What's Junk? (The Mech Touch)

[Thomisannoyed]

A large part of Ves attitude towards Bolt is probably that bolt has never threatened him, or even talked smack, I'm pretty sure most designers he interacts with swear a blood feud with the hour.
Meanwhile Bolt here is taking care of Ves's family and having a Mech design battle in his own field with basically no stakes for Ves.

 

[lost star]

The introduction of the Einherjar Berserker was not a surprise to the Hexadric Hegemony. If there was one major success that had occurred due to the raid attempting to kill Bolt, it was the fact that they'd been able to retrieve one of the mechs while retreating. This was a major boon and allowed them to have plans in place before the mech reached final production and wide distribution.

Were the war at any other point, this would have resulted in a serious albeit temporary advantage. As it was, it blunted the Friday's Counter offensive by a small amount. This was quite valuable. It didn't really change the course of the war.

Ves' mechs did more in this case. Though the Hella Handmaiden could not stand up to the Berserker it still provided a significant amount of value. It wasn't a mech that could operate alone, nor could it eliminate significant swaths of enemies like the Berserker could. What it could do was give unconventional methods of attacking and bolster the weakening Hexxer forces. In crude terms it gave them free fodder to use for various tasks. When combined with the Valkyries ability to frequently get quick kills you had a small combo that could force enemies to become more cautious and mindful of everything. It granted them space to use other tactics.

Bolt considered it a minor win for Ves. The Einherjar Berserker was not a flop by any measure. The Handmaiden simply influenced the war more. Ves considered it more of a draw again, but that was more due to fog of war and the deteriorating situation on the Hexxer side. Truthfully the situation prevented any real conclusion.

With the lost momentum the main houses in the Hegemony were starting to scramble and fracture. Their vicious infighting started to escalate as people began blaming one another. Several major houses suffered severe 'unavoidable accidents.' More of them shifted forces into moving towards the Red Galaxy. Most of the latter were absorbed by Gloriana's family. Those that refused were quietly shuffled and delayed such that they were forced to expend significant effort to fight the war.

These internal movements caused absolute havoc on the frontlines. Supplies still were still being provided and reinforcements were happening, but it was all automated systems. The chain of command was being fractured in many areas. This resulted in conflicted orders across the front. Some forces advanced, others retreated.

Defeat and chaos compounded in on itself. Soon it became very obvious that the Hegemony was going to lose. The only real question was how much.

Here was where the Friday Coalition's internal politics came to the fore. They were still quite united, but that unity was showing cracks. The Gauge Dynasty was in ascendence due to positioning and careful maneuvering. They'd taken relatively little damage and were starting to push for various concessions due to that. The other factions were quite unhappy about this, so they were actually slow-walking the counter offensive.

This put the Gauge Dynasty into a small bind. With the Hexxers retreating and hemorrhaging forces, the other factions were under far less pressure. Every month of delay let them recover rather than lose more forces. If this continued the Gauge faction would lose their advantage. They couldn't force the others to attack harder either. Their solutions were either make concessions to their allies, push with their own forces, or wait.

Political decisions made for poor war. The Gaugers decided to push with a token force. Furthermore they tried to push with none of Bolt's mechs. This was again a political decision rather than a decision their generals made. One made in arrogance and pride. They used fresh troops with a conventionally overwhelming amount of numbers. Their target was one of the Friday Coalition's previous fortress world, taken by the Hexxer forces and then fortified.

Three days of fighting later the battle would become a textbook example of the folly of neglecting Glows. The Hexxers, some of whom had been in fights since the start of the war, had built their entire doctrine around Glows and fighting them. The shear aura and power inherent in them had been blunted by Bolt's contributions and it had given several ignorant people a false impression of how impactful they were. The last time many Gauger forces had fought the Hexxers they'd only had the Blessed Squire and a newborn doctrine around them.

A 'modernized' doctrine was far more formidable. The Hexxers shredded the push. Pilots were traumatized, frozen with fear, clawed by their own downed mechs, and more. Their morale frequently broke before their mechs did. The Gauger push had to be reinforced by several times over the three days, and it only broke when they committed enough tonnage to outright drown the enemy in bodies. The humiliation made many higherups furious and eager to lash out.

Their initial idea was to proclaim a public bounty of Ves Larkinson. Tentative inquires as to that got it shut down by internal factions immediately. The MTA took an extremely dim view of that, and the Gauger Dynasty was not in a good enough standing to manage that. Their next step was to commission an expedition to attack and kill Ves.

At this point in time both Ves Larkinson and then Bolt Silica initiated a public statement. Ves' statement was that attacking a designer or their family for successful design was both abhorrent from a morality standpoint and stupid from a progression standpoint. Designers should be fought on the field of ideas if humanity was to advance. He followed that up with a personal declaration that anyone that targeted Bolt's family would be in direct opposition to him. Bolt's statement concurred and specifically pointed out that his work would not have been possible without Ves' achievements in the field of Glows. He also further said that he'd oppose anyone targeting Ves' family.

It was an idealistic statement. (Ves didn't really believe all of it, but he knew how to make the best soundbites, and it was an idea he wished was true.) It was also something that had the MTA making a statement of support on. The organization didn't actually back that approval with anything more than words, but that was a lot in the first place.

This made the Gauge leaders increasingly furious. Not due to the sentiment, but due to the fact that the combination of statements made it extremely difficult to hire anyone to go after Ves or Bolt. Even their local Black Ops teams were quite hesitant to arrange something. The combination of statements had given both designers enough public support that a direct attack would be seen as outright villainous.

At this point Gary and the team of mercenaries he'd been working with found the remains of what was likely Cian Lewin, Lilly's mother. The woman had ODed on a particularly potent narcotic and the placed herself in cryostasis. The combination had resulted in a toxic shock that had essentially rotted her body from the inside out. The body would have to be examined at a different area, but the tentative confirmation of her death meant that the last remnant of one of the Friday factions was likely dead.

Politically, this was the equivalent of initiating a firestorm in the Friday Coalition. It also gave the Gauge leaders something like a target. They immediately went after the assets Cian had in her name with all their power. While this was very legal due to bankruptcy proceedings, it was also seen as the equivalent of robbery by the other factions in the Coalition. The normal course of things in this position was to allow the dust to settle and divvy up the assets to preserve power.

Lilly and Bolt naturally wanted nothing to do with this. Unfortunately in this case their wishes were going to be completely ignored.

 

[Negation]

Politically, this was the equivalent of initiating a firestorm in the Friday Coalition. It also gave the Gauge leaders something like a target. They immediately went after the assets Cian had in her name with all their power. While this was very legal due to bankruptcy proceedings, it was also seen as the equivalent of robbery by the other factions in the Coalition. The normal course of things in this position was to allow the dust to settle and divvy up the assets to preserve power.

Click to shrink...

...wut? The Gauge leaders want to inherit debts from a crackhead?

 

[foo-jin]

...wut? The Gauge leaders want to inherit debts from a crackhead?

Click to shrink...

I think they're buying out the debt so they can put pressure on Bolt and Lily through that.

 

[Mithril-blade]

@lost star my dude, will we ever get a clear picture of Lily's mom?

Like, she never appeared "on screen", so this begs the question: What sort of shennanigans were going on? Like, was this exactly what it looked like, a noble heir that utterly fucked up her life till the end? Or was there some other sort of fuckery going on behind the wings?

I ask this because, well, she is now dead.

 

[lost star]

Maybe! We'll see.