A wave of nausea hit him, harsh acid rising in his throat.
“Jesus Christ,” Rachel whispered.
Jarek reached over to grab her arm for support, but she didn’t seem to notice.
Thankfully, he had Al to set the ship down. He knew better than to think Al wouldn’t be disturbed by the sight below, but his companions “hands” would still be far steadier than Jarek’s right now.
Al guided the ship past the horrible scene and into the low mountains where Kole had built his isolated home. They touched down to a soft landing a little ways from the perimeter of Kole’s estate.
Like much of the village below, the house was in the late stages of its transition to burning embers.
The groan-clack of the ship’s boarding ramp beginning to descend snapped Jarek out of dark thoughts and back to the moment. He turned in time to see Lietha slide through the crack of the still-descending ramp and take off running.
“Hey, wait!” he called, but it was only half-hearted.
Drogan held his gaze for a long moment, his expression unreadable, and turned to follow Lietha down the ramp at a more controlled pace.
Jarek said nothing. There was no danger here anyway. He was fairly certain of that. They’d seen it all from above, and shocked or not, Al would’ve been scanning to spot anything they’d missed. Whatever had happened here, they’d missed it.
They were too late.
He stood and numbly made for the back of the ship, stopping on the way to grab his sword and wait for Rachel. She stopped beside him, leaning heavily on her staff.
He wanted to pull her to him, to hold her so tightly that her physical presence would force every single thought from his mind, but something stopped him. Maybe it was the look in her eyes.
“You don’t need to see this, if you wanna stay on the ship,” he said.
She set her jaw and walked down the ramp, staff clunking heavily with each step. He braced his stomach and followed.
The Enochians were gathering outside of their own ship, most of them looking green at the gills. Michael looked the worst of all, his revulsion at the scene behind them only stacking onto the sickly look he’d been cultivating since the messenger nest had burst.
Rachel went to give her brother a somber hug, spoke a few quiet words with him, then told him to stay put while they went to have a look.
By unspoken agreement, Hal, Johnny, Elise, and Alton peeled off to join Rachel and Jarek while the rest of the Enochians hung back to watch the ships with Michael.
Jarek took deliberate care to place himself between Rachel and Alton as they trekked along the path to Kole’s house.
“You guys sense anything?” he asked.
“No survivors,” Alton said. “Not here, at least.” He took three heavy sniffs of the air. “And Kul’Gada has been through here.”
Ahead, an awful wail split the smoky afternoon sky. Lietha, he could only assume.
“Yeah,” Jarek said quietly. “I kind of got that impression.”
They reached Kole’s house and passed under the stone archway to find Lietha staring numbly up at the smoldering wreckage of his home. Ahead, Drogan was prowling around the perimeter of the rubble, sniffing here and there for some scent.
“Where are they?” Elise asked quietly.
Across the courtyard, Drogan snapped around and pointed. “Kul’Gada came here from the west.”
Lietha stirred from his stupor. “Our ship.” He straightened, his voice more urgent this time. “The ship!”
With that, Lietha sprung into a wild sprint and leapt over the west perimeter wall with no signs of stopping on the other side.
“Lietha!” Drogan called.
No answer.
“Someone really needs to have a teamwork talk with that guy,” Jarek muttered.
“We should follow,” Drogan said. “Zar’Kole would have been using his ship’s messengers to speak with Kul’Gada before his arrival. Perhaps he is still there with his clan.”
It was clear enough that Drogan didn’t really believe they were about to find Kole and crew alive and well, but no one argued. They headed back to the ships, swapped Michael over to fly with Jarek and Rachel, and headed west, flying low and slow enough for their telepaths to sweep for Lietha. It turned out they didn’t need telepathic senses to find the raknoth.
“There, sir,” Al said only a couple miles later, zooming the display.
Lietha had somehow already managed to make it to the top of what the map identified as Mount Hotaka. And he wasn’t alone.
“Cursed void,” Drogan said behind them, his voice uncharacteristically soft.
A raknoth ship, similar to the Enochians’ but smaller, had come to a rough landing near the crest of the mountain. Four green raknoth bodies scattered the trail between the ship and the peak, most of them in multiple pieces. And at the peak was a fifth body, the one Lietha stood over now.
Drogan dropped the ramp and leapt out of the ship before they’d landed. Once Al had set them down, Jarek and Rachel followed along with Michael between them.
Outside, Lietha had fallen to his knees and was huddled over the still form of Zar’Kole. Jarek knew it was Kole only by the kimono he wore, the same one he’d been wearing when he’d last seen the Zar. It was the only thing he could be recognized by.
The raknoth’s head had been hacked clear of his shoulders and crushed into an indiscernible pile of gore. Dark raknoth blood stained the grass all around it.
As they watched, Lietha gathered Kole’s body up in his arms and tilted his head back to bellow a mournful shriek at the sky. Drogan fell in behind Lietha and rested his hands on the raknoth’s shoulders in support, or maybe restraint.
Even the most hate-filled Resistance soldier might have felt a stirring of sympathy at the sight.
Rachel turned away.
When Jarek finally tore his eyes away from Kole and down the trail, the sight of the other four dead raknoth was no less gruesome. One had been cleanly beheaded. Two lay with their heads caved in but still attached. In addition to severe head trauma, the last raknoth had been ripped clean in two, straight through the torso.
The sight sent a shudder through Jarek, for more reasons than one.
He was intimately aware just how hard it was to hack through raknoth hide, and they were no slouches on the battlefield. Something that could have ripped five of them apart like this… that wasn’t a creature he wanted to meet in a dark alley—or at all, really.
He looked back at Kole’s body and clenched his fists, anger and fear beginning to bleed through the raw shock.
Why the hell had Kole insisted on staying here when he knew that thing was coming for him? He’d said himself he had little hope of a peaceful resolution. And now they’d lost what had probably been their most powerful ally outside of Krogoth’s clan.
The crazy old bastard.
Jarek didn’t realize just how tightly he was wound until Rachel put a hand on his arm.
“Are you okay?”
“Fine,” he said.
She looked less than convinced but didn’t make a point of saying so as the Enochians slowly trickled over to join them near Kole’s body.
For a while, no one spoke. The sun beat down on them, the wind buffeted at their clothes and hair, and they stared at the remnants of brutal violence, lost in their own thoughts.
Jarek made the mistake of looking back the way they’d come, and the plumes of drifting smoke hit him like a bag of bricks with the reminder of just how many people they’d been too late to even try to save.
“What the hell are we dealing with here?” he asked, not really to anyone in particular. “Was it really just one of them that did all this?”
“I was just wondering that myself,” Haldin said, still staring at the four raknoth who’d been crushed or torn to pieces.
“The rakul are warriors without equal on the battlefield,” Drogan said. “You should understand that by now.”
“Yeah,” Jarek said. “Just
a bit different seeing the aftermath with your own eyes.”
“You can see why so many of our kind have been unwilling to believe the rakul were coming,” Alton said. “Easier to simply deny such horror.”
Elise waved a hand at the dead raknoth and back toward Katashina, looking a few shades too pale. “What do we do against… against all of this?”
Franco was reaching to put both hands on his daughter’s shoulders when a horrible throaty voice startled them all.
“We kill the Masters. Cowardly tyrants.” Lietha stood and shoved off Drogan’s touch. “We tear the rakul to pieces until their cold, shriveled bodies lay bared and we crush them into oblivion. We kill them all!” The last words were roared more than spoken, and with that, Lietha stalked off toward his fallen clan members.
Jarek couldn’t say he disagreed with the general principle of the statement, but it was kind of hard to forget they were talking about a group of twelve immortals who’d never been defeated. Well, except for one of them, once, by one Zar’Gada—the same Gada who’d promptly taken his earned rank as Kul and just so happened to be the first on the scene to destroy them right now.
One victor over god knew how many thousands of years, and apparently even that son of a bitch hadn’t thought it a good idea to press on. Or maybe that was just what power-hungry raknoth dreamed about—or fantasized, seeing as they didn’t really sleep—over the millennia: growing up big and strong so they could stick it to a Kul and take his place.
Either way, the known history of rakul slaying wasn’t exactly an encouraging one.
“So what next, then?” Rachel asked once Lietha was over mourning his kin.
No one was eager to answer that question.
All this destruction rained down by a single rakul. And eleven more out there… What could they do about that? The first pangs of true fear stirred in Jarek’s chest.
What if there was nothing they could do about it? What if the rakul were just too strong—worlds out of their league?
“Ah, c’mon guys,” Johnny finally said. “We’re not dead yet. Let’s say—hypothetically, of course—we’re all feeling good and fucked right now…”
“Speak for yourself, fire-crotch,” Jarek said.
He wasn’t in any manner of joking mood—not by a long shot. But faking a cavalier tone for the others was better than giving in to the part of him that wanted to simply sit down and stop. Give up. Do nothing.
Johnny pointed appreciatively at Jarek. “There we go! Not your finest work, but I like the spirit.” He clapped Haldin on the shoulder, earning himself a somber stare, then continued on, unperturbed. “Look, we have three options.” He started ticking fingers. “We can all pile into our ship and hightail it the fuck off this planet—not very cool. We can sit here dreading these faceless horrors that eat raknoth for breakfast until they come around to eat us too—not very smart. Or, we can get our shit together and make sure that, if we die, we at least do it right. Way cooler. Now who’s with me?”
He was met with heavy silence and sullen stares that said everyone would just as soon Johnny cut it out and let them all wallow in their eminent doom.
Jarek took a deep breath and resisted the urge to let it out in a sigh.
What they needed was a morale boost, and, as completely as he’d failed to prevent the devastation around them, he’d be damned if he wouldn’t help now.
So Jarek patted the hilt of his sword and stepped into the center of the loose huddle with Johnny. “You’ve got my Whacker at your six, Red.”
“Interesting choice of words,” Johnny said, “but I’ll take it.”
Jarek shot an expectant look at Rachel and tilted his head to the spot beside him.
She gave a little shake of her head.
He gestured more emphatically, and, with a hard roll of her eyes, she took a half-step toward them.
“Yeah,” she said slowly. “Guess you’ve got my staff back here too, alien boy.”
“See?” Johnny said toward his fellow Enochians. “I told you guys the aliens had a thing for putting things in strange places. C’mon, guys. Hop off those mope-mobiles.”
With deliberate motions, Elise drew her staff, extended it with a springing pop, and twisted once more to deploy the vicious spear head at one end. “You’ve got my spear up front.”
“Ah,” Johnny said. “Looks like it’s gonna be a rough day for Johnny.”
Franco and the other Enochians filled in behind Elise.
That left only Haldin and Alton.
“Buddy?” Johnny said.
Haldin sighed and stepped in. “This is kind of ridiculous, but of course I’m with you.”
“Phew,” Johnny said, “that would’ve been super awkward otherwise.”
Alton shot a glance at Rachel and stepped into the huddle almost self-consciously.
“C’mon, Stumpy,” Jarek called. “You too.”
Drogan frowned at him and looked over at Lietha before stepping in one step closer.
“Okay.” Johnny stuck his hand into the center of the huddle. “Bring it in, guys. Yes, I’m serious.”
Slowly, they each stepped closer, adding hands to the pile. Drogan was the last, hesitantly looking between the huddle and Lietha over by the crashed ship until he finally extended a single finger into the huddle.
“Scud, guys,” Johnny said once they were all in. “I’m not gonna lie, I was kinda hoping we were all about to agree to run for it. But now that we’re all here…”
“Crazy bastards on three?” Elise said.
Johnny smiled. “Crazy bastards on three.”
Johnny counted, and they all cried the mantra with energy none of them probably truly felt—or most of them did, at least. Drogan’s and Phineas’ voices seemed oddly absent from the energetic display, and Rachel’s mumble was only barely audible.
As soon as they broke their huddle, what little energy they’d conjured evanesced in a blink, and the inevitable weight settled back on Jarek’s heart.
Team spirit and well-meant promises to one another aside, people were still dead. Far too many of them. And the rakul were only getting started.
Jarek had failed today. And as terrible as he felt, he knew the full weight of it hadn’t yet settled over him.
An entire village. Hundreds—maybe even a thousand—dead and gone. Kole and his clan. All gone.
And for what?
They needed to do something, to dust themselves off and get moving—warn Al’Brandt in the Himalayas or get back to HQ and sharpen their sticks. Because, hopeless or not, they had a rakul out there that needed killing, and plenty more to come.
But first they needed to round up Lietha. The raknoth still didn’t look far off from rampage mode, his eyes ablaze and his body caught between pale brown skin and mint green hide.
When Lietha kneeled down and began laboriously tearing off one of his dead clan member’s ruined heads, Jarek worried it was a lot more than anger issues they had on their hands.
Had Lietha lost it? Gone mad with grief?
He was about to ask Drogan when he and Alton went over and joined Lietha in tearing off more heads.
“Dude…” Rachel said quietly. “What the fuck?”
“They leave their dead floating in space,” Haldin said. “Kind of like how you guys bury yours in the ground. They call it the void. It’s… sort of sacred to them.”
So that’s what all that cursed void stuff was about?
Jarek didn’t have long to think about it before a particularly horrendous ripping sound pulled him back to the moment with a cringe.
“Fair enough,” Jarek said. “But what’s with the heads?”
“It’s where the majority of their true bodies take up residence in their human vessels,” Haldin said. “From what I understand, it’s pretty hard to disentangle raknoth from human if they die inside, so in that case, they take the head.”
Jarek looked at Hal, wondering not for the first time what the hell he’d been through to learn all of this
.
“I’ve seen enough raknoth die,” Hal said in answer to Jarek’s stare. “And a year’s a long time to spend couped up in a ship with one.”
Fair enough.
Lietha came for Kole’s head last and collected it with tender care. When the gruesome work was done and the heads all loaded aboard Kole’s ship, Alton returned to them to tell them that Drogan and Lietha were going up to release the fallen to the void and that it shouldn’t take long.
They watched the raknoth ship hum to life and lift up, shaky at first but quickly stabilizing as it soared up and up.
Jarek watched until the pin-point of the distant ship was lost to sight, then he turned toward the dark columns of Katashina’s dying breaths and went to wait.
Given their casual ease with dispensing it to others, Rachel hadn’t imagined the raknoth would overly stand on ceremony where death was concerned. Whatever raknoth funeral rites consisted of, though, it apparently wasn’t a ten minute affair. Then again, she also wasn’t exactly sure how deep they’d go into space and how long it would take to simply get there and back again.
All she really knew was that it had been foolish to go running off halfway across the world with a pair of raknoth on what, at best, had been a long shot at rescuing Kole. At worst, it had been exactly the kind of reaction Kul’Gada had been hoping to elicit.
Even now, the Kul could be headed straight for HQ. That would be just their luck, wouldn’t it? And if the party got started while she, Jarek, and the Enochians were all sky gazing in Japan…
Not for the first time, she found her gaze lingering on Alton, wondering if the raknoth could feel his master right now, could hear him whispering commands in his ear.
Her conventional understanding of telepathy told her that was impossible unless Gada happened to be hiding nearby. No human telepath could ever hope to consciously reach more than maybe a mile, but the rakul—as well as all the raknoth ships, as she understood it—had the messengers, and those ethereal little sprites, whatever the hell they were, meant the rules she knew were out the window.
Case in point, the furor that had gripped HQ and the surrounding area for miles—to the best of their knowledge before Gada had even arrived on the planet.
The Complete Harvesters Series Page 63