by Logan Jacobs
The silence that followed was eerie but welcome.
“Aurora, PoLarr,” I motioned to the two of them, “we are going to be the away team. I want to get to the cave, find the treasure, whatever the hell it is, and get back to ship as fast as possible.”
“Thank god I’m not wearing a red shirt,” PoLarr said and whistled. “Although Scotty always wore red and seemed to do just fine.”
“Huh, I never thought of it that way,” I said as I did indeed think about it for a second. “Good point, PoLarr.”
“Aye, captain,” she replied in a very bad Scottish brogue. “Don’t worry, I'm never doing that again.”
“Okay,” I nodded to my crew and held out my hand. They all put theirs on top of mine. I took a moment to look each of them in the eye, and they did the same in turn with the rest. I felt a surge of pride and confidence well up inside me. I was pretty sure I could take on the entire galaxy with these bad ass bitches at my side. “Team Havak Go!”
PoLarr, Aurora, and I loaded up on extra laser pistol recharges, secured our swords and headed out. On a whim, just as I was about to walk off the gangplank I grabbed a coil of rope from our ships rigging and slung it over my shoulder before walking down the pier. It lead to the edge of the jungle where there was a small, winding path through the thick, dense, brilliant green foliage. With a last glance back at the ship and my remaining crew mates we disappeared into the dark depths of the jungle.
“It is hot and wet,” PoLarr said as sweat burst out on our skin as if we were back in the thunderstorm.
“Okay if you are with a lady, not so good if you are in the jungle,” I shot back in my best Robin Williams from Good Morning Vietnam.
“Stop teasing, Marc,” Aurora pouted.
“Now you know how it feels,” I said quietly and kissed her gently on the cheek.
“Fair point, sugar,” Aurora agreed and smiled at me. “Fair point.”
Our chatter ceased the longer we walked. The heat and humidity were overbearing and oppressive. It felt like we were walking through the damp cotton and were soon drenched with jungle moisture and sweat. Our breathing became harsh and ragged as our lungs tried to scrub oxygen from air that felt like water.
“Never get off the boat,” PoLarr groused as she slashed at the jungle foliage with her machete like sword. I was beside her, cutting at the thick growth that had covered the path with my own cutlass, and nodded my head in approval. Aurora was just behind us, her Shriike senses on high alert for any life forms that might want to eat us for a snack.
After an hour of relative boredom and excessive sweating we reached the bottom of the mountain. The mouth of the skull cave was forty feet of sheer, smooth, volcanic rock face above us, and I didn’t trust my sweat slicked hands to climb it.
“I can get us up there on dark matter discs,” Aurora said, having read my mind.
“No, I want you to save your reserves in case we run into some big baddies inside the cave,” I shook my head. “Because, you know, we always run into big baddies.”
“Sometimes it’s little baddies, but lots of them,” PoLarr added. “Keeps it fresh.”
“Word,” I replied and pulled the coil of rope off my shoulder. “You wanna test out the modifications Darry made to your Val’Keeyre pack, PoLarr?”
“I was wondering if I was going to be able to use it this match,” PoLarr smiled. PoLarr had been a member of an all female special forces unit known as the Val’Keeyre, or the Death Angels, as they were colloquially known throughout the universe. Part of her standard gear was a super high tech, compact, streamlined jet pack that allowed her to fly, hover, and do all kinds of cool as shit stuff, but because of the technology limitations of this world, it had to be modified to fit the match.
Darry Dar’Tor was our armorer back in Valiance City and handled all the necessary modifications and upgrades to our equipment. Grizz, our holographic former champion and trainer, and Darry were old friends, and it had been because of Grizz that we’d been able to snag him. Darry was the best in the business, and we were damn lucky to have him. “Let’s check out Darry’s magic.”
PoLarr reached into her jacket and pulled out two small molded wooden handles that were connected to her belt with several cables. She then pressed a button on top of the handle, and there was a mechanical whirring from the small pack on her back. Then a series of clicks and metal frame wings extended past either shoulder. They resembled batwings with the same gold foil material that made up the sails that shimmered in the light cast from the weird sun high up in the top of the cave. I handed her the coil of rope, and then she pressed a button on the other handle. Two small rocket boosters popped out of her pack and whooshed to life.
With a surprised but joyful squeal, PoLarr shot up into the air trailing a plume of pinkish-gray smoke. She was a little unsteady at first, which was unusual for her, but she soon had the hang of the steampunk inspired jet pack.
PoLarr timed her ascent perfectly and killed the rocket boosters at just the right moment so that she stepped out on the ledge in front of the mouth of the cave as if walking onto someone's deck for a summer bar-b-que. I watched as she flipped a few more switches on the handles, and the wings folded back into the pack.
“That was cool!” She yelled down and then tossed the coil of rope down to us. “Give me a second to secure the other end. Okay, come on up.”
“Ladies first,” I motioned to Aurora.
“That is usually the way you like to roll, sugar,” Aurora smirked at me as she grabbed hold of the rope and hoisted herself up on the side of the rock face like Batman and Robin from that campy, over the top, sixties TV show. “I’ll be highly offended if you don’t stare at my ass and get all sorts of naughty thoughts the entire way up.”
“We really need to have sex soon, don’t we?” I asked her with a big grin. Aurora was normally overflowing with sexual energy, but she had been practically bursting this entire match.
“It is a good thing you are pretty, sugar,” Aurora winked and began to climb. “Because sometimes you are very slow on the uptake.”
I let her get a few feet ahead of me and then grabbed a hold of the rope myself, braced my weight with my feet and began to climb behind her.
True to my word, I stared at her ass the entire climb and got many dirty thoughts. Which I then had to store for later because, you know, we were in some sort of prehistoric cave on an island in the air looking for buried treasure so we all didn’t get killed. Or, as I liked to call it, Wednesday.
We made quick work of the climb and joined PoLarr on the ledge in front of the open mouth of the skull which lead into a long, dark shaft.
Just inside the mouth of the cave, at about shoulder height, were three wooden torches placed in metal holders, as if they had been left for any intrepid treasure hunter. Which set my spidey sense tingling. It was a little too convenient, but we needed light, so I grabbed one out of the wrought iron holder. From a pouch on my leather belt I pulled out a small laser lighter, not unlike something you could buy at Wawa convenience store back home in Delaware. Although, I didn’t really consider Delaware home anymore, more like a place this guy I used to be had come from.
I flicked the lid and clicked the little button, and a little arc of blue plasma flicked across the two leads on the top of the lighter which I then held to the top of the torch. A soft, yellow flame sprang from the end of the torch almost immediately and cast the inside of the mouth of the cave in a six foot circle of flickering light. Once it was lit, I could see that the torch actually had a cylindrical reservoir of some sort of fuel that ran down the center. The one I held in my hand was about three quarters full.
“Let’s hold on to these for back up, just in case,” I said and handed one to PoLarr and one to Aurora.
“Fortune and glory,” PoLarr said in a quiet, almost reverential voice.
“Fortune and glory, kid,” I echoed with the line from Temple of Doom and then we began to walk into the cave.
Cave was
a loose term. This was more like a mine shaft. I could see scoring marks on the volcanic rock as well as evidence of heavy blasting that suggested that it wasn’t a natural phenomenon but that this long, winding, and claustrophobic corridor had been hewn from the mountain. It led downward at a fairly steep angle. We were very cautious as we ventured deeper and deeper into the depths of the mine shaft. This was by far not our first rodeo, and we were very wary of booby traps and other various sorts of life ending danger.
“Aurora, are you sensing any life forms?” I asked quietly when it seemed like we’d been on our trek for a good fifteen minutes without any change in the corridor.
“Nothing, sugar,” she whispered back. “Nothing at all.”
“Good… I think,” I remarked mostly to myself. “Stay frosty, kiddies. I’m starting not to like this one bit.”
“Starting?” PoLarr asked jokingly.
Almost like the shaft had read our mind it ended and opened into a much larger cavern. This whole island was like a Russian nesting doll of caverns within caverns. The shaft ended and was about twenty feet off the ground. The cavern itself was a rough rectangle maybe sixty feet long by thirty feet wide and about a hundred feet high. Once again, the room looked like it had been carved from the rock and was certainly not a natural occurrence.
Rotted wooden scaffolding stretched up the walls and lay in ruins across the smooth stone floor of the chamber. Dust floated in swirling motes and glinted in the light from our torch, which was the only light in the room.
“Hand me one of the other torches?” I asked. Aurora gave me hers, and I handed mine off to PoLarr. I unsheathed my cutlass and using the small spike on the pommel cracked the fuel reservoir for the torch. I then tilted it up and down a bit so that the fuel had spread through the whole thing before I touched the tip to our already lit torch. The fuel ignited in a whoosh, and I hurled it into the center of the chamber before I got burned. Outside of the reservoir the fuel was crazy flammable and burned very hot and bright.
The torch flipped end over end until it landed roughly in the middle of the room. The yellow blue flames burned away the darkness and gave us a much better look at the chamber. As I looked around, I kind of wished I hadn't thrown the torch. Light was good and necessary but what it illuminated was more than a bit terrifying.
In the center of the chamber, resting on wooden supports was a small, two mast airship that looked like it had been here for three hundred years. There was a huge hole in the hull and one of the masts had been snapped clean off. Dust and dirt covered the whole thing, but that wasn’t the scary bit though.
Littered all over the ship, and the ground were the rag clad skeletons of the ancient alien pirates. The bones must have been photoluminescent because as soon as the light hit them they began to glow an eerie pale green, like the dial on old school dive watches. The alien pirates were probably six and a half feet tall and had four arms. Old swords, pistols, and other weapons were strewn about the floor and ship like discarded beer cans after a frat party.
“Why do I get the vibe that this is more than likely going to turn into some kind of Harryhausen nightmare?” PoLarr asked quietly.
“Probably because that’s exactly what is going to happen at some point,” I responded honestly.
“Who?” Aurora asked, confused.
“Famous stop motion animator who created monsters in the days before computer-generated images,” PoLarr answered like a boss.
“Baby done all grown up,” I smiled at her like a proud parent.
“Shut up, Marc,” she grinned back and then pulled out her sword.
“I’m just going to pretend like I understood that, sugars, so that we can just get on with this,” Aurora sighed with a shake of her head and then jumped down to the floor of the cavern like some kind of kick ass space vampire in a sexy space pirate outfit, ‘cause, you know, that’s exactly what she was.
I turned, shrugged at PoLarr, and jumped down myself. The combo of my Parkour mod, my regen mod, and the fact that training to fight for your life, or actual fighting for your life, on a daily basis was a workout that made CrossFit look like jazzercise made it so that I landed like a boss in a cool superhero pose without breaking my legs. A second later PoLarr landed beside me. All three of us stood at once in what I imagined in my head looked all sorts of fucking cool.
“Do you hear that?” I asked. As I landed, I thought I’d heard something in the distance but with the rustling of clothes and clanking of my weapons and gear I couldn’t be sure.
“No, sugar,” Aurora answered.
“Nope, just the sound of us landing like a badass,” PoLarr grinned.
“Don’t get cocky,” I shot back at her as I drew my sword with my right hand and a pistol with my left. “Let’s go check out that ship.”
We walked slowly through the chamber, senses on high alert, and made our way to where the wreckage of the old pirate ship listed to the side on the broken down wooden supports. The gangplank was still extended and with a shrug at my two warrior companions, I walked up onto the deck of the ship.
More alien pirate skeletons lay about the deck. Long dried smears of what I assumed to be blood stained the planks and char marks where a fire had ripped across the hull were all that remained to tell the tale of what had happened. One particular smear led across the deck as if painted by some angry brush and lead into the cabin of the ship.
Aurora, PoLarr, and I walked cautiously into the dark confines of what had once been the Captain’s Quarters. A thick, heavy oaken door barred our path.
“Booby trap?” I asked my companions.
“For sure, sugar,” Aurora nodded.
“Is water wet?” PoLarr joked.
“Okay, PoLarr, you and I are going to stand back,” I said as I motioned us around the corner of the wall. “Aurora, hit that with a quick blast of dark matter.”
“Will do,” Aurora said. She took a breath and held her hands out to her side with her trademark “devil’s horns” that would have made Raven from Teen Titans jealous. A thick shield of purple-black energy formed around her and then she hurled a racquetball sized sphere of dark matter at the door.
Aurora had gotten very precise and able to control her abilities much more over the last few months of intense training and combat so the sphere hit the lock with a small boom and actually very little collateral damage. The big oaken door swung slowly inward, hinges creaking loudly in the small confines, and then a big blast of laser fire ripped through the doorway.
Aurora’s shield deflected the blast, and it tore a small part of the wooden ceiling away.
“Power cores must have degraded,” PoLarr commented as we joined Aurora in the doorway. “Blast that big should have torn half the ship away.”
“Lucky us,” I said and peered into the Captain’s Quarters.
On the far side of the room a large, antiquated laser cannon still smoked next to the seated skeleton of what I assumed was the captain. His velvet jacket was moth eaten and covered in mold but still held its form. In his hands was a small golden chest that he clutched to his breast like a baby.
I walked cautiously into the room with the torch held out in front of me as if to ward off malevolent spirits. The floor creaked under my weight, and the cannon on the other side of the room toppled over and clanked to the ground.
As I got further in, I could see that the small chamber was overflowing with riches from a long-ago era. Gold goins, now green with tarnish, lay in great heaps and rotting bolts of fabric leaned against the walls.
“Can we just grab a handful of coins and get the hell out of here?” PoLarr asked nervously. “I do not like confined spaces.”
“Something tells me that ain’t the treasure we need to get,” I answered her. “Pretty sure it's the gold chest in his hands that he looked like he died rocking to sleep.”
“Typical,” Aurora grinned at me.
I walked over to where the ancient pirate captain sat in a large wooden throne-like chair behind
an equally large desk. Dusty charts and nautical maps were spread over the desk and an ornate, jewel encrusted dagger was sunk into the wood through a piece of paper. I looked down and slowly pulled the dagger out of the desk and put it in my jacket pocket. No one said we couldn’t take a little booty home with us.
In the flickering of the torch light I could make out flourishing handwriting on the note that read:
Beware all ye who wish to steal the heart of darkness
Cross these bones past the father's flag and
'Tis not death that you shall receive for your plunder
But a slumber full of no rest
“What’s it say?” Aurora asked.
“You don’t want to know,” I answered.
With a deep breath I reached out and pried the captain’s brittle fingers away from the chest. I held that breath for a long beat while I waited for something terrible to happen.
Nothing did.
I let the breath out, somewhat relieved and turned back toward my teammates who had been holding their breaths as well.
“Let’s get the hell out of here,” I said quietly and led my sexy companions back out onto the deck of the ship.
“And Team Havak is the first team to the Treasure of the Ancient Sky Mariner!” Che-Cheshire’s voice boomed in the close confines of the stone chamber. His face took up most of the ceiling. I started to prepare my mind for the matter transmit jump back to our gym as a grin of victory began to spread across my face. “But that was the easiest part, dear viewers. Now they must remove the treasure from this chamber and deliver it past the mouth of the great skull before they will be declared the winner.”
“If I ever meet that cat, I am going to punch him right in the mouth,” I muttered. “Okay, let’s get the hell out of here.”
“Not today, foul pirate!” A heavily Castilian Spanish accented voice called from across the chamber. I turned and looked at the shaft that we had entered through. In the mouth of the shaft stood the Nautillian Captain from the Man-Of-War. There was a bandage over his forehead and about twenty of his crewmen crowded into the mine shaft behind him.
