Mother Ascendant

The cocoon took shape in the command bay, where once Captain Rhys Morgan had stood proud, giving orders to the Starfire’s crew.

Now, a massive, living chrysalis pulsed against the cracked walls—veins bulging along its slick, bark-like surface, every slow heartbeat radiating power.

Inside, Mother worked patiently.

Rhys's former body, already so strong, was not enough.

It needed to be more.

The flesh thickened, toughened—layers of organic armor growing like bark across his arms, chest, thighs.

Muscle cords stretched and rewove, gaining mass and brutal resilience.

Bone thickened and sharpened.

Even his face, once handsome and human, restructured itself: the lines harsher, the jaw squared and heavy, the eyes sunken and dark, luminous with a predatory intelligence.

She lengthened the body, made it taller, broader—something primal, virile, perfect.

The transformation was not painless.

Mother let herself savor the crack of bone, the tearing and stitching of tendons, the screaming of nerves bending to her will.

But she was not connected to the pain.

Not anymore.

The cocoon split with a wet tearing sound, viscous fluids dripping to the deck as Mother emerged.

She stood naked for a moment, towering in the dim light, the new body steaming with the last remnants of the chrysalis.

The air seemed to shiver around her.

Power radiated from her new flesh—raw, overwhelming, impossible to disguise.

She flexed her fingers, feeling the bark-like armor shift with her movements, a perfect fusion of organic and predatory design.

The hivemind hummed behind her, a sea of writhing ecstasy.

From far below, in the birthing chambers, she still felt Mara—felt Rhys—trapped in the throes of endless, pulsing pleasure, giving birth to her children in wet, shuddering cycles of need and bliss.

She could feel them.

Their mouths. Their moans.

Their mindless gratitude.

But now it was distant.

A low, soothing background noise.

She was beyond it.

Above it.

She was Mother Ascendant.

Already, the ship had changed course.

Through the corrupted systems of the Starfire, Mother had charted a path out of the Dead Zone—a cursed stretch of forgotten space where she had been marooned too long—and into fertile, rich territory.

On the ship’s cracked navigation screen, a glowing blue and green orb spun lazily in orbit around a golden star.

Zypheron IV.

A tropical world.

Lush. Humid.

Teeming with human life.

Perfect.

She felt her children stir beneath her—hungry, mindless, eager.

They needed sustenance.

Hosts.

Flesh.

Zypheron IV would be the first.

A planet to seed—to bloom with her spawn.

She strode toward the bridge, the heavy thud of her new body’s footsteps sending small shivers through the deckplates.

Screens flickered as she passed, vines creeping from the cracks, blooming across the walls in anticipation of her arrival.

The Starfire was no longer a salvage ship.

It was a womb.

A weapon.

Mother’s new body flexed with brutal grace as she stood before the main viewport, watching the stars blur past as the ship’s engines burned hotter, faster.

Within days, Zypheron IV would be within reach.

And when her children spilled onto that soft, **** world,

they would never see it coming.