chapter 105
POV: Remi
“Come on, close.” But no matter how much I pushed, it just wouldn't shut completely. Finally, I hammered it with my hand, hearing it click shut and the inside pressurise.
“Heavy mech operator, report?”
It took a moment for me to get an answer.
“Seal confirmed. Starting diagnostics run.”
I jumped off the step stool I was on and took a few steps back. The metal monstrosity in front of me stood resolute. It was 8 feet tall, upright like a literal wall that was in somewhat of a human shape.
Its arms were as thick as my torso, with absolutely everything covered in thick armour. It towered over me. Quite honestly, I wouldn’t want to run into this thing if it weren’t bonded to me.
The operator inside was a special AI core that had six flat denticle-like appendages that were needed for the extra controlled surface they could provide, and so it could directly control absolutely everything, not just control its mech suit with digital input, but also manual ones.
This design seemed to be most promising in the simulations for durability and reconstruction when needed. The armoured box the AI was in was as durable as I could make it. So technically this wasn’t a droid but instead a mech suit piloted by an AI.
While the suit did have batteries, it could only run off them for about 10 to 15 minutes. The real power came from a smaller version of the power core inside the Mark II.
While I couldn’t make fusion in such a small space, the 5 kilograms of fissionable materials give it an incredibly long operational life, not measured in days, weeks, or months, but years. In fact, if it wasn't in active combat, it could run for centuries.
“Diagnostics completed. Starting movement testing.”
I had purposely built the speakers to sound like someone was speaking. Its voice was extremely deep and menacing, as they were built not just for destruction but also intimidation.
The mech suit went into a T-pose. Then started to move its arms and body around. Its steps sounded heavy, which was quite understandable as it weighed quite a lot. Currently, it is not capable of flight, but I think I could build a sort of jet backpack. But currently we have no need for it.
“Arm up,” I commanded it. The steps were now lighter as it had gotten more used to moving around. It reached a large, sturdy table where its armaments were.
With a hiss, its shoulders popped open. Drones near the table immediately went into action and started to load a lot of small and 12 medium-sized missiles.
When that was done, the first thing it picked up was a large rectangular shield. That shield served multiple purposes; it could also expand to be longer and a bit wider. The shield was heavy enough that I couldn’t move it, but the mech suit handled it easily.
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With a click, it was secured to the back of the mech suit, giving extra protection from any attacks from behind. Next, it slotted into its right thigh holster a massive revolver that was longer than the FH-02 rifle. It shot bullets that were as thick as three fingers combined.
This was a sidearm for cases when physical destruction was needed from a distance. Next was what proportionally looked like a knife but actually was the size of a sword, with it being a lot thicker than any sword normally would be.
This went into a slot at the lower back. Finally, it picked up its main weapon. I didn’t come up with this weapon, it was one of the junkyard finds, but I did modify it quite a bit.
It was close to two metres long and built like a heavy machine. It was a laser rifle that was incredibly powerful. It required a specified type of gas and, of course, a lot of power.
Originally, it could only make ten shots before you needed to change the canister and the battery. It was more designed to be a sniper rifle. Firing more rapidly would also cause quite a lot of heat, but that was also fixed because none of these needs were built into the rifle itself.
At the holding locations for the weapon, there were connection points, and on the mech suit’s hands, there were also connection points. Basically, the weapon would be non-functioning without this suit. The power and gas were delivered from the mech suit, with the cooling of the weapon connected to the cooling system of the mech suit.
This allowed me to make the laser rifle incredibly powerful, make it so it could be used continuously for a long time, and with rapid firing speed. Using the beam continuously like some laser weaponry did would be too taxing, but this thing was still incredibly destructive.
The destruction it caused was truly explosive. It heated up anything it hit so fast that it vaporised anything similar to water instantly. Whenever it hit rock, for example, it didn’t melt it, instead causing an explosion that blasted the rock apart because of the expanding gas generated from superheating the moisture inside of it.
The damage it did to biological substances was quite similar. It was also capable of melting rock if it didn't have any moisture inside of it for it to explode apart. It was still a tiny bit weaker than the laser turrets on the Mark II.
I was incredibly proud that I managed to get anywhere close to that with a handheld weapon. The cost of building the entire mech suit was heavy, but finally, we had our heavy hitter that would go under Bob, so finally, we could once again start clearing portals.
We will only be building one more, but eventually, we want four of these things. The overall situation with other gangs has cooled down quite a lot. Everyone is keeping a low profile after the Enforcers came, as everyone called them.
One of the gangs that sent missiles towards us after we killed three of their higher-ranking members triggered quite a lot of the wrong types of alarms. We managed to get about half of their territory before we stopped, as we didn't want to overextend ourselves.
One of the gangs even seems to be trying to adopt our way of doing things because our actions are considered legal, even firing the counter missiles. FH has done a lot of work to get contacts influential enough to grant us a lot of leeway in our dealings.
“I am calling for a meeting,” Bob’s message alerted me. The location was the ship’s hydroponics as usual. I needed a break anyway, so I headed that way.
The factory was now fully up and running, with almost every inch of the floor space we had used up. We needed to build gangways to get around. As I reached the hydroponics, I saw Sam, Bob, and Lola sorting through what looked like stones. Getting closer, I realised the table was basically filled with skill stones.
“What’s going on here?” I asked them, thoroughly confused as to where those came from.
Bob looked towards me and started to explain. “With us having so much territory, there are quite a lot of merchandise moving through it. It was easy enough to slowly start buying up promising skill stones for pretty reasonable prices. I have a lot more, but those will be for selling far away from this place.”
“Then what are these for?”
“This is to fill out your resistances?” Lola so happily answered. Her tone made me shiver, as I knew she would want to start running all kinds of tests.
“I think this set will be perfect,” Sam said, pushing forward fifteen skill stones.
Quite a long discussion followed with only one substitute. My basic affinity didn't allow me to get the best resistances; I needed to go one tier down. One of the better resistances could actually be used by my mind affinity, so instead of using a lesser one, we instead went with that one.
I already had Impact Dampening, Pierce Dampening, and Heat Dampening. While having all these resistances for myself was nice, they would really start to shine when I got the skill that would allow me to transfer all these resistances to my bonded AI. Now that would be quite the power boost.
The fifteen new skills were: Cut Mitigation, Pressure Mitigation, Shockwave Dampening, Cold Compensation, Electric Insulation, Radiation Mitigation, Light dampening, Corrosion Mitigation, High-Shear Ward. Which was basically a resistance against gravity, more specifically, the shearing force of it.
Magnetic Insulation, Entropy Ward, Plasma Insulation, Mana Ward, Temporal In-Placement, and finally Psychic Resilience that went under the mind affinity.
All of these were passive skills, meaning that they took less mana, but the protection they would give wouldn’t be as high as truly active skills.
I wasn’t as stupid as to absorb all of them immediately; it would take me a couple of days, and I’m sure Lola would also want to run tests in between as well. After that, we should have a stable enough position in the town to finally start running portals again.
I just knew that my mind was going to be wrecked after all of this.
“I guess I should get started,” I announced to everyone and crushed the first skill stone.