Chapter 2568: Docile Woman (1/2)
While Gloriana wasn't easy to get along, Ves had already established a good working relationship with her. Even if they disagreed with each other, they always hashed out their differences somehow.
Together, they set a comprehensive plan for the Cherub, the Bright Warrior IB and the Ferocious Piranha IB.
Ves decided he spent enough time with Gloriana after handling these projects. He rose up from his seat and began to move to the other side of the design lab.
”Are you visiting Juliet now?”
He paused. ”I am.”
”Don't do anything naughty. I'm keeping my eye on you. You're mine.”
”For the millionth time, Gloriana. You don't have to worry about these unrealistic fantasies. If you truly love me, then you should know how much I value loyalty.”
She directed a measuring glance at him. It was as if she completely disregarded his words!
Ves did not bother to entangle with his overpossessive wife any further. He leaned in for a quick kiss before heading over to Juliet's corner of the design lab.
”Hello.”
”Hello.”
The Penitent Sister turned from her work station in order to face him. ”I've just received your memo on the new naming system. Let me guess. Did your wife come up with this scheme?”
He nodded. ”It makes sense. In the future, we'll be designing a lot more mechs, many of which will be derived from other versions. We need to make sure we don't get lost in the confusion of our own making.”
”I think it's a good method of naming our designs.”
”Even when it comes from Gloriana?” Ves raised his eyebrow.
She sheepishly shrugged. ”I don't hate your wife, sir. I merely dislike her because.. you know. Regardless, a good idea is a good idea. There are many objective and subjective aspects to mech design. While we can disagree about the latter, we should be careful not to distort the truth.”
”That is strange to hear from a Penitent Sister.”
Juliet straightened her back. ”I am a Penitent Sister as well as a mech designer. I see no contradiction here. I pursue the truth in both my identities.”
”How does that even work?”
”As a Penitent Sister and devout Hexer, I seek the truth behind our place in life. How superior are women? How inferior are boys? What must we do to catch up to the Superior Mother's glory? Every sister of mine grapples with these profound questions every day. Don't underestimate the difficulty of answering them. Back in the Hegemony, even our most honored matriarchs have failed to settle on a definitive answer. In comparison, designing mechs is a lot easier.”
Ves twitched his mouth. Juliet made it sound as if the religious crap she mentioned was serious science.
He strenuously objected to this comparison!
He decided to adopt the same approach he used whenever Gloriana brought up something nonsensical. He ignored everything she said that was related to faith and tried to pivot the conversation back to normal territory.
”We should focus on our work. Gloriana and I have just made some important decisions regarding some of our design projects. Let me fill you in on our design choices…”
As Ves quickly brought Juliet up to speed, she began to provide her own input on matters. She especially had a lot of opinions about the direction that they should take with regards to the Ferocious Piranha IB and the Cherub.
”The Ferocious Piranha and the spaceborn version of the Cherub may both look like light mechs, but their flight and movement characteristics are dramatically different.” She explained. ”The Ferocious Piranha is a high-budget mech that scores high in terms of energy reserves, peak energy output, heat management and other qualities. The Cherub on the other hand is like a toy. It has too many constraints. Not only are we confined to using cheaper components, but we also have to make do with simplified ones in order to avoid burdening the mech pilots.”
”Do you have a problem with that, Juliet?”
”Not per se, sir. It's just annoying that I have to take a different approach for the Cherub. We need to take a rationing approach and strictly limit how much capacity and other resources we expend in order to integrate any part in the design.”
Ves just recalled that Juliet probably lacked experience in designing third-class mechs. As a proud graduate of the Artemis Institute, she was almost as elite as Gloriana in the Hegemony's mech industry. There was hardly any reason for someone as good as her to dabble in lesser mechs.
”You need to get used with designing mechs under these limitations.” He warned her. ”The LMC started off as a third-class mech company. We only started to design second-class mechs not too long ago. While I intend to ramp up our output of second-class mech designs, we won't abandon the third-class mech market.”
Juliet looked confused. ”Why would you do that? The profitability of second-class mechs is much higher.”
”There are multiple reasons. Second-class mech markets are far more complicated. I also don't want to pass over the third-class mech market. Devoting our energies to one market might be profitable enough, but being active in both markets at once is even more profitable.”
”It's quite a burden to keep servicing the third-class mech markets.”
Ves waved his hand in dismissal. ”It's not a big deal. Third-class mech design projects are considered minor projects in our department. We can just leave most of the work to our assistants and just keep an eye on their progress every once in a while. In fact, this is good practice to them. Those who do well under these circumstances can exercise their nascent design philosophies.”
There was another important reason why he didn't want to abandon the third-class mech market.
The huge volume of sales provided a lot of spiritual feedback to his design spirits. In fact, for some of them, they received far more spiritual feedback than they could handle.
While that wasn't entirely good, it was much more preferable than the alternative! Poor, stagnant and impoverished design spirits such as Bravo could only dream of earning so many rewards!
Ves did not have to worry about any of his design spirits going hungry as long as millions of mech pilots kept piloting related mechs.
While there were many differences between third-class mech pilots and second-class mech pilots, they were largely the same when it came to the quality and quantity of spiritual feedback they provided!
Even expert candidates and expert pilots were no different. At most, second-class expert pilots were a bit more vigorous and varied due to their superior heritage and training.
While he couldn't tell all of that to Juliet, it was enough to make his stance clear.
”You're in charge, sir.” She demurringly said. ”If this is your policy, then I will get up to speed on how to design a lesser mech.”