Max stopped off to grab a couple of cases of rations for Stalwart before climbing the gantry to tidy up his living space.

After spending so long inside the Mecha on Belmont, the cockpit needs a deep clean and deodorizing in the most desperate of ways. The first step is to remove absolutely everything from the cockpit that isn't bolted down. Once that is complete, the high-tech part starts.

The repair gantry has an automated cleaning machine that will sanitize and disinfect all surfaces inside the Mecha for you, but the pilot is required to remove anything loose or risk it being damaged.

Max tosses his used uniforms and bedding into to laundry cart that sits on the hazard stripe painted walkway, just waiting for a pilot like him to clean out their mecha for the automated sanitizing process. An attendant comes by to collect the laundry while Max stays by Stalwart and plans out how to organize the limited available space.

The laundry facilities automated sanitizer only takes a few minutes to clean everything, so his belongings will be back long before Max is finished with his organization chart.

By contrast, Nico manually cleans everything inside her cockpit instead of using the automatic functions. It might be that her cockpit had been customized, and the machine isn't sure what to make of it, or simply that she preferred the hands-on method to be sure everything was to her satisfaction.

It probably isn't because of decorations; the only personalized items that she has mentioned are the bedding she ordered when they first arrived, the same time that she called his watch and an extra pillow for the dorm aboard Abraham Kepler.

After his rations are delivered, and the water tank is sanitized and refilled, Max loads his handful of personal effects back into the Mecha. Looking around the spartan interior, Max decides the cockpit needs something to remind him of the past, but he didn't collect anything while they were on Belmont.

Max decides that from now on, he will have something collected for nostalgia's sake. But as he is sorting away the clean clothes, Max finds a gift ticked in amongst his items. A single photo of him charging out of the Lander behind Tarith's Rage. It must have come from Lieutenant Becki's feed since the vantage point is too high for an infantry helmet camera.

Max isn't sure who sent this to him, but he is thankful for the fond memory and tucks it into a clear pocket mounted beside his seat, more commonly used for written notes. Many pilots like to write things down to look at later, saying it helps their memory, but Max isn't one of those people.

"Captain, are you nearly finished up in there? We need to change out your armaments, so the Mecha will shake some while we work." One of the techs calls from outside, and Max sticks his head out to assure them he is good to go.

"Go ahead. I will go check on Tarith's Rage while you work." Max calls, climbing out.

He will need her help once they finish anyhow. Her [Mecha Modification] Skill is just too good when combined with his optimization. The Pulse Laser Battery fires twenty-four pulses a second, rotating barrels on six sets of lasers to help control heat collection.

Ignoring the projectile, it is functionally very similar to the Gatling Battery that it is replacing. It also serves the same purpose of clearing massed infantry and light mecha. If Nico can make it more efficient, his optimized multiple targeting will make a genuinely deadly combination without the ammunition limitations of its predecessor.

The actual swap won't take long; the lower arm sections on the Crusader Class Chassis are intended to be modular for easy repairs and weapon changes. An hour or two should be enough to do the installation and functionality checks.

"Hey Nico, how's it going down there?" Max calls as he gets close to her cockpit, not wanting to cross the catwalk to the open hatch.

Her armor is still marked as slippery when wet, so the custom red paint is still drying, or they applied another layer of that slick wax. It isn't something he would want to slip and land on, especially with that razor wire still in place at the edge of the carapace armor.

"Pretty good. I'm just finishing posting up my pictures. Did you get the gift from Becki? He had them made to commemorate our first deployment, but he got called away before he had a chance to chat. Something about getting reinforcements to his wing."

"I'll have to thank him later. But when you get a bit of free time, they are installing the Pulse Lasers on Stalwart, and I'll need you to modify them for efficiency and rate of fire if that's possible." Max calls back.

"No problem. I don't know how much we can increase the cycle rate, it is set that way to maintain operating temperature, but if we can get thermal efficiency up, I should be able to tweak it a little bit without any overheating issues."

That's all anyone could ask for. Not every mecha can do everything perfectly, after all. Pilots balance their mecha to their skills as well as they are able or allowed to.

Thinking of skills, Max can feel that his third skill is still hung up, waiting on something. It is early for it to manifest, even with the bump in stats that he got during battle, but the feeling makes him vaguely anxious, and Max hopes that it settles down before he has to go into combat again.

Nico doesn't even wait for the techs to finish their work before she climbs up the Mecha and borrows the test device from the repair bay technician that is completing the installation.

"We have this. I'll do the diagnostics, and Pilot Max can do the system checks." She declares, waving them away.

None of them are going to argue with that, they have too much other work to do. Spending an excessive amount of time on complex jobs just leaves more mecha waiting to be brought back up to operational status.

Nico is busy tweaking the system, so Max climbs into his cockpit and powers up in diagnostic mode.

[Stalwart Active: Diagnostic Mode Engaged]

[Welcome, Pilot Max]

[Change in Armament Detected]

The Mecha messages in his Heads Up Display end at the same time that the System Notices Begin.

[New System Skill Online]

[Split Fire] Active

Max isn't entirely sure what that does, so he looks through his System interface, noticing that he is still a single upgrade from 200 points of bonus, so the skill really is a little early.

Keres Max

[Compatibility Determined] Rank A

[Primary Attribute] STR 2.5x modifier

[Secondary Bonuses] DEX 2x, SPD 2x

[STR] 3+95%

[DEX] 3+52%

[SPD] 3+52%

[Innate Talent] Mind Reading

[Additional Function Unit Optimization]

[Additional Function Multi-Point Targeting]

[Additional Function Split Fire]

[Split Fire] Allows rapid adjustments of the Mecha's high rate of fire weapons to accurately target multiple points with a single burst.

That is insanely good with the Pulse Laser, but if Max had the quad barreled anti-aircraft guns on Stalwart instead of missiles, he would absolutely destroy incoming targets.

But then, with all these skills, and the extremely long range of the lasers, he might not need them. A bit of practice, and he could likely hit moving aircraft with a scattered burst from the Pulse Laser Battery.

The final tweaks don't take long, though Nico is ordering parts from the repair bay, replacing similar parts that Stalwart's diagnostics and Max's Optimization said were fine.

She cut heat retention by twenty percent and power cost by ten percent while maintaining the same output. The decision was made not to change the firing rate, though.

Instead, the Pulse Laser Battery has become capable of long duration sustained fire at maximum output instead of having to reduce power after five continuous seconds of fire to let the accumulated heat dissipate.

What sort of target he might need to shoot for more than five straight seconds is unclear, but with his luck, Max is about to find out.