Spider's Web (4)
Bears, lions, wolves. These are the predators we encounter most easily through media. On screens, they are portrayed as killing machines, or as avatars of violence that fear no fight whatsoever. Machines built for nothing but slaughter.
Is that really true, though?
Anyone who knows would know: it isn't. Most predators avoid fights they judge to be a losing proposition. Out in the wild, even a minor injury can prove fatal. A predator in the real world isn't a merciless terminator — it's closer to a coward.
Not that I mean it as an insult. That caution, which looks like cowardice, is precisely what makes carnivores true hunters.
Having played the Amorph so often, I had carved nature's lesson deep into my heart. No matter how powerful a trait I possessed. No matter how much information I held in my grasp.
Without caution, it's all worthless.
Keeping that fact in mind, I scanned my enemies.
Arnold's heartbeat was steady. His display of nervousness a moment ago had been an act, just as I'd suspected. While his men were dying, he'd probably been studying me and planning his response. He didn't know that I perceived the world through my auxiliary organs and eyes, but he did know I had some kind of biological radar.
Impressive, really.
I had butchered the soldiers deliberately, to intimidate him — and it hadn't worked on him at all. He carried the scent of a hunter like me. The scent of a seasoned predator. Unlike me, who learned at nature's knee, I found myself curious who his teacher had been.
The plasma pistol spat fire once more. A searing bolt of energy scorched the spot where I'd stood only seconds before.
I tore across the bridge on powerful legs like a wild horse, thinking through how to take him down.
His biggest weakness, first of all, is the location.
This was the bridge situation room, crammed with delicate electronic equipment. Even if the plasma pistol was considered weak in firepower, that was only relatively weak among plasma weapons — it was powerful enough to punch holes through thick alloy plating. If a single stray shot hit the wrong thing, there was no telling what kind of accident might follow.
He'd been hoping not to use it, I imagine.
Even in the future Predator Sense had shown me, Arnold only drew the pistol at the very brink of death. He, too, knew that firing it inside the ship was far from ideal.
"Crisis Management Team Leader! Don't forget where you are — this is the situation room!"
"Be careful what you hit! Watch the equipment!"
"...Understood."
Yuseong was making a fuss and the team leaders chimed in, but Arnold showed no intention whatsoever of putting the pistol away despite his reply.
Right. The ship can come after me — but I come first.
Apparently, in his hierarchy of threats, I ranked above the safety of the vessel itself. It wasn't hard to understand. I was the single obstacle standing in the way of his plan. Even if the ship took some damage, he'd judged it better to capture me here and now.
Still, for all the firepower at his disposal, Arnold labored under more than a few disadvantages. His duty, at this moment, was to protect the captain and the team leaders. He couldn't reach C-08 alone — some of them were absolutely essential to the voyage.
Lots of weaknesses, sure. But my own conditions aren't exactly favorable either.
The room was wide open, which meant clean lines of fire. If there hadn't been consoles and terminals to use as cover, I'd have taken a plasma bolt ages ago. Even now, every time I tried to close in on the captain or a team leader, Arnold kept me at bay with the pistol, and the moment I slipped behind a console, he held his fire.
"Filthy little rat."
Arnold spat the curse from across the room. It looked like impatience, like irritation — but listening to his heartbeat, I knew better.
That's deception.
Arnold wanted the standoff to drag on. While keeping me pinned down, he'd called for the ship's remaining troops over his comm unit.
"This is the bridge situation room. The creature has attacked us. All combat-capable personnel, converge on this position."
So that's your play, huh?
That bear-looking fox was using his trump card as a stalling tactic. Yes, he wanted to take me here — but I'd bet anything he intended to let the soldiers finish me off rather than do it himself.
And to be fair, his plan was working. That one pistol had made me cautious enough that my movements had gone passive.
Ha. Trying to fool me? Amusing.
With judgment like that, he'd rank above the middle of the pack among Space Survival players. After feeding so long on docile sheep, running into a wolf mixed in among them was genuinely nerve-wracking.
My first true crisis since becoming a Juvenile — and a tricky opponent on top of it. Facing a situation like this after so long set my fighting spirit boiling.
I have to finish this before the reinforcements arrive...
I dodged another bolt of energy and ducked behind a console.
As I was plotting my way out, a fire extinguisher caught my eye. Its shape differed from the ones on Earth, but it spat out the same white, smoke-like suppressant.
That could work.
I snatched it up quickly and, with the small hands on my chest, pulled the pin.
Just then Arnold appeared behind me, plasma pistol raised. Before he could fire, I triggered the extinguisher first. White suppressant gushed from the hose and swallowed his field of view.
"Kgh?! Enough of these cheap tricks!"
Through the white haze, a bolt of green energy came hurtling at me. I hugged the deck to dodge it, then launched into a six-legged sprint on my four combat arms and legs — and all the while, the small arms on my chest kept spraying the extinguisher's contents in every direction.
"Cough! Cough!"
"I can't see anything!"
The sealed situation room filled with suppressant. Coughing rang out from the survivors huddled here and there.
"You useless idiots! Are the weapons you're carrying just decoration?!"
"S-sorry, sir!"
The comm soldiers remaining in the room scrambled to draw their laser pistols. But with the suppressant robbing them of all visibility, the lasers they fired posed no threat to me whatsoever.
"Where is it?!"
"No way— damn it! Everyone, get the captain out of here!"
Arnold, having read my intentions at least partly, screamed the order. He must have assumed I was going after the heart of the ship — Yuseong himself.
His instincts were decent. But he'd picked the wrong answer.
My target was not the captain.
The head chef lay sprawled before me. The tail embedded in his belly quietly withdrew its stinger and retracted. Like a great beast going for a herbivore's throat, my fangs sank into the flesh near his carotid artery. Human blood and meat flooded into my body, and the small organ in my throat reacted to it.
Now I could mimic the head chef's voice.
"Not that way! The captain's over here!"
"What?"
The enemies, blinded by the haze, panicked at my voice. The captain was supposedly right nearby — and now a completely different voice was claiming otherwise. Of course they were thrown.
"Don't fall for it! It's running a disruption tactic!"
"Y-yes, sir!"
Arnold drove the soldiers on, but the confusion refused to settle. They'd heard over comms how Teams A and B had been wiped out — they just never imagined it would happen to them.
While the enemies floundered, my hands were already stained with another victim's blood. The luxurious uniform he wore made it clear his rank was no ordinary one.
I cried out in his voice.
"Don't be fooled! It killed the team leader!"
"The... the Navigation Team Leader?"
The voice belonged to the Navigation Team Leader — second only to the captain in the chain of command. Higher up than Arnold, the Crisis Management Team Leader.
"It's imitating the team leaders' voices!"
"Goddamn son of a bitch! Don't listen to it!"
"I'm the Navigation Team Leader! Believe me!"
"Damn it all, you idiots! That thing is the monster! Shoot it — kill it now!"
Arnold might not have noticed, but I could feel it. The barrels of the panicked comm soldiers' laser pistols were swinging wildly back and forth between his position and mine, settling on neither.
In a space where the suppressant hung like fog and no one could see a hand in front of their face, the soldiers were having their loyalty tested. On one side, the team leaders, near as gods to them. On the other, a monster flung from the abyss of space. Which way would they choose?
"U-uaaaaagh! Goddaaamn it all!"
One of the comm soldiers finally made his decision. The muzzle of his laser pistol swung toward a figure lost in the fog of suspicion.
A red flash split the suppressant cloud. After a streak of light too fast for human eyes to track, the smell of burning meat seeped through the haze.
"Kghk!"
Arnold let out a groan laced with agony.
His right shoulder was blackened and seared where the laser had struck. The hand gripping the plasma pistol hung limp toward the deck. A clean hit would have taken his whole arm off, but even this was harvest enough for me.
Now's my chance.
The disruption operation — aimed not at Arnold but at the comm soldiers — had succeeded. You can't say numbers always win in combat. Allies whose breathing is out of sync are worse than enemies.
He should have chosen to escape the situation room alongside the others instead of attacking me. Starting this fight determined to kill me himself was his greatest blunder.
"D-damn it all...!"
Refusing to surrender, he switched the pistol to his left hand. The pistol still had charge left, and he clearly intended to resist to the bitter end. A man who kept his fire even with his body falling apart — the very picture of a soldier. A pity he'd picked the wrong opponent.
Thanks to the ship's ventilation system, the suppressant was slowly dispersing. I hid myself in what remained of the white cover and ran.
"There you are!"
Perhaps because of the grievous wound to his shoulder, his aim was off, and the plasma bolt screamed past me. It was only a graze, but the ultra-hot energy seared a long burn across one of my combat arms.
Pain flooded my mind, sharp enough to wrench a scream from me, but I barely held it in.
There was no time to hesitate. My enemy had no leisure to wait for me.
I sensed the faint tremor of the plasma pistol in Arnold's hand charging up.
Only seconds remained before that little death-god pronounced my sentence. Meanwhile, my tail was still out of range to pierce his body.
So I decided to play my last card.
The muscles along my back, receiving my will, began to move. What would be called the trapezius on a human body split wide open. From the parted flesh, something vast and black slowly emerged.
Something I had never once deployed since becoming a Juvenile. The very first trait I had ever acquired after becoming the Amorph.
Two enormous wings unfurled, and in an instant my body closed the distance to him.
His face swelled rapidly in my vision. His pupils, locked on me, now reflected the Amorph with wings spread wide.
Caught in those rust-brown eyes, the Amorph was baring its teeth.
Strength flooded the index finger resting on the plasma pistol's trigger. Green death roared from the muzzle and tore through the air.
But that lethal bolt was never fated to reach its target.
I heard the plasma round, robbed of its mark, slam into the alloy wall behind me. It sounded like fireworks celebrating a victory.
And at the center of that triumph, my mouth held Arnold's head between its teeth.
"Team Leader!"
One of the comm soldiers recovered his wits and leveled a laser gun at me. I glared back at him, Arnold's head still clenched in my jaws.
"...Eep!"
I'd have loved to take my time savoring the meat, but there was no time. My auxiliary organs were already warning me to move.
The banquet would have to wait.
I brushed past the comm soldier. He stood frozen solid, a deer before a tiger. He didn't move a muscle until I had crawled into the ventilation duct.