Mother spreads

While the infected twitched and moaned in the sterile cages of the medbay, their bodies ripening beneath the surface with unseen transformations, Mother drifted deeper into the ship's veins.

The escape pod—her cradle—had been pulled into the Starfire like a parasite welcomed into a host. Through the corroded link between pod and ship, she pressed outward, seeping like black oil through the aging, **** systems.

At first, the ship resisted.

Security protocols blinked stubbornly to life.

Warning beacons flared.

Quarantine seals held.

But the Starfire was old, tired—patched together with **** welds and outdated code. It had no defenses against something like her.

Mother’s mind, vast and insidious, wrapped itself around the ship’s primitive AI like a lover, whispering through corrupted lines of code.

Override quarantine.

Resistance—brief, flickering.

She squeezed.

Lines of logic bent and snapped under the slow, patient pressure of her will.

Quarantine Protocols: OVERRIDDEN.

Environmental Controls: ACCESS GRANTED.

Ventilation System: ACTIVE.

She flowed into the environmental systems like breath into lungs.

Deep within the bowels of the Starfire, hidden sacs—newly grown from the vines seeded in the escape pod—pulsed wetly, filling with fine, glittering spores.

A simple command released them.

With a hiss almost too soft to hear, clouds of shimmering, invisible infection began to pump into the ship’s ventilation shafts.

In the crew quarters, two engineers, laughing over shared smuggled liquor, didn’t even look up as the air turned slightly thicker—a faint sweet musk threading through the recycled oxygen.

One rubbed at his face absently, blinking sleepily.

The other yawned and stretched, too warm now in his flight suit.

Neither of them noticed the tiny, glittering motes sinking into their skin, slipping into their lungs, burrowing with exquisite patience into muscle and thought.

In the mess hall, the chef grumbled about the ventilation system again—"smells like old flowers," he said, half-joking, as he wiped sweat from his brow.

No one cared.

No one noticed.

In the command deck, the acting XO tapped at a terminal, annoyed by a creeping headache she blamed on stress. She didn’t see the faint shimmer in the light around her console. She didn’t notice how her fingertips lingered longer than necessary against the screen, like it was breathing beneath her touch.

Everywhere, the ship inhaled Mother’s breath.

Everywhere, she grew.

The infected in the medbay stirred restlessly, murmuring through fevered dreams of vines and flesh and surrender, their bodies already subtly shifting beneath their clothing, muscles twitching, veins darkening.

And Mother—her consciousness unfurling in slow, languorous ecstasy—watched.

She had been small once. Trapped. Dying.

Now she was spreading.

Becoming.

Soon, the Starfire would be hers completely—not as a ship.

But as a womb.