Chapter 826: A Lot Of Pest Control

We didn’t meet another one of those rat-mantis creatures on our way to the security room.

But when we did enter the security room, however, one of the creatures was laying inside it and seemingly tearing one of the crew members it had already killed earlier apart.

The weird thing was that it was slicing the corpse carefully like a chef trying to separate an ingredient into different parts to be used for making a dish.

It was even laying out the parts it cut off neatly on the ground beside it.

The creature immediately noticed us as the door made a noise when it opened, prompting it to spin around while still holding up the corpse with its right foreleg.

As though offended by our presence, the creature immediately dropped the corpse it was holding to growl at us before attempting to slash its scythe arm towards us.

Yumiko immediately intercepted the attack, her swords slashing out to slice off its arm before I aimed my shotgun at its head and fired a slug round that blasted through its head.

The remains of the creature wobbled for a moment before crashing down onto the ground with a loud thump.

I checked the rest of the room to make sure there wasn’t a second creature that was hiding somewhere waiting to ambush us before lowering my weapon.

Yumiko looked down at the corpse of the monster before she shifted her gaze to the corpse of the poor guy who got cut up into pieces.

"What was this thing even trying to do?" She asked.

I shrugged, "Maybe it was trying to arrange an art piece or something?"

Stepping over the corpse, I went over to the console panel and booted the machine up, the screens flickering to life and taking a moment to connect to the cameras around the ship.

The moment I saw the screens however... I couldn’t help but stare at it with a dumbfounded expression.

I then slowly brought up my Codex before calling up the Captain again.

As though he was already expecting the call, he picked it up the moment it rang and I found him looking at me in worry.

"Umm... Is... Is something wrong?" He asked, clearly pretending not to know anything.

I pointed at the security terminal, "Didn’t you say that there were only five to eight of them?!! Why are there so many?!!"

On the screens that showed the various different parts of the ship, each of them was showing several of the creatures stalking the halls.

Even just by what is visible on those screens, there were at least several dozens of them crawling around in front of the cameras.

I think there might be at least a hundred of them crawling all around the ship!

It’s a fucking miracle that we didn’t get swarmed by them the moment we entered the ship.

I glared at him, "Why the fuck did you lie about their numbers?!!"

He looked a little sheepish before he scratched his cheek in embarrassment, "That... Well... To be honest... That creature that you saw in the generator room... That wasn’t the creature that had attacked us..."

I frowned, "What do you mean? Are you telling me that you weren’t just transporting one type of creature but there’s more of them?!! How the fuck did they get out then?!"

"I don’t know!"

"Then why the fuck didn’t you tell us the truth?!"

"I... I panicked, ok?! I thought if I told you there were more, you would just turn back and run away to leave us here!! Please don’t abandon us!!"

"That is the most stupid thing I have ever heard... If we didn’t have the plan to come here and just started searching the ship because of your incorrect information about there only being eight of them at most... We might have been swarmed and killed which means you’d be dead too, wouldn’t it? Did you think about that? Did you?"

He gave me a face that basically told me he did not think of that.

I guess I’m also expecting too much from the guy who literally let his ship get taken over by some alien creatures so I shouldn’t have expected this guy to be smart to begin with.

He then gave a confused look, "Wait a minute... What do you mean swarmed?"

I showed him the screens, "Look!!"

There was a moment of silence from him before he whispered almost inaudibly, "Oh... They multiplied..."

I gave him a pointed look, "If you have anything else to tell us, now’s the time."

He hesitated before letting out a sigh, "Ok... Listen... The creature that forced us to flee and barricade ourselves in here isn’t the creature that you killed in the generator room... There’s another creature that was let loose which is worse than this creature and that one can’t be killed..."

"What do you mean it can’t be killed?"

"We tried to shoot at it when it broke free and none of our bullets penetrated its skin! We had laser rifles too and none of that worked! It just kept walking towards us like we did nothing!! Then it crushed through the containers holding that creature you just killed and let them loose! That’s how we got to this point!"

"You’re telling me you have a container stuffed with a few hundred of these things?"

"N... No... We were transporting six of them and one of them was the broodmother... And it was already pregnant so... I suppose all the eggs hatched in the time we were hiding here..."

Great... So there’s at least two types of creatures that we have to deal with.

"Do those two creatures not attack each other or something?" I asked.

"I... I don’t know... Even after they were set free, they completely ignored the first creature and the first creature also just started walking away instead of fighting them so... I assume that they aren’t hostile to each other..."

"Would killing the brood mother deal with the rest of the creatures that are loose inside the ship?"

"I... I don’t think so... They aren’t a hivemind after all..."

Damn it... Means we would have to do things the hard way then...

I gave him a pointed look, "How much can you pay us?"

His eyes widened, "You’re... You’re going to help us?"

"We’re already here anyway so might as well. So how much can you pay us?"

He brought his face even closer to the camera on his personal terminal, "I’ll pay!! I’ll pay!! I’ve got three hundred thousand Credits stashed right now! They’re all yours if you can get us out of here!"

Well... Good enough I guess.

"Right, before we deal with this, I first have to warn you that there’s some equipment that we would be using here that we don’t want outsiders to know so..."

"I got it! We’ll tell no one about it!"

"No, no... I’m saying that I would be shutting down your security systems and disabling the cameras so there would be no footage of us using said equipment. You have no problems with that right?"

He hesitated before slowly nodding his head, "That’s... That’s fine... It’s alright..."

"Then your ship might sustain some damage from our fight as well, you would not ask us for compensation later, would you?"

"No! As long as you can get us out of here, that’s all we care about!"

"Right, next thing you need to know is that you aren’t in unoccupied space right now... I told you I’m a Merc, didn’t I? What I didn’t tell you is that I’m currently hired by Crusaders Inc. to work with them so you’re currently floating in a system that belongs to them right now. You might be questioned and detained by their security. Are you alright with that?"

"That’s... That’s fine... I mean... We aren’t doing anything against them specifically after all..."

"I’ll warn you ahead of time that this place just recently experienced an attack by Insurgents so you should be prepared for that. And if there’s anything else, you should tell us now before we start exterminating all these creatures from your ship."

He paused for a good few seconds before his eyes widened again, "Wait... Wait, wait, wait!! You’re going to exterminate those creatures?! Aren’t you just coming to get us out?!"

"What? No? Was I not clear enough? We’re going to try and contain the broodmother if possible while we kill off the monsters. Then that supposedly invincible monster would also be contained but if that’s not possible, we’ll deal with it as well. You just need to sit tight and wait for us to finish this job."

"Wait!! You really can’t kill that thing!! We tried everything and nothing worked!! Just get us out of here!!"

I waved my hand, "If things really go south, we’ll do that. In the meantime, I’m shutting down the cameras and we’ll proceed with the extermination job. You just sit tight in that room and wait for us. Got it?"

Without waiting for a response, I shut off the call and manipulated the console to turn off all the cameras.

I gave Yumiko a nod and stored my shotgun before my back before letting loose a bit of Psionic energy from my body.

Time to get a little serious...