[401-600] THE MECH'S TOUCH

Chapter 450: Driven

No Senior Mech Designer ever made it to their rank by being stupid. Despite her slow responses and her erratic behavior, when it came to mechs, Professor Velten was as razor sharp as any mech designer.

She immediately took note of the abundance of superfluous elements in his design proposal.

"Mr. Larkinson, of all the elements of a mech that you could have chosen to work on, you focused on the cockpit. Worse, besides switching the neural interface systems, most of these changes appear to be purely cosmetic! I can understand if you've made the cockpit sturdier or increased its ability to withstand a breach, but all you have done is rearrange its interior! What do you have to say for yourself?!"

Ves held up his hands. "It's not cosmetic, ma'am! Far from it! Every adjustment I have made is needed to increase the ergonomics of the cockpit!"

In order to cover for his ability to affect a mech pilot through the X-Factor, Ves had delved into real ergonomics several times before. Just for this occasion, he brushed up on his theory by referencing the textbooks the Mech Corps made available through the central database.

"According to Leitzbritz's theory of luminescent comfort, putting more than three projectors in a row will excessively distract the mech pilot and…"

"The height of the piloting chair is set according to the average height of every mech pilots in the service more than a century ago. That's fine as a whole, but the average height of the mech lots in the Flagrant Vandals is a little bit shorter than that…"

Ves basically spun a tale of nonsense cloaked in scientific rigor. The vast majority of his adjustments had no point. They were only there so that Ves could leave his fingerprints on the design. While he changed plenty of things inside the interior, getting these changes approved was a very different matter.

After a couple of minutes of blabbering on, Ves reached the end of his prepared speech. He waited in a tense moment of silence as Velten parsed his words.

"I have no doubt that your applications are sound." She conceded slowly and knocked a gnarly knuckle against her desk. "Yet none of it seems worth it. How will any of these changes improve the performance of the Inheritor? As much as you tout the benefits of this proposal, there is an alarming lack of hard estimates on how much the design will improve. How am I supposed to approve to the wholesale modification of every Inheritor in our possession, thereby wasting a large portion of our limited logistical capacity?"

In other words, Ves might have talked a good game, but he hadn't been able to justify why the Vandals should overhaul the cockpit interiors of every Inheritor. It wouldn't take a lot of time and effort to rearrange the interior of a single cockpit, but it was an entirely different story when it came to hundreds.

A mech regiment as large as the Flagrant Vandals constantly ran their production equipment night and day, doing all sorts of tasks. The mech technicians always had more things to do. Thus, convincing the Vandals and Professor Velten that his changes was worthwhile would always be an uphill battle.

Fortunately, Ves already prepared an answer to this question. He withdrew a data chip from his pocket and gently put it on the desk. "I have already tested out the changes. The raw data and the results are in the data chip. Please take a look, professor."

The professor looked at him with a little skepticism, but she didn't dismiss the data chip out of hand. As she slid the secure data device in her terminal, she began to peruse the logs and data that Ves had recorded during the tests.

This was his trump card for this meeting. During his stay with the design department, he heard many stories about Professor Velten. Everyone spoke about her ironclad rigidity on certain matters.