Reaping Day: Book Three of the Harvesters Series

by Luke R. Mitchell

  The furor. The retreat.

  HQ. Was HQ even safe?

  And Michael …

  She reached for her comm, thinking to try for her brother.

  Before she could, Drogan gathered himself to leap from the crowd below.

  “Jarek, we have to—”

  Jarek must’ve seen Drogan coming himself, because he turned and shuttled her up the steps and through the hatch before she could finish the thought.

  A second later, Drogan thudded to a hard landing right where she’d been standing. He didn’t stop there, pushing past them and into the ship with Lietha’s bloody body, urging them along with him.

  “They come!” he cried, his tone wild, desperate. “We must flee this place!”

  “Slow down, Stumpy,” Jarek said. Or started to say before Drogan shouldered him to the wall, still clutching Lietha’s limp form to his chest.

  “Fool,” Drogan hissed. “There is no time!”

  He released Jarek and took off for the cockpit.

  Rachel and Jarek shared a stunned look.

  The furor outside was bad—worse than anything they’d seen yet. But for Drogan to insist on fleeing, and for the commanders to be calling for retreat …

  She turned back to the hatch, not wanting to look—not wanting to believe it could be true. Not now, after they’d fought so hard. After they’d won the day at so terrible a price.

  It was too much.

  They couldn’t handle more. She couldn’t handle more.

  But whatever was happening out there, it wouldn’t simply go away for her refusal to acknowledge it.

  So Rachel leaned out of the open hatch and looked skyward. Cold dread poured through her at what she saw, freezing her inside and out.

  “Oh, fuck,” Jarek said quietly beside her.

  The remainder of the storm clouds had passed. The sky was clear. And there, high up in the atmosphere, descending from god knew where, were half a dozen ships, all of similar shapes but various sizes. All decidedly not of this world.

  The harvesters had come.

  Epilogue

  After spending nearly a year working their way across the galaxy, jump by jump, Haldin was no stranger to a quiet ship. On the contrary, the quiet times had often been some of his favorite. The times when he’d sat deep in meditation, glimpsing at that elusive inner peace with which his old mentor had been so attuned. The times when he’d lain with Elise for hours, feeling the soft warmth of her bare chest rising and falling against his, infinitely mesmerizing and undeniably vibrant with life.

  But now Elise’s body was broken.

  That inner peace was nowhere to be found.

  And this quiet …

  This quiet was different.

  This quiet told of defeat and despair, of guilt and shame at having fled to fight another day, even when no one fleeing had any true expectations that that fight would ever be one they could win.

  This quiet was absent hope, and Haldin had been sharing it with Alton for too long now, staring the raknoth down in more ways than one as they waited for Elise’s change to truly begin.

  Alton had propped his legless body up against the wall of Haldin and Elise’s bedroom. Haldin stood over him, arms crossed, lost in thought.

  The position might’ve given him some kind of psychological advantage against another human—never mind that any such human would currently be screaming in pain following the beastly double amputation Alton had suffered—but Alton was far too old and cunning to care about such things.

  And so they’d been here, locked in a mostly silent stare for the better part of an hour.

  It almost seemed like a waste of time, like they should go do something productive—take charge, establish a plan, a next move.

  Except this was the next move. THE Next Move. The only move left. He just needed Alton to see it.

  “It’s unnecessary.” Alton sent for the thousandth time. “Dangerous.” He looked over at Elise’s still form, his face more expressive than he often allowed, filled with uncertainty and maybe even fear. “Bad enough that Elise and Lietha were forced into this. The least we can do is protect them until they’re ready to stand together.”

  Haldin crossed to Elise’s side and knelt down to softly stroke her fair cheek and her raven dark hair. He resisted the urge to pull back her blanket to inspect Lietha’s entry site yet again and resigned himself instead to the long, pensive silence.

  The weight of his old friend, Guilt, prowled the perimeter of his mind, seeking some weakness through which to enter. He shut it out with the resolve he’d learned out of necessity back on Enochia.

  It wasn’t his fault.

  It wasn’t Alton’s.

  They hadn’t brought Elise here—hadn’t brought any of them.

  They’d simply set out to accomplish something together, he and Alton. Elise, Johnny, the others … They’d all made their own decisions, for their own reasons.

  Elise was a warrior. She was the love of his life, the one that he’d die to protect—would give anything to protect—over and over and over again. Every time.

  But she’d chosen to come here, chosen to fight.

  She controlled her own destiny, not him.

  He had to remember that, had to respect it. Had to hold onto it with desperate, bloody fingertips to keep from being sucked down the bottomless hole of despair and self-loathing that waited, always there, just below love and reason.

  He had to forgive himself.

  But fuck, was it hard.

  And hell take him now if Alton thought he’d sit here and let Elise suffer this new fate alone.

  “We’re doing this, Alton.”

  The raknoth crossed his arms. “This … symbiosis is unnatural to us. It will take time to perfect. Too much time. You trust the others to ensure our survival meanwhile?” He tilted his head toward Elise. “You trust them to protect your love?”

  Haldin studied Alton. “You really think we have a choice? That there’s any other way we win now?” He was quiet for some time. Then, “Wasn’t this always the plan?”

  Alton gently shook his head, silent for a long while. Then, finally, “I’m afraid, Haldin.”

  It hadn’t been what Haldin had expected to hear, but he wasn’t surprised to hear it, either.

  Human, raknoth—it didn’t matter.

  Who wouldn’t be afraid right now?

  After a thoughtful silence, he went and sat with Alton. With careful deliberation, he planted his hands on the raknoth’s shoulders, holding Alton’s gaze with all the steady conviction he could muster.

  “You’re the one who convinced me to come here, who brought this world the help they needed to make it this far.”

  It felt incredibly odd to be touching the raknoth like this. In all their time together, he couldn’t recall having ever touched Alton outside of sparring sessions.

  “You’re the reason the rakul are going to lose, Alton. And so am I.”

  He let his hands fall from Alton’s shoulders but left one extended, open and waiting to seal this insane pact.

  “I’m scared too.” Haldin glanced at Elise, bolstering his resolve. “I’ve never been so terrified. But this is it. The others will keep us safe as long as they can. But this is how we win.”

  He’d never seen a raknoth look quite so human as Alton reached, slowly at first, and then fell upon Haldin’s extended hand with both of his own, his alien eyes wet with unspilled tears.

  “Okay,” Alton whispered.

  Haldin gave him a solemn nod, his jaw clenched tight in a futile attempt to prevent the tears from welling in his own eyes.

  “I …” Alton searched for some time and finally gave up with a shake of his head. “Thank you, Haldin.”

  Then he sagged limply against the wall like his strings had simply been cut, just like that.

  It was time, then.

  Haldin looked longingly at the corridor hatch, not so much seeing the smooth, purplish surface as the realm of possibilities that lay just
outside it.

  Even with the darkness descending, even with this planet so completely, utterly fucked, there was still life to be found out there. Moments of pain and joy, triumph and sorrow. There were his friends. There was his mortality.

  But this was how they won. He was sure of it.

  So instead of heading for the hatch, instead of saying his goodbyes to Johnny and Franco and the others, he crawled delicately onto the bed and laid down next to Elise. He took her hand, careful not to shift her body, and enjoyed the simple feeling of her hand in his—the calloused warmth, the faint but unmistakable pulse of human life pumping through her veins.

  Would it feel the same on the other side?

  Would it ever feel this way again?

  At the foot of the bed, Alton’s body gave a hard twitch, then another. A horrible wet crack split the air, like the world’s largest egg beginning to hatch.

  Haldin’s gut churned with apprehension and barely contained nausea, his pounding heart and electrified nerves screaming at him to get up, to run, to get the hell out of there.

  “I love you, Elise,” he whispered.

  Then, with her hand grasped tightly in his, he laid back and closed his eyes to wait.

  Our Heroes Will Return … In RETRIBUTION

  And I don’t think it’s too much of a spoiler to say that Jarek, Rachel, and crew will be in for the toughest fight of their lives.

  But Retribution is still a little ways off. What’s a Harvesters fan supposed to do in the meanwhile?

  Well, you could build a backyard forge and start crafting your very own Big Whacker…

  OR, you can sign up for my mailing list and get two free prequel novellas and some “deleted scenes” sent straight to your inbox!

  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 #1: You’ll also get the “deleted scenes” from Reaping Day–chapters written from Haldin’s perspective that ultimately didn’t make it into the final story.

  Bonus #2: 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

  Like a surprisingly literate (and unsurprisingly awkward) snowball plunging downhill, it seems the more books I manage to write and sell, the more people I have to thank for supporting me along the way and helping me to deliver the best stories I can. That said, I guess I’d better get straight to it.

  First on the list (as she always will be) is my incredible fiancé, Marina, whose support has always been stalwart and whose love reminds me there are still at least a few reasons to pull my head out of the clouds and participate in this real world of ours from time to time.

  Secondly, to my mom, my soon-to-be in-laws, and my friends, I thank you all for making me smile, occasionally feeding me, and otherwise supporting me in your own special ways. In particular, a big, sweaty thanks to my dear friends, Matt and Cara, for sheltering me from the oppressive Georgian heat for a good deal of my Reaping Day revision time—long and brutal as it was.

  Speaking of revisions, as always, I owe a good deal of gratitude to my developmental editor, Lisa, who once again descended from Story Heaven to grant a living, breathing soul to the sad Story Golem I’d stuffed together by my own devices.

  No matter how carefully Lisa and I plan and execute a story, though, the ultimate test remains in how that story is received by readers. To that end, I want to thank my faithful ARC crew, who have come through yet again in helping me deliver the most polished story I can (not to mention in reassuring me that said story is in fact not a steaming pile of Golem droppings). Additionally, for finding and slaying what typos and other various word demons slipped past us all, thanks to Dj, proofreader extraodinaire and writer of consistently hilarious emails.

  Story aside, (or, in other words, to judge a book by its cover), I think we can all agree that Prokopy and Clarissa have once again nailed the illustration/design combo that’s given this series the look I love.

  And, lastly, to end with a hefty (but sincere) chunk of cheesy goodness, I want to thank you, the reader, for buying yet another one of my books and continuing to fan the sails of my wobbly little authorship. It means so much that I even decided to stop being rebellious and finally put an honest dedication in a book (see the front matter, or, alternatively, just know that I really do appreciate your support).

  We’re all in this together now, team. May our collective snowball never reach the bottom.

  Now, on we go.

  Thank you so much for reading!

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

  Happy reading,

  -Luke