Max climbs the gantry at a full-out run, swinging off the yellow and black hazard striped safety trails to make the corner. He only slows down when he gets to the more precarious footing of the Mecha's curved upper armor.

The top and side hatches are both already open, so Max drops in from above, sliding gracefully into the Pilot's seat thanks to his enhanced physical abilities and only narrowly avoiding snagging his head off of the top hatch as he fails past it.

Max taps the activation code indicated on the new equipment checklist, and the Mecha's system flickers to life.

[Welcome, Pilot Max. Command Codes Recognized.] The Mecha's large front internal display screen reads, showing the default view of the outside world in the visible light spectrum.

[System Ability Active: Optimizing Unit]

While System does its thing, Max starts verifying the items on the checklist. Quality and condition of the seat and brackets, then the harness, the neural link headset. As he makes his way through the itemized list of cockpit components, the system optimization completes.

[Unit Optimized, No Errors Detected.]

That's reassuring, but Max continues through the list carefully, one item at a time, then exits the cockpit to begin the external checks. After being in storage so long, Max is more worried about age deteriorated seals that will blow once the unit starts working than he is about stress fractures from its last tour of duty. Still, he doesn't have any information about the Mecha's history to indicate how or if it was maintained, so leftover combat damage is a possibility.

Many seals and hoses are visibly aged, but all the mechanical joints and bushings are solid, showing no signs of wear, and look freshly greased. It takes Max two hours to check every part and fitting, leaving him with over a hundred points that he recommends for maintenance or upgrades before putting the unit in service.

Compared to the total, that's not too bad, and functionally the unit did pass inspection, with every system and joint properly operational.

By the time he's finished, Ibanez and Russo have both arrived and begun their inspections. They're both just as excited about their new units as he is, stopping every so often to simply admire their new mecha.

The blue over silver color scheme is a beautiful look, and Max is a bit sad to realize that it will have to change to match whatever unit he ends up being assigned to, the same as the other units will. The camouflage of the 42nd looks reasonably good, but unless you're flying by at high altitude, you're not going to mistake a unit of Crusader Class Mecha in the open for a stand of trees or anything else.

Nico's Mecha seems to have gone to the extreme opposite end of the visual spectrum, being blood red with lengths of chain hung from the shoulders like sinister wind chimes. They end in hooks, making Max wonder if the previous occupant hung war trophies from them.

Razor wire loops ring the upper carapace armor and the waist joint, and the shin plates are spiked. It must have spent a lot of time in close combat if the pilot saw a need to prevent infantry climbing the mecha.

As the name suggests, everything about Tarith's Rage is designed to intimidate, and Max wishes he could have met the pilot who did that to his Mecha. It's all so deliberate that there must be a story behind it.

"All done the inspection, Pilot? If you are, I'll take the checklist and do the verification so we can get Stalwart moved to the bays for upgrades and renovation." A voice calls from the catwalk behind him.

"Just checking my work. I'm sure it's all finished, but I've never done it before." Max tells him, walking over to the tech.

Max jumps the three meters from the Mecha to the walkway, and the Tech sighs. "Must be nice to be Alpha Ranked; those physical skills are barely human."

They'd grown so smoothly through training that Max had never really noticed. Still, with the recent increase in his base stats that he could not recall being notified of by the system, the cumulative effect was incredible.

"Living with it every day, you forget it's not normal. I'd think the F Ranked who never activated their systems feel the same way about Deltas and Gammas, who are easily twice as capable." Max shrugs.

The two stop talking and turn to look and laugh as a string of curses and death threats come from the direction of Tarith's Rage. The tech doing the second round of checks got tangled in the razor wire at the edge of the carapace armor.

How he managed it, they're not sure, but he's so mad he won't stop moving so his comrades can rescue him, which is only causing more damage.

From what they can gather, the crew who cleaned the unit after storage waxed the armor so well it's ice slick. The only ones in the receiving area who aren't entranced by the spectacle are Nico and Fritz, who are more interested in arguing the merits of the so-called Light Rail Guns.

They're light compared to the main armament version that fires a ten-kilogram projectile, but they still send out a half kilogram round at nearly twenty times the speed of sound.

Fritz thinks they're overkill and should be replaced with a more practical weapon; Nico believes they need a higher capacity munitions storage compartment and a higher rate of fire.

Unlike a standard unit such as Stalwart that uses a Rad Engine, the ancient design of Tarith's Wrath uses a much higher powered Thorium Reactor. Even with the Ion Destroyer, it has the power to spare. Power that Rail Guns use a lot of.

Max wonders what exactly she's planning to shoot with those fist-mounted railguns. Even without her modification skill, they fire once a second and can punch a hole in a Line Mecha with relative ease. If it weren't for the crazy power usage and lack of flexibility, the rail guns would have been one of Kepler's most popular weapons.

The Battle Cannon, Gatling Battery, and Ion Destroyer all have the option for high explosive area damage; the Rail Guns do not. It had been tried, of course, but either the magnetic field or the acceleration caused issues with every explosive they had, so the project was abandoned.