“What did we miss?” Rachel asked.
Drogan looked hesitantly around the room. “Three of our own clan fled the planet with our only functioning ship only days ago.”
“Funny,” Alaric said, “that seems like just the kind of thing you might think to report to your allies during a time of war.”
“It was an internal affair,” Drogan said. “Let us not pretend either one of our peoples want this alliance. The illusion of dissension in our ranks would not help matters.”
“If Krogoth can’t keep his own people in check,” Commander Daniels said, “the dissension isn’t an illusion.”
“Do not speak to me of order and discipline, human.”
Gun hands tensed. Nostrils flared.
Rachel focused her will, preparing to channel energy from her batteries if need be.
“Okay!” Jarek cried, spreading his hands between the two parties as wide as he could in the cramped room. “I’m hearing a lot of us and them language, guys. Let’s all remember that this here is a we.” He held up a finger. “We are all gonna die bloody together if we don’t get our shit together. Yeah?”
“I might prefer the release of death to another minute of your rambling,” Drogan said.
“Oh shit. Was that …” Jarek looked around the room. “Was that a zing, Stumpy?” He extended a fist to the raknoth. “Look at you, slummin’ it with the humans. Put it there, buddy.”
“Gah.” Drogan turned for the door. “Come, Lietha. Let us escape this buffoonery and report our findings.” He glanced back at the commanders. “We should begin final preparations. If the deserters were attacked tonight—”
“That puts the rakul only a couple days out,” Alaric said. “Which sorta leads us back to the ‘need to know’ nature of that information.”
That exact question had been bubbling on the tip of Rachel’s tongue before the pissing contest had started. She didn’t have a clue how fast or far those raknoth could have fled in a couple of days, but it stood to reason that the rakul would be able to cover the same distance as fast, if not faster.
Drogan dipped his head. “It is possible. We must be ready. And soon.”
Her stomach sank. They weren’t ready. Not even close.
Most of their “allies” were still scattered about the world, unconvinced of the coming threat. They barely even had a plan outside of building some heavy duty traps and throwing every bullet, blade, and claw they could at the bastards when they showed up.
And what would happen to Michael as the rakul closed in? Would his attacks grow more frequent? More violent?
“Drogan,” Rachel said. “Is there any other way we can keep the rakul out of Michael’s head?”
Drogan considered that. “I do not see how we might fix the chinks the messengers have found in his barriers when neither you nor I can see them. The messengers will preferentially flow toward those familiar to their kind, and given our recent hiding and Mikey’s extreme exposure, he is likely the foremost on that list.”
“Do they know I’m seeing these things?” Michael asked.
“I cannot say for certain, but it is possible they do not.” Drogan’s nostrils worked at the air as he thought. “Maybe even likely, considering you have no innate telepathic ability. I do not expect the rakul will make much use of the messengers once they reach the planet, but your insights might still grant us some advantage.”
“And what if it goes the other way?” Rachel said. “What if the rakul do know and they use him like a nav pin? What if they deliberately trick him to lead us into a trap? We need to stop this connection. How do we do that?”
“If it becomes problematic,” Lietha said, “we kill him.”
His words carried all the weight of someone explaining they might need to spray down a bothersome hornets’ nest. For a few seconds, Rachel was almost too surprised at the raw callousness of it to even be outraged.
“What?” Lietha said to whatever look Drogan gave him. “Mikey cannot receive these visions if—”
Drogan silenced his partner with a sharp shake of his head.
Somehow, it didn’t exactly convince Rachel to drop the energy she’d already reached for, nor did it particularly put her at ease or calm the fire in her chest when Drogan turned back to her, his eyes pulsing crimson fire.
“We slay the rakul,” he said, his expression composed and his tone matter-of-fact. “All of them.”
Six
Jarek paused at the bottom of the ship’s ramp, frowned up at the bright morning sun, and shot a wistful glance back at Fela’s compact form. “Did I mention I’ve got a bad feeling about this?”
“Oh really, sir,” Al said in his earpiece. “What’s the worst that could happen?”
“Zombies, Al.” Jarek shook his head and set off for HQ. “It’s always zombies.”
“Ah, of course, sir. How could I possibly overlook such a distinct threat?”
Jarek refrained from answering as he passed a few Resistance boys with a neutral nod, then decided against saying anything at all. He didn’t need Al scrubbing through his vocal patterns and discerning just how anxious he was at leaving Fela behind for the first time in weeks. Of course, Al would just pick up on his irregular silence instead now.
Perks of having a robot for a friend.
Anxiety aside, though, if he was actually going to make a point of “showing trust” as Al kept putting it—or doing the meat-suit strut, as Jarek preferred—he might as well avoid looking like the guy who walked around cackling with the voice in his head.
They wouldn’t want anyone to go thinking he was crazy, would they?
“I can be there inside of two minutes, sir,” Al said, unbidden.
Apparently Jarek’s nerves were shining through. Or maybe Mr. Robot was a bit nervous himself as Jarek moved deeper into the HQ traffic, which was escalating with the morning sun—more and more troops, new recruits, and helping hands getting to the day’s work expanding the base above ground and fortifying the perimeter.
“Why do I feel like a kid whose overbearing mom just dropped him off for his first day at high school?”
“Why am I always the mom in your analogies?”
“Because you’re a total mom-bot,” Jarek said, earning himself a confused frown from a woman who was busy with a tablet full of what looked like base floor plans. He found an easy grin, and she pursed her lips and went back to her tablet.
“That said,” he mumbled, openly meeting one of the many stares that followed him across the lot, “never hurts to have a codeword. Just in case.”
“Might I suggest ‘zombies,’ sir?”
“Har har, Mr. Robot.”
The guards at the new main entrance gave him the thorough stern-eyes up and down but waved him on.
“This is an important step, sir,” Al said.
“No kidding.” Jarek stepped through the doorway and started down the stairs to the HQ common room. “A whole flight of ‘em, really. Can’t help but notice they’re all leading down.”
“If we’re serious about whipping this team into shape,” Al said, ignoring his comment, “we need to be a part of it. Remind them there’s a human inside the suit. This will all go a lot smoother if they accept you as one of their own.”
Jarek reached the bustling common room and looked around. “Our old pals the Iron Eagles knew too damn well there was a human inside the suit. Remember how that turned out?”
“Only too well, sir. Though I do seem to recall a cool voice of reason telling you to be careful back then. And perhaps it’s simply the second coming of the apocalypse speaking, but, for what it’s worth, that voice believes this time could be different. Let them be your friends, sir.”
Most of the room’s occupants were merely passing through, but there were a fair amount scattered around the couches and chairs, taking a moment to catch up or plan next moves. Of those, it felt like at least half had turned to give him a smattering from the wonderful spectrum of stink eyes, and of those, the most promine
nt by far came from a stout man with a bulldog face—Rodgers, if memory served.
“Yeah, I can feel the love already,” Jarek mumbled.
Technically, he hadn’t really done anything to the stout guard himself, but Rodgers had been the one on armory duty the night Michael had slipped Jarek in to reclaim his stolen—or apprehended, as Nelken had since put it—exosuit from the Resistance’s temporarily greedy paws.
Suffice it to say, Rodgers didn’t seem to have taken kindly to being made the guard who’d lost the Resistance’s only one-of-a-kind super weapon. And if the dirty looks his pals all shot Jarek were any indication, Rodgers wasn’t about to be super-fanning for Jarek’s reputation anytime soon.
Never mind that they were staring at one another across the exact same space where Jarek had duked it out with the world’s most vicious raknoth to defend HQ not two weeks prior. No. The rubble had been cleared, and the petty little shit had piled back in to take its place with a rapidity that almost made Jarek laugh. Almost.
He realized he was fingering the bottom of the claw trails Zar’Golga had left across his face in that fight. The mindless prodding was quickly becoming a habit.
He dropped his hand, sighed, and turned to skirt through the busy room.
“This is why we work alone,” Jarek said in a quiet sing-song tone as he went.
“Give it time, sir.”
“Not so sure we have much of that to give, buddy.”
Not if Michael’s visions and their star-hopping calculations had any amount of reliability, at least.
Their dark-skinned prophet was asleep when Jarek gave a soft knock and poked his head in. Rachel, on the other hand, was sitting on the cot she’d dragged into Michael’s room, back to wall and knees to chest, head bowed.
She looked up at Jarek’s entrance, and the look in her eyes stopped the playful kiss he’d been about to blow her in its tracks.
“Everything okay?” he asked quietly.
Rachel’s gaze flicked to Michael then drifted around the room as if searching in earnest for an accurate answer to the question.
“Everything’s fine,” she said, equally quietly, after a few seconds too long.
She looked lost, enough so that Jarek had half a crazy inkling to go give her a hug and tell her it was going to be okay. The non-robotic voice in his head told him that wasn’t the best idea. Rachel wasn’t one to be coddled, and things between them had been … not quite right since she’d given him the cold shoulder after the big HQ rumble.
So he settled for cocking his head and shooting her his most disarming, Hey, you can tell me … It’s me! look.
No dice. She gave him half of a forced smile and tilted her head in a clear sign he was good and welcome to move on and butt out.
He hesitated for a long moment, then shrugged and quietly backed out and closed the door.
Something was bothering her, that was for damn sure, but he wasn’t going to win any points trying to push in when she wanted space. He’d catch her later, hopefully alone for a change, and crank up the ol’ Slater charm until he got to the bottom of it.
Michael’s most recent episode had probably just aggravated the wound she’d been sporting ever since the nest had burst and left him … whatever he was. Or, hell, it could have just been a case of the sombers on account of the Super Monsters coming to eat them. None of them had to look too far for reasons to be less than ecstatic right now.
But a slippery little feeling in his gut told him something else was up. He hadn’t missed the fact that she’d disappeared with Alton for a bit last night, or that she’d looked a light breeze away from meltdown mode upon returning.
It wasn’t hard to imagine what they might’ve discussed, and if Alton had broken hard news to her on that front …
He’d find out soon—even if it meant pushing harder than advisable and getting his goose pleasantly cooked. But for now, he had another stubborn tree to go bark at.
Yep. He was definitely looking at a twice-cooked-goose kind of day.
Alaric answered Jarek’s knock looking every bit as surly and stern as he always did, and more than a little weary. His eyes traced down and up Jarek’s unarmored body, noting Fela’s absence without betraying any surprise.
“Looks like you woke up on the trusting side of bed this morning.”
“Hey, gotta start somewhere right?” Jarek raised a fist. “Go team, and all that fun stuff.”
Alaric considered Jarek for a stretch, then stepped back and opened the door in invitation.
“Care for a cup of coffee?” Jarek asked as he strolled past Alaric and into the room.
Alaric closed the door behind him. “Isn’t that my line?”
Jarek shrugged, looking around the room. “You look like you need it worse than I do. Love what you’ve done with the place, by the way.”
Alaric’s frown deepened as he followed Jarek’s gaze around to the blank walls and hard, cold emptiness of the tiny living quarters. “Son, I’ve got a raknoth warlord playing hardball, a base full of jittery children, and about three hours of sleep to my name. I don’t need a coy wise-ass on that list.”
“Yeah, that’s kinda what I wanted to talk to you about. The hardball thing, I mean. Not the coy wise-ass. He’s here to stay, for better or worse, till death do us part.”
“Funny”—Alaric sank to his cot and waved Jarek to sit in the chair at his small desk—“I don’t remember agreeing to any vows.”
“Well,” Jarek said, flipping the chair around so he could sit facing Alaric with his elbows on the chair’s back, “sounds like death might be trying to do us part sooner than later anyway, so …”
Alaric waited quietly if not patiently while Jarek tried to parse out the best way to propose what he wanted to without getting shot. In hindsight, this probably hadn’t been the best day to make his Fela-free debut in Resistance HQ.
“What is it, son?” Alaric finally asked. “Just spit it out so I can deal with it or try to get some sleep.”
“Promise not to shoot me?”
Alaric considered that then made a noncommittal nod toward the rack on the opposite wall that was currently home to his battered long coat and his fully loaded gun belt.
Taking that to mean Alaric was either too tired to bother with shooting him or that he’d at least have fair warning, Jarek tilted his head in concession. “Right then. Out with it. I think we should use Seth to—”
Jarek paused at Alaric’s swelling intake of breath and the full body clench that was evident across the room.
“—to smooth relations between us and Krogoth,” Jarek forced himself to finish. “So yeah, Krogoth let Rachel and Lea tag along on his recruitment tour, but if he’s not letting us in on any particulars of his operation over there … Well, Seth is the closest thing we have to an inside man, and he’s not doing anyone any favors sitting over there in the brig.”
Alaric looked like he was regretting not having his pistols in easy reach. “Seth isn’t a tool to be used,” he said, his voice deadly quiet. “Not anymore.”
Jarek suppressed a flinch at Alaric’s tone.
Calling Alaric’s relationship with his son, Seth Mosen, complicated was like calling a raknoth kind of strong. Understatement Central. Case in point, Alaric had kept the crazy bastard—his son—locked up since they’d captured him two weeks earlier and resolutely insisted on visiting him each and every day for another hefty helping of go to hells along with a side of I wish it’d been you—it should have been you.
Alaric sure wasn’t the first father who’d ever had to deal with having let their kid down by not being there. He might’ve been the first, however, who’d had to deal with his son murdering his own mother, Alaric’s wife, and blaming Alaric for not having had the courtesy to join her in the grave.
It had taken Alaric five years, some less-than-gentle prodding from Jarek, and a small army of Reds to even get Alaric back to this side of the country, and Jarek didn’t blame him one bit for that. It didn’t matter tha
t it had been the work of Zar’Golga’s extensive mental and physical reprogramming—and not Alaric’s perceived failings—that had driven Mosen into the deranged killing machine he was today. Not to Alaric, at least.
To Alaric, all that mattered was that his son had gone off the deep end and that now, for the first time since it happened, he thought he had a chance at getting him back.
Call him a pessimist, but Jarek wasn’t so sure that was going to work out if they continued on with keeping Mosen locked up like a good little psycho son. Of course, he couldn’t exactly phrase it like that to Alaric.
“Look,” he started slowly, “I know sending Mosen—”
“Seth.”
Jarek tilted his head in peaceful acknowledgment. “I know sending Seth over to Camp Krogoth is probably just about the last thing you wanna do right now, but I think it’s a good move. Give him something to do, space to breathe.”
If looks could kill …
“Do you remember what he did last time he had space to breathe?” Alaric growled.
Jarek knew only too well what Mosen was capable of. But, “Holding him here isn’t accomplishing anything, Alaric. We need better communication between our camps if we have any hope of actually fighting together, and, much as I don’t wanna piss you off, I have to point out that it might give you and Seth something to talk about aside from the usual—Hey!”
Alaric had reached under his cot and yanked free a snub-nosed revolver he must’ve kept hidden there for emergencies.
“Whoa!” Jarek cried, flinging his hands up. “Easy, man! I—”
But then he caught it too.
An odd, shimmering something had filled the room like softly glowing mist, so faint Jarek hadn’t even noticed it at first, occupied as he’d been with treading on eggshells.
He waved his hand through the air, but the phantom light didn’t swirl or disperse as he’d half-expected. “What the shit is this?”
Alaric shook his head, mouth agape as he flicked his gaze warily around the room. “I have no idea.”
Outside, someone shouted in a distant hallway. A few seconds later, heavy boots thundered by the door.
Reaping Day: Book Three of the Harvesters Series Page 7
