Chapter 36

The Tav-vessel begins its death rattle. Nixus thrashes in its skin, frustrated by the fragility of these apes.

It had hoped to use Tav as a bridge that would take it to Slake, and then Slake could carry it across a vast empty void, to life. To feast. But unfortunately, this meat's expiration date is nigh.

Nixus supposes Exel was correct. If Nixus had left more flesh on this puppet's bones, perhaps its current predicament wouldn't require such an urgent resolution. But Exel, while a smart ape, is still just an ape. He doesn't know hunger the way Nixus does.

Across just a few kilometers of vacuum, the void senses two deaths in rapid succession. Burning hot deaths, with brains seared to a smoky mass. A third death, slower, agonizing, the sense of a very important bone breaking. And then another, fourth, heat death. Heart burned to hot mist.

Then pain, terror, strobing from deep in the bowels of that strange ship Exel calls Profundity. It's a light with which Nixus is familiar. A favored ape. The one that is smarter than Exel, but more cruel. Always delighting in the pain of others. Now, it is feeling pain. Immense pain. The scent or flavor of the ape's life ebbing out of it whets Nixus' appetite. But there's nothing left of this Tav shell to eat.

Then, the life fades. In death, Nixus remembers its name.

Virtaaaaa… Tav's rotten mouth whispers.

Slake is defending herself. The fools with whom Nixus has associated are not prepared for her strength. If she has learned to harness her abilities, all may be lost.

Nooooo… Tav moans. His throat collapses, Nixus swallowing its own mess of black goo. It gets to work on an impromptu tracheotomy.

These fools. Of course they blundered Slake's capture.

Exel's life is now forfeit. Nixus will spend eons flaying him. And when that grows tiresome, it will reassemble him. Exel will feel every stitch of sinew fusing back to his bones. And then Nixus will do it all over again.

But this situation is not without benefit. Nixus has never been challenged. It is exhilarating to possess an… Nixus scours Tav's dead brain for the word… an adversary. Nixus does not know if it will win, and that uncertainty makes it feel elation like its never known. The sensation coursing through this near corpse is the precise opposite of those eons wasted, bored and starving in space. Every single moment feels crucial and consequential.

Using what Nixus knows of Tav's anatomy, the void fashions new, makeshift lungs for its vessel. It grows them on the surface of the ape's neck in a matter of seconds, tinkering with the necessary cellular apparatuses to pull oxygen into Tav's body. Nixus knows it can no longer taste Tav. It will be difficult, but willpower is a requirement to subdue its enemy and achieve its goal.

Both of which are Slake.

The void summons its parts and puddles that strewn about this ruined office. Nixus will not be contained.

The void congratulates itself for making an airtight capsule for Tav, its albeit temporary connection to this physical plane. Tav is its tool. Its beating heart. Its weakness. The void stretches its fatty, cutaneous capsule, then depressurizes it, pulls in oxygen. It seals the ape inside, safe and sound.

Nixus pulls more pools and plashes of itself, hardens those pieces, and arranges the plates into six—no—eight legs. Each with a razor-sharp pincer at the end. It practices tap-tap-tapping all over the room, a faceless, anomalous arachnid.

Yes. This will do.

Nixus crawls onto the window and observes the heat from the strange, oblong ship they call Profundity. The spider-cocoon that it is now, connects to its main body that it was—that it still is—the swirling vortex of gravity outside, and watches the ship with that eye as well, seeing the ship from both angles, no blind spots, sensing all the delicious heat and life inside its pressurized metal skin.

Slake is inside that ship. The void wants to be where she is.

Nixus pinpoints the exact spot in the glass it needs to hit. Propulsion is easy to understand after billions of years. If its physical body needs help steering, the larger void can support it, pulling and pushing with its grasp on the system.

Nixus molds a great stinger on its thorax, with a pump and thrust of its legs and abdomen, it pierces the glass veil between it and the Profundity. The body, capsule, Tav and all is sucked out of the depressurized office and propelled with great speed directly at the MC90. The sound of alarms klaxons from the sudden exposure to vacuum fades almost instantly in the dead space between ships.

Nixus checks on Tav, housed deep in the spider-thing's guts. The ape breathes, safe and insulated from the cold depths of space.

Nixus senses life being snuffed out in rapid succession inside the Profundity. The void has felt this before, on the worlds that once belonged to it. When its pets butchered one another to prove who was the most devout, the most worthy to receive its former warmth a grace. But the void has never seen the roiling mosaic of death, blood, and glory up close.

Nixus hums to itself a little song of anticipation. To be in a war. To take a life from up close on the physical plane. It can barely control its anticipation. Yes, of all its infinite number of days, this one is the most… stimulating.