The Mech Touch novel Chapter 37

Charlotte glowered at him. "Are you fucking kidding me? No! I won’t sacrifice my Kirby’s long-term health for a short-term boost. Only scum do those kinds of things!"

No matter how many times Ves tried to explain it, the pilot kept sticking to her stance. He understood then that to Charlotte, her Kirby’s health was more important than even getting one up over the hated Miranda.

"Maybe we’ve gone off the wrong foot. Let’s try this a different way." Ves said in a conciliatory tone. "Tell me more about your Kirby."

"Why’d you wanna know that?" Charlotte looked at him with suspicion.

"We’ve got two hours of time left and maybe I can make a few tweaks here and there if you’d let me. The only way I can do that is if I know more about the mech and be able to suggest improvements in line with your thoughts."

Though she showed she still had misgivings about it, when it came to her mech, she felt better if she bragged about the Kirby. "I won the top marksmanship prize in the academy tournament. They loaned me the Kirby as the first place prize. It’s the best mech I’ve ever piloted so far. He’s an old training mech, but he’s got the best specs among the heavies in terms of firepower."

Charlotte went on and on as she gushed about the mech’s substantial firepower. She really obsessed over the ability to turn an enemy mech into Swiss cheese before they even reached her. Ves thought the reason why she personalized the Kirby so much wasn’t because she considered the mech a person, but that its weapon loadout featured tons more firepower than all the other piddling mechs she practiced with. In her words, those smaller medium and light mechs were pansies.

"I think I see what you want." Ves nodded his head. "Your training mech is a great fire support mech, but Miranda is going to destroy you with her sword again if you go on stage with the same mech. You have to plug your vulnerability to close ranged mechs if you want to stand a chance of winning the cup."

"I don’t want you ruining my Kirby."

"No no, I’ve got something different in mind. I’d like to install some temporary additions to the Kirby. What do you say about bolting more guns to the Kirby’s frame?"

The prospect of even more guns exciting Charlotte a bit, and after Ves detailed his plans based on the Kirby’s build and the available parts, she enthusiastically gave her approval.

As a Turbofire model, its design had proven itself over the years as a sturdy and reliable way to deliver heavy firepower. It featured a large, stocky bipedal build, allowing it to hide behind hills or structures and fire its weapons over the top without exposing itself excessively. Its main weapons were its two heavy cannons that took the place of the arms. This left the Turbofire with a well-integrated pair of weapons that could easily be fired around corners and over other obstacles. Naturally, this also prevented the mech from wielding external weapons such as rifles or swords.

Though much of the mech was devoted to supporting the two cannons, the mech also featured twin laser shoulder mounts. Each mount carried three medium-powered lasers and normally fired in rapidfire mode in order to take down missiles and light mechs.

The Turbofire design incorporated extra large and extra sophisticated sensors. Their best feature was their strengthened targeting systems, allowing the laser mounts to fire more accurately at fast-moving targets. Charlotte always relied on the autonomous shoulder mounts to take care of rushing mechs.

Unfortunately for her, Miranda knew about this detail and confronted the Kirby with a knight-type mech. The shield was specifically prepared for this arena duel. Hiding behind the reinforced shield, Miranda was able to dodge the heavy cannon shots and shrug off the laser beams long enough to reach Charlotte’s rear. As the Kirby lacked any way to turn her weapons around, Miranda had ample opportunity to do all manner of things to the lumbering heavy mech. Even the shoulder mounts couldn’t turn around due to their excessive length with the mech’s large head in the way.

To plug this gaping weakness in the Turbofire’s design, Ves offered to add a small change to the Kirby. He wanted to add a couple of rear-facing weapons on the Kirby’s back. With relatively little experience in this area and only less than two hours to accomplish the job, Ves knew it wouldn’t look pretty. But right now he needed to impress the crowd and just sticking to safe and boring repairs wouldn’t cut it. The Kirby also deserved better.

Mounting weapons on the rear of the mech was a tricky operation. It couldn’t be something with a long barrel such as a cannon because the enemy mech could just stand to the side or even cut it off. The weapon should also be limited in weight, or else it could shift the mech’s center of gravity too far backwards, making it easy to trip on its back.

"Hm, lasers could do. There’s a couple of smaller mounts available. Still, they don’t pack enough of a punch."

There was really only one solution. Missiles.

The basic ranged weapons available to mechs consisted of three separate choices.

Laser weapons boasted high accuracy, weighed relatively little and required no physical ammunition. They also slurped energy like a thirsty hog and generated incredible amounts of heat. However, their light speed damage delivery meant that if a mech’s sensors were good enough, it could even detonate explosive shells in mid air.

Ballistic weapons, which included solid projectiles as well as explosive shells, often fired through an electromagnetic barrel. This caused them to consume energy and build up heat, but in a much lesser proportion to lasers. They generally delivered a lot more damage at the cost of accuracy and having to carry around ammunition.

Missiles in these days were basically considered self-propelled and self-guided explosive shells. They boasted a substantial amount of firepower and did not require a large and sophisticated weapon platform to launch. The simplest missiles could even be launched from an improvised pipe. They demanded the least in terms of heat, weight and space out of the mechs, but they were also the most troublesome to reload since they took an incredible amount of space.

Still, their ease of delivery made them popular alternatives to ballistic weaponry. These missiles also came in hundreds of different varieties. The most dominant type of missiles were long-ranged missiles, which could travel at long distances and arrive at a target with pinpoint accuracy as long as it was supplemented with decent targeting.

What Ves decided to incorporate in the Kirby’s back was something different. Long-ranged missiles were all fine and dandy, but the close-ranged nature meant that much of the propellants in the missiles would never be fully utilized. He decided to go with short-range rockets instead. While they didn’t possess enough propellant to travel beyond a kilometer of distance, they used up all of the freed space for extra explosives instead, leading to a bigger boom.