The furry plane of Mada’s back shifted below them as they fought, tilting steeper, steeper, until they nearly had to find handholds to avoid falling.
Mada was mounting the mountain, Jarek realized. Perhaps intending to go squish Krogoth and his raknoth underfoot. Or maybe just to stomp until The Complex collapsed below.
Whether that was physically possible or not, Jarek couldn’t really fathom. He didn’t want to find out. But before they could stop Mada, they had to get Ogrin and Gada off their backs—or off Mada’s, at least.
Jarek was drawing back to hack at Ogrin’s exposed flank when a sonorous crack from below startled all of them.
With a sound like a watermelon hitting pavement from a ten story drop, a section of Mada’s enormous head exploded outward in a shower of dark blood, shattered skull, and god knew what else.
Jarek’s brain had only begun to register that something had shot the Kul—something big—when Mada pitched sideways with a mournful bellow.
Jarek wasn’t ready for it. He had nothing to grab. Nothing to stabilize with. He caught a glimpse of Drogan holding Rachel in one arm and clinging to Mada’s fur with the other. Then gravity took him past the tipping point, and he was tumbling for open sky.
“Jarek!”
Rachel’s shout. Too distant.
He tucked and spun as fast as he could, free hand flailing wildly for something—anything—as he tried to reorient his feet downward. The world spun. His stomach quailed in protest.
Something brushed his hand.
He grabbed and squeezed. Held on for dear life. A handful of Mada’s thick hairs yanked his descent to a halt—or nearly to a halt, at least, before they tore free with a dry ripping sound.
The next handful held. Then Mada hit the mountainside, and for a second, Jarek was thrown against the furry wall of the Kul’s bulk so hard that he couldn’t have fallen even if he’d let go. He only barely managed to hold onto the Whacker through the impact. Then Mada moved through a series of colossal shifts, and he nearly had to ditch the blade anyway in favor of a second handful of furry lifeline.
When the madness stopped, he strapped the sword to his back and grabbed another furry handhold. He was suspended maybe a third of the way down Mada’s front right leg, which still put him probably a good eighty feet off the ground. The enormous Kul seemed to have stabilized itself, despite the small hole that’d just been blown through his head.
And as for who’d blown said hole through said head…
Jarek saw them below now—several men in a frenzy of activity by a few trucks at the mouth of the south portal, working around a car-sized heap of metal, coils, and cables that had to be Pryce’s railgun. They must’ve moved it out with one of the trucks.
And there, right beside the thing, snapping commands and tapping away at a tablet, was Pryce. James was there too, and Michael and Chambers, helping the Enochian load something into the rear end of the big weapon.
No sooner had Jarek recognized his friends than Ogrin swooped down overhead, bound straight for them.
“No!” he shouted.
There was nothing he could do—nothing but to watch helplessly.
The gargoyle slammed to a hard landing and slapped Pryce across the asphalt like a cheap toy.
Jarek felt sick. “Pryce!”
He wasn’t moving.
James was down too, clipped by the same blow that had taken Pryce—a blow that probably could’ve overturned a car.
Michael and Chambers were scrambling for their weapons.
Ogrin approached James with predatory confidence, paying them no mind. The Enochian scuttled backward in an awkward crab walk, one arm hanging loosely at his side.
A gunshot cracked below, and another—each one coinciding with tiny jerks that might’ve been bullets striking Ogrin’s head. The Kul paused, glancing around to the spot ten yards in front of the rail gun. The spot where Jarek only now noticed Alaric.
The commander stood with a single smoking revolver raised, every bone in his body screaming defiance in the face of Ogrin’s clear superiority.
Ogrin sneered and leapt for Alaric, wings unfurling to shift his jump into a glide.
Jarek half-expected Alaric to hold his ground till the bitter end. Instead, the wiry old commander turned and dove over the edge of a small rocky crag behind him. Not that the cover would do him much good.
Jarek had to get down there.
He was preparing to drop into a fur-ripping leapfrog down Mada’s leg when he noticed James tapping furiously at the tablet he’d crawled to after Ogrin had left him.
Michael shouted something from the rear of the rail gun. Chambers yanked him aside. Ogrin landed over Alaric. Turned.
James jabbed his finger to the tablet.
There was another loud cracking sound, and Ogrin’s head disappeared in an explosion of black ichor.
Served the fucker right.
“Make a broadcast, Al,” Jarek growled, beginning the hand-over-hand climb up Mada’s furry leg. “Tell them to get their asses out here with whatever medical they have.”
“Already on it, sir.”
Jarek climbed in silence for the next several seconds, too flustered to make much sense out of the commotion carrying to his ears from multiple battles above.
A heavy thud off to the left drew his attention, and he saw Gada lying belly up in a small crater over a hundred feet below, having apparently fallen from Mada’s back.
Drogan lay face down a few yards away from Gada, unmoving.
Jarek gritted his teeth and kept climbing, part of him hoping Gada was dead and Drogan was fine, and the other part hoping they were both fine—just so he and Drogan could finish kicking Gada’s ass to pieces together. First, though, he needed to find Rachel, and end Mada’s lumbering stampede.
He reached for the next handful of fur.
Something landed on his back and wrapped an arm around his throat. He had a split-second to register the orange appendage as Fraga’s before a dark, glassy dagger plunged for his chest.
His breath caught.
Nothing. There was nothing he could d—
The dagger hit a wall of thin air and careened wildly off.
Jarek stared dumbly for a moment, then grabbed the short leg dangling by his right side in a crushing grip and hurled Fraga as hard as he could. The little bastard nearly managed to keep his hold on Jarek’s throat but finally lost his grip and shot away with a snarl. His second dagger left a shallow gash across Jarek’s chest plates.
Jarek didn’t bother trying to figure out where Fraga was headed when he vanished. He just grabbed another handful of Mada’s fur and kept climbing toward his golden-haired savior.
Invisible hands lightened the last few feet of his climb, and then Rachel was there, helping him up the rest of the way. She looked pale and exhausted, like she’d already channeled more than enough energy for the rest of the decade.
“This ride sucks,” she groaned between heavy breaths.
“You said it.”
Jarek drew his sword and scanned the mountain ridge Mada appeared to be preparing to make another push for. He wasn’t sure it was worth the Kul’s effort.
Only three raknoth still stood, as far as he could see, and none of them looked as if they had great chances of remaining that way much longer with Shimo, Harga, and the mysterious mechanized Kul-bot pressing in on them.
The human forces had scattered. The Enochians, Zach, and a few others were beating a retreat down the mountainside. James and the others at the south portal were scrambling to retreat into the tunnel and away from Fraga, who’d already left three soldiers dead and the rail gun in a smoking heap.
They were losing.
Ogrin might be dead, and Gada and this unholy mammoth at least injured, but they were still losing. No doubt about it.
Jarek looked to the northeast and felt a small flutter of hope at the sight of tiny figures piling into vans and trucks in the distant lot. The Complex evacuees, fleeing the base.
>
There was that, at least.
“Rachel Cross!”
The roar tore Jarek’s gaze back to the mountain in time to see Krogoth hurl a man-sized boulder off a nearby ridge in an arcing trajectory toward Mada’s head. The stone must’ve broken loose in one of Mada’s impacts. It was long and more flat than round, vaguely resembling a giant arrowhead.
Which was exactly what Krogoth intended it to be, he realized.
Rachel extended her hand, eyes drifting closed.
On the ridge above, Fraga popped into existence right beside Krogoth.
“Krogoth!” Jarek shouted, starting helplessly forward.
Too late.
Fraga’s dagger plunged into Krogoth’s ribs before the word finished leaving his mouth.
Krogoth roared and grabbed Fraga by the throat.
Jarek froze, unsure what to do, how to help anyone in time. Apparently, Rachel didn’t share his dilemma, focused as she was.
Her wordless cry erupted from behind, and the boulder, already tumbling rapidly toward Mada’s raised head, accelerated downward as if fired from its own invisible rail gun. Jarek couldn’t imagine how much energy it took to shoot something that big that fast.
It punched straight through Mada’s eye like an enormous bullet, a resounding wet thud smacking through the air.
Mada jerked—the kind of sickly jerk Jarek had come to associate with someone being brained. And given the way the furry back under Jarek’s feet began to sway, he was guessing that interpretation might apply to giant mammoths as well.
Time to bail.
He turned to tell Rachel—just in time to see her unconscious body tumbling limply over Mada’s side as the giant beast swayed.
“Rachel!”
He lunged desperately forward.
No time. No chance of catching her before it was too late.
So he dove for her without another thought.
No time for thought. Not until he caught her in his arms and found himself in free fall with her.
He wasted a precious second staring dumbly at the rapidly rising ground.
“The Whacker, sir!” Al cried.
“Wha—”
“Swing the Whacker!”
Jarek didn’t have time to question. He swung the damn Whacker—and immediately realized what Al was driving at when the weapon flashed weak blue light and resisted his hand as if it were fixed to something more than thin air.
He swung again.
Sixty feet.
It was like trying to do a one-armed pullup on a bar suspended by wobbly bands. It wasn’t going to be enough.
He swung again anyway.
Twenty feet.
He cocked his arm back for another swing, thinking about how he’d try to roll when they hit.
Then Drogan appeared directly below them, arms outstretched.
Jarek tucked and spun as best he could, offering his back to Drogan and two bodies’ worth of buffer to Rachel.
They hit.
It wasn’t pretty.
The world became a jumbled blur of colors, motion, and jarring impacts—no coherent thoughts in his mind aside from sympathy for Drogan, who was crushed beneath them on impact, and the overwhelming need to keep Rachel safe as they bounced and skipped through a few rough revolutions down the mountainside.
He managed to plant his feet and pull them out of the tumble sitting in an upright position with Rachel’s limp body cradled in his arms. Shaken, he turned to see how Drogan had fared.
A hard shove hit him in the back and sent them sailing before he could.
Uncomprehending, desperate, he twisted through the air and landed so his back was to the ground and Rachel was on his chest. They hit and kept sliding down the rocky grade, Jarek reaching out to stop them—until he saw the enormous furry wall collapsing down on top of them.
Mada. Falling.
He caught a flash of Drogan’s red eyes.
Then Mada’s bulk slammed down with a thunderous boom, burying his friend and missing him and Rachel by mere yards.
“Stumpy!” Jarek shouted. Then again, louder.
The air was filled with dust and the sound of crumbling rock. So much of it coming down.
A roar and a shriek in the distance.
Then nothing.
“Stumpy,” Jarek groaned, pulling himself up, careful not to jostle Rachel in the process. “Shit.”
Was there any way the raknoth had survived that?
He didn’t know. But there was probably nothing Jarek could do for him right now. Not before he checked on Rachel, at least.
She was still alive. He was confident about that as he carted her further down the mountain, away from the dust and shifting rocks. Or maybe it was just that he wasn’t ready to even think about the alternative.
But no. As he settled to the ground with her, she shifted uneasily and murmured a few disoriented words.
Thank god.
He nestled her carefully against himself, keeping her shoulders and head supported against his leg and arm. He looked back at the devastation, trying to take stock and gauge their current predicament.
Everything hurt, head to toe. The worst was his pierced leg, radiating a profound sickly ache with pulsing overcurrents of sharper pain.
Drogan was still smashed under Mada’s bulk—alive or dead, he didn’t know.
To the right, the south portal had collapsed—or was at least obscured—under the rivers of rubble Mada’s collapse had brought down. Jarek could only hope to god Pryce, Alaric, the Enochians, and all the other soldiers had managed to retreat far enough down the tunnel in time to avoid being crushed.
On the mountainside above, Krogoth lay bloody and torn beside Harga, whose enormous jaws had been torn apart, his entire head nearly split in two. Neither of them were moving. Nor were the rest of the raknoth above.
The rakul, on the other hand…
They picked their way through the dust and crumbling rock, making their unhurried ways down the mountainside—Shimo, Fraga, and the oddly robotic Kul that scuttled over the uneven terrain on four mechanical appendages. Too many crimson eyes still burning. All of them fixed on Jarek and Rachel.
Jarek’s mouth was entirely too dry to swallow, but his throat tried all the same.
The only spot of sunshine was the line of vehicles rolling down the road to the northeast, ferrying dozens of evacuees steadily away from Cheyenne.
At least there was that.
But that didn’t change the fact that he and Rachel were the last two standing—or huddling, as it were—against at least three rakul. The sight of Gada stomping out from around Mada’s enormous fallen form and making it an even four didn’t make matters any better.
Rachel stirred in his arms with a heavy groan. He slid open his faceplate and bent over her, too worried about her and too tired and beaten to care for the moment about the rakul picking their leisurely way down to them.
She blinked up at him.
“Did we win?” she croaked.
He stroked a few hairs from her forehead. “Not yet, Goldilocks. But I think we have ’em on the ropes.”
She looked around woozily, silently taking in the gravity of their situation. Then she met his eyes and, of all things, smiled—the most beautiful, sad smile he’d ever seen. “Got ’em right where we want ’em?”
He smiled back, trying to convey every bit of the love he felt for her in that moment, fighting the tears that suddenly wanted to come. “Exactly.”
She touched his face with a pale, cold hand, then tried to sit up with a groan. He was shifting to help her when a shadow sped over them.
Jarek looked up, stomach sinking, expecting to see a rakul ship descending on them.
There was a ship. A big one. Bigger than he could even wrap his head around. But it was the thing plummeting from the enormous hatch in the ship’s underbelly that held Jarek’s attention.
It dropped like a colossal bird of prey and pulled up maybe a quarter-mile from the ground, unfurling wi
ngs that would’ve put the most massive of sails to shame.
They beat with a sound like crashing thunder. Once. Twice. Three times.
Then the gargantuan beast that Jarek could only describe as an honest-to-Christ dragon dropped to the earth with a resounding boom that jolted straight through Jarek’s spine and into his racing heart.
“Kul’Naga,” Rachel whispered.
“Yeah,” Jarek said slowly. “On second thought, that might put a little wrinkle in things.”
33
For a long few moments, all Rachel could do was stare. The mountain-sized mothership above was impressive enough, defying her brain’s feeble attempts at comprehension. Her attention, though, was more rooted to the monstrosity that had just fallen from said ship. The one that had hit the earth like a force of nature, crushing the last faint inkling of hope they’d had of making it through this thing alive.
Kul’Naga. The World Ender.
It was a bit rich, wasn’t it?
Then again, considering the way the beast had seemed to shake the entire planet when he’d landed, maybe not.
Fortunately, Naga didn’t appear to be in any great hurry to come stomp their petty little lives back to The Void. And why would he be?
Naga was easily as big as Mada, and ten times as ferocious-looking. Twenty times, actually, once she recalled the memories Haldin had shown her of the beastly dragon tearing his way through that clan of frost giants. And that had been a couple thousand years ago.
How in the hell did she even begin to fathom hurting something so colossally powerful?
She reminded herself that she’d had that exact thought about Mada before Krogoth had come through with his stony solution. But, as far as she could tell, it was only her and Jarek now. And neither one of them was in any condition to be hurling boulders.
She thought of Haldin and Elise, lying cold and still in Dola’s office below, and felt the need both to punch something and to be ill. So much power. Such young, good lives. All gone.
The Complete Harvesters Series Page 114
