What's Junk? (The Mech Touch)

[lost star]

"Ya know, I didn't expect you to be quite so... Enthusiastic about this." Bolt observed as the woman practically bounced on her heels in front of him.

He'd just sent out the designs for the new Friday mech and really hadn't expected the girl to rush to the design room after he'd indicated he was free. Admittedly he hadn't known what her reaction was going to be really. Lilly had cleared Sami for some simple stuff, but this was the first time he'd actually spoken with her.

"Listen, short of being apprenticed to a Master, you're the next best thing. Maybe Ves too, but I'd rather stay very far away from Gloria." Sami said with another eager bounce. "Also, mechs! I haven't done anything with them in forever!"

"Fine fine." Bolt waved the girl into the design room and took a seat on one of the front desks. "You just graduated from some Hexxer college right?"

"Only the finest in educational standards, complete with mandatory training on behavior an how to treat boys." The woman confirmed as she took her own place. "I'm quite the disappointment due to not breaking through soon after graduation."

"That's a bit confusing." Bolt replied with an upraised eyebrow. "Lemmie see yer mechs." He brought up the search and engine and paused at the results. "Ah, did you not make any?"

"It's tradition that we're apprenticed under a Senior or higher after graduation for some further polishing and guidance to Journeyman. The woman I worked with wasn't horrible, but the work was mostly in review and going over other designs." The woman said with a small frown. "I think she was mostly mad at my lack of piety in some of my work."

"Ah, the six-point latch question?" The Senior mused out loud.

Sami looked caught off guard at that statement. "You know about that one?" She asked.

"I'm familiar with most general styles in this sector and some in a neighboring one. The six point latch problem is a religious question about a physical problem. How reverence is appropriate for mech design, and how many sacrifices are you willing to make? Sometimes even using the six-sided bolts and screws can be a problem and it's a serious question about thematics that's actually relevant to almost all mech design." Bolt said before he shrugged. "I'm ultimately looking at it from the outside in, so my conclusions are different than yours. You should do what works with you. In fact..."

The man tapped at his console and then shifted permissions here and there. Sami wasn't going to have access to a lot of designs that he was using on the ship, but all his Third Rate designs were fair game after some light censoring. He also gave her access to previous designs and a full parts catalog.

"Hm?" The girl made a confused noise as she looked at her own design console.

"I want you to make a Third Rate mech. No restrictions, take the rest of the day." Bolt instructed the woman. "Doesn't matter if it's finished. Doesn't matter what it is. Just make the first thing that comes to mind."

A mix of emotions flashed across Sami's face before she frowned. "Third Rate? Isn't that kind of simple?" She asked neutrally.

"If you feel that way then it should be easy to make one." Bolt replied back with a small chuckle. "Now get going. This ain't a pass fail question, I really just need a baseline."

That seemed to clear things up for the girl and she got to work. Bolt watched her a moment before forcefully turning his attention away. There was nothing worse than watching someone do something wrong, but he needed to see her strengths and weaknesses.

In the meantime he also needed to work on the new expert mech. Fortunately Naoto didn't really need anything unique or special. An upscaled Valefar was perfectly acceptable. They'd actually upgrade and remake the one he'd ascended in. The only thing that was needed was a proper resonating material, and that was actually remarkably easy to arrange.

For once Bolt didn't need nor want to innovate. He just needed to do simple design work. It wasn't uncommon for experts to want to keep their mechs. There were plenty of documents and published studies as to what to do there that he had access to now. There were even notes on how to gently persuade the experts to change things if there were unsuitable conditions. It was mildly amusing to see a checklist of instructions that started with 'Do not call your pilot stupid.' This was for seniors by the way. Mechanical skill didn't translate to social skill.

Several hours later Bolt glanced at the time and nodded. "Ok, done."

"Huh?!" Sami startled. "Already?!"

"You're on a sane schedule now. After today it'll be four hours of general work that I need you to do, four hours of personal study or design time, and I will personally throw you out of here if you use all your personal time to do mechs." Bolt ordered very firmly. "I do not want to see you missing sleep or I'll take drastic measures."

"Yes Ma'am, er sir." The young woman responded reflexively.

"Now onto the design." Bolt brought up the mech.

Fortunately he'd expected something bad so he didn't wince. It closer than he'd like, but he kept his expression neutral. The mech in front of him was bad. Bolt had to specifically remind himself and then discretely look up what was average for an initiate before he started to really evaluate things.

His was immediately drawn to the lack of religious iconography. The woman hadn't let her religion impact the design at all, but that smacked of her trying to please him more than what she wanted. Sami did believe. She also wanted to impress him. He wasn't impressed, but that was because he wasn't sure what the average designer of her level should be at. Bolt was only able to eyeball it and judge it using other designs before he discarded the idea entirely. This was his student now, so he needed to know what was good or bad for her. How she rated towards other designers wasn't important at the moment.

The mech was a rifleman. Third Rate, with too little focus on the core function and unfinished. The former was a telltale sign of someone trained in Second or First Rate mech design. She had traces of several specialties but nothing out of the ordinary. He could probably trace her teacher's specialties but only with effort. This was a good thing. She was essentially a blank slate, which was how designers of her level should be.

Her creation was a very standard and generic design. Textbook, if you accounted for the Second Rate educational slant. There was a hint of deviation here and there, and he couldn't narrow down the causes immediately. That would have to be identified now.

"You have an implant?" Bolt asked.

"Standard one for most designers of my level." The woman responded with a hint of unease.

"Did a lotta repair?" Bolt continued.

Sami's expression indicated that she did. He didn't even need a verbal answer there. She'd done a lot of repair work, which was where that deviation came from. The woman had adjusted it based on what she thought would be easiest to repair.

"That explains what I'm seeing." Bolt closed out the design and closed his eyes as he thought how to say this. "You're at the level you should be for a newer graduate." He evaluated out loud. "Which only means we don't need remedial lessons from me." He highlighted things on the design. "Here's some small tips. Your work was solid here. This area would cause stresses if you jumped. The arms are too unstable, and you spread the design out too much for a Third Rate design. Third Rates are extremely limited in space. Otherwise this is a functional mech, which is very good for the time you had to do this in. You should be developing your personal style now, which is what your next goal will be and what I'll guide you on. What do you know about the rational passionate divide?"

"A divide?" Sami asked with confusion.

"Designers fall into one of two camps. Rational, where they do reason with design, and passionate, where they follow their emotions. The prevailing thought in the MTA is rational design. I've found they both have strengths and weaknesses. Right now thanks ta yer implant and teaching you're doing things rationally. It results in very standard and consistent designs." The senior explained quietly. "Mechs like that only succeed based off your technical skill. Passionate mechs are inconsistent but can produce innovative and unusual effects."

"I got flat Bs for all my technical classes." The Hexxer woman noted with narrowed eyes.

"You can brush up on technical skill. I can help with that if you want." Bolt said and settled back in his chair. "My master is pure rational." He didn't say who the master was, but the Assembler had practically founded the rational school of thought and had explained the core of it in his lessons. "With enough work and familiarity with other designers rational designers can mimic other designer specialties. They can innovate too, but it's iterative and slow buildup. That's the strength of it, it's consistent, predictable, and relatively controllable."

Bolt's ability to mimic other designers was very different in that regard, but that wasn't a topic for this lesson. This was general attitudes and the basis for future mech designing. Sami had the base, it was time to build on it.

Sami didn't seem to want to hear it the differences based on her mulish look. "It sounds boring though. I've done enough boring, and enough controllable. How'd I become an passionate designer?" She asked.

"I give you an account in Iron Spirit in a Third Rate ecosystem. You'll have full access ta all my part licenses in there. Design mechs that are fun for you." Bolt explained with a small grin at the face she made. "If you make a mech that was both fun to make and successful then you're on the path. My suggestion is to find a mech or two and adjust them first, then make your own when you feel confident."

"That's it?" The young woman asked incredulously.

"You already have the technical skill as a base." Bolt tapped at the design again. "What I explained is the next step. Becoming a Journeyman is defining yourself and your style. How you think, what you specialize in, and if you feel like you can do this the rest of your life. It ain't for everyone."

Sami stared at him. "You are encouraging me to drop out?"

"I'm saying you need to understand it's an option." Bolt shut down the designer station and stood up. "You are not slaved to being a designer. I don't want that. If yer learning from me I want commitment."

The woman gave a small laugh at his wording. "Sure, commitment." Another small laugh came from her before she nodded. "Give me that account. I'll do it."

Bolt didn't see any serious ambition there at the moment, but that was fine. There was enough of a spark to work with there. The rest was going to be on the girl.

 

[lost star]

As much as she disliked to say it, the carrier she'd inherited from her estate was useful. The thing was capable of holding enough mechs to be useful, fast enough to avoid most problems, and durable enough to handle any problems that did catch it. That was without the tuneups Gadget had done. It was in essence perfect for their goals, if you discounted the cost of maintaining it. As a high quality carrier that did everything it was on the upper end of expensive for a ship. Most of their profit from the job was being spent on that and supplies for the mechs. Really the upkeep of all of it was such if they were just restricted to their salvage income they would have almost no profit at all. You got what you paid for in this instance, and they paid a lot.

Fortunately Bolt pulled in enough independent income that the could likely maintain several ships like the carrier if they needed. Military contracts could be extremely profitable, and Bolt had gotten two sweetheart deals by this point. This meant that the only real issue they had was in maintaining their operating was keeping their secrecy when gathering supplies. If no one knew where they were in the void before they hit a place, predicting where they would strike next was extremely hard.

Lilly tried to be careful while she helped arrange the supply runs. Her contacts with the space-born clans had continued to grow, and they weren't afraid to route her the required supplies for a small fee. That meant they'd have to supply in what amounted to dead zones in space, but that was more a bonus than a problem. The carrier had plenty of ways to keep people entertained and the wide open void gave them the perfect viewpoint to avoid ambushes. It also meant she could pay a bit more for news and the like, though the results from that were always going to be mostly rumor and heresy.

"All Hail the Arch Heretic!" The man said on the short range radio as the shuttle approached.

"Why do I get the feeling that asking you to look into things was a mistake." Lilly muttered back.

"Why miss blasphemer, I could never guess." The reply came with a chuckle before the man continued. "But yes, the Hexxers are squawking about you, and have issued a bounty. They also refer to your husband as the Arch Heretic, the Corpse Thief, the Blasphemer, the Defiler, and any other name they think could stick. Really the amount of curses going your way would make me blush if I had any shame at all. I think the last tale was him laying on a mountain of bodies with you chained up on a throne."

Lilly genuinely wanted to cry about that. "Oh god." Neither she nor her husband had wanted fame and now she had the worst possible images stuck in her head thanks to her talks with Sami. "All right, so I regret even asking now."

"If it helps, even the witches don't really believe most of it. The propaganda peddlers are really just throwing things out there. They don't like that you got something that rivals what they consider holy mechs. Gotta say I like the look of the Ice Maidens. They're one of the most cinematic mechs I've seen in ages." The man paused. "Are yours different? Cause I saw the versions they're rolling out and they aren't nearly as good as yours."

"The Hoarfrost model is internal. The Yuki-Onna are what the Friday field. There was a bit of a problem with the exotics when sourcing them." Lilly explained.

"Does explain the order and price changes then." The shuttle docked with the carrier at that point. "We've got another load by the way."

"No rush." Lilly replied and kept Dowry at an active scan.

Trust but verify and all that. Dowry wasn't the best in space, but her scanning was good enough to pick up anything reactive. Plus it was easier to deploy when you were already out there and all that.

"Friday news is a bit different. There's still a large hate towards Ves, but with the victories and your stuff it's dying down a lot. Your group's considered some flashy maverick that has been running around doing random prison breaks like a modern day superhero. You'd be the talk of the town if the internal salty conflicts weren't sucking up airtime." The man said after a few beats of silence while his shuttle was unloaded.

"Venerable Lilly, two bugs, three instances of skimming, and two improper orders." A man on another channel informed her.

Lilly nodded. "Isolate the bugs. We have to assume we missed a few, so you know the drill." She ordered.

"Into the melter!" Her subordinate said with a laugh.

Some bugs and sabotage could get really tricky. The easiest way of dealing with all of that was just processing it all immediately. Only First Rate stuff could avoid destruction after that, and if that was being used they were screwed anyway. (Bolt did have a few discrete ways of checking, but they didn't want that known.)

"Got a few misfiled supplies." Lilly forwarded the records of two of the skimming attempts and all the mislabeled orders. Had to both keep them guessing and get the proper materials they needed. Letting one skimming go through would make them uncertain as to what they were catching.

"Blasted packagers always try to stiff us. Don't worry, I can get that solved." The supplier didn't miss a beat blaming someone else. "I'll get that on the next trip. Any last minute requests?"

"I'd rather not pay the extra surcharge for that." The woman said with half a smile. "So trouble in Friday paradise?"

"They like to dress it up, but there's about five separate factions with different ideas in the Coalition. It's probably going to be one less soon, especially if you get that disinheritance done. When the last heir is gone the people using that faction as a sock puppet are going to have to find another front." The shuttle pulled away and moved back to the visiting ship as the man explained. "That plus how things went will really shake things up. Anyone not the Guagers were getting hosed until your husband's mechs came around. Now that they're not drowning they have questions about certain behaviors and it's loud enough that I'm hearing it. Only the fact that the Hexxers are insane is keeping things together, and even that won't last forever."

"Ah." Lilly breathed out. "Lovely."

"Ain't that the truth. This is why we live in space. Sure you get issues in some areas, but if you don't like your neighbors you up and leave." The man chuckled. "Be right back. Next load should finish up the order."

Lilly made the mic click and settled back in her cockpit chair to think. It would figure that winning wasn't going to make things easier. They didn't want to pull back either. The Hexxers were going to start losing soon, and desperate people did very stupid things. Threading the needle here was going to be difficult.

"So that's general news." The man said as he docked in the supply station several minutes away. "More local news is a bit mixed and more specific. Not sure if you care much about it. Biggest thing is actually people wondering what mech your husband does next and what heroics you're going to do."

"Can't say anything about either really." Lilly responded with a small chuckle.

"Don't expect you too, but if you take requests, we'd love to see a space mech. I'd even chip in for something myself." The supplier said.

"I'll relay that. Knowing him he'll take it as a challenge."

"Hah! If he does something good I'll get you a discount of one percent!"

"Stinnngy!"

 

[lost star]

To his mild bemusement, Bolt was actually caught up, relatively. He still had that work with that master in the near future, but he had no real large projects now. It was probably time to start planning his next mech.

Before then he checked up on Sami. The girl had not designed any original mechs yet. This wasn't a ding on her. Bolt had been rather bizarre in his designing development. The first real project most young designers did on their own was altering another person's design. That was what Sami had done and was doing. She'd taken the Zombie and made a few variations. None were released yet. The changes were mostly just altering the head and appearance, and in one case giving it a witch hat that also detached and exploded. She was exploring her boundaries and creativity. It was a good first step.

It would still probably be appropriate to speak with her before he got caught up in work though, so he took a small walk to her workstation. There the girl was going through a lot of the backlogged tickets for the Third Rate models. She was actually doing a very good job based on the rate she was flipping through them.

"Hello, ma-er sir." The woman nervously greeted as he entered.

Bolt didn't roll his eyes, but it came close. She'd relax over time. "Having trouble with the work at all?"

"No, I did this when I was at the facility and working for the senior. There's always some sort of question or problem. Third Rate isn't much different." Sami said with a small shrug. "Implant does a lot of the work truthfully."

"Good to know. I let it get too backed up far too often." The senior admitted with a small chuckle. "But I thought I'd talk with you about your personal work. Having fun with it?"

Sami frowned and closed out of a few things on the station. "I've been trying? I don't think I get it truthfully."

"Take your enthusiasm with mechs and go with that. You don't have ta go with my old models." Bolt advised. "Make something wacky."

"I suppose. I was hoping to get an idea of what... Umm. Is it appropriate to even ask? I wanted to know how you do the glow thing." Sami asked while lowering her head and looking away with a wince.

"While I don't mind giving you hints, I think we should talk a bit about how teaching should work for you." Bolt turned around and got a chair to sit down. "Right now you're actually at a really delicate time. Higher level designers are meant ta teach, but we're also supposed to help you develop your own style. I can give you parts of my style to develop, you can use my style to influence yours, you can go on your own path, or you can even attempt to mimic me. How you want to develop will tell me how we should move forward with Glows."

It was an actually extremely complicated and delicate topic actually. Bolt had been given a lot of literature to review for this with his ascension to Senior. The most key thing was to develop the student, not forcefully put your own specialty on them. Trying to suppress a nascent style was the equivalent of shouting until the student went silent. Deliberately overriding someone's emerging specialty was the equivalent of taking a young mind and brainwashing them to your point of view. None of it was illegal, but it was actually fairly offensive to most masters and Star Designers. Bolt had no intention of doing that, and he didn't want to unintentionally do it either.

"I'm guessing you don't want the latter?" Sami asked with a hint of curiosity. "It's not restricted either?"

"What I do is something that I will have ta teach at some point. If you can learn it and do it better that's good. But the last option is typically when you have someone who's dying and wants to pass on their style. Ya want that anyway?" Bolt asked back.

That got the woman to laugh softly. "No thanks. I don't want to be the heir to the archdemon. By the way, the collars on the maids are not helping the sex-slave rumors."

Bolt sighed with sudden weariness. "That's on them. But onto what ya want. Based on your thoughts, you want to specialize in Glows?"

"Yes!" Sami nodded with a hint of eagerness. "The stuff you do is like magic! Ves is all channeling the Mother, and that's nice and all, but really not my thing."

"Heard that before. You want magic?" Bolt smiled slightly at the hidden enthusiasm. "Ain't easy to do. Really don't got a best way to teach you either." He was still working on that book after all.

Actually now that he was a Senior he could technically publish it now according to Bubbles, but that felt like a bad idea. Instead his current plans were to have it accompany the Heart System when it was released. This would really make things better. He could use Sami to really get the kinks worked out.

"You can't teach it?" The woman looked very disappointed.

"I can, it's just that it requires trying several different methods and some strange steps." Bolt gave the girl a pat on the shoulder. "Get up and we'll try the first one."

Bolt had probably underestimated the enthusiasm his student had here. She really wanted to learn this, and it didn't seem like the sort of 'enemy action' thing. It was more she was genuinely enthusiastic about it. Which actually boded well.

Though now that he was thinking about it, he needed to change the lesson plan. His first thought was to get her used to sensing spiritual power, but was that really the best path? Did she needed to sense spiritual power to do something with it? More importantly, did he want to risk her enthusiasm by rolling the dice on sensing? Everyone had different degrees of natural sense and it was very possible that she wouldn't feel it.

Letting none of it show on his face, Bolt shifted his plans immediately. They made their way to Bolt's sort of personal work-room. It had a small fabricator, a few Heart Crystals and was frankly a mess of wires and metal parts. It wasn't a place he'd normally take a student. Sami immediately wrinkled her nose at it before she smoothed her expression out. (No one's personal work-room was tidy, just various degrees of messy that made sense to them.)

"Have a seat." Bolt gestured to a chair and grabbed a Heart Crystal before setting it down in front of her. "You probably recognize this."

"Yeah." Sami nodded. "You put it in all your mechs."

"So, what I'm going to do is this." Bolt set the crystal into a holder and started up the connected computer. "Now I have the data to show something the unseen energy that sort of powers Glows. I call it spiritual power, but the MTA would probably call it psionic power. You could even call it magical power if you want. The name doesn't matter so much as what it does and there's no real official name for this stuff yet."

Bolt added two small metal rods to it and shifted the spiritual power from one side to another. On screen the numbers shifted. It was a relatively easy mental exercise, but it still caused a bit of strain.

"All you have ta do is focus and move it. Very specifically mentally." Bolt ordered.

Sami grabbed at a rod and narrowed her eyes. The computer showed no movement. The pout was rather expected.

"It'll take a bit. It requires mental focus and either emotion or will. Once ya get it down it will be easier, but there's going to be a strain." The senior explained. "If ya get a headache stop immediately. That means your exerting yourself, and pushing through it will result in nosebleeds, bleeding from the eyes, and probably worse." He'd never pushed that hard so he didn't know what the next step was.

"Visualization, visualization." Sami murmured, and there was a slight twitch on the computer. "Yes!" She shouted and then winced. "Ow!"

"Give it ten before you try again." Bolt advised. "It's like a muscle."

"So what's next after this?!" The woman asked with wide eyes.

"You do that fer the next month until you can do it without wincing. Gotta build it up." Bolt advised and almost laughed at her expression.

That'd keep her very busy for awhile by his estimate.

 

[lost star]

Today's problem was quite unusual. Bolt wanted to design a new mech and flex his abilities. He also did not want to let people know about his advancement to Senior. This meant he couldn't actually push the mech he'd designed into production, because people would notice. So, he had to get creative.

"Ya know, the spacers who supplied us did want you to make a space mech." Lilly mused from her place on the floor next to the couch.

Bolt tried to vary up where he designed and brainstormed. Mostly as a way of keeping things fresh, but sometimes as just a way to spend time with his wife. They were both very busy, so they had to be specific about spending a few minutes around one another just doing things. Right now Lilly was on a very plush rug listening to an audiobook.

And he just realized he'd not actually told her about his advancement. Sure it'd been implied, but he'd never outright said it. Now how should he say that.

"I'll probably do a space mech next maybe." Bolt said. "Can't build it now though. Ya remember that work I did that gave me a headache?"

"Yep." Lilly eyed him. "Yer gonna admit to your poor long-suffering wife that you advanced now?"

"Ah." The man breathed out in mild embarassment.

The woman closed her eyes and flopped onto the rug in a manner that felt more smug than anything else. "I do pay attention hun. Just thought it was some designer thing and you'd say when it was finished."

"Well yes, I did advance, and becoming Senior this soon ain't necessarily the best thing. I almost hit the record that Polymath did. That sorta thing means that people will believe Star Designer ain't off the table." Bolt said.

"You'll owe me a Star-mech then." Lilly replied back with a yawn. "And the kids too, if they pilot."

"That's a given." Bolt responded and sighed as he recalled the latest update from home. "They're both talking a lot now according to Ma and Pa."

"Good. We'll see them in person soon. Just gotta wrap up the war." The expert replied and flipped herself over. "Can't wait to hold them."

"Me either." Bolt said and began to sketch out something.

Since he was going to be waiting on building the mech he decided to just go down a list of mechs he didn't have types for in their lineup. Boiled down to it, he could use a dedicated duelist (Brawler or Fencer), an something with explosive range (Cannoneer or Artillery), something that could handle speedy mechs (Striker), and some utility. There were a lot of gaps in his lineup.

A good artillery mech felt like the best option. Something that could lob explosives downrange was always useful. The thing was his current lineup was actually pretty offensively orientated. Most artillery mechs were pretty slow. He would need to brainstorm on that. Their current lineup was extremely aggressive and a slow mech could make them lose tempo. Perhaps something with long range? There'd be a problem with friendly fire though depending on the weapon.

An idea came to him as he thought on that. He wasn't near the limit of what spiritual construction could do. Hadn't he managed to finagle a small friend-or-foe recognition in the snowflakes? They weren't exactly safe for allies to touch, but they would drift away from them naturally, and that made them useful and precise enough to be used. The Hoarfrost and the Yuki-onna both be very free with their weapons due to that. Bolt could probably create something else using that concept.

He decided he wanted lightning on a whim. This was not an unknown weapon. There were even a few of them on the market. They were all short ranged shot-gun like devices. Hell, Morning Star used a lot of it herself. That was again short range though. Bolt wanted long range. He wanted artillery.

That wasn't physically possible. Even with all their technology past a certain point lightning obeyed physics. Short range electrical weapons got around that through exotics or other factors. It required a fairly high amount of voltage to get past the natural defenses a mech had as well. He still wanted a lightning mech!

Making proper lighting weapons required bending physics into pretzels. There were still ways, technically. You could get a lot of range using some specialized technology involving exotics and lightning-rod analogs. One particularly fun weapon involved using a spike and to provide a conduit for the electricity. Unfortunately that weapon wasn't actually used frequently because if you could hit them with the spike you could use a bullet instead.

Bolt still bought the weapon license and began to take apart the design to get a few ideas. He had a possible workaround. It would need to be a heavy mech due to power needs again. Though the problem was different in this instance.

The weapon, titled Lightning Rod MK U1TRA used capacitors to charge up electricity before it released. More range required more stored power. Scaling it required a lot. A heavy mech was the only thing that would have enough output to charge it quickly.

So, one heavy artillery mech. Not uncommon. The initial design was fairly standard too. Heavy armor, bulky frame. Back mounted weapon in the shape of two large rods, which was the modified U1TRA that would serve as one of the main weapons. It needed some hand weapons too. Something big. Something dangerous.

"You know," Bolt mused as he looked at his plans. "I do owe you a heavy."

"Oh?" Lilly opened one eye.

"Something like this." The designer sketched out the twin gattling guns and added a bit of flare. "Your next expert mech."

"Hey, that's sorta like the Woodpecker." Lilly noted as she opened both eyes to stare at the sketch. "Don't recognize that back weapon though."

"Gonna shoot lightning when I'm done with it, and the range will be variable." Bolt explained. "I figure if I adjust one or two things I can have it use allies as range extenders up to a pretty large distance."

The expert grinned. "Sounds fun! Though it'd be another crowd killer like Morning Star."

"Ah, yeah. Would you prefer a duelist?" Her husband asked as he looked at his sketch with a more serious eye. A duelist would probably be better in retrospect.

"No, this will be fine. Will it have the Woodpecker's space shifting?" Lilly asked curiously.

"I..." Bolt paused and looked over the plans again.

He did have the power budget for it somewhat. If the weapons weren't charging the energy had to go somewhere. Pushing it into the space warping was possible. It'd require some very good cabling and some very delicate energy management. It was also very possible.

Bolt nodded slowly as he talked himself around to it. "I can do that. It'll have to be done after I do my work with Master Olson. I'm going to offer that device as a sort of distraction. We'll work on it together to make a mech, and I can take the lessons to finish this up and make it a real monster."

"Look at you being all sneaky." Lilly said with a small laugh. "What'll you call it?"

"Hmm." Lightning, space, and rather heavy. "Thinking Typhoon, but there's like a hundred other mechs with that name."

"Probably more. We'll just make sure yours is the best." The woman said with a nod before making grabbing motions towards the designing pad. "Now I want him, gimmie gimmie."

"Gotta make him first woman." Bolt muttered back and got another laugh.

 

[lost star]

As much as Lilly and Bolt wanted to just sort of chill in space and let the war pass them by, they did need to be seen doing things. So, once they were supplied they moved off again. This time to a place closer to an active battle.

Now, it has to be said that the Wrench Rats were not part of the Friday Military. They'd managed to get around the offers / demands of direct recruitment by supplying their own equipment and basically being mercenaries. This had good parts and bad parts. The good was that they chose their missions. The bad was that there was no support from the Friday Nation. This was less of a problem than you'd expect, mostly because the 'standard' contract the Friday people had with experts they recruited was basically just upgrade the mech to Second Rate and throw them at the enemy.

This was very evident in the battlefield they approached. The first thing they found was a rather large pile of mech bodies on one of the moons around the primary planet. Amongst them were over a hundred wrecks of expert mechs. Many of them hadn't even been stripped properly. This was the result of a space battle around the area that had been puttering along since the war started. The number of wrecks in the area was a bit unreal.

"No point in checking for survivors there." Lilly observed from the bridge. "We cleared for low-g salvage?" She asked the main salvage leader.

"Less experienced there, but we'll handle it. That's a lotta expensive stuff they left though." The man commented warily.

"Why does that sound like a bad thing." Miranda asked.

"Because that means there's still fighting. Get to the mechs." Lilly said as she began to move. "Assume we're going to get attacked the second we broadcast our greetings or a bit before."

They'd drilled something like this more than a few times. There were specific elevators designated for pilot transport. She got to the bay within a minute and was in Dowry within another one. There was no particular reason for this choice. Either one of her mechs could function in space and do so well enough to be impactful.

"Venerable Lilly, ready to being the broadcast." The man in the bridge said.

"Do it." The expert ordered and shifted Dowry to standby.

As ordered the carrier began to broadcast on all frequencies. It was a fairly generic statement, Friend or Foe recognition codes and their intent to salvage the battlefield. Lilly closed her eyes and synched with Dowry while she waited.

"Movement." The words she as half expecting came.

A few seconds later she was deploying with her people. The void of space and her fellows were all the surrounded her now. Their Son of War deployed his banner and the Torments shifted into a rough formation.

Space battles were a whole different kettle of fish than land battles. They typically revolved around the ships that carried the mechs rather than anything else. Some clever ships had deployable cover and the like, but here they just had their carrier while the enemy had something else. Their ship was already moving back as her people shifted to oppose the oncoming enemies.

"Valkyries spotted. Enemy shield-ship also on the way." Someone called out. "Brace yourself."

Lilly drifted up and engaged Dowry's stealth. The camouflage would let her choose her targets here. She could almost feel the enemy experts now. There were likely two there based on the movements she was seeing and what she was feeling. One was still on the ship as it approached. Either a riflemen or an artillery. She was leaning towards the latter based on positioning of the mechs involved.

The shield ship was mostly a stack of metal on an engine. Designed to hold artillery mechs in space it was mostly a close range support ship that was meant to get around the fact that warships were very much banned. It was a typical example of the ship type. A lot of metal bunkers designed to hold mechs and little else. Dowry was picking up a singular mech inside one of them. This was unusual enough that she held off on immediately deciding that that was where she should go.

"Going dark to backstab. Naoto, you're up here." Lilly called out and cut her comms.

Beneath her, her people moved as Miranda ordered them. Lilly carefully boosted a few times and watched as the enemy charged forward and smashed against their lines. She could tell when the Valkyrie raked people with it's Glow as they charged. The way some people froze was very obvious to her. One of them even hit her by accident. The feeling was potent. A thick cloying feeling of impending doom. Like seeing an oncoming sword right for her cockpit. Lilly found it bracing but it made Dowry furious.

"Hmm." The expert hummed to herself and continued to drift. "Where are you?" The experts were being careful in positioning. She had the likely targets, but she needed something more for confirmation.

Naoto moved forward as the lines started to clash. His sword swung. There was no concealing his expert status with that swing. The blade slipped through the enemies guard like it was air instead of a blade almost the size of the mech using it. It flowed through the poor target without stopping or even slowing. The mech drifted into two parts and the man almost serenely moved forward to the next target.

An enemy skirmisher moved forward intercept him. That was one of he experts she was looking for confirmed. It was also a relatively even matchup that Lilly didn't feel the need to supervise. She drifted closer and undetected until she could peer into the bunker and confirm the other one visually.

"And what are you..." Lilly focused on the artillery mech already readying its weapons. "Naughty girl."

The enemy Hexxer wasn't targeting the mechs. The woman was targeting the carrier, which was why she'd held her fire. The carrier had naturally moved away to avoid something like that, but they'd obvious underestimated the range if she was drawing a bead on it. This wouldn't do at all. The ship did have defenses, but against an expert like that they wouldn't last long.

Lilly dropped onto the bunker and ripped open the top of it in a second. The woman opposing had only a moment to react, and she did so by blasting her boosters and slamming open the emergency exit. The heavy metal door blew out from the impact as she frantically tried to gain room. This was unfortunately a poor matchup for her. Speedy mechs like Dowry were meant to eat mechs like her alive, and Dowry was very hungry at the moment.

A feeling of death hit Lilly as she began to chase, but she brushed it off even as she acknowledged the enemy movement. The opposing Valkyries had disengaged and were attempting to their allies to the best of their ability. They might have lacked serious long ranged weapons but it was enough to force her to slow slightly. The larger mech used that movement to bring the hand-weapons to bear, two small missile launchers sent out a wide swath of missiles that blanketed the area. Dowry was hit hard enough to force her to expend precious energy trying to get her footing again. The Zero-g was not doing her any favors here at all.

"What's next... Shit." Lilly muttered as her mech sensed another group approaching.

"Friendlies incoming!" Her comms screamed.

Lilly grinned at that call. That was some good fortune for once. All they'd need to do was pin the enemy down here and the reinforcements would finish them off.

She shifted her attention back to the artillery mech even as the enemy Valkyries charged at her in a frantic and last ditch attempt to stop her. The next few seconds were a frantic bit of movement as the Spearwomen tried to skewer her or just give the mech with some very large guns a free shot. Lilly managed a good enough job to keep neither option from happening, and that was obviously not acceptable to the Hexxer women. Mid-dodge the artillery mech simply aimed its heavy weapons in her general direction and fired.

Even braced and ready an expert shot like that was no joke. It caused horrific chaos to everyone. On the positive side the damage was pretty indiscriminate. Several of the mechs trying to aid their expert were shredded. Another feeling of doom hit her and Lilly almost rolled her eyes. It should have been terrifying. Dowry was having none of it, and the building fury let Lilly push past the oppressive aura without a flinch. Around her the remnants of the woman's allies floated away from the slightly molten shield-ship. Everything was clear now.

Her shot would have been useful and valid against any other mech truthfully. A blast like that was what cockpits were practically made to deal with. The pilots of those hit were still fine. Assuming the Hexxers won, the trade would have amounted to a few mechs for her life. Lilly should have been more damaged than she was, but Dowry's absurd regeneration made the trade far too lopsided on her end. The opposing woman obviously hadn't been briefed on Dowry at all.

Willpower fed into Dowry and she flexed and clawed as she grabbed onto the ship and moved with all speed towards the still fleeing enemy. The enemy mech in turn bounced away, picking up another set of hand missile launchers. Lilly hissed even as she tried to egg her mech on, but the woman fired before she could approach again, forcing her to shift and dodge even as she approached. Around her the battle intensified. This was getting extremely irritating. The ship was giving her quick reloads!

Shots hit the ship and it was forced to turn as the reinforcements began to fire upon it. The Hexxers were losing and they all knew it. It was only a matter of time really. The woman could obviously see the same thing and did something desperate instead. She turned her big weapons towards the ship she was on, right between them. A pointblank shot with an expert's willpower at full throttle would cause an explosion that would either throw them both off the ship or kill them. It was a complete tossup as to which would happen, and the woman gambled. Lilly could feel absolutely no hesitation as she fired.

Unfortunately for her, Dowry was a mech both flexible and fast. The moment Lilly noted the intention she was already digging her claws into the ship and shifting her position. The mech dropped down flat to the ground and ducked. Dowry's head was still nearly blown clear off, but the damage was relatively contained thanks to the angles, and it wasn't the first time she'd had the damage. In contrast the enemy expert had been blown back and was now off the ship, drifting slowly away as she tried to recover from the self inflicted damage.

This wasn't the end of the battle, but it was most certainly when victory was assured. As a bonus, Naoto finished about a minute later, outright slicing off each of his opponent's limbs before hacking the body up into neat squares. He hadn't even killed the expert while doing it, which was somehow more terrifying than actually killing her. (Lilly was so proud!)

 

[lost star]

Cleanup was unfortunately more of an issue than the fight. They'd almost accidentally managed to capture two expert Hexxer pilots, a fair amount of normal pilots, and all their support staff. Figuring out what to do with that many people was going to be a hassle, because putting them on ice required resources that they didn't actually have. Their initial step was therefore simply disarming them and throwing them into a camp that had food, water, and enough support that they weren't killing themselves. It was fairly messy and unpleasant process made worse that the surviving Friday forces practically demanded they all be lined up and shot.

Being fair, this wasn't an outrageous demand considering how the war was going. Hexxers would routinely do something similar. They'd also just as frequently do proper prisoner captures. It was highly commander dependent and there was no official line from the party aside from 'don't kill women.' Lilly was casting no judgements at all here. She simply didn't want to have her people be the ones doing the shooting, hence the camp.

Space at least wasn't an issue for this. The moon they'd been fighting around had simply been a primary point of battle. The local planet was a relatively serene place that mostly grew and farmed. Neither side had been inclined to fight on it due to the fact it had almost no military targets of value. The primary export had been a sort of luxury beef and feedstock for most standard food machines. Actually landing and fighting had thus been completely pointless for both sides of the war. There was therefore plenty of unused and untouched land for a prison complex to be hastily made. That would solve the prisoner problem in the short term.

What was less easy was dealing with the Friday remnants. These weren't shattered men and women who's units had been broken. They were desperate and near fanatic resistance members who'd been doing anything they could, up to and including suicide attacks. They were friendly only by virtue of opposing the Hegemony.

Even Lilly's expert status didn't make communications and trust happen. The people involved insisted on radio only and kept very far away from their forces before almost demanding that they leave as soon as possible. The doubled demands combined with their near insistence on her people killing the captured soldiers soured any sort of actual negotiation and made her very disinclined to work with them. After a few hours of back of forth, tense negotiation Lilly switched to legal Friday speak and the authority her contract gave her rather than trying to come to an agreement.

"Per our official negotiated agreement with the Friday Coalition we are able to claim the bounty found in any battlefield so long as we do the securing and it has not been claimed and occupied by any recognized units. We are also fully authorized to work in all unrestricted Friday territory." Lilly rattled off the appropriate legalese. She still got a small headache from reading, but she'd developed a lot of workarounds. One of which was having Bolt put the entire contract into the Heart Crystal. "Are you recognized by the Friday Coalition as one of their units?"

"Respectfully Venerable Lilly, we have been fighting since the start of the war." The man responded with absolutely no real respect in his voice.

"Are you recognized? Do you have the paperwork for it?" Lilly pressed with a small snarl. She was getting very tired of this mindless insistance.

"We are the sons and daughters of the people who defend this nation!" The man snarled back. "You are scavengers trying to make a quick credit. We both know you'll be leaving as soon as the witches show their face with a real force."

"Real force yes." The woman rolled her eyes and paused. "Actually, why were there two experts here? More importantly, why were two experts here with so few forces? Those two together should have had at least double what we faced."

Military wise, experts were attached to units. Unless they specialized in it, most experts needed a wide variety of support, from fire support, to actual supplies and such. A lone expert on the field was a dead expert. An artillery and skirmisher expert should have the forces to let them play to their specialty. A singular ship was not proper backing. The Wrench Rats should not have been able to meet their numbers at all.

"That is none of your business." Was the immediate and hasty reply.

"Let me think out loud here." Lilly spoked out as she looked at the top of her cockpit. "This place isn't much in the grand scheme of things. It was on a minor route to one of the fallen fortress worlds and was really just an intersection that you could pass people through discretely. Now it's pointless to control for either side due to how the fronts are positioned. Yet from our survey there's been constant low level fighting, and we had two experts with with what looks like half their forces lost."

The other end of the radio was silent for awhile before the man very quietly confirmed her words. "That is a proper assessment of the situation."

"So, I suppose my question is where's your expert and how much trouble are they in?" Lilly finished with a small grin. "Ain't gotta tell me if that's right or not, but I'll go ahead and have enough salvage for an expert mech and change put into a gift box with a bow on top it. That stop your squawking and complaining?"

"We are done here." The man said with finality.

Lilly didn't laugh, although it was close. She'd been mostly guessing, but she'd obviously stumbled on something since he'd disengaged rather than talked. Pushing more would probably result in something more hostile than what she'd been encountering. There was a decent chance that she'd hit upon something delicate. She opened up another channel instead.

"All right, get to work on salvaging. High value stuff first." She ordered and then closed that one once she got the acknowledgement.

Once all of that was settled she turned her attention back to the more lingering problem. The women they'd captured were relatively fine in their current area, but they couldn't just leave them in the area. Two experts alone were a pretty nice prize. When the Hexxers swung by here they would take the time to rescue them and Lilly didn't want that. So they had to either take them with her or bite the bullet and shoot them. The latter would get side eyes from the MTA. They did not like people killing experts out of battle. (This was another reason to keep from killing the PoWs.)

The problem in transporting them was the lack of space really. There were enough of them that if they placed the captured people on the ship there would be issues. None of their people were experienced with dealing with prisoners. Tech would surmount a lot of that, but it wouldn't keep problems from happening. She needed more room.

Her gaze turned to the shield-ship they'd also captured. That thing wasn't in the best shape, but it did have enough room and life support to handle the people if they stripped out a few military things. It was likely bugged and sabatoged to all hell as well. Yet if they threw the people on there and had the controls slaved to a few remote controls they could just have it transport people. The nearest good Friday Fortification was about two jumps away. That would be quite possible to achieve.

All that remained was doing it.

 

[lost star]

The Valkyrie Redeemer was interesting in several ways, yet boring in others. Mechanically it was sound. Ves had obviously gotten a significant amount of assistance in building it. The Hexxer influence was all over the blueprints. His design ethos still showed through that almost taint. The mechanical parts of it were standard Hexxer military. The spiritual parts were potent and his alone. Bolt was actually fairly tempted to poke at the spirit backing it, but he refrained for many reasons. That was Ves' full specialty there, and Bolt was fairly sure that working with spirits was not really his strength. Mechalla aside, his sum total of work was with Qilanxo and actual mech spirits. What Ves did was rather beyond him. He wouldn't learn any more by interacting with them. He had a firm handle on his strengths and limitations.

Really his largest question in examining this was how did the Glow feel? So he'd arranged for one of the prisoners to show him. The mech she was in was completely destroyed as a matter of safety, but the glow should still work.

"Pretty interesting that he linked the activation to faith." Bolt mused as the test started to count down. That was really the most relevant mechanic that he'd discovered.

Three, two, one...

A terror hit him at zero and Bolt staggered as it hit his mind. He was perfectly safe and yet felt like he was a second from death too. His could feel his hands trembling and his heart racing. It wasn't an unfamiliar feeling. He'd felt this far too many times. He couldn't help the chuckle as the test continued. The woman was obviously relishing the chance to inflict some sort of damage on him and his laugh intensified.

"Ahaha." Bolt laughed even as the feeling continued to press down. "Ok, that's enough, that's enough." He said to the pilot.

It wasn't actually funny, but he could still feel the humor in it. That feeling was achingly familiar, like an old friend. He couldn't name a Rat back home that hadn't had to deal with something like that, from a gun being aimed at you to trying to live through a mech stomping right next to you, to more. He almost felt nostalgic at feeling it again. Almost, because it still wasn't a pleasant feeling. He could very much see people being paralyzed by it.

"Have it salvaged. I've learned all I can." Bolt ordered and began to think on what to do next. He should probably head down to the repair bay and see about getting their mechs in top shape before he did more.

Mid thought an alert started to sound. One of the green-skinned maids that liked to follow him around immediately grabbed one of his arms and pulled him out of the bay and towards one of the safe areas on the ship. Bolt allowed her to do so. Internally he mused that the familiar feeling of death was back again. This was a very low intensity, but it still echoed what he'd felt from that Glow.

"Intruders were discovered on the ship." One of the security forces informed him once he was settled.

"We know what they're after?" Bolt asked back.

"Can't tell at the moment."

Phillipe's people had seriously progressed since they'd joined up. They were professional, competent, and most importantly confident now. Bolt had no regrets about paying them, less about keeping them on, and he was quite happy about how they'd developed. They searched the ship and swept through everything they could quickly. This took several hours unfortunately. Bolt did have his comm, so he managed to get some work done, but not as much as he'd liked. The secured area was metal and chairs, not much else. That wasn't conductive to real work.

"It looks like someone left an airlock unsecured and someone used that to float in." Phillipe reported after they were certain things were clear. "Zey probably panicked once we detected them and ran to the mech area. One override later and they were gone with one of the mechs. Pursuit was being arranged, but Lilly had them stop."

"Override?" Bolt asked.

"Explosives and localized hacking tools. Nothing that compromised our computers or security, if you discount the need for repairs." Phillipe reported with a mild sigh. "We will be reviewing things, but it's likely someone let them in."

"Of course." Considering their recruitment sprees, it was more surprising that this was the first time. "Can we see who did that?"

"We will." The young man promised him. "That said, they did take the mech named Cheshire and some supplies nearby."

"Cheshire is a stealth mech with no weapons." Bolt observed.

"That is why Lilly stopped the pursuit." Phillipe replied before giving Bolt a questioning look. "Why did you build a mech without weapons?"

"Cheshire was mostly a proof of concept mech. The stealth if very potent for such a small frame. She'd actually be very good for infiltration like what we just dealt with if you modify her to carry people. You could probably get like six or so if they're crammed together." Bolt mused. "That said, the stealth does have flaws." The man picked up his comm. "Lilly."

"Hey hun. Bit busy. I wanna know how they got so close and who I should gut." The expert didn't sound happy.

"Got something ta help. Ask Dowry to hunt." Bolt replied and then sent a set of numbers to the mech that would allow it to track Cheshire somewhat. The spirit in Dowry should be able to handle the rest.

"Hmm?" Lilly's laugh wasn't exactly friendly. "Oh you got it."

Really, what had they been thinking? Bolt shook his head in mild exasperation. Had they thought they could just get on the ship undetected? Every military ship had internal sensors. Had they just assumed they could bypass them? Actually now that he was thinking about it, perhaps they had?

Bolt got to his feet and made his way to where Cheshire had been stored. The small mech hadn't been in a primary bay since she wasn't really something they wanted to deploy. She was a novelty mech really. Cute, mildly useful, but also a mech that required a very specific skillset. You didn't get someone able to pilot a cat and a stealth mech casually.

True to his thoughts, this meant that the security was different. It'd been mostly locks and armored doors. Each one had been bypassed with precise explosive devices or self-destructive devices of some indeterminate nature. The ruins of them were already being collected carefully by Phillipe's team.

"Friday gear." Bolt noted. "Exclusive stuff too."

"Mind explaining please?" Phillipe asked with a bit of exasperation.

"There's a subset of hacking tools meant to deal with ships and doors." This was something Bolt had specifically looked into with Gadget, and just in case. "Based on the look and the damage, this was all high level Friday equipment. Why just Cheshire though?"

"Any other mech couldn't have escaped. They must have had information on the manifest, including what you had stored." The young man replied back with a small sigh.

"We'll get it sorted." Bolt tried to comfort the other man.

It probably didn't help much. This was a failure of security now matter how much you dressed it up as. Unfortunately with the way they recruited it was going to happen. Lilly vetting them could only do so much. There unfortunately wasn't really a solid solution available.

 

[lost star]

Dowry was not a stealth mech. That was the mech she was chasing, Cheshire. Dowry did have enough camouflage to mimic a stealth mech in certain situations, like following a stealth mech trying to get away. Which made following the cat easier. It helped a lot that the little cat-mech wasn't really built for anything but being sneaky. The sensors on it were average, the armor was minimal, the speed was poor, and the lack of weapons made it mostly a toy, and possibly a scout if you wanted to be funny. (Lilly had taken it out a few times just for that. The stealth was very good and hilarious if you did things right.)

Lilly tried to think of why they'd pulled this idiocy. It reeked of something. What she couldn't tell yet, but it reeked. That was why she was slowly drifting along in space rather than burning and following them with everyone. Better to take Dowry as a semi-scout and decide things afterwards cautiously.

Now one thing everyone had to remember and be told repeatedly was that space was big. Its size was not something that the human mind was meant to handle. You could get lost and dead in short order if you did not take care to orient yourself. The places people fought around were specks compared to the stellar bodies in a solar system. This meant that there was a lot of space to hide in. If you were very careful with positioning and energy radiation you could remain undetected for years.

Lilly was reminded of that when she finally saw where the stolen mech was going to. It looked like nothing from the distance. Just an asteroid floating in space. The system had billions of them. If Dowry's senses weren't extremely good, she'd have just thought of it as a hollowed out asteroid or something. Instead she was registering metal. As she approached it became even more clear.

"Huh. That's some decent concealment." She observed to herself.

They'd camouflaged a ship with enough silica to make it look like an asteroid from a distance. Nice trick. It was useless once you had a visual on the ship, or when it powered up, but still useful when you didn't know where it was. If Lilly were to guess this was a stealth ship that they'd added extra concealment to while doing repairs. She could see signs of severe battle on the hull. This thing had done a lot.

Not that she cared. She was more irritated at the utter disrespect they'd shown in stealing her husband's mech. Now how to handle this? Did she want to do this calmly? Hah!

"All right thieves, I caught you red-handed. Either surrender now or I start shredding." Lilly broadcast to them even as she signaled her position to everyone on her side. "If you try to spin up your engine expect me to treat that as hostile and start shredding."

For a long moment there was silence. It was long enough that Lilly almost started readying herself to attack the ship and plotting vectors on how to pull this off. Then one of the doors on the ship opened, then shut, then opened again. The woman saw a hint of an explosion before it shut once more.

"Please don't shoot venerable!" Someone sent out, and then was cut off.

Oh for the love of god. Lilly cursed internally and moved Dowry forward so that she could do something if necessary. "All right, dunno what's going on in there, but knock it off!" She switched to the Rat channel. "Get a boarding team together when you come in. We're going to need boots on the ship."

Several long minutes occurred. Lilly almost had Dowry start clawing at things while she waited. The only reason she didn't was that the ship had gone very dead and the bay doors were staying firmly shut. Eventually the breaching teams arrived and under her watchful eyes they began to infiltrate the ship.

Lilly expected to need to tear into things to support. She even readied her claws and approached the ship close enough to start. If the morons though they could hide behind the ship bulwarks they'd be in for a very rude surprise. The precautions proved less than necessary.

"Venerable, we've captured someone on the ship. You're going to want to speak with them." The breaching man said after a moment.

"Um Hello Miss Venerable." A young sounding male spoke.

"What?" Lilly breathed out.

"Yes, so uh, we're really really sorry about everything." The young man continued. "There's just a lot of... Well..."

"The chain of command is screwed." The man who'd done the breaching interjected. "You don't know who's in charge right?"

"Yes!" The young man said back before giving an audible swallow. "So, uh, we have like three groups here. Me and my friends are, what do you call it, defects?"

"Defections, or defector." The man said with a very tired sounding sigh.

"Ah that. We followed along Venerable Willow because she said something that went over my head. She was apparently a deep plant and the guys who extracted her got really hurt along with her. The other group helped us a lot, but are really paranoid? I'm sorry I don't know more, just that there was shooting and yelling and screaming and-"

"He's crying now." The breacher muttered uncomfortable as he took the radio.

"Of course. Male hexxer?" Lilly asked.

"A group of them, ranging from eighteen to nine, if I'm lucky. It's complicated because there's barricades, infighting, and what looks to be several prisoners on their own side." The man answered, sounding increasingly out of his depth.

"Of course." Lilly muttered. "Do you have locations of people?"

"A few. Not many." The man responded.

"Hey kid, is everyone in suits?" The expert asked the other person.

"Huh? Some are? Venerable Willow isn't. She's in medical." The near child responded.

Lilly nodded, though it couldn't be seen. She then plunged Dowry's hand into the ship. Some very careful tearing opened it up like a can and she had her mech run full sensors as the air started releasing and several emergency hatches slammed down.

"Order everyone to stand down. Those that don't will have me doing something." Lilly flexed a hand and very deliberately scratched long the hallway she'd exposed.

From her perspective that was relatively soundless. There was some vibration that transmitted to the cockpit, but nothing else. From their perspective it would be a loud rattling shriek.

Only the terminally stupid would actually ignore that offer, which meant that Lilly had to prove good on her words several times. Dowry was actually ideal for this. Her claws were meant to be precision weapons, so Lilly's only real obstacle was in getting to her targets with no damage to her allies.

It probably looked more than a little silly towards the end. Dowry ended up having to stick her entire arm into the ship to get to some areas. Her fellow Rats found the exercise both entertaining and midly horrifying. It was one thing to call for support, but another to see a hand rip through a bulkhead and squish a person.

Eventually they managed to subdue the people with a repairable amount of damage to the ship. Unfortunately that wasn't the end of it. They now had more prisoners, and several critical patients, including the expert Willow. Willow in particular was one step away from death.

All told it was a fiasco that made everyone involved both irritated and upset.

 

[lost star]

Logically the series of events made sense. Bolt really didn't want to actually try to decipher it all. It made his head hurt. The stupidity involved was so endemic that he wanted to scream.

"So, you saved these kids on your infiltration job, attempted to run away, and ended up with the local resistance?" Bolt summarized the issue.

"Correct." Venerable Willow confirmed.

The woman had seen far better days. Truthfully Bolt wasn't even sure how she was alive at the moment. Fully half her body was gone. She had a singular functional hand, and had to be hooked up into several devices because she was missing most of what was needed to digest food. Fixing this was possible with their technology, but it'd take months. Months that she didn't seem to have.

"Several radical Hexxer groups have a tendency to kill the male side of the population in various types of purges. They're usually harshly punished for it, but it's far more consistent than the upper echelons like." The woman seemed serene despite her injuries. "Rescuing them was the correct thing to do. It was easy actually. It's one of the larger dividing points between many factions inside the nation."

"But that broke your cover and caused the officials on the Friday side to deny help." Bolt filled in.

"It helped that the result of my escape did this." Willow indicated her body with her one good hand.

He suspected that there were other factors too. Experts were valued. Willow, with her specialty in stealth related actions, was probably one of the most valuable people in their lineup. Her getting cut off like that and forced to rely on local and unreliable help smacked of politics.

"They're good children." The woman commented into the silence. "Keep them safe. Don't blame the theft on them or the others either. Some people thought a mech would make me feel better."

"You've not piloted in awhile." Bolt observed before nodding and getting to his feet as he made a decision. "All right, I'll get the mech ready for you."

Willow gave a soft smile. "Like I told them, that won't help me. I vowed to serve the Friday Coalition. With no use for me, this is not the worst fate."

The designer flicked her forehead. As she stared at him in consternation he did it again. "No. Bad cat."

"Cat?" The expert repeated with bemusement.

"Bad cat." Bolt repeated with a nod. "No curling up in the shadows to die." He pulled out his comm. "Lilly, talk some sense into the woman giving up if you would? I'm getting Cheshire ready for her."

All teasing aside, this was an issue known to the MTA that he wanted to prevent. In the more restricted briefings there was information on various afflictions experts could have. One of them fit here. When experts suffered a severe mental hit related to how they'd ascended they tended to wither and die. If Bolt was right, Willow had devoted her life to the Friday Coalition, and them cutting her off had caused a fatal and poisonous blow. The physical side could be repaired. The mental side couldn't.

Really this was a bad situation all over. Taking the local resistance force, Willow's supporting staff, and the ship crew into custody was a bit of a problem in many respects if it got out. They couldn't cut anyone loose right now either. The resistance force could probably be left once they were ready to leave, but the rest would cause trouble or be in trouble if they left them behind.

Getting Willow up and running was therefore a mix of altruistic and selfish reasons. If they could get her active then her relations with all the involved groups would smooth things over. The word if was holding a lot of weight though. The restricted information didn't really have official ways of helping someone with a broken will. It was a psychological issue that required a quick and precise evaluation and a substitute reason for the expert to pick up. The latter was highly dependent on circumstances, and also had to be done carefully, because experts were not people that responded well to manipulation.

Lilly had an advantage in this case that made him believe they could do it. She could read people and was genuine. Bolt was setting up their other advantage. Cheshire wasn't a combat mech, but she was a very special mech in a spiritual sense. She was serene in a way no other mechs were. The combination of the two should stabilize Willow and get her mending instead of fatalistically dying.

In a way the next few hours resembled someone getting physical therapy. They had to carefully get Willow into the cockpit, and then practically beg her to take control of Cheshire before taking her out. They stepped out into the open fields of one of the many empty areas on the planet and watched as she took a few steps.

"I fail to see the point here." The woman said with good humor as Cheshire moved, if no real enthusiasm.

"Really, you haven't piloted in over a year and you say that?" Lilly asked back with an audible eye roll. Morning Star picked up a rock and threw it her way.

Willow dodged reflexively. "Rocks, really?"

"You're so rusty that I could kill you with anything better." The other woman shot back and threw another rock.

A delicate sniff followed and Cheshire disappeared from sight. Bolt stifled a small chuckle from his observation position. He'd put a few monitoring tools in the mech before doing this just in case, but Lilly didn't have access to them. Not that she really needed them.

"Gentle." That's was Lilly's response as she flapped Morning Star's wings slightly. "I didn't think I'd ever see a gentle expert, but here we are. Yer really soft."

"That sort of description is a first." Willow replied placidly as Cheshire prowled around.

"Yep. Met a lotta experts by now. Naoto thinks of himself as a blade, and he's at peace with that. Pup is a guard dog. You? A quiet ghost. How'd you ascend?"

"I'd rather not speak of it."

Bolt glanced at the battlefield, if you could call it that. Cheshire had been quite before, but as time passed she was getting even quieter. The little mech wasn't an expert mech, but Willow was certainly making it seem like it. It was even making the monitoring tools slightly glitchy.

"Since the goal here is to get you moving I think I'm going to take it up a notch." Lilly had Morning Star manifest a dozen small stars. "These won't do much to anything, but let's play tag with em." She flicked one through the air.

Willow was forced to dodge. Completely invisible, obscured from all the senses, she was still forced to dodge. Bolt truthfully had no idea how Lilly was seeing her at first. After a few movements he figured out that she was watching the ground. No matter how invisible and padded the mech was, there was still going to be a bit of a shift.

That was until there wasn't. Lilly paused when it happened and made a guess. "Using the boosters? That's not gonna last forever."

"Please don't confuse me with an amateur Venerable Silica." Willow responded softly.

"Oh, is that a hint of will?" The other expert immediately said with cheer.

"Professional pride." Willow muttered with a hint of emotion.

Truthfully Bolt was quite impressed. Seeing the trick didn't make it any less impressive. Cheshire was stepping on solid ground and places she'd already flattened to keep her movements from being seen while boosting periodically to get from point to point. It was a cat playing hopscotch invisibly and silently. The little mech had managed to do all of this and approach Lilly.

"Ya don't gotta say it, but I think yer getting a bit back into it." Lilly said after a few seconds.

Willows response was simple. "Tag." Cheshire appeared with a paw on Morning Star's back leg.

"Hah!" Bolt's wife said with a laugh. "Ok, that tears it. Bolt do your magic and Cheshire. Willow's perfect for that."

Bolt exhaled loud enough that the mic probably caught it. "Ya know that'd be a bit pointless if Willow hasn't decided to live yet." He pointed out. "And magic, really?"

"Don't care." Lilly responded. "I want ta see her in something special even if she dies. Someone like this deserves to be remembered at her peak."

"I am still here and on the public channel you know." The woman they were speaking of reminded them.

"Like that matters." Lilly said flippantly.

Bolt really sympathized with Willow's long sigh there. He really did.

 

[lost star]

It was all well and good to say they needed to make Cheshire into an expert mech and another to actually do it. The mech was small. The stealth system occupied most of the available space as well. Truthfully Bolt wouldn't have bothered at all had the entire design not really clicked with Willow. Had Willow not shown improvement upon piloting the mech he might had delayed some as well. Might have. There was a distinct possibility that he would have tried anyway. He knew himself well enough to acknowledge that.

Adjusting the mech to make it viable in combat was actually going to require a lot of rather delicate work. If it were anyone else it wouldn't have been possible, Bolt had to acknowledge. The best adjustments he could do to make Cheshire a proper offensive mech was add some armor, add a singular weapon with a little bit of ammo, and resonant material. The latter had to be the main offense. Willow, when using the mech would have to burn willpower to really deal damage. This would be completely non-viable designing conventionally. Only Bolt's skill and the fact that it was a stealth mech made it possible.

The offense would be achieved with a particularly rare, but also relatively cheap exotic that produced an entropic effect. The reason it was both those factors was because the exotic had entropic properties. Properly preserving it was a pain in the ass, and it held very niche uses. Hence relatively cheap and annoyingly rare.

Cheshire would be using it to create 'bad luck.' She'd tap her paw to an enemy and they'd be marked. How bad it would be would be up in the air. Aside from that untested weapon she'd also be able to set small sticky bombs that'd explode on a timer. Getting something high yield enough would be costly, but necessary.

Other than those changes, the mech would get more armor and some tweaks here and there by changing out the salvages parts with more expensive and more efficient parts. Cheshire was going to be a very pricy cat! She'd also hopefully be a decent sapper mech. They'd have to test the bad luck after the changes were done to see how good that was. Ideally no one would even notice the cat was there at all.

Thankfully rushing everything wasn't really needed. Willow would need months to recover enough to properly pilot, assuming she reassembled her willpower. The woman was improving, but it was a slower process. Regular walks with Cheshire in space and on the ground when they could would hopefully fix her. After the changes were done there was a decent chance that the mech spirits hiding in Mechalla would be able to sim the bad-luck for added practice as well.

Also, while she wasn't fully recovered, Willow was up and working well enough to smooth things over somewhat with everyone. The rebel forces were being placated with a lot of scrap. The Hexxer boys and Willow's support staff were being folded in with the Wrench Rats, and the people manning the ship were being cut loose with a repaired ship and would likely find mercenary work doing something a stealth ship would be good for.

At Willow's instance both of the rebels and the shipmen did not know she was actually recovering. In their eyes she was passing on her last wishes. That was a sneaky reason for that. Bolt wasn't particularly enamored or interested enough to care about it. It would probably be useful in the future. Especially if he was discrete with upgrading her mech. Watching for expert parts wouldn't actually tell people what he was doing in this case! Cheshire had never been seen, and upgrading her to an expert mech was particularly insane from a designer perspective.

Subterfuge aside, the salvage was going well, and they were on track to leave. The next destination would be a Friday fortification world. There was a decent one on the list of places they could retreat to, and it'd be a good place to drop off prisoners. They'd dip in, see about any news or updates, and dip out.

--Elsewhere, in a Friday meeting between high level people--

If one had to say what the largest bane of any real organization was, it was one of two items. Corruption or internal politics. Very typically it was both, frequently intertwined. It was human nature to favor the ingroup and dislike the outgroup and corruption favoring you was hardly real corruption wasn't it?

Takaharu was familiar with all the excuses. He'd used more than a few himself. There was a sort of understanding that so long as the main mission of resisting the witches was kept up, people would look the other way. That didn't mean he liked all of it. He frequently felt like he'd sold his soul several times. But the problem was that sometimes that was what was necessary to keep the war moving.

"Projections are that Larkinsons' next mech will be out within a month or two." The intelligence officer gave the last part of his report. "Rumors are that he was inspired recently."

"Inspired." One of the generals noted sourly. "Is that what we're basing our tactics off now? Scuttlebutt about a singular designer halfway across the galaxy?"

"The Witches are finally starting to take meaningful losses. Would a new mental Glow actually do anything to change that?" Someone else asked. Looked like a lower level officer being used as a mouthpiece.

"Reports are that they're tapped on manpower. I'll leave you all to make predictions." The intelligence officer deflected quietly.

Takaharu gave a small grunt. He didn't blame the man for being less than eager to commit. The tension in the meeting was high despite the relative good news.

"Shall we bring up unit distribution in light of that news?"

If there were fighting words at the moment, it was those. It had not escaped people that the Guager forces were still rather fresh. Officially they'd been held back as a last resort due to the dire nature of the war. Unofficially they'd been very happy to let others take the damage and then push back. With the push back happening they were suddenly far less happy at the entire situation.

"How's our special asset?" The question was directed to Takaharu.

"He's alive." The general said. "We'd know if he died. And no he doesn't want to be moved to a secured facility. Anyone who wishes to push the issue would be best advised to read the designer management advice we keep handy."

Very specifically trying to cram designers into environments they weren't happy with usually ended up with rebellion or worse. You literally couldn't force designers to work for you. Even brainwashing techniques weren't valid, and those had been proposed. The MTA would not be happy with people assaulting someone of Bolt's status either. There were lines you could and could not cross.

"There is an official note of him doing a design collaboration with one of our masters." One of the less poisonous officers noted. "Do we have information on that?"

"Master Olson has been quite cooperative, so we can likely send her requests. She should be able to guide the special asset into something more suited for countering Larkinson at the very least. There's a report of him dropping off PoW's soon?"

Takaharu wished he could have covered that one up, but no. Paperwork had to be filed for something that large, and experts were extremely valuable as trading cards at a minimum. "Yes. The area does have facilities suited for rapid prototyping. I'm sure we can get something done quickly there."

"Good. Leak that he's doing it to the enemy." One of the higher generals ordered. "Place forces ready to reinforce the area, but pull back a few garrisons on the world itself."

"We're baiting the Hexxers?" Takaharu asked quietly.

"Yes. Delay the asset there as long as you can. Give him a few bonuses and request that he help with prototyping the new work. If you can, have them have a few ready. With luck the Larkinson and the Assets mech will counter one another and we'll be able to crush whatever forces the Hexxers pull together to attack it." The leading general said.

It was a good plan. It was also a trap in a lot of ways. Takaharu was quite sure that someone at the planet would be discretely ordered to prioritize their forces, not Bolt and his family. If some of their independence was clipped then they'd be able to quietly pressure the Rats into areas more favorable to Friday forces.

Kami help him, he despised politics.

 

[lost star]

A curious effect had emerged on the battlefields recently. It was not uncommon for experts to ascend and keep their mechs. It wasn't uncommon for groups of experts to do this. If one particular model was very popular, you could get hundreds of almost identical expert mechs. The Shining Shrine Maiden was just one amongst many in that regard. It still stood out though, for one particular reason.

"Let evil be cleansed by fire!"

They called it the Wrath of God. When several Expert Maiden pilots worked together their laser attacks magnified one another instead of added together. The similar mindsets, unique mechs, and willpower created something that was more biblical than made by man.

Everything burned. Vast swaths of terrain were fried. Enemy mechs ignited. Some more than others, but all of them took more damage than simple lasers could produce. Even glancing hits would take off limbs as the lasers superheated the armor beyond natural causes. It was utterly apocalyptic on a scale that took divisions of heavy artillery mechs.

It was also a relatively telegraphed attack that couldn't be done often. Good to utterly annihilate an area, bad for everything else. The Hexxer forces had adapted to it quickly out of necessity after they'd been baited into a few attacks. The laser bombardment could get devastatingly precice.

"They've spent themselves, charge forward!" The rallying cry came out from the Hexxers in question and they charged through the blackened and ash strewn terrain. Once the attack came through it took a noticeable amount of time to reload, so a quick charge could frequently disrupt any sort of followup.

Several quiet and unassuming mechs interrupted their momentum. At their forefront was a near skeletal mech with a halo behind his head. Venerable Huang, a Buddhist that had ascended with Bolt's Last Prayer. He had not kept his original mech. The Last Prayer simply couldn't handle being pushed up to a Second Rate mech. His new one had been custom made by a mildly Senior and some minor input from Bolt. It wouldn't have fit him had it not still had the Heart Crystal though, which had convinced him of its importance.

"Namaste to my opponents." He spoke as they ran forward.

His mech had no weapons. It's armor was average. Aside from the halo and prayer beads it was unadorned. Simple, unassuming, non-threatening for a mech. The prayer pose it held as the enemy approached was almost arrogant in this situation. Shots flew at him as he stood still. Not a single one hit.

"Forgive the violence and be assured that no offense is intended." The mech moved and it was as if the battlefield moved to accommodate him rather than anything else. Several Hexxer enemies were destroyed by gentle palm strikes before they could even register the attack.

A Valkyrie Expert moved to attack. "Feel death!" The woman shouted as she charged.

"I do, and I am unafraid." Huang replied simply as he slapped aside the spear and then danced back as the woman used secondary weapons in her attempt to attack.

"Foul man." The expert in the mech snarled and charged forward with all her willpower.

"Be glad that it is I, and not another here." The halo eluminated. "She would find your goddess' gaze offensive."

"You should be glad that it gazes your way at all!" The woman snarled back and maneuvered her spear to slash and thrust at her enemy.

Despite the casual nature of how Huang was moving, he was being pressed. While every shot missed him, and the Glow flowed through him without trouble, he was at a disadvantage in range and power. That was perfectly fine with him. If he died, he died. He accepted the world as it was. This allowed him to bypass the feeling of death. It was also a very odd example of willpower as well, which privately amused him when he allowed it to happen.

Behind his head the halo continued to grow brighter as the systems began to flow with power. After a few seconds the light trickled down to the prayer beads around his mech's neck. Then it traveled more. Liquid gold moved around his mech and formed into an intricate pattern that flowed with willpower. Eventually it hit the hands and mid thrust one of those golden detailed hands grabbed at the spear attempting to attack him.

Reflexively the woman attempted to jerk it free. Her mech's arms whined but there was no response. The golden light spread up the spear and she dropped it before she could discover what it'd do further.

"Corruption?!" She switched to secondary weapons as she backed up. "Another spear!" She called out to a fellow.

"Merely spreading enlightenment." The man pulled a prayer bead off the wire it was held on. "You need not fear me."

"I fear nothing!"

"Ah, but allow me to rephrase that, my apologies for the implication of cowardace." Huang corrected himself. "You should fear someone else."

"BURN!!!" The shout traveled too far to feel natural.

Huang clapped the palms of his mech together as light rained down. Miraculously all of it missed him. None of it missed the charging Hexxers. Those that got hit head on were melted to various degrees. Those that took glancing blows found chunks of their armor melted off. The expert was touched by a singular beam. It shouldn't have a lot of damage. It caused the afflicted part to ignite in flame against all laws of reality.

Huang shifted his stance as the volley ended. "For that to effect you so much..." He mused. "I wonder."

"Spare me your wondering and simply die as the Mother intends." The woman shot back and grabbed a spear from one of her fallen comrades.

"You could simply render yourself deaf if you find me too abrasive." Huang's serene response ended up just enraging the woman still further.

This was far from the only battle of course. Bolt's designs became more and more recognizable as the war continued. Not only were they designed in an iconic and thematic sense, there were a lot of experts using them. This made sense for the most part. The Sand War had resulted in many people ascending with Last Prayers, Shrine Maidens, and other mechs. Most of the new experts had elected to keep with their mechs when they could, and if not get some consulting from Bolt. While Bolt himself couldn't design all their mechs, he could and did put a blanket permission in place for any expert to use his Heart System and would frequently spend an hour or so when he could to help. It ended up spreading his reputation far wider than most people suspected.

Heart Crystals and both Bolt and Ves designs started getting far more scrutiny as this continued. Demand started to rise for both of their mechs despite any implications it might have had, and people began cataloging the unusual effects. One of them was a sort of correlation between certain types of mechs and pilots. If a mech 'felt right' to the pilot, there seemed to be a better chance of an expert happening. This was mostly rumor, but rumors had a way of gathering life on their own.

The MTA's official statement about this was that no harmful effects were noted for using either Ves or Bolt's mechs. This ended up pouring gas on the fire. Which was probably the organization's intention in retrospect.

 

[lost star]

"This next lesson is gonna be mean." Bolt's voice was rough as always, with a bit of a drawl that he'd never bothered to smooth out.

Sami still had trouble dealing with it truthfully. Every time she heard it some small part of her cringed. No Hexxer male would allow himself to sound so much like a yokel. As a scion she'd never interacted with men outside her nation and the differences were stark. It was only now that they had a few men from her nation on the same ship that she realized how stark. The systematic adjustments men went through in her nation were rather extreme from the outside. They wanted 'boys' and not men. She'd almost forgotten what that meant for them. She still liked the pretty boy look but had to acknowledge that it was not the whole of man and they were lesser for it in the place she called home. (She wasn't alone. The fashion for men in the Hexxer was truthfully not that extreme compared to other places, it was just oppressive and mandatory.)

"No more exercising my head?" The young woman asked as she met her teacher's eyes.

Bolt chuckled and shook his head. "Not really. You could keep it up, but yer consistent enough that it's fine to move onto the next step. Now there's a problem we need ta address before we take that step. I haven't seen a mech from you."

That statement made Sami flush slightly. "I know." She admitted. It had been several months now since they started. She'd failed at anything original. "I did work with Zombie and Ghoul, but nothing really made me eager."

"We'll go over the work." Bolt responded and brought the blueprints up. "Yer gonna be stuck on this ship once we hit that Friday base, and I'll be down on the planet designing so you'll got plenty of time ta review." He rolled his eyes at that. "They requested my personal presence and offered to pay a lot. I swear they couldn't be more transparent if they tried."

That statement made Sami perk up at the thought of some juicy gossip. "Are they trying some sort of nefarious plot?"

"Something like that. It shouldn't be a concern for you. You'll be up here in the carrier being safe. It'll jump away if needed." The designer responded. "And if yer wondering about that decision, I do have reasons fer this. That's getting off topic though. Right now we need ta... Let's call it refine you."

"That sounds needlessly ominous." The woman replied with a half grin.

Bolt's look made that grin die. The next few hours made her want to scream. It was like no other teaching she'd ever gotten. He poked and prodded at everything she did, asking for explanations, forcing her to account for everything, and making her brain hurt horribly as she was forced to think again and again. It was all she hated about mech design. It was also unfortunately sort of part and parcel in making them. Calculations and evaluations were all absolutely necessary for mech design. She gone through this process several times. That Senior she'd been mentored under had specifically had her do this. Sami had really never been pushed this hard, or been forced to explain herself so much, but it was unpleasantly familiar.

Eventually the girl felt herself reaching the end of her abilities and couldn't stop from letting her head rest against the desk in a display that would have gotten her scolded back home. "Uuuug. How are you managing to push me like this? I know you don't have an implant! This isn't mech design. It's math and numbers pretending to be mech design!"

"I can see why you scored average." Bolt responded and chuckled at her scowl his way before turning serious. "Your knowledge is appropriate fer your level. Your designs are average and play it safe. But probably most importantly, your drive towards learning the base parts of mechs is average. This part of mech design doesn't interest you." He indicated the equations, diagrams, and other things necessary to make a mech work that they'd gone over. "If you keep on this path you're maybe gonna be a journeyman in a few decades."

Hearing it so bluntly stated made Sami wince and close her eyes so she wouldn't be seen crying. "Ouch."

"This ain't bad news. It's just an evaluation of your weaknesses. You're not a logical thinker and we've proved that. Now time to prove that you still can design and become more than just the knowledge you got pounded into your head. Draw me a sketch of your perfect mech." Bolt ordered.

"Huh?" The girl breathed into the table.

"Draw yer perfect mech. Hell, draw a mech you think looks good. Don't think about the parts and the base. Just give me the mech." Bolt continued.

Sami snorted as she raised her head and switched to the drawing tools. As fuzzy as her head was, she didn't have trouble sketching out something. It was also very, very silly. A witch. She knew what her people were called, but she'd never found it particularly offensive. Even the ugly witches were powerful. The pretty, sexy ones? They were icons. She had a semi-secret love for the look.

Big floppy witches hat, magic wand, a skirt with floof, even heels, because why not. It was an utterly ridiculous mech. Even one glance at it made her quite certain that it was impossible to build.

Her master chuckled as he looked at it. Then he did something that made Sami gape. He added parts. He shifted internals around and made it all make sense for the shape. Right in front of her eyes the basis for a mech formed and became something real. It became possible. It was a mech in the shape of a witch that would work, and work well, if it was finished.

"Why'd you stop?" Sami whined and knew she did, but she couldn't help it.

"Hmm, why would I finish your design?" Bolt asked back. "This is your mech. I'm just letting you know it's possible. In particular, if ya wanna add magic, it has to be yours. I ain't gonna do it. Channel your passion, feel your emotions. You had a hint of it while watching me. We both know that. Even if it's just whimsy, that's ok. Do the rest."

Grumbling, tired, and barely able to focus, the girl did as ordered. She couldn't say she was happy about it. She was in fact very unhappy. Working with the old outdated Third Rate tech in the game wasn't exactly easy. Nothing really fit, everything was so expensive and primitive. She had to practically jam everything she needed into the mech, and was forced to cut and cut. She felt clumsy as she worked. Like she was working with a hammer when she needed pliers instead.

The only thing she was proud of was the wand. The base weapon created a contained plasma sphere and shot it. With a little bit of her teachers help she was able to adjust it to form the plasma sphere inside the wand, and then you waved it to shoot. It was very silly, with a very slow fire rate, but it was a wand that threw viable ordinance at the tech level she was forced to use. Even that was flawed, but it felt like she'd achieved something with it.

"Good. We have just enough time to build it too." Bolt noted once she was finished.

"Build it?" Sami repeated blankly. "We're not just giving the design to the techs?"

"Sami, no student o' mine is going to know just how to design. You're going to learn how to build mechs by hand, with minimal assistance." The man noted as he got to his feet. "This is non-negotiable." He said very firmly before he paused and looked at the time. "Tomorrow though."

Unfortunately for the girl, having a project like that on the horizon didn't make for good sleep. She had no idea what to expect. She'd never assembled mechs with minimal assistance. She'd barely worked on mechs at all! Even in her overloaded job before this she'd mostly just directed people.

 

[lost star]

The bay Sami was directed to the next day had a faint smell that was hard to identify at first. It felt different than what she'd expected. It should have been drenched in oil and metal. There was none of that. Just a faint electrical smell and the hum of shipboard life. A few small drones flew through the air to tidy things up here and there, but it felt empty. It emphasized how large mechs were in her eyes.

"Normally I'd just leave ya to it, but I'm guessing that you don't have much experience here." Bolt's voice made her jump as he came in.

He'd switched his normal robe-like look out for a shirt that had no sleeves and clung to his body. Sami was reminded again that his build was very far from typical for a designer upon seeing it. You didn't usually see someone looking like that unless they were infantry-men typically. It made her quite aware that she didn't really have work clothing either for this.

"You'll wanna tie off your hair." Bolt threw a band the woman's way. "That standard Second Rate clothing?" He asked.

"Yes?" Sami looked down at the blouse and pants she'd found before tying back her hair.

"That'll do for this. It's durable enough and nothing in it would be reactive. You're going ta build your first few mechs before you find your footing. It gives you a good feel of your design outside a designer table. Once you've done it enough that I'm satisfied you can avoid it in the future if you want." Bolt instructed the girl. "Now, we're going to start."

Her very first impression minutes in was that she hated everything. She was a modified human yes, but she was not modified for physical labor! In she was a baseline Hexxer woman in that regard. Bolt could life three times her weight! She had to use machine assistance and take multiple trips

Her only real advantage was that small hands made the delicate wiring a lot easier. She ended up doing most of the cockpit herself alone, which gave her a small bit of pride through the misery. The rest of it was pure torment. Adjusting the sensors in the big hat was required her crawling through parts at some points. She was fortunate that there wasn't a lot of oil being used yet or she'd be a complete mess.

"After this you can move up a level of tech." Bolt said about halfway through. "This is full manual." He continued hefting a bar almost as large as him. "Ain't something I do often nowadays either. It's good to show you why we use a lotta the tools though."

"That'd be Second Rate then?" Sami asked hopefully.

"Third Rate." Bolt corrected. "This is if ya don't have tech. Notice how all of the tools are low or no power? You can make all of this with a half-assed fabricator and pedal power." He gestured to the assembled construction aids they had.

Despite herself she felt a mote of interest in that. "Sort of like forging a sword by hand then?" She asked cheekily.

"They still do that, but yes sort of." The man answered with a small laugh before directing her to the break area. "Now hydrate. Also remember that this mech design is pretty safe, but as we go up in complexity some things can get very dangerous. Exotics especially can become lethal depending on positioning." He continued the lesson.

It might have been a lot of torment, but Sami could appreciate seeing her mech come to life. There was something very special about knowing you made a mech and watching it form. The size, the power, the feeling of it. It actually made her glad to get into design for a brief moment before her body reminded her that she wasn't a very physical person.

"Will I be able to add the Heart System for the magic later?" Sami asked.

"Ya don't need that for the spiritual effects." Bolt said as he guided her though the armoring process. "That's just a way ta make it easier. Here's a little trade secret." He lowered his voice dramatically. "Building it like this is part of how you do that magic."

The words broke her brain a bit. "Huh?" She stared down at a screw. "How?"

"Spirit, psionic, magic, chi, whatever. It's all a flow of energy around us. It's pretty thin, but every action we make adds a small layer. If ya focus in design you add a layer. You focus here, you can add another. Remember that push? Do it while we finish up the mech." Bolt ordered. "Think up a good song if you like. We can play music too. Whatever makes you put the emphasis on what you desire."

Sami was silent as she finished off the build. She tried, she really did, but without the computer and the crystal she didn't know if she succeeded. Was that why he'd made the Heart System then? It would make it a lot easier if she could see what she did. A good song for a witch like this? Something from those old magical girl animes maybe. That felt fitting.

"Later we can go over how ta sense it. There seems to be degrees of it, and it's hard ta train up. Didn't want ya to get focused on the wrong thing. You have my permission to use the Heart System too, but that takes some work ta figure out what it's showing." Bolt said while doing a final spray coat to seal up the mech. "This one? This one's going to do a bit of what you want, and it'd be all you. I just helped you guide it."

"Really?" Sami asked.

The two designers stepped back to look at the mech. Sami could already see a thousand flaws. It was a bad mech, even for a Third Rate mech. Yet...

"Good work." Bolt gave her a pat.

Why was she crying now? Sami sniffled and almost missed a new person coming in and getting into the cockpit. "Venerable Lilly!?" She asked as the person registered.

"Hey Hun. Figured I'd help a bit here." Lilly said with a wave as she got in and sealed up the mech. "We're nearby a small planetoid, so I can go ahead and do a few tricks with your first mech."

Sami didn't squeal, but it was close. Having an expert drive her first mech was beyond an honor. She'd never heard of it ever happening. She rushed to the observation deck to observe. A few minutes later she got to see her mech move. It made everything worth it. Everything.

Especially when Lilly fired the magical wand. The plasma-shots curved! There was no physical mechanic that should allow that, yet they curved slightly upon command! It was tiny, but it was magic. She'd finally done something special. The joy from that was unreal.

Admittedly the report from Lilly afterwards really cooled her enthusiasm, as did Bolt's instruction to take the mech apart and find all the stresses and flaws. That lesson had been messy and unpleasantly physical again. It didn't eliminate the joy and newfound enthusiasm, but reviewing her work made her wince. Especially he damage it could take from a single test run.

To her mild despair it seemed to be extremely helpful though. That meant she'd have to do it in the future as she continued with designing. Physically seeing how the mech got stressed by piloting showed so many flaws. A report didn't do it justice, though Lilly had admittedly pushed the mech to the absolute limit too. Bolt had taken pains to emphasize that in his instruction.

(Bolt was sure she'd get the reason for that lesson later. He also made sure to store the reassembled mech away. His first real student's first mech!)