Chapter 11 – One after the other
"How did you do that?!"
The Apex said sounding astonished, the way he looked at the small grey cube told me he didn't know what it was, meaning he had never seen the time machine before. Only higher class Apex must have been allowed to lay eyes upon it, which makes sense in the grand scheme of things. The lower class Apex probably didn't even know what this device does.
"From the very beginning there was no chance of you winning this fight, sorry to disappoint."
"That is the device is it not? Hand it over, now! I am still the one with the gun if you seemed to have forgotten, do not attempt to resist."
Slowly I laid my left hand on top the grey cube, enclosing it in-between the palms of my hands.
"It's as I told you, in the storage locker."
Feeling quite highly of myself I removed my left hand from atop the grey cube, where it once sat in the palm of right hand, it stood there no more. The Apex turned his head, spotting the storage locker behind him in the middle room of the ship; he slowly walked towards it while still pointing his gun at me. Sheathing his sword he opened the locker with his free hand, searching for it, he found the time machine exactly where I told him; in the bottom right corner underneath a dirty old rag.
"How did you…?"
He asked; question how it got into the locker when it sat in my hands only seconds ago.
"Do I have to explain?"
"The charades over Avian, put your hands in the air! I demand you tell me what you did."
A moment of silence passed by, I sat there continuing to smile, glaring down at the floor.
"As you wish then. Before you even arrived on this ship I used the little grey box you hold in your hand, which just happens to be a time machine, to travel to this very point in time."
The Apex looked down at the grey box in mystery, wondering if my words had been true.
"At which point, I placed the time machine in the locker, using it to travel back to my original time line here, leaving it in the future. Still having the time machine that hadn't yet been put in the locker, I kept it in my pocket up until recently. When I disappeared and reappeared behind you, I was actually into the future where I set it in the locker and left it, returning me to my time line where I ended up behind you. Having closed the box inside my hands, I set it to follow the timeline in which it was placed in the locker rather than the one it stood in, in-between my hands. Having the time machine placed inside the locker, I left it there to be found by you."
"Seems like a lot of work, I don't understand why you did all of this. Tell me."
His hands shook as he clenched his gun facing towards me. I remained calm and continued with my explanation.
"Because all I needed was for you to touch it. The moment you laid hands on the device, my victory was assured."
"How so?"
"Oh, I'm sure you will understand soon enough, in time we all start to understand. In fact, in approximately eight…seven…six…"
By the sound of me counting, the Apex looked down at the time machine, finding a small black circle strapped to it, counting down every second; he knew it was a bomb. The Apex realised that very second he had been outsmarted.
"How did you activate it? Why are you doing this, you will blow up the whole ship!"
He asked sounding enraged. Five, four.
"We Avians aren't that undeveloped you know, all it took was a bit of Apex DNA to activate the timer, which I strapped to it as soon as I got off your planet."
Three, two.
"You're still going to die here!"
"You think I'm that stupid?"
Once more a grin ran across my face as I pulled the handle of the door that separated the teleporter room and the main room closed.
One.
A small explosion just enough to rattle the door I leaned up against occurred just after I closed it. I then happily opened the door, where I found the time machine sitting peacefully on the ground where nothing but sparkles of the Apex's data that was being sent back to the base to be cloned this second. Minor damage of ash and burn marks were across the floor and walls of the ship, but nothing that couldn't be cleaned. Retrieving the time machine, I felt pretty proud of myself.
I went back to the end of the ship, where I made it just in time to see that the Apex ships had stopped following us, and began to head back to their planet in the other direction. This means only one thing, Aserva beat the Apex. I turned around only to find myself face to face with Aserva, who had used the beam transporter just in time to re-board the ship.
"Assserva destroy all Apex on ship!"
"We did it, were escaped the Apex!"
I hugged Aserva, as we shouted happily in our success. Our destination had come into sight only moments later, we were lucky we took care of the Apex before we began to slow down or they would know exactly which planet we were on. This way they only knew an approximate location, and would likely have to search many planets thoroughly before finding us. Returning to the pilot's seat of the ship, we prepared to slow down just above the planet's atmosphere.
"Amarus getting used to G-force of ship?"
Realising it actually wasn't as strong anymore, or maybe it was just something you have to get used to. Another accomplishment, two in one day this has to be some sort of record.
"Our main goal here is to find more fuel, most likely coal. On another note I'd like to try and find a new weapon, I lost my spear back in the fight."
We hovered above the planet, which was a beautiful bright blue colour. Making our way to the beam transporter pad at the back of the ship, we stepped on top of it and I readied the location system to land us safely on the ground.
"It's an adventure?"
Aserva said still grinning, we had already had so much fun it was hard to believe it had only been one day. Sliding the grey cube back into the ships locker, I locked it this time so no one else would get in, and set it only to open if Aserva or I were the ones trying to get inside.
"It's an adventure."
I replied, beaming us down onto the soft dirt covered landscape of our latest discovery.
