Admiral Rashad gave Nico an excited look at the mention of testing. "If you need a test Pilot so you can fully monitor the data output and make adjustments, I have plenty of skilled Pilots here who would be happy to volunteer."
That might be a good test for the Machine. Both Nico and Max should be capable of operating it to the limits of its structural design, but how the average Pilot would do in such a complex machine was another question.
It was a prototype for a much more powerful Mecha, but as it was, it could be the basis for a mass production Line Mecha, should Nico be bothered to work the design flaws out of it. The Admiral would surely push for her to finish this design and not just have the Pilot do a few tests and then scrap it.
Unless she was going to make another, better Line Mecha prototype, that was. Max could sense in his thoughts how eager the Admiral was to be the first to get the new toys for the first time in his life.
He wasn't the highest ranking of Fleet Admirals and had earned his spot with hard work. But that hard work meant he was always stuck out in the boonies on some obscure low-reward mission and, therefore, the last to learn of anything new.
He had just gotten a new ship, though, and he wasn't the last of the active Fleet Admirals to get one, which was an improvement. Of course, then they sent him to watch the Anomaly, as the front line against an unknown alien threat, but at least he got to do it in a new ship with the latest technology in Mecha and Replicators, or at least within the last generation or two of the devices since they were advancing so fast over the last few years.
He didn't even know how long they had existed. He had been on the frontline with the Federation, working an anti-smuggling mission for the last five years, and didn't really learn of anything happening on the far side of the Empire, much less in Kepler, until it was all over.
"Alright. It will be easier to analyze the data if I'm not the one in the Mecha, so I will agree to have one of your people pilot it. We will go out in the smaller shuttle that is in the hangar of Santa Maria, and we will have the Pilot do maneuvering and weapons tests in the asteroid field.
That should at least give us a baseline data set to go by, as well as some user input from a user without a capped-out System." Nico agreed.
Admiral Rashad gave her a strange look at those last words.
"You mean at your young age, you have already reached the diminishing gains level of your System? As you know, my ship's Pilots are all Cygnus born, so they won't have any of the augmentations that you have. Well, except for the cybernetics. A number of my pilots are partial conversion Cyborgs due to combat injuries." He asked.
"No, I actually capped out Speed and Dexterity. I have reached the extent of my progression unless I can modify my cybernetics even more. Commander Max there has capped out his strength at roughly nine times the human baseline."
The Admiral turned to Max for confirmation of that ridiculous bit of information.
"I am at a three-point baseline and two hundred percent bonus. I have indeed reached the hard cap for strength. Any more, and my body wouldn't be able to withstand it, so the System has stopped increasing my strength." He agreed.
That wasn't strictly true anymore. He had gotten a few percent more after the latest upgrade to his bones and skin, making him more biomechanical and less standard human, but the Admiral should be well aware of the limitations of Kepler Pilots as a Cygnus Fleet Admiral.
Rashad shook his head in dismay at the news, then sighed and brought up a list of possible test pilots.
"I have five Super Heavy Mecha aboard the ship, one leading each company and the Regimental Commander." He suggested.
"If we're going to assess this as an actual Line Mecha, we should use a more suited Test Pilot. Who do you have for Corvette Class Pilots or new Crusader Class Pilots?" Nico asked.
They would be much more familiar with the smaller Mecha since a Super Heavy Mecha pilot wouldn't have been inside one in years, or perhaps decades, by the time they would usually have gotten the appointment.
"We have a young Ace among the Corvette Class Sergeants. He was formerly a Crusader Class Pilot but was stripped of his commission for poor behaviour. He is the finest of my Corvette Class operators, and I suspect that he would be the most likely to give you an unbiased review of the new unit and not just tell you what you want to hear." The Admiral suggested, with laughter in his voice and amusement creasing the lines around his black eyes.
"He sounds like our sort of Pilot. If you can get him over here, we will go over the controls and the basic layout, and then we will set out for the asteroid belt." Max agreed.
"Perfect. But one more question. Where did you even put a shuttle in Santa Maria? Two Mecha that size have to take up nearly the whole bay." Rashad asked.
"It's magnetically locked to the ceiling on my side of the bay. Cleansing Light can't stand up in there, to begin with, and the corner on my side doesn't get used unless Shattered Pride is laying flat, so we just stuck it in the back corner along the roof." Nico laughed.
The prototype would just barely be able to stand in the shuttle, but it had a rear ramp for entry and an energy barrier to let occupants out without disturbing the atmosphere inside, so it would do for the purpose, and it wouldn't give away any more of the military capabilities of the Destroyers if any hostile species should happen to be watching.
"He is on his way. It should take about five minutes for him to get here since Sergeant Khalil is on duty right now. I didn't tell him what he was coming here to do, only that he had been requisitioned for your research." Rashad laughed.
"So, he likely thinks he's on punishment detail? Oh, his response should be great." Max laughed as he realized what the Admiral had intended.
Showing too much favour to a troublemaker wouldn't go over well with the rest of his unit, but if they all thought he was being brought to do the grunt work for the visiting Reavers, nobody would ask any awkward questions about confidential Mecha development specifications.
The Sergeant definitely wasn't in a hurry to get there. Max followed his progress through the ship as he stopped to talk to a few female Pilots, flirted with a feminine young man from the kitchen, had a smoke with the janitor and then finally took the elevator down to the cargo bay.
He definitely thought that he was on punishment detail, especially when the message came directly from the Fleet Admiral and not from anyone in his usual chain of command within the Mecha Regiment stationed on the ship.
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