The Mech Touch novel Chapter 1753

Chapter 1753 Firepower Disparity

In the time it took for the Scarlet Rose to pass through the territories of the Ordent Republic, Ves hadn't been spending his time in vain.

As someone who always indulged in paranoia, Ves never assumed the best case scenario happened all the time.

His temporary rational state did not diminish this aspect of his. Instead, he became just as paranoid as any casual probability analysis concluded that Ves would surely encounter a situation like this where the Scarlet Rose couldn't shake off her pursuers!

If not now, then later! Ves had to pass through too many star systems, giving his pursuers plenty of opportunities to prepare an ambush!

Aware that fleeing was not always a viable solution, Ves had to prepare another countermeasure!

If he was a qualified starship engineer with many different ship-related competences, then he would have decided to tinker with the Scarlet Rose.

Perhaps he might be able to boost the propulsion system of the ship to provide her with a temporary doubling in acceleration. If Ves happened to be very competent and in a gambling mood, then he would have taken his chances by performing a ruinous double jump!

Sadly, Ves only possessed a shallow understanding of starship engineering. While he could have spent some time by studying some of the textbooks in Aisling's comprehensive library, it would take months or years to become competent enough to manipulate the Scarlet Rose's complex engineering systems!

Trying to master the Scarlet Rose by himself was a waste of time!

Ves wasn't an engineer. He was a mech designer! Rather than attempt to mess with something outside of his expertise, he should rather be leveraging his strengths!

And what better could he apply his expertise to than the four dormant second-class mechs stored in the mech hangar of the Scarlet Rose?

When Ves first visited the mech hangar in person, the cleaning bots already took away the bodies left by Lucky's rampage.

A bit of scars signifying weapon discharges still marred some of the portions of the mech hangar, but by and large everything was fairly intact.

The mech hangar wasn't actually very big. The Scarlet Rose had to devote a significant amount of internal volume to provide enough space to accommodate four battle-ready mechs.

Each of the four mechs shared the same orange coating and markings of any mech affiliated with Clarion University.

Evidently, Aisling managed to replace the standard CRC mech compliment with four of her personal bodyguard mechs.

The design schematics and other files that Ves retrieved from her personal desk terminal proved to be extremely helpful in figuring out the mechs.

Without them, Ves would have wasted precious time and effort in deciphering the mechs!

Yet now that he possessed all of Aisling's notes about her own work, Ves rapidly understood the essence of the four mechs.

"These mechs are all reflections of her design philosophy!"

She designed and built these mechs for herself. This was different from designing mechs for external clients, who all possessed different demands.

Aisling's aim in designing these bodyguard mechs was to form a team of mechs that exerted as much strength as she could manage.

"The secret ingredient is neural interconnectivity!"

Grouping four random mechs together did not necessarily yield greater results. The challenge was to form four complementary mechs who each amplified each other's strength.

The goal was to achieve a level of performance that was stronger than the sum of its parts!

This happened to be something that Lady Curver excelled in! By employing a group of four, very close mech pilots and pairing them up with custom mechs that each connected to a neural network, the mech pilots were able to exert a level of coordination that was a level beyond what elite teams could manage!

While Aisling's application of neural interconnectivity was still immature to the more dramatic applications of Master Huron, it was enough for her four mechs to exert the effective strength of six or eight uncoordinated mechs!

Of course, all of that was rather moot to Ves. With no mech pilots on hand, particularly those who possessed the necessary training to pilot second-class mechs, Aisling's specialty couldn't be leveraged.

In fact, without any mech pilots, how could Ves even make use of these powerful machines?

Surprisingly, Calabast came to the rescue.

Part of the software and data packages she included in her transmission consisted of programs meant to take control over Coalition mechs!

Though it required a bit of hacking and hardware modifications, Ves and Lucky easily managed to follow the steps outlined by Calabast's instructions.

After modifying the neural interfaces and replacing its software with a Hexer-developed control program, they eventually managed to convert the mechs into bots!

Yes, bots!

"Well, perhaps I should call them drones."

Regardless of how he called them, after a lot of modifications spanning an entire week, Ves managed to turn the four second-class mechs into unmanned fighting machines!

Ordinarily, Aisling's bodyguard mechs did not come with any automation.

If Ves wanted to convert the mechs into bots without any assistance, then he would have taken at least a month. He would have been forced to spend most of the time on programming and configuring the AIs and control systems.

Calabast's timely gift provided him with a ready-made solution, allowing him to finish the conversion even before the Scarlet Rose left the Ordent Republic!

The end result made Ves excited. The four unique mechs that used to be piloted by humans now turned into a quartet of battle bots!

Of course, these battle bots only exerted a fraction of their original effective performance.

The automation of the mechs was fairly limited and lacked a lot of ingenuity. While it was no problem to command them to perform standard tasks, as long as they encountered formidable opposition, then the AIs controlling the mechs could easily be fooled!

This essentially meant that the four battle bots would certainly lose in a battle against four proper mechs if all else was equal!

In fact, the battle bots would still lose if they faced just two second-class mechs piloted by competent human mech pilots!

However.. the Echo Spears that managed to corner the Scarlet Rose did not come from the Friday Coalition.

The mercenary corps was a homegrown outfit from the Great Zona Republic!

Their economical light carriers and their large number budget mechs with a handful of midrange and premium mechs all indicated that they were not swimming in money.

The chance that the Echo Spears were capable of fielding second-class mechs was practically nil!