The Ghost Ship of C-08 (3)
"……."
Under normal circumstances, this would have been a time for whooping and hollering, savoring the plunder. But not a single soul dared open their mouth.
The reason was Elchen, snorting like an enraged bull behind them.
Having lost his prized battleship in the blink of an eye, Elchen was struggling to smother his fury and claw back his reason. Into that charged silence, one of his men approached, faltering with every step.
"B-Boss."
"What?"
"The bio-detector picked up a person. They say it's in the captain's quarters."
"And?"
"The, the door's blocked off, so we'll have to cut through it."
"You little shit, do you ask my permission to take a piss too?"
"N-no, sir!"
It meant handle it yourself. The man and his comrades began preparing to breach the door.
The demolition specialist unslung the plasma cutter from his back and assembled it, then secured the cutter against the door and worked the terminal connected to the machine.
The cutter roared to life, spitting a beam of green light. A highly compressed mass of energy bored through the heavy door, more than fifty centimeters of solid steel.
By the time thick smoke had settled over the corridor, the captain's quarters stood breached. One pirate craned his head in to peer inside—and a bullet came flying out from within.
"Gahk!"
"You son of a—! Everyone take cover!"
It began with the pirate collapsing, a hole punched through his skull, and from there bullets poured out of the captain's quarters like driving rain.
The pirates dove behind cover and drew their respective weapons. Just as they were about to return fire, Elchen stepped forward.
"Move. You useless bastards."
Thanks to his genetic modification, his skin was so tough it wouldn't so much as scratch unless hit point-blank by a plasma launcher. Through the torrential rain of bullets, Elchen strolled forward as leisurely as a man out for a walk.
He gripped the melted hole in the door and pulled, and the fifty-centimeter slab of steel warped like bread dough. Having demonstrated his monstrous strength, he entered the captain's quarters and began the slaughter.
"AAAAGH!"
"A m-monster!"
Every time Elchen's fist cut through the air, another crewman became a lump of meat. While their boss rampaged, his men laid down suppressing fire toward the enemy.
In the blink of an eye, the crew in the captain's quarters had become corpses. Only one man remained. As Elchen closed in to finish him off, the man shrieked.
"W-wait! I-I surrender!"
"Surrender? The Dvara Cartel doesn't take that."
"I'm the medical team leader of this ship! I'll be useful, I swear!"
At those words, Elchen relaxed his fist.
"A doctor?"
"Y-yes."
"Then what's a doctor doing in the captain's quarters? Where's the captain?"
Come to think of it, the captain hadn't been among the men he'd smashed.
"That miserable dog... *ahem*, the captain went to board the escape shuttle."
"The escape shuttle? He abandoned his own crew and ran?"
"I can't say whether he made it out safely, but that's what happened."
The medical team leader seemed genuinely betrayed, his whole body trembling as he made no attempt to hide his anger. With the situation growing complicated, irritation welled up in Elchen.
The battleship was wrecked, and the one person who might have known where the bodies were had gone off chasing an escape shuttle. Elchen considered simply killing the medical team leader on the spot—then changed his mind.
"Hey. Smart guy."
"Y-yes?"
"You're a doctor, so you'd know where the bodies are, right?"
"Th-that's, well, yes."
"So, uh, apparently there's a Noble Capital corpse around here somewhere. Where is it?"
"……."
The medical team leader had no idea where Kisaragi Yujin's body was.
But telling the truth felt like a sure way never to see tomorrow's sun, so he lied.
"Th-the monster has it!"
"That bastard again? Why the hell would a monster carry around a corpse?"
"It eats people."
That meant Elchen was short on time. Clicking his tongue, he called his men together.
"Hey. The good doctor here says the monster's got the body. We don't have time to wander around searching every corner one by one, so you're splitting up. Got it?"
"Yes sir!"
"That thing is no ordinary beast, so you move in groups of six minimum. And if anything happens, report it over comms immediately. Any idiot who breaks that rule gets his skull cracked by yours truly."
"Yes, Boss!"
"You there. You're searching with me."
"Yes."
His men answered with vigor and dispersed.
Watching them sprint off, the medical team leader wondered if now was the moment to speak—but his terror of Elchen kept his mouth shut for good.
"Hey, doc."
"Yes?"
"You said you wanted to be a pirate, right? Good news. We're just short on doctors."
"A-ah, yes."
"You happen to know your way around genetic modification too?"
"Pardon? O-of course! Leave anything to me!"
Elchen kept chatting, and the medical team leader's chance to speak vanished. And so the information—that the monster could mimic a human voice—was buried, never to surface.
Shame.
I'd expected the crew to hold out a little longer, but it ended far more anticlimactically than I'd anticipated. Then again, considering the boss was a Hulk Mutant, perhaps the outcome was only natural.
Hulk Mutants were deployed in ground warfare to destroy tanks and bipedal combat walkers. For an ordinary crewman to so much as scratch such a monster would have been a miracle.
The boss had massacred every crewman but one. I couldn't see the survivor from here, but I could make a decent guess at who it was.
The doctor, presumably.
Spacedogs were a high-mortality breed. Criminals, war orphans, the destitute, retired soldiers, mercenaries—people of every stripe flowed in constantly, and just as constantly died off. With such a high turnover rate, professions like doctors were treated as precious commodities.
Anyway, whether the medical team leader became a pirate or not was none of my concern. I had no intention of leaving any survivors on this ship.
The battle at the captain's quarters had ended faster than I expected, but it didn't matter. Everything after had unfolded precisely according to my expectations.
Just as I thought—they're splitting up.
With the boss and one man aside, the rest had formed groups of six and set out on the search.
Pirate armaments weren't uniform, so I couldn't tell what each of them was carrying. One thing was certain, though: the enemies' movements were anything but amateurish.
Their footwork alone is practically regular-army grade.
Even when I'd devoured the Insectmen aboard this ship, they'd fought to the bitter end. I had to assume they were a cut above the soldiers stationed on the research vessel.
They seem spread out enough on their end. Time to start moving.
Just as I was about to leave the nest, Number 26 followed after me.
｢Baby, I'm coming too.｣
[Zzz (Stay here)]
｢No.｣
[Zzz (Why?)]
｢I want to help.｣
Number 26 was acting like a child trying to help its father. I picked it up and set it back on top of the nest, but it refused to give up and came toddling after me again.
It showed no sign whatsoever of backing down, so I recalculated the enemy's strength.
Aside from the boss and that suspicious one, none of them should be a problem.
I'd fought pirates enough times to be sick of it. I didn't know exactly what armaments they carried, but I could handle whatever they brought out.
Besides, if Number 26 was going to travel with me from now on, it needed combat experience too. There might come a moment when I couldn't protect it.
Number 26 needs to see battle for itself. Even if it can't help directly, I can't have it tripping me up.
Decision made, I allowed it to come along.
[Zzz zzz zu-zzz (Be careful, the enemy is dangerous)]
｢Okay! You be careful too, Baby!｣
It hopped up onto my shoulder. The little thing was impossible to resent.
Where to first.
There were four groups in total, each headed for a different destination: the armory, the mess hall, the cargo bay, and the research laboratory. For a bunch that lived off plunder, their priorities were plainly obvious.
Let's clear out the armory first.
Most of the weapons in the armory had been damaged by the tendrils I'd sent out from the nest, but a few were still intact. If those pirates got their hands on them, things would get annoying.
With Number 26 on my shoulder, I made my way toward the armory.
As I drew near, the intruders entered the range of my senses. Six pirates were bustling about, preparing to breach the armory.
"What kind of plant grows all the way over the door?"
"Hey, we gotta clear all that junk off before we can set up the plasma cutter."
Except for the demolition specialist, every one of them drew a machete.
Had those been ordinary plants, their judgment wouldn't have been bad at all.
The problem is, they're not ordinary plants.
Facing an unknown enemy demanded more careful thought and caution. They hadn't bothered—and so they were walking, with their own two feet, straight into a pit of destruction.
"Hah!"
One of the syndicate men swung his machete in a wide arc and lopped off a spore. The spore burst, and the viscous fluid inside sprayed outward.
"What the fuck?! What is this stuff?"
"Heh heh, looks like jizz."
"You got some on you too, dumbass."
The one splattered with mucus cursed violently while the comrade beside him cackled with obscenities. They hadn't the faintest idea how much danger they were in.
It didn't take long for the laughter to turn into screams and shrieks.
"U-uuuuaaagh?!"
"My—my face! AAAAGH!"
"Wh-what's happening?"
The pirate with acid mucus on his face watched his skin and muscle melt away until his jawbone simply dropped off, and the comrade with neurotoxin on his fingers collapsed, paralyzed from head to toe.
They'd handed me a golden opportunity, so I would receive it with gratitude—and devour it.
I charged at them, driving my massive bulk forward.
"Huh? There it is!"
"The monster!"
"F-fuck?! It doesn't look like what we saw on the monitors!"
Of course not. The footage they'd watched in the control room had been recorded before I acquired the Physical Enhancement Type.
I'd returned to the control room once more to devour the holdouts, but even then I'd concealed myself under a smoke screen.
In other words, the enemy knew nothing about me. And fighting with insufficient intelligence was an enormous risk.
I rammed into the pirate standing nearest to me.
"Kehak!"
He vomited up a spray of blood laced with scraps of viscera. Without even having to open him up, I could easily tell his insides had been reduced to mush. I finished him off by whipping his half-dead body away with my tail.
In the meantime, the pirates who'd recovered their wits drew their weapons and opened fire on me. Their reactions were swift—the mark of seasoned fighters. Had they been research-vessel soldiers, the ambush would have stunned them into helpless inaction.
Red bolts of energy wove a net of fire that hammered against my chitinous carapace.
Before I got my Type, that would have been dangerous.
My current exoskeleton was incomparably harder and thicker than before. The deep brown plating, gleaming almost black, protected not just my head and thorax but all four of my limbs as well.
Truly, I was a full-plate knight reborn in the space age. Just as the lance charge of an armored knight was called the tank of the Middle Ages, the same held true for me.
I charged through their attacks without deigning to acknowledge them. With a resounding boom, the pirate standing in my path burst into a bloody pulp.
Not stopping there, I extruded a tentacle from my upper arm. The sawtooth tentacle shot out like a venomous serpent, fangs bared, and coiled around their waists.
"Kraek?!"
"Agyagak!"
Their midsections tore apart as if run through a sawmill, entrails spilling from the wounds.
"D-die!"
Watching his comrades die screaming, one pirate lost his mind entirely and charged at me.
He was an Insectman. His species' physical abilities outstripped a human's, so he must have figured he could manage in close quarters. As with most things in life, though, what he hoped for never came to pass.
The machete he swung was severed cleanly in two by my tail. I was about to finish him off when Number 26 leapt from my shoulder onto the Insectman.
"Grrrrrk!"
The instant a pink, translucent soap-bubble-like blob latched onto his face, the Insectman panicked—but he had no choice but to writhe as searing agony followed.
Number 26 had dissolved his antennae clean off.
He tried to claw Number 26 off with the sharp talons characteristic of his kind.
Can't let that stand.
Number 26 was finally on the hunt; I had zero intention of letting it get hurt. I jabbed the Insectman lightly with my tail and injected a neurotoxin. As though someone had frozen time beside him, he stiffened rigid and couldn't so much as twitch.
I'd leave the Insectman to Number 26 and deal with the last one myself. The demolition specialist, instead of attacking me, was frantically calling for backup on his comm unit.
"Th-there's a monster here!"
I slipped behind him and pinned his body fast with all four arms.
"H-huh?! Hurry, backu—gak."
Before he could finish his sentence, I unhinged my jaws wide and crunched down on his head. The fearsome bite force unique to my kind shattered his thick skull and pulped its contents.
｢What? Where are you?｣
I gulped down the demolition specialist's brain and activated the specialized organ at the back of my throat.
"Grrk, ahem, never mind."
｢What?｣
"False alarm. Nothing going on here."
｢What kind of crazy bastard prank-calls over comms? What else is there to mistake?｣
"Sorry."
I gave a suitably casual reply and shut off the comm unit. That took care of the armory group.
I'll hold onto this comm.
It looked useful for disruption tactics. Surely pirates wouldn't demand my name, rank, and serial number.
Comm in hand, I approached Number 26. It was still eating. It had been the same when fighting me—the Insectmen's tenacious vitality seemed to be more curse than blessing. Watching the thing twitch and shiver, unable to die, was pitiful enough to make even me feel sorry for it.
Not that I have any intention of sparing it.
While Number 26 finished its kill, I would deal with the other corpses. Working through them one by one, I found a Star Union native among them—one of the ones I'd bisected at the waist with my tentacle.
"P-please... s-spare me...."
True to his cybernetic nature, he was still alive despite his upper and lower body being severed. He pleaded desperately for mercy.
Star Union was a collective of cyborgs who believed humanity's frail flesh ought to be replaced with machines. One could call their philosophy the exact opposite of Mega Corp's, which refined human genes to become something greater.
Not that either of them being scum changes.
Star Union was eager to share the 'blessing' they'd received with other species as well. What that meant, in practice, was that they forcibly cybernetically modified prisoners of other races—whether the prisoner wanted it or not.
The pirate before me was one such modified man; I could see machine components mixed in among his organs.
I stomped his weeping, begging head into the deck and crushed it. His artificial brain burst, spitting sparks.
He's part machine, but I can still eat him, right?
Just in case, I carefully picked out the visible components and swallowed only the remaining flesh. Fittingly for someone half machine, his taste carried a sour, spark-tinged tang and a heavy, oily richness.
...Well, that's certainly a distinctive flavor.
All things considered, he was edible enough. I finished off the rest of the cyborg's corpse.
I was wiping my hands, uneasy about the gasoline-like residue on my fingers, when a translucent text box appeared before me.
Partial conditions for the Juvenile → Sub-adult evolution have been fulfilled.
Primary Intelligent Species: 10/10 (COMPLETE)
Secondary Intelligent Species: 1/10 (INSUFFICIENT)
Oh?
Unexpected, but welcome news. I'd had my doubts, but it turned out cyborgs counted as a separate species, just like in the game.
There were twelve of them on this ship, weren't there?
If I devoured every cyborg aboard the research vessel, I could evolve to the next stage immediately.
Who would have thought the path to becoming a Sub-adult would open this fast. An utterly unforeseen gift.
｢Baby, what's got you so excited?｣
[Zzzz zu-zz (There's something good)]
Having finished its meal, Number 26 came over to me. I stroked it gently and set it on my shoulder.
The Spacedogs—a calamity some called the scourge of the universe.
To me, those fearsome creatures were beginning to look like Santa Claus, hauling in sacks brimming with presents.