Fundamentals of Silhouette Knight Design, oh how I loved that class. The first true step into the world of giant robots, and I couldn't wait to get every piece of information that I could.
To begin with the foundation, Silhouette Knights have a surprisingly human-like endoskeleton. This was so that the artificial muscle system had the proper anchor points and movement paths to move the humanoid form. These muscles were made out of specially processed crystal catalysts, which were the magic crystal cores that were pulled out of slain Demon Beasts. Because of this, they functioned as both the locomotive and the mana fuel storage systems. The heart of any Silhouette Knight and the true source of its power was the Ether Reactor. These were carefully sculpted crystal catalysts pulled specifically from Duel-level Demon Beasts, that is the Demon Beasts that were large enough that one needs a Silhouette Knight to be reasonably able to kill it. Unfortunately, Ether Reactors were black boxed, and their method of creation was a national treasure.
That right there was the reason why there was only one size of Silhouette Knight, the reason why they never built anything bigger or more complex. Because if one were to attempt to do so, the Knight wouldn't even have the energy to even stand up, its heart just couldn't handle the strain.
At least, that's what they told me, but I knew far better.
Humanoid, 10 meters, 20 tons, and Artificial myomer. I had wondered why they had never been able to build bigger, say about 35 tons, and after a little bit of digging into the history books, I found out why.
You see, it was because of the cockpit's location in the chest over being in the head, and surprisingly enough, the air intake system.
To put this into a biological perspective, if one were the move a human's brain into their chest, the organ that would probably suffer the most would be the lungs. Those lungs which are the supplier of critical oxygen to the entire system would have their intake capacity cut by half or worse. Why are the lungs relevant here? Because the source of the ether that the Reactor uses to power the mech is pulled directly out of the air through great air intakes. To follow that analogy, what did they put into the empty space they freed up in the head? Nothing. It's now just the main sensor suite that takes up the same amount of space as it does in a human, meaning that much of the appendage is empty space.
Now to be fair, there was a reason that they have the cockpit in the chest. It is by far the safest and most armored area for the pilot to be and prevents any sort of lucky strikes below a certain threshold from threating the squishy meat. Like a tank, you put the pilot in the deepest section for the best safety, to a degree.
Obviously that entire point is moot because a Silhouette Knight isn't a tank, it's a giant humanoid robot. If the head gets destroyed, the pilot is mere seconds from dying either way. After all, anything that gets the head then has the pilot at its complete mercy due to said head being the only sensor system in the mech. Ejection systems don't exist in this world yet, and even if they did, ejecting out of a humanoid's chest is incredibly more difficult than ejecting out of the head. Why is that you ask? Because the chest is so armored and below the head itself, that the only options are either blowing up the top half the mech just to be able to eject or blasting out the front or the back of the chest, which will more often than not be point directly at an enemy or a solid object.
Now with a bit of napkin math, I quickly found out that moving the pilot to the head, and thus opening the "lungs", nearly doubles the recovery rate for the mech. Granted, you then had to deal with head being almost disproportionally large and the pilot technically being in more danger. That danger becomes a lot less technical without any sort of quick escape.
It came to me that for this idea to even be considered by the Knightsmiths, I needed to come invent ejection systems. The whole thing, from small thrusters for the seat, to the parachute for the pilot, not to mention the training required to effectively survive the event itself. If I hadn't had a perfect recollection of all my random internet searches and especially all the military museums that I'd visited over the year, I probably would have been a bit a trouble coming up with that.
Not to say that it wasn't a colossal pain in the rear, to the point of inducing migraines in both me and Eru. Yeah, since it wasn't a direct spell, even Eru struggled with coming up with a streamlined ejection system. While he personally preferred piloting from the chest, he did at least agree that an ejection system absolutely needed to be invented.
It was probably for the best that we had used Eru's basic blueprints to bring to our father Mathias to help brainstorm what sort of training we would ultimately need to subject ourselves to.
]I[
Mathias rubbed his chin with one hand as he held little Eru's drawing in the other, his father Lauri doing the same as he held a copy. He glanced over at the attentive form of his two boys standing at attention seemingly unconsciously in their excitement.
Thankfully they weren't asking him just how in the world one would mechanically get this "ejection seat system" to even work. They were just wondering what would go into this "parachute" idea.
"Well boys, I can honestly say that you've dumped one heck of an idea on me," he began with a kind smile, which they thankfully returned. They were certainly eager but seemed to be patient enough to give such a serious idea the time that it needed to be properly realized.
"Thankfully, if those boys in the Knightsmith department are able to tackle this seat thing of yours, this parachute system would be a rather simply addition to Knightrunner training." he allowed, his smile growing at the confusion that was evident across their faces.
"It would be a simple matter of some wind spells for the Runner to glide away from a battle as well as soften the landing. A bit a Physical Boost should handle the rest of it I imagine." he finished, his father Lauri already nodding his head.
"Indeed, Knightrunners already receive basic training for 3-dimensional combat, in the unfortunate event that they must fight without their Knights." the Academy Director supplied.
"Huh," his eldest Frededen said with a surprised expression "so the only issue is if we can get the seat to even work?"
"Obviously this parachute training would be something that only the Senior years would tackle, but I can easily see it being something taught at the Academy itself." Mathias replied.
"Well," Ernesti chirped, that ever-familiar gleam in his eyes whenever Silhouette Knights are brought up in conversations. "Back to the blueprints then!"
Mathias shared a chuckle with his father as his boys rushed off, nearly running down one of his poor maids yet again as they used Physical Boost magic to get around as quickly as possible.
]I[
Unfortunately, while I knew quite a bit and Eru could figure out even more, we just didn't know enough about mechanical engineering to figure out the ejection seat system on our own.
So, we obviously ambushed poor Bastson with the idea. He very quickly took it to his father, both to get us to shut up about it and because I believe he very quickly saw the sheer value of system itself. Might have just been to shut us up though.
Thus, we waited. Over two months of it. To be honest, I was starting to worry if we would be forced to learn the engineering required to invent the entire system ourselves.
Thankfully Batson's father eventually with good news. The man and his team were able to create the designs for seat itself, as well as the series of systems and spells that could catapult it vertically out. The bad news was that the whole thing was near useless with the cockpit in chest, for the same reasons I mention earlier. And yes, I made sure to laugh at Eru yet again over this. Mechs are far more practical than mechas ever will be.
Before you start yelling about that, I did encourage him afterwards with the simple fact that any flying mecha he makes will still benefit from the ejection systems just as much as the ground pounders would. After all, for mechas that will probably be flying more often than not, shooting the cockpit out the chest or back will work for them just fine up in the sky.
I then took immense glee in watching the faces of the gathered Knightsmiths, who had wanted to deliver their finding in person, as they gazed upon my designs for a "head-piloted" Knight. I drank in the near awed looks these master craftsmen had as they looked upon the firstborn of a new breed of war machine. Any ancient machine reborn anew, a reincarnation from a universe far different than even the one I had once called home.
What would become the first Battlemech of this world, the first step into a far larger tonnage and the herald of a new age:
The Commando