A Complete Metamorphosis
"Fire!"
THOOM! KRA-KOOM-KOOM!
A baptism of musket fire hammered down on the enemy — closer to an artillery bombardment than a volley of gunfire. Only a superhuman body could have stood firm against recoil of that magnitude. The knights' standard-issue muskets boasted a caliber of no less than 120 millimeters; they were, for all intents and purposes, tank cannons you carried in your arms.
Holes several times larger than the rounds themselves punched clean through the creature's body — so much of it had been blasted away that what remained was less than what was gone.
But a Banelisk never came alone.
"Brace for impact!"
I racked the overheated musket, glowing cherry-red, onto the mount at my power armor's thigh, and drew my Force Sword in its place.
Vmmm! Vmm-vmm! The knights along the front rank activated their armor's Force Shields in unison, and a translucent barrier sprang up between us and the enemy.
KRA-KOOOOM!
In that instant, the Banelisk's massive scythe-blade slammed against the shields.
Krrrk-crack—!
Hairline fractures began to spider across the Force Shields.
"Ghk—!"
"Hold the line!"
At the same moment, I ignited my jump-pack.
FWOOOOSH—!
As I rocketed skyward, the crown of the Banelisk's head came into view — a small patch of soft flesh atop its skull, bare of any carapace. That was the creature's weak point. Through evolution upon evolution, in true Krig fashion, it had relocated that weak spot somewhere all but impossible to strike… and yet it could never quite erase the vestigial organ it had grown from.
SHLUNK—!
I drove my blade straight into it.
KREEEEEEE—!
The Banelisk went berserk with a monstrous shriek — and in that very instant, I activated the sword's disruption field.
KRAK!
With a sickening sound of rending flesh, the Banelisk's rampage cut off dead, as if someone had flipped its power switch.
KU-BOOM.
Its colossal bulk tipped sideways and crashed to the ground.
"UWOOOOOAH!"
The knights' roar rolled across the battlefield.
"Shield squads, musket squads — rotate the square!"
"Yes, sir!"
In that instant the knights traded places with drill-ground precision, and the Force Shields unfolded anew — pristine, without so much as a single crack.
I pulled up my large-caliber musket, now properly cooled, and fed a steady diet of rounds to the horde pressing in on us.
THOOM! THOOM-KOOM-KOOM-KOOOM—!!
A monstrous wall of fire. Anything that didn't outweigh a Banelisk was reduced on the spot to a fistful of bloody mist.
And the ones that came crawling through alive?
"GYAHAHAHAHAHAH!!!!"
Knights gone mad with bravado ignited their jump-packs and drove the Force Swords' disruption fields clean through the creatures' skulls.
"BLOOD!!!"
"DIIIIIIIE!!!"
"For Fenrir! For the Grand Duke! For Her Majesty the Emperor… and for so on and so forth, et ceteraaaaa!!!"
…Just as I was starting to lose track of whether these men were knights or berserkers, a chilling sensation came crawling up my spine. I stopped firing, slowly exhaled, and slowly breathed in.
Something was there. A battlefield ringing with mad howls and the shrieks of monsters — and the moment I focused, it felt as though everything had faded back by a single layer. I held my breath.
Behind me.
CRACK—!
An eight-limbed monster wreathed in chitin dropped its camouflage, its countless legs scything through empty air… and toppled where it stood, its head gone.
"A Raptor…"
A hunter with a taste for stealth and ambush. If it had succeeded in slipping into our lines just then? Knight or no, every last one of us would have been caught by a Raptor's ambush at least once.
"G-Good heavens…"
"He shot a Raptor… on instinct alone?"
And in the very next moment, the tide of monsters that had surged without pause began to stumble and falter.
So, finally. The hive mind had awakened and finished its deliberations, it seemed.
"Sir Queregg! Activate the teleporter!"
"At once!"
"All units, prepare to withdraw!"
Whereupon the knights who had been gleefully rending the Krig limb from limb began kicking the creatures away and falling back in perfect step — as though the whole berserker act had been nothing but a bit. …Which was, if anything, even more terrifying.
GRRROOOAAAR—!
The Krig swarmed in, too late. Even if they couldn't reach the engines, they had at least meant to take the knights down with them—
Here — do have some.
I flipped them the middle finger.
FWAP!
The flagship of the Grand Duke's fleet — the Glory of the Wolf.
Aboard that flagship—
"GYAHAHAHAHAHA!!"
"Long live the Grand Duke! Long live Her Majesty the Emperor!!"
Knights whose testosterone had yet to burn off were still swaggering from table to table, trading tales of valor.
"So there I was, I grab the Nigling with both hands and just—squish, squish—"
"Did you see His Highness? First man to fire his jump-pack. Thanks to him, I got to come in low without anyone the wiser."
"And the way the whole operation fell into place exactly as he planned it, every single step — man, what a rush…"
"When that Banelisk blade came swinging down at me, I figured I was a dead man. But then I thought about it — I've stopped a truck single-handed before, haven't I? And suddenly it didn't seem so bad."
War stories seasoned with a full two hundred percent MSG rang out deafeningly on every side.
"Damn it all. I should've been down there…!"
"That's not fair! An S-tier event like that, and you keep it all to yourselves…!"
Grievances burst out from the knights who had failed to claim any glory for themselves. Sir Queregg watched the scene for a moment, then spoke with a short laugh.
"Your Highness. Should we not rein them in soon?"
"Let them be. They've earned that much."
So saying, I began stripping off my power armor. It was less a suit of armor than a kind of mobile exoskeleton, and shedding it took quite a while. I wasn't drenched in sweat, but the enormous fuel burn sent jets of steam hissing from the suit's seams.
"We make for Fenrir. Until then, leave the knights to their fun."
"Understood."
I slipped quietly into the Grand Duke's stateroom and took in the view beyond the viewport. The System Melter was, true to its name, melting away every last trace of ice in the star system.
A magnificent sight, truly. When again would I ever get to watch a world locked in ice thaw before my eyes?
Beep—.
Just then, a call came through to the stateroom. From the administration — the Grand Duke's Secretariat.
"What is it?"
"Your Highness. A communication from the Chief Secretary."
"…?"
Now what? Last time she'd had the gall to call me directly; this time, it seemed, she was at least observing protocol. Why? Curiosity stirred, but I felt no pressing need to chase it down.
"Put her through."
"At once!"
A moment later, Vera's figure resolved into a hologram before me.
"Congratulations on your victory, Grand Du— …hm?"
She looked at me — and both her eyes flew wide open in disbelief.
"Wh-who might you be?"
Is this some kind of joke? Not that we were close enough for jokes in the first place.
"I'm afraid not, Secretary. I don't believe ours is a relationship built on teasing."
"That voice… could it truly be the Grand Duke?"
What is this? She genuinely doesn't recognize me? Don't tell me she thought I'd possessed yet another body the moment her back was turned?
"…"
I drew my sword and studied my reflection in its smooth face. Banelisk blood still clung to it in mottled streaks, blurring the image — but I could see enough.
"What the—"
The exclamation escaped me before I could stop it. I hastily clapped a hand over my mouth.
My face had completely changed. The precious flesh that young Ryan had spent a lifetime packing on with liquor and gluttony had evaporated, clean away — and standing in its place was me, a Ryan so transformed that even I couldn't recognize myself.
I'd thought of this body as a lottery ticket guaranteed the moment you scratched it… but never to this degree.
Coarse silver hair. A sharp, hard-bitten face. The kind of face that women of about twenty-eight to thirty-two mean when they sigh, lately I like that type better than the pretty ones~ — the face cast in the role of that type. And layered over it all, that ferality unique to Fenrir: the look of a man ready to throw back his head and howl like a wolf at any moment.
The lecherous lust-swine was gone. In his place stood the wolf of the North, practically radiating that ink-and-smoke bad-boy musk.
Honestly, I was staggered. Granted, the weight had been coming off bit by bit… but the operation on Zenith-VI had lasted barely half a day. In that half day alone, I had slimmed down enough to change my entire face.
Of course, combat burns a monstrous number of calories. It wasn't for nothing that combat rations were criminally dense with them. Even so, there could only be one reason the change ran this deep: a single taste of real battle was several times more brutal than all the training that had come before, and a superhuman body, in exchange for the power it produced, devoured a staggering amount of energy in turn. That had certainly matched my own experience.
And it struck me anew: that lunatic Ryan could pull off a full cut in half a day. He'd come all this way blessed with a body that every gym rat in the universe would kill for.
In any case, I cleared my throat once and steered us back on course.
"Ahem. It seems the fighting was fierce enough to change my body. Now then — what business brings you to call?"
"Ah… um. Yes. That is to say."
Only then did she grasp what she'd just done; her face reddened, and she cleared her throat.
"We have confirmed the anomaly that just took place in this system. The matter you spoke of last time — is this it?"
"It is."
"Then the report that you activated the OOPArt known as the System Melter must also be true. In that case—"
"Then you'll finally believe that I have obtained a portion of the Akashic Records' truth."
"…I suppose. Half of it, anyway."
No — either you believe it or you don't. What's this 'half of it' nonsense?
"A shame. I'd thought this much would have earned a Secretary's trust."
"Did you not say yourself that we were not on terms for joking?"
She had reverted, once more, to the cold Ice Witch — frostier, if anything, than the day we first met. Sir Queregg was right after all, it seems. Old-maid hysteria… To bristle like that at a single remark meant to lighten the mood.
"In any case, I shall report this matter to Her Majesty exactly as it stands. How you are to be treated, Grand Duke, will be decided thereafter. And one more thing."
She glanced downward for a moment, as though reading from a document.
"This is unrelated to our duties, but… we have received word that the surviving Krig swarm has escaped the planet and is bound for another system."
"Is that so?"
A relief, as I hear it. …If I truly thought that, I'd be unfit to call myself the Northern Grand Duke guarding the Imperium's frontier, wouldn't I? But there was nothing to be done. Right now, Amirates had only just gotten its fingers around the single straw of its revival.
Her next words, however, were more than enough to shake that relief loose.
"Having hijacked the bio-signals of their hive mind, we have determined the swarm's destination to be…"
She let the pause stretch, her gaze drifting back to the document as if reading it again.
"Planet Raviel, in the Mechanios Sector."
"…!"
Hold on.
Where did you say?