Jungle (4)
"We're ready."
"Right."
At the vice-executive's report, Dylan rose from his seat. He wore a modified suit of high-grade powered armor over his body, and a strangely shaped mask covered his face.
Silver, molded in the likeness of a human face, resembling a death mask — its name was the Unyielding Mask. It was equipment the boss had granted Dylan as a special favor, and it granted its wearer the ability to detect concealed targets along with immunity to poison and psychic powers that affected the mind.
Beyond that, the Unyielding Mask carried a tremendous advantage: it was compatible with any equipment whatsoever. Case in point — the Auto Plasma Gun currently mounted on his shoulder. Linked to the mask, it could fire automatically at enemies that conventional detection gear would never find.
Not a single thing he wore came cheap, but Dylan didn't care. The enemy they were about to face was no pushover — far from it.
When Dylan stepped out of the tent, thirty heavily armed pirates were waiting in the open ground of the campsite. Every one of them wore high-grade powered armor and carried gauss rifles as their primary weapons — and on top of that, they'd brought along portable plasma rocket launchers and Purple Spray Guns as infantry support weapons.
"Where are the Heavy Walkers?"
"Already boarded, sir."
And on top of everything else came the Heavy Walkers — thick with armor, armed with stormguns and plasma launchers.
Even across all the Spacedog syndicates, there weren't many cartels that could mobilize equipment of this caliber.
"Good. We go with the usual encirclement tactics."
"Understood."
Whenever Dylan hunted with his men, he always split them into three teams. A scouting team to search for prey, a driving team to herd the quarry or lure it out in reverse, and finally a strike team to deliver the killing blow. The scouting team numbered six including the vice-executive, ten made up the driving team, and sixteen — Dylan and the walkers included — formed the strike team. Thirty-two in all for the hunting operation.
The pirates' armor and weapons were likewise matched to their team and role. The scouting team wore light stealth-capable powered armor, while the driving and strike teams were equipped for maximum protection.
"Then let's get moving."
"Yes, sir. Everyone, board up!"
One after another, the pirates followed Dylan aboard the large transport ship. Laden with the walkers and the pirates, the transport punched up through the pre-dawn fog and climbed into the sky.
The humid air particular to the jungle flooded the transport's interior in an instant. The pirates checked over their equipment in silence, one last time. Every face had hardened with pre-battle tension, but not one of them showed a trace of fear.
The pirates of the Humanity Cartel had spent all this time battling hardened foes. They'd lost now and then — but the ones who survived to the end had always been them.
"Some unknown monster? Monster, my ass. Let's show the damn thing who the real monster is."
"Yeah!"
The pirates answered Dylan's words with a rousing shout.
Before long, the speeding transport reached the airspace above the designated landing zone.
"Vice-boss, we're almost there."
"Good. Once we land, we start the sweep around Camp 17."
As the transport prepared to set down on the broad clearing, the pirates finished their preparations — some loading their weapons, others climbing into their walkers. And the moment the landing gear touched the ground, Dylan heard something.
"Hm?"
He realized it was the sound of a landmine arming — but by then, it was already too late. A massive wall of fire swallowed everyone aboard the transport.
It's begun.
Far in the distance, a pillar of fire surged skyward. One of the landmines I'd planted in advance had gone off.
Before the enemy arrived, I'd interrogated the pirates I'd captured and learned exactly where their transport planned to land. Then I'd swept up every defensive mine the camp had been storing and packed them thick into each clearing the enemy was expected to use.
They'll be wearing powered armor, so that probably won't kill them.
Two or three casualties at most. I didn't expect heavy losses — but cutting off the enemy's means of retreat was a result worth having all on its own.
Objective achieved, I leapt down from the crown of the great tree.
Next up…
I tore through the mist-choked forest. Small creatures scattered in fright as I smashed through the young trees in my path. Around the time the humidity in the air thickened another degree, the trees thinned abruptly and a wide riverbank opened up before me.
Hundreds of creatures resembling Stegosaurus had gathered there. Plant Lizards — the same kind I'd devoured back in the space city. They looked like herbivorous dinosaurs, but they were actually classified as plant-based lifeforms.
Their ecology matched the classification: by day they drew nutrients wherever the sunlight fell generously, and by night they came down to the water like this to drink their fill of moisture.
Sorry to interrupt your rest, folks.
Right now, I needed help from my friends in the forest. I threw my head back and roared at them with everything I had.
「■-----------!」
The massive cry ripped from a body approaching twelve meters including the tail thundered across the entire forest. The flock of pterosaurs sleeping in the canopy startled and leapt above the treetops, and from the forest's depths came the warning roars of other predators wary of me.
My roar woke every Plant Lizard in the herd at once.
"Kweong?"
"Keong! Keong!"
The biggest bull, a ten-meter giant, gave a short bellow at the sight of me — and at that sound, the whole herd turned and began fleeing in the opposite direction.
Good.
I chased at their heels, swinging my tail and bellowing threats. Time and again, the bull planted himself mid-herd to try driving me off and protect his family.
Every time he did, I ignored him and feinted toward a different Plant Lizard at the rear. When he rushed to shield that one, I threatened yet another. When he moved again, I marked another still.
As the pattern repeated, the herd fled harder and harder, desperate to put any distance between us.
Keep it just like this.
My plan was to have the herd crash straight into the pirates mid-flight. A Plant Lizard has no real weapon besides the spikes on its tail — but a herd is another matter entirely. Picture hundreds of Stegosaurus-like giants, five to ten meters apiece, charging all at once. Even a heavily armored Heavy Walker could never survive being trampled under that stampede.
And I'll pick off the enemy in the confusion.
They were professionals over there, so they'd recover quickly — but my strategy hardly ended here. I still had more than a few dozen ways left to cook these bastards.
Almost there.
The auxiliary organ beneath my jaw whispered to me. A pack of clueless idiots was heading my way.
"Two dead from the scouting team, one wounded from the driving team, one walker immobile."
"…You fucking retard — you don't count the transport and the pilot? You can't even do your one job right?"
"I-I'm sorry!"
The losses Dylan's crew had suffered before the battle had even properly begun were anything but small. Especially crippling was the loss of one Heavy Walker — their main firepower. Only four remained.
Damn it all…!
The bastard skinned his kills and hung them from trees. He should have anticipated the pirates' own bombs and weapons being turned against them. It was a blunder born of assuming he'd only be fighting dangerous beasts.
"Dissolve the scouting team. Everyone left joins the driving team."
"Understood."
"Vice-boss, what do we do with the wounded?"
At another pirate's words, Dylan walked over to the injured driving-team member. The man's leg was bent at a grotesque angle — walking was clearly out of the question for a long while.
So Dylan, without a moment's hesitation, shot him dead with the Auto Plasma Gun mounted on his shoulder.
"The Humanity Cartel has no use for the wounded."
Not one of his subordinates raised a protest at what Dylan had done. Here in this hellish jungle, being left alone while injured was as good as being dead already.
The pirates salvaged tools and ammunition from the transport's wreckage and moved out toward Camp 17. When the distance to the camp had nearly run out, the vice-executive in the lead gave a hand signal.
"……"
At that signal, every pirate froze. While the others stood guard through the night-vision systems built into their helmets, Dylan activated the Unyielding Mask's concealment detection.
Violet flame flickered across the eye lenses of the mask, and the forms of every creature hiding in the forest poured into his field of vision without omission.
「Tsk. Eleven o'clock.」
At the vice-executive's words, every gun barrel swung toward eleven o'clock in unison. The Auto Plasma Gun on Dylan's shoulder tracked with its master's gaze.
"Krreong!"
"Keong!"
Beast cries echoed in from the distance. A landscape where every vista looked exactly alike, fog pressing in on all sides, the calls of unseen animals — the suffocating atmosphere sent cold sweat crawling down the pirates' necks.
As the cries swelled louder, Dylan rested his finger on the trigger, ready to intercept whatever emerged.
Then he felt his body trembling faintly.
An earthquake?
Feeling the vibration crawl up his knees from the ground below, he pressed his palm flat against the earth. What began as a faint shiver shook harder and harder.
"No way — that piece of—! Everyone, scatter!"
The instant Dylan shouted, dark-green shapes burst from the fog-shrouded undergrowth — great reptilians wreathed in shadowed green. The Plant Lizard herd, dorsal plates cresting their backs in striking patterns, charged straight into the waiting pirates.
"Gyaaaagh!"
"You retards! Break off and take cover behind the trees! Don't trade fire with them!"
At Dylan's bellow, the pirates dove behind trees and rocks. The Plant Lizards paid them no mind at all, ignoring them completely and thundering past.
"Wha—"
But the big, slow Heavy Walkers couldn't move that fast. One of the four had been firing its plasma launcher into the Plant Lizards when it missed its window to dodge.
The result: the Heavy Walker went down under the stampeding herd. Hundreds of beasts, each topping ten tons, trampling over it — no amount of heavy armor was going to save it. The cockpit, shielded by its thick plating, crumpled inward, and the pilot inside was crushed without so much as a chance to resist.
"Son of a bitch—!"
But their ordeal was far from over. A black-shelled something burst from between the Plant Lizards and hurled itself at one of the remaining walkers. Riding the full momentum of its charge, it slammed into the Heavy Walker — and its two thick horns punched clean through the walker's reinforced cockpit glass.
"There he is!"
"Open fire!"
The pirates immediately targeted the monster clinging to the walker. Armor-piercing rounds from the gauss rifles wove a wall of fire, and violet flame poured from the Purple Spray Guns.
The moment it tore its horns free, the creature slipped through their barrage and vanished into the forest on the far side.
"The walker pilot? Check, now!"
While the driving and strike teams raked the monster with fire, one of the scouting-team pirates peered into the walker's interior.
"What's the situation?"
"…He went straight through the pilot's chest. Dead center."
Hearing his subordinate's report, Dylan's face contorted savagely.
The battle hadn't even properly started, and already he'd lost three precious Heavy Walkers.
"Uu, UAAAAARGH!"
Dylan's scream tore through the forest and echoed, rattling, among the trees.
He's got to be fuming by now.
Listening to their leader shriek like a stuck pig, I couldn't help but feel good. The more my enemies lost their composure and went reckless, the better it suited me.
I expected it, but they really did bring good gear.
I'd figured the Humanity Cartel for moneyed, but their armament went well beyond the scope of ordinary pirates. The Heavy Walkers alone were mounting plasma launchers on both arms — weapons that could kill me even outside my Paragon of the Hunt form. That was why I'd marked the walkers as my top priority and gone for them first.
The regret was that I'd only managed to take out two. Ideally I'd have exploited the chaos to ambush the others too, but their counterfire was too ferocious.
And they even hauled Purple Spray Guns along.
A Purple Spray Gun was essentially a psychic flamethrower. Picture my Psychic Breath at half its power, converted into a wide dispersal pattern instead of a beam. I had psychic resistance, but that was absolutely not the kind of weapon you shrugged off while trading hits.
Two walkers remained. The pirates carrying Purple Spray Guns were still untouched. I had to finish off the walkers with the next trap I'd prepared — only then could I focus on dealing with the spray-gun crews.
Alright. Time to go, then…huh?
I was moving toward the next trap when the auxiliary organ sounded a warning. Something invisible had been detected nearby.
Invisible?
Nothing registered in my superb vision. But the auxiliary organ didn't lie to me, so I stopped and focused my senses. The smell of soil spread across the ground. Moss crusted on stone. The moisture composing the fog. The sound of trees drinking water and breathing. The smell of sweat…
Wait — sweat?
An alien scent was mixed into the air. Faint to the point that it would be nearly impossible to find without concentrating — but it was unmistakably the smell of a human under stress.
I flicked the tip of my tail toward the direction of the smell. Spines flew out and lodged squarely in something transparent. The thing collapsed to the ground, paralyzed — a man in powered armor, eyes wide with disbelief behind the translucent visor of his helmet.
Stealth gear?
It resembled the stealth powered armor worn by the sniper I'd fought back in the space city.
Well, perfect timing.
I'd prepared a different trap for this spot. But now a fine piece of equipment had dropped right into my lap — and it gave me a delicious idea.
You, my friend, have a very special role to play.
I picked up the man in the stealth armor and moved on to the next location.
The pirates who'd come into this jungle — I still had plenty more to show them.