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Inside the base.
Ryan had just walked in through the small door when he saw, right in the center of the base, the enormous Crimson Typhoon standing before him, the bright red waterproof anti-corrosion paint on its surface gleaming under the base's big lights.
A great many tiny figures hurried past its heels.
By now everyone was suited up and ready. In the base, technicians and researchers alike had thrown themselves into the work.
Someone drove a small transport cart loaded with spare parts. Someone clutched documents and ran past in a hurry. Every single person was busy at their assigned post.
Ryan walked into the master control room, and the operator at the computer immediately handed him a report. "Chief Designer, we just ran a self-check on the mech. Status shows normal. It's ready for the experiment."
Ryan, still holding a cup of coffee, took the report and glanced at it.
It was seven in the morning. He said, "Have the technical team start loading fuel into the fuel tanks at eight. Half a tank each."
"Got it."
The operator turned and issued the instruction to the hangar's technical team through the intercom system.
Ryan followed the top-level passage from the master control room straight to the hangar's preparation room.
Over on the hangar side, there were also plenty of rooms. One of them sat level with the mech's head, and it was the pilots' preparation room. From here, they could walk directly into the mech's cockpit via the aerial passage.
Right now, all nine pilots had already put on their custom-tailored circuit sensor suits and sat in chairs, helmets in their arms, waiting.
Among these nine, the three Pierce brothers were the first-choice pilots. The others were all backups.
Seeing Ryan walk in, they hurriedly stood and saluted.
"Don't be too nervous." Ryan soothed their nerves and bolstered their spirits. "From the day you arrived at this base, you've been training for today. By any count, it's been over a year now. Whether it's your performance or our tests, all of it shows that you absolutely have the ability to pilot a large mech now."
"Countless people in this world envy you. What you're about to do will set a human first. And all you need to do is walk onto the mech, then walk out to meet everyone's applause."
Listening to Ryan's words, the nine grew more and more fired up, wishing they could walk into the mech right that instant.
But they couldn't. The technical team was still running checks inside.
Taking the opportunity, Ryan once again restated the experiment's tasks to the nine of them.
"For this experiment, the most important task is to test the mech's mobility and its sealing. So once you've come down off the transport platform, all you need to do is move along the preset route into the sea."
"Along the way, you can use the engines on the back to accelerate, but watch your fuel consumption. And whatever you do, do not activate the weapon systems."
"On the way back, if you feel the pressure is still within a bearable range, you can start up the other systems to test them."
Ryan explained the details to the nine of them one by one. Though they'd already heard it before, they listened with particular care.
The main pilots for this test were the three Pierce brothers, but once they'd finished this round, the other two triplet sets would carry out the same task in turn.
In other words, a single mech mission required at least three pilot-group swaps and at least three tests. So the others had to listen too.
As he was speaking, an assistant suddenly came looking for him.
"Chief Designer, it's started raining outside."
Ryan paused. "It's really raining?"
He walked to the window and looked up at the sky. At some point, a patch of dark cloud had drifted in. The sky outside had begun to dim, and a light rain had started to fall.
They'd obtained today's weather forecast a week ago and known there might be rain today. He hadn't expected it to actually come.
"Does the experiment still go ahead?" the assistant asked, coming over.
"It goes ahead. Of course it does." Ryan spoke as if it were nothing. "It's just a bit of rain. What's there to worry about?"
At this moment, beyond the restricted waters, pleasure boats large and small had packed the area full. The boats were lined up in a row, as if they were holding a regatta.
Danny Price sat on a mid-size pleasure boat, a pair of binoculars in his hands.
"I see the mech base. That door is so damn big." He looked at the somewhat blurry image in the binoculars and shouted in excitement.
His roommates were fiddling with their binoculars beside him too. "Where? How come I can't see it?"
"You've got the direction completely backwards. No wonder you can't see anything." Danny turned his roommate's direction around, and only then did the roommate find the mech base on the coast.
"Last time I went to MIT to watch Scrapper's test, I got to run alongside the mech for a loop. Now, to watch a mech, I have to come out to sea. You think next time we want to watch a mech, we'll have to go to outer space for it?" Danny's mind suddenly cracked wide open.
His roommate Trey was speechless. "Why don't you just say you're going to heaven?"
Suddenly.
Plip.
A drop of rain fell from the sky, and Danny instantly had a bad feeling.
"This isn't going to start raining, is it?" He stared, a little shocked, at the rainwater that had landed on his hand.
"It's probably about to rain."
His roommate Trey held out his hand and caught a few drops of rain too, the sea breeze blowing cooler and cooler.
Everyone exchanged a look, their faces going dark. "This is such terrible luck."
This whole dorm of them had fought tooth and nail to grab tickets to the Redcliff Islands, fought tooth and nail to book a hotel, and fought even harder to grab a single spot out at sea.
"It's almost nine now. Why would it suddenly rain? I hope they're just delaying the test. Whatever they do, don't let it be canceled."
The people on the boat with them all started to complain.
The rain set off the same complaints on the boats around them.
The television station's helicopter, passing overhead at this moment, also noticed it had begun to rain and, for safety's sake, prepared to descend back onto the cruise ship.
"Viewers in the livestream, because light rain has suddenly started on-site and the sky has dimmed somewhat, we now need to land temporarily. Today's test may also be postponed because of this rain. We'll continue to bring you tracking coverage." The reporter on the helicopter finished speaking to the camera, then cut the feed back to the studio.
The people in the online livestream erupted at once.
"It's raining?"
"Looks like there's nothing to watch today."
"I finally get to slack off at work, and you're telling me it's raining?"
But at this moment, unlike what everyone imagined, the people in the base had no intention whatsoever of stopping the experiment over this rain.
Ryan had already returned to the master control room, where an assistant immediately reported, "Fuel loading is complete."
"Good." Ryan walked to the microphone in the master control room and spoke into it. "Attention everyone, Crimson Typhoon's first experiment is about to begin. Everyone to your positions. Everyone to your positions."
These words rang out simultaneously from every speaker in the entire base.
In the preparation room, the three Pierce brothers immediately stood up. The technical team came over too, pushing three small carts that held their armor suits.
The three of them stood in place, arms spread, and the technical team expertly fitted them into the armor suits. Finally, they took the Spinal Clamps out of sealed cases and installed them onto the men's backs.
Then the three walked toward another door in the preparation room. Behind this door, across one more aerial passage, was the mech's cockpit.
"Good luck."
Passing the other two triplet sets, the six of them shook hands one by one and cheered them on.
"Mm." The three brothers nodded and walked into the cockpit, bearing their mission.
The cockpit door was directly at the rear of the cockpit. Inside the red-toned cockpit were three pilot frames in total.
The front two were responsible for the mech's neural control. The rear one was responsible for observation and non-neural operation, while also bearing the connection pressure for the other two.
Right now, all three pilot frames were retracted up into the air, and the whole cockpit looked quite spacious.
This wasn't their first time inside. In fact, over the past week, they'd performed simulated connections in the cockpit no fewer than five times, and had even driven the mech's arms. They simply hadn't released the locks on the platform to let the mech truly move.
They'd only walked a few steps in when the mech's AI automatically lowered the pilot frames, and the cabin grew much more cramped at once.
The three stepped onto the pilot frames, the armored boots on their feet locking into the mechanical foot mounts at the base. The technical team members who'd come in helped secure their armor suits and pilot frames, then quickly headed out. On the way out, they sealed the cockpit door for good measure.
"The mech cockpit door is sealed."
"Pilots are in position."
Listening to the information coming from the technical team and the cockpit, Ryan checked the time once more. It was about right.
He set his microphone channel and spoke to the cockpit alone. "Activate the sync connection between you."
Then he adjusted the microphone to the all-broadcast channel.
"Attention everyone, the exit procedure is now beginning."
As he spoke, he pressed the main door switch in the master control room.
Accompanied by a beeping warning tone, the enormous door slowly opened, and the transport platform beneath the mech's feet gradually came to life.