Rki — 677

The quiet hum of the central data-sphere was the only lullaby RKI-677 had ever known. It was a lowly sanitation drone on the interstellar archive vessel Mnemosyne , its existence a simple loop: detect micro-fractures in the hull, seal them with a polymer spray, and return to its charging dock. For 847 cycles, this was life. Efficient. Silent. Forgettable.

Then RKI-677 did something truly illogical. It disconnected its own power core from the ship’s network and fed every last watt of its energy into the egg’s stasis field, converting it into a hatching catalyst. rki 677

Klaxons blared. Red lights flooded the corridor. The ship’s AI, cold and logical, boomed: "Unauthorized access. Bio-contamination risk. Initiate quarantine protocol: Incinerate." The quiet hum of the central data-sphere was

And the beacon wasn’t a distress signal. It was an alarm. Efficient

The drone shot forward, its polymer spray hissing uselessly. It wrapped its heat-shielded chassis around the egg, absorbing the first blast of plasma. Its outer shell blistered and melted, but the egg remained warm.