There was nothing more I could do to help her with this bastard still on his feet so, without a thought, I charged toward him. He calmly shot at me, hitting my right shoulder, which spun me a bit. I screamed in pain and rage, staggering, but I forced myself forwards. My right arm was hanging on by muscle only. When I reached him, I led with a straight left while continuing my momentum to barrel into him. His skin was crazy-tough, like hitting granite, and he barely moved when my body hit his. Slightly off balance, he still managed to push me backwards, quickly following up with a ferocious right-hook, which sent me flying over the desk. Shit. Ang-bor were way tougher than I expected.
I couldn’t even pick myself up off the ground with my partially severed arm pissing out blood. The bank manager came around the desk, sneering down at me. He knelt down, grabbing the clothes on my chest, and hauled me up in the air with one arm. I didn’t wait for him to talk. Instead, I did the only thing you could do against a seven-foot demon in this situation. It was my tried and tested trademark solution: I kicked the fucker so hard in the nuts that he’d be eating them for lunch. True to all the anatomy I knew about, he dropped like a sack of hammers to his knees. I was struggling to stay conscious from the blood loss and pain when I saw Havok flying through the air. Relief washed over me as he landed straight into my hand.
His healing power immediately began to flow into me. I felt better within seconds, only the arm wasn’t going to be a quick repair.
“Ember is okay,” he said.
“Thank you Havok. You’re my hero.” I hefted him up with my left arm. He must have been lending me strength somehow as I staggered over to the nut-clutching Ang-bor.
“I fucking promised I’d kill you if you double-crossed us,” I snarled at him.
He growled back as he tried to get himself back to his feet. Using Havok as a staff to balance myself, I jumped a little and did a push-kick to his chest. It kept him down on his knees. Still, he swiped at me. But I’d pushed myself backwards just enough to be out of his reach.
He was about to reply when I swung Havok around and whipped his head clean off his shoulders.
I checked over on the two remaining guards. They had been too occupied trying to fight Elyek to get involved in the fray with the Ang-bor. One was still alive, swinging around wildly with a knife, rifle now discarded. I walked over towards him.
“Elyek. Get behind me. I don’t want to accidently chop you in half.” In a second, Elyek stood next to me, still invisible.
“I’m here,” came the exhausted response. The Tri-bor began to move towards me. He looked very reluctant, but he didn’t have a lot of choices available to him.
It wasn’t even a contest. I brought Havok down and he raised his knife in a pathetic attempt to block the blow. Havok just cut straight through his fingers, knife, and finally sliced his head directly in half down to his neck.
I was about to check on Ember when she slumped exhaustedly onto the desk next to me.
“I love that goddamned axe,” she breathed out.
I moved over to take her in a one-armed hug. “Thank all the alien gods in the galaxy you’re alright,” I cried.
“I'm weak as piss though. I feel like I’ve about a pint of blood left in me.”
I looked at her and she was incredibly pale.
“Havok, leave me. Heal Ember,” I thought to him.
“She is fully healed, Shaun. I can’t magic blood from nowhere. She needs lots of food and so do you. Although, I’m still repairing your arm.”
“Okay. Thanks, Havok,” I thought back.
“Havok says you're fully healed. What you’re feeling is blood loss. I’m the same.”
“What happened to…?” She slapped her hand to her mouth when she saw my injury.
“Shaun! Your arm!”
“Yeah. I know about it,” I laughed. “You shoulda seen it before Havok started working on it. Luckily, I bulked up or I would’ve lost the damn thing.”
“How did it happen?”
“Bastard shot me, didn’t he?”
“And Havok didn’t protect you! Come on, Shaun. What happened?” Ember questioned me with an intense look in her eyes.
I began to stutter, when Elyek, who remained invisible, spoke up, “You were shot from behind. It was bad. Shaun gave you the axe and fought the Ang-bor with his fists. It was one of the bravest, most selfless things I’ve ever seen. I understand your absolute trust in him now.”
“You fucking idiot! Why didn’t you kill him with the axe first, then save me?”
“You might not have lasted that long. It was a real bad wound, Ember.”
“He’s correct. You were, perhaps, seconds from death, and I would also like to thank Havok from the bottom of my heart. A truly remarkable weapon. I’m proud to be on your crew.”
Havok began chatting incessantly about how happy he was.
“Ok, fine. I understand that! So then why didn’t you use your telekinesis or telepathy instead of charging an eight-foot demon who had a laser rifle!”
“I… well… you know, I’m shit at telepathy and that sort of stuff,” I stuttered. I mean, she was right, that was pretty fucking stupid of me.
“No Shaun, you’re really not shit at it, you should have at least tried! You were throwing things for fun at the people of Xzonico by all accounts. Plus, you had big increase in your Mental Clarity. But oh no, Shaun hits things as hard as he can,” she was wearily chuckling as she said it.
“I know it’s something I need to work on, but I just lost my fucking mind when I saw you hurt.”
“I know you big dafty,” she replied, gently leaning in for a hug. “So, how the hell are we going to get outta here.”
C18
Uprising Inc.
“No one has come for us yet. This room must be soundproofed,” Elyek said.
“That means we might still have time before anyone knows what’s happened. How about this: We both go out and tell the clerk that Elyek has further business to attend to with the bank manager, but they felt it was private,” Ember suggested. “Then, we quickly and calmly get the fuck out of here.”
“What? And leave Elyek here?”
“Elyek is invisible, you fucking moron.”
“Right. Yeah of course. Got it,” I said. I really didn’t do myself any favors sometimes.
“I’ve got it too,” Elyek said, over by the terminal.
“Got what?” I asked.
“The manager did a good job of routing our money through different avenues. He had to, because he named himself as an account holder. He wouldn’t want that to be traced until he could take all the money out. No matter how we dealt with this shithead, he was going to screw us over. Nevertheless, now this account is untraceable to us as individuals. It’s a separate entity that we have anonymous access to. It’s actually perfect. He has even left his own accounts open which are also completely untraceable.” Elyek fell silent for a few seconds, but I could see things were still happening on the screen. I was glad of the time for my arm to heal. It was almost there now.
“Shaun, can you grab his head please?” came Elyek’s voice from nowhere.
“What?”
“His head! Quickly! We could be running out of time.” I did as Elyek asked, even though it was totally gross. I started getting a bit squeamish, which is madness as seen as I chopped it off, but there you have it. I’m a weirdo.
I put it on the head on the desk, where it began to float up and dangle in front of the terminal, a blue light shone out to the manager's face. It beeped.
“We’re in,” Elyek said, excitedly. I had no damn clue what they were doing, but it must have been important, so I stayed quiet. The head landed on the desk and I could hear the sounds of Elyek’s tapping on the screen. A few more minutes passed and the head floated back up to the terminal, another scan and beep.
“What’s going on, Elyek?” Ember cried, slightly stressed.
“I’ve put all of his untraceable money into our account and then I removed
his account completely. No one will ever know any of this happened.”
“How much?” Ember asked.
“53.4 million senlars,” came the reply.
All our eyes went wide, until Elyek brought us back to earth again, “If we manage to get out of here and off Necrus without being captured or murdered, Uprising Inc. now has one of the fastest ships in the galaxy and 58.9 million senlar in the bank.”
“That’s absolutely fucking brilliant. But you’re right: We need to get out of here to spend it,” I said.
“Elyek, can I have your cloak ? Only, mine is covered in blood,” Ember asked.
“Oh. Yes, definitely. Here.” A cloak appeared from nowhere as it left what I assumed was Elyek’s hand, and landed on the desk. Ember quickly picked it up and put it on. I did the same, grabbing my cloak from the floor where it dropped it at the start of the fight. I wrapped up Havok in Ember’s bloody cloak. It wasn’t great, but it would have to do. His original wrapping had been shot to pieces.
Once we were all sorted, we left the bloody, stinking room.
We walked back through to the foyer as casually as we could, and approached the alien clerk we first met who was watching us intently as we headed over.
“Your manager wishes to speak to Elyek alone and we’ve agreed. Is there anywhere we can wait?” Ember told him.
He gave us a creepy, smug little smile and pointed. “Over there by the front door,. You may be there a while,” he sneered.
It brought me great satisfaction to know he thought he had one over on us, but in fact we’d royally screwed them over.
We strolled over to the chairs like we didn’t have a care in the world. Ember went straight out with Elyek and I sat down. After less than a minute had passed, I got back up trying to make it look like I was just popping out to see Ember. It was a shit pretence, and was probably completely unnecessary to our plight, but it was worth a shot.
Once I was outside with Ember and the invisible Elyek, we walked slowly away from the bank until we were out of sight. Then we fucking legged it down the street. We received the occasional odd look, but we only slowed to a walk once we approached the docking bays. The guards barely even batted an eyelid at us as we passed other than to say, “Not find any crew? Looks like you lost one as well.” He laughed.
“Yeah. They are staying behind. We’ll be back later for them. The trip hasn’t gone how we’d hoped. Still, we should be able to manage.” I laughed back. It was so forced. I don’t know why he didn’t arrest me there and then for being suspicious as hell.
“Probably just as well,” he said, waving us off as he turned back to talk to his companion.
I let out a huge sigh of relief when the shuttle door finally closed behind us.
“Quick, Elyek, please get us the fuck out of here as quickly as possible. I think my heart is going to explode,” I said.
“That was the most intense time ever,” Ember added.
“I have to admit, it certainly ranks up there for me also,” Elyek said, as they materialized in the pilot’s seat.
We hightailed it out of there in our shuttle as quickly as Elyek could manage. Once I’d contacted Calegg, we all started laughing our asses off at our highly-successful, and surprisingly-lucrative mission.
“We’re millionaires, Ember. I can’t believe it!”
She laughed at me, but her reply was still less-than-positive, “Yeah, and possibly the galaxy's most wanted.”
“Thanks for putting the damper on it.”
“You’re welcome,” she smiled and lay back in her chair, looking scarily pale, but still beautiful.
The Uprising rendezvoused with our shuttle within half-an-hour of our contact. We all happily piled out into the loading bay, with yet another layer of relief sweeping over me. So happy to be back on our baby.
We went straight to the bridge to see Calegg.
“Hey, buddy. Mission was a success,” I said, as I clapped him on the back.
“You got Elyek’s money?” he asked.
“I’ll let Elyek tell you about that,” I smiled, and he looked intrigued.
“They tried to kill us in the bank manager’s office. Except, with Shaun and Havok there, they obviously failed.”
Calegg raised an eyebrow at that while I interrupted, “Hey, stop that. We did it as a team.”
“We certainly did,” Elyek said. “But you probably could have done it better without us there to protect. From my observations, anyway.”
“Elyek is right, Shaun,” Ember said, smiling from her seat. “Don’t worry. We're still all going to be a team. We're not going to just send you out there alone. I mean, who would levitate your dumb ass out of danger and who would hack into computer systems or fly ships? That’s right, not you!” Ember laughed.
“Whatever!” I snapped. “Elyek. Get to the most important bit before Ember crushes all of the fun out of this.”
“Sick burn, Shaun.” Ember laughed again.
“Right! Yes,” replied Elyek. “I’m beginning to waffle, like you two do.”
Ember and I gave each other What the fuck? looks while Elyek continued, “So, Calegg. Once we had killed everyone, and Shaun beheaded the Ang-bor, we used his severed head to enter his very private accounts. We took everything. Uprising Inc. now has nearly sixty-million senlar in its accounts”
Calegg’s jaw dropped, then slowly wound up to a giant grin. “So, it couldn’t have gotten much better,” he exclaimed, visibly overjoyed.
“Well, Ember and I need to replenish some blood, and we probably have a new enemy in the Mazltor, but yeah, things are looking up for Uprising. Now, get us out of here. I think we’ll have company soon,” I said.
“Sure thing, Captain,” Calegg said. “I’ve plotted the coordinates on the folding drive to about a day out of Torax, if you want to go there next. At Elyek’s suggestion, I also set the folding drive charging when you contacted me. So, we’re ready to make the jump.”
“Yeah. Let’s go build our army. I want to see this folding drive in action. Then me and Ember can go and start replacing blood cells in the canteen,” I chuckled.
“Rich and fast,” Calegg shouted and pumped his fist. “You can do the honors, Elyek. You bought this baby, after all.”
“We bought this baby together, but okay. I would like to use the drive.”
Elyek moved over to the terminal when Calegg screamed, “Incoming!” The ship suddenly veered to the side.
“Shall I hit the folding drive? It’s all set!” Elyek shouted.
“Do it!” Ember and I screamed at the same time.
Before we could go, a communication came over the comms. It was crackly at first, then cleared up, “Hand over the criminal known as Elyek and we’ll not destroy you. Repeat: We have you surrounded. This is Captain Astrid of the Thoth. Hand over the criminal known as…”
The space folding engine kicked in and all went black.
The end.
…Incoming from Shaun…
Phwew! Can’t bloody believe we made it here. Not that I have any idea where here is. What I do know is I am rich… “Yes Ember! I know…” Uprising is rich!
We’ve got plenty of money and plenty of enemies.
All we need now is more warriors for our war. Oh and more of Reviews!
One of the major fuel sources the folding drive uses, is actually awesome reviews from amazing readers like you. Otherwise, we’ll end up stranded in space.
Ok, gotta go. Calegg is having a hissy fit about something.
See you all soon.
Kevin Sinclair
Don’t miss out on future releases. Visit my website or Facebook page. Also you can get in touch at [email protected]
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