Red Gambit: Book One of the Harvesters Series

by Luke R. Mitchell

  Whatever. If she was going to be watching Michael’s back around Jarek, it wouldn’t do to start worrying about his soul.

  She was about to turn to her work when he said, “Take a picture.” His eyes came open in a way that told her he’d been awake all along. “It’ll last longer.”

  She managed to stifle her surprised jolt, but she still sucked in an audible breath. The sound ignited a wolfish grin that spread to his eyes.

  Asshole.

  “I’m coming with you,” she said.

  “Much as I’d love to have you along, sunshine, there’s no need for that. I’ll keep Mikey safe. You can go home and not worry a single golden hair. Or maybe you just want a reason to bitch too.”

  She dropped her cargo on the table and pointed her staff down at Jarek’s sprawled form. Maybe it was the remnants of the whiskey talking, or maybe she was just pissed at the Spongehead’s bad judgment, but she couldn’t take this shit right now.

  He frowned at the tip of the weapon as it settled in front of his face. Then he burst into motion, tugging the staff aside and springing to his feet so fast she didn’t have time to so much as blink. He pinned her to the table with her arms tucked uselessly at her sides.

  She bucked against him a few times, reaching for her power. His grip loosened. She looked up to find him watching her with an expression that was hard to get a read on. Slowly, almost gently, he released her. He held his hands up but didn’t step back more than an inch or two, which left him firmly planted in her personal space.

  She held his dark eyes. Her pulse quickened, a thrill she’d almost forgotten stirring in her chest. Need burned in his eyes. Any moment, he was going to kiss her—she could feel it. Would she kiss him back if he did? Or would she put his well-formed ass through the wall twenty feet behind him?

  “I, uh …” His eyes searched her face in a way that seemed utterly unlike everything she’d observed of him since they’d met. “I think we may have gotten off on the wrong foot.”

  Goddamn right they had. She wasn’t sure why that made her angry, but it sure as hell did. She clenched her fist, enclosing him in a cocoon of her will, and shoved him back into the table five feet behind him. She squeezed harder, intensifying the pressure of his cocoon.

  “So you’re …” he managed to squeeze out between breaths, “saying you would like to come then?”

  “Goddammit.” She relinquished her hold on the energy.

  He slumped back against the table with a little puff as she scooped up her staff.

  “You’re a child,” she said into the silence. “You know that, right?”

  He didn’t answer. Instead, he inspected the pile of scraps she’d laid out on the table.

  She waited for the inevitable: the paltry attempt he’d make to salvage his pride or mark his territory and establish his dominance. That was what guys like him did, right? She’d learned from experience it was best to smack down the bullshit before it took root. But the attempt didn’t come.

  “How are you hitting me past my glyph?” he finally asked. “Is my shield faulty?”

  She frowned. “That’s the first thing you wanna know?”

  “Considering I might be stuck for the time being around an arcanist who wants to kick my ass, yeah. That’s the first thing I wanna know. Why? Were you expecting me to ask what it’s like to have powers?” He wiggled his fingers for dramatic effect.

  Dammit all to hell, she was fighting to keep herself from mirroring his grin. Something about the stupid thing was infectious. Worse, he was right—that was exactly what everyone asked when they found out about the things she could do.

  “Your glyph is fine,” she said. “There’s just more than one way to toss around an asshat.”

  He chuckled, and she felt that stupid grin tug at her mouth.

  “My mind is safe, though?”

  She arched an eyebrow at him. “I don’t know if I’d agree with that assessment, but you’re guarded from telepathic influence, at least.”

  He nodded. “Great. So what are the ways?

  “What?”

  “What are the ways one tosses an asshat?”

  She considered. There wasn’t any great reason not to tell him. If she did end up needing to wipe the ceiling with him, nothing she told him would help him much anyway.

  “Well,” she began.

  He held up a finger and looked back toward the spiral stairs. “Is that you up there, Pryce?”

  There was the sound of a clearing throat, and then padding footsteps and light creaks as Pryce began descending the staircase. “What are you two up to down there? I hope you’re not making a mess of my supplies.”

  “It’s like you read a book called Things Grumpy Old Men Say 101,” Jarek called back. “And don’t pretend you weren’t eavesdropping, you old weirdo.”

  Pryce shot them a guilty smile as he drew into view and made his way over to the table. “Couldn’t sleep. Too curious.”

  “What’s it like being you?” Jarek said, looking at him as if he were an alien.

  Pryce ignored him and turned to her. “Care to sate an old man’s curiosity?”

  “What, are you an enthusiast or something?” she asked.

  Jarek laughed. “You have no idea.”

  Pryce shrugged. “I am a man of many fascinations. An intellectual polygamist, if you will.”

  She looked between the two of them, then shrugged and gestured to the bench. She grabbed a small metal plate for her pile of scrap and sat down on the bench opposite them.

  Jarek watched with interest, but Pryce looked like a kid whose parents had told him Santa was coming.

  “The most efficient way to exert telekinetic influence over something is to form a direct connection with it,” she began, reaching out with her mind to find the little plate and trickling a tiny bit of her own body heat into it, shaping it to do her will.

  The plate rose smoothly from her fingers to float between her and her audience.

  “This kind of connection wastes less energy.” She concentrated, picturing the piece in motion, and it began to weave a figure eight through the air. “And it also makes precise control a lot easier.”

  Pryce was staring, eyes wide and mouth agape.

  “Freakin’ Jedi,” Jarek said.

  The bulb paused in midair. “Freakin’ what?”

  He looked at her as if she’d sprouted a third arm from her forehead. “Have you not seen … ?”

  The smile she’d been holding back finally spilled over her face. “Of course I’ve seen Star Wars. Jesus.”

  “Oh, thank the maker,” Jarek said, placing a hand to his chest. “I mean, otherwise, what’s the point?”

  Pryce nodded his silent agreement, his eyes still fixed on the floating plate.

  “Do you wanna hear the rest or not?”

  “Apologies, master,” Jarek said. “Do continue.”

  “So. When someone—let’s say an insufferable mercenary—decides to get cute and shield something from an arcanist’s mind using a glyph or whatever, I can’t form that direct connection, which means I have to get creative.”

  Jarek listened attentively now, genuine interest in his eyes.

  “Different arcanists handle these things in their own ways. I’ve heard of people resorting to calling wind, for instance, but that’s kind of a shitty workaround. I basically conjure up a solid wall in my mind and push that against the shielded space. Or maybe into it. It’s kind of abstract, but …”

  She willed the plate to resume its figure eight, this time fixing it in a hard case of her will, not unlike she’d done to Jarek a minute ago. The plate wove through the turns, its flight noticeably more jerky than before. At each turn, there were tiny sounds as if the plate were striking a physical surface in the thin air.

  “It’s clunky and less efficient than a direct connection, but it works.”

  “I’ll say. Felt like I’d been hit by a car back in the brig.”

  Pryce arched an eyebrow, glancing between them.


  She let the plate drop back to her open hand. “Yeah, I was a little revved up at that point. And you didn’t seem to be taking prisoners.”

  “Not a problem,” Jarek said. “I would’ve done the same thing if I had Jedi powers.”

  She set the plate back on the table. “I didn’t say I was sorry about it.”

  He smiled. “I know.”

  They regarded each other in silence.

  “I’m not so sure about this Jedi talk, either,” she said. “Arcanism might be on the mystical side, but at the end of the day, it’s bound by energy conservation just like the rest of the universe.”

  “Star Wars was based in this universe.”

  She threw her hands up in exasperation. “Whatever, man. You know what I’m trying to say. I’m not tapping into some magical energy here. It’s all give and take.”

  “I knew it!” Pryce said, thrusting his hands into the air.

  She couldn’t help but smile at his fervor.

  “Yeah, yeah,” Jarek said. “Keep it in your pants, old man.”

  “You first,” Pryce mumbled.

  She cleared her throat.

  Jarek turned back to her. “So do you have to kill us now that you’ve told us all your secrets?”

  “I wouldn’t say have to,” she said. “Sometimes I do things just for the fun of it. And that was hardly all of my secrets.”

  “Intriguing.” He waggled his eyebrows at her, then glanced down at his comm. “Think it’s better if I hear the rest of them later, though. I’m useless without my beauty sleep.” He stood, his expression leaning toward serious. “We’re gonna leave in a few hours. You should sleep too if you’re coming with us.”

  She nodded but made no move to stand. As much as her body craved sleep, she needed to at least get the glyph etchings laid down on the new catcher tonight. The actual enchanting she could always do on the road—or in the air.

  Pryce remained seated as well. “Caught between the Resistance and the whole Red nation, the fate of Fela and who knows what else hanging in the balance. What have you gotten yourself into this time, son?”

  “Agh, who knows,” Jarek said. “As long as I get Fela back, everything else can burn, for all I care.”

  “Spoken like a true mercenary,” she said.

  Jarek gave her a lazy two-fingered salute and turned for the stairs.

  “He doesn’t mean it,” Pryce said quietly.

  “The hell I don’t, old man.” Jarek’s voice rang down as he disappeared above.

  Pryce smiled a weary smile, then turned his attention to the scraps she’d laid out from the pile. “And what are we doing with these here?”

  Maybe she should feel bad for dipping into his things, but Pryce didn’t seem put off in the least.

  “Enchanting.” She picked up the engraver with a flourish, unclipped her own catcher, and handed it over to Pryce. “Making a copy of this thing.”

  He turned the catcher over in his hands. “And what does this doodad do?”

  “It pulls thermal energy from the air to stop incoming bullets.”

  It was hard to say it in a way that didn’t sound ridiculous out loud.

  Pryce paused his inspection to look up at her. “Well, I’ll be damned. It just boggles the mind.”

  “I guess it’s easy to start taking this kind of stuff for granted.” She conjured a small sphere of nebulous green light into existence over her palm and watched Pryce, so clearly fascinated by all of this. She smiled, relishing the electric tingles the minor channeling sent racing through her body.

  He set the catcher back in front of her so he could clap his hands. “Amazing.”

  “If you say so.” She released her hold on the light.

  “And it’s all equivalent exchange? Energy in equals energy out?”

  “If you’re really good, yeah, but less skilled arcanists tend to waste a lot of energy.”

  “Makes sense, but there must be some limit to …” He shook his head and leaned back. “I’m sorry. Someday, I’d like to ask you eight thousand questions about how all of this works, but Jarek’s right. You should sleep while you can.”

  She watched him extract his legs from the bench. “You don’t do this very often, do you? Take people in like this, I mean.”

  A sad smile crossed his face. “I won’t say Jarek’s family. We don’t have family anymore, he and I. But he’s a good kid, no matter how hard he tries to hide it. Better than he himself knows, I sometimes think.”

  She pushed down the urge to ask if they were talking about the same Jarek. The way Pryce talked about him, the almost gentle way Jarek had reacted to her threats … Maybe there was an ounce or two more to the guy than his dangerous jackass routine let on.

  She picked the etcher back up. “I need to get these etchings done tonight, but I can talk while I work. The concentration part doesn’t really come till later.”

  He inclined his head and sat back down, settling his elbows on the tabletop and propping his chin up on intertwined fingers.

  “He lost his parents in the Catastrophe?” she asked, starting on the first glyph.

  Pryce studied her and nodded. “Been on his own ever since, for the most part. He was on a short stint with a merc outfit when I first met him. That didn’t end too well.”

  “For him?”

  “For them.”

  When she glanced up, he looked ten years older. “Sounds like there’s a story there.”

  “Oh, yes. That’s where he got his nickname, actually.”

  “His nickname?”

  “In a lot of circles, they call him the Soldier of Charity. When he has Fela, at least.”

  This time, she couldn’t hold it back. “We’re talking about the same Jarek, right?”

  He chuckled. “There’s a reason his nickname isn’t the Czar of Teamwork and Sensitivity.”

  She smiled back. As a general rule, she didn’t really trust anyone until they had damn well earned it at least thrice over, but occasionally she decided she liked certain people. Jay Pryce was quickly making his way onto that short list.

  “I’ll keep that in mind.”

  “He’s been through a lot,” Pryce said. “Seen too much. He might not play well with others, but his heart’s in the right place. Assuming I have any right to say what that place is.”

  She put the finishing touches on her third glyph. “Why are you telling me all this?”

  Pryce showed her a tired smile. “Because you seem like you might care.”

  Well, that was sobering. She swallowed, and whatever dam had been staving off the exhaustion picked that moment to break inside her.

  “Sleep.” Pryce waved at the table. “You can take all this tomorrow—the engraver too. Get some rest.”

  Apparently he’d seen the dam break too.

  She sighed and gave a hesitant nod.

  He left as she began to gather up her supplies and returned a few moments later carrying a small leather satchel. He held it out to her.

  “You’re sure?”

  He shrugged. “Feels nice to help someone while I can.”

  She thanked him and scooped the table’s contents into the satchel’s main compartment.

  “Why don’t you use my bed tonight?” he added.

  She stiffened, her defensive reflexes kicking in. “I’m not stealing an old man’s bed. I can sleep on a couch or in a chair just like those people up there with the man bits.”

  “Oh, I’ve no doubt of that, but I probably won’t sleep tonight now anyway, and if I give the bed to Jarek, he’ll probably just bleed all over my nice white sheets.”

  He met her uncertain look with a friendly smile. “Let an old man pamper a lady for a night. I won’t tell if you won’t.”

  She smiled and finally gave a shrug. “Have it your way.”

  She climbed the stairs, not the least bit excited about flying off tomorrow to stick her head into business that wasn’t hers. Then again, if even a tenth of the people around Newark were half
as good as Pryce, maybe there were worse ways to risk one’s neck than trying to make sure the place wasn’t about to become the new raknoth ground zero.

  She laid down on Pryce’s soft bed, her entire body weeping in relief, and decided that these were questions for her tomorrow self to figure out. Within the minute, sleep took her.

  Twelve

  No one talked on the short walk to the ship the next morning, partially out of fear the Reds would still be out looking for them and partially by merit of the ridiculous predawn hour that Rachel wasn’t entirely convinced could even rightfully be called morning. To top it all off, she’d had just enough whiskey the previous night to leave a dull ache in her head.

  Yes, it was just as well that no one talked. She couldn’t imagine anything Michael or Jarek would have to say right then would do anything but piss her off more.

  A sleek-looking ship was waiting for them when they arrived in the still mostly dark space of the overgrown park.

  “Baby,” Jarek said, patting its hull, “you’ll never believe the week I’m having.”

  In response, the rear hatch let out a few pops and began to descend into a boarding ramp.

  The ship looked as if it might have been a military design—not that she was an expert. Its body was about the size of a small trailer home, but the sleek angularity of its matte black hull panels and compact wings whispered promises of stealth and speed nonetheless.

  She absentmindedly reached out to touch the hull, more to appease a vague curiosity than to learn anything of value.

  “All aboard,” Al’s voice said quietly from inside the empty ship as the boarding ramp touched down.

  Yep. The whole artificial intelligence thing was definitely going to take some getting used to.

  Jarek strode up the boarding ramp with the air of a child who wanted to show off his favorite toy but was scared to admit he cared what anyone thought.

  How the hell had that guy ended up in possession of a fancy ship, a fancy battle suit, and a freaking artificial intelligence?

  Inside, the ship was just large enough to constitute a cozy living space, which was exactly what the first compartment looked like—minus the “cozy” part.

  A small, stiff-looking cot lay against the right wall. At the foot of the cot, a faded brown recliner faced a film-screen TV that hung over the drawers on the opposite wall of the cabin. Beyond the drawers was a tall locker with an obscenely large sword hanging along its side.