Into the Dragon's Nest (3)
"Entry complete."
｢Good. The ship's defensive systems are still offline.｣
"Konjay? Are you seeing this? I've never seen a ship built out of biometal like this."
Six cyborgs, synced with their walkers, set foot inside the mysterious vessel. They hadn't realized it while cutting through the doors, but once inside, it became obvious that this ship was anything but ordinary.
Apart from the fact that both the hull and the inner walls were pitch black, the ship looked little different from a standard Cult escort frigate. Yet the bio-signal detection module mounted on the walkers told a completely different story.
A faint life response permeating the entire ship, a warmth reminiscent of living skin, humid air that no vessel in the vacuum of space had any right to have. None of it matched the characteristics of an ordinary ship.
"The Cult developed metal like this? Bizarre."
"You think they got it from the Outspacers?"
"We've got plenty of time. Let's take it slow and look around."
The interior of the ship was nothing like what they'd expected, but the cyborgs weren't worried.
The walkers they had boarded were Sentinel models — heavily armored combat walkers, each fitted with reinforced shields normally reserved for warships, powerful enough to go toe-to-toe with a Cult warband.
Since such weapons had no business aboard a mere cargo hauler, every one of these walkers had been provided by the Star Union's Population Management Department, all to ensure the cargo arrived without a hitch.
On top of that, they carried combat drones and a full arsenal to support them. They might struggle to achieve a complete victory against a Cult warband, but they were far from the losing side.
Heavily armed as they were, the cyborgs, led by Mackay, fanned out their exploration drones. The small spherical flyers vanished down the ship's corridors, heading deeper inside.
According to V's analysis, the ship carried more than seven hundred units of cargo. A Cult escort frigate of comparable class normally ran a crew of two hundred — meaning this vessel held over three times that number.
With that many people aboard, they were bound to find them quickly.
Just then, the exploration drones began transmitting footage from every corner of the hull. Studying the slowly assembling map of the ship's interior, they pressed onward.
"Hey, Mackay. Take a look at this."
"What the hell is that?"
"Looks like some kind of plant species."
Everything was so black that they'd missed it at first. Only after one of his fellow cyborgs pointed it out did Mackay realize that the corridor floor was littered with what looked like tree vines — or stems.
｢V cross-referenced it with the Starlink database. Says there's no matching biological data.｣
"Not Outspacer, not anything else. What is this stuff?"
"I'll collect a sample."
The cyborg piloted the walker's work arm to tear a stem loose from the corridor wall. Black slime oozed in a slow trickle from the severed stem.
"...Thank god these walkers are sealed. If we were in light walkers, we'd be puking our guts out right now."
"Aren't your insides fully modded already?"
"I'd still puke like crazy."
"Cut the chatter. Sample's in, so let's move."
"Yeah. Just log it in the database first."
And so they advanced, gathering data as they went. The corridors grew steadily narrower until the top of the walkers all but scraped the ceiling.
And still, not a single Cultist in sight. The only living things they had seen so far were the vines sprawling in every direction and the spores expelling what looked like filthy slime.
The strangeness didn't end there.
"Next junction, we go right... huh?"
"What is it?"
"There's supposed to be a fork right here."
"What are you talking about? This corridor's dead straight."
"The map's acting weird. Everyone check yours."
At Mackay's words, each of them pulled up the maps their drones had compiled. What they saw in the virtual displays made them freeze.
"The maps are all different."
What if the ship's structure was shifting in real time? Of the six maps their drones had constructed, not a single section matched.
"Is something wrong with the drones? Signal jamming, maybe?"
"Jamming would cause malfunctions, not... this."
"Konjay, you seeing this? The situation's looking bad."
｢Damn... let's just head back to the ship first....｣
The moment the cyborgs began to retreat at Konjay's order, the ship lurched violently.
"What was that?"
"Hey, Konjay. What's going on out there?"
｢The ship is mov— zzT— caution, zzz—t｣
"Konjay? Konja—agh!"
"Gah—?!"
When a powerful shriek of static burst from the linked walkers' receivers, the cyborgs hastily cut their comms. Mackay rebooted the communication system and tried to reach Konjay again, but nothing came through but noise.
"Damn it. Comms system's fried."
The link between the walkers was perfectly fine — it was only contact with the cargo ship that had gone dead.
Lost contact with the hauler. A ship with an impossible, shifting structure. And corridors filled not with people, but with strange spores and creeping stems.
Somewhere deep in the cyborgs' minds, long-buried emotions began to slither to the surface.
The emotion called fear.
"Everyone stay calm. We head back to the shuttle."
The cyborgs began retracing their steps. Mackay took point, doing his best to steady his anxious comrades.
The heavy thud-thud of the walkers echoed through the corridors. Each time those footfalls shook the metal walls, the black stems sprawling dizzily across the hull twitched as if they were alive.
There was no way that was actually happening, but watching it, Mackay couldn't shake the feeling that the ship itself was some kind of living creature.
The innards of some colossal beast — and the cyborgs gathered here were already swallowed, already being digested.
What kind of nonsense is that?
Mackay forced the thought away. Now more than ever, he needed to keep his head on straight.
But cruel reality trampled his efforts without mercy.
"Wh-what the fuck is this?!"
"......"
Where a dead-straight corridor had greeted them on the way in, a fork now waited instead. One cyborg, plunging into panic, screamed out a curse-laced shriek.
Mackay even tried disconnecting from his synced walker to check whether his own eyes were deceiving him. His hopes were in vain — the fork was still there, waiting for them.
"Damn it, now what?"
"Send the drones out ag—"
"What's the point? The maps'll just change again!"
"Calm down! Then how about we skip the corridors entirely and just smash through the walls?"
"Smash the walls?"
"The Sentinels have their own oxygen supply. We can survive in open space. We get outside and walk to the shuttle."
It was risky, but not a bad plan. Better than wandering through a ship whose interior rearranged itself at every turn.
The muzzles of the stormguns mounted on the walkers swung toward the corridor wall. Then a terrifying volume of fire poured into the alloy plating.
By the time the spores and branches clinging to the wall had been burned to black ash, a gaping hole had opened. A new corridor waited on the other side, but the cyborgs didn't falter.
Fuck it. Let's see who wins — you or us.
After blasting through wall after wall, they finally reached what they'd been hoping for: the outer hull.
"We just need to get through here!"
"Finally!"
Depleted uranium shells, cradled in their magazines along with the cyborgs' last hope, hammered into the wall.
They fired until the overheating stormguns forced them to stop — and at last, they broke through to the outside.
But the scene beyond the outer wall was not the reality they had imagined.
"Huh?"
The first thing they saw was the hull of a ship. A long, rectangular shape gleaming a dull gray — a familiar silhouette. It was the cargo ship they'd arrived on.
And that cargo ship was now torn clean in two. An enormous pincer claw was gliding through the void, methodically chopping the hauler into bite-sized chunks.
Hundreds of containers spilled from the sundered hull into open space. Long tendrils shaped like serpents harvested the floating debris one by one.
Every cyborg who witnessed the scene arrived at the same conclusion.
Their cargo ship — right now.
Was being devoured by this ship, which had turned into a monster.
Just as I expected — clear strengths, and clear weaknesses.
The shattered remains of a ship drifted before me.
The manpower supply ship, several times larger than the frigate I had seized, had been utterly obliterated by my massive pincer claw, stretching over thirty meters.
The raw destructive power easily surpasses my normal state, but... there's one serious drawback.
When I grew pincers, the Harvester's Jaw, or a tail out of the ship's hull, my movement speed dropped. And the manifested body parts themselves were agonizingly slow.
If that ship had been an actual warship instead of a hauler — or if it had reacted even a moment faster while I was closing in — slicing it apart this cleanly would have been impossible.
Good thing No. 26 got stronger. It comes in handy at times like this.
Having absorbed the Sea Demon's power, No. 26's psychic strength had grown beyond all comparison. And this Cult frigate I had commandeered was built from Moonsilver alloy — a metal that amplified the effects of psychic power.
Those two factors combined allowed No. 26 to unveil a brand-new ability.
An EMP made of psychic power.
No. 26 had focused psychic energy intensely on a single point, creating a field that disabled electronic equipment. EMP-type skills existed in the game too, but every one of them was incapable of distinguishing friend from foe.
In other words, No. 26's technique — disabling only the supply ship while leaving our own untouched — was an original ability, hers alone.
It only lasts a few minutes at best, though.
Which had been more than enough time for me to close the distance to the supply ship.
The moment the crew saw a colossal maw and pincer claw sprouting from my frigate, they'd scrambled to put distance between us — but it was already too late. Mid-retreat, the supply ship was caught in my pincer and split straight down the hull.
This fighting style might work well in fleet engagements too.
Against small numbers, this method could clean things up easily enough.
Of course, against a fleet of dozens of ships, the psychic vortex wouldn't cut it, so I'd need to devise something else.
Still, the eating part is conveniently simple.
The colossal jaw that had erupted from the frigate's bow swallowed the cargo containers pouring from the wreck whole. The Harvester's Jaw — manifested from Moonsilver alloy and living tissue — crushed the containers and absorbed their contents.
In an instant, the Genetic Essences of hundreds of people seeped into my body, and multiple text boxes announcing the Predation Effect appeared one after another. These people had been anesthetized inside frozen capsules; they wouldn't have felt any terror of death, any pain at all.
Not all of them, though.
There were those who tried to flee from me in desperation, and those who dared to resist me. For them, a peaceful death would be harder to come by.
From the exploding wreck, a handful of shuttles and a swarm of combat drones burst free. The drones, armed with lightweight stormguns, unleashed a hail of fire in my direction.
Meanwhile, the shuttles tried to run. Using the drones as decoys while they slipped away, no doubt.
Like hell I'm letting them escape.
Dozens of Erosion Tentacles surged from my body, fused as it was with the hull. Like the many-headed serpents of myth, the tentacles swarmed after the shuttles' tails.
The shuttles thrashed and burned every thruster they had to break free. But the tentacles blanketing the space around them were simply too many.
In the end, not a single shuttle escaped. All of them were caught in my grasp.
The long, slender Erosion Tentacles coiled around the shuttles and shattered the alloy glass enclosing their cockpits. Then they tore out the cyborgs fused with their craft — whole.
A female cyborg, as small as the distant stars, wailed in silence. Out here in the void, no sound carried at all, but I could guess what she was screaming.
Spare me, I'm sorry — something like that, probably.
Sorry. Can't do that.
They had come after me first. If I'd been the weak one, they would have killed me without a second thought.
They had made the wrong choice, in the wrong place.
And so, one by one, the cyborgs aboard their shuttles became nutrients for my Erosion Tentacles.
Hm?
Just then, I felt eyes on me.
I diverted a fraction of my attention from the supply ship's remains and scanned everything happening inside and outside my body.
When did these guys crawl out?
The six walkers that had infiltrated my body had torn open my flank and emerged, gaping at the aftermath I had created. The fully visored heavy walkers hid their faces, but they had to be thoroughly rattled.
Should I clean them up too?
I issued a command to the Erosion Tentacles nearest them: capture all the walkers.
"■■■! ■■ ■■!"
"■■ ■!"
The moment the walkers saw the tentacles lunging at them, they shrieked and scrambled back inside my body. Only one walker in the rear failed to dodge my tentacle and was seized.
"■ ■■ ■■■! ■■!"
The walker squirmed in the tentacle's grip. It tried to sever my Erosion Tentacle with the stormgun mounted on its arm, but the resistance was meaningless — I had plenty more tentacles where that came from.
In the end, the struggling walker was chewed apart by the tentacle, torn to pieces from end to end.
Five remain.
I could have reshaped the ship's structure right now and crushed them all to death, but I decided against it.
A human or two should be fine to use with the Human-Faced Beast.
I'd already extracted all the information I needed from the Cultists. Introducing some new friends to them wouldn't be a bad idea either.
And Adhai's been bored lately anyway.
Aside from occasionally helping set our course, Adhai had been passing the time playing with No. 26 or running hunting drills with the Mother of the Sky.
The Mother of the Sky's tutelage in particular had sharpened the young Gallagon's command of her Super Acceleration and Purple Lightning to a whole new level of finesse.
Maybe I'll leave this batch to Adhai.
I sent a thought-wave carrying my will to her, then turned my attention back to the feast.
Even as the manpower supply ship emptied, space itself remained utterly, soundlessly still.