The Mech Touch

Ves had very high hopes for the sniper bunkers. They would offer fixed and highly secure positions for the Amaranto Mark III to attack her targets.

Being able to draw on the much larger and much more impressive power generators of the Torturous Scream should allow the ace marksman mech to charge her Instrument of Vengeance to full power a lot faster than if she relied on her own internal power generation.

The extensive surface contact with the enormous hull of the Torturous Scream should also allow the Amaranto Mark III to have virtually no concerns about heat buildup.

Unless the Amaranto was generating an astronomical amount of heat in a very small time frame, she should have no issue with dumping her excessive waste energy directly into the battleship. The Torturous Scream would be more than happy to serve as her gigantic heatsink!

Another benefit was that the Amaranto Mark III would have much fewer concerns about defending herself against enemy retaliation. She would remain well-protected behind multiple layers of azure energy shields as well as thick slabs of metal.

If a sniper bunker was ever at risk of getting destroyed, then the Amaranto Mark III could always evacuate in two different directions. She could either blow open the top cover and flee outward or move deeper into the hull via newly installed corridors.

Adding enough space to embed a heavy defensive mech such as the Bastion was a nice touch. It made the sniper bunkers a lot larger and more complicated in design, but Ves considered the effort to be worth the additional work and delays.

His only regret was that the Larkinson Clan only had one ace marksman mech in its possession!

Well, the Promethea Mark II would become available later this year. Adding her firepower to the Torturous Scream should make the converted battleship even stronger!

The only question was what Saint Isobel Kotin thought about it when she came back to the clan after completing her full-body reconstruction and physical therapy sessions.

Would she be willing to huddle inside a bunker during combat, or was she the sort that preferred to maneuver around on the battlefield in order to attack her targets from different angles?

Ves already knew that Saint Davia Stark had no objections to using bunkers as her Amaranto Mark III was inherently designed to remain stationary most of the time.

The Promethea and her next iteration were supposed to function like traditional rifleman mechs, so there may be many times where it was better for the fiery ace rifleman mech to deploy in the field.

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Ves actually preferred it if more ace mechs stuck to the hull of the Torturous Scream because their Saint Kingdoms could provide a huge amount of additional protection.

This was why he insisted on installing at least four sniper bunkers onto the hull. They were distributed in places that would allow each of them to deploy their own Saint Kingdoms with low chances of pressing against each other.

This should provide excellent coverage to the battleship as well!

After Ves completed his inspection of the implementation of the sniper bunkers, he moved on to inspecting the other upgrades made to the converted battleship.

"Have you been able to implement the command mech bridge concept?" Ves asked the two shipbuilders.

The projections of the two displayed uncertain expressions.

"We tried our best given that we don’t have an idea of what we are working with." Vivian Tsai responded as she zoomed in the projected blueprint to the bridge section. "As you can see, we have freed up space to allow for the entry and physical interface of an ace command mech to the bridge systems. Our programmers have already altered the code of the main ship systems to grant access to the Minerva Mark II or other potential command mechs, but the work is still immature. We simply do not know how Saint Commander Casella Ingvar and the Minerva Mark II will be able to handle the strain of connecting to the computer systems of a battleship that is only partially converted to human usage."

He understood the concerns and doubts. This was one of his more dubious requests. It may end up a failure or disappointment, but it was worth a try.

His vision for the Torturous Scream was to enhance her capabilities with the help of expert mechs and ace mechs as much as possible.

It had rarely been done in the past as most people liked to keep mechs and warships strictly separate from each other.

After all, concentrating so many high-value assets in a single warship would definitely turn the vessel into the highest priority target!

Ves believed that it would still make sense to station the Amaranto Mark III and the Minerva Mark II inside the hull of the future flagship of the Larkinson Clan.

The two ace mechs were never designed for brawling, and it was not necessary for them to maneuver around on the battlefield.

In fact, as high-value targets with immense strategic value to any force they fought alongside with, it was important to protect them as much as possible!

A strong rationale existed to keep them away from the field. The Torturous Scream should be able to provide them with a lot of protection and other forms of assistance.

"Have you been able to implement the other modifications?"

"We have only partially fulfilled your list, sir." Kezi answered. "The deadline that you have set for us has forced our engineers to drop a number of demands in order to ensure we have properly implemented the rest. According to our schedule, the conversion of the Tortuous Scream will be ready for trials in two months or less. That does not necessarily mean that she will be ready for service. We are expecting higher rates of bugs, faults and errors during her initial deployment as we have many doubts about whether we have properly adapted and connected intact alien systems to human systems. Many of the officers and ratings that your clan has hired to crew the Torturous Scream will also require years to fully master their new stations. Whatever previous work experience they might have will not translate perfectly to their new stations as most of them will have to learn how to operate orven warship systems as well."

This was a pretty huge burden, but they had no choice. The Larkinson Clan needed to get its hands on a first-class warship as quickly as possible to avoid wasting the unrestricted RF Battlecruiser Token that Ves had managed to obtain.

After many months of waiting, the wait was almost over! The Premier Branch would finally gain the qualifications to fight opponents at the highest level of warfare in the Red Ocean!

Ves continued to listen to the briefing of the two shipwrights. Their crews had done their best to update inferior alien tech with superior human tech whenever possible, which did not happen a lot.

The time pressure was too great to allow for more extensive overhauls. The Torturous Scream would probably become a nightmare to operate for many crew members, but this was why the Larkinson Clan was prepared to pay considerable bonuses to the personnel who were willing to put up with wrangling orven tech.

Overall, Ves grew satisfied with the overall projections on her estimated performance. Even without including any embedded ace mechs, the Torturous Scream was still a fairly modern and powerful alien battleship that should at least be able to fight against other alien battleships!

She still required plenty of support from mechs and other assets in order to prevent any accidents, but this applied to nearly every warship aside from dreadnoughts.

"How extensively is the Torturous Scream able to accommodate productive activities?"

"Well, as you know, orven battleships are actually homeships that are meant to house entire populations. We have been able to hastily refit one of the larger internal sections into a production hall. Although there is less internal space for production machines, the use of first-class materializers and superfabs fed by first-class power generators should allow for a faster rate of production of second-class mechs and other productions. They can also be used to produce first-class mechs, but the circumstances are not ideal. Production will take longer and impose more costs."

"That’s fine." Ves said. "We can afford to pay this price in order to gain self-sufficiency. At least the Torturous Scream should be able to fabricate her spare parts for her own use. What about the mech lab and mech workshops?"

"We have made sure to set them up according to your specifications. We have made sure that they are not directly linked to the other computing systems of the converted battleship to increase the information security of your workplaces. We have yet to install any high-tech instruments and production machines as we believe that you and your wife may want to make the arrangements yourselves."

"You are right. You can leave them empty for now. Once the Torturous Scream is in operation and arrives in New Constantinople, we will probably transfer all of our existing stuff in Diandi Base to our new flagship."

"You do not intend to stay in New Constantinople or relocate to Yernstall?" Vivian Tsai asked.

"Hey, you have been with us since the early years. You should know that whenever war begins to spread, no place is safe. The Devos Ancient Clan has been a great host these past few years, but I am not going to wait until the fight defensive band collapses to preemptively evacuate from New Constantinople. It is better to err on the side of caution and move out sooner rather than later."

If possible, Ves preferred to stay on New Constantinople VIII much longer. He wanted to give his children a fixed place to live and grow up. He wanted them to attend excellent schools in person and make friends with Terran kids their own age.

He could argue that the Agamemnon Upper Zone was not under immediate risk as the alien invaders still had to pass through other zones.

However, red humanity had yet to establish new lines of fortifications that could systematically stop the native aliens from pressing deeper inside human-occupied space.

The aliens should freely be able to commence deep raids into the hinterland where all of the biggest and most productive industrial facilities were located!

The New Constantinople System was no exception to this as it was a port system and the capital system of the Riston Territory.

As the central location of the Devos Ancient Clan, razing the port system was equivalent to inflicting a crippling blow to the Devosans!

This was why he already considered the Torturous Scream to be his new home in the coming years. He vastly preferred the security of being able to move wherever he wanted.

After all, the best way to avoid danger was to put distance between himself and the source.

As the remote briefing came to an end, Vivian Tsai wanted to bring one more matter to his attention.

"Since the date of the relaunch of the converted battleship draws closer, we should begin to explore new names for her. We have all been referring to her as the Torturous Scream, but this is a shorthand for the full translated name. It is not appropriate anymore for us to keep using the names that match orven sensibilities rather than human sensibilities."

"I disagree." Ves quickly replied.

"Pardon?"

"The Torturous Scream of a Human Dying in Agony over a Span of 46.7 Hours is a rather unusual and exotic name for an alien battleship. I am sure it sounds much more poetic in orven language, but it doesn’t sound that bad when translated into standard language. I think it is funny, actually. Just think about it. The orvens want to torture and kill humans so much that they dedicated the name of one of their more powerful warships to this cause. What better way than to claim this name for ourselves and allow our captured and converted battleship to wear it with pride? We’ve already pissed off the orvens big time. Fighting them with this specific vessel will surely drive them insane, haha!"

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