Reaping Day: Book Three of the Harvesters Series

by Luke R. Mitchell

  He descended to kiss her neck, but she stopped him. “Nothing?”

  Damn his giggly body.

  “I just, uh, remembered something Drogan said. About us squishy humans. It was nothing.”

  Somehow, that didn’t seem to put her at ease.

  “Oh,” she said.

  That single syllable was like a fine sheet of ice spreading between them.

  For a second, he considered trying to explain the tidbit about Drogan and Lietha, as if that might just clear the air, but no—a lesson in raknoth reproduction probably wasn’t the ticket to righting this suddenly sinking ship.

  As testament to that, Rachel added, “Guess the two of you really hit it off, huh?”

  Her expression was a forced neutral, but the way she said it—the unspoken suggestion that such a thing was morally reprehensible—had Jarek spitting out his rebuke before his better judgment had time to vote.

  “Wasn’t like I really had many alternatives on the visitor front.”

  He regretted the words almost before they’d finished leaving his mouth. This wasn’t what he wanted—the petty, scathing bullshit. The undue judgment. The shadow falling over Rachel’s expression, making it all the worse.

  “Jarek …” she said quietly.

  He couldn’t quite tell what it was in her eyes. Anger? Frustration? Regret?

  She looked away, refusing to meet his eyes. “I was—I didn’t want …”

  Tears glistened in her eyes, and intuition hit him like a charging raknoth.

  All this time, he’d been sure she was dodging him because she thought he’d be angry or at least want to lecture her about what she’d pulled with Alton.

  He’d never thought to imagine she’d simply been afraid of what he might think of her for it. Why would she be? Since when did she care what he thought? But that’s exactly what he saw in her face now. Remorse and fear.

  “Hey.” He took her chin and steered her eyes back to his. Or tried to.

  She resisted for a second and then snapped her face back toward him with a sharp huff of air, her eyes brimming with tears, remorse giving way to anger. “Dammit. Why do you—”

  He cupped her cheek with one hand and, feeling her jaw quivering with tension, shook his head. “I don’t care, Goldilocks. Never mind what whiny-bitch Jarek has to say about it.”

  She watched him uncertainly, looking like she was debating whether she should shirk his touch and retrieve her shirt.

  He shook his head again, willing her to believe him. “I don’t care. Not about what happened in the Himalayas. Not about what’s happened since. We’ve laid too much shit on the line for each other to let a second’s questionable judgment throw it all out the window.”

  Because a second’s misjudgment was all it had been. Call him naïve, but he was sure of that looking at her now. Whatever hang-ups she might still have concerning Alton and the rest of the raknoth, she wouldn’t be making a habit of sabotaging their war efforts moving forward. He trusted that.

  The quiver of her jaw intensified beneath his palm. Then, quietly, she said, “Don’t you mean defenestrate it?”

  He laughed, thinking back to the shootout in Deadwood she was referring to, when he’d complimented her on blowing a gunman through the window. Back when he’d been without Fela and they’d both been about two steps shy of knifing each other. It felt like such a long time ago.

  “You’re right.” He planted a kiss on her forehead. Her cheek. Leaned in until his lips brushed her ear. “Pardon my pedestrian tongue, m’lady. It tends to wander.” A light nibble. “You don’t happen to have any idea how we could keep it occupied?”

  Rachel shifted beneath him, clearly not hating the affections, despite the firm hand she planted against his chest.

  “You realize I almost got you killed,” she whispered, “right?”

  “Eh.” He leaned back to take her in—ruffled hair, tear-streaked face, and beautiful, shining eyes—and shrugged. “None of us gets to bat a thousand, Goldiloc—”

  She reached up and pulled his mouth down to hers, and he didn’t fight it.

  Before, their kissing had been insistent, frantic.

  The kiss she drew him into now, though, was deep and electrifyingly sensual—passionate, but in no hurry to get out of its own way or move on to the next step. It was full of care and warmth and the salty wetness of recent tears, and it made Jarek’s head spin like he’d just sprinted a mile with a gas mask full of nicotine.

  He was almost too stupefied to speak when she pulled back and whispered, “I’m sorry, Jarek.”

  “I, uh …”

  Words, dammit. He needed to use his words.

  Rachel’s face was crinkling into a smile now, her brow arching up at him. “You okay up there? You’re not having a stroke, are you?”

  “Oooh …” He dipped and planted a kiss on her breastbone, reaching for the button on her jeans. “You might wanna be careful using the word ‘stroke’ right now.”

  She laughed, resting a hand on his but not quite stopping him.

  And by the will of all the cruelest, most dastardly fates in the universe, her comm chose that moment to buzz against his side.

  “Shit,” Rachel whispered.

  For a few quick heartbeats, they held each other’s gazes, silently debating. Then some unspoken agreement passed between them, and she swiped the call away with a breathy laugh.

  He pulled her in for another kiss and skirted down the cot, slipping out of his briefs, moving to help her do the same with her jeans—each small movement she made, each touch of warm skin driving him wilder with need.

  The comm buzzed again.

  “Fuck it,” Rachel breathed.

  She was unfastening the intrusive device from her wrist and shifting her hips to aid Jarek’s endeavors with her jeans when Al spoke from the cabin speakers.

  “So sorry, sir, but we have multiple calls from HQ. It’s … Well, it appears to be quite urgent.”

  “You’ve gotta be kidding me,” Jarek growled.

  “My sincerest apologies, sir.”

  “Are we talking pants urgent?”

  “Indeed, sir.”

  Rachel sighed. “Guess we’d better check it out.”

  Jarek looked back and forth between her and the cockpit, praying for some magical development to float along and un-ruin what had been turning out to be a perfectly amazing day.

  No such luck.

  “Shit!” He kissed Rachel’s forehead and sprang off the cot, headed for the cockpit. “Take the call, then, Mr. Robot,” he said, stepping into Fela’s waiting boots stark nude. “And easy with the pelvic plate, buddy,” he added as Fela began to fold around him.

  The console holo sprang up, blank but for the buffering icon as the connection strained to add video to the call.

  “What?” he growled at the console before he’d even noted the ID.

  “Sorry,” came Lea’s voice, “I—oh …” she added as her face appeared on the holo and her holo must’ve similarly populated to show Rachel tugging on her shirt in the back cabin.

  “What’s up?” Jarek asked, not in much of a mood to give a shit what anyone thought right now. “Judging from the persistence, I can only assume the world is ending.”

  “I’m …” Lea’s gaze flicked back and forth between him and Rachel. “Shoot. I’m really sorry to interrupt, guys, but we have a problem.”

  Twenty-Two

  Once upon a time, Jarek had been reasonably confident that phrases like “we have a problem” could be translated to things like, “We’re gonna have to wait for daylight if we don’t want the ship’s batteries to run dry,” or, “Hey, that band of marauders who wanna kick your ass just rolled into town.” Those had been problems, yes, but manageable ones. Trivial ones, even.

  But nowadays, anytime someone said those four shitty little words, Jarek was inclined to go from zero to full-on clench in a few microseconds flat.

  “Lay it on us,” he said as Rachel entered the cockpit behind him
, entirely too clothed for the afternoon they’d been fixing to have.

  “It’s happening again,” Lea said. “Another furor, I mean. It’s hitting Newark, coming up from the south. A big one, from what our scouts reported. The commanders are sending everything we can to get it under control.”

  Crap.

  “The new generators are almost ready,” Rachel said, dropping into the copilot’s seat next to Jarek.

  “Nelken’s reaching out to the Enochians himself about getting them deployed right now,” Lea said. “In the meanwhile, they want you guys at the vanguard.” She glanced uncertainly at Jarek. “Assuming you’re ready for it.”

  “I can handle it,” Jarek said.

  As long as he tried to favor his left arm where possible and didn’t happen to come across any upset Wookies. Or rakul.

  Whether or not he was ready wasn’t quite as concerning at the moment as the way this development was tickling at his funny business button, though.

  “Why Newark?” he added. “Why hit anywhere but here or Camp Krogoth?”

  Why, indeed, unless Gada was trying to draw them out?

  “Command is already considering it could be a trap,” Lea said, “but we still don’t know if these events are even deliberate or what, and people are dying out there. Unless you know something we don’t, we’re moving out. All of us.”

  Jarek traded a questioning glance with Rachel. “That’s an order?”

  Lea looked uncomfortably between the two of them on the holo. “You two be careful. That’s the order. There’s a team headed your way for transport. I’ll see you out there once we’ve finished rallying the troops here.”

  With that, she ended the call.

  It was probably just that he was hearing through Fela’s sensors now, but the muffled sounds of activity outside seemed to have doubled or tripled since their fun had first been interrupted by their confounded comms.

  Jarek absentmindedly listened to the bustle, trying to mentally hash out every scenario in which a furor down south wouldn’t simply be a trap to bait them out of their stronghold.

  The options seemed rather limited.

  “What is it?” Rachel asked.

  He shook his head. “It’s nothing.”

  “That doesn’t look like your ‘it’s nothing’ face.”

  Probably because it wasn’t. But Lea was right. People were dying. Whatever else might be happening … Well, he was supremely short on any proof, and he didn’t need to look too far to remember what had happened last time he’d thought he’d known best.

  So instead of speculating, he stood and offered Rachel his hand. “Come on. We need to move.”

  Rachel watched him closely, making no move to take his hand. “You think you’re seeing something they’re not? And you’re just gonna march into battle like a good little soldier anyway?”

  Jarek shrugged. “It’s nothing. And you heard the lady. Orders is orders.”

  With that, he strode back to the cabin to strap on his gun belt and his shiny new sword, trying to ignore the nagging feeling that’d settled somewhere in the space between his brain and his gut.

  It was nothing, as he’d pointed out twice now. They’d keep the good people of Newark from hurting themselves and each other as best they could until the furor ended or the Enochians got there with the cloaking generators, then they’d regroup back at HQ and rally up for the real fight.

  What could possibly go wrong? Aside from pretty much everything, that was.

  Apparently, Rachel had her own share of skepticism about the whole thing.

  “Can we get a bioscan or something to confirm that’s still our Jarek in there, Al?” she asked from the cockpit.

  “I was rather thinking this was cause for celebration, ma’am,” Al said. “Jarek practicing caution and playing nice with others? I’ll enjoy it while I can.”

  “Don’t tempt me, Mr. Robot,” Jarek said, strolling back to the hatch release. “Any eyes on that team, by the way?”

  A firm pair of thumping knocks on the hull answered before Al could.

  “Company, sir,” he added anyway.

  “Gee, thanks, buddy.”

  Jarek reached for the hatch release, glancing back to exchange a knowing look with Rachel only to find that she’d tensed in the cockpit doorway, looking less than amused.

  “They sent Drogan,” she said quietly to Jarek’s questioning look.

  Ah.

  “You don’t have to hold hands,” Jarek said slowly. “But our people seeing him helping out there could probably do us all a lot of good right now.”

  She considered that, looking no less tense, but finally nodded her agreement.

  Jarek slapped the hatch release, and the ramp descended with a mournful groan to reveal several skeptical faces gathering nearby, pointedly separate from Drogan, who’d been the one to knock.

  Around them, the entirety of HQ was at full throttle—squads dashing here and there to link up with their respective transports while others, presumably those who weren’t packing cloaking glyphs on their persons, hurried to carry gear and supplies where they were needed. From the looks of it, command was scrambling the better part of the entire Resistance army to get its ass down to Newark.

  They must be dealing with a serious furor then, beyond what they’d seen before. The thought didn’t ease the bad feeling in his stomach.

  As hectic as their surroundings were, tense silence somehow managed to assert itself through the space between the parties gathered in and around Jarek’s ship.

  Drogan looked like he’d say something first, but, instead, he closed his mouth and strode pointedly up the ramp, past Jarek and Rachel without a word, and into the cockpit, where he probably realized he’d be most easily separated from the rest of the crew.

  That, however, didn’t make the Resistance troops look any happier at the thought of climbing aboard.

  A loud click reverberated across the lot, and Nelken’s gruff voice sounded from several speakers, informing the base that all readied forces were clear to depart. Jarek thought he detected a hint of rankle in Nelken’s tone, probably largely centered on the man’s current role as the injured commander who was to sit back at HQ while the others got to have their fun out in the field.

  Around the lot, the already chaotic bustle took on a frantic edge at Nelken’s all-go order. The half dozen transport trucks already gathered by the newly-constructed gates sprang forward to action, several more rolling in to take their place.

  Fun. Right.

  Jarek looked down at the timid troops waiting at the base of the boarding ramp and waved them on. “C’mon. Let’s get this party started, people.” He jerked a thumb in Drogan’s direction. “He’ll keep his hands to himself.”

  “I’ll make sure he does,” Rachel added to the troops.

  Jarek forced himself to keep a relaxed expression and not look around at the low warning growl that rumbled from the cockpit. At least it was quiet enough that he was probably the only one to hear it.

  So maybe Rachel wasn’t exactly all in on Operation Raknoth Friendship yet, but at least her comment encouraged a few of the troops to scowl and plod their way onto the ship with their dastardly ally.

  The rest followed their example quickly enough.

  “Right then,” Jarek mumbled, slapping the hatch button. “Was that so hard?”

  Not as hard as making his way up to the cockpit past the dozen troops now crammed into the cabin, apparently.

  It didn’t help that none of them seemed overly concerned with easing his passage, either because they were feeling ornery or because they were too preoccupied staring at the boarding ramp with a range of horrified expressions as it raised shut with the groans of a laboring ox.

  “Shall I take us up, sir?” Al asked in Jarek’s ear as he reached the head of the crowd and the ramp snapped shut with a few too many jarring clacks.

  “Take it away, buddy. Nice and easy.”

  Soldiers grabbed high and low for handholds as
Al lifted the ship and set them off as gently as could be reasonably expected.

  Jarek posted himself just outside the cockpit and clamped an armored hand onto one of the grips above the door, not minding one bit when Rachel skirted closer to him and opted to use him for support.

  What enjoyment he gained from Rachel’s closeness, though, was quickly snuffed out by the heavy silence that hung in the air, practically oozing malcontent and distrust. All Resistance eyes were trained on the cockpit door, none of them relaxed.

  This wasn’t going to do.

  “Stumpy?”

  Drogan shot him an irritated scowl, his eyes lightly smoldering.

  Jarek ignored the look and jerked his head toward the cabin-goers. “Is there anything you’d like to say to the class?”

  “My participation was requested by their commanders,” Drogan said without looking back into the cabin or even particularly bothering to raise his voice enough to be heard back there. “If they take qualm, perhaps they should reevaluate the process by which they elect their leaders, not to mention their desire to survive in the days to come.”

  Fantastic. Thank god he wasn’t going to make this difficult or anything.

  Jarek looked back to the cabin crew and waved his free hand, trying to keep the wince off his face. “See, guys? All good!”

  Oddly enough, they seemed less than convinced.

  A short, tense flight later, the only positive news was that no one had much energy left to worry about the single raknoth in their midst.

  Jarek had expected the furor to be big.

  Not this big.

  There were hundreds of them, maybe even a thousand, just in the stretch he could see through the cockpit windshield as they flew low over the first arriving Resistance trucks. Wild-eyed men and women of all shapes and ages, in all states of dress and undress, and with all manners of armaments. The crowd had one thing in common, though.

  They were clearly all out of their minds with rage.

  Several bodies already lined the streets, plenty more joining them by the second as many of the crowd tore at each other with teeth, nails, fists, and the odd club, blade, or chair.

  How were there this many?

  Had Gada swept all of Newark, moving up from the south? Had he marched them in from all the homesteads in the surrounding areas?