The Nexus roused, having spent an unknowable time in hibernation as its body crossed the interstellar ocean.

The creature was known by no name, nor did it need one. An identifying mark would be wasted on it, for individuality was a trait rarely seen among its kind, only reserved for those few in castes higher than its own.

Despite that, the Nexus’s thoughts were far from bestial. It had access to a grand intelligence which now stirred in earnest as pre-ordained subroutines triggered the machineries it needed to awaken.

The Nexus’ fragile body was flooded with a hot soup of agitating chemicals and hyper-active hormones, spreading to the very tips of branching limbs the creature had long forgotten it possessed. Suspended flesh came alive once more. It pulsed and throbbed with newfound vigor, shaking off long decades of hibernation.

A great many mechanical brains sputtered nonsense at first, each speaking in thought patterns that were unfamiliar and illogical. Then its organic brains were drained of suspension fluid, and time regained meaning.

The scalding slurry of chemicals was pumped back to holding tanks before its effects turned detrimental, and with it came a short-lived serenity. The Nexus sighed, allowing itself one moment of calm before attending to its demanded duty. It fed its soft body with nutritional fluids and its solid body with increased electrochemical output from its stores.

For its kind, corpus and machina were one and the same. Both were added upon and shaped to suit the needs of the colony. The Nexus was more extensively modified than most, its flesh body stripped down to little more than nervework to control a machinal form, becoming a grotesque amalgamation of both.

Were a creature of another race to examine its strung-out biological components, they might assume them to be a hatchlings botched attempt at dissection. Melded to the machine as it was, few if any traces remained of original form or function.

Ribbed energy cables intertwined with glinstering green flesh, turned wet by thermal mucus. Fuel pumps serving dual purpose were overgrown with labyrinthine arteries, throbbing with life. Chitinous exoskeleton overlapped with ceramic armor plates, forming a two layered skull and skin in the shapes of teardrops to protect circuitry and neurons alike.

All together, the Nexus was of a size similar to transport shuttles of the enemy, those which only carried five or six of their bipedal bodies. Its form giant next to a creature of flesh and blood, yet little more than a speck in the vast expanse of the black sea. The Nexus now tested its body’s inorganic limbs and organs, which were spread throughout the bulk of its form; thrusters, weapons and antennae all felt mostly unscathed. They would be operational should the need for them arise. That knowledge gave the creature some measure of reassurance, even though it had little consideration for its own survival.

The Nexus refrained from firing its reactor. For the moment, it was meant to be inert. Hidden in plain sight from the sharp eyes of its prey. It masqueraded as interstellar debris, lazily drifting towards the prey-worlds it was intended to lay low. The solid minerals that dressed its true form were heavy and constraining, yet the Nexus was engineered with patience in mind. It would continue the facade for as long as it needed to.

It opened its senses. An explosion of data presented itself, spread across many spectra its unaugmented form would have been unable to witness.

However, it had no memory of life before its modifications. In fact, it had no memory before its awakening at all. It might have waged many battles in this form. This might also be its first. It did not know. It did not wonder. All it had was an instinctual experience that may or may not be its own.

The Nexus first cross-referenced the stellar constellations with those saved in its databanks in order to assure itself it had arrived at the correct star system. A lesser mind might have been satisfied by the unmistakable characteristics of the collapsed stellar body, or the presence of three spatial passageways created by the colony’s machina, but the Nexus never made assumptions of any kind.

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With its location confirmed, the Nexus considered what brood assets were already present in-system. Like itself, most of these forms would be hidden as tumbling rocks originating from interstellar space, their orbits determined by gravity alone, though some hid through more perfidious means.

The process of locating all of them took considerable time, enough so that the outer prey-world spun around its axis three times ere it was completed. The Nexus had to tread carefully. Each communication presented the risk of detection. It beamed tiny bursts of luminescence to those asteroids it knew for certain were untouched by the prey, receiving similarly short replies only from a small fraction of them.

Until now the brood had drifted in total silence. None knew how many they numbered, much less where the other forms were located. Should one be discovered, the plan was jeopardized, but not ruined.

The Nexus finally became aware of its brood's extent, numbering in the thousands. They had infiltrated deep into the system, and were poised to strike at any time. So far it appeared the prey was none the wiser. The spatial passageways had proved an effective distraction, yet they served purpose beyond that.

While the Nexus hibernated, other broods commanded by other Nexuses had conducted feint attacks against different systems occupied by this prey. Many broodforms had been destroyed in the face of the superior foe, but through feigned weakness and predictable strategies had the colony given its enemy a misplaced confidence. The Nexus saw all this in messages intended specifically for its mind, hidden within the radiation of the spatial passageways.

Specialized secondary brains greedily absorbed this information much like how the deathcorals of its homeworld gorged themselves on nutrients. Over the many cycles it took for its concealed form to approach the system, the Nexus assimilated the knowledge and experience gathered by others of its caste. Though these forms were long dead in body, they lived again in their successors mind.

Through their advice it formulated strategies based on its prey’s movements, which it carefully observed through the now closely-woven net of covert broodforms.

Enemy ocean-forms crowded around the brood’s holes in fabric like curious hatchlings around an elder, though the bulk of their forces were still in a state of preparation close to their colonies. Especially interesting were the two enemy shoals currently in migration, heading past the tiny sun for the innermost worlds. At sub-luminescent speeds, these were days away from any assistance but each other’s.

The Nexus issued its first commands, redirecting a portion of its force to those targets of opportunity. Enough to pose a significant threat, not enough for their shift in course to be conspicuous.

Where the brood skulked about silently, carried mostly by the currents of inertia and momentum, the prey made no efforts to conceal their movements. Their ocean-forms were almost painfully obvious in how they traversed the black sea. They thought themselves masters of their realm, unobserved by their enemies. They were brimming with the bold confidence of an apex predator, just as the Nexus had been told it would find them. Little did they know their domain was now part of the brood’s hunting waters.

Its attention shifted to the three spatial passageways through which the colony’s main force would come. They resembled churning maelstroms, their surface whirling with eddies of arcing energy, promising impending doom. The prey knew this, and had posted guards at the gates intruding on their territory. The disposal of these guardians was the Nexus’ primary objective. To this end, it commanded the vast bulk of its hunting party to shed their rocky camouflage and change course, relying instead on specially tuned sense-stumping equipment to avoid detection.

Using the local star’s rapid rotation as an universal timescale, the Nexus commanded its troops with a coordination unattainable by self-sufficient individuals. It slaved minds to its own where it was needed, but allowed them to navigate for themselves where possible. Micro-managing its forces was best left to the Alpha forms, nearer the action. The Nexus instead focused on the whole of the coming battle. Its cold hearts stirred, sensing that action was close at hand.

Phantom tension ran through long-removed limbs. The Nexus’ flesh body shuddered in anticipation of the kill. No matter how machinal one became, that instinctual thrill of the hunt would always be there. The Nexus reveled in that feeling, letting the primal emotion strengthen it.

Warforms drew close to the enemy. Detection was merely a matter of time now. The Nexus’ own form reached a position with equal distance to each of the three imminent battlespheres. The ocean-forms of its prey were in visual range of its brood now. The Nexus would show this prey its first taste of defeat.

A wordless command propagated silently through the vacuum sea, spreading itself across the many constituent parts of the Nexus’ brood until all warforms shared their commander’s excitement. Moments later, a thousand Baknian voidcraft went weapons hot as one.

By the time the Runora defending the wormholes realized they were under attack, they had already lost.