“So he’s a smart-ass with a strong moral compass?”
“You forgot man-child, but yeah, something like that.”
“Well, at least he’s got it where it counts.” Elise gave her a mischievous grin. “Plus he’s not too hard on the eyes.”
“Just on the ears and the brain,” Rachel said.
Elise wasn’t wrong, of course. Even with the fresh battle scars, Jarek was a handsome guy, and Rachel would’ve been lying if she said she hadn’t spent some time lingering on the memory of their kiss and imagining more well beyond a stolen hallway peck. But there was no place for blossoming relationships in their worlds right now, and even if there had been, she wasn’t about to crack open and spill these thoughts to Elise just because they shared the same anatomy.
Lucky for Rachel, she was saved from having to when her comm buzzed with an incoming call.
Commander Stacy Daniels, read the display.
Shit. Make that unlucky for her.
She set her glass down and hit Accept. The commander appeared on the holo, looking troubled.
“Michael?” Rachel asked.
Daniels gave a slight nod. “He’s okay, but I wanted to let you know he just had another episode.”
“Shit.” Rachel took a deep breath, trying to loosen the sudden anxious pit in her stomach.
“We have people with him,” Daniels said. “You should get some rest.”
“No, I’ll be over. I should be with him. Thanks, Stacy.”
Daniels gave her a sad smile. “See you soon then.”
“I’m sorry, Rachel,” Elise said quietly once the call had ended. “Is there anything we can do?”
Rachel hopped to her feet and handed Elise the remainder of her whiskey. “Finish this. Celebrate. Have fun.” She tried to force a smile. “Don’t worry about us. Michael always was a bit of a party pooper.”
Five
Night was falling in Newark, lacing the air with a faint chill as they made their way around the block to the small park where Jarek’s ship was parked. Rachel suppressed a shiver and glanced over at Jarek, who’d insisted on accompanying her, and on donning Fela to do it. Never leave home without the big guns, he’d said. She ran a thumb over the glyphed surface of her staff and couldn’t say she disagreed with him. Still …
“Are you sure this doesn’t count as drunk driving?”
“You gonna put me under arrest, officer?” There was more than just amusement in the alluring grin he shot her. “Look, just because the tykes back there can’t handle their booz—”
A metallic thunk announced Jarek’s discovery of the garbage container he hadn’t noticed in his path. The container tipped over with a crash, spewing old trash onto the run-down sidewalk.
She snorted. “You were saying? About the tykes and the booze?”
He narrowed his eyes, and his faceplate slid shut and locked with a small click.
She couldn’t help but smile. “Pout then.”
Out here, in the cool night air with Jarek and away from the crowd—aside from Lea, who’d also tagged along—she felt temporarily lighter, more centered. Then the ship came into view, and her smile faded as Michael and the rest of tonight’s shitstorm shifted firmly back to the forefront of her thoughts. A glance back told her Lea was feeling the same worry where Michael was concerned.
Lea and Michael were close, that much had been obvious since Rachel had first seen them together. Lea might have even had a thing for Michael, but Rachel wasn’t sure how the Spongehead felt about it. She hadn’t had much of a chance to see the two interact before Michael had been caught in the messenger burst.
Whatever there was between them, Lea hadn’t thought twice about slipping away from the party to come with her and Jarek.
The flight to HQ wasn’t long at all, and Jarek thankfully raised no objections to letting Al handle the piloting.
They set down in the graveyard of old, rusted shipping containers that had recently been the front for the secret entrance to the underground Resistance HQ. Now that the late Zar’Golga’s forces had literally blown the roof off HQ and the need for secrecy had passed right along with Zar’Golga’s life, the Resistance was expanding the base out into the shipping yard.
It was a major upgrade, as far as Rachel was concerned. HQ 1.0 had been a claustrophobic’s nightmare.
Unfortunately, Michael’s quarters were still down in the old section, so she took a deep breath and tried to ready herself for the walls to close in.
The Resistance crew in charge of renovations had already cleared the old common room of its considerable debris and added both a raised, mostly translucent dome and a staircase entrance from the lot above. Even in the night hour, the base was fairly alive with the expansion efforts, with work lights scattered around the yard and the sounds of power tools and busy voices drifting in from all around.
Plenty of those sounds ceased and turned to cold stares as the three of them reached the dome and descended into the old common room. Much as they’d fought and bled for these people, Rachel knew she and Jarek weren’t the most popular kids on the block right now. How could they be when they’d brought home a group of oddly human aliens and driven the Resistance into allying with the very creatures they’d been formed to resist?
It wasn’t like they’d had many choices. When the baddest badasses in the galaxy were coming to eat your entire planet, you couldn’t really pick and choose which allies you wanted to take for the fight, right?
Maybe.
The fact that the Resistance and Krogoth’s forces had formed what tenuous alliance they had was proof enough that everyone understood it was probably their only real option for survival, but it didn’t mean anyone had to be happy about it.
Rachel sure as hell wasn’t, especially not after her talk with Alton tonight, but that hadn’t seemed to stop her, Jarek, and the Enochians from becoming the blame targets for half the Resistance.
Whatever. She couldn’t blame them too much. Most of the men and women in the Resistance had lost friends or family to the raknoth and their forces. And that wasn’t even to mention the tiny fact that the raknoth had caused the Catastrophe fifteen years ago. Destroying the planet and preying on them ever since … It was a lot to try to forget overnight.
If Rachel hadn’t seen the monsters coming for them, she wouldn’t have considered an alliance with the raknoth for even a minute. As things stood, she wasn’t sure they wouldn’t be better off trying to find another way even now.
And sure, maybe it hadn’t completely been a one way street. But so what if the Catastrophe had been the raknoth’s response to the viral would-be-genocide her mom had unleashed? It wasn’t like the raknoth had been planning on letting Earth live on happily ever after before that. If things had gone to plan, it would only have been a matter of time until they’d called the rakul to come harvest the planet anyway.
So boo-freaking-hoo.
As far as Rachel could tell, they all would have been better off if her mom’s virus had done its job and wiped the raknoth from the face of the Earth.
Jarek’s voice broke the darkening stream of her thoughts as they wound their way through the common room and down a narrow hallway. “You okay over there?”
“Fine,” she muttered, in no mood to talk any of this out right now.
She didn’t have to worry too much. The people of the Resistance would never think of the raknoth as anything but the lesser of their current enemies—certainly not as full, welcome allies. For now, maybe they could all just fall in line and focus on surviving. Maybe.
She kept her eyes front and center as they made their way through the base, engaging neither the accusing stares nor the friendly hellos they got from the few Resistance members who seemed to maybe not resent them for breathing.
When they made it to Michael’s room, he was sitting on his twin-sized bed, elbows resting on his knees and face buried in his hands. It struck her how much thinner he looked these days than he had even a month or two earlier. T
he thought only fed the angry flames building deep down.
Rachel was only a little surprised to see Lea’s mother, Commander Stacy Daniels, still with him, sitting quietly in the corner of the small room.
Rachel went straight to Michael, sat down beside him on the bed, and draped an arm across his broad shoulders. Lea went to hug her mother, and the two talked quietly. Jarek hovered back outside the doorway to give Rachel and Michael the pretense of privacy.
“Hey, Spongehead,” Rachel said softly, reaching up to rub the short but puffy sprigs of Michael’s hair.
His dark skin looked ashen, and when he looked at her, the whites of his eyes were bloodshot.
“Rachel,” he said slowly, as if it had taken him more than an instant to recognize her. He glanced at Commander Daniels. “I told them they didn’t need to bother you every time this happens.”
“And I told them they’d better. You’re never a bother, Spongehead.”
He frowned and sniffed the air. “You’ve been drinking.”
“Just celebrating a safe return. It doesn’t matter. This is more important.”
Michael’s mouth formed a humorless smile. She rested her head against his shoulder and looped her arms around one of his, wishing she had something better to say.
“What’s happening to me, Rache?” he asked after a length of silence, his voice almost a whisper.
It broke her heart to see him like this, so tired and frail. And so completely beyond her ability to help.
She squeezed his arm and leaned back to fix him with a serious look. “I don’t know. But I’m going to figure out how to fix it, even if it means going out there and stomping the floor with every one of these rakul bastards until there’s no one left to beam bad vibes your way. I promise.”
“I hear that,” Jarek said, stepping into the room. “Even brought my stomping boots to help.”
This time, Michael’s smile was a bit more sincere. Especially when Lea came over to give him a hug. When they pulled apart, though, Michael wasted no time in sinking wearily back to the bed.
“Do you want me to tell them what you saw?” Commander Daniels asked.
Michael gave a bitter smile. “I think I can still manage that much, at least.” He looked around at them uncertainly. “I don’t know much. The … visions, or whatever they are, are really intense when they’re happening, but I never seem to remember more than a few random scraps once they pass.”
Lea rested a hand on his shoulder.
“Hey, we’ve all been there, Mikey,” Jarek said.
Rachel shot him her best shush look and squeezed Michael’s forearm in support.
“I remember a room,” he said after a while. “I think it might have been a raknoth ship, kind of like the one the Enochians came in.”
“Was there anything else?” Rachel asked softly.
Michael nodded. “Raknoth. There were raknoth. Three of them, I think. And there was this voice, this terrible voice.”
“What did it say?” Lea asked.
“Traitors.” Michael shuddered. “I think they’re getting close. The rakul, I mean. I don’t know how to explain it, but I have this feeling.”
Rachel traded a concerned glance with Lea and wrapped her arm back around Michael. “We’ll be ready. We’re going to figure this out.”
If only she’d felt half as confident as her words sounded.
Michael looked less than convinced, but he didn’t argue. “What Alton told you about my exposure leaving me, uh, marked … Did he say anything about what that would mean when the rakul came?”
Rachel was pretty sure she managed to avoid visibly bristling at the mention of Alton. Inside, it was a different story, but she did her best to relax and remind herself that Michael came before the other stuff.
“He said you might hear more than you wanna hear. He didn’t seem very certain about it, though. Why do you ask?”
“I, uh …” He shook his head. “I don’t know. I just have this feeling like I’m connected to the rakul somehow, like I’m seeing these snippets straight from them.”
“I think,” said a strong voice from the hallway, “that Michael Carver is correct.”
They all whipped around to see a middle-aged man with sandy blond hair step into the room. Only it was no man at all, Rachel realized with a jolt of alarm. It was Al’Drogan, playing at being human, just like Alton Parker always did outside of battle. The physical deception was probably the only reason the Resistance soldiers on his flanks were only fidgeting restlessly with their weapons instead of training them on the back of the raknoth’s head.
Alaric was just behind Drogan, along with a Japanese man that a quick mental sweep confirmed was, like Drogan, also not actually a man. It must have been the raknoth Zar’Kole had sent back with Jarek—Lietha, that was it.
“Hey, buddy,” Jarek said to Drogan. “What brings your stumps ’round here?”
It was a damned good question. “Allies” or not, the raknoth presence on base just begged for the slipping of itchy trigger fingers. And the way Rachel was feeling right now, she couldn’t guarantee it wouldn’t be her finger—or mind, at least—that did the slipping.
“Zar’Krogoth asked to stay informed of Michael’s … episodes,” Daniels said behind them.
“He neglected to mention he’d be sending his second in command by when we did so,” Alaric said, pushing past Drogan and scooting in to check on Michael.
“And a call wouldn’t do?” Rachel asked.
“Not that we’re not thrilled to see you two and all,” Jarek added, “but …” He nodded out to the hall where four shotgun-toting Resistance soldiers were watching the raknoth with all the laxity of cats in a dog kennel.
The raknoth paid the soldiers no mind.
“We wished to hear Michael Carver’s accounting in person,” Drogan said.
He took a step toward them to allow Lietha entry into the too-cramped room. That made Rachel tense enough on its own. Then she caught the slightest flicker of red in Drogan’s eyes, and it registered in a flash exactly why he’d come here.
“No.” She stood and planted herself between Michael and Drogan. “You’re not rooting around in my brother’s head. Fuck that.”
Jarek glanced between her and Drogan, then understanding dawned. “Ah. Stumpy, you tricky old bastard.”
It was like the air in the room had thickened with strained silence made corporeal. Outside, the soldiers had somehow managed to tense harder.
“We must inspect what Michael Carver has learned about the rakul,” Drogan said.
The raknoth stepped closer, and this time Jarek barred his way with a raised hand before Rachel could grab her staff and tell the raknoth precisely what he was free to inspect.
“Easy, Stumpy,” Jarek said, shooting a glance back at Rachel. “You don’t wanna go sticking that mind of yours anywhere near Mikey without asking nicely first.”
“And the answer is no, by the way,” Rachel said.
She plucked her staff from the side of the bed. None of them could afford for this to break into a fight, but she wasn’t about to step aside and let Drogan have free reign of her brother, even if Michael’s head was too well protected for it to matter.
“If you have questions, fine,” she said. “But keep your mind to yourself.”
Drogan took on the expression of a parent explaining why they in fact couldn’t spend all day playing and eating treats. “His unconscious mind might well hold information he is unable to access himself.”
“His unconscious mind is in no condition to have anyone poking around in it,” Rachel said. “And he’s glyphed against telepathy six ways to Sunday anyways.”
“Not so tight as to repel the messengers, it would seem,” Drogan said.
The son of a bitch.
“Wrong tree, dude,” Jarek said. “Wrong tree.”
Behind Drogan’s shoulder, Lietha frowned. “What tree? Does the human always talk like this?”
“Incessantly,” Drogan
said.
Jarek put a hand to his chest. “I doth resent that. And for the record, calling people things like ‘the human’ isn’t winning you any friendship points, Minty. Would it kill you to learn our sad little names?”
Lietha’s eyes were smoldering embers as he pointed. “That one is Michael Carver.”
Jarek pointed back. “Hey! Better. If you’re really feeling funky you could even just call him Michael. Or Mikey. He loves Mikey. Tell them, Mik—”
“Merciful void, enough,” Drogan said. “Very well. We will settle for hearing Mikey’s accounting for now.”
Jarek grinned appreciatively.
Rachel could have cursed him and his never-ending little games just then, but at least Drogan seemed to have dropped his mission to prod Michael’s mind for now. She even managed to start breathing again as Michael began catching Drogan and Lietha up to speed on what he’d seen.
When Michael mentioned the three raknoth aboard the ship, Drogan’s already stiff posture tightened further.
“What else?” Drogan asked.
Michael shook his head. “Not much aside from the voice. I think it was calling the raknoth traitors, and it kind of seems like it was coming from my point of view, but … I don’t know. It’s all pretty hazy.”
The fire was waking in Drogan’s eyes. “Describe this voice.”
“It was kind of like a bunch of whispers all mashed together into one. It was creepy.”
“And there was nothing more? No sense of timing or location? No mention of any others?”
“Things kind of flashed out at the end.” Michael glanced at Commander Daniels. “That must’ve been when my episode got violent here. I think whoever was talking might have killed those raknoth.”
“I do not doubt it,” Drogan said. He traded a short look with Lietha. “And I believe we may have no need of delving into Mikey’s mind after all.”
Apparently some part of Michael’s description had rung a bell for the raknoth—and not a happy one, from the sound of it.
Reaping Day: Book Three of the Harvesters Series Page 6