Reaping Day: Book Three of the Harvesters Series

by Luke R. Mitchell

  “I feel compelled to point out that this is coming from the guy who’s currently playing a crucial role in helping us prepare for said war-making.”

  Pryce cocked his head. “I’d like to think we just had the misfortune to be born in the middle of some great equilibration. Even steady-state systems need time to stabilize after perturbation, you know. In the grand scheme of things, if that means a few millennia of ugliness to achieve a future that doesn’t end with the mutual annihilation of, well, everything …” He shrugged. “I can be okay with that.”

  Rachel waited to see if he’d continue. Then, when he made no sign of doing so, “I’m not sure that really answers my question.”

  He gave her a wan smile. “I’m sure it doesn’t.”

  She shook her head, part bemused, part exasperated. “You’re a strange old man, you know that?”

  By way of reply, Pryce only gave her a friendly pat on the leg and walked away whistling a tune she recognized after a few moments as the older-than-dirt classic, Dust in the Wind.

  Twenty-One

  If commercial advertisements or the global market had still been things, Jarek would have signed up in a heartbeat to be the poster child for Drogan’s Old-Fashioned Miracle Spit. Just five days after Kul’Gada had smitten his bloody body into the snows of the Himalayas, Jarek crawled out of his bed in medical for the last time and gingerly windmilled his injured arm to the tune of his doctor’s exasperated protests. There was still plenty of pain, but nothing popped or tore out of place.

  Good enough in his book.

  Even if the world hadn’t literally been coming to an end, he couldn’t have taken any more of the waiting. He hadn’t had a proper visitor since his oh-so-interesting talk with Drogan. The fact that his friends were all busy prepping to save the world out there didn’t lessen his desire to get back to the action. And neither did the message Rachel had sent him the previous night, implying in a roundabout way that she was maybe-sort-of-kind-of sorry about having avoided him these past few days and promising she was going to have a special surprise waiting for him when he was ready.

  He’d spent the night eagerly thinking and dreaming about the implications. At least until he’d woken up to an odd-hour message from Pryce emphatically promising much the same thing. That had somewhat dulled the excitement.

  Either Fela was getting an upgrade, or he was in for some traumatizing shit.

  Drogan had been back the day after their little mishap to provide a dose of slobbery healing goodness with a liberal side of determined silence outside of the necessary communications. This morning, though, the raknoth had been at least mildly more responsive to Jarek’s comments before informing Jarek he’d done his best and now it was up to Jarek to finish restoring his own pathetic, squishy meat suit to fighting shape.

  Granted, it was a bit of a jump to get past little chestnuts like immortality and requiring human blood to live, but, despite their differences, Jarek would almost go so far as to say he and Drogan were slowly developing something of a friendly rapport—ish.

  That, or he’d read entirely too much affection into Drogan’s “banter”.

  Hell, maybe Jarek really was hurting for friends.

  An arcanist, a digital construct, a bunch of humans from another planet, a crazy old tinkerer, and now a raknoth …

  Nah. He was doing just fine.

  Right now, though, all he really cared about was getting back to doing something that wasn’t walking aimlessly around HQ or lying in bed waiting for the hurting to stop.

  So once he’d dressed for the day, he headed for the common room and climbed up to the new groundside exit, determined to huff it over to Pryce’s and get his lungs working.

  Inside and out, the base was alive with activity. Resistance soldiers busied themselves unloading, organizing, and repairing weapons and other equipment. Others were hard at work erecting fortifications around the base in preparation for whatever was coming. From what little he’d heard, things were even busier over at casa de Krogoth, where their wise leaders were hoping to force the inevitable confrontation.

  The bustle was a poignant reminder that Gada was five days closer to pulling off whatever he must be up to. Unless the rakul had simply decided to wait for his eleven backup monsters before striking again, that was. Jarek couldn’t imagine the other rakul would be much further behind.

  Either way, time was running out.

  He was headed in the direction of the recently-completed south gate and preparing to kick it up to a jog when Pryce’s truck pulled around a nearby line of shipping crates headed the other way, toward the less populated corner of the base where Jarek’s ship was still parked. It wasn’t Pryce in the truck, though, he realized as it passed by, but Rachel.

  He turned and jogged after her as she continued on and pulled the truck up beside Jarek’s ship. She still hadn’t spotted him as she hopped out and turned back for her staff.

  It wasn’t until Fela unfurled and stood up in the truck bed and Al called, “Good morning, sir,” that Rachel jolted upright and looked around to see him approaching.

  Their eyes met, and his heart leapt in a way that had nothing to do with the jogging. It probably would have irritated him more if Rachel hadn’t looked every bit as flustered as he suddenly felt—and then some.

  He tried to relax and focus on Fela as Al hopped the exo from the truck bed down to the pavement and awaited Jarek’s arrival.

  “Ah,” Jarek said. “A fresh pressed suit. Just what the Jarek ordered.”

  Al shifted to put Fela’s shoulder on display, and Jarek took a closer look at the patch job. The damage had been bad, he knew, but Pryce had done a good job with it, as usual. The new right shoulder plate was a bit bulkier than the original, but not obnoxiously so.

  “How’s that shoulder handling, buddy?”

  “I might ask you the same question, sir. But our fix is workable. Not great, but workable. Might I suggest not being mauled by the galaxy-conquering dinosaur next time?”

  “You might,” Jarek said.

  “I dunno,” Rachel said, drawing up beside Fela with a hesitant grin. “‘Not great but workable’ kinda sounds like just your style.”

  “Style being the operative word there, I think,” Jarek said.

  She shrugged. “Everyone’s entitled to their own opinion, I suppose. How’s the shoulder? You look like a raknoth spit on you.”

  “Oh, you know”—Jarek did a demonstrative windmill—“not great. But workable.”

  She smiled, but the silence stretched a bit too long, and some of that nervous discomfort crept back in.

  Rachel shifted her focus to her staff, fidgeting. “I, uh, guess we might have a few things to talk about, but … surprise first?”

  Much as he’d resented being kept at arm’s distance these past days, now that she was here in front of him, Jarek was in no hurry to see Rachel do anything but smile for the time being.

  So he made a show of glancing around at the not-so-faraway work crews and said, in a hushed tone, “Like, here? Right now?”

  She wagged her eyebrows with more sarcasm than Jarek would’ve thought possible. “If you think you can handle it. How are you with your left hand?”

  “Oh, you bad girl …” He rubbed his palms together and clapped a hand on Fela’s shoulder. “Either there’s a sword waiting for me in that truck or I’m about to be one very happy man.”

  As it turned out, there was a sword waiting for him in that truck.

  “Eh,” Jarek said as Rachel uncovered the weapon that had been wrapped safely next to Fela for the ride, “I guess I’m still a pretty happy man.”

  “Hey”—Rachel hefted the weapon up from the truck bed with a mild effort—“I just got done playing with your Whacker all night long. What else could you want?”

  Jarek eyed the weapon more closely. “Huh. Color me intrigued.”

  The blade was sheathed, but it looked slightly smaller than his Whacker, and it had a slight inward curve, like a gigantic
kukri, or maybe a kopsis or some other similar sword Pryce would be able to name for god knew why.

  Technical distinctions aside, Jarek was pretty confident about one thing. The curved blade would be all the better for lopping off rakul limbs.

  He accepted the sword from Rachel and actually listened to her advice to mind his shoulder as he drew it. The blade was indeed curved, and quite wicked-looking. It felt heavy in his bedrested arms. It was heavy compared to any standard sword—maybe fifteen pounds or so—but the balance wasn’t bad, and it wasn’t intended to be used without Fela anyway.

  Most intriguing of all were the several glyphs etched on the flat face of the blade, not unlike those on Rachel’s staff and bullet catcher. And there, right near the cross guard, someone—almost definitely Pryce—had etched into the side of the blade, shallow but readily legible: Big Whacker 2.0

  “Yes!” Jarek cried, thrusting the blade triumphantly skyward. “Long live the Big Whacker!”

  Rachel snorted. Al clapped ceremoniously with Fela’s hands.

  Jarek slowly lowered the blade, trying not to wince at the pangs in his shoulder. “So, uh, what does it do?”

  “Hopefully not break, for starters. But there’s more.”

  “Do go on.”

  She nodded toward Fela and the ship. “Why don’t you suit up and find out for yourself?”

  He sheathed the blade. “Tease a guy, why don’t you. To the ship, Al! I need to be inside of you.”

  “I do hope you mean Fela, sir,” Al said as he remotely keyed the ship ramp open and marched the suit over.

  “You’re sure you’re up for this?” Rachel asked, following along behind. “I don’t want you to rip an arm off swinging a sword around too soon.”

  “I’ll be careful.”

  For some reason, neither Al nor Rachel seemed particularly convinced by that one, but Rachel was clearly burning to see her and Pryce’s creation in action as well.

  Aboard the ship, Jarek began to strip down without a thought. There was only one way to properly don Fela, and clothes—at least beyond briefs—were not a part of it.

  “You look a lot better,” Rachel said quietly behind him.

  When he looked, she’d turned away to sit at the open boarding ramp while he changed. He grinned at her chivalrous attempt to protect his modesty and stepped into Fela’s embrace.

  Once suited, he took up the Big Whacker 2.0, giddy with excitement, and plunked down the ramp. He spun the blade through a few experimental arcs. The discomfort in his shoulder wasn’t crippling, but it was enough that he shifted to lefty for the next try.

  “You like it?” Rachel asked.

  He whipped it through one last arc and smiled at her. “It’s perfect.” He ran his thumb over one of the glyphs. “I’m still not sure what it does, though.”

  She gave him an impish grin. “Flip the switch on the pommel.”

  He did.

  Nothing happened—unless he counted Rachel growing visibly excited.

  “Flip the switch and …?”

  She wiggled her brows, and this time there was nothing sarcastic about it. “Give it a swing, big guy. Just be careful.”

  He frowned at the sword, shrugged, and spun it through another series of arcs.

  It was as if the blade were suddenly moving through a vat of molasses instead of air. Even stranger was the heat that radiated from the blade’s length, beating onto the sensors in Fela’s forearms.

  “Uh …” He looked from the blade to Rachel. “What?”

  Her smile widened. “Come on, man! A real swing. Put that suit’s back into it! You know, carefully though.”

  Jarek willed his faceplate shut more for affect than anything. “I feel like you’re giving me mixed signals here, Goldilocks.”

  With that, he set his feet, took a two-handed grip with his good arm in the lead, and stepped into a heavy overhand strike. Once again, the invisible molasses field pulled against the blade, but he swung hard enough that the strike still fell as fast as any swordsmen could’ve managed with a normally weighted sword.

  A flash of azure light seared the air inches in front of the blade’s path as it fell. That alone nearly jostled a surprised cry from his throat, but the gust of heat that swept over his arms and chest finished the job.

  “Holy shit!”

  Afterward, he stared dumbly at the blade, registering the smell of ozone in the air.

  He turned slowly to Rachel, who was watching him with a satisfied smile. “Goldilocks … did you just build me a lightsaber?”

  She wrinkled her nose. “There might be a copyright issue in there somewhere, but yeah—I got about as close as I could think to.”

  He willed his faceplate open. “I think I’m in love.”

  Her eyebrows crept upward as if by their own accord as she searched his face. Something about the expression made her look younger and more beautiful than she ever had.

  “With the sword,” she said, half-question, half-statement.

  He tilted his head, holding her stare. “We could go with that.”

  Her throat shifted in a visible swallow, her gaze pulling at him until he’d all but forgotten the sword in his hand. “So,” she finally said, “do you, uh … wanna go cut something?”

  The tension rushed out of his chest in a series of airy chuckles. “You bet your ass, I do.” He looked around the shipping yard like a dog at a butcher’s shop. “How hot does it get? Think it can cut through one of these shipping crates?”

  She shot an uncertain look at a distant crate. “I think so. Pretty much, the harder you swing it, the hotter it gets, right up until it caps out around ‘ridiculously freaking hot.’ You need to take it easy though. Don’t hurt yourself.”

  Jarek turned on his heel and darted off with a bark of laughter. After days of bed rest, the freedom of moving with Fela’s power wrapped around him was like heaven. He veered toward a shipping crate whose door stood ajar, calculated distance, made a small stagger step to adjust, and lunged into a hefty top-down diagonal slice.

  The blade fell in a flash of heat and azure light. The sword barely even kicked in his hand, but then the top corner of the crate door was falling.

  The hunk of corrugated steel hit the ground with a crash, its severed edge a trail of glowing molten metal that matched the one left on the downsized door.

  “Hell yeah!” Jarek shouted.

  He danced through a few turns, putting the blade through a smooth series of flourishes and hard strokes that brought the blade alive with glowing energy.

  With each swing, the extra resistance seemed more and more of a non-issue. He merely had to remember to expect it and think a little further in advance to keep the movements smooth and flowing.

  He flipped the pommel switch to the off position and strolled back over to Rachel and the ship.

  He spun the sword through a few more loops, felt the blade to make sure it wasn’t too hot, then stepped up the ramp and slid it neatly into the sheath Rachel held out for him. “This is amazing, Rache.”

  She looked up at him, the sword lingering in their combined grasp for a stretch before Jarek moved the weapon to the side and stepped in closer to her. Before either of them could break the silence, he stroked her cheek with his thumb and bent to kiss her forehead.

  “Thank you.”

  She tilted her head back to meet his eyes, and something in his chest tried to do a barrel roll. She was just so damned cute when she bit her lip like that. Her hands slid slowly around his sides, and the hunger built until he couldn’t contain himself.

  He wrapped a hand behind her head and pulled her into a kiss. She lingered on the threshold for a second, hesitating. Then her arms tightened around him, casting aside all pretenses of self-restraint. Jarek dropped the sword on his recliner and slipped the free hand around the small of her back.

  When she pressed into him, he looped his arm the rest of the way around her waist and hoisted her off the ground, pulling one leg up to his side. She went with the mo
tion and hooked her feet behind his back, their lips never parting for a moment. He slapped blindly at the wall, head spinning with raw need, until he found the switch to close the boarding ramp, and then he carried them into the cabin, pulling Rachel’s jacket off along the way.

  That was when Al decided to clear his throat in Jarek’s earpiece.

  He set Rachel down on the bed. “Run along, Mr. Robot.”

  Fela sprang open with a series of hard clicks and peeled away from his body. He stepped out, leaving nothing but the fabric of his briefs between him and Rachel.

  Behind him, Fela stood and jogged up to the cockpit to Al’s cries of, “Not looking! Not looking!”

  “Just go watch a movie in cyberland or something, you big baby!” Jarek called after him. He turned back to Rachel and saw hesitation creeping into her expression.

  He took her hands and pulled her to her feet.

  “We shouldn’t,” she whispered. “I—”

  He wrapped his arms around her waist and kissed her, relishing the feel of her all the more now that it was through his own hands rather than Fela’s tactile sensors. Slowly, inch by inch, she softened until her body was molded to his.

  When the faint moan escaped her, he lost control.

  They were on the cot before he knew it, twisting and twining in a desperate race to press their bodies together as completely as possible. Her shirt came off, and they pressed together again, the smooth warmth of her skin against his driving his brain in wild circles until he could barely see straight.

  They pulled hungrily at each other, too lost in the urgency of the moment to take more coherent action than simply mashing their bodies together.

  Unbidden, the memory sprang to mind of Drogan muttering something about mashing faces together like filthy humans, and Jarek laughed before he could stop himself.

  Rachel stiffened against him. “What?”

  “No, nothing,” he said quickly. “It’s nothing.”