Drogan nodded as if this were something he’d already thought over more than once. “They do not. But that does not mean they are absent fear. Not even if they have forgotten that fear themselves.”
Rachel frowned at a particularly gnarly tree in the field they were passing. “Is this one of those immortal things my puny human brain can’t hope to adequately comprehend?”
The hint of a smile touched at Drogan’s mouth. “It is possible. Though, as it is difficult for you to understand the perspective of one who has lived for thousands of years, so too is it problematic for me to recall my own capacity for understanding such feelings in the first few decades of my own existence. It’s been awhile, as you might say.”
“I kinda get it.” She frowned. “I think. But let’s start with the basics, then. What exactly do the rakul even have to be afraid of in the first place?”
“Again—”
“The same things as the rest of us,” Rachel said, “I get it. But you’re gonna tell me they intended to wipe out humanity because they were afraid we were some kind of threat?”
“Yes,” Drogan said. “Not now, clearly, and maybe not for several of your millennia to come, but mankind exhibited every sign of eventually becoming a genuine threat to the galactic dominance of the rakul.” He tilted his head. “Provided you did not fall into the not-uncommon pattern of eradicating your own species before it could reach that stage.”
“Yeah, someone kinda beat us to the punch there,” Rachel muttered. “Fine. So they’re committing, what? Preemptive genocide?”
“That is one way to perceive it.”
“Well, that’s…” Rachel shook her head, uncertain how to adequately capture the sentiment.
Fucked up didn’t quite seem to cut it.
“What’s the point of even living if that’s your legacy?” Rachel asked when she’d given up on expressing her revulsion.
“Your question betrays the belief intrinsic to most young species—that there should be any point to existence at all.”
Rachel stared at him, looking for some sign of insincerity. “You’re saying you don’t believe there is?”
“Why should I? It is a vain belief, and one that grows more tedious with each passing year, each passing planet. We simply choose existence over the alternative. The rest follows, and the cycle perpetuates.”
Jesus. Remind her never to let a raknoth try to talk someone off the edge.
She was about to point out that being nihilists only made what they did that much more fucked up when she registered the last thing he’d said.
“Cycle? What cycle?”
Drogan seemed to be amused by the question. “We may seem ancient by virtue of our lifespans, but I will point out that the oldest of the rakul is not so much older than the civilization of mankind. Where the age of the universe itself is concerned, we are still but hatchlings.”
“Point being?”
“That we were hardly the first beings to dominate The Void,” Drogan said, shooting her a look that might’ve been condescending.
She was too busy contemplating the implications to care.
“There were others? Before the rakul?” She frowned, considering the entirety of his story. “Were your people…?”
She trailed off, looking around in confusion as Drogan slowed the car and guided them over to a halt at the side of the road.
All she saw were more houses, more fields, and, maybe half a mile ahead, a crappy little saloon that looked like it was two light breezes from crumbling to the ground.
Judging from the way Drogan was staring ahead and sniffing the air through his cracked driver’s side window, though, something interesting was afoot.
“What is it?” she asked.
He wrinkled his nose and turned to her with a wary expression.
“We walk from here.”
22
When Krogoth called the convoy to a halt a mere fifty miles from the rakul they’d too-narrowly left behind, Jarek had been as alarmed as the rest of his people. Then Krogoth had explained himself, and they’d all dropped their arguments and obediently funneled into the old ramshackle saloon they’d stopped at to keep out of sight while Krogoth and his raknoth went over each and every one of them from head to toe.
The problem at this point, as Krogoth explained, was only half in outrunning the three Kul and whichever of their brethren they might’ve already alerted before their ship had been destroyed. The other half was making sure they weren’t leading the rakul straight to Cheyenne.
It seemed that, aside from being physically dangerous and virtually impossible to kill, Wriggles—or Kul’Vermaga, as Krogoth identified him—was capable of controlling and communicating with every little wriggly bit of himself, be they near or far. Worse, Krogoth was worried that each of Vermaga’s units might possess enough of his power to be able to exert some telepathic influence over unprotected minds.
And, as if that all wasn’t bad enough already, they could also multiply.
Once Krogoth had laid it out, no one had argued with his instructing his raknoth to conduct a full sweep. Turns out, it had been a wise fear to have.
The raknoth had already found several of the wormy little things crawling around in their vehicles and half a dozen more clinging to their people in various bags and pockets. Each one they found, they crushed and tossed into the small garbage-can fire they kindled up.
Which made it twice they all would’ve been dead if it hadn’t been for Krogoth.
No. For Krogoth and Mosen . . .
For the hundredth time in the past half-hour, Jarek’s hands curled into painfully tight fists, fruitlessly seeking some purchase to keep him from plummeting into the black hole of guilt—or at least a Kul throat to choke about it.
He’d done his best. Done everything he could to see his people safely through to Cheyenne.
How the rakul had even managed to track them down was still a mystery, but that only made things worse. Because, without knowing where they’d messed up, Jarek couldn’t shut out the thoughts whispering that, maybe, if he’d done things differently—traveled at different hours, taken a more roundabout route…
Maybe he could have saved them.
But it was too late now.
Mosen was dead, along with five more of their group who’d died trying to hold against Vermaga while Jarek had been busy getting his ass handed to him by Gada and the gargoyle—or Kul’Ogrin as Krogoth had called the big gray monstrosity.
And here it had only been a few days ago that Jarek had been thinking life would be so much easier if he could simply drop Mosen from his plate of worries. As it already had several times in the past hour, shame burned hot in his cheeks and throat.
Those few short days felt more like a lifetime now.
Worst of all was the fact that Alaric had found them just in time to see his son ripped away. As heavy as Mosen’s sacrifice rested on Jarek’s shoulders, looking at Alaric now…
Jarek wished the wiry old commander would say something. Anything. Hell, he would’ve taken Alaric coming at him with fist or bullet over nothing.
But nothing was all Alaric seemed capable of right now.
He just sat at the bar, stringy gray hair unkempt, an untouched bottle of whiskey sitting forgotten in his hands as he stared with unseeing eyes into the depths of a personal hell Jarek could only guess at.
Commander Daniels sat beside Alaric with an arm draped over his shoulders, not bothering to try with words.
The only shred of light—paltry as it seemed in the face of everything else—was Al’Brandt, who’d told Jarek, between sweeping the troops for Vermaga’s pieces, that he’d been with Rachel and the others less than a week ago.
It wasn’t much Jarek didn’t already know—that they’d fled the rakul in Pittsburgh and opted to try their luck with Johnny’s recommendation of the Cheyenne Mountain bunker. But it was more of a relief than Jarek would have expected to hear the story confirmed from another mouth.
Jare
k wasn’t the only one for whom Brandt’s presence had been a blessing either, from the sound of it. A day after having ditched the ship he’d used to distract any rakul pursuing Rachel and the others out of Pittsburgh, Brandt had found Krogoth’s group on foot and informed them of the new objective, Cheyenne Mountain.
Looking at it all from a bird’s eye view, it seemed a minor miracle any of them were still alive at this point.
But they were alive. Soon they’d be back together with the rest of their allies. And from there…
From there, they had a small army, a dozen pairs of claws, an arcanist, and one Big Whacker that all said the rakul were going to bleed long and deep if they wanted to take this planet.
Jarek held the thought in his mind like a mantra, pushing it over and over again against the thoughts of Mosen and the rakul no doubt closing on them as the raknoth finished sweeping their people for bits of Vermaga.
He’d almost convinced himself he had the guilt and doubt under control for the time being when Brandt tensed next to him and threw a steaming pile of dread over his burgeoning zen.
It couldn’t be. Not again. Not so soon.
But across the room, Krogoth was perked up too now, testing the air with his short, rust-red snout.
Give them a fucking break.
Krogoth caught Jarek’s and Brandt’s stares and nodded toward the front door, opposite the rusty kitchen they’d entered from the back parking lot.
Jarek and Brandt traded a dark look and moved for the door together.
The open space of the saloon, already somber enough in the aftermath of their near escape, dropped to dead silence as everyone caught on that something was up.
The silence only emphasized the pounding of Jarek’s heart and the fire in his shoulder and back as he reached back to draw the Whacker.
They were nearly to the door when Jarek heard it. The patter of footsteps in the dirt lot outside, quieter than he would’ve been able to hear without Fela’s sensors. And they were headed their way.
Krogoth appeared at Jarek’s left shoulder, listening as well.
It was two people, from the sound of it. One clearly heavier than the other judging from the creak of the wooden deck out front.
Heavier, maybe, but not so heavy as to believe it was two rakul outside.
Jarek exchanged a hopeful look with Brandt and Krogoth, some of the tension bleeding out of their faces.
Not rakul.
And if it wasn’t the rakul…
A new hope fluttered in his chest, as cautious as it was unlikely.
He grabbed the door handle. Waited for Krogoth’s affirmative nod. Then he threw the door open, shooting through the doorway, sword at the ready.
As hopeful as he’d been, he wasn’t ready for the relief that poured through him at the sight of the glyph-etched staff in his face and Rachel’s wide eyes behind it.
He gasped, scared to even move for a moment.
Then he pushed her staff aside and wrapped her in a desperate hug.
This was a trick, his mind whispered. He was hallucinating. He’d died back in front of that farmhouse.
But Rachel was still there, solid and real in his arms, and—
“Can’t… breathe…” she wheezed, and yet her staff had fallen to the deck, and her arms clung to him just as tightly.
He loosened his hold incrementally and pulled back just enough to take her in, his throat aching with emotion as she looked up at him with wide hazel eyes.
“Michael?” she whispered.
Jarek nodded, struggling to find words at first. “He’s inside. He’s okay.”
Rachel closed her eyes and let out a heavy breath of relief, then she looked back up at him and tapped his faceplate. “And you? I’m not getting Al-swapped right now, am I?”
“Perish the thought, ma’am,” Al said through Fela’s speakers while Jarek willed his faceplate open.
To his own two eyes, Rachel looked even more beautiful, her eyes and skin somehow more alive with a subtle palette of soft tones no sensor-to-display interface could ever perfectly recreate.
The sight of his face, apparently, wasn’t quite so relieving to her.
“Jesus,” she said, reaching up to touch lightly at his left cheek. “Did you try to kill a Kul with your cheekbones or something?”
He almost smiled before the reminder of the bruise’s source hit him like another of Mosen’s punches.
“Something like that,” he said, thinking of Alaric sitting mutely at the bar.
The sound of a throat clearing yanked them back to their surroundings, where they had faces staring at them through the windows and three raknoth standing around them, including—
“Stumpy!” Jarek cried.
Drogan furtively extended a fist in invitation for a fist bump.
“Aw, bring it in, you old stumpy bastard,” Jarek said, swatting the fist aside and wrapping the stunned raknoth in a back-thumping hug.
When Jarek pulled back, Drogan’s entire body was comically rigid. Krogoth, Brandt, and the few other raknoth watching through the windows all looked like they weren’t quite sure whether to be disgusted with Drogan or to laugh at him.
“We should move,” Krogoth said, looking back at the sea of curious faces in the saloon. “Kul’Vermaga will have felt us disposing of his little spies. They will not tarry in reaching this place.”
Drogan stiffened anew at that. “Kul’Vermaga tracks you?”
“Back to the vehicles,” Krogoth called into the saloon. Then, in a quieter tone to Drogan, “We have dealt with it as best we presently can, brother. Kul’Gada and Kul’Ogrin come as well, and likely others by now.”
“Cursed Void,” Drogan growled under his breath, exchanging a dark look with Rachel.
“You tangled with three of them?” Rachel asked. “How’d you get away?”
Jarek’s gaze tracked in Alaric’s direction by its own accord only to find the saloon wall instead. “Long story.”
“One we’d best save until we’re behind thicker walls,” came Commander Daniels’ strong voice from the doorway.
Jarek turned to see that most of their people had already cleared back out to the vehicles. Which meant they should probably cut this off and get moving.
Understandably, though, Daniels had to quietly first ask, after a nervous glance back toward Alaric, “Lea?”
“She’s safe,” Rachel said. “And worried sick about you.”
“Thank God,” Daniels breathed.
“Sounds like it’s high-time for a reunion,” Jarek said.
“Splendid,” Krogoth said in a tone that sounded anything but splendiferous. “Let us move out, then.”
Rachel shared a knowing look with Drogan, the faintest hint of a satisfied grin tugging at her mouth.
“Zach is gonna be so pissed.”
23
In the race to Cheyenne Mountain, no speed limits were observed, and no accelerator pedals spared. Jarek sat clutching Rachel’s hand in the back of the rearmost truck in their convoy, only silently allowing himself to hope they might make it to safety without pursuit. As much as the Al-trained side of his brain insisted the concept of a jinx was utterly ridiculous bullshit, some less logical corner whispered that he’d be a fool to say the words aloud—or to even think them too intently—and risk inviting disaster down on their heads.
It was that stupid superstitious bit that whispered a gleeful little Told you so! when Drogan stiffened on the bench opposite them.
“My kin have spotted aerial pursuit.”
Everyone else in the back of the truck sat up a little straighter, checking weapons and trading woeful looks. Not that Jarek blamed them on the last part.
If woe was anyone, it was absolutely them right now.
He grasped the release lever on the truck’s rear hatch. “Everyone secure?”
After the round of somber affirmatives, he pulled.
The door slid up into the ceiling compartment by its own power, opening their view to a wide
square of cloudy blue sky. And there, streaming through those distant clouds like a prowling shark, was their aerial pursuit.
A rakul ship. He didn’t want to know how many of the bastards might be on board.
“Shit,” Rachel said.
“It will be a close race,” Drogan agreed.
A very close race, it turned out, as the truck hung a right and practically begged the pursuing ship to make use of its aerial freedom to take the direct hypotenuse between their silly little human roads. The winding of the current road only worsened matters.
“Tell me we’re close,” Jarek said.
“Three-point-four miles, sir,” Al said through Fela’s speakers. “Uphill.”
Jarek groaned. “You just had to include that last part, didn’t you?”
“It felt pertinent, sir.”
“They will likely catch us,” Drogan said.
“Well aren’t we just a happy bunch of downers today,” Jarek muttered.
Rachel stiffened as if she’d just remembered something important. “The landmines.”
Drogan waved her concern away. “I have already informed my brothers throughout the convoy.”
Rachel partially relaxed and looked at Jarek. “See how much simpler things would be if you were a telepath?”
“Hey, I can do mind stuff.” He closed his faceplate with a careful thought and spread his hands as if to say Ta-da!
Rachel’s response was cut short by Drogan’s growl, which drew their attention back to their closing pursuit. Icy panic shot through Jarek’s gut at the sight of the thing plummeting from the ship.
It was still a fair distance away, but the shape was unmistakable. It was the same one that had been haunting his nightmares since it had chased him and Michael out of HQ a few weeks prior. A hairless, quadrupedal monstrosity that could only vaguely be compared to some mix between a wolf and a bear.
A giant, jacked one who probably ate real bears for breakfast.
“Kul’Harga,” Drogan growled as the cracking thud of the thing’s landing carried to them through the green roadside foliage.
A dissonant, alien bellow filled the air, declaring Harga’s hunt in session.
The Complete Harvesters Series Page 103
