[201-400] THE MECH'S TOUCH

Chapter 312: Prospecting

The chief engineer arranged a souped-up armored shuttle for Ves. Compared to a regular shuttle, it held a lot less storage space, but the armor and increased structural integrity made up for it in spades.

The first time Ves stepped inside the shuttle with Lucky hanging over his shoulders, he became a little bit intimidated by its complex control scheme.

Forces employed armored shuttles in many different ways, from stealthily dropping commandos behind enemy lines to pursuing a rampaging mech. The Mech Corps employed even more advanced shuttles that came with many additional features that bore unwieldy acronyms like GURED or NEFFI-Fast.

"Don't worry." A shuttle technician said as he accompanied Ves inside. "Let me activate the dummy mode for you. It'll disable most of the advanced features and automate the rest. As far as the controls go, it'll turn into something similar to the games you can play from your comm."

"Ah, thank you for the trouble. Please do so."

Ves sat down the chair and watched the technician navigate the projected control panel. Overall, the menus looked similar to those employed by mechs, so Ves quickly got the hang of it himself. Still, as he hadn't trained in piloting shuttles at all, it was best to leave the controls to dummy mode.

In the wide-ranging galaxy, humanity became increasingly dependent on machines to rule their lives. Humanity was a quintessential tool-using race that had ascended into dominance due to their ever-voracious appetite for deadlier and more capable machines.

Naturally, this also presented problems as many machines required extreme amounts of training to master their use. Mechs alone not only demanded potentates with the right genetic aptitude, they also required at least ten years of training to gain the most basic qualification to pilot them these days.

At the start of the Age of Mechs, mech pilots only needed four years to effectively wield their mechs. This stark difference showcased the relentless advance to developing better but more complex machines, which meant it applied to anything that fell under this category, including mechs, shuttles and starships.

A human could only master a couple of skills in a given amount of time. To provide against contingencies and to make their products more appealing, developers and manufacturers of these machines standardized the implementation of dummy modes to their products.

The basic standard of an effective dummy mode would be that even a ten-year old kid could figure out the basic controls. The moment the dummy mode began to proliferate, life became much easier. Even though most of the advanced capabilities would be wasted, sometimes a person only needed to accomplish a simple job, like going from A to B.

Ves fell into the same situation. He had no intentions of performing any advanced maneuvers. He just wanted to go out into the tunnel and sniff out a high-grade Rorach's Bone.

"C'mon Lucky, you better get your mineral senses ready. I'll be relying on you to get me another fat piece of bone." Ves petted the lazy cat on his shoulder.

Using the dummy mode, Ves easily drifted his armored shuttle out of the hangar, to the collective relief of the crew. At least he didn't veer off and crash against the deck or something.

"It really is like a game."

Through making some delicate hand gestures, Ves got the hang of the controls. He maintained a slow speed and slowly inched the shuttle away from the Gregarious Wrath. The tunneler loomed large in the shuttle's augmented sensors.

Currently, tons of shuttles and mech technicians crawled over her exterior. Ves knew that even more repair crews worked inside the tunneler. To get the Wrath moving again required all hands on deck.