What's Junk? (The Mech Touch)

[Thomisannoyed]

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

 

[lost star]

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

 

[Negation]

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

Click to shrink...

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

 

[foo-jin]

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

Click to shrink...

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

 

[Mithril-blade]

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

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

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

 

[lost star]

Maybe! We'll see.

 

[lurkingkraken]

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

Click to shrink...

Several of those processes had put a lot of stuff into Lilly's name as the heir to the family's wealth. Some of them had happened years ago. They were just being informed because they were in the nation and in a stable area now.

Click to shrink...

There were millions of credits worth of debts, assets, and other things tied up in their name. To compound the problem, Lilly's mother had completely mismanaged all of it before she'd disappeared. It was an extremely dense mess that people were attempting to dump into the couples lap.

Click to shrink...

Summed up, stripping out the thousands of lines of text, people were trying to give Lilly a lot of debt because her mother had been a moron. It was maddening. It was also apparently legal in the Friday Coalition.

Click to shrink...

status. If she's dead then you can officially disinherit yourself and no one can dispute it. If she's alive it's another legal battle.

Click to shrink...

was mostly a series of debts instead of a behemoth of wealth now. In a way this was a lot of power still. A canny individual could probably leverage their name and their existing assets to recover.

Click to shrink...

Yes, they do want to inherit debts from a crackhead.
Just because the House had a ton of debts doesn't mean it also doesn't have productive or valuable assets that aren't liquid, and we were outright told that inheriting debts is legal in Friday-land.

Given how Lily and Bolts entire purpose for their trip was to find the body so Lily could disinherit herself, it looks like someone will either one pursuing/assigning her the debts faster than she can say 'not it', or someone will make the argument that Lily's genetics are part of the assets that are to be reclaimed so hand over your children, or some of the assets are going to beg for help.

It'll undoubtedly be both exciting and infuriating to see.

 

[tanasinn]

Oh no. Bolt is going to end up as the leader of the Fridays by the end of all of this isn't he.

 

[Mithril-blade]

Oh no. Bolt is going to end up as the leader of the Fridays by the end of all of this isn't he.

Click to shrink...

Probably not? The flags the story is setting in regard's to Lily's family, and Bolt's breakneck ascension, have very little to do with taking the reigns that the Gaugers are grasping.

 

[Negation]

Asset protection means that Bolt and Lily's personal fortune need to be held by a Trust in which they receive an allowance by an executor (Bolt's dad) so the Guagers cannot seize anything because Bolt and Lily legally own nothing.

 

[lost star]

Bolt was actually quite irritated at this point. They'd confirmed that Lilly's mother was dead. It should have been good news. It allowed them to start the process of separating her from the woman's legacy. Unfortunately, things had gotten very complicated due to factors beyond their control. Factors beyond anyone's control really. Even the other factions in the Friday Coalition.

All of this was because of how much money was involved. Cian Lewin, of the Lewin family, was one of the last heirs of the Puffer Clan. That clan had been one of the founders of the Friday Coalition. As such it had an immense amount of assets. Even as one of the weakest and least populous clan they had something on the order of a few dozen planets worth of wealth. This all needed to be accounted for, sold off, transferred over, and more.

Normally that could be handled by accountants and others. If this wasn't a heir's wealth it could have been delegated with a single signature. This was during a war when Bolt and Lilly were famous actors on the stage of politics. It couldn't be deligated. Furthermore, there were several 'pools' of assets that needed to be dealt with. One was the clan estate stuff. That was safely not their problem and was where about half the outstanding debt was. Another pool was the business stuff. That was all the rest of the debt and also not their problem. (Most of it had been horribly mismanaged and the embezzlement was apparently a new and exciting scandal in high society.) The third pool of assets were things specifically under Cian's name. Combined together it was all enough wealth to make nearly everyone lose their mind.

Truthfully, they could sort of ignore most of everything anyway, but that would be a very bad idea. You didn't delegate this sort of wealth transfer without supervision. They had to get it all sorted out so that they didn't get blindsided by something stupid. This meant heading to the main estate of the Lewin family and handling everything they could in person. It would also involve them in a lot of drama, because you couldn't sell off all those assets without an auction apparently. It was turning into an entire circus that the Wrench Rats were going to have to go right into to prevent worse problems in the future.

Bolt had decided that meant Typhoon had to be built now. Lilly needed a new and unexpected expert mech as a big stick. When Morning Star was rebuilt that'd give her three mechs to use with a wide variety of potential. That sort of unpredictability would be integral for future battles.

He needed a bit of help for that though. Master Olsen's work had helped finalize the Star-Shifter, but he couldn't use that exact model for Lilly's mech. It was very technically proprietary Friday tech at the moment. Variants were perfectly fine. He just couldn't use that model. Which wasn't really a hinderance truthfully. He still had a line open with Delicee, and the other designer was quite eager to help.

"I did say that I wanted to design something for her, and I would be absolutely delighted to do something with that new toy you made." The man said as they met in the mech bay and began assembly together.

"Didn't expect ya to come over though. Just needed a bit o' help with the design." Bolt responded while also shifting a few of the parts into place and setting up the frame.

"Oh pish posh. I wanted to meet our new Senior in person. You don't get to see someone touted as the next great genius every day." The taunting grin on the other man's face made it clear that he was teasing. "I will admit I was curious about these Glow things."

Bolt nodded in turn. "This one will have an interesting one. Hope ya learn something from the testing." He'd debated a bit on having it use a new Heart Crystal or just using Lilly's others. He'd gone with a new crystal for now. It made it easier to align what he needed for the lightning generators.

"I have no doubt about that." The First Rate designer said with a laugh.

Typhoon was looking formidable and deadly as they worked on it. The back mounted electrodes for the lightning attack had been adjusted to become more like swirling decorations. The twin gatling guns in the hands had been nicknamed hail-guns, and the Star-Shifter inside had been modulated using Delicee's specialization and turned into a resonance device called the Storm-Shifter.

If the mech worked as expected it'd become a walking storm with a deceptive speed. It wouldn't be fast, but it'd be faster than any heavy when the Storm-Shifter was active. This wasn't a mech you could replicate with normal tech. It was an expert mech using First Rate principles and at a near First Rate cost too. It was both expensive and a hell of a card to play. No one but him, Delicee and Lilly would know what it was capable of until it was deployed out in the field.

"Really surprised yer getting your hands dirty as well as helping with the design." Bolt noted as the mech came together, looming and dangerous.

"After our little collaboration how could I not? Working with your hands is surprisingly fulfilling. I only do it for personal projects, but I do agree that something is lost if you just hand the design off to something. I even noticed some notable performance changes." The First Rate designer smiled happily. "All of my recent work has most certainly moved me closer to Senior. After this I'll be making a fun little First Rate mech using a few lessons from this and quite probably advance."

"Really now?" The other designer asked with surprise.

"Others call what I'm doing slumming it, but they're still stuck at Journeyman." The man said as he dropped his levity a bit. "Efficiency, working with less, being careful with design, all of those have a place in mech design. You are not less intelligent because you grew up on a ruined planet. I believe you will prove that quite well going into the future."

"That is quite touching." Bolt said with a nod. "I'll be sure to sign an autograph for you later." He jokingly added.

"Hah! Please do. I want to put it on a wall and taunt everyone else when you make the big leagues!" Delicee laughed and they got back to construction.

The finished mech loomed as they slotted the final pieces in. It wasn't a masterpiece. Bolt had been certain of that going in. He had plans to deliberately try to make one later, but that was neither here nor there. He didn't need that for this baby anyway. Typhoon was even more of a weapon than the other mechs. Lilly would be using this one when she was feeling mean.

Sometimes you just needed something that could say screw that area. This mech would be that. Facing it on the battlefield would be like fighting a storm made manifest, even in space!

 

[Waruiko]

Sometimes you just needed something that could say screw that area. This mech would be that. Facing it on the battlefield would be like fighting a storm made manifest, even in space!

Click to shrink...

Ah yes nothing quite like casting, "screw everything in that general direction!"

 

[Pyro Hawk]

Ah yes nothing quite like casting, "screw everything in that general direction!"

Click to shrink...

"Temper temper!"

 

[lost star]

The planet they arrived at was beautiful in a very artificial way. As the main seat of the Lewin family it was very technically their crown jewel. Even if no one from that family had set foot on it for years, it was meant to be a place to host and impress others. The estate itself took up an entire continent, just for vanities sake. It was impressive in the very wasteful way that rich people were.

Structurally it was mostly done in old Roman style buildings. A lot of white pillars and faux marble. The weather was climate controlled and there were enough places with gardens and trees that you could settle small cities in the space. Even the cities holding the people responsible for maintence were carefully maintained to look both elegantly rich and artful. It made Bolt's skin crawl truthfully.

With all of this said though, the place did double as a place of work and tourism and actually broke even on the finance books. The palace had an army's worth of bureaucrats handling various tasks across several planets. Many of the parks doubled as hunting or wildlife preservation areas. If you had the right amount of influence you could find yourself in a veritable paradise where every single need was met.

Very technically the Wrench Rats had that sort of influence. They'd elected to take up the barracks for the guards and had stripped out a lot of the luxury accommodations. It was frankly uncomfortable for most of them. Even the people from Second Rate areas found the place sickeningly luxurious.

It didn't help that there was a factor making things very uncomfortable. Everyone knew that the family was on the way out. That meant that the entire planet would likely have to be realigned. Which also meant that a planet's worth of people had no idea what was going to happen in the near future. The palpable anxiety on the streets did not make people feel at ease.

The majordomo of the entire place was professional enough not to give a sign of it. Nor did any of the servants that met Bolt and Lilly. The group met them at the main palace with all the decorum a professional servant could bear. It was actually enough to make Phillipe and his group visibly jealous and while neither group was unprofessional enough to verbally say anything, Bolt could almost see sparks fly.

"Heyo!" Lilly waved casually and broke half the tension in the atmosphere with that one action. "So, we got a lotta paperwork, and a lotta decisions. Before ya ask, I ain't taking up the Lewin name for anything, even if ya give me a few sob stories."

"Perish the thought madame." The majordomo bowed to her. "I would not even attempt to influence your decision on this matter."

"Hmm." Lilly bounced a few times as she walked into the massive hall. "Ok then, kiddoes go play and everything." She wiggled a few fingers at the maids and butlers. "Adult talking. Secure the area and all that please."

The others did as requested and the expert twirled as she examined the vast entry hall. The majordomo straightened up and waited patiently, keeping Bolt in the corner of his eye. Bolt stepped forward and looked over the place as well after a few seconds.

"So, our big thing is gonna be clearing out Cian's stuff and then making sure that the rest doesn't turn into a flaming heap." Bolt began once people had filed out. "We're trying to detach ourselves from the Lewin name, and this is basically the last steps."

"Indeed, I did see the paperwork in question. Unfortunately if you desire to have this done quickly I fear I must inform you that it will not be possible." The man said with great formality.

"Think they lawyer said something like a decade ta get it all untangled. Can do Cian's stuff right now though. That's what..." Lilly turned to Bolt.

"Don't ask me to get the law term. We just gotta do inventory, decide if we wanna keep any of it, and decide what to do with the rest. This is specifically stuff under Cian's name." Bolt gave a shrug and faced the Majordomo. "How easy is that gonna be?"

The man didn't grimace, but he did look slightly ill as he relayed the news. "Difficult in a variety of ways. Most of the lady's business was off planet after she reached an appropriate age. She did no record keeping, and sent no messages, so all we have is automated transactions and what physical items she sent to us. All of those items that reached here are stored and notated, but many of them are on different planets, and under different names."

"That's bad right?" Lilly asked Bolt.

"I'd call it decades before that's all sorted." Her husband answered with a sigh.

"We have several accountants working on what we can. Most of the most obvious purchases were recreational pharmaceuticals. I believe I can safely have them on the get rid of list?" The majordomo offered.

"Please." Lilly answered with a sigh. "Was that all of it?"

"If I may madame, most of the more notable things that were brought here were placed in the art gallery and library." The man in charge of everything offered. "It has all been labeled and categorized as best we were able to. I can direct you to that area and you can begin the sorting process. Unfortunately all her digital information is now completely inaccessible due to standard security measures. Normally the deceased would have entrusted a security key to a next of kin, but that has not happened." He paused briefly. "So we have several items that cannot be identified and more that we would gladly remove once you give the authorization."

Bolt and Lilly exchanged looks and let themselves be led to the two areas. Both were quite large. The library was filled with books, paper books at that, which was a choice typically done by the very rich nowadays. These were hand-crafted things specifically made for decoration or novelty.

The art gallery was about the size of a large stadium. It had several old mechs in it, and a wide variety of various artwork. Some of it was quite obscene, which was probably why the majordomo had specifically warned them. Cian had apparently decided to purchase whatever hit her fancy art wise, and her fancy was in the most shockingly perverse things she could find.

"Why was my father the more respectable one?" Lilly moaned as they looked over the items.

"I dunno, that autonomically correct mech is surprisingly well done." Bolt mused as he looked at the robot woman and tilted his head while squinting. "Though I'd still melt it down. I think she had it modeled off herself. The designer who did it must have taken pride in their work even if the subject matter makes me mildly ill."

"We're having that one scrapped before we leave for the day." The expert ordered and stared at one of the sculptures. "I have no idea what this is."

"The term's Avant-garde I think." Bolt didn't try to look at the one she indicated too long. The exotics involved made it float around the pedestal and it gave him some mild vertigo due to how the shapes shifted. That was both impressive and disturbing really.

After a few hours they'd managed to categorize most of it as useless artwork that only collectors would like. There was no theme that made sense in them really. Only three of the pieces were worth another look. The vertigo inducing one was interesting in a novelty factor, there was one particularly strange model that had a thousand little clockwork people living in a house, and a singular piece of artwork that reeked of blood and had a spiritual signature. The last one was going to be disposed of quickly.

The books in the library were somehow even less worthwhile. Many of them were outright vanity projects. Diaries of random morons fluffed up on self-importance. Had a few of the writers been famous they would have been collector items, but most of them were done by people either high on drugs or high on their own flatulence. There was one prize in the entire lot worthwhile and something Bolt was actually going to keep. Someone had taken the time to draw out an entire educational science series. Hand-drawn and hand-written in beautiful calligraphy, it was half art and half instruction. He actually quite loved it.

If that was all they found they would have been quite happy. Unfortunately, they didn't. Hidden in a safe keyed to Lewin genetic codes were a few old documents. All of them were drenched in enough spiritual power to make Bolt's eyes blur. Lilly was less effected and was therefore the one to read it initially.

"They're mostly labeled the Word of Water and Word of Earth." Lilly said as she examined them.

Bolt nodded from several steps away as he kept his eyes covered. "What do they have on them?"

"Couldn't say, and not cause I can't read it. It's just cause parts of it were torn apart. Yer gonna have to grin and bear it." The expert said.

"Of course." Bolt braced himself and looked. Even braced it still hit him hard. He could see a thousand words in a single line. "Shit. Ok, Earth is..." He genuinely couldn't tell. It had a half dozen concepts partially inside one word. "Ow, nothing. It's a fragment of something."

"How bad is it." Lilly asked after Bolt closed his eyes.

"Minor eyestrain. Yer not seeing the layered words?" The man asked back.

"Sorta, kinda. It's got a lotta pressure, but I've dealt with a lot worse." The expert replied.

Bolt nodded and reopened his eyes to look at the water. "And that one's just as fragmented. I think... Yeah, there's a genetic code there maybe?" He closed his eyes again.

"Genetic code, like what I was born with?" Lilly asked.

"Not a geneticist, but based on where we found it probably." Bolt grumbled. "What I could make out told me that there's practically nothing there. These are like torn up spiritual parts. Didn't even know they could get that big."

"What do we do with them?"

"Put em in a box and take them with. Then see if we can get more information about where they came from." Bolt said with a sigh as he rubbed at his closed eyes. "Something solid and lined with a heavy alloy should shield them from most scans. I don't think trying ta destroy them will work at all."

 

[Pollyamorous]

"Minor eyestrain. Yer not seeing the layered words?" The man asked back.

"Sorta, kinda. It's got a lotta pressure, but I've dealt with a lot worse." The expert replied.

Click to shrink...

"This psionic barrier can't stop me because I can't read!"

 

[Starfall15]

The assembler is going to be annoyed and cranky that bolt has parts of those two.

Also, is bolt going to be able to see the shard of the tome of metal that ves has if they meet in person? It is very spiritually active.

 

[Waruiko]

The assembler is going to be annoyed and cranky that bolt has parts of those two.

Also, is bolt going to be able to see the shard of the tome of metal that ves has if they meet in person? It is very spiritually active.

Click to shrink...

I mean Ive not read the original but is there any reason he can't tell Bolt to let it be as something dangerous and then compensate Bolt to bye the books off of him? Bolt may not be big on material wealth but theres plenty of stuff he would likely take such as extra defenses for his family, rare exotics for that planned masterwork he wants to build, or just MTA credits for access to things that would be beyond his reach otherwise in the future.

 

[Starfall15]

Also the bits of water and earth are labeled words not fragments. Going to be interesting to see what bolt can pull out of them.

Could bolt take the idea of layering words and concepts and use it to upgrade the ice mech?