Ves found a new project to occupy himself with after his talk with Helena.
Though Operation Saturday Market loomed closer than ever, he no longer spent as much time on worrying about the Sundered Phalanx mech divisions his troops had to fight against or whether the Neo Amadeus carried any nasty surprises.
Instead of worrying about matters that he had no control over and could not meaningfully affect with his intervention, Ves instead returned to what he was originally good at, which was creating ground-breaking new innovations!
Of course, given the time constraints, Ves knew he had to work extremely quickly in order to design a functional product and fabricate it before the decisive battle commenced.
Ves quietly drafted up a list of requirements as he carried his cute little daughter to the design studio. He put her down a floating kiddy chair and quickly began to draft a concept of what he had in mind.
“What are you doing, papa?” Andraste curiously asked as she grew fascinated by how Ves drew glowing lines in the air with his mind and fingers.
“I’m making a flower. A deathly flower. Kind of like the one I made for Helena, but at a far bigger scale.”
His little girl looked impressed. “Wooooo.”
Naturally, Helena appeared as well. Ves carried a totem of his ‘eldest sister’ on his person most of the time so that she could manifest in his presence whenever she wanted.
As the principal design spirit who would be lending her death energy to this hypothetical new product, Helena gained a huge personal interest in the outcome of this project.
She exhibited a similar interest in the work of her brother when he had tackled the Valkyrie Redeemer Mark II Project in the past.
That had been a fun time. While Ves and Gloriana had mostly focused on updating the older rim-level marauder mech design up to heartland-level specifications, Helena provided numerous suggestions on how to better allow her to channel her death energy through the mech line that she had ‘inherited’ from her mother.
She also insisted on cosmetic changes that better reflected her personality!
For example, each copy of the Valkyrie Redeemer Mark II and its variants carried a decorative black lotus on their upper torsos!
Now, Helena looked to repeat that experience. Any weapon based around herself or her Death Lotus needed to be pleasing to her eyes before she was willing to extend her blessing!
“What are you making, exactly?” She asked.
“A mech pistol.” Ves answered. “One that will vaguely resemble your Death Lotus when it is in its weapon mode but scaled to the proportions of a mech. Of course, its internal design will be a lot different because it is not a spiritual construct like your personal weapon. It has to be a real luminar crystal weapon that is especially attuned to channel your specific energy.”
This was not an easy task. Ves had never developed a weapon that was completely centered around the idea of channeling the energy of a spiritual entity.
He never developed the need to create such a weapon because his mechs already possessed all of the weapon solutions they needed to defeat their opponents.
However, considering the formidable reputation of the Sundered Phalanx and the many dangers of fighting against so many veteran, battle-tested military mech divisions, Ves felt ill at ease with the current situation.
Though there weren’t any obvious indicators that showed that their predictions were off, Ves couldn’t help but worry about the amount of casualties his clan would suffer in the ensuing combat.
There were plenty of possibilities where Operation Saturday Market succeeded but only after the Larkinson Clan lost over half of its mech pilots!
Ves also considered possibilities where the Sundered Phalanx gave up all pretense of defending the Pima Prime System and went all-out to destroy the Spirit of Bentheim and the other vulnerable starships of the Larkinson Clan in an act of retribution!
The Gaugers might even do their best to aim at his life and the lives of his immediate family. In the past few weeks, he had spent a considerable amount of his time bolstering the stealth detection measures of his flagship and all of the other capital ships.
The Senior-level Stealth and Cloaking Skill that he had acquired from the System 2.0 came in extremely handy during that time. Ves became a lot more assured that his fleet would be able to detect any sneaky bastards approaching his flagship while most of his clansmen were preoccupied with the enemies in the open.
He never got over that instance where a whole bunch of Haatumak cultists were crowded in the same compartment but somehow pulled off a trick that caused him to overlook their presence.
With all of the additional precautions he made, he was certain that this would never happen again, especially on the Spirit of Bentheim!
After a few minutes of hasty sketching, Ves completed his initial draft of his proposed weapon design.
It looked like an elegant black pistol at first. It shared obvious resemblances to the Death Lotus, which in turn was inspired by the Amastendira.
Unlike Helena’s favorite flower, the mech pistol he drafted did not come in an alternate lotus form.
He didn’t think it was necessary to add a transformation function. Mechs carried weapons all the time. They only looked more awesome when they carried an additional gun.
Besides, it was much easier to add a transformation function to a spiritual construct than on a solid object.
Unless the latter was made of smart metal, it was incredibly troublesome to design a pistol that could transform into a flower shape. The amount of mechanisms he needed to add was excessive, and he would be forced to make so many compromises that the firepower of the weapon would definitely suffer.
The last reason why he skipped the transformation function was that it added way too much time to the design process.
An energy pistol was one of the simplest weapons that he could design. Ves was extremely familiar with luminar crystal weapons of all kinds.
His last significant mech design project where he had to explore and push the limits of what he could do with luminar crystal technology was the one that resulted in the Nullifier model.
Ves applied the lessons he learned from designing the Nullifier and many other recent ranged mech models to the initial design of this new black pistol.
Helena and Andraste both watched on as Ves zoomed in on the internals of his draft and began to draw crystals and other essential components to make the weapon work.
The two young ladies did not understand anything about the science and engineering behind what Ves was doing, but that didn’t stop them from voicing their appreciation.
“Pretty!” Andraste giggled as she clapped. “I want it! I want it! Papa, give me one! I want to shoot!”
Ves grinned and leaned over to kiss her adorable cheek. “Hehe, let’s wait until you’ve grown a little older. You’re too young to hold a real weapon. Let’s wait a few more years and I’ll prepare a special gift for one of your birthdays. Is that alright?”
“I want it now!”
Ves had to spend a bit of time to placate his daughter before he could resume his design work.
He not only refined the initial appearance of the pistol, but also detailed its core components so that he could gain a better estimate of its technical performance.
Energy weapons could be quite complex, but one of the charms about luminar crystal technology was that it made several conventional components redundant.
Luminar crystals designed for different functions could wear multiple hats at the same time, so Ves could not only spend less time on designing a weapon, but also simplify its design.
Another benefit to weapons based on luminar crystal technology was that they were remarkably efficient. Luminar crystals were extremely good at converting electrical energy to pure output without generating too much waste heat.
This allowed Ves to place much less emphasis on heat management as his luminar crystal weapons simply didn’t overheat as much.
The only major concern was that crystals endured such great strain when converting one form of energy into another form of energy that they could break after enduring constant stresses.
Still, everything was fine as long as Ves put a ceiling on the power output of his weapons.
All of this happened to make luminar crystal weapons particularly suited for compact weapon designs.
When it came to outlining the attack phase crystal which was one of the key components that defined the performance of the weapon, Ves paused for a time.
“What are you hesitating about, Ves?” Helena curiously asked.
“If… if I want to design a pistol that can effectively channel your death energy, then I can’t rely on conventional luminar crystals.” Ves answered. “The attack phase crystals that I have developed before mostly output conventional energy such as laser beams, positron beams and kinetic beams, which are all great at dealing material damage. None of the existing attack phase crystals that I have made in the past focused purely on channeling spiritual energy.”
Before Helena’s birth, the idea did not sound practical. Though there were design spirits that could probably inflict at least some hurt on people, the price-to-performance ratio was far too low to make it worthwhile.
For example, if he tried to make a luminar crystal weapon that channeled the spiritual energy derived from the Illustrious One, then he would probably end up with an overengineered flashlight that could only blind people at best!
Helena thoughtfully rubbed her smooth, porcelain chin. “So you have to invent a new ‘attack phase crystal’ in order to get the pistol to do what you want?”
“Yup.”
“Do you know how?”
“Not really.” Ves admitted. “This is the greatest hurdle to my project. I know that the luminar race used to be able to leverage spiritual engineering in their luminar crystal products, but I don’t have that knowledge. I will have to spend my limited time on research and experimentation to whip up something quickly.”
“That sounds like it would take weeks or months instead of days. Do you even have enough time to complete such an important task?” Helena asked in a skeptical tone.
Ves slowly grinned. “If I was working on my own, then I probably wouldn’t be able to get it done in time. However, when did I say that this is a solo project? Don’t I have you, Helena? You’re the Daughter of Death. There is no one else in my orbit that knows more about death energy than you! As long as we work together, we’ll be able to crack the secret sooner than later!”
Helena blinked. “While that may be true, I’m not a maker like you. I don’t know the first thing about crystals and luminar crystals, let alone all of this engineering stuff.”
“Don’t worry about that. I can already cover this area, and if that’s not enough, I have another crystal expert at my disposal.”
“You mean that Illustrious One fellow?” Helena frowned. “He’s weird.”
“He’s derived from a couple of long-dead aliens. Of course he’s weird. It doesn’t matter as long as he lends his expertise on luminar crystal technology to me. His knowledge base might not be complete, but he possesses a much greater affinity for luminar crystals than myself. I will need to borrow that in order to succeed.”
“Is that all? Do you want to bring over our mother as well?”
“No.” Ves shook his head. “She will probably refuse to give me any helpful information as usual. I have another assistant in mind that is much more helpful for our project. In fact, I would say that he is made to develop unique relics like these!”
“Who?”
“Me.”
“Really, Ves?”
Ves chuckled for a moment. “I mean it, Helena. Of course, I am not referring to my base self. I am instead referring to Vulcan!”
This was an excellent opportunity for Vulcan to finally put all of the knowledge that he had absorbed from lots of craftsmen, mech designers and other worshipers of his totems over the years!
