Hell to Pay: Book Two of the Harvesters Series

by Luke R. Mitchell

  He shot her a wink, then his helmet gave a whirring groan, and he frowned at the dented edges where his faceplate used to be. “Shit. Forgot I was flying without protection. Pretend that was dramatic.”

  Rachel turned and set off down the adjacent hallway, praying that wouldn’t go down in the books as their last interaction.

  She did her best to work through the ranks without too much pushing. A glance back confirmed Elise was with her.

  Of the two roughly equidistant routes leading to medical, the hallway straight ahead past the council chamber was far more congested with armed Resistance traffic, so Rachel cut right down the less crowded hallway. Halfway down its length, three—no, four—explosions rocked the base from the direction of the common room, shaking more dust loose, right along with Rachel’s resolve.

  Her step faltered. She traded a worried glance with Elise and saw her own question reflected in Elise’s wide blue eyes.

  Did they go back?

  The explosion that boomed from the other side of HQ a second later jolted them back into action.

  Jarek, Haldin, Alaric, all the others—they were big boys. They could handle themselves better than most, in this base or otherwise. Definitely better than Michael, who very well wasn’t even conscious right now.

  They rounded left at the next junction, moving at a hard run now. Gunfire erupted from ahead, or maybe it was from behind. Worse, it might have been from both directions. The network of looping hallways made it hard to tell for sure.

  At the corner, Rachel darted across the hall and into the cover of medical’s doorway before peering down the next hallway.

  Resistance troops were likewise taking what cover they could in doorways. Further down, Commander Daniels herself was leading the way in returning fire on the dark-clad men fighting their way out of the cells they’d apparently breached at the end of the hallway.

  Rachel turned to see Elise peeking out from the corner she’d just skipped over from, holding a dark pistol at the ready.

  Elise inclined her head toward medical, and her voice entered Rachel’s head though her lips didn’t move, “Go.”

  Rachel only thought about arguing for a split second before she nodded and hurried to the back room.

  Michael’s bed was empty.

  Her stomach went into free fall. Then a flicker of motion caught her eye, and she turned, staff flying up to point down the raised barrel of a handgun, and—

  She sucked in a breath then blew it out, tension bleeding from her chest and shoulders as she lowered her staff.

  On the other side of the pistol, Michael did the same and lowered his gun. Beside him, Pryce lowered his own pistol and patted at his chest over his heart.

  “Jesus, Rache,” Michael said, “you scared the—”

  She stepped briskly forward and pulled him into a hard but brief hug. He returned her squeeze, and she pulled back.

  “Good to see you on your feet, Spongehead.” She turned to Pryce. “Thanks for sticking with him.”

  Pryce opened his mouth only to be cut off by another wall-shaking explosion close by.

  “We need to get out of here,” Pryce said. “Is Zar’Golga—”

  “Alive,” Rachel said. “We barely made it out ourselves.”

  “Out of the frying pan …” Pryce said, looking around as if plotting potential escape routes.

  “I need to go help them,” Rachel said.

  “We’ve got your back,” Michael said, shuffling forward.

  “Michael, you’ve been unconscious for the past—”

  “We’ll be safer with you anyway,” Michael said.

  “Plus,” Pryce said, “if you happen to decide it’s time to abandon ship, I’d rather not be squirreled away back here.”

  Rachel wasn’t so sure abandoning ship was even a remote possibility at this point, but they raised fair points either way, and they didn’t exactly have time to argue. For all they knew, Golga’s men could breach through right above their heads at any moment.

  “Okay. You’ve got your bullet catcher, Spongehead?”

  Michael patted the spot where the device must’ve been clipped to his belt beneath his shirt.

  “All right then.” She paused by the door back to the hallway. “Cover our asses, Spongehead. Pryce, you stay between us so—”

  “Catcher fields,” Pryce said. “Overlapping. Got it.”

  She almost smiled despite herself. “Right. Let’s go.”

  Elise was nowhere in sight when Rachel stepped into the hallway. Commander Daniels had been pressed back toward medical, and at least four of her soldiers had fallen, but those who remained fought on grimly.

  A few of Golga’s troops shifted their fire from the Resistance forces to Rachel, apparently expecting an easy target.

  Bullets slammed into the edge of her catcher’s field, each one tearing to a halt and falling harmlessly to the floor until she was treading over a trail of spent lead through suddenly frigid air.

  She raised her staff and threw a column of telekinetic force at the densest group of enemy soldiers. Another soldier yanked out a grenade and pulled the pin. Rachel reached out and telekinetically swatted the live grenade from his hand before he could throw it.

  Everyone who saw it threw themselves out of the hallway and into the nearest available rooms, but the blast still caught a few enemy soldiers. Even with the gunfire ringing in her ears, the explosion was nearly deafening in the small hallway space. A wave of hot air slammed against the barrier Rachel had erected, peppered with bits of shrapnel.

  A triplet of gunshots barked just behind her, and she glanced to see more dark-clad troops rounding from the hallway behind them. Spent lead fell to the ground at Michael’s feet as the catcher did its work. Too much lead. Michael and Pryce’s breaths steamed out of their mouths in the frigid cold the catchers inflicted on their patch of hallway.

  The breeze of equilibrating air swept at her hair as she shifted her staff around, aiming to disrupt the worst of the attack on their flank.

  She was drawing energy for her attack when a vast telepathic presence swept through the hall, parting around her as if she were a tiny boulder in the middle of powerful river.

  Rachel froze, pulling her mental defenses tight around her. That presence wasn’t human—she was sure of that much.

  With her defenses as arranged as she had time to manage, she rechecked their surroundings, expecting to find enemy soldiers closing in on them from both sides.

  Golga’s men were frozen in place along the hallway, standing at attention with eerie, silent precision.

  “What the f—”

  At a creak from behind, Rachel spun, staff raised.

  Given that they were the only serviceable cover in the hallway, all the cell doors had been thrown open during the firefight. All but the two doors guarding Seth Mosen and Al’Drogan. And now, the closer of the two doors was opening with a groan of creaky hinges while Golga’s troops looked on in absolute stillness.

  Daniels watched with a tight jaw, and the remaining Resistance soldiers looked around in fear and confusion, most of them probably wondering whether they shouldn’t just gun their oddly still foes down while they had the chance. Rachel couldn’t say she wasn’t wondering the same thing.

  The cell door finished opening, and Elise emerged. Al’Drogan strode out behind her, completely unchained, fiery-red eyes sweeping the hallway.

  Some gasped. Others cursed. And every Resistance agent in the hallway pointed their weapons at Drogan.

  Elise patted the air with her hands. “It’s okay, everyone.”

  “Easy, guys,” Johnny added as he stepped out of the room behind them, holding the odd assault rifle he carried in as non-threatening a way as possible. “This isn’t what it looks like.”

  “Are you crazy?” one of the Resistance soldiers demanded, keeping his rifle trained on Drogan while trying to simultaneously keep a wary eye on the creepily still enemies at his back. “That bastard will—”

  Co
mmander Daniels silenced him with a raised hand, glancing around at Golga’s unmoving troops with only a tad more confidence. “You’d better explain yourself quickly then,” she said to Johnny. “Because it certainly looks like you’re attempting to spring the Red King from custody.”

  Johnny held up a finger then gave a conciliatory nod. “Okay. It’s exactly what it looks like. But! The King here is the only thing keeping these guys”—he gestured at the frozen troops—“from going all shooty-shooty-stabby-stabby right now. You don’t have to call him buddy, but he’s on our side right now.”

  “Bullshit,” the Resistance soldier said.

  Daniels didn’t look like she necessarily disagreed.

  “Those are his friends attacking us out there,” another added. “I say we kill the bastard while we can.”

  Elise bent an eyebrow at Rachel. “A little help here?”

  Rachel swallowed, recalibrating her shocked tongue.

  “Johnny’s right,” she said, putting as much weight and authority behind the words as she could.

  Several eyes shifted toward her. No one here but Daniels probably much cared what she thought, but some of them had seen what she could do, and they knew that she’d fought for them in the past.

  Hopefully it was enough.

  “Look, our asses are too far in the fire to argue right now.”

  The sounds of nearby gunfire and shouting added credence to her words, as did the blood-curdling roar that tore out from the direction of the common room.

  Shit. They needed to get back to the others. And if this was really happening, maybe Drogan could even help shut down the rest of Golga’s forces.

  She looked at Drogan, then back to the men and women watching her. “I’ve been closer to this raknoth’s mind than anyone here.” She shook her head. “He’s not my friend. But right now, he’s not my enemy either, and if we don’t take all the help we can get, we’re all gonna die down here.”

  No one spoke for a long tense moment.

  Then Michael barked, “Let’s move, people!”

  Heads turned to Daniels, who gave a solitary nod. “You heard Carver, people. Let’s move.”

  Uncertain stares slowly gave way to bobbing heads.

  “We need to get back to the common room,” Rachel said. “Shut them down before—”

  A sound like a choir of roaring lions spun Rachel back to Michael’s side of the hallway. Down by medical, Golga’s men began to unfreeze and promptly parted to clear a path.

  Al’Krogoth stepped in view, rusty hide fully intact and crimson eyes blazing, a low growl rumbling in the back of his throat.

  “Fuck,” Rachel said.

  Too late.

  Twenty-Eight

  After Rachel and Elise departed for medical, things actually seemed rather dull to Jarek—for all of one whole minute, at least. Judging from the focus etched on Haldin’s brow and the fact that Golga’s forces weren’t currently blasting down on their heads, the Enochian was still at it with his little mischievous arcanist act, which left them with little to do but sit and wait.

  At least until Alton bristled up and quietly announced that Haldin was under attack. The raknoth didn’t specify beyond that, but the sudden sheen of sweat on the Enochian’s forehead gave Jarek a decent guess as to what he meant.

  There had to be at least one raknoth topside—probably several—and it looked like they must be taking it upon themselves to disrupt the arcanist who was currently HQ’s main defense.

  “Can you help him?” Jarek asked quietly.

  “I am.” Alton’s tone was flat, his gaze distant. “There are several of them nearby.”

  Several raknoth topside. Fantastic. At least Alton hadn’t accidentally called them his kin out loud. He was already drawing enough distrustful stares as it was.

  Jarek reached over his shoulder for the Whacker but thought better of it. The common room was the most spacious place in HQ, but even here, the ceiling was too low to easily swing a giant sword around, and that wasn’t even to mention the risk of catching a friendly with this many Resistance forces around.

  For a second, Jarek considered asking Phineas to borrow one of his snazzy assault rifles, but the stoic bear-man didn’t look eager to part with any of his ordnance. Instead, he strode over and scooped up a carbine one of the first batch of Golga’s men had carried in before Haldin sealed the breach. However the hell he’d managed that one.

  Pound for pound, he wasn’t sure who was packing more power between Rachel and Haldin, but he had to admit the Enochian was devilishly crafty from what he’d seen. As tenuous as their arrival had been, Jarek was glad the Enochians were on their side.

  In addition to the rifle, Jarek plucked two loaded mags from the soldier’s vest and tucked them into his gun belt before checking to ensure his current mag was full enough. The weapon wouldn’t take down a raknoth, but there were plenty of men ready to kill them up there too. Jarek might as well be useful until it was time to let the Whacker out.

  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.