The Mech Touch

"What is going on?!" Lord Pearian yelled as he was being unceremoniously carried back to the alien battleship's cell block.

Now that the Fractured House of the Collapsing Star woke up and readied for combat, a nunser guard unceremoniously grabbed a hold of his body and brought him out of the circular audience chamber.

The most undignified part about all of this was that the nunser guard carried him by biting the side of his shirt and lifting him up! It made him feel as if he was a naughty kitten who had to be carried back to his nest by his overprotective mom cat!

"I am a human! I can walk on my own! There is no reason for you to hold me like this. It hurts!"

Unfortunately for the first-class scion, the armored guard remained completely unmoved by his pleas. Perhaps the nunser soldier's helmet didn't contain any translation modules that allowed him to interpret standard human language.

"You!" Pearian loosely pointed at the only other human he had met on this ship. "Tell this blue cow that he should let me walk by myself!"

The robed and masked figure of Jugal Meren no longer assumed an extremely undignified cattle-like posture anymore. The proud cosmopolitan held his back upright as if he had nothing to be ashamed about.

At least he became more human again.

"I do not command authority on this homeship." Mr. Meren replied in his synthesized voice. "The Trampler of Stars has instructed his men to return you to your cell, so that is what will happen. I suggest you remain as still as possible to make your journey more comfortable."

At least that overgrown four-legged tyrant kept him alive. Lord Pearian might prefer to die like a human than persist as a slave to these filthy aliens, but that didn't mean he was eager to cut his life short!

He didn't know what happened and why that strange alien relic prompted the Trampler of Stars to go berserk, but he was not stupid. He could make a few guesses.

This was also one of the reasons why he was more willing to bide his time and see how this situation would unfold.

Maybe rescue was on its way after all. It just took a lot longer than he thought for assistance to arrive.

As his body continued to dangle below the powerful mouth of a nunser guard, he kept sending glances at Jugal Meren.

Though the man's thick robes and solid mask pretty much made it impossible to read the man's body language, Pearian tried to recall all of the lessons he learned about other people.

It was harder for him to do so without the benefit of the perfect memory search and recall functions of his cranial implant, but he could still fall back to the endowments bestowed by his designer genes.

Pearian observed and mentally recorded many different variables. Despite all of the cosmopolitan's attempts to hide his body and form, the man's gait, reaction speed, posture, distancing and so on could not be obscured.

Of course, Pearian had always taken into account that a skilled diplomat like Jugal Meren was a master at controlling his body and deceiving others through its purposeful manipulation.

The first-class scion couldn't rule out the possibility that the figure underneath the robe was a remote-controlled android, though it was rather unlikely that the Trampler of Stars would tolerate speaking to a robot construct rather than a flesh-and-blood human.

Even then, there were still many ways for humans to alter their entire bodies after undergoing a short procedure.

A man who possessed all of the associated functional reproductive organs could easily turn himself into a full woman after a single day.

Though such procedures never truly amounted to full conversions, as long as someone was willing to pay enough money, they could afford faster and more thorough transformations.

Other biological alterations such as removing mass, increasing one's length and adding more physical strength could all be performed with ease as long as the technological facilities were advanced enough.

This was why Pearian couldn't necessarily trust any of the data that he had gathered on Jugal Meren.

Cosmopolitans were one of the most hated and reviled groups of humanity. They even ranked below pirates and violators of the taboo against warships and weapons of mass destruction.

This was because the deranged followers of the Cosmopolitan Movement directly threatened the survival and continuation of a proud, strong and independent human civilization!

Though Pearian could trust almost nothing about what he observed from Jugal Meren, he still dared to make a few conclusions based on the time he spent with the cosmopolitan.

Mr. Meren appears to have isolated himself from human society for a long time. This was not a man who was fully in sync with modern humanity anymore. There were many small touches that suggested that he was a bit old-fashioned.

This suggested that Meren was fairly old. The silver-masked man definitely conveyed himself as a member of an older generation than Paerian, but not old to the point where the cosmopolitan carried himself as a legendary figure who has experienced an entire age.

Pearian confidently guessed that Mr. Meren was between 100 and 175 years old. Anyone older was probably too high-ranked and valuable to go on a field assignment.

The man was also truly a man underneath all of his disguises. Though Jugal Meren made an extensive effort to hide his true identity, Pearian guessed that the cosmopolitan still possessed enough pride in himself that he disdained altering his own body.

This was a rather strange conclusion as Pearian had personally seen Mr. Meren utterly debasing himself in front of the Trampler of Stars, but that was the man's job.

It was this particular conclusion that also allowed Pearian to extrapolate Meren's possible origin.

Of all of the humans he knew who took great pride in maintaining their 'original' human form, one group clearly stood out in this aspect.

"You're a Terran, aren't you, Mr. Meren?" Pearian abruptly spoke.

Though the Fractured House of the Collapsing Star became more active and busy, a well of silence had descended on their little group.

Much to Pearian's disappointment, the suspected Terran member of the Cosmopolitan Movement declined to respond at all. It was as if the accusation fell into the depths of space without producing any further ripple effects.

The silence lasted until they finally reached the cell block. After the nunser guard unceremoniously dropped the captive in the same cell that was devoid of anything aside from a typical nunser watering pool, the cosmopolitan finally spoke again.

"Sit tight and wait until this incident is taken care of. I cannot say when you will next have a chance to prove your worth to the Trampler of Stars, but he will only call you when he desires to see you. As you are not a particularly important captive in his mind, that may take weeks, months or even years."

That sounded outrageous to Lord Pearian!

The scion could tolerate being belittled, but he could not accept being forgotten! That was a fate worse than death in his opinion!

The younger man quickly scrambled back onto his feet. "Then do something about it! You can talk to him, right?"

The robed figure didn't respond. The diplomat's posture conveyed so much distance and lack of sympathy that it seemed as if he cared nothing about his fellow humans.

Perhaps Jugal Meren didn't represent every cosmopolitan, but the fact that such an individual turned into such a monster to begin with caused Pearian to develop an even greater contempt towards the Cosmopolitan Movement.

Pearian decided to switch to another strategy. People often liked to boast about successes. He wondered whether Meren could resist the temptation.

"Are your ploys to stop the Big Two from taking over the Red Ocean gaining any ground?"

"They are." Meren freely replied. "No one can stop us from uplifting the local aliens. Even if many of them are not receptive to our appeals, there are still enlightened groups such as the Red Cabal that can look past our appearances and recognize our goodwill towards them. Under the lead of these cooperative alien groups, their entire societies are about to undergo an extensive metamorphosis which will allow them to unite and form a proper resistance against the Big Two's unjustified incursion into their territories."

"It can't possibly work. The MTA and CFA are too strong. As long as they transfer more warfleets through the greater beyonder gate, no amount of uplifting will prevent the native aliens from getting crushed by superior numbers and firepower."

The cosmopolitan remained stoic. "We have accounted for that and more. Of all of the species we have studied, we understand humankind the most. We know its strengths, its weaknesses, its beliefs and most importantly its fault lines. We are hardly alone in our mission to free the human race from the hegemony of the Big Two. The mechers and fleeters have made many enemies, more than you will ever know. Together, we can topple the two giants. We only need to provide the catalyst that can trigger this inevitable rebellion!"

Pearian took a step back as he looked at the cosmopolitan in fear. "You're mad. You're utterly mad."

"In my viewpoint, you are the ones who are sick in your minds.." Mr. Meren stated. "The mechers, the fleeters, the Terrans, the Rubarthans and almost every other member of human civilization has completely fallen into the trap of human supremacy. My fellow cosmopolitans and I are the only ones who are sane enough to recognize your collective insanity. Forgive us for our actions, but we recognize that only the most extreme shocks can wake you all up in the nightmare that you have embraced."

With those final delusional words, Mr. Meren made a short bow before he excited the cell block.

The silent nunser guard left as well, leaving Pearian alone in his isolation once again.

The Yorul-Tavik scion let out a tired breath and sank onto the deck.

He experienced too much in this brief period of time. From meeting a cosmopolitan for the first time to almost getting trampled by an overgrown quadruped alien warlord, Pearian never imagined that his adventure would expose him to the darker side of reality!

Just as Pearian tried to revisit these moments to see whether he had missed anything, his left wrist began to sting.

He idly scratched his wrist and tried to fall back into his thoughts.

"Ouch."

His wrist stung harder. This was odd because there was no reason for him to feel this pain at this moment.

Though Pearian tried his best to remain nonchalant, he had actually become a lot more alert.

As he tried to do his best to control his heartbeat and other physical indicators, his wrist started to sting multiple times. Though the pain was frustrating, he couldn't care about that at the moment.

He paid close attention to the frequency and timing of these stings.

It was old-fashioned Morse code.

Pearian had been forced to learn it when he was young in order to expand his means of transmitting and receiving covert messages.

Though it was a primitive and not that sophisticated method of communication, there were times when simplicity was enough to do the job.

This was exactly such a case.

Pearian guessed that whoever was communicating with him had slipped a tiny batch of nanomachines in the alien artifact that the aliens had retrieved and brought before the Trampler of Stars.

That was the best moment for the nanomachines to depart from the recovered alien artifact and onto his body.

The violent outburst from the Trampler of Stars even created the perfect opportunity for the nanomachines to move without tripping any alarms!

Right now, Pearian tried his best to contain his excitement and confusion as he translated the message.

LORD PEARIAN YORUL-TAVIK.

RESCUE EFFORT UNDER WAY BUT MAY TAKE TIME.

IF YOU WANT TO LIVE LONG ENOUGH TO EMBRACE FREEDOM AGAIN, YOU MUST COOPERATE.

THIS IS MANDATORY: PRAY TO HELENA, THE DAUGHTER OF DEATH.

THIS IS NOT A JOKE.

IF YOU DO NOT PRAY TO OUR DEATH GODDESS, YOU WILL DIE.

YOU WILL DIE.

YOU WILL DIE.

IF YOU WANT TO LIVE, BELIEVE IN HELENA AND RECEIVE HER GRACE.

IF YOU ARE SINCERE ENOUGH, WE CAN COMMUNICATE FURTHER.

YOU WILL NOT BE ALONE.

SIGNED, GOLDEN SKULL ALLIANCE.

P.S. THESE NANOMACHINES WILL SELF-DESTRUCT AFTER REPEATING THIS MESSAGE FIVE TIMES TO REDUCE THEIR CHANCES OF EXPOSURE.

"..."