The Mech Touch

The first one consisted of dozens of armored soldiers. The mix of colors and armor designs signified that they consisted of a combination between Davutan guard soldiers and a random collection of private guards in the employ of the organizations valued by the colonial state.

This flanking force had been tasked with attacking the upper floors controlled by the indigenous alien remnants from a different direction.

"Do you think these flankers will produce any results, major?" Ves curiously asked the leader of the government forces trapped in this pocket space.

The middle-aged infantry guard officer maintained an impassive face. The man possessed a lot of experience dealing with high-ranked personnel. He wouldn\'t have been assigned to oversee the protection of the VIPs invited to the seating blocks if he did not possess the required social acumen.

The man initially appeared unprepared to lead all of the guard troops who had the misfortune of getting trapped in the prison facility, but he quickly adapted to his new role.

This was why Major Durant conscientiously made sure that he did not surrender total control to the Larkinsons.

"We do not have a good understanding of the combat effectiveness of the pescan survivors." The man replied. "We can observe their troops and assets, and we can even form estimates of how effectively they can fight based on what we have learned during the initial invasion of this planet, but several years have gone by since then. The scientists and engineers that Great Chief Jaharon has undoubtedly brought with him must have developed numerous technical improvements. We cannot let ourselves be fooled by what has worked in the past."

The Larkinsons understood this well. They had personally experienced how the native community of the Red Ocean adapted its tech and strategies after humanity broke out and quickly conquered large swathes of territory.

The differences in tech and cross-racial cooperation between the shabby alien pirate forces based in the Boryan System and the modern Fractured House of the Collapsing Star showed that the natives did not object to learning from their betters!

Just as the humans who rose up from Old Earth had rapidly assimilated all kinds of alien technologies in order to close the technological gap, the indigenous intelligent life forms of the new frontier were in the process of imitating this approach!

Ves decided to call up the latest footage recorded by the spy drones that the scouts had tried to sneak into the upper floor.

The trapped humans possessed a good understanding of the outer defenses that could easily be observed from a distance, but it was a lot more difficult to obtain solid details further inwards.

"Why don\'t we have any good footage of the inner base and the top floors?" Ves asked as he became dissatisfied with the monotony of the collected data.

"The aliens have activated numerous transphasic energy shields that block the passageways that lead up to the next floors." Major Durant answered. "These shields are constantly active, which means that no spy drone, no matter how small or unnoticeable, can move past these barriers."

That was bad news.

Ves frowned. "What a crude and costly defensive measure. Energy shield generators will have to endure a lot of strain to remain constantly active. The wear and tear is significant. In a circumstance where the pescans are cornered in an isolated pocket space where they cannot replenish their spent resources, they should be conserving what little they have left."

"I believe that the pescans understand they are at the end of their ropes." General Verle commented as he studied the borrowed footage of the initial invasion of the alien planet in order to get a better understanding of his current adversaries. "The local aliens have no planet left and they are completely trapped in a zone where they are surrounded by powerful human forces in every direction. This battle will likely be the last swansong of their race."

Ves frowned as he thought back on the behavior of these aliens up until this point.

The entire situation stunk. While he knew little about the pescans, their past interactions with the nunser civilization suggested that they were not a race that was prone to make foolish decisions.

The pescans understood humility and recognized how weak they were in the face of much more powerful races.

"If my intelligence director was here, then she would have asked a lot of pertinent questions about the motives of the pescans." He said to everyone. "Right now, these aliens are most likely the last survivors of their race. If they have any sense of self-preservation, they would have taken advantage of the obscurity of their pocket space and continue to hide for generations. It makes no sense for them to expose themselves and their pocket space to humanity. What do they seek to gain by kidnapping the people that the colonial state most relies upon? Since these pescans understand the importance of our identity, I am sure that they must have been able to study us throughout all of these years!"

He spent so much time with Calabast that he had learned how to think from her perspective to an extent. Though he was still far inferior to the kind of machinations that the spymaster was able to deduce from a few scattered clues, even he could not ignore the clear gap in logic presented by recent events.

General Verle, who used to have an intelligence background, was not ignorant of the odd choices made by the pescans.

"It is difficult for us to predict the behavior of aliens by virtue of their non-human cultures and thought patterns. Nonetheless, I also agree with you that these pescans have made odd decisions. There are several possible answers that can explain their behavior which appears irrational on the surface. The first and most obvious one is that the pescans that have fled into this pocket space may be running out of food and water."

That caused both Ves and Major Durant to frown.

Ves waved at the projections showing the state of the alien camp. "With all of this hardware, it should not be difficult for the pescans to start a few indoor farms."

"That may be true, but that also depends on how extensively the aliens of the city state of Davute have prepared for this evacuation." General Verle replied. "Major Durant, how long did the campaign to conquer and cleanse this planet of alien life last?"

"Not long, general. Our leaders were impatient and wanted to build an initial settlement and start the terraforming process as soon as possible. We cannot proceed with either of them without risking attacks from the local indigenous aliens, so one of our most urgent priorities was to make the pescans extinct. Though we did not employ our high-ranking mechs too much, we mustered almost all of our mechs as possible to raze their cities and slay the aliens en masse. Only in certain cases did infantry such as my unit have to step in, mostly to raid the most valuable treasure houses."

"So the pescans hardly had time to prepare for a proper evacuation or backup plan?" Ves asked.

Major Durant reluctantly nodded. "Numerous pioneering fleets had raided the surface of the planet before, so the pescans already learned of us. I was told that those fleets only launched quick raids at the smaller and weaker city states, so there is a great chance that the city state of Davute did not take us seriously at the time. The local aliens also put a great amount of faith in the protection offered by the nunsers. None of the locals could have imagined that we would wipe out their entire race in as little time as possible, especially since they lacked contact with the greater galactic community."

One of the major shortcomings of the civilizations of the Red Ocean was the lack of sophisticated communication.

As far as humanity was aware of, the alien races of the Red Ocean did not possess a widespread network of instant communications.

Although the major alien races most certainly possessed at least some means of communicating across vast distances, most individual aliens did not have access to such tech. Even entire ships and planets remained in the dark of what took place in other parts of space.

This also caused the local galactic community to become a lot more fractured and localized. Even aliens from the same race began to diverge wildly due to how much they were separated from each other.

It was completely plausible that the pescan race had remained ignorant of the scourge of humanity throughout all of this time.

It was not until the pioneering fleets dispatched by the founders of the colony of Davute that the indigenous aliens experienced true despair, but by that time it was too late to do anything substantial!

"Okay." Ves collected his thoughts. "From what I am hearing, the pescans of this city state may have been forced to rush their evacuation to this pocket space. Given that farms and food and stuff are usually located outside the city proper, it may be possible that the aliens under the leadership of this \'great chief\' simply didn\'t have the time to bring in enough food."

General Verle nodded. "That is plausible, sir. A far-sighted leader should have stockpiled sufficient food and agricultural facilities, though. This is why I am also considering other possibilities."

"Such as…?"

"Staying here is not a viable way for a race to persist." Verle said. "This is literally a prison. The space is too confining, there are no stars above their heads and it is impossible to harvest any resources here. If humans can go crazy here, then so can aliens. If this is the case, the pescans may be thinking about staging a breakout attempt."

"That is a rash decision. In the years that have passed by, the founders of Davute have transformed this place into a trade hub as well as a military fortress."

General Verle acknowledged this argument. "You are not wrong, but perhaps they are under time pressure. If they wait too long, then this star system along with all of the other star systems in the zone will become much more unfriendly towards aliens seeking to escape from human-controlled space."

"Do not forget about the timing of the founding ceremony." Major Durant noted. "The fact that so many important figures of Davute have gathered in the center of the Government District is a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity. If the aliens understand us well enough, then they may have confidence that abducting you and all of the other important leaders may serve as effective leverage in any negotiations."

Ves grimaced. His thoughts already headed towards this direction ever since he discovered that the culprits responsible for bringing them all here were the former rulers of this planet.

It was almost impossible for such a scheme to succeed!

"I think that Davute must definitely have no choice but to surrender to the demands made by the pescans." Ves theorized. "However, I don\'t think the Mech Trade Association will allow any compromises to be made between humans and aliens."

This caused everyone else to look less optimistic. The pescans may have been able to learn much about the conquerors of their former home planet through unknown means, but their understanding of humanity was still deficient!

If these aliens thought that blackmailing human civilization would produce results, then they would definitely suffer a major penalty!

General Verle "Their original plan likely cannot proceed anymore now that we have escaped those cells. Rather than letting these desperate, traumatized and resentful aliens dictate our fate, it is better to take matters in our own hands and earn our freedom through our own efforts."

"Agreed." Ves said.

"We are approaching the enemy site." Major Durant reminded them. "That is not all. Our scouts have detected elevated activity from the enemy defensive positions. The pescans know we are coming."