Chapter 23
Slake feels a powerful jerk once she clears the Profundity with her Interceptor. It feels like Nixus is pulling at her harder than days previous, yet the rocks and debris all seem to be moving toward the black hole at the same clip.
Strange.
"Credenzo, are you feeling that extra grav?"
"Negative, Baroness. Same as always."
Bizarre, however, if there is indeed extra pull, she can use it. Slake fires her boosters and burns hot, closing on the mining platform and the speck that is Roderick's Interceptor. On her approach, she sees how far Kell set his fighter down from the airlock door.
He's a good pilot, but common sense is not one of his strong suits.
Slake checks the records on the airlock door now that she's in proximity of the platform's core processor. She's relieved to see that it opened with an external command 22 minutes prior. So, safe bet that Roderick's made it inside and isn't dead in Nixus' belly.
Price and Drome launch from Profundity. The Obsidian channel opens.
"Captain," says Price. "I have concerns about you landing on that platform. We don't know what's in there."
Slake knows what's in there. A bunch of droids and her pilot. Maybe some nameless, evil force too. "Acknowledging the risk, Price. By the time Virta gets a rescue shuttle prepared, Roderick may be dead. I'm going in to get him."
Drome joins in. "Baroness, be reasonable. Secure the perimeter sure. But going in alone is madness."
Slake rolls her eyes under her flight helmet. "Remind me of your rank again, Drome. Is it higher than Captain?"
"No, ma'am. I just…"
"Spit it out, pilot. We're all listening. Exel and Virta saw to that." Slake cuts her speed as she approaches the platform. She applies more engines to reverse thrust than any other time. The hole is certainly pulling harder. On her at least.
Drome ahems, then delivers his shot. "Would you risk yourself like this for any other pilot in Obsidian?"
The answer is no. Slake knows that. They all do. "I'll pretend you didn't just ask that, Drome. Fly your bomber. Watch my six. Follow your orders."
"Copy, Baroness."
Within 200 meters of the platform, Slake executes a quick fly-by of the bases that house the klicks-long tethers that extend into the impossible darkness of Nixus. They shift and sway too much for Slake's liking, but all three seem to be in perfect working order. Whatever damage Roderick perceived just isn't there.
She believes he saw it. Nixus showed it to him.
Slake sets her interceptor down between Roderick's and the airlock door. There's a good chance that she'll have to carry him out, so she executes a 90-degree pull from the platform's surface, using her repulsors to bring her aft within a meter of the plat's topside. She sets the Interceptor to hover, and unbuckles, tucking her legs for a spinning somersault to align with the top hatch. This way it's a quick run and toss to get him in the cabin with her.
She checks the seals on her suit, then pops the hatch. She doesn't magnetize her boots. Instead, she kicks off her seat and flies in a beeline to the airlock hatch.
The door opens for her automatically. Unsettling.
She floats in, stopping herself with her hands at the interior door. The airlock operates as though there were someone else at the controls. Exterior door shuts, then the interior opens. She's in the locker room's artificial grav before the first chill of open space hits her.
The lights inside the locker room go black. Slake draws her pistol. "Roderick! Say something!"
No answer. Just black. While Slake fumbles for her suit's flood light, the hallway lights activate. She sees the glow around the corner. Pistol drawn, she steps softly and creeps toward the light.
When she reaches the corridor, she sees no droids, no Roderick. No blood, no weapons, nothing that would suggest any sign of a struggle. The hallway is lit only to the left of the locker room. On the right, the hallway is pitch black.
"Roderick!?" she calls out again. Nothing.
She opens the Obsidian channel. "Get backup now. I need a full squad of stormtroopers in a transport and out of that hangar, ASAP."
Only static. The lights in the hallway blink in sequence. They switch off, then on again in a pattern that sends a wave of darkness to the left. The platform is telling her where it wants her to go.
Any idiot could see that this is a trap. Nixus already got her out of her Interceptor, and that's her only real advantage. But Kell's likely the bait. So she doesn't have a choice. She follows the blinking lights down the corridor.
At an intersection, maybe the third, maybe the fourth, she's lost count, the lights go black again. Her suit's flood barely pierces the darkness. Formless shadows weave around her. Slake takes off her helmet and puts it on the ground.
"Stop playing games. I'll talk if you want to talk."
The lights activate down a side hallway. A black protocol droid lies face down in the doorway of a room about 30 meters away, ambulating its legs as though it were still upright. Slake pulls up her pistol, drawing a bead on the doorframe. The signage reads "Miner's Lounge," in basic.
"Hey," she calls out to the droid. "Are you all right?" She steps toward it. Slowly.
The droid keeps walking, face down. She sees that it's got a hole blown through its back. It's still smoking. Somebody, maybe Roderick, shot it in the chest.
"Give me your registration number," Slake says to check its basic programming. See if it's still intact.
The droid's head turns to face her, its eyes twin burning coals. The light fades out of them. It stops walking.
Slake calls out for Roderick again. Nothing. Then, as she's about to resume her search…
"Yeah! Hey! I'm in the lounge."
Why didn't he say anything sooner? Never mind, Slake trots to the door, and looks around the doorframe.
Roderick sits back in a chair, his legs kicked up on a table's surface, as he eats some rice dish with his bare hands. The food has long since spoiled, and the smell of rot in the lounge is pungent and nauseating. She wishes she'd kept her helmet on.
When she looks closer at Roderick, she notices that his right foot hangs sickly off his leg. It's broken. Yet Roderick smiles wide with spoiled food all over his face. His eyes have gone full black.
"Amara, it's great to sssee you. Holy shit, it's nutsss in here."
She draws her pistol. "Get out of him. Now."
"What do you mean? It's me. Your friend and sssquadron mate Kell Roderick." He takes another chomp of moldy blue rice. "This must be sssome Rodian's lunch. It's very deliciousss." Bile trickles down the corner of Kell's mouth.
When she spoke to Tav earlier, Nixus seemed fussy, uptight and angry. But now, in Roderick, the spirit feels lighter, more chaotic and frivolous. Nixus' possessions must be some kind of negotiation with the host entity. Attitudes, emotions from the body leak through.
While dealing with a more confident, unpredictable Nixus isn't anything Slake wants, there's some hope here. This thing isn't all powerful. Some rules, cosmic or physical, still govern it.
"You must think we're a very stupid species. You're not fooling me."
"Aww. Ya got me," Nixus-Kell throws the dish over his shoulder, and it splats on the floor behind him. "What gave me away?"
It's a sincere question. It really doesn't know. She makes something up. "You called me 'Amara.' Kell knows to address me by my title."
"Damn it all to hell," says Nixus-Kell with a laugh. "You know, this… bait… is obsessed with you. 'Amara this, Amara that. Don't hurt her!' He will not shut the fuck up in here." He taps his forehead too hard, leaving a red mark on his temple. "I do like the way he talks though. It opens up a whole new tier of vocabulary to me."
"So, he's still alive."
"Oh, of course he is. I lose my leverage on you if I kill him. I may not understand your kind all that well, but every species parleys in the language of power."
"What do you want?"
"Oh, let's not start there. I never stop thinking about what I want. I'm far more interesssted in you. For example, why does thisss ape motivate you ssso? Is not Tav more powerful? Exel? Virta? I understand that you're quite pleasing to the eye among these monkeys. You could claim any one of them for your mate, but you choose this obnoxious fool. Why?"
"I have no interest in Kell."
Nixus-Kell takes its feet off the table and places its left forearm on the top of a chair. With its right, it slams down on the wrist, breaking the arm cleanly. Kell-Nixus' eyes return to their human blue, and Kell screams, "FUUUUUCK! Shit, Amara, run! Get off this fucking plat-"
The eyes go black again and the screaming stops. "Wait. He called you Amara there. You lied to me."
Slake raises her pistol. "Leave him alone."
Nixus-Kell turns stern. "You need to be honest with me. If you think breaking his arm was painful, you have no idea what I can and will do to him up here." Again, with that hard, rapid tap on the skull. Kell's skin tears at his temple, and blood runs down his cheek. "Now. Answer me honestly. Or I will tear him asssunder. Why this one?"
"Because he's a good man."
Nixus-Kell laughs the sound is at once robotic and organic. Wholly unnatural. "Good? What do you know of good? You murder others for an occupation. You are the instruments of oppression, the both of you. And one of you thinks the other is good? Try again… And, If I don't like the answer, I'll rip off a part of him he'll miss."
She steadies herself. "He cares about me. No one's ever cared about me before. I'm just a… thing that helps people get what they want. Kell doesn't want anything I can give him. He just likes who I am. And I like him. I think he's… I don't know… funny."
"This is because your parents whored you."
Slake's guts clench. "I don't want to talk about that."
"Why? Do you think this ape doesn't know that? You must think he's more stupid than I do. And I think he is very ssstupid."
"Fuck you. It's my turn to ask you a question. Why did you throw a barrel at Exel's shuttle?"
Nixus-Kell smiles, "Do you know how boring it is out here? I ate everything. Then you little apes appear, and sometimes I just can't help myself. I need to shake things up!"
Slake puts her pistol to her own head.
"WAIT. NO!"
Slake sees her angle. Nixus wants her for something. Needs her. She flips the safety off, keeps the barrel to her head.
"Hm. Now I guess it's your turn to be honest. Afterall, I'm just a whore. Why should I live, if all I hear are lies?"
"I don't like how clever you're being, little ape."
"Boo-fucking-hoo, dude."
"I'm unfamiliar with this expression, but your friend finds it amusing. Very well. I propelled the barrel to put the culture at unease. When you are uncomfortable or frightened, you're easier to enter. Easier to take possession of."
"Easier. Hm. So your power has limits."
"SILENCE. IT DOES NOT. I AM BOUNDLESSS!" Slake's ears pop from the inhuman bellow from Nixus-Kell. The lights flicker and the whole platform shakes, nearly bringing Slake to her knees.
As the platform settles, Nixus-Kell sighs. "Do you realize how many worlds I've watched rise and fall in my time? Billions of years. All of them at my whims."
"Yet look at me. A single little germ to you. Getting you so worked up."
"Well, you're very important to me, Ssslake. You asked earlier what I want. And isn't it obvious? I want you."
A pit of dread forms in Slake's gut. "Why?"
"You have a gift. Something no other ape or bug or bird I've ever seen has. You can bend reality. You can manipulate life. You create and end it. You are like me, only smaller."
"You're mistaken."
"No. You saw it, when we went into your memory together. Remember Vaderrr. Remember hisss fear."
"That was an image of your own making."
"No. It was a… composite of Tav's memories and yours. I confirmed it. Vader fears you. That's why he approved the order to sssend you out of the galaxy. Your power, it rivals his. You are simply untrained in the wielding of it."
Slake's heard rumors of the ancient religion that Vader practices. It involves some kind of archaic laser sword, a commitment to seeking strength. Weird cult shit. She's never had a speck of interest in it. She just watched his old flight logs in operations against the planets that refused to join the Empire.
It's not that Vader was a tremendously gifted pilot—to Slake's eyes, he was sloppy, reckless. Talented, like Roderick, but more just incredibly lucky. His fighter evaded lethal blasts countless times, seemingly by accident. Every kill-shot would fire an instant after Vader boosted into attack approaches.
"I see the dismissiveness in your dumb face. He wasn't merely fortunate, Ssslake. He knew what he was doing. Much like you do."
Slake searches her memory. How many times has she herself felt an overwhelming urge to weave, just as a turbolaser scorched past her wings?
Enough times.
She looks up at Nixus-Kell. Roderick looks dead when Nixus doesn't animate him. Just a husk. Filled with poison. It's haunting. "You still haven't told me what you want."
"I'm afraid my desires resist description. Especially in your crude language."
"How can I help my friend if I don't know what you want from me?"
"I will show you. I must enter you."
Slake tips her head inquisitively. "Why haven't you already?"
It's because Nixus can't.
A low growl utters from Nixus-Kell's throat. "The weak are easy to take. So are the stupid ones. Tav. Your precious Kell. I wanted inside them, and so I took them."
"But for me, you need my permission. It's like the dream. I can push you out."
"No. No. No no no no no no no no YOU CANNOT!" Nixus screams, bashing the table with Kell's flopping, broken arm. The lounge stretches and swells, its walls concaved to the impossible volume blasting from Kell's mouth.
But Slake knows it's not real – it's all an illusion. Because this hole isn't a thing. It's the absence of a thing.
She meets its gaze. It stops screaming, defeated. "Sssee? Thisss is why I cannot take you. Not without permission. You are… unflappable."
"So, sounds like I'll be calling the shots here."
"Does it?" Nixus-Kell smiles wide, drips of dark sludge running down its teeth. Suddenly, it jams its fingers into Kell's collarbone, ripping through the skin, and gripping hard. "Because I can still tear this germ inside out."
When Slake shouts "No!", a sharp, black tendril launches from Kell's mouth and drives itself down her throat.