The Mech Touch novel Chapter 4430

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.

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