"Patriarch Ves!"
The observation room of a private testing facility beca a lot more boisterous after Ves, Lucky and his usual entourage of guards stepped inside. The mbers of the design team monitoring the current testing session all looked up from their consoles and stood up to convey their respect.
Ves casually waved his hand. "Proceed with your work. Don’t stop on my account. Who is in charge at the mont?"
"That would be , sir." Catherine Evenson remained standing.
"Give an update on the latest iteration of the Blinding ch. How is it performing?" He asked as he approached the front of the room.
She proceeded to do so. Catherine summoned various projections of graphs and tables filled with data to detail the current performance of the ch design in question.
The large transparent windows looked down at an extensive pit where over fifty chs moved according to a predetermined plan.
All of the chs belonged to the Larkinson Clan. An entire ch company’s worth of prototypes moved in formation.
Each of those late-stage prototypes carried the thick and ungainly form of the Blinding ch. Its utilitarian, masculine appearance lacked the elegance of female Hexer ch models.
What made the model look even more remarkable was that it did not wield any weapon at all. Neither its arms nor its fra boasted any armants of any kind.
The Blinding ch was actually quite capable of wielding weapons in battle, but that was not its primary responsibility. Its performance with either lee weapons or ranged weapons was rather poor due to budget constraints.
Auxiliary chs didn’t necessarily need to be ard. Their primary purpose was to support other friendly units in battle. If they were forced to carry the battle, then sothing must have gone horribly wrong.
The materials needed to fabricate the ch consisted of ubiquitous low-grade exotics and ordinary tals. The bulk of the Blinding ch was deceptive as an ordinary knight ch of the Hex Army could easily withstand several tis more damage!
Even the ch pilot was supposed to be disposable. Ves already received word that the Hexadric Hegemony were in the process of conscripting hapless male potentates whose genetic aptitudes were too low to qualify for regular military service.
It would have been great if the Hexers were on the winning side, but since the opposite was the case, the state could no longer afford to squander its resources. Boys had to be put to work no matter the cost!
Being aware of this reality hadn’t made it easy for Ves to design this ch. Yet it was the only way he could think of to counter the unfair advantage the Friday Coalition held. As the Battle of Reckoning had brutally emphasized, it was incredibly costly to resist an opponent who brought additional expert chs!
Ves did not wish to see the Hexadric Hegemony collapse. The state was the Superior Mother’s greatest backer at the mont. Gloriana would also beco hysterical if the Hexer people beca holess all of a sudden.
He also did not wish to let the Friday Coalition enjoy the satisfaction of winning an existential war. The Fridayn targeted him several tis and a lot of good clansn had died due to their aggression.
The bad blood between him and the Coalition ran very deep! There was no way Ves was going to allow sothing as inconsequential as his conscience get in the way of his revenge!
In order to fulfill this greater goal, Ves simply shut out his complaints and diligently designed the Blinding ch without adding any additional frills, which was exactly what the Hex Army sought.
The Blinding ch was not like the Blessed Squire. While the latter was also a male Hexer ch, its design was a lot more noble and benign towards its ch pilot.
The Blinding ch could only put up a shield and pray that an ard Hexer ch ca to the rescue.
The Blessed Squire was able to tank quite a decent amount of damage, which was pretty different from the Good Boy that it was originally ant to supplant.
The Blinding ch was a fake defensive ch. It possessed the bulk but not the defensive capabilities to withstand aggression from hostile military-grade chs.
The Blessed Squire was designed to be deployed as an individual ch supporting a larger unit of chs. In turn, the other chs would automatically do their best to coddle and protect the supportive knight ch so that its valuable glow would be preserved.
The Blinding ch was supposed to be deployed in mass formations numbering hundreds of identical copies or more. This was all necessary because a single ch was not enough to achieve the desirable effect.
This last point was the most disturbing aspect about this ch design. No good would co from grouping so many flimsy, slow and pathetically-ard chs together.
If even a single Fridayman ch company entered their midst, then a massacre would quickly ensue!
Ves could only hope that the Hexer military commanders weren’t heartless enough to deploy so many Blinding chs without providing adequate protection to them. With a production cost of 145 million hex credits a copy, it still cost billions of valuable hex credits if entire squads got trashed at once!
While Ves looked down at the Blinding ch exposing the luminar crystals embedded on the surface of their uncovered tower shields, Catherine finally concluded her report.
"...as it stands, a ch company of Blinding chs has only proven to be marginally effective at debilitating ordinary ch pilots but has not been able to hinder any expert pilot. I do have to ntion that these are only preliminary results that are subject to several caveats and limitations."
Ves glanced at the forr Sentinel noble. "Tell about the caveats."
"As you can see right now, we have only been able to fabricate 40 copies of the current iteration of the Blinding ch. While we have never fabricated so many prototypes of any single ch design before, this is still a sparse amount when you consider how it is ant to be fielded."
"That’s true. How long will it take for additional Blinding chs to be shipped to this testing facility?"
"I’m afraid it will take at least three more days, sir. Due to confidentiality requirents, it is irresponsible to outsource the production of the prototypes to any ch company in the Prosperous Hill System. It is prudent to produce the needed chs from the Spirit of Bentheim herself, but..."
Ves grimaced. "The Spirit of Bentheim’s main priority is to mass-produce as many Bright Warrior IB’s as possible. Her production halls have recently been configured to optimize the fabrication of the new standard ch of the clan as much as possible. Temporarily switching over to fabricate a hundred Blinding ch prototypes won’t go smoothly."
"Correct, sir. It doesn’t help that we have to ship raw materials and finished chs back and forth from the outer system to Prosperous Hill VI by relying on a single transportation service. The PHTS has proven to be a severe bottleneck that imposes considerable delays."
There wasn’t much they could do about this problem, so Ves ntally shrugged and accepted that it would take ti for more Blinding chs to arrive.
Still, even if the testing facility beca host to over three ch companies of Blinding chs, he doubted whether the results would beco any different.
This was why he dropped by the testing facility. Only Ves was able to troubleshoot the ch design when its spiritual aspects failed to deliver on their promises.
"Miss Evenson, I’d like to witness so of the basic tests in person." Ves commanded as he got down to business. "Please suspend the current testing program and deploy the test chs according to my direct instructions."
"Uhm, it will only take another hour to complete the schedule."
"Don’t bother. We’ve already collected enough data on the Blinding ch’s physical performance characteristics. Even if a few paraters differ from the previous iteration, no one cares about a few percentage points worth of deviations."
The Blinding ch revolved completely around its ability to repel enemy expert pilots. Everything else was secondary. Ves saw no point in fiddling with its physical configuration at this late stage.
It took a few minutes for the test chs to suspend the current test and ’reset’ them so that they were ready to act according to instruction.
"Which group of ch pilots are helping us with the prototypes?" Ves suddenly asked.
"Commander Ingvar dispatched so of her Living Sentinels ch pilots to us. We originally approached the Penitent Sisters, but they do not have any males among their ch pilot roster."
It wasn’t a big deal in this case. The Blinding ch’s design spirit was the Ill.u.s.trious One. Ves refrained from adding the Superior Mother to the mix because she wouldn’t be able to contribute to the performance of the ch in any aningful way.
In fact, Ves was afraid that her strong presence might interfere with the Ill.u.s.trious One’s role!
"Let’s start with pitting a single Blinding ch against a single regular ch."
Once the upper layer shifted out of the way, the shield exposed an entire grid of flat luminar crystals!
There were even more luminar crystals hidden inside the fra of the Blinding ch. They didn’t really serve any obvious purpose as far as other ch designers were concerned, but Ves thought differently.
Luminar crystals interacted with the Ill.u.s.trious One in interesting ways, so there was nothing wrong with adding more to a ch.
"Begin with blinding the opposing ch."
The Blinding ch in question activated its main function. The blinding attack was actually a combined attack.
As Ves switched to his spiritual vision, he could see that the ch pilot ntally activated the Blinding ch’s triggered ability. The design spirit beca stimulated, causing it to interact with the luminar crystals embedded in the shield in a mysterious fashion.
Whatever the Ill.u.s.trious One did sohow caused the luminar crystals to beco charged with a minute amount of spiritual energy!
At the sa ti the design spirit made its move, the circuitry and other components of the shield began to channel electrical energy into the sa crystals.
This caused the front surface of the tower shield to dazzle all of a sudden!
If any human stood in front of the Blinding ch while it engaged its Blinding Pulse ability, that person would probably be blinded from all of the flashes!
In fact, the intensity of the flashes was deliberately controlled to avoid inflicting permanent retinal damage. It would have been too easy for the Blinding ch to harm lots of civilians if this precaution wasn’t in place.
There was no way that a few bright flashes of light was capable of overloading the sensors of any modern machine.
The bright light flashes were only there to complint the spiritual flashes channeled by the sa luminar crystals!
Yet as an ordinary comrcial ch standing opposite to the Blinding ch got exposed, it remained absolutely stable!
The teletry from the ch pilot on the receiving end of the Blinding Pulse only jumped a bit before going right back to normal.
While this was just a single attempt, the lack of any aningful result did not bode well for the Blinding ch!
Yet the ch did not do anything. Ves clearly observed the prototype channeling so sort of spiritual emission towards the target.
The problem was that it was too weak!
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