Chapter 34
Perez’s office was exorbitant, to say the least. While I disagreed with what seemed to be his ethics, and I could not say his taste matched mine, I had to at least give him credit for consistency. The man had a certain style, and he wasn't afraid to flaunt it.
A massive purple wood desk sat in the center like it was a masterpiece.
It was simple and smooth, with thin gold edging that had been polished mirror-bright with use.
Behind it was a heavily stocked snack bar, and I assumed the cabinet beneath it was a fridge with more of that purple wood as a facade.
The rest of the room had thick shelves, each of them tastefully lined with objects that I assumed were trophies.
A big four-pointed sports ball hung in the center, a name scrawled across it, likely some famous player.
There were other objects signed or otherwise positioned to make it clear they weren't just ordinary collectables.
I'm sure if Perez were here, he could walk down the line and share a story with each one.
Lily huffed as she also took in the office.
"What?" I turned to her, surprised by her reaction.
"This is too nice for him," she grumbled.
I chuckled. There were far worse things I thought she was going to say. "Is that so?"
Her head bobbed up and down. "He does not deserve something this nice. You do." She made the statement sound more like fact than opinion. I wondered if she was comparing this to my quarters on the ship.
"Well, thank you for the vote of confidence. However, I don’t want something like this."
"I wonder if this is worth anything." Lily lifted a trophy and tapped on it with one of her nails.
"I don't know. Isn't the old trick to bite it to see if it's real gold?" I asked.
Lily tilted her head and opened her mouth unnaturally wide.
"Wait, maybe that’s just a human thing, as our jaws aren't actually that strong," I said before Lily took a bite out of the trophy.
She tilted her head and then offered me the statue. It was heavy enough that it could very well be made of a precious metal. Either way, I tucked it under my arm because there was another option that I had for how to use it.
"What now?" Lily asked.
"East side, assuming the sun rises in the east here." I double-checked with Violet, realizing I had not been paying attention to this planet that much.
"Yes, in the east."
I nodded, then walked to the east wall. It was covered with more of these trophies, and I scanned for anything obvious. When nothing stuck out to me, I began shifting the trophies and knocking at the wall behind each one of them. More than a few were firmly glued to their shelf.
"The goal here is?" Lily asked.
"To see if one of these spots has something hollow behind it," I answered simply, taking the heavy trophy and readying myself to use it to smash through the wall.
"Oh," Lily replied, tilting her head as she reassessed my actions and then looked at the wall.
I was about to ask what she was thinking when a dozen spines launched from Lily's wrist, each of them stabbing into the wall at various spots; some went right through, while one didn’t penetrate more than an inch.
Violet was faster than me, darting up to said spot, only to reach in and rip a safe cleanly out of the wall.
I glanced down at my trophy. It was probably better to leave the heavy lifting to these two.
"It looks like that dravarii wasn't too bad of a guy," Violet said, hefting the safe as if it weighed nothing.
"Or I suppose you can just do that," I said in response to their efforts. There were definitely times when you could just muscle through all of the problems. I suppose this was one of them.
"How do we open it?" I asked.
Violet pulled out her beam saber and went to cut it, only for the blade of the saber to suddenly project off at an angle when it came into contact.
I frowned as I processed what had just happened. "Reflective?"
"In a sense. Repulsion of the ions in a beam saber or blaster. It’s too heavy to wear through." Violet nodded, seeming unsurprised.
I noticed the angle had deflected off and hadn't caught any of us, so I suppose she had half expected that outcome and prepared for it.
"That makes sense. We could probably find a drill back on the ship in Brick's things," I decided.
"Unnecessary," Violet said, her tail switching back and forth behind her, with a giant grin on her face as she tilted the safe back.
Her tail flicked up as she stared at the safe with an intensity that didn't belong in the moment, and then her tail flicked forward, and at the same time, a razor-thin cut sliced where her tail had gestured towards, cleaving the front of the safe straight off.
I let out a soft whistle. "I suppose that's one way to do it." The kikai preened under my praise.
"I would have been able to do something," Lily grumbled.
I smiled at Lily. "I'm sure you could have made something like a drill, or even, heck, maybe use your raw strength to break through."
Lily beamed. "Yes, I would have been able to do just that."
"Tell you what, the next safe is yours," I told her.
"Hmm," Lily said, scanning the room.
"Why don't we rip this whole room apart? Honestly, I wouldn't put it past a man like this to have more than a few safes," I said.
I began picking a few things off the wall that I figured were made of precious metals, not just gold and silver.
As I'd learned when looting the smuggler's ship, there were plenty of metals and alloys that had extensive purposes in either shipbuilding or weapons.
As a result, they would fetch far more than gold or silver.
Now all I had to do was guess which ones were valuable.
I stared at the objects before me and decided that position didn't necessarily equate to value. More likely, the position was more of a measure towards the boost to Perez’s ego than a numerical value, at least if I understood people like Perez well enough.
I plucked a few more choice trophies, several of them heavy enough for me to regret selecting them.
But there was a type of purse, man-bag, or something in that realm, on the shelf, and I decided it was going to make carrying these a little easier, even if the leather bulged and threatened to split with how much I was stuffing into it.
Lily seemed to use my poaching items as a green light to begin working to outcompete Violet.
Her arms stretched out before she grasped hold of a wall, her fingers transforming into claws, before she just ripped the entire side of the room out, finishing with a big smug smirk as she turned back to us.
"Well done," I said, eyeing another safe in the wake of her destruction. "We wouldn't have found that."
She smiled proudly.
“Good job," I gave her the praise that I knew she craved. Lily, for all her strengths, was dependent on me and measured much of her success off of my response. But I was happy to give her the approval.
"Since you're so good at it, do the other wall," I instructed, picking up a few more choice pieces of loot while Violet moved over to the next safe.
Lily spun quickly, actually growling at the kikai. "Mine," Lily demanded, her eyes glowing in the dim light of the room.
Violet's hands shot into the air, releasing the safe as if it had burned her.
I smiled at both of them. "I did promise Lily the next safe, and by the looks of it, it's important to her." And by that I meant, get your hands off the safe before she starts fighting you for it.
"Yeah, understood," Violet said, stepping away from the safe as Lily stepped up, her fingernails still extended into long claws.
She lifted them high and swung down on the safe with enough strength that her nails dented it.
She grunted and swung again, this time managing to puncture one side, before she repeated it on the opposite side.
She lifted the safe and focused as something shifted inside of her.
The safe began to creak and groan, her claws hooked into the metal, screeching as she pulled with enough force to drag them through the metal.
The safe gave way, crying out as the metal sheared under her strength. She grinned at the results.
"I suppose that's one way to do it," Violet said, amusement lacing her voice.
"I mean, if you want to show off, go right ahead." I gestured at Violet, because Lily had unearthed a third one.
Both ladies were looking particularly smug, and Violet shrugged. "Perhaps you should give this one a try, Captain? After all, three safes, three of us." Or, more likely, she didn’t want an uneven record with Lily.
"Sure," I offered, walking over to the desk and fumbling around inside of it until I pulled out a piece of tape that had been stuck to the roof of one of the drawers.
"Wait, what is that?" Violet asked.
"My guess is this is the password," I smiled in victory and stepped over to the one that Lily was extracting.
Violet's jaw dropped, and her tail fell to the floor. "How did you—"
"Do you really think this Perez guy is the kind of person to memorize all of his passwords? As soon as I saw there was more than one, I knew he likely had to keep them all written down somewhere.”
"Good spotting, Captain." Lily smirked, shooting Violet a look that said she had been about to uncover the same thing, which I doubted.
As I focused on working through the passwords, I spoke, “Why don't we see what we've earned today?" I wanted to distract the two before they went at it like oil and water again.
Predictably, both of them perked up, and perhaps, more importantly, they dove into examining what exactly was within the safes.
Lily was so excited that she didn't shift her nails back from claws and raked them along the remnants of her safe.
Violet was a little more delicate, but only a little, flipping her safe over and dumping out the contents.
Both of them had gone to the safe they had opened.
I could instantly see a competition bloom in their eyes.