Red Gambit: Book One of the Harvesters Series

by Luke R. Mitchell

  Jarek moved to the right of the double doors, indicating she should mirror him. Satisfied, he reached over and yanked the right door open, and she immediately learned why he’d taken the time to scoot them clear of the doors.

  Gunfire roared from within. Bullets slammed into the heavy wooden door. Some stopped there, but several tore through the thick wood, showering them with splinters and dust.

  Through the chaos, Jarek caught her eye and wiggled his eyebrows.

  Christ, was he enjoying this?

  He held his gun hand up to point his index finger at his own eye, then he wiggled it toward the church, raising his eyebrows. It wasn’t the most inspired sign language on the planet, but she took his meaning nonetheless. Before the door across from her had completed its slow swing closed, she jammed her staff through the crack and began pulling energy.

  He gave her a wink and said, “Give ’em hell, Goldilocks.”

  She was surprised to feel her mouth pulling into a tight grin as the energy built inside her. She met his eyes and let loose with her finest arcane flashbang.

  Blinding light flashed out of the narrow door crack, along with a resounding crash of thunder. Jarek was already moving, tearing the door open and darting through. She rocked back to her heels as the fatigue hit.

  Inside, crisp, controlled shots were quickly joined by shouts and more sporadic gunfire.

  She cleared her head as best she could, wrapped herself in a telekinetic shield, and slipped into the church after Jarek.

  Two dead marauders waited for her inside. She jerked her gaze up the hallway at the sound of another gunshot just in time to see a third man crumple to the thick red carpet. Jarek stood over him, smoke dissipating from the barrel of his extended gun.

  Another marauder leaped into sight and swept a tiny, vicious-looking sawed-off shotgun toward Jarek. The shotgun roared, but Jarek had already ducked past the marauder.

  The dark wall spit sawdust as the shot tore into it. Jarek swept his sword up. A shudder rippled through Rachel as the blade passed through the marauder’s arm and everything from the elbow down unceremoniously flopped to the carpet, gun and all.

  The man stared in shock at the place where his right arm used to be. Jarek placed a solid kick into his side, and he toppled to the ground, twisting to clutch at his fresh stump. An agonized scream escaped his throat. Jarek kicked him in the side of the head, leaving him unconscious or at least stunned out of his misery.

  “Come on,” Jarek said.

  She felt hypnotized. His blade was oddly free of blood after having passed through all that flesh and cartilage. It seemed such an odd thing, that—

  Jarek clucked his tongue twice, tugging her back to the present. “They made their choices. No time to hold back. Come on.”

  He vanished around the corner at the end of the hall. She squeezed her eyes shut for a long second and then followed at a hard run.

  She pulled up at the corner to the deafening chaos of two gunmen firing at Michael and Weston from the windows of the next hallway. One of them had an assault rifle of some kind and the other, an old bolt action.

  Jarek leaned out of an empty doorway ahead, pistol raised. The closer of the two gunmen, the one with the bolt action, turned. Jarek fired twice, the crack of his pistol paltry in contrast to the roar of the assault rifle down the hall.

  His first shot went wide, kicking up a puff of drywall dust next to the first gunman’s head. The second shot found the man’s throat. The gunman fell against the wall, a horrified expression frozen onto his features as he clutched at the bleeding mess of his neck.

  By then, the thunder had quieted as the second gunman turned to see what was happening. Jarek took a hurried shot and missed, and then the thunder promptly resumed. Jarek threw himself through the doorway he’d been using for cover as the wooden doorframe exploded into showers of sawdust and splinters.

  With his first choice of targets behind cover, the gunman turned to her. She made like Jarek and threw herself back around the corner. A stream of hot lead tore into the corner behind her, and she scooted away. No reason to tire herself butting heads with an assault rifle when there were perfectly good walls, right?

  The hallway fell silent. Was the gunman reloading? Or just waiting?

  Jarek must have been wondering the same thing. Maybe if she distracted the gunman …

  She pulled her barrier back in place, took a deep breath, and stepped into the hallway—just as the gunman slammed a fresh magazine home. His rifle tracked toward her. Before he could fire, Jarek appeared and sent three shots at him. The first went wide. The second and third must’ve struck his armored vest, because he jerked back but swept his rifle back toward Jarek.

  She dropped her defenses and let loose a telekinetic blast that caught the gunman like a small wrecking ball and threw him through what remained of the window.

  Hopefully Michael and Weston would handle the guy from there, if he was still conscious and functioning.

  Tingling fatigue licked at her limbs. She leaned heavily on her staff.

  “Defenestration by magical whackin’ stick.” Jarek nodded approval from the splintered doorway. “Classic.”

  She kept her eyes on the end of the hallway as she gathered herself and moved forward. He fell in beside her.

  “You just wanted me to know that you know what ‘defenestration’ means, didn’t you?”

  “Gotta use them there big words when I can. People need know me talk real good.”

  She fought down a smile. Why did that even make her want to smile?

  “God, it’s unbearable.”

  “The charm?”

  She spared a glance at his impish grin. “Sure. We can go with that instead.”

  Was that what it was? Was she charmed by this man?

  She’d have to deal with that irritating thought later.

  They drew up to the sanctuary doors. There was a muffled thump on the other side and a few shouts.

  She held the back of her hand out to Jarek’s chest to signal him to pause. If he had questions, he held them surprisingly well as she closed her eyes and reached out with her extended senses.

  Her mind brushed against pinpricks near the head of the room. “Two at the front of the pews. Both armed. One seems to be in a lot of pain.”

  “I would think so,” he said. “I shot him in the ass.”

  Through the door, there was another loud thump and then a muffled voice: “No, you idiot! He shot me in the ass!”

  She traded an unbelieving look with Jarek, fighting down the surreal fit of giggles that threatened to burst free. Every scrap of humor evaporated as she cast her senses up to the altar and felt a dozen young, frightened minds.

  “Kids.” She felt as breathless as if she’d been kicked in the gut. “Sick bastards fell back to hole up using the kids as cover.”

  Jarek sobered in an instant. “Son of a bitch.”

  “What do we do?”

  His gaze shifted from her staff to her eyes. “Can you shield us without that thing?”

  She nodded.

  “Then we give them what they want. They don’t know what you can do yet. Follow my lead, and please don’t let them shoot me.”

  She nodded again.

  He searched her face. “This isn’t the part where you just let them take me out, right?”

  Was that real concern in his eyes? For a second, he actually looked vulnerable, and she actually wanted to reach out and tell him not to worry.

  The second passed. She broke their eye contact and reached for the energy to conjure their barrier. “Just keep close to me. And no sudden movements unless you’re ready to abandon the shield.”

  “Fair enough.”

  The doors parted easily. The butt-shot leader lay on one of the pews at the front, groaning in pain but managing to keep his pistol trained at the altar, where a dozen boys and girls ranging from five or six through the early teens cowered. A second marauder stood watch behind them, but he looked like he was seri
ously thinking about making a run for it instead.

  At the sound of their entrance, marauder number two whirled to face them, jumpy as could be.

  She showed her hands. Beside her, Jarek did the same, letting his pistol hang loosely on his finger by the trigger guard as he held his hands up.

  “Easy, guys,” he said.

  The marauder leader swiveled to face them from his pew, keeping his gun trained on the altar. “Who the fuck are you people?”

  “It doesn’t matter.” Jarek took a few slow steps forward, waiting for her to match each step. “It’s just us now.” Slowly, carefully, he bent and dropped his sword and pistol onto the thin gray carpet.

  She followed his example, carefully maintaining their barrier as she tossed down her staff.

  He nodded to her, and they slowly walked forward side by side, hands raised.

  “Your posse is dead,” Jarek said. “You have nothing to gain by doing this.”

  “That’s far enough,” the leader said, his voice thick with pain.

  Jarek took one more step forward and stopped. Slowly, he removed his second pistol with thumb and forefinger and tossed it into the pews. “There. Our weapons are down. You two are free to slip out the back and be gone. Leave the kids and go.”

  The marauder behind the altar took a small step toward the back exit, clearly thinking about it.

  The leader shot an uncertain glance that way, then looked back to them, his face pulling into a sneer as he turned his gun their way. “You think you’re better than us? Walking in here and shooting up our crew when we’re just trying to survive too? You can go fuck yourself.”

  “Dude. Not only did you decide to raid what might be the only half-decent town left on the planet …”

  Jarek was slowly moving left into the pews as he spoke, keeping them moving without actually approaching the marauders. She followed closely, not yet sure what his angle was.

  “ … you did it on a Sunday while the good folk were at church, for Christ’s sake. Or, you know, not for Christ. Whatever.” He spread his hands. “I think that goes a bit beyond just surviving, don’t you?”

  The marauder leader only glared at him with murderous eyes.

  “I get it, man,” Jarek went on. “At some point, you had to eat. You had to do what you had to do. But then you just kept on doing it—taking and taking and killing and killing. You couldn’t stop, could you? I bet it even got easy, didn’t it? Pulling the trigger? No problem. At least until you had to lie down to sleep at night.”

  “Shut up,” the man said, fanatic energy creeping into his eyes. “Shut up and hold fucking still!”

  Jarek paused and raised his hands higher in emphasized surrender. “You know what? I tried to reason with you, but fuck it.”

  She caught it then: the faintest flicker of motion at the doorway leading out of the front right corner of the sanctuary. She did her best not to react.

  Beside her, Jarek sat down in the pew. “Everyone wants to blame this shit on the raknoth. I say it’s people like you that have kept us in the dark ages for the past fifteen years.”

  That’s when Alaric Weston strode in from the corner opposite them with his dark revolvers raised, one for each marauder.

  By the time they caught a hint of his presence, it was already too late.

  A few of the children screamed, but their peers saw to them, quieting, soothing. After it became apparent they were more or less okay, her attention shifted back to Weston.

  He stalked toward them, guns still drawn if no longer pointed at anyone. She shifted her barrier to cover them as he approached, although her head buzzed and her limbs were beginning to feel heavy with the prolonged effort.

  “Hello again,” Jarek said. “Thought I saw you lurking back there. You’re, uh, not gonna try to kill us now, are you?”

  Weston stared at them, his dark eyes stoic. “Son,” he said finally, holstering his revolvers in a smooth movement, “I don’t know who the hell you are, but I reckon I owe you a thanks rather than a bullet. Now, can you two help me get these kids outside?”

  She released her barrier as Weston went to the altar to begin restoring order.

  “Whew!” Jarek patted the spot over his heart. “Guess that’s a no on the killing us thing, then. Go, team!”

  He bounded over to help with the children. She watched him go and couldn’t help but wonder: would that no stay a no once Alaric Weston found out why they were here?

  Fifteen

  Jarek fancied himself a hard man, more or less. He’d certainly been known to rough it often enough. But as he shifted his numbing butt on the thick stump that was his seat at Alaric Weston’s round wooden table, he decided that proper chairs wouldn’t have been too much to ask for after having saved the day.

  Michael was pointing at him. “You’re telling me that you, Jarek Slater, talked your way through a hostage situation?”

  He shrugged. “I was gifted with a silver tongue, Mikey. I’m not sure why you’re so surprised.”

  Michael glanced at Rachel, who sat at the table with them as they waited for Alaric’s return.

  She gave her own shrug. “Yeah, as long as you consider having two marauders gunned down in front of a roomful of children a victory, Jarek totally nailed this one.”

  He held his palms upward. “Hey, no one died. You know, except the guys who—ah, I’ll take it anyway.”

  Michael leaned his elbows on the sturdy bulk of the table and frowned. “I’m not seeing it.”

  “Ye of little faith,” Jarek said, sitting on his stump as sagely as he could manage.

  Michael rolled his eyes and looked around the room for about the trillionth time in the past hour. “Well, I hope that silver tongue’s ready to make the hard sell to Alaric when he gets back.”

  It wasn’t hard to tell that Michael was restless. He understood. Fighting was stressful enough, and they had what might very well turn out to be the hard part still ahead. Repetition, like obsessively looking around a room over and over again, could be soothing. It could help convince someone they were doing everything they could despite not really doing anything at all. But try as he might, it wasn’t as if Michael were going to suddenly spot Alaric hiding behind the bread box or under the table.

  They’d barely had the chance to exchange more than a sentence with Alaric, but saving an altar-full of kids had a way of breaking the ice. He’d asked that twitchy Bobby kid who’d nearly been executed before the fighting started to show them to his cabin and insisted they take a breather while he helped the townsfolk cart the surviving marauders to their small jail, which turned out to be next to Alaric’s house anyway.

  According to Bobby’s ceaseless chatter, the location wasn’t coincidental.

  When Alaric had fled the east coast five years prior, he’d apparently arrived just in time to liberate the town from a violent batch of would-be rulers. When they’d realized he was a local returned home, they’d named him sheriff. He’d refused the badge but accepted the call of duty. As thanks, they’d pitched in as a community to build him the rustic cabin they were sitting in, made with wood cut from the trees of the very hillside next to them, if you could believe it. (Thank you, Bobby.)

  Maybe the kid’s verbal flatulence wasn’t unreasonable given he’d almost been killed thirty minutes earlier, but Jarek had a sneaking suspicion that Bobby never really stopped bouncing off the walls, near-death experience or no.

  At least the kid had shown them to the food before scurrying off. A large bowl of beans and a few glasses of water later, Jarek was sated and well prepped for flatulence of the nonverbal variety.

  After another twenty or so minutes of idle chatting, heavy boot steps sounded on the porch. The screen door screeched open, and Alaric Weston strode into the room.

  He went straight to the wooden rack by the door and unburdened himself of his battered long coat in a way that was clearly ritual for him, revealing a simple shirt of some light beige, rough-spun fabric. Next, he made as if to remove
his gun belt, then thought better of it and came to settle on the last of the four stumps at the dining room table. He brushed his stringy gray hair off his forehead and behind his ears.

  The four of them sat still for a long moment, silent but for the sound of Alaric’s steady chewing. God knew what he was chewing. Maybe tobacco leaves.

  “Right, then,” Alaric finally said. “You’re Resistance?”

  Michael nodded. “I am.”

  More chewing. “Figured as much. We don’t get many new folk ’round here.” He looked at Jarek, then at Rachel. “Especially not ones that can stop bullets in thin air. Much as I appreciate the help back there, I made it clear to Hux that I was done with the fight. Not much left to say there.”

  Michael looked down at the table, his face tight. “Hux stepped down from Command a while back. Sloan wormed his way into replacing him before I got there.”

  Alaric’s expression darkened. “Nelken and Daniels still there?”

  Michael nodded.

  “Well, they knew the score too, so either they’ve succeeded at shoving their heads so far up their asses that they forgot, or something’s seriously wrong.”

  “We’ve got a pretty big problem,” Michael said. “And you might be the only one who can help us.”

  “Although I think you’re pretty spot on about the heads-in-the-asses thing too,” Jarek said. He smiled and shrugged at the stern look Michael shot him. “Just one outsider’s opinion.”

  “You two are freelancers?” Alaric asked, looking from him to Rachel.

  “Just friends,” Rachel said.

  “Rachel is my sister,” Michael said, earning him a frown from Rachel.

  The honesty didn’t surprise Jarek. Michael was a believer, and Alaric had basically founded the Resistance. Michael would probably have licked Alaric’s boots if he’d asked. Plus, pedigree aside, Michael was about to ask something of the guy—something that wouldn’t be easy or pleasant for him. A little honesty probably didn’t hurt their chances.

  “And Jarek,” Michael continued, “is—”

  “His indentured love slave,” Jarek said. “Wait, no, I’m getting my roles all mixed up again.”