The Hull-Grown God

"Anything on the internal sensors, Millie?" Cassian’s voice was a gravelly rasp inside his helmet, muffled by the recycling system.

Millie’s holographic form flickered into existence beside him, a woman of blue light whose feet never quite touched the grated deck. "Negative, Cassian. Atmosphere is stale but breathable if you had a death wish. No bio-signs. No energy signatures beyond residual power in the walls. She’s been cold for a long, long time."

"That’s what the manifest said," Cassian grunted, bracing his cutter against the cryo-bay door. The metal was a composite alloy he’d never seen before, thick and unyielding. The plasma torch spat a plume of incandescent fury, and the air filled with the smell of superheated metal. "Sealed due to 'containment failure.' Vague. Profitable."

"Vague is rarely profitable," Millie countered, her form shimmering as she processed data. "It's usually a synonym for 'unspeakable horror beyond human comprehension.' Or leaky plumbing. The historical records are maddeningly ambiguous."

Cassian let out a short, sharp laugh. He loved it when she got like that. Centuries of stored data and she still had a knack for gallows humour. He finished the cut, the heavy slab of door groaning in protest before he kicked it inward. It clanged against the deck of the room beyond, the sound swallowed by a profound, oppressive silence.

He swept his light inside. The cryo-bay was vast, a cathedral of slumber. Hundreds of pods lined the walls in neat, vertical rows, their indicator lights long dead. A fine layer of dust coated everything, a grey shroud over the ship’s failed promise to reach Proxima Centauri.

"Alright, let's see what treasure we can liberate," Cassian said, stepping over the threshold. Millie floated in after him, her light casting long, distorted shadows that danced around the silent pods.

It was the patterns that first tipped him off. The frost on the cryo-pod glass wasn't random. It spread in delicate, fractal shapes, like ice flowers blooming in perfect, geometric precision. Too perfect.

"Millie, run a spectral analysis on this rime," he murmured, his glove touching the cold surface of the nearest pod. Through the frosted glass, the occupant's face was a pale, indistinct smudge.

"On it," she replied. Her eyes glowed a brighter blue. "Cassian... this isn't water ice. It's a silicon-based crystalline structure. There are micro-filaments extending from the crystal into the pod's gel medium. They're... networked."

Cassian moved deeper into the bay, his light tracing the intricate lines of crystal. They spread from pod to pod, a glittering, inorganic web that connected every single sleeper. It pulsed with a faint, internal light, a slow, rhythmic thrum that he was only now beginning to perceive. It wasn't a sound; it was a feeling, a pressure against his skull.

"They’re all linked," he whispered, a cold dread seeping into his bones. "Like a single organism."

"Worse," Millie said, her voice tight with something that sounded unnervingly like fear. "The filaments are interfacing with the neural ports of the occupants. It’s not just a network, Cassian. It’s a mind. A collective. Forged from every dream and nightmare in this room."

At the centre of the bay was a larger structure, the command crew's hibernation unit. It was the heart of the web, covered in a thick, pulsating cocoon of the same crystal. As they watched, a fissure appeared in its surface, spilling a cold, blue light onto the deck.

A Birth in the Cold

The thing that emerged was not human. It was a construct of shimmering crystal and pale flesh, fused together in a way that defied biology. It had too many joints, its limbs moving with a smooth, unnatural grace. There was no face, just a smooth plane of crystal that caught Cassian's headlamp and threw it back, blinding him for a second.

"Oh, hell," Cassian breathed, fumbling for the pulse rifle slung over his shoulder.

The creature moved. It wasn't a walk or a crawl; it flowed across the floor, silent and impossibly fast. It ignored Cassian, its attention fixed on Millie's holographic form.

"It's drawn to my energy signature!" Millie cried out, her form flickering wildly. "It sees me as another intelligence. An intruder!"

Cassian fired. The plasma bolt hit the creature square in the torso, but it didn't recoil. The energy was simply absorbed into its crystalline structure, causing the internal light to flare brighter. The pressure in his head intensified, and for a moment, he heard a choir of screaming voices, a thousand minds trapped and twisted into one.

He stumbled back, clutching his helmet. The thing was getting closer to Millie. Her projector, the small, unassuming cylinder on his belt, was the only thing keeping her tangible. If that was destroyed...

He made a decision. It was the only one.

"Millie, get out!" he yelled, unclipping her projector and throwing it with all his might towards the door he’d cut.

The small device skittered across the deck, coming to rest in the corridor outside. Millie’s hologram vanished from the cryo-bay, instantly reappearing twenty metres away, safe.

Cassian scrambled back to the doorway, his hands finding the emergency seal controls. The creature turned its attention to him, its featureless face seeming to fix on his. The choir of voices in his head became a single, deafening shriek of fury.

"Cassian, no! Don't!" Millie’s voice was tinny, coming from the projector’s tiny speaker.

He slammed his fist on the activation panel. The heavy blast door began to groan its way shut. He gave her one last look, a wry, tired smile she couldn't see behind his visor. "Find a good price for the salvage, kid."

The door sealed with a final, booming clang of finality. He was trapped. The creature unfolded itself to its full height, a god born of corrupted dreams and cold calculus. It raised a limb that ended in a shard of razor-sharp crystal. The last thing Cassian saw on the small monitor on his wrist was Millie’s frantic, terrified face. And then he died.