by Lee Stephen
Novosibirsk couldn’t come fast enough. That first clue couldn’t come fast enough. When it came, there’d be no place for Remington to hide. The best of the best were in active pursuit.
The world’s most wanted were about to be snared.
13
Location: Unknown
Time: Unknown
SVETLANA WAS surrounded by darkness. Her blue eyes peering forward, she saw only the faint outlines of curvature around her, indicative of standing inside some sort of metal tube and staring forward into an unknown that reached far ahead, beyond her field of vision. But she didn’t need to see to know what was before her. This was the path Order and Chaos had chosen.
Her hands clenched, their grip tightening around the metal spear that was clutched between her fingers. Her armor, a sparse interlace of metal and leather, provided only as much protection as was required. Any other protection she needed would be gifted by Uladek. She could smell the war paint on her face, beneath her eyes and on her forehead. The plume of dark feathers at the end of her spear gave notice that she was not to be trifled with. She was one of the priesthood.
Inhaling through her nostrils, Svetlana took in a familiar musk. At the end of the tube, a light emerged that was just faint enough to outline the form of a lumbering beast stalking toward her. The blonde narrowed her eyes as its features came into view.
It towered—it was befitting for someone of her stature. Its massive hind legs clomped one after the other as it neared, its gaping jaws hanging as saliva fell from between its teeth. Its body lowered as it readied to be mounted.
All of a sudden, hands reached out from the darkness and grabbed her. They wrenched the spear from her grasp. They were taking her.
Svetlana screamed out in Russian as they pulled her back, away from the canrassi and into the darkness behind her. A blur of dark colors flew past her vision as the hands pinned her back to a wall, which quickly turned into a floor. Her nose began to burn—a fervent fire that felt like nothing she’d ever felt, like hot coals in her nostrils. Releasing a blood-curdling scream, she felt the heat dig into her face.
“Setana?”
The voice was Tauthin’s. The moment the Bakma spoke, all of the colors faded. The hurricane of motion subsided. The dream melted away. Her chest heaving, Svetlana looked around the room. She was in the brig of the Noboat. There were no hands holding her wrists and ankles at bay—there were only the same metallic clamps that’d been there all along. Staring through the strands of her hair that floated in microgravity, the blonde’s gaze focused on Tauthin. The alien was looking at her in wonderment. It was a look of surprise the likes of which she’d never seen from him before. “What?” she asked him.
Tauthin’s mouth hung open for several seconds before he managed a reply. “Yuu waar ska-reem-angh words.”
She was screaming words. It was a reference to her dream. She must have been acting it out. “It was only a dream,” she said.
The Bakma hesitated. “Yuu waar ska-reem-angh words…een Bakmanese.”
The blonde’s brow furrowed. “What?”
Right then, it hit her: a sharp pain in the center of her face. It came on slowly, then rapidly intensified until its sheer rawness caused her whole face to contort. Svetlana winced, her mouth opening in torment as teardrops formed over her pupils. It was as if knives were stabbing her in the nose. She cried aloud. “My face hurts so bad!” Her mouth open, she panted, “I cannot breathe!”
His head lowering, Tauthin said, “The paeen will saab-side. It ees to be eck-spacht-ed.”
“What?” she asked again, crying out in agony and leaning her head back. “What are you talking about?”
Tauthin looked at her, his dark purple eyes narrowing. “Waat do yuu mean?”
“What are you talking about?” she asked again, forced to draw in another breath through her open mouth. “Why can’t I breathe? I am so cold…” Suddenly blinking in realization, she tilted her head down to look at her body. She was in her undergarments. Gasping, her hands jolted to instinctively cover herself, but the clasps kept her in place. “My God! Where are my clothes?”
The Bakma’s head tilted. For several seconds, he simply observed her. At long last, in the midst of her panic, he addressed her. “Yuu maast remaambar.”
“What?” she asked in horror as she desperately squirmed. “What must I remember?”
“Waat hapeened to yuu.”
Her eyes tear-filled, she whipped her head to face him. “What happened to me, Tauthin?”
For almost ten full seconds, Tauthin said nothing—he only stared at her in uncertain silence. All the while, her stare remained locked. “Nagogg took yuur claths. He took yuu awaee.”
“Took me away for what?”
Tauthin’s eyes drifted away from her, drawn inherently to the far side of the room. Where he’d last seen it floating. It was still there.
Her expression narrowing, Svetlana followed the Bakma’s opaque stare until she too caught sight of the tiny object hovering in microgravity. Squinting to make it out, she asked, “What is that?”
“It is…” he said, his voice trailing off as he watched the object float, “yuur nose.”
Svetlana blinked in confusion. She craned her neck forward to see it more clearly. Then reality hit. The blonde’s eyes widened. She looked down as much as she was able. No blur of a nose could be seen. Within seconds, she was hyperventilating.
Tauthin’s gaze returned to her. “Setana, leesin! Do not paahnic!”
“Do not panic?” she asked in open-mouthed horror. Her whole face contorted. “My God, no! No!”
“Yuu maast remaambar.”
She didn’t remember. She didn’t remember anything. The last thing she remembered was hanging on the wall, then…then the door. The door to the brig had opened. Then everything was a blank.
Her nose. Her nose! Part of what she was, one of the few things about her that she’d always felt was beautiful. It was gone! That explained the pain, that explained the difficulty in breathing. She had nothing there to filter and direct the air. Her throat convulsed. Leaning her head back and closing her eyes, she released a mournful wail.
The Noboat shimmied, its walls vibrating with an almost urgent violence. The discomfort of breathing was set aside as Svetlana drew a sharp breath. Tauthin was quick to calm her. “Nuu feear. Graahvity.”
Gravity? What did he mean? The shaking lasted for several seconds before there was a sudden smoothening, and the familiar sensation of weight swept over her. Her body dropped in the chains as her hair fell in front of her face, the most basic of nature’s forces bearing down on her. It wasn’t quite Earth-like, but it was something that resembled normal. Briefly, her eyes returned to the corner where her nose had been hovering. The amputated protuberance rolled lifelessly on the floor.
“What is happening?” she asked Tauthin. Truly noticing it for the first time, she cringed at the sound of her voice. It was high-pitched and nasal, almost alien to her. It was like someone else speaking.
Tauthin answered, “We haaf creaated graahvity whael. Paart of the riift.”
Gravity wheel? Part of the rift? She didn’t know what any of that meant.
Like every other spacecraft EDEN had encountered, the Noboat was an aerospace vessel—it needed to function just as well in an atmosphere as in deep space, where microgravity reigned supreme. It was a spaceship restricted to an aerodynamic design, with no leniency given to counteract the lack of weight in space. Svetlana knew about the effects of weightlessness on the human body; it had to be the same for the Bakma. Eventually, microgravity caused bone decalcification and muscle atrophy. Every cosmonaut who returned to the NSU from a space operation returned weaker. While that might be okay for a cosmonaut, that could never work for an interstellar warrior.
But gravity was virtually impossible to simulate in space without some sort of centrifuge, and even that was a flawed impersonation at best. The only place Svetlana knew to find gravity was on a planet. Yet there they were, existin
g in it without one. Gravity wheels, rifts…she didn’t know what any of that was supposed to mean. In the grand scheme of things, it didn’t matter, anyway.
The chains that bound her to the wall were vastly more uncomfortable now. They caused her to dangle helplessly against unforgiving shackles. The more she tried to squirm into a more suitable position, the more they dug into her wrists.
Svetlana’s mind returned to her nose and her near-nakedness. How could she remember nothing? How could there be such an absence of time? The only answer she could come up with was that she must’ve completely disassociated. The experience must have been too traumatic to recall.
Her nose…
Her thoughts were interrupted as the brig door opened. Nagogg. The self-proclaimed chieftain of the Noboat was standing in the doorway, holding his spear at his side like some kind of tribal leader. Behind him stood Gabralthaar and Ka`vesh.
Svetlana felt an initial surge of fear, though it quickly morphed into a sensation she was not used to feeling. It was focused and decidedly more sinister. When her ocean blue eyes settled on the spear, her fingers curled as if wrapping themselves around it. She visualized it piercing Nagogg through the throat. Her blood simmered as she imagined pushing it forward.
The click of an Ithini connection surfaced in her mind. Nagogg’s raspy Bakmanese formed meaning. Angling his head, he asked, “Do you submit?”
“Setana…” said Tauthin from her side, he too linked in the connection. She looked at him. He was afraid for her. Tauthin’s bony brows were arched outwardly, adding even deeper crevices to the wrinkles already in his forehead. His eyes searched hers as if seeking to understand her as much as plead with her. But the plea still came. “Please submit.”
Her eyes turned back to Nagogg. In the midst of her panic—of the horror of discovering that she no longer had a nose—a series of rational thoughts came to her mind. If she submitted, it would be over. The fear, the danger, the pain. The freedom. Submit, and share Tauthin’s fate: to be subservient to a god she could never accept, could never believe in. But even that would not be the end. This religion was radical. It demanded adherence and threatened apostasy with torture, chains, and death. It allowed for nothing else.
Disfigurement or not, she could never submit to that.
Svetlana didn’t even have to say a word. The moment Tauthin saw the defiance on her face, his hopeful body language sank into resolution. There was nothing in her that he could change.
Turning her head to Nagogg, she uttered a single, unyielding statement: “I will never submit to you.”
The angle of Nagogg’s head evened out. Beneath his skeleton’s grin, the Bakma’s jaw set. For the faintest of moments, she thought she saw his face flush. Inhaling through his slotted nostrils, Nagogg tilted his head upward, looking down at the woman whose nose he’d removed—the human who’d matched his battle of wills move for move. The next move, once again, was his.
In the midst of the showdown, though her eyes were locked onto Nagogg’s, Svetlana’s mind found itself in a prayer. I am here because You put me here. If you will me to die today, I will die.
Pointing his jagged finger Svetlana’s direction, Nagogg barked out an order as the Ithini connection was lost. Striding past him, Gabralthaar and Ka`vesh approached the bound medic. Pressing her against the wall, they unlatched her chains and took hold of her. As she was jostled violently toward the chamber door, she cast a look back at Tauthin. He seemed so far away. Just as their eyes met, Svetlana was shoved into the hallway hard, her body slamming against the metal wall of the Noboat’s interior. Behind her, the metal door whooshed close.
In the brief moment that Svetlana had to observe the hallway under her own free will, she saw two other beings present—Ed, the Ithini that Nagogg was using for communication, and a remarkably fit Bakma. Both were standing at a distance in apparent observation. Before she could focus farther, the abusive hands of Gabralthaar and Ka`vesh took hold of her, yanking her to her feet by her blond roots and shoving her ahead. Svetlana held back a yelp, though the pull of her hair made her eyes water.
The air was cold against her skin, though at the moment it was the least of her concerns. Where was she being led? What was next?
This is the direction of the bridge.
As Svetlana neared the corner at the end of the corridor—the turn that led to the antechamber with the Noboat’s side exit ramp—her gaze was able to focus more on the two by the door. She knew Ed. She’d seen the Ithini and felt his presence in her mind numerous times. It was the Bakma beside Ed—the one in peak physical condition—that caught her attention. The alien had no eyes. Vacant sockets stared at Svetlana as she marched, looking directly at her while simultaneously looking at nothing. This is why Nagogg took my nose. They all suffered the same way. Billions of miles away, the impact of General Thoor was still being felt. His torture of his captives had come full circle on her.
Just as Gabralthaar shoved her forward toward the corner, another Bakma unexpectedly emerged from around it. She and the alien collided, stumbling back as they—for the most fleeting of moments—made eye contact. A moment was all it took, as Svetlana’s eyes widened in recognition.
Wuteel. The Bakma she’d treated on a ground mission. Cared for. He was among her tormenters.
The alien’s eyes shied away immediately, and he hurried past her to walk down the hall. Svetlana’s head turned to follow him, but another hard shove from Gabralthaar cut the motion short. In the next instant, she was around the corner, and Wuteel was out of view.
She felt like someone had kicked her in the gut. The betrayal was almost worse than losing her nose. Before her thoughts could develop further, she was pushed through the antechamber and toward the bridge.
It wasn’t until the door to the bridge slid open and she was thrust inside that the shame of Svetlana’s scarce clothing hit her. This wasn’t a narrow hallway—this was an open, circular room. She could be viewed from every angle. She felt completely lacking in dignity.
There were two other Bakma in the room—one sitting in the pilot’s chair at the front of the vessel, and the other standing at a console on the far wall. But though she registered them, they weren’t the source of her most intense focus. That belonged to the canrassi. The brown-furred beast was sitting subserviently beside the captain’s chair, its oversized mouth gaping, exposing rows of razor-sharp teeth. The canrassi’s two spider eyes turned to Svetlana as Gabralthaar forced her toward it.
Svetlana’s heart pounded. No…no! Her knees locked as she tried to push back, but she was powerless against the massive Gabralthaar.
She was about to be eaten alive.
The canrassi released a shrill-like scream as it rose almost completely upright. As Svetlana was shoved nearer, she too screamed in panic. Behind her, Nagogg shouted in Bakmanese, though the lack of a connection kept his meaning lost. Gabralthaar grabbed the back of her hair, thrusting her down to her knees.
“Stop it! Please! I…” The word submit formed at the tip of her tongue. “I…”
She was violently thrust forward, her head forced downward as if bowing to the massive beast, which lumbered closer.
There was nothing she could do. There was nowhere she could run. She was at the mercy of captors who knew nothing of the concept. The canrassi roared savagely. She saw its shadow rear upright before her. She closed her eyes and held her breath.
Everything went silent.
Ever so slowly, Svetlana opened her eyes. The canrassi was gone. Blinking, she looked across the Noboat’s bridge. The consoles were still there, beeping and pulsing as they had been when she’d entered, but there were no Bakma manning them. There was no Gabralthaar, no Ka`vesh. No Nagogg. Every single one of them had vanished. She was alone on the bridge.
Looking down at herself, Svetlana gasped and took a step back, holding out her hands so that she might see herself more fully. She was clothed. From head to toe, she was back in her silver and blue EDEN uniform. It was perfectly presse
d and clean. Reaching up, she touched the tip of her nose—a nose that was very much intact.
From the corridor beyond the bridge entrance, a woman screamed. Flinching, Svetlana whipped her head to the sound. It was a terrified, panicked wailing. Like a woman being tortured.
“Kill him.”
It was her own voice that addressed her, though nothing had come from her mouth. On the contrary, the voice seemed to come from every direction, as if both audible and in her mind. Slowly, Svetlana’s head tilted down to look at her right hand, which seconds earlier had been empty, but now most certainly was not.
She was holding Nagogg’s spear.
“Kill him.”
A glow emanated from her hand where the spear was grasped, and from the glow, an intense, fervent heat. It traveled through her veins and up her spine. It burned like fury. Her head raising again as the glow faded, she stepped forward in what felt like slow motion.
The screaming, which she recognized now as her own, continued from down the hall. Walking through the antechamber, she exhaled a breath of premeditated calmness. Deep inside her, a sensation swelled, prompting her to open her mouth and suck in, very faintly, through delicately parted lips.
“He is waiting for you.”
With every step Svetlana took, the feelings grew fiercer. By the time she reached the door to the room where the screaming was coming from, it had completely taken over. Rounding the corner, she looked into the room.
She saw herself lying on a table, her face soaked with blood, her mouth frozen open in horror. Standing above her, holding her sliced-off nose in his hand, was Nagogg. The lipless rider looked up to regard her standing in the door.
All emotion went cold. All anger, all fervency. Svetlana’s blue eyes hardened as she walked Nagogg’s way. She paid no mind to the agonized wails that came from her body on the table. She was not in that body anymore.
Svetlana’s mouth opened wide—twice as far as should have been possible—as she let loose a rage-filled scream at her tormentor. Thrusting forward with the spear, she stabbed it into Nagogg’s belly, as her other hand reached across his face. Her claws dug into him; his face began to cave. Blood pouring from his body, Nagogg gurgled and screamed.
