Half the bar fled toward the door, shouting, the young gang member first among them. A waitress dropped a tray filled with drinks and ran out the door. Others trampled over the shattered glass. Under normal circumstances, Tyler would be furious, but he barely registered his fleeing employees or all the customers skipping out on payment.
Tyler scrubbed a hand over his face. “Well, fuck. I didn’t see that coming—and I see everything coming—but it makes sense. If it’s not terrorists or criminals but just a government fuck-up, nothing would have leaked to the streets.”
Maria took a few deep breaths and straightened her back. “Maybe this is something Brownstone can help with.”
Tyler let out a strangled laugh. “How? You heard the President. The government is searching for the artifact. This isn’t something that can be solved by punching someone really hard. Even Brownstone will need to evacuate. I doubt he can survive an explosion big enough to blow up a city.”
Jeff and the other police officer at the bar frowned down at their phones. “We’ve got to go.”
Maria nodded. “Good luck, guys.”
Darkness flavored the cop’s chuckle. “I don’t think anyone in this city can say they have good luck now.” He hopped off his stool and joined the stream of customers fleeing the Black Sun.
“We need to get the hell out, too,” Tyler declared. “I’m not happy to have to leave, but I’ve got plenty of cash in hidden accounts. Even if this entire country becomes a crater, I can come back from it. I say we hit the Oriceran Consulate and take a portal to San Diego. There will be fewer people taking the portals because they’re afraid of magic.”
“I…” Maria shook her head. “I’m not sure. I need to call Brownstone and figure out what the agency is going to do.”
“What? Fuck Brownstone! I know he’s your boss, but he doesn’t outrank the fucking President!” Tyler threw up his arms. “We need to get the hell out of here. Not only that, we have to get the hell out of here. We’re under mandatory evacuation and martial law. I’m not going to get in a fight with some soldier over you worrying about Brownstone.”
People continued rushing out the front.
“Fine.” Maria grimaced and looked at the front door. “Let’s just swing by my place before the damned National Guard locks down the entire city. If Los Angeles is about to become a crater, I want to make sure I have a few keepsakes.”
Chapter Thirteen
James had to admit that the seats in the government car were damned comfortable. A truck filled with soldiers zoomed past. He had unbonded Whispy before Senator Johnston explained what had happened on Oriceran. A symbiont screeching in his mind for battle against another Vax was distracting.
“You’re lying to the entire country,” James commented. “Everyone thinks you lost a magical nuke.”
“True enough, but a lot of people lied to the entire world about magic for much longer. We’re lying to protect people.” Senator Johnston nodded. “I know it sounds self-serving, but it’s for their own good. If the Vax comes here, a lot of people might die, so the best thing to do is to get everyone out of the way. Simple as that, really.”
Shay scoffed from the other side of James. “And it’s not about cutting down on the number of witnesses? A few statements here and there to the soldiers and remaining cops and it’s easy to keep them quiet, but you get millions of phones with cameras uploading instantly to the net, it’ll be too many questions you have to answer. The truth about aliens will come out.”
“Controlling the information certainly figures into it. I’m not going to deny that,” Senator Johnston replied. “While a little technology and magic can go a long way toward keeping curious eyes off the situation, particularly satellites, the fewer people actually in the city, the easier it’ll be.”
“But you can’t even be sure the Vax will come over.” Shay let out a dark chuckle. “You might be evacuating the entire area for nothing.”
“Then it’ll be a nice training exercise for everyone involved, but this is definitely one time I would like to err on the side of caution rather than hoping it all turns out all right. If we had better luck, the Vax wouldn’t have shown on this planet for a few hundred years. We would have had time to develop better ray guns and spells.”
James grunted and shook his head. He uncurled his fists, which he didn’t even remember clenching. “The asshole will come. I guarantee it. There’s no fucking way this is a big coincidence, especially since Corey is freaking out and saying it’s not normal, according to what you’ve told me. The Vax asshole might have blown up an Oriceran town, but he’s here for me.” He chuckled.
The senator raised an eyebrow. “You find this funny, son? It’s good to not let a situation overwhelm you, but I’m a little surprised.”
“Nah, it’s not funny. Not really.” James shrugged. “Okay, kind of funny. I just was thinking about how Shay was saying that if anything fucked up the wedding, I’d better blow up a city in revenge. Looks like that might happen, but I’ll make sure I take that fucker with it.”
Shay elbowed James. “If you win the fight, it’ll be fine. The island I’m going to rent is off the coast of Southern California, sure, but it’s far enough away from Los Angeles that it shouldn’t be affected.”
Senator Johnston glanced at them, an amused look on his face. “We’d prefer it if you stopped the Vax, but, yes, we are prepared for collateral damage, and we do understand that it’s inevitable the city will take damage.” He pulled out his phone and tapped in a few commands. “A limited amount of damage might even be easily repairable with magic if we need to conceal certain realities, but our primary concern is taking the bastard out.”
“You don’t need the Oricerans to get to Oriceran,” Shay observed. “We could just send James over there anyway and let him do his thing. You said the Purifier isn’t near any cities right now.”
Senator Johnston shook his head. “When this is all over, we don’t want to be on the brink of war with the Oricerans. We’ll handle this here. It’ll show the Oricerans that Earth can defend itself. Hell, it’ll show that the United States can defend the Earth by ourselves. If you want peace, prepare for war, and one way to do that is show strength.”
“You think Oriceran is going to attack the Earth?” Doubt filled Shay’s voice.
“I think that you never know what’s going to happen. Earth history, let alone the return of magic, proves that well enough, and I believe it’s a good idea to plan for the future so you don’t get blindsided by it.”
“Where we going right now?” James asked.
“Los Angeles Air Force Base. Not much in the way of fancy planes there, but it is where the Space and Missile Systems Center is, so it’s a nice place to help coordinate the response.” Senator Johnston swiped on his phone. “I’m ultimately calling the shots on this little party. It’s the best of both worlds. If I do well, no one gets hurt, and no one even knows I was involved, but if it goes south, then I’m the scapegoat they hang for the loss of Los Angeles.” He offered a toothy grin to James. “A politician who actually has to take responsibility. Scary thought, isn’t it?”
“Why are you even here?” James nodded to the senator’s phone. “You could sit your ass in DC and do everything over a computer or phone.”
“Because if something bad goes down and we’re not able to finish evacuation before your relative arrives, I think it’s important for a few high-up people to have skin in the game. A lot of innocent people might still end up at risk, not to mention all the military personnel we’re asking to stick around.” Senator Johnston shrugged. “I’m not the President. The country can continue on just fine if my old ass dies.”
James grunted. “I can respect that.”
“Besides, being at the heart of this place will help us coordinate easier with some other bases involved in the control of space assets.”
“Space assets? Why does that matter? The Vax don’t travel through space. They portal.”
Senator J
ohnston held up his phone. There was a blurry picture of a long, narrow gray shape. He swiped, and there was another blurry picture. Two more swipes, same thing. A final swipe revealed four dots in the expanse of space.
Shay leaned forward, her eyes narrowed. “What are these? Asteroids? Comets?”
Senator Johnston lowered his phone and shook his head. “Imagery analysis indicates they are four smooth and very large and narrow objects with a number of hard angles and unusual reflectivity, and they are much hotter on one end. There are all sorts of other fancy things they can detect using fancy instruments, but there is only so much they can do with space telescopes, and not much they can do with magic so far away. These objects are still halfway across the Solar System, but they’re on their way to Earth, and they’re traveling damned fast.”
“Ships,” Shay offered. “Those are ships.”
James sighed. If the Vax didn’t use ships, that left only one obvious possibility. He’d already worried about this possibility when Heather mentioned the strange tasking of the telescopes by the military. “It’s an Alliance fleet.”
“That’s what we’re assuming,” Senator Johnston replied. “The Alliance representative already threatened to handle the situation without our permission. This is proof that they aren’t content to let us solve this little problem ourselves. Given what they’ve said previously, I would also guess these aren’t cruise ships filled with alien tourists. They threatened to bombard you with anti-matter torpedoes from a much smaller ship, so they must have a lot of fancy weapons on these bigger ships. Not only that, they’re paranoid enough to bring four when one might have been enough.”
Shay leaned back, her eyes flicking to the side as several motorcycles zoomed past the car going the opposite direction. “Can the Vax take out ships in orbit?”
“Who knows? The Alliance is remarkably unwilling to share concrete intelligence on the matter. I think they figure if we know too much, we won’t accept their help.”
James growled. “It doesn’t matter. You’re saying they’re going to attack.”
“I’m saying there’s a good of chance of that, yes.” Senator Johnston replied. “If the Vax comes to LA, I presume the Alliance would bombard it, and I’m not convinced they’ll stop if we haven’t finished the evacuation.”
James furrowed his brow. “I can’t fucking fly. Not even sure if Whispy works in space. How the fuck am I supposed to stop four spaceships?”
Senator Johnston waved a hand. “You don’t need to worry about it, son. We’ve already got a plan for that. It’s a little something I’ve been working on for a while. It uses our advantages and their disadvantages. It’ll also help send a message that our backward little planet can bite when necessary.” Johnston grinned, reminding James a little of a soberer Professor. “You only need to concentrate on your relative, because we’re not going to be stupid about this. This isn’t going to be like some alien invasion movie where we send a bunch of cannon-fodder soldiers to die pointlessly against an enemy we know is beyond them.” He clucked his tongue. “It’s always the same. Step one, send military personnel to die. Step two, drop a nuke. Step three, realize the nuke didn’t work. Step four, hope and pray you find a weakness. We’re going to skip past step four and send you.”
Shay cleared her throat. “James is tough, and he has been exposed to radiation, thermal energy, and that kind of thing, but I’m not sure he would survive a nuke. I get the Oricerans refuse to break the Great Treaty, but what about nuking the guy when he comes over?”
“We’re not evacuating Los Angeles for fun, Miss Carson, and we have every reason to believe he’ll appear in Los Angeles. We’re evacuating the city to minimize the loss of life, and we’re hoping that James here can do his best to take out the Vax bastard and minimize the overall damage to the city.” Senator Johnston pointed over his shoulder with his thumb at a passing gas station. “We drop a nuke, and even if we win, we’ve lost. We will have just taken out one of the major cities in the United States, and it only gets worse. My people tell me if that Vax arrives in the next few days, there’s no way in hell we’ll have this city totally evacuated. Best-case scenario, even excluding military personnel, we’re still talking thousands of people.” Any hint of humor or light-heartedness left the senator’s face. “With God as my witness right here, Miss Carson, I will do everything I can to prevent the deaths of thousands of Americans up to and including sacrificing my own life.”
Shay blinked and nodded. Death and destruction were one thing, but the potential scale of the casualties went well beyond the kind of pain James and Shay had delivered even to the Nuevo Gulf Cartel, and those bastards had had it coming.
James stared straight ahead, the movement of the cars in both lanes idly drawing his attention as he thought about everything he had been told. He had always assumed the Vax would come, but for some reason, he had allowed himself to believe it would be years in the future, or maybe decades.
If I want a peaceful life, I’m gonna have to fight for it. It’s time for a fucking galactic Brownstone Effect.
Senator Johnston handed James his phone. “Sorry, son. The minute you got in this car, we started jamming your phone and your hacker friend. We couldn’t take the chance some Alliance assassin decided to take you out, but I’m sure you’ll want to contact your daughter. Keep her at that school. She’s far safer there than she’ll be here, and I’m sure you have a few other calls you need to make.”
James grunted. “Yeah. I’ve got one other thing I need from you for this shit.”
“What’s that?”
“I need someone to go pick up my dog,” James explained. “And he better be well-fucking-treated, because if he isn’t, the Purifier will look like a Cub Scout compared to me.”
Chapter Fourteen
I kept wishing for Dad to quit bounty hunting, Alison thought, but that wouldn’t have made a difference this time.
Alison swallowed when James finished explaining the situation. She clutched the handset of Headmistress Berens’ phone in her hand. She had wondered why the headmistress had summoned her, but hadn’t expected the news she had received.
The girl’s stomach churned as she leaned forward in her chair over the front of the desk. While this wasn’t the first time she had received an emergency call at school, it had never been in conjunction with the government declaring martial law and a state of emergency. Even when her father had fought the Council, it still felt like him doing what he always did: being a bounty hunter.
This felt different, like a soldier calling his daughter from the front lines.
“Alison, are you all right?” Headmistress Berens asked, concern on her face.
“Yeah, just taking in the news from my dad.”
“I would like to tell you more,” James rumbled over the phone, “but there’s no point, and I don’t have a huge amount of time right now. I just figured you should know the truth.”
Alison would have preferred it if her father had called her directly. Having to process all her emotions in front of the headmistress of her school was uncomfortable.
Unfortunately, Alison didn’t have any choice. Her father’s attempts to call her on her phone had failed, and he’d called the headmistress in a last-minute act of desperation.
Alison wasn’t surprised. They had experienced difficulties in recent weeks speaking with each other over her phone. The professors at the school were always adjusting the wards and other spells around the main building and the grounds. That was likely the reason.
The Entrepreneurs Club had even been complaining about it, since some of the recent modifications were disrupting a few of their research projects. She could easily imagine a time in the future where cell phones might not work at all on campus.
We’d really be separate from the world then.
“Dad,” Alison whispered, “I should be there.”
“No way,” James rumbled back. “It makes no sense for you to be here. At least I know if you’re back there a
t that school, you’re safe, no matter what happens here. Besides, I’m not gonna lose. You know me. The closer I get to losing, the more pissed-off I get. I just figured you should know. I’ve got to go now. The senator’s got to talk to me about other crap. You know how saving the world is. Lots of annoying details.”
“Okay.” Alison teared up. “I love you, Dad.”
“Don’t cry,” James replied softly. “I can hear you choking up. Remember, it’s just a few months until the wedding. I need you to keep it together until then.”
“I… I will. You promise we’ll have the wedding on time, right?”
“If we don’t, your mom’s gonna be a lot scarier than some assholes from space.” James grunted. “I love you. Talk to you soon.”
The call ended.
Alison barely noticed the headmistress as she handed back the handset. Feelings swirled inside and threatened to overwhelm her.
It hadn’t been all that long ago when her dad had admitted he was an alien. As in all things, he had been blunt and straightforward during the conversation. Somehow learning he was an alien made sense. She couldn’t even claim she was that surprised.
He’s an alien, and I was a secret Drow princess. That’s just the way things work in our family.
The truth didn’t bother Alison for another reason. James Brownstone was her adopted father, so the revelation didn’t change anything about her past. In addition, she had peered into his soul and knew he was a good person.
Alison attended a school with teachers from both Earth and Oriceran. All her dad telling her about being a Vax accomplished was adding a third planet to the list of places where people she loved had been born.
Learning about the rest of the Vax disturbed her. She couldn’t help but compare her dad’s situation to her own. The Drow had hunted for her, and they had killed to get to her. Even if the Drow weren’t inherently evil, they’d done a lot of evil in the name of her people, just like the Vax.
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