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The next morning brought a freshly built cockpit mockup from the night shift, installed in the prototype of the X137 and ready to go the moment that Max and the team walked into the bay.

It had everything that they had requested, including the upgraded shielding and the new design seats, they had even put removable dividers into the under-bunk storage to keep items from shifting around while in motion, a small detail that Max and the team had overlooked, and one that wouldn’t have caused anything worse than an annoying rattle as items shifted.

“Power it up and make sure that everything works. We had to change a lot of the electrical routing to make the packaging work without compromising the integrity of the shielding around the cockpit pod.” The head of the night shift, who stayed behind to meet them this morning, instructed with a smile, already knowing that it should work.

They didn’t have a test pilot on the night shift, but they could at least power the unit up and do a diagnostic on it.

Most other projects had Pilots on every shift, but the X137 was a bit of an outlier. They didn’t have any more Pilots qualified to Pilot it other than Majors Max and Nico, so all the testing was done on the day shift.

They spent two hours going through every relay and possible motion configuration to make sure there were no more issues before Sister Lilith declared that the Mecha was fully functional. That meant that they could call Uncle Lu here, and see if they could get approval to walk it to the test firing facility, where they could unleash the weapons for their final check and clear the design as completed.

Both of the Crusader Class replacements for the Redemption Pattern Mecha had already undergone this stage more than once, due to design modifications, but this would be the first time the Lab had actually sent a Super Heavy to the bay. It was a cause for celebration if the Base Commander would approve it, and Uncle Lu did love approving live testing of his new designs.

It didn’t take long before the man himself was at their bay to verify their results and get ready to formally move the Mecha to the live fire bays. They were on the same floor, but in a contained area near the edge of the facility, so that any accidents wouldn’t cause serious damage to the rest of the hab dome facility.

“Since we have a qualified Pilot already in the Mecha, why don’t we skip the transport rack and let the testing bays see just how well you all did?” Uncle Lu suggested, signing off on the change of location paperwork that Lilith had sent him.

In Max’s mind that would be the best possible option. The ground floor between bays was strictly off limits to all pedestrian traffic, thanks to the number of Mecha and forklifts that traveled between bays, bringing materials and taking away failed experiments, so there wouldn’t be a fear of stepping on anyone while he walked across the city.

It would be loud, even with the noise canceling, but Max could minimize that with good control of the Gravity plates and a smooth walking motion.

“Pilot Max, please be ready to begin the movement in 1 minute. Directions for the route are being sent now, please maintain the indicated pace.” Sister Lilith instructed, reminding Max that all movement between bays was monitored, with much of it being automated, so maintaining the correct speed prevented collisions and traffic jams.

Max moved out, carefully following the directions, as every tester in the area came to watch from the catwalks. The X137 was the pride and joy of their Lab, the first new Super Heavy Mecha that the Kepler Military had approved in nearly a century of warfare. Sure, they had issued hundreds of upgrades over time, but the basic designs had been the same for most of the Empire’s history.

With its release, they could soon be considered technologically on par with the greatest of Militaries in the Galaxy, and not an Empire holding on by sheer perseverance.

It was not an easy task to improve on the existing designs, like many truly ingenious things, they were simply better than anything that had been intended to replace them, enduring through time well beyond their intended lifespan. Many had joked over the years that Kepler’s Mecha was the rubber tire of the war machine industry. The rubber tire, in various incarnations, due to planetary differences in plant life, had been around for millennia, and it still was commonly used on many worlds for everything from children’s toys to light industrial equipment.

There simply wasn’t anything that could replace it and not be cost-prohibitive in regions without easy access to the higher end of technology, like many agricultural worlds that lacked the rare resources to replicate anti-gravity plating locally.

Max had learned from some Pilots who had grown up in such worlds that the common person believed that if they were intended to float through the air, they would have been born with wings. The rich could fly all they wanted, but the ground was where humanity truly belonged.

That belief led to the idolization of the Mecha. Huge and stompy, firmly grounded on the earth the way a proper human should be, they were a symbol of might and hope to the masses. Even on worlds as advanced as Kepler Terminus, where wheeled vehicles were all but unheard of, Max felt that belief on a personal level.

The poor walked, and the rich floated along in their hovercars. That was how it was, and the Mecha were seen as hope for a better future, even at the risk of one’s own life.

Max precisely followed the route as he was lost in his memories, watching the crowd cheer on the mightiest addition to the Kepler Military. Word had already spread that the design was approved for construction, they just had to finish the final tweaks so that the factories could begin their work.

For the bureaucracy of the Kepler Empire, that was astounding. Too astounding in fact. Enough that Max suspected that this decision had come straight from the Emperor to Central Command and had been decreed to Uncle Lu before the design was even put through testing.

“There would be a new Super Heavy, and it would be better than the original, or else.” That was how Max imagined the conversation went. But they had done it, the X137 was moving on its own to go test an all-new weapons suite. One last test and the factories would be hard at work.