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Chapter 166: Space Edition Resident Evil Outbreak
Inside the ship, Sector F, damaged area.
Boom!
A single shot tore the warped, ruined hatch off its frame, and the Chitauri squad stepped into the smoke-filled metal compartment.
Inside, large numbers of test tubes containing stored viruses had shattered. The ruptured viral fluid ran down across the surfaces of the tables, pooling together and dripping onto a still-running atomizer unit.
The atomizer was converting the liquid virus into vapor, dispersing it throughout the compartment.
The moment the Chitauri soldiers opened the hatch, the vaporized virus rode the air currents and began spreading silently throughout the ship.
Naturally, the first to be exposed were the very soldiers who had opened the hatch with their own hands.
The squad leader glanced at the shattered tubes on the counter, his brow furrowing slightly, but he said nothing more, instead turning his attention to the cryogenic storage units inside the compartment.
Because their consciousness had been specially backed up, none of them felt any fear in the face of the unknown.
Instead, they moved forward and opened one of the cryo containers in front of them.
Hiss—
Along with the sound of a high-pressure valve releasing, the contents of the cryo container came into view.
"Are these... eggs?"
What lay before them were rows upon rows of neatly arranged "eggs."
Each was about the size of a human head. Unlike the hard shells of ordinary eggs, these had a distinctly fleshy texture, the surface covered in blood vessels and sinew, immediately recognizable as belonging to something living.
"They went to all this trouble just to bring a crate of eggs aboard?" the squad leader asked, puzzled.
"Maybe it's emergency rations," another Chitauri offered.
"Are they planning a war of attrition with us?"
"A war of attrition? Heh... a war of attrition assumes Earth can withstand our continuous assault long enough for that to matter. You really think conquering Earth will take that long?"
A low growl.
"More likely Earth collapses before any 'war of attrition' even gets started."
"So what are you saying?"
"I'm saying these eggs probably have some other purpose."
"What do you mean..."
While they were still talking, behind them, an unremarkable Chitauri soldier suddenly let out a low growl.
The Chitauri soldiers who heard it turned to look, but seeing it was one of their own, they turned back and went on speculating about the eggs.
But before they could say much more, the soldier who had growled suddenly opened his mouth wide and lunged at the person nearest him!
"Raaagh!"
The sound was nothing a living creature should have been able to make.
That mouth, full of fangs and sharp teeth, clamped down on the nearest soldier's throat, tearing it open with brutal force, then ripped his windpipe out whole.
In an instant, blood sprayed everywhere!
The others, hearing the horrifying sound behind them, spun around in alarm.
But it was already too late...
The man who'd been pinned down now had his abdomen torn open by the zombified Chitauri soldier, his organs exposed to the air as the creature bit and tore at them in great mouthfuls.
Seeing this, the squad leader immediately raised his weapon and aimed it at the zombie nearby.
Just as he was about to pull the trigger, the teammate behind him also began growling and snarling, then lunged uncontrollably, biting at the others around him.
And this wasn't an isolated case.
As time went on, the rest of the squad began showing the same symptoms one after another.
It wasn't limited to them, either. Crew in other compartments were starting to show infection responses too.
Things like fever, coughing, fatigue.
Except these post-infection symptoms came on fast, and passed even faster.
There was a reason for that. The T-Virus the Astartes had brought aboard the ship was a "special edition." Matthew had accelerated its zombification rate by several dozen times.
It could complete the transformation within minutes of exposure.
This was the special gift Matthew had prepared for them.
[Modified T-Virus]
Of course, "modified" here didn't mean improved in the helpful sense. It meant the negative effects had been intensified.
The transmissibility had been specially enhanced, allowing the virus to survive for extended periods even at temperatures of negative ninety-five degrees Celsius, while the zombification speed had been accelerated by several dozen times.
That wasn't all. To make sure this particular "gift" delivered, Matthew had also enhanced the zombies' bite force, destructive power, speed, and resistance to physical damage.
These zombies didn't move at the pace of a ninety-year-old man anymore.
They moved fast. Every single one of them ran like an Olympic sprinter.
At this moment, scenes straight out of a biohazard outbreak were playing out simultaneously across the entire ship.
As the T-Virus spread through the ventilation ducts into every corner, the entire ship fell into chaos.
This was especially true given that the command center had already pulled a third of its forces away. The moment one infection occurred anywhere, it immediately escalated into a large-scale zombie outbreak.
In the command center, the battle commander listened to the reports coming in over the radio, his breathing growing unsteady.
He couldn't understand it. The situation had been completely under control just a short while ago.
So why had everything fallen apart so quickly?
Just as he was trying to figure out how to handle this latest development...
The observer beside him suddenly spoke up. "Report! Unidentified units detected advancing toward the vehicle control room!"
"Should we relay this to all combat units?"
The battle commander listened to this for a moment in silence, then finally nodded his approval.
"Relay it."
"And tell them: gather sufficient forces. They must be stopped, no matter what."
"Yes, sir!" The observer nodded, then spoke into the radio system. "All units, attention. Unidentified units are advancing toward the vehicle control room!"
"Upon receiving this message, move immediately to reinforce the vehicle control room. The enemy may be attempting to destroy our vehicles and disrupt the pace of our offensive against Earth."
This message sounded simultaneously over every soldier's shoulder-mounted radio.
The Chitauri soldiers near the vehicle control room, hearing this, hurried to finish off the zombies in their corridor before rushing as one toward the vehicle control room.
Tromp, tromp, tromp—
At an intersection somewhere in the ship.
Listening to the footsteps converging from every direction, the Astartes slowly came to a halt.
"According to the map, we're still twelve kilometers from the vehicle control room."
"There's no way around the units blocking our route."
"So... get ready for a fight." One said it flatly.
The other Astartes nodded in response. "Understood."
With that, they all drew the portable railguns from their belts and charged at full speed toward the vehicle control room.
The metal bulkheads at the corner gleamed with a thick, blood-like sheen under the red lighting.
The Astartes didn't slow down at all. Their heavy boots struck the deck plating like rolling thunder, echoing back and forth through the narrow corridor.
Only a few steps later, they ran into the enemy at the corner...
A Chitauri soldier had just leaned half his body around the corner, before he could even register who was coming, an armored arm had already closed around his throat.
The instant the armored fingers tightened, the crisp snap of his neck breaking rang out unmistakably in the enclosed space.
Like someone snapping a dry twig underfoot without a thought.
Having done this, One tossed the body aside behind him without ceremony, then turned his gaze toward the end of the corridor.
At the far end, a Chitauri squad was rapidly assembling.
They had clearly just received orders from the command center and were pouring in from every passage.
The squad leader at the front spotted the massive silhouette looming in the red light, his pupils contracting sharply, and nearly in the same instant raised his energy rifle.
Without the slightest hesitation, they squeezed their triggers!
Boom! Boom! Boom!
Energy rounds rained through the corridor like a downpour.
The air vaporized under the heat, producing a piercing shriek.
The energy beams struck the bulkheads, instantly melting fist-sized craters into the metal, molten iron running down the walls like blood.
Facing the dense barrage of energy fire, Astartes One didn't dodge.
Or perhaps, he simply didn't need to.
Their heavy armor was built precisely for situations like this.
The energy rounds struck the powered armor, blossoming into warm red bursts of light across its surface, one after another.
Attacks powerful enough to punch straight through an ordinary soldier left nothing more than shallow scorch marks on the armor's surface.
One charged at the front of the formation.
His gaze lifted toward the squad at the end of the corridor.
Then, within the span of a single second, his speed climbed to something genuinely terrifying!
His nearly three-meter frame seemed to transform into an accelerating heavy artillery shell!
Each step he took left the deck plating beneath him buckled and deformed.
A low, tearing howl tore through the air.
The Chitauri squad leader, witnessing this, found his eyes filled with disbelief.
In their understanding, no living creature could absorb concentrated fire head-on and still maintain a charge at this speed.
"This is bad!" the Chitauri squad leader thought to himself.
The incoming figure grew larger, closer, like a silent dump truck barreling toward them at full speed.
Nobody could afford to ignore a dump truck charging straight at them, not even the Chitauri.
Just as they tried to scramble out of the way, the Astartes was already on top of them.
BOOM!!!
An explosive impact echoed through the corridor.
Looking on, One's entire body had slammed directly into the heart of the Chitauri squad's formation.
The soldiers who took the full force of the impact were crushed between One's shoulder armor and the metal bulkhead.
They absorbed nearly the entirety of the impact, their bodies driven deep into the deformed metal wall.
Their exoskeleton armor had shattered into fragments, mixed in with their own flesh and blood, as though someone had pressed a pile of broken glass directly into their bodies.
Blood seeped along the cracks in the wall, dripping to the floor with a thick, viscous sound.
From the start of the charge to its end, the entire process had taken less than two seconds.
Creak...
One stepped out from the dented wall, glanced down at the blood smeared across his shoulder armor and chest, then said, flatly, a single word: "Move."
His voice was unsettlingly calm, without the slightest fluctuation.
As though everything that had just happened had been a trivial, unremarkable thing.
The other Astartes responded with simple acknowledgments to One's order, then continued toward their destination.
Boots stepped through the thick pools of blood.
Nobody looked back at the bodies. Nobody said another word.
As though the bloody skirmish that had just occurred was nothing more than a single breath taken during the operation.
They continued their advance, mechanical and relentless.
Ahead, more footsteps were rapidly closing in.
On the corpses behind them, the radios continued repeating commands from the command center, their voices urgent and sharp.
Chitauri reinforcements were converging from every direction... but none of that mattered to them in the slightest.
Because to this group of walking war machines, twelve kilometers was nothing more than a stretch of road with a bit more garbage to grind through.
The "biohazard" phenomenon continued to play out across every part of the ship.
Compared to the first half of their journey, the second half went considerably smoother for the Astartes.
Because now, in addition to themselves, they had "allies."
The Astartes watched the zombies sprinting past them, their expressions completely unchanged.
The zombies made no move to attack them.
Because the Astartes themselves were products fused from the T-Virus and a mixture of other viruses and serums, the zombies didn't attack them at all. Instead, the zombies recognized them as friendly.
Boom!
A single punch blew open the door to the vehicle control room.
The Astartes filed inside, one after another.
Inside the vehicle control room, large numbers of Chitauri soldiers, who had been preparing to board their vehicles before being infected mid-process, now wandered aimlessly throughout the chamber.
Hearing the Astartes enter, they turned their heads toward the sound, and upon seeing it was the Astartes, lowered their heads again and went back to wandering.
"The command ship has encountered an emergency situation. All combat units, return to the command ship immediately."
"The command ship has encountered an emergency situation. All combat units, return to the command ship immediately!"
Inside the vehicle control room, the radios on the shoulders of every zombie crackled to life with the same message at once.
Hearing this, Astartes One glanced at the zombies, then spoke. "Looks like we'll need to pick up the pace."
"Otherwise we might run straight into that returning wave of forces."
Astartes Eight nodded in agreement upon hearing this.
Those calm, unwavering eyes swept across the chaotic mess of zombies scattered throughout the vehicle bay, finally settling on a row of neatly arranged ships not far off.
They were Chitauri assault craft, shaped like flattened metal beetles.
Short swept wings extended from either side, and their tail thrusters were still giving off the faint heat of recent use...
It was clear these vehicles had just finished maintenance before the viral outbreak, and had been preparing to deploy for combat.
"Let's go."
Eight raised his fist and swept aside the zombie blocking his path.
The swing looked almost casual, but it sent the zombified Chitauri soldier flying clear across the bay.
Seeing this, the other Astartes moved in as well, each selecting their own ship.
None of them spoke, but their movements were remarkably synchronized.
They swung themselves into the pilot seats, gripping the control sticks with one hand, and turned the nose of their craft around the way one would turn a motorcycle, heading toward the command ship's flight corridor.
The thrusters at the rear of each craft erupted in blinding blue light.
The next instant, all twelve shot out of the vehicle bay's exit like arrows released from a bowstring.
The twelve ships burst out of the command ship in a diamond formation.
And the moment they cleared the hull—
They got a clear view of what was waiting outside.
In the pitch-black expanse of space, countless points of light were converging toward them.
The points of light were so dense they looked like a swarm of locusts sweeping across a field, staining half the starfield a shifting silver.
It was the Chitauri's returning reinforcements.
Tens of thousands of single-pilot fighters and assault craft were turning back from every direction of the Earth battlefield, surging frantically toward the command ship.
Their thrusters trailed countless streaks of light through space, and from a distance, it looked like a reverse meteor shower.
And among those craft, larger shapes were mixed in...
The Chitauri's mechanical Leviathans.
"Looks like we've got trouble this time," One said evenly.
Even as he said it, there wasn't the slightest trace of tension or fear in his voice.
The other Astartes said nothing in response, instead drawing the grenade launchers from their belts...
Clearly, they were ready to fight, regardless.
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