Red Gambit: Book One of the Harvesters Series

by Luke R. Mitchell

Thing four: the raknoth were every bit as terrifying as the stories he’d heard.

  The Red King yanked himself up and made a grab for Michael’s leg with one hand. Michael jumped back. The raknoth clamped onto the walkway and began pulling himself up properly.

  Rachel thrust the tip of that oddly winding staff into the Red King’s face an instant before the end detonated with a booming flash of light.

  There was a screech of metal and an angry roar.

  Jarek tried too late to shield his eyes, his vision already bleached with light. Something pressed against his side, and he heard Rachel’s voice through the ringing in his ears.

  “Move.”

  He didn’t argue. As his vision began to resolve, he saw Rachel ahead, pushing Michael along ahead of her. The Red King was blessedly nowhere in sight.

  Of course, the King’s absence cleared the line of fire for all the Reds below.

  He kept his head down and ran as at least a dozen weapons opened fire together. Rachel dropped back, yanking Michael with her, and put herself between the guns and their little band.

  It was almost comical to see the small blonde tugging around the big black guy, but when the spent lead slugs began clanking down to the walkway in their wake, Jarek decided that Michael had good reason to comply.

  The air unmistakably chilled around them as they ran unharmed through the swarm of lead.

  They reached the end of the walkway and fled into the cover of the next hallway.

  Jarek bent over and braced his hands on his knees. Thing five: apparently arcanists were pretty damn real and also a little scary themselves. He’d heard plenty of rumors and hearsay, but he’d never really believed. His views were changing pretty quickly. As usual, Pryce had been right. Now Jarek just had to stay alive long enough to tell him so.

  They ran down the hallway side by side.

  Michael hissed, “Was that—”

  “Telepathic attack,” Rachel said. “Yeah. Pretty freaking strong one too.”

  She still looked more than a little pale. Pryce had insisted on multiple occasions that arcanists couldn’t simply bend nature to their wills for free, that there had to be some equivalent, thermodynamically feasible exchange. Apparently he had been right about that too.

  “That was the Red King?” Michael said, panting now.

  Jarek swapped his spent mag for a fresh one as he led the way around a corner. “That or there happens to be another one that’s decided to run around in a ridiculous coat and call himself a—shit!”

  A stairwell door burst open ahead of them and two men swept into the hall, weapons raised. Jarek raised his MP5, but Rachel stepped in front of him and Michael. She pointed her staff, and the two Reds went tumbling back through the doorway to crash into more allies, judging by the disgruntled cries.

  Rachel slammed the stairwell door shut, wedged it closed with her foot, and applied the tip of her staff to the latch. The air in the hallway grew cooler even as the metal around the door handle glowed red-hot. A muffled yelp came through the door—probably someone burning their hand on the opposite handle, he thought with a grin. As suddenly as it had appeared, the red glow drained out of the door and the temperature in the hallway returned to normal.

  Moving on instinct, he pushed Michael forward and lunged to yank Rachel aside.

  She glared at him. “What the f—”

  Muffled gunfire barked out, denting the door beside them. A few bullets tore their way through.

  She looked from the door to him. “Right.”

  The gunfire ceased, and something—maybe a boot—slammed against the door. The door held. Rachel had melted the components of the door’s latching mechanism into one solid piece, effectively locking the door for good unless someone hit it hard enough to shear through the fused metal. Someone like an angry raknoth, for instance.

  “Not half bad,” he said. “Let’s move.”

  The monotony of the hallways didn’t help with the directions, but he was at least eighty, maybe seventy percent sure he was leading them southwest. They’d be fine.

  A loud crash echoed down the hall, not unlike the sound an angry raknoth might make kicking down a locked door. Jarek led them down the next stairway and picked up the pace, waving Michael and Rachel onto the ground floor.

  Down the hallway. Another left. Another right. They had to be getting close.

  “I sure hope you guys can both swim,” he said.

  Michael glanced over. “Why does that—oh.”

  Jarek smiled. “Oh, yes.”

  Ahead, the top left half of the next hallway was lined with translucent polymer windows. The windows afforded a view into a small indoor dock. There were only a few boats sitting in the dark water, all small and in varying states of disrepair, but it wasn’t the boats he cared about.

  He pulled open the first door they came to and hurried the others in, uncomfortably aware of the proximity of voices behind them now.

  The water would feed into the Passaic River. More to the point, it would feed out of the Red Fortress. The only problem was the bay door that would in all likelihood be locked. Luckily, he’d had the foresight to swipe Seth Mosen’s comm, and he was reasonably sure its ID would grant them access, assuming the bay door didn’t require an additional code.

  It did.

  “No, no …” He swiped the comm past the receiver again, which refreshed the same message: “Please enter your personal access code.”

  “Stupid”—he kicked the wall—“shit!”

  “‘I know what I’m doing,’ he says,” Rachel said. She was leaning on her staff, looking like she desperately needed a nap or some form of sugar. “‘Trust me,’ he says. What’s the plan now, asshole?”

  He bit back an angry retort and held up a finger, thinking.

  The controls were digital, but the locks themselves were mechanical, and he’d seen what Rachel could do to locks.

  He nodded at Rachel’s staff. “You pop the locks, we lift?”

  She spread her hands in a gesture that said What the hell else am I gonna do?

  “That’s the spirit, Goldilocks.”

  He met her glare with his best grin. He was tossing away Mosen’s comm and the knife he had no easy way of carrying into the water when he caught motion through the translucent panes of the dock’s inner wall. The sounds of approaching Reds echoed oddly off the water’s surface.

  “Shit,” he whispered. Then, louder, “They’re coming. Everyone in. Now.”

  He dropped down into the dark water, trusting that they’d follow. The coolness of the water embraced his tired body. It was deeper than expected; he found the bottom only at the lowest point of his plunge. The waves of Michael and Rachel entering the water rocked him on the way up. He surfaced and moved to find a handhold on the side of the pool.

  Michael surfaced and managed to get his own handhold just before the door opened, letting in the sounds of numerous Reds in the hallway outside. Rachel was flailing a few feet away, encumbered by her staff and her leather jacket.

  Michael tried and failed to reach her.

  Jarek caught her fingertips and pulled her to him, trying to convey the strongest shush he could with his eyes. Her expression was hard to read in the darkness as he drew her in and wrapped his arm around her waist to keep her afloat.

  Her body pressed against his, warm and soft in contrast to the stagnant water. Above them, footsteps plodded toward the water and paused.

  He stopped breathing.

  “Clear,” a voice said after what felt like minutes but must’ve been only a second or two.

  Grumbles. Shuffling footsteps. Sounds of the Reds moving on. Then, finally, silence.

  She let out a careful breath against him, and his focus precariously teetered away from listening to the retreating Reds. His senses filled with the sweet scent of her closeness and the racing of her heart against his sternum.

  “We clear?” she asked, the air of her whisper teasing lightly at his wet cheek.

  They were,
as far as he could tell, but instead of saying that, his lower anatomy decided to go with, “Are you seeing anyone?”

  She pushed away, electing to go back to her sorry version of treading water.

  “Seriously, dude?” Michael hissed from the darkness.

  Jarek allowed himself a small grin. “I know! Jesus, guys, can we act like professionals here and just focus on getting this damn door open?”

  “You have problems,” Rachel whispered from the darkness.

  “Tell me about it.” He began swimming toward the bay door. “Like this door, for instance. If you can pop the locks, I can hold it while you and Mikey scoot under. We should probably go down together.”

  “You’d like that, wouldn’t you?”

  “Is that a no in the ‘seeing someone’ column, then?”

  There were a few swishes from Michael’s direction. Then, again, “Seriously, dude?”

  “Not my fault!”

  “Can we just get this over with?” Rachel asked.

  “You’d like that, w—” Before he could finish, she took a deep breath and vanished beneath the dark surface of the water. “Shoot. Let’s go, Mikey.”

  He dove down, guiding himself along the surface of the bay door with his hands in the dark. On his way down, he felt more than heard a pair of sharp clicks reverberate through the door, followed a second later by another pair. The arcanist must’ve done her job, then.

  He grimaced in the dark as his hands tracked down along a steadily grimier door. Finally, he found the bottom and arranged himself into an effective pulling position.

  It was only then that he realized the hiccup in his plan. Down there in the nearly complete darkness, they weren’t going to be able to see one another and make sure they’d all made it through. But that was assuming the door even opened in the first place. First things first.

  There was no hope of effectively coordinating with Michael. He dug his fingers under the slimy edge of the bay door as best he could and heaved. Even partially submerged in water as it was, the door wasn’t light. He pulled harder, and it began to budge upward, inch by inch. He adjusted his grip, shifted his footing, and pulled again. Halfway through his pull, the door began moving faster, and he assumed Michael had found his side and pitched in.

  By the time the door was high enough for him to maneuver underneath it and prop it on his left shoulder, a good thirty seconds had passed. His lungs were burning with exertion.

  The water outside of the bay door was slightly lighter, but not enough to afford any real visibility. So he remained crouched at the bottom, pinned under the heavy door, heart racing and lungs burning, hand outstretched as he waited for some sign of the others’ passing.

  Something brushed against his hand. An arm. A leather-sleeved arm. Rachel. A small hand found his, tugged once in the direction of the river, then let go.

  Did that mean Michael was already on the other side? He must be. Maybe.

  He considered inching his way over to check, but the door was heavy, and he was running out of air. He’d made the decision to try anyway when the weight on his shoulder shifted and pressed down harder. That had to have been Michael leaving his post on the other side of the door. That was the only explanation, right?

  He waited another lung-burning fifteen seconds to be sure, then shimmied out and toward the river. When he broke the surface, Michael and Rachel were already near the end of the short, walled-off inlet, looking back uncertainly.

  The sweetness of his first breaths was soured by Rachel’s impatient wave.

  Why the hell had he even been so keen on waiting for the two of them?

  “This is why we work alone,” he mumbled as he swam quietly over to them, ignoring the fact that Al wasn’t there to hear him.

  “You get lost down there?” she whispered as he drew up to them.

  “Just making sure I didn’t lose my new business partner,” he said, looking pointedly at Michael. “Also, I forgot: Phase Four.”

  With that, he pushed past them to join the flow of the river.

  They floated downstream like deadwood under the moonlight. With the extra weight of her soaked leather jacket and staff, Rachel had it the worst attempting to keep afloat. Between their soaked clothes, wet boots, and general, bone-deep weariness, they swam with all the grace of drunken hippopotamuses.

  Behind them, the Red Fortress was alive with activity as men scoured the base and cars hit the road to look for them. He waited until they’d floated nearly half of a mile and rounded an appreciable bend before he decided their chances of being spotted were low enough.

  He signaled an end to their tactical float, and they extracted themselves at the edge of what had once been a park but was now a small field of mostly bramble and wild grass. No one was quick to do anything but lie in the thick foliage and catch a few merciful gulps of warm summer air.

  “Mikey,” he finally said, extending a closed fist toward the younger man lying beside him.

  Michael’s shadow shifted, his head turning from Jarek’s face to his fist and back.

  Jarek plopped his head back down to the tangle of weeds and wild grass with a wide smile. “Operation complete.”

  Nine

  What Rachel wanted more than anything was a hot shower, a good meal, and a couple of years’ worth of sleep.

  What she got instead was a long night of slinking from shadow to shadow under Jarek’s paranoid, arguably insane direction. And her sopping-wet jacket didn’t help either.

  “It’s been like a goddamn hour,” she whispered softly to Jarek as they peered around the corner of an abandoned home, checking the next stretch of road. “If we haven’t seen them yet, you really think they’re out here?”

  Instead of answering, he held up a single finger. She was on the verge of reaching out to snap said finger when someone gave a low whistle from a truck she hadn’t noticed.

  Four men, all well armed, came shuffling out of the nearby houses to pile into the truck.

  He waggled his eyebrows at her. “Oh, they’re out here, Goldilocks.”

  After that, she didn’t argue so much.

  After her years living in Unity, Newark at nighttime was a spooky sight, a dark, empty husk of a city that told mostly of lives dead and gone. They scarcely spoke as they trekked through dusty lots and past a gamut of old homes and other buildings that ranged from run-down to scorched wreckages. Under Jarek’s lead, they stuck mostly to the shadows, being especially careful to avoid the streetlights that intermittently lined the crumbling pavement of the old streets.

  In another hour of walking (or, more accurately, sneaking), she saw a grand total of eight people outside their homes. Jarek guided them into the shadows or behind the cover of fences or old cars while each of those eight people passed. The caution seemed a tad ridiculous, but Jarek just said something about how people talk, and neither of them saw fit to press the issue. Better safe than sorry.

  As sparse as the pedestrians were, there weren’t many signs of occupied homes, either. The few small gardens they stumbled upon were inevitably hidden from street view, and none of those houses had lights on inside. Her father had once mentioned something about how people in the cities tended to rise and fall with the sun these days because lit homes ran the risk of drawing the attention of passing marauders.

  She gazed at the dim shapes of ruined buildings as they went and tried to imagine how the place had looked before the Catastrophe, when there had been flowers in the gardens and children playing in their augmented realities. Back before the raknoth had culled the world population from nine billion to one with the push of a few buttons.

  The story had spread across what remained of the world with as many variations as there were tellers. She’d heard stories about how the creatures ate people whole and others about how they only drank the blood of humans. That one might actually be true, considering the way the Red King had ripped into his own man earlier.

  Some claimed the raknoth had come from space and had been hiding
away on Earth for thousands of years, while others insisted they’d been sent by God himself as a reckoning for humanity. No one actually knew how or why the raknoth had nuked the world into oblivion, only that they had done it.

  She hadn’t even fully believed the raknoth were real until tonight. She shuddered, part from the chill of her wet jacket and part from the memory of the fury in those blazing red eyes and the raw power of the alien mind that had sought to invade hers. The thing had been an absolute monster—one of the very monsters her brother had signed up to wage war against.

  She could see why Michael wanted to stop the raknoth. He’d only been five when the bombs had fallen, but he’d grown up utterly surrounded by constant reminders of the hurt the creatures had inflicted on the world. She’d suffered plenty of hurt herself, but most of that had come before the Catastrophe. Once John Carver had taken her in, she’d been too preoccupied making sure she didn’t lose another home and another family to think about running off to join some foolhardy crusade.

  As fun as tonight had been, somehow she wasn’t too upset at the thought of getting Michael the hell out of Newark and taking the next five or so years to calm her amped-out nerves. She might have to find them another car, as getting close enough to the Red Fortress to recover the one she’d been using didn’t seem like the wisest idea right now. She’d probably be able to find an abandoned solar car somewhere. God knew the Catastrophe and the long winter that had followed had left plenty of them lying around, and a lot of them still functioned, especially once the debris had begun to clear from the atmosphere.

  For now, though, lying low, licking their wounds, and getting an hour or two of sleep all sounded like good enough places to start. While she didn’t trust Mr. Tall-Dark-and-Handsome ahead, he seemed to be their best bet for avoiding the Reds while they did that.

  When they reached the dusty span of an old park, Jarek announced they were almost there. They skirted around the mostly barren clearing of the park, cut north for one last, spooky block, and arrived in front of a plain gray metal door.

  Jarek walked in as if he owned the place. She traded a hesitant look with Michael and followed him in, keeping her staff ready.