The Mech Touch novel Chapter 2636

Chapter 2636: Dr. Frederico Navarro

According to his public profile, Frederico Navarro was a forty-odd years old Journeyman Mech Designer.

To be more precise, he was both a biotech expert and a biomech designer. This reflected the fact that every biomech designer had to know the ins and outs of exobiology, genetics, molecular biology, biomechanics and many other related fields.

How else could they design and 'grow' their biomechs if they didn't know how a living organism worked?

Biomechs may perform identical to classical mechs on the battlefield, but their organic nature meant that the logistics around them were completely different.

Mech companies didn't fabricate biomechs. They grew them. Biomechs literally started as tiny, juvenile masses of tissue. As long as they were kept in special cultivation pools, it usually took a couple of weeks or months for them to grow in size and mass.

This was a very long production time. The weakest biomechs took at least a week to reach maturity while the more powerful models might take years to gestate!

While this sounded incredibly backwards, this growth-based production method had its own advantages.

The most important one was that once a producer set up the infrastructure, they just needed to feed materials, energy and nutrients in the cultivation pools in order to grow a lot of mechs at once.

Hardly any mech technicians or other workers were required to perform any manual processes. Just a few overseers and biotech experts were enough to oversee the production of thousands of biomechs!

Maintaining the biomechs once they were finished was easy as well. The living machines were always capable of regenerating minor battle damage by themselves. If they suffered major damage such as losing an arm, they could still regrow a new one as long as they were fed with lots of materials and tended to by a single biomech technician!

The same method could also be employed to upgrade or modify the biomechs.

Rather than treat them as machines, biomech designers and biomech technicians instead treated them as giant living organisms. Just like how humans could improve their capabilities by augmenting themselves with implants and gene treatments, biomechs could also be augmented in the same fashion!

While biomechs possessed several advantages, they also came with some distinct downsides.

The first major demerit was the higher barrier to entry to design them. Every biomech designer had to be proficient in both biotechnology and traditional engineering. They could not skimp in either direction, or else their biomechs would never be able to compete against classical mechs.

The second significant downside was that biomechs demanded a completely different infrastructure. The traditional mech industry had no clue how to produce, repair, maintain and recycle biomechs.

As biological machines, a large proportion of their makeup had to be made with different materials. Biomech producers competed against both traditional mech companies and other biotech companies when it came to sourcing the necessary materials.

All in all, biomechs were generally very difficult to popularize in a region where classical mechs already reigned supreme. The lack of infrastructure hampered their utility as it demanded producers and consumers to make special accommodations. All of that cost extra money, effort and resources.

When Ves briefly looked at the states bordering the Life Research Association, he quickly found out that none of the neighbors adopted biomechs on a widespread scale.

Aside from a couple of exceptions, the rest of Majestic Teal firmly stuck to using normal metallic mechs!

While this forced the LRA's mech industry to stand alone, the biomech enthusiasts didn't appear to be having difficulties. Biotechnology was far more developed in the state than anywhere else in the local region, so local biomech designers such as Frederico Navarro could easily make a living by depending entirely on the domestic market.

"Why is Dr. Navarro so interested in challenging me to a design duel?" Ves asked.

His assistant shrugged. "We aren't sure, but we think that he is driven by a combination of pride in the LRA's biomechs and a perception that we are challenging the definition of 'living mechs'. I'm not sure how his specialty plays into his motives. According to the MTA, Dr. Navarro excels at designing mechs that can transform mid-battle or in a short amount of time."

His exact specialty was rapid biomechanical transformation. While it was a bit exaggerated to state that Dr. Navarro's products could transform in the middle of an engagement, some of his products were actually capable of doing so depending on the scale of changes.

Regardless whether his biomechs took seconds or hours to change into a different form, Dr. Navarro was not the most successful Journeyman in his home state. His products may be versatile, but they were also significantly more expensive than the industry standard. His biomechs also possessed shorter lifespans. If they lived longer than they were designed to last, then they would rapidly degrade until they died a 'natural' death. Just like prolonging the lives of humans, it was very troublesome to extend the lifespan of a biomech.

However, what did all of this have to do with Ves? While he was intrigued by Dr. Navarro's work, he had no intention of delving further into the intricacies of biomechs. He possessed no foundation in this weird category of mechs. His own production facilities weren't capable of producing biomechs and classical mechs already offered plenty of diversity for him to explore.

"Is it possible that Dr. Navarro did not reach out to us on our own initiative?" Ves guessed. "What if someone else wants to test us through this fellow?"

"That is what Calabast suspects as well when we brought it up to her. She is still looking into this angle, but it is unlikely for us to determine whether that is the case." Gavin replied.

Just like regular mech designers, every biomech designer possessed a range of connections. Their teachers, business partners, friends and colleagues were part of the networks that people like Dr. Navarro relied upon to maintain their footing in a competitive mech industry.

No mech designer was able to stand alone. This was especially the case in a second-rate state.

Personally, Ves suspected that Dr. Navarro might be part of an organization or faction within the LRA. That wasn't necessarily a big deal as Ves would actually be surprised if the biomech designer was all on his lonesome.

Was Dr. Navarro or the mastermind standing behind him trying to pull Ves and the Larkinson Clan into some kind of plot?

Who knew. Ves just wanted to shop at the LRA. He had no interest in getting pulled into the quagmire of local politics.

"As long as you don't find anything alarming about Dr. Navarro, go ahead and tell him that I accept his challenge." He decided after a moment of thought. "Make sure to remind him of our conditions. We will only be travelling to open, commercial star systems and we will not stay too long in any destination."

"Will do, boss."

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