What's Junk? (The Mech Touch)

[lost star]

To Bolt's mild entertainment, the designing station was right in the little pavilion. It was actually part of an entire system that could be adjusted. Basically a smart room that could become whatever they needed. It answered more than a few questions. They'd left it at park like settings just because it was casually novel and relaxing for all of them. It was just a background though. The designing was the important part, and everyone wanted to do it already.

"Here's the parts we have available." Gary began with a swish of his hand, and an entire list filled up a wall. "Exotics over here." He made another list.

"I'm compatible with the highlighted." Delicee noted while highlighting a significant portion of the parts, all business now that they were designing. "I'm unfamiliar with second rate design though. Too big for my usual tricks."

"Join the club. I'm mostly lost there." Bolt muttered as he tried to get an idea of what was available before closing his eyes and taking a breath.

"Going up a level in tech isn't something we can remedy quickly. I can select things if you like. I'm not going to be able to apply my specialty without my usual supplies so I'll have the time." Gary offered.

Bolt opened his eyes and shook his head. "No first, we need to go over the exotics together. You need specific exotics?"

"I can use chemicals, but they're not potent enough for real mech operations. Home had entire mountains of exotics that ate heat. Hence me needing this even at Second Rate." Gary fluffed his hood in emphasis.

"Understandable, I tried doing that with my own mech and hit that problem. I think I can bring it up. You'll see the issue immediately I think." Bolt brought up Undertaker. "One of my works. Third Rate, so sorry about that." While he wasn't ashamed of his work, it was decidedly low tech.

"Don't apologize. Designing with limited resources is an artform in itself. I actually love way you do forms." Delicee tapped and all of the sudden all of Bolts designs were displayed. "You have the soul of an artist. Actually, that needs reciprocation, here." He tapped and everyone's designs filled up the rest of the space.

The young designer took a moment to look over them. This was actually very interesting. Delicee's work was all space mechs, for what little that meant for multipurpose First Rate mechs. They were studded with stars and all had ranged weapons of various sorts. There was even a little video on each of them showing notable feats. Most of it wasn't as understandable as he'd like.

Gary's were easier to understand. Those were basically walking icicles or mountains. He favored very heavy mechs, and there wasn't a single freeze ray to his mild disappointment. Most of them actually didn't have any obvious frost effects at all.

"Huh. You designed your works to deal with cold rather than project it. I expected more weapons." Bolt observed after a few minutes.

"The exotics I work with can do offensive work. Most of my early designs were just to make the mechs function in the cold. I advanced when I figured out how it applied to other areas in mech designs." Gary tapped at the blueprint of Ghoul. "Yours is harder to pin down. A novice would say it's you having cannibal mechs."

"I'm never going to live that down." Bolt said with a sigh.

"Oh, don't feel bad. It's splashy and spectacularly risque! We can tell your specialty is actually quite subtle. I'd say the Cerberus has the clearest display of that. You haven't made a mech since you hit journeyman though have you?" Delicee asked with mild amusement. "None of these have that signature heft that Journeyman work has."

"I made one, but that's for my wife. She's an expert and it's not in the databases here yet." Bolt replied and ignored why that was the case.

That of all things he'd said got mild looks of surprise, and then a bit of flipping as the other designers looked for information. Delicee was the one to say something after the information was brought up. He'd found a video of her ascension. Someone had edited it very well. It looked far more dramatic than Bolt remembered, and he had no idea where they'd gotten the music. His fellow designer had a different idea about it.

"I am absolutely in love." Delicee declared once it finished. "That skill? That absolute showmanship? Oh to design for her. I don't even care that it'd be a Third Rate. If I could see her in a First Rate? Oh I'd die happy."

"Putting aside the inappropriate declarations, we'd probably be best served to let him do as much designing as possible. I remember my first real mech after journeyman and how much I needed to feel things out." Gary noted.

The other designer nodded. "Yes, you haven't flexed at all. You need to, and the Rim Guardians can foot the bill!"

"I'd rather we all work together. My teamwork still needs improvement." Bolt muttered as he switched the blueprint layers on Gary's mechs and flipped through them. "Hmm. I can see why you're going to have trouble here. I don't recognize half the materials on in your mechs."

"Local resources. You never realize how much you depend on them until you move halfway across the galaxy." Gary sounded more than a little frustrated.

Bolt felt irritated himself, but he couldn't actually address the issue. The list of materials they had access to with this challenge was expansive and unfamiliar to him as well. "Ug. Delicee, can you help identify something that will work with his style? I refuse to have someone here do substandard work, and I need to review everything to see what I can contribute. Give me thirty."

He was actually pretty appreciative of the way the other man jumped on it. Both of his companions for this had egos, but it felt as if they were also willing to work with others too. The low stakes and purpose of the group probably helped a lot there. Bolt could see their brilliance based on their designs, so it meant a lot that they were willing to just, well be nice and try to work with him. He was going to do his best here just because of that.

Thirty minutes was nothing in the grand scheme of things. It most certainly wasn't enough to get himself up to speed technically. Second Rate was an entirely different paradigm of technology. Bolt would need to learn parts and costs from the ground up if he wanted to make a mech from that type. It wasn't his purpose here though. He was going to try to flex other parts of his specialty. All he needed to do was get a handle on the other designer's specialties. Class Ones were supposed to be really good with others right? He just had to be careful not to 'eat' the others. (Which he suspected was just making sure they made sure their work wasn't overridden by his, hopefully.)

"Found something usable of sorts." Delicee said after the time was up.

"This isn't optimal, but I can work with it." Gary agreed as he brought up the exotic component specifications.

The exotic was almost a liquid in that it flowed like a liquid sometimes. It could change from a solid, to a liquid, to what amounted to flowing shattered glass in a second. When it changed phases it stored or released energy depending on the phase. The stuff was barely controllable, but had some use in mechs when appropriately leashed. Called Flowing Ice, it was nasty nasty stuff in the wild and subsequently rather expensive as a Second Rate compound.

"All right, so my thought was we do a heavy. That's something yer very good with Gary." Bolt nodded at the heavies on display. "That's not something Delicee is good with, but he can do the weapons. Most of your stuff does orbital shots so you can do something long range." He gestured to a video of an a laser changing direction mid-flight.

"That is a good basis, but there's the problem of applying our specialties together." Gary noted.

"I can smooth over most of them I think." Bolt offered. "The tricky part is we need to coordinate. I have some understanding of your work and will need you to walk me through the mindset some. That's the whole unification thing I put in that description."

The other designers were smart enough to understand he was keeping some things close to his chest. At the same time they didn't seem to mind. If anything they seemed both amused and eager to get started. He felt the same way. They weren't competing per-say, but he wanted to sort of show off some. They likely felt the same way.

 

[lost star]

Second Rate mechs were different than Third Rate. By necessity Third Rate mechs were best described as mechs designed to work with the bare minimum of resources. They had a very narrow focus, a limited space, and were extremely frugal in exotics. Second Rates were typically able to handle at least two roles, could fly for a few minutes, and could work in space, all in the same design. They also cost more. Really, the best way to describe it was a standard Second Rate mech cost and worked like an expert mech from a Third Rate nation.

This was a base and generic comparison. It assumed the designers and pilots were the same. There were bottom of the barrel Second Rate Mechs that could only trade three to one. There were high quality Second Rate mechs that could utterly trounce any number of Third Rate mechs. Pilots would alter the equations dramatically as well, and this was typically more culture and practice than training. Second Rate nations liked to boast they had the best training, but experience and attitude mattered more than anything else. It was a known fact that you could train up Third Rate pilots and they'd perform identically to Second Rate. It just took some time and you needed to have pilots with good potential. (Third rates used D and higher. Second needed Cs. First Rates didn't bother with anything below B.)

Bolt was actually getting a demonstration of that disparity here. Delicee was a designer from a First Rate nation. He had an implant that would take Bolt a decade of saving up MTA credits to afford. Using that allowed the man to create a mech and upload it to the designer they had in seconds.

Gary still found plenty of things to fix and adjust. Delicee's focus had been mostly space mechs, and he was too used to First Rate mechs. This again showed an implants power. The blueprint flickered repeatedly as the two bounced ideas back and forth using their implants. Some trends emerged. Delicee loved to add more stuff. Gary was more restrained and very typically had to remove things to make the overall mech work.

Amusingly, that left Bolt to do a lot of the form factor and make the big decisions. He was thankful that he could still be useful here. He changed the outside appearance and design, made decisions on where they were going, and also did point out a few things here and there too. Their implants helped with designs and calculations, it didn't always catch mistakes. (GIGO still applied.)

Their target was a few simulated super beasts in a simulated jungle. It was a noted flex of technological might. The Rim Guardians were spending who knows how much resources to give them a small and inconsequential contest. Bolt still found it entertaining and less stressful than the other things he'd encountered in the trip.

Their mech was a heavy. Since Bolt wasn't the lead, he didn't go with his usual themes. Their initial thought was to go for a cold giant monster instead. A thing from outer space, icy and malevolent. It looked like a horror monster. (Delicee loved it, Gary was repeatedly rolling his eyes under the hood every time the flamboyant designer added another detail.)

This decision was mostly because Gary loved using thick armor with high power generators. His default mode to using his specialty was using endothermic reactions to cool the mech and give him more leeway in other matters. It was not a visible or flashy way of working. It did give his mechs the ability to run at surprisingly high output for significant periods of time. Heat management was core to a mech and his specialty lent itself very well to that.

Delicee worked on the rifle they'd decided to integrate with the system. It was a relatively thick thing that used the heavy's output to support it. It wasn't a particularly novel weapon, but the 'elephant gun' was likely going to be able to down nearly anything if it hit, and he could easily make it hit.

It was also boring and really didn't show off his specialty at all. The designer wasn't complaining, but Bolt certainly didn't like it. He wanted more than just functional!

Bolt stared at the design as it formed and took a step back as he thought on it. Then he reviewed his teammate's works again. They barely noticed, still focused on other things. He looked at the details of everyone's previous design and then frowned. "Delicee, mind verifying a few calcs?" He wrote out a few equations.

The numbers made the designer pause in consideration. "What in the world?" He asked. "You managed to pick that up?"

"Gary. Got some for you too." Bolt wrote out more theoretical propositions.

"No." The designer immediately said after a single glance.

"Damnit, I wanted to make a black hole gun." The young designer said.

"You wouldn't believe how many people want to do something similar." Delicee brought up a few videos of the attempts. "Really, the largest problem is that it's only possible to do at First Rate. Anything lower than that is just sort of cost prohibitive at best."

"I wouldn't say we can't here." Bolt hummed to himself and sketched out few designs. "The physics feel like their possible with some work. And I'm sure if we combine our specialties we could do it. Just gotta figure out the exact angle."

Delicee and Gary looked at Bolt as he worked and then seemed to exchange messages between them. Then the First Rater nodded. "Would this help?" He projected a few math concepts detailing space and time combined with gravity onto their shared display. The equations were rather dizzying to behold but Bolt managed to get the general concept even if a lot of it was beyond his ability to calculate with just his mind.

"Curvature is good I think. Sorry, I need to bring up a calculator ta really read this." Bolt replied as he started to get into the idea. "We need to build up the gravity sheer. Then sort of pull in? Endokinetics is mostly pulling in heat anyway."

"That's a simplified way of putting it." Gary commented dryly. "I'd need some physical connections. I think... Yeah I see where you're going with that." He observed before creating a sketch of a device that would pull in heat.

"Let's make a chain here with that. Ball and chain isn't really a mech weapon normally, but we do the ball like this." Bolt changed the object into a ball and then added the chain before attaching it to the mech.

Delicee's eyebrows raised. "Your math is completely wrong, but it might be possible." He acknowledged with some surprise.

"We're going to throw black holes!" Bolt declared with amusement.

Gary sighed as he kept running numbers. "Calcs are saying we aren't. We need just a bit more pull for it to work as a weapon." He pointed out with clear disappointment.

"Put them on screen?" Bolt asked and then winced at the equations provided and the clearly highlighted defect they had. "So it won't pull in enough?"

"There's a threshold that we have to hit to make it viable." Delicee observed with a sigh of his own. "Pity. I could do this with Fist Rate materials, but that'd defeat the point."

"Other problems too. Power requirements are higher than a ball and chain can support. The chain will also break if it does work. It will also be explosive enough that we need reinforcement over everything, which might cause issues." Gary did sound disappointed as he listed the trouble.

The young designer eyeballed the device and ran through a few mental estimates. "I think I can get it to work. I'd need to physically assemble it and we'd need to switch it to a very large mace-like design. We're going to need some Third Rate efficiency in the design too. Strip out everything but support for this weapon."

"You think you can make it by hand?" Gary asked incredulously before shaking his head. "Well why not? It's easy enough to test." He tapped at something and a door opened up.

"Hmm?" Delicee made an inquiring noise.

"It's a known thing sometimes. Some specialties are like that in Second and Third Ranks." Gary replied with a small shrug as they walked through the door.

"Ah, and Bolt here is an omni-disciplinary Type One so he can do that." The First Rate observed. "You're actually fortunate there. First Rate designers have more exotic specialties, but that's partially because you have so many options it's impossible for even an enhanced designer to learn them all. You on the other hand can start broad and narrow down as you advance if you need to."

"That's interesting to know. They don't advertise that do they?" Bolt asked and got a laugh in return.

Through that door were their parts, already made. Bolt was mildly surprised. Even knowing that they could make parts instantly it was still a bit shocking to see how quickly the parts had been made. That did make it easier for him though. All he needed to do was assemble them all together and focus. The only complication was he needed to borrow Gary's gloves because several parts were freezing due to exotics.

Well that and he wasn't sure how much 'psionics' he should display. All he really wanted to do was add a bit more strength to the pull. The goal was basically have the ball draw in everything it could with artificial gravity. Then the when the ball impacted something it would release the accumulated matter and energy. They'd obviously need to workshop the idea, but that was the general thought process behind the concept.

Bolt just decided to focus and let things fall where they would in making it. He wasn't even sure he could do what he wanted. This was pushing his abilities in an admittedly strange direction. It was experimenting quite a bit really. Which was honestly fine here.

The assembly itself only took a few minutes. With the parts already made it was just slotting them into the proper area and having it welded or bolted into place. He didn't even have to tweak much. Just a few wires here and there, and adding more insulation. Soon he had a rather ominous looking mace. He and Delicee had been a bit enthusiastic in making it look deadly.

"It shouldn't have that much of a change in throughput based on what you did, but I can almost feel that it will work now." Delicee observed once he was finished. "Huh. There is something to making it yourself. I learned something today!" He clapped his hands theatrically.

"Proof is in startup, not in feelings." Gary pointed out.

"Out of the room first." Bolt ordered everyone, and they seemed bemused at the order.

Outside they started up the camera and then started up the device in the ball. With an almost ominous hiss that was audible through the camera, the ball went dark as the gravitational effect activated. All three designers stared at it with glee. There was something special about knowing you'd successfully made a dangerous weapon.

"We're going to have to revamp the rest of the mech to use this aren't we?" Bolt mused as he stared at the active weapon. A weapon like this was more explosive ordinance attached to a stick than a mace.

No one minded the added work. Redesigning the mech to handle the new weapon required some significant reinforcement. True to Bolt's words they had to strip most of the typical functions a Second Rate would have. This mech would do one thing very well. It would crush things with the hammer.

This did necessitate they drop the monster appearance and switch it to something else. They ended up doing something a bit silly with it.

 

[lost star]

As a faction in the MTA, The Rim Guardians lacked the full might of the organization. If one were to be brutally honest, they were basically on the bottom. Their stated goal was helping the poorest of the galaxy after all. This meant that their best relationships was with the poorest parts of the galaxy. That was not conductive to gathering power, so they were solidly at the bottom organizationally. This was compared to other organizations. They were still a part of the MTA, and many members were also parts of other organizations. It wasn't uncommon for many masters to be part of multiple groups. This meant that the Rim Guardians easily surpassed any other nation's influence and power.

For Bolt and his teammates, this just meant they had an on call pilot who was capable of handling any second rate mech. The one picked was an elite MTA pilot and his name was Joe. And yes he'd heard all the jokes. He'd also done this sort of thing many times before. The organizers of these events liked to switch it up every month and do something different, but a lot of them did need a few pilots willing to try out janky mechs. He was on the list for it.

It wasn't the worst duty in the world. The Rim Guardians only accepted Journeymen and above talent wise. This meant that the mechs would always function. They'd sometimes be pretty strange, but they'd function. Doing contests for some junior initiates was generally an exercise in frustration and pain for anyone epxerienced.

"They really did add an excessive amount of warnings to this." Joe observed as he reviewed the documentation before shrugging and filing the thing under the 'kids making big booms' mental drawer.

Designers loved to call themselves rational and educated, but when push came to shove they frequently just slapped more explosives on the weapon and called it a day. This was doubly true when they had a functionally unlimited budget. The mech he'd been given, named imaginatively Monster Hunter, wasn't even in the top ten of unusual mechs he'd dealt with. It actually wasn't even in the top one hundred since it was upright and walked properly.

It looked interesting at least. The colors and lines they'd used to make the armor made it look like some savage in a bone outfit. The mace completed the look. It was, if you wanted to be silly, an unga bunga mech. You'd think it was a Third Rate mech based off the design and the lack of ranged weapons. It had decent flight time, sensors, and armor, but the rest of it was pure focus on melee.

This wasn't a bad choice, the pilot had to admit as he settled into the cockpit. The scenario was fighting beasts. The sim wasn't going for complete fidelity, but most giant beasts were heavily armored and all close range. You either needed a very heavy gun, an immense amount of firepower, or a good melee weapon to fell them. Since he was solo the last option was the best.

Monster Hunter started with a purr and Joe grinned just a bit. Very smooth startup and movement. The designers were some of the better ones. It didn't hold a candle to a First Rate MTA mech, but he'd been trained for everything. This was up there performance wise for Second Rate. Impressive for a quickly designed mech.

He hefted the mace and then frowned slightly. The weight was off. It was too light for your standard mace of this size. With a mental sigh he recalled the briefing again. Then held the mace very far away from his body and activated it. He loathed testing experimental weapons.

Instantly the area around the mace turned black. The mace grew heavier. The wind howled as it was sucked in. Joe stared at the monstrosity with a bit of alarm and flicked it off. In response the mace exploded as it released all the accumulated matter and energy.

Joe felt his eyebrow twitch a bit. They'd armored the hands explicitly for this from what he could tell, so the damage to his own mech was just a bit of scorching. That was still excessive, and the lethality was supposed to scale based on how long the mace was 'charging.' The complete focus around the weapon made a lot more sense now.

"Madmen, the lot of them." The pilot muttered out loud. He knew this was being recorded and he didn't care. Something like this needed to be called that.

With another mental sigh the pilot stared to walk through the simulated terrain. He was in a forest of sorts. It felt a bit familiar, but that was just because these places were more common than you'd think. Trunks large enough for mechs to take cover behind, vines so thick a person could walk on them, heat and rain everywhere. A giant's hunting ground. Complete with animals fit for giants.

Like the one that met him.

It was not a particularly creative specimen. A rhino made large and with bony armoring. It would have been a nightmare for most mechs to fight solo. The way it charged forward ignoring everything indicated that it had enough plating to probably shrug off anything but artillery shells.

Joe was rather glad they'd programmed the simulation before they'd gotten the mech. He activated the mace. The sudden weight felt almost reassuring as he measured the distance. One second. Half second. In range.

The mace swung around with a screaming howl. It impacted the side of the beast's head. He could feel the arms strain as an explosion and weapon met the momentum of the monster and won. The thing staggered to the side and he was able to just barely sidestep around the mass of its now dazed form as it tumbled to the ground in a stunned heap.

He reactivated the mace and let it charge up as the beast recovered. This was a slow and steady sort of battle. He'd broken the plating on the side of the head, nothing more. Fortunately it wasn't a smart beast. A smarter one would have fled from the screaming weapon he was using. The simulation had just had it set to charge forward, so that was what it did.

Joe could have repeated the action. He was curious as to how the weapon performed when it was charged for more than a few seconds. He waited and dodged. The beast attempted to kick him then, in a slightly surprising change of behavior.

Fortunately he was in a heavy. The impact striking at his armor dented it but did little to change the performance. As the animal bucked and tried to gore him he decided his weapon had charged up enough. He didn't bother aiming for something special. He just slammed it into the head of the beast.

The explosion was both satisfying and more than a little dangerous to him. It absolutely shattered the reinforced skull of the beast. Half of it was burnt, and his mech's arms rocked enough that he felt it a bit through the cockpit's compensation. Half his mech looked like it had gotten scorched when the visual sensors came back on. The armor handled it just fine, but if he'd charged it more he half expected that he could have damaged himself.

Joe stared at the dead beast and ran a system report. The damage was all cosmetic fortunately. He turned his attention to the mace and examined it with a critical eye. They'd managed to make it so that it didn't damage itself on impact, but he wondered how well it would hold up after a few more hits. The forces involved seemed barely tamed. It was Second Rate right? If they ironed out the flaws it would be a horrifically dangerous thing for this level of tech and this was coming from a pilot used to First Rate MTA mechs.

He turned back to the body of his target and then realized a small problem. He just recalled that the 'explanation' for the scenario was looking for prizes. Typically that meant you wanted the head. That was very hard to do when it was all in little pieces. Oops. Joe stared at the gore for a bit before he shrugged. He had about three more beasts to find. It just meant he couldn't hit their head with the weapon.

So far as problems went, it was mildly amusing at worst. The weapon was actually more of a threat than the monsters in this mech. Monster Hunter indeed.

 

[lost star]

If they were going to be honest, Bolt and his allies had a low opinion of their work. Sure they'd succeeded, but the weapon system had shown itself to be flawed and cumbersome. There was potential there. It just needed a lot of work before it'd be useful. Work that they couldn't do. They'd had fun at least, and seeing the mech in action had been very thought provoking.

"Pity we can't actually fix it after this." Gary said once the contest was over.

Bolt had to agree. Making it had taken all three of them working together. Refining it would require the same. He simply didn't have the time. He was sure the others didn't either. They were all busy people. Delicee especially was basically slumming it, and working with Second Rate technology was a bit beneath his level. He wasn't being offensive about it, but both the other designers knew what the difference was like. Bolt worked with Third Rate tech. Gary was the only one that could potentially use it, and he was very obviously too occupied with other stuff.

"We all learned something I believe!" Delicee declared. "Grasp the inspiration you get from both heaven and earth tightly!"

"In other words you enjoyed it and got something out of it." Gary translated with a small smirk.

"You did not?" The other designer asked with dramatically wide eyes.

"I picked up some things." Bolt commented softly.

"I think we all did." Gary said with a nod of his own. "Like our dramatic one says, you take what you can get."

With that, the three walked out of the room. The secretary was there waiting for them, still holding that cheerful customer service smile. Surprisingly, it seemed relatively sincere. Bolt figured she had a good job here and the goal was something agreeable as well. He was in a generous enough mood to assume good intentions rather than anything else.

"I hope you enjoyed yourself. Some Rim Guardian credits have been allocated to your account. Please feel free to keep them or spend them at your leisure. A catalog has been sent to your account detailing the purchases you can make." The woman said with a small bow once they came into sight. "As you are probably aware, the Rim Guardians focus on protecting the areas towards the edges of the galaxy. They are frequently neglected and ignored. The MTA does of course try to assist, but their resources are tied up in many tasks, so it falls upon others to fill in the gaps. The Rim Guardians are an officially approved organization that tries to coordinate and encourage all forms of aid."

"Mailing lists, contests, and occasional actual aid to others." Delicee added with a wave of his hand and lowered his voice theatrically. "They're the runt of the MTA, but they're also the only one that's worth something if you want to work away from the core."

"While I would not phrase it like that, they are the only group that deliberately pays attention and offers regular humanitarian support and aid to Third Rate and below areas. They are also the only group that pays attention to those considered lower than Third Rate." The woman countered with a slightly less pleasant smile and something that was not a glare but implied one.

"Ahaha." Delicee laughed. "Don't get me wrong! I am a member. I am in fact a contributing one! I wouldn't be here if I didn't support them!" He almost apologized with a wave of his hands.

"Let's not antagonize the help." Bolt interjected dryly before frowning. "So, to clarify, they are an organization? What about factions? What's the difference?"

"Ahhh, internal MTA politics. Come, we don't want to take up this lovely lady's time any more than we should." The man gestured out the door.

A few second later they were in a cafe of sorts. It was a room with a few coffees and a chairs. It was also private. Delicee had paid for it all before Bolt could even figure out the price. Gary had ordered hot coocoo. Bolt, completely unsure what to get, had somehow ended up with something that was cream, sugar, and maybe coffee.

"So, factions in the MTA, and the CFA are complicated. Extremely so." The man lectured with an almost serious expression. "On the surface it's simple. You have political factions and organizational factions. The political factions are roughly organized around Star Designers and God Pilots in the MTA. In the CFA, they're arranged behind Admirals. Organizations are organized around official MTA approved actions and help direct their resources more efficiently, at least that's the official statement."

"Makes sense." Bolt said with a nod and sipped at his drink. "I looted an alien place and was told that aligned me with something." He sipped again and then frowned down at the beverage. He had no idea what to think about it.

"It did somewhat. The Star Designer Xenotechnition has a following dedicated to looting and exploiting alien technology. I do hope you got it checked over. The aliens love to leave hidden traps." Delicee said with a bit of concern.

"I did." Bolt confirmed before setting aside his abomination of whatever it was.

Gary gave a small snort. "You likely did more than that based on your expression, but good on keeping it close to your chest."

"Yes. I want to say we are friends, but we do have our own interests and some friendships are best served by distance. Continuing, there's a lot of interplay between factions and even the MTA and CFA. Unless you have an ear to it, it's going to be opaque to outsiders though. Many people are members of multiple factions and organizations so it's impossible to set clear lines anyway." Delicee gave a delicate shrug and sipped at his latte. "At the level of Journeyman it's best to signal your alignment by joining an organization like you've just done. Seniors and above will give you ways to gain favor and try to orient you towards like minded people as a method of recruitment. It's rather free form and nearly everyone has more than one group they favor."

"He's making is sound more friendly and intuitive than it is." The designer in the cold weather gear interjected. "There are conflicts, and harsh ones."

"I wouldn't deny that. They do try not to let it escape internal channels. They don't always succeed." Delicee continued to sip with a small look of contemplation towards the heavily dressed man. "I'm assuming you got caught up in one of those disputes?"

"Something like that." Gary didn't offer to elaborate and they dropped the topic before things got awkward.

Bolt checked his comm quickly and blinked. "They're already sending me things." He observed. "All missions to loot alien graves." It was a surprisingly large list.

"Feel free to not answer, but I'd guess that your specialty benefits from exploring scrapyards and battlefields?" Delicee asked while carefully setting down his cup.

"I think so?" Bolt replied with a grimace. "I literally just advanced and can't say specifics as I don't know them yet."

"Those are tests with rewards. It isn't uncommon for MTA officials. They love to dangle offers that both push promising Journeymen and gives them a feel of your character. Had plenty of those right after I advanced. They taper down as years pass, but only go away if you stop showing promise." Gary informed the other man and finished his coocoo with a quiet sip.

"Ah to be young and recently advanced. You feel on top of the galaxy and will become the next Polymath, and then you realize it's going to be decades of hard work at the minimum. Take it from me Bolt, do more than work and keep it slow and steady. Heavens know how many promising Journeymen burn out after ten or twenty years." Delicee said with a small laugh. "But yes, that's what's going on. Accept what you can when you can. Most designers learn to take the long view by necessity, so they won't demand urgency. Rim Guardian missions will be risky, but they'll be worth it if you are careful."

"I will look into it once I sort out the transporting issue." Bolt muttered with a small wince as he browsed the catalogs. "Ships are expensive and I don't want to hire people all the time."

"You'll still need to hire people. Ships need pilots and maintenance. The Rim Guardians are actually extremely good for that. The MTA official catalogs only offer top of the line things. The Guardians can offer you contacts to more local resources." Gary informed the other designer. "It will still expensive, but affordably expensive. You don't want a first rate ship. You want a ship that will work for you."

"That is something I wouldn't know. I have a personal automated ship that does everything I need." Delicee shrugged.

"Rich boy." Gary deadpanned, and got a laugh.

"Wonder if there's ship building stuff in here." Bolt switched to the Rim Guardian's catalogs. "My little sister wants ta do that over mechs. I'm so disappointed."

His companions chuckled at the small joke. "If she's as brilliant as you she should be fine no matter what. If you want that best, that's CFA material." Delicee informed him with a bright smile. "You can actually pay for public lessons. They're nothing compared to the internal tech, but they're heads and shoulders above everything else. She'll have no shortage of work and prestige that way."

"That's all First Rate and expensive. You'd be best served to inquire with the Guardians again. If she has enough potential they'll actually scramble to get a good setup for her. Getting promising talent to an eager teacher is worth a lot of favors on both ends." Gary added.

"Sounds like something to look into." Bolt paused as he saw an entry. "Huh, CFA offers a test to join? Didn't know that." It cost CFA credits, but it was available.

"It's biased against anyone born on a planet. Don't bother." Delicee's statement was surprisingly definite, and the man ordered another latte immediately after speaking. "If your sister dreams of that, then you'll need to do them a favor to even get a fair chance."

"They say they only care about ability, but that's a blatant lie." Gary muttered with something resembling anger. "Most of their people are asses to anyone not space-born too."

The First Rate designer nodded his head and sipped at his new latte aggressively. "I hate to agree. There's some people that are fine and upright, but the culture there is..." He trailed off and took another angry sip.

Conversation drifted a bit here and there after that to keep the mood from dropping. Mostly inconsequential things about mech design and technology in general. Delicee had strident and strange opinions on space combat. Gary had a very large bias towards heavies and extremely armored creations that was at serious odds to the other two. Bolt just enjoyed talking with people that could keep up with him. The two had advanced around his age and had been in business for more than a few years by this point. They were slightly more senior peers. The meeting was nice enough that they exchanged contact information and promised to stay in touch.

It made the end of the trip surprisingly pleasant.

 

[lost star]

So, this post is going to be me half reasoning out things in text and half me defining how it works in the setting.

3rd rate mechs are the cheapest of the cheap. They take pilots from D-A rank. D rank pilots frequently get stuck in something called frontline mechs, which are the real cheap stuff that's barely a mech. A good expert rate mech is about 10-100X as expensive as a baseline mech and can fight off 100 people. (Assume this is on average.)

2nd rate mechs take C-A rank pilots. One mech costs about the same as an expert mech from 3rd rate. They're typically capable of functioning in land and space and are good at two things. A pinnacle standard mech is the equivalent of a 3rd rate expert. That's pinnacle. The reason 3rd rate mechs still exist is because a 2nd rate is pretty expensive to run. If you don't have backing you're going to run out of resources. This is why 3rd rates get pirates and have a thriving mercenary / freelancer economy.

1st rate mechs have a similar jump. They're far, far more mobile, which makes them a lot more dangerous. A 1st rate mech can basically do everything they want. While on paper they can match 100 v 1 2nd rates, they're simply too mobile for that to matter that much. They can literally leave orbit if they want to. They're again extremely expensive, and furthermore they need B rank pilots by standard. C rank pilots can just barely squeak by if they work hard, and require specific mechs.

No, what defines a 1st rate nation vs a 3rd rate? Officially it's the number of systems. 3rd rate needs to claim at least 50 systems. 2nd is 1000. 1st 10,000. Unofficially that doesn't matter at all. A nation that lays claim to 1000 stars with nothing in them doesn't matter. A lot of nations claim a lot more territory than matters. What really matters is exotics. If a nation claims a good exotic planet they basically rule the immediate area. Most of the good exotics are restricted to the nation their in. This is where a lot of the exorbitant costs come around. Getting the stuff if you aren't the main government gets a significant markup.

This brings us to the MTA and CFA. They're the ones getting the big money from the exotics, and how they're funding everything ultimately. Aside from the other 1st rate nations, the MTA and CFA have a stranglehold on the best stuff. This very technically means that there's another tier that they're in. MTA mechs are above 1st rate mechs. They're also not fielded frequently because they require so much money that it's more efficient to do practically anything else. Something similar goes for the CFA warships. They're capable of outright glassing planets but firing their weapons is again costly.

Which is why you won't see First Rate and the Big Two out there unless there's something big. Fielding their forces is both a statement and a serious cost. Sending them out to the boonies and having them do things requires both time and expenses. They frequently use specialized exotics that have to be replaced as well. So if a First Rate mech gets damaged enough out in the Rim, it actually needs stuff from the center of the galaxy to be repaired. And they will get damaged. The disparity between a 1st and 3rd rate is enormous, but the Golden BB rule still applies. One good hit from a 3rd rate can damage a 1st rate. Hell, just running the mech is frequently enough to need some maintenance. Like our military planes and the like, mechs require work done after every time they sortie. It's not much if they aren't in combat, but it adds up.

Another thing, on paper the 1st rate states and Big 2 are fairly big and united. This is patently untrue. They have factions and infighting. Some if it is pretty vicious. The MTA and CFA manage to rule because they're relatively united and aren't being pushed. The second something seriously forces them to stress themselves, fracture points are going to form. The many years of relative peace have caused everyone to ossify and form internal factions.

Finally, there's this big thing about 1st rates being really big and really impossible for a 3rd rate to beat. The thing of it is, the 1st rates are significantly outnumbered by the rest of humanity. That big 10,000 number? That's peanuts. It's one big nation with a lot of resources surrounded by a lot more small fries. If they ever got together then the numbers would tell.

Of course a lot of people know that, so it's in the best interest of the guys up top that people stay fractured. Which admittedly isn't hard to arrange. They just have to be relatively hands off and let human nature do the work for the most part. Most people are content with the status quo or are too busy settling generational grudges. Frankly, even peaceful states are fine because in a few generations some dipstick decides to stir the pot somehow. Planets are still big to people after all. If you have say, like 3 planets with 1 billion people, you're going to get some sort of conflict.

-On designers and pilots -

One thing that really separates the levels of states is the fact that the upper level states make it a point to brain drain the lower level states. Journeymen are encouraged heavily to migrate up. Not all of them do, but the most ambitious certainly will. Something similar goes for pilots. Experts who want to advance will frequently take a sort of contract of sorts. They move up to the next level and can return if there's something needed from their home.

The lower level states naturally take steps to mitigate that, but the almighty $$ tells here.

There is a small equalizing factor though. Since it's cheaper to go to war, the 3rd rate states do so far more often than higher levels. This means they get better experts and more Journeyman. Their experts frequently stall out at expert, but they're outright better all round, and their Journeymen Designers have cut their teeth on actual competition instead of curated contests. This has significant meaning.

This is a sort of open secret that most people in the know don't advertise, and is actually a source of considerable worry by some people. Functionally it's a working system. Practically it builds resentment.

 

[lost star]

"I had expected more trouble." Bolt observed once he'd settled back in on Blubbles' ship and they began to leave MTA's territory.

"Being polite and willing to work within the system tends to keep the obvious trouble away. With you officially registered I can handle most of your MTA contact now, which will keep the less obvious problems away as well because most reports will route through me." The senior said as she brought up a familiar looking hologram. "Now I get you home and you can pretend you're a nice normal Journeyman."

"Why am I detectin' some sarcasm there?" The young man asked with a half frown.

Bubbles batted her eyes. "I have no idea what you mean. I'm more focused on the funsies! We're going over Morning Star. Once we're done we can order the appropriate materials and get it done right when we arrive. That will conclude the last part of official business."

There were a lot of questions he wanted to ask about what had happened. There were far too many things that were going over his head politically. At the same time Bolt figured that there was precious little he could do about it. All he could do was address what was in front of him.

Morning Star did need a rather large touchup admittedly. His inspired design for her had resulted in issues in more than a few places. The largest one was that according to the techs back home, fixing her was an absolute nightmare. The wings and armor required some revised documentation and designs to make them less of a pain. If they weren't, she'd be something close to a Hangar Queen, and no one wanted that. (Except maybe Morning Star.)

Fortunately addressing that shouldn't be that difficult, just time consuming. It might not even be necessary to get to it immediately. They were going over the entire design right now so things were going to change. Starting with the largest performance issue that had been found.

"Need ta revise the weapon system completely." The designer started with a sigh. "That's a failure."

"Don't be too hard on yourself. You're not used to what an expert mech needs for offence. It's really common when you get into exotic weapon configurations." Bubbles consoled. "My suggestion is that we remove some armor on the gauntlets and add some specialized capacitors. They'll store the electricity and give more burst to the entire system. Also, we're adding spare daggers. That part I heavily advise."

Bolt agreed and made the notes on their planned revisions. "We can store them on the inner part of the wings. There's six on each gauntlet because that was the best balance of number and force. The base charge can only throw so many without degradation in some area. I thought the Gluttony system could handle rearming, but it's too slow when you need daggers now."

"Ammo is something you have to account for on all mechs to be fair. We don't want to overcompensate and add too much either." Bubbles sketched a few quick changes before moving on and highlighting a few areas. "I'm going to show you what a Senior can do by touching up the Envy and Sloth systems. I'd like more information on Greed before I start though. I see the physical parts in the feet, but mechanically they shouldn't work." The senior said while flipping through the blueprint layers.

"Shit." Bolt muttered and frowned at the hologram. "You have my old notes?"

"Some. Your naming sense is horrid by the way." Bubbles brought up a series of files.

"I want to dispute that." The designer shot back with a fake scowl. "I can't use the word spiritual on this, so let's call this the psionic layer of the mech." He switched to a layer of the blueprint just showing the outline. "Actually, let me try something. Could I get a pair of glasses? As basic as you can, and just clear glass."

A few seconds later a rather cute and pink pair of glasses appeared next to Bolt. The young man sighed at the design and held them in his hands. Bubbles already knew about this, so the MTA likely had an entire report on him, so there wasn't a point in hiding this ability. It was extremely taxing and hard to do without tools or supplies though.

"Oww." Bolt winced at the flash of pain when he was finished. He'd gotten close to straining himself again. "Put that on and look at the blueprint."

With bemusement the woman did and then her eyebrows raised. She pulled the glasses down and then pulled them up again. She did that several times while Bolt closed his eyes and let the headache fade.

"Interesting." The senior said.

"That, based on my guessing, is the psionic layer of a mech that is applied when the mech is built. Those glasses also just show things based on your interpretation, so I'm not sure how useful it is to show you this. I actually found that feeling mattered more than sight to me. I'm showing you because it gives us a base to work with." Bolt explained.

With a nod the senior turned to Bolt and paused before lowering the glasses again. "It confirms psionic presence in the design, but the need to interpret things hinders it's use so I agree it's not extremely helpful. By the way, you have a refinery in your head."

Bolt chuckled. "Yeah, that tracks. Lilly saw an ouroboros. Like I said, personal views matter a lot I think. So, let me try something." He began to write out things on the blueprint. "I'm going ta have to use my own notation. Spirit, er psionic constructs work in ideas rather than physical parts. You can make a lever, but it would be the idea of a lever. That's important because I did seven sins and called the mech Morning Star. That resonates with a human idea to create a unified form and aligns the concepts together in a unified theme that is greater than the sum of it's parts."

"We're going to have to workshop at lot of the terminology, but..." Senior Bubbles stared at the blueprint through the glasses again. "I'm actually seeing something different now. Intriguing."

They eventually had to start creating their own terms and calculations. This actually wasn't that unusual. Many Journeymen and Senior designers had to do that to estimate and simulate the functions of their more unique works. Bubbles ended up leading Bolt through the process and he picked it up quickly, even if spirituality tended to be a bit fuzzy around the edges. Since it worked a lot more off ideas and concepts rather than direct one to one functions, it could waver a lot. Some of it could probably still be calculated. They just needed tools that Bolt couldn't provide at the moment. This again was something most designers eventually got into. Seniors and above could spend years just measuring various outputs of their own designs.

"This is something you're going need to address in your how-to guide. It does allow me to work with the Greed system though." Bubbles said when they had something workable. "Do you want the glasses back?"

"They're something I make in a few minutes even if it gives me a headache. If you think they'd be useful take them." Bolt waved it off. It had taken a few minutes and time.

"We'll see. I need to experiment more with them to see what use they are." The senior said with a shrug. "But that will be later. Right now, I'm going to make your Envy system more efficient, make Sloth significantly better, and tidy up the Wrath. Then I'll add the resonant materials to the gauntlets to give it a lot more omph. After all of that we can work on Greed on the physical side so it can't potentially fry the internals if you pull too much."

"Yes we do need more omph." Bolt said with a very serious nod of his own that made Bubbles roll her eyes.

Jokes aside, the resonant material choice was actually pretty obvious. Something that generated more electricity. This had an added benefit of being a relatively common exotic. With combined with the tweaks they made, Morning Star had no real upper limit to how much power she could channel through her offensive systems. Lilly could now store electricity for a surprise shot, use it immediately, or discharge it at close range and electrocute someone.

Bolt had to admit it was a treat watching the Senior work. Bubbles looked like the sort of trophy wife that was hanging off an important person's arm. Her mind and ability made that appearance a complete lie. It also showed him what it was like to see a compatible specialty reinforce your idea. Her specialty was almost tailor made to work with Morning Star.

The changes she made were not significant structurally. The armor alloy was shifted, the lines changed, and the segments adjusted. It reduced the cost slightly, increased the effectiveness, and made how it distributed power better. Sloth would activate smoother and work longer. Wrath shot the daggers faster as a base, and could scale indefinitely. There were a lot of small changes like that.

You didn't need to do significant changes to really improve a mech. Bubbles was a trained MTA Senior. They were the top of the line. All her small changes boosted the entire mech's performance by a good ten percent. Not in one factor. All areas. Morning Star had already been a monster defensively. Bolt really didn't think there was a match for her now.

They were even able to adapt her for Space Combat too, which was a thing that Bolt had been dreading trying to learn on his own. He had no experience there, and it was enlightening to see what was needed. You didn't just need to seal the cockpit. You needed to have the entire mech insulated from a half dozen things. Frankly had the mech not been an expert mech it wouldn't have been possible.

If there was a serious flaw it was that Morning Star was Bolt's most expensive mech to date. Any damage to the armor would be pricy, and the wings would be hell on a pocket book. (They were easier to fix now at least.) She as close to Second Rate a Third Mech could be in form and function though. This made her unmatched in her niche and very dangerous outside it.

About the only problem they ran into in their improvements was trying to define a lot of the Greed system. Bolt would have to have extensive testing done later to verify a lot of numbers. That was the peril of using creating an entirely new system. You had to spend days gathering data about its capabilities.

 

[lost star]

Travel time could get very strange when you added FTL to the equation. Lilly was encountering that first hand. She'd barely been back home more than a few days before Bolt came back home himself. Though his way of returning was far more spectacular than hers. He teleported into the main entrance area with a flash of light. MTA ships had some pretty special ways of transportation when they wanted to show off.

That didn't stop her from lunging at him and giving him a big hug. "Bolt! I missed you!" She said and gave him a kiss.

"Missed you too." The young man replied while supporting her. "Looks like we survived again."

"Yep." Lilly held herself against her husband a bit to check everything and then let herself drop. Then she turned to the other person that had come along with the teleportation.

The woman was pink. Not the worst color. Just an unusual one to be so dedicated to. She was dressed in a pink dress that looked practically painted on, and was pulling on a pair of pink gloves. Once she was finished she tied back her pink hair and gave Lilly a small wink.

"Like hi!" The woman waved. "Senior Bubbles with the MTA here. I'm going to need to do some work on Morning Star. Alone. Do we have the hangar cleared?" She asked.

"First thing we did when we got the message." Lilly confirmed and did a small bounce to get close to the woman. "Bolt, honey? Mind making doubly sure? Also, go say hi to the parents. They were worried."

"On it." The designer said and strolled out without a thought of why she was asking.

Bubbles grinned at Lilly. "Something up?"

"Yer after my hubby." The expert pointed out with a glare once the man was out of the room. "Don't deny it. I can tell."

The senior designer gave a shrug at the accusation, not at all distressed. "And if so?" She asked with a raised eyebrow. "You can't really stop me if I wanted to do something."

Lilly really wished she was taller. Right now she was at boob height, and that was not easy to deal with when you wanted to menace things. She took a deep breath to focus herself and then paused. Her head tilted.

"Are all designers so emotionally flat?" She couldn't help but ask. This was the first time she'd been around one since she'd ascended and everything felt off slightly when she tried to read the woman. "Sorry, but I was gonna do something to threaten ya, but now that I'm focusing, you don't really seem to care at all?"

Bubbles blinked several times and the emotions bled from her face as she changed her stance and behavior. "That's oddly insightful." She stated neutrally.

"Ya not gonna answer the question?" Lilly asked as she stepped back to get a better look at the Senior.

Now that she'd discovered it, she could see still further. Everything about the woman was, well fake wasn't the right word. She wasn't lying. It wasn't a mask either. It was like clothing. She'd put on some behavior to influence people. Behind it all was calculation and numbers.

"What have your heard about the rational paradigm?" Bubbles gave her own question.

"That the funny thing designers do where they're trying to be all rational and stuff? Bolt talked about it a bit. Said it was pretty stupid." The small girl declared with a nod. So far as she was concerned it was really.

The words made Bubbles almost laugh. "Something like that. It's the prevailing thought through the MTA. You have to divorce yourself from emotion. It started as a way to keep your output consistent. You can design in bad days, when you hate the client, or when something about the design disagrees with you. All MTA designers are trained in it." The designer shrugged as she explained. "It's considered the best way. We even have something called logic speak that we use in higher ranks."

"Seems a lot like you neutered your head." Lilly observed as she eyed the woman's body language.

"It can be like that. Don't even get me started on some people's insistence on the speech thing. It's all single words where you have to interpret the rest, and it ends up causing issues if you don't actually know the other speaker." Bubbles shook her head. "It's worse because I'm a natural at it. I come from a place a few sectors away and spent most of my early years training to be a... Well culturally it's a high priestess position. You'd probably think of it as something else." She tilted her hips and did a deliberate come-hither motion that implied more than a few things. "It requires significant emotional detachment, and you wouldn't believe how much I laughed when I noticed the similarities."

The expert pilot had no idea what to think about that. Had she not been able to pilot she probably would have been in a similar position. Attractive women on the planet had some rather specific methos of advancement and survival so she didn't look down on the woman for the admission. Why was she giving it out though?

"So you don't feel a lot cause you were raised to discard it all. Why are you after Bolt if you don't really care?" The young woman got the conversation back on track rather than contemplate things still further.

"He's compatible design wise. That's your typical reason for designer marriages. We could likely help each other advance significantly. You don't really have to worry though. He completely missed all my signals." Bubbles informed the other woman with a slightly tired expression on her face. "I don't think he even stared once, and I do take pride in being decent eye-candy."

"The boy tends to get really focused and getting any attention takes a sledgehammer and a rope." Lilly agreed with a nod and moved back to the original point. "Also, yer not getting him."

"I didn't plan on anything immediate anyway. You are a pilot. I can wait. Your life is risky." Bubbles replied bluntly. "I expect in ten years or so you'll have died and I'll be able to move in." She finished with an indifferent look on her face.

Oh, that was completely different. It was even a small custom with the Rats. There wasn't a name for it, but when death was common you had to make plans for it. Several things snapped into place and Lilly made an immediate decision.

"Perfectly fine then." Lilly chirped and bounced up to the side of the designer. "So, let me show you my mech. You need to make her better right?"

"You're ok with what I just said?" Bubbles seemed a bit surprised at the sudden change in attitude.

Grabbing an arm Lilly nodded. "Ain't like I'll be around then. Go fer it. It'll probably keep him from creating a giant murder machine made of even more murder than normal." She informed the other woman.

That got a small chuckle from the senior and the two began to chat about a few other things while they walked. Lilly couldn't say she liked the MTA representative, but she also couldn't say she hated the other woman either. They could probably be friends at some point. This all assumed that they'd interact with each other more.

As someone associated with the MTA, Bubbles actually had to keep people at an arms length. They could speak, they could interact, but anything that could compromise her behavior was considered a problem. This meant very technically no friendships with non MTA members at all. All communications had to be business only. It was one of those rules that were on the books but never enforced. It would get a few side eyes if Bubbles stuck around all the time but no one would say anything.

She didn't plan on it. According to her, once she was done with Morning Star she had a half dozen personal experiments to work with. So the woman would be in contact, but pretty far away. Lilly was actually a bit grateful for that even if she wasn't feeling threatened. It would keep things from getting messy, which was likely the point of it. Bubbles had admitted that she was trained to seduce and likely manage people. This meant she knew how to deal with jealous wives.

Oddly, Lilly couldn't find it in herself to be angry at the other woman for the blatant manipulation. She was being very obvious about it and not lying. Which was again another bit of manipulation. Lilly was quite sure the MTA had a big profile on her and her likes and dislikes.

Really it was amusing more than anything else. Sort of like a friendly bit of combat in a social arena. Also she hadn't been kidding about Bolt making an extra murdery murder machine if she died. It was probably best to have plans for that, just in case. Lilly didn't plan on dying. She was not going to discount the possibility.

 

[lost star]

It was only once Bubbles left that Bolt finally internally let himself acknowledge that they'd done good. They'd done better than good. He could literally do nothing else and he was set for life. His family was as safe as they could be. He was getting a steady income. Even the planet was starting to recover a bit. No one was interesting in attacking the place. He could rest if he wanted to.

He didn't.

It went without saying that Bolt was already moving again. Several days after he returned he began to go over his backlog of work. It was extensive. He needed to make new mechs, review all the information he'd gotten in his looting, refine all his old mechs, do a thousand an one experiments, and so on. Bolt could spend years working on just what he had at the moment, and he might.

"Yer bounty on that Ves guy came though." Bolt's father interrupted him while he was organizing most of what he'd do in the future.

It took a moment for him to place what the man was referring to. Bolt had put a small bounty out for mechs made by Ves Larkinson awhile ago. He hadn't expected much really. The other designer was on the other side of the Vesia kingdom, which was a considerable distance. Bolt had expected he'd have to import something at considerable expense at some point if he wanted to follow up on everything. That they had the mechs now was pretty good fortune.

With a grin Bolt thanked his father and made his way to the storage where the mechs had been placed. The bounty had been for mechs ruined or otherwise. It had not been a big one so he hadn't expected much. In this case he got one semi-intact one, and a host of ruined ones. Apparently the merc company had wanted more mechs and his 'felt similar and fit better' for some reason.

The young man could instantly tell one of the reasons for it. The intact mech was another strange one. Titled the Aurora Titan, it was a space mech with a medium configuration. It was a pretty mech with a lot of armor and a fairly robust design.

That was the only good thing about it. What did you call a mech that had been designed well but the design didn't work in reality? Bolt could only call it a failure in his head. The speed was anemic, the firepower was pathetic, and it's defenses were specifically designed to handle energy weapons at the cost of other types of damage. The only thing the mech was good at was holding a defensive position. Frankly had it not had some sort of invisible reinforcement and backing Bolt would call it a worthless waste of money. A defensive space mech with these problems was target practice.

It's aura was what made it interesting and theoretically useful. It felt like a giant beast when it rested. Bolt could almost imagine something massive breathing right in front of him as he examined the thing visually. There was nothing else like it in the world.

"Why hello there." Bolt muttered to it as he rested a hand against its armor and closed his eyes.

Last time he'd encountered a mech like this had been with the Crystal Lord. That time he'd had only a feeling and instinct. Here the aura was more vibrant and powerful. He also had some experience with spiritual matters. He could knew where to start, and immediately did so.

Admittedly he didn't expect to find himself in a black void once he tried to properly connect so to speak. It was quite unusual. Doubly so because he could feel his real body in reality. He was projecting his consciousness somehow? The thought was novel enough that he almost missed the very large beast in front of him.

'Curiosity.' The thing sent at him once it noticed him. The thought was accompanied by the vague sense of 'unexpected visitor' too.

"Umm, hello?" Bolt tried to send back very carefully as his mind raced.

The reply was a sense of amusement, like that of listening to a child's attempts at conversation.

"Of course I can't do it as well as you can. This is completely unexpected! I was just trying to examine things and connect- Wait, did he just attach something to an unsecured connection on a mech?!" Bolt tried to turn around and look at where he'd come from. "Is he a moron or just that confident no one could follow his work?!"

The amusement doubled, and Bolt was reminded that he was next to a spirit that could possibly hurt him, or something else equally dangerous. He was in a completely alien environment. He also had so many questions.

"Questions for later." The designer took a deep breath, for whatever that was worth in her and straightened himself. "Sorry, let me try again. Hello, my name is Bolt Silica. I'm a designer sort of like Ves." He gave his introduction.

That got an approving sensation accompanied by something like a head pat. Then a few flashes of questions that he couldn't really parse immediately.

"Yes, I make mechs sort of like Ves." Bolt said. "Though I don't do whatever this is." He frowned as several conclusions came to him. "Does he link mechs to things like you? Interesting method." And one that he'd had no idea was even possible.

It was both novel and a bit disappointing. Did Ves just make something like the thing in front of him and attach it to the mech? Did he completely neglect the mechanical side of the equation? Sure it worked, but it felt like it lacked nuance.

A prod made Bolt realize he was stuck in thought and he sent an apology to the beast in front of him.

"Sorry, I was thinking about the entire process." Bolt examined the creature and then the link with careful eyes. "You're really spectacular by the way. I really didn't expect this while examining the mech. I thought he doing more spiritual architecture. Instead he's linking mechs to something like a spirit? You're the source of the aura and the other effects I assume. Does that cost you energy?"

The beast sent back an affirmative and then sent back a very complicated series of thoughts. Parsing it made him furrow his eyebrows. It took the thing swirling some energy between them before he got the idea.

"Ah, you get something out of it if pilots use the mechs." Bolt concluded. "Hmm."

Now that he was hearing about this, it felt almost like this was actually contradictory to how he did his work. Their styles felt completely incompatible for some reason. Bolt had been edging into using the sprit to reinforce the mechanical. This Ves had just added spirit and was using that over the mechanical. It barely even felt like mech design. Actually, wait, it was like a weapon specialist. Was Ves a spirit specialist?

"I'm sorry, I'm trailing off into thought too much here." Bolt told his conversation partner. "I have things to think about, but is there something I could do for you? You answered my question and I feel like I've just barged in and done my own thing."

The reply was another sense of amusement and then something like an offer.

"Ah. Again, I don't make mechs like Ves. I'd also feel like I'm plagiarizing something if I make a mech connected to you." Bolt explained with a small wince at the thought. "It's an ethical thing, and I try to have clear lines."

If made a mech linked to this beast, it'd be very much like stealing his work. Bolt had no idea how Ves had made this spirit. It was probably a core component to how the other designer was developing himself. Sure he hadn't added security, but that was probably because very few people looked into spiritual work in the first place! Bolt had wanted clues. He wasn't going to plagiarize.

"How'd you like a substitute though?" Bolt asked. "I'd love to talk with you more when I have time and I should be able to setup more connections. I think my wife would like to speak with you too."

With a snort the beast almost gestured to the very black area around her. Bolt could understand. When you had nothing but void, anything was better. He gave it an transmission of agreement and then stopped focusing.

Not even a second later he was back in his body. That had been a bizarre encounter. He had to say it was informative. A quick check of the other mechs and he could see traces of the same connection. Ves had done something completely different with his mechs. Bolt couldn't say it was better or worse at the moment. Such a strange designing strategy. It had it's strengths, but he could see some clear weaknesses too. He was probably being a bit harsh though. Ves was likely still feeling out his designs, just like him.

He could say that the whole 'living mech' ethos had resulted in some fairly spiritually charged mechs after examining the other mechs he'd gotten. He'd have to scrap them and see how that was retained, but he might have stumbled on something related to his own specialty. Salvaging the spirits of dead mechs felt like an interesting avenue to pursue! It would also solve some of his thoughts about sustainability.

He was going to be sure there wasn't any thought there before he did that of course. He wasn't going to grind up some living being by accident. Ick. Worst case there he'd be able to test his Heart system. And actually, it could theoretically be used to gather spiritual power too couldn't it? Something to think about once he started to see more spiritually statured mechs.

Before he got deeper into that, Bolt cut out a part of the Aurora Titan's armor and did some quick shaping of it. Soon he had a small replica of the mech that he could carry in one hand. He then focused and held one hand to the Titan and the replica. Once he was finished he had a little copy of the connection. The little figure even felt like a tiny beast!

The spirit connected felt just as amused as he did. Bolt chuckled a bit, then turned to find Lilly. So far he did find the spirit very agreeable and personable, but he was not going to trust it at its word. His wife was far better at figuring out people. She could determine how friendly the thing actually was.

He also wanted to make copies of all his mechs like this. It was actually pretty neat. He'd make a little shelf and put them all on there.