The stellar field ahead appeared empty, a void of velvet blackness tucked between the gravitational pull of two distant, pulsing suns.
‘Where the hell are we?’ Sheba asked, bracing her hand on the pilot’s chair.
Idan reached out, grasping her waist to tug her onto his lap.
‘Just a short side trip. Remember asking me about my small stash?’
‘Naam-,’ she muttered.
‘We’re going treasure hunting,salkia,’ he rasped.
She turned her gaze to the view, intrigued, searching the vacuum.
All of a sudden, the space ahead rippled.
As the corvette glided forward, a geometric monolith emerged from the nothingness, a black iron fortress pulsing with sapphire light.
‘What am I looking at?’ Sheba breathed, her heart rate quickening at the sheer scale of the structure.
‘The Sacran Vanguard Aether-Coffer,’ Idan rumbled. ‘The hidden treasury where Sacran warriors and veterans store their emoluments and spoils from their brutal campaigns. Mirage is using a unique Sacran-coded hex I gave her to emit a pulse that allows us to see it. Otherwise, it remains a ghost to standard radar. The signal also allows us passage without getting gunned down.’
They settled on a landing pad that rose from the smooth surface of the hovering platform.
The couple disembarked, leaving Mirage at the controls and on alert for any surprises.
‘The Coffer is impenetrable. It protects itself with rail guns and screaming hexes should anyone try to breach it illegally,’ Idan grunted as he led his woman towards the structure’s massive entrance.
He produced an artifact from the folds of his jacket, theAstral-Clevis, a key forged from aetheric chondrite that hummed with cold blue energy.
He pressed the device into the vault’s sensor, and the heavy iris of the folded entrance spiraled open.
They strolled along a series of corridors with numbered portals until they reached a silver door.
Idan repeated the unlocking procedure, and the steel hatch swung ajar with a whisper.
Sheba followed Idan into a cavern of such refracted brilliance that she blinked to take in the light, as her mouth gaped in awe.
Shelves of dense gold bars lined the walls, standing sentinel beside weapons of intense ancient potency; they warped the very dimensions of the room.
Blocks of raw xentium ore, pulsing with a rhythmic, violet luminescence, sat alongside diamonds the size of paperweights.
Emeralds with the verdant hues of a dying nebula, and heaps of heavy bullion coins from extinct dynasties, spilled from an open chest in a glittering tide.
Strands of translucent pearls vibrated with a mysterious frequency, arranged in jewelry cases along with rings, necklaces, and tiaras forged from fallen stars.
The wealth was staggering.
‘Small stash, my ass,’ Sheba muttered, lost in disbelief.
‘Tis a hoard capable of purchasing a galaxy or two and still fund a private militia for a century,’ Idan confirmed.
He dragged out a series of hover crates as he began filling them with his freakin’ treasure.
The sheer volume of the valuables was almost too much to get her head around.
‘How many years have you collected all of this?’
‘Eonssalkia, and a few epochs, over one thousand and one wars, plus a smattering of battles, wagers, bets, and card games.’
