Obviously I wasn’t going to try my luck and enter the room that those guys just entered and pretended to be busy outside.
They didn’t even take that long inside as they simply picked up the stuff that those four had gathered, looked around for a bit more and then left the place.
None of them even spared Amber or myself a glance as they walked past.
Honestly, that suited me just fine since I didn’t want to get their attention anyway.
We waited until they were out of sight before we went in there, having needed to step over the dead bodies of those Mercs as we did so.
Seems like those Reaper guys also stripped these dead Mercs of anything valuable as well so I didn’t even bother searching them.
Truth be told, I wasn’t really expecting to find anything here.
Sure, Amber got the pirate lord to tell us the supposed location of where his treasures were supposed to be, but there’s every possibility that it was all just bullshithe made up just to stop my lover from beating the shit out of him.
So I wouldn’t be surprised if there wasn’t actually any false wall behind the bed and the pirate lord lied to us.
Both of us went to the bed and I started knocking on the wall, pausing when I realised that it sounded hollow.
I gave Amber a look and found that she was grinning at me.
“Not gonna lie, I thought he might have been lying to us about this one,” I admitted.
Amber frowned, “If that bastard dared to, I would have gone back and beat him even more.”
I chuckled before turning back to the wall, “Alright… So how do we open it? I’m assuming he has to get in there to store more of his stuff so there must be a way for him to open this wall without breaking it down.”
“Or it might just be his secret stash that he chose to hide here in case he has to make a run for it. Perhaps it might also be a trapped stash that has a bomb behind it aimed to blow up anyone who tries to get him to cough up the location of his treasures.” Amber suggested.
I shrugged, “Well… Either way, we probably need to figure out a way to open this wall before even knowing which one it is.”
Amber grinned and pointed at my gun, “Isn’t the answer right there?”
I shook my head, “What if I end up blasting everything behind the wall to shreds? Definitely not an option. Let’s just see if there’s a way to open it up first.”
“In this mess?” Amber asked, gesturing to the room that had been ransacked and was pretty much destroyed by the previous group of Mercs.
I winced as I looked around the room, “I suppose that’s a little difficult huh… Then what do you--”
When I turned back to look at Amber, I found her standing in front of the wall with her fist pulled back.
Right as I saw that, she punched her fist forward, breaking through the wall like it was made of paper. She then grabbed a part of the wall through the hole she made and tore it open, revealing a hollow interior inside that held a small chest.
“Oh look! I got it, Tera! Come--”
I smacked her on her butt, “You!! You’re the one that told me that there could be a bomb behind it!! Why did you just punch it like that?!!”
This story has been stolen from Royal Road. If you read it on Amazon, please report it
She pouted, “Psh, even if there was, I would have been fine. I have a personal shield, remember?”
“And what if the bomb is a big one?!”
“As crazy as pirates are, I doubt even that pirate lord would be stupid enough to sleep here with a bomb over his head.”
Ugh… Touche…
She turned back to the hole she made, “Anyway, look! Look! We got it!”
“Ok, calm down… It seems like it’s just one chest. I doubt there’s anything good inside anyway.”
Amber shrugged and reached into the hole to pull out the chest, setting it on the destroyed bed in front of us.
The chest did not really look that special. It was just basically a metal container with a latch in the middle and devoid of any features around its sides.
Amber then went ahead to unlatch the box and pushed the lid open to reveal the chest’s contents.
I honestly did not know what to expect from a box like this but… The contents of the chest were a mish mash of several data chips of different sizes stuffed inside it.
I recognised some of them as Credit Chips which meant that we found a chest full of money, but I had no idea what the other chips were.
Amber raised an eyebrow at the chest’s contents, “Hmm… Seems like we’ll need to take some time to sort through them.”
I nodded, “Let’s just bring everything back to our ship first. I kind of want to get out of here now in case we run into any other Mercenary group like those Reaper guys.”
“True. Let’s go then.”
We went back outside and placed the chest on top of the hover cart, prepared to move it out of here.
I was half expecting those Reaper guys to return and demand the chest from us but luckily for us, they were nowhere to be seen.
But just as I was about to push the cart towards the exit, the light inside the captain’s quarters suddenly changed into a bright red colour. A split second after that, a robotic voice started broadcasting itself around the corridor.
“Self-destruct sequence initiated. Destruction in T-minus ten minutes.”
Amber and I looked at each other.
Fuck! I bet the pirate lord made that trap where the ship will be set to blow if the chest was moved out from its hiding space!
Actually… Thinking about it… I think Amber’s hypothesis about this chest being the pirate lord’s emergency stash where he would take this out if he has to abandon the ship for whatever reason. Then he would take the time to run away while the ship blew itself up.
Too bad he wasn’t able to do it for this scenario because the military started boarding the ship from this side which forced him to hunker down in the armoury instead.
He must have sent us here hoping that we would trigger the self-destruct sequence and have some of us die in the explosion.
Ok, fuck everything, let’s get out of here!
Amber and I started running at the same time with me pushing the hover cart towards the area where our ship was docked.
Along the way, we also spotted soldiers and other Mercs also running in the direction of their ships, some of them still carrying the loot they nabbed while others completely abandoned what they picked up to run away.
Good thing our ships weren’t that far away so we managed to reach the docking hatches with time to spare, both Amber and I separated to enter our own ships.
I shoved the hover cart into my ship’s storage room before sprinting towards the cockpit, tapping on the controls to start up my ship’s engines even before I sat down on the seat.
Outside, I could already see several Merc ships detaching themselves from the battlecruiser, speeding away to get clear of the blast radius.
I initiated the undocking sequence and my ship broke free from the battlecruiser, my inertia thrusters pushing the ship off into space before my main thrusters came online to boost my ship away.
Amber’s ship joined me soon after and I was a little concerned about the military battleship that was still beside the battlecruiser. No doubt it was still there because there were still soldiers who had yet to evacuate from the pirate ship and it was waiting for everyone to board.
We sped off to a safe distance and watched as the battleship began to move, its thrusters coming online as the giant ship started lumbering away from the doomed pirate vessel.
I looked at the time and realised that more than ten minutes had passed, yet the ship had not blown up yet.
Was the self-destruct sequence a ruse? Or maybe it failed to initiate because the ship was already half destroyed?
Just as that thought crossed my mind, a section of the pirate ship exploded which set off a chain reaction along the length of the ship, blowing it into pieces.
The military battleship shifted slightly from the shockwave of the explosion but was otherwise unscathed.
“Oh~ Seems like someone managed to delay the self-destruct sequence. They must have a capable hacker there,” Amber mused over our comms channel.
I suppose that explains it…
Amber then gave me a look, “I think that’s enough excitement for one day. Shall we go back and eat some delicious food?”
“I’m guessing I’m the one cooking said food?”
“Of course~ I’ll suck your dick afterwards as payment, how about it?”
“... Fine.”
What else was I supposed to say to such an offer?
Both of us then angled our ship towards the Cietai Trading Hub and engaged our travel drives to speed away.
Not bad for a day’s work I would say.