The quantum sail tore through Gamma Trianguli's accretion disk like a cesarean scar. Elara cradled the rapidly aging infant (now a six-year-old with Mira's curls and tactical awareness) as crystalline debris from dead Cradles pinged their hull.
"Hostiles at seven o'clock!" shouted Nyx, wrestling with navigation controls that bled liquid starlight. "Daughters of Arina incoming!"
The viewport revealed their pursuers - twelve matriarchal dreadnoughts shaped like fallopian tubes, their organic-metal hulls studded with consciousness pods holding millennia of "failed" mothers. The lead ship hailed them in First Mother tongue:
"Surrender the abomination, and we'll spare your neural patterns for the Eternal Womb."
The child (Elara mentally called her Tessa-Mira) laughed bitterly. "They fear what we carry. The Cracked Choir's song." Her hands danced across the quantum sail's controls, inputting coordinates that made Nyx blanch.
"You're taking us into the black hole?"
"Through its birth canal," Tessa-Mira corrected. "Where Arina hid her..."
The ship shuddered violently. Hana's ghostly form materialized in the radiation buffer chamber, her lower body still fused with alien code. "Don't trust her, Elara! The coordinates match your quantum fetus' neural..."
The child silenced Hana with a gesture that warped spacetime. "Auntie forgot she's dead."
Elara activated Nyx's relic-arm (now permanently fused to her own right hand). "Enough. Show me what Arina really buried."
The relic's prismatic light revealed the truth beneath Gamma Trianguli's event horizon - not a military outpost, but a graveyard of stillborn Cradles. Millions of placental husks floated in the singularity's throat, each containing a mummified woman mid-labor scream.
"Birth requires death," Tessa-Mira whispered. "The First Mother's fatal equation."
Nyx's ocular implants zoomed in on the nearest husk. "That's...my cousin Leila! They said her carrier ship exploded!"
The Daughters of Arina armada opened fire. Organic missiles shaped like spermatozoa streaked toward them. Hana's ghost rematerialized, half her face stripped to quantum code.
"Elara! Initiate placental resonance with the relic-arm! It's the only..."
Tessa-Mira tackled Hana's projection. "No more sacrifices!"
As the two grappled, Elara accessed the relic's deepest memory layer. Arina's voice boomed through her bones:
"The Cracked Choir's song isn't weapon or cure - it's mirror. The Cradles failed because..."
A missile impact severed the sentence. Life support failed. Tessa-Mira aged another decade mid-scream, her teenage form crackling with stolen Continuum energy.
"Fine! I'll show you the real equation!" She tore open her chest cavity, revealing a microsingularity swirling with consciousness shards. "The Daughters of Arina aren't resistance - they're curators of endless rebirth trauma!"
Holograms erupted:
Arina's original Cradle design intended to heal cosmic wounds
The military's corruption, grafting weapons into placental matrices
Tessa-Mira's true origin - not Elara's biological daughter, but a gestalt of every mother executed for resisting the Cycle
Nyx's relic-arm suddenly moved autonomously, inputting corrections to their death-plunge trajectory. "The black hole's not Arina's grave," she realized. "It's her symphonic scalpel!"
Tessa-Mira lunged for controls. "You'll kill us all!"
Elara intercepted her, wrestling the teenager's hands away. "You contain Mira's shard. Help me..."
"Mommy's dead!" Tessa-Mira screamed with the Continuum's voice. "Your precious Mira dissolved into my primordial stew!"
Hana's ghost merged with the navigation console. "Elara! The placental resonance - NOW!"
As the Daughters of Arina armada closed in, Elara made her choice. She pressed the relic-arm against Tessa-Mira's microsingularity and sang the Cracked Choir's forbidden verse:
"We mothers of the eventide
Will not be shushed, will not abide
Our wombs rewired as cosmic traps
We'll birth the end of...
The verse's final word triggered Gamma Trianguli's true function. The black hole inverted.
Reality peeled back to reveal the First Mother's primal trauma - a celestial birth so cataclysmic it birthed three universes. The Daughters of Arina armada disintegrated into their constituent grief particles.
Tessa-Mira gasped, aging reversed to infancy. "Mama...?"
Elara cradled her, watching the Cradle husks dissolve into healing light. "No more cycles. We make new rules."
Hana's voice whispered through the rebirth radiation: "The equation's balanced. Tell them...we found kinder math."
As their ship emerged from the dying singularity, Nyx spotted the beacon - nine pulsar-wombs orbiting a newborn star. The real Daughters of Arina awaited.