“Just stop talking, please.”

Philip was taken aback, almost dropped the generator that twitched in his feeble grip, far too heavy for a man of his build to be holding.  He gritted his teeth, trying to fight the growing nausea brought on by its constant cancerous humming.

“I was just.”

“Be quiet.  It’s almost charged.”

“Rerd.  I.”

“Shut up.”

Rerd was holding a long black cylinder with a small green dial on it.  The dial was turning slowly and increasing in brightness as the device drew in power greedily from the generator.  Rerd rubbed his sleeve over its shiny finish; it was one old run of the terminator rifles.  An R-Series.  One of the first designs however, when it was so inefficient it could drain a city of power for a single shot.

Rerd had calculated, with his diagram of the rifle and the word “pow”, that a small generator should be enough to make it through the vault.  Rerd was counting on it.  In silence they waited patiently for the click which would mean it had enough energy to fire.  Philip tottered on one foot, almost losing his balance.

“I’m going to have to drop this.  It’s too heavy.”

“Keep it up.  We can’t let any vibrations draw attention to us.”

“I can’t hold it.”

“You can.”

There was a click, Rerd smiled to himself.  It was ready and charged.

“You can drop it now, come on.”

There was a solid clunk as the solid block of the generator came to rest on the steel floor of the rest room.  Rerd pulled the cable that tied it to his rifle free enthusiastically and threw it to the ground, allowing it to coil randomly on the floor.

Rerd grinned back at Philip before running out of the cubicle and pushing his way past the rest room door and into the lobby of the bank.  The door flapped closed behind him and as Philip moved to follow Rerd through he could hear the muffled screams and the filtered rancor of Rerd’s threats.  Philip pulled his pistol from his pocket.  He didn’t know what the weapon Rerd had insisted on charging before the robbery was, but he hoped that he knew better than to use it.

Emerging into the lobby Philip witnessed the familiar scene of random people covering their heads and lying on the floor, others were in the process of fleeing but all were ignored by Rerd, who had already got his hands on the manager.  He was holding the bizarre form of the terminator rifle to his side and screaming at him.

“The vault, now.”

Rerd had heard of something through an ex-military friend of his, something that had instantly grabbed the entirety of usually fleeting attention.  He had told Rerd about a new rifle they had developed that could vaporize any known military hardware from impossible distances.  His friend had gone on all night about the military implications of this as if it was of any interest to him, but Rerd only had one thing on his mind the whole time he sat through the ordeal.

There was a famous unbreakable vault in the desert and now there was something that could break it.  Getting one turned out to be easy.  Rerd’s contacts were good and nobody wanted to be hold onto one of the rifles for too long.  It was an incomplete version of the rifle however, made before they started tracking them correctly but allegedly capable of the same effectiveness.

Rerd and Philip followed the subdued manager to the vault.  He waddled ahead of them, rapidly soaking his expensive shirt with sweat.

“There is no way into that vault.  You do know that?”

Rerd rammed the rifle into his back, causing him to miss a step and almost fall forwards.

“Shut up.”

Rerd knew that was had been true up until now but Rerd had something that hadn’t been tried before.  In the backroom was the vault, the famous unbreakable vault of the Fliunsky Brothers.  The world famous bank was in the center of the desert, had low security but was impossible to steal from.  It was a major selling point for savers and a major deterrent for thieves, at least those which didn’t like a challenge.

Inside was a fortune but it was time, laser, space and vacuum locked.  Fifteen meters of some incredible new alloy, everyone had seen the ads.  Rerd turned the terminator rifle on its side and looked over the glowing dial.  It was still holding his charge, good, he thought.  He didn’t want to send Philip after the generator again.

The face of the vault was just a plain grey square set into the silvered hulk.  The door was huge with easily enough room for two trucks to drive in side my side had it been open.  Rerd knocked on the structure with his fist, the only sound was the splat of his hand on the hard surface.  He was tempted to kick it but an experience involving another vault and five broken bones had taught him better.

“Philip, keep an eye on him, cover my back.”

Philip looked at the rifle.

“Are you going to just fire it from here?  Is that safe?”

Rerd shrugged.  He didn’t care.  He just wanted whatever was in the vault, or at least as much as he could carry.  He stroked the black surface of the gun; it certainly felt up to the job.  He raised the rifle to eye level and looked down the barrel at as much of the vault entrance as he could fit in his vision.

“Here it goes.”

The trigger receded with a click and there was a flash of light, forcing Rerd to close his eyes.  Rerd felt himself pulled forward violently and panicked, but then everything was still again.  He opened his eyes.

There was a desert in front of him.  The entire rear section of the bank, and the vault, was gone.  Rerd blinked.  A circular pattern of charred sand marked out vaguely where he had been pointing the rifle.

Rerd, the manager and Philip stared out into the scalding sun that now streamed down at them.  Their minds felt like somebody had just hollowed them out and filled them with cotton wool.  Rerd dropped the rifle and turned to Philip.

“What just happened?”

Philip looked to Rerd and shrugged, together they ran out into the desert, thankful that they had parked out front.