Heavy thunder boomed overhead.
“Sir,” Al said in his ear. “Kul’Gada has been spotted heading for the front lines. We’d better get back there.”
Jarek clutched his sword tight, memories of Gada’s unbridled fury setting his shoulder to aching and trickling cold dread down into his gut. But Rachel was back there, and all the others too. They had to stop Gada here—fear be damned.
Brandt told them to get back to Krogoth, he, Drogan, and Lietha apparently having already heard the news of Gada’s approach via the voices in their heads. They spent a precious minute helping him and the humans push Ashida’s soldiers back to restore the line, then they turned and headed for the central battlements at full speed.
Leaving a single raknoth to guard the flank wasn’t ideal, but it might well take all of them to put down Gada, and if they didn’t do that, none of this would matter anyway.
Rain began to patter down in thick droplets as they went, and above, the sky was growing positively foreboding.
Without a doubt, the storm was coming. And, as they raced to the aid of their friends, it looked like it was in no mood to dither.
25
Rachel pointed her staff, gathered her will, and let loose a telekinetic blast that drove one of Haldin’s attackers into the rampart fifteen yards behind. One problem accounted for, Haldin ducked a savage swipe from the other enemy raknoth, sent the creature stumbling into Krogoth’s deadly reach with a telekinetic shove, and whirled into telekinetically catching a live hand grenade and hurling it back over the wall.
A distant boom, a single instant of peace, and then they reset to take their next challengers.
Things had been stable for all of two minutes after Jarek had departed with Drogan and Lietha. With little else to do on the ground, Johnny and Phineas had climbed up onto the battlements to add their firepower to the line. Beyond the wall, intermittent explosions had punctuated the cacophony.
Rachel had hovered near Haldin and Elise, unsure where best to apply herself.
Then the first section of wall had blown inward about thirty yards down the line, and the answer to that question had become far too obvious far too quickly.
The first men through the breach had clearly felt the effects of the cloaking generators, reeling in confusion as the devices severed their connections with Ashida or Gada or whoever was controlling them.
Then the enemy raknoth had come charging in, over and through the wall, and all hell had broken loose.
On either side of the wall, men and women killed each other in droves while raknoth attempted to do the same.
With the considerable aid of Krogoth and his raknoth, Rachel and the Enochians had helped put a sizable dent in the number of intruding enemy raknoth.
The sky had grown dark as they fought, the beginnings of what promised to be a heavy rain joining the rumbles of thunder just in time to greet the arrival of Alaric and a convoy of Resistance forces.
The reinforcements had been a welcome sight—a hopeful one, even. At least until the first cries had gone up.
Kul’Gada had been sighted.
Even Krogoth looked worried for a second. Then he caught the raknoth Haldin had shoved his way and swung his traitorous kin like a flailing bat to smash into another raknoth who’d leapt over the battlements, tore through the men atop, and lunged straight for Krogoth.
That done, Krogoth tilted his rust-red snout skyward and let out a primal roar of challenge that was taken up by his raknoth all along the line. It was the most fearsome sound Rachel had ever heard. Until Gada answered.
She didn’t know—didn’t want to know—how close Gada was on the other side of that wall, but the sound he made seemed to dwarf even the fury of the battle around them, reaching down through her chest and shaking the ground beneath her.
When the Kul’s roar ended, the sounds of the ongoing battle seemed almost mild for its absence. Rachel jabbed at her comm with shaking fingers and snapped a quick report to Al.
“I’ll tell him to hurry back, ma’am,” Al said. “Do be careful over there.”
She didn’t voice the thought that careful might not be enough, just killed the call and turned to fight on alongside Alton and the Enochians, who were facing down two more raknoth.
The rain wasn’t yet steady enough to dampen the small gout of flames Haldin conjured to hurl into one of their faces. The raknoth turned with an aggravated yelp, swatting at his snout, and was promptly met by Elise’s spear in the under jaw. The blade pierced hide, but not deep enough to kill the raknoth.
His ally roared and lunged at Elise, who threw herself to the side, clearing the way for Alton to step in and catch the over-eager raknoth off guard and drive him to the ground.
As Alton set to work severing the spine and removing the head, Haldin moved toward the second raknoth, spear at the ready.
Rachel gathered her energy and was preparing to reach out and tell Haldin she’d pin the raknoth for the killing blow when another stomach-wrenching roar shook the field, and a wave of telepathic pressure crashed down on her.
Gada. He’d crossed into the cloaking generator field. There was no question about it. Nor did there need to be.
As soon as she turned to the wall, Gada’s enormous bulk appeared, flying over the fifteen foot wall with an ease that shouldn’t have been physically possible for a creature of his enormous size.
The rakul slammed down to a landing near Krogoth and his guards, shaking the ground even twenty yards away.
“Hal!” Elise cried to the left.
Rachel looked back in time to see Haldin whirl into blocking a raknoth’s overhead pound with a raised forearm—and, presumably, a considerable dollop of channeled energy, considering his arm didn’t snap like dry kindling as it should’ve.
The raknoth stopped in his tracks, staring in obvious confusion at Haldin’s clearly-not-obliterated forearm. Before it could get over its surprise, Haldin dropped his shoulder into the raknoth’s chest. Rachel added a blast of telekinetic force and sent the creature sailing backward into Alton’s waiting arms.
“We need to help Krogoth,” Haldin sent to them as Alton set to the gritty work of finishing the raknoth.
They fell into a tight group and moved to join Krogoth and his three remaining raknoth guards in circling Gada. The Kul watched with little evident concern for them or the numerous bullets pelting his hide.
Four more raknoth leapt the wall on Gada’s trail. Rachel whipped her staff up and managed to cut one’s jump short with a well-aimed blast. The other three touched down and wasted no time moving in on Krogoth’s raknoth.
Gada chose that moment to spring into action.
In the blink of an eye, the first of Krogoth’s raknoth lay dead on the muddy earth.
Krogoth didn’t stand idly by, though. He followed Gada through his lunge, ducking smoothly under the Kul’s heavy tail, and tore a sizable hunk of flesh from the back of Gada’s right leg with his claws.
Satisfying to watch, but it was going to take more than that to hobble Gada.
The Kul swept his tail at Krogoth—who narrowly avoided the strike— and spun to charge after the raknoth.
Haldin pelted a small fireball at Gada’s face. The Kul barely flinched, but it at least bought Krogoth an extra fraction of a second to throw himself out of Gada’s path.
The Kul rounded on Haldin with an irritated growl. Rachel timed her attack and formed a lance of telekinetic force that buckled Gada’s knee and sent him into a drunken stumble. Elise and Alton circled around while Gada regained his balance, Elise taking the opportunity to harry his wounded flank with her spear.
Around them, more raknoth were closing in, some fighting on Gada’s side, others clearly not. Rachel caught a glimpse of Mosen rushing toward them from across the park alongside a pair of raknoth—drawing back from the eastern flank, apparently. Probably to help deal with Gada. But that hardly mattered now.
The traps. They needed to start driving him toward the traps.
> She looked for the choppy ground where the closer of the concealed traps lay and realized Haldin was already circling around Gada, orienting to be able to push the Kul in the proper direction. Rachel followed along. The others shifted in kind, keeping Gada occupied as they went, apparently understanding the intent.
“Say when,” Rachel sent to Haldin and Elise.
With her senses extended, she could feel the vast pull of energy pouring into the Enochians from their batteries and their surroundings, chilling the rainy air further.
Rachel took her own pull from her batteries and clenched her fists, relishing the crackling power buzzing through her core.
“Now,” came Haldin’s voice.
All at once, she let the energy explode out of her in a column of telekinetic force aimed straight at Gada’s chest. Additional cascades of energy pulsed out beside her—a swift river from Elise and a crushing tsunami from Haldin.
Their triple whammy took Gada off his feet, but when the rakul’s hulking mass slammed back to the earth, he was still a good fifteen yards away from the nearest trap.
More importantly, he was pissed, and Rachel was nursing a seriously spinning head and wobbly knees for her efforts.
Around them, several smaller fights had paused to see what had caused the small earthquake.
“Kill them!” Gada’s voice hissed in her head like a thousand disjointed whispers as he clambered to his feet. “To me, my children! Kill them all!”
Those of Gada’s raknoth who weren’t already nearby soon reconciled their error, launching over the wall and rushing in from multiple directions to answer their master’s call.
“To me, free raknoth of Earth!” Krogoth beamed out for all to hear. “Let us clear the field of these traitors and finish this False Master!”
Gada started after Krogoth with authority—so much so that no one saw it coming when he abruptly changed course and cut down another of Krogoth’s raknoth instead.
On either side of Rachel, their circle was quickly falling away from containing Gada to defending against his reinforcements.
Alton pounced on one of the incoming raknoth, driving him to the ground. Haldin and Elise whirled off to confront another.
For a terrifying stretch, it was only Rachel and Krogoth facing the monstrous Kul, Krogoth taking the brunt of his fury and Rachel running what interference she could.
Then the raknoth Haldin and Elise had engaged came sailing through the air like a live missile and struck the Kul in the back. Gada, expecting an attack, promptly turned and cut his flailing underling in two before his body hit the ground.
Rachel couldn’t help but feel a touch of grim satisfaction watching it play out. That satisfaction took root and began to grow into determination as more of Krogoth’s raknoth arrived from the eastern flank to help with Gada and his raknoth. She caught sight of Alaric nearby, directing his troops into a defensive perimeter around their fight, isolating them with Gada so they could finish him without interference.
All they had to do was get the rampaging monster into the giant hole in the ground.
Rachel began to drift that way as they fought, and the others mirrored her, guiding the Kul swing by swing to his awaiting doom. A little further, and they’d be able to land him in the first pit with another good blast.
Gada stalked after them, either not sensing the ploy or simply not caring. Their reinforcements aside, the Kul probably had good reason to be confident.
Underfoot, the trodden ground was growing more muddy and restrictive by the minute in the thick rain. If they didn’t end this soon, Gada would pick them off one-by-one as they tired and grew too bogged down in the rain and the mud.
A quick backward sweep with her extended senses confirmed she was within a few yards of the pit trap. Unfortunately, that was also when Gada ceased his stalking. He regarded them silently as the war continued to rage on around them.
Then he began to laugh.
It was an odd sound, a series of airy hisses punctuated by brief, low rumbles.
More troubling than the laugh itself, though, was its implication.
“Ah,” Gada hissed, this time out loud. “A trap.”
A crack of thunder punctuated his words, and Rachel’s stomach fell.
“Clever,” Gada said. “So clever.” He leaned toward them, crimson eyes pulsing brighter with what might have been excitement. “But what if I told you that I have a trap of my own?”
Rachel glanced toward the concealed pit, so damned close, and met eyes with Alaric, who’d scooted discreetly over to the trap’s manual switch, ready to spring it by hand if it should fail to activate.
So close. They’d been so goddamned close.
For a long second, there was nothing but the sounds of the fighting raging on around them. Then a cry descended from above, shrill and piercing.
Rachel risked a glance upward and caught a glimpse of a craft not unlike the Enochians’ ship descending from the dark clouds. There was the flicker of motion—something falling from the craft—then Krogoth was grabbing her and they were flying away from the pit.
What the hell was the bastard think—
A flash of brilliant orange. The air split with a tremendous boom. A torrent of hot air slammed into them, and then they were hitting the ground, rolling to a rough, jarring halt.
Farther down the line, a second explosion lit the night.
Rachel tried to scramble out from under Krogoth, her head reeling from the blast. Krogoth ignored her struggles for a second, then scrambled to his feet and pulled her up after him.
She nearly pitched over as her weight settled back on her shocked legs. Then she took in the damage, and shock twisted to nausea in her gut.
Twenty yards off to the left, Alton was crouched over Haldin and Elise, his back badly burnt, trying to pull them to their stunned feet. Gada stalked toward the three of them, steady and confident despite his own blackened right flank.
To the right, the traps were in shambles—the thin decoy covers of soil and earth caved in, gouts of blue flame licking up from the exposed pits to join the more steady orange flames that burned almost cheerily in the wake of whatever had been dropped from that ship. Even at a distance, the heat was intense.
And all they had now was a pair of big fiery holes in the ground.
It was possible the proper lids might still be triggered to slide over the pits and trap Gada inside, but good luck getting him in there now that they’d lost the chance of surprise. Even then, it’d probably require manual activation now that—
Shit. Alaric.
She scanned to the right of the pits, where she’d last seen the commander standing.
There.
He lay still, tendrils of smoke drifting up from his stringy gray hair and his battered long coat. Clearly, he’d taken some serious heat in the explosions. But not nearly as much as the charred, limp figure draped over him.
Mosen.
A roar to the left snapped her addled attention back to the moment.
Krogoth was charging Gada’s turned back, Alton stepping away from a recovering Haldin and Elise to approach the Kul from the front.
Gada sprang forward, only to come to an abrupt halt and round on Krogoth instead. The Zar saw it coming and was ready to duck Gada’s swipe. What Krogoth wasn’t ready for was Gada’s feint.
In mid-swipe, the Kul broke and spun clockwise, catching Krogoth with a powerful tail slap that sent the raknoth flying.
Alton hopped back just in time to avoid the follow-through swipe Gada aimed at him, then returned a hard kick to the Kul’s lowered head. Gada spun with the kick and tried his luck with another tail whip. Alton managed to jump over the heavy appendage, but that only left him floating helplessly in the air as Gada completed the revolution and came around with another bladed strike.
The blow caught Alton at mid-thigh and took both of his legs.
He smacked to the ground with a very human cry. Gada followed, ready to finish him, but then Alton sprang back
, yanked seemingly by thin air, and landed beside Haldin, who was on his feet now, looking seriously pissed.
The closest of the fires that had spread from the explosions at the pits died out around Haldin as he gathered energy, preparing to let loose.
Rachel started forward on shaky feet to help but froze when a horrible shriek cut through the air, just like the one that had preceded the blast. The sound made Rachel want to curl up and cover her ears, and the thing that fell from the sky with it only deepened the desire.
It slammed down beside the pits with ground-shaking force that sent a circle of mud and rainwater exploding out from the point of impact. The creature was shorter than Gada, but not by much, and nearly as wide as it was tall. The initial appearance of a swirling, amorphous blob soon resolved into the wriggling movements of hundreds of tentacles ranging in size from the width of a small finger to that of a tree trunk, the thickest tentacles extending down to the ground—not unlike legs.
From the depths of the countless slithering appendages, a pair of large, burning red eyes stared out at them.
Before they had time to process the shock of the thing or properly wonder where the hell it had come from, Krogoth came barreling in to attack it.
At the same time, Gada took advantage of their surprise and lunged for Haldin.
Helpless shock ensnared Rachel as Haldin turned, focus broken, hands shooting up in an action that screamed pure, useless reflex, eyes betraying, for the first time, the fear of the terrified teenager that still resided in there.
The one who was about to die.
Rachel couldn’t move, couldn’t process anything but that look in Haldin’s eyes, the look of finality, of—
Elise slammed into Haldin in a low tackle and drove him clear of Gada’s path like the world’s smallest freight train.
Rachel felt an instantaneous flood of relief at the Kul’s frustrated cry. Then horror at Elise’s agonized one.
The Enochians hit the ground together. Haldin bounced straight to his feet and back to his senses, coming into a protective crouch over Elise.
On the ground, Elise wasn’t moving. Haldin bent to check on her, trying to keep an eye on Gada at the same time.
The Complete Harvesters Series Page 80
