The Mech Touch

While the Cenatus Prospecting fleet had become increasingly more fascinated by the chunk of ship debris that was orbiting close to the brown dwarf star, a certain human was having a bad time at the moment.

To be fair, Lord Pearian Yorul-Tavik never enjoyed a good day in the past few months. His dirty and marred face had long turned numb.

Back when he was captured, he completely forgot his training and utterly lost his dignity as he screamed, cried and rage against all of the misfortune he experienced.

It wasn't fair.

He had managed to raise a decent first-class pioneering fleet, one that should have been strong enough to handle most problems in the field.

Entering the Red Ocean and making achievements in the new frontier should have given him a chance to prove to his clan that he wasn't as useless and befuddled as before.

He wanted to put all of his childish foibles behind him and show his parents and his many doubters that he was finally ready to be an adult and assume serious responsibilities!

Yet instead of proving that he could contribute to the Yorul-Tavik Clan, he only ended up damaging it further.

The proud and expensive first-class starships that comprised his fleet were gone. The overwhelming firepower and the relentless pursuit of the nunser warfleet had whittled down the carriers and mechs under his command until even his own flagship had become vulnerable.

Even though the nunser warships had already suffered a heavy blow from the MTA, that didn't help much as surviving enemy ships persisted in their original goal.

What pained Lord Pearian the most was that he didn't even know why the aliens targeted him to begin with! What had caused the nunsers to send a sizable warfleet deeper into human-occupied space and target a random first-class pioneering fleet?

The fleet was nothing special and it hadn't picked up any treasures worth fighting for. While Pearian was proud of his identity, he possessed enough self-awareness that he was nothing special compared to prominent Terrans and Rubarthans who were backed by much powerful states.

"Why then?"

Even now, the scion of the Yorul-Tavik Clan still couldn't figure out why the aliens targeted him in particular!

He at least knew by now that the aliens specifically targeted him as opposed to his fleet.

One of the reasons why his flagship was able to survive for so long was because the alien pursuers never targeted her directly. At most, the enemy warships sought to disable his vessel's defenses and thrusters.

When his flagship was finally on her own, a strange warship had come and finished the deed.

Whenever Lord Pearian closed his eyes, he relived the moments where his trusted friends and subordinates fell in droves. Their beaten and exhausted first-class multipurpose mechs had run out of options and could do very little when struck by the powerful gun batteries of the odd alien battleship!

When his only remaining fleet carrier lost all of her mechs, the strange warship that employed a mix of different technologies had dispatched alien boarding troops that proceeded to start a massacre.

The fighting within the hallways and compartments was brutal. The internal defense systems of his flagship were strong, but an alien coalition of nunsers, puelmers and other alien races systematically bulled their way through the opposition.

The power of these boarding troops exceeded anything the defenders could throw at them. The alien footsoldiers managed to disable or destroy every defensive measure through a combination of overwhelming firepower and advanced technology!

Lord Pearian was sad to admit he lost his nerve that day.

Instead of making a heroic stand and retaining what little dignity he had left, he threw it all away and sought to escape by himself!

He first tried to use his emergency teleporter to get himself out of his ship, but the device malfunctioned because the mixed alien battleship blocked any form of spatial manipulation!

He then tried to head to a secret hangar bay where a number of stealth shuttles were supposed to be on standby.

The alien battleship had blasted the entire section into pieces by firing a volley with her secondary gun batteries!

Pearian then ran to the nearest escape pods, only to stuff himself into a device that the aliens had already disabled beforehand.

By the time an elite unit of alien commandos had finally come and apprehended his broken self, his former flagship became drenched with the blood of his people and crew.

"Why?"

He kept asking this question out loud. He hoped to get a response out of his alien captors.

Despite all of the effort and sacrifices it took to capture him, the aliens had left him alone for weeks on end.

It broke him even more to see that after all of the fighting and killing, his jailors didn't feel the need to interrogate him. They were taking their sweet time!

The only reason why he knew that his alien captors hadn't forgotten about him entirely was because they made sure to feed him at irregular times.

He could feel the steps of their heavy hoofs vibrating through the metal cell floor before they appeared into view.

On the other side of the translucent energy screen that held him contained in this alien cell, he could see that two large armored figures had appeared.

The pair of nunsers troopers looked identical to the footsoldiers that had unleashed a bloodbath throughout his flagship.

Their blue-furred forms were completely covered up by their heavy armor. They moved ponderously as the force of gravity on the ship was as high as 1.4 g, which caused Lord Pearian to constantly feel as if he was overweight.

Though the nunsers had developed articulating forelimbs through evolution, they preferred not to use them if possible.

The nunsers were in their most natural and comfortable posture if they kept all four of their limbs to the ground.

This was why the pair of nunser footsoldiers mounted their weapons and other equipment on the exterior of their heavy armor. They resembled miniature tanks rather than human soldiers.

The nunsers preferred to manipulate objects with the help of transmitting wireless commands, making use of external artificial limbs or simply holding onto stuff with their teeth.

This time, Pearian again felt disgusted as the armored nunser guard on the right held a nutrient pack between his herbivorous teeth.

The massive teeth and jaw possessed enough strength to cut and grind a human limb into mulch, but the nunser guard at least had the decency to control his bite strength to prevent the wrapping from getting punctured this time.

It was a lot worse in the early days.

"Gyughheahha."

Pearian frowned. "I already told you a million times that I can't understand your alien speech. If you hadn't disabled all of my implants, I would have been able to hit you back with my own insults!"

He still smarted at the loss of most of his implants. Disabling them was one of the first procedures they performed on him after he fell into their alien hands.

No matter whether they were biological or mechanical, the aliens who crippled him showed no mercy!

If not for the fact that all of his implants were designed to remain safe and prevent any possible side effects from occurring under these conditions, he might have actually died!

As it was, Pearian only felt that he had become slower, weaker, more tired and less capable of forming complex thoughts.

People like him heavily depended on their cranial implants to remember lots of information and to perform lots of analyses.

He distinctly remembered that he had downloaded a language pack in his cranial implant so that he could talk with aliens without relying on outside help.

Unfortunately, the aliens weren't making it easy.

"Yhyuhaaaagahu."

"I SAID I DON'T UNDERSTAND YOUR STUPID COW LANGUAGE!"

The nunser guards didn't deign to address him any further, but Lord Pearian was sure they were laughing at his expense.

As the pair of soldiers turned around and headed towards the exit, Lord Pearian silently waited before he lifted himself from the barren cell floor and moved over to pick up the nutrient pack with an ugly expression.

"There is at least a third more alien drool than usual."

Lord Pearian did not dare to pick up the pack with his bare hands. He instead opted to remove the plain shirt provided by his captors and used it to grab a hold of the pack.

He then brought it over to a small pool of water that functioned as both his water source and his toilet.

Apparently, the nunser race saw no distinction between the two. While they were careful enough to employ different technologies to keep their watering pools clean and free of germs, it still took less than a day before Lord Pearian resigned himself to the inevitable!

His feeble attempt to force the aliens to provide him with a decent source of water quickly failed when he became too thirsty to maintain his strike.

It didn't help that the nunsers only provided him meals in the form of nutrient packs that were filled with incredibly dry matter in order to make them as compact as possible.

The packs were designed to be filled with water in order to make them more palatable.

Eating a pack dry had been a horrible mistake that significantly broke down his resistance!

By the time he dragged himself over to the watering pool where he had voided himself only half a day ago, he dunked his entire head into the pool and greedily sucked up as much water as possible!

This was why each time Lord Pearian looked at a nutrient pack, he recalled this traumatic failure. It left him with no good thoughts about this type of meal.

Still, he couldn't feed himself off his complaints, so he moved over to his 'toilet' and dunked his shirt as well as his drool-covered nutrient pack into the water pool.

He vigorously stirred his limbs a couple of times before he pulled up his shirt and nutrient pack.

He set aside the former so that it could dry on the ground and shook the latter in order to shake off the water dripping from its exterior.

After that, he skillfully ripped off a small button. He used his fingers to pinch a small, flexible straw and pulled it out so that he could dip the end into the watering pool.

The pack automatically sucked a decent amount of water from the pool and deposited it into the main pocket.

The insides began to heat up upon contact with water. The pack remained comfortably cool and slightly wet on the outside, but Pearian knew that it soon became piping hot on the inside.

He waited until a strip on the packaging turned green.

His meal was ready.

There were two ways for him to eat this particular pack. He could either use the same straw to suck the liquified nutrient mush directly into his mouth. This was mainly helpful under zero gravity conditions as it prevented foodstuffs from flinging in every direction.

Lord Pearian did not want to use the straw.

He instead ripped off the top of the packaging and unclasped a small composite spoon that was attached to the side of the interior of the pack.

He steadily began to spoon the contents of the pack into his mouth.

The food was palatable, more or less. The quartermaster in charge of stocking his flagship with energy food had at least paid extra to stock up on quality nutrient packs that were appetizing to most highly augmented humans.

"...Tastes like chicken. Again."

The variety of flavor options left a lot to be desired. This was the sixth day straight that he was eating a chicken-flavored nutrient pack!

Once he finished his meal, he softly burped before he dumped the empty pack and spoon into the watering pool.

Aside from functioning as a toilet and a drinking source, the pool also served as a garbage chute!

With that done, Lord Pearian went back to sitting on the ground as the aliens didn't even give him the courtesy of providing a chair or a bed.

As his naked back pressed against the side of his cell, he looked out at the semi-transparent energy shield on the other side, expecting to see nothing but the entrances of other cells.

"Who!?"

Instead, he practically jumped on his feet as he saw that he had a visitor!

"You… you're human!"

It turned out that while he was eating, a strangely dressed human figure had moved in front of his cell!

This visitor had mysteriously disguised himself by wearing a silver mask that was shaped like a distinctly human face and a purple robe.

Although it was possible that this figure may be a member of a humanoid alien species, Lord Pearian instinctively knew that he was facing another human!

"You… who are you?! Why are you here? Are you a prisoner or a… guest?"

Silence ensued as the newcomer declined to answer his questions. Lord Pearian became more and more apprehensive as the silent figure continued to oppress him by doing absolutely nothing.