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Storm Bay's construction was the easy part. The remaining work was software.
Operating a mech (or even a single arm) required more than the hardware being physically functional. The arm needed an operating system. Not Crimson Typhoon's eventual full operating system, but a purpose-built test OS designed to interface the spinal clamp signals with the arm's hydraulic and pneumatic systems. The test OS needed to be precise enough to translate three-pilot neural input into coordinated arm movement, while flexible enough to log diagnostics across every actuator for post-test analysis.
The manufacturers who'd built Storm's hardware were out of scope for this work. Their contract had been to deliver the physical arm. The software was Prism Sciences' problem.
Ryan camped at the two relevant labs and stripped to the work.
His arrival accelerated the labs' progress to absurd levels. Researchers who'd been wrestling with a difficult problem for days would describe the issue to Ryan, and within minutes Ryan would offer an approach that resolved it. Some of the problems Ryan answered without looking up from his notebook, by analogy from work he'd done in unrelated domains. Others he engaged with more directly, sketching out the solution at the whiteboard while the team copied notes.
Within a week, the long-stalled operating system had advanced significantly toward completion. The dedicated arm test OS, which hadn't existed when Ryan started, went from zero to production-ready in the same week.
The researchers spent the entire week in a state of professional disorientation. The pace was unprecedented. People started joking that time accelerated in Ryan's immediate vicinity, that minute-long trips to the bathroom returned to find that their projects had advanced past the point of comprehension.
The feeling was familiar to anyone who'd ever bent over to retrieve a dropped pen during a math lecture, looked back up, and realized the professor had moved through six steps of derivation in the interim.
At the end of the week, Ryan stood up from the workstation, stretched, and announced that the preparation work was complete. The arm test would be conducted in the coming days.
The labs were spent. They'd run a marathon at sprint pace for a week. None of them felt they'd done meaningful work because Ryan had been driving every step. They'd been note-takers more than researchers.
Several of them privately admitted to friends that they were exhausted in a way they hadn't experienced since graduate school finals week.
The triplet pilots were notified of the test date and asked to report to Storm Bay.
Jake, Marcus, and Dean walked into the chamber together and stopped at the doorway.
Storm hung four meters above the floor, suspended from the gantry crane. The red-and-gold titanium armor caught the chamber's overhead lights and reflected them back in long bands of flame. The arm's articulated joints showed through the unarmored gaps. Every line of the machine spoke to mass and intention.
"What is that thing," Jake said, with the careful tone of someone who was hoping he was wrong about the obvious answer.
"That," Ryan said, walking up behind them, "is what you're going to drive today."
The triplets exchanged looks. None of them spoke for several seconds.
Then Dean, the youngest brother, asked the question. "We're driving an arm that's bigger than a city bus?"
"Yes."
"How? It doesn't have a cockpit."
The brothers looked at the suspended arm again. They'd grown comfortable with Scrapper. They'd been operating mechs (admittedly Scrapper-sized mechs) for months. Their mental model was: pilot climbs into cockpit, pilot connects neural link, pilot operates mech. This arm had no cockpit. Where was the pilot supposed to sit?
"Different setup," Ryan said. "The arm is incomplete. It doesn't have a body for you to climb inside. You'll be controlling it externally."
He gestured toward a side door.
"Follow me. We have a control room."
The control room was elevated above Storm Bay's main floor, positioned at the rear corner of the chamber, accessed via a staircase. The room's front wall was glass, providing a clear view of the suspended arm and the bay below. The interior had been reconfigured for the test: cabling thick as a forearm ran from a central platform in the room's middle, exited through a conduit in the wall, and connected to Storm's shoulder joint.
The platform itself was familiar in form. It resembled Scrapper's pilot platform, redesigned for the present application. The most notable difference was that the platform had no visible cockpit equipment, no neural link harness in evidence.
"Ryan, the neural link platform is ready," Frank Cabrera said. He looked exhausted but excited, the kind of expression that came from running on caffeine and adrenaline.
"Operating system installed and running. No technical issues on the arm hardware," the other lab's lead reported.
"Let's start a trial," Ryan said. He turned to the triplets. "Which of you wants the first ride?"
Jake stepped forward. "I'll go."
Ryan gave him an okay sign and called over the technical crew.
"Equipment up."
The crew brought out several large cases.
The first case contained a black bodysuit. The material was similar to Scrapper's pilot vest, but the new garment was a full-body unitard with neural sensors distributed throughout the inner surface. The suit covered everything except the head, like a wetsuit for an extremely high-stakes diving expedition.
Jake stripped down and pulled on the bodysuit. Sensors made contact across his torso, arms, and legs.
The second case contained a series of red armor plates, segmented into upper-torso, mid-torso, lower-torso, shoulder, and limb sections. The crew began attaching the plates to Jake's bodysuit, securing each section with quick-release fasteners that locked into precision-machined receivers. The armor wasn't decorative. It served as the physical mounting structure for the spinal clamp and helmet, distributing the load and isolating Jake's body from any electrical or mechanical feedback.
By the time the armor was fully attached, Jake looked like the protagonist of a high-budget science fiction film. The team in the control room collectively did a double-take.
"The armor is so cool."
"Get me one for my birthday."
"How do I get one of these?"
Jake test-flexed his arms and legs. The armor was rigid where it needed to be, articulated where it needed to move. He could walk, turn, and gesture without restriction. Heavy combat motions might be limited, but the armor wasn't going to interfere with normal use.
"Hold still," the crew chief said.
He approached Jake from behind. The team opened a sealed case and extracted the spinal clamp.
The armor's back section had a vertically-oriented receiver groove machined into it, sized to accept the clamp. The crew aligned the spinal clamp with the receiver, lowered it into position, and pressed it home.
CLICK.
The clamp's internal mechanism engaged automatically, distributing its individual segment locks across the matching positions of the receiver. The indicator lights along the clamp's length illuminated in sequence from base to crown, each segment registering successful contact.
Jake felt the clamp engage. He didn't move. He'd been warned not to.
Ryan picked up the helmet from a table and presented it to Jake.
The helmet was red, designed to match the armor. The front face plate carried a stylized five-pointed star emblem. The central inverted triangle of the star formed a double-layered transparent visor. The bottom two points of the star housed communication equipment. The top point recessed inward.
A yellow gel-like substance occupied the gap between the two layers of the visor. The substance had a specific function. Jake didn't know what yet.
The helmet's sides featured several connection ports: oxygen feed, data cables, telemetry ports.
"Put it on."
Jake lifted the helmet over his head and lowered it into position. A soft CLICK as the helmet's mounting points engaged with the armor's neck collar.
The yellow gel inside the visor began draining. It withdrew through the helmet's interior systems, leaving the visor clear and transparent within seconds. The mechanism behind it was apparently a data-transfer medium: the gel had served as the connection conduit between the helmet's external interfaces and the internal display systems. Once the data link was established, the gel was no longer needed for transmission.
"Don't worry about it," Ryan said. "The gel is just a transfer medium."
Jake nodded, breath fogging the inside of the visor briefly before the helmet's climate control compensated.
Ryan gestured toward the platform.
"Step up. We're starting."