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Frankly, Ves wasn’t very eager to turn the Spyre Helix into the deadliest platform for weapons of mass destruction. Though he did not object to the commission to the point of refusing it outright, he clearly lacked passion for the project.

Fortunately, developing a variant was far easier than designing a completely new mech. Since Ves had to work along existing design choices, his work demanded far more out of his technical capabilities than his creative vision.

It was fine for him to treat the commission as a regular job and try to finish it in a decent fashion. It wasn’t as if he would ever commercialize his variant and put it on the market.

If that was the case, Ves had to put far more effort into optimizing and strengthening his variant!

Ten minutes after inspecting the workshop, Ves returned to Finlay. "The workshop is in order. I can begin my design work immediately."

"Good." Finlay jerked his robed and suited body. "I’ll be taking off, then. A number of our men will remain in place to guard this facility and supervise your work. Please do not leave the workshop before the job is done or if the Circle of Mota instructs you otherwise."

"I know. That’s what I’ve signed up for. You can expect to receive your revised design very soon. Just make sure you have my rewards ready for transfer."

After a brief chat, Finlay finally left with his bodyguards. Ves turned to Nitaa and made a silent gesture.

"I will keep an eye on your watchers." She spoke and remained close but unobtrusive.

Ves had already gotten used to being stared at by Nitaa all the time. At least he was reasonably sure that she was completely on his side.

The same could not be said for the faceless goons garbed in full-body armor. Half-a-dozen of them silently patrolled the interior and exterior of the loaned mech workshop.

It was a given that Ves disliked their presence. He never really enjoyed performing his work with an audience. He only really got into his groove when he was by himself or in the presence of like-minded mech designers such as Ketis.

As for Finlay’s guards? Ves regarded each of them with a healthy amount of wariness. Considering the highly controversial nature of his commission, he could never discount the possibility that Finlay would want to silence him afterwards.

Ostensibly, the Circle of Mota ought to prevent such instances, but who knew if they were as impeccably neutral as they claimed? Ves was a complete nobody to the Circle while Finlay happened to be a VIP!

Still, the chance that the Circle of Mota would run afoul of its own rules and traditions was small. It wasn’t worth it for them to risk tarnishing their reputation in order to please a single faction.

Ves put his paranoid worries out of his mind and began to focus on the task at hand. Finlay’s organization had been very efficient in moving a physical copy of the Spyre Helix into the workshop.

"Before I begin, let me study the mech up close."

Ves approached the impressive doom crawler. Though dormant and locked in place by restraints, the Spyre Helix nonetheless evoked a primordial sense of doom and terror in his heart.

The mech looked formidable.

"What a formidable machine. I can feel the intention of its designer from its very contours."

Sharp. Intimidating. Unstoppable.

Whoever designed the Spyre Helix understood the basic essence of the doom crawler mech type. The design emphasized those characteristics as much as possible without compromising too much in other areas.

Due to his heightened mech affinity, Ves was capable of inferring a lot more clues out of the physical copy than before.

He captured many nuances about the doom crawler, enough to paint a vague picture of the original mech designer’s distinctive design style.

The mech designer probably started off as an orthodox Journeyman Mech Designer, but went pirate some time ago. Despite going pirate, the Journeyman did not lose much of the thoroughness and meticulousness demanded of their profession.

In fact, the Journeyman successfully incorporated a lot of fundamental design traits tailored to a different clientele.

As Ves climbed up to the doom crawler and entered the cockpit to boot up its operating system, he discovered the extent the original mech designer had gone to simplify the Spyre Helix’s piloting requirements.

The extent of automation employed by the Spyre Helix frankly alarmed Ves! A disturbing amount of control had been taken out of the hands of the mech pilots!

If the AIs of the Spyre Helixes were ever tampered with, then most of its nuclear arsenal could easily be unleashed in the wrong direction!

He sighed. "This isn’t my problem."

A lot of things could go wrong by placing so much control over the doom crawler’s destructive weapon systems in the hands of exploitable AIs. Yet Ves did not have the leverage to impose any changes in its specifications.

For a moment, Ves considered sneaking some tampered code into the programming of the mechs themselves. However, he reconsidered shortly afterwards.

Any decent Apprentice Mech Designer proficient in mech programming would easily be able to identify any detrimental elements in the updated software packages.

Ves did not wish to risk his own safety or endanger his deal with Finlay over a misguided attempt at appeasing his morality.

As long as the modified Spyre Helixes didn’t blow anything up that belonged to him, its owners were free to use them as they wished!

"Alright. I’m done here."

Ves and Nitaa exited the heavy mech’s roomy cockpit and approached an open design terminal. There, Ves activated its design suite and loaded in the Spyre Helix design. He also imported the component design files of the nuclear cannons, gamma laser weapon mounts and nuclear-capable missile launchers.

He stared deeply at the different schematics projected side-by-side.

Compared to the Spyre Helix’s standard armaments, the replacement weapon systems took up considerably more space.

If the modifications only amounted to swapping out one weapon system with another weapon system with nearly-identical parameters, then Finlay wouldn’t have been so desperate to seek out a Journeyman!

"The base model of the Spyre Helix doesn’t have the capacity to accommodate all of the replacement weapon systems." He whispered. "Since that is the case, I will have to make some room instead."

He began to work. He first ripped out the old weapon systems, leaving gaping holes in the doom crawler’s altered design. Then he tried and failed to fit the new weapon systems in place of the old ones.

Though the attempts failed straight away, the exercise still assisted him in visualizing the amount of room he had to free up from the doom crawler.

"This is going to be a difficult challenge." He muttered.

One of the requirements he had to abide by was that the overall performance of his variant could not be any less than that of the base model.

Certainly, it was fine if the mech design was a little bit less resilient, as long as Ves compensated the deficiency in another way, such as improving its speed.

The key here was that Ves could not allow his variant’s performance index to fall!

The mech performance index was a simplified indicator that summed up a mech or mech design’s overall performance. The MTA developed a very complex formula that attempted to take every important variable into account and come up with a single index number that signified how ’good’ a mech performed.

The mech industry hated performance indexes. To sum up and condense all of the complexities of a mech design into a single number meant that lots of the strengths, nuances and uniqueness of a mech design would be lost!

However, laymen such as Finlay weren’t able to determine whether a mech design was good or not by reading out an entire spec sheet. Their inability to interpret all of the technical parameters meant that they either had to listen to the advice of a knowledgeable insider or depend on crutches like performance indexes to evaluate a mech design.

The base of the mech performance index started at 100. The MTA matched this number to the very first standard mech design in existence at the very start of the Age of Mechs.

That was a long time ago!

With over four-hundred years of rapid progress in the field of mech design, most mechs far surpassed the performance of those ancient machines. The performance index of even the cheapest third-class frontline mechs already reached the thousands!

Of course, a doom crawler like the Sypre Helix possessed a performance index that reached high in the tens of thousands.

Ves wasn’t allowed to let that index drop by 1 for his variant! Finlay insisted that a Journeyman like him ought to be capable of implementing the changes without degrading the doom crawlers!

"Well, he’s right." He muttered. "Apprentices probably won’t be able to keep the mech performance index at the same level."

As for Ves? He could already tell it would only pose a moderate challenge to him! The reason why a challenge existed at all was that Ves was forced to discount the vast increase in destructive power to boost his variant’s performance index.

It would have been too easy to game the performance index if that was the case. Finlay wasn’t that stupid to discount this loophole, unfortunately.

"Well, no matter."

Ves began to work immediately. Since he did not have enough space, he first began to tinker around the weaponless version of the Spyre Helix. He spotted many ways to make more room and to accommodate the increased heat and energy draw of the new weapon components.

"I can’t forget to strengthen the radiation shielding as well."

In addition to these basic changes, he also had to optimize the mech’s ability to operate on the 0.53 g environment that Finlay had mentioned. To do that, Ves scanned the entire design and marked many areas which he could alter in order to optimize the Spyre Helix to operate on a small and sunless rogue planet.

All in all, by the time Ves finished planning his upcoming work, almost every aspect about the base model needed to be changed.

Most of the changes were fairly subtle. Ves tried to keep the changes as easy as possible to apply to existing mechs because that was part of the commission requirement. He could not go too far in his proposals and force mech technicians to expend a lot of time and effort into enacting all of the modifications.

Even so, Ves couldn’t avoid implementing more drastic changes, especially with regards to fitting in the new weapon system.

He tore out a considerable amount of minor subcomponents and structural supports from the base model. In order to keep the performance index from dropping due to his actions, Ves implemented even more changes to the design in order to optimize his variant’s performance.

That was the most challenging aspect about this job. Though Ves still rushed the job, he nonetheless spent two entire days to puzzle out effective solutions that addressed all of the thorny problems.

Ves predicted that an ordinary Journeyman that didn’t enjoy his advantages would have taken at least a week to accomplish this much more, if not more!

His abnormal attributes, skills and mech affinity all contributed to an exceptionally productive design session!

In particular, the improvements he gained from his continued assimilation of Senior-level Mechanics played a starring role!

Since much of the work involved involved making space, the structure of the Spyre Helix experienced a lot of changes. Trying to make sense of them and seeking out ways to make better use of the limited space was a lot easier to do now that Ves began to apply many new advanced theories!

"The original mech designer owes me a favor when he sees my variant!" He couldn’t help but snort. "If he carries some of my changes over to his base model, it will likely perform ten percent better!"