The Mech Touch

5635 Dark Zephyr Mark III Project

The Dark Zephyr was the ultimate light skirmisher of the Larkinson Clan.

Ves still took pride in his oldest expert mech. Designed with the support of Master Moira Willix, Venerable Tusa Billingsley-Larkinson received the first proper living expert mech.

Over the years, Tusa and his expert mech partnered up and fought many battles together. The two had become as thick as thieves. Even when the Dark Zephyr had begun to hold his mech pilot back as of late, the two still worked together to get around their limitations and ensure that they could eliminate enemy warships as effectively as possible!

To Ves, the pair was one of the ideal results that he strove for when he embarked on his design philosophy. He wanted to do them justice by making the Dark Zephyr better in any way, but not to the extent of breaking the living machine's identity and ruining the perfect harmony between the two battle partners.

It was quite difficult to fulfill all of these requirements when Ves and his wife completely transformed every single aspect of the Dark Zephyr.

They did not hold back when it came to the design budget of the machine. Venerable Joshua might be the fastest to grow into a high-tier expert pilot, but the other heroes of the Larkinson Clan were not too far behind.

Once Tusa reached the limit of what the general cultivation elixir could do, he would become a genuine ace pilot candidate that only needed a bit of polishing and a hearty battle to break through.

Once Tusa became an ace pilot, everything would change!

Ves had every intention of bringing him and his battle partner over to the Premier Branch and preparing the pair for the tougher battles ahead.

Naturally, the Dark Zephyr would have to undergo yet another thorough redesign and rebuild process. Only a proper ace mech would enable Tusa to channel his full power at that point.

This was an enormous hassle. If Ves and Gloriana wanted to make this transition period as short and convenient as possible, they had to design the Dark Zephyr as a preparatory ace mech.

It was similar to the recent refit of the Spirit of Bentheim. Back then, Ves wanted to completely reform much of the structure of the factory ship so that the hull already met first-class standards more or less. That meant that removing the word 'quasi' from her designation was as simple as replacing the power generators and other easily swappable ship parts.

Though Ves and his wife had a clear goal in mind, the design challenges they needed to overcome were great.

It would have been much easier if they designed a high-tier expert light skirmisher from scratch!

Yet because of the need to upgrade an existing low-tier expert mech, they had to limit their deviations in order to retain the overall spirit of the Dark Zephyr as best as possible.

However, neither Ves nor Gloriana were as limited as the Journeymen as they used to be back when they started to design their very first Larkinson expert mech under the supervision of Master Willix.

They had improved by leaps and bounds. Ves had already become a Senior Mech Designer and learned all of the necessary methods and techniques to integrate exotics into high-ranking mechs.

Both Ves and his wife had spent many years developing a vastly improved repertoire of design applications.

They not only built up much larger toolboxes for themselves, but they also added in a lot of higher-end tools into their personal arsenals, allowing them to keep up with the rising specs and tech level of their design projects.

More importantly than that, Ves and Gloriana's productivity had skyrocketed to a level that they could have never imagined just a few years prior!

The primordial planet inside the Blinkyverse was slowly getting covered by more and more E-computers. The tech and design of the primitive transistors and circuit boards might be horribly outdated compared to contemporary processors, but that did not matter so long as the quantity was large enough!

Gloriana's new Arachne 01 implant set was even more ridiculous. Augmented with broken up pieces of a mysterious Mentalist Crystal, the cutting-edge hyper augmentation began to demonstrate its formidable power.

Hundreds of specialized software programs efficiently utilized the miniaturized processors and supplied a lot of answers in record time.

Even though Ves and his wife were still in the process of forming a draft design, the pair had become so meticulous in their work that they managed to produce a much better overview of what the upgrade project entailed!

This was incredibly valuable as a more detailed and correct draft design could provide a lot of correct guidance in advance. This would help the participants in the upgrade project avoid any unnecessary detours and engage in a lot of work that ultimately ended up redundant.

By the time they came to the end of their planning session, both husband and wife became more than satisfied with the results they produced in so little time.

The vastly increased complexity of the high-tier version of the Dark Zephyr did not hinder them as much as they feared. Both of them were fully capable of designing such a powerful and complex mech in considerably less time it took to design the Lionheart!

"If neither of us get distracted by too many other design projects, we should be able to complete the Dark Zephyr Mark III Project in four months." Gloriana optimistically estimated. "This should make your cousin Tusa more than happy. I do not think he is willing to be as patient as your grandfather and uncle."

Four months was a difficult target to meet, especially when the upcoming version of the Dark Zephyr required them to redesign virtually everything!

Ves did not offer any objections, though. The Dark Zephyr was still a light mech, which meant that it was smaller and contained less design elements in total.

"Mark III? Shouldn't it be called the Mark II?"

"We already upgraded the Dark Zephyr once before, Ves. We upgraded much of its old tech to second-class heartland-level standards. We also mounted it with grenade holsters."

"Oh, that. I don't consider that to be a proper revision. At best, it is just a mid-generation upgrade. It should be regarded as Version 1.5 rather than 2.0."

"I disagree."

The two argued for a bit before Gloriana finally managed to get her way.

"Dark Zephyr Mark III it is." She said with an upturned chin and a satisfied expression. "I shall be leading this project. Juliet, Ketis and you have worked on the original, and I would like the three of you to contribute to the design again."

"Juliet has gone off to EdNet training." Ves reminded her. "It will take at least three years before she gets back to us again. The same applies to most of our other established lead designers."

Gloriana was well aware of this. "A mech as important as the Dark Zephyr must receive the attention of a full high-level design team. I do not want to squeeze Juliet's design philosophy out of the picture, but we may not have an option."

If they wanted to do a proper job, then it was best if they waited until Juliet came back from EdNet training with a lot of design experience and theoretical knowledge in her head.

Yet how could they possibly wait so long? Venerable Tusa would probably grow mad during the long wait!

The needs of the Larkinson Clan necessitated that the Design Department moved quickly to fulfill this long-awaited upgrade demand.

For this reason, Ves and Gloriana both agreed to push Juliet Stameros out of the Dark Zephyr.

This was a weighty decision as that effectively meant they would have to remove the influence of her design philosophy from the expert light skirmisher, all without being able to notify her because she was currently studying inside an accelerated virtual reality setting!

Ves felt rather guilty about that, but his wife looked nonchalant.

"She had made her choice when she chose to accept this opportunity. This is on her, not you." Gloriana mercilessly said. "Besides, it is actually fairly normal for the main design team of a high-ranking mech to rotate after every revision."

She was right. Expert mechs and ace mechs that had been in development for decades rarely tended to maintain the same design team.

Anything could happen that caused the team composition to change.

Contributors may have become too busy and swamped with other responsibilities to go back to their old work.

Other mech designers might have been able to squeeze out the older ones by virtue of their superior ability or connections.

The original mech designers may have died or defected to another organization.

Whatever the case, it was common practice for older expert mechs to come under the care of a different set of mech designers after a long time.

This was why Ves did not get too hung up over this change. He ultimately reminded himself that they needed to serve the interests of Venerable Tusa Billingsley-Larkinson and the Dark Zephyr as best as possible. The feelings of the mech designers involved in this project ultimately did not matter.

The more important consideration now was to choose the mech designers to fill up the two vacant spots previously occupied by Juliet Stameros and Master Moira Willix.

"I think it would be fun to invite Jovy Armalon. He previously told me that he doesn't want to bother with second-class mech designs, but this expert mech is so powerful that I am sure he wil make an exception." Ves proposed. "His design philosophy is very interesting. I think it is an excellent fit for the Dark Zephyr. This is a mech that likes to play tricks and refuses to get pinned down. What better way to complement it than to add the Reality Trickster to our design team?"

His wife immediately frowned. "No. The Dark Zephyr is one of our clan's exclusive works. Do you want to leak all of the proprietary secrets of our high-end mechs? The mechers will know everything if one of their own is involved!"

"That is pretty much already the case no matter what we do, honey."

"We still have to stand by our principles! We can upgrade the Dark Zephyr without outside assistance!"

"If that is the case, then we have no choice but to turn to the new recruits." Ves concluded. "If we want to complete the upgrade project quickly, then we will have to suspend the acclimation program for the selected Journeymen."

"That should not be an issue as long as I am in charge. I will supervise their work more closely to ensure that they will not deviate from the demands made by Tusa. I am much more equipped to do this with the help of Alexandria."

She was right. Ves no longer had any concerns about this issue.

"Who do you want to add to the design team?" Ves asked.

"We need a mobility specialist, so it is essential for us to bring in Adrien Marceau. He is the youngest of the 25 Journeymen, but he has formulated his design philosophy during the heyday of the short-lived Phasewater Generation."

A few of the talented Journeymen that came up during the previous mech generation were quite remarkable.

They had centered their design philosophies around the use of phasewater, which meant that they were much more capable of designing transphasic mechs than their older counterparts!

Adrien Marceau was a part of this fairly recent wave of Journeymen. He developed a Class IV Design Philosophy that was classified as Instant Combat Warping.

His work and design philosophy were best suited for highly mobile transphasic mechs!

Being able to work on the Dark Zephyr would definitely be a dream come true for this new recruit!

Ves had no objections to this choice. "Okay. What about the remaining slot?"

"That depends on what else we would like to add to the Dark Zephyr…"

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