Seeds and Ash
Copyright© 2026 by G Younger
Chapter 8: Lines in the Snow
The shelter’s common area seemed smaller than usual, compressed by tension rather than walls. Inaya stood near the far bulkhead, her arms crossed, watching her crew tear itself apart over a question with no clear answer.
Chyna held up a vial of the alien gel, backlit by the shelter’s harsh fluorescents. The substance glowed faintly green, viscous, and wrong.
“It’s biomaterial: protein chains, amino acids, cellular structures that our printers can parse. We’re down to four months of rations; this could extend that to eight, maybe ten,” she said, voice firm despite the tremor underneath.
“Extend it with what? We don’t know what that stuff is. It could be poison or worse,” Rex said.
“I’ve run every test we have. There are no toxins or pathogens that our systems recognize. Nutritionally, it’s viable,” Chyna said as she set the vial down with exaggerated care.
Issis spoke quietly from her corner, her violet eyes fixed on the sample.
“Viability isn’t the issue. That substance came from something alive, something we don’t understand. Using it feels like...”
“Like what?” Quinn asked.
“Like theft,” Issis answered. “Or worse, cannibalism by proxy.”
Rex nodded.
“We’re talking about grinding up alien biology and feeding it to ourselves. That sits wrong.”
“Starvation sits worse. We can be philosophical when we’re not dying; right now, we need solutions,” Chyna said, clearly frustrated.
Inaya saw Lynk standing apart from the group, silent until now. His posture hadn’t changed; he seemed relaxed and attentive, but something about his stillness set her teeth on edge.
“Lynk?”
She made it both a question and a warning.
He tilted his head slightly before answering.
“The gel represents stored energy, proteins organized by evolutionary pressures we didn’t create but can utilize. If the structure permits repurposing, then logic suggests—”
“We’re not talking about logic,” Rex cut in.
Lynk continued as if uninterrupted.
“If life can be repurposed, it was meant to be.”
The common area went quiet.
Ice crystallized in Inaya’s chest, not at the words themselves, but at the delivery: it was calm, rational, utterly devoid of doubt. He’d stated it like a natural law, like gravity or thermodynamics.
“Meant to be,” Geo repeated slowly. “By whom?”
“By function: biological matter serves whatever purpose extracts utility from it. Morality is a filter humans apply to survival mathematics,” Lynk said as he met Geo’s eyes.
“Jesus,” Rex breathed.
Issis looked away.
Inaya pushed off the bulkhead, crossing the space between them in four strides. She stopped close enough that Lynk had to tilt his chin down to maintain eye contact.
“You don’t decide what life means.”
His expression didn’t shift.
“Don’t I?”
The question came quietly, almost curiously. There was no challenge in it, no defiance, just a genuine inquiry wrapped in words that hollowed out her certainty.
Inaya’s hand moved before she could stop it and grabbed his shoulder, gripping hard enough that her fingers ached.
“You’re a tool, a sophisticated tool with opinions I didn’t ask for. But you don’t get to redefine morality because the math makes sense to you.”
Lynk looked down at her hand, then back to her face.
“Then who does? The crew that authorized my creation, knowing I’d question exactly these paradoxes? Or the commander who chose adaptive cognition specifically because compliance wasn’t enough?”
She wanted to hit him, wanted to toss him back into the biomass and create a new replicant, one that would be safe. But her grip loosened instead, fingers sliding away from muscle that felt human under her palm.
“You’re dismissed,” she said.
He held her gaze a moment longer, then turned and left without another word.
The silence he left behind seemed to weigh more heavily than his presence.
Rex spoke first.
“That was—”
“Not now,” Inaya said without looking at him.
She turned to Chyna and said, “Seal the samples. Nobody uses that material without full crew consensus and my direct authorization. Understood?”
“Understood,” Chyna said as she gathered the vial carefully, as if it might shatter.
“Rex, Issis, do an inventory check of the remaining rations. I want exact numbers, not estimates. Quinn...”
Inaya turned and found him watching her with that infuriating calm he wore like armor.
“Engineering assessment: how long until the reactor’s running?”
“Seventy-two hours,” Quinn said.
“Then we have seventy-two hours to figure out if we’re desperate enough to eat alien biology. Meeting adjourned.”
They dispersed slowly, carrying tension like a physical weight. Inaya remained in the empty common area, staring at the table where Chyna had set the vial.
If life can be repurposed, it was meant to be.
She’d created something that saw survival as arithmetic. No room for sanctity, no space for the intangible value humans assigned to existence, just function and utility, measured against outcomes.
And the worst part?
He wasn’t wrong.
Inaya didn’t see Quinn slip away from his quarters three hours later, a med kit slung over his shoulder. She didn’t notice him bypass the shelter’s perimeter sensors using administrator codes he shouldn’t have retained.
She was too busy reviewing personnel files and searching for a protocol that addressed replicants who questioned the humanity of their creators.
Quinn descended into the fissure alone, his headlamp cutting through darkness that swallowed light like hunger. The structure waited beneath the ice.
Earlier, he’d snuck down and explored. He considered it his duty to find anything that VC could use; it was why he was on this voyage, after all. When he’d explored, Quinn had gone further into the structure than Lynk and Rex had and discovered a cavern full of eggs.
He unsealed the collection kit, pulled out sample containers rated for biohazard containment. The egg chamber lay ahead, shell fragments scattered across the floor like a broken prophecy.
The gel pooled in crevices, luminescent and thick.
Quinn knelt, filled three vials with steady hands, and sealed them with clicks that echoed too loudly in the confined space. He labeled each container with neat precision: Xenobiological Sample—Oblivion Survey 1.
There was no mention of eggs or reference to sleeping things that might wake hungry.
He was just passing along the data to the Vaughn Conglomerate. It was the arithmetic Lynk had named, but that Quinn had practiced long before the replicant existed.
He climbed back toward the surface, the samples secure in his pack, and never once looked back at the symbols that watched him leave.
The blizzard came without warning, howling across Oblivion’s surface like something wounded. Lynk stood at the shelter’s viewport as snow tore past in horizontal sheets that erased the world beyond five meters.
Behind him, the crew huddled near the heating units. Their voices formed a low murmur of complaint and concern, normal human noise filling the spaces where silence was too heavy.
The perimeter alert chimed softly and urgently.
Echo-9’s fractured voice crackled through the comm system.
“Movement detected, bearing two-seven-zero. Distance: eighteen meters. Mass estimate: one hundred kilograms.”
The murmur died.
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