His faceplate slid closed once more. “We can decide later who’s pissed at who for what”—he shook his head—“but don’t dare go dying on me, Goldilocks.”
It all kind of sounded like macho Jarekism until the soft, “Please…” that followed.
That single word yanked at something deep inside her. Then she caught sight of Michael watching this all unfold from the doorway.
It was as good as any splash of cold water.
“Come on.” She started after the Enochians, Michael trailing after her. “You don’t wanna miss your chance at Whacking the galaxy-conquering dinosaur, do you?”
“God help me,” Jarek muttered somewhere behind her, “I really don’t.”
“Rache…” Michael’s voice was low, worried.
She kept walking, waiting for him to tell her not to go.
“Just be careful,” he finally said.
“I will.” She squeezed his arm. “And you just keep your head down for this one, Spongehead.”
She filed in around the open hatch with the Enochians and steadied herself as Phineas not-so-gently brought the ship around to face them toward the butte. Kul’Gada watched them from sixty feet below, motionless but for the slow sweeping of his tail.
She half expected Johnny or Jarek to call something ridiculous down at the rakul, but everyone was silent, which was probably for the best. It seemed wise not to taunt the uber-powerful alien when they were within what she wouldn’t be too surprised to find was jumping reach for the massive creature.
At least they had three people on board who could telekinetically swat the bastard down if he tried.
“Ahh,” came a voice behind them.
Michael’s?
She had to look to confirm it had indeed been her brother. There was something wrong with his voice, something that made her skin crawl, and he looked rigid, his expression vacant.
“The boy has been touched,” Michael continued in a monotone. “And he has informed you of my movements? How irritating.”
She processed what was happening just as Michael shoved James against the wall, yanked the Enochian’s pistol free from his side holster, and raised the weapon toward his own head.
Rachel reached for the gun with her mind, but Haldin was faster. The weapon yanked down toward the floor, pulled by an unseen hand, and then James and Franco were on Michael, struggling against the younger man’s possessed strength. Johnny joined in to help the others wrestle her brother to the ground. Michael thrashed and clawed at them all the way, until he was pinned too tightly to move. That was hardly the end of it, though.
She could only guess at what Gada did next, but the agony in Michael’s scream was every bit as real as if a hot poker had been pressed to his dark flesh. The sound ripped at her insides and made her want to scream herself. Haldin adjusted his cloaking pendant and dropped down next to Michael, trying to shield him.
Michael screamed again, his voice already raw from the intensity of it.
Rachel took a step toward him and stopped.
They couldn’t keep Gada’s messengers out of his head. She’d tried. She’d failed. She couldn’t do a damn thing. Except to stop Gada from inflicting the torment.
Except to kill one of the monsters who’d started all of this—the Catastrophe, her family. Everything.
She turned to the hatch.
Gada had helped engineer the destruction of her world and more.
And there he was, staring up at her, trying to take Michael too.
“Rachel, don’t!” Jarek’s cry seemed to come from somewhere far behind.
And far too late.
She felt him swipe at the empty air just behind her as she leapt out and plunged toward the hulking rakul.
12
In the brief moment after her feet left the hard security of the Enochian ship deck, Rachel was certain she’d made a critical mistake. She’d acted in anger, utterly without rational thought. Jesus Christ, she’d thrown herself at the most powerful thing on the planet. And what’s more, the ferocious snarl on Kul’Gada’s snout and the hungry flare in his eyes told her she’d played precisely into the bastard’s hands.
But none of that mattered now. She was falling, and she had t-minus two seconds to get her shit together and focus on stopping Gada from driving Michael mad with pain—not to mention keeping herself alive.
She gathered her will and, just before she impacted the snowy butte, threw the energy of her falling body into a hard, concentrated uppercut of force, directed straight at Gada’s ugly face.
The attack sent the rakul staggering backward from her landing space, but not nearly as far as she’d hoped.
Gada’s tail shifted to root him back to balance after only a couple steps. Before she could think, the rakul lunged forward with a thrilled howl.
She swung her staff around in a horizontal arc and threw a telekinetic blast behind the blow as it slammed into the rakul’s side. The hit budged Gada off course just enough that he didn’t trample her, but he rounded on her too quickly, sweeping out with a massive clawed hand.
Time slowed. Her mind went numb. And then a gray figure rocketed down and landed on Gada’s head in the mother of all flying kicks.
She heard herself cry out in relief as Jarek completed the kick with a wobbly backflip dismount and Gada tumbled to the ground with a startlingly solid thud.
Jarek landed beside her and drew his sword. “I said don’t die, dammit! Nice entrance, though.”
Gada rolled awkwardly back to his feet, his bulk rumbling the ground beneath them, a low growl bubbling in his throat.
Rachel caught Alton’s descent with her extended senses just soon enough that she didn’t jump when the raknoth landed on her other side with a thud.
She barely had time to think cautious thoughts about another potential turncoat episode from Alton before Gada gave a bone-rattling roar and rushed forward.
Jarek stepped to meet him, sword at the ready. Rachel skirted back to offer ranged support as Jarek dipped under Gada’s first swipe. He whipped his sword around and brought it down on the rakul’s tail, which stayed unfortunately attached. The strike did, however, earn Jarek an irritated growl and a moment’s attention.
Alton took advantage of the distraction to dart forward and drive a kick into Gada’s chest. The rakul stumbled then pivoted unexpectedly and swept his tail around to catch Alton with a torso slap that sent him flying clear off the snowy butte.
One threat eliminated, Gada whirled on Jarek.
Just then, Haldin and Elise landed beside Rachel, each bearing a spear. A low thrum shook the air as they touched down together, and Gada jolted to the side as if he’d been hit by a small car.
Rachel watched in horrid fascination as the rakul shook the blow off and the already considerable claws of his three-fingered hands began to elongate into long, chitinous blades.
“Looks like someone’s getting excited,” Jarek called.
Gada said nothing. He simply lunged at Jarek.
Jarek leapt backward to match, then reversed and stepped past the charging Kul, batting his way under Gada’s bladed swipe with his sword. As Gada turned to follow him, Rachel gave his tail a telekinetic yank. Gada, having been relying on the tail to break the momentum of his charge, fell ungracefully to his ass with a furious roar. Jarek closed in and brought his sword down with all of his might.
Gada raised an arm in helpless defense. Only it wasn’t so helpless.
The blow that would have lopped a raknoth’s arm off met the Kul’s arm with a dull thud and sank no more than an inch into his flesh. Jarek overcame his surprise in time to leap backward and avoid Gada’s counter swipe. The rakul lurched to his powerful haunches and followed hungrily. Haldin and Elise were charging in to engage now. Rachel cursed and followed after them.
She telekinetically flung snow in Gada’s eyes and yanked at his feet and tail to keep him off balance as best she could. She even hurled a small fireball at his face. Haldin and Elise harried at Gada’s
thick flanks with their spears, dancing out of range of his tail strikes with impressive agility. Nothing they did slowed him for more than a second here and there as he bore down on Jarek, raining strike after furious strike.
Cold fear settled in the pit of her stomach as Gada swatted Jarek’s sword aside so hard it nearly left his hands. Jarek was looking flustered, and Gada’s attacks seemed to be growing in strength, as if he’d only been testing them thus far.
Gada raised a bladed hand to strike—and froze.
“Now, Jarek!” Haldin shouted. His hand was raised in a closed fist, and he was trembling.
He was holding Gada in place, Rachel realized with a jolt. She cast her own telekinetic bubble around the rakul and added her strength. Even split between them, the effort was immense. Gada strained against their hold with unbelievable strength, lancing out telepathically at the same time.
She couldn’t hold. Wouldn’t hold for more than a few seconds. She fell to her knees.
Jarek lunged forward and hacked at Gada’s exposed neck. Dark blood trickled, but the strike didn’t do much more damage than the first had. What it did do was piss Gada off beyond belief.
She lost track of which part of his bellow she heard mentally and which part was out loud, but the sound was ferocious, and the swell in power even more so. Her hold on the rakul broke, and she collapsed to the snow in exhaustion. She must’ve lost it for a second or two, because when she looked back up, there were people climbing onto the butte—maddened, wild-looking people.
Gada was calling in his ramshackle army.
Haldin hadn’t fallen from exhaustion like Rachel, but he looked like he was about to. Next to him, Elise was shifting to face the mindless villagers running toward them.
“Alton,” Haldin called, swaying on his feet. Then, louder, “Alton!”
Elise retracted her spearhead and moved, staff twirling, to meet the first of Gada’s furor puppets.
Meanwhile, Gada roared and resumed his mission to destroy Jarek with a single-minded animosity he’d apparently been holding back for the beginning of the fight.
Across from their furious shuffle, a pale-faced Haldin hesitated, clearly torn between helping Jarek with Gada or Elise with the overwhelming tide of berserkers.
Rachel scrambled woozily in the snow, trying to regain her feet, to gather her focus, but it was no good. Her head spun with residual channeling fatigue, and she slipped and fell forward into the cold white powder.
She looked up, desperate, just in time to see Alton alight on the butte at Jarek’s flank. Haldin, seeing Jarek had help for the moment, whirled to face the horde of villagers dangerously close to swarming over Elise.
Alton darted to Jarek’s side, but Gada was beyond caring now. The rakul stomped on without a moment’s pause, lashing out relentlessly with claw and tail.
Jarek and Alton dodged and weaved clear as best they could, Jarek taking the brunt of Gada’s fury, both of them backpedaling all the while. They couldn’t keep this up. Couldn’t stop him.
She had to do something.
So she planted her staff in the snow with freezing numb hands and pulled. One leg up, then the other. Her head was clearing now, carrying in a fresh tide of feedback about just how fried she was.
Ahead, Jarek’s armored boot caught on something buried in the snow as he dodged a blow, and he tripped backward with a wordless cry.
Rachel’s breath caught right alongside Gada’s eager hiss.
Alton tensed as if caught between the options of attacking Gada or hauling Jarek clear.
Gada sprang forward.
No time.
It happened before she knew it, as if by its own accord.
A push. A small push. That’s all it was. She didn’t even have to give conscious thought to channeling the energy.
Alton stumbled straight into Gada’s path, red eyes wide, hands thrown up as if to brace himself against the thin air that had suddenly betrayed him—by Rachel’s bidding, of course.
Gada adjusted to the development seamlessly, the victory unmistakable even on his alien features as he raised his claws for the killing blow.
Rachel had one blink of an instant to wonder at what the hell she’d just done.
Then something dark and fast slammed into Alton and sent him flying, and it was Jarek there, desperately raising his sword overhead with hands on hilt and blade to block Gada’s powerful swipe head-on.
Gada’s chitinous blades caught the broad side of Jarek’s sword, cleaved it clean through with a sharp crack, and continued downward. Something wrenched inside of her as the claws ripped into Jarek’s armor at the shoulder.
The cry Jarek let out only twisted her insides further. She’d never expected to hear him make a sound like that—surprised, agonized. Afraid. She couldn’t see straight, couldn’t think.
Gada withdrew his hand to wind up for another swipe.
Steaming rivulets of blood fell to the snow.
“No!” Rachel cried, starting forward.
Somehow, Jarek managed to duck the next blow, but the kick Gada followed up with caught him square in the chest and sent him sailing through the air to tumble off the edge of the butte.
“No!” she screamed, hefting her staff as she picked up speed. “You son of a bitch!”
Gada turned to meet her, an eager flare in his eyes.
She shifted her grip to the end of her staff and spun, pivoting around into a baseball style swing. As she turned, she channeled everything her tired body could handle—and more.
Gada was openly reaching for her, unconcerned by the staff bound for his head. He’d regret that.
His blades were entirely too close to clamping down on her as she completed her turn, but she kept swinging and poured every ounce of the energy she’d channeled into a pinpoint telekinetic charge at the end of her staff.
The staff hit with a low boom. The jolt of the impact tore through her arms, and Gada staggered down to one knee with a startled shriek, covering one eye with the palm of his bladed hand. She caught a brief glimpse of clear, oozing fluid and realized she’d put out Kul’Gada’s eye. Then the rakul threw a backhand at her that probably could’ve flipped a car.
She thrust her staff out upright, throwing what energy she could into one of its shield glyphs. It was a hasty working, rooted not to the space between them but to the staff itself, which was in turn supported only by the strength of her own arms and body. When the blow fell, the strength of her flesh and bone gave well before that of her will.
Her arms buckled, her staff crashed into her torso, and she was flung backward. She couldn’t say how far. Only that it was too far.
The world spun and solid ground smacked at her from every side as she tumbled across the butte. At least there was snow, mercifully thick and fluffy. Without it, she might have broken every bone in her body.
As it was, she wasn’t sure she hadn’t.
For a second or two, she wasn’t quite sure of anything. She couldn’t seem to string a complete thought together aside from that her vision was swimming with darkness from whatever she’d just done, and that she was afraid, and that she hurt. And—she gasped—and that she had to move!
With a wordless cry, she threw herself to the side just as Gada’s large foot stomped down on the spot she’d just occupied with a brutal thud.
She rolled drunkenly to her knees, raising her hands toward the rakul, her staff lost to the snow. She gathered everything left inside of her and let it loose one last time. As much juice as she’d already channeled and as disoriented as she was, her efforts barely drew a twitch from Gada.
She slumped down, utterly exhausted. Gada stepped forward, his single eye pulsing scarlet.
This was it.
She thought of Jarek, lying in the cold snow, dead or dying, and she cursed herself for her idiocy. Not Alton’s. Not anyone’s. Just hers.
At least she didn’t have much longer to suffer the thought.
Kul’Gada raised his blades—and stumbled sideway
s as something plowed into his left side with a ferocious roar.
Rachel looked up, not believing it at first, and there was Al’Drogan.
He dipped back to avoid the sweep of Gada’s tail, and in charged Lietha with a scream of wordless fury that would have put a banshee to shame.
“No, Lietha!” Drogan cried.
Lietha didn’t bat an eye. He slammed into Gada’s chest in a full on tackle, and—despite the radical size discrepancy—somehow sent Gada toppling off his feet.
The rakul swung for Lietha as he fell. He would have hit the raknoth, possibly even killed him right there, had Lietha not been inexplicably yanked backward several yards to land unceremoniously on his minty green rump.
Rachel turned and saw Haldin approaching, hand raised. Behind him, Elise and Alton were holding off the furor horde side by side.
“Hey, Spike!” someone shouted from behind. Phineas had pulled the ship down over by the direction Jarek had fallen. Good. And that shouting someone turned out to be Johnny, fully loaded. Also good.
Gada ignored Johnny’s call until the redhead opened fire with some Enochian artillery that hummed softly and apparently packed a big punch.
Gada roared and faced Johnny, but Drogan, Lietha, Haldin, and Alton all stepped in to cut him off.
Elise appeared by Rachel’s side and helped her to her feet. Behind her, a dozen villagers were either lying unconscious or staring in fear at Gada, apparently coming back to their right minds now that they’d had some time in Haldin’s and Elise’s cloaking fields.
“Jarek,” Rachel croaked.
“The others have him,” Elise said. “Gather your strength, Rachel. Focus.”
Any other time, she probably would’ve told someone to fuck off if they’d said something like that to her. Now though, she just nodded and called her staff to her hand.
Elise went to join the others in harrying Gada from all directions at once. Gada spun at their center, taking swipes at his harassers here and there, finding little success and growing progressively wilder and more frustrated with each attack. Several times, his missing eye had him turning more than he otherwise would have to fix onto the next target. Slowly, the tide was shifting.
The Complete Harvesters Series Page 66