Enemy One (Epic Book 5)

by Lee Stephen

  Nagogg rasped in response, “Focus on them and be prepared to jump.”

  “Yes, lord.”

  She could understand them. She could understand every word that they said. Eyes widening, she lifted her head to look at Ka`vesh as he operated the Noboat’s navigational controls. The warrior’s gnarled fingers flew over the control panel. “We are prepared to jump upon your order,” the Bakma said, his head turning to view the bridge’s main screen.

  She understood it all, down to the inflection of every syllable. The nuances of the Bakma language—everything. Deep in her stomach, something swelled.

  Ed’s thoughts interrupted her epiphany. Something has changed in you.

  Something had indeed changed. She had figured out her inadequacies and vanquished them. She had taken everything from Nagogg then put a spear through his throat.

  I sense it, the Ithini added. Nagogg has been removed.

  The whole while Ed addressed her, her focus was on the bridge. She watched Gabralthaar, the titan, as he stared at a computer screen that seemed to show a system of planets. She watched Uguul, the starved warrior, seeming to have nothing better to do at his station than wait for something to happen. Her ears picked up Nik-nish, the pilot, relaying information about approach vectors to Nagogg. She not only knew their words, she knew them. Every single one of them. She knew them as well as Nagogg did. She knew them as if they were her crew—their weaknesses, their vulnerabilities. Every means by which she could exploit them. She knew it all.

  You are altered beyond the removal of Nagogg, Ed said to her. I detect subtle changes to your core identity.

  In that moment, a feeling came over Svetlana that she’d never experienced before: that of being underestimated. She knew something about the Bakma that they didn’t know about her. She could speak their language, spy on them from right there in front of their faces. They wouldn’t have a clue.

  Everything Svetlana had seen in the vision stayed with her. The Nerifinn, the Dishan, the Annihl. The Khuladi. All of it was in her head, ready to be accessed like any other piece of common knowledge her brain had stored in life. Everything was there.

  Her mind began racing, even as Nagogg barked out the order to Gabralthaar to take her and Mishka back to their pen. Her eyes flickered to the titan briefly as Gabralthaar’s partner in crime, Ka`vesh, released her clamps with his magnetic key. As soon as Svetlana was free, Gabralthaar grabbed her by her blond roots and yanked her to her feet. Despite her new sense of strategic power, she couldn’t stop herself from yelping in pain. Through watering eyes, she was forced ahead with a solid push.

  “Time to go, rat!” Gabralthaar shouted. She and Mishka made their way out of the bridge and into the hall. Her connection with Ed was lost.

  Prior to the vision, Ed had warned her about the dangers of manipulating her own psyche—of inadvertently taking something back with her. The warning had resurfaced in her mind the whole while she was on the surface of Khuldaris, beneath the violet glow of Vasvuul. For the most part, she felt she’d adhered to the advice well. There was no denying, though, that something felt different.

  She was still herself. That was the most important thing. But beneath the many layers of Svetlana Voronova, a seed of defiance had been planted. Even as Gabralthaar forced her oppressively down the hallway and back to the pen, she could feel its tiny sprout emerging. To feel that wasn’t like her. Svetlana was many good things. She was compassionate, charitable, and dedicated to being a professional. She was even willing to evolve, taking calculated strides to soften her serious side to the point where she was actually okay with being an object of self-depreciation for the sake of garnering a laugh. But one thing she’d never been was a fighter. Not in the angry sense. There was no chip on the shoulder of Svetlana Voronova. It wasn’t in her nature. But something was stirring, now. Had she felt the way she felt now back when Esther slammed a bowl of porridge in her face, she’d have leapt across the table and ripped the scout’s ponytail clean out of its roots. This was beyond anger. She was feeling retaliatory.

  Placing his massive hand on her back, Gabralthaar shoved her hard through the door of the pen. Stumbling forward, she fell to her knees on the floor, wincing as they scraped against the pen’s metal grating. Rolling over, she clutched them. Blood oozed past her fingers as she clamped her teeth together in an effort to hold back tears of pain, to no avail. That hurt. Her eyes shot to Gabralthaar, her brows narrowing into a glare. So vitriolic was the display, that it actually prompted Gabralthaar to angle his head from the doorway. After releasing a deep chuckle, the Bakma smirked.

  “Cute.”

  Seemingly satisfied with his one-word remark, the titan stepped out of the doorway and into the hall, activating the door mechanism and sealing Svetlana and Mishka inside.

  The anger swelled again. “Cute,” she mocked. “It will be cute when I ram Nagogg’s spear through your genitals.” Almost as soon as she said it, she covered her mouth. Shame, Sveta! What was that? Even in the situation she was in, properness still had its place. But still…that thought was so satisfying.

  Pushing herself up from the floor, Svetlana inspected her knees again. “Terrific,” she said in Russian, repeating the word in Bakmanese just for circumstantial emphasis. Every moment she spent on the bridge was spent on her knees. This was a wound that was going to linger. Just another battle scar.

  Sitting on her rear end, Svetlana placed her palms on the floor behind her and leaned back on them. As she did so, Mishka lowered himself onto his haunches several meters away. The canrassi looked at her expectantly.

  “Eat,” she said, waving half-heartedly at the trough of slop. “Don’t wait for me, trust me.” Glancing back at the trough, she blinked as she realized it was sealed shut—obviously a measure preparatory for microgravity in the event they were actually in it. Shoulders sinking a bit, she pushed up to her feet and walked gingerly toward it. “All right, come on.” She waved Mishka toward her. “I will get this off for you and you can eat.” Sliding the trough cover into its slot in the wall, Svetlana stepped back as Mishka charged the trough to eat. Burying his nose in slop, the beast chowed down with vigor. Making a face at the pungent odor of the slop, Svetlana stepped away to lean back against the wall.

  “How are we going to get out of here?” Sliding down the wall, Svetlana ended up on her rear on the floor. “How are we going to take back this ship?” She smirked at the canrassi, just slightly. “I am open to your suggestions.”

  There was no question that Svetlana was in a better position now than she’d been even only hours before. Just the same, she was still a captive who was, by all practical definitions, powerless in the environment. She couldn’t break free from her shackles—they held her firmly on the floor next to Nagogg’s chair. She couldn’t fight off the Bakma. They were almost all, with the exception of the emaciated Uguul, physically superior. She had no weapons.

  How was she supposed to get out of this?

  Pressing her fingers into her hairline, she thought. There were moments when she had freedom, though they were always when Gabralthaar was coercing her down the hallway. Overpowering him was a non-option; it just wasn’t going to happen. But Mishka was always with her.

  Eyes settling on the beast as it ate, Svetlana pondered the canrassi’s loyalties, which had always existed blurrily in her mind. When faced with competing orders by her and its Bakma masters, which side would it choose to follow? There was no question that she had earned Mishka’s favor to an extent that none of the Bakma had even attempted to gain. The time might come soon to put the canrassi to the test. There was no better time to try that than when she and Mishka were being escorted by Gabralthaar, who would be forced to fight off the beast single-handedly.

  The only other option Svetlana had for freedom was to somehow gain access to Ka`vesh’s magnetic key on the bridge and attempt to free herself there. For obvious reasons, though, this was the less desirable of the two options. For one, the bridge was the last place she needed
to gain freedom. She’d be surrounded by Bakma on all sides. On top of that, she had no idea how she was supposed to get the magnetic key in the first place. She would have to rely on someone like Ei`dorinthal or Kraash-nagun to steal it for her, then somehow get it to her or free her themselves. That just wasn’t realistic. Of the two possibilities, getting Mishka to attack Gabralthaar while en route to the pen was the better alternative by leaps and bounds. Just the same, having two options was better than having one.

  Lifting its giant maw from the trough, Mishka looked at Svetlana and huffed loudly. Svetlana smiled a bit, though she had no idea what the gesture was supposed to mean. Perhaps it was wondering if she was going to eat. “The answer is no,” she said with a faint smile, just in case. “That is your trough. I will gladly eat calunod.”

  Sputtering with its tongue, Mishka returned to its meal.

  Svetlana sighed. So this was what it was like to be a prisoner of war plotting her escape. She was as confident as she could be that she would figure this out, despite the plethora of challenges that she faced. Tauthin and Kraash-nagun might have been comfortable abandoning all hope, but Svetlana had no intention to. Come hell or high water, she was going to get her freedom. Then, she was going to get back to Earth—wherever it was. Having that long-term goal was important. It gave her something to hope for.

  Until that time came, however, there was little that Svetlana could do. Ultimately, her options would be limited to what the Bakma gave her, be it by their own arrogance or by simply underestimating her and slipping up. She was ready to take advantage of either.

  Lying down on her side, Svetlana closed her eyes and exhaled a long breath through her exposed nasal cavities. Her face didn’t hurt at all now—her body having adjusted to the mutilation it had experienced and the beating it’d taken during EDEN’s attack on Novosibirsk. The biggest threat for her now was infection—but that would be tackled when it would be tackled. It wasn’t like there was a hospital in driving distance. She’d pray for her body to be strong then leave it to God. Despite Tauthin and Kraash-nagun’s urgings, she still believed in Him. Despite everything around her that screamed the contrary, she still believed He was working some kind of plan. He’d gotten her this far—He could keep her health intact for a little while longer.

  Svetlana had no trouble falling asleep on the pen’s metal floor. As exhausted as she was, she could’ve probably fallen asleep on a bed of nails. No dreams of Nagogg haunted her mind as she slumbered. Quite the contrary, she had a bona fide dream of Novosibirsk. It was as welcome a reprieve for her mind as rest was for her body.

  She held onto it as long as she could.

  28

  Friday, March 23rd, 0012 NE

  2004 hours

  Norilsk, Russia

  Two days later

  THE CALL CAME to Scott just as he was getting ready for bed. Though brief, it was enough to prompt Scott to scramble to his closet, sling on his uniform, then bolt down the hallway to retrieve Becan. The frenetic nature of it was almost mission-like—but this was far more desirable.

  Max was waking up.

  Though the Fourteenth had been keeping tabs on the technician’s progress, visits to the med-bay specifically to see Max became less frequent each day. The sad truth was that, by and large, no one in the unit could bear to look at Max for any extended period of time without becoming depressed. To see him comatose and covered in tubes was gut-wrenching and emotionally deflating—and deflation was the last thing any of them needed to feel with the train heist looming over the horizon.

  Gavriil Shubin had warned Scott the day before that he would start weening Max out of sedation—Scott just didn’t expect it to happen at eight o’clock at night. He was sure there must have been a reason and was eager to find out what it was. Right now, though, that didn’t matter. What mattered was that his friend was coming to—and that was worth leaping out of bed for.

  The past two days had effectively reclassified what the Fourteenth—and Falcon Platoon, for that matter—considered to be normal. From the Falcon side of things, their thankfulness just to be alive and free to roam a place morphed into a growing sense of restlessness and bitterness that that place was Northern Forge. This was a unit that didn’t belong there. There was an ironic solace in knowing that their loved ones wouldn’t be interviewed on television alongside the families of the Fourteenth, but only because their loved ones thought they were dead. After all, the final resting place of Falcon Platoon was still the Great Dismal Swamp. For all they knew, their obituaries were already in the newspaper. But from top to bottom, their demeanors were miserable. Budding camaraderie with the Fourteenth only went so far in offering them a sense of calm. Simply put, they were getting fed up with being there.

  In no member of Falcon Platoon was that more evident than in Tom King, who had even gone so far as to begin picking fights with some of Northern Forge’s staffers. The sense that Tom could be trouble had arisen in Scott’s mind the moment he met the man, but the last thing any of them needed was to fall out of the already-not-quite-good graces of the base. It was a long drop from the hangar doors to the bottom of the mountainside.

  From the Fourteenth’s side of things, the unit had handled their sequestering at Northern Forge surprisingly well. Stronger than the pain of seeing their loved ones urging them to “come home” on the television was their determination to see this operation through to its completion and, ultimately, to clear their names. Though none of them had asked to be in this situation, none of them blamed each other for it. If nothing else, the two days of relative inactivity had given many in the unit a renewed sense of confidence. They were still alive. Something had to be going right.

  Little had been seen of Jayden and Esther since their wedding. Valentin had cleared out a room for them at the far corner of the living quarters, from which the newlyweds had sparsely ventured. All in all, as shocking as their sudden marriage was, things seemed to be going well with it. The only negative was how it had affected Scott. He missed Svetlana more than ever.

  Antipov still had heard nothing of Oleg and Svetlana’s whereabouts. As far as anyone knew, they’d just vanished. Scott didn’t understand it. With every day that passed, Scott’s heart grew heavier and heavier. He was starting to believe that the last moment he’d spent with her—that ridiculous moment in his suite, when she’d made a fool of herself for him only to be rejected—might have actually been their last. It was tortuous to even think about.

  Though Scott was naturally excited about the prospect of having Max back with them in the land of the living, he was also acutely aware that Max was the Fourteenth’s last verifiable link to Svetlana. Prior to Oleg having her, she’d apparently been with Max to some extent. Scott didn’t know how much Max knew, but anything was better than nothing. He needed to find some kind of reason to hope.

  Gavriil was standing outside the medical bay door, waiting for Scott and Becan as they approached. Despite the exhausted look on the doctor’s face, his countenance was not the first thing the two men noticed. What they noticed was the blood. His scrubs were covered in it. Immediately, a sense of dread came over Scott. What had happened?

  Seeming to note their alarm, Gavriil held up his gloved hand. “This blood is not your friend’s—do not panic. A forge worker lost a hand today. It was a ‘gusher.’”

  Scott sighed in relief.

  “Before you go in there, there is something you need to know. Your friend is very scared. He is confused.” A frown crossed his face. “I did not call you here out of the goodness of my heart. I called you because, if he does not see a face he recognizes, I fear he may become aggressive.” The doctor hesitated. “Your friend is…stubborn.”

  That was Max, all right.

  Gavriil continued. “Please come in and help us calm him.”

  “We can do that,” Scott said, looking at Becan as if waiting for him to offer the same assurance. “We’ll get him calm.”

  The doctor nodded. “He will be unable to t
alk, so any effort on his part to do so will likely only frustrate him. He is only now realizing that he has a tracheostomy tube in his neck.”

  Scott nodded. “Understood.”

  “All right, then. Let us go.” Turning the doorknob, Gavriil stepped aside to allow the three men to enter.

  A pair of nurses were at Max’s sides, each attempting to calm him as he fought against soft wrist restraints. The look on his face was pure panic. It was heart-wrenching. Scott glanced briefly about the room, his gaze passing over Centurion and Ju`bajai, the latter of whom was slated to be released the next day, before returning to Max. Let him see you. Sliding past another nurse, Scott stopped at the foot of Max’s bed. As soon as the technician saw him, his terrified stare stopped. It shifted from fear, to confusion, to slow realization. Max inhaled sharply through his nose and started to sit up. He was about to call out Scott’s name.

  “Don’t even try,” said Scott, holding his palm out quickly but firmly. “Your throat is busted up—you can’t talk yet.” The technician listened, though the look of confusion remained. “You were…” There was no other way to say it. “You were shot in the neck.” Max’s expression was unchanged as Becan moved behind Scott and into Max’s view. Looking over to Gavriil, Scott said, “Get him a pencil and a tablet.” One of the nurses removed Max’s wrist restraints upon Gavriil’s order. His handwriting wouldn’t be pretty, but he’d still be able to write. Nodding, the doctor complied. Scott’s focus returned to Max, who was still staring in total loss. This was going to be hard.

  “There’s a lot that I’m going to need to explain,” Scott said, “but before I say anything, I need you to promise to stay calm.” For Max, that would be a tall order—but the technician didn’t have a choice. “Nod that you understand.”