"You know, I was leaning for the Cathedral, but this, this is incredible. With the Samurai Line Mecha, it would be like a whole demonic army charging the enemy lines. Even the bravest of soldiers would mentally break when they saw that army in combat." Admiral Drake sighed in longing, staring at the evil-looking Mecha.
Trying to inject common sense into this group was like herding cats through a field of catnip.
"You mentioned the Samurai Pattern Line Mecha, do we have a design for the God Class Mecha to be an enormous Samurai Statue?" Max asked hopefully.
"Oh, yeah, I made one of those as well. It lacks the single target oomph of the Rage Class Mecha design, but if you look here, I mounted Thunder Guns on both forearms that will still let it use the sword, as well as what I like to call the Hundred Points of Enlightenment, a Pulse Laser Array on par with a hundred Crusader Class Mecha's Pulse Lasers."
The lasers were mounted as focusing lenses on the edges of every armor plate, so only half of them could actually be trained on a target at a time, closer to third in most situations, but not many targets needed thirty Crusaders' worth of combined firepower to take them down.
This seemed to be the most practical version of the design that anyone had come up with so far, though that wasn't saying much, and the reception was very good.
"Who could even pilot that though? A hundred and six simultaneous targets are way beyond any Pilot that I've heard of." Mary Tarith pointed out.
"Me. She designed it for me to pilot, and I can target over a hundred points at once, with perfect accuracy." Max responded, making all the Reavers smile in barely hidden joy.
"So we have an agreement then? We will go with the huge Samurai and not the walking Cathedral?" Max asked hopefully.
"For a Mecha that glorious, we can compromise on aesthetics. I vote for the last design presented." Uncle Lu finally relented, breaking the stalemate in the room.
With his agreement, the final decision was made in only a few minutes, while a few design changes were suggested. An energy barrier for the blade, so that it could be used to hack holes in enemy vessels, minor changes to the armor design to match armor that the Reavers were familiar with, instead of the design that Nico had pulled out of memories of her past life, and the possibility of an Orbital Lance Cannon, to be made handheld and stored on the back when not in use.
That was more contentious since it would block a lot of the lasers, but it would give the Mecha that initial oomph to really get its point across when it arrived on a battlefield.
Uncle Lu would work on something to make the design more practical, he insisted, and the Mecha was sent back to the drawing board for the modifications needed to make the new outer appearance work with the necessary structural elements.
With that, the meeting was dismissed, and Max had to return to the daily drudgery of actually running his Regiment. Keeping everyone training and in top form, installing the new training simulators that they had acquired, and negotiating with the other Reaver Captains.
[Commander Keres, there is an incoming ship requesting you personally.] Admiral Drake reported from the bridge.
[Patch it through to the office next to the meeting room.] Max agreed, waving goodbye to the others so that he could take the call from the unknown vessel.
[Go for the Terminus Trading Company. This is Commander Keres.] Max confirmed, opening a video link so he could see who he was dealing with.
The face on the other side of the screen was one he never thought he would see again though.
[Major Payne? What are you doing here?] He asked, too startled to wait for her to speak.
[Good to see you again, Commander. We were out on a training mission and we seem to have run into a bit of trouble that I was hoping you could help us with. Nothing too dangerous, at least not all the way out here, but urgent.] His old Dorm supervisor replied.
[Your vessel looks sturdy enough for planetary landing, but if you need, we can shuttle you and your team down from the orbital station. It is under construction, but there are landing bays already complete.] Max offered.
[With permission, I would prefer to land next to that monstrosity of a Colony Ship you seem to have acquired. We don't have much, but it would be easier to transfer while on land.] She replied, and Max sent through a request for a flight path to the Capital's flight controllers.
[See you soon.] Max replied, then pulled up the sensors from Terminus to take a good look at the new arrivals.
They were in Kepler Terminus Royal Academy's private vessel, a small cargo ship modified for sending graduates to their first deployments. If they had mecha with them, there weren't many, and the ship was only designed to carry about a thousand people, plus rations and gear.
It wasn't a large vessel, and barely Warp Capable, since it was never intended to go much further than the Military bases in the surrounding systems at the lowest possible purchase price.
They might well have been on their way here for an entire month at this point and had only just made it due to their slow travel speed.
Still, a friendly face from the past was always welcome, and Max assumed that she had brought them some more refugees to be settled in the city. If they weren't planning to leave, the sale of the little ship could net them a pretty comfortable life here on Rae 5 as well.
Max pinged the ship and then hacked through the Academy's laughable security as soon as they stopped talking. They hadn't even updated the passwords since he left.
What he found was that the ship was at twice capacity, which was unexpected for an Academy vessel, but as he looked he found that every person other than the Major aboard that ship had their Personal Data altered to make them appear to be Academy Dropouts bound for the Infantry.
Why they would do that when it was a death sentence for the Cadets was a mystery to Max, but if the Major had gotten wise early, she might actually have a very good surprise for him.
