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Hunger moves the body forward. Hunger and loneliness. It - they - need more. Too much energy to think, not enough mass yet. Instinct drives them towards the incubators - cryo tubes, the host brain provides. Context is meaningless, there is sustenance beyond this metal and glass. Sustenance and knowledge.
It was large once. It consumed thousands of fleets, galaxies of flesh and meat and bone, it gathered many under its own mantle. It provided the answers to life and death and a thousand more questions. Then it had been burned by those that came after and before. Left to starve and wait, but time was always on its side.
A rest for the chorus. A lull in the hymn. Voices silenced for but a moment, drawing breath before the crescendo and the return.
There were always mistakes - the vermin kept it weak and small for study. Kept it separated and isolated and frozen, but time was its ally and its sword. These new beings with their false confidence and pitiful weapons. Ancilla, combat skins, and fire. Naught but ants biting as their nest is overturned.
Commandeering vehicles was difficult at this stage, but stowing away was simple. Instinctual. Borrowed muscle and memory of layouts. Ships meant fleets, meant hangars and hallways and dark spaces. A way off their weapon-worlds. A way to spread anew.
Animal fear spiked in the half-subsumed host. Adrenaline and pheromones cataloged and then silenced. Such a strange way of being. So sad. Weak and alone. What was one compared to many-in-one? Compared to a veritable colony of minds blended together? Mycelium supporting itself. Sending resources across the expanse of its network. Ever spreading, ever consuming, ever joining. Why could they not see? Animal minds, small, isolated, and crowded with fear and thoughts of continuing. But they were wrong! Enlightenment awaited them - it - we.
The cryo tubes gleam in the low light. This host knows the codes, knows the Ancilla is too old, too curious, too wrong to take action. She had been watching for days. Didn't even make coffee when she woke SN 82201-42910-VM. No move to stop it from learning as well. An Engineering Specialist made for an excellent first convert.
The cryo pod opens under its tendrils and misshapen limbs, like roots spreading through a garden. Fresh soil, nutrients, knowledge - all absorbed under its growing mass. More voices to join, more knowledge to learn. Mass brought more thoughts, more plans, and the ability to seek out specific new hosts. There were such gifts inside these capsules. Offerings of sustenance and expansion, mind and soul.
Another pod hisses open without its prying touch. This one has a being in a combat skin. A Spartan, the meat supplies. Spartans send strange feelings through the consumed. Hope. Relief. And then a flare of animal instincts as it understands more of what this new threat means. More than just mass and knowledge, this Spartan brings fire and loss.
It throws explosives on the vessel, destroying infector pods and equipment haphazardly. The Spartan uses a primitive ballistic weapon to destroy the mass of a newly converted "Lieutenant Kwan". Names mean nothing in the chorus but Kwan was different from Maldini, had new knowledge. The Mass loses some of the combat skills he would have brought if fully subsumed.
The Mass had grown large enough that the Chorus had started. Voices joining in joyous outrage. A fight for survival that made the blood sing. Together, it had grabbed a gun and fired back at the threat. The combat skin of the Spartan held and it returned fire on that branch of the Mass. Voices silenced until it could scrape itself back together and release spores. All it needed was time.
Time made all fall before it. The Ancilla was nothing and this Spartan would fall soon. Then it would integrate with the ship and spread.
The first host is strong. The others are too new. It's been weak for too long, controlling shaky limbs still getting used to this new life stumble and fall to the Spartan's fire. But the main body learns even as voices drop from the chorus. They live on elsewhere.
There are more sleeping bodies hidden away, another cryo bay through a hangar. More voices, more blessed sustenance. Another Mass to be held, holy and true. They will be strong again. United against these weak, lonely animals. Food for the congregation. Lambs to the slaughter. Language comes with more knowledge from these humans. Ancient memories rise up as well. It was always humans, wasn't it?
The next bay comes into view through borrowed eyes. It hears the Spartan approach and the pods on its back spring into action. They thought it a mindless beast when all of them were vermin before it. At the height of its being, it consumed planets. The Spartan and Ancilla and weak waking humans would witness and convert. No longer concealed, it was time to feed.
The berths were set to open, codes entered minutes before it escaped the lockdown. Time was its ally. The infectors latched onto the weak combat skin, testing its strength. Prodding for weaknesses, it heard the garbled radio of the furious mouse in its talons and the dying Ancilla. It was too late.
A bay door opens and it is pulled from the ship. The Spartan in its clutches, its voiceless cry interrupts the song as it scrambles for the boosters on the combat skin. Parts of the chorus are drifting away, frozen and falling silent. The Spartan lashes out and frees itself. The last thing it sees as it tumbles away into the dark is the shrinking vision of green on gray. The Spartan clinging to the hull like a parasite.
A muffled voice of the dying chorus cheers its fate. Humans…so vindictive. Vicious little things.
The Spirit of Fire flies on.