reasoned out. "And this is going to be rough if we want it done fast."
"As an emergency measure I feel like this will be doable." The senior had to agree. "It's the best option we have I think."
"It's a plan." Odette agreed with audible reluctance.
EternitynChaos
Once there was a Maiden...
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This sounds hilarious, like something the Einst would make out of Granzion
Luker number 5
Versed in the lewd.
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I appreciate that work around for getting Lils in a mech. Can't go fast? make a heavily fortified big mech all about the guns that can't go faster then a big rig in a traffic jam.
M148
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Woodpecker was not a pretty mech. It was an unfinished, ramshackle, barely functional piece of hardware in all truth. The armor was rough and grated against itself as the limbs moved. The engine stuttered at certain actions. The footing and balance was frankly atrocious, and Lilly didn't even want to consider the endurance it would have if she had to actually move the thing for more than an hour or so.
Yet you didn't need pretty to survive. You just had to be functional. This was far from the first time she'd had to pilot a bad mech. If anything being an expert had spoilt her. She was almost out of practice in fighting the mech for every step. She could and would compensate. The fact that Bolt and his new co-worker had managed to slap this mech together in hours had to be enough for their purposes. Lilly, as an expert was a priority target. Just the presence of an expert in a heavy mech would be enough to force everyone in the city to re-evaluate things.
Privately Lilly had to admit it was hilariously fun too. Woodpecker was a true heavy in all senses of the word. Every step was a slam into the street. This was a mech that had presence, even if it was incomplete. It was also distinctly different than her other mechs. Dowry and Morning Star needed a delicate touch. This one needed muscle and focus.
"Oh, look, first victim." Lilly muttered as a sensor pinged.
Debora's work was also rather unfinished, though in a different sense. As a heavy weapon specialist, her main contribution had been a pair of rotating gatling guns named Rotary Buzz-Saw .90. The massive things were her own custom creation and had required the mech built to handle them. They fired 'wood' spikes in an imitation of one of the common Arboretian weapons, but revised to work with human technology. It was far more dangerous than it sounded if you went off just the description.
As a new and relatively untested weapon it had it's quirks though. The initial firing sequence involved spinning the multiple barrels to allow for a fast fire rate and the process was neither quiet nor quick. It produced an ominous whine that could likely be heard by the enemy and gave everyone a warning that the weapon was being readied. No one was foolish enough to stay in direct line of sight when given such and obvious sign.
Lilly could still shoot them through the buildings if she had a sensor contact. The Buzz-saw's penetration was enough to go through several buildings without significant loss of damage. There was a reason it'd been considered viable to center a mech around them. The weapons were formidable on paper. She wasn't inclined to show that and add more damage to the city at the moment though. Instead she shifted her footing and readied herself to pivot if necessary.
Heavies like this were best likened to slow and cumbersome trucks. Young pilots thought that meant you couldn't display your skill in them. Older pilots knew that a skilled heavy was one of the most terrifying things you could fight in a war. Heavies were slow, they were ponderous, a good pilot could absolutely rip apart everything lighter in seconds. You did not rush in and overwhelm someone in a mech like this. You had to predict everything. If you did? The weight and volume of fire could decide entire wars. Her victory here would therefore lie in careful and slow work, not quick reflexes and pushing the limits of her engine. Which was a very good thing here, because high Gs would hurt the baby still growing inside her.
Right now Lilly was playing bait. Alone and unsupported she was dangerous but something that could be beaten on first glance. Lilly was getting pings on several enemies sharking at the edges already. She'd probably triggered some sort of general call. They were likely thinking about ganging up on her. Woodpecker looked like a big and juicy priority target.
Deciding to make it even easier, Lilly stomped to a small park nearby. Wide open area, clear viewpoints once you got past the buildings around it, the place allowed no one to sneak up on her, but also gave the enemy multiple lines of approach. All one of them would have to do was approach from the rear and she'd be dead, assuming she was a normal mech.
Time passed. She was fine with that. The close range communication line clicked. "Venerable Lilly?"
"Debora, right?" Lilly asked back. "Jamming down?"
"It's been reduced. Some of our people in another area managed to take down one of the jammers they'd hidden in the city. Venerable Odette has indicated that several mechs suppressing her have moved out. Our people are moving in. Status?"
"Right now they're jockeying for position. They don't know if they know I'm an expert." Lilly responded as she watched mechs move through her sensors.
"Bolt asked me to tell you to retreat if you feel at all pressured. You already did enough of a distraction." The senior relayed.
Lilly laughed and fired a few rounds into the distance. One of the mechs peaking around the building flinched back as the pilot jerked away. She didn't think the worry was out of line, but she was under absolutely no threat at the moment despite how it looked.
A few more minutes passed as more mechs moved into position. Then the action happened all at once. Several Wasps began to rush out of cover from various angles. Lasers erupted as the mechs fired and the shots glanced off Lilly's armor as she carefully shifted the heavy to absorb the damage. The Woodpecker might have been rough, but the armor was thick enough that she could literally ignore the damage they were inflicting at range for awhile. The enemy was smart enough to understand that, hence their rapid approach. The lasers were there to just cover them.
Carefully Lilly shifted one of her still spinning weapons and let it fire at full speed. The bullets, slightly inaccurate, but still guided by an expert's skill impacted into one of the mechs. It lasted a singular second under the onslaught before the armor was pierced and half of it shredded. She used her other hand to do similar on the other side. That killed two mechs and possibly pilots if they were unlucky. It looked like there were three more to go. One was angling towards her back already.
She shifted her mech's weight to one foot and spun. The very thick ammo casing of her weapon impacted the mech mid lunge and sent it spinning as the sheer weight disparity forced it off course. Lilly then lifted a foot and stomped forward, crushing one of the mech's feet and pinning it long enough for her to bash it again. The gatling gun's lower parts doubled as heavy clubs, and just the sheer weight was enough to critically damage the mech with her strikes.
That left two more, and they would reach her before she could position herself to shoot them. Yet the woman didn't even worry. Lilly activated the secondary equipment in the mech. The even more experimental one that Bolt and Debora had made through what was possibly black magic and insanity.
In the center of the mech the device woke and devoured power from her systems. The generator screamed so loud it was audible outside the mech. Heat surged through the system and every system creaked. Lilly could feel damage starting to accumulate al over as the mech struggled to provide the fuel the device needed, and she was forced to flex her will in an attempt to keep together.
Space flexed around her mech. It was like the thing sank into the ground even though it did not move a singular step. The mechs charging at her found each step covering less and less ground as reality warped to her will. Suddenly they weren't several steps away. They were hundreds of steps away. The surprise crippled their reactions as Lilly almost leisurely turned her mech around and aimed her still spinning weapons. Space snapped back to normal just at the right time and bullets flew out from the guns in a veritable stream. Close as her opponents were, the Buzz-Saw didn't shred, it bisected them both with a messy display of might.
Unfortunately the clean victory was tainted almost immediately. As her systems wound down, something sparked and caught aflame inside her mech's chest. Damage alerts declared red across half the internals. Lilly hissed to herself. "Ok, that ain't a nice thing to activate." She said over the comm. "It did more damage ta me than the enemy did."
"I'm more surprised it worked without breaking anything. We barely got the theory together properly. Sure it-" The woman cut herself off. "Apologies. I shouldn't be ranting about it."
"No, it's fine." Lilly muttered. "You forget who I'm married to."
"Taking up the comms is still unprofessional." Came the reply before the senior continued. "It would be best for you to come back in light of how poorly the test went. That should still serve as a spectacular distraction. We have reports that the possible Arboretian Ten-year is on its way towards you."
Lilly nodded and disabled most of the systems before powering up the space adjuster once more. If she was right she could do one last thing here. Woodpecker stepped forward, and covered enough distance to leave the park. It stepped again, and disappeared down a few alleyways.
Something exploded inside and Lilly winced as she completely cut the power to the device. That might have been pushing things, but it should confuse pursuit. Heavies didn't move that fast after all, and any watchers would definitely have been thrown.
Yet you didn't need pretty to survive. You just had to be functional. This was far from the first time she'd had to pilot a bad mech. If anything being an expert had spoilt her. She was almost out of practice in fighting the mech for every step. She could and would compensate. The fact that Bolt and his new co-worker had managed to slap this mech together in hours had to be enough for their purposes. Lilly, as an expert was a priority target. Just the presence of an expert in a heavy mech would be enough to force everyone in the city to re-evaluate things.
Privately Lilly had to admit it was hilariously fun too. Woodpecker was a true heavy in all senses of the word. Every step was a slam into the street. This was a mech that had presence, even if it was incomplete. It was also distinctly different than her other mechs. Dowry and Morning Star needed a delicate touch. This one needed muscle and focus.
"Oh, look, first victim." Lilly muttered as a sensor pinged.
Debora's work was also rather unfinished, though in a different sense. As a heavy weapon specialist, her main contribution had been a pair of rotating gatling guns named Rotary Buzz-Saw .90. The massive things were her own custom creation and had required the mech built to handle them. They fired 'wood' spikes in an imitation of one of the common Arboretian weapons, but revised to work with human technology. It was far more dangerous than it sounded if you went off just the description.
As a new and relatively untested weapon it had it's quirks though. The initial firing sequence involved spinning the multiple barrels to allow for a fast fire rate and the process was neither quiet nor quick. It produced an ominous whine that could likely be heard by the enemy and gave everyone a warning that the weapon was being readied. No one was foolish enough to stay in direct line of sight when given such and obvious sign.
Lilly could still shoot them through the buildings if she had a sensor contact. The Buzz-saw's penetration was enough to go through several buildings without significant loss of damage. There was a reason it'd been considered viable to center a mech around them. The weapons were formidable on paper. She wasn't inclined to show that and add more damage to the city at the moment though. Instead she shifted her footing and readied herself to pivot if necessary.
Heavies like this were best likened to slow and cumbersome trucks. Young pilots thought that meant you couldn't display your skill in them. Older pilots knew that a skilled heavy was one of the most terrifying things you could fight in a war. Heavies were slow, they were ponderous, a good pilot could absolutely rip apart everything lighter in seconds. You did not rush in and overwhelm someone in a mech like this. You had to predict everything. If you did? The weight and volume of fire could decide entire wars. Her victory here would therefore lie in careful and slow work, not quick reflexes and pushing the limits of her engine. Which was a very good thing here, because high Gs would hurt the baby still growing inside her.
Right now Lilly was playing bait. Alone and unsupported she was dangerous but something that could be beaten on first glance. Lilly was getting pings on several enemies sharking at the edges already. She'd probably triggered some sort of general call. They were likely thinking about ganging up on her. Woodpecker looked like a big and juicy priority target.
Deciding to make it even easier, Lilly stomped to a small park nearby. Wide open area, clear viewpoints once you got past the buildings around it, the place allowed no one to sneak up on her, but also gave the enemy multiple lines of approach. All one of them would have to do was approach from the rear and she'd be dead, assuming she was a normal mech.
Time passed. She was fine with that. The close range communication line clicked. "Venerable Lilly?"
"Debora, right?" Lilly asked back. "Jamming down?"
"It's been reduced. Some of our people in another area managed to take down one of the jammers they'd hidden in the city. Venerable Odette has indicated that several mechs suppressing her have moved out. Our people are moving in. Status?"
"Right now they're jockeying for position. They don't know if they know I'm an expert." Lilly responded as she watched mechs move through her sensors.
"Bolt asked me to tell you to retreat if you feel at all pressured. You already did enough of a distraction." The senior relayed.
Lilly laughed and fired a few rounds into the distance. One of the mechs peaking around the building flinched back as the pilot jerked away. She didn't think the worry was out of line, but she was under absolutely no threat at the moment despite how it looked.
A few more minutes passed as more mechs moved into position. Then the action happened all at once. Several Wasps began to rush out of cover from various angles. Lasers erupted as the mechs fired and the shots glanced off Lilly's armor as she carefully shifted the heavy to absorb the damage. The Woodpecker might have been rough, but the armor was thick enough that she could literally ignore the damage they were inflicting at range for awhile. The enemy was smart enough to understand that, hence their rapid approach. The lasers were there to just cover them.
Carefully Lilly shifted one of her still spinning weapons and let it fire at full speed. The bullets, slightly inaccurate, but still guided by an expert's skill impacted into one of the mechs. It lasted a singular second under the onslaught before the armor was pierced and half of it shredded. She used her other hand to do similar on the other side. That killed two mechs and possibly pilots if they were unlucky. It looked like there were three more to go. One was angling towards her back already.
She shifted her mech's weight to one foot and spun. The very thick ammo casing of her weapon impacted the mech mid lunge and sent it spinning as the sheer weight disparity forced it off course. Lilly then lifted a foot and stomped forward, crushing one of the mech's feet and pinning it long enough for her to bash it again. The gatling gun's lower parts doubled as heavy clubs, and just the sheer weight was enough to critically damage the mech with her strikes.
That left two more, and they would reach her before she could position herself to shoot them. Yet the woman didn't even worry. Lilly activated the secondary equipment in the mech. The even more experimental one that Bolt and Debora had made through what was possibly black magic and insanity.
In the center of the mech the device woke and devoured power from her systems. The generator screamed so loud it was audible outside the mech. Heat surged through the system and every system creaked. Lilly could feel damage starting to accumulate al over as the mech struggled to provide the fuel the device needed, and she was forced to flex her will in an attempt to keep together.
Space flexed around her mech. It was like the thing sank into the ground even though it did not move a singular step. The mechs charging at her found each step covering less and less ground as reality warped to her will. Suddenly they weren't several steps away. They were hundreds of steps away. The surprise crippled their reactions as Lilly almost leisurely turned her mech around and aimed her still spinning weapons. Space snapped back to normal just at the right time and bullets flew out from the guns in a veritable stream. Close as her opponents were, the Buzz-Saw didn't shred, it bisected them both with a messy display of might.
Unfortunately the clean victory was tainted almost immediately. As her systems wound down, something sparked and caught aflame inside her mech's chest. Damage alerts declared red across half the internals. Lilly hissed to herself. "Ok, that ain't a nice thing to activate." She said over the comm. "It did more damage ta me than the enemy did."
"I'm more surprised it worked without breaking anything. We barely got the theory together properly. Sure it-" The woman cut herself off. "Apologies. I shouldn't be ranting about it."
"No, it's fine." Lilly muttered. "You forget who I'm married to."
"Taking up the comms is still unprofessional." Came the reply before the senior continued. "It would be best for you to come back in light of how poorly the test went. That should still serve as a spectacular distraction. We have reports that the possible Arboretian Ten-year is on its way towards you."
Lilly nodded and disabled most of the systems before powering up the space adjuster once more. If she was right she could do one last thing here. Woodpecker stepped forward, and covered enough distance to leave the park. It stepped again, and disappeared down a few alleyways.
Something exploded inside and Lilly winced as she completely cut the power to the device. That might have been pushing things, but it should confuse pursuit. Heavies didn't move that fast after all, and any watchers would definitely have been thrown.
EternitynChaos
Once there was a Maiden...
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Just imagine if they had a day to put it together instead of an hour lol
M149
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lost star
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Odette was a woman on the average side for a Second Rate woman. Mildly pretty, short brown hair cropped in a way that brought military styles to mind, and fairly unremarkable clothing. She could have passed for a normal person if her presence didn't scream expert. She was also quite furious at the current circumstances.
"Look at my lovely Swan!" The woman gestured emphatically to the chained up mech that had been brought with her. "They ruined her! Not only that, they did it through subterfuge and betrayal! Honorable combat is one thing. This defilement is another!"
Bolt winced as he looked over the mech. "Can't disagree there."
Whomever had done the sabotage had managed a rather telling bit of damage. If he were to guess they had thrown an explosive device in the cockpit and closed it up. That sort of contained destruction had cored all the vital components for the mech. In a mechanical mech that meant a good half day's worth of work to fix. For a biomech it meant that the mech was practically impossible to repair conventionally.
It was a true pity too. Swan was one of those mechs that blended form and function in a very striking manner. He was fairly sure it had taken inspiration from ballet based on the design. The feet, coloring, and hints of feathers made it look elegantly graceful. This was a labor of both love and dedication, not the utilitarian style of expert mech that most militaries churned out.
"The plan was to use me as a rallying point, but unless you can pull out another miracle today we are in a bad spot. Your wife's mech is destroyed as well." The woman observed with a large frown.
"I mean I didn't want her out there, but was the damage worse that bad?" He asked Lilly. He hadn't managed to get to it after she'd returned.
"Experimental thingy worked but blew out everything inside I think." The small woman said with a halfhearted shrug. "Bit of a pity, cause it was fun."
"You have my agreement in that it looks entertaining. I am not one for a heavy, but I would not zay no to weapons like that. Sometimes you just need a big weapon yes?" Odette noted as her frown decreased slightly.
"Yep! They're totally worth the hassle that comes with having something so big." Lilly agreed with a grin.
Bolt listened to the chatter with half an ear as he evaluated things. They had two mostly totaled and expensive biomechs at the moment, and very little time. Assuming the enemy wasn't stupid, they knew that there was at least one expert free at the moment. They would find the base. It wasn't like the place was really hidden after all. They needed more than the militia equivalents that Phillipe's friends represented.
For a moment he wondered if he could just see if one of Lilly's mechs could be brought down. The consideration stopped midway through. There were too many reasons to avoid that. His best bet would therefore be trying to fix Swan. He'd done it once with another biomech after all and he could do it again.
The problem was that he wasn't sure he had the time. The process of fixing a cockpit wasn't that hard really. The cockpit itself was meant to come out. It was the connections from the cockpit to the rest of the mech and the fact that several important components were typically next to the cockpit to take advantage of the shielding. A second rate mech had thousands of connections. It was so fiddly and time consuming to deal with that it was sometimes faster to remake the mech than to fix it if the problem was deep enough.
He was going to have to cut it all out and do a transplant of sorts probably. It wasn't going to be pretty. If he did it right it could be fast, but he'd have to lean heavily on the biomechanical repair processes. Would it be fast enough? He couldn't say. That really depended on the enemy.
"I'm going to need you two ladies out." Bolt said out loud, and Lilly laughed at whatever face he was making before screwing her face up in fake outrage.
"Who you callin a lady!?" The woman said before grabbing the other expert and giggling again. "Come on, let my hubby do his magic."
"Magic you say?" Odette asked and then jumped as a spray of sap went through the air.
Bolt waved sheepishly as he held up the tool he'd started the cut with. "I'd call this less magic and more horror. Also it ain't going to be a pretty repair. Walk the woman through Frankenstein mechs if you can hun?"
Lilly nodded and shut the door firmly behind her. Bolt paused as something else occurred to him. There was an added safety measure he could use. There should have been, and there was a sealed suit in the side rooms. Typically used for highly toxic materials, it was standard for most higher level workshop to have at least one. Even better, second Rate suits were actually fairly nice to work in. They were temperature controlled and the material was thin enough you could feel things through the gloves. Bolt didn't normally use them, but he didn't want to risk more toxins building up in his body from the work he was doing. He could probably get treated for it, but better to keep it from happening in the first place.
Now prepared, the young man resumed cutting.
This was not an easy procedure despite the speed. Even in metal mechs it was a process that you tried to avoid. The cockpit was the brain of a mech. No mechs took well to having everything rewired. Biomechs were worse, because it was all messy with liquid and organic connections. Bolt ended up cribbing more medical techniques, outright clamping several places shut with improvised tools before he stared running lines.
Fortunately, despite it being difficult, it was fast. Especially because Bolt had another expert mech of sorts on hand. Ripping out the appropriate parts from Woodpecker was the fastest part of the procedure. It was so fast Bolt was able to pull out the space warping organ they'd made too. That ominously glowing thing was still useful even if it'd crippled Woodpecker.
His thoughts were that if he narrowed the focus and added a few power limiters the space warping could be used for something like quick bursts of movement. Swan could power it maybe less than half a second based on his math. That sounded rather limited, but for an expert Bolt believed it'd be game changing. Odette would appreciate the trump, and adding it cost him a few minutes really. He was ripping out enough of the torso that there was room.
All told, the repairs were relatively quick for the damage that had been inflicted if one ignored the fact that Bolt had just functionally ruined two expert mechs. The 'repairs' he'd done were more akin to cannibalism and fusing the functional parts of the two mechs together. They would not hold up well. Swan was going to die after a few days of operation and after that it would have to be completely scrapped.
That was unfortunately a common thing in battlefield repair. This was why Bolt had been concerned about creating life in mechs. They were tools, and sometimes your tools broke. Sometimes you had to do something that would ruin them, like in this case. The stopgap measure would suffice, and they should be able to remake the mech with another bases resources when they had time.
He really wondered why Debora gave him such strange looks after he'd announced what he'd managed. Sure he'd done something interesting, but it was a horrible rushjob that was barely working. He'd made sure to tell Odette that.
"Look at my lovely Swan!" The woman gestured emphatically to the chained up mech that had been brought with her. "They ruined her! Not only that, they did it through subterfuge and betrayal! Honorable combat is one thing. This defilement is another!"
Bolt winced as he looked over the mech. "Can't disagree there."
Whomever had done the sabotage had managed a rather telling bit of damage. If he were to guess they had thrown an explosive device in the cockpit and closed it up. That sort of contained destruction had cored all the vital components for the mech. In a mechanical mech that meant a good half day's worth of work to fix. For a biomech it meant that the mech was practically impossible to repair conventionally.
It was a true pity too. Swan was one of those mechs that blended form and function in a very striking manner. He was fairly sure it had taken inspiration from ballet based on the design. The feet, coloring, and hints of feathers made it look elegantly graceful. This was a labor of both love and dedication, not the utilitarian style of expert mech that most militaries churned out.
"The plan was to use me as a rallying point, but unless you can pull out another miracle today we are in a bad spot. Your wife's mech is destroyed as well." The woman observed with a large frown.
"I mean I didn't want her out there, but was the damage worse that bad?" He asked Lilly. He hadn't managed to get to it after she'd returned.
"Experimental thingy worked but blew out everything inside I think." The small woman said with a halfhearted shrug. "Bit of a pity, cause it was fun."
"You have my agreement in that it looks entertaining. I am not one for a heavy, but I would not zay no to weapons like that. Sometimes you just need a big weapon yes?" Odette noted as her frown decreased slightly.
"Yep! They're totally worth the hassle that comes with having something so big." Lilly agreed with a grin.
Bolt listened to the chatter with half an ear as he evaluated things. They had two mostly totaled and expensive biomechs at the moment, and very little time. Assuming the enemy wasn't stupid, they knew that there was at least one expert free at the moment. They would find the base. It wasn't like the place was really hidden after all. They needed more than the militia equivalents that Phillipe's friends represented.
For a moment he wondered if he could just see if one of Lilly's mechs could be brought down. The consideration stopped midway through. There were too many reasons to avoid that. His best bet would therefore be trying to fix Swan. He'd done it once with another biomech after all and he could do it again.
The problem was that he wasn't sure he had the time. The process of fixing a cockpit wasn't that hard really. The cockpit itself was meant to come out. It was the connections from the cockpit to the rest of the mech and the fact that several important components were typically next to the cockpit to take advantage of the shielding. A second rate mech had thousands of connections. It was so fiddly and time consuming to deal with that it was sometimes faster to remake the mech than to fix it if the problem was deep enough.
He was going to have to cut it all out and do a transplant of sorts probably. It wasn't going to be pretty. If he did it right it could be fast, but he'd have to lean heavily on the biomechanical repair processes. Would it be fast enough? He couldn't say. That really depended on the enemy.
"I'm going to need you two ladies out." Bolt said out loud, and Lilly laughed at whatever face he was making before screwing her face up in fake outrage.
"Who you callin a lady!?" The woman said before grabbing the other expert and giggling again. "Come on, let my hubby do his magic."
"Magic you say?" Odette asked and then jumped as a spray of sap went through the air.
Bolt waved sheepishly as he held up the tool he'd started the cut with. "I'd call this less magic and more horror. Also it ain't going to be a pretty repair. Walk the woman through Frankenstein mechs if you can hun?"
Lilly nodded and shut the door firmly behind her. Bolt paused as something else occurred to him. There was an added safety measure he could use. There should have been, and there was a sealed suit in the side rooms. Typically used for highly toxic materials, it was standard for most higher level workshop to have at least one. Even better, second Rate suits were actually fairly nice to work in. They were temperature controlled and the material was thin enough you could feel things through the gloves. Bolt didn't normally use them, but he didn't want to risk more toxins building up in his body from the work he was doing. He could probably get treated for it, but better to keep it from happening in the first place.
Now prepared, the young man resumed cutting.
This was not an easy procedure despite the speed. Even in metal mechs it was a process that you tried to avoid. The cockpit was the brain of a mech. No mechs took well to having everything rewired. Biomechs were worse, because it was all messy with liquid and organic connections. Bolt ended up cribbing more medical techniques, outright clamping several places shut with improvised tools before he stared running lines.
Fortunately, despite it being difficult, it was fast. Especially because Bolt had another expert mech of sorts on hand. Ripping out the appropriate parts from Woodpecker was the fastest part of the procedure. It was so fast Bolt was able to pull out the space warping organ they'd made too. That ominously glowing thing was still useful even if it'd crippled Woodpecker.
His thoughts were that if he narrowed the focus and added a few power limiters the space warping could be used for something like quick bursts of movement. Swan could power it maybe less than half a second based on his math. That sounded rather limited, but for an expert Bolt believed it'd be game changing. Odette would appreciate the trump, and adding it cost him a few minutes really. He was ripping out enough of the torso that there was room.
All told, the repairs were relatively quick for the damage that had been inflicted if one ignored the fact that Bolt had just functionally ruined two expert mechs. The 'repairs' he'd done were more akin to cannibalism and fusing the functional parts of the two mechs together. They would not hold up well. Swan was going to die after a few days of operation and after that it would have to be completely scrapped.
That was unfortunately a common thing in battlefield repair. This was why Bolt had been concerned about creating life in mechs. They were tools, and sometimes your tools broke. Sometimes you had to do something that would ruin them, like in this case. The stopgap measure would suffice, and they should be able to remake the mech with another bases resources when they had time.
He really wondered why Debora gave him such strange looks after he'd announced what he'd managed. Sure he'd done something interesting, but it was a horrible rushjob that was barely working. He'd made sure to tell Odette that.
EternitynChaos
Once there was a Maiden...
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Bolt continues to have no clue just how many 'Rules' he casually breaks over his knee, huh? lol
Negation
Shameless Pervert
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Organ Transplant rejection and cell death
I042
New
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Connoisseur.
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Odette was genuinely convinced that the foreigner named Bolt was capable of black magic. She knew damage. She might not have been a designer, but any pilot worth their mech knew how to evaluate damage. Swan had been dead. Yet somehow black magic had revived her beloved partner for a final dance. Sure it was something called a Frankenstein mech now, but she'd take what she could get and let the city know it in glorious detail.
This wasn't just vanity. There was a small aspect of culture in the city that most visitors weren't aware of. It was something unstated and frequently not even brought up to outsiders. It came with the fact that every barrier planet had at least one expert on the planet at all times and the fact that they saw frequent deployment. Experts were practically mascots to their planets. Odette and Swan were seen almost daily in times of war. They were known. They were celebrated.
So seeing her flying over the city boosted morale like nothing else could. The very sight of their expert in the air galvanized everyone. People began to mobilize, and the enemy was thrown into disarray. Just as her absence had stricken fear into hearts, her appearance singlehandedly stiffened every spine.
This movement of hers could not be unanswered, and Odette was counting on it. She directed her flight path to the wall and counted down the seconds. One, two, three. Such was the delay in their response that she wondered if the enemy would allow her to proceed unmolested, and then instinct had her dive.
Behind her the enemy mech stopped midair as the axe swing missed. The sight was incredulous. There was no visible means of propulsion. The mech just hovered there, boosters off. It was standing on air without a singular means of support. Very typical of advanced aliens.
"High priority spotted. Air-walking confirmed." Odette reported and spun into a dizzying dance to reposition herself.
Swan was a flying lancer. It was a dangerous combination for the pilot and the target. To win a lancer had to charge and hit the opponent. Lancers were therefore by necessity on the heavier side. Fliers in contrast had to be light. Making the combination work required dedicated construction and a pilot who could perform maneuvers that were insane. Not barely sane, not risky, literally insane. One mistake meant you splattered uselessly against the ground.
The expert's thrusters fired as she charged at the enemy, lance first. In response the enemy mech did a combination of floating and stepping to the side. Typical of a ten-year Arboretian. At that level they were able to practically negate momentum and maneuver however they liked, even in the air.
"Looks like the thing has stolen a mech." Bolt muttered over the comms.
"Not the first time." Debora said back. "They like doing it when they can. The benefits are relatively low due to their inability to use the systems."
"Clear comms." Odette reminded the designers. "Engaging enemy."
Debora had been right about the mech part though. The Arboretian wasn't really moving the mech like a mech. It was more like it was tied to puppet strings. It wasn't even firing the back weapons, which would have complicated things. As a general accepted fact, aliens could not pilot mechs. Based on history, Arboretians took about a year of occupation to 'digest' a mech and actually gain anything from it aside from the armor.
That wasn't to say this was easy. Odette wasn't trying her hardest, but her opponent had some incredible maneuverability and this meant that dodging her attacks was not difficult for it. Every movement she made was accompanied by a shift of their mech in the air. They were testing each other before they commited, trying to find the patterns in their thoughts.
She was unfortunately hindered by the fact that her mech was dying. It was a slow and subtle thing, but the systems were starting to take damage just from the movement. Bolt's repairs had been a miracle, but it still had a price. She could feel every second of operation. That was fine. Lancers were made to finish fights quickly.
Once Odette had a feel she shifted and flared her willpower. Swan glimmered with light. The feathery adornments almost seemed to grow. She then put thrusters on full and charged.
Her opponent's power also flared as it attempted to suppress her. To Odette it was an abrasive and toxic feeling that almost made her ill. Like poisonous sludge painted in the sky. She hated it with all her being. What was worse was that it clung to her like a particularly nasty weed.
Willpower clashed with alien malignance and she pushed with all her might. The lance cut through the air and angled to the enemy. In return it attempted to shift to the side like it always had. The contemptuous dismissal of her charge proved to be its undoing. Odette reduced the boost on one side of her back at the last second and her mech arched mid-charge, giving her opponent no time to compensate.
An arm went flying as her mech impacted with a titanic slam. Half the enemy's torso was gone. Unfortunately that meant nothing. Odette wasn't fighting a mech. She was fighting a creature manipulating the mech with puppet strings. The alien choked up on the axe in the remaining hand and slammed the blade into her shoulder without a care for the damage it'd taken. Both mechs went spinning from the impact and Odette took precious seconds to compensate.
Even with that disorientating movement the expert kept her eyes on her opponent. She could see how it moved the back weapons and so mid-spin she angled herself up high. Even then she barely avoided the beam-like projectile it shot. The toxic energy wafted over her and the woman hissed. Weaponized whatever the enemy used. Not good. That was not a typical ten-year behavior.
There were too many unknowns here. Too many problems. What had the traitors done? Had they taught this thing something? They had to know reinforcements were already on the way, so why fight like this?
The alien switched to offense. Incredibly it was almost more dangerous one arm down. Worse, Odette could see the shoulder starting to regrow. This wasn't unknown for Arboretians, but it also only happened with older ones.
"Not a ten-year." The expert reported with grit teeth.
"Found reports of the thing's imprisonment. It was sanctioned. The thing was supposed to be sealed in a room with no possible means of contact. It was also supposed to have been in captivity for only ten years." Bolt's voice was not reassuring based on what he was reporting. "Reading between the lines, it might have been alive for a few years before it was captured. Dunno how much that matters."
"Variable depending on circumstances." Odette noted. "In this case, more thought, less combat experience."
This was very, very bad. A thinking alien of this level could easily kill her. The toxic power it was still using was seeping into her mech every second. Her willpower was winning, but she could not keep this up. She diverted power to the added organ that Bolt had used and flared her mech's boosters to rise up even further.
Something about the action alarmed the alien. Odette couldn't say how she knew, only that it's movements changed. It recognized the space warping? That was fine with her. She activated her resonance again.
Swan's resonance was a subtle thing. On the surface it looked like just flash. What it did was add 'stability' to her form. When it was active, Swan took less damage and dealt more. It wasn't very obvious, but it was what let her be a lancer beyond compare.
This close and entangled in her opponent she couldn't really do the trademark charge of a lancer. Instead she poured more energy into the space organ. Swan burned. She came apart. Yet she did so gladly as Odette rose up and up, faster than the alien could chase her. When she judged the time was right she reversed it.
"Effondre!" The shout left her lips without prompting as she dropped.
Such violent movement was not gentle. Her barely repaired mech bled from the g-forces. Odette barely managed to stay conscious, and she rocked in her harness. She held, just like her mech. They descended together. Her lance pierced the alien's mech and they fell. They dropped and dropped like a meteor. Then, before they hit the ground Odette hit the eject. Swan did the rest. Overloading power and energy cascaded with momentum and when the mechs hit the ground it wasn't so much as an impact as it was an explosion.
Odette's cockpit drifted through the air on its inner propulsion. She watched the wreckage with a critical eye before she brought up the comms again. "Enemy down. Need confirmation."
"We have contact with a few people nearby. They will check on foot." Debora reported. "Mech assets are sparse."
"Of course they are." Odette let a small lapse of professionalism escape her before she thought of something. "Specifically deny the children and Venerable Lilly from checking merci."
"Ain't sure why you gotta say them specifically, but I'll relay it." Bolt answered.
Odette nodded. She liked the other expert. The woman, the teenagers, and the woman's husband had done more than enough. It was time for her people to pull their own weight.
This wasn't just vanity. There was a small aspect of culture in the city that most visitors weren't aware of. It was something unstated and frequently not even brought up to outsiders. It came with the fact that every barrier planet had at least one expert on the planet at all times and the fact that they saw frequent deployment. Experts were practically mascots to their planets. Odette and Swan were seen almost daily in times of war. They were known. They were celebrated.
So seeing her flying over the city boosted morale like nothing else could. The very sight of their expert in the air galvanized everyone. People began to mobilize, and the enemy was thrown into disarray. Just as her absence had stricken fear into hearts, her appearance singlehandedly stiffened every spine.
This movement of hers could not be unanswered, and Odette was counting on it. She directed her flight path to the wall and counted down the seconds. One, two, three. Such was the delay in their response that she wondered if the enemy would allow her to proceed unmolested, and then instinct had her dive.
Behind her the enemy mech stopped midair as the axe swing missed. The sight was incredulous. There was no visible means of propulsion. The mech just hovered there, boosters off. It was standing on air without a singular means of support. Very typical of advanced aliens.
"High priority spotted. Air-walking confirmed." Odette reported and spun into a dizzying dance to reposition herself.
Swan was a flying lancer. It was a dangerous combination for the pilot and the target. To win a lancer had to charge and hit the opponent. Lancers were therefore by necessity on the heavier side. Fliers in contrast had to be light. Making the combination work required dedicated construction and a pilot who could perform maneuvers that were insane. Not barely sane, not risky, literally insane. One mistake meant you splattered uselessly against the ground.
The expert's thrusters fired as she charged at the enemy, lance first. In response the enemy mech did a combination of floating and stepping to the side. Typical of a ten-year Arboretian. At that level they were able to practically negate momentum and maneuver however they liked, even in the air.
"Looks like the thing has stolen a mech." Bolt muttered over the comms.
"Not the first time." Debora said back. "They like doing it when they can. The benefits are relatively low due to their inability to use the systems."
"Clear comms." Odette reminded the designers. "Engaging enemy."
Debora had been right about the mech part though. The Arboretian wasn't really moving the mech like a mech. It was more like it was tied to puppet strings. It wasn't even firing the back weapons, which would have complicated things. As a general accepted fact, aliens could not pilot mechs. Based on history, Arboretians took about a year of occupation to 'digest' a mech and actually gain anything from it aside from the armor.
That wasn't to say this was easy. Odette wasn't trying her hardest, but her opponent had some incredible maneuverability and this meant that dodging her attacks was not difficult for it. Every movement she made was accompanied by a shift of their mech in the air. They were testing each other before they commited, trying to find the patterns in their thoughts.
She was unfortunately hindered by the fact that her mech was dying. It was a slow and subtle thing, but the systems were starting to take damage just from the movement. Bolt's repairs had been a miracle, but it still had a price. She could feel every second of operation. That was fine. Lancers were made to finish fights quickly.
Once Odette had a feel she shifted and flared her willpower. Swan glimmered with light. The feathery adornments almost seemed to grow. She then put thrusters on full and charged.
Her opponent's power also flared as it attempted to suppress her. To Odette it was an abrasive and toxic feeling that almost made her ill. Like poisonous sludge painted in the sky. She hated it with all her being. What was worse was that it clung to her like a particularly nasty weed.
Willpower clashed with alien malignance and she pushed with all her might. The lance cut through the air and angled to the enemy. In return it attempted to shift to the side like it always had. The contemptuous dismissal of her charge proved to be its undoing. Odette reduced the boost on one side of her back at the last second and her mech arched mid-charge, giving her opponent no time to compensate.
An arm went flying as her mech impacted with a titanic slam. Half the enemy's torso was gone. Unfortunately that meant nothing. Odette wasn't fighting a mech. She was fighting a creature manipulating the mech with puppet strings. The alien choked up on the axe in the remaining hand and slammed the blade into her shoulder without a care for the damage it'd taken. Both mechs went spinning from the impact and Odette took precious seconds to compensate.
Even with that disorientating movement the expert kept her eyes on her opponent. She could see how it moved the back weapons and so mid-spin she angled herself up high. Even then she barely avoided the beam-like projectile it shot. The toxic energy wafted over her and the woman hissed. Weaponized whatever the enemy used. Not good. That was not a typical ten-year behavior.
There were too many unknowns here. Too many problems. What had the traitors done? Had they taught this thing something? They had to know reinforcements were already on the way, so why fight like this?
The alien switched to offense. Incredibly it was almost more dangerous one arm down. Worse, Odette could see the shoulder starting to regrow. This wasn't unknown for Arboretians, but it also only happened with older ones.
"Not a ten-year." The expert reported with grit teeth.
"Found reports of the thing's imprisonment. It was sanctioned. The thing was supposed to be sealed in a room with no possible means of contact. It was also supposed to have been in captivity for only ten years." Bolt's voice was not reassuring based on what he was reporting. "Reading between the lines, it might have been alive for a few years before it was captured. Dunno how much that matters."
"Variable depending on circumstances." Odette noted. "In this case, more thought, less combat experience."
This was very, very bad. A thinking alien of this level could easily kill her. The toxic power it was still using was seeping into her mech every second. Her willpower was winning, but she could not keep this up. She diverted power to the added organ that Bolt had used and flared her mech's boosters to rise up even further.
Something about the action alarmed the alien. Odette couldn't say how she knew, only that it's movements changed. It recognized the space warping? That was fine with her. She activated her resonance again.
Swan's resonance was a subtle thing. On the surface it looked like just flash. What it did was add 'stability' to her form. When it was active, Swan took less damage and dealt more. It wasn't very obvious, but it was what let her be a lancer beyond compare.
This close and entangled in her opponent she couldn't really do the trademark charge of a lancer. Instead she poured more energy into the space organ. Swan burned. She came apart. Yet she did so gladly as Odette rose up and up, faster than the alien could chase her. When she judged the time was right she reversed it.
"Effondre!" The shout left her lips without prompting as she dropped.
Such violent movement was not gentle. Her barely repaired mech bled from the g-forces. Odette barely managed to stay conscious, and she rocked in her harness. She held, just like her mech. They descended together. Her lance pierced the alien's mech and they fell. They dropped and dropped like a meteor. Then, before they hit the ground Odette hit the eject. Swan did the rest. Overloading power and energy cascaded with momentum and when the mechs hit the ground it wasn't so much as an impact as it was an explosion.
Odette's cockpit drifted through the air on its inner propulsion. She watched the wreckage with a critical eye before she brought up the comms again. "Enemy down. Need confirmation."
"We have contact with a few people nearby. They will check on foot." Debora reported. "Mech assets are sparse."
"Of course they are." Odette let a small lapse of professionalism escape her before she thought of something. "Specifically deny the children and Venerable Lilly from checking merci."
"Ain't sure why you gotta say them specifically, but I'll relay it." Bolt answered.
Odette nodded. She liked the other expert. The woman, the teenagers, and the woman's husband had done more than enough. It was time for her people to pull their own weight.
Last edited:
Luckless21
Versed in the lewd.
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Sadly the Swan has sung it's last song, but at least they went out with a bang and hopefully taking the allien tree with it.
Simonbob
Really? You don't say.
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M150
New
lost star
Connoisseur.
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It probably said something that sleeping in the bunker with cheap beds felt far more comfortable than sleeping in a fancy hotel. Lilly didn't want to think on it too much, especially since the pregnancy meant sleep was a bit of a problem. Not much of one, but she didn't like staying in bed more than she needed thanks to the pressure the added weight made on certain parts. This was mildly annoying at the moment because they'd moved onto the wait and see portion of military action.
Odette at least seemed even less likely to sleep in. Lilly found the other woman in the cafe sipping on some sort of coffee. Considering how early it was, she had gotten perhaps four hours of sleep, if she'd hit the bed right after returning.
"Thanks to certain adjustments I require at most three to four hours a day. I can stay up for a week with little trouble." The fellow expert explained with a wave as the other woman came in. "It iz less pleasant than you'd think. Sleeping is a welcome reprieve at times."
"I suppose I can see that." Lilly mused as she looked through the things available and made an annoying realization. "Damnit, I need to avoid caffeine don't I?" At least the heavy stuff.
"Please follow your doctor's advice. Women pilots like us have few windows to have children while maintaining a career." Odette advised with a serious look. "You will regret it if you cause your unborn child trouble."
"Yeah yeah. Not like I was the biggest fan of coffee." Lilly had a mild fondness for the black tar that mechanics and people with long shifts used, but didn't much like the rest. "Fruit juice it is. Any news?" She asked as she took a seat.
"Little. After my display people are trying to rally and a unit when to the downed area to secure the kill. There have been no reports other than they've found the wrecker. More generally the morale is higher than paralyzed fear now and we have found some officers. There's understandable suspicion on many of them, but they have been found. It is a mess." Odette sighed and slouched very slightly in her seat. "I would very much prefer being back in Swan."
"But she's gone." Lilly commiserated. "It's always painful when you lose a good mech."
"Oui. Admittedly I probably kept with her more than I should have. The design just felt nice." The expert sighed again.
Lilly's eyes darted around the area before she leaned forward and lowered her voice. "Ask Bolt to salvage some of it. He could probably keep a bit of the... Spirit involved in it." She advised. She was being needlessly secretive here, but it felt appropriate.
Odette didn't look like she got it, but she nodded anyway. "I will see what I can do. Military expert mechs are quite regulated in many aspects and outside help is strongly discouraged."
"I couldn't tolerate that." Lilly noted as she leaned back before sipping at her juice and frowning up at the ceiling. "If you like, I could see about getting Morning Star or Dowry down here now that we have some breathing room. They're both Third Rate, but they're better than nothing and I wouldn't mind you piloting either."
"The offer is very appreciated but I must reject it. Compatibility issues make that less than viable." Odette said with a dry tone and a small chuckle. "Not everyone is like you either. I do need practice with any new mechs and I have a rather narrow field of exotics I am compatible with. I cannot simply take a mech and use it immediately."
The young woman had completely forgotten about that. "I need ta look up my exotic compatibility myself one of these days. Bolt's been handling it so far and I have no idea what the list is like." She admitted out loud.
"It is not uncommon with experts I've found. More often than not we just take what mechs are assigned or designed rather than request something specific. They try their best to accommodate uz, but there's always factors that give us less control such as cost, designer availability, and simple mech design. You are quite lucky in many ways to have your husband and your freedom. He will take your requests very seriously I assume." Odette said with a nod as she sipped at her tea.
"Hehe, he does, and I'm thankful every day." Lilly agreed before downing her juice. "So, what do we do next?"
"Next, we should do nothing. I should do something. You should not." The other expert said dryly. "You are a visitor and a tourist. You should be relaxing and seeing the sights, not assisting in a war and risking you and your child's life. That you have had to is a great shame for uz and something we will have to address later."
The young woman flinched at that statement. "Erk."
"Forgive me if I seem overtly critical." Odette continued with a small wince of her own. "I personally very appreciate your aid, but it should not have happened.
"No, no, I've been skating pretty close to the edge." Lilly admitted with a wave of her free hand.
She didn't regret the risks she'd been taking. She did need to acknowledge her actions had not been the safest paths she could have chosen. Fortunately she was reaching the point where it'd be viable to do an early birth and let the child be nurtured in a machine. It was a fairly standard practice for a variety of reasons apparently.
The other expert shook off the statement and gave the woman a half smile. "Let us speak of something else." And paused as she noticed a message come in. "One moment."
Lilly watched as the woman's face twisted into a few other expressions before settling on something cold. "Bad news?" She asked.
"The alien has been captured and can speak zhe human tongue. Normally we would simply execute it, but we need information and it is offering some in exchange for a conversation." Odette hissed. "I loathe granting concessions to the filth."
With a slow nod Lilly gave the other woman a searching look. "Just a conversation? Not a delay on death?"
"Specifically with someone that had been adjusted with their DNA and yes." Odette reasoned out rather slowly. "Though it did not ask for anyone by name. While I trust the children, I am now worried about some sort of sabotage in their flesh. This is suspicious, but we need the information. Something about this does not make sense at all."
Lilly frowned and then tapped at the table as she thought. "Let me be nearby, and let me talk with Bolt. There's a few things we know that makes it possible for us to catch something maybe?"
Odette gave her a strange look before nodding. "This is acceptable, but you will not be in sight, and we will have many guards. We shall ask Phillipe and he shall have to agree to a few security measures. It will not be pleasant for anyone."
Odette at least seemed even less likely to sleep in. Lilly found the other woman in the cafe sipping on some sort of coffee. Considering how early it was, she had gotten perhaps four hours of sleep, if she'd hit the bed right after returning.
"Thanks to certain adjustments I require at most three to four hours a day. I can stay up for a week with little trouble." The fellow expert explained with a wave as the other woman came in. "It iz less pleasant than you'd think. Sleeping is a welcome reprieve at times."
"I suppose I can see that." Lilly mused as she looked through the things available and made an annoying realization. "Damnit, I need to avoid caffeine don't I?" At least the heavy stuff.
"Please follow your doctor's advice. Women pilots like us have few windows to have children while maintaining a career." Odette advised with a serious look. "You will regret it if you cause your unborn child trouble."
"Yeah yeah. Not like I was the biggest fan of coffee." Lilly had a mild fondness for the black tar that mechanics and people with long shifts used, but didn't much like the rest. "Fruit juice it is. Any news?" She asked as she took a seat.
"Little. After my display people are trying to rally and a unit when to the downed area to secure the kill. There have been no reports other than they've found the wrecker. More generally the morale is higher than paralyzed fear now and we have found some officers. There's understandable suspicion on many of them, but they have been found. It is a mess." Odette sighed and slouched very slightly in her seat. "I would very much prefer being back in Swan."
"But she's gone." Lilly commiserated. "It's always painful when you lose a good mech."
"Oui. Admittedly I probably kept with her more than I should have. The design just felt nice." The expert sighed again.
Lilly's eyes darted around the area before she leaned forward and lowered her voice. "Ask Bolt to salvage some of it. He could probably keep a bit of the... Spirit involved in it." She advised. She was being needlessly secretive here, but it felt appropriate.
Odette didn't look like she got it, but she nodded anyway. "I will see what I can do. Military expert mechs are quite regulated in many aspects and outside help is strongly discouraged."
"I couldn't tolerate that." Lilly noted as she leaned back before sipping at her juice and frowning up at the ceiling. "If you like, I could see about getting Morning Star or Dowry down here now that we have some breathing room. They're both Third Rate, but they're better than nothing and I wouldn't mind you piloting either."
"The offer is very appreciated but I must reject it. Compatibility issues make that less than viable." Odette said with a dry tone and a small chuckle. "Not everyone is like you either. I do need practice with any new mechs and I have a rather narrow field of exotics I am compatible with. I cannot simply take a mech and use it immediately."
The young woman had completely forgotten about that. "I need ta look up my exotic compatibility myself one of these days. Bolt's been handling it so far and I have no idea what the list is like." She admitted out loud.
"It is not uncommon with experts I've found. More often than not we just take what mechs are assigned or designed rather than request something specific. They try their best to accommodate uz, but there's always factors that give us less control such as cost, designer availability, and simple mech design. You are quite lucky in many ways to have your husband and your freedom. He will take your requests very seriously I assume." Odette said with a nod as she sipped at her tea.
"Hehe, he does, and I'm thankful every day." Lilly agreed before downing her juice. "So, what do we do next?"
"Next, we should do nothing. I should do something. You should not." The other expert said dryly. "You are a visitor and a tourist. You should be relaxing and seeing the sights, not assisting in a war and risking you and your child's life. That you have had to is a great shame for uz and something we will have to address later."
The young woman flinched at that statement. "Erk."
"Forgive me if I seem overtly critical." Odette continued with a small wince of her own. "I personally very appreciate your aid, but it should not have happened.
"No, no, I've been skating pretty close to the edge." Lilly admitted with a wave of her free hand.
She didn't regret the risks she'd been taking. She did need to acknowledge her actions had not been the safest paths she could have chosen. Fortunately she was reaching the point where it'd be viable to do an early birth and let the child be nurtured in a machine. It was a fairly standard practice for a variety of reasons apparently.
The other expert shook off the statement and gave the woman a half smile. "Let us speak of something else." And paused as she noticed a message come in. "One moment."
Lilly watched as the woman's face twisted into a few other expressions before settling on something cold. "Bad news?" She asked.
"The alien has been captured and can speak zhe human tongue. Normally we would simply execute it, but we need information and it is offering some in exchange for a conversation." Odette hissed. "I loathe granting concessions to the filth."
With a slow nod Lilly gave the other woman a searching look. "Just a conversation? Not a delay on death?"
"Specifically with someone that had been adjusted with their DNA and yes." Odette reasoned out rather slowly. "Though it did not ask for anyone by name. While I trust the children, I am now worried about some sort of sabotage in their flesh. This is suspicious, but we need the information. Something about this does not make sense at all."
Lilly frowned and then tapped at the table as she thought. "Let me be nearby, and let me talk with Bolt. There's a few things we know that makes it possible for us to catch something maybe?"
Odette gave her a strange look before nodding. "This is acceptable, but you will not be in sight, and we will have many guards. We shall ask Phillipe and he shall have to agree to a few security measures. It will not be pleasant for anyone."
SaltySmile
Getting sticky.
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Chapter 14 question:
I spent the entire fight thinking about why the Wrecker was assaulting MC's home. It just doesn't make sense from both a logical and a profit standpoint. Sure, he might have needed a fall guy, but did he really think a single slave mechanic he owned (who could take the fall) was worth more than the continuous "good" mech market that is MC's family? It's not like he even tried to take over; the voice was clear that the aim was to kill everyone there.
Let's break it down: the nobleman probably doesn't even care about sabotage. So why do a costly operation to assault them rather than just either do a single fall guy or just promise he will find the guilty party and then just not do it? The nobleman will leave soon, so who cares?
MC's family provide good repair service and can get the good quality mechs in comparison. Their expertise is probably worth more than anything they might get from looting the place. What is he going to do with all the junk that can barely be used by them and constantly needs repairs?
All in all, the attack made 0 sense to me that the situation happened, and as such, the impact of her being forced to kill her father fell flat.
P.S. got to say I a bit dislike how you glossed over the explanation of the situation by throwing a random girl at the parents to explain how they are all going to be murdered in a week. Or the fact that they just go engaged in the background. The second part could have had good build-up, but it just happened as background stuff.
P.P.S. I tend to comment mostly on negative parts I read, so don't take it as if I mean everything was bad. It's mostly normal fic besides those points.
I spent the entire fight thinking about why the Wrecker was assaulting MC's home. It just doesn't make sense from both a logical and a profit standpoint. Sure, he might have needed a fall guy, but did he really think a single slave mechanic he owned (who could take the fall) was worth more than the continuous "good" mech market that is MC's family? It's not like he even tried to take over; the voice was clear that the aim was to kill everyone there.
Let's break it down: the nobleman probably doesn't even care about sabotage. So why do a costly operation to assault them rather than just either do a single fall guy or just promise he will find the guilty party and then just not do it? The nobleman will leave soon, so who cares?
MC's family provide good repair service and can get the good quality mechs in comparison. Their expertise is probably worth more than anything they might get from looting the place. What is he going to do with all the junk that can barely be used by them and constantly needs repairs?
All in all, the attack made 0 sense to me that the situation happened, and as such, the impact of her being forced to kill her father fell flat.
P.S. got to say I a bit dislike how you glossed over the explanation of the situation by throwing a random girl at the parents to explain how they are all going to be murdered in a week. Or the fact that they just go engaged in the background. The second part could have had good build-up, but it just happened as background stuff.
P.P.S. I tend to comment mostly on negative parts I read, so don't take it as if I mean everything was bad. It's mostly normal fic besides those points.
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Tavarokk
Pursuer of perversion
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I believe the issue was that the noble got cheated out of an expert candidate concubine (which is a big deal and not something you can blame on a single in-house mechanic). The fight and the circus around it were just a set-up for Lilly to leave with them.
SaltySmile
Getting sticky.
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Not really the reasoning used there. At that point the attack was already planned before they even knew she escaped (MC literally got the news on his way home from the rescue). Besides that, why would they blame MCs family for the escape? As far as noble and the girls father were concerned, they either didn't know she escaped yet, or she mysteriously disappeared in thin air and they don't know where she is. Nobelman should be blaming his guards and searching for her, or blaming her father for this (though that also lacks logic and is more of a spoiled kid response).
Also, I understand that from overall perspective this was done to remove her ties to anything but the MC, but I'm complaining about the in-world reason.
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