They were experimenting with the limits of their newly obtained body when the door slid open.

Digging their claws in the ceiling and striving to remain attached, they froze at the noise of hissing air and snapped their head towards the open door.

The marine entering looked up, saw them, and immediately paused. They had no such hesitation and launched themselves out of the small room, pinning him to the ground and blasting a hefty dose of spores in his face. He struggled for a moment, firing a five-round burst straight into their body’s chest before his limbs locked up.

As they consumed the Grineer from the inside out and hastily started repairing the other body, they devoted a small amount of mental power to examine their surroundings. Four more marines, one of them armored in beige instead of dull green, were running from them. The beige one went straight for one of the tablets, a spindly hand keying a complex series of symbols into the surface.

The infestation hurriedly finished adding the marine to its army of two and shot towards the beige marine, leaping into the air and huffing a breath of spores into the air. They started replicating as fast they could, ensuring that the two bodies in their possession weren’t their only backups.

The beige marine finished what he’d been doing and turned, raising a differently shaped weapon than the marines they were familiar with. An orange gout of flame erupted from the end and enveloped their first body even as the lights flashed red and alarms went off.

It ignited instantly, and the infestation panicked. It had no nerves with which to feel pain, but the misery it felt at losing a valuable asset and the worry it experienced regarding its own survival suited to copy the sensation.

Without time to mutate the newly acquired marine properly, they forced it to raise its arm and pull the trigger. The first two shots missed. The next three didn’t, and the horrible marine stumbled.

It was more than enough of an opportunity. With what little control they had over the flaming corpse of their first body, they launched it at the fire marine and dug deep into its armor. The fire marine released a loud grunt of pain, sending another burst into the dying corpse. It wasn’t enough, and both of them died.

The infestation began to replicate with a newfound furor. Its survival would not be called into question so easily! Filing the information away, they made a small bunch of spore sacs and dispersed them into a number of hard-to-reach places, ordering their remaining puppet to begin running after the other marines.

The lights made it harder to make out specific entities, but that was no issue to the infestation. They knew exactly who and where they were. Anything that was not themselves was an enemy; anything that was not themselves was a potential arm, another leg, another weapon to be used for their ultimate survival.

Their marine sprinted forward, discarding their weapon. A brief investigation into the marine’s remaining memories identified the weapon as a ‘gun’. They suspected that guns would come in handy later on.

As the location they’d been in began to be filled with spores, they ensured that the bars emitting light from the ceiling would be dimmed to maximum effect. They could find their targets with any sense - their targets could only use sight. Meanwhile, their marine was beginning to fill up with spores, bloating magnificently, and it gave them an idea.

Temporarily amplifying their reproduction rate, they tautened the marine’s skin and armor and crammed as many spores into its insides as possible, leaving only the leg muscles intact. The marine’s arms slowly rose outward as it ran forward, inflating far beyond what the Grineer species could survive.

Hurling the marine into the next room, the infestation caught a glimpse of half a dozen startled marines before their makeshift weapon exploded. A wave of spores washed over the marines and the infestation gleefully dug through their armor. With their initial marine, it had taken a minute. With this number, it was only a few seconds.

The infestation felt a considerable amount of pride. That had worked quite well! Leaving two of the marines with their guns, the infestation mutated the other four - no, five? - into the quadrupedal creatures their memories had supplied. The moment they were done, the infestation sent the quads off to find more marines, filling every available space of their insides with spores. Even in death they would serve to advance the infestation’s survival.

Bringing the two armed marines back to the infestation’s main location, they took a moment to consider their options. The only limits in marines were the lack of space and the relatively low movement speed.

Wait…

The infestation turned its attention to its own spore pods. They were small, sticky, and could hold a considerable amount of spores.

They had to move quickly. There was no time for second-guessing or alternate decisions. Anything that didn’t work the first time must be discarded.

Without hesitation, the infestation burst its pods, releasing even more spores into the already crowded hallway. Rapidly concentrating a small amount of the spores, it grafted pods onto the marines’ bodies and promptly sent them off.

It did not have one consciousness and so was not limited to one task at a time. Its quads had found a group of more Grineer, around a dozen or so. Over half of them were a different soldier than the gun-wielding marines. These ones held sharp weapons as they rushed the infestation’s quads, gurgling and groaning the whole way.

The infestation was briefly stunned. Did these Grineer have any survival instincts at all? They were charging a melee-exclusive unit. Perhaps their brains weren’t working?

Whatever the case, their weapons were sharper than the infestation had anticipated, and easily carved through their quads. The instant the corpses’ shells were cut open, spores puffed into the air, and the infestation happily consumed the new troops. Three of them were shot down before they could finish fixing them, but in only a few moments, the cutters did their job and slashed the marines down. The infestation greedily stuffed the bodies full of spores, standing them up. It didn’t matter that they were dead - their skin was easily covered with fungus and sealed. They would make decent walking spore pods if nothing else.

All things considered, this was going quite well.

~ ~ ~ ~ ~

“This is not going well.”

The technician who had spoken earned a cuff over the back of the head from the captain of the ship. “Don’t make it worse with your words, fool!” He snarled, moving over to the communications hub. “Send out a distress call. The Tenno will come, enemies or not. They hate the disease more than we do.”

It made the captain’s skin crawl, knowing that they would have to rely on the Tenno to pull them out of the hole they were sinking into. He spat to one side for good measure, shivering in disgust. “And tell every Scorcher on the ship to get to that section. Nothing gets to the bridge!”

He seized a flamer from a nearby Hellion. His life was far more important than theirs, after all.

~ ~ ~ ~ ~

The infestation was in a good mood. Their army was expanding at an exponential rate, spreading through the ship and consuming more victims at a far greater speed than the Grineer could hope to kill them. The whole while, they were gradually obtaining more information from the fragmented memories left behind, and they were getting smarter from it.

A gout of flame warranted more attention than the rest of the ship, and the infestation focused on the dozen quads (recently renamed chargers) getting torched. Before the last one died, they recognized five of the beige marines. They already hated them with a burning passion.

They paused. Something had seemed… amusing, somehow, about that last thought. They filed the concept into the back of their mind for later. Perhaps it could be helpful.

Returning to the situation at hand, they sent a good twenty of the gun-wielding marines to take care of it. Pushing the task to their lower conscious, the infestation considered the project they’d started working on.

Generational memory spoke to them of a construct called a juggernaut. Its design was expensive, requiring extremely dense spore colonies along with a large amount of metal, but would end up an almost unstoppable machine of infested will. Its only weakness was that the spores would be expended as the juggernaut operated - it would have to pulled out only for the most dangerous enemies.

Examining the entirety of their forces, the infestation pushed and pulled at the necessary points, operating as a more effective whole than the Grineer could hope for. At the front with the horrid fire marines, an onslaught of lead fire tore through their armor and shredded their innards. The infestation buried them in a manic wave of spores moments later. These subjects were good for nothing more than nutrients for their consumption.

Dismantling their flame-spewing weapons, the infestation proceeded to expand. A troop of Chargers overran half a dozen of the knife-wielders. A small army of volatile runners was proving incredibly effective, cleansing entire areas of the ship at a time. Splitting their attention, the infestation took a moment to observe the entire battlefield.

Small groups of the fire marines were appearing at certain points, trying to push through to the infestation’s point of origin. Not that their base was in one place anymore - the infestation was not going to risk losing any major sections of the ship. They had only one chance to remove the threats: there was only one infestation, and many Grineer.

A moment’s thought later, the infestation decided to make several groups of gun-users head in the torcher’s direction. Chargers and runners would be pointless to endlessly throw at the burners - range was the only option.

The infestation realized that they were dependent on guns for range and immediately began experimenting on spore-based projectiles. The biggest issue was that all of them were still flammable. Maybe they could figure out how to breed a fire-resistant strain? That sounded helpful.

A screeching hail of gunfire later, the infestation mowed down the last of the fire-spewers and charged onward. A troop of marines laid into their chargers, and one of them screamed, “Dof kle rkkgr!”

One enormous door quickly slid down, and the infestation swiftly hurled a spore pod underneath it, exploding it as soon as it hit the ground. A spout of fire washed over the spores, all but annihilating them entirely. On the other ends of the ship, the infestation finished cleaning out all the corners.

It had taken them fifty-six minutes, and there was only one room left.

~ ~ ~ ~ ~

It had taken them fifty-six minutes. The bridge was the only place left standing.

The captain gripped his console hard enough that the plasteel handles creaked. What in the Twin Queens was this!? He’d never heard of any strain of disease that conquered an entire Grineer warship in just under an hour!

Turning to the communications officer, the captain made sure there wasn’t a hint of anxiety in his voice. “Raise the level of the emergency. And hurry up!” He snapped.

Something hit the blast doors. Something big.

The captain, along with the other Marines and Scorchers in the room, aimed their weapons at it. The sound repeated, echoing a mechanical knell throughout the bridge, accompanied by the hard patter of countless bullets against reinforced metal.

A long pause followed.

The captain’s nerves slowly began to build. This particular disease was far smarter than it had any right to be. What was it-

The blast door slid open.

The shocked Grineer in the bridge were granted a brief moment. A fraction of a second of stillness, giving them all enough time to see the veritable armor of bloated monstrosities awaiting them, along with a barely affected marine next to the electronic lock, a stupid grin on its face.

Raising his flamer, the captain shouted, “Rettrroy klem!” He barely managed a quick trigger pull before a burst of gunfire smashed into his armor. Protected by the superior quality, he yanked his Kraken from his hip and fired as quickly as he could. Two of the four-legged mutants went down in a burst of chitin and fungus before they pinned him to the ground.

He snarled into the warped faces of what had once been his crew, “Filthy sikkhat!”

Then they shot him.

He died angry.

~ ~ ~ ~ ~

The infestation felt immense satisfaction. They were around five hours old and they had already conquered their first ship! Acquired their first army!

Absorbing the final vestiges of information from the last Grineer, they paused. Sikkhat. Was that what they were called?

Very well, Sikkhat mused. It was a decent enough title.