The Mech Touch

The first interrogation was a massive success.

Ves obtained more information out of Aruva-QkrnRa-81 than any other human managed to squeeze out of the prisoners of the captured orven scouting vessel!

Sure, the details were rather scarce, but the meaning of everything that came out of Aruva's mouth was significant!

He took one last look at the captive that had ultimately chosen to cut his life short rather than live with the guilt of sharing a secret that was greater than everything else that he had exposed.

Ves actually didn't know that the orvens could commit suicide like this. If he wanted to extract additional information from the other two orven captives, then he needed to take care not to push them to the brink.

"I guess this death was worth it. At least Aruvan had the courtesy to depart from life after he shared his big secret."

After thanking the expired alien one last time, Ves calmly stood up and left the interrogation room.

He met up with Calabast who had paid close attention to what took place inside the interrogation room.

She replayed the recorded footage of the brief interspecies dialogue. A translation program helpfully interpreted Aruva's native words, though Ves noted that the software did not convey the exact same meaning.

There were many nuances that the translation program either missed or interpreted in the wrong manner. This caused Calabast to base her thoughts on slightly faulty data.

It was not that big of a deal, though. The basic meaning of Aruva's words were still clear.

"You did a good job, Ves." Calabast complimented him. "I knew you had a few tricks up your sleeve, but outright trying to pose as an ancient and terrible human god was a great way to exploit the orven prisoner's psychological triggers. We have improved our understanding of the behavior and attitudes of the orvens. We would like to guide your actions in the next interrogation session so that we can generate more results."

That was a polite way of saying that Ves was still an amateur at this and that a professional could have done better in his shoes.

Ves shrugged. "Okay, but I don't think we can get that much more out of these prisoners. We can throw them off-balance for a time, but once they process their unprecedented situation and realize that they are only putting the Unspoken at greater risk by talking, they won't hesitate to sacrifice themselves to protect his cause."

"We are aware of that. Don't worry. We won't let the remaining two prisoners die too quickly."

"Maybe we should allow Venerable Joshua to approach one of them instead." Ves suggested.

"The friendly approach will not work. There is no way to hide the fact that Venerable Joshua is a human, which the orvens see as a greater evil than any other enemy of their race. Much of Joshua's success in developing good relationships with different entities is because there are grounds for cooperation. This is not the case in this instance. Humans are the invaders of the Red Ocean and the destroyers of every native civilization. We are the greatest evil that the Red Ocean has ever seen. We are the one threat that can force all of the indigenous alien races to set aside their rivalries."

That was true. It was impossible to brainwash the orven captives to the point where they were willing to shift their loyalties to a human power. It was just too absurd for them to work against their own race and heritage.

Even if individuals such as Aruvan were being mistreated by their superiors, that did not diminish their racial pride and loyalty!

Ves could even argue that these simple-minded underlings were even harder to shake than the higher caste members of their race!

The lowly grunts were conditioned from birth to do their jobs and obey the instructions from their orven superiors without question.

The higher caste members who actually had to do a lot more thinking ought to be a lot more flexible in comparison. Their capacity for deep thinking also allowed them to form more diverse opinions about everything.

This was also a strong reason why Ves wanted to capture a high-ranking orven officer. He would have much more room for maneuver if he interrogated someone who wasn't accustomed to blindly following orders.

"So what do you make of this secret alien order?" Ves asked.

"I wouldn't be surprised if such a large conspiracy theory turns out to be true." Calabast replied as she crossed her arms. "The Red Ocean may not be as big as the Milky Way, but it is still an old dwarf galaxy that has existed for a long time. Life evolved in the stars around us a long time ago. Few ever managed to develop to the point where they gained intelligence and started developing technologies, but don't forget about phasewater. Access to this powerful substance substantially lowers the barrier to interstellar travel. Warp drives are not that difficult to make for any decent intelligence race as long as there is enough phasewater."

Phasewater possessed strong spatial manipulation properties that could easily reduce the difficulty of developing a means of superluminar travel by three or four times!

Throughout history, there were many alien species that evolved in their home star systems but eventually became extinct without ever impacting the wider galaxy around them because they failed to develop a viable means to travel faster than the speed of light!

The fact that phasewater gave everyone an easy way out meant that the Red Ocean should have birthed dominant alien civilizations a lot sooner than in the Milky Way!

However, that hadn't happened.

Many members of the scientific community debated why this was so. Some posited that one or several dominant alien races of the Red Ocean may have emerged in the past.</>

However, they found that the dwarf galaxy that they belonged to was ultimately too small and limited to help them attain their higher ambitions.

Perhaps these once-powerful alien species gathered their collective potential and utilized a huge amount of phasewater to transport themselves to an entirely different galaxy or reality!

There was no solid proof to this theory, though. The indigenous alien races that existed to this day did not know anything about this possibility and human pioneers found no archeological traces of powerful precursor races that had left the Red Ocean.

A more probable theory that received the support of many scholars was that the Red Ocean's stagnant development was due to the complacency and lack of pressure of all of its native alien races.

The phase whales, the nunsers, the puelmers, the orvens and even the voribugs never experienced the pressure of total war that could drive them to extinction.

They had lived so long and spread their presence so extensively across the Red Ocean that if total war erupted between any of them, they would likely drive everyone to mutual extinction!

This had led to a state where the major alien races still competed against each other in regional conflicts, but conscientiously avoided any possibility of escalating it to anything greater.

Once the natives of the Red Ocean established this new status quo, the drive to improve and become overwhelmingly stronger than everyone else was no longer as significant as before.

Too many aliens grew comfortable with the relatively peaceful and stable galactic society that they had formed. No one wanted to break the peace, so a lot of alien scientists and developers began to devote their efforts to more peaceful pursuits than inventing stronger weapons.

At this time, the major alien races that previously lorded over the Red Ocean probably regretted the fact that they had been sleeping behind the wheel for so long!

Now that disaster finally struck in the form of a massive extragalactic threat, the aliens led by the puelmers abruptly woke up from their long dream and had to contend with the nightmare that had befallen their dwarf galaxy!

"Do you think that it is true that the phase whales have any relation to the Unspoken and the Palace of Shame?" Ves asked.

His spymaster frowned. "The way that the alien captive responded makes me believe that he has witnessed a meeting between the so-called Shadow Lord and a phase whale in person. He was probably stationed on a ship that had attended this possible event. If this is the case, then that is an indication that the Palace of Shame is far more important than we imagined. The involvement of two different major alien races shows that this matter transcends the interests of a single group within a single race."

Ves grinned when he heard that. "Good. The greater the importance of the Palace of Shame, the more benefits we can gain out of looting it. Whatever multiracial organization is behind all of this must be incredibly rich and powerful. It wouldn't put anything cheap inside an asteroid base that is significant enough to merit the personal attention of a phase whale."

His strategic partner did not like what she heard. She turned and pinned him with a reproachful stare.

"You are playing with fire again, Ves. I would have thought that this revelation would have made you second-guess the wisdom of proceeding with the attack. Though we have only received scant details about this unknown multiracial organization, we may very well be on our way to provoke a secret society that is as monstrous as a certain cult. Have you forgotten why you urgently wanted to leave the old galaxy as soon as possible? If you persist in this, then we may end up in a similar situation! The biggest difference is that you have nowhere left to run."

Though Ves initially became alarmed by her ominous predictions, he soon relaxed and scoffed at her overly pessimistic words.

"You're blowing our current circumstances way out of proportion, Calabast. We are in a much different situation than before."

He raised an armored finger.

"First, if this multiracial organization even exists, it cannot shake the might of the Big Two. There is no way that a phase whale or a hunter-killer fleet will cross into human-occupied territory just to eliminate a trivial group of second-class humans."

He raised a second finger.

"Second, there are too many humans for us to merit any special attention. I would think that the members of this secret order are much more focused on beating back the MTA and CFA than to waste their time on the dregs of the human race."

He raised a third finger.

"Third, the Palace of Shame probably isn't that important in the greater scheme of things. If the hidden order truly cared about it, then it would have found a way to evacuate whatever is locked inside the asteroid base before the humans arrived."

Before Ves could bring up his fourth point, Calabast held up her palm. "You can stop now, Ves. I get the story. I admit that your arguments are all plausible, but we are all basing this on scraps of information from a lower caste orven. The range of possibilities is too extensive, but if we want to be careful, then we should always take the worst-case scenarios into account. In my judgment, we are about to enter a dangerous collision if our clan proceeds to attack the Palace of Shame. We should at least spend more time on gathering intelligence. We can make much more informed decisions if we have a better understanding of the truth."

Ves shook his head. "We don't have the time to go through all of that trouble. The longer we wait, the more things can go wrong. Besides, we already formed an agreement with the Gemini Family and the other pioneering groups. It is too late for us to back out at this point. We can still make this work in my opinion. We just need to be more careful and maybe encourage others to take the lead."

More than anything else, Ves wanted to see for himself what the Unspoken were hiding inside the Palace of Shame.

If there were any massive conspiracies brewing beneath the surface of the Red Ocean, then he wanted to find out about it sooner rather than later!