I'm hungry, but I think all I need is some soup and a sandwich.
I passed a deli on the way here.
Let's do that.
You sure you want to let my bank get off that easy?
Don't worry about that. So should I call you David?
Only my mom called me that. I prefer Dave.
OK. I recommend the pastrami. It's made from the local cow-analog. Gives the meat a good gamey taste.
Sounds like an adventure. I'll give it a try. Speaking of adventures, you know a lot about me, but I hardly know anything about you, except what I've heard in the bars and the mechyards.
I don't mind talking about myself. This way I can put me in the best possible light.
So how did you get started in the business?
It's sort of a family thing.
You dad was a mech-mech?
No. My dad was 6th Andalusian mechanized.
Oh.
After the scandal, Daddy and his squad went merc.
Hard luck?
Other than being on the wrong side? Not really. Actually, Halverson's political implosion was probably the best thing that could've happened. Since then, my dad saved enough to buy an outworld continent. He lives fairly well off the resource and homestead rights. What else do you want to know?
Well, I'm learning that I never know what to expect with you. I feel like my foot is surgically grafted to my mouth.
Hey, don't sweat it. People see patterns that build up expectations. It's not your fault that I don't fall into any of your categories.
Definitely. But you still haven't answered my question. How did you get started?
Well, by the time I was sixteen, Daddy had been retired for a while. Being an independent type…
*snort*
…I felt I had to make a go at it by myself. I accepted a modest chunk of seed capital from my dad at a not-too-murderous interest rate and moved here.
Makes sense.
So when Ford and Nekko started building ceramic-framed mechs for the sport-mech-set, I remembered my dad's experiences with ceramic structurals and invested in the e-beam welder. The rest is history.
Huh.
You know, you don't seem like the sort of guy to drop everything, buy a mech, and rampage. What's your story?
My story? It goes something like this: man refuses to sell out to the latest world-lord, world-lord hits man's family with a custom genomic virus, son is immune because of post-doc self experimentation, son watches everyone he loves convulse and leak fluids until they all die…
Wow. That sucks.
Yeah. A damn common story though.
Well, yeah. I hear about family inoculation hits all the time. I just haven't ever met someone who survived one.
One of the benefits of a university education.
So you're a nano-bio major?
Better than that. I'm one of the guys who could've tailored the virus myself. I was working on a reverse recombination vaccine to fight exactly that sort of attack. So, in a twisted way, my enemy did my final field experiment on us. I knew that my vaccine worked even as I watched my family die. I even tried direct transfusion, but by that time there was too much…
Wow. That really sucks.
I think I'm tired of talking about personal stuff. I want to eat my pastrami sandwich and listen to you talk about mechs.
Sure thing. We left off on armor. First thing is: reactive armor is worse than crap for mechs. It's bulky. It's heavy. Most importantly, it's only effective within a limited angle of attack. With a tank, you're pretty sure that a projectile is coming 90 degrees horizontal to vertical, front, back, and sides. You can design the armor array accordingly. The way a mech moves, the target silhouette is never that simple. And consider what happens if your arm is across your thigh and your thigh's hit. Boom. Stupid.
Next we have reflectives. Idiots and posers like reflectives because it looks cool. All it does is inflate egos. Let me illustrate with a story. It the early days of the Scripture Wars, St. Andrew's Fishermen invaded Moroni. Now, the Mormons had equipped their outpost with the best energy defenses. The mackerel snappers had good intelligence and showed up for their date polished to the nines. They cut through the bigamists like a plasma jet at first. It didn't take long for the enterprising Mormons to crack this nut. They simply set an ambush with drums of paint. Good thing for them the outpost was so new that they hadn't had a chance to build and paint most of it. When the Fishermen stalked out of the government-gray mist, the Mormons cut them down. See, when the paint is hit with a laser, it absorbs just enough energy before it atomizes to compromise the reflective armor.
So, I'd recommend good ol' reliable tungsten-carbon plate with the most effective dispersive coating you can find.
Fascinating.
Hey, if I'm boring you…
No really. I mean, this is the sort of stuff that will help be from getting killed too quickly. So really, it's fascinating.
"Killed too quickly"? So I shouldn't expect repeat business?
I like to stay realistic.
Realistic is good. Fatalistic is fatal. We're going to build you a mech and train you well enough so that you need to come back and pay for repairs, dammit.
It's nice to know you're looking out for me.
Pakeha