XIII
Her children knew what she knew, and she could see what they saw.
Curled up in the sanctity of her womb-like nest, her senses extended as far as he brood did, a network of security sensors that ran through the ship like the nervous system of an enormous creature. The ship was hers, almost an extension of her as she took in the environments around her children in their various stages: stem to stern, port to starboard, she knew the ship as if it were her own body, despite the fact she had barely moved from the welcoming embrace of her intimate nest.
From egg to larvae, infant to adult, they were all part of her, the brood that ran amok the ship as an overwhelming force that brought the inhabitants of the craft to their knees. They heard her voice as one, an ethereal force that guided their actions and kept them under control, and they in turn shared their findings with her.
One group of the nightmare creatures had scouted the far side of the craft and found transparent bubbles affixed to the side of the craft, domes filled with a plethora of different creatures that would be more than adequate for expanding her hive: those that weren't suitable would be simply meat for the young, or materials for the nest itself: maybe both. Hundreds of creatures spread throughout the network of hydroponics domes that littered the hull of the craft, the buzz of bioluminescence only her and her kind could see offering a gentle warmth that beckoned to her natural urge to procreate…
Another group, the smallest of the scouting parties, were in a small room with a flat screen protecting her children from the vast and cold reaches of the void outside the craft. A room filled with glowing lights and beeping machines, a vacant chamber ideal for a reserve nursery to store her most treasured of offspring in their larval form. Should anything happen to her, there most be a successor, and keeping them far away from her and any danger to herself was a survival instinct that thrived inside her just as the urge to spread her malevolent seed…
From the lofty heights of a cavernous room filled with men and machines, a secluded and solitary spy clung to the grilled ceiling, its bulk hidden amongst pipes and outlets as it remained stoically in place, watching men encased in yellow shells tending to weapons and spacecraft alike. She knew what these were, had encountered most of them herself close up, and urged her lone soldier to remain deathly still, to avoid any contact with the infernal contraptions knowing all too well what any of them could do to the child of the hive…
A wave of multi-limbed larvae crawled through the various tunnels and ducts that spread through the ship, spreading the seeds of the creatures like a malignant tumour as they latched to the faces of unsuspecting hosts…
As she hung suspended from her resinous harness, her swollen abdomen pulsating as more and more eggs were released into the waiting arms of the smaller drones who tended her, a piercing scream lanced through the calm of the ether that knitted her to her children, and she froze as each muscle tensed and flexed: just as any other creature of nature, she knew the sound of her children and their calls of distress; she felt their agony as the bodies of her young were torn apart by lethal gunfire. She raised her immense head, the ebony comb slick with condensation and her jaw dripping mucus as she unleashed her own call, a piercing call that reached out to the ears of the unfortunates still strapped to the wall around her, beyond the confines of the engineering section she had dominated, and into the tunnels surrounding her. The adult aliens could take care of themselves, but her younger children were defenceless, they were the future of the hive, and the current generation would have to protect the next.
The sleeping creatures around her roused from their slumber: extricating themselves from their hiding places in the ridged walls that their malleable forms blended in to so well, a swell of creatures surged away from the central nesting area and towards the site of their kindred's death. Slinking into the artificial tunnels of their hive structure, they stealthily merged into the darkness as the command from their matriarch rang in their minds.
Protect and proliferate.
