Ch.108108. ‘Knight’

The Monster Fleet is the name given to the fleets of the “Monster” Hive Mind, currently the main enemy of humanity—and indeed, almost all interstellar civilizations in our galaxy. The fleet now approaching this cargo ship escort is commonly called a Small Invasion Fleet.

An invasion fleet is defined as having at least one ultra-large Hive Ship capable of independent interstellar travel through space jumps. If such an invasion fleet contains only one ultra-large Hive Ship, it’s classified as a Small Invasion Fleet.

The word “Small” in the name often misleads the uninformed into thinking it’s an insignificant vessel—but that’s a dangerous mistake.

Small Invasion Fleets are the number one cause of civilian fleet annihilation, inflicting severe damage on humanity. The ultra-large Hive Ship alone is a tremendous monster.

It’s in the same class as the Independent-class battleship, the main battleship of the Human Federation, which has fewer than 3,000 ships across the entire Federation despite controlling one-third of the galaxy. The Hive Ship contains its own energy production facilities and monster breeding facilities.

There are even records of a single damaged ultra-large Hive Ship that escaped during a war, only to multiply tenfold within ten years and occupy 20 planetary systems.

In other words, that Small Invasion Fleet represents not only a top-level potential threat, but without ships of comparable class, there’s little chance of victory.

‘Can we even win this…?’

Like the experienced solo mercenary he is, John immediately started looking for ways to escape alone, but after seeing the psychic radar scan results on his interface, he abandoned that idea.

The fleet includes four large Hive Ships equivalent to the Human Federation’s standard cruisers, and an impressive twenty medium Hive Ships similar in size to the six escort vessels currently protecting this ship.

And naturally, there are over 500 small Hive Ships of destroyer class, with approximately 20,000 Hive Ship fighters surrounding them—trying to escape in a small speedboat would be suicide.

But it’s not like the ships can simply flee either.

The aging military standard escort ships are already slow in normal navigation, and if the monster fleet uses space jumps to pursue, they could instantly close thousands of kilometers of distance.

Space travel is also difficult because neither of the Human Federation’s two space travel methods are suitable for combat situations.

Dimensional gates connecting different points in space are only installed at major hubs for large fleet movements and don’t exist in this area anyway. The standard teleportation used by regular ships can be disrupted by monster fleets.

Typically, Human Federation spaceships create small passages to the psychic dimension, fire psychic ropes to target coordinates, secure space at the connected point, and then swap spaces to travel. As one might guess, this is extremely complex and demanding, so unless the distance is significant, ships with sub-light speed capability simply travel directly. Moreover, ultra-large Hive Ships can interfere with the psychic dimension and jam this method.

In summary, they currently have no means of escape, extremely low chances of winning a fight, and even if they somehow survived, they’d still have failed Nano-Tech’s request, which wouldn’t lead to a good outcome.

Therefore, they have only one survival option to bet on:

[Support request complete. Arrival within 1 hour.]

Their only hope was to trust that information displayed on the interface and somehow hold out for an hour until Human Federation reinforcements arrived.

“Sigh… my life.”

So John, with a deep sigh, used his telekinesis to push out the Rockist pirate ships that had broken through the outer wall at the crew’s request, and installed a psychic structure to prevent air from escaping until they could weld metal plates over the breach.

Accepting that their only chance of survival was to fight with everything they had, he checked his visual interface’s radar information, confirming that the Hive Ships were approaching and tightening their encirclement.

‘I have to hold out with these people…’

Now that command had ordered all crew and mercenaries to hold their positions, the forces currently in this thirteenth cargo hold (H-13) were pitiful.

There were 205 regular crew members—trained militia at best—armed with spear-shaped in-ship laser rifles, plus about 20 engineers who had volunteered to help defend the area in their work-purpose powered suits.

The engineers might stand some chance against the monsters with their exoskeleton-only powered suits reinforced with welded metal plates and armed with shotguns taken from the Rockists or welding tools… but the crew members, frankly, didn’t seem likely to be much help.

The crew’s training amounted to defensive tactics of hiding behind temporary barricades in narrow corridors while firing lasers wildly—perhaps effective against common space pirate rabble, but against monsters considered humanity’s primary enemy in space, they had no chance of winning and would be lucky if even one survived.

“…Gotta do something. …Haaa.”

So John was sighing deeply while checking for areas to retreat to if they needed to abandon this cargo hold, when suddenly—

A faint vibration was felt throughout the massive ship, and the monster fleet’s movements on his psychic radar interface looked ominous.

“They’re coming this way, aren’t they?”

More precisely, he could see small to micro Hive Ships rushing madly toward the cargo ship he was on.

‘…Better get ready.’

Although the cargo ship’s defensive laser anti-aircraft guns were shooting down micro Hive Ships, they were swarming in faster than they could be shot down. John began circulating psychic energy through his body to warm up.

And moments later:

KWAAAANG—!!!!! KWAAANG—!!!!! KWAAAANG—!!!!! KWAAANG!!!!

As sounds and vibrations of powerful impacts resonated throughout the ship, new information updated on his interface:

[Monster intrusion at H-2, H-13, H-17, P-11.]

[Mercenaries stationed in these areas, please suppress immediately.]

‘…They came here?’

The news that monster ships had boarded the thirteenth cargo hold where he was currently stationed was bad news for him, but what could he do?

Deciding that facing them in battle was better than breaking contract and suffering a fate worse than death, John trudged along behind the crew members who were hurriedly moving somewhere—and—

Whoosh!

“KRAAAAAAAA—”

Slash.

“H-help, help me, hel… he……………”

‘What a mess, as expected.’

At the end of his path, he witnessed a horrific massacre unfolding.

The monster ship had penetrated the thick outer wall and fixed its muzzle as if infecting the flesh. Beyond the connected monster boarding ship, the monsters’ infantry troops were pouring in.

They had elongated heads with circular mouths resembling lampreys. Three black pearl-like eyes were attached to both sides and the crown of their heads, and their skin was protected by bumpy, dark purple carapaces.

Two pairs of arms extended from their shoulders, each holding close-combat weapons or shortened heavy weapons for in-ship combat—and they were slaughtering the human crew members in the entry zone.

Deflecting sporadic laser fire with psychic shields, they moved their nearly 2.5-meter-tall bodies quickly, throwing aside crew members with laser rifles along with their barricades, then methodically slaughtering the scattered crew.

Crew members trying to fight back with industrial powered suits became priority targets for their plasma rifles and most quickly perished, with only a tiny minority of lucky survivors frantically fleeing.

And immediately after John witnessed this scene and charged in swinging his greatsword—

The tables turned, and the monsters became the ones being slaughtered.

The blade of a Grade 3 mercenary could cut through these monsters as easily as it had the Rockists, despite the monsters being much stronger. When reinforcements arrived from nearby areas, the battlefield became even more one-sided.

As the ship’s professional defense team, they came armed with expensive anti-psychic blasters and organic decomposition lasers—heavy weapons that they fired relentlessly at the monsters, while John blocked any approaches toward them.

The monsters, who had occupied more than half the room until moments ago, were being killed faster than they could be replaced and gradually pushed back. As the attack finally reached the connection point of the monster ship:

‘Release!’

John released the built-in function of his sword and fired a psychic energy slash directly at the ship’s connection point.

As the slash flew through, cutting four monsters into pieces on its way to the connection point—at that very moment—

Crack!

The psychic slash disappeared due to what seemed to be telekinetic psychic action, and immediately the one who had blocked it emerged:

“—A Knight?”

The being was none other than one of the Hive Mind’s most notorious named monsters—a “Knight.”