What's Junk? (The Mech Touch)

[Simonbob]

Laser SWORD!

Lily with the laser sword, IN HER MECH! WRECKING YOUR BOYS!


Can you smell what the Lily is cooking?!

 

[Golgotha]

More hints to how it all goes together.
And its possibly something about how it all goes together

 

[Wolfjob]

I think I figured it out. Gonna spoiler it though.

Spoiler

Mmmmmmm,Darwin. The most successful organism is the one most suited for it's environment. Evolution? Nanite-evolving-blade emitter? Iterative design? Because it'd be REAL COOL, man.

Super duper boi with his ubermenchmechs.

 

[RandolphWill]

Hopefully it something cool like efficiency or optimization.

 

[Negation]

I thought his speciality moves towards easing logistics/maintenance strain? Everything stripped down to core functionality? "Work with what you have, not what you wish you have."

Edit: But his spark of creativity would be using failed products outside their intended purpose?

He'd gotten hung up on using the device for some bizarre reason. It was really stupid because the device was functionally useless. The light sword lasted for half a second and destabilized faster if something impacted them. Why he'd gotten interested in it he couldn't say. It was just a miniature forcefield combined with laser technology. The thought was to make a sword out of the forcefield and run a laser beam around it. Hence, laser sword.

Click to shrink...

Just scale down and make it a laser knife. To give it range, create a Rifleman that can shoot laser knives


View: https://youtu.be/-BKEZbYOMpI

Or if you can't let go of the idea of swords, make the gun look like a Swordbox straight out from Xianxia that shoots "flying swords"

 

[lost star]

The Undead Legion was a very silly little clan in Iron Spirit. It had one requirement. You had to have an mech that looked like some sort of undead. There was a lot of leeway allowed if you weren't particularly rich in game. Painting it up properly was sometimes enough if there was some effort involved. Some people just had their mechs painted green with some highlights to make them look rotting. (They were kids after all.)

About one thing that everyone agreed on was that the Legion was for fun. No serious stuff allowed! Well, no serious stuff when they were doing clan activities. They did skirmishes where the goal was just to play around, every zombie pilot had corny jokes, and re-enacting horror movies was perfectly fine.

Jun liked that about the clan. He also liked leading it. As the duly appointed leader of one of the factions of the Undead Legion, he had responsibilities. Not many, it was a game people played to unwind. He still had responsibilities. This felt important. Shy, outside game Jun was just another pilot. Inside, he was SmashyMister, lieutenant to the important expert!

Not that he interacted much with Lilly nowadays. Despite their desires the expert didn't have an infinite amount of time. She had a lot of duties. She could spend an hour or two in game a day at best. He'd still consider her a mentor, even if she'd basically bullied him into an Undertaker. She gave advice freely in the time she had, and was always encouraging, even if that encouragement wasn't always conventional, or polite.

"Live first, kick ass second." Jun whispered to himself and giggled.

One Star Undertaker was nothing special. He lacked the jamming. His communication was pretty bad. His best feature was his cannon. He was still fun.

The best part about Bolt's creations was that his main line had mechs from one to five stars. This meant if you wanted to downgrade or upgrade, you could get the same mech. The performance was different, but the feel was the same. It was very rare for designers to bother with that. That was probably the core reason why the Legion was still going strong even without Lilly's constant presence.

"Helle, you're out of position." Jun called out. "Back!"

The zombie didn't seem to hear him. Instead trying to lung forward and swing its club at its opponent. The knight back stepped and then several riflemen started to fire from the side.

Jun didn't let that get him down. One star battles with kids were frankly messy. He watched it happen and then carefully aimed his cannon. The shot sprayed cold goop all over them and caused their fire rate and aim to decrease significantly. Fog formed from the secondary effect of his shot and he gave the zombie another command.

"Helle, step back." He repeated again, calmly.

The zombie seemed to realize the position it was in finally and moved back with shuffling steps. Fortunately that mech was pretty tough. It wasn't down, just broken in some parts. Perfectly acceptable for a match.

"Skellies you have a line open. Blind fire." The Undertaker pilot carefully stepped back and readied his cannon for another shot.

Skellies were basically riflemen painted white. They'd found a very thin rifleman model at one stars that was both perfect in looks for a skeleton and decent enough to fit into the theme. It wasn't the best, it wasn't the worst. It just had decent eyes and a semi-auto rifle. Perfect for new players who needed to just get familiar with mechs. You just ordered newbies to fire in a general direction and they'd hit something. The mech was a bargain bin bare-bones travesty that functioned well for one purpose. That was all it needed.

Jun was a commander by virtue of being the only person suited for it. He was not the best at it. His 'subordinates' weren't the best either. They were kids one and all, in the game by virtue of having money and free time. Iron Spirit and other simulator games were training wheels and games at the same time. It was a game you could play and convince your parents that you were doing something important. This, combined with other factors meant that they lost in the end.

The boy wasn't broken up about it. He'd tried. There was only so much you could do with inexperienced pilots. The truth was that without Lilly, their teams weren't that good. Bolt's mechs had decent synergy with one another, but that alone didn't give a grand and insurmountable advantage. It gave a little boost. That was it. There were plenty of other good designs out there that gave their own advantages too.

Helle was more emotional about it though. "Sorry Jun." She apologized after the battle and in the training area.

"No need to apologize. Did you have fun?" The pilot asked in return.

"Some. Zombie is kinda fun." Helle replied. "I don't have any good jokes down and he feels slow though. I don't think I'm zombie material."

"You're what, eleven? No personal name, or details, just age." Jun asked very calmly as he went over standard controls of his mech. Just general practice.

"Eleven and a half!" Helle corrected. "I liked Lilly's stuff. Is it true she's back? Did she really marry Bolt?! Did they really fight off that whole army like they're going to show in Rust to Riches?!"

Jun very carefully kept his amusement under lock and key. Rust to Riches was a movie that had been somehow greenlit and was based very loosely off Lilly and Bolt's experiences. They were minor celebrities now. Lilly found it absolutely hilarious apparently.

"According to her, it was even more." Jun informed the young girl. "And she does come by every now and again. She likes teaching some when she has time."

"Can-can I?" Helle's zombie shuffled some as the pilot's nerves transmitted through the mech.

Jun hummed. "There's a long list, but you can get on it." Long list was a bit of an understatement. It was two lists. One was a maybe. The other was 'has potential.' Both took time to get through that the expert didn't really have so he frequently had to act as a buffer. "You do need to find a mech you like first. Do you like Bolt's designs, or just want to imitate Lilly? There's a difference."

"Ummm." Helle shuffled some more. "I like the Maiden?"

Her and every other girl. That one was in the game as a six star though. A modern mech. Bolt had not made one to five star versions of it. "You'd have to build up to it. Artillery mechs are hard. So do you like it because it's pretty, or because you want to shoot it?"

"It's pretty." Helle said immediately.

"And you're piloting a zombie mech." Jun pointed out with a trace of amusement. They were thematically appropriate, not pretty.

Helle shuffled again and made a few noises that Jun couldn't interpret. Unfortuantely, as much as he tried to be a leader, he was still very young. He didn't know how to help here.

"Umm, was there any other mech you really liked?" He asked.

"Vermillion?" Was the immediate but uncertain reply.

"Of course." Her and everyone else. "Well, keep trying other mechs. My suggestion, and Lilly's too, is that you look for something that clicks with you. Everyone has certain habits that work with specific mechs." Jun advised as best he could.

Helle nodded. Fortunately aside from the minor problems, she was an ok pilot for her age. Nothing spectacular, but willing to at least work with people. That was a lot harder than it sounded. Most pilots had a serious case of tunnel vision when they started. Jun couldn't count the number of times a mech had died because someone had walked up behind them and shot them.

Jun did pass a request onto Bolt through Lilly. It hadn't been a serious one. This wasn't the first time Vermillion had been requested. The mech won looking spectacular. There were still clips of it moving being spread around months afterwards. He was very surprised to see it show up later in the store, with a few subtle changes that made it look a bit like it was on fire and burning to fit the undead theme.

(Bolt had seen the request, and actually spared some time to contact his friends still in the Serene Temples. Revising Vermillion for the game and making one to five star versions of it had been a fun little side project. They'd had to do a few rough adjustments to make it worthwhile for more than a short time, but it was more a project for fans than anything serious. It had serious flaws. It was still very popular.)

 

[Negation]

Sigh. Cosmetic skins still sell.

 

[Gingi71]

Fashion is the true endgame.

 

[MoguMog]

... do Phoenixes fit the undead theme?

Oh! What other pretty undead designs could there be? Ghost Bride? Vampire assassin? Lady Dimitrescu? Yuki-onna? Lovecraftian designs? Flower/fungi-parasitized warriors?

 

[ContinentalEnjoyer]

Sounds like Cos-Mech-tics (heh) can be a decent side hustle for Bolt. He's gonna need every bit of currency he can get if he wants a kid with Lilly

 

[lost star]

Time waited for no one. It ground on without a care to petty human concerns. Sometimes though, it could be kind. After the initial spurt of activity, things started to slow down. Aside from general recruitment and build up, not much happened in the mountain. Bolt focused on studying and doing minor adjustments to his current lines of mechs. Lilly focused on recruiting and training. It was preparation work for the future and a welcome break for the couple.

In the meantime the galaxy moved on without touching them yet. Vesia finished it's war with their neighbors and went into a stabilizing period. Their frequent and constant internal rebellions had started to cause intolerable instability. Their focus was mostly inward as a result. It'd be a few years before they turned their attention outwards once more.

Likewise, the Empties were inward facing still. That was par for the course admittedly. Their internal politics were quite murky to outsiders. Something about their makeup and ruling structure made them very disinclined to look outwards for the most part, and people tended not to pry in the face of more relevant and local matters.

The Land of Serene Temples was going to be the largest trouble in the near future. Their ever-present bloodlust was barely restrained at the best of times. It was very likely that they'd be starting up their own wars shortly. Though calling it wars was a bit of a misnomer. They very frequently didn't formally declare war. What they did was send out raiding bands under experts to pick fights. Those bands would attack whomever looked like the best fight and return with whatever plunder they could get. It was a spectacularly infuriating and complicated tactic that had caused more than a few wars, which the nation gleefully and enthusiastically encouraged.

Bolt and Lilly's home was not immune to these raids. They were expecting at least one good attack within a year or two. Until then they had time to prepare. It helped significantly that the Wrench Rats were making good business. Bolt's creations weren't breakout hits, but they were enjoying steady and consistent sales with some surprising successes.

Cerberus was getting a reputation for being a good and consistent guard mech. It worked well in groups and was considered a very good mech to put less skilled pilots into. The Hellfire Missiles didn't require exact aiming and the mech itself was hard to mess up. Having a few good sensor mechs was also just good sense. They enjoyed brisk sales, especially in Vesia due to the different dog variants Bolt offered.

The Shining Shrine Maiden was enjoying an almost cultish popularity in the Empties. Every church wanted one. They also wanted them decorated appropriately, which was fairly trivial to do thanks to the Wrench Rat expertise. The only reason it wasn't a breakout hit was because each church really only wanted one. They were functional show pieces. Very loved, but also not something you needed a lot of.

Aside from that, the most commonly ordered mech was Zombie. The cheap mech was easy to use and deceptively durable. Most buyers had a habit of either not bothering with the head, or loading up custom ordinance in the decoy target. Typically relatively cheap things. They were decent filler mechs. A step up from ultra-cheap frontline mechs but still very affordable and consistent.

Bloody Berserker also enjoyed brisk sales. They weren't exactly popular, but more than a few mercenary companies liked having a few. The durability and destructive force made them useful in a narrow but consistently used role. The reinforced cockpit was also big selling point. Line breaking was a dangerous role in an already dangerous field. Having something that kept the pilots in the role alive was appreciated.

Other than that, the rest of Bolts designs were not particularly popular. They enjoyed a few sales here and there. The Ghoul version with Nanites, dubbed Scavenger Ghoul was too expensive for most people. It was still bought, but not much. Even with the custom nanites provided by the manufacturer the mech was simply too niche for the common buyer. The other mechs were likewise not suitable for most people. The Drowned Man was the most commonly bought of them. Fortunately it didn't cost anything to offer the mechs, and manufacturing different ones was easy for Bolt's family so they remained for sale. The production lines for the mountain weren't even being stressed yet!

These sales (plus the individual part licenses and repair jobs) put the Wrench Rats into the minorly successful category for mech salesmen. For mech companies this meant a few billion credits of whatever currency you worked in profit. For natives of the Junk Planet, this meant they were richer than anyone on the planet had ever seen. Not that this mattered much. It had about as much value to them as paper would to a starving man. There was no local economy at the moment. It led to a very odd situation where the Wrench Rats had to basically import everything and pay the locals in ration packs.

Strange economy aside, the money was still useful elsewhere. Lilly's ascension had eased a lot of things. She still needed a 'win' so to speak. She needed to show she wasn't going to squat on the planet and do nothing. They had a truce and an informal agreement that the planet was hers. To get it formally, they had to show she had teeth and ambition. This was where the money was being useful. They were planning an expedition to the Cold Grave.

Historically the planet was basically the local treasure hunter's destination. It was a planet in the boonies that had once been the site of several battles between an alien race and both the MTA and CFA. Officially it had been cleaned out of anything valuable. Unofficially people kept finding small trinkets and things there. Most people assumed that the big two simply didn't care about the smaller things that kept being found and found it amusing to see people squabble over scrap.

There were many reasons that it hadn't been claimed and seriously explored. One was that the average temperature was below subzero. Two, it was a fortress planet. It had automated alien defenses. Many of them were still active even after all of the aliens had been exterminated. Three, one of the defenses drove people mad if they stayed too long. Four, and probably the biggest one, the planet was isolated. Rust Bucket was actually only close because of its unique FTL configuration.

Now why did Lilly want to get in there? Experts were immune to the maddening effect and could apparently ward it away from other people. More importantly, Wrench Rats were experts at salvage. If there was one thing they knew they could beat anyone in, it was salvage. They were going to loot everything not nailed down and then steal the nails, the planks attached to the nails, and even the building if they could manage it.

This came back to money. You had to spend money to make money. They needed to rent haulers. They needed mechs prepared. They needed supplies, and other things.

Fortunately Bolt's designs came in handy here. The focus on repair and consistency helped significantly in long deployments. Cerberus could be configured with different sets of missiles, and Bloody Berserker could easily be shifted around to fight the defenses. This was important because the local 'monsters' were basically big stone constructs. They were durable and bulky in ways that many mechs weren't designed to deal with. Bloody Berserker would need to use hammers instead of axes.

It was a risky and large undertaking for a new group still. This problem was made doubly so by the fact that their home would very likely be attacked or raided while they were gone. The grim calculations of how things worked in this universe meant that without Lilly at the mountain they'd be considered weak and vulnerable. Someone would try something. Especially once word got out about the planet's status. Lack of claim by the nations made it a prime target for opportunists.

Lilly and Bolt were naturally taking steps to prevent that sort of thing, but they both knew how little that would matter in the end. Despite all the steps they'd made, they were still suffering the whims of the more fortunate. Their path to freedom was going to be filled with risks like this.

Money did come in handy though. In many ways. Reinforcing the shields in the mountain and spending enough for a few precautions did help quite a bit. Bolt and Lilly were not powerless. Not anymore.

Thus, a year and some days after Lilly's wedding they hired a few ships and made their way out of the system. Risking it all on a chance and a prayer. There was something both thrilling and terrifying about that.

 

[Negation]

It had automated alien defenses. Many of them were still active even after all of the aliens had been exterminated.

Click to shrink...

They are going to loot these 1st right?

 

[lost star]

"Remember, masks on at all times!" The command came from the mission leader immediately after landing. An old veteran Wrench Rat, Cable. "The cold's enough to freeze your lungs if you aren't careful. We do have fixes for that, but I'll make sure your stupid ass suffers if you have it happen!"

"Venerable Lilly, might I ask why you aren't lead?" One of the newer pilots asked on a private channel while the briefing started.

Lilly kicked back on Dowry and looked over the sensors. "Can't give orders for the life of me. Also, this lets me focus on combat." They'd trained for it, but there was still some friction among her people. Especially when the mission leader wasn't even a pilot.

Their rented ride had been surprisingly painless. They'd just paid some money and gotten shipped. No questions asked. Getting dropped down had been likewise easy. Cold Grave was a barren, undefended place on the surface. The defenses were all inside. The danger was all inside. Getting to the surface was easy.

Really, the cold and snow on the surface were enough to dissuade the more casual looters. The environment was so brutal that a unsheltered person would die in seconds. Mechs would creak and act sluggish if they weren't treated. Vision was measured in steps, and even sensors had trouble picking up things. It probably would have been disturbing if they'd not trained significantly in misty conditions with similar visibility.

"Remember, we have two FTL communicators for emergency exits. We will also get a checkup in thirty days. We will be setting up a rear base once we find an entrance. That will be our base of operations and fallback point. Do NOT forget that. If you are lost, or our FTL comms are down, the base will be our last resort." Cable continued to rant at the people.

Lilly kept half an ear on it as she kept watch. They'd chosen a landing spot that wasn't frequently used. Cable, as an old hand at salvage, knew how things were hidden. Though this was a fortress planet built by aliens the tricks to hide things were still pretty consistent. Not too obvious, not too out of the way. This landing spot had stood out as a good target after they'd poured over all their available information. If they were lucky, there was an untouched entrance nearby. That meant a possible payday, if they could grab it.

It didn't look like much at the moment. Ice, snow, wind. Not much to see. The planet itself was far relatively from the local star, so the lighting was also very poor and wouldn't get better. It was a minor miracle that it had breathable air. Or likely engineering. This was not meant to be a pretty world. It was a world designed to be a weapon and fortification.

A few minutes of briefing and checking their supplies happened before they began to move. Past the landing zone the terrain dipped and the wind got even worse. Even their treated mechs were having minor issues here and there, but it was easy to handle. Their goal was a narrow valley with high walls and no discernable features. It was almost claustrophobic for their mechs as they entered it and the wind had narrowed down to such a point that their vehicles were actually rocking from the force. Lilly led. Based off their guesses, this was a less used entrance to the fortress innards. Easy landing spot nearby, and a very subtle path into the planet. It was a possible emergency entrance or something similar.

Quicker than thought Dowry's hand lashed out before anyone could even register movement. A stone snake like monster was caught mid lunge and she pulled the thing up before biting down on it. The teeth tore through the stone covering and then there was a burst of heat registered in the mech's mouth before it cooled.

"Ambush types." Lilly reported as she examined the strange creation. "Camo and low visibility."

"Dogs front and rear!" Cable ordered immediately. "Send out a comm if you see something!"

There was some shuffling as the transport vehicles were repositioned. Fortunately mechs were mobile enough that it wasn't that large an issue. They began to travel again with more alertness. This was actually a good sign.

Lilly caught two more 'snakes.' The Berserkers crushed the others. They were simple and relatively easy to spot once you knew they were there thanks to Cerberus. These likely wouldn't even be able to really damage mechs. A quick analysis from Bolt determined that they were meant to pierce with their nose and inject superheated material into an enemy. Dangerous, but only if they weren't found beforehand. Really most of the pilots found them more like jokes than threats.

"They were likely more dangerous to older mechs." The designer noted over the coms as he continued his analysis. "Or they could be mine equivalents. They're quite simple and barebones as constructions."

"Historic reports are that there are still manufacturing facilities up and running." Cable contributed. "Cleared places don't stay cleared unless you find the places they're made in, and those are all over."

"We sure it's abandoned?" Someone asked.

"Very. Ya couldn't see it by landing, but the CFA made a nice big crack on the other side. That plus cold and time means nothing can live here." Cable answered. "Ain't a reason to be relaxed though. One o' those snakes will eat ya whole and have room for the truck yer in."

Lilly could almost hear the gulps. She did agree with the sentiment though. She could see possible holes that the snakes could come out of. Were the defenses fully intact there likely would have been hundreds of those snakes just ready to leap out. This might have been the easiest part of the job, but it wouldn't do to be sloppy.

More time spent traveling. A few more snakes were crushed. Walls rose around them and they moved deeper and deeper. Soon a roof covered them, and the wind stilled. This made it more eerie, not less. Outside of the wind there was only the sound of the mechs and vehicles they were guarding. By this point there were no more obvious defenses.

Eventually their lights showed that there was no where else to go. The tunnel terminated into solid rock, with no seams or obvious entrances. Nothing for mechs and nothing for people either. It was a dead end so obvious there had to be something around.

"Looks promising. Wonder boy yer up!" Cable called out.

"Wonder boy?" Bolt asked over the coms with obvious amusement.

"Should I go with lover boy instead?" The old man asked.

"No, I claim that one." Lilly joked and got a few laughs.

They needed them. The atmosphere was already oppressive. Lilly could feel little tickles at the edges of her senses and had to practically flare her willpower every now and again to push it back. Something was pressing at people. It wasn't potent yet, but she could feel it trying to claw at her people. A small weight that would grow as she had to hold it up.

At Dowry's feet Bolt got out of the armored vehicle he was in and walked to the dead end. It was very, very obvious that there was something there. A path like this was too artificially made. It was equally obvious that the door was shut and hidden.

Minutes passed. Then Bolt returned to the vehicle and pulled out a customized set of tools, including something that let him fly into the air briefly. The young man moved up and down the dead end before calling over a few other techs. They emerged and began to examine areas on the wall too. They discussed things, then hammered at the walls with sledge hammers a few times before they returned to their vehicles.

"Transmitting a few instructions. Lilly, your claws will have to work here. Be precise as possible." Bolt instructed the expert once he was settled. "We found what we need but we'll need to rip off some protection before cracking it."

Lilly looked at the markings and then raised her eyebrows. They were telling her to claw at the right wall instead of in front of her. The opening was perpendicular to the hallway then?

Experts could get very precise when they needed to. Dowry's claws were meant to rip into armor. The stone used in this planet was armor-tough, but still quite vulnerable to her mech. The fingers dug into the stone at the markings and she found some very distinct mechanisms after digging a bit.

Once these were exposed, Bolt and the others were able to hook up some generators to the mechanisms and force something to run. Very slowly the seamless wall started to open up like a curtain, revealing a very large and long, unlit corridor. The winding passage felt ominous.

"First step done." Cable said to everyone. "Now setup camp and get out the markers. We're taking no risks."

 

[Simonbob]

I kinda like the aliens in The Mech Touch.

They're both weird and understandable, at the same time.

 

[RandolphWill]

The scavenger fleets beginnings

 

[Rustic]

I kinda like the aliens in The Mech Touch.

They're both weird and understandable, at the same time.

Click to shrink...

I honestly don't remember them. Mech touch just got weird later on. It also stopped being a fun read. The gaps in my attention when reading it. Grew larger and larger I don't believe I even read the last three hundred chapters.

 

[Simonbob]

I honestly don't remember them. Mech touch just got weird later on. It also stopped being a fun read. The gaps in my attention when reading it. Grew larger and larger I don't believe I even read the last three hundred chapters.

Click to shrink...

...... I was speaking about the ones I read about in the first 600 odd chapters, because that was as far as I got.

 

[lost star]

The camp when it was finished was not much. It was a simple fortified area with a few tents and such to keep out the cold. It was mostly a resting area that held their excess supplies and a theoretical fallback if they needed it. The ideal was to keep a few guards there while they ranged out and then return regularly before making further decisions. This would very likely change based on circumstances, but it was the idea. They planned for one to two months. They had supplies for six. The amount they'd brought was excessive, but it gave them extreme leeway and theoretical trade options if they encountered others. (Not likely.) Being pressed for time due to supplies would likely result in mistakes. Mistakes would kill.

"First layer is going to be a big maze." Cable explained to Bolt as the rode along in one of the armored vehicles. "History nerds call it the alien's version of a kill zone."

Kill zone was likely a misnomer really. That implied a place with a lot of weapons setup to funnel enemies. The first layer of the planet below the surface was mostly large tunnels fit for mechs. They were very empty and very dark. They twisted and turned in a dizzying fashion, and contained some rather strange shapes. The disturbing and frequently claustrophobic geometry was tailor made to disrupt human senses. More disturbing was the fact that the stone walls healed from damage over time. Lilly had clawed a few with her mechs and hours later the claw damage was noticeably reduced. It was like they were in something's innards rather than a planet of stone. Traveling through it and exploring it was going to be a nightmare.

They still persisted in their exploration. Rats in the pursuit of cheese could be very persistent. Days passed as they roamed up and down the passages carefully in pairs. People started to hear whispers if they hadn't been nearby Lilly recently. Bolt personally spent the nights with her, so he didn't notice anything aside from a few quiet sounds at the edge of hearing, but the symptoms were rather obvious when they happened. Paranoia and trouble sleeping. There was nothing he could do about that, so he tried his best to contribute in other ways.

His focus became dealing with the enemy force composition. These automatons, or fake mechs as others called them occasionally. These enemies loved to hide in these twisted tunnels, and made exploration something only the mechs could do without risk. So far they weren't a large threat. That could change. They all wanted to be ready.

It was rather fascinating from an academic standpoint. The large stone constructs that defended the place were made of some sort of stone, metal fusion. The alloy was smooth, slightly organic looking, and surprisingly tough. It didn't match mech armor, but the stuff made up for it by being extremely flexible when active. The dead 'snakes' were basically just a tube of stone and hot matter inside them. It didn't need joints or leverage. Just this living stone. How it worked was a large mystery. There wasn't any sort of obvious engine or anything else at first.

Bolt got a clue from the next step up when they encountered them. Spiders. Yes, it was as horrifying as it sounded. The round stone things suspended by eight spindly legs were disturbing enough to encounter, but they spat acid too. They were likely fulfilling a scout and terror role. The acid wasn't potent enough to be immediately dangerous, but it weakened metal and added a chemical identifier that likely marked the mech. Bolt's immediate counter action to handle that was just to create a spray that solved both issues. Loading it into a crude and quickly made missile and having the Cerberus mechs fire it sounded rather funny, but it worked. Yes, they were shooting their own mechs to prevent damage. Yes it was amusing. No you didn't get to do it that often.

Countering them was not the only thing he did. He examined them too, and that was where the clue came in. The living stone only looked homogonous on the first look. It actually had trace circuit like materials wound through the stone that functioned as a power supply and what made the locomotion happen. It was very efficient and hard to identify, but once Bolt did he was able to force the spider legs to move with a generator and a bit of wire work. It was a good first step.

Only a first step though. It didn't solve where the central command node housing the AI equivalent was, or where the power was coming from. It did give them weak points to target. All the spiders and snakes were identical. Cutting or damaging critical points made them inoperable, and having their mechs computers mark those targets made it easy for even the least proficient pilot to deal with.

More days passed as they continued to map the tunnels and deal with the persistent enemies. Cable was fairly sure that there was nothing in the first layer by this point. Had the base been live, they likely would have been bogged down with these stone constructs in the maze of passages. Instead they had long passages of nothing. They needed to get deeper to get into the good stuff. The tricky question was, where were the entrances?

The answer was never, ever bet against the scavenger when there was loot on the line. They were still Rats in the end. Born and raised on a planet where mechs died and battlefields looted. This wasn't the first fortress Bolt's people had looted. Just the largest.

Some of the more ambitious techs were the ones to find the opening that gave them the clue. It was very likely just a flaw in the architecture more than anything else. All it was was a small hole that they could put a drone through. Some of the living stone had melded with one of the walls wrong and given them a twisted path to drop down into the next layer. That had revealed another mech-sized tunnel that was lit up and straight rather than cured and disturbing. That was enough of a clue to mark it as a priority. After that it was just a matter of finding where it joined to the first layer.

This was easier said than done. A few long hours of tracing revealed that there was no obvious entrance. There was only a place where the two tunnels were close. This was considered good enough. It turned out that the creepy wall repairing feature couldn't work if you put a small sheet of metal in the way. With a target destination they could just do some controlled demolition and digging. They ripped open the tunnel and plastered some metal over the 'wounds,' and that was their in.

Time taken to get in? About a week and a half. Not bad theoretically. They'd gotten nothing of value yet, but they'd gotten past the initial security. Lilly was holding up decently, but they did switch her to more resting times. She was the lynchpin for the entire process and if she became exhausted they'd have trouble.

A third defender made themselves apparent as they explored more. Consisting of squat things with two legs and arms, the swiftly dubbed claymen were actual threats in that they were causing damage. At about three quarters the size of their mechs, the claymen had what amounted to machine guns in the place of arms. The shots were relatively anemic, and a zombie could bring them down alone, but that sort of chip damage would be dangerous if it added up. They also came in packs and were completely suicidal in behavior.

The actual arm weapons and stupidity made them useful in a different way though. Lilly was able to bring them down without actually killing them. The spiders and snakes had been too hard to keep alive. This one, she'd just needed to hack off the arms and then Bolt could get into one while it was still alive.

Well, cut into it. Getting through the stone stuff that they were made of required the same saw they used to break open damaged mechs. The things were basically blobs on legs too, so finding vital parts involved cutting out chunks in random areas and hoping you got the right areas. The coordination indicated something like active communication though. Using the hints from the spiders and several more test subjects let him narrow down the vital part to a golden area. Literal gold laced stone.

"This would be a bit valuable in another time." Bolt observed.

"Can't say I like the joking at tha moment." One of the techs he'd roped into to help noted nervously.

That was fair enough. They were standing in the thing's head and it was still trying to wiggle out of the restraints. It was a bit unsteady and if it got free they'd get squished.

"So, based on the others and my guesses, if we cut this, the thing will stop moving. So it's how they do brains in these things. How is it coordinating though?" Bolt mused.

The tech waved a tool in the air. "No radio. Getting the other doodad out." He put away the tool and pulled out another sensor. "This one got nothing either. Light maybe?"

"No receiver visible." Bolt knelt and placed a hand on the gold. Then he frowned and pulled off his glove.

"You touch that without cover yer losing the hand." The tech warned immediately. "Don't like no wind fool ya, it's still subzero."

"Ain't that stupid. Still got my thin glove on see?" Bolt wiggled the hand and pressed it to the gold. "It's not warm... But..."

"Coulda told you it wasn't warm." The tech muttered irritably.

"Yeah, if it were a computer it'd be warm enough to heat my hand, but these things don't generate a lot through their standard action, and distribute it very well." Bolt muttered. "Still, it's like. Hmm. Lilly? Mind poking this with your hand, it feels a bit like your warmth!" He called out.

The expert pilot didn't ask questions. She just got out of her mech and landed next to Bolt, then tapped at it. It was impossible to see her expression through the mask, but they could see her confusion.

"It does have that sorta feel to it. Also kinda pointing, ya know?" Lilly muttered.

"Yeah." Bolt nodded and held his hand to it. "Pointing... That way." He pointed in turn.

Curious, the tech pressed his hand to the thing. "I can't feel a thing." He admitted. "But yer the special ones, and one way's as good as another. Can try to triangulate things if we get another and this feeling is consistent."

That was what they ended up doing. Like the tech had said, one way was as good as another. Having an actual direction gave them a goal more than wandering corridors hoping for a lucky strike.

 

[Pollyamorous]

"Hm, how does this stone-creature work?"

"We're not sure sir, it has a truly alien biology, and no doubt plenty of expeditions in the past have brought out their most sophisticated gear to try and analyze what they're ma-"

"I'm going to poke it with a stick."

"...I see. Well at least you're still-"

"Didn't work. I'm going to touch it with my hand."

"Sir it's an alien bio-mech operating at minus fourty celcius, you're going to freeze your limb off."

*Poke poke*

"Sir..."

"Alright I'm pretty sure it's magic, I can feel it with my mind and it's urging me to go deeper into the horrifying megastructure full of monsters."

"That sounds like a-"

"Great idea, yeah! Let's gooooooo!"

 

[Simonbob]

"Great idea, yeah! Let's gooooooo!"

Click to shrink...

Hopped up Rats looking for alien chees- I mean loot! Yeah, loot!

 

[Rustic]

...... I was speaking about the ones I read about in the first 600 odd chapters, because that was as far as I got.

Click to shrink...

Oh there like 1700 chapters on web novel. It still ongoing I don't read it anymore but I see it on the top rated feed much like the king of avatar who is a pro gamer for League of legends. I never even played L of legends but it's sound like a mix of dota and mortal kombat honestly. Neither of which I ever actually had an interest in. But I do like the lore.

 

[Simonbob]

Oh there like 1700 chapters on web novel. It still ongoing I don't read it anymore but I see it on the top rated feed much like the king of avatar who is a pro gamer for League of legends. I never even played L of legends but it's sound like a mix of dota and mortal kombat honestly. Neither of which I ever actually had an interest in. But I do like the lore.

Click to shrink...

There's over 7000 chapters.

It's pretty bullshit, but even if the quality falls off, it's still being read, so, kudos.

 

[Negation]

"Alright I'm pretty sure it's magic, I can feel it with my mind and it's urging me to go deeper into the horrifying megastructure full of monsters."

Click to shrink...

I've seen the movie. If corpses hanging from racks start to appear and disappear at inopportune times, I will not be surprised.

 

[lost star]

M060

----

Bolt and Lilly's senses had led them to a manufacturing and command area. That was the best description of what they found. A large factory for stone things. It was actually really fascinating to watch from a distance. They could see stone being poured like water into forcefield molds to form an alien replacement mech. It was a cross between metal casting and clay shaping. Actually very interesting, and something Bolt could watch all day.

"We need to disable it." Cable said bluntly as he lowered the binoculars.

"Getting Lilly and and wrecking it shouldn't be an issue." Bolt pointed out as he lowered his own vision aid.

The older man shook his head in an exaggerated fashion so that it was visible through the hood and mask. "No. She's getting worn down. Also, first rule of salvage. Keep the machines active if ya can." He pulled out a communicator. "Send in the rat cars."

Bolt stifled a snort. The rat cars were actually little cars with rats in them. Cheap, disposable, and perfect for triggering traps that targeted movement or things with biological traces. He pulled up his binoculars again.

The manufacturing area was part of a layered fortification designed to withstand a significant amount of damage. It also had a thousand holes in it due to time and the lack of manpower. That was how Bolt and rest had managed to sneak in so close. The designer had to assume that they'd usually have something to handle people, but those were long gone now. All that was left was the standby stuff. In this case a small army of silent and still stone guards on the outside that Lilly had already wrecked.

Watching the rat cars move through the open areas and towards the main manufacturing area was surprisingly tense. They trundled down a few ramps, through a few open areas and then to a door. A little mechanical hand opened the door and then the machine moved inside the largest building.

A few tense seconds later, and the tech manning the car gave an all clear. The next one to head out was an actual tech. Clad in their standard shielding robes, he carefully walked to the building. Then entered it.

Bolt watched from outside as Cable directed everyone. After the initial tension, all he could do was watch more stone things being poured. He wasn't in charge of clearing the building. That job went to the more experienced people, and it was going to take a few hours.

True to his thoughts, it took several hours before he was addressed. "We'll need you to look at things." Cable spoked up. "Can't make heads or tales of the controls."

Bolt nodded and snuck into the building himself. The inside was a mess to put it politely. Ruined and alien decorations littered the floor, and several doors had been forcefully burned open. There were even a few frozen bodies on the ground. Long mummified and utterly unidentifiable. None of them had warm clothes.

"Think the bodies are worth anything?" A tech asked casually.

"No." Bolt responded as he ignored the corpses and moved in. "Maybe something more intact, but this? They likely have mountains of them out there."

"Probably."

Death was nothing new. Once you'd had to clear out a collapsed bunker, you realized the fragility of life. Humans didn't treat themselves well. Why would they treat aliens differently?

Further inside he could see why people were having trouble. There were screen equivalents, but no buttons. Just little green crystal things here and there. Bolt refrained from speculating and examined the place further. The little crystals showed up again and again, placed in storge, on shelves, and elsewhere. They were the only consistent thing. The rest was decorations, mostly. There were a few possible weapons that no one wanted to test.

It was pretty obvious that the crystals were something, but visually they had no indicators as to what. Bolt had his suspicions though, and picking one up with a thin glove let him feel a strange sort of... Well connection was the best way to describe it. Feeling that there was a connection and actually connecting wasn't exactly easy though. That took more than a bit of fumbling mentally. Sort of like groping for a switch in a dark room. You knew it was there, but finding it was a different matter.

"This isn't pleasant." Bolt muttered to the techs as he tried to connect.

"Ain't even feeling anything." One of the other techs muttered as he held one of the crystals.

"Lilly says she feels something similar." Someone else called out. They'd brought her a few, since getting in and out was fairly easy if you avoided what looked to be the automated sensor areas.

Finally finding the 'connection' after all that fumbling was something of a relief really. Mentally Bolt couldn't explain it that well. Getting back to the dark room analogy, it was like he'd finally found the switch. How did you describe that to another person? Fortunately once he connected the rest was actually very intuitive, if admittedly tiring.

"Technical information." Bolt said as he began to categorize things. "Notes about mechs. Notes on enemies." His head was starting to throb a bit. "Shit, I can't do this that long."

"Think you can turn off the manufacturing?" Cable asked the relevant question.

As an answer Bolt moved to the very obvious crystal screens and pressed a finger to one of the chips beneath it. There he connected again. Most of the functions were indecipherable. He'd need to study everything more to get a feel of what was going on. Whatever and however these things stored information, it by passed the language barrier. It didn't give him instant understanding.

Issuing a general shutdown didn't need a lot of work thankfully. It did increase the throb behind his eyes a bit. Bolt rubbed at his mask as the throb slowly abated. He was going to have to take things slowly here.

"Damnit, this is going to take forever." He muttered as he saw the veritable pile of crystals his fellows had looted.

Cable chuckled. "Well, we can get Lilly in now. Just got a report that all the constructs in the area are inert now. Maybe she can help some when she gets the trick. These are small so we can store em just fine as well. This'll be a great place to move everything to once we clear out some things." (Translated, once they cleared out the bodies.)

The next few hours showed why they were veteran salvagers. Everything of value was found and categorized. They found rare materials. They found hiding spots. They even searched the bodies and found a few more crystal things.

Called Jade Slips, they were basically alien data storage. Some careful exploration from Bolt and Lilly found that they could hold a lot of information in a relatively language free form. It would actually have been a good personal diary or something like that if normal people could use them. As it was, Bolt got a headache after a few minutes of use, and Lilly was already being pressed mentally by keeping people 'clean' from the whispers so she couldn't actually review them.

In light of that Bolt changed priorities. Cracking into the enemy data storage would be extremely valuable. Therefore, while people were working on salvaging things, Bolt decided on another project. He'd already seen that a Jade Slip analog could interact with one of the crystal screens. Those were just TV screens made by aliens. In theory, all he needed to do was get one of their portable computers and get something setup to do a similar conversion.

Theory did not turn into practice unfortunately. The tokens required some sort of internal power that only he and Lilly had to read. They also didn't really store things in an easy to transcribe format that a computer could interpret either. It was best described as impressions and images. A person could understand it, but trying to write it out was rather difficult. How would you describe a picture with emotional context added to it? His few experiments gave them absolutely nothing, even with a near replica of what the aliens used.

Bolt did get another idea as he thought about the problem. What he was doing was really just a mental interface. It was very similar to one they already had. The nero-helmets in mechs. Therefore it shouldn't be that difficult to just add another input. He made a small device he called a Slip Reader, and then attached it to the mech's inputs.

Bizarrely, it worked out pretty well with a bare minimum of adjustment. All the pilots needed to do was put the Jade Slips into the provided slot and they could read them effortlessly. This both freed up Bolt and Lilly, and gave them a lot more people to look over the loot they'd gotten.

The designer couldn't say the pilots were happy about becoming glorified librarians, but they did begrudgingly help as requested. Part of that was because they had nothing else to do with the defenses disabled in this area. The other part was because they rather needed the help. There were over a thousand of the blasted things to go through. The pilots couldn't make sense of most of the details, but categorizing them reduced the time Bolt was tied up substantially.

 

[Wolfjob]

Previous chapter posted again

 

[lost star]

Previous chapter posted again

Click to shrink...

Genuinely wonder how it happened this time. Fixed.

 

[Golgotha]

Jade slips feels so cultivation world, it's interesting to see how its starting to slip through to the mech side of things

 

[lurkingkraken]

For some reason, coming up with a way to let low-level mech pilots read and interpret Jade Slips seems like the sort of thing the MTA would be interested in, since it lets those who aren't even experts yet to interact with the deeper mysteries.
Making it so you don't even need an expert to keep your non-volatile esoteric mnemonic storage devices organized seems useful.

 

[RandolphWill]

He should patent the slip reader cause that machine is fantastic in this world.

 

[Simonbob]

It's really showing the Cultivation world stuff, isn't it.

You just had to slip it in, didn't you, @lost star!