Ch.211Prequel Chapter 16. Everything According to His Will

With a hissing sound, the cargo hold hatch opened to reveal an android with its eyes covered by a blindfold.

When he touched the switch, only a clicking sound was heard with no response from the lights.

From that sound alone, Knight could tell the problem wasn’t with the electrical system but with the fluorescent lights themselves.

As he approached the ceiling and felt around with his hands, he could confirm it.

The cargo hold lights, which had been perfectly fine until the accident, were now smashed.

This raised the question: who had destroyed them?

‘The alien parasite would have no reason to break the lights.’

When Knight first discovered the smashed lights, his danger detection circuit sent a signal.

He had thought that at least one of the four who went to turn off the alarm would return as a corpse.

Yet surprisingly, all four—no, five including the cat—had returned.

If the parasite hadn’t broken the lights to kill crew members in the darkness, then who had?

‘Whoever it is, they’re still in here.’

Knight had already completed searching every space except the cargo hold.

Besides Jin, Allen, Gustav, and Ash huddled together in the navigation room, he hadn’t found any living beings or even signs of them anywhere else.

If someone else was here, Knight concluded they must be hiding in the cargo hold.

‘Besides, a thorough captain would surely have prepared a backup plan.’

Soon, he heard the hatch closing with a hiss behind him.

In the pitch-black darkness, Knight moved down the central corridor and grabbed the old-fashioned camera hanging around his neck.

“Smile~”

A child’s innocent voice followed by a mechanical sound, and the camera flash burst forth with light.

Simultaneously, the photo data was transmitted through the wire connecting the camera to Knight’s circuits.

In the photo, which captured the scene as if in broad daylight, there was nothing in the long central corridor.

Knight checked each shelf one by one with his hands, flashing the camera down each inner alley.

“Smile~”

Nothing, and nothing again.

As Knight was shaking his head and about to move on, he noticed something in the photo and quickly turned around.

Though slightly blurred, something that looked like a human hand appeared in the photo.

Hurrying into the alley, Knight flashed the camera again.

“Smile~”

“Ah.”

A sigh escaped Knight’s lips as he recognized what it was.

It was a spacesuit.

A spacesuit slightly protruding from behind the shelf.

As he was about to turn away, slightly disappointed, a question formed in Knight’s circuits.

“Wait. But why would a spacesuit be in the cargo ho—?!”

At that moment, something grabbed Knight’s ankle and yanked hard.

With the little girl’s voice calling “Smile~” and another flash, the photo captured only the tip of Knight’s hand being helplessly pulled into a corner.

.

.

.

“W-what the hell is going on?!”

Sweat poured down Ash’s forehead like a waterfall opening, clearly showing his panic.

The red light on the ship’s schematic diagram was coming from none other than the cargo hold hatch.

The cargo hold hatch had just opened on its own.

“Damn it. Damn it…!”

Reflexively, Ash reached for the emergency switch, cursing.

But the button wasn’t there.

The emergency button had already been disabled by mutual agreement.

There was now no way to remotely control the hatches from the navigation room.

Of course, while Ash was panicking, the corridor hatches were opening one by one in sequence.

“Hehehe. You’re screwed now, Ash.”

“What?! You knew about this, Jin? What’s coming? Tell me quickly!”

“What else? The grim reaper coming for you, man.”

Just then, a faint hissing sound came from the door.

It was right outside.

Ash’s face turned pale instantly as he grabbed a steak knife from the table and pressed himself against the wall above the hatch.

As Ash desperately tried to quiet his breathing by clutching his chest, it happened.

Hisss…

As the hatch opened, a massive shadow loomed inside.

Watching the glowing eyes in the dark corridor, I gestured upward with my chin.

“Above the hatch! 12 o’clock!”

“Jin, you bastard!”

And then—whoosh.

A black figure surged in from the corridor and immediately lunged toward the ceiling.

Dodging Ash’s knife with fluid motion, the figure slammed Ash against the ceiling and delivered a direct hit to his face.

That was it.

The move from “Become a Martial Arts Master in One Book! Space Combat Edition.”

“Urgh…”

With his face crumpled, Ash groaned and then—

WHACK!

After taking another hit, he rolled his eyes back and passed out like a virgin reaching climax for the first time.

It happened in an instant.

Though Ash was skinny, the impressive individual who had disarmed a knife-wielding man with bare hands now removed the hood covering his head to reveal himself.

Inside was, as I expected…

“Phew… Jin. Are you hurt?”

“What?! Why is Ranger coming out of there?”

…not what I expected at all.

Why was Ranger appearing?

Ranger was supposed to be dead.

He dove into the engine flames.

“…Who else did you think it would be?”

“Obviously I thought Knight had hacked some combat android hidden somewhere in the cargo hold?”

“What are you… Wait. Knight got destroyed already?”

-It’s been a while, Ranger. I’m right here. Due to circumstances, I had to switch hardware.

“How could an AI speaker hack anything…”

Ranger looked back and forth between the dented speaker and me, laughing in disbelief.

But something was odd about how they were talking.

It was as if Knight had known Ranger was alive all along.

“Knight. Did you know?”

-About Ranger’s survival, you mean?

“Yeah, man.”

-Yes. I discovered Ranger had been hiding in the cargo hold when I searched it. However, I deliberately kept it secret because I thought Jin would mess things up if he knew.

“Ah, this tin can bastard, seriously…”

My head suddenly started throbbing.

I swear I’ll melt this tin can in a furnace someday.

While I was grinding my teeth at Knight, Ranger had already finished restraining the unconscious Ash and came over to cut the cable ties binding my arms with a butter knife.

This brought us face-to-face, almost touching foreheads.

“How did you survive? I clearly saw you die.”

“Did you really see it clearly?”

“Yes, I did. My eyes aren’t playing tricks.”

“Think about it. Wasn’t something off?”

“What could be… Oh.”

Something off.

There definitely was something awkward about Ranger’s movements when he was working on the outer hull of the spaceship.

Rather than the movements of a military veteran, they were more like those of a corpse having a heart attack from extreme fear.

“You just realized? That spacesuit was empty. I secretly hid in the cargo hold.”

“Then your death was…?!”

“Yes. The captain and I planned it all. If I were infected by the parasite, keeping me isolated would prevent killings, and if I wasn’t infected, we’d have a hidden joker card against them.”

“Ah… So that’s what happened. Couldn’t you have told me too?! The captain and Ranger, you’re both too much!”

-The captain clearly judged that telling Jin would increase the probability of ruining the plan, so he didn’t—

“Shut up, tin can.”

I was getting really annoyed.

Yes, I admit it was a brilliant strategy to catch the aliens off guard.

The problem was that it caught me off guard too…

But I guess the end result was good, so it’s all fine.

Though that didn’t mean my irritation had subsided.

“Jin. Are you upset?”

“I don’t know, damn it. But why can’t you cut this properly?”

“Well, it’s a butter knife.”

“There’s a steak knife over there. Use that.”

“I don’t want to.”

“…”

Ranger smiled slyly while continuing to work on the ties.

His hands kept brushing against my fingers as he worked with the butter knife.

Looking at that handsome face—which would have been on my kidnapping list if I were just a bit younger—my mood started to improve slightly.

Damn. In my thirties already.

“What should we do with Ash?”

“Obviously split his head open.”

“No, no. I have a better idea. If we hand him over to the company that buys our stolen goods, they’d be grateful for such a good research subject.”

“Ha! Sell him to scientists?”

“You object?”

“No. I’m completely for it.”

Is this guy really Ranger?

Why is he so smart now?

There was no better revenge than handing him over to scientists who would go crazy for an alien organism.

Especially if they were the kind who conducted unethical experiments without government oversight.

“Ah. It broke.”

“Ow!”

Just then, the cable tie snapped, and I lost my balance, bumping foreheads with Ranger.

As we rubbed our foreheads and made eye contact, Ranger’s expression was peculiar.

I blinked silently, exchanging looks with Ranger, and then moved my hand downward.

“Hey! Why are you suddenly putting your hand in my pants?!”

“Aliens have tentacles! Stay still! Let me check… Aaah! Found it! No wonder you seemed unusually cool! Oh my goodness! I’ve been fooled by an alien again!”

“That’s not a tentacle…”

“What?”

Feel, feel.

As I fondled the hot tentacle, I fell into panic.

This big, long thing isn’t a tentacle?

That can’t be right.

As if to shatter my common sense, the thing in my hand began to swell and harden.

Crazy.

-Obstacle ahead!

“…?!”

Just then, red lights flashed in the navigation room as a loud alarm sounded.

Without hesitation, we both rushed to the control panel and pulled the throttle down.

The sudden emergency stop threw our bodies forward.

As the engine finally shut down completely and the cargo ship came to a halt, we couldn’t open our eyes properly due to the intense light shining through the front window.

Someone outside was blasting us with a blinding light.

“Ugh. What is that?”

“Parts delivery?”

“But why is it so… noisy…”

Looking at the constantly screaming radar, I saw red dots surrounding the cargo ship.

I just realized it.

We were completely surrounded.

.

.

.

“Hey! Hey! How can you do this to fellow traders! We ordered parts delivery, why did special forces show up? This is a breach of contract!”

“We’ve sold you tons of gold! How could you backstab us like thi—urgh!”

The shouting man and woman, completely restrained, gradually faded into the distance.

As the hatch closed and their voices disappeared, a man in a white coat smiled and clasped his hands behind his back.

In front of him, a middle-aged white man with a broken nose lay unconscious on a stretcher with an oxygen mask, tightly secured.

When black tentacles drooped from under the stretcher, a nurse rushed over and quickly pushed them back up.

“There’s no movement from the Space Force, Doctor.”

“Seems we haven’t been detected.”

“What should we do with those trash? Kill them?”

“After working together all this time, how could I do that? Haha. Keep them alive as test subjects.”

“Understood. However, we only recovered this one specimen, Doctor. The other one was found dead in the ship’s freezer.”

“That’s fine. Even if one died. What matters is how much data we can extract from this one. But, hmm?”

As the man looked down at the stretcher, he noticed the nurse holding something and turned his head.

In the nurse’s hands was an AI speaker with a dented edge, slightly stained with blood.

“Knight. Is that you?”

-Yes, it is, Doctor.

“Excellent. Thanks to your call as soon as the incident occurred, we were able to arrive in time.”

-I was only doing my duty.

Thanks to placing several hospital-owned androids throughout the world—no, the entire solar system—they were able to recover the stolen test subject early.

The foolish pirates probably thought lending them an android was just a simple act of kindness.

In this world, there’s no such thing as kindness without a price.

The man tapped the speaker gently and adjusted his glasses slightly.

After staring at the man on the stretcher once more, the doctor spoke.

“Open his head, extract the specimen, and retrieve the data. Then completely erase the specimen’s memories.”

“All of them, sir?”

“Yes. All of them. We need to use it in the next experiment, don’t we?”

“Understood, Dr. Allison.”

The man called Dr. Allison smiled contentedly as he watched the nurses and doctors push the stretcher through the hatch.