The Bluejay Fleet cut through space like a sharp knife. The vessels of the Red Association had beco much more visible and active throughout human-occupied space, so they did not attract too much attention.
Nonetheless, many parties had developed a strong interest in tracking the movents of Professor Ves Larkinson.
It was not difficult to find out that he was scheduled to hold a product reveal in the Bortele System in less than a month.
The 9 ships of the Bluejay Fleet followed the right trajectory for the most part. Their powerful superdrives made the journey much shorter than what was possible just a decade or so before.
This gave Ves less ti to practice his flute playing skills, not that he was able to devote much ti on this activity to begin with, just because he set out on a vacation did not an he could drop his other obligations so easily.
Though he had made sure to clear his schedule for an entire week upon the mont he arrived at Ocanon VI, he had to make up for that by putting in extra work.
Fortunately, his productivity had increased by another degree after his second lightning baptism. It did not bring any notable qualitative improvents to his cognitive capabilities, but the quantitative improvents were quite notable!
Ves utilized this boost to quickly revise and expand the spiritual designs of the Supremo Project and the Transcendent Punisher Mark III Project.
It was not easy for him to convert them from mono-spirit living chs into multi-spirit living chs.
He not only had to figure out a lot of new solutions in order to cram multiple living entities in a single cohesive ch fra, but he also had to build up the theoretical frawork that systemized this novel approach.
According to his latest theoretical model, living chs could be divided into two different categories.
Almost all of his previous works could be categorized as mono-spirit living chs. Leaving out the variable of design spirits, living chs always embodied just a single living spirit.
It was only after Ves designed the Fey Fianna that he broke this pattern. Though he had confined the additional spiritual entities into the fey, they were still subordinate and connected to the main body.
From this result, Ves derived two variations that he could pursue in order to develop additional variations of his central living ch concept.
The first variation was the one he was trying to realize with his two heavy artillery ch design projects.
Asymtrical multi-spirit living chs encompassed any of his products that contained a hierarchy of multiple spirits.
The Fey Fianna was actually the first ch model of this kind. Ves currently sought to determine whether he could also apply this approach to chs without any external equipnt or spurs.
The word 'asymtrical' denoted the existence of an unequal relationship between the different spirits. A hierarchy had to exist where there was at least one master spirit and multiple slave spirits.
"Hm, maybe that is the wrong terminology to use. It's better to use the terms dominant spirit and subordinate spirits instead."
In any case, no matter how much the different spirits got along, when it ca down to it, only one of them had the greatest say.
A battlefield was no place to engage in any quarrels. Efficiency and quick decision-making mattered more than debating over the most effective solutions.
Ves believed it was always better to leave one spirit in charge of any of the other ones he put inside his works.
"Of course, the ch pilot has the ultimate say over everything. His will supersedes everything."
He intended to pay close attention to the actual performance of the Fey Fianna, the Supremo Project and the Transcendent Punisher Mark III in reality.
So long as the asymtrical multi-spirit arrangent applied by Ves worked out well in three different cases, he planned to make it the standard of all of his living ch designs going forward!
So long as it did not introduce any serious shortcomings, Ves saw little reason why he should stick to mono-spirit living chs.
This could be considered a generational evolution of living chs.
"Thinking about asymtrical living chs also caused Ves to wonder what would happen if he designed a living ch that was not asymtrical."
It was an interesting thought experint. What if he stuffed multiple equal spirits into a single ch fra and did not establish an explicit hierarchy?
Would the two spirits work out their own responsibilities and split their duties in a harmonious fashion?
Or would the two spirits try to fight and devour each other in an attempt to 'monopolize' the ch they inhabited?
Ves truly did not know what would happen, and that made him excited. He just needed to co up with the right ch concept in order to develop such an interesting ch.
That was not all. Since Ves was able to design a living ch that contained multiple interconnected spirits inside its ch fra, what if he went into the other direction and spread them out over multiple ch bodies instead?
This could be regarded as an extrapolation of the Fey Fianna.
Instead of designing a single living ch that was accompanied by several living spurs, Ves wondered what would happen if he replaced the latter with complete living chs instead.
"If this works out the way I think it will, I can effectively create a superorganism among chs!"
This would be another radical new application of living chs!
Instead of designing living chs that all took on the role of independent machines that could be combined and separated without any issue, he wanted to form permanent spiritual bonds between them all that discouraged any separation.
"It would be like designing a Fey Fianna while replacing its living fey with dependent chs."
The dominant ch would serve as the hive queen or pack leader of a larger number of subordinate chs.
The forr was able to exist on its own, but was designed to perform much better if it actively led a squad or a company of permanently bonded low-ranked units.
The latter would operate at reduced effectiveness when left on their own, but would be able to provide a lot more value on the battlefield if led by a suitable leader unit!
Ves imagined several possible scenarios where an arrangent like this could be better than grouping chs in a traditional manner.
For example, the dominant ch could be piloted by an experienced and battle-hardened ch officer. The pilot of this machine did not even have to possess good combat skills. So long as his judgnt and leadership abilities were good enough, even injured leaders could contribute to the battle with the help of a supportive machine!
As for the subordinate chs, there was no reason to make them too powerful or expensive.
The best possible use for them was to put younger, inexperienced and lesser qualified ch pilots into their cockpits.
They could be reservists who never experienced a life-and-death battle in their lives.
They could be less talented ch pilots whose genetic aptitudes scored below C.
They could even be old and retired veterans whose skills had degraded and found it difficult to maintain situational awareness on a chaotic battlefield.
Whatever the case, so long as these lesser-qualified ch pilots interfaced with their machines, they not only developed a connection with living chs, but also ford an indirect bond with their superior officer!
This would make it so that all of the ch pilots in this unit fought in a much more coordinated fashion.
"I would love to tackle this project."
Ves recognized that there should definitely be a demand for this kind of concept. While he did not think it would catch on in the first-class ch market, he believed it should be of considerable value in both the second-class and third-class ch markets!
"This is an especially good way to effectively mobilize a lot of low-skilled third-class ch pilots!"
From what Ves recalled of the ti he lived in the Bright Republic, there were an awful lot of potentates that lacked the talent or the money to attend a ch academy.
They either learned how to pilot chs on a part-ti basis or simply attended a crappy ch academy before settling down as security guards or whatever.
Throwing all of these poorly qualified ch pilots into the at grinder that was the ongoing war between red humanity and the native alien races without any preparation would just be sending them to their deaths!
In an ideal scenario, the people in charge would send all of these lesser pilots through intensive retraining courses in order to bring them up to standard.
However, this was not a realistic solution. Red humanity couldn't afford to wait so many years to put so many ch pilots into action.
The manpower, chs and other resources needed to train or retrain so many ch pilots was considerable as well. Those resources could be better spent on supporting existing ch armies.
Before he knew it, Ves had already begun to sketch out a few hypothetical chs that conford to his latest idea.
He needed to be especially careful with embarking on this complicated project because he essentially had to design two interdependent chs at the sa ti!
Any mistake in one ch directly affected the performance of another ch.
Ves felt more challenged than ever by the added requirents and the much greater variables that could go wrong.
"It is all worth it as long as I can make it work. I do not think that there is any ch that can more closely bind different ch pilots and living chs together with each other!"
According to his vision, this might be an alternative and more accessible way to enhance the coordination between ch officers and their subordinates.
Command-oriented ch pilots such as Casella Ingvar possessed the ability to Commandeer any subordinates that were willing to obey her instructions.
Certain chs designed with enhanced coordination in mind such as the works of Master Toqueman Huron were able to produce similar results, but only after satisfying a lot of heavy demands.
Ves owed a lot to Master Huron.
The Fridayman Master ch Designer had inspired Ves to create many of his most valuable and innovative design solutions.
He would have never been able to co up with the kinship network, battle network, design network and so on without drawing inspiration from Master Huron's iconic neural networks!
While Ves did not study neural interfaces too deeply, he actually considered himself to be the Master Huron's best apprentice!
It was funny. Master Huron not only belonged to a hostile state, but never t his talented and overachieving 'student' in reality!
Ves had even killed one of his formal disciples, so his actual relationship with the Fridayman Master was complex to say the least.
Nonetheless, there was so much synergy between networks and living chs that Ves couldn't stop himself from replicating or surpassing Master Huron's works.
As far as he recalled, Master Huron had designed different variations of these asymtrical neurally networked chs in the past.
One of them happened to be piloted by Venerable Ghanso Larkinson!
The Charlemagne and its 44 accompanying quasi-expert chs had been formidable in combat. Ves drew a lot of inspiration from them when he designed the Minerva.
Now, Ves wanted to see if he could replicate the sa sche at the standard ch level.
While there were no powerful expert pilots that could enhance their control and supervision over a bunch of subordinate ch pilots, Ves believed he could partially make up for this shortcoming by shifting their responsibilities to the living chs.
In effect, the dominant living ch would serve as a non-human adjunct officer that perford much of the more labor-intensive duties, thereby allowing the ch officer to focus on the truly important issues!
"How can I strengthen their cooperation further?"
Better teamwork alone was not enough to win a battle. Ves needed to find a way to better leverage the increased coordination of an interconnected ch unit.
"What about hyper technology?"
User Comments
0 comments from readers