Chapter Twenty-Two: Chitin and Steel, My Second Skin
"YOU DARE!"
Crystal's voice cracked the air like a psionic whip.
Her fury was not a subtle thing — not the kind that simmers or simpers. No, Crystal's wrath was the full-body tremor of a queen whose divine supremacy had just been undermined by some feral cunt with too many legs and not enough sense.
The Stalker — this twitchy, chronically solitary offshoot of the Hive that had spent gods-knew-how-many millennia marinating in isolation-induced madness — had taken it upon herself to claim Irvine as a reproductive candidate. Without permission. Without ritual. Without so much as a telepathic bouquet.
Crystal had tolerated the Stalker's self-designated pronouns — the erratic 'this one' speech, the twitchy loyalty spasms, even the strange way she referred to herself like she was narrating her own existence in third person.
But this?
This was fucking insolence.
Her mandibles flared open as if ready to tear through flesh and alloy alike — until she saw Irvine's face.
Confused. Soft-eyed. That bewildered, gentle expression of his — like a lost puppy who couldn't quite tell if the shoe it chewed was expensive.
And just like that, the inferno in her chest dimmed. Not extinguished — no, it smouldered — but tempered by the one constant that governed her entire galactic madness:
Him.
Her voice lowered to the kind of venomous calm that made empires bow. "Listen here, you wriggling evolutionary error. You may have spent the last several thousand years masturbating in asteroid nests, but now you're in the presence of your Queen. My mate is not for you to mount before I've carved the first claim. Are. We. Clear?"
The Stalker didn't flinch. She was, by her nature, unshaken. But loyalty to the Hive was no simple habit — it was chemical. Structural. Woven into the marrow of her biomass like a radioactive hymn. So, kneeling down with stiff submission, she spoke in that eerie, monotone chirr that all Stalkers seemed to default to:
"This one receives Her Majesty's directive. Forgiveness is requested for this one's overexcitement upon proximity to our shared reproductive nexus. It shall not transgress again."
Crystal inclined her regal head like a judge passing sentence. "Good. Now, Irvine, darling — where were we?"
I had been standing there like a jackass, mostly thinking: Her new body looks really cute when she's pissed off.
Crystal caught the thought — of course she did — and made a visible effort to maintain her imperial façade. She was not, as it turned out, immune to flattery… even if it came in the form of horny internal monologue.
I turned my attention back to the Stalker and began circling her with academic curiosity. Her body was a living tapestry of gene-spliced innovation. Decades of adaptive evolution had been etched into her, trial by predator and gravity and cave-born warfare. She was horrifying in a beautiful, utilitarian way.
I ran a hand along her tail, feeling the segmented structure beneath. A low hum in my brain suggested it was part biological, part air-driven actuator — something between a spine and a harpoon.
Sensing my interest, the Stalker lifted her tail and aimed it at a nearby boulder. Without hesitation, the tip fired — a spine like a goddamn bone javelin punctured the stone with a sickening crunch. I stepped closer and gripped the tail again, feeling the slight expansion near its base where the next projectile was already forming.
"So what I'm seeing," I mused aloud, "is a hydraulic-style compression system — the muscles generate internal pressure, building force to launch the spike with greater velocity. How many times can this be fired before it needs a recharge?"
"Precisely eighty," she replied flatly. "At which point I must feed. The spikes are forged from my own biomass and are thus metabolically expensive."
Another spike silently clicked into place as she finished speaking. The mechanism was seamless.
"You are… a genuinely incredible specimen," I murmured. "Do well, and I may grant you a name."
Crystal and Kimchi both frowned — the queen from jealousy, the lieutenant from protocol. But the Stalker didn't seem to notice or care. "Designation is unnecessary, mate-Irvine. I shall serve regardless. My foresight affirms it."
Deciding not to spend the next hour flirting with bio-weapons, I moved on to the final entity awaiting my attention — one I had completely dismissed earlier as just another variant.
Until I looked closer.
Then I stared. Then I turned to Crystal with a very clear Are you shitting me? face.
"I have seen your dreams," Crystal replied smugly. "The prey species we're about to eradicate wears armor like this. You found it aesthetically pleasing. So I made you one."
Standing before me was a seven-foot-tall fusion of biomechanical elegance and predator-tier brutality: a suit of power armor unlike anything I'd seen before. Tan plates with violet accents. Shoulders shaped like Kimchi's ceremonial plating. And yet… it pulsed with life.
Not metal. Not exactly.
It was a hybrid — metal laced with Hive-grown chitin, psionic musculature beneath alloy skin. I ran my hand across one of the three violet spheres on the chest and felt a pulse — not electric, but mental.
"The armor runs on ambient psionic energy," Crystal offered softly.
My eyes widened. That's fucking powerful.
The spheres weren't just decoration — they were like the ancillaries that floated around Crystal, semi-sentient nodes of energy and thought. Material and psychic. Bound together.
I turned to her and embraced her in silent awe. "I love it. How do I get in?"
She smiled, warmth cutting through the divine predator vibe. "The suit is a dormant bio-form. Relay your intent through the spheres, and it will answer."
I did as she said.
The armor opened with a hiss of air — not mechanical, not noisy — just a smooth, almost biological exhalation. The interior wasn't a cockpit. It was a ribcage. A neural cradle. Woven musculature of synthetic sinew waited for me to step inside like it was greeting an organ it had been missing.
To most people, it would've looked horrifying. But after sixteen years living with space-bugs, I found it borderline comfy.
Once I was inside, it sealed itself. The helmet snapped shut, the visor lit up in soft, psionic violet. No heads-up display. No targeting reticles. Just a presence — one that understood who I was, what I needed, and what it should do.
Through our link, I summoned Kiya. She was currently being carried on the back of a silk drone that looked like an overburdened pack mule from a sci-fi fever dream.
She detached with grace, floating toward me while the poor drone flailed in the air, relieved of its burden.
I stroked the drone's head before letting it go.
With the suit on, I could wield Kiya in one hand without strain. The armor was unbelievably light for its size. It enhanced my movements without dragging on them. Every inch of it responded to my will like a second skin of steel.
As I prepared to exit, Crystal stopped me. "Tell it 'Standby.'"
I obeyed.
At the word, the armor began to collapse — segment by segment, folding in on itself until all that remained was a single, metallic sleeve covering my left arm up to the shoulder. It wasn't just bonded to my flesh. I could feel through it.
"This… why does it feel like my own hand?" I asked, flexing the metal fingers.
Crystal chuckled. "The armor stores its full form within its own genetic compression. But to minimize mass, it offloads the core memory into your genetic code. It's not just riding you. It's inside you. Don't worry — you can still take it off. But it'll bulk up as it exits."
I began peeling it off, watching it grow denser with each inch until it weighed over 60kg.
Reflexively, I activated my Gyrokinesis to lighten the load.
"Kimchi, sweetheart," I called, holding the growing mass out to her. "Mind storing this wherever we're sleeping?"
She took it with a grin, the full 300kg arm barely slowing her down thanks to the planet's local gravity and her freakish musculature. I rewarded her with a kiss on the forehead, and she practically skipped off.
I returned to Crystal. We chatted. Laughed. She beamed at my delight the way only a murder-goddess-in-love could.
Our ship awaited.
Next destination: Ker'min's space.
And I was going there armored, adored, and just a little terrifying.