Ravens of Eternity

118 Necessary Optimizations

Miko’s eyes gleamed as she toyed with a partially dismantled armor. It was laid out on a metal workbench, which was littered with parts and plates of armor, as well as all sorts of tools and gadgets.

The armor itself didn’t look too complex. It was covered in a number of scales, some larger, some smaller. All of them were interlocked with some sort of flexible mesh underneath, which caused the armor to articulate with very natural movements.

A dozen or so wires splayed out from inside the main chest, each of which had hand-written Drogarii labels stuck onto them. It appeared each of the wires fed power to the various parts of the armor itself – arms, legs, repair systems, sensors, and so on.

Although it was taken apart and in pieces, she could easily imagine that when put back together, it would have been close to three meters tall.

The meshing that held the armor plates together was an odd mix of different metals, fabrics, and plastics. Though they were all highly flexible, they were also incredibly strong. The armor scales themselves were sleek and strong. Each one could clearly take a punishing amount of force.

And because they were attached to the mesh, which was incredibly flexible, it meant the whole armor was highly protective while being highly dextrous. Both important aspects for any defensive system.

Judging from the electronics that wove through the entire armor, it was clear that it was computerized. At least to some degree.

This was clearly much more than simple armor. To Miko, it appeared to be like a miniature mecha, stripped down to the basics, and with zero means of external thrust. It had structure, armor, and a few ‘dumb’ systems.

It was essentially a suit of powered armor.

.....

“That’s a Belynn Industries Type V Assault Infantry Armored Suit,” said Szereth. “The best they’ve ever made, if I’m being fair.”

He walked up and stood next to Miko, who was almost a full meter shorter. She seemed like a child to him, which was technically true.

He reached into the armor’s main chest, fiddled around for something inside, then pulled out a device. It was still connected to the armor via some wires, so he used a tool to unhook the latches that held the wire onto it.

Once it was free, he handed it over to Miko.

Both Justicars had told Alevos and Szereth what kind of people Eva and Miko were, and how they absolutely couldn’t be underestimated. Both pressed how critical it was for them to treat them like they were incredibly dangerous operators. It was an opinion neither of them could ignore.

And to someone like Szereth, he couldn’t help but put these two humans to the test. Or, perhaps, he simply needed to validate their claims in person.

“Look it over,” he said. “Tell me what you think.”

Miko took the device from his hand and scanned it from top to bottom and all around. When she was satisfied, she reached for a few of Szereth’s tools and dismantled it with relative ease and with few problems.

It only took her a few minutes to completely disassemble the device, and a few more minutes to organize every part. She laid them out in an orderly pattern in front of her, and made sure to separate all of the screws, bolts, and fasteners in little groups off to the side.

Her understanding of it grew as she pored over every part, piece by piece.

“This appears to be some form of power conversion module, right?” she asked.

“Very close – I’m impressed,” replied Szereth, “It’s not raw electrical energy, if that’s what you’re thinking. More like the energy output of its wearer. For example, if the wearer jumps, this module calculates where and how much energy is being expended.”

As he spoke, Szereth pointed to the various parts she had laid out, as though to demonstrate which parts interacted with which.

“Then,” he continued, “it sends that data to the main controller, which in turns sends instructions to the ExoMesh. There specific sections of the mesh are activated – ones related to the original muscles being exerted – and provides an analogous amount of force to assist the wearer.”

“You mean this multiplies strength?”

“Yes, to some degree. Very much like a fulcrum – it uses minimal input to optimize and magnify output. The more energy is used, the more power is delivered.”

Miko glanced back down at the various parts in front of her. After hearing his description, she assessed the device anew.

“The design could use improvement,” she said.

Szereth laughed heartily and grinned as she picked up a few pieces and began to reassemble it.

“That’s exactly what I said after the first time I opened it up,” he said.

But his grin turned into a frown as she began to put it back. It was a completely different configuration, and she had even bent a few pieces to get it to fit.

“Hold on,” he said. “That’s the wrong-”

Before he could finish protesting, he realized that she was being methodical with her changes. That she wasn’t just putting it back together – she was actually trying to optimize it! Even though he had imagined a few of those changes himself, he never thought to actually perform those optimizations.

It didn’t take long for her to put it all back together, which she handed back with a grin.

“I believe I’ve increased input detection speed by roughly 8 percent,” she said. “This has also increased output scaling up to 75 percent, from 66.6. I have also introduced a redundancy to the overload circuit for extra protection. But that was a happy accident.”

Szereth looked at the device in awe, then at her, then at the armor itself. He then shuffled off to one of his tools and hooked it up to the device. He wanted to be sure of her numbers.

And as he tested it, Miko took apart a few more parts of the armor, and began to recombine them. But as a different device altogether.

“It could improve more,” she continued absentmindedly, “if the materials were better quality. In fact, the entire suit suffers from poor optimization all around.”

As she spoke, Szereth’s measuring tool confirmed Miko’s estimated improvements, well within a percentage or two. When he looked up, she had isolated a couple dozen of the armor’s scales, and affixed a number of electronics up to each of them.

“What’re you making?” he asked.

“I’m just doodling,” she answered.

But as he watched, it was clear she wasn’t just putting things together. Each one was exactly the same. An armor scale, a micro-battery, a plasma circuit, a pulse-wave electromagnet, a network intelligence chip.

Whatever she was making intrigued Szereth greatly, so he simply stood to the side and watched. And as she put it together, he couldn’t help but muse on her project.

Is it some sort of gadget? Or a tool?

As she assembled each of the scales, Miko also built its code and injected it into the intelligence chips. Although it took her the better part of an hour to put together, it seemed like no time at all had passed.

She activated her makeshift device through her DI, and small arcs of electricity jumped up from each of the scales. They immediately reached out to every other scale nearby and linked to each other.

With a snap of her finger, the scales jumped up and formed a ball made of electrostatic energy and armor scales. She adjusted how much energy the scales emitted, and they reduced the length of the tendrils of electricity that ran between each scale. This also reduced the diameter of the ball itself.

She pulled the power way down to the minimum, and the scales snapped shut into an armored sphere. Then, she picked it up and tossed it in the air a couple of times. Like a ball, except made with military-grade hardware.

“That’s, er, an interesting little toy,” said Szereth.

“Mind if I keep it?” asked Miko.

“Sure, but only if you’ll take a look at something for me.”

Miko quickly nodded, and threw the ball into one of the shielded pockets in her sling bag. As it entered, its electric links deactivated and the ball broke up into individual scales once again. She clasped it shut and followed Szereth to the other side of his lab.

Along the way there, he pulled out a small datapad from his suit and tapped a few controls. A large section of the wall in front of them slid up and out of view, which revealed a set of armor floating in an antigrav field.

It appeared to still be in the process of being assembled and its many pieces floated alongside each other, but in a roughly humanoid arrangement.

Miko quickly noted that this armor was much smaller and sleeker than the rest of the Drogar armor all around the lab. Its stylings and lines were also very similar to what Szereth’s guards wore as well.

“This is for Freya, right?” she asked.

“You got it,” replied Szereth. “I’ll need to tweak it to properly fit and respond to her physiology – I only know about standard Drogar physiology so I had to fudge the initial numbers. But it works, mostly. Once I put it all together, anyway. What do you think so far?”

Miko walked up to the armor and appraised each of the pieces. Unlike the Belynn suit, she took much longer to appraise Szereth’s custom suit.

“This one contains much more complexity,” she said. “You appear to have also reinforced exploitable gaps. At least, in comparison to that other suit. It is not active, so I cannot gauge its mechanical capabilities or output. How much do you intend for it to amplify Freya’s strength?”

Szereth scratched his head.

“Well, about that,” he said. “I could easily quadruple her output. Problem is, all armors in the Pit are capped in some areas. Energy Amplification, armor hardness, weight. They also can’t have any operating intelligences, and all parts have to be manually configured by the wearer.”

“If all of the armors are made equal, then what is the point?” asked Miko.

“Well, we’ve got stuff we can play with. Mechanical response times, joint smoothness, materials. But it all boils down to how well the duelist understands her own weapons and armor. And from what I’ve heard Freya’s shaping up to be a great duelist.”

“She can be single-minded at times, yes.”

Szereth glanced back at the armor, and looked over a few parts.

“Got any suggestions for improvement?”

Miko took another look at the armor. She had a few suggestions to make of course. Fit and finish could use polishing, mechanics could use dialing down, electronics could be optimized. But she only mentioned the most important one.

“Paint it black.”