This is what I’ll be doing for the university, too—going around telling other people to dig things up. I’ll be looking for lost secrets with fewer killings. It might be less adrenaline-filled, but still interesting in its own non-lethal way.
Then again, the very nature of modern archaeology post-opening of the gates added more inherent danger. Many archaeological digs required at least some precautions in case they encountered a bizarre magical trap or threat. If Shay could provide that for herself with the cover that she’d been trained by James Brownstone, people might not even find it odd.
“Last thing I thought I was gonna do today was dig,” James commented. “Kind of relaxing, even if Whispy bitches every once in a while about finding someone to kill.”
Shay smirked. “If you want to quit the bounty-hunting game, you would make a good gravedigger.”
“Probably. I’ve sure sent enough people to their graves.” James’ muscles glistened with the exertion. Although he exercised a lot at home, it’d been a while since he’d done basic physical labor that didn’t involve kicking someone’s ass or hauling around meat, especially in a tropical climate.
“We still clear, Peyton?” Shay asked. “No tanks or helicopters or wizards riding dragons?”
“I’m still doing a wide perimeter with the drone, but the satellite info from a few minutes ago showed the rebels on their way to a boat on the opposite side of the island.” Peyton whistled. “You scared them off their own hideout. Nice. You didn’t even have to kill any of them.”
“I’m less worried about those assholes than I am Fortis agents,” Shay replied, staring at James’ left arm for a moment. Even if he’d regenerated it, that didn’t change the fact that they’d destroyed it, which meant there was a possibility they could hurt him again. He was tough, but he wasn’t invulnerable.
James continued to shovel, oblivious to Shay’s eyes and concern.
“I’ve hacked into the systems at Julius Nyerere in Dar es Salaam,” Peyton explained.
“The airport? Why did you do that?” Shay frowned.
“So I could also get access to their radar,” Peyton explained. “You’re close enough to the mainland that I might be able to use those as early warning systems if something suspicious and high-speed heads your way. Also doing my best to keep you in sight with different satellites. The drone might not be the most effective, but I’ve got your back. The only thing is, I’m going to lose you once you go underground.”
“We’ll be fine underground,” Shay replied. “There might be some zombies or monsters or giant spiders or whatever down there, but we’re expecting that. I just don’t want to be surprised by any assholes with alien ray guns.”
James grunted as he launched another shovelful of dirt away from the hole. He’d now completely revealed the massive circular door leading into the tunnels beneath them. He jammed the shovel blade into the ground and wiped the sweat off his brow.
“Not a bad hole. And Whispy’s already immune to their weird-ass gun,” he explained. “Not worried about it anymore. I think they’re out of tricks.”
“But they might have another weird-ass gun,” Shay replied.
James shrugged. “Sounds fun.”
Shay sighed and shook her head. “Just watch our asses, okay, Peyton?”
“Will do.”
James nodded to the door. “Now that I’ve done all the hard work, you gonna come and open it and take all the credit?”
Shay grinned and headed toward the door, looking it over until she found the symbols she sought in the upper-right. “Something like that.” She placed her hand on the symbols and rattled off the Arabic phrase she’d memorized from the briefing materials. “Hope this works.”
Nothing happened.
“Shit. Maybe we will have to blow—”
With a loud crunch, the doorway slid away, revealing a dark tunnel gently sloping into the ground.
Shay shrugged. “Or not.” She lowered her goggles and changed them to normal optics before activating her headlamp. “Let’s go find ourselves a map artifact.”
James fished a headlamp out of his backpack. “I’ll take point. Might get lucky and get exposed to some new attack types.” He stepped inside without waiting for confirmation.
Shay followed him with a frown. “We’re not sure if you can survive something like being decapitated, so you might want to still be careful.”
“That’s funny, coming from you.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
James grinned. “You’ve never seemed all that worried any of the times you were shooting me or trying to blow me up in a warehouse.”
“That was a carefully controlled training environment,” Shay insisted. “Even if it was fun.”
“See?” James grunted and stepped through the doorway. “I’ll be fine. It’s fucking rare that I run into something totally new anymore.”
They proceeded deeper into the tunnels, the sunlight from the surface slowly giving way to dusty darkness. Their headlamps kept the shadows at bay, and the temperature went down until it was chilly but not cold. The tunnel leveled out into an angled two-way intersection.
“See?” James commented. “No traps so far.”
Shay switched her AR goggles to thermal mode and looked around, but everything in the tunnel system was the same cool background temperature. The only thermal differentials in the entire area were from James and her.
“I’ve got nothing. Peyton, you there?”
He didn’t respond.
“Not surprising,” James commented. “We don’t even have a decent line of sight on the entrance anymore.”
Shay switched off the thermal mode of her goggles and nodded. “Let’s just do this the hard way. We’ll explore one path, and backtrack if we find nothing. As long as the place doesn’t collapse on top of us, we should be okay.”
James nodded and continued down one of the forks.
Several minutes had passed when a blade sprang from the wall and crashed into his chest. The loud clang echoed in the hallway.
James grunted and looked down at the bent, rusty blade. “That’s annoying.”
“You okay?” Shay asked.
James nodded. “Yeah. Fucked up my tac vest a little, but it didn’t cut me.”
“We might want to be a little bit more careful.”
“Maybe. If this is the best shit they’ve got, I’m not worried.” With a dismissive snort, James continued forward.
Shay sighed and hurried after him.
Two more blade traps and one fireball trap later, they’d returned to the initial fork in the road. James was still unharmed, but Shay’s level of concern was building.
If they had the vimana map here back in the day, that would suggest they understood what it was, which means they had access to decent magic. Those shitty traps James has tripped so far can’t be the limit.
But maybe they’ve just run out of power over the centuries. Has anyone even been in these tunnels in a few hundred years? That still doesn’t explain how they were able to hide the tunnels from other scans, though.
Their trip down the other path, including several meandering turns, brought them to a dead end. A stone statue of a man in elaborate armor holding a wand stood at the end of the hallway.
“Well, this is interesting,” Shay observed. “That armor isn’t what you’d expect from the Sultanate.” She pointed at the carved stone wand. “And it’s ballsy to display the wand openly like that.”
James looked around. “You think it means something?”
“Yeah. Let’s see.” Shay tapped the side of her goggles to cycle back to thermal mode and looked around, detecting a hint of heat from the wall behind the statue. She pointed. “I think we might have a secret passage behind the statue.”
“How do we get to it?” James looked back and forth.
Shay tapped the side of her goggles. A small window appeared in the upper-left of her field of vision. “By trying every incantation the Professor
gave me. Glad I practiced my pronunciation.”
Twenty phrases later, the top of the wand lit up and the tunnel shook.
Shay grinned. “Looks like we’re in business.”
James looked back and forth down the tunnel. “Or you activated the self-destruct.”
“At least we’ll die together.” Shay tapped her foot and waited.
The grinding of stone on stone filled the chamber, and the back wall slid open. Bright blue light blinded them both, and they stumbled back.
Shay’s eyes adjusted after a few seconds. A series of pulsating energy fields lined the newly revealed hidden passage. A twisting beam extended from the center of each field to the back of the chamber and a ring of crystals on the floor, an emitter of some sort. It lay right in front of an entrance to a smaller chamber.
She knelt and picked up a stray rock and tossed it at the first field, which crackled and vaporized the rock.
“That’s annoying,” Shay muttered. She pulled her gun and aimed at the emitter. She fired off a few rounds, but the first field destroyed them. She ejected the magazine and loaded anti-magic rounds before shooting at the emitter again. The bullet made it through several fields, but it didn’t make it to the emitter before being destroyed. “That’s expensive and annoying.”
James grunted. “Just let me walk through, then.”
“Woah.” Shay shook her head. “Wait one second. Those fields are vaporizing lead on contact. We don’t know if it’s heat or at the atomic level or what.”
James looked unimpressed. “I’ll be fine.”
Shay pulled out a small crystal and tossed it to him. “At least use that.”
“What’s this?”
“An artifact. Helps purify water. Just drain it for the magic, so you can at least have better armor coverage.” Shay held up a hand. “I know, I know. He’s changed you so much that you’re tougher without him, but the reality is, you have that armor for a reason. Use it.”
James nodded. “Fine.” After removing his tactical vest and holster and handing them to Shay, he placed the crystal against his amulet, and a moment later, the silver-green metallic tendrils shot from his amulet to cover most of his body in bioarmor, although he didn’t extend a blade. His helmet appeared. “Happy?”
“Satisfied,” Shay responded. “Ease into it. Just try a hand first. If the field fries it off, we can regenerate it with a potion. Wait a second, is that extended advanced mode?”
James shook his head. “I’ve got the helmet because I asked Whispy for it in my head, but from what he’s telling me, it’s not as good. He’s right. I don’t have the wide range of vision I normally do. He also says I don’t have enough power for energy blasts or jumps.”
Shay nodded. “The helmet’s what’s important anyway. Maximum coverage. I’d prefer you not die after all the time I’ve put in on wedding planning.”
“Yeah. It’d be annoying when I went through all the trouble to set up the perfect proposal.” James grunted and stepped toward the field with a curious look on his face. He reached out with an armored hand and touched it, then grunted and stumbled back when his fingers disappeared with a sizzle.
He shook out his hand, his face tight with pain. “Shit. Didn’t expect that.” His face twitched as he grabbed a healing potion from a belt pouch with his good hand and downed it.
Shay stared, refusing to blink as she watched the regeneration unfold. Tendrils extended first from the armor, and then bone formed around them, followed by muscles and then the skin. Once the fingers were back, new armor coated them.
“Imagine what five Vax like you could do,” she murmured in awe.
James looked at her with a slight frown on his face. “I do all the time, which is why I need to get stronger.” He lifted his newly regenerated fingers. “And this is one of the reasons I need to take risks. If they ever do come, it might come down to something I’m adapted to that they’re not.” He headed toward the field again and stuck his hand in it. The armor sizzled on contact but didn’t vaporize. Gritting his teeth, the bounty hunter stepped through. He now stood in an empty space between two of the fields. “Going to give Whispy a moment to continue adapting. He’s having a great time.”
“I’m sure he is. Just remember who’s in charge.”
James hurried through the fields until he got to the end. His armor was sizzling and charred, but he remained in one piece. He brought back his fist and slammed it into the crystal emitter, cracking it. Several of the energy fields disappeared. A few more punches knocked large chunks off the emitter, and the rest of the fields vanished.
After a quick check with her AR goggles in several modes to assure the fields were gone, Shay jogged down to the end of the hallway to join James. His armor was already regenerating from the damage.
“I hope Whispy had fun,” Shay commented. “That shit worried me.”
“You never know when an adaptation would be useful.” James shrugged, the gesture almost comical given the alien armor coating his body.
He pointed past the broken emitter to the interior chamber. A series of glyphs and Arabic writing covered the back wall.
Shay took a deep breath. “Time to go through my list of phrases again. Should I start from the front or the back?”
“Don’t know.”
Shay sighed and picked one at random she hadn’t said before. In a loud, clear voice, she shouted it.
A small glass sphere winked into existence and dropped toward the floor. She jumped forward and grabbed it before it smashed against the waiting stone.
“That could have been…annoying,” Shay commented with a laugh. “Sometimes it’s nice to be lucky.”
18
James had reverted from advanced mode by the time they hit the exit, but they’d recovered the map, and they hadn’t run into anything worse than a few more blade traps. It’d been one of the smoother tomb raids Shay’d had in a while, but being able to change symbiont modes on demand wasn’t a tool they’d had access to before.
“…you…hear…?” said a voice over a static-filled line as Shay and James closed on the entrance to the tunnels.
“We can hear you, Peyton,” Shay responded.
“…trouble…”
“What?” Shay’s heart rate sped up.
Shay and James jogged up the sloping tunnel.
“There’s trouble,” Peyton explained as they cleared the tunnel, and their comm link stabilized. “I’ve been trying to get you for a while now. Maybe we should have set up repeaters or something.”
“What trouble?” Shay asked.
“You’ve got a large transport plane on the way,” Peyton replied. “It’s flying damned low, and it doesn’t have any active transponder, so they’re trying to keep out of sight. There’s no way they aren’t there for you.”
James snorted. “There’s nowhere to land on this island, let alone land a big-ass plane.”
“Maybe they don’t plan on landing,” Peyton countered. “Maybe they just plan on shoving a huge bomb out of the back. ETA is a couple of minutes. I might be able to get the drone close since they’re flying so low.”
Shay looked at James. “Maybe we should break for the water just in case?”
They hurried through the trees, the hum of the approaching aircraft now audible and growing louder with each second. They were still in the trees when the plane passed directly overhead.
Shay looked up, expecting a bomb or something equally annoying, maybe a bunch of zombies in parachutes, but nothing came.
This isn’t over, so what’s their game?
James and Shay slowed but continued toward the beach.
“What’s the situation, Peyton?” Shay asked.
“They’re circling the island, and…opening the cargo door. Trying to get a good angle to see what’s inside.”
James grunted. “Big bomb it is.”
Shay looked up at the plane as it flew back into their line of sight above the sparse canopy. “I don’t think so.”
“Why?”
Shay patted her backpack. “Because if it’s Fortis, they want the vimana as much as we do, and blowing us and the map to hell won’t accomplish that.”
“Then why are they opening the cargo door?” James looked up. “They’re letting something out.”
Peyton cleared his throat. “I can answer that. From what I can see on the drone, they’re about to drop a bunch of guys in exoskeletons and heavy weapons onto the island. They’ve got integrated anti-magic deflectors, too.”
“Good.” James let out a low growl. “I’d prefer a straight-up fight to all that trap shit.”
“Hrmm,” Peyton murmured. “This thing is a fancy turboprop.”
Shay snorted. “Don’t really give a shit about appreciating the enemy gear at the moment.”
“No, what I’m getting at is, I think if I time it right, I can jam the drone into one of the engines. It might not crash the plane, but they’ll probably at least back off.”
“Do it!” Shay shouted.
“Sure thing,” Peyton replied. Shay could almost hear his grin over the line.
A few seconds later, a loud pop sounded. Smoke poured from one of the engines on the plane, and it leveled out and turned toward the mainland. Several gray forms fell from the back, parasails deploying. As the new arrivals continued to drop, it grew obvious they were going to land near the beach where James and Shay had come ashore.
“Sh…I’m…think…jamming,” Peyton’s voice managed to get through.
Static filled the line, burying him entirely.
“Remind me to give him a proper thanks later,” Shay commented. “He can be pretty useful at times.”
“Is that what you say about me when I’m not around?” James asked.
Shay winked. “You bet it is.”
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