The Mech Touch

Before the assault commenced, Ves and many others received a surprising piece of news.

Calabast had only recently left the office after she was done with giving Ves an update, but she returned right afterwards after receiving an important update!

"The Santana Group's covert operations unit has managed to capture an alien scouting vessel that strayed closer to our fleet's position." She succinctly reported even though Ves already received the same message through his comm.

Ves already had a lot of new questions in his mind. "Do you think this is a routine patrol or do you think the groups in control of the Palace of Shame have figured out that there is an approaching threat?"

"We can't say." The black-clad woman shrugged her shoulders. "All I know is that we can gather a lot of useful information from the captured ship, though the vessel's capture may also give our opponents a greater understanding of our capabilities. This is why the Santanas are making sure to keep the captured alien hull away from our main fleets."

It took a bit of time for the Larkinsons to receive more information about the captured ship. Calabast had already instructed the closest Black Cats in the field to suspend their current assignments and move to the alien scouting vessel as soon as possible so that they could provide more detailed information.

Soon enough, the Larkinson Clan received a transmission that finally granted Ves a good view of the alien ship in question.

"That's... an orven-style starship." Ves noted. "The all-black coating along with the wide and relatively flat hull shape is a dead giveaway of that. No other indigenous alien race has a history of designing such an atypical scouting vessel. The materials used to construct her interior also matches what the orven race has historically made use of. I can see that the orven ship is still relatively new and fresh, but her tech isn't anything to be impressed about."

The orven race was known to be strong, but that only applied to its best. There were many other orvens who were not as wealthy and powerful. The large orven underclass had to make do with cheaper and more inferior tech.

That sounded awfully familiar now that Ves thought about it, and he wasn't the only one to recognize this similarity.

It turned out that many exobiologists viewed the orvens as the aliens that most closely resembled humans!

The orvens were bipedal, furred mammals that closely resembled upright apes but without a nose.

For some reason, the orvens and many other native creatures on the same planet never developed the sense of smell.

They all made up for it by strengthening their other senses. The orven race stood out for their four eyes.

The powerful eyesight of the orvens caused them to develop a preference of operating in low light environments.

As they originally evolved on a planet with 0.81 g, the orvens were also taller than humans on average. A typical orven adult could reach a height of 3 meters, though the tallest individuals of this race were known to surpass a natural height of 4 meters.

The orvens also lived significantly longer than humans. They aged slower to the point where a typical healthy orven individual was able to live up to 320 years without relying on any treatments.

The downside was that the orvens did not excel that much at learning. It took decades for them to raise qualified scientists, engineers, doctors and other professionals.

It was due to this that the orven race maintained an extremely high respect towards elders.

Over time, the orvens built up a society where many of its people were born into castes.

Though there was still a limited degree of upward and downward mobility, the vast majority of orvens tended to learn from their parents and pursue the same careers.

The orven caste system was quite stable for the most part. The orven society existed for a long time and had reached a high level of stability.

If not for the fact that humanity upended the entire Red Ocean by launching a massive invasion, the Orven Star Nation or whatever it was called would have been able to maintain its current form for many more years!

Another important aspect about orven society was that those at the top were extremely smart and powerful.

An important reason for that was because the orvens at the top were functionally immortal. They had access to advanced biotech treatments that completely broke the physical and non-physical limitations that successfully allowed them to escape the fate of a natural death!

No one knew how many years the oldest orvens had experienced, but the intelligence that the MTA had gathered from many sources suggested that there were numerous ancient visionaries that had first come into prominence over 10,000 years ago and still remained active to this day!

The orvens looked up to these living fossils so much that they even revered their highest leaders as literal gods!

All of this sounded extremely silly to Ves, but religion was hardly exclusive to the human race. The orvens developed their own traditions of worship. A surprisingly high proportion of the orven population were devout believers in the members of the highest caste.

Many humans who first learned about the orvens couldn't decide whether these aliens were strong or weak.

On the one hand, the orvens built up a stable interstellar society and steadily advanced their technological mastery over time. They weren't particularly brilliant or spontaneous, but they excelled in long-term thinking and planning, enabling them to avoid many mistakes that more impulsive races tended to make from time to time.

On the other hand, most orvens were dull and incapable of exhibiting much independent thought. Many of them were no different from slaves who solely existed to serve their higher caste masters.

The upper echelon of orven society were generally smarter and more talented, and heavy augmentation further made up for their genetic and physical shortcomings.

The difference between a lower caste member and upper caste member of this race was so high that it was not that much of a surprise that the latter could moonlight as a god!

Though the Big Two managed to collect a lot of information about the orvan race and orvan society, Ves only learned how these aliens worked on a general basis.

He did not possess any specific information about the orvens that chose to settle in a pirate base that was far removed from their own star nation.

Ves continued to observe the orven scouting ship in the projection as the Santanas took control of both the exterior and the interior of the vessel.

After a relatively short wait, the Santana Group finally succumbed to the pressure exerted by the other pioneering groups and opened up the orven corvette to outside visitors.

Both Ves and Calabast switched to a direct helmet feed of a Black Cat officer that had received permission to step aboard the alien vessel.

High ceilings, dim lighting and triangular-shaped corridors immediately gave the interior a distinctly non-human vibe.

The ubiquitous black color scheme along with the moist air made the place look even gloomier than normal.

One of the more interesting quirks about the lower caste orvens was that they did not engage in any form of entertainment at all. Recreation simply wasn't a part of their lives.

What they did spend their time on while they weren't performing their duties was showing their piety to their 'gods'!

As the Black Cat officer slowly toured the relatively small alien ship, his helmet feed continued to showcase abstract statues and artwork that vaguely represented the gods revered by the crew of the scouting vessel.

One of the challenges to interpreting this religious iconography was that they possessed so little features that it was difficult to figure out which orven god or leader they personified!

The human captors needed to interrogate the orven crew members in order to gain the right answers, but the problem was that they never said anything!

The orvens were relatively xenophobic and hostile towards other races as a rule. Even the lowest and most marginalized member of their alien society refused to betray anything even when subjected to heavy torture!

"How troublesome." Ves muttered.

If a group of humans captured another group of humans, there were many different solutions to make the latter spill their beans.

However, since the Santana Group and the other pioneering groups never came into contact with the orvens before, they did not master any special interrogation methods that could make the stubborn aliens open their mouths.

"In time, humanity will develop an effective drug that can encourage an orven captive to tell the truth." Calabast said. "Our race may also develop a special neural interface that can forcibly extract all of the memories of an orven individual and convert it into usable digital files that we can interpret. It may take decades for all of this useful technology to become available."

In other words, there was no way for any of the pioneering groups to gain anything useful out of interrogating the captives.

"Please instruct the officer to take a look at the captives."

The source of the live feed moved to a small cargo bay where a number of heavily armed and armored guards watched over a group of orven crew members that had been fully restrained and locked within energy cages.

Each of their black-furred, noseless faces clearly showed a lot of hatred as the orvens loathed their human captives.

From time to time, a group of Santana intelligence officers brought out an orven captive so that they could try their luck and see if the aliens spilled any useful intelligence about the Palace of Shame.

None of their attempts succeeded, but that didn't stop the humans from trying.

As Ves and Calabast observed how little the captors were gaining from the orven prisoners, the latter came up with an interesting proposal.

"You have a talent for communicating with alien life forms." She spoke to him. "Do you have any useful tricks that you can use to make the prisoners talk?"

Ves blinked. "Uhm, maybe. It depends on how they think and how their brains work. I can't really guarantee anything unless I have direct access to an orven prisoner, but theoretically I should be able to squeeze information out of a captive as long as their mentalities aren't too weak."

When he looked at the angry but rather pathetic-looking orven crew members, Ves wasn't sure whether these orvens were strong or weak.

On the one hand, they were lower caste orvens who easily submitted to their higher caste leaders.

On the other hand, the orven crew members possessed the same xenophobia and intense hatred towards humans that characterized every other member of their race!

Calabast smirked. "It doesn't hurt to try. Let me issue a request to transfer a handful of the alien prisoners in our custody. Are you willing to interrogate them if we are able to bring them back to our flagship?"

"I suppose I can try." Ves thoughtfully replied. "It might be best to bring along Venerable Joshua as well. He is even better at befriending aliens than me. I'm not sure we can get much useful information out of a captive, though. The lower caste crew members clearly look like grunts who only know how to obey orders. If we want to obtain more important details, then we should grab their higher caste officers."

"Let us see what we can get."

The Larkinson Clan issued a request to take a few of the orven prisoners into custody, but the Santana Group adamantly refused to give up even a single living alien!

"If you want to get your hands on live specimens, then go out and capture your own orven scouting ship!"

The Santana Group remained obstinate until the Larkinson Clan finally offered to exchange money for the alien prisoners.

Even then, the Santanas refused to hand over any of the officers of the alien vessels.

In the end, the Larkinson Clan managed to gain custody over three random orven crew members after handing over 150 MTA credits!