The Mecha moved surprisingly smoothly for its first steps, and Sergeant Khalil gently maneuvered it into the shuttle, where it just barely fit without hitting the ceiling.
Once he was in, he gently turned the Mecha around in the limited space, and Nico nodded happily.
"It looks like all the neural links are working properly. Have you been trained on manual controls?" She asked the Sergeant.
"I have, but that was back in basic training when they still pretended that Piloting a captured enemy Mecha to a glorious victory was a thing that happened." Khalil laughed.
Max chuckled at the absurdity of that training scenario. Infiltration units that could commandeer enemy Mecha without either getting killed or getting locked out by the security systems were incredibly rare and specialized. Your best chance, if you didn't have a hacking-related System Function, was to kill the Pilot as he opened the door and then use his biometric data to power up the Mecha and add your own as a secondary user.
It certainly wasn't the sort of thing that an average Pilot would ever use, but it gave them ideas in combat like they might survive a terrible situation after their Mecha was destroyed.
That hope was a valuable commodity, and it was pure hope that kept many Pilots going until extraction or reinforcements arrived. Every Commander knew of at least one unit who had fought constantly for days on end because they had hope that they would survive to go home. There was also a good chance that any Commander who rose through the ranks had been in that unit.
"Admiral, would you like to come along for the flight, or do you have a business to attend to?" Max asked as Nico took her place at the shuttle control panel.
"I am afraid that I do have to get back to work. I wish you the best of luck, and please keep me informed of the progress. The success of the Light Mecha prototype will mean as much to my men as the replacement for Shattered Pride does to you, I am certain.
He wasn't wrong. A new Line Mecha, which was this powerful, as well as space capable, would be a dream come true for the Line Mecha Pilots, who weren't usually even deployed in such situations due to their lack of orbital mobility. Even the Crusader Class Mecha, which had thrusters of much higher output than the Line Mecha, were barely considered mobile in space combat.
Nico took the shuttle to Warp speed for a few minutes and dropped them on the far side of the Solar System, far from the prying eyes of any of the Koleska facilities. There might be a ship or two that could still see them, but their sensors wouldn't be as capable as the ones on the Station or the satellites in orbit.
Max and Nico both changed into Mobile Suits and secured their helmets in case there was an issue with the barrier over the bay door and then the ramp was lowered, allowing the Mecha to step out into space.
Max clipped a tether to his back and gave the Mecha a thump so that the Pilot would know he was good to go.
"The tether is attached. Please step out into the void for maneuvering thruster tests. Don't worry. The tether is only a kilometre long. If there are issues, we will have no problem powering down the Mecha and reeling you back in before it even starts to get cold in there." Nico informed the Sergeant.
"You really have a way with words, don't you, Subcommander? Very calming and reassuring." Khalil replied.
"Thank you. I have been working on my motivational speaking. You should have heard the early ones. They received truly terrible audience response ratings." Nico joked.
"Worse than don't worry, we will drag you back in after leaving your mecha powered down in space?"
Max laughed at the man's underestimation of Nico's motivational skills.
"I recall one time she encouraged a full charge of a swarm of Klem Behemoths, with the motivational line that "Running only makes you die tired."
The Sergeant relaxed as he laughed. Those who run away only die tired was a long-running joke in the military of every human empire, and the reference made the diminutive Subcommander seem more relatable.
Sergeant Khalil was doing a good job of hiding it, but he had a serious case of Hero Worship regarding the Titan Class Mecha, so Max and Nico had seemed like a superhuman entity, untouchable and unrelatable when he had first heard that they were coming to the same ship he was on.
Hearing them tell combat jokes reminded the Sergeant that despite the differences in skill levels, they were still Pilots and had seen an enormous amount of combat.
The thrusters powered up smoothly, and he followed the route that Nico had given him to complete the movement tests without getting himself tangled up in the lanyard.
"Good. Now with the wings deployed and weapons armed. Report any lag incidents or changes in handling." Nico cheered as he finished the first set of movements, like a strange 3D yoga routine in space.
Not that there likely would be any changes in handling in microgravity, but it had to be tested in case there were interfering lines of code in the control system programs. The test of a Mecha was not just mechanical but also a debugging session for the code that translated the neural controls to mechanical outputs.
That part changed with every change to the Mecha, so there was always the chance of unforeseen issues between subroutines.
"With the wingtip thrusters deployed, the controls get quite twitchy. Is there some sort of gain control for them?" Sergeant Khalil requested.
"Control dial seven on panel four B. Second panel from the end on the top row right," Max replied.
"Or you could adjust it through the module in the neural interface, but that might be too clunky. It was made for debugging, so it's not very user-friendly." Nico added.
The Pilot reached out and tweaked the settings for all his thrusters, then ran the loop a third time. He adjusted them again, reported his changes, which was actually redundant with Nico watching the computers, and then ran a fourth and a fifth time before he was happy with the settings.
"Excellent work. None of the adjustments are at their limits, so there is room for personalization by the Pilots. Return to the shuttle, and we will do a systems diagnostic before we send you out for weapons testing."
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