Survive (2)
Where to next, after the cargo bay?
Truth be told, I'd already decided that.
Let's head for the cooling room next to the reactor.
Even in the space age, humanity's method of handling excess heat hadn't changed much from the old days. Wherever a ship's reactor was located, a cooling room responsible for temperature regulation stood nearby.
A cooling room is a critical facility, so it won't see many visitors.
Because it was a vital installation, it sat under tight security — but flip that around, and it simply meant fewer people came and went. Call it the darkest spot beneath the lamp. Unless someone physically tampered with the cooling room itself, it was the perfect place to grow while slipping past the watchers' eyes.
There was one more advantage: the cooling room sat right beside the reactor.
If my existence were ever discovered, it was the ideal ground for a final line of defense.
If all else fails, I can just wreck the reactor and the cooling room together and run.
Trouble in the cooling room meant trouble in the reactor, and a ship whose heart failed had no choice but to halt operations.
The moment a ship stopped, every life-support system keeping the interior environment habitable would shut down as well.
At first, the crew would flail desperately — spinning up auxiliary engines, doing whatever it took to revive the vessel — but that wouldn't last. Just as a creature whose heart has been destroyed cannot escape death, neither could a ship.
Unless a habitable planet happened to be within crash-landing distance, only one fate awaited the people aboard.
Killing one another in a wretched scramble to breathe a few minutes longer as the oxygen thinned away.
Of course, if the ship died, I'd be stranded with nowhere to go either — so attacking the reactor would have to remain a last resort.
Well then. Shall we get moving?
Before setting out, I ate two more calorie bars. With my belly properly filled, I leapt up to the ceiling. The tiny suckers nestled between my claws anchored my body firmly against it.
Insects can climb walls thanks to adhesive pads called arolia — suction-shaped protrusions that secrete a powerfully sticky substance, letting them scramble up even the slickest surfaces with ease.
I was no different. Thanks to the secretion from the pads between my claws, I could move about freely even while hanging upside down from the ceiling.
As I padded silently along, upside down, an entrance leading into the ventilation duct came into view.
It looked like a window-mounted ventilator blown up to the size of a small child, with a wire mesh screwed into the outer face. Behind it, enormous blades spun without rest, devoted to their work with a vicious whine.
Tearing through that mesh is beyond me for now.
It would be magnificent to smash my way through in style, but in my hatchling state, that was impossible.
The ship I stood in was built from special alloys forged with cutting-edge technology. That slender wire mesh was no exception. If I recklessly brought my claw down on it, the claw would be the thing that snapped.
Time to borrow the power of intelligence, then.
Raising a claw, I twisted the screws holding the mesh in place. Had the ship's humans been more security-conscious, they'd have welded this up too, but thankfully these were the kind of people who numbered their cargo 1234.
The first line of defense blocking the ventilation duct was neutralized with almost embarrassing ease. Beyond the mesh, the next thing to greet me was the ventilator's blades.
Here's the critical moment.
Two ways through. One was to time my entry and slip past the blades. The other was to grab some random object and break the fan with it.
Needless to say, the second option was off the table.
I doubted I could damage blades forged from that hardened alloy by throwing anything at them — and even if I somehow succeeded, that would only create a bigger problem. The super AI governing the ship would never overlook a malfunction in its ventilation system. The AI would report the fresh error to the humans immediately, and from that moment, all that awaited me was pursuit and death.
So instead of breaking it, I have to pass through it.
From here on, it was time to lean on the Amorph's abilities.
Walk in blindly and those blades would carve me into sashimi, so I stayed where I was and waited.
As I waited, my auxiliary organ began compiling data: the flow of the air, the currents of energy escaping the blades' joints, a dozen other fragments of information.
The auxiliary organ wasn't the only one working hard. My highly developed vision locked onto the repeating rotation of those precision machines, hunting for a weakness in their motion.
How much time had passed?
The auxiliary organ detected iron oxide particles suspended in the air, along with fine metal dust swirling in the drafts. On top of that, my eyes discovered that the blades' joints were worn, and that at one precise point in each rotation, the fan slowed — just for the barest instant.
My brain, having weighed every scrap of data from eyes and auxiliary organ alike, delivered its verdict.
Jump in. Now.
—!
Trusting the Super Sense, I plunged into the ventilator.
The mechanical death god showed not a shred of mercy, scything its blade high. The pressure of air torn apart by the blade lashed mercilessly against my back armor. Whatever was left of my human self screamed to get out — but in my small Amorph heart, there was not the faintest tremor. As if thought itself were a luxury, every sense in my body converged on a single task: evading the guillotine's edge.
The ventilator blade grazed the very tip of my tail as it swept past. I had survived.
I made it! I actually made it!
Had I still been human, I would have whooped with laughter — but my oral structure was ill-suited to laughter. All that escaped was a low, sullen hissing cry.
After savoring the moment for a while, I set off again.
The ventilation ducts wound through the ship like a maze, but before my Super Sense they posed no obstacle at all.
The ship's veins, quiet on any ordinary day, grew louder today as they welcomed an unfamiliar visitor. The sigh of air rushing through ventilator grilles at every junction mingled faintly with the click of my claws against steel plating.
Spiders.
The spiders and flies I crossed paths with made fine snacks over the long journey. For creatures aboard a spaceship, they'd all eaten remarkably well and grown plump. Thanks to them, I never once went hungry or ran low on energy along the way.
I was still chewing thoughtfully on a spider's leg when the tips of my claws detected the residual heat in the duct fading. Proof that the cooling room was drawing near.
I quickened my pace — until the auxiliary organ suddenly applied the brakes. Something important lay just ahead, it said. Confirmation required.
Hm?
Invisible to my eyes still, but a wavelength of light registered from somewhere not far off. Four pairs of legs carried me onward for about ten minutes without rest before a steel mesh laid across the floor of the duct appeared.
I stood on the mesh and looked down. Below, figures in white lab coats moved among oversized test tubes and incubators.
A laboratory? I thought this wasn't a military vessel?
All that food and weaponry in the cargo bay had made me assume it was a supply ship or a freighter. And yet — a laboratory.
If this ship was secretly a research vessel, the odds weren't bad for me at all.
"Hey, how'd the results on Specimen 026 come out?"
"Failed again."
"Tsk. The team lead's going to throw another bitch fit."
"He's Earth-born, what can you do — even the captain grovels to him."
"Ugh. Let's call it a day."
Once I'd confirmed the two men leaving the laboratory, I undid the mesh screws and dropped down below.
From the look of them, they must be Mega Corp.
Mega Corp: the human faction that had flourished with the Solar System at its heart — put simply, a species modeled on Earth's own people.
By their faction lore, massive corporations had replaced governments as the rulers of nations, and the vast majority of their members were materialists of the most extreme stripe.
Space Survival featured dozens of sentient species, most of them leaning neutral in alignment — but Mega Corp, perhaps by virtue of that lore, sat squarely on the evil end of the spectrum.
There's no one else who takes perfectly healthy people and surgically rebuilds them into slaves.
Mega Corp seized debtors and alien species alike and, through modification surgery, forged them into war slaves. It was one of their signature racial traits, called Employment — and playing as Mega Corp, the returns from Employing were so enormous that you found yourself using it aggressively without even meaning to.
If they did that in a game, imagine reality. The air inside the laboratory was thick with the lingering echo of blood.
What do I do here?
The auxiliary organ had already located the refrigerator where gene samples were stored, but I couldn't rush the decision.
What matters is when I eat.
For the Amorph, evolution demanded more than just hoarding genetic essence.
The absolute requirement to pass beyond the hatchling stage was consuming a living, sentient being. In other words — to become a Juvenile, I had to kill a person.
Kill a person, huh.
In the game, killing humans had been a non-issue. But could I really do it in reality?
Even if I believed I could manage it easily now, if I hesitated the instant it was in front of me, that hesitation would be the end of everything.
This place stays on hold until I've steeled myself.
The gene samples tempted me, but if I devoured everything here and now, there'd be no escaping the hunt that followed. The laboratory assault would come only after I'd eaten a human.
For today, let's just see what's on offer.
What purpose this research vessel served would change my path dramatically.
If this was a facility studying Hulk Mutants — mutation-engineered soldiers specialized for ground combat — I'd secure a durable body and combat capabilities. If, on the other hand, they were experimenting on the psychic powers of the space-faring Cult, I could get my hands on potent psionic strength.
Personally I'd prefer the Cult, but psionic power this early is probably asking too much.
I mobilized every sensory organ I possessed and began to inventory the laboratory.
Unlike the dark, grimy cargo bay, the laboratory was enclosed in clean white walls. By image alone, it looked immeasurably better — yet behind those bright surfaces, paradoxically, death and agony filled every corner.
In the test tubes, living human brains and forcibly abducted creatures floated suspended in chemical solutions. In the incubators, an AI pulsed electronic signals as it monitored the embryos' condition.
The reek of chemicals, electromagnetic waves bustling back and forth through the air, the stench of blood and rotting tissue, the pheromones creatures unknowingly leaked in their agony — an avalanche of information poured into my head. And amid the flood of data pouring out of my auxiliary organ, I snagged one signal that stood out.
Help? Is it... asking for help?
Using a special wavelength no human could detect, some living thing was appealing to me for aid.
Curious, I followed the wavelength to its source — a test tube.
> [026]
Inside the tube stamped with the number 26, a pink creature shaped like a droplet of water drifted in slow circles.
A Bubble Amoeba.
The Bubble Amoeba was a non-playerable creature found mostly on ocean planets. Normally it drifted through the water in its droplet form, but when prey drew close, it engulfed them in an instant and digested them alive with corrosive fluid.
The big ones aside, most were about the size of a basketball, so they'd never posed much of a threat to players. Harmless and cute to boot, they were supposedly popular among users hunting for a little healing.
A decorative pet, basically. I'd never imagined it had intelligence — let alone that one would reach out and speak to me. Unexpected. As I drew closer, the creature pulsed its wavelength once more.
"Pain. Help."
Exact interpretation was impossible, but thanks to the Amorph's exceptional senses I grasped the gist. The creature was suffering for some reason, and it had asked me for help.
What do I do?
Eating it was one option, but by my memory, the trait the Bubble Amoeba carried was the single most useless trait in the Amorph's arsenal.
It was called Oxygen Storage — a trait that supplied a set amount of oxygen in airless environments. For any other species it would have been quite handy, but the Amorph could survive extended periods without oxygen at all, making it utterly unnecessary.
So eating it is out. And even if I wanted to help, I don't know what, exactly, I'd be helping with.
I focused my senses on the test tube, hunting for clues. Inside the thick hose connected to its base, I felt a mixture cycling in a loop; inside the machine, measuring instruments busily checking the fluid for irregularities; and running along the surface of the liquid, a faint current of electricity.
Electricity?
Come to think of it, a small sensor was attached to the creature's body. Wired to the apparatus, it fired periodic electric shocks into the creature's flesh.
Understanding what it was asking for, I crawled up onto the terminal mounted beside the test tube.
Across the terminal screen, graphs of bio-rhythms and the AI's test results flickered into existence and vanished, over and over.
So this is what those two researchers were muttering about.
They'd grumbled their way out about failure after failure — and apparently forgotten to shut the machine down on their way.
I pressed the terminal's button and halted the experiment. The faint electrical signals from the sensor cut off, and the creature's vigor flooded back. Its droplet body flickered pink, pulsing light in a gesture of thanks.
"Thanks."
'Thanks,' it says.
I wouldn't call what I'd done worthy of gratitude. If the creature had been something I needed, I'd have devoured it without a second thought and absorbed its essence like everything else. I'd indulged in a moment of whim, nothing more — simply because I'd judged it harmless.
Good luck surviving on your own, then.
There was no escaping whatever doomed end awaited specimens in a Mega Corp laboratory. Still, I wished it the easiest remaining life it could manage, and left the laboratory behind.
About thirty minutes after setting out through the ducts, the temperature plunged. Droplets beaded thickly on the walls, and a thin frost glittered across the floor of the passage.
At last, I had arrived above the cooling room.
Good. Now — time to build my nest.
I scraped the water droplets from the walls, gathered them up, and drank them down. Then, holding the water in my mouth like a gargle, I spat it back out.
A moment ago it had been pure water. Not anymore.
The instant it entered my body, the water transformed into a substance that was lethal poison to every living thing except the Amorph itself.
This unclean mucus, resembling chewed-up spat-out gum, carried two properties: it prolonged the vitality of any Amorph nearby, and it amplified the effect of the Super Sense.
Once I finished coating the passage above the cooling unit, I could settle in here and surveil nearly half the ship.
I repeated the motion — drawing water into my mouth, expelling it — again and again.
Before long, the passage above the cooling room had transformed into an environment fit for an Amorph to dwell in.
A sticky, toxic, unclean, contaminated space.
In the very heart of a place that would revolt any living creature, I laid my body down. With a coziness like resting in a mother's womb, I closed my eyes.
I can feel it. The ship — it feels like my own body.
What mattered most to winning a war?
Information.
Mega Corp's humans — and me, the Amorph.
They knew nothing of me, but I knew everything of them. Where they went and what they did there, where they moved, who they spoke with — every scrap of it flowed to me through the liquid coating the passages.
They would never know.
That the war had already begun — and that they were already losing.
In the darkness of my nest, I smiled without a sound.