What's Junk? (The Mech Touch)

[Sunhawk]

I wonder if Bubbles might have any advice on MTA resources he can draw on to deal with kidnapper-type threats like this; seems like something designers do occasionally have to consider (albeit probably usually not involving a gestation pod).

Mini-mechs might be a way to deal with human-sized threats in human-sized spaces? And making sure one or more of the protective mechs is able to take the gestation pod inside, keeping it powered and supplied - just in case evacuation is needed.

 

[lost star]

The answer is typically have a trusted security detail. There's no perfect solution though. Even high value First Rate guys have issues.

 

[Simonbob]

The answer is typically have a trusted security detail. There's no perfect solution though. Even high value First Rate guys have issues.

Click to shrink...

Sure.

But, Bolt is offering a supprise for this set of kiddenapers.

 

[lost star]

Mechs were expensive. This wasn't immediately obvious to someone who saw Bolt create them, but it had to be said. Making mechs from scratch simply reduced the cost from extremely expensive to expensive. Bolt could cheat due to his abilities. He still had to pay an exorbitant amount. Moreso because he was paying to have the materials delivered as a priority.

Thankfully he had a bank of Friday Credits due to his antics elsewhere. The sales from Nosferatu and the arena modules covered his expenses and made it so that he didn't have to take the time to do some money transfers. It was a nice benefit that also sped up his timeframe by a fair amount. What should have taken days worth of material transfers was done within a day. This didn't include build time though, and Bolt would have to push himself if he wanted it done before the weeks end.

By this point Lilly had moved their child to the suite. She was notable tense and they'd managed a few words in private and out of any possible earshot using some spiritual shenanigans. None of what she relayed was good. What was worse was that there wasn't really actionable intel at the moment. What would they say, there were people out there that Lilly had identified as dangerous? That was not much at all. Expert senses were good, but they had no idea what would happen if the people were accused. They didn't even know what the actual danger was! It'd look very silly if they accused the man and the danger was something around him or something.

They couldn't leave the planet due to the child still needing personal attention either. It was very possible that even if they could there would be a problem there! Right now bunkering down was the best option. Making three Torment-guards became half Bolt's way of handling the stress and half him creating a solution.

Bolt would not be selling this line. It was private use only. Which meant that the MTA didn't need to get involved, and he could push his spiritual construction all the way.

He did the chains for the electro-whip first. They were cruel and barbed things that wouldn't be out of place in a torture show if they were so large. The whip itself was very technically a melee weapon, though it used a different range of motion and had a surprising range. It required a quick snap and pull from the arm. The chains would drag across armor and shred the target in the best case scenario.

What had made the weapon less than popular was the fact that the best case scenario rarely happened. Mech armor was naturally able to prevent the barbs from gripping, and the electric / heat payload that was contained in the chains was typically grounded harmlessly. It was a weapon that looked cruel and cool and ended up being rather anemic in practice. Yet it fit perfectly with this mech. It was also the most fiddly part of the entire thing because nine barbed chains that each weapon had were not easy to assemble safely. (The proprietary material had a strange sort of stretch that gave the whip a natural snap. It'd be something very entertaining in other circumstances.)

The armor was red. Solid, but unremarkable. Bolt wasn't getting fancy with it. Most of the construction was actually fairly standard. Bolt's innovations were more in the unseen than the seen. It was a bit soothing to go through the routine of creating the mech. Bolt added spikes here and there to compliment the back weapon and overall theme. Each mech was going to be slightly different, but would have the same broad strokes. The fan-like structure was striking and prominent. It made the mech look almost vain really. As if it'd worn a personal adornment to give it a background effect.

Once the three eyes were installed Bolt decided that it needed some shading here and there to magnify the overall look. The eyes might have been just sensors, but they really popped. It felt a bit strange until Bolt stood back and looked at the entire design visually. The fan-like structure of the launchers drew the eyes up, and then you got caught in the three eyed gaze of the mech. Very striking.

Amusingly this was emphasized still further by the fact that the lower half of the mech was a bit chunky. The legs were thicker and more armored than standard, and the feet were larger. This gave the mechs better footing and made it harder to push them off their feet. The boosters were meant for balance and quick response more than flight. When the thing was in action it'd be almost a show, which was purely unintentional honestly.

All told, the entire construction was fairly normal from the outside. Bolt knew for a fact that anyone looking at the recordings would see him just make three mechs. Sure it was done a bit fast, but he was known for that sort of thing. The Torment-guards looked more ceremonial than weapons of war. The aura was barely there as well. It looked and felt like a decorative piece on first glance.

Yet if one probed deeper there was something sleeping inside these mechs. He'd poured his emotions into them. All the tension and hopes. This was a mech that would wake up at the proper time. Until then it was content to sleep.

"So, there's a system you ain't familiar with in these." Bolt told the three pilots when they gathered around him. "It's called the heart system, and it's got the blueprints and briefings in them." He said with a small and grim smile. "Please review them if you can."

To his mild bemusement, the three pilots were in what they considered their formal outfits at the moment. Two maid outfits and a butler outfit. Complete with chokers. Why they preferred the collars he didn't know. Bolt had a sneaking suspicion that the kids found it funny. So far as jokes went it was completely harmless, so Bolt wasn't going to make a big deal of it. It was going to spread rumors about him, but that was almost helpful really. Obscurement about his tastes and needs would be useful moving forward.

He was more focused on what needed to happen next anyway. The teens needed practice in the new mechs and he needed to review any bugs he'd missed. There were always a few small things that needed to be adjusted on new mechs, and he technically had time now.

The waiting was always the worst part. There was no question in Bolt's mind that there were going to be problems. It was just a matter of when.

Elsewhere the man responsible for setting off Lilly was not even aware of being the one to alert her. He'd been doing this for decades now, and not a single person had even come close to identifying him as a threat. Assassinations, espionage, sabotage, he'd done it all without a single hint of his involvement. He'd become almost complacent.

Yet he was still a very good infiltrator. This meant that even though he had a team he wasn't going to rely on them alone. His goal was to abduct the child. His secondary goal was to disrupt governments. Unhappy areas gave better opportunities. There were a good few cats-paws in the city that were watching the couple. Provoking a few of them to attack and make a distraction was a matter of simply making them believe that it was in their best interest.

The man didn't even need to really do much. Paranoia was an artform amongst many black-ops areas. It took about two calls and a singular meeting in a tea-shop to arrange for an entire mercenary company to attack within a few days. Practically overkill really.

His plan was relatively simple really. Have the mercenaries attack. Invoke the shield that was built into the suite that the couple was in, and then have his team walk in through the backdoor. They'd slaughter everyone, sabotage the shield to make it explode, and the battle would do the coverup.

Unfortunately for him, he gave Bolt several days of preparation. A paranoid man wondering about things like that could do a lot. He also rather neglected to take into account how many other black-ops groups there were.

 

[Luker number 5]

Haha these FOOLS these utterly CLUELESS RUBES have no idea I've manipulated them into doing exactly as I want! Soon they shall make a mess and I shall SWOOP IN and claim my rightful prize with none the wiser!

THERE WERE HOW MANY GROUPS?!

 

[Oglymogly]

I wonder why he didn't make a man sized one like he did back in the fortress. Didn't want that knowledge getting out? Or couldn't get a spirit into it from here?

 

[lost star]

It began with orbital drops. A standard tried and true tactic that had become almost a point of pride between groups. Everyone used something different when you wanted to get to the surface of a planet. In this matter the black-ops backed mercenaries used a unique mech-type that used a large and temporary shield to enter atmosphere quickly. By design the mech dropped down and secured the area nearby the target while readying the area for a follow up.

Bolt's people had approximately ten minutes of warning. The on-duty mech pilot in a Torment-guard was ready immediately. Lilly would take about fifteen minutes to get to her mech. The other two available pilots would be there within ten and thirty minutes. Phillipe and his friends had established a rotating guard which allowed for people to be on guard at all times, but this had by necessity created the circumstances they were dealing with right now. One guard managed to rush in just as the enemies started to come into range.

The two Torment-guards had to hold for five minutes against six mechs. The pilots involved were not experts. They were young teens with C Rank piloting capabilities and very little experience. This was close to suicide. Close but not quite. The opposing mechs had a few hoops to jump through.

One of which was the shield that rose up behind the guards. The second an alert went off several shields were raised to protect various important areas. Landing on one of them would result in a rather violent reaction, so the falling mechs had relatively few places where they could secure a good landing zone. This narrowed their points of assault and removed significant flanking tactics.

As they came into sensor range the Torment-guards shifted their shields and the three eyes of each mech almost seemed to come alive when they spotted their targets. Their fan-like launchers also changed in presence if not physically. They became more prominent and almost backed by fire. When the enemy came into range they didn't hesitate at all. Two dozen missiles flew out as soon as the pilots found a lock.

The first volley was mostly handled by the shields the mechs used to protect themselves against the orbital friction. The spikes slammed into the metal and stuck. Some got through though. The lack of explosive ordinance meant that each missile could be packed with cruel and hooked darts. The embedded projectiles stuck and tore from the movement necessary.

It was not the only volley. Smoke drifted off the fan-launchers and the heated barrels burned as they pushed beyond conventional safety measures. There was an enemy in front of them. This was unacceptable. On its back the launcher clicked and reloaded faster than it should have. It fired off again. Then again. Then a final time before the launchers became too hot to continue.

The endless array of spiked missiles had achieved their goals though. The shields protecting the mechs were destroyed, and all of them had been spiked in various areas. The damage was mild for the most part despite the sheer mass of firepower that had hit them. The spiked weapons traded the power of explosives for sheer mass and the ability to stick at least once every shot.

Shield shards dropped to the ground as the mechs unburdened themselves and pulled out weapons. They then flared boosters and darted through the air to get better vantage points. The Burning Meteor mech was a medium assault mech designed to do one thing very well and several things decently. Its loadout was a shotgun variant and a series of back mounted lasers suited for a variety of different circumstances and it was capable of flight for several minutes if needed, at to cost of low run time and being rather expensive.

The attackers hesitate to fire everything on the defenders once they found they had an angle. Most of it did little. The guards had their shields in place every time in defiance of what their pilots skill should have resulted in. One mech even mustered the ability to charge upwards into the enemy, shield first. It was a low-key mistake truthfully. The attackers scattered as trained, and one of them misjudged the range of the whip and stayed too close in their own mistake.

The cruel weapon lashed forward and the full design of the Torment-guard bore fruit. Skill mattered little with the weapon. It had a wide range and a deliberate effect that was not dependent on targeting weak points. The barbed tails of the whip lashed at the armor, the electrical payload discharged, and the spikes still in the armor drank the electricity greedily. They heated up and stuck to the chains of the whip as it raked across the armor. All of this happened in an instant, and the result was that a singular whip strike outright flayed the mech, removing a large chunk its armor in an instant. The damage was such a surprise that the targeted mech couldn't react in time to avoid the follow up shield strike that crushed about half its vitals.

Unfortunately for the guard, this meant little in the face of the five other mechs. They fired from all angles, and the hits damaged everything. The only reason it wasn't completely annihilated in a singular volley was because it was a defensive mech designed to handle such attacks. Instead of being mission killed it was just severely damaged.

There were still four minutes left until Lilly arrived with her mech.

Battered but not broken the Torment-guard dropped and covered itself as best it could while its companion moved to help. With the display of the whip's damage the enemy was determined to keep at range. This was useful in that it gave the guards more time. It was dangerous in that another full volley at an unshielded area would likely destroy it completely. Situationally the battle favored the enemy mechs. While they would have to land shortly the had the number and skill advantage.

Yet death wasn't in the cards for the pilot. As the mechs jockeyed for position, reinforcements arrived in the form of rifle toting mechs. It was impossible to tell their origin due to their ramshackle nature. They were militia mechs, or whatever the equivalent was in Second Rate states. Whatever their reason for appearing was impossible to tell, only that they were there and firing at the attackers.

It distracted them enough for the undamaged Torment-guard to do a quick lunge and lash of its own whip. The weapon slashed out and stripped. Even braced the targeted pilot flinched as something traveled through his mech and to him. The Torment-guards weapon wasn't just a physical one. It was a spiritual one too. Those that would hurt its charge would suffer. The afflicted mech lost altitude quickly and became a primary target for the riflemen.

A little bit of pain wouldn't stop a pilot really. The armor stripping effect hinged on the spikes being embedded in the mech. If the spikes weren't there the damage was fairly minimal. Yet this unexpected threat kept the enemy pilots cautious. No one liked pain, and the armor stripping effect was incredibly dangerous. This one two combo meant that the mechs had been taught to be wary of the guards quickly. They switched to avoiding the guards and trying to dissuade the sudden rifle mechs.

Which further complicated and delayed the assault, allowing other people to register what was happening. Above them all orbital assets began to shift. More mercenaries backed by Black Ops were called in from standby. Several mechs hidden around the city began to move. The police, long since bribed to stay quiet, were forced to activate as things became more than just a small assault on some rich person.

Unknown to basically everyone, there were far more than a handful of groups investigating Bolt. All of them had forces that they could call in. Going down the list of the most significant actors, there were the Five Scrolls Compact, the Friday Coalition's government, Hexxer Special Forces, Debt collectors involved in the Heir dispute, investigators from other old families, several interested parties from the arena, one group involved with tracking MTA assets, and people from the Second Rate nation that Bolt had recently visited. There were the largest groups. It did not include smaller groups like news groups and other interested parties that had one or two mechs they could bring in.

There was only one obvious side on the increasing chaos. Bolt's forces were clearly labeled in the friend or foe tags that mechs broadcast in battle. Everyone else was black ops. This meant that no one knew who was a foe or potential friend. Admittedly in black ops friend was just another word for person you hadn't backstabbed yet.

It was during all of this that Lilly got to Dowry.

Most of the people involved in the chaos hadn't discounted the expert. They'd just kept a very, very close eye on mech supplies and parts rather than her directly. Creating a Second Rate Expert mech was an expense that could not be hidden. Upgrading a mech was also something that couldn't be hidden. Absolutely no one, even the MTA, had been aware of Dowry's abilities. The MTA had been aware of Dowry enhancing itself, but the official in charge of surveillance (Bubbles primarily) had done the absolute bare minimum. It had been a footnote.

Lilly got into her mech absolutely furious. Dowry activated, and the expert practically shoved her willpower into the mech. The slurry of supplies and careful programming from Bolt activated.

Dowry altered herself. She became more narrow. Hungrier somehow. The plating adjusted to accommodate. The reactor blazed as it was reactivated and reforged. The entire mech creaked as it almost seemed to collapse on itself before it came alive, sharper and more deadly.

The mech modeled after a monster deployed with a whisper and a few alerts. Most people monitoring the hanger were confused as to why a Third Rate mech was being deployed. An expert mech at that level of technology could manage maybe a two or three versus one, and everyone would then focus and kill it.

They weren't confused for long.

 

[EternitynChaos]

Heheheheheheheheh oh those poor assholes are in for a horrible time of things, even worse than they have already had lol

 

[Passing Pinecone]

The attackers hesitate to fire everything on the defenders

Click to shrink...

'did not hesitate ', I assume?

 

[lurkingkraken]

Dowry is the gift that keeps on giving.

And now it's time to show off another staple of horror movies: the unstoppable killer who is right behind you.

 

[Tsureai]

So many faces to be eaten.

 

[Luckless21]

So many faces to be eaten.

Click to shrink...

It's an all you can eat buffet and Dowry brought an empty stomach.

 

[lurkingkraken]

It did not include smaller groups like news groups

Click to shrink...

I am also really curious about what mech channel 9 news is bringing to the fight.
I would imagine it's probably based on a scout mech?

Something with overpowered sensors to capture all the surrounding events and an overpowered ECCM suite to make sure that




Ẏ̷͍̙͖̮̈́̉̂̐̈́͗̇̀͘͘O̷̢͉͓̜̭̯͓̣̫̩̻͒̓U̸̥͉̱̰͖͙̱͉̬͍̾̈́͋͐̔͜ͅ ̸̢̯̝̗̖̜͋̾C̶͍̠̺̏͒͗͝Ả̵̡̢͇̻̰̲̟̗̈͑̿͠ͅN̵̖̻̹̥̞͎͓̂͗̒̓͌͘T̵̫̦̣͖̣̬̙̳̋̋͂̅͜ ̶̡̱̜͙̣̾͒̿̀̔͊̉̿͑͂̆̿̑̚͝͠S̵͉͎̆̀̀̆̄̈́̎͛̓̇̑̂̽̕͜ͅT̷̢͎̺͖͉̭͎́̈́̇͑̋̇̾͘̚O̸͇͉͇̺͇̝͊̄̿̈́̑̀̉̈́P̶̛̝̺̤̗̲̬̘͚̂̉̓͋̈́͗̽̓͋̑̐͐̒̈̍͠ ̸̡̱̹̳͓̜̫̜̟̭̣̠̘́̈̀͝ͅͅT̸͕̝̪̘̜͉̂̎̏̋̈̓̚ͅH̵̢̞̞̠̹͎͖̝̳̙̜̱͙̭͊Ẻ̵͓͒͗̐͑͒͑̀̄͘ ̶̧͖̎̀̈́̽̉S̷̢̢̛͇̲̘͔̻͓̜͎͎̘̖͎͇̎̒̕͜ͅI̶̡̡͓͚̗̮̹͚͕̲̞̩̹̊͌͋̊̀͜͝G̵̡̢̢̙̬͓̝͙̫̟̙̞̣͕̝͉̀̉͑͆̿̋̎̍͐̌̈́̃̐̀̚͝N̴̛̞̟̣͙̦̟̙̣̱̬̊̉͆̔̉̃̈́͐͘͝͠ͅĄ̶̡̲̯͉͖̂͛̈́͑̏̐̒̋̓̒͜Ĺ̵͖̥̤̳͉̌̅̉̀̀̇̏͂.




Needless to say I'm looking forwards to the battle Royale.