I want to preface this by saying, I am not trying to hate. My intention is to give thoughtful, honest feedback so that every story I rate has something the author can walk away from and both appreciate and work on. If I sound rude that is entirely accidental, I'm only intending to give helpful, honest criticisms and praises.

I really liked having a story from the hive's perspective, not many people go that route and I commend you for it. I will be blunt though, I personally got bogged down in a lot of the names and few grammar slip ups here and there made this a difficult read for me. I feel like if this were a full book then all of the names for things could've been spread out a bit and easier to digest, but as a thousand word short story it just made it a hard read. Still, you've got a really cool concept on your hands and I'd love to see it stretched out into a full length story.

Double the allies, double the fun! I enjoyed all the alien hive worldbuilding you managed to fit into such a small wordcount, too. I have many questions about the rat's and human's motives, but I did enjoy how you were able to sell the team-ups that happened without a conversation.

Some nice additive world building for the Hive, I agree not sure of the human's motivation especially since it killed the rat-folk (unless the poison/spray had something to do with it?) since Ksthrak being on the ship seemed deliberate on the human's part, but all in all this could be a great cold start to a larger story easily enough due to its engaging nature.

I enjoyed the way that you wrote the alien hives character. They seemed very organic and alien.

Wow. That was a neat twist. Alien hives and- *cough cough* -oh and humans too I guess.