“No turkey, only bullets, blood, and artifacts?”
“Aye. There might be turkeys where you’re going. I can’t guarantee there won’t be.”
Shay sighed. “Okay. Whatever. Let me text James to let him know I’ll be late, and I’ll be right over.”
“Thank you. That’s all I can ask.” He hung up.
I hope I don’t end up regretting this, she thought darkly.
Shay settled in across from the Professor after glancing over her shoulder and surveying the room for anyone who looked to be out of place. There were several men and women who didn’t seem to be having a good time, which made them suspicious at the Leanan Sidhe. The raucous atmosphere always seemed to intoxicate people even without the beer, and only people with something to hide, like Shay, didn’t give in to that atmosphere.
High-priority jobs mean big risks. Better be careful the next few days even if I don’t end up taking the job.
Shay finished her check of the room. None of the potential hostiles spared even the smallest glance her way. That didn’t mean she was safe, but it did cut down on the likely risk.
“I’m here,” Shay commented. “So what’s the big job that I had to run over here to discuss tonight?”
The Professor didn’t answer at first, instead taking a huge gulp of his beer. “You’ve previously recovered artifacts related to a vimana for me. Quite successfully, I might add.”
Shay nodded. “Yeah. What about it? From what you told me before, you made it sound like you had a magical flying fortress stashed in a lake somewhere. You ready to buzz the Eiffel Tower with it?”
“Hidden in a lake? I did give that impression, didn’t I?” A merry smile followed.
Shay rolled her eyes. “Why bullshit me?”
“It can be useful to keep people off-guard. You, of all people, should understand that, Miz Carson.”
“Just tell me. Do you or do you not have a vimana? I’m here for a job offer, not games.”
“Aye, but games are so fun.” The Professor sighed. “To offer complete honesty, no, I don’t actually have a vimana, small or large, parked anywhere, and now I’m interested in the ultimate prize, an actual vimana. In this case, it’s exactly as you described: a massive flying fortress powered by magic. It has likely not been in operation since the last time the gates opened. Even with the gates open, it still will require a huge amount of magic to be fed into it to get it to operate, and it will only be a shadow of what it could be at full capacity.”
Shay furrowed her brow. “So, wait, you want me to go on a tomb raid to get a magical flying castle that you admit is huge and is going to need shitloads of magic to even work? How the hell am I supposed to pull that off? My pockets aren’t that big.”
The Professor chuckled. “That would be impressive, but no, I’m not asking you to stick the vimana in your pocket or backpack. Technically it’s not the vimana you’ll be recovering, which is why this is a practical job offer.”
“Another activation artifact? Some sort of magical fuel cell?”
“Far simpler, yet more important.” The Professor grinned. “You’ll be recovering a map artifact that points to the current location of the vimana. I’m sure there will be some confusion based on how old the map is, but you don’t have to worry about that. I have other people to help with the final collection and launching of the vimana. It might be fine in its current location, but it’s important that we know where it is and have firm control of it as a future asset.
“I should be able to fit a map in my backpack,” Shay replied with a smirk. “Do I need to take any special precautions?”
The Professor shook his head. “No. I should note it’s a small glass sphere rather than the paper kind, just to be clear, but it’ll lead me to the vimana all the same.”
“And why do you even need a vimana?” Shay asked.
The Professor looked more amused than offended. “Worried I’ll try to pull a Gulliver’s Travels?”
Shay snorted. “When I first heard of a vimana, I was thinking magical plane, and you immediately upgraded it to a magical castle, and now we’re all the way up to city? Maybe I should be worried.”
“Ah, Miz Carson, I assure you that it’s nothing quite so grand.” The Professor’s easy smile remained on his face. “It’s just interesting that you now care so much. You’ve rarely expressed that much concern about what I might do with an artifact. I’m curious if this means you now don’t trust me.”
“I don’t trust anyone on this planet except Alison and James, and she’s a teen who can be tricked, and James can be a little too honest for his own good.” Shay matched Smite-Williams’ smile with a predatory one of her own. “It’s not that I think you’re ready to go all Rhazdon, Professor. I just care a little more about the future now, so it doesn’t hurt to ask.”
In a rare moment, the smile vanished from the man’s face briefly as he picked up his beer and took another drink. His cheer, fake or not, returned after he downed more of the dark liquid.
The Professor set his glass down. “Two things motivate me in this particular case, Miz Carson.” He held up one finger. “Firstly, when it comes to weapons, denying them to your enemy is sometimes as important as having them yourself, but how can we deny them to an enemy if we don’t even know where they are?”
Shay nodded. “Fair enough.”
The Professor held up another finger. “Secondly, one could make the argument that recent events have suggested that having a magical flying fortress available might be useful if one had to deal with unusual threats. This isn’t just any random vimana. It’s one of the more powerful ones from the previous times, and it’s my belief, along with that of a few others, that we could potentially get it into space.”
Shay stared at the Professor, frowning. “How openly can I speak?”
“As honestly as you want, Miz Carson.” The Professor gestured around the room. “There’s a reason I like this location so much. The entire CIA could try to spy on us but fail.”
“Recent events,” Shay echoed. “You mean that alien shit?”
“Certain mutual acquaintances in the government feel that we need more resources at our disposal.” The Professor mimicked an explosion with his hand. “I believe the exact wording was, ‘What do we do if some asshole alien decides to drop ten anti-matter torpedoes on a city from orbit?’”
Shay snorted. “Not so trusting of the Alliance, after all?”
“Aye, and even the lad can only do so much from the ground.” The Professor’s brow lifted. “Everything we know about our new diplomatic friends suggests that magic is their Achilles’ heel, so it doesn’t hurt to collect a few extra-powerful magical trinkets. Unfortunately, when the gates opened, such old-school technology quests as advanced space travel became secondary concerns.
“It’s only recently that people have begun looking back into that and giving it decent funding.” He shook his head. “We might be able to send a few people into space on rockets, but it’s not like Earth can field a fleet of spaceships, let alone warships, and Earth’s magic grows weaker the farther you go from the planet. Some of the portal experiments NASA has been trying to prove that. Also, the Oricerans are leery of most strategic-level magics. It’s unclear whether they’d be capable of shooting a ship out of orbit with magic, or even willing to try to do so.”
Shay frowned. “You telling me they’d let an Earth city get nuked?”
“I think they’ve lived with mostly peace for centuries after a war that nearly destroyed their world, and they’re not eager to get involved in a new planetary-scale war.” The Professor polished off his drink and let out a satisfied sigh. “And in the end, this is our planet, not theirs, so it’s up to us to defend it.”
Shay folded her arms over her chest, still trying to take in the enormity of what was being discussed. It might be just another tomb raid for her, but she was being asked to help recover a map to a magical fortress in case the planet wanted to fight off an alien invasion.
/> Things were a lot simpler when I didn’t worry about anything but who I was killing for a living.
“I want you to answer my one question as honestly as possible,” Shay replied, her voice barely above a whisper. “Because I need to know what the fuck is going on before I get too involved.”
The Professor held up his hand to tell her to wait. A waitress zoomed by, picked up his old glass, and set down a new one without even stopping.
“Go ahead, Miz Carson.”
Shay lowered her arms and frowned. “Does the government have information that the Alliance is going to make another play for James?”
The Professor tilted his head, his eyes narrowing ever so slightly. “You’d try to make him run, wouldn’t you?”
Shay locked eyes with the older man. “I’m not gonna let him walk into a fight he can’t win. He’s getting stronger, but he’s still a long way from whatever they think he is.”
“And, what, you’d choose him over the world?”
Shay barked out a harsh laugh. “All this time and you still don’t get me, do you, Smite-Williams?”
“Please explain it to me then,” the Professor replied.
“I’m not a good person. Just because I stopped killing people for money doesn’t mean I’m a good person. Just because I love Alison and James doesn’t make me a good person.”
“I see.”
Shay shook her head. “No, you don’t. The rest of the world can burn. I’m not letting James sacrifice himself for it.”
The Professor offered her a disarming smile. “And no one is suggesting that you do so, Miz Carson. If you will recall, Senator Johnston all but offered to go to war on the lad’s behalf.”
“I just wanted to make sure we understood each other.”
“We understand each other.” The Professor nodded. “Which is all the more reason for you to help me locate the vimana. The more tools we have available, the less anyone will worry about what one individual man, however unbelievable and impressive, can bring to the fight. And no, I don’t know of any current particular threats, but you know what I say. If you want peace, prepare for war.”
Shay took a few deep breaths to try to calm her pounding heart.
Shit. Where did that come from? Is that why I’ve been so obsessed with James training the symbiont more? Because I’m worried the assholes are coming for him?
“Fine,” Shay spat. “Let’s prepare for war. Maybe these assholes have the long view and will wait a hundred years, but how do you know if this thing still works? It’s been thousands of years, and you don’t even know where it is, so it’s not like there was some vimana inspector checking on it every few centuries to top off the magical gas tank.”
“Aye,” the Professor replied. “But the energy signature of a viable vimana can be detected if you know what to look for, and a helpful elf did just that in this particular case.”
“Why the hell do you need me to find a map, then? Why not just track that shit directly and cut out the tomb raider in the middle? It’s not like I mind the money, but it seems like a waste of time.”
The Professor gave her a condescending look that made her want to headbutt him. “We’ve tried that already. Direct tracking fails; whether from residual magic on the vimana or something else, we can’t say. It might just be the low levels of magic involved. Think of it like detecting trace amounts of some compound on Earth in the atmosphere. You might know a chemical is being released, but you can’t easily pinpoint it. But in this case, I do know where the map is: on a remote island east of Tanzania in ruins that belonged to the Kilwa Sultanate.”
The elf? Probably the Fixer. He’s been involved with this alien shit from the beginning. Once again that lazy elf is making me do all the hard work with all his fucking excuses.
“Okay.” Shay nodded. “This is starting to sound like a decent job.”
“Isn’t it, though?” The Professor ran his tongue along the inside of his cheek. “Unfortunately, it’s not as simple as going to the island, which, incidentally, is occasionally used as a base by local rebels.”
“I’m not worried about the local AK boys, but if they’re incidental, then who is the main threat?” Shay frowned. This job was becoming more complicated than she had expected.
“We both know you’ve dealt with certain men interested in alien objects. Just because you’ve eliminated some of those men doesn’t mean that the ones who employed them are all gone.”
Shay groaned. “Are you fucking kidding me? More black ops rogue government assholes? This shit’s even more annoying than I thought. Can’t Johnston do something about them?”
“Trust me, Miz Carson, he is. I’m not privy to everything he is doing or planning, but he’s already putting in efforts to minimize the risk to you. That said, it might not hurt to bring the lad along, and let me make it clear. No one, including our mutual employer, is going to lose sleep if you’re forced to repel them through lethal means.”
James has been kind of annoyed about Alison not coming home for break. He had his fun at his bounty the other day, but a tomb raid might further take his mind off shit.
Shay shrugged. “A little ass-kicking always brings a smile to his face.”
The Professor clapped once and rubbed his hands together. “Good. I’ll send along the information. Just be cautious. These people aren’t just ruthless like the mercenaries and tomb raiders you’re used to dealing with. They have access to advanced technology, and it’s my understanding that they have no problem killing even innocent people, let alone hired tomb raiders.”
“Good. Both James and I could use a good workout.”
12
You’ve got to be fucking kidding me, Shay thought.
She frowned as she glanced into her rearview camera. There was nothing more insulting than someone following her and not even bothering to pretend they weren’t. She expected a certain professional courtesy from anyone who might be planning to kill her.
Just because I don’t always practice defensive seating doesn’t mean I don’t check for assholes following me right after a sensitive meeting. Or do you really think you’re that slick? Were those assholes I spotted earlier exactly what I worried about?
Another quick check in her mirrors and camera reinforced her initial belief. A black sedan with tinted windows and two drones were following her. Given the conversation she’d just had with Smite-Williams, she doubted her newfound friends were something as harmless as paparazzi or mobsters.
You assholes are really underestimating me, and this is gonna end badly for you because of it.
Shay changed lanes and took a hard right to verify the tail. A few seconds later, the car careened around the corner, and the drones followed right above it.
Thanks for the warning, Professor. These guys showed up even earlier than you thought, I bet. Everyone’s eager, huh?
If these assholes are from Ragnarök or Nephilim, they aren’t going to want to take me too publicly, but if I go to the police, they might end up killing someone. Shit, they might even do it and try to frame me. With my background, digging out of that might take a while.
Of course, they have to come at me when I’m not in the car loaded down with all the toys. Fuckers. How inconsiderate can you be? You should never attack a woman when she doesn’t have her magic sword with her. It’s just rude.
Shay had her gnome-crafted knives, which was something, even if they lacked the full anti-magic penetration of her tachi. She’d been pleasantly surprised by how effective they could be in the absence of the sword. In the end, it didn’t matter how cool she looked when she killed her enemies, just that she defeated them.
“Fuck it,” she muttered. Shay would need to end the encounter as quickly as possible. If the assholes wanted to party, she’d show them why it was a mistake to invite her. There was always the small possibility they were something as boring as surviving Harriken, cartel members, or someone else from one of the organizations or groups she had helped demolish in the las
t few years despite the extra hardware and timing.
Could they just be overly well-equipped mob carjackers? The two drones are a bit much, but everyone’s upping their game these days.
Doesn’t much matter. I might as well end this shit.
Shay yanked the Porsche into a narrow alley. The tires screeched with her hard stop. With a quick press of her thumb against a biometric sensor, she popped open a hidden compartment under her seat and pulled out a couple of sonic grenades, a flashbang, and some extra magazines. She stuffed the deadly treasure into her jacket pockets.
A drone zoomed overhead and continued past her.
Where did the other drone go? They up to something?
Shay fingered the jade ring and pendant, again appreciating James’ wisdom in his choice of engagement ring and present, even if they still needed to figure out the wedding ring situation. Good defenses could keep her alive, even in an ambush situation where she lacked her best equipment. She activated the defensive artifacts before pulling out her gun and throwing open her door.
Loud buzzing from the back end of the alley caught her attention.
What the fuck was that? It sounded like an EMP. But why?
Shay looked at her car. Her Porsche was still on, and it wasn’t hardened against electrical attacks. Her watch was fine as well. The EMP hadn’t been aimed into the alley.
Directional EMP, then?
A long horn blast sounded, along with an echoing crash. The grinding of metal on metal echoed down the alley. The cab of an 18-wheeler rolled past the back end of the alley with blood on the windshield. The trailer scraped across the asphalt a few seconds later, sparks marking its path as it ended up blocking the alley.
Shay stared at the wreck. She’d fought lizardmen in Romania not all that long ago, and she’d felt less surprise.
“Did these fuckers just cause a truck crash to block me in?”
Movement and the squeal of a driver riding his brakes too hard brought her attention back to the front of the alley. The black sedan from before now blocked the head of the alley.
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