The Mech Touch Chapter 2376: Blueshift

Ves didn't have much experience with working with light chs. He considered humanoid dium chs to be his ho ground.

dium chs were the most mainstream variety of chs for good reason. They were mobile enough to avoid getting pinned down by artillery attacks and they were tough enough to provide their pilots with plenty of margin for error.

The load-bearing capacity of dium chs was also far superior to that of light chs. Due to their volu, mass and other design properties, dium chs were able to carry enough weapons and other gear to make it easy for any of them to contribute in battle.

Light chs traded all of that in to gain more mobility. They were faster, but they paid a lot to secure this advantage.

The relatively thin chest armor of a light ch ant that the ch pilot had to brave a lot of dangers with insufficient protection. This was the biggest reason why most ch pilots would rather not pilot these challenging chs.

One single mistake could easily spell death!

The casualty rates of light ch pilots were statistically the highest in every star sector the MTA surveyed. Ves could pull up centuries worth of studies that pointed at the depressingly high number of deaths for this group of ch pilots.

To be fair, many of those ch pilots would have rather piloted a dium ch if they had the choice. Light chs were smaller and therefore cheaper than dium chs, so plenty of struggling rcenary outfits attempted to fill up the available space in their carriers by purchasing so 'affordable' light chs.

These outfits got what they paid for. Their inability or unwillingness to invest in larger chs ant that the ch pilots of the outfit had very little choice.

This was sothing that Ves personally disapproved of, but what could he do? Not every organization was as flush with money as the Larkinson Clan. Journeyn such as him may not be as good as Masters when it ca to creating value, but even the worst Journeyn were still capable of funding a couple of ch companies!

Ves showed off the design of the custom light ch to Tusa. The modification plan and all of its diagrams montarily overwheld the light ch specialist.

While he didn't understand any of the finer details of the design schematics, Tusa still knew enough about light chs to judge the approximate performance of certain aspects by their appearances.

"This ch.. Doesn't look light enough." He said.

Ves grinned. "This ch is faster than you think. Look, it's true that designing a light ch from the ground up is much better than stripping down an existing dium ch. However, we don't have the ti to do the forr, so I'm trying to implent the latter in the best way possible. In this case, despite our lack of ti, we have an abundant amount of resources, much of which consists of rare and valuable exotics."

"You an you…"

"Your guess is right. Any problem can be solved as long as I stuff enough high-quality components in your ch! To be honest, so of the components such as the flight system and the power reactor will be rebuilt to second-class standards. Do you know what that ans? It's specs have surpassed the standard expected of a third-class ch or a bridge ch!

Though Ves still had to strip plenty of Breyer alloy and other mass, the stripped down Bright Warrior still retained much of its resilient structure! This ant that Tusa wouldn't have to cut it so close in battle. Compared to his current light ch, the defensive capability of his upcoming ch was at least an order of magnitude higher!

Giving his expert candidates more durable chs was one of the main reasons why he went through the trouble of making them. Each and every expert candidate and expert pilot was valuable to Ves. How tragic would it be if any of them died before they managed to leave the Nyxian Gap?

Ves and the rest of the clan would definitely cry until they had no tears if soone like Joshua lost his life!

As for Tusa, Ves figured he wouldn't cry as much tears, but that didn't an he was fine with this outco. An expert candidate was an expert candidate, and Ves was not in the habit of squandering valuable assets.

"I don't need an excessive amount of defense." Tusa stated with a frown. "I appreciate your work in trying to increase the protective capabilities of my ch, but if I can sacrifice most of that to gain 10 percent higher acceleration, I can live with that!"

Ves doubted that. The pirate armada barreling down on their fleet possessed a lot of firepower. Even if Tusa piloted the most nimble light ch in the clan, the Gravada Knarlax rely had to instruct a hundred of its secondary gun batteries to saturate the surrounding space!

Therefore, Ves was pretty adamant in sticking to his current plan.

Tusa may make as many unreasonable demands he wanted, but according to his professional judgent, Ves had the obligation to protect his current client from his own stupid decisions.

Of course, he didn't put it that way to Tusa.

"The Bright Warrior ch is by nature a dium ch that heavily emphasises its armor. Converting it to a light ch can only go so far. The proper way to enhance its mobility from that point isn't to strip any further structure. I've already done that. It may not look this way, but the design that you're seeing right now is as barebones as I can make it. At this point, Gloriana and I looked at upgrading so of its core parts to speed it up. If you look at the spec sheet, you'll see that the end product is projected to be substantially faster than your current ch in almost every criteria."

This wasn't difficult to achieve as Tusa piloted a normal premium light ch up until now. The comrcial ch that Tusa was accustod to was a good, speedy machine, but its budget constraints ant that its materials and parts were highly constrained.

With light chs, miniaturization was a very important concept. A part that accomplished the sa job as another part but took half the amount of space was at least several tis more expensive!

In fact, it was more common to see these smaller parts selling for eight, ten or even fifteen tis the cost of sothing larger!

A comrcial ch could never incorporate so much waste, but fortunately this was different. Ves had a sufficient amount of exotics at his disposal to cobble up so replacent parts that were lighter, took up much less space or delivered superior performance!

Though Ves was only able to apply this treatnt to a couple of parts under the circumstances, this was already enough to turn Tusa's ch into an incredibly elusive ch!

Not even the light chs of the Penitent Sisters could match the extravagant amount of expensive materials that Ves intended to use for this project!

After Ves parried every request to make the design faster, Tusa reluctantly accepted the current plan.

The work proceeded without issue. Ves may not have spent too much ti on this project, but Gloriana made up for that. As long as Ves supplied a list of every exotic in his fleet's possession, she could licence any superior component that made use of these materials.

It actually took less than a week for Ves to put the custom ch together. Compared to a typical Bright Warrior, the ch reserved for Tusa looked like it had lost at least half of its mass. Its limbs were leaner and its torso looked like Ves had taken a knife and cut off a lot of the bulges.

Though it looked anything like a traditional light ch, to Ves the ch looked much more formidable. Due to all of the mass and volu retained in the modified ch, it possessed significantly higher arm strength and structural resilience.

In short, this light skirmisher was capable of hitting a lot harder than regular light skirmishers!

When Tusa inspected the finished ch up close, he placed his hand over the surface of his new machine.

"You should get rid of the gold coating." He spoke. "I don't want to pilot sothing that looks so ostentatious. If I am about to enter battle with this ch, I don't want to attract too much attention."

"Oh. I'll take care of that. What color sche do you prefer?"

Tusa thought for a mont. "Go for sky blue. I like that color. It reminds of the pristine blue skies of ho."

To him, sky blue stood for freedom.

"Alright."

Ves finalized the ch by changing its coating. This didn't demand too much effort as Ves only had to instruct so bots and machines to perform this quick job.

As the ch changed color, Ves asked Tusa if he wanted to na the ch.

"I'll leave that up to you. I've never nad my own ch before. I can't think of anything at the mont."

"Then let's call it the Blueshift." Ves casually chose. "There are two anings behind this na. Your ch is blue, and if it moves fast enough, any enemies observing its approach will see it slightly bluer than usual."

In most battles, this effect was negligible. Ves still thought it was still a nice reference, though. Perhaps one day Tusa would be able to pilot a ch that was fast enough to make his enemies see blue before they perished!

After making sure that the ch's spiritual foundation was fully saturated, Ves ordered so n to ship it out of the Scarlet Rose. Ves gave a stern warning not to pilot his new ch until they confronted the pirate armada.

He had already passed on this instruction to every other expert candidate. It wouldn't do for them to advance prematurely.

Ti quickly went by after this. Ves only had to modify two more chs. He did his best to elevate the performance of the Shield of Samar and the Quint within his current ti constraints.

"I don't have enough ti!"

He received plenty of assistance from his Braves, and the Larkinson ch designers back in civilized space also pitched in by performing lots of tests and simulations.

Despite all of this help, Ves couldn't implent all of the improvents he wished into the chs. Ves had to retain as much character as possible, so he couldn't afford to make any drastic alterations to the Quint and the Shield of Samar.

He still managed to make a lot of improvents. It was just that the difference was not as drastic for so of the other chs.

Ves was much more concerned about fabricating so of the weapons and shields of his custom chs. So far, he hadn't begun to make them. If he didn't begin work on them soon, he had no choice but to issue his chs with gear made out of Breyer alloy!

"Breyer alloy is pretty good, but it's no longer good enough." He muttered.

Only Unending alloy t his standards!

In order to break down the statue of the Unending One, Ves had no choice but to turn to his cat.

He moved to his stateroom and stepped up to Lucky.

"o.?"

"It's ti, Lucky."

"eoooww…"

Ves picked up his cat. "No excuses. I don't care if you are still sick. You need to get back to work and earn your keep."

"owww!..."

If your stomach is really troubling you, then I have the perfect ans of solving this problem!"

Uh oh. Lucky knew exactly what Ves was talking about. He began to squirm!

"Give up. You don't get to go until you complete your job!"

"OW! OW! OW!"

Ves opened up a drawer and retrieved an egg-sized chunk of B-stone. He especially prepared this sample for just this situation.

"Stay still! Don't fight so much! You'll feel better in no ti!"

"ow! ow! ow!"