What's Junk? (The Mech Touch)

[lost star]

They were going to hold off on selling the Cursed Crow for a bit. Probably until it had been fielded for a few battles and the abilities became well known. They were a bit out there and would be extremely useful as a surprise. It could also use some more field testing. The inconsistent effects of the curse were both interesting and unexpected. The nanomachine programs had been to just disrupt the systems, not to cause such wildly different results. This decision to keep from selling didn't mean they didn't need to go through the steps to get it ready for selling. This meant MTA approval.

Bolt wasn't really surprised to get a call from Bubbles after he'd submitted the design. The woman looked just a little bit irritated.

"You did make that newest design right?" She asked bluntly after the call connected.

"That's the first question?" Bolt responded in mild confusion before nodding. "Yes I did."

"Good, because the style doesn't match anyone in that mountain of yours. It's like a completely different person designed it alone." Bubbles heaved a sigh and stared at the ceiling of her ship as if pleading with a higher power. "I swear, no one else gives me work like you do!"

"I'm... Sorry?" He didn't know if that was appropriate, but it felt like something he had to say.

"No, no need for the sympathy here. This actually isn't that large a problem all told. So far as designer quirks go, it's actually almost mundane. We have a checkbox for this one." The woman wiped away the traces of annoyance she was showing as she bounced up in her seat. "It's just another bit of talent on an already lengthy list." The woman finished with a half glare that turned amused as she added. "It also means more work for you for once!"

"Well, ain't like I got a lot of that at the moment." Bolt drawled back with a bit of sarcasm.

"Haha." Bubbles bounced in place as she giggled. "Well in this case, if your aides or you want to have anything attributed to them specifically, like they need to do with their Journeyman credentials, they need to enable some recording programs. We have to be totally certain who did the design."

That was actually very reasonable. "I can do that easily." Bolt agreed with a nod.

"I'll setup a notification on my end for when they submit their original mechs and give them a once over myself to smooth out things for both of us. The paperwork involved there can get messy if I don't pre-empt a few things. Based on the records they're pretty close." Bubbles mused casually. "They'd be on the low end as Journeyman, which isn't impressive, but will be useful as filler. No offense intended."

"Genuinely not sure how to say things like that without being mildly offensive." The man said with a small shrug. "How do you say you're below average? It's not like I need them to be spectacular. They're good friends and the help they provide is extremely useful. That's more than enough fer me."

"There's leadership courses out there if you want to know how to manage people. Otherwise just tell them that." The senior advised with a shrug.

"Hah yeah, but I'm sure you have other things to do, and a reason besides complaining to call me." Bolt settled back in his chair as he stared at the monitor.

"I would consider us at least friends by now. This isn't like completely official business but it's covered under clarification of design so I can gab for hours if I wanted to." Bubbles said with a hand wave while also relaxing. "But yes, I suppose we should start on the official reason we need to talk. The next part is officially recorded. Just be sure to stare at the screen, and understand that I got a few scanners on you right now detecting lies."

"Er." Bolt took a deep breath and let it out. "This big?"

"Not really. We're covering our backsides early by doing some paperwork early." Bubbles said with a small sigh. "All right, starting. Did you knowingly attempt to interfere with the neuro-helmet?"

The question made him blink. "No." He said very firmly.

"Did you knowingly attempt to create a system that directly targets a pilot?" Bubbles continued in a very bored tone.

"No." Bolt refrained from asking for clarification.

"Final question. Did you order any of your subordinates to do either of the previous?" The woman asked.

Really? "No."

"Good." Bubbles let out a long sigh and rubbed at the bridge of her nose. "I want a painkiller and I don't even have a headache."

"The Curse Crow's weapon doesn't even come close to the pilot." Bolt pointed out the obvious. "The curse effect is pure mechanical!"

"I know that, our techs know that, the accusation will still come. The nanomachines involved in it shouldn't be able to do what they do, and they shouldn't be as random. Yet here we are." The MTA official waved her hand to indicate the video call they were in. "It's actually like not that out there as an effect. We've had hacking specialists that could do something like your crow is doing. You just did it with needles and nanomachines. I will say congratulations are in order for this one. You're showing off some serious versatility with it and that's genuinely impressive."

"Why thank you." Bolt responded with a small smile before he sighed. "I really hope I don't trigger whatever this was again though."

"Hun, I'm hoping you don't do it for another month." Bubbles replied back with a small laugh.

"I'm not that bad!" Bolt shot back as the call stopped.

He snorted to himself. He wasn't! Though he was pretty sure that if they knew everything he was doing he'd be in a nice little golden birdcage. Best to avoid that.

Fortunately he didn't have any more big things on the horizon. Dai and Wu were actually the ones with the big thing. They were each going to make a mech alone. Bolt knew for a fact that neither was going to be a breakout hit, nor would they be that useful in the grand scheme of things. As painful as it was to say, their designs were very average. About the only thing unique was that they'd picked up a sort of bastardized spiritual ability from working with him frequently.

Simplified, the two had figured out how to use spiritual power slightly in their own designs. They didn't do it like Bolt did. They just sort of reinforced what they could do in their specialties. Dai could feel out how his weapons would work and make them work the way he wanted to, and Wu could do similar. It was a more deliberate and conscious Journeyman specialty, and probably meant they were pretty close to breaking through.

It was also partially how they'd managed to create the Crow's effects in retrospect. Bolt had merged their specialties together and reinforced them with great care and all the delicacy he could manage and that had included all their 'spirit.' Bubble's question about the maker had actually been semi-serious. It was like the mech had been designed by someone who specialized in nanomachine weapons with a backing of spiritual power rather than three people working together.

Fortunately while that sort of technique was unusual for designers, it wasn't exactly groundbreaking. If you removed the spiritual power part, there were actually a notable amount of designers who could do that in official records. Bolt's achievement there was more in the fact that he'd added another thing he could do to an already large list. Which actually didn't mean that much. He was already 'valuable' in the MTA's eyes. This was like adding a one to a thousand. Notable, but not at the same time.

 

[tanasinn]

What a fantastic read. Was always hesitant to read The Mech Touch and maybe won't still given how much more I like Bolt as a character rather than how Ves has been portrayed (also have heard it gets wacky). Hope you are crossposting this since it's a shame that this isn't getting the number of readers it deserves here though thank you for not putting this SFW story in the NSFW section unlike so many other authors here. Going t reread The Cultist since I remember really enjoying that from you and will try out that Steven Universe story (didn't enjoy the few episodes I saw but must be something to it since you wrote a fanfic of it).

Also I imagine canon has pure bombers being disallowed but artillery seems to be fine at least as long as it's a mech. Could you just strap a ICBM to a heavy and get that to be allowed? Or a MOAB to a flyer as long as it's not too plane shaped?

 

[Simonbob]

Also I imagine canon has pure bombers being disallowed but artillery seems to be fine at least as long as it's a mech. Could you just strap a ICBM to a heavy and get that to be allowed? Or a MOAB to a flyer as long as it's not too plane shaped?

Click to shrink...

So long as it's not too big a boom, sure.

Tactical, sure. Strategic, generally no.


Oh, and you should know, in the canon, there are power armor, tanks and fighter planes. After all, it was only something like 3% of the population that could pilot a mech, and while mechs are magic, enough convetial forces could face them.

 

[lost star]

Dai and Wu's forming mechs were... Well they weren't spectacular standout designs. As their superior, Bolt could see their workstations and what they were working on alone. Bluntly and honestly put, they were mediocre and niche.

This wasn't surprising. The two designers had been average in their classes. They had displayed no notable talents afterwards. Their contributions under Bolt had been mostly as a second set of eyes and an inspiration. Their largest achievement was Curse Crow, which had been mostly him pushing their own specialties up and together. Neither designer could be considered special alone. If they wanted to have even moderately successful mechs they needed to push towards a niche that their budding specialties could thrive in. Thus the designs for the current mechs.

Bolt found it actually mentally painful seeing them work. There was nothing worse than seeing someone do something wrong and knowing you could fix it. It was worse because they were good friends. Yet he had to sit there and not touch. If his friends were going to progress, then they'd have to do the designs on their own. They needed a mech that was completely theirs without interference at all.

Fortunately, this was just to fulfill an arbitrary condition for the MTA. The mechs didn't need to go into full production once they were finished. They just needed to exist and show off the person's design philosophy. They could remake them with his help into something better later if they were so inclined, and Bolt wanted to. The core ideas behind the mechs weren't horrible. They could just use some adjustment to have them properly fill out their niche. Really, they actually showed the strength of their component designs more than anything else. Those were respectable by most standards and would be useful when used with a more robustly made mech.

It was interesting to see their mech philosophies independent of his influence though, and that was why Bolt kept an eye on things even through the pain.

Dai had narrowed his focus down. Instead of being a weapon specialist, he was now best described as an ammo, and likely consumable specialist. His mech to represent that was basically a budget Marksman. Looking almost like a skeleton, it had the barebones basics required for a sniper mech. (Heh.) The rifle and the eyes were the most expensive parts. The ammo was the most inspired part of it and where he'd put his focus. The man had very, very carefully shaved away all costs to make it one of the economical ammos you could get while still maintaining good penetration.

To clarify this, sniper ammo was expensive compared to other types of physical ammo. To penetrate a mech's armor you needed some significant heft and power. Riflemen took something like four to twenty shots to take down your average mech, depending on a wide variety of factors like armor and pilot skills. Marksmen were designed to take down a mech in a singular shot. This required highly specialized designs for the weapons and ammo if they used it.

Dai's work had made budget sniper weapon and ammunition. It was about as expensive as a normal rifleman's weapon and ammo while having the power of an average marksman rifle. The tradeoff was that the rifle was a single shot before reload. This unfortunately was the largest problem with the design. A budget mech was something you put lower skilled pilots in. A singular shot rifle required someone with very good aim to make work. You didn't put your good pilots in cheap mechs.

In Bolt's opinion they wouldn't field this mech much. Though they needed a Marksmen, their current ones were all experienced. That didn't mean the mech wouldn't sell as is. A lot of people would and could use a cheap Marksmen mech that did it's purpose relatively well. Sometimes you just needed an affordable mech that filled a particular niche now rather than saving for a more expensive mech later. In conclusion the mech was obviously made by a lower skilled designer trying to prove something, but it that did not make it invalid. The Skeleton Sniper could find a few places where it'd be useful.

Bolt figured they'd use it as a base for a more premium model they'd use more in house once Dai was done with it. That'd actually be very useful in tandem with the other design actually. You'd start with the budget and shift to the expensive one. It'd fill the role they needed for their ground forces as well.

Wu's mech was also something that could be potentially sold. That one would probably be less viable as a standalone product though. Her mech was a spearman that was more there to show off the part she'd made than anything else. This was an internal nano-machine repair kit that could be activated to do a near instant repair.

This was a devilishly tricky process even with the examples they had in Ghoul and Dowry. Nanomachines weren't used in Third Rate states for a variety of reasons. They were costly, required a lot of effort, and rather fragile in many ways. Bolt had gotten around it with his spiritual reinforcements and even then his Ghoul line was a bit expensive. Wu's creation in contrast was very economical.

Her programming was elegant and intuitive in a way that Bolt was actually having to make effort to follow. She was actually making it look a bit like she was using psionics in the fictional sense. Leaps of logic and strange solutions bounced through the code to produce something usable. Her intuition with nanomachines had become uncanny.

The Immortal Warrior she'd made wouldn't live up to its name but it would come close. Thanks to her work it was able to do a 'burst repair' that would patch up damage temporarily. Unfortunately this package took up most of the budget in power and cost. The mech itself was completely average and uninspired and had little room for additions. This was still impressive. Wu had made an affordable machine that used nanomachines to repair itself on a competative Third Rate budget. She'd also put it into a frame that would want to get in and use that function repeatedly. It was almost a pity that just made it a damage sponge more than anything else. The repairs were nice, but other spearmen models had their own strengths.

It best to describe it as a mech that worked as more a proof of concept than a functional mech in the end. It was going to need some work to be more than that, which was fine. Wu's mech proved she was a Journeyman in both skill and ability. With some reinforcement of the spiritual side, Bolt figured he could make a decent frontline monster that'd be very useful to just supplement forces. Sort of a step up from Zombie. Mechs that could take damage and keep going had their place and a good workhorse melee mech was nice just add some variety.

That actually brought to mind another thing. His work on the how-to psionics had a lot of notes but not a lot of substance. It was still very, very hard, but Bolt's work with his sister and everyone else had given him at least something resembling a path forward.

There were two things he had to note for publishing later. The first thing was that spiritual sensitively seemed to operate on a scale. Most people could feel the aura of a mech if it hit a certain threshold, but that threshold changed based on the person, and what they sensed also varied. About one out of every ten people could be said to be actually 'sensitive' and pick up something more than just a general on or off.

The led to the second thing. That spiritual sense was wildly different between people. Bolt did it basically through touch. His sister did it through sound. The few techs that had managed did it through code, though in different fashions. This made things even more complicated.

Yet even with those obstacles Bolt had a way forward. It was again through tools. Exotics specifically. All of them had certain very tiny spiritual frequencies. They could become the ways to 'tune' things basically. Once you had a good feel of an exotic, you could use it as a base.

For instance, there was one local and common trash exotic that was completely useless for anything but being pretty. In the spiritual sense all it did was say 'I'm pretty' in an utterly obnoxious and self absorbed tone. It had turned out to be perfect to teach others with using it as a sort of tuning fork. Using it with other examples had let both Bolt and Gadget create a sort of common language despite the wildly different settings and set the stage to teach others.

Basically what Bolt and Gadget had ended up doing to develop their senses was to create a small sensory deprivation chamber with exotics. You sat in there, went mildly mad due to the lack of stimulus, and tried to determine which exotics were being paraded in front of you and out of sight. It was crude, inelegant, but worked. Bolt could actually have it built on the opposite side of the galaxy and it'd still work.

That was honestly just the first step, but it was a good first step!

Of course you didn't really need the sense to manipulate spiritual power. It helped. Dai and Wu couldn't sense it for the life of them, but their mechs had shown him that this didn't matter. They had a distinct spiritual architecture in their work despite their lack of ability to touch it. Bolt also held out a bit of hope that they'd be able to develop a sense over time too possibly.

Even if they didn't, later they could see about creating custom tools. That could be a good second step? Running his friends through creating tools to see and interact with spiritual power? He could do it, but that would sort of violate creating a how to guide. If Bolt wanted this to work, it had to be done as if someone on the other side of the galaxy was reading it. That was a tall order. Fortunately he had time.