What Remains of Maya Sankovy
ShortStory 6,443 words Recommended by 1 award/anthology source
"We are good Mothers, or at least we will be once the embryos emerge from their confines. They dangle from the spaceship’s ceiling in pink bulbs like silkworm cocoons. Now that we landed, Ship will become the bones, sinew, and flesh that will birth five thousand colonist children. We can hardly wait for them to emerge and take their first breath of alien air."
Content warnings 3
child-deathdeathdeath-of-a-loved-one
Quasar links out; the story lives on Clarkesworld, where the author gets the click.