The Chronicles of Valerie Corsair - The Vault

Absconditus is a world drenched in never-ending rain. Nobody travels by air, only underwater. The Military IS the Government. Freedom is limited. The only true freedom belongs to the Underwater Outlaws. Valerie Corsair is the greatest. She commands The SeaScraper, along with her gorilla first mate Brutus, worker robot Wiz, and AL the sentient ship artificial intelligence. These are her chronicles. 

The Vault

By Will Hirsch

The card game had been going on for a while. Valerie could barely stand the smell of sweat, body odor, and smoke coming from the various cutthroats and outlaws that sat across the card table from her. It didn’t help that the crowd watching the game were getting restless. After every flop of the cards, they would cheer, boo, or do whatever was in their power to distract the players. Valerie hadn't really been that focused on winning the game anyway, she was more concerned with just staying in as long as possible. Durbin, a particularly unpleasant Gorilla outlaw, had been giving her nasty looks all night. She could feel his suspicious eyes trying to figure her true motives out. The game itself was an annual card game held between twenty Underwater Outlaws that the sponsor (a mysterious man by the name of Rex) held. The prize this year was an item that most outlaws would never come across in their entire careers. A ruby. A beautiful, glowing red ruby that was too big to fit into even Gorilla hands. This was the fifth time that Valerie had been invited by Rex, but the first year that she accepted.

The day before the game, Valerie had been on the Bridge of her ship, worried about the severe lack of good paying jobs. Brutus and Wiz begged her to read this year's message from Rex. “It’s the only chance we have to make money right now.” Brutus explained.

“This is boring, just sitting around. I want to see some action!” Wiz awkwardly exclaimed.

“You hate action,” Valerie interjected, “your favorite part of the job is not getting shot at.”

“Yeah, but Brutus said he’d take me apart if I disagreed with him.”

“Just take a look at the message Val.” Brutus said, "Unless you have another way to make money right now?”

Brutus was always the optimist despite having a lifetime of experience to say otherwise. Valerie eventually agreed and read the message. The part about the ruby didn't interested her; it was the part that mentioned what previous prizes had been. One year it was a diamond, the next a jade statue, one ton of liquid gold the year after that, the list went on and on. “He can’t just happen upon these prizes year after year,” she explained to the crew in the Scraper’s Mess Hall, “he must already have them in his possession. AL, show them.”

AL brought up the images of previous prizes on his screen above the Mess Hall table, as well as the only known photo of Rex. It showed a man mostly covered by shadows, wearing a white clay mask of a blank face. It would have been creepy except for the pet cat Rex held in the photo, which made it look like he was trying too hard to look evil or powerful or whatever he was going for. “If this Rex guy has all these items,” she continued, “then there must be a vault where he keeps them all.”

“So we show up to rob the guy?” Wiz asked.

“Yes, but don’t think of it as robbing so much as keeping possibly stolen merchandise out of the hands of dangerous Underwater Outlaws, other than us of course.”

“What about the ruby?” asked Brutus.

“Geez, we’re already stealing a vault’s worth of priceless artifacts and you want the ruby too? No need to be greedy, Brute.” she said with a smile.