The Mech Touch novel Chapter 686

Ves realized that Ketis spent most of her time in his office when she first boarded the Shield of Hispania. He hadn’t taken her down the workshops and the hangar bays even once. Due to that, her true opinion on mech technicians never had the chance to come up. Ves simply took for granted that the Swordmaidens ran their maintenance departments like every other outfit he had seen.

He should have known better. The frontier lived in primitive times. Humans living in the Faris Star Region devolved into simpler, brutal means of survival.

Whispers of slavery always surrounded the frontier. Ves didn’t expect for it to hit closer to home.

Even Walter’s Whalers, the presiding gang on Cloudy Curtain, didn’t treat their mech technicians that badly!

"You know what’s needed to protect yourself in the frontier?" She said with an indignant tone. She perceived his judgemental thoughts and felt challenged at his disapproving gaze. "Strength! The power to fight! Without strength, how can you defend yourself against the sandmen and the other scum that roam around the stars? The only people of value in the frontier are those who can stand up for themselves and fight."

"And those who can’t? The mech designers? The mech technicians? The ship crew? Average people?"

Ketis sneered contemptuously at the mention of noncombatants. "Those who can fight reign over those who can’t. The mech pilots rule at the top. The ones who can fight with a gun or sword in their hands are counted among the middle rung of the ladder. Those who can’t fight but master rare and valued abilities such as being able to design a mech or command a ship sit right below the warriors. As for those with lesser ability or no ability at all, they’re the dregs of the frontier."

"So let me get this right." He said, trying to parse through her words. "The mech pilots belong to the privileged class, the other warriors belong to the fighting class, the mech designers and ship captains belong to the lower class, and the people of lesser skill comprise of the underclass?"

"That’s what I said, though I never heard it put in that way."

"This is too extreme!"

Even in civilized space, plenty of people whose fighting abilities were bad earned an incredible amount of respect. From statesmen to business tycoons to scientists to artists and more, human society exhibited a broad spectrum of talent and skill that elevated them to the top.

However, according to Ketis, someone as respected as a medical doctor could barely be counted as a low-class laborer from the impoverished working-class city of Haston in Bentheim!

Instead, the ill-bred thugs and gang members that terrorized the streets and caused a lot of trouble ranked higher than these respected doctors and scientists, just because they could shoot a gun or throw a fist!

This was madness!

Ves voiced his thoughts. "How you pirates stay aloft when you treat your doctors, your technicians, your farmer, your miners and other essential vocations like dirt?"

"You think that because someone is good at something, they automatically deserve respect?" Ketis sneered at his naivete. "Teacher, without the ability to protect yourself and fight on behalf of yourself and your mates, all your smarts and abilities won’t save you from a laser beam burning your precious brain to ash. Everything you build or obtain rests on the condition that you can defend your stuff! What is the use of becoming the best mech designer in the galaxy when any group of pirates can easily point his gun at you and force you to work for their outfit?"

He paused for a bit as he became affected by the sheer amount of conviction in her voice. She wasn’t being wordy for a random reason. She truly believed in this spiel the frontier had ingrained into her from birth!

"...Is this why you keep up your sword practice so diligently? You value your status of being among the fighting class more than the wonders and mystery of working as a mech designer?"

"Mech designers are cowards who can’t be bothered to fight their own battles." She summed up her true thoughts about her vocation in the bluntest fashion possible. "The only reason they aren’t dumped with the other mech technicians in the so-called underclass you named is because the good ones help the privileged class of mech pilots fight better."

"And the rest? The lesser skilled mech designers? The mech technicians?"

"We don’t have a lot of those in the frontier. Everyone in the settlements who grows up either inherits the work of their parents or gets picked up by a pirate crew. We don’t have your schools or workplaces where mech technicians or ship engineers or any of those other difficult jobs can be raised. The only way to get them is to rob them from others that do have these people."

"I see."

Ves should have anticipated such a custom. He had already heard of the harsh conditions at the frontier before, of how it was sparsely populated, of how the settlements couldn’t sustain the technology level of modern humanity, of how schools were virtually non-existent.

If he took some time to connect the dots, then he should have figured out how the pirates truly kept their ships, mechs, space stations and other gear and industry running. No matter how well a pirate could fight, their lethality didn’t avail themselves when it was time to repair a broken FTL drive.

Still, to treat the people who fixed up their mechs, ships, weapons and other gear like slaves was a step too far to Ves. He couldn’t even imagine how the pirates managed to survive when they became completely dependent on their slaves to run their most essential gear. Weren’t they afraid of betrayal? _{fгee𝑤ebɳoveɭ.cøm}

He forcefully calmed himself down. Blowing up at Ketis benefited nobody and would only worsen their relationship. Right now, he lacked too much data to come to a decision.