The IFA is seen as a kind of family planning corporation in the outer edge of colonized space. They help new colonies grow their populations and manage the birth rates so it won't exceed what these colonies can support. But they have a dark secret.

Unbeknownst to the colonial governments, the IFA has been conducting research on a unique alien creature they found drifting on an ancient, but also alien, transport in deep space. A parasitic creature that infests the mammary tissues of many species with its offspring, makes the host's breasts grow to considerable sizes, an then violently bursts out of the host's breasts. The births of its young are fatal for the host due to rapid-onset hypovolemic shock, but the newborn creatures rapidly develop into adults which feature physical traits adapted from the hosts that bore them and actively produce milk.

The IFA is interested in this milk and the genetic traits these creatures copy from their hosts. They think they can use these creatures, breed a variant that they can control, or who knows what else, and set up a highly covert research program using a public cover to trick women on these remote colonial worlds into singing up to be hosts. But the IFA is playing with fire because one of their test subjects, a lioness, bore a pair of queens...