Twenty-three hours after the others departed, General Tennant deemed it safe to begin the modifications to the mountain region to form a hidden base that could be passed off as a Mercenary stronghold, including large underground Mecha Hangars.
In an emergency, this location could be used by the Kepler Military as well, so the effort was not a lost cause, only a contingency plan.
Max looked down at the plans he had drawn for his Battalion's portion of the complex and then out at the Mecha around him. The Corvettes wouldn't be an issue, and the twelve-meter tall Crusader Replacements, with their sharp angles and radar absorbent black paint, should also be fine, but designing a hangar bay for the X137 Super Heavy was more difficult.
Where the relatively slender and humanoid Mecha that made up the rest of the force could walk two abreast through a standardized door, the Super Heavy units would struggle to fit at all.
Even if it pulled its arms in close so that the triple-barreled Ion Bombard Arrays on either arm were mostly out of the way, it was still twice as wide as the Crusader Class units, thanks to the bulk of the torso that had been widened to accommodate mounting the three Mass Drivers of the Thunder Guns.
Those would also need to be watched when passing through a door or entering a room, as they added up to eight more meters to the already twenty-two-meter height if they were extended upward for Bombardment.
They would have to put a storage notification into the standard procedures for bringing the Mecha inside.
On the X137 the designers had kept with the harsh angles to reduce reflected radar signals, but Max did have to wonder how effective it actually was on a Mecha so large. Given the size, it would be easy to mistake a crouched unit for a house on the radar.
For the testing, they were also adorned in flat black paint like the Crusaders, but that would change when they were deployed in a regular unit. Without the radar absorption, they would look even more like a randomly placed house on the radar. One with a flat roof and steep gables.
While Max was calculating the space needed for the Mecha Hanger, which should hold their entire Regiment, Nico was in communication with the Research Team, making plans to tweak the Mecha after analyzing battle data.
The other Battalion Commanders were assigned to other areas of the base, but they could all use standard patterns for their design, as the spaces were for human occupancy.
"Hey Max, unequip the Ion Bombard Arrays, I need to get at the power couplings," Nico called, not looking up from her conversation with Sister Lilith, who was in charge of design updates before the official production run was started.
Max leaned the Mecha forward and laid the two Arrays, with their angular shells protecting the three Ion projectors, on the deck of a transport truck that had been parked in front of him for that purpose. He didn't see a driver, so either the crewman had already left, or Nico had overridden the controls and borrowed the truck on her own.
Once they were in place and not going to drop and damage anything, he retracted the internal power couplings, then backed up and slid the Mecha's lower arms out of the housing, exposing the Super Heavy Mecha's hands for the first time.
"Thanks, boss," Nico called, then hopped out the side door, using the Anti gravity plates of the Tech Adept Exoskeleton to keep her in the air.
Thirty-meter roof heights in a Hangar seemed like overkill to Max, but after reviewing his calculations, that was the minimum height to properly service all of the new Mecha, so Max updated the plans and submitted them to General Yaakov.
[Very good. It will serve the purpose. The hangars will be closest to the entry, so your team is up first with the mining equipment.] General Yaakov responded, sending Max a location pin in the foothills of the mountains and a rough layout, with the areas that were not finalized yet left gray.
[Orders are in. Corvettes proceed to the location with the newly built mining equipment. Able Company, you are up first. Baker will replace you in four hours.] Max ordered.
[Got it. Move out everyone.] Major Ivanov of Able Company ordered.
The heavy Mecha would bring the equipment, which was sized for the Corvettes to use. The light mecha would do the majority of the work, while the heavy Mecha removed rubble with large ore wagons.
The Generals had at least picked a nearby location for the base, and there was a landslide nearby where the rubble would blend in with the terrain, saving them a lot of effort in camouflaging the area.
Compared to the X137 units, which were all getting some circuitry updated in their arm-mounted weapons, the Crusader Class units were in for much more work. Max had just seen the list, and they would need weeks to complete all of that work with the staff that they had.
From changes to the armor shape, user comfort modifications inside the cockpit, and mechanical updates to the thrusters on the Fast Attack models, everything about the new Crusader Class Chassis was getting tweaked.
They were even changing the Main weapon from a hard-mounted setup to a handheld rifle pattern which would lock to the arm only when in use, allowing the Mecha more freedom to hold tools or other weapons.
It would also make changing main armaments a thirty-second job, even if the Pilot wanted a whole different setup than what their Mecha was currently equipped with.
This wasn't possible for the fast attack units, where the weapons were more integrated, but for the others, it was very convenient. Except that the new munitions pack for the Mass Driver that was replacing the old Battle Cannons, which hadn't previously been an option for these Mecha, looked a bit clumsy and needed assistance to equip.
They had scheduled live fire testing for later that day, using the whole Regiment to increase the data sample size and hopefully eliminate some of the unforeseen issues they had found the first time.
Everything performed without failure during the fight against the Klem, except after being damaged, which couldn't be accurately tested in the lab. The research team thought they had found a fix for all of the vulnerabilities that had been identified here, and the Crusader Class Pilots were looking forward to testing their new toys out.
Lack of diversity in weaponry had been their top complaint, as they found that some of the Klem were better defended against certain weapon types and the Energy Weapon dominant pattern that they were all equipped with struggled against a few opponents, as well as lacking in long range area damage capability.
[This thing is awesome, it's like the old grenade launchers that the infantry get, but belt-fed.] One of Max's Pilots commended the new Crusader Class Mass Driver.
[We saw what the Thunder Finds could do in combat, so with one of these in either hand, my wing would be unstoppable.] Another pilot laughed.
[Yeah, for about fifteen minutes. They are still recommending an energy-based offhand due to the munitions consumption.] One of his squad mates replied, deadpan.
The Pilot had a point. With the increased rate of fire and limited storage, the Thunder Cannon, as they nicknamed the single Mass Driver, didn't have much longevity in a sustained fire scenario.
But it could be dropped and replaced in seconds, so it wasn't the wasted capability that a Redemption Pattern Mecha with an empty Battle Cannon was.
[Colonel Max, we are ready for you to use your System Functions and check the updates.] Nico called up from her seat atop the right arm's Ion Bombard Array.
[Optimizing] Max's System informed him as he equipped it, then provided him a short list of changes that needed to be physically made and couldn't be done by the System.
Max sent them to Nico and she got back to work, double-checking everything before sending the data to the research team.
[That is an impressive combination of System Abilities. Between the two of you, the output of the Ion Bombard is up by sixty percent on the baseline without overload or overheating issues.] General Tennant congratulated him on a secure channel and Max resisted the urge to tease his instructor about being upstaged by the new generation.
It wasn't really a generational issue, Max and Nico simply worked too well together.
[As long as stability isn't affected, I will be happy. The original design had the long-range stability changes we made for targeting Landers included. It would be a shame to lose that capability.] Nico pointed out.
The other Super Heavy Mecha began to implement their changes now that the data had been verified. Only half of the X137 units would do this final round of updates right away, the others would be the control group to compare them against.
None of the tests would begin until the underground base was finished though. They had a whole planet worth of space to test, and the team wanted real-time data from everyone at once to reduce environmental variables.
The only issue Max could see was that [Optimize] was intended to be for his personal use, so it might not be right for the others.
Their Mecha would all have been set up slightly differently, to their Pilot's preference, so the changes might conflict and lead to unwanted outcomes.
[Mecha Hangars are complete and makeshift repair gantries are installed. Returning to position so the other teams can begin work.] Baker Company reported halfway through their shift, and the Pilots of Charlie Company celebrated.
Their Battalion's part of the digging was done, and they didn't have to do any of it. They would be up first next time, but today, they were the lucky winners.
Max set his alarm and lay down for a nap, knowing he had at least four hours before the call to begin testing would be made, and that they would be busy loading everything up and leaving the planet after the tests were complete.
