Stepping beyond the six-sided archway felt like entering the swollen, pulsating belly of a dead god.
The underground vault was huge. Over fifteen miles wide and vaulted into a natural dome three miles high, the cave occupied a massive hollow pocket at the boundary where the Moon’s solid dark rock crust met its liquid mantle. In the hard empty pocket of the inside, there was no air to scatter light. Only the sickly, rhythmic violet bioluminescence emitted by millions of pulsing alien eggs lit up the endless forest of stone pillars.
The eggs were everywhere.
Ranging from two to four meters in height, each egg was a semi-clear, leather-like capsule anchored to the dark rock bedrock by thick, stringy placental stalks. Inside the glowing membranes, the dark, curled silhouettes of young crust-borers, void-leeches, and winged reapers moved with sluggish, rhythmic contractions. Across the floor, a dense carpet of white fungal mycelium connected the millions of eggs into a single, vast living network that thrummed with a low, sub-heard heartbeat.
“Merciful heavens...” Sergeant Major Miller whispered over the squad channel. His hand shook as he lowered his carbine. “There must be millions of them. An entire invasion army... Gestating beneath our boots.”
