by Logan Jacobs
“Oh my god,” I muttered in my best Bob Belcher.
“Today you shall die with your pirate forefathers!” He yelled and held his arm before him mightily. It was kind of hard to take him seriously. His voice was rather high and that combined with the over pronounced Castilian lisp made him sound like something from a cartoon. “But first, we shall take the lost treasure from you. Our King will pay highly for such a boon.”
“Come and take it then, you son of a bitch!” I yelled back and brandished my sword in what I hoped was a very threatening gesture. I was pretty confident the three of us could take the fop and his crew.
“I think you will give it to me freely, dirty pirate,” he responded with a grin that told me he was hiding something.
“Um, why?” I asked and glanced at Aurora and PoLarr whose bodies were barely contained coils of energy ready to pounce.
“Because we have the rest of your crew,” he responded arrogantly. There was a jostling behind him and a second later Tempest and Nova, both bound with manacles, were shoved forward to the lip of the shaft.
“Hey, Marc,” Tempest said wryly.
“Havak, these bastards came into the cave lagoon guns blasting,” Nova shouted and pushed one of the guards who was holding her into the mine shaft wall. “We tried to warn you, but you must have been too deep into the mountain. The ship is gone.”
“Yes, we blew your ship up, ha ha!” the Nautillian captain bragged.
“He used to have about fifty men, though,” Tempest added and jostled against the two sailors who held her. To an untrained eye it just looked like Tempest and Nova were struggling angrily against their captors, but I could see that they were trying to better their position for when shit hit the fan. We’d been at this long enough to know that shit always hit the fan. And at this rate, it was going to be sooner rather than later. Which was fine by me. I was tired of being in this stupid chamber and was bored with all the talking.
The captain was no dummy either and motioned for his men to spread out. They all jumped down into the chamber and formed a loose semi-circle, rifles and pistols all trained on us.
“The treasure for you crew,” the captain offered as he and his men slowly closed the semi-circle around us. They had brought more torches with them and now the interior of the chamber was bathed in light almost as bright as day. I looked down and noticed that the floor had a large mosaic carved into it. It was under a thick layer of dust and grime but I could just barely make out a red flag with two crossed swords over an alien skull motif. Aurora, PoLarr and I were just on the edge of the flag, our feet inches from the first few tiles of the mosaic.
“Father’s flag…” I mumbled to myself as I remembered the words of the note. “Ah, shit.”
“What?” PoLarr asked quietly as we watched the captain walk toward us with Tempest and Nova dragged behind several of his men.
“Things are probably going to get all Havakey,” I admitted.
“Wouldn’t have it any other way, sugar,” Aurora whispered back to me.
I caught Nova and Tempest’s eyes and gave the smallest head nod to them. Nova smiled and Tempest winked. They were ready to go.
The captain walked all the way up to us, full of bravado and confidence, and extended his hand for the little gold chest. It could have been my imagination, but I swore the thing began to hum and vibrate in my hand with some unseen force.
“Hand over the treasure,” the captain commanded. Again, I had to stifle my laughter because it came out “treathure” instead of “treasure”.
“My crew first,” I countered.
“Hand me the treasure I hand you your crew,” he replied.
PoLarr shot me a look, and I winked briefly.
“Have it your way pal,” I grunted and held out the small golden box so that I was well over the mosaic flag at our feet.
The captain grabbed it greedily and clutched it to his chest, in a move that was very similar to how I’d found it, as if it were his precious.
“Kill them all,” he yelled to his men and brought the chest up to his face. I’d been expecting it, as had the rest of my team, so we were seconds away from pouncing, just waiting for the exact right moment. I could sense Nova pooling the potential energy in her cells, ready for a concussion blast. The Paladinian had been involved in a freak reactor core accident on an intergalactic freighter years ago and it had given her the ability to store all types of radiation in her already dense cells and then release it as blasts of concussive force. Aurora’s fingers were open so that she could pull dark matter, and PoLarr and Tempest were like snakes ready to strike.
His men began to bring their guns up and I was just about to give the signal for my team to unleash hell, but before they could fire hell was released.
The ground rumbled from deep within the cave and the mosaic at our feet cracked in two. Pale green light, just like the bones on the pirate skelton’s all around produced, began to seep from the sliver in the rock. It moved about as if it had life. Smokey tendrils of the light slithered out as if a nest of snakes had been disturbed and they wanted retribution.
I watched in fascination as the snake light moved into the skeletons, and then there was complete silence.
The Nautillian captain glanced at me, and I just stared back. The sailors looked to their captain for guidance but he just shrugged his shoulders in return.
That’s when we heard the shuffling of feet from the ship behind us. It was more like a thud followed by a clank.
Thud.
Clank.
Thud.
Clank.
Moving toward us inexorably. As the pale green light glowed brighter and brighter in each of the skeletons littered about us the pirate captain, still nothing more than ragged clothes over bare bones, strode out onto the deck of his ship and stared down at us. His eyes were glowing orbs of the pale green light. He grinned and drew his sword and then laughed in a maniacal cackle of the undead.
“Greedy fools,” the pirate captain bellowed. His voice was the sound of dry, rotted leaves rustling over a cadaver. “You were warned. Now you must pay the price. Men! Take your plunder!”
On his command the skeletons all rose to life and attacked.
“Team Havak!” I yelled as the din of war began. “Let’s get the fuck out of here.”
Tempest slipped free of her manacles having picked the locks and smashed her elbows into the faces of the two Nautillian sailors who held her. She grabbed the guns from their limp hands and blasted two more of the nearest sailors.
Nova snapped her manacles easily and then tossed her captors high into the air and twenty feet across the room. Her molecules were much denser than a human’s, and it made her very strong and incredibly durable. It also made her kind of heavy and slow, but she more than made up for it in sheer destructive prowess.
Aurora loosed two blasts of dark matter into several advancing undead pirate skeletons. They flew apart like bowling pins blasted with a fifteen pound ball strike thrown by a Brunswick master. The bones scattered to the four corners but a second later they flew back together as if drawn by some supernatural magnet to reform as sword slashing, swashbuckling skeletons once again.
“Oh boy,” I muttered as Iwatched the army of undead take blow after blow and still keep coming. We needed to get out of here fast.
The Nautillian captain still clutched the golden box to his chest tightly as he desperately fended off a few skeletons with his ornate sword. I dashed over to him quickly. I really didn’t want the cursed box back any time soon, but I needed the damn thing.
When I reached him he spun on me and slashed with his sword. I sidestepped the blow and parried with my cutlass. We then began to circle each other slowly with laser blasts, bones, and bedlam raging all around us.
“Have at thee, foul pirate!” He shouted at me and charged.
“Yeah, yeah, you said that already,” I said back and blocked his blows easily. He may have been a hell of a ship captain but he sucked at close
quarters combat. He sent a flurry of halfhearted blows at my head and torso that I was able to block with a few flicks of my wrist before he bolted for the mine shaft.
I took chase because I couldn’t let the lisping idiot get away with the box. I had no freaking clue what horrible curse lay within, but I needed it to win, so goddamn it I was going to get it.
He ran at a full out sprint and was actually pretty fucking fast, but then six preternatural skeletons blocked his path, and he came up short and turned tail. Unfortunately, I was in his path, and I was pretty sure I was scarier than any fucking skeleton.
“Take it!” He yelled and tossed the golden box at me before he juked and tried to run away. Apparently, it wasn’t just the treasure that the skeletons protected because they set about him like flies on carrion. The Nautillian captain tried to fend them off, but they penetrated his feeble defenses and soon had their boney hands on his soft flesh. They then tore him apart. Literally. Bloody chunks of the guy flew into the air as if we were in some big Cuisinart food chopper. A few bits of him splattered across my face. The gold chest flew into the air and then dropped into my open arms like some kind of desperate Hail Mary.
“Uh, gross,” I spat out. I didn’t have the time to get upset because the specter skeletons set upon me as well.
I wasn’t some uninitiated noob like the captain thought. If I was going out, I was taking some emaciated jackasses with me.
My left hand shot out like a piston full of laser vengeance and blasted a skeleton right in his hollow face at point blank range. The laser blast tore his head apart in a spray of bone confetti. I didn’t pause long enough to see how long it kept the fucker down because I was moving through the next one. My right arm slashed down as if chopping a winter sapling and cleaved a skeleton in two at his pelvis. The two halves of the undead thing fell away, and I kept moving.
“Team Havak let’s go!” I shouted, having no clue how the hell we were going to get out of this mess.
My crew were all embroiled in their own battles as my mind raced at how to extricate ourselves from this stone chamber.
I knew Nova probably had a whole hell of a lot of concussive force saved up and that Aurora hadn’t used too much Shriike energy for the dark matter yet.
That’s when I noticed a small trickle of water seeping up from the crack in the mosaic. I did some quick calculations in my head regarding the angle of the mine shaft and how long we traveled and I realized we were more than likely below the water level of the strange lagoon. In my memory, I glimpsed a few small row boats laying on the side of the pirate ship not fifteen feet away. In that moment a crazy plan hatched in my brain.
“Nova! Blow the mosaic!” I shouted as I grabbed a row boat from the side of the ship and righted it. This idea was absolutely bonkers, but it was the only hope we had. “Everyone else in the boat!”
My teammates extricate themselves from their battles and soon the rowboat was full of the sweaty flesh of my sexy battle babes.
I turned and watched as Nova gathered all her concussive force and let it go in one big blast.
Skeletons of the undead pirates exploded outward in a wash of rags and bones. The mosaic under Nova’s feet cracked and split and a torrent of water flooded in.
Even though she was exhausted, Nova sprinted over to our boat and jumped in while a tidal wave of lagoon water burst into the small chamber drowning Nautillian sailors and sending the skeletons floating away.
“Aurora, shield!” I commanded. The space vampire put up a thin covering for our little boat that made us look like a bullet.
The water swirled around us and soon we were completely submerged. The skeletons, not to be deterred, kept trying to scramble into our makeshift submarine but Aurora’s shield held.
Once the room was full of water, it had to go somewhere, and we rushed toward the mine shaft like a log flume ride from hell.
“Whoooo!” Tempest wailed as we sped faster and faster.
I felt the golden box in my arms vibrate more and more as we approached the rifle-like exit of the cave.
The water pressure shot us from the skeleton’s mouth like a bat out of hell and we flew high into the air.
Below us the blue gorilla beat his chest in anger and jealousy.
We sailed into the false sky of the cavern like a bullet from the depths of Hades, and I held the golden box tightly in my palms.
As we reached our apex and began to fall back to the ground, I felt the telltale tingle of my molecules being blown apart as we matter transmitted out of the carnival ride of doom, victorious.
Chapter Four
It was always a strange feeling having your molecules blown apart, beamed to and fro across the galaxy, and then glued back together in what amounted to a tube of cellophane. That’s what are matter transmit tubes looked like they were made from, stretched Saran Wrap. The opening of the tube seemed to melt away so that I could step out into the familiar and comfortable confines of Team Havak’s gym at the Hall of Champions.
The building itself was a huge, Apple Mouse looking building in the center of the Champion’s District in Valiance City on whatever the hell planet this was. I kept meaning to ask Artemis where in the known universe we actually were, but I just never managed to get around to it. There were always more pressing matter that came up. Either fighting for our lives, or having sex.
I preferred the latter.
Speaking of Artemis, the perky, sexy, gorgeous brunette bounded over to my tube from behind her Command Center, a bank of high-tech computer consoles that controlled the gym. She was dressed in her usual blue-gray jumpsuit that resembled the ones worn by fighter pilots, except she liked to keep the front unzipped almost to her belly button which more than showed off her spectacularly pert full c-cup breasts in a dark red lace bra. Her shoulder length chestnut hair framed a face that could have belonged to a model or movie star back on Earth.
Artemis V-Five was actually a highly complex Artificial Intelligence program that had been downloaded into a genetically engineered human body to act as my attaché, assistant trainer, and all around His Girl Friday when I first became Earth’s champion in the Crucible of Carnage. She was also a friend and lover.
Artie threw her arms around my neck and gave me her customary post “you didn’t die” kiss. Her lips tasted of Cherry Chapstick and were as soft as an angel’s cheek. Her tongue darted into my mouth quickly, and I felt a little electric surge flow through me and a stirring in my groin. She knew how to rev me up and broke away from the kiss just at the point of no return where I would have totally sported full on wood in my Jack Sparrow get up.
“I’m glad you didn’t die,” she said in her chipper, cheery voice.
“Yes, human, you all did a commendable job today,” a huge, deep voice boomed from behind me. I turned and stared into the somewhat bare holographic chest of my main trainer, Grizz. He stood six-and-a-half feet tall, was dressed like a space barbarian, had big ram horns that framed the side of his face, and looked almost exactly like Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson, even down to the former pro wrestler turned international super star’s classic eyebrow raise. “You all did well. All our training on coordinated movement and strategy has been paying off. I have done an excellent job preparing you all not to die.”
“Yes, Grizz, and you are also the best at modesty,” I joked. Grizz had a gruff, rough exterior, but had become more and more like a big cuddly bear in the months that I’d been a champion. Grizz had been one of the Crucibles most loved competitors but over a century ago he had been betrayed by one of his own alliance mates who literally stabbed him in the back. Grizz’s consciousness had been downloaded into the mainframe that ran the Crucible before that match, and his was the holographic representation of all his memories before that fateful day. He was as much a part of Team Havak as any living breathing being.
“I am fantastic at modesty, thank you,” Grizz said without having any clue that I was busting his balls. “It appears that Darry’s modifications wer
e exemplary as always.”
“Yeah,” PoLarr said as she stepped out of her mat-trans tube. “That jetpack was interesting. I kinda want to go fly around in it some more.”
“I kinda want everyone to stay in their sexy pirate get ups,” I said.
“Ohhh, I want a sexy pirate get up,” Artemis said excitedly. “You guys always get to wear cool outfits. I’m messenger bag preserves.”
“What?” Tempest asked on her way to the main table by the Command Center. It was our go to congregation spot in the gym. “Did you hit your head, Artemis?”
“She meant totes jelly,” I explained. Artie had a rough time with Earth, particularly twenty-first century American, English euphemisms. It was one of the things I loved about her. She’d gotten a lot better about understanding and didn’t do it as much as she used to, and that made me just a little sad.
“That doesn’t help at all, Havak,” Nova chimed in from the weapons lockers. She was in the process of unburdening herself of her armaments.
“Totally jealous,” PoLarr finished for me. “It’s a weird Earth girl abbreviation because apparently saying totally jealous takes too much time, so, totes jelly.”
“That is utterly ridiculous,” Nova scoffed. “I mean, not when you say, Artemis. I find that incredibly adorable and endearing.”
“Aww, thank you, Nova,” Artie squealed and ran over to give the Paladinian knight a big hug. Nova wasn’t the best with public displays of affection but she returned Artemis’ hug as best she could. “That match was so exciting. I mean, I thought I was going to die of a heart attack at one point, but exciting zero the fewer. After being able to communicate with you guys during the last few battles it was hard to just be on the sidelines again.”
“I almost had to have her sedated when you were blown out of your ship, Havak,” Grizz said as he also walked over to the big table. Everyone else was on their way to congregate there, too. We liked to debrief after a match before heading out to blow off steam.
“I almost sedated you, you big goof!” Artie shot back. She walked right up to the much larger hologram and put her finger in his face with a mighty scowl on her face. “You had to cover your stupid face when the curse was unleashed, didn’t you? Didn’t you? Admit it!”
