Retribution: Book Four of the Harvesters Series

by Luke R. Mitchell

  Her own bullet catcher would keep her and those immediately behind her safe. At least until the thing sucked enough heat from the already chilly tunnel air to freeze them to death. Either way, she resisted the urge to shout Get behind me! and set off whatever itchy trigger fingers might be watching them.

  “Just to be clear,” came the voice from the speaker, crackling over the mechanical whir of the ready guns, “this is the part where you answer.”

  That seemed to unfreeze everyone.

  Johnny raised a hand in peace, opening his mouth to say something.

  Nelken clamped a hand over Johnny’s mouth and faced the speaker that sounded to be somewhere above the door. “We’re refugees from the eastern US,” he said in his best strong commander voice. “And we’re not here for trouble.”

  “Oh, good,” said the voice. “Well, in that case, why don’t you go ahead and get the hell out of here? We’re not looking for more mouths to feed.”

  “And what about trained, armed ones looking for secure walls to help defend?”

  There was a huff of garbled laughter. “If you didn’t notice, we can defend ourselves just fine in here. Now kindly get the f—”

  “We’ve fought the vamps,” Nelken said, apparently deciding to shift gears. “And we’ve won, too. Judging from your decorations outside, I’d think that’d mean something to you. Please, we’ve come a long way.”

  With their mysterious trigger man engaged in asking Nelken why it was they were running if they were such prodigious vamp slayers, Rachel felt marginally safer shifting the entirety of her focus to disabling the guns. It was deciding exactly how to accomplish that feat that was giving her pause.

  She entertained thoughts of firing pins, bullet-feeding mechanisms, and other moving parts for all of three seconds, but it was too risky, her knowledge too shallow to be sure any of it would work the way she intended.

  So instead, she found the cables running to the robotic housings controlling the guns, telekinetically undid the connectors, and yanked them free.

  The whirring of the spinning guns began to descend in tone like music to her ears, assuring she’d broken the connection to whoever was in control of the weapons.

  She let out a relieved breath.

  “—more than just the vamps out here,” Nelken was saying. “I know it’s hard to believe, but you’re not as safe behind this door as you’d like to think. Let us in to talk, and I’ll explain everything.”

  “Look,” the speaker said, “I appreciate your struggle, and that all sounds nice and scary, but if you don’t quit your babbling and evacuate this tunnel, I will—”

  “You’ll what?” Rachel called, stepping to Nelken’s side. “Gun us all down? Go for it, bunker boy.”

  Nelken snapped to her with a horrified stare, but she tilted her head at one of the guns, and his horror shifted to uncertainty.

  “Don’t tempt me, lady,” the speaker voice said. “You wouldn’t—Hey … Hey, what the fuck did you do out there?”

  She shot Nelken a quick wink, and his face shifted to an expression that might’ve been exasperated or pleased. Maybe both.

  “I think the door’s about to go too,” she said. “Wanna let us in before I break your fancy toy? We just wanna talk.”

  Nelken seemed to give up on trying to be irritated with her bold play and waited quietly beside her.

  Silence stretched. Rachel could only hope it meant whoever was on the other side of that speaker was running their request up whatever chain of command might exist in there.

  She swept her senses all around them again while they waited, searching for any hidden surprises she might have missed while distracted by the enormous Gatling guns staring them down.

  Finally, the speaker voice returned.

  “No weapons. No more than three of you. The rest wait at the north portal while we talk.”

  Rachel traded a look with Nelken.

  “Agreed,” Nelken said.

  After a moment’s hesitation, he gestured for Rachel and Drogan to join him then turned to hand off his weapons and address the others.

  “You heard him, people. Head back to the entrance. Sit tight. Eyes peeled.”

  Several looked miffed at being told to sit out while an arcanist and a raknoth accompanied their commander into potential enemy territory, but no one argued.

  Johnny looked like a kid who’d just been told he was too short to ride the rides, but he allowed Lea to turn him around by the shoulders and followed obediently after the slowly retreating crowd, head hung low.

  Rachel silently wondered at the wisdom of bringing Drogan into the facility that was boasting a dead raknoth as a trophy. It was a risky idea on multiple levels. But, then again, everything about this situation was risky, and if the shit actually hit, it’d take more than a few humans with big guns to take down Drogan.

  “What did you do to my guns, lady?” the speaker voice asked as the sounds of their retreating allies faded to distant echoes. “And what’s with the staff?”

  “Trade secrets,” Rachel said. “Explicitly reserved for people who haven’t threatened to kill me and my friends in the past five minutes.”

  The speaker chuckled. “Well shit, at least today’s not gonna be another boring day. I think it goes without saying you’re gonna need to toss the stick, though.”

  She shrugged and bent down to slide her staff a good way down the smooth tunnel floor.

  “I trust no one’s hiding any other weapons?” the speaker asked.

  Rachel resisted the urge to make some stupid I AM the weapon comment.

  No need to put their soon-to-be hosts on edge more than necessary. Better to keep it to themselves that, together, she and Drogan could wreak havoc on their base, weapons or no.

  “All clear out here,” Nelken said. “Unless you’d like me to leave the cane.”

  Apparently, that didn’t merit a response.

  “You see that box by the door?” the speaker asked.

  Rachel had noticed the little metal box sitting there, but she hadn’t paid it much mind what with the giant guns and everything.

  “We see it,” Nelken said.

  “Open it,” the voice said. “And put them on.”

  Rachel’s trap-o-meter started tingling as Drogan started forward to inspect the box. It didn’t really look threatening. It was the kind of thing someone might’ve once kept bread in. She scanned it with her extended senses all the same.

  Nothing but a few little pieces of metal. Silver, maybe.

  Jewelry?

  Drogan stood from the box and confirmed her findings. Three silver pendants hung in his hand—completely ordinary and benign in every way Rachel could sense.

  Confused, they each slid one over their heads.

  For a long moment, nothing happened.

  “Good,” the speaker voice said quietly. “Good. Step back, then.”

  They complied, trading another confused look.

  What the hell had that been about?

  Before she could wonder about it too much, a series of deep clacks vibrated from the immense bulk of the bunker door, at least ten in total.

  With a groan of heavy machinery at work, the enormous door began to swing open. It moved with a ponderous slowness that was agonizing to wait through and yet probably inevitable given how much the door must weigh. The groan of laboring motors grew louder as the door opened to spill out a beam of yellow light that grew steadily wider and wider across the tunnel floor.

  Finally, the door swung far enough to grant them line of sight into the space beyond.

  Pale, cream-colored walls, spanned by networks of cables and pipes and—

  She resisted the urge to flinch as the door swung wider and revealed the gruff, no-nonsense face staring them down from behind the barrel of an assault rifle.

  Wider, and there were three more men. All dressed in military fatigues. All pointing weapons at them.

  A fifth man stood at the end of the firing line, rifle held ready acr
oss his chest but not actively pointing at them. It was this last man who’d been talking to them through the speaker, Rachel was almost sure of it, though she couldn’t quite say why.

  Maybe it was the look of semi-guarded superiority in his dark eyes as he waited to see their reactions to the surprise firing squad.

  Apart from those smug eyes, he wore a beanie cap, sported a dark beard, and generally looked like a guy who might give her reason to punch him at some point down the road.

  For now, though, he just watched them until the door came to a jarring halt and the sounds of groaning motors abated.

  “Come on in,” Beanie Cap called, his voice confirming he had indeed been the speaker. “No sudden movements and so forth.”

  Rachel traded a look with Nelken and Drogan, and they all walked past the huge door and through the wide doorway, hands held in plain sight.

  As soon as they’d crossed the threshold, Beanie reached over to press something on the wall, and the door began its slow, groaning journey to close them in.

  Rachel did her best to brush aside the tickle of panic that bubbled up in her chest at the thought of being trapped behind that door. When that failed, she reminded herself that, A, she was an arcanist and perfectly capable of escaping most locked boxes and that, B, she wasn’t trapped in here with them so much as they were now trapped in here with her and Drogan.

  Or so she hoped.

  At any rate, she took heart from Nelken, who strode into the room, head held high, and paused at a non-threatening distance from the firing squad. Drogan, oddly, acted a bit timid.

  After a painful wait, the door finally closed behind them with a decisive boom and a series of locking clacks, and Beanie turned from the controls to face them.

  “Much as I’d like to trust you good folks,” he said, “I’m gonna have to search you before we go any farther.”

  “We understand,” Nelken said, handing his cane to Drogan and spreading his arms wide.

  Easy for him to say. He probably wasn’t about to get taken to Grope City.

  Beanie made quick and efficient work of patting down Nelken, as if the act were routine for him, and moved on to Drogan, who thankfully didn’t growl.

  The gunmen watched silently—alert, but not overly threatening.

  Rachel’s stomach wriggled a bit as Beanie finished with Drogan and approached her, but she held his gaze evenly.

  To her relief, he was as professional with her pat down as he had been with the men. At least until …

  “What’s this?”

  Rachel mentally braced for the inevitable ass-grab, insisting to herself that she must not punch, no matter where that hand landed. When Beanie tugged on her bullet catcher and battery packs, though, she couldn’t keep the heat from spreading to her face at her overly-aggressive assumption about the man’s honor.

  “Just some old batteries,” she said.

  He leaned around from behind to show her his skeptical frown. “You just keep batteries on your belt? And what the hell are those etchings supposed to be?”

  “It’s … personal.”

  Jesus. She was just on fire today.

  “Uh-huh,” Beanie said slowly. “Mind if I hold onto this stuff, all the same?”

  “I kinda do.”

  He scrunched his face in an expression that was only mockingly apologetic and went to work trying to pull the gear from her belt.

  After a few moments of his awkward fumbling, she sighed, unfastened her belt, and let him take the whole getup.

  “Happy?” she asked with a scathing glare as Beanie tucked her things neatly into his vest pockets and returned to his men.

  Beanie considered the three of them and shook his head. “Probably as much as I’m gonna be today.” He nodded to his men. “Let’s head in.”

  Another impressively thick blast door and an equally impressive wait longer, they were shuttled into a wide, vaguely cavern-esque hallway that, past dozens of crates of supplies, led to yet another door and yet another tunnel.

  This tunnel, Rachel was pretty sure, was the beginning of the actual complex. It spanned wide and high, its floors smooth but its walls angling into uneven, rocky features that reminded her they were inside a mountain. Faded white buildings lined the tunnel, each one propped up by dozens of the thickest springs she’d ever seen.

  A few unarmed onlookers openly gaped at them, but Rachel didn’t get a chance to take in much more before Beanie hustled them up and into the closest of the white buildings. Inside, the building’s hallway sort of reminded Rachel of your average hospital or maybe a rather depressing administrative building. Linoleum floor squares. Bland tones.

  Beanie and his men funneled them into a plain square room whose contents consisted of nothing more than a metal table with a pair of hard-looking chairs on either side.

  It could have been a tiny conference room, but it sure felt like one intended more specifically for interrogations.

  Beanie scooted one of the chairs around the table so that it was three on one side and one on the other, then he bade them to sit with their backs facing the door. His men posted up along the wall at his back while he settled into the lone chair opposite Rachel, Nelken, and Drogan.

  “So …” Beanie said, propping his rifle up and laying his hands on the tabletop, seemingly more at ease now that they had multiple blast doors between them and the rest of Nelken’s men. “We got off to a colorful start.” He laid a hand on his chest. “My name’s Zach.”

  Zach watched them expectantly.

  “Commander Nelken,” Nelken said.

  Zach gave a sarcastically impressed head bob. “A commander, huh? So what does that make you two, then?”

  Drogan gave an uncharacteristically timid shrug, and when he spoke, his tone was decidedly less regal than usual. “I’m just Derek.”

  So apparently Drogan could act when the situation called for it.

  “And I’m just Rachel,” she added. “Nothing special to see here, folks.”

  Zach considered her. “Nothing special … Hmm. You mind telling me how it is our guns went offline out there, Rachel?”

  “You tell me,” she said. “I just heard ’em winding down and wanted to pretend I was a badass.” She shrugged. “Sue me.”

  Zach clearly didn’t buy it.

  “As far as I can tell,” he said, “both guns had their cables yanked. Neat trick, unplugging a pair of autocannons that are thirty feet apart behind steel plates”—he spread his hands—“without any of you moving an inch.”

  Zach watched her like a hawk as he allowed time for his words to sink in, like he was hoping she’d spontaneously crack and spill everything.

  She just shrugged, trying to look as helplessly lost as she could. “I don’t know what to tell you, man. Did I wanna be a magician when I was a kid? Maybe. But I sure as shit didn’t make your big machine gun cables go poof.”

  “If you don’t know what’s going on out there,” Nelken interjected before Zach could call bullshit, “I think we might have more pressing matters than why your rotary cannons went down.”

  Zach kept his gaze on Rachel for another long moment before finally sitting back with a sigh and waving a hand in invitation to Nelken.

  “Let’s have it then, Commander. What is this bright new doomsday you claim to be running from?”

  Nelken started and stopped himself a few times before finally settling on a direction. “How much do you know about the raknoth?”

  None of the men looked happy.

  Zach’s grin was violently chilling. “We know how to kill ’em. Don’t see what else you’d need to know about a vamp. Get to the point.”

  “All right, then,” Nelken said. “What if I told you the … vamps have bosses they used to answer to. Bosses who are far older and more dangerous than they are. Bosses who aren’t too happy that their servants skipped town on them to hide out here on Earth after the Catastrophe.”

  Zach blew out a humorless laugh, his icy expression taking on a derisive
edge. “Ah. So you people come from the alien theory camp …”

  Nelken frowned. “I don’t kn—”

  “Let me save you some breath, commander,” Zach said. He gestured to the men behind him. “We here in The Complex don’t put much stock in that alien invasion bullshit you people have been bouncing around the Net for the past fifteen years.”

  Nelken looked uncertain as he pressed on. “The raknoth came here from another planet. We’ve heard as much from one we captured.”

  One who just so happened to be sitting right next to them.

  “And you might have noticed the Net’s down?” Rachel added. “We’re pretty sure it’s these bosses we have to thank for …”

  Normally, Rachel might have ignored the hand Zach raised for silence. But the way he was suddenly trembling with rage gave her pause.

  “The vamps,” Zach growled, “are servants of hell.”

  A sick feeling crept into Rachel’s gut at the change coming over Zach—the fanatic gleam slipping into his eyes.

  “The only master they have is Satan himself,” he continued. “You can’t trust a single word out of their blood-stained mouths. And if you three hadn’t passed the silver test …”

  The silver test?

  Was that what they thought? That they could spot a raknoth with a goddamn little piece of ordinary silver?

  Zach was shaking his head, some of his rage dissipating though he still studied them with narrowed eyes. “You three passed the test, but you sure claim to know a lot about them. I can’t help but wonder why that is.”

  Bogus test or no, Rachel’s stomach sank further at the reactions of the men behind Zach.

  Distrustful stares. Grips tightening on weapons.

  What the hell had they stumbled into here?

  Nelken was surveying the men with his neutral commander face. “How long have you boys been down here? What’s the last news you had from outside?”

  Zach smiled, and the expression felt several degrees saner than a second ago, as if he’d thrown the blanket back over whatever fanaticism had just fallen momentarily out of hiding.

  “You’re not a man of faith, are you Commander Nelken?”