Enemy One (Epic Book 5)

by Lee Stephen

Looking more than mildly annoyed, Rashid observed the exchange in silence.

  “Look,” Scott said to Pyotr, “I appreciate it, I appreciate whatever it was that you did in Krasnoyarsk, but we’re fine. You shouldn’t have come with us.”

  “No, but I needed to,” Pyotr said, “and you needed me to. I am very good with all things, I can be big, big help to you. Anything you need, right? You tell Pyotr, and he will get it.”

  This kid didn’t get it. “We don’t need anything, Pyotr. Just—”

  “We have a dog, and he needs to be walked,” said Esther, still in the same position. “He’s in my room. Go.”

  Pyotr looked at her, confused. “A dog?”

  “Yes, a dog. Go, quickly. He’s going to spiz all over my sheets.”

  Opening his mouth as if verging on a question, Pyotr swallowed then said, “Yes, umm. I will walk the dog. Umm.” He looked at his tray. “Can I eat first—”

  “No.”

  Frowning, Pyotr stood up, leaving his tray abandoned on the table. “Very good. Pyotr is happy to walk your dog. I will do this for you, beautiful Esther!”

  Scott raised an eyebrow. Esther did not. Turning away from the table, Pyotr hurriedly walked away from them. Casting a sidelong glance at Esther, Scott asked, “‘Beautiful Esther?’”

  The scout eyed him flatly. “Do not even.”

  “You’re going to let him go to your room like that?”

  Shaking her head, Esther answered, “My room is locked. I have the key in my bra.”

  “I feel like we should tip him.”

  “Everyone has chores.”

  Across from Scott and Esther, Rashid cleared his throat loudly. The two looked his way. “Sorry,” Scott said. “What’s up, man?”

  “We have been discussing our situation,” Rashid said, motioning to the man sitting next to him.

  It wasn’t until that moment that Scott realized the man next to him was Feliks Petrukhin—otherwise known as Four. It was the first time anyone besides Rashid had seen one of the slayers from the Cairo extraction team outside their armor. Sensing that his surprise was obvious, Scott said, “I’m sorry, I didn’t realize who you were.”

  “It is good to meet you face to face, captain.” Feliks wore an expression that could have been mistaken for disinterest had the slayer not been looking directly at Scott, obviously putting effort in his focus. He had orange-red hair that was almost Becan-like in its wildness. Light facial hair and droopy gray eyes completed a face that would surely not be forgotten. There seemed some roguishness there, buried beneath Feliks’ Nightman exterior. Rashid, the dark-brown-eyed, olive-skinned elder, couldn’t have been more of a contrast.

  Continuing where he’d left off, Rashid leaned forward on the table and said, “At this point in our operation, we are no longer bound to remain with you, as per Antipov’s instruction. However, as is obvious, we are all in this situation together. We are specialists—we do not have a designated unit. If it is desirable for you, even if for the time being, we will join the Fourteenth as a part of its crew.”

  It wasn’t exactly a decree of undying loyalty. It sounded more like a mix of necessity and convenience. “Well, the first question I’d have,” Scott said, “is, is it desirable for you?”

  No answer immediately came from the two men. They simply exchanged a brief look before Rashid went on. “It is neither desirable or undesirable. It is a matter of logic. We are here. At this time, we cannot go home. Therefore, it only makes sense that we would join your unit in an official capacity, though obviously that choice is yours.”

  Esther asked, “What happens when an opportunity to leave us presents itself? More than numbers, right now we need trust.”

  “Trust, you will have,” answered Rashid. “Any departure on our part would not occur without discussion. You are on a critical mission—we recognize that, even if we are not privy to all of its details.” The Turk’s attention returned to Scott. “But only you can decide if having us would be a benefit.”

  “It would absolutely be a benefit,” said Scott without pause. “We need you guys right now. I don’t know what we’d have done without you. We’d be dead back at Cairo.”

  Rashid’s expression remained stoic. “You would. But Cairo was not your assignment to give us. It was Antipov’s.”

  None of that mattered to Scott. “Well as far as I’m concerned, you’re a part of the team. What do you need from us in order for that to work?”

  “Nothing,” Rashid answered. “I do not require a share of your unit’s command. I will serve as your counsel when it is requested.”

  “You’d just give up your right to leadership?” Esther asked. “You’d give up your power as a fulcrum? Color me skeptical.”

  Shifting his dark eyes to her, he said, “It may provide context to know that this was to be my final operation. Upon the return of your team and the Ceratopian to Novosibirsk, I was to be granted retirement.”

  Scott’s eyes widened somewhat. Well, that’s certainly new information.

  “I am as capable as any fulcrum,” Rashid said, “but I will not try to deceive you. My bones hurt, Captain Remington. A change in the weather causes pain in my joints, and I cannot imagine this new bullet wound will make things any easier. I have lost the ambition of youth to lead soldiers into battle. I am content to simply do my job.” Very faintly, he tipped his head toward Scott. “You will not have chain-of-command issues with me.”

  It was honesty that Scott appreciated, especially now. He extended his hand to the Turk’s good one. “Then we won’t have any issues at all. Welcome aboard, Faraj.” He looked at the other man. “Feliks.” As Rashid shook Scott’s hand, Feliks nodded expressionlessly.

  “What is our first order of business?” Rashid asked.

  “Not repeating Thoor’s mistake,” answered Scott. When Rashid looked at him curiously, Scott went on. “The late general had Lilan in his custody for days when Novosibirsk was attacked. I think he wanted to let EDEN hang themselves—to let them talk about Novosibirsk’s guilt over and over, then to drop the survivor bomb on them.” He glanced at Esther briefly. “I don’t think anyone thought EDEN would actually attack The Machine.”

  Rashid nodded his head—he was following along. “Then we must prepare Colonel Lilan for a statement immediately. We must expose him to the press and show the world that EDEN was lying.”

  “They’ll have a hard time whitewashing that,” said Scott.

  Canting her head his way, Esther asked, “But don’t you think they’ll find a way to anyway? Think of how they managed to set the Nightmen up with Falcon Platoon. Surely they went into that with a contingency plan in the event Lilan survived.”

  “Not if they were overconfident,” said Rashid, “as was General Thoor.”

  “The general was a blusterer,” she said. “Bluster is easily thwarted by action. I’m not saying we shouldn’t get the news of Lilan’s survival out there as quickly as possible. Obviously, that’s the right course. I’m just saying be prepared for a counter. I don’t think EDEN will be as easily caught off guard as the ‘Terror of Amsterdam.’”

  She had a solid point. If EDEN managed to somehow deflect the blow of Lilan’s survival, the Fourteenth needed to be able to respond to it. They needed as much evidence of wrongdoing on EDEN’s part as they could find.

  “Hmm,” Esther said.

  Scott looked at her. “What is it?”

  Her gaze trailing to the tabletop in deep thought, she answered, “H`laar, and by association Centurion, were obviously important for something they knew. I wonder if Ju`bajai knows what that might have been.”

  “Ju`bajai? The Ithini? But I mean, she wasn’t a part of it, right?”

  Shaking her head, Esther answered, “No, but she’s a clever little sprite. It wouldn’t surprise me in the least if she poked around in Centurion’s head—particularly if she thought he might be dying and whatever he knew might be lost.”

  Another solid idea. “We’ll talk to her.”
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  “I’ll talk to her,” Esther corrected. “She may be more keen to listen to me than to you—no offense.”

  He half-frowned. “Some taken.”

  “I’ll find out what she knows and let you know. She knows Centurion is of value. I’m sure she must’ve at least wondered why at some point.”

  Sitting upright in his chair, Rashid said, “So we speak with the keeper about bringing Lilan into the public, and she will speak with the Ithini about the Ceratopian. Are these our only tasks at present?”

  No. There was another task on Scott’s heart: he hadn’t heard from Antipov about Svetlana, yet. He was hoping to have received an update sometime during the morning hours, but none had come. Scott still had no idea where Svetlana was. But was that even appropriate to bring up when so many other big-picture issues were on the table? Fortunately for Scott, Esther brought it up so he didn’t have to.

  “There are several members of our crew who are missing,” the scout said, her brown eyes on Rashid. “Matthew Axen and Svetlana Voronova, primarily. Those names may not mean much to the two of you, but they do to the Fourteenth.”

  Esther referring to Svetlana as meaningful? Scott was impressed.

  “It’s critical to us, if not to the mission, that we find out where they are.”

  Looking briefly at Feliks, Rashid’s focus returned to the two across the table. “I am not sure there is a practical way to find out that information.”

  Esther didn’t disagree. “There may not be. But just know that it’s something we’re dealing with. Any solutions would be greatly appreciated should you think of them.”

  “Thank you, Ess,” Scott said quietly.

  Eyeing him coyly, she smirked. “I’ve got your back. And yes, that tart of yours, too.”

  Rashid arched one of his pointy eyebrows, but said nothing.

  “And,” Esther said, “we need to be restocked.”

  Now that, Scott could chime in on. “We’re actually already working on that. Dave and I went to the forge earlier. We’re pretty confident we’ll be able to snag armor for everyone, we just need to talk to the forge master.”

  “Oh…my God,” Esther said.

  Scott blinked, until he realized the scout wasn’t responding to what he’d said. Her gaze was aimed straight across the dining hall, to the doors. It was Pyotr. The teenage slayer was walking awkwardly into the dining hall, with Flopper in his arms. Half of the room turned to stare.

  “I walked him in the showers!” Pyotr said, only moments before Flopper’s paws flailed in an effort to escape. The teenager stumbled and fell as the pooch scrambled from his grasp.

  Scott asked Esther sidelong, “I thought you said your door was locked?”

  “It was,” she said through her teeth. “Did he break into my room?”

  Flopper scampered out of the dining hall, his paws digging out as he fled down the hall. Scrambling to his feet, Pyotr gave chase, disappearing as the doors swung shut behind him.

  Rashid turned to Scott. “That one concerns me.”

  Scott sighed. “Yeah, you’re not the only one.” Glancing at Esther, who was staring slack-jawed, Scott nudged her in the side. “You going to go get him, or what?”

  “If you make it a question,” she said, “the answer’s going to be—”

  “Go get him.”

  The scout narrowed her eyes. Pushing back from her chair, she abandoned their table to chase Pyotr and Flopper.

  After several seconds of silence, Rashid looked at Scott and said, “You have a very interesting unit.”

  Shaking his head, Scott said, “You don’t know the half of it.”

  * * *

  “That’s not the one!”

  From the crawlspace beneath the Pariah’s troop bay floorboards, Boris could hear Travis shouting to him. Grunting as he shifted his belly-down position to reach his voltmeter, the Russian technician hollered back, “I have not done anything yet!”

  In the cockpit, Travis leaned in to get a closer look at the transport’s digital readout. The pilot raised an eyebrow. “It shows a secondary line was just unplugged!”

  Finally wriggling the voltmeter to where he was, Boris inserted the test probes into one of the main line inputs. “I did not unplug anything! It must be a glitch.”

  Rubbing his hair with his hands, Travis blew out a breath and murmured to himself, “This thing sure has a lot of glitches.”

  “All readings good!” Boris yelled from beneath the floorboards. “The problem with the vertical thrusters is not from here!”

  “If it’s not coming from there, where’s it coming from?” The question was asked mainly to himself, as Travis sighed and shook his head. Nothing about the Pariah ever made sense.

  Immediately after waking up and eating breakfast, the pair of friends made their way straight to the hangar to do a thorough inspection of the damaged Vulture. Though it had taken its fair share of bullets in the dogfight with the Superwolves, most of the shots had merely hit metal. The only internal systems that were affected at all were the vertical thrusters and forward landing gear. Everything else—or what little there was in the stripped-down Vulture—checked out fine.

  “I have power all the way from primary systems to thruster control!” Boris said. “There has to be a problem with the thrusters themselves.”

  “But the thrusters weren’t hit,” Travis yelled back, rising from the pilot’s seat to walk back into the troop bay. He knelt down by the removed floor panel that Boris had crawled into. “It’s not getting a feed from somewhere.”

  Pulling himself into view with a grunt, Boris pushed his mop of black hair from his face and looked up at Travis. “I checked everything from the housing connectors to the primary feed—there is power throughout.”

  “That just doesn’t make sense. Could it be a damaged sensor?”

  The technician shrugged. “Could be.”

  “That would explain…” For a moment, the pilot fell silent in thought. Nodding emphatically and gesturing with his fist, he rose to his feet again. “Yeah, that would explain a lot. Maybe that secondary drop I just saw, too.”

  Sighing, Boris said, “I will check the sensors.”

  “If that’s the case, that’s easy. They might even have some spare sensors lying around here, somewhere.” Travis walked back into the cockpit and leaned over the controls. “What other systems run through those same sensors?”

  “Uhhh.” For several seconds, Boris fell silent. “Autopilot?”

  Travis bit his lip, half shaking his head. “But this thing is so stripped down,” he said once more to himself. “Hey, what about…” He cut himself off mid-phrase. “No, we don’t have that, either.”

  “None of the bullets hit anywhere near the thruster inputs, so it would make sense that a sensor was damaged somewhere else!” Boris said. “I am almost to the panel. I will check and see.”

  “Hey,” yelled Travis, “do you think it’s possible that she just jostled something loose with all that crazy flying she did? What if the problem wasn’t caused by a bullet?”

  The technician’s grunts grew louder as he went deeper into the crawlspace. He was almost under the cockpit now. “That would be big coincidence! You have flown crazy sometimes and nothing has come loose.”

  Rubbing his chin in thought, Travis said, “It’s possible something just loosened over time, and she gave things just enough of a jiggle to jar it free. Right?”

  “Anything is possible!”

  “I bet that’s it. I bet that loony blonde broke our ship.”

  Beneath the cockpit, Boris laughed. “Small price to pay for saving our lives, no?”

  “You know,” Travis said, “if we would’ve surrendered, we might not be stuck in this mountain hellhole. Do you have any idea how close she was to getting us all killed?”

  “But I thought you said during flight that surrender was bad? You sound jealous!”

  Travis’s eyes narrowed. “Jealous, my tail. What she did worked, but it was insane.
”

  “Sensor looks fine!” Boris yelled. Grunting, he once again contorted to reach his tools. “Let me look at diagnostic.”

  “I kind of feel like…” The pilot bit his lip. “I dunno. I guess it’s hard to imagine anyone else flying this ship other than me.” He sighed. “But if someone’s gotta do it, I guess Tiffany isn’t half bad.” He placed his hand atop the cockpit dashboard, a sentimental expression appearing on his face. “You okay with Tiffany, old girl?”

  Through a straining voice, Boris said, “Diagnostic looks good!” A moment later, a series of loud, metal-to-metal bangs emerged.

  Sitting upright, Travis looked at the floorboard. “What the heck are you doing?”

  Between bangs, Boris said, “When it doubt, beat it out!”

  “You know, that doesn’t actually work.”

  “First time for everything!”

  Another series of loud clangs reverberated. The dashboard in front of Travis illuminated. His eyes widening, the pilot stared at the display. “Whoa, whoa! Stop!” The clanging subsided. “They’re on!” Cycling through the diagnostic display, Travis looked at the vertical thruster readout. “How did you…?”

  “Ah-ha! One point for the technician! There is a loose connection in the sensor mount—we will have to take it apart to fix it.” Once again, he awkwardly moved back toward the troop bay. “You were probably right about it being loosened over time! So one point for us both.”

  As the damage indicator lit up again, Travis frowned. “And, it’s out again.” There was a hesitation from below, as one final bang rang out. Vertical thruster control came back online. “Yeah, this is definitely not gonna cut it. That whole system needs to be replaced.”

  “Maybe the ship needs to be replaced!”

  “I’m going to pretend I didn’t hear you say that.”

  Boris chuckled. “We will fly her as long as she lets us.”

  “No doubt,” said Travis as he curled his fingers around the joystick, just for sentiment’s sake. “This ship’s been through hell and back on numerous occasions. We wouldn’t be the Fourteenth without her.”

  His fingers emerging from the displaced floor panel to pull himself out by its edges, Boris said, “But we are not the Fourteenth, anymore. We are outlaws! Yippee pow-wow!”