A nervous looking lad of about seventeen immediately jumped up from the middle of the vault. He placed his hands above his head and cried, “Don’t shoot! I ain’t got any weapon!”
Tamsin stepped out of the way to let Jackson finish this one. He surprised her by shooting the boy in the leg.
“What was that for?” she demanded. “You had a clear shot!”
Jackson had already walked past her and was working on picking the lock of one of the trunks in the center of the room.
The lad began to wail in pain. “Fucking Jesus Christ Mary oh my leg it agh shit God Almighty…”
He sounded like a toddler in the midst of a temper tantrum.
“Tamsin, honey, come over here,” he entreated. “I need you to help me open this chest.”
She sighed and complied. For the moment, she was distracted from the wailing boy by the hunger of her imagination. She was about to explode at the thought of what treasures were hidden inside. Chinese vaults were usually only owned by the richest of merchants and pirates. Would it be gold, cash, glittering diamonds from the coast of Africa or something more magnificent than even she, in all her powers of avarice, could imagine?
They swung the trunk open and discovered a neat cache of tiny white bits of paper bound together in small lumps by twine. Tamsin flipped through the sheets of paper in disappointment. “Why this isn’t gold!”
“They’re bonds,” Jackson said in quiet appreciation.
Tamsin gave him a questioning look.
Jackson answered, “Tamsin, this is as good as gold. Each piece of paper stands for a bar of gold in the British Treasury.”
“Yeah, but ‘stands for’ doesn’t necessarily mean ‘equal’. Unless I’ve got a gold bar in my hand, I ain’t got no gold bar at all.”
Shouts came from outside the cargo hold. Jackson’s shotgun somersaulted through the air as he snapped it back in their enemies’ direction. Tamsin found herself fluttering madly across the grated floor. If only she hadn’t left her flamethrower outside!
Of course! She thought to herself. I still have my…
But she didn’t complete the thought. She couldn’t have. Not while the floor beneath her had disappeared. Not while she fell swiftly through the air and crashed into a heap on the cold metal plating fifteen feet below.
Up in the vault, Jackson turned around to find Tamsin gone. The grated floor upon which she had stood was also gone. He looked at the boy who had been in the vault that whole time. He was no longer screaming in pain. He had dragged himself to a series of levers by the wall. One of them was thrown down and his left hand was poised to pull another one. He was laughing now. It was a cruel dark laugh of fate.
“BAM!” Jackson’s shotgun thundered and smoked.
The boy was finally dead.
Jackson pivoted back to face the oncoming group of enemies alone and was relieved to see it was Hanson and about three of the other Rotten Rogues smiling in the doorway.
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