Enemy One (Epic Book 5) (75 page)

If this was Nagogg’s echo, then this must have been something Nagogg had seen. Was this Khuldaris? Wrapping her bare arms around her body as much out of trepidation as coldness and wetness, she looked in every direction. A distant tree line surrounded her. Was she supposed to go to it?

Suddenly, a realization struck her. The ocean—the gulf. It was gone! Panicked, Svetlana fell to the muddy ground cover and felt everywhere for some sort of hole to dive back into. There was none. Ed had warned her not to awaken on Nagogg’s side of the gulf—he’d warned her that such a thing could prompt an unpredictable change in her. But how was she supposed to return? Punching through the moist undergrowth, her hands found only mud. Heart pounding, Svetlana sunk to her knees again, pressing her hands atop her head in desperation, then sliding them back down to her sides. She was stuck there.

“There is a way out,” she said quietly. “There
must
be a way out.” This was
not
the mind of Nagogg. This was his echo in Svetlana’s own head. She controlled all of this, regardless of how alien it might have looked. The way home would appear when she was ready for it. Rising again, Svetlana surveyed the tree line. “Let’s go, then,” she said, lifting her feet from the mire to start trudging ahead.

Had she not known that this was a dream state of some sort, Svetlana would have sworn she’d just been teleported across the galaxy. Everything felt so real. The wind, the humidity, the stench of the bog. That she was able to experience all of this was a testament to something, be it the depths of the human mind or the power of the Ithini. Even the dirtiness on her skin was real.

Peering ahead, Svetlana kept her eyes on the tree line. It still seemed so far away. She could only press on.

Despite the strangeness of the bog and the purple glow of Vasvuul, it was not those things that struck her as the most alien. What was the most alien was how she
felt
. There was a hopelessness here, a despair. Yet in a manner she couldn’t quite grasp, there was also a fervency. She could think of no other way to describe it other than being enveloped by a singular purpose that directly conflicted her sense of belonging in the universe. It was the opposite of being at peace.

Slowing to an uneasy stop, Svetlana scrutinized the tree line again. It still wasn’t getting closer. They
were
trees, not mountains. She could see their tops swaying. She should have been drawing near to them. Pivoting around, she squinted at the tree line behind her. It was the same distance away. In all that she’d walked, she was still in the dead center of the bog. She’d gone nowhere. Svetlana turned back around to face the direction she’d been walking.

Barely ten feet in front of her stood a Bakma. Gasping, Svetlana stumbled back in surprise, losing her footing on the moist terrain and falling backward on her rear. Slinging muddied tendrils of hair from her face, she stared up at the alien.

It was Nagogg. The Bakma rider was anything but emaciated, and his face was complete and perfect, no trace of the torture he’d endured at
Novosibirsk
to be found. The lipless skeleton’s grin was gone. Nagogg was clad in the same black and brown, metal and leather armor Svetlana had worn in her first vision, and his chieftain’s spear was standing upright, held in place by one hand. Beyond his breathing, Nagogg was motionless, staring straight ahead, not at Svetlana herself, but seemingly past her. Like a living mannequin.

Pushing up again, Svetlana cautiously drew near to him, angling her approach to see if he would indeed follow her with his head. He didn’t. Running her fingers through her damp, dirty strands, she circled around him.

There was a power to him—an allure that she couldn’t quite pin down. Though he was indeed a prime physical specimen, as lean and well-defined as any Bakma she’d seen, the attraction to him wasn’t physical. There was something deeper there. Something pulling her in.

Purpose.

It was undeniable, inescapable purpose. There was no hope in it—not an ounce—but Nagogg was satisfied with that. The Bakma rider did not seek to be redeemed. He sought to be devout. To bring honor to the one he served. Uladek. That determination, that clarity of existence…she envied it.

“What are you looking at with such adoration?” she asked quietly. No answer was expected, which only surprised her more when one was given—not audibly, but by the distinct arrival of another presence. Following Nagogg’s steadfast gaze, Svetlana saw standing before her a solitary, humanoid being. Drawing to it, Svetlana took it in.

It was unlike anything she’d ever seen before. Its skin was like black sapphire, so black it was almost blue, and its body was sparsely covered by violet armor, much like the color of the gas giant above them. Its abdominal muscles were symmetrical and tight. It was built the way a human would envision a god. Physical sublimity.

There were no visible features on its face, save two oval bulges where eyes should have been and a pair of vertical slits where there should have been a mouth. It was hairless—clean. Everything from its posture to its look of unbridled readiness was…was perfect. There was no other way to describe it. This was a beautiful, perfect creation.

This was a Khuladi.

A Khuladi…the species responsible for the Alien War. The ones ordained to bring Uladek’s judgment to the Ithini, the Bakma, and now the Earthae—humanity. The true villains.

They looked every bit the part.

Ed’s warning to her echoed in her head.
Do not approach what you do not wish to bring back with you.
But just the same…this was a Khuladi! If anything needed to be brought back, it was the knowledge of them. Was there an
obligation
on her part to approach it?

Standing between Nagogg and the Khuladi, Svetlana found her focus shifting from one to the other. She needed them both. With Nagogg, she had no choice. Retrieving Bakmanese from the depths of her subconscious was the reason she was there in the first place. The Khuladi would be up to her.

“Get what you came here for,” she whispered to herself. Casting the Khuladi a final glance, she turned away from it and approached Nagogg. “I need your words.”

“Tu`shak Vahn! Tu`shak Kan! Grii-vaash Rak!” The words were shouted from Nagogg suddenly, the Bakma rider’s entire body remaining motionless save his mouth, which uttered the three statements over and over again, his voice unaltered by a lack of lips with which to enunciate. Though startled initially, Svetlana drew closer.

The three statements continued, unchanging in their vehement inflection as if part of some military mantra.

“Tu`shak Vahn! Tu`shak Kan! Grii-vaash Rak!”

A tingle came to Svetlana’s lips. They parted, as her tongue slowly found itself mimicking what came from Nagogg. “Tu`shak Vahn. Tu`shak Kan. Grii-vaash Rak.” Though her volume was lower, she spoke the words with Nagogg in perfect harmony. The tingle traveled to her neck then up to her ears.

“Tu`shak Vahn! Tu`shak Kan! Grii-vaash Rak!” And again. “Tu`shak Vahn! Tu`shak Kan! Grii-vaash Rak!” Then again. “Tu`shak Order! Tu`shak Chaos! Grii-vaash Eternal! Tu`shak Order! Tu`shak Chaos! Grii-vaash Eternal!”

Slowly, the words’ meaning became clear. “Bringer of Order! Bringer of Chaos! Keeper of the Eternal!” She was saying the words right along with him. It was a tribute to Uladek. A chant of worship. Once more, the overwhelming sensation of singular purpose washed over her. Order, Chaos, the Eternal. Like a trinity.

The significance of the Khuladi became more defined. They were not only the chosen of Uladek. They were the guardians of him. Only through the Khuladi—only by honoring them and them alone—could one hope to gain Uladek’s favor. For all practical purposes, they
were
Uladek. To wish to escape them was to reject Uladek altogether. The Eternal—the place where Order and Chaos converged into the infinite—would be out of reach. Nothing but reaching the Eternal mattered. Nothing but bringing honor to the Khuladi.

Singular purpose.

The chant stopped, Nagogg’s words replaced by the sound of the wind in the distant trees. As Svetlana looked to them, she realized that in the midst of the chanting, three more beings had appeared, each spaced equally apart from one another alongside Nagogg, and all facing the Khuladi. An Ithini—its black, bulbous eyes staring blankly ahead. Next to the Ithini, there was something else—another being she’d never seen before, pale-skinned with long, black hair and sharp facial features that she could only describe as rodent-like, minus the fur. It was hideous in its foreignness, yet in an unsettling way, almost graceful. She wasn’t sure whether to be revolted or allured.

“Dishan,”
Svetlana said softly. It was their name. She just knew.

Her attention shifted to the next being, which stood in stark contrast to the one she’d just seen. This one was four-legged and towering. Powerful. It was a creature—no, a monster—of great ferocity and strength. Dark green skin with a face that looked a mix of reptile and fish, with slanted, almost glowing blue eyes and a wide mouth framed with elongated fangs. It looked like something dragged from the depths of Earth’s deepest ocean trenches, armor-plated and primal. Yet despite the grotesqueness of its body, the creature emanated prominence. This was a being of elevated status, not to be trifled with. A female of its kind.

“Nerifinn,”
Svetlana said. Stepping back slowly, Svetlana observed the four beings. The Bakma, the Ithini, the Dishan, and the Nerifinn. The slave species of the Khuladi. But the portrait was incomplete. There was one being she had not yet seen.

All at once, the four beings bowed down, the Nerifinn falling on its front knees like a centaur. Each one lowered their heads in reverence. Turning around, Svetlana’s gaze sought the Khuladi once more. What she found made her step back in awe.

Lowering to the bog behind the Khuladi was a spaceship roughly the size of a Noboat, if not larger. The ship was bulky and a dark, metallic gray, with various black indentations running all along its surface. It looked to be in two parts—an upper half that was flat and streamlined and a lower half that seemed more a massive cargo hold than part of anything designed for aerospace flight. Beneath it, four thrusters blew water and dirt from the bog. Blocking the light of its flames with her hand, Svetlana squinted in an effort to see.

The cargo hold shifted, its massive bays opening as four long, heavy objects began to flower out at the ship’s four corners. As they protruded, they expanded, growing longer as distinct bends began to form. Svetlana’s blue eyes widened as the realization struck her. These were legs—legs with the equivalent of feet and knees. This was not a spaceship.

The four feet crashed upon the bog, shaking the ground beneath them as the machine settled in a series of whirs and motions. The indentations and panels across its surface slid open. Massive cannons emerged—some at its nose, two large ones where arms should have been. A panel at the top of the machine elevated, revealing a singular, elongated weapon slot that was larger in sheer scale than all of the others combined. By the time the machine finished, it was as tall as a six-story building. This was more than simply a robot. This was a war machine.

“Annihl,”
Svetlana said.

This was it. The family portrait was complete. These were the forces of the Khuladi Empire. All at once, a wash of understanding came over her. Turning back to the row of beings behind her, she looked upon each of them as their roles came into shape. The Ithini were research and development—driven to conjure up whatever the Khuladi wanted. The Dishan were the personal servants, the Bakma the ones who prepared other species for judgment by initiating ground warfare. The Nerifinn declared the Khuladis’ coming, preceding them as they and their created Annihl rained upon their target worlds like battle-ready locusts.

Five implements of war—four captured, one created. But something was missing. There was still a species that, at least in the mind of Nagogg, was supposed to have been there. Svetlana could sense it.

At the far end of the line, past the Nerifinn, a whimper emerged. Her ears perking, Svetlana stepped back to locate the final piece of the puzzle. The moment she laid eyes on the one at the end of the line, a dark coldness came over her.

It was a woman. A human woman, an
Earthae
woman, stripped almost entirely of her clothes and trembling in terror. She had blond hair cut just past her shoulders—just long enough to put into a ponytail, should she have so desired. She was not a peak physical specimen, but she was slender just the same. As Svetlana drew nearer to her, she could see the woman’s ocean blue eyes, crowning the place on her face where a nose should have been, but where instead was a sawed-open pair of nasal cavities.

It was her.

Hand sliding over her mouth, Svetlana approached the replica of herself. Her
real
self, not as she envisioned herself in her own mind, but as she was seen through Nagogg’s. There was no impartiality there, no benefit of the doubt. As had been the case with Kraash-nagun, this was the cold, clinical dissection of a woman who was utterly helpless. As Svetlana stood face to face with her reflection, she gaped in horrified awe.

What a weak and pitiful creature.

This was Svetlana Voronova, shivering in terror with tear-filled eyes and a look of total subordination. Unable to muster even the slightest bit of dignity in spite of her state. Ready to fall over and die.

Svetlana couldn’t sense whatever role it was that she was supposed to play there, or even if she represented humanity to any degree in Nagogg’s head. But whatever she was supposed to symbolize, it wasn’t something to be proud of. Standing beside the towering Nerifinn female, Svetlana looked downright insignificant.

Not lost in her self-reflection was the fact that, indeed, this confirmed the Khuladi’s intention to adopt humanity into its ranks, just as it had done with all of the other species before them. They were the next slaves in line, yet to be captured, though capture was a foregone conclusion. If the Khuladi won this war, this was the future of the human species. Though Svetlana was aware of those things, they still paled in comparison to the dose of reality that she was staring right in the eyes. The big picture gave way to the personal.