The Complete Harvesters Series

by Luke R. Mitchell

  When he turned to cross back to the others, Haldin looked markedly worse than he had a minute ago.

  That was when things went to shit.

  Haldin’s eyes snapped open, wide with alarm. “Take cover!” he cried.

  Jarek almost listened. Then he lunged toward Alaric, Nelken, and Haldin on impulse and nearly punched a hole through the wall breaking his momentum.

  Behind him, the ceiling exploded inward with a violently loud pop and a stream of crumbling sounds. A thick wave of dust and larger particulates swirled through the room.

  Jarek shoved a protesting Nelken and Alaric down next to Haldin and stood over them, arms planted against the wall to shield them as best he could.

  It wasn’t much, but it was all he could manage before the next blast hit.

  Jarek barely had time to register there had been a blast at all until after the rapid series of violently abrupt impacts that left him drifting in a murky haze of disorientation.

  He blinked and tried to move. It hurt.

  Somehow, he’d ended up on the ground, something was on top of him, and it was… He blinked again.

  It was dark in the room?

  Impossible, said his sluggish brain. It was still daylight outside. Which meant…

  Another explosion rattled Jarek’s insides.

  “We’re buried, sir,” Al’s voice crackled in his ear. “In case you hadn’t noticed.”

  Jarek coughed and tasted something suspiciously similar to blood. “Rock and a hard place, huh?”

  He tried his arms and found his left arm pinned and his right only marginally more free and, thanks to Fela’s iron grasp, still gripping his commandeered carbine.

  He was about to make an awkward attempt at heaving his way out when the slab over his face shifted with a sound of grinding stone and then flipped explosively off him.

  Daylight poured in, revealing Jarek’s rescuer to be Alton Parker.

  The raknoth spun toward the source of a pained cry and disappeared to go help someone else.

  The common room was a devastated mess, strewn with heaping piles of collapsed asphalt and debris ranging from the size of golf balls to kitchen tables. Much of the ceiling was gone, and—more importantly—dark-clad figures were swarming around the edges of the now-open pit that was the common room.

  More importantly still, several of those men were pointing guns at Jarek’s unprotected face. And he was still too pinned to move anything but his right arm.

  He ripped his stolen carbine free from the rubble, praying it hadn’t been too badly damaged, and pointed it at the nearest soldier.

  The weapon jolted in his hand, barking out shot after shot. The closest of Golga’s troops fell back to use the lip of the room as cover. The rest of them returned fire.

  Jarek turned his head away from the worst of it. Bullets smacked down around him, several cracking and twanging off the bits of his armor that were exposed from the rubble pile.

  Luckily, he didn’t need to see with his own eyes to aim.

  “A little help, Al?”

  “I can barely see anything, sir!”

  Shit. He hadn’t even thought about that. Most of Al’s sensors had gone with the faceplate, and half of the others were probably buried right now.

  The incoming fire intensified, and the itchy fingers of claustrophobic panic clutched harder at Jarek’s chest.

  His heart beat faster, almost as fast as the bullets were pouring down all around him now. He needed to move, needed to—

  “Jarek?” someone called from somewhere near his feet.

  Haldin?

  “I could use a big strong robot hand over here!” the voice said.

  Definitely Haldin. And he needed help. Jarek’s help. The thought centered him.

  Jarek tossed the now-empty carbine aside, twisted as best he could, and reached his right hand across to the large hunk of debris on his left shoulder. In comparison to what Fela could technically lift, the piece pinning him probably wasn’t so heavy, but he didn’t have the position or leverage, and god only knew what else was stacked on top of it.

  He pushed those thoughts aside and pushed with all his and Fela’s combined might. With the grating rumble of stone on heavy stone, the rubble slid back inch-by-inch. Another inch or so and he’d be able to—

  Something slammed into the side of his helmet hard enough to render thinking temporarily problematic—a bullet, he realized.

  “Move, sir,” Al’s voice said somewhere in the back of his foggy brain.

  His ears rang. Another inch or so to the right and that bullet would’ve—

  “Move!” Al cried.

  Jarek snapped back and gave the rubble one last heavy shove.

  There.

  He ripped free of his rubble-strewn confinement. Once his torso was up, his legs came easily enough. He stood, drew his left pistol, and fired a few barely aimed shots to keep Golga’s men cautious as he stepped over to the slab of collapsed ceiling he thought Haldin’s voice had come from.

  “Hal?”

  And shit, where was Alaric? And Nelken?

  “Back here,” came Haldin’s voice.

  The enemy fire was dulling down, largely thanks to the fifteen or so Resistance soldiers who’d remained alive and unpinned through the ceiling collapse. They’d rallied behind rubble piles, hallway mouths, and other cover, and were returning fire now. A few more were fighting their way in from the uncollapsed sections of HQ.

  In the one corner with a mostly intact ceiling, Phineas was directing a particularly heavy stream of deadly lead (or whatever Enochians used in their bullets) at Golga’s troops from behind a large pile of rubble.

  Jarek got a grip on the thick slab in front of him and heaved. The thing was heavy, but he managed.

  He was wondering if Haldin couldn’t have moved the slab himself when it toppled away from the wall to reveal the Enochian had been busy with other matters.

  Haldin was hunkered down beside Alaric. Nelken was wedged against the wall beside them, trapped by rubble all around, including the small mountain of debris inexplicably floating over his head.

  The instant Jarek’s slab fell off them and cleared the way, the floating pile shifted and toppled clear after it, and Haldin slumped back against the wall.

  Jarek rushed forward to help Alaric pull Nelken out from under the looming pile.

  Nelken roused as they handled him, reaching up to clutch at Jarek’s arm and trying to cough something out of lungs that were probably half full of dust. They only moved him a few inches before it became clear his legs were still pinned, and it looked like they were going to have to move some serious weight to get him out.

  Jarek bent to grab the slab that looked to be the primary culprit.

  “Behind you!” Haldin snapped.

  Something landed right near Jarek’s vulnerable ass with a thump and a shifting of rubble.

  Haldin sprung into motion before Jarek could stabilize his slab enough to aim a mule kick backward. A second later, there was a sound of crushing stone and a furious roar.

  Apparently the raknoth had joined the party.

  Amid the dwindling gunfire, he heard the thuds of multiple impacts around the room. More raknoth? Or Golga’s soldiers moving in?

  Either way, not good.

  He set his feet and heaved the slab higher, lifting and then pushing until the slab passed the tipping point and fell aside to the floor with a heavy boom. Below, Nelken grunted in alarm or pain. Yanking him out like this without understanding what was pinned where was probably a monumentally bad idea, but they didn’t have time to do it right, and an injured leg was better than a dead commander.

  Jarek scrambled to clear a few more easy pieces then reached for the next large piece obstructing Nelken.

  Alton appeared to beat him to it and yanked the heavy slab aside to reveal two more Resistance fighters, a man and a woman, huddled together beneath, looking harrowed but relatively unharmed.

  For a split second, their expression
s shifted to profound relief. Then they caught sight of Alton, whose eyes had gone red somewhere between his exertions and the bullets slamming into his back, and their expressions twisted to pure terror.

  The woman produced a pistol and pumped four rounds into Alton’s chest before Alaric hurled himself over to pull her gun arm down.

  “He’s trying to help, you dimwits!”

  Before either of them could respond, a second pair of fiery-red eyes dropped down behind Alton, and a pair of scaly green arms clamped around his torso and chucked him across the room, where he smashed into the opposite wall like a sack of bricks.

  The enemy raknoth turned back to them just in time to catch Jarek’s front kick full-on in the chest.

  The kick launched the raknoth across the room, bouncing from one pile of rubble to the next.

  Alaric was waving the two stunned Resistance troops to action. “Wipe those dumb looks off and help me get your commander out of here!”

  They snapped to and complied, and Jarek turned to follow his raknoth foe, reaching for the Whacker as he went.

  He hadn’t drawn his blade—hadn’t even made it two steps—when what might have been a six-hundred-pound gorilla came down on him from behind. He did his best to tuck and roll with the thing’s considerable momentum, but there was only so much he could do with his attacker stubbornly riding him all the way down.

  They bounced across the uneven ground in a series of messy rolls that ended with Jarek on his side and strong, scaly arms trying to wrap their way around his torso and neck.

  He threw a pair of vicious elbow strikes back at his faceless opponent and was rewarded with a wet cracking sound and a low growl. A violent backward headbutt changed the growl to a screech, but the impact left Jarek’s own head ringing. He bucked against the raknoth’s steely grip all the same and managed to slip free in the distraction.

  In a single second, he was on his feet and aiming a hard stomp at the raknoth’s head.

  Not fast enough.

  A second raknoth—the one he’d kicked he realized—came out of nowhere to catch him in a low shoulder tackle, and he didn’t stop there. The raknoth pumped his powerful legs, driving Jarek back, back, back, until they slammed into the wall they’d excavated Nelken from. Luckily, Alaric and his helpers had shuttled Nelken out of harm’s way by then.

  Lucky. Right. Because now all Jarek had to contend with was the raknoth pinning him to the wall and his buddy who was rising from the rubble to come help tear Jarek’s head off.

  Across the room, Alton was tangling with a new raknoth now. To the left, Haldin stood over his fallen raknoth opponent with a pair of long, simple daggers in hand, one of which was coated with dark raknoth blood.

  A hard punch to the stomach drove out what little air remained in Jarek’s lungs and yanked his attention thoroughly back to the raknoth at hand. He replied with a hard knee of his own and brought his closed fist down on top of the raknoth’s thick skull.

  It was about as pleasant as punching a vault door, but Jarek gritted his teeth and threw another punch into the side of that reptilian head, and then another. He got in two more good punches before the raknoth he’d failed to stomp to its end lunged over, caught Jarek’s raised fist, and slammed his arm to the wall.

  For a few seconds, the three of them struggled furiously.

  Then another raknoth dropped into the room, and everything seemed to freeze.

  When he got a look at the newcomer, Jarek realized why.

  Even if he hadn’t been carrying that obscenely large club of his, Jarek would’ve recognized the raknoth by the dark green of his hide and by the sheer animosity that radiated off him like a deadly miasma.

  Zar’Golga had arrived.

  29

  “You’ve gotta be shittin’ me,” Jarek muttered.

  The two raknoth holding him thrust him harder into the wall as if demanding silence, and across the room, Zar’Golga showed him that bone-chillingly murderous raknoth grin of his.

  Fighting Golga one-on-one had been bad enough. And somehow, Jarek didn’t think things would work out better with an entire army and god knew how many raknoth at Golga’s back.

  Golga appeared to feel similarly as he pointed his club toward Jarek. “This time, there will be no esca—”

  Half a dozen shots rang out from the right, and Golga jerked back, spattering the wall behind him with dark ichor. Jarek followed the shots to Alaric and Phineas, who were both sporting sleek Enochian rifles. Then all hell broke loose.

  Raknoth roared. Golga’s forces renewed their fire on anyone who wasn’t in close proximity to the raknoth below. Haldin sprang across the room and drove a hard boot into the side of Golga’s head.

  Jarek needed to get free and help Haldin. The Enochian was good, he’d give him that, but he doubted Haldin fully appreciated what he was getting himself into fighting Golga one-on-one.

  Jarek bucked against his captors, kicking and stomping. He broke his left hand free just in time to catch a clawed hand on its way to his exposed face.

  Ahead, Haldin twisted and turned past a rain of Golga’s blows with grace and speed that should have been well outside the limits of a human being. He moved as if he knew what would happen before it did, like a machine built for the sole purpose of dancing smoothly around a rampaging raknoth.

  While Jarek struggled to keep one raknoth from gouging his eyes out, the other came to the realization that Jarek’s hands were tied and his neck vulnerable.

  A strong hand clamped over his armored throat and tugged him forward only to slam him back into the wall. And then again.

  Jarek’s vision swam with oddly-colored spots from the impact, and he was fighting a losing battle for breath. But at least the raknoth’s new hold freed up one of his legs.

  He kicked the raknoth’s right knee before he could give Jarek another slam. There was a gristly crunch, and the raknoth hobbled back but didn’t fall. Instead, he gave an angry roar and started forward again, ready to end Jarek.

  His buddy held Jarek in place, content to let his kin have the honor.

  Or did, at least, until Phineas came charging in and planted an earth-shaking punch right on the side of the raknoth’s head.

  The punch should’ve broken Phineas’ hand. Only it wasn’t his hand, Jarek realized, but a prosthetic.

  Jarek’s captor stumbled aside from the hit and released his grip on Jarek to aim an angry backhand at Phineas. The blow caught the big guy in the chest and sent him sprawling into the wall, but Phineas’ distraction wasn’t wasted.

  Jarek threw a shove into the raknoth’s chest, hard enough to buy himself a moment as the raknoth with the bum knee closed in on him from the left.

  In one continuous motion, Jarek tore his sword free and stepped in a high to low sweep. The giant blade caught the incoming raknoth at the left knee joint and ripped through, tearing more than cutting.

  The raknoth fell with a screech, and Jarek pivoted straight into his next strike, maintaining the blade’s considerable momentum and steering it into a rising sweep at the spot where the second raknoth would probably be lunging straight for his exposed back.

  Claws ripped at his left shoulder armor as he completed his turn, and then the raknoth came into view and Jarek’s blade connected with his upper arm. Between the angle and the raknoth’s proximity, the strike didn’t have the power to remove the arm, but judging by the sound and the feel of the impact in Jarek’s hands, it at least broke something.

  Jarek darted back just in time to avoid a wild backhand. The raknoth lunged after him. He spun, dropping his left hand from the hilt, and brought the Whacker around in a high horizontal sweep.

  The sword kicked in his hands, and the raknoth fell to Jarek’s side, the top half of his head torn open. Jarek caught a glimpse of something wriggling in the dark fluids oozing from the open head wound, and his stomach turned. Then a roar to his left wrenched his attention away.

  Across the room, Haldin’s daggers shot up to meet a tremendous bl
ow of Zar’Golga’s club. Jarek tried to cry out. Too late.

  What was the crazy bastard thinking, trying to catch that thing with those tiny—

  The club smashed off thin air as if it had hit an invisible, immovable post a few feet from Haldin’s daggers. Jarek’s horror turned to shocked admiration as the force and leverage of the impact proved sufficient to jolt the weapon free from Golga’s grip.

  Haldin, apparently expecting the large weapon to come spinning out of Golga’s hand, had already ducked to the side to avoid its wild trajectory. What he hadn’t expected was how seamlessly Golga reacted.

  The raknoth abandoned the club as if throwing it away had been his intention all along and whirled to catch Haldin by the throat. Haldin dropped his daggers and managed to catch Golga’s hand with both of his and avoid getting his throat torn out, but he couldn’t do a thing to keep Golga from driving him down to his knees and yanking him in for the killing blow.

  Jarek sprang forward, aiming an overhand strike at Golga’s left elbow. The raknoth saw him coming and leapt backward, releasing Haldin to avoid Jarek’s attack. Jarek planted his feet and turned, raising his sword as he tracked Golga.

  There was a gasp of air and a choking cough from behind, and then Haldin stepped to Jarek’s side, daggers at the ready.

  Behind Golga, Alton stood wearily from an unmoving foe and began to skirt the edge of the room toward them.

  Two raknoth dropped down from above to bar his way—Toady and Slender Face, Jarek registered.

  Another pair of raknoth dropped down behind Jarek and Haldin, low growls emanating from their throats. Jarek didn’t realize how silent the battle had gone around them until shouts and gunshots picked up from somewhere down the hallway behind them.

  Jarek waited until Golga himself turned to inspect the racket, then he took a quick glance. He cursed at what he saw.

  Rusty-hided Al’Krogoth emerged from the hallway, not ripping and tearing his way through the Resistance troops there but merely pushing through them as if treading through a field of tall wild grass. One of the stunned troops pointed his pistol at Krogoth and pulled the trigger, and the raknoth simply swatted him aside.