The Complete Harvesters Series

by Luke R. Mitchell

  But there were wounds even a raknoth’s miraculous healing gifts couldn’t keep from scarring, and Rachel was pretty sure father shooting son was one of them.

  “You know I wouldn’t,” Alaric finally said. “That was… That’s behind us now. Seth, I—”

  Mosen shot his father a look, his face contorted and his eyes glinting pale red. The words died in Alaric’s throat. And then Mosen was staring at the floor again.

  The Resistance soldiers shifted uncomfortably around them. Pryce looked like he was on the verge of saying something. Rachel felt compelled to help Alaric, to find the right words for him, but…

  What did you say to the son who’d been compelled to murder his own mother—your wife—and systematically trained to hate you for allowing him to fall into enemy hands and become their hybrid puppet?

  Apparently, no one knew.

  “Enough,” Alton said.

  The crimson fire poured back into Krogoth’s eyes, and he straightened as he fixed onto his new challenger.

  Alton kept his eyes pointedly trained on Krogoth’s feet as he spoke. “Might our time not be better spent elsewhere, Zar’Krogoth?”

  Krogoth thought about that for a long second, looking like he might decide to escalate matters, but finally decided he’d had his fun.

  “Very well,” he said. “I believe that will do for now. Let us visit the battlements.”

  Even if the raknoth hadn’t murdered her family, Rachel would’ve been fighting the urge to help Krogoth achieve blast off through his ridiculous skylight by then.

  Krogoth didn’t care one bit about what Alaric and Mosen might do to one another out there, she was sure of it. The display had been intended to hurt, an exercise in psychological warfare that was unhelpful for everyone involved. Unless Krogoth had wanted to get Alaric too upset to speak and probably too pissed to think clearly. Then it had definitely been helpful to Krogoth.

  One day—and she didn’t know when, but one day—Rachel was going to give Alton and Krogoth and all the other scaly bastards what they deserved. But for now, Haldin’s and Pryce’s imploring looks convinced her to stow her arguments now that they were moving on.

  They made their way silently out to the landing pad built off the posh penthouse, where the Enochians’ hovering ship was waiting beside Krogoth’s smaller parked one. By some unspoken agreement, they saw to it as a group that Alaric stayed on the opposite side of the pack from Krogoth and Mosen until they’d split off to board their separate ships.

  The flight was a short one. Within a minute, the remains of old Central Park stretched out ahead in the view port, dry and largely barren—of greenery and wildlife, at least. The park was most certainly not barren of activity. That, it had in droves.

  The scope of the bustling below was actually quite impressive. All around, Krogoth’s people were busy at work with hand tools and more elaborate machinery, constructing a long-running barricade a little ways in from the southern end of the park. Others were hauling heavy-looking armaments to the turrets interspersed along the fortifications. Out beyond the wall, dozens of men were busy in the dirt planting a variety of smaller traps, and a dozen or so yards behind the wall on their side, still more men labored to dig a pair of huge pits.

  Alton guided them after Krogoth’s ship to a landing near the pits, and they all shuffled out of the ship.

  Krogoth led their party to the closer of the pits. Alaric quietly established a comm call with Nelken and Daniels as they went so the commanders could have a look at Krogoth’s preparations from the relative safety of HQ.

  Pit Number One, like its brother on the other side of their ships, was probably twenty feet on either side, and another twenty or thirty down. A hectic mess of rebar networked its way along the walls and the floor of the pit. As they drew up to the edge, Rachel saw men at work below, anchoring sheets of plywood to the inner surfaces of the rebar network. The old concrete mixer truck nearby solidified their goal in Rachel’s head.

  They were building a cell of sorts.

  “Not bad,” Haldin said. “But we still have to get Gada in there. Assuming he’s careless enough to strike here to begin with. He could still tear the rest of the world apart waiting for his backup to arrive or for us to come out to him.”

  “That’s what we’re worried about,” came Nelken’s voice from Alaric’s comm.

  “The Kul will come,” Krogoth said. “Gada is renowned neither for his patience nor his skill at tactics. He will be burning to prove himself after his defeat in the mountains, and I imagine he will hope to do it before his peers arrive to hear of his earlier failure.”

  He sounded confident enough, but then again, Rachel couldn’t really picture Krogoth sounding unconfident about anything. Aside from his side hobby of psychological sadism, Krogoth struck her as a warrior first and foremost, and one with an ego. If he hadn’t already caught onto the old phrase, “My way or the highway,” Rachel suspected it would be a likely candidate to capture his heart quite quickly.

  Still, Krogoth’s operation looked a whole hell of a lot better than their rag-tag fighting force had flying off to try to get the drop on Gada. If divine intervention or some manner of massive rakul stroke was out of the question, she hoped Gada would be brazen enough to charge into this death trap.

  That hope only grew as she spotted the two long green pressurized cylinders off to one side of the pit.

  “Fire always works,” Pryce said quietly beside her, apparently following her gaze.

  Jesus. At first she’d took the pits to be cells. Cells without tops for the moment, but she’d figured that must be why the men at the other pit had been digging shallow lines to either side of their pit—probably setting tracks for a sliding panel or something. But they weren’t just cells, were they?

  They were giant, custom-made rakul ovens.

  The thought was at once revolting and comforting. Revolting in the carousel of screaming shrieks and charred, smoking flesh that poured through her head. Comforting in that it might just work. And right now, that was better than they could say about most of their plans.

  Trapping Gada wouldn’t be easy—it might even prove impossible—but it was better than aimlessly harrying him and hoping he didn’t inevitably score a hit with those devastating blades of his. And with Krogoth’s army and the Resistance at their backs, their chances seemed a lot brighter. Unless Gada kicked up a big enough furor to bring an army of his own to match.

  But that’s why they’d brought the cloak generators, right? Assuming those actually worked to break whatever army Gada might stir up.

  “Are we sure this thing’ll hold him?” Rachel asked, still looking down at the pit. “You know, assuming the other million steps before that all go off without a hitch?”

  “The interior will be reinforced with plated steel,” Krogoth said. “It should suffice for long enough.”

  She thought back to the way Gada had cut through Jarek’s enormous sword with enough force left to tear through Fela’s armor in the same swing and wondered if that were a wise assessment. It wasn’t overly encouraging that everything about this setup seemed to be coming back to Hey, it’s better than anything else we’ve got.

  God knew what they were going to do when the rest of the rakul arrived. If this was the best they had, they were going to need a lot more pits, at the very least. Judging from the markings and the digging equipment further down the line, Krogoth was of the same mind.

  “So all we have to do is push the giant killing machine down there and slam the lid, then,” Rachel said, mostly to herself.

  “Preferably without any… misunderstandings, this time,” Krogoth said.

  Rachel did her best to keep her face composed as her stomach attempted to flee somewhere subterranean.

  Had Krogoth heard about what she’d done?

  A furtive glance at Alton showed he was caught off guard by the statement as well, but Rachel wasn’t sure what else Krogoth could be referring to. The way he was boring holes in her w
ith those glowing eyes right now didn’t exactly suggest an alternative explanation.

  Neither did the predatory wink he shot her from across the pit.

  She resisted the urge to reach out and shove Krogoth into the pit right then and there—or at least to turn and get the hell out of Camp Krogoth—as Haldin mercifully turned the conversation to the cloaking generators and Alton followed his lead.

  A warning, then, Rachel thought as Krogoth continued to stare at her from across the pit, a blood-chilling smile creeping slowly onto his reptilian snout. A creepy-ass warning not to try any funny business around Krogoth or his clan.

  Part of her wanted to reach out and telepathically tell him to shove it out of spite alone. The rest of her succeeded in suppressing that desire and turning to the cloaking generator discussion just to escape Krogoth’s leer.

  They spent the next couple hours going over plans and touring the battlements. No one actually resorted to whipping it out, but Haldin and Krogoth, and Nelken via Alaric’s comm, did hem and haw about the best locations to install the cloaking generators, with occasional inputs from Pryce and Johnny.

  Alaric remained awash in a sea of surly stoicism that was rivaled only by Mosen’s silent brooding.

  Elise and Rachel followed them all in companionable silence, watching and listening, though Rachel only caught half of what was being said. Mostly, she was busy wondering how it had come to this. Men and women working beside the raknoth who’d laid waste to their world. All of them preparing for the likely necessity of taking down innocent, maddened civilians just to get a shot at the giant red-eyed asshole who wanted to lay waste to them all.

  And eleven more like him on the way.

  If things went poorly, they could all be dead in a week. Less. It was almost too much to process. But this was the hand they’d been dealt, and there was little left to do but keep their heads down and keep swinging until the rakul were gone or they were.

  And what if they did win? What if they beat the rakul and were left standing side-by-side with the raknoth? What then? Were they supposed to imagine they could all just drop the past fifteen years and share the planet happily ever after like good symbiotes?

  Fat chance.

  One way or another, she couldn’t help but think this fight was going to come to a bloody end, followed shortly by another.

  When the meeting had concluded with Nelken, Daniels, and Alaric agreeing to send a portion of their forces to aid Krogoth’s preparation efforts, and they’d returned to Pryce’s to get back to work on a new batch of cloaking generators, Rachel pulled Pryce aside, needing to hear what someone else thought, to know that she wasn’t sliding down a big old sheet of crazy.

  “You know what they say,” Pryce said after some short deliberation. “Sic vis pacem para bellum.”

  It took her a few seconds to register the old adage.

  If you want peace, prepare for war.

  She arched a brow at him. “Really? That’s what you’ve got? You never struck me as a sayings guy.”

  Pryce shook his head. “Oh no. Not in the slightest. I was going to say I think it’s the biggest load of shit ever peddled down through humanity. Well, except for…” He cocked his head thoughtfully, then waved away whatever had occurred to him. “Never mind. Point is, I don’t think the whole big stick, scared enemies policy is long-term sustainable. Case in point, look at what’s happening between the raknoth and the rakul right now. War-making is so often the answer and, I think, never the solution.”

  “I feel compelled to point out that this is coming from the guy who’s currently playing a crucial role in helping us prepare for said war-making.”

  Pryce cocked his head. “I’d like to think we just had the misfortune to be born in the middle of some great equilibration. Even steady-state systems need time to stabilize after perturbation, you know. In the grand scheme of things, if that means a few millennia of ugliness to achieve a future that doesn’t end with the mutual annihilation of, well, everything…” He shrugged. “I can be okay with that.”

  Rachel waited to see if he’d continue. Then, when he made no sign of doing so, “I’m not sure that really answers my question.”

  He gave her a wan smile. “I’m sure it doesn’t.”

  She shook her head, part bemused, part exasperated. “You’re a strange old man, you know that?”

  By way of reply, Pryce only gave her a friendly pat on the leg and walked away whistling a tune she recognized after a few moments as the older-than-dirt classic, Dust in the Wind.

  21

  If commercial advertisements or the global market had still been things, Jarek would have signed up in a heartbeat to be the poster child for Drogan’s Old-Fashioned Miracle Spit. Just five days after Kul’Gada had smitten his bloody body into the snows of the Himalayas, Jarek crawled out of his bed in medical for the last time and gingerly wind-milled his injured arm to the tune of his doctor’s exasperated protests. There was still plenty of pain, but nothing popped or tore out of place.

  Good enough in his book.

  Even if the world hadn’t literally been coming to an end, he couldn’t have taken any more of the waiting. He hadn’t had a proper visitor since his oh-so-interesting talk with Drogan. The fact that his friends were all busy prepping to save the world out there didn’t lessen his desire to get back to the action. And neither did the message Rachel had sent him the previous night, implying in a roundabout way that she was maybe-sort-of-kind-of sorry about having avoided him these past few days and promising she was going to have a special surprise waiting for him when he was ready.

  He’d spent the night eagerly thinking and dreaming about the implications. At least until he’d woken up to an odd-hour message from Pryce emphatically promising much the same thing. That had somewhat dulled the excitement.

  Either Fela was getting an upgrade, or he was in for some traumatizing shit.

  Drogan had been back the day after their little mishap to provide a dose of slobbery healing goodness with a liberal side of determined silence outside of the necessary communications. This morning, though, the raknoth had been at least mildly more responsive to Jarek’s comments before informing Jarek he’d done his best and now it was up to Jarek to finish restoring his own pathetic, squishy meat suit to fighting shape.

  Granted, it was a bit of a jump to get past little chestnuts like immortality and requiring human blood to live, but, despite their differences, Jarek would almost go so far as to say he and Drogan were slowly developing something of a friendly rapport—ish.

  That, or he’d read entirely too much affection into Drogan’s “banter”.

  Hell, maybe Jarek really was hurting for friends.

  An arcanist, a digital construct, a bunch of humans from another planet, a crazy old tinkerer, and now a raknoth…

  Nah. He was doing just fine.

  Right now, though, all he really cared about was getting back to doing something that wasn’t walking aimlessly around HQ or lying in bed waiting for the hurting to stop.

  So once he’d dressed for the day, he headed for the common room and climbed up to the new groundside exit, determined to huff it over to Pryce’s and get his lungs working.

  Inside and out, the base was alive with activity. Resistance soldiers busied themselves unloading, organizing, and repairing weapons and other equipment. Others were hard at work erecting fortifications around the base in preparation for whatever was coming. From what little he’d heard, things were even busier over at casa de Krogoth, where their wise leaders were hoping to force the inevitable confrontation.

  The bustle was a poignant reminder that Gada was five days closer to pulling off whatever he must be up to. Unless the rakul had simply decided to wait for his eleven backup monsters before striking again, that was. Jarek couldn’t imagine the other rakul would be much further behind.

  Either way, time was running out.

  He was headed in the direction of the recently-completed south gate and preparing to kick it
up to a jog when Pryce’s truck pulled around a nearby line of shipping crates headed the other way, toward the less populated corner of the base where Jarek’s ship was still parked. It wasn’t Pryce in the truck, though, he realized as it passed by, but Rachel.

  He turned and jogged after her as she continued on and pulled the truck up beside Jarek’s ship. She still hadn’t spotted him as she hopped out and turned back for her staff.

  It wasn’t until Fela unfurled and stood up in the truck bed and Al called, “Good morning, sir,” that Rachel jolted upright and looked around to see him approaching.

  Their eyes met, and his heart leapt in a way that had nothing to do with the jogging. It probably would have irritated him more if Rachel hadn’t looked every bit as flustered as he suddenly felt—and then some.

  He tried to relax and focus on Fela as Al hopped the exo from the truck bed down to the pavement and awaited Jarek’s arrival.

  “Ah,” Jarek said. “A fresh pressed suit. Just what the Jarek ordered.”

  Al shifted to put Fela’s shoulder on display, and Jarek took a closer look at the patch job. The damage had been bad, he knew, but Pryce had done a good job with it, as usual. The new right shoulder plate was a bit bulkier than the original, but not obnoxiously so.

  “How’s that shoulder handling, buddy?”

  “I might ask you the same question, sir. But our fix is workable. Not great, but workable. Might I suggest not being mauled by the galaxy-conquering dinosaur next time?”

  “You might,” Jarek said.

  “I dunno,” Rachel said, drawing up beside Fela with a hesitant grin. “‘Not great but workable’ kinda sounds like just your style.”

  “Style being the operative word there, I think,” Jarek said.

  She shrugged. “Everyone’s entitled to their own opinion, I suppose. How’s the shoulder? You look like a raknoth spit on you.”

  “Oh, you know”—Jarek did a demonstrative windmill—“not great. But workable.”

  She smiled, but the silence stretched a bit too long, and some of that nervous discomfort crept back in.