Chapter IX

A/N: Ehhh, I hope this chapter is okay. I rewrote several sections of it Idk how many times- I'm still not 100% happy with it, but I need to move onto the next chapter before I get myself stuck, so...

On the way to planet Eudora…

"… this one is my second personal favourite! Profitez, nos beaux fans!"

Rivet turns down the volume of the radio station, not quite having heard what Klunk had said to her. "Hmm? Sorry, I didn't catch that."

"I was wondering… why were you living on Veldin?" Klunk asks. "Information about the Lombaxes in my database is severely lacking, to say the least…"

"I really don't know," Rivet tells him, looking away and staring out the cockpit window now, watching the stars as they stretch past the ship. "I crashed on Veldin when I was just a baby. No message… no name. Nothing. Just me and my space pod— which got trashed after I was sent to the orphanage." She chuckles mirthlessly, turning her gaze onto her boots. "I guess I just wasn't good enough for my parents either."

"What do you mean?" She doesn't answer. "Rivet…?"

"No one wanted the 'space rat' from another galaxy," Rivet finally replies. "I finally escaped when I turned twelve. I've been on my own ever since. Not that I wasn't alone before…" She sighs, crossing her arms and looking out the window again. "One thing you learn very fast when you're someone like me… the universe has the worst sense of humour."

Planet Eudora…

"Whoa…" Rivet peers out the cockpit window as Klunk settles the ship on one of the landing pads poised on the highest plateau. Most of the trees have been reduced to nothing more than shredded stumps. Most of the grass is gone too, revealing the loose brown dirt underneath.

"It seems we are too late," Klunk observes, also staring out the window.

Rivet is still for a moment, and then she reaches for her favourite orange scarf and ties it around her neck. "Too late or not, we can't let Victor get away with this. I say we still track him down and send him a message."

"Ha! Who needs a Trespasser when you've got me?"

The Invinco-lock is now nothing more than a tangled ball of wires and panels, thanks to Rivet. As she rewires the thing, her eyes flick from the lock to the yellow holographic display being projected from the tiny lens on her glove.

"Well, it would certainly make less of a mess," Klunk mutters drily.

Rivet gives him an annoyed look, before turning her attention back onto the task at hand. She plugs one wire into a new socket, causing one of the Invinco-beams in the holo-display to rotate around its circle and hit a receptor.

"Yes! Three down, one to go!"

A little more rewiring later, and the last Invinco-beam revolves around its circle and strikes the last waiting receptor. The door whooshes open, and Rivet delivers Klunk a triumphant smirk. "Told ya I'd get that door open."

"I still stand by the fact that using an actual Trespasser would have made less of a mess," Klunk tells her.

"Maybe, but where the heck are we gonna get one of those nowadays?"

Once Klunk is secure on her back, Rivet sprints into the open doorway, through the small storage building (at least, she assumes it's for storage— it's completely empty, so who knows?), and out the other side. The ground stretches out a little ways, before ending in a sharp drop-off. One section is walled-off by a flimsy old fence, while the other isn't.

Rivet cautiously approaches the edge, and spies what looks like another bolt crank down below. "What is it with people and their bolt cranks?" The feline quickly shakes her head. "Never mind. On my mark, I'm gonna need you to engage your heli-pack, okay?"

"Very well," Klunk answers, his tone still as dry as usual.

"Three… two… one… mark!" Rivet leaps off the cliff edge, and at the same time Klunk engages his heli-pack, she activates her hoverboots. They glide gently down to the section of cliff with the bolt crank, and land safely.

The Lombax wastes no time in tele-equipping her FissionMallet and settling the head atop the bolt. She pushes hard, slowly turning the bolt around and around until it stops and sinks into its base.

In a flash of light, a series of Versa-Targets appear, leading up to another small bit of land up ahead.

"Greaaat, more death-defying technology," Rivet drawls, equipping her Swingshot anyway. "Because it's a perfectly sanething to do, to put a bunch of Versa-Targets where an actual bridge could be instead."

The feline takes a step back, and sprints towards the edge. She engages her Swingshot and, just after the grapple latches to the Target, leaps off the cliff. There's a second Versa-Target ahead, but realistically… how likely is it she'd be able to latch onto it before both she and Klunk plunged to their untimely demises?

"Lightbulb," Rivet mutters as an idea comes to her mind. Just as she swings high and disconnects the grapple from the first Target, she activates her hoverboots, and the powerful thrust from the footwear slows her down long enough for her to grapple onto the next Versa-Target. "Take that, gravity!"

"Talking to forces of nature now, are we?" Klunk asks, some of the snark coming back into his tone as Rivet disengages her Swingshot and lands safely on the ground. "Are you certain that you are the sane one here?"

"Har, har, har." Rivet is glad they're facing opposite directions now— an amused smirk, despite her best efforts, breaks out across her muzzle anyway. "You think you're sooo funny, bolts."

"I know I am," Klunk shoots back.

Rivet just shakes her head and turns her attention to the path ahead. Or lack thereof, unless the Kick Pads installed along the cliff walls somehow count. And now's the one time she hopes that the old myth about Lombaxes having nine lives has some merit.

"Hang on tight, bolts," Rivet tells her partner. "This is… gonna be next level. And not in a good way."

Klunk's voice box releases a mild squelch. "Naturally."

Rivet lowers into a crouch, gauging the Kick Pads and how far apart they are. And then, without further ado, she lunges off the cliff, her hoverboots humming to life.

To say both Rivet and Klunk were surprised to make it to the other side with their bodies intact would be an understatement. "I will never complain about the Versa-Targets ever again," Rivet says as she and Klunk sit side by side on the mini-plateau, both having decided to take a moment to calm down after the insanity that was the Kick Pads. "At least with the Versa-Targets, I can take a moment to think about what I need to do next. With those Kick Pads, it's either do, or the both of us fall to our deaths."

Another Versa-Target later, and Rivet has to take apart and rewire another Invinco-lock.

About ten minutes later, the door is finally open. Rivet and Klunk peer inside and spy none other than Victor Von Ion ahead. His back is turned to them, so he hasn't seen them yet.

Klunk quickly settles himself back onto his partner's back before she can say anything.

Rivet shrugs, tele-equipping her brand new R.Y.N.O. She cautiously tiptoes into the small building, all her senses on high alert. Just as she steps into the cylindrically shaped room, Victor turns around, equipping a Negotiator.

"Well, well, well," Victor drawls, his creepy yellow eyes narrowed. "If it isn't the little Lombax and the defect.You've caused Executive Chairman Drek a lot of trouble, you know."

"Yeah? Well, it's his own fault for destroying planets!" Rivet shoots back. "You may have wiped out Eudora's forests, but that doesn't mean you and your boss are gonna get away with it!"

Victor's eyes narrow further, and his voice morphs into a nasty growl. "Let's take this outside. I don't want my walls smeared with your disgusting organic blood and guts."

"Fine, let's," Rivet snarks back. "But only so I don't bring this little building down on me and my partner's heads while I turn you into scrap metal."

Outside, on one of the larger plateaus of Eudora…

While the R.Y.N.O. was able to take off huge chunks of Victor's armour, it was far from enough to do him in, and the powerful missile launcher could only carry ten clips of nine mini-missiles at a time. (Something Rivet intends to fix when she has the time.) All of which she ran out of upon reducing Victor to something akin to a walking robo-skeleton with hunks of mangled circuitry tangled everywhere.

Unfortunately, he's still going strong, even with more than half of his body missing— if the fact that he's still able to quickly lunge at the duo with his Shredder Claws at every turn in an attempt to slice them up into sushi (he'd run out of Negotiator and Warmonger rounds some time ago) is anything to go by.

Thankfully, Rivet still has an arsenal at her disposal, and just as she dodges the latest in a series of attempted slashings, she tele-equips her Spiral of Death and increases the distance between herself and Victor with her hoverboots— before whirling around and quickly pulling the trigger. The spinning blade does little damage aside from ripping out some more wiring, but it does halt Victor's next attempt at making an attack by pulling him off his feet and sending him tumbling backwards onto the ground.

Rivet switches over to one of her Dual Raptors and aims it at the downed robot before pulling the trigger and raining fire on him.

"I am… really… not getting paid enough for this lousy job!" Victor struggles to his feet, and hurls himself at Rivet again. The feline stops blasting him and dashes out of the way with the help of her hoverboots.

"What's it gonna take to beat this guy?" Rivet switches over to her Bomb Glove and hurls a bomb at Victor. "What I'd give to have a Gadgetron PDA right about now…"

"… Public Display of Affection?" Klunk asks. He sounds genuinely confused.

"I— what?! Public Display of— crap, never mind! Not the best tiiiime!" Rivet hurls herself over Victor just as he lunges at her again. She speeds down the beaten path, eyes searching desperately.

"What are you doing?!"

"Looking for ammo crates!" Rivet answers. "Didn't you see them on the way here? There were quite a few. If I can find more ammo for the R.Y.N.O., I might be able to finish off Victor!"

"Yes, but the chances of locating an ammunition crate with rounds for the R.Y.N.O. are six-thousand, three-hundred, twenty-two to one."

"Better than no odds at all."

"Victor Von Ion is gaining on us," Klunk adds. "It seems his jet pack is still functional."

Rivet sees it: a drop-off up ahead, and another series of Kick Pads leading to… somewhere. She can't see where they lead, and at the moment, she doesn't care. Rivet leaps off the edge of the cliff without hesitation, and her hoverboots make contact with the first Kick Pad.

The Lombax pushes herself off of it and flies onto the next one. And then the next one.

A few more Pads later, Rivet hurls herself onto the winding stretch of land ahead.

"I see a couple of crates up ahead," Rivet tells Klunk as she zooms towards the aforementioned objects. "And I think one of them is for ammo!" She tele-equips her Mallet with her left hand. She swings it high as she gets close, and smashes the crates in one swoop. She's just barely able to see what type of ammo is in the crate before it automatically teleports into her weapon.

Rivet switches over to her R.Y.N.O., heaving it up to rest against her shoulder as she whirls around just in time to see Victor rounding the corner.

"Hey, rust bucket!" She can't help but smirk as Victor's expression goes from sour to horrified. "Hungry? Well, here's a lead sandwich for ya!"

She pulls down on the trigger and lets loose wave after wave of rockets. And finally, finally, just as she runs out ammo again, what little remains of Victor crashes into the earth, smoke billowing and the occasion spark flying out from the mess.

"Yep, yep, yep." Rivet un-equips her weapon and dusts off her gloves. "Rivet and Klunk: One, Victor: Zero!"

"While this is quite the victory for us," Klunk starts, "we still have more to do."

"Whaddya mean, bolts?"

"This is a logging operation being run by the Blarg. Perhaps if we search the site, we can find more information."

"I can't argue with that," Rivet amends, shrugging. She turns around and starts trudging down the path ahead, equipping her Mallet and resting it on her shoulder. "And y'know…" The Lombax gestures with her free hand to the nearby delimber and harvester as she adds, "There's still a lot of logging equipment here. I think we should destroy it all so Drek can't use it anymore. It might not do much, but… it's something. And in my book, every little bit counts."

Soon enough, all the logging machinery riddling the site has been reduced to piles of sparking, smoking circuitry and melting metal. Apparently there were still axebots (both big and not-so-big) and sawbots also lurking around— but Rivet's arsenal of weapons made short work of them.

Rivet calmly dusts off her gloves as she walks past the smoldering remains of three big axebots she'd just destroyed. She then comes to a sharp halt, squinting as she peers through the building's opening— which leads to a small cliff up ahead. And hovering above the cliff is none other than another infobot. "Hey, bolts! There's another infobot here!"

After detaching from his partner's back, both Klunk and Rivet quickly make their approach.

The infobot blinks at them, and then opens its mouth. The screen inside expands, and the black falls away to show a clip of a small, cat-like alien trying to use a wrench twice their size to screw in a bolt— only to get sprayed in the face with a black cloud of gas after finally managing to push the wrench down.

"Is your current occupation leaving a rotten taste in your mouth?"

"Drek," Rivet growls, instantly recognising the voice crackling over the speakers. More like the thought of you leaves a rotten taste in my mouth. The video then cuts to none other than Drek himself, who seems to be standing in a rather large hangar bay. And is it just me, or is he angling the camera like that just to make himself look bigger?

"Then you need to know about BTS — Blarg Tactical Research Station. Hi, I'm Supreme Executive Chairman Drek, and we here at BTS are seeking motivated individuals to fill positions in these exciting careers."

The camera then cuts to various employees working as Drek starts listing the various occupations available.

"Grind Boot tester… warhead assembly technician… mutant animal husbandry…" That third one, if the clip shown is anything to go by, seems to involve the employees tending to become lunch rather than the actual food. "… robot repairman… Suck Cannon test dummy… administrative assistant!"

The advertisement cuts back to Drek. "So call BTS! Build our weapons while you build your future!"

And then it cuts back to the cat-like alien from the very first clip, who makes a phone gesture as they add, "I'm calling BTS today!"

When the commercial is over, the screen shrinks, and the infobot closes its mouth. Rivet and Klunk both share a look.

"Well, I guess we know where we're going after we head back to Aridia," Rivet says after a moment. "Sabotaging that station could help us really cripple Drek! Not to mention there's all the cool gadgets they're making."

"It is likely that the Blarg have repaired their missile launchers by now," Klunk points out as he opens his chest compartment and slips the infobot inside. "With the ship that we have currently, it is very unlikely we will be able to approach Aridia without being shot down."

"So in other words, we'll have to steal one that can either take out those launchers for good," Rivet starts, "or one that the Blarg won't shoot down." Klunk nods in affirmation. "Well, we won't find anything if we just keep standing here. Let's go!"

After combing through the site a second time, they found a door disguised as part of the rock face of one of the cliffs. It apparently served as a private landing pad— most likely for Victor, seeing as he was in charge of things here before meeting his demise. And this new vessel, a bulky red thing that's twice as big as the courier ship (which they would have to return to in order to transfer their supplies), is certainly large enough to fit him. Not that he needed it anymore.

It took a while for Rivet to be able to override the security lockout, and she took a few extra minutes to reprogram the ship to recognise them on its sensors when they're nearby.

To make the moving of supplies easier and quicker, they landed the new ship next to the courier vessel. Once all the packing was over and done with, Rivet took one last look at the courier ship. She feels bad for having to leave it here, especially since she's kind of grown attached to it.

Figures.

Aridia… within the construction site…

"Fine, I admit it," Rivet grumbles as she pulls the Trespasser out of the Invinco-lock as the now unlocked door slides open. "This thing doesn't leave as much of a mess. And it's a little faster. Happy now?"

"I will be happy when we are no longer within the blast radius of this construction site," Klunk tells her, his voice blunt.

"I'm getting there," Rivet shoots back, just as annoyed. Geez, who put the diesel in his oil this morning…?

Then again, this is Klunk. What exactly did she expect?

And anyway, he does have a point. They'd set the place to blow up in ten minutes, and there's not a lot of time left. Blowing up one of Drek's to-be warbot factories would be another step towards making things much harder for the guy.

So that's exactly what they agreed to do.

The fastest way out of the construction site turned out to be— surprise, surprise— riddled with Versa-Targets. It was still better than the Kick Pads, though.

Not to mention that they'd found a Trespasser right next to the exit, too.

In any case, escaping the incomplete factory was a cinch, and the view of the eventual explosion as the duo piloted their ship out the atmosphere was breathtaking.

Somewhere within Nebula G34…

"That's weird," Rivet pipes up, her eyes glued to the screen on the dash. Klunk, who as usual is piloting the ship, glances at her for explanation. "I'm picking up the station on sensors, but the power generators are fluctuating like crazy." She hums as she cycles through the rest of the data being relayed. "Looks one of the hangars was left open… we could probably get in through there."

When they do find the open hangar, what they see as Klunk settles the ship onto the landing pad is not what they expected to see.

The frozen bodies of several Blarg soldiers and a Snapper float aimlessly in the hangar, along with some bolt crates, an ammo crate or two, and a damaged Crotchetizer.

"Well…" Rivet trails off, not sure what to say. "Now what?"

"I will go outside first, and close the hangar doors," Klunk tells her. "And I will retrieve an O2 mask from one of the bodies. There is no telling if life support on this station is even functional anymore."

"I'm not sure I like the idea of wearing a dead person's O2 mask," Rivet retorts.

"We do have supplies to disinfect it."

"That's not what I…" She quickly shakes her head. "Fine. Fine." Rivet is far from comfortable with the concept of putting on a dead person's O2 mask, disinfected or not— but Klunk has a point.

If the power on the station is all over the place, then life support is probably not all that reliable at the moment.