Currently, Zephyr was staring blankly at the instructor's lessons as he began to explain the formulas of introductory Calculus. Students around him were gingerly taking notes as well as solving the practice problems that were being provided on the monitor.
'I see…I understand nothing.'
Why were they learning Calculus anyway? This was the first year of high school! The furthest he has learned during virtual classes was Algebra!
'Damn you Sentinel War Academy. Damn those rich bastards.'
"Does anyone want to step up and solve this question for us?" The instructor's voice sounded over the several speakers placed around the lecture hall.
The clock ticked by as no one raised their hand.
"If no one is volunteering, I will begin choosing at random."
"Sir, why don't we have Zephyr answer for us? On his very first day, he declared he would be the best student in our grade. I'm sure he will know the answer."
Zephyr turned towards the voice that spoke.
'Yensen, that bastard.'
Now everyone's attention was on him.
"Sir, I'm afraid–"
"Zephyr. Come up and solve this problem for us."
'Curses.'
Standing up slowly from his seat, every step he took down Zephyr listened to his peers snicker loudly, not even bothering to hide their amusement.
Finally making it to the front of the lecture hall, he let out a heavy sigh before writing some random numbers on the board and turning to the instructor.
"I'm done."
The instructor turned around quickly looking over his obviously made-up answer with a deep frown growing on his face.
"Zephyr, did you not listen to a single thing I've said during class?"
Out of the corner of his eye, he could see the class trying their best to hold back their laughter. Zephyr briefly met a certain black haired girl's gaze before the instructor's voice forced him to snap back into attention.
"Zephyr, you must take these lessons here seriously if you wish to succeed here. Go back to your seat."
"Yes, sir," Zephyr mumbled, as he glared towards Yensen's direction.
As he walked back towards his seat, the snickers grew louder. He wasn't so much angry as he was annoyed. His reputation was already at rock bottom anyway.
When he finally sat down, he noticed Nia Sterling still looking at him, her expression unreadable. For a moment, their eyes met again, and he felt a flicker of something—pity, perhaps, or curiosity. He couldn't tell.
The class went on after the snickering died down, as Zephyr continued to make no sense of the material taught. Subjects like mathematics and language required a strong foundation of knowledge. His current level was solely inadequate resulting in his participation in class solely for attendance's sake.
Hours passed by and history finally began.
"Today, we will be going over the birth of mechs in human society and the reasons why they are so dominant in our civilization today."
Zephyr's ears perked up slightly.
The instructor pulled up a map of the star sectors humanity controlled nearly a millennium past.
"To understand the need for the development of mechs, we must first understand the events that preceded it. Humans had already colonized roughly one fourth of the galaxy before the first mech was born. Many planets and star systems held no intelligent life, meaning that our ancestors only needed to terraform them to our needs."
He paused for a moment before inserting an image of a battleship in front of the map.
"As many of you know, this is the Ark Class Battleship: Pathfinder. Although I have stated how we as a species did not encounter much opposition from alien life, it wasn't as if there wasn't any. Humanity used these battleships to wipe out any potential enemies, driving them to extinction."
It was a narrative that was etched deeply into humanity's history. Battleships developed by the former industrial titan Xenon Systems were weapons of mass destruction. After destroying enemy space fleets, they would conduct regular operations of planetary orbital bombardment. The number of alien casualties were estimated to be in the quintillions over the course of early human space colonization.
"As humanity's rise began to appear unstoppable, several alien races bounded together to develop a new type of weapon. It is something we now know as the mech."
The idea of the mech indeed wasn't created by humans. Alien species didn't possess the technology to create ships several kilometers in length. Most of their ships consisted of terraforming vessels incapable of combat.
"Due to their weaker manufacturing capabilities and their imminent need for a mass produced war machine, they began to produce small craft that resembled larger visages of themselves. Mechs were small enough to be mass produced, versatile, and most importantly capable of being fielded in large numbers. During their first appearance in the battle for planet Granstine in the Emir star sector, several tens of thousands swarmed the Third Spaceborn Division of the Russian Commonwealth."
It wasn't difficult to infer what had happened to the fleet. They were wiped out entirely. Back when wars were still being fought on sea, battleships were lauded as the strongest weapon a nation could possess. The number of battleships directly correlated to their national strength. However history was doomed to repeat itself. The reason why battleships were phased out was due to the introduction of carriers.
Aircraft deployed from carriers swarmed battleships from several directions, chipping down their defenses and eventually sinking them.
Mechs served the same purpose as those aircraft in the past.
"After the first major defeat of humanity, it was as if a domino effect occurred. Mechs had begun to appear in every battle front, from space to even small skirmishes on planets. Human land weaponry was no match for mechs, and it soon appeared like human space dominance was also dwindling. Over the course of a mere 100 years, the amount of space humanity controlled was only a tenth of what they had once possessed."
A student raised their hand.
"Yes, you," the instructor pointed.
Standing up, the student asked.
"You mention mechs originally being an alien technology. Did humanity reverse engineer alien mechs to produce our own or did we develop them ourselves from ground up?"
Zephyr was also curious about this.
"Excellent question Mr. Ents. To answer your question, it was a little mixture of both. As you all know…"
The image of a miniaturized reactor filled the screen.
"...all mechs in the past had used the Aquarius Reactors as the main power source. Humans were accustomed to simply scaling larger as their needs for energy increased. This was partly the reason why ships only kept growing larger and larger. Mechs before their utilization by our enemies was widely thought of as impractical. They weighed as much or more than tanks while consuming even more energy to move. Their center of gravity was high meaning on land warfare they easily lost balance if a little bit of force was applied in the right area. Their joints were exposed, increasing the amount of weak points they had. To put simply, with human technology at the time, they could not produce an energy source capable of bringing out the full abilities of a mech."
Scaling up reactors to response for a greater need for energy was easy. Scaling down the size of a reactor while maintaining its high capacity for energy was not.
"Humans developed the frames of our mechs from ground up. Our very first miniaturized reactor however, was stolen tech. It had taken several decades for humans to successfully create our very own. Speaking of which, after humans had begun to lose all of their formerly conquered land, a civil war broke out due to the lack of resources causing the collapse of the old world powers. It was then when the four conglomerate powers of the Terran Federation arose from the ashes of the outdated ways of the old."
The instructor glanced at Nia briefly before continuing.
"As you all know, these groups had rapidly enacted reforms changing the distribution of wealth and henceforth reigniting the economy spurring rapid development of several lines of mech models."
Another student raised their hand.
"Humanity today has conquered nearly half of the galaxy ever since we have adopted the use of mechs ourselves. What about the remaining half?"
"The situation has stabilized in the last century for the most part," The instructor said as he began pacing back and forth.
"The alien coalition now runs a civilization closely resembling our own. Unless we have another breakthrough in technology or the sudden increase of several Thrones in human ranks, don't expect another war to break out. The Republic is one of the states on the frontier of human space. Instead of worrying about a sudden alien incursion, it would be wiser to focus on our neighbors first."
Currently there are two other near peer states bordering the Rust Republic. One being the Faraday Theocracy; a state governed by a religious cult. The other was the Crescent Commonwealth. There were already several wars over territory disputes that had occurred around once in every twenty years.
The instructor continued with his lesson for the next hour and a half obviously pleased his students appeared to be more engaged. Everyone here attended for the sole reason of pursuing a career related to mechs after all.