“What? They already built one?”
It was mid-July, just two months after the prototype unit had been seized, when I heard from Mogami. Unable to hide his irritation, he told me that the Third Division had apparently completed a production model.
“Seems like it.”
“It seems like it?”
It’s your machine they’re replicating, right?
But it turned out things were more complicated than I’d expected.
“They only asked us a few questions at the start, then sent us on our way. I guess they wanted to pretend they’d built it entirely on their own.”
“Huh. I see.”
While finishing a prototype in two months was fast, it wasn’t surprising, considering the difference in capabilities between a private company like Mogami Heavy Industries and a military organization backed by all the material and manpower a nation-state could afford. Although it was the Third Division that had forcibly requisitioned the mech, military HQ was all for mass production, so there was no shortage of cooperation.
Compared with how the superpowers that ruled the world in my previous life used to churn out a new aircraft carrier every month, I had to think this was probably a lot easier.
Still, no matter how much production power you had, there were some things you just couldn’t get your hands on—chief among them being the technical black box that Mogami Heavy Industries had locked down.
Everything from the ratio of monster to machine parts in the frame; to the method for processing the artificial muscles that covered the frame and the pseudo-nerves that linked the upper and lower body; to the materials used to build the joints, which were specially designed to absorb recoil—all that was unpatented and kept under wraps as Mogami Heavy Industries’ proprietary tech.
Yes, the military could take the prototype apart and reverse engineer certain aspects of it, but if they cared about professional ethics or future business relationships—which they should—then it wasn’t something they could do openly. If they set a precedent of reverse engineering weapons from major conglomerates, you could all but guarantee pushback.
Even so, you would think Mogami would be furious at them building a production model like this. But strangely, he didn’t come off as upset. If anything, he seemed…pleased?
“They did succeed in replicating it—that much is true. But it didn’t move.”
“Huh.”
Was it just too much for regular pilots used to the standard or beast-type units?
“They tried to figure out why, and their first idea was to make it smaller.”
“Oh?”
Maybe they thought it was too heavy or the neural load would work better in a smaller frame. Either way, neither were terrible ideas.
“They reduced the height to five meters and cut down the weight to twenty tonnes.”
…Wait, what?
“Wouldn’t that mean they can’t use the cannon that’s supposed to one-shot large-class monsters?”
The original hybrid unit weighed thirty tonnes (thirty-five with equipment) because the whole idea was that it needed to be able to take out big enemies with a single long-range blast.
With experience and optimization, the pilot might feel as if the unit was lighter, but the machine itself wouldn’t actually lose weight. If anything, it would grow heavier.
In other words, lightening it just meant less firepower.
And what was a sniper with no stopping power supposed to accomplish anyway?
“Well, if it doesn’t move, there’s nothing else you can really do. And they can still use a heavy cannon—just not one that kills in a single shot.”
“I guess that makes sense?”
Come to think of it, twenty tonnes was heavier than the standard models. If you thought of it as being able to carry stronger weapons than those, maybe it wasn’t all bad.
“But even after all that, it still didn’t move. Not properly anyway. The upper body could hold a weapon, and the lower body could kind of crawl around, apparently.”
“Yeah?”
Being able to crawl wasn’t a total failure, considering beast-type units already moved around on all fours. But just because the pilot or I might put up with that, there was no reason the enemy would.
“That’s the kind of thing that gets you killed by return fire, you know?”
Snipers had to move right after taking a shot for that exact reason.
Even though the beams fired by monsters were strangely slow—slower than light or lightning—they were still faster than normal shells. They also produced a shock wave that blasted away everything within several meters of the impact zone.
That was why we couldn’t just store our mechs in our magicite crystals and hoof it as soon as we’d shot.
In other words, to perform well with a hybrid model, you had to be able to leap ten meters sideways the instant you opened fire.
Crawling around was practically a death sentence.
“Yeah, I know. But I think the Third Division’s guys just wanted to see if they could get it moving at all. And now that it sort of does, they’re probably satisfied—for now.”
“You think?”
“That’s how these things go. You’ve got to take it one step at a time. Not that we’re in any better shape, since no one besides you can even get the damn thing to actually move.”
“Ha-ha.”
I couldn’t argue with that.
It was weird how detached Mogami sounded, considering the prototype was his own design. Then again, it must have stung even more to have the military steal it than if he’d lost it to total strangers, so seeing them fumble around and produce a half-baked knockoff might actually have given him a vindictive sense of joy.
I couldn’t say I blamed him. In fact, I understood the feeling.