Dark Omen (3)
The ship's hangar, always a quiet place, buzzed with activity as the maintenance crew swarmed its floor. Over the past few days, their workload had ballooned so dramatically that even doubling their numbers wouldn't have been enough. Orders had come down from the top: every carrier-based fighter on board was to be serviced, top to bottom.
"Hey, Scott. It's dinner time. Let's go eat already."
"Yeah, just let me finish this one thing."
The blond man called over to the dark-haired man working beside the fighter. The one called Scott set down his wrench and climbed to his feet.
"How much you got left?"
"Enough that I'll be here till midnight."
"Ugh, shit."
The two of them headed for the cafeteria along with the rest of the crew.
"I still don't get it."
"Get what?"
"What are we even supposed to be fighting? Why tear every plane apart like this?"
Fincher, the blond man, grimaced as he chewed on synthetic meat with the texture of a rubber eraser. "Scott, you little shit. Do you have to talk about work while we're eating?"
"Come on, though, am I wrong? Think about it, Fincher."
Here we go again.
Fincher sighed at the sight of Scott launching into yet another of his strange conspiracy theories, the same routine he never seemed to tire of.
"What's it this time?"
"I heard something, all right? Word is the brass wants to catch a Metallic Gremlin."
"A Metallic Gremlin?"
Fincher snorted at the sheer absurdity of it. "Dude. If we ran into a Metallic Gremlin, we'd get torn apart in seconds. The Capital suits upstairs are dicks, sure, but they're not idiots. They wouldn't fight one — they'd run for it."
"Hear a man out, will you? Here's the thing — a Metallic Gremlin is already on the ship. And the higher-ups know it. They're going out of their minds trying to catch it."
"What?"
"You've noticed the weird smell in the air lately, right? They say that's Gremlin stink."
"That's the most ridiculous—"
Fincher shook his head hard.
It was true that a strange odor had been drifting through the ship these past few days, just as Scott said. But if the air really was being contaminated, the ship's AI would have reported it ages ago. Not once had Fincher heard a single word about an air-quality problem.
"Just listen, all right? I know a guy on the kitchen crew, and he says people have been disappearing from the ship one or two at a time since last week."
"Ha. What kind of bullshit is that."
He'd hoped for better, but no — it was the usual. Listening to Scott's nonsense just left Fincher exasperated.
The ship carried 222 souls in total. Hardly a large crew. One person vanishing a day? There was no way nobody would notice. And did he really think the people in charge were fools? Subordinates going missing and them just sitting on their hands? The team-leader-grade Capital men were bastards, like Fincher always said, but they weren't incompetents.
Fincher was about to write the whole thing off as Scott's delusion when someone else cut into the conversation. Cameron, sitting beside them.
"I heard something similar. Word from Material Management is that their team leader went missing."
"Seriously?"
"Yeah. The cargo bay caretaker got a promotion out of it — he's acting team leader now."
"See? See, Fincher? I told you!"
Scott lit up like a little kid now that he had a witness. Fincher's face, meanwhile, twisted as if he'd bitten into something rotten.
"Fine. Say people really are disappearing. Then why are the bigwigs doing nothing about it?"
"Because they know everything, and they're covering it up so the crew doesn't panic."
"See! It's the Metallic Gremlin, just like I said!"
"Gremlin or no Gremlin. If they're the ones making people disappear, what does overhauling the fighters have to do with anything?"
Cameron shrugged. "Couldn't tell you. All I heard was that people were going missing."
"Uh... running drills to tighten discipline, maybe?"
"Tsk, you absolute goober. That's so you."
Fincher clicked his tongue at the sight of Scott scratching the back of his head with a vacant look on his face.
Dinner ended, and the maintenance crew trickled back to their stations.
Time crawled past, and before anyone noticed, night had fallen. The crew departed one by one, and the vast hangar grew quiet — as if all the bustle from earlier had been a lie. Only Scott and Fincher remained, wrestling with a single fighter in a corner.
"Scott. I'm heading out to grab some late-night snacks. What do you want?"
"I'm good. But if they've got synthetic booze, bring me some."
Scott was under the fighter, loosening bolts with his wrench. The silence around them was dead enough to suggest everyone else had already gone home.
"Scott."
"Yeah?"
He was in the middle of swapping out a part when someone called his name.
"Cameron?"
"Come over here for a sec."
"I'm right in the middle of something."
"It'll only take a second."
Scott was annoyed beyond words — swamped with work, and Cameron calling him around like this. He promised himself he'd make the man buy him a whole round of drinks if this wasn't important, and slid out from under the fighter. In the wide-open space, he saw only the fighter and toolboxes. No Cameron anywhere.
"You call me over and then just walk off?"
"Over here. Come on, hurry."
Cameron's voice popped out at precisely the right moment, as if guiding him along.
"The maintenance room?"
What an obnoxious friend. Grumbling, Scott trudged toward the maintenance room.
When he arrived, the lights were off.
I'm sure I heard him in here?
He was tilting his head, wondering if he'd imagined it, when Cameron's voice drifted out from the depths of the room.
"Scott. Over here."
"Why are you sitting in the dark?"
"I'm looking for something. Come on, give me a hand."
Scott flipped the switch on the wall, but nothing happened. It must have been shut off from the central control room — too late at night.
He had no choice but to pull the flashlight from his belt.
Its beam cut through the pitch-black maintenance room. Leaning on that thin circle of light, he stepped inside.
The darkened room made for grim company. Steel shelves crammed with parts and tools towered on every side, so overloaded that the slightest jostle threatened to bring the whole lot crashing down. The floor was littered with secretly smoked cigarette butts and dried stains of spilled synthetic liquor — filthy in the extreme.
And the place reeked. Machine oil clinging to the tools, lead fumes from the soldering irons, the unwashed sweat of men who worked long shifts — a whole menagerie of foul odors soaked into every inch of the space.
But within that familiar, disgusting smell, Scott caught something alien.
What is that smell?
The man handled metal parts every single day of his life, and that was exactly why he noticed. Mixed into the air of the maintenance room was something like the reek of raw iron — and yet not.
"Where the hell are you?"
"Over here. This way."
Something was wrong. The voice that had come from the doorway just moments ago was now coming from the far end of the room.
Following it, he threaded his way between the steel shelves. Like the lightless void of space itself, the room showed him absolutely nothing without the flashlight.
He was walking by the glow in his hand when he nearly went down.
"What the—shit?!"
Scott had stepped on a loose screw rolling across the floor. As he staggered and caught himself, an important realization dawned on him.
Even with a flashlight in hand, the darkness kept him from seeing more than a few feet ahead. Then what was Cameron doing in this blackness?
The conversation from the cafeteria floated back to him.
A Metallic Gremlin prowling the ship. And the missing people.
"C-Cameron?"
His voice shook without his permission.
No answer came.
The moment Scott turned to run, it lunged out of the dark right in front of him.
—
"Scott?"
Fincher returned with the snacks and found no one near the fighter. That struck him as odd.
Scott was a bit of an oddball, sure, but he was scrupulous about his work. The man did not walk off with a job half done.
"Scott!"
He shouted his colleague's name, and it echoed through the silent hangar.
"Over here."
As if in answer, the voice drifted back from somewhere across the floor.
"Where are you? I've got the booze."
"I'm in the maintenance room. Come here, would you?"
"The maintenance room? Why the hell are you in there?"
"I'm looking for something. Help me out."
Correction to the earlier record: Scott was good at his job, but in his private life he was an insufferable nuisance. Fincher grumbled his way to the maintenance room.
"Sitting in the dark? What are you doing?"
"I've got stuff to move. Give me a hand."
"Ugh, you useless bastard."
Flashlight raised, Fincher stepped into the black maintenance room. Past the shelves, a faint glow flickered in the distance.
The light of Scott's flashlight.
"Hey, what are you even do—huh?"
Scott wasn't there. Only his abandoned flashlight lay where its master should have been.
"Why is this just lying here?"
Fincher picked up Scott's flashlight. He swept the beam around, but there was no sign of the man anywhere.
Then something wet struck the back of his neck.
"What the—?"
A leak? He reached back and rubbed his nape. Whatever had dripped from above was hot and sticky.
He shone the flashlight onto his palm.
"...Blood?"
His hand was soaked scarlet.
The liquid falling from the ceiling was blood.
As the realization landed, he swallowed hard. The flashlight trembled violently in his grip — and rose.
It was there.
A creature a full meter long clung to the ceiling, Scott held fast in its grasp.
It looked like something out of myth — a Galagon, the Dragon of Space. A dragon of legend, right now devouring Scott alive.
The dragon reaching out its claw toward Fincher was the last thing he ever saw.
From that day on, no one ever saw the maintenance team's three men again.
—
Who knew I had a talent for fishing?
I sat in the darkened maintenance room, chewing thoughtfully on a human leg. Its owner lay sprawled nearby, his neck torn out along with his spine.
"Voice Mimicry. What a remarkably convenient thing."
From my mouth flowed the voice of the leg's former owner — a man named Fincher.
Voice Mimicry. Among the creatures the Material Management Team Leader had tried to smuggle was the larva of something called a Red Worm.
The Red Worm was a colossal subterranean earthworm that lived only on desert-type planets, and it possessed an extraordinarily rare trait: the ability to mimic the voices of other living creatures. It had supposedly evolved that way to hunt prey effectively in its barren, food-scarce environment.
I had eaten the Red Worm larva stored in the cargo containers, and by luck acquired its Genetic Essence. Thanks to that, a highly sophisticated vocal organ had taken up residence in my throat.
The drawback is that my version is a downgrade from the original.
Unlike a true Red Worm, I couldn't imitate just any voice. Only the voice of the most recent creature I had eaten. Mimicking Scott or Cameron, whom I'd consumed before, was out of the question.
And I couldn't manage complex sentences — only short phrases or single words. Stretch the speech even a little and growling bled into it, producing a sound that was neither human nor monster.
Still, it's a good enough ability.
Hearing a gruff adult man's voice come out of my mouth instead of a low guttural rumble felt strange — uncanny, somehow, and oddly fascinating.
I tested the voice a few times, then turned my mind to the next target.
Tomorrow I should eat someone from the kitchen crew. Pierre, was it? He doesn't seem particularly close to Fincher, but that shouldn't matter.
Even a total stranger can't help but respond when you call his name. Tomorrow's dinner would be the man called Pierre.
Not that he'd ever know — that it was his own pointless gossip to Scott that had signed his death warrant.
Meal finished, I emerged onto the runway and slipped into a ventilation duct along the wall.
Should I stop by for a moment before heading to the nest?
Crawling through the ductwork, I turned off toward the Research Laboratory — to see the Bubble Amoeba, the one I called No. 26.
As I drew near the lab, her wavelength reached me.
"Hello."
The tentacles at the back of my skull hummed with a low buzz.
I'd always assumed the psychic organ was completely useless. I'd been wrong. Ever since this cluster of tentacles had grown in, I'd been able to commune with the creatures who spoke in wavelengths.
Back when this was a game, I'd chased only efficient play, and had never once paid attention to traits with small, incremental effects like this one.
Not that I'd ever have bothered picking up a trait for talking to Bubble Amoebas.
That was the sort of perk meant for Bubble Amoeba fanatics, not for me. Still, she had greeted me first, so it was my turn to answer. I focused my awareness on the back of my skull. The tentacles writhed, gathering invisible energy.
[Zzt-zzt-zzt (Hello)]
"Hello. Hungry again today. Food."
Being able to talk to her without seeing her had taught me something new.
Her vocabulary has grown since last time.
As far as I knew, Bubble Amoebas weren't a species that evolved. Once they reached adulthood, they simply grew larger — no change that could be called evolution at all.
But she was different. She was pushing past her species' limits, conveying thoughts of impossible complexity.
And apparently she was studying on her own somehow, because every time we met, her language skills had leaped forward.
They said she was being given Psionium trials. Could it have effects I don't know about?
I couldn't tell whether it was the Psionium or simply something special about her. Either way, her getting smarter did me no harm. I decided to stop worrying about it.
[Zzt-zzt zzt-zzt-zzt (Sorry. Food difficult today)]
"What's difficult?"
[Zzt-zzt-zzt-zzt-zzt (Means cannot give)]
A sullen wave of emotion washed over from her side.
I could hardly blame her. For a creature subjected to experiments all day, every day, the calorie bars I brought were her one small pleasure.
Ever since she grew, I haven't been able to bring her any.
Laboratory security was now the tightest on the ship, second only to the reactor and the Cooling Room. After the research team leader vanished, the Security Team Leader had cranked the lab's defenses to maximum.
Which meant the ventilation passages above the lab — safe until now — had become dangerous ground. Vibration sensors carpeted the lab interior; one careless movement down there and I'd be caught in an instant.
In a situation like this, there was nothing to be done but talk to her from a distance, like this.
[Zzt-zzt-zzt (You okay today?)]
"Hurts. Pain."
Since Kisaragi's death, the Psionium experiments had stalled. Her staff ran trials daily, but they were no longer pumping in the reckless quantities they once had.
That didn't mean she was fine, of course. Even in small doses, Psionium was a poison to living tissue.
[Zzt (Leaving)]
"Hello. Bye bye."
Tsk. Hang in there.
It wasn't that I had no desire to help her — but the risk was far too great. Even with a powerful new trait in my arsenal, going to all-out war with this ship's crew was impossible. I would need to reach at least the Sub-adult stage before a guerrilla campaign became viable. As a Sub-adult, I could wipe out even a squad in powered armor without breaking a sweat.
The problem is how harsh the Sub-adult conditions are. I had to kill ten members of each of two distinct intelligent races—the playable races—and consume their genes. The only race aboard this ship that qualified was humanity, which made Sub-adult evolution impossible here.
There are pirates around, but whether that pans out is anyone's guess.
Whether I could evolve depended on which cartel the Space Dogs in this sector belonged to. Some cartels were made up of a single species — if I ran into a human cartel, they'd be worthless to me.
Days at most.
Judging by the mood on the ship, an encounter with the Space Dogs wasn't far off. The very maintenance crew I'd devoured had been working the fighters through the night, after all.
I was on my way to the nest when a group of people passed beneath me. Soldiers — and the Crisis Management Team Leader.
"I have business to attend to. Dismissed."
"Sir!"
Parting from the soldiers, the Crisis Management Team Leader walked off alone toward some destination.
I do need to eat him eventually.
He looked like a difficult target, so I'd put it off — but this was a lucky break. Even if I didn't take him down today, learning his weaknesses or daily patterns in advance was worth something.
I tailed the Crisis Management Team Leader.
His destination was the fitness center. Inside, soldiers and crew were hard at work sculpting their bodies.
Huh? He came here to work out?
He changed clothes in a flash, sat down at a weight machine, and threw himself into strength training. I watched for a full ten minutes to see if anything would change. All he did was diligently pump iron.
Tch. I'll go find someone else.
There was no need to watch my prey exercise. I was about to move on when he set the weights down and pulled something from his pocket.
A phone?
A miniature comm unit shaped like an earpiece. He cradled it in his hand and glanced around. Satisfied that no one was paying him any attention, he fitted it into his ear and resumed exercising.
Intrigued, I trained my auxiliary organs on him.
"...business...contact... This is...near C-08..."
The fragmented voice grew steadily clearer.
"Yes. Proceeding as planned. Yes. Yes. Pardon?"
Plans, huh?
"The Family has issued orders? Ah — no, of course not. How could I possibly question them?"
For an instant, bewilderment flickered across the team leader's eyes — then vanished.
"Well, it works out either way. Miss Kisaragi has already been eliminated. The ship will arrive at C-08 on schedule. Yes. Captain Yuseong's orders have all been recorded."
What?
"Yes. Yes. It's quite all right. Everything is in service of the Family — no, of Master Jungwoo Yujin's will. I'm prepared to bear it. Yes. Understood. Then."
Call ended, he buried himself in his workout again. On the surface, the very picture of a fitness fanatic. Inside my skull, my wariness of him climbed to its highest possible level.
And here I took him for a big dumb bear. He's a fox all the way through.
I already knew the Crisis Management Team Leader had nudged the captain toward making contact with the Space Dogs. But judging by what I'd just heard, there might be far more schemes layered underneath that one.
Whether any of it would turn out to my benefit — or my ruin — remained to be seen.
From the darkness, I watched him in silence.