Unwelcome Guest (2)

I had infiltrated the ship and even secured a safe spot to work from.

So the question was — what next?

'I have to wreck the FTL engine.'

This was a warship belonging to the Star Union fleet. Once the battle ended, it would return to its home space station for repairs — and if that happened, everyone hiding in here would be finished for good.

'But if the FTL engine breaks down, the ship can't move at all.'

The FTL engine was the crowning achievement of super-science, and its astonishing performance came hand in hand with extreme sensitivity. A damaged FTL engine was every bit as dangerous as an overloaded reactor — because it could drop a ship in mid-jump somewhere entirely unforeseen.

'If you're unlucky, you can even fall straight into the heart of a star.'

In the game, a failed FTL jump that ended inside a star meant instant death, no exceptions. Unique-grade equipment, special traits, a top-tier ship — none of it mattered. I had died that way myself once, forcibly warped into a star's interior while fighting a Vortex One.

'Reality probably works the same way.'

An engine malfunction dropping a ship into a star mid-transit was an extreme scenario, but it wasn't impossible. No fleet would move recklessly unless it had already lost.

I pressed my secondary organ against the wall inside the waste processing bay. With a series of intermittent vibrations, I could feel a powerful flow of energy running along the ship's flank.

With the forward rockets and bow section heavily damaged, this ship was in no condition to rejoin the battle. It would most likely pull back to the rear of the fleet and hang back, dodging the Cultists' attacks.

'No telling when the fighting ends, though….'

Probably not long.

'That cyborg flagship I saw earlier.'

It was more than three times the size of any other ship in the fleet, and I recognized the model at a glance.

'Z2-class heavy battlecruiser. It looks like it's had some modifications, but that's what it is.'

Every Star Union battlecruiser carried ship-to-ship torpedoes as standard armament.

'Gremlin Torpedoes.'

Among the Star Union's inventions, these were among the most formidable — a kind of nanomachine torpedo that, true to its name, devoured nothing but metal. And the Gremlin Torpedoes loaded on the flagship had received a special modification: they could be designated to target specific types of metal.

A Gremlin Torpedo set to hunt Moonsilver, for instance, would not stop until it had devoured every trace of Moonsilver near the point of impact.

And there was only one power in this system that built its ships out of Moonsilver.

'They can fire them right into the middle of a free-for-all with zero risk of friendly fire.'

The only drawbacks were the exorbitant unit cost and a vulnerability to EMP.

'But the Cult can't use EMP.'

Unless there were a psychic as skilled as No. 26 — or a Cult Prophet — ordinary shields stood little chance of stopping a Gremlin Torpedo.

'They'll wait for the right moment and shoot it at the Imperial Carrier.'

The moment those torpedoes flew, the battle would be over. Which meant I had to deal with the engine before then.

Target locked. Time to move.

[Zz zzz zzzzz zzz (I'm going out for a bit. I'll be back.)]

｢Where? I wanna come too.｣

｢Me.｣ ｢Together.｣

｢Both of you, wait. Morph-hak… ahem, B-Big Baby has something to take care of.｣

｢Take care of?｣

[Zzz zzzzzz zzzz (Just going to look around a little. You two play while I'm gone.)]

｢Okay! Come back soon!｣

｢Me.｣ ｢Bye-bye.｣

｢…….｣

Watching the Mother of the Sky squirm in embarrassment at the words that had slipped out of her own mouth was genuinely entertaining — but I didn't have time for it. I told the kids to rest up and crawled out of the waste processing bay.

Any other time, I would have moved together with them. Not this time.

'This has to be done in secret.'

Rampaging together as one big, glorious family could wait until our safety was guaranteed.

Once out of the processing bay, I traveled with my body clamped upside-down against the ceiling. The corridors were crawling with cameras, but not one of them registered my presence.

The fur hanging downward thanks to my inverted posture — that was the doing of my Fur of the Unknown Creature trait.

'If a cyborg had looked up right then, it would've gotten quite the scare, huh?'

The trait's stealth effect was supposed to fool detection devices, skills, and tracking abilities — so an ordinary cyborg would still be able to see me just fine. Androids and drones, I wasn't so sure about.

'I'll experiment with that later.'

For now, avoiding encounters was the wiser play. I hugged the ceiling with all eight of my limbs, picking my way along routes where I sensed no movement from androids or drones.

One stroke of luck: most of the drones and androids had apparently been committed to repairing the ship, and there were few robots patrolling the corridors.

I was drawing closer to the engine room when I felt the movement of something large in the distance.

'A Worker?'

But I revised that thought almost immediately — the closer it came, the more certain I was that it was no Worker.

To avoid running into it, I peeled off at a junction and concealed myself against the corridor wall.

Before long, a spider-like machine came into view down the corridor. It had a human head and torso, but where its arms and legs should have been, six mechanical limbs jutted out instead.

'A Screamer?'

｢Kuuuh｣ ｢Kuuuh｣

The hideously deformed Screamer wheezed ragged breaths through the tube jammed into its mouth. Every time the tubes plastered across its face and back sloshed and injected their chemical solution, fresh sweat streamed ceaselessly down the creature's body.

It swept its bloodshot eyes across the corridor once, then scuttled off somewhere on its six emaciated metal-bone legs.

'So that's where the smell of sweat was coming from.'

I'd assumed it was from half-modified cyborg soldiers sweating under stress. Never expected a Screamer.

The Screamers were a creature that laid the developers of Space Survival's tastes perfectly bare. To summarize the lore behind those grotesque bio-machines: they were essentially penal units, like the punishment battalions once run by old communist states.

Instead of sending its worst criminals and dissidents to prison, the Star Union converted its cyborgs into Screamers. Waste not, want not — even a person useless to society wasn't allowed to simply rot when they could be melted down and recast as a weapon of war.

Once you became a Screamer, every shred of control over your own body was stripped away, leaving nothing but your mind trapped inside a puppet. No wonder their nickname was 'biological drones.'

Word was that once your sentence was served, you'd be restored to an ordinary cyborg — but in practice, almost nobody survived rolling through the battlefield long enough to earn their release.

'Screamers aboard an elite fleet. Now that's a surprise.'

From the Machine Council's perspective, every last one of them was a criminal, so they were rarely assigned to fine fleets like this one. ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠I'd heard the Star Union's elite forces did field one unit composed entirely of Screamers, but this ship wasn't part of it.

'Screamers are a nuisance of an enemy. Best keep my guard up.'

Like androids, they knew no fear, and their ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠combat power was beyond anything a combat android could match. The moment they spotted an enemy, they'd clamp onto it like a rabid dog and chew until it couldn't run. In a phase like this one — infiltrating and hunting the crew one by one — they were nothing but a headache.

After that, I confirmed two more of them on the move. Since the Screamers made regular patrols, I had to take a long, winding detour toward the engine room.

The detour cost me more time than I'd planned, but it wasn't time wasted.

'Think of it as memorizing the ship's layout in advance.'

The security level of the communications facility, the location of the auxiliary terminals that displayed thruster output — I catalogued every piece of information I'd need when the time came to crack this ship open.

Only after finishing my circuit — gathering intel while dodging patrols — did I finally arrive at the deck above the engine room.

Why one deck above instead of the engine room itself? The reason was simple.

'Going straight in is too dangerous.'

This was a warship, and the security guarding its engine room dwarfed that of the research vessel I'd roamed back in my Hatchling days.

The most vital facility on the entire ship was held by ten heavily armed androids and twenty combat drones. They stood relentless, round-the-clock vigil, ready to turn any unauthorized intruder into a honeycomb of bullet holes.

On top of that, the corridors leading to the engine room were blanketed in sensors of every conceivable kind.

The Fur of the Unknown Creature could indeed slip past cameras, but it was surely not omnipotent. Motion sensors that detected vibrations would catch me.

So I had no intention of assaulting the engine room directly.

'I'll destroy the other things the engine needs to run instead.'

The engine room's cooling system, say. Or the power circuits feeding it from the reactor.

I swiveled the corridor cameras out of position, then dropped to the floor. Landing soundlessly, I pressed myself flat and lowered the secondary organ beneath my jaw against the metal panel of the deck.

From beyond the dark-gray inner wall came an intense heat — and a vibration, shallow, but stronger than anywhere else I'd sampled.

'Roughly here, then.'

I'd just turned the cameras back around; this stretch of corridor wasn't being recorded. Extending my sharp claws, I began carving into the metal panel — slowly, carefully, in case the noise summoned someone.

Before long, a hole opened in the plate, revealing a tangled nest of wires and tubes inside. I opened my jaws wide over the opening.

'A corroded circuit isn't so easy to fix, is it?'

The acid fungal glands nestled between my throat and esophagus activated. A moment later, masses of highly acidic fungus came pouring out of my mouth.

"Phew."

Watching the visual feed streaming in through the ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠cables jacked into his ship, Keynes-Q let out a long sigh.

At the center of the screen sat what used to be an Imperial Carrier.

The Cult's prized absolute weapon — the Imperial Carrier Judge of Gormos 03 — was sinking, riddled by a Gremlin Torpedo.

"That was a brutal fight. Truly."

As the free-for-all dragged on, at some point the Imperial Carrier had begun hanging back. It must have realized what was coming — that the Union would finish it off with a Gremlin Torpedo. The other Cult warships had thrown themselves into screening the carrier, doing everything in their power to keep it from taking a torpedo hit.

'More of a nuisance than I expected, that's for sure.'

The Cult warships had defended so desperately, sacrificing themselves in the process, that even the flagship had struggled to get its Gremlin Torpedoes into firing position.

"Tch. Should've run while you had the chance, you idiots."

When the Cultists proved more troublesome than anticipated, Sanada-F, the acting fleet commander of the Nemea Fleet, chose a strategy that was Star Union to its core.

He had his own ships take torpedo hits, coating them in nanomachines — and then hurled them in a suicide charge at the Imperial Carrier.

Ten-odd ships were lost in the process, but thanks to them, the Imperial Carrier fell victim to the Gremlin Torpedoes' nanomachines after all.

The result was the footage Keynes-Q was watching now.

And just like that, the short battle was over. Keynes-Q had no idea how enormous the shockwaves from this battle's outcome would prove to be.

'Not that any of it is my problem.'

Every decision came down from the exalted members of the Machine Council. At most, the battle might make things mildly annoying for Sanada-F, the acting fleet commander. Or for him, maybe.

"Order the repair drones back and prep the FTL engine."

｢Acknowledged.｣

Ship 98's computer relayed Keynes-Q's orders. In the meantime, he pulled up the data on the 'special machinery' stored aboard his vessel.

'Ugh. Why did the new-model Screamer trials have to happen on my ship?'

By rights, every Screamer in the Star Union fell under the management of Pyra Eleven, the android Supreme Councilor of the Machine Council.

Ordinarily, that office would have handled all Screamer testing on its own — but this time, circumstances were different. Word had come down from above: run a trial to see whether Screamers could operate smoothly alongside ordinary soldiers aboard a warship.

Prototypes — only a handful completed so far — were currently being tested for deployment on standard vessels, and Keynes-Q's ship happened to be one of those carrying Screamers.

'Who in their right mind puts criminals aboard a warship?'

No captain, however tightly controlled the prisoners were supposed to be, enjoyed having criminals roaming his ship's corridors. And it was all the more galling when he was expected to observe how well they adapted and file reports on it around the clock.

But Keynes-Q had no grounds to complain.

Pyra Eleven held the rank of Supreme Councilor — the same rank as Nemea Five, the Supreme Councilor of the Machine Council and supreme commander of the very fleet Keynes-Q served in. He could hardly talk back to an android sitting so far above even the acting fleet commander, Sanada-F.

"Hah… if I'm told to jump, I jump. Ship 98 — are we ready yet? Why aren't we moving?"

"What? What kind of malfunction?"

"What did you say? No — what kind of nonsense is that?"

A perfectly healthy FTL engine failing out of nowhere? Keynes-Q was dumbfounded.

Just then, a transmission came in from the flagship.

"Ah, we've had a malfunction in the FTL engine, sir. If we jumped in this state, there'd be a 63% probability of an error. It's too risky."

"Understood, sir!"

Cutting the transmission, Keynes-Q called up Ship 98 again.

"What's the nearest star system from here?"

"Good. We'll head there and get repairs started—"

Just as Keynes-Q moved to issue the order, the display hovering before him cut out entirely. And not only that — the lights in the situation room he sat in went dark all at once.

"What? Ship 98? What the hell is going on?"

The ship answered his outburst with silence.

After a moment, power returned to the situation room. Ship 98 sent another message through the cables linked to his body.

"What? An EMP, out of nowhere? What caused it?"

"Then connect to Starlink and investigate the cause."

"Goddammit! What the hell is going on?!"

Communications deactivated. Those words meant only one thing.

Distress.

They were stranded in enemy territory — the very place where the battle had raged mere moments ago. Adrift in that hostile expanse, their FTL engine broken, left behind by the fleet.

And it didn't end there.

"…Inside the ship?"

Hearing Ship 98's report, Keynes-Q felt the back of his neck go ice-cold.

Being stranded was bad enough. But now something of unknown origin was among them — right there, in the dark, at their side.