Chapter 778

Bab 778 Perak Valencia

“Pisau Cukur Iblis adalah andalan kekuatan mech kita.” Ketis menjelaskan ketika dia memimpin Ves ke bengkel mech Swordmaiden melalui rute indah. “Mayra mendesain mereka sebagai kuda kerja yang bisa diandalkan yang dapat digunakan di sebagian besar planet tanpa kerusakan.” Pedang pendekar menengah dengan pedang lebar dan pipih dan garis merah ikonis mereka yang membentang di tengah depan mereka mengangkat hati setiap Pedang Perempuan yang melihatnya. Mereka membuat pemandangan yang menginspirasi.

“Apa sifat-sifat desainnya?” Dia bertanya. Sementara dia membentuk kesan sendiri dari mengamati mereka secara langsung, dia penasaran apakah mereka cocok dengan kebenaran. “Kurasa ini dirancang untuk serbaguna?”

“Ya!” Ketis mengangguk. “Mayra mengatakan kepada saya bahwa prioritas terbesarnya untuk Pisau Cukur Iblis adalah merancang sebuah mech yang dapat bertahan bagi Swordmaidens untuk sementara waktu. Oleh karena itu, dia belum menambahkan terlalu banyak lonceng dan peluit ke dalam desainnya. Ini adalah teknik pendekar pedang medium menengah dengan arsitektur internal yang andal dan kuat. Hanya setelah dia menyelesaikannya dia berpikir untuk meningkatkan kemampuan lainnya.

“Itu adalah titik awal yang baik, terutama jika Mayra mendesain mekanisme yang seharusnya menjadi andalan bagi pasukan bajak laut.”

“Biasanya, Pisau Cukur Setan agak ringan dan cepat di kaki mereka. Mobilitas adalah salah satu dari pakaian kuat mereka. Itu dan mereka dapat menambah banyak kekuatan pada serangan mereka bahkan dengan hanya sedikit momentum yang dibangun.”

“Tapi mereka tidak terlihat sangat tangguh.” Kata Ves. Dia tahu bahwa bajak laut umumnya tidak menggunakan mechs dengan armor terkompresi. Butuh banyak keahlian untuk bekerja dengan formula baju besi yang rumit dan membuat baju besi terkompresi tanpa celah atau ketidaksempurnaan menyeret kemampuan pertahanan mereka. “Karena mereka lebih cepat dan lebih ringan daripada mech pendekar pedang lainnya, kurasa mereka tidak bisa dipukuli.”

“Itu benar.” Ketis mengakui. “Menambahkan armor yang lebih baik akan memperlambat keuntungan lainnya, dan kita memiliki mechs ksatria dan mechs lainnya yang dapat fokus pada pertahanan sebagai gantinya. Sebagian besar Swordmaidens kita lebih memilih untuk menyerang daripada bertahan di pertahanan.”

“Keuntungan lain yang mungkin relevan di sini adalah karena mereka lebih ringan dari rata-rata, ransel gravitasi mereka tidak akan terlalu membebani diri mereka sendiri. Mereka pasti akan bertahan lebih lama daripada mekanisme yang lebih berat.”

“Ya, aku lupa menyebutkan itu. Pisau Cukur Iblis bukanlah mekanisme yang paling efisien, tetapi mereka tidak membuangnya sebanyak mekanisme yang lebih berat.”

“Tetap saja, sama luar biasanya dengan Iblis Razor, aku ragu itu berfungsi sebagai mekanisme tanda tangan dari Swordmaidens.”

“We also have the Silver Valencia.” She mentioned. “We don’t have a lot of them, but some of our best mech pilots have earned the right to pilot them. It’s a swordsman mech that has all of the advantages of the Devil Razor but also makes up for their weaknesses by incorporating compressed armor. While we can’t fabricate them on our own, we had them made at Malligan’s Pitstop.”

“Are there any Silver Valencias nearby that I can observe?”

Ketis shook her head. “Not at the moment. Right now, we’re working on tweaking them to make sure they can run smoothly on this planet. Since they’re our most expensive mechs, we don’t want them to fail in the middle of a battle. Mayra and I were working on the final tweaks just earlier. I’ll show you how they look like!”

They reached the sloppy row of prefab workshops and brushed past the slaves who had been conditions to stand aside at the approach of each Swordmaiden. Ves felt very uncomfortable passing by what should have been kin to him. These poor sods didn’t look like they deserved to be brainwashed and turning into human-shaped bots for the Swordmaidens.

“Have you Swordmaidens ever tried to make do without the slaves?”

Ketis looked at him with an expression that told him he didn’t know anything about the frontier. “Are you kidding me? I thought we had gone over this. There’s way too many technicians or people trained to service mechs and ships for us to rely on volunteers. I know the slaves bother you civilized people a lot, but don’t try to pretend we have any other choice. I don’t like them more than you do.”

Her tone brokered no argument on this matter. To be fair, Ves knew a lost cause when he saw one. Trying to divest the Swordmaidens of their slaves when they really needed on this mission would be to cripple one of their limbs just as they were about to step into the arena.

He would only do more harm if he harped on this point, not that the Swordmaidens would listen to him in the first place.

Once they walked past the entrance, the entire interior darkened up as the bare metal prefab walls blocked out all of the radiance from the astral winds. His eyes adjusted quickly, though at some points he found the workshop to be too dark.

“Here they are. The Silver Valencias!”

The handful of mounts in this workshop currently lifted up four largely identical mechs. To say that they were upgraded Devil Razors was to do them a disservice. Due to their partially disassembled states, Ves caught a good glimpse of their insides.

Visually, their appearance and profile resembled the Devil Razors like how cousins resembled each other. He could definitely tell that both designs had been developed by the same mech designer, and all by herself to boot!

Their internal architecture looked a lot more sophisticated than that of what a simpler mech like the Devil Razor made use of. Premium materials along with a focused design towards combining power and flexibility turned these Silver Valencias into offensive powerhouses that could lop off the limb of any mech with a single heavy chop!

If the Devil Razors focused on mobility, reliability and endurance, the Silver Valencias focused less on the latter two in exchange for a greater amount of raw power and a bit more protection.

While it was true that the Silver Valencias incorporated compressed armor, both their thickness and their quality didn’t appear to be of good quality.

The thinness of their plates cut down the weight, allowing the Silver Valencias to maintain their advantage in mobility, while the average quality of its composition pushed down the costs and made it possible for them to be produced in the frontier.

Ves liked to estimate the selling price of a mech even if they had never been commercially sold, but he found it difficult to pin down the exact value of the Silver Valencia. They looked deceptively simple, so simple in fact that he couldn’t believe that this was all a Journeyman Mech Designer was capable of designing.

If he judged their value solely through his observations, he pinned their value at around 50 million credits. Both his Blackbeak and his Crystal Lord designs sold for more than that, so Ves felt very skeptical about his latest judgement.

A seasoned Journeyman like Mayra would never design something so simple as the signature mech of the Swordmaidens.

“There’s something more about these Silver Valencias.” He mused. “Otherwise, you Swordmaidens wouldn’t value them so much.”

“Wouldn’t you like to know?” Ketis teased with a naughty grin. “The Silver Valencias are our trump cards. It won’t do for us to reveal what they are capable of. There’s nothing around us right now that warrants showing them off. Anyway, Mayra is just ahead. Let’s go!”

The pair picked up the pace, though that was mostly due to Ketis’ boundless enthusiasm. Ever since she defined her design philosophy, she became a lot more cheerful at times. It was like she was a little girl surrounded by toys.

“Mayra! Look who’s come to visit!”

“Ves. Good to see you in the flesh once again.”

“Mayra.” He simply greeted her as he observed their surroundings.

The Journeyman appeared to be designing a handful of optimizations for her Silver Valencias. Because of the sensitive nature of its full design, she quickly swiped her arm, causing the projections wink out of sight.

Ves found it regretful to lose sight of the full design schematics, but he respected her desire for privacy. It was bad form for a mech designer to snoop on another mech designer’s work without permission.

It was one thing to analyze a mech by observing their finished frames. It was another thing entirely to access their private design schematics and specifications.

“So, what brings you to Swordmaiden territory?”

“Oh, I wanted to talk shop with the only mech designer who is better than me. My subordinates over at the Vandals aren’t exactly the brightest mech designers that I’ve ever met. I’d like to exchange some ideas on how we can better cope with the heavy gravity.”

“Understandable.” She said in an elegant fashion that belied her frontier origins. She patted an armored hand over one of the seats at her side. “Come. Let’s sit down and discuss.”

Ves did so even as he did a double take of Mayra. He had always found her a bit too talented and refined to be a daughter of the frontier. That reminded him that he had never dug too deep in her background before she accepted Commander Lydia’s offer to join her Swordmaidens.

He beheld her straight posture. Even clad in a suit of medium combat armor decorated with the trophies of her own kills, her entire form possessed an indistinct quality that reminded him of nobility.

As Ketis was about to sit, Mayra interrupted her with a raised palm. “Ketis dear, could you fetch me the gift I prepared for your wonderful teacher?”

“Didn’t you intend to hand it over after inviting him to a ceremony?”

“I did, but the difficult conditions of Aeon Corona VII doesn’t leave us with a lot of opportunities to hold a ceremony. Since Ves is already here, I might as well hand it over now.”

“If you say so.”

Once Ketis scampered off to wherever Mayra stashed her gift, Ves turned to the older mech designer with an appraising eye. “You wanted to send Ketis away.”

“I did. Now that she’s off, we can discuss her upbringing under you. I must say, I am very impressed with your efforts. What you managed to accomplish is beyond my expectations. Not only have you enlightened her to the values and principles held by the prevailing institutions of mech design, you also did more than that.”

“I enjoyed the teaching process.” He replied with a proud smile. “I know what you wanted me to do, but I wasn’t satisfied with that. While she’s your protege, she’s my student as well, and if I see something lacking, I won’t hesitate to address those shortcomings.”

“Apa yang kamu lakukan juga berisiko.” Mayra berkata dengan tajam. Matanya tumbuh tajam dan entah bagaimana Ves merasakan tekanan yang tak tertahankan menumpuk di sekelilingnya. Itu bahkan memicu indra keenamnya! “Sebagai gurunya, kamu memiliki pengaruh yang sangat besar dalam perkembangannya di masa depan. Kamu memiliki kekuatan untuk mengarahkannya ke arah mana pun yang kamu inginkan. Jika kamu tidak membiarkannya memilih arahnya sendiri, aku akan tersinggung pada kamu prakarsa.”

Ves awkwardly laughed in response. He knew that some of his actions had been a little too presumptive for his own good. “You placed Ketis under me, so obviously you wanted me to influence her in the first place. I won’t deny that I have steered her closer to what an orthodox mech designer ought to think, but I think that it will eventually give her a leg up against other pirate designers.”

“And her design philosophy?”

“I can promise you I did not nudge her in any direction with regards to her successful attempt to discover and define her own design philosophy.” He said firmly, even under this formless pressure. “If I was in charge, I would have never limited her to focusing her entire mech career on swordsman mechs. She decided on her own to work with the type of mechs she loved the most, and to focus on pursuing the greatest degree of sharpness for their swords.”

After a few seconds of silence, the pressure suddenly lifted. Mayra threw a small but satisfied smile at him. “Thank you for your honesty. I have already observed from Ketis that you haven’t abused your power over her, but it is good to hear some confirmation from your own mouth.”

Ves membalas senyumnya. Dia tidak tersinggung pada pemeriksaannya. “Jika dia anak didikku, aku akan teliti.”

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