Seeds and Ash
Copyright© 2026 by G Younger
Chapter 10: Replicant Morality
They’d gathered in the mess hall around a table built for dozens, their bodies creating small islands of warmth in a space designed for a colony that would never exist.
Inaya sat at the head, her back straight despite having just finished an eighteen-hour shift. She’d enforced the ritual of a group meal unless someone was on a critical task; it was the last thread of structure before everything unraveled completely.
Lynk took his position near the wall, observing the group dynamics.
Rex shoved processed food around his tray, his jaw working like he chewed glass instead of nutrition paste. Chyna picked at hers with clinical detachment, occasionally glancing toward the corridor that led to the bio-bay. Xavia sat rigid, fork gripped too tightly, while Geo hadn’t touched his meal.
Quinn arrived late, ice still crusted on his thermal suit.
“Where were you?” Inaya asked.
Her tone made it an order, not a question.
“I did a perimeter check. Something’s wrong with the ice near sector four,” Quinn said as he stripped off his gloves and sat without meeting her eyes.
“Define ‘wrong.’”
Quinn finally looked up, and Lynk caught the deliberate omission his body language screamed.
“It’s thinner and looks to be structurally compromised. We should relocate the shelter,” Quinn said.
Issis laughed, the sound bitter and sharp.
“Relocate where? This entire planet’s a corpse.”
“A corpse that’s waking up,” Rex said with a worried look.
Silence dropped like atmosphere venting.
Chyna broke the focus on the idea that the planet was out to kill them.
“The egg’s metabolic activity has increased twelve percent in the last six hours.”
Inaya’s knuckles whitened around her fork.
“I said no shop talk at meals.”
“Commander, we can’t just—” Chyna began.
“We can, and we will. For one hour each day, we eat, we maintain a normal routine, we remember we’re still human,” Inaya said.
Her voice carried the weight of someone forcing reality to submit through sheer discipline.
Quinn’s smile held no warmth. His gaze slid to Lynk.
“Are we, though? How can we forget that we’re eating rations while something hatches two decks below us? While we discuss survival strategies with a thing we printed in a lab.”
Lynk’s jaw tightened.
Inaya set down her fork with deliberate precision.
“Enough.”
But the damage spread through the room like hull fractures. Rex stared at his tray, and Xavia pushed back from the table. The pretense of normalcy had cracked, revealing the desperation beneath the facade, as seven people clung to it while the ground literally shifted beneath them.
After they ate, or pretended to, Chyna stood and activated the wall display. Chemical diagrams bloomed across the screen, molecular chains spiraling in three dimensions.
Lynk watched from his position near the wall, cataloging the shift in tension. Inaya’s fingers stopped drumming, while Rex leaned forward.
“The egg’s internal composition contains protein chains I’ve never seen before. They’re not in any database or documented terrestrial sample,” Chyna began, her voice steady despite the tremor in her hands.
She zoomed the display to show a complex helix structure.
“They’re adaptive, and I think the egg is viable.”
Quinn tilted his head, gaze sharpening before he asked, “Viable for what?”
Chyna’s throat worked before she answered.
“Bioprinting. If we extract and process the fluids carefully, we could use them as a base material.”
She paused, letting the implication settle before saying, “We could print new replicants.”
The words hung in the air as no one said anything.
Lynk’s pulse accelerated, an involuntary response he’d learned to recognize as significant. His existence was reduced to a commodity that could be replicated, expanded, and manufactured from the thing currently interfacing with the ship’s systems two decks below.
Issis broke the silence.
“You want to harvest an alien organism to build more...”
Her gaze flicked to Lynk apologetically.
“ ... more workers?”
“Not workers,” Quinn said, standing slowly.
He approached the display, his eyes moving across the data with the hunger of someone who’d just figured something important out.
“Soldiers, explorers, and ... a sustainable population. We lost a thousand colonists; this could replace them,” Quinn said, sounding reasonable.
Rex’s chair scraped back.
“That thing is alive.”
“So are bacteria. So are the trees we cut down to build shelters. Life serves a purpose, or it serves nothing,” Quinn said without turning from the screen.
Lynk registered a philosophical chasm opening: creation versus exploitation, survival versus morality. It was the same debate that had surrounded his own bioprinting, now magnified and possibly weaponized.
Inaya stood, command radiating from her despite exhaustion carved into every line of her face.
“This conversation requires more than speculation. How much material would you need for a single extraction test?” she asked Chyna.
Chyna’s fingers trembled against the data pad.
“Three hundred milliliters. It would be non-lethal to the organism, assuming standard metabolic recovery.”
“Assuming,” Geo muttered.
Lynk watched Inaya’s jaw tighten, watched her perform an impossible calculation that weighed the crew’s survival against an unknown consequence.
Rex stood so fast his chair toppled backward, metal clanging against the deck plating.
“You’re talking about harvesting alien embryos.”
The words hit the room like decompression, as oxygen seemed to leave the space as everyone held their collective breath.
“It’s not an embryo; it’s a biological structure that is dormant genetic material. There’s no consciousness to violate,” Quinn said, his tone measured and infuriatingly calm.
“You don’t know that,” Rex retorted.
“Neither do you,” Quinn said.
Xavia’s fingers drummed against her thigh, the nervous pattern accelerating.
“We’re discussing ethics while our rations are exhausted in less than forty days,” she said.
Issis shook her head, her pale violet eyes wide as she tried to wrap her mind around this.
“Everything that breathes has a reason for breathing. We can’t just—”
“Can’t what? Can’t survive? Can’t adapt? We’re stranded on a dying planet with seven people and a ship held together by prayer.”
Quinn’s gaze swept the room, landing on each face with surgical precision before continuing.
“One printed soldier could double our survival odds. Two could establish sustainable rotations. Three...”
“No.”
Inaya’s voice cut through the escalation like a blade through frozen atmosphere.
Quinn faced her, jaw tight.
“Commander...”
“We won’t become grave robbers for science,” Inaya said.
The silence afterward carried weight. Lynk analyzed the escalating tensions: Rex’s shoulders dropped in relief, Chyna’s expression crumpled between hope and guilt, while Quinn’s fingers curled against his palms.
Geo cleared his throat, his rough voice breaking the standoff.
“Meat is meat.”
Every head turned.
The construction chief shrugged, his weathered face unreadable.
“I’m just saying. We’ve eaten printed protein, worn printed fabric. Hell, Lynk’s printed.”
His gaze found the replicant without malice, just brutal pragmatism.
“If those things down there can keep us alive another month, another year ... what’s the difference?”
Lynk registered the logic; it was the same that had governed his creation: life as a resource, existence as a transaction. He recognized the survival calculations, and his emerging consciousness recoiled from them.
“The difference is consent,” Issis said quietly.
Quinn laughed bitterly.
“Consent from an egg? From frozen alien architecture that’s been dead for millennia?”
“We don’t know it’s dead,” Issis said.
“We don’t know it’s alive.”
“Exactly: we don’t know. So maybe we shouldn’t play deity with things we don’t understand,” Issis said, her hands shaking, but her voice steady.
Quinn’s expression shifted to something dangerous.
“We’ve been playing deity since we learned to print DNA. Since we built colony ships, we decided to expand our reach deeper into space. And we created him.”
All eyes found Lynk.
He stood against the wall, golden irises reflecting the display’s glow. The weight of being reduced to an exhibit of evidence in his own trial.
Rex moved between Quinn and Lynk, his protective instinct overriding protocol.
“He’s not the same thing.”
“Isn’t he?” Quinn asked.
“Bioprinted tissue, optimized organs, and we messed with his brain for efficiency. We extracted materials, combined them, and gave them purpose. The only difference is that we used human templates; this egg offers something better. We can create something stronger and more adaptive,” Quinn said.
Lynk’s hands formed fists; muscle and tendon moved beneath his skin. He’d spent weeks learning to be human by reading his crewmates’ expressions, understanding emotion, and developing a moral framework beyond pure calculation.
Now Quinn stripped that away with clinical precision, reducing him to a proof-of-concept.
Chyna stood, her voice breaking. “This isn’t the same.”
“Why? Because you like him? Sentiment is a luxury we can’t afford when we’re dying. That egg represents our chance for survival,” Quinn said as he removed his glasses, cleaning them with deliberate slowness.
Inaya stepped forward, command presence filling the space between her and Quinn.
“I gave you an order.”
“You gave an emotional response dressed as a command.” Quinn replaced his glasses and met her stare without flinching. “The crew deserves a vote.”
The air crystallized between them.
Lynk processed the fracture forming as Quinn challenged Inaya’s authority, pitted against Quinn’s power grab. He registered the crew’s shifting alignments: Rex and Issis beside Inaya, Geo uncertain, Xavia’s gaze darting between factions, Chyna frozen in the middle.
Seven people splintering into factions over an organism they barely understood.
Lynk saw Inaya’s jaw work as she thought of her response to Quinn’s blatant challenge. She could pull rank, enforce hierarchy, and crush the mutiny before it solidified.
Instead, her shoulders sagged, a tell Lynk had learned meant surrender to inevitability.
“Forty-eight hours,” Inaya said. “We table this discussion until Chyna completes a full analysis. In the meantime, no extraction, no votes, and no unauthorized action.”
Quinn smiled without warmth.
“Agreed.”
But Lynk caught the lie in his expression—pupils contracting, gaze tracking right before centering. Quinn had already decided; his show of compliance was a performance.
The crew moved to disperse as fractures deepened.
Lynk pushed off the wall.
“The survival of the group outweighs moral discomfort.”
Seven heads turned, and the mess hall’s ventilation hum became the only sound.