Reaping Day: Book Three of the Harvesters Series

by Luke R. Mitchell

  “Dude …” Haldin said as they entered. “What are you doing?”

  Jarek turned, his face tight with pain as he finished the last of what looked to have been at least three or four injections, judging from the state of the messy wound.

  His eyes took in Rachel and sent an anxious ripple through her chest before settling on Haldin.

  “I’ll tell you what I’m not doing. I’m definitely not blatantly disregarding the opinion of a licensed medical professional.” He grimaced and extracted the syringe tip. “And I’m sure as hell not pumping myself full of raknoth spit in hopes of gaining superhero-like healing powers. That would be crazy.”

  Behind Jarek, Drogan gave an innocent shrug.

  “No, I understand what you’re doing,” Haldin said, “but … Sweet Alpha, man—you couldn’t at least find a needle or something?”

  Jarek tried to shrug but winced instead. “Agh! Dammit! I think aforementioned medical professional hid said needles after we asked for her help, uh, shooting up the vitamin R, if you will. I’d go so far as to say she didn’t trust us to behave responsibly.”

  Haldin smiled. “Guess you showed her.”

  “Totally.” Jarek threw the syringe in the waste bin by his bed and extended his good hand toward Drogan in a closed fist. “Put it there, Stumpy.”

  The raknoth crushed the paper cup in his hand and frowned down at Jarek’s fist. Then, hesitantly, Drogan extended his fist to meet Jarek’s.

  It was almost sweet, in a bizarre kind of way. Minus the part where the gesture only solidified Rachel’s conviction that Jarek was not going to be happy about what she’d done to Alton—or already wasn’t, if Drogan had filled him in.

  She wasn’t in any hurry to broach that topic, though, so she didn’t complain when Haldin asked Jarek how he was feeling and proceeded to fill him in on the fight and his assessment of how Gada had handled himself.

  Jarek’s gaze drifted her way several times throughout, but he kept whatever questions he wanted to ask to himself for the time being.

  They were turning to the topic of how they might go about handling Gada the next time around when something brushed softly at the edge of Rachel’s mind, faint and unobtrusive, but most certainly there.

  It was the feeling she’d come to associate with the messengers, and it made her go tight inside and out. The dread only deepened when she noticed Drogan and Haldin looked to have felt something too.

  Not now. Not another furor.

  Haldin held up a finger to Jarek, who dropped silent and took the three of them in without batting an eye. He could probably tell something was off with all of them.

  Haldin closed his eyes and switched the glyph on his cloaking pendant to the off position.

  Rachel pulled her mental defenses tight and followed his example.

  The soft buzzing presence at the edge of her mind immediately resolved into a voice like a dozen loosely synchronized whispers.

  “—who still serve your true Masters. Join us in ending this mockery of our established order and we will grant you forgiveness. We will cure you of the ailment that chains you to this feeble race, and you will be free to return to your proper place as emissaries of the Kul. This I offer only once. Join us, or prepare to meet the eternal void.”

  With that, the presence vanished.

  Gada. That had been Gada’s voice. She was sure of it.

  Drogan’s eyes were glowing faint crimson now. Rachel reached for her energy stores just in case and watched for any other reaction.

  Was he thinking about it? Turning on them? Fleeing back to his masters for forgiveness?

  And what about the rest of the raknoth who’d heard?

  Drogan’s eyes dimmed as they turned to her and Haldin. “Lies. The rakul do not forgive. They would not hold the power they currently do otherwise.”

  Rachel let out the breath she hadn’t realized she’d been holding. “How many of your buddies will come to that conclusion?”

  Drogan frowned at her as he thought about that. “I cannot say. Fear rarely makes for intelligent decisions.”

  She tensed and had to bite down on a retort.

  What were the chances that wasn’t a shot at her recent failure?

  “Okay, gang,” Jarek said, breaking the tension whether he knew it or not. “I think this is the part where you fill in the guy who isn’t sporting a telepathy dish on his noggin.”

  “Kul’Gada calls for those raknoth still loyal to the rakul to join him in destroying us,” Drogan said.

  “Ah.” Jarek scratched at his head with his good hand. “Well shit.”

  “Probably doesn’t bode well for the state of our current alliances,” Haldin agreed.

  “What,” Jarek said, “you mean you don’t think the fine people out there will trust our raknoth buddies once they realize their old boss just offered them their jobs back?”

  “Well,” Haldin said with a sideways glance at Rachel she appreciated like a slap in the face, “as much as a hug fest as it’s been so far …”

  Rachel could have kicked the Enochian square in the pants for the way Jarek’s dark, piercing eyes assessed them after that.

  If he hadn’t been sure before that something had happened, he probably was now.

  “We need to get ahead of this before word spreads,” Haldin said. He looked at Drogan. “We also need to figure out which raknoth are going to flip on us. Because I doubt they’re all just gonna tell the Masters to suck it.”

  Drogan nodded. “I concur. We will extract oaths of true fealty from those with us. We will root out those who think to betray us to our doom”—he pounded fist and open palm together—“and they will be the ones who will suck it!”

  Jarek barked a laugh at that, and, despite everything else, Rachel almost joined him. Determined to maintain her somber composure, though, she managed to retain her laughter to a brief silent shake.

  Drogan glanced between them uncertainly.

  “Excellent,” Haldin said, only partially succeeding in masking his own amusement. “We’re lucky to have you with us, Al’Drogan. Now I better go find Alton and speak to the commanders before someone catches scent of this thing.” He met Rachel’s gaze, and the desire to give him a groin shot only grew. “I’ll see you in the council chamber soon?”

  She gave Haldin a stiff nod, and he bade his farewells and headed back to meet his crew in the commons.

  The Enochian was right to take this new threat to their marginal internal peace seriously, but he was probably worrying preemptively. The only people who would’ve been able to hear the message would probably be the last people to spill the beans. Her, Haldin, Elise, the raknoth.

  And Michael.

  Her heart quickened.

  Michael. Shit. She’d been too wrapped up in her own little silent drama here to realize he’d probably felt the broadcast too. And, if past experiences were any indication, it was entirely possible he hadn’t done so quietly.

  “I have to go.”

  The realization fell out of her mouth on its own, a distant mumble next to the racing kaleidoscope her mind was playing out of all the ways this might imminently explode in their faces.

  Jarek raised his good hand in a gesture of peace. “Easy, Goldilocks. No one’s about to—”

  “It’s Michael,” she said. “If he heard …”

  Understanding sparked in Jarek’s eyes.

  “I need to check on him,” she said.

  “Go,” Drogan said.

  She held Jarek’s conflicted gaze until he gave a small nod.

  “We’ll talk later,” she said, backing toward the doorway.

  Then she turned and hurried out of medical before he could say anything more.

  Well, there was one bullet dodged. For the moment, at least. The next one, though …

  Haldin was just about to turn the corner at the end of the hallway as Rachel stepped out of medical. He paused when he caught sight of her. She was about to send her worries about Michael his way, but he sti
ffened, apparently coming to some similar conclusion, and darted off toward the commons.

  That didn’t exactly soothe the unease in her gut as she turned the other way and hurried through the bland hallways for Michael’s quarters.

  By the time she reached her destination, she’d broken into a run.

  She rushed through the open doorway—which in itself didn’t seem like a great sign—and was met with wide-eyed stares from Michael and Lea.

  “Rache,” Michael said. “What is it? What’s wrong?”

  He didn’t look too bad—no worse than usual for these days, at least.

  Had he even felt the messengers?

  Lea had risen to her feet, like she was expecting a horde of maddened berserkers to pour in on Rachel’s tail.

  “It’s, uh …” Rachel looked between the two of them, taking in their expressions more carefully before focusing on Michael. “Did you happen to, uh—”

  “I felt it.” He frowned. “Heard it. Whatever. I was just telling Lea. I take it you heard him too?”

  Rachel eyed the open doorway uneasily and pushed the door closed before saying anything.

  “Yeah. And I might have thought to close the door before telling anyone about it. If anyone heard you …”

  Rachel’s comm buzzed against her wrist before she decided just how to finish the thought.

  “No one heard,” Lea said, though the look on her face didn’t convey nearly as much confidence.

  Rachel glanced down at her comm. The message was from Haldin, and it consisted of one word.

  Trouble.

  “You’re sure about that?” Rachel asked, raising her comm for them to see.

  Michael and Lea exchanged a horrified look, both of them lost for words.

  “Just sit tight,” Rachel said, turning for the door. “I’ll make sure no one starts killing each other out there.”

  They watched her like scolded children as she pulled the door closed behind her and set off down the hallway again, this time starting at a full run.

  After a minute of dodging and weaving past indignant Resistance soldiers, she turned into one of the hallways that led to the commons and spotted Alton, Johnny, Elise, and Haldin ahead, surrounded by at least a couple dozen Resistance soldiers who looked less than pleased.

  It wasn’t hard to guess why.

  “Whoa, whoa, whoa,” Johnny was saying as Rachel padded quietly toward the spectacle. “Easy, lady. I don’t know where you’re getting your infor—”

  “I heard Carver say it down the hall not five minutes ago,” a stout woman with short, dark hair said. “That harvester thing is throwing arms wide open for any vamp willing to fall in line and hand us over. We already know we can’t trust the bastards.”

  “Ah,” Johnny held up a finger. “See, that sounds like an unsubstantiated claim to me. I don’t know how you guys do things here, but—”

  “You’re goddamn right you don’t know, you alien freak,” cried a kid that couldn’t have been older than seventeen or eighteen.

  Johnny pointed toward the voice, still holding the black-haired woman’s gaze. “That’s hurtful. Look, I get that you don’t trust the scary bloodsucking monsters. It’s a wise move. Good on you.”

  “Who the hell do you think you—” someone started, but they fell silent at a sudden flicker of fire in Johnny’s expression.

  “The fact here is that we are up against some serious shit, people,” Johnny said. “We don’t have the luxury of turning our backs on allies for anything less than irrefutably damning evidence. And, you know what? If you’re not okay with that, let me ask you this: which one of you is going to wrestle down Alton here and throw him in chains?” He glanced at Alton, then back at the crowd. “Have any of you ever tangled with a raknoth? I’m guessing not, since you’re all still standing here.”

  Alton and Haldin both looked like they wanted to add more, or maybe even rein Johnny in, but Haldin continued to stand quietly at his friend’s side, and Alton, probably wisely, hung in the back, looking as harmless as he could manage.

  Rachel hovered at the back of the growing, buzzing crowd, unsure how to proceed.

  Johnny raised a valid point about Alton, but he couldn’t have picked a worse audience. The soldiers who deemed themselves Earth’s premier guardians against the “vamps” were the last people who’d want to hear that these “alien freaks” thought their bark was lacking its bite.

  Regardless, she wasn’t sure anything she could say would carry much weight with this crowd.

  “We’ve had enough of this bullshit, space-boy,” rumbled a tree of a man pushing his way through the crowd. He made it to the front row and jabbed a finger down at Haldin’s face. “I don’t trust a single goddamn one of you. You could all be vamps in disguise, for all we know.”

  This point raised a hearty chorus of agreement and further accusations.

  Haldin calmly looked over through the noise and caught Rachel’s eye.

  “A little help?” came his voice in her head.

  She took half a step forward and opened her mouth, searching for the words.

  What could she possibly say?

  Heads were starting to swivel her way now, curious as to what Haldin was staring at while that hulking mass of man loomed so threateningly over him.

  She had to say something.

  “There’s only one raknoth in this room right now,” she finally called. “And I’d probably be dead right now if it weren’t for him and these three.”

  “Yeah?” the human tree called right back, only looking away from Haldin for a moment. “And we’re just supposed to take your word on that? The word of a telepath who comes and goes as she damn well pleases? You’re an outsider, lady. If you’re not with us, you can fuck off, for all I care.”

  Another round of agreement rippled through the crowd, though it might’ve been slightly milder than the last one. Either way, it emboldened the big guy to get even more up in Haldin’s face.

  Haldin’s calm composure was starting to show cracks now. “She is—We’re all …”

  He closed his eyes, his face tight, and Rachel half-expected the human tree to take sudden telekinetic flight.

  “Fine,” Haldin growled instead, eyes snapping open. “Fine. You call us raknoth?”

  Rachel felt the thermal energy drain from the air around Haldin.

  Then the air between him and the human tree flared to life with a brilliant wall of fire.

  Cries and shouts exploded through the crowd, those closest scrambling backward.

  The big guy who’d been in Haldin’s face fell over in his haste to back up, tiny wisps of smoke curling up from his singed beard and eyebrows.

  “What the fuck?!” he thundered as he hit the floor and pulled himself back another few feet.

  The wall of flames died out almost as quickly as Haldin had conjured it. The Enochian stood calmly watching the human tree now, a small fireball still hovering over his raised palm.

  Tense silence filled the room, everyone waiting to see what the mad arcanist would do next.

  Finally, Haldin allowed his handful of flames to die out. “Raknoth can’t do that, last I checked.”

  He pointed at the kid who’d called Johnny an alien freak, and half the crowd flinched.

  “You. You’re right. We’re not from here. We left our planet—our perfectly good, safe home—because we thought your world might be in trouble. And it is.”

  More people were packing into the common room now, drawn by the commotion. The crowd watched silently, waiting.

  “Here’s the truth,” Haldin continued. “Johnny’s right too. Alton could tear you all to pieces right now if he wanted to. So could I. That’s not a comfortable thought to live with, I get it. But here’s the more important truth.” He waved a hand from himself to Alton, Johnny, and Elise. “We’re gonna keep putting our lives on the line to protect the innocent people on this planet. I don’t really give a damn who likes who. We’re gonna fight the rakul because it’s the r
ight thing to do. If anyone wants to stop us from doing that, well … I have to wonder what it is we’re even fighting for if that’s how little you care for your own world.”

  Johnny clapped him on the back, and Elise stepped confidently to his side, her expression daring anyone to argue.

  “And what if your precious raknoth sell us down the creek to these masters of theirs?” someone called.

  “Then I’ll be standing on your side of the crowd when we find them,” Haldin said. “But there are none of those raknoth here.”

  The crowd weighed his words in a sea of murmurs and whispers. A lot of them even looked half-convinced—or slightly uncertain, at least.

  “Let’s break this up, people,” called a strong voice. Rachel craned her neck to see Commander Daniels pushing into the hallway that led to the council chambers. “The small council is meeting now to get to the bottom of this. Mr. Raish, Mr. Parker, we’d like a word. Immediately.”

  Haldin nodded, his Zen mask firmly back in place. “Of course, Commander Daniels.”

  The crowd parted to let them pass, some of them—particularly the human tree—clearly hesitant to do so.

  “Excuse me,” Johnny said as he shimmied through the crowd after Haldin, Alton, and Elise. “Pardon me. Just trying to save the world. Pardon the inconvenience.”

  As unproductive as poking an already edgy hive was, Rachel couldn’t find it in herself to blame Johnny too much.

  She wasn’t about to fall to the ground licking the Enochians’ boots or anything—and they weren’t expecting it, either—but they had literally flown halfway across the galaxy to risk their necks for these people. Raknoth sidekick or not, the least these soldiers could do was back off and leave the Enochians alone while they continued to bleed for the Resistance and the people of Earth.

  Of course, if she felt so strongly, she certainly could have said so when it had mattered.

  The look Haldin shot her from across the room suggested he was having similar thoughts.

  “Coming?” he sent.

  She swallowed, gave him a nod, and started winding her own way through the slowly dispersing crowd, wondering whose side she was even on anymore and, more importantly, just how much shit the Enochians would be willing to take before they decided to say screw it and just fly home.