Hell to Pay: Book Two of the Harvesters Series

by Luke R. Mitchell

  Jarek raised a hand.

  Alton stared at him for several seconds before he finally shook his head and extended a hand to Jarek in invitation.

  “I have a feeling I’m not gonna like the answer to this one,” Jarek said, “but, uh, has anyone ever actually taken down one of these rakul guys?”

  Tense silence stretched, the earth crew all leaning forward in anticipation. The way the Enochians’ gazes all dropped to the deck gave Jarek all the answer he needed.

  “Only once,” Alton finally said. “By the oldest of my kin.”

  “And what happened to that guy?” Rachel asked.

  Alton’s smile was utterly devoid of humor. “He became Kul’Gada.”

  “And I take it that meant no sympathy for the little folk anymore?” Jarek asked.

  “Not so much,” Alton said. “In fact, it’s the opposite, if anything. Ascensions to Kul clearly don’t happen every day. Or millennium. I would imagine Kul’Gada feels the need to prove himself even now. He’s certainly acted like it over the past 2,000 years.”

  “Sounds like a swell guy,” Jarek said.

  “But at least he demonstrated it’s possible to kill a rakul,” Pryce said.

  “It is most certainly possible,” Alton said. “For all their power, the rakul are flesh and blood. On the inside, at least.”

  That raised a few eyebrows.

  “And on the outside?” Jarek asked.

  “It varies,” Alton said. “Some have become amalgamations of the many species we’ve conquered over the millennia, strengthening their bodies over time while we are forced to start fresh with each new species we infiltrate.”

  “Right …” Rachel said quietly.

  “Creepy,” Jarek agreed.

  “It’s one of the ways they’ve kept us subservient all this time,” Alton continued. “By the time any of my predecessors thought to first question the way of things, the rakul had already grown too strong.”

  “Double creepy,” Jarek said.

  “But killable,” Haldin said.

  “Right,” Johnny said. “All we gotta do is unite a bunch of scared humans and the blood-sucking monsterrr—umm, guys who blew their planet to ashes and get everyone ready to rumble with a dozen alien warlords who’ve basically never suffered a loss.”

  “So yeah,” Jarek said slowly. “A bit of work to do, then.”

  “Who doesn’t like a good challenge?” Elise asked.

  “Well,” Pryce said, glancing from Alton to Haldin, “as our resident experts, what do you believe to be our best shot from here out?”

  “We’ll begin reaching out to the other raknoth on Earth,” Alton said, looking to Haldin and Franco for confirmation. “There are several clusters of my people scattered across the planet. We’ll try to convince them the only hope is to join forces and rally here to face the rakul together.”

  Jarek looked at Rachel. “Guess that means we should focus on getting the party started right with Krogoth and Drogan.”

  Maybe they could even get Mosen to help them bridge the gap with the raknoth, provided the ruthless bastard had any pull with Krogoth’s new regime—and especially provided Alaric didn’t shoot Jarek in the face for even suggesting such a thing.

  Maybe he’d wait to mention it, at least until he had a functional faceplate to protect him after word got to Alaric.

  With Fela’s missing faceplate, his thoughts turned to his wrecked ship, sitting abandoned in the middle of Yankee Stadium.

  He and Pryce—and mostly Pryce if he was being honest—had some heavy-duty repairing to get to. A lot of work to do indeed.

  Jarek sighed and leaned back to rest his head against the wall. When his shoulder brushed against Rachel’s, he paused, waiting to see if rejection would strike again and she’d withdraw from the contact. He felt more than saw her uncertain sideways glance. Then, quietly, she shifted and settled more comfortably against his side.

  So it was gonna be like that, then.

  Jarek met Michael’s soft frown with an easy smile then settled in to take a few deep breaths and enjoy the contact while the others continued talking plans. Then his comm decided to buzz and ruin everything.

  “Call from Alaric, sir,” Al said in his earpiece.

  Jarek scooted around so the others would be behind him and in frame. “Share it with the class, Mr. Robot.”

  Jarek’s comm holo sprang to life to reveal a battered-looking Alaric standing in the council chamber, which was empty but for the muffled bustle of voices and activity that carried through the doors.

  “We’ve got rubble,” Alaric said without preamble. “The kind it’d be handy to have a big strong exo to clear out.”

  “Well don’t beat around the bush, Alaric,” Jarek said. “Was there something you wanted?”

  Alaric scowled. “Get down here and help unless you all have something better to do.” His hard stare shifted over Jarek’s shoulder to the others. “What are you all doing, by the way?”

  “Just trying to save the world,” Johnny called. “You know how it goes.”

  “We were discussing our best next steps in facilitating a human-raknoth alliance,” Haldin added. “We’re happy to move the discussion to HQ as soon as everyone’s ready.”

  Alaric shook his head, his scowl deepening. Jarek half-expected him to give a strong Hell no, or something of the sort, but when he spoke it was with defeated acknowledgment.

  “I can’t believe it’s come to this.”

  No one in the room seemed to disagree with the statement.

  “Not that I’m particularly excited to suggest it,” Alaric continued after a stretch, “but the logistics of this half-assed alliance might at least be a touch easier now that we have a Resistance Commander on board.”

  Jarek studied the stoic expression beneath Alaric’s grizzled beard.

  “You?” he asked finally.

  Alaric nodded.

  “Can’t imagine Sloan approved that decision,” Jarek said.

  And he had a feeling he knew why.

  “Sloan is dead,” Alaric said. “Enemy forces breached into his room from above. Looks like the blast took him.”

  That earned a moment of silence, which Jarek willfully refrained from breaking with something along the lines of Good riddance.

  “He wasn’t the best man we lost today,” Michael finally said.

  “No,” Alaric said. “He wasn’t.”

  Jarek had never seen Alaric look so tired. For a second, he thought about asking if Mosen had made it through the fight safely in his cell, but that wasn’t liable to do Alaric’s mood any favors.

  “All right.” Jarek stood and showed Alaric a casual salute. “I’m on my way, cowboy. We’ll get HQ squared away and then worry about the end of the world. See you in a few.”

  Alaric looked a shade surprised, but he stifled it quickly enough, said a gruff, “Thank you,” and cut the call.

  Jarek looked back at the others. “Anyone up for strengthening alien goodwill with a bunch of twitchy Resistance fighters?”

  They shared a look and all rose to their feet. Jarek pulled Rachel to her feet, and, together, the party began the short trek out of the ship and back to HQ.

  As they went, Jarek found himself wondering where along the line things had changed to the point that he was the one leading the march to go help the same Resistance that had been willingly hiding Fela from him not even a week ago.

  Sideways, apparently.

  Or maybe not. Maybe it wasn’t the same Resistance they were marching to the aid of right now.

  Because everything had changed, hadn’t it? For now, at least.

  And all it had taken was the threat of extinction.

  Jarek wasn’t about to paint a big red R across his chest, and he sure as hell wasn’t about to thoughtlessly toe the line and give any of them the Sir, yes sir, but there was no denying it anymore. After years of trying to do the right thing from a distance, he’d finally picked his side. He was as much a part of this now as
any of the soldiers scrambling around in the tunnels below.

  He was still his own man, and always would be. But for the foreseeable future, being his own man meant fighting for the Resistance—and for the rest of Earth too.

  Tomorrow would bring new struggles. In the weeks to come, there would be squabbles and fights. Friendships would be shaken, alliances forged and broken. Most likely, people would die—maybe a lot of them. And even if everything went to plan and raknoth and human somehow came to stand together without friction or animosity in a few short weeks, at the end of it all, they still had to face their retribution.

  The rakul were coming.

  But for today, at least, they were alive. And it was time to do something about it.

  Our Heroes Will Return … In REAPING DAY

  And I don’t think it’s too much of a spoiler to say Jarek, Rachel, and crew are in for a rough ride. Look for Reaping Day sometime in late August (2017).

  Better yet, sign up for my mailing list, and let me send you a couple free books to tide you over.

  Tell me—do you wanna know why everyone keeps calling Jarek the Soldier of Charity? How about where Rachel’s mom disappeared to just before the Catastrophe, and exactly what she was up to in that lab?

  Well, boy, do I have some long-winded answers for you.

  The first one’s called Soldier of Charity. The second is Cursed Blood, and it’s only available to my mailing list readers.

  Want ’em both for free?

  Just sign up to my mailing list right here.

  Bonus: I also run a lot of giveaways for my mailing list, and you’ll always be the first to know about my special deals and new releases, so it’s really a win-win … win-win-win-win? I’m not entirely sure, but it’s definitely good.

  So join me, and together we can rule the galaxy. Wait, no. Read great books. Together we can read great books.

  See you on the other side.

  About the Author

  Luke is a storyteller (although if that part’s not clear by now, there’s probably been a critical error somewhere) whose dreams include being a paid storyteller and also one day growing up. And lots of zombies. Don’t ask. Also, the “growing up” bit was a lie.

  After studying engineering science at Penn State and neuroengineering at Drexel, Luke finally decided to throw in the towel on actually building a working Iron Man suit and opted instead to simply make things up and write them down. Boy, is he having more fun now.

  When he’s not holed up in his cave trying to string words together, he can often be found powerlifting, video-gaming, reading, and/or drinking the darkest, most roasty beers he can get his mitts on.

  You know what? Enough about Luke. He’s not that interesting. But if you’d like to say hi to him for whatever reason, he’d probably be glad to hear from you.

  Swing by lukermitchell.com to say hi, and don’t forget to join the mailing list for your free copies of Soldier of Charity and the list exclusive, Cursed Blood.

  You can join the list right here!

  Thank you for reading.

  Acknowledgments

  I’m not gonna lie, guys, I was tempted to leave this section as it was from Red Gambit. I mean, people liked it. Some almost better than the book itself, it seemed. I never expected to have people contacting me to tell me they enjoyed the acknowledgments, of all things. And besides, nothing’s really changed since then anyway, right?

  I’m not so sure. In fact, the more I thought about it, the more I decided that’s not true at all. Everything has changed.

  Okay. That’s also not true at all. It just sounded cool. But truly, things have come a long way since the launch of Red Gambit, and a lot of it—probably most of it—wouldn’t have happened without you guys. So let’s take a moment to, well, acknowledge all of the things (all of which are in fact people and not things, but let’s go with it) that have helped me get here.

  Thing 1) My beautiful Puffin, known by some as “Marina” or “Dr. Z, medicine woman,” totally agreed to marry me. I’m still not sure what she was thinking on that fine Parisian afternoon, but I think this is probably cause to take all the sweet things I said last time and amplify them by roughly 9,000 times, give or take. Hard to imagine, isn’t it? I’m getting teary-eyed just thinking about it. Her support, as ever, has been positively stellar.

  Thing 2) My mom has been putting up with my crap. Okay, so maybe nothing’s actually changed there. Business as usual. But it probably goes without saying that she will always be in these acknowledgments by default. She’s the best. I’m a momma’s boy. ‘Nuff said. Thanks, Ma.

  Thing 3) My relationship with my team, not to mention the team itself, continues to grow and improve. I’m tempted to break this down by subdivisions, but I suppose this is a leisurely acknowledgments section, not a legal proceeding, so let’s keep it casual. Lisa continues to cut through my questionable story decisions like an oh-so-wise knife through soft, sometimes deluded butter. And fix bad metaphors. Dj has done a wonderful job stepping in and helping me catch those pesky typos and particularly clunky sentences. Clarissa and Prokopy worked their tag-team magic to once again produce a beautiful cover. And, lastly, I’d be remiss if I didn’t mention my uber-helpful alpha reader, Julie, and the rest of my amazing ARC crew, without which, these books would be launching to crickets—and apathetic ones, at that.

  Thing 4) You. Yes, you. The readers who make the book world go round and give wind to my stubby little author wings. My readership has (thankfully) continued to steadily grow, and for that, I thank each and every one of you. As much fun as I have writing these stories, at the end of the day, I can’t make a career of it without you fine ladies and gentlemen reading my stories and spreading the word about them, and in that regard, you’ve been an utterly fantastic audience. I love sending out my weekly (-ish) newsletters and communicating with our little community, and the reviews and comments I get are part of what keep me staying the course. So to those of you who’ve stuck with me this far, thank you. And to those of you who are just stepping in now, thank you for reading, and welcome. I hope you’ll stick around.

  May your favorite characters always live and your most fantastical adventures never tarnish.

  Happy reading,

  -Luke