The Mech Touch novel Chapter 4406

Ves eventually declined to follow up on Gloriana's suggestion.

While he believed that the Hexers would definitely be willing to offer him a glimpse of their current expert mech designs, he was not sure whether it was worth the price.

It went far beyond owing a favor to the Hexers. What Ves was truly afraid of was that he would copy and take over too many of the design solutions developed by Hexers and adapted to different circumstances.

If Ves wanted to do right by the Ghost Project, then he needed to design it so that it could optimally serve its purpose in the Larkinson Clan rather than under the umbrella of an intelligence agency of the Hex Federation.

He thought it might be better if he worked on the Ghost Project from a fresh perspective that was relatively free from any existing biases or preconceived notions.

In any case, his understanding on the mechanisms of outdated expert stealth mechs already made him feel a lot more confident about designing the Ghost Project.

He just needed to figure out a way to apply the latest tech to his complicated design. In particular, he wanted to make the outer layer transphasic so that the Ghost Project could actually take a few hits and come out unscathed.

"You're making a mistake, Ves." Gloriana told him in a disappointed tone. "You always insist on trying to reinvent the wheel in your own style. While I can respect your determination to develop an application from the ground up, you will just end up with a wheel that is inferior to the latest generation of wheels. Instead of wasting far more time than necessary in designing an expert stealth mech that is quirky at best, it is much more efficient to start from studying the best of what the Hex Federation has to offer so that you will begin at a higher starting point."

Ves sighed. "I can understand your logic, but you are leaving out a lot of variables that I find important. I won't explain it to you all, but according to my own logic, it is not a bad idea for me to forgo your offer."

"...You'll regret it, Ves."

"Let us see. I might surprise you, honey."

"Don't call me honey!"

Ves did what he said and proceeded to go his own way. As the expeditionary fleet continued to hop from star system to star system, often times staying for a time in order to explore and survey different planets and asteroids, the Larkinson Journeymen continued to become engrossed in their design work.

Both the older and the newer cohorts of Journeymen were hitting their stride.

While it became increasingly more obvious to everyone that Miles Tovar, Merrill O'Brian and Cormaunt Hempkamp weren't as productive as the ones that had been designing mechs in the Larkinson Clan for many more years, the gap wasn't insurmountably big.

Ves and the rest had already taken the differences into account and made sure to assign lighter and more manageable responsibilities to them. This quickly allowed them to find a comfortable place within the Design Department.

In fact, as Journeymen, the three were anything but fragile children who needed the help of a babysitter to do anything complicated. They were true mech designers who had already moved beyond the mortal limitations of ordinary professionals.

Miles and Merrill had both joined the Larkinson Clan when it was still a third-class organization, which meant they were already at home in the Design Department.

They only had trouble with transitioning from a subordinate assisting role to a leading contributing role. The increase in responsibilities was massive, but by working alongside more experienced mech designers such as Ketis and Gloriana, they were never left to fend for themselves.

What surprised Ves quite a bit was that Cormaunt Hempkamp adapted to his responsibilities faster by virtue of his prior work experiences.

Mr. Hempkamp not only proved to be a competent project leader, but he was also able to quickly bind the newly recruited neural interface specialists into a coordinated design team.

The newcomers were sorely needed to replace the standard neural interface models of the Larkinson Clan's existing mech models with customized versions.

Though the difficulty of most of these jobs was not that much as long as Mr. Hempkamp designed a neural interface for a base model, the amount of work that needed to be done was massive!

Ves expected the design team to start off shaky considering that each of them had only joined the Larkinson Clan only recently, but when Ves paid a visit to their design lab, he was greeted by the sight of a smooth operation.

Every assistant mech designer was diligently working on planned assignments without any fuss or confusion. Nobody looked lost and it was rare for any of the neural interface specialists to be doing any redundant work.

This was not the picture that Ves expected to see from a design team led by a Journeyman who had a history of insubordination and reckless experimentation.

"I am not incapable of learning from my mistakes." The dark-skinned mech designer told a skeptical-looking Ves. "I am cognizant of all of the chances that I have blown when I worked for previous employers. After joining your clan, I became truly taken in by the warmth and trust that I have received from you and your fellow Larkinsons. I have made the determination not to ruin my opportunity to work in the best possible place I can work with. I have even cut short my breaks and off-days in order to meet your expectations."

That caused Ves to look concerned. "Don't work too hard on my account. I know people like us can easily get pulled into our work to the point where we neglect everything else around us, but I don't want you to maintain an unsustainable schedule. You are still human, Mr. Hempkamp."

The other mech designer dismissively shook his head.

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