869 869 Delivery
Nico's version of a slightly upgraded weapons capability was to change the capacitors on the Disintegrators, allowing them thirty percent faster firing rates at a slightly lower output and to put a second Mass Driver at the shoulders to go with the one at the wingtips.
The increased firing speed was only an advantage to the most elite of Pilots in the Corvette Class ranks since most couldn't target fast enough to outdo the weapons that it already had, but you could fire them in pairs, increasing the damage done, which would be an advantage of its own against the hardest of targets, which would normally be the ones that the Command Mecha would have to deal with.
The Command Mecha construction was finished without incident, but the Cutter simply didn't have enough materials on board for them to make a whole Regiment full of Line Mecha at once, so they were going to have to relocate to the asteroid belt and pull in some sizeable rocks to use as raw materials for the rest.
[Duty Captain, inform the fleet that we are moving to the asteroid belt to get supplies. They can stay where they are.] Max directed, then got a strange feeling of being watched.
He searched the area for stray thoughts, but there was nobody around except his crew and the only one in the room who had heard him was Nico, who was eagerly waiting for the ship to move.
He knew better than to pass it off as nothing, though. If his instincts said that something was watching him, it was. The question was, what was it, and how did he find it before it became an issue?
Perhaps it was a tracking program or device. If it was interference from his implanted communications device, then it would make sense that he felt the sensation but couldn't find anyone.
So, Max checked the device against the default specs and found that it hadn't changed in any way. That was a good sign and meant that he hadn't picked up a virus like the Arisen had implanted into everything else they met.
But it didn't mean that nothing had hacked their communications.
The sensation had been something nearby, so Max took the liberty to check Nico's communicator as well but didn't find anything out of the ordinary. Perhaps it was just a bit of interference from another message that he had picked up, and the overlap made it feel like he was being watched.
Without any evidence, Max decided to remain on guard against intruders in the ship who might be cloaked or otherwise disguised and started setting up for the mass production of Line Mecha.
A Cutter Class ship like Light of Truth really wasn't meant to have a thousand Line Mecha stored in it, so they would have to build racking as well, allowing them to stack the Line Mecha ten units tall along the wall for storage, but Nico seemed confident that they could manage it without impeding the construction process, so Max didn't ask what the plan was. Instead, he focused on picking out smaller asteroids to pull into the cargo bay to be broken up and used as fuel for the Terraforming Pods that had been repurposed as their construction shop.
Ten at a time, the newly optimized models of the Line Mecha roll off the production floor in wheeled dollies, created for ease of movement around the hangar. The process runs all night long and into the morning, with both Nico and the Research Team forgoing sleep in order to finish the job and get the product moved to the Destroyers as quickly as possible.
As soon as they were done, Max sent a message to the Destroyers that they were coming to drop off the new equipment and that they would be on break for the rest of the day afterward.
The logistics staff understood very well that an all-night effort to get a resupply run ready shut everything down for the day as the crew got back onto a normal schedule, and the defence teams were happy to have the chance to be on guard against a return of the Galen fleet.
A chance to test out their new gear would make everyone's day as long as they performed, as well as the VR testing and training suggested that they would.
All of the Line Mecha pilots who were being switched over to the new units had been undergoing intensive training for the last day, practicing in the learning machines how to operate in a three-dimensional battlefield, as well as some additional close combat techniques that were better suited to the new Mecha.
Unlike Kepler Pilots, the Cygnus Pilots had close combat training as part of their core requirements, but these Mecha were very agile, and the Mass Drivers were a directional weapon with limited adjustment, so they needed to work on their positioning to get the most out of their new equipment.
Most importantly, they had been working on a ten-sided defensive formation which had everyone's back to the center of the formation so that they had no remaining blind spots, and the formation could be collapsed in on itself as casualties were taken, with the damaged Mecha moved to the core of the formation for safety.
That wasn't the sort of thing that a terrestrial force would ever need to know, and it had taken a lot of training to get the force even somewhat confident in implementing it in combat, but now that they were, the Commanders were eager to get a chance to try it out.
"Greetings, gentlemen. Your equipment is waiting for you along the far wall. Half are for you. Half is for the other Destroyer. We will send you the plans for your Mecha Construction devices now, so you can make spares and do any repairs or alterations you might deem necessary." Max greeted the crew of the first Destroyer once they were docked.
The logistics officer smiled back at him. "The Admiral has already trained all our Line Mecha pilots on the new units, so I suspect that they'll be making enough for everyone under Crusader Class certification to have a new Mecha in the next few days.
We won't be fighting on land anytime soon, and it's too big of a loss not to have our Light Mecha be combat capable."
"It's your call. But remind him that they are still experimental and that the vessels here are the test team, so it's best not to put all their faith in untested equipment and make sure that they have the heavier Mecha back them up at all times."
"Understood, Commander. We're just eager to have our men back in the game."
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