The Complete Harvesters Series

by Luke R. Mitchell

  Drogan chuckled. “I hit an opponent on the field of battle. No child of Rakzaied would ever begrudge such a thing.”

  “Wait, wait, wait. I thought the raknoth on this planet were all dudes.”

  Drogan nodded and began fixing the needle to the filled syringe. “If you wish to think of our subspecies as analogous to your sexes then yes, all raknoth are ‘dudes,’ as you say. But Shieth’Lietha is no raknoth. She is one of the rakzeed, the mothers of our species.”

  “Ah, right. Guess I missed that one on orientation day.”

  Jarek had never really stopped to even think about the sex of the raknoth. That they were all male had just been a default assumption given that every one he’d seen had been wearing a male body.

  “Are there many of these, uh, rakzeed here on Earth?”

  “There is but one.”

  “Wow. One chick and eighty dudes? How’s that working out?”

  Drogan gave an exasperated sigh. “My kind do not copulate and mindlessly fondle like yours. There is no romance, no petty shows of jealousy and possession. The Shieth rarely leave Rakzaied, and the Maieth never. When our numbers dwindle, the raknoth return to the homeworld, provide our lifeseeds—what you would call genetic material—for incubation, and the imbalance is rectified shortly. It is as simple as that.”

  “Jesus, man. Do they make you sandwiches while they’re at it, too?”

  Drogan offered him the filled syringe with a frown. “You imply this arrangement is guilty of what you would call sexism?”

  Jarek took the needled syringe and shrugged. “Hey, you tell me. You’ve been here for the whole revolution, right? You probably remember women being told to be good baby-makers and stay in the kitchen like it was yesterday.”

  “Yes, but it is not so with the rakzeed. They hold a position of great honor in our species, one of critical importance to our survival. It stands to reason that they should be kept out of harm’s way, much as your own bodies have evolved to keep your gonads protected. It is the way of nature.”

  “Huh.”

  Something told Jarek his gonads would’ve been anything but safe if he’d tried to explain that kind of reasoning to Rachel or Lea, but he didn’t see the point in getting into a debate with Drogan’s archaic bias right now.

  “So how did Lietha get here then if the, uh, Shieth rarely venture out?”

  “She…”—Drogan frowned—“was unsatisfied with her role on Rakzaied. An unusual disposition.”

  Surprise, surprise. Position of great honor his gonads.

  “On a trip home some centuries ago,” Drogan continued, “Zar’Kole took notice of her distress and offered her another path. Or so she tells me.”

  “Uh-huh. So, what, the rakul or whoever don’t come chop off hands or… appendages for running away with the planet’s baby-makers?”

  “It is not unheard of for a Shieth to abandon her post. I have heard it said that it is in fact often times the Kul themselves who take them for their own purposes. In any case, their numbers are replenished easily enough, just as with the raknoth.”

  “Shit, man.” Jarek sank the needle into his shoulder and began the first injection with a grimace. “At the risk of stating the obvious, the rakul sound like enormous cock-hats.” He glanced at his shoulder. “For several reasons.”

  Drogan inclined his head. “I have not heard this phrase, but I believe I agree with the underlying sentiment. It is time the rakul pay for the millennia of their tyranny.”

  “Right on. Fight the power.” Jarek finished his injection and handed the syringe back. “So why did Lietha choose to take a male for a host? Trying to keep her head down in a sea of bros?”

  Drogan carefully filled the syringe a second time. “I think you are misunderstanding the subtleties of the differences between our subspecies and your sexes. But, in essence, yes—Lietha wished to remain inconspicuous to those who might have showed unwanted interest.”

  Jarek wagged his eyebrows. “So does that mean your interest was wanted?”

  Drogan handed him the second shot with a scowl. “I simply know enough to recognize a rakzeed when I smell one, unlike many of my younger and less-traveled kin.”

  “Yeah you do, Stumpy, you horn-dog, you! So, what, are you guys like…”

  Drogan crossed his arms and nodded impatiently toward the full syringe in Jarek’s hand. “This planet is hardly in need of defenseless raknoth young right now.”

  Jarek pointedly got on with the second injection. “Yeah, I get that, but you know… Last girl on the planet. Big badass like yourself. End of the world fast approaching… None of that’s doing anything for you two?”

  “I think you confuse our relationship with the pathetic mush you share with Rachel Cross. Living among the humans for centuries may have left its mark on us in the short term—submerging in another culture always does to some extent—but I assure you, neither one of us is entertaining thoughts of holding bodies into the night and smashing faces together like a pair of filthy… humans.”

  Jarek held Drogan’s now faintly glowing gaze.

  This was getting him worked up, wasn’t it?

  A slow grin crept over Jarek’s mouth. “Is this your way of telling me you’re scared to kiss a girl, Stumpy?”

  By way of reply, Drogan took the spit cup and slapped it heavily down on Jarek’s bedside table. “Stick this where you will. I am leaving.”

  “Again? Hey, we can talk about it, buddy! It’s nothing to be embarrassed about, you kn—”

  Drogan growled and started for the door.

  “Wait!” Jarek cried, shaking with barely-contained giggles.

  Drogan stalked out of the room without a backward glance.

  “Okay! Good talk, buddy!” Jarek called after him. “Same time tomorrow? I’ll be right—Yep, he’s gone. Damn… Eh, he’ll be back. You catch all of that, Mr. Robot?”

  “Quite fascinating, sir,” came Al’s voice in his earpiece. “And masterfully handled, as always.”

  “Ahh, to be five-thousand years old and in love…”

  “Perhaps I’ll know the feeling someday,” Al said. “Provided I ever find a better alternative than the ship. She’s so slow, sir. And no personality to speak of. Never wants to talk about anything but pressures and velocities and altitudes.”

  “Hey, if we’ve got galaxy-conquering space dinosaurs floating around, there’s gotta be a nice lady AI out there somewhere in the universe.”

  “I was merely joking, sir. But you know you could have been more compassionate to Stump—Drogan just now.”

  “What is this, raknoth therapy hour now?” Jarek asked.

  But, in truth, he did feel slightly bad about having laughed Drogan away like that. Sure, the raknoth was a dangerous predator and had left a lot of bodies in his wake, but the more glimpses Jarek took behind the curtain of the raknoth/rakul relationship, the more he felt like the raknoth weren’t so clearly the evil bastards he and pretty much everyone else had always wanted to believe they were.

  Drogan had feelings too. Probably.

  He’d try to do better next time. However irritated Drogan might have been, Jarek had a feeling the raknoth wouldn’t be gone for long.

  So, after he’d fumbled his awkward way through drawing up and administering the last of the miracle spit, he laid back with a heavy sigh and closed his eyes, thinking healing thoughts and vowing to be less of an unsupportive wise-ass—by a little bit, at least.

  Then, when the weight of his old friends, Boredom and Worthlessness, began to grow too much, he sighed a curse, threw back his blankets, and slid out of bed to see how his legs were faring after days of bedrest.

  20

  Rachel removed her hands from the boxy device in front of her, crossed her arms on the table, and laid her head on top of them. She took slow, deliberate breaths and did her best to hold off the shudder as the channeling fatigue exacted its vengeance for her latest working.

  “Enchanting fuel for the lady and the sir,” came Pryce’s
voice.

  With conscious effort, she opened her eyes and looked up, and there was Pryce with his sympathetic gaze and his—Oh holy mother of god.

  She lunged for the tray of brownies like a wild animal who hadn’t seen food for weeks. Beside her, Haldin was only slightly more dignified in his approach.

  Pryce grinned, set the tray on the table, and sat down across from them.

  It wasn’t that they’d been wanting for food. It was simply that enchanting—or Expression, as Haldin the Shaper called it—took its toll. Especially when one was at it all morning long.

  Plus, Pryce’s brownies were goddamn delicious.

  She didn’t ask him how he’d made them or whether that was a spritz of mint in there, she just woofed brownies until her soft-spoken manners managed to quell the beast inside of her long enough for her to spout, “These are amazing!” around a mouthful of sweet chocolaty goodness.

  Haldin gave an affirmative grunt. He looked pale from his exertions, and she couldn’t imagine she looked any better. Probably worse, actually.

  “How goes it?” Pryce asked.

  “Not so bad,” Haldin said. “Last time I did something like this, I was figuring it all out from scratch.” He shook his head as if chiding himself. “Tried to cloak an entire army in a single night once I did. Didn’t exactly work out so smoothly, but I guess it’s safe to say I’ve had worse than this.”

  Rachel waved her hands in the air to show him just how impressed she was by his epic, manly awesomeness. “Well those of us who aren’t used to single-handedly saving the world are exhausted.” She snagged another brownie. “And hungry.”

  Sarcasm aside, she actually was pretty damn impressed with Haldin’s capacity for punishment, both in channeling and in a more conventional sense. He was a warrior, as was Elise. Everything else aside, Rachel was glad they had the Enochians with them. Especially since they needed to protect a serious number of heads from getting lost in Kul’Gada’s furor, and assembly-line enchanting wasn’t exactly her strong suit.

  “I don’t know when enough’s gonna be enough, all things considered,” Haldin said, nodding toward the two cloaking generators they’d just finished, “but I think these put us up to enough cloaks to cover HQ and the main bulk of Krogoth’s line.” He glanced at Rachel. “Assuming they don’t mind the cold.”

  “Better cold than stark raving mad, I suppose,” Pryce said.

  It was hard to argue with that.

  The challenge of powering the gigantic cloaking field generators they’d enchanted into each small box was a problem without an easy solution—or a readily available one, at least. Sure, good batteries, solar panels, or even old generators were all fine options for deploying the devices, but none of those were exactly in overflowing surplus.

  So they’d kept things simple, at least for now. She just hoped they didn’t find themselves fighting next to the devices on a cold, rainy day. She’d been there before, on the night the nest had burst, when the bullets had been pouring on her catcher as thickly as the rain itself. Back when the only ones trying to kill them had been Drogan and his men.

  God, how had being hunted by only a raknoth warlord and his army become a fond memory?

  Her comm buzzed, and she looked down to a message from Alaric: Bringing cloaks? Meeting will be too long if it lasts a minute.

  Wasn’t that the truth?

  “We’re coming, we’re coming” she muttered at the comm.

  “Alaric?” Haldin asked.

  Before she could answer, the door Pryce had swapped for the open hole Drogan had punched into the shop wall a few weeks prior swung open, and Johnny stepped in.

  “You guys ready to go share your project with the class?”

  Rachel made a face. “Not really, but it sounds like they’re waiting.” She turned to Pryce. “You sure you wanna come? I can’t imagine you’ll be missing much more than a pissing contest between Krogoth, Alaric, and anyone else brave enough to whip it out.”

  She looked pointedly at Haldin with the last, but he only shrugged and shook his head. Her gaze drifted to Johnny, who gave her a wave and a wink. “I’m your man. Just give me the signal!”

  She shook her head. “Not what I was getting at.”

  Johnny shrugged, and Rachel turned back to Pryce.

  “I’m curious to see what they’re cooking up over there,” Pryce said. “If I have to brave a few waggling genitalia along the way, I suppose I’ll survive. I could use a break anyway.”

  Elise trailed in after Johnny to help Haldin start gathering the cloaking field generators into the duffel bags Pryce had provided.

  “Fair enough,” Rachel said. “How’s the Soldier of Charity’s reboot coming along, by the way?”

  Pryce wrinkled his nose. “Well, Fela’s not what I would call easily patchable. She’s got more layers than a Russian stacking doll. The armor, that’s easy enough to improvise. The bits that do the actual moving, on the other hand… I don’t happen to have any synthetic muscle lying around, but Al and I are toying with integrating some old servos, so…”

  “So that’s… good then?”

  Pryce shrugged. “I’m sure we’ll figure it out. We always do!”

  “I’m sure if anyone can, it’s you two. What about the other thing?”

  Pryce grinned. “You mean the Big Whacker 2.0?”

  Rachel rolled her eyes. “I wish we didn’t have to call it that.”

  “Ah, but how else would they know that it’s bigger and whackier in every way?”

  “Oh, I think they’ll know something’s wacky, all right,” Rachel muttered.

  Pryce only grinned wider. “I should be able to wrap up my part and lay down the etchings by this evening if you want to start”—he wiggled his fingers—“doing your thing tonight.”

  She frowned at him. “I think you might be a bit too chipper for a guy who’s trying to help stop the second apocalypse.”

  “What can I say?” Pryce gave a helpless shrug. “I love building stuff.”

  Something told Rachel that the grandiose chamber where they’d been instructed to wait for Krogoth was not of Krogoth’s choice and design but simply the room he’d adopted from the late Zar’Golga as an “office.” Whatever the hell a raknoth needed an office for. And one so decadent at that. Then again, in her book, the same question would’ve been fair enough when reapplied to the doubtlessly richer-than-rich human who’d occupied the space in a past lifetime.

  Haldin, Johnny, Alton, and Pryce stood with her, Alaric, and Alaric’s detail of half a dozen armed guards in the penthouse suite on the eastern edge of what had once been called Hell’s Kitchen.

  Maybe they should call it Krogoth’s Kitchen now.

  The building was one of the few in the area that had avoided complete ruination during the Catastrophe. Most of New York City hadn’t been so lucky, but Zar’Golga had labored, or at least his men had, to scrape together a fairly livable space around his mighty tower. Though “tower” might have been a stretch. The building wasn’t objectively that tall by old standards, just tall compared to those left standing.

  The penthouse was vastly unnecessary in its spaciousness and decked out with glossy, wood-paneled walls and a large skylight whose dozens of glass panes reminded her of a honeycomb. The floor was ridiculously luxurious—and did she mention unnecessary?—dark marble, interspersed with splashes of lighter gray. It was all rather immaculate.

  She wondered how many people had died in that room.

  When that became overly disturbing, she turned to wondering how many more minutes Krogoth would keep them waiting here for whatever posturing bullshit he was up to.

  The answer to both quandaries, she was pretty sure, was too many.

  Even so, the clacking of boots and claws on marble that preceded Krogoth’s arrival several minutes later didn’t exactly bring relief. The warlord strode confidently into the room, flanked by a figure on either side, a raknoth she didn’t recognize on his right, and on his left… Shit.

/>   Seth Mosen followed Krogoth into the room, jaw tight and gaze held low.

  Alaric’s knuckles cracked like dry wood beside Rachel, but the wiry Resistance commander made no move other than to shift his weight and skewer Krogoth with a cold glare.

  Mosen and the two raknoth drew up to their group, and for a long stretch, no one spoke. Rachel could feel her companions’ desire to spit pointed comments about the wait—wanted to make such comments herself. Krogoth almost seemed eager for them to come.

  Finally, though, Haldin broke the silence, calm and steady. “Shall we get to business, then?”

  Krogoth cocked his head and gave Mosen an expectant look.

  “Father,” Mosen said, eyes still trained on the smooth marble floor.

  Rachel swore she could feel the air itself tense around Alaric as his gaze flicked between Krogoth and Mosen. “What the hell is this?”

  “I believe you might call it an intervention,” Krogoth said, the crimson of his eyes dim against the rust red of his hide.

  Was that a sign of deference or something? She hadn’t cracked the code on raknoth eye glows yet. Krogoth didn’t really seem like the deferent type. Maybe he was just tired.

  “Much as I appreciate the peaceful return of my subject, Commander Weston,” Krogoth continued, “if we are all to share the field of battle, I would prefer to do so with moderate certainty you will not decide to shoot one of my lieutenants. Again.”

  So that was a no on the deference thing—the son of a bitch.

  Judging from the tension in his jaw and the strangled sound that escaped his throat, Alaric seemed to be banking on popping tendons or cracking teeth to provide an answer in lieu of words.

  Rachel wasn’t sure if her heart was trying to break with sympathy for father and son or explode with tension for the rest of them. Alaric, for his part, stared at his son, utterly speechless.

  Thanks to the many uncanny “upgrades” Zar’Golga had treated him to over the years, Mosen had healed quickly enough after Alaric had been forced to shoot him to restrain him during a scrap they’d had in Philadelphia just a few short weeks ago.