Humanity's Greatest Mecha Warrior System-Novel



The man strapped to the bed laughed at Max as he evaluated him. "If you thought that I would simply tell you everything that you wanted to know just because you asked, you're far too incompetent for this job. Have you considered being a janitor?" 

"I will start off slow. How about the pharmaceutical Company? They didn't give you anything but an easy death. You don't owe them anything." Max asked. 

The man's thoughts went to the large amount of money that they had provided him, as well as the experimental treatment for his subordinate's disease. It would almost be touching if he wasn't planning to kill the subordinate as soon as he returned to his ship. The mission had gone bad, and he was already planning to tie up all the loose ends. 

"You have to be the worst interrogator in history. Seriously, you're going with the appeal to decency?" 

Max smiled. "Of course not. I just thought that you might prefer a quick death, but if you want to draw this out, that's fine by me. I'm paid by the hour." 

The man silently cursed the Niall Pharmaceutical Company in his head, and Max used Nico's skill to record everything that he heard, like a built-in transcriptionist. It reminded him of all the free flow of consciousness messages that he had gotten from her in the past, but he kept his attention on the target. 

Before the man could speak again, the sound of a mournful scream sounded through the walls, making both of them look in the direction where Nico was working. 

"What in the seven hells was that?"  New chapters are published on N(o)vᴇl(F)ire.net

"One of my coworkers is having a polite conversation with a child molester. It seems that the prisoner is feeling particularly regretful." Max replied with a shrug. 

That scream had a mental attack aspect to it. The walls were completely soundproof, but both Max and the other man in the room had heard it. The prisoner didn't seem to be able to hear his thoughts, so it wasn't a matter of shared skills. It must be somehow related to the species of the other prisoner. 

Nico's thoughts were more amused than anything else like she had found a fun new toy with unexpected features, so he left her alone to work. 

"Now, where were we? Oh yes, Niall Pharmaceuticals. Why are they bringing in the Klem, and how did they end up spread all over this Galaxy?" Max continued. 

The prisoner looked shocked that Max knew the name of the Company, and then his thoughts turned to resignation for an instant. If Max already knew that much, he would be in real trouble. The prisoner knew that there was a chance the Black-Market Boss had ordered him tortured on general principle since his employer had accidentally let the Klem they had been transporting infest the station twice in the course of a month, but he didn't know anything about the Klem being released anywhere else. 

If the ships had let them infest other stations as well, the revelation that the Company had been transporting them would ruin a thousand-year-old legacy in a single day. 

"It's just routine research. They have the appropriate permits. Look for yourself. There's no reason to be holding me here." The prisoner suggested. 

Max shook his head. "We already checked. No hazardous species quarantine exceptions have been made. They didn't have a permit to take them, much less transport them anywhere. Now, how about you tell me why your employer has been targeting my station?" 

The prisoner legitimately didn't know that the Klem had been placed under quarantine by the Alliance Authorities. The ship hadn't picked them up from a quarantine zone. They had been in storage in a corporate warehouse already. 

But he didn't know how they had gotten to that warehouse, and he didn't have a good explanation for this strange pale-haired interrogator. 

He hadn't seen a human before, and although they had a passing similarity to many other species, they still looked sufficiently alien that their appearance just gave off that nagging feeling of familiarity, but one that you couldn't quite place. 

"If they perhaps purchased them from someone else, say an unauthorized dealer who faked the permits, my boss would really like to know." Max offered kindly. 

His work was interrupted again by the mental scream, only this time it was begging for mercy from everyone from Nico to the mythical Gods to the prisoner's own mother. 

"We need to work on that. It's really quite distracting." Max muttered while the man with him went a little pale. 

"Are they going to torture him to death? I thought this station still respected Alliance Laws, at least on the surface. You can't just make people disappear." The Prisoner in Max's room pleaded. 

"Of course, we're not going to kill him. That would be much too easy. I suspect that you might not have a very relaxing month here if he keeps screaming like that, though. If you can get me some real answers, I can ask that you are moved to a more distant room." 

The man's thoughts played through all of the experiments that the Corporation was running with the Klem that they had obtained, but none of his knowledge included experiments on planets, as they were working on using the rapid growth genes in the Klem biology to try to develop an anti-aging serum. 

That didn't match with the invasion of planets. They didn't need large amounts of Klem biomass for their experiments or for the product that they were working on producing. It wouldn't help their cause at all. There must be another company or party involved in setting the Klem loose. 

Max tapped his chin as if he had been thinking deeply. "Do your bosses perhaps have enemies? Someone who would profit from setting them up for a fall by sabotaging their shipments and setting Klem loose on planets near their warehouses?" 

Burgerstein Pharmaceuticals appeared in the man's thoughts. They had been at odds with each other for generations, and both companies had done some seriously underhanded things to each other in the past. 

That was one more possibility for Max's list, but the prisoner remained closed-lipped. 

"Fine. I will come back later and see if you're feeling more cooperative." Max shrugged, then turned for the door. 

"Wait, water. Can I get some water?" The prisoner asked. 

He still had hope that a secondary poison in his mouth would be activated by the water and wipe all of the sensitive memories of his employer before an Illithid could arrive and strip his thoughts. 

"I will send for some." Max agreed, then stepped outside and sat down on a chair to dive deep into the man's thoughts, scraping out every little detail about his employer and their enemies. He had just finished compiling the data when a bodyguard came by with food for him, and Nico came out of her interrogation room whistling a jingle from the advertisement for a new video game that had been playing earlier. 

Max looked at the bodyguard in front of him. "Give the prisoner in my room a glass of water. He has a drug that will activate with water and cleanse his short-term memory, as well as all memories of his employer. I've gotten everything relevant that has happened to him since his third birthday already, so we can let him mind scrub and leave without ever knowing that he gave up everything. 

The best mole is the one that nobody will ever know was one."