Chapter XI
Klunk steps through the open doorway of yet another docked ship, regarding the three massive pipes ahead of him with an unreadable expression before peering around the corner.
Just behind the next open door ahead, a mutant snapper stands guard.
Klunk pauses, and then tiptoes with his back pressed against the pipes, while keeping an eye on the snapper. The snapper watches him, dead silent, but doesn't move from its post. Klunk then shuffles around more of those empty metal crates, and comes face to face with a bunch of little Gadge-bots encased in a golden glass shell.
"Vioxyite shells," Klunk grumbles. "Barbaric. Not to fear, my captive brethren! I will set you free!" He smashes the shells one by one, and within moments, all four Gadge-bots are free from their cages.
The one closest to Klunk chirrups happily at this turn of events.
"We should not celebrate just yet," the silver robot warns them, nonetheless giving the Gadge-bot a pat on the head anyway. "We need to get past that mutant snapper guarding the door—" As he speaks, the Gadge-bots' eyes all change from green to red, and they whirl around simultaneously, charging right at the snapper in question. "Wait!" Klunk calls hurriedly as he starts running after them. "I did not ask you to attack—"
The Gadge-bots stop right in front of the snapper, and just as the creature hisses and bends down to crush the lot of them in its massive jaw, the bots leap and sink their teeth in whatever flesh they can get a grip on. The snapper screams in pain, and Klunk uses this opportunity to tele-equip his Bomb Glove again, and shove one of the spherical explosives down the creature's throat.
"Quickly now, before it explodes!"
Just as Klunk and the Gadge-bots manage to get out of range, the bomb and the snapper explodes in a billowing of flames, shrapnel, and cooked meat.
Klunk's voice box squelches, and he brushes some of the disgusting organic matter that hit him off of his now-not-so-shiny dome. "By the time this is over, I will need a very deep cleaning and heavy polishing…"
Upon stepping into the next room, he finds that the front of the ship is blocked off by a purple forcefield, and that the only way to deactivate it, it seems, is to send the Gadge-bots into the machine off to the side of the room.
"I do not think so," Klunk declares, instead choosing to lob a bomb at the machine. He certainly didn't free those little Gadge-bots from their cages, only to send them into another form of captivity, thank you very much!
The machine explodes, leaving behind nothing but piles of smoldering, melted circuitry and metal. The forcefield flickers off, and Klunk is free to enter the next room with his little Gadge-bot friends still free. The silver robot spies lone gadget sitting in the middle of the floor. He bends down and picks it up, examining it. And almost dropping the thing in the process, considering it's quite a bit larger than him.
"Ah, so this is the source of that energy signature I detected," he comments. "A hydrodisplacer."
A series of loud booms suddenly ripple through the station. After shoving the gadget in his chest compartment, Klunk and the Gadge-bots hurry out onto the newly formed bridge leading back to the elevator where the former first started, just in time to see a drifting Blargian warship exploding, and a transport shuttle haphazardly zig-zagging away from it hurriedly.
"It seems we are not the only ones who have had the adventure," Klunk observes, shaking his head. "Come along, Gadge-bots! Let us see what Rivet has been up to."
Earlier…
"Unauthorized device removal detected. Self-destruct sequence initiated. Please remove all personal belongings."
"Dangit, I knew something bad was gonna happen!"
Rivet quickly shakes her head and kicks on her hoverboots, quickly speeding out of the room and down the corridor ahead.
"T-minus sixty seconds until total destruction. Would you like to record your last will and testament?"
"Not today!" Rivet hurls herself over a space pirate as they charge at her. "This Lombax doesn't plan on dying anytime soon, thank you very much!"
"Dually noted," the ship's computer replies, a hint of annoyance entering its previously monotone voice.
Rivet zips down the last corridor, ducking underneath the swipe of a pirate's sword, before practically diving into the transport shuttle and slamming her fist against the big red button on the side. The door behind her slams shut, and the Lombax sets to work on detaching the shuttle from the warship. "C'mon, c'mon!"
Through the walls and door, she can hear a faint, "T-minus thirty seconds until total destruction."
Finally, after several more seconds or so of fiddling with the controls, the shuttle detaches from the warship. Rivet slams her foot against the thrust pedal, and with a burst of speed, the shuttle blasts off. Moments later, Rivet can hear the warship exploding behind her.
"That… was too close," she mutters, piloting the shuttle back towards the hangar from which she'd left.
"I am back," Klunk calls, watching as Rivet clambers out of the transport shuttle.
"So am I, bolts!" Rivet greets, dusting off her armour a bit and grimacing at the now-dried green goo still sticking to it.
"I see you encountered the mutant swarmers as well," Klunk observes, tilting his head.
"Yeah, I made the mistake of using my FissionMallet on them." Rivet pauses upon lifting her head and seeing the four Gadge-bots crowding behind her partner. She kneels down, a small smile spreading across her muzzle. "Who are these little guys? Did you make some new friends?"
"I merely freed them from their captivity at the hands of the Blarg," Klunk answers. "Although now I am afraid I do not know what to do with them."
Rivet shrugs. "Well, if you want, they can come with us in the meantime. We've got a whole cargo bay they can roam around in," she says, referring to their bulky red ship in their hangar.
"That… could work for now, I suppose." Klunk opens up his chest compartment and reaches inside, before pulling out a strange looking gadget. It's a pale blue thing with yellow and red markings, shaped vaguely like a gun, with a transparent plastic-like middle. "And… I found… this!"
He struggles with it a moment before tossing it to Rivet.
"Hey, cool! It's a… a…" Rivet looks back at him in puzzlement. "Ah… what is it?"
"A hydrodisplacer," Klunk answers, his jaw tilting into a frown. "It can fill or drain any pool of water that is connected to an Insta-Faucet."
"Ohhh…" Rivet nods slowly in approval, turning her gaze back onto the gadget in her hands. "Neat! I thought it looked like it might've had something to do with water, but I wasn't sure until now…" After uploading the gadget to her Quick Select and hoisting Klunk onto her back, the duo and their new Gadge-bot companions start heading back towards the hangar.
As Rivet steps into the wide, empty chamber they'd passed through previously before encountering the Gadget Engineer, she stops dead in her tracks, frowning heavily. She turns her gaze onto the Gadge-bots and waves for them to hide behind a stack of crates. "I've got a bad feeling about this, little guys… you stay there until we know the coast is clear, okay?" After the little bots hide, Rivet starts tiptoeing forward again. "Bolts, you stay sharp too, okay? You never know when— gah!"
The next thing the young feline knows, sharp metal claws are digging into her neck and lifting her up in the air.
"So, yer the filthy little Lombax who's been takin' out my crew. I thought ye were all extinct."
"Yeah, I get that a lot…" Rivet's eyes widen in recognition upon seeing the space pirate's face. "The infamous Captain Blackstar. Of course. Robotic space pirates plus creepy green eyes and other weird… glowing… stuff? Equals a crew of ghost space pirates led by one ghost pirate captain. My next guess was gonna be Captain Darkwater— grrhck!" Her words are cut short as Blackstar squeezes her throat.
"Ye would do well to never mention that name in my presence again. Not that it matters… ye and your little friends will be dead in a minute anyway."
Klunk spies one of the Gadge-bots peering around the stack of crates, and— remembering how the little bots attacked the snapper before he'd finished speaking— thinks one word: "Attack." He's not sure if his smashing of their cages established some kind of link without his knowledge, but something has to be done before they're all killed.
The Gadge-bot's eyes turn red. Klunk silently tele-equips his Bomb Glove and waits.
The next thing Rivet knows, Blackstar is screaming in pain as a couple of the Gadge-bots latch onto his good leg. As a result, he drops her, and she barely manages to land on her feet without toppling over. Klunk shifts on his partner's back, and flings a bomb over her shoulder directly into the ghost pirate's face. The Lombax herself meanwhile, after taking a second to catch her breath, tele-equips her FissionMallet and swings. It strikes Blackstar right in the face, leaving behind a huge dent. She then switches over to her Dual Raptors, and runs backwards for the door leading back to their hangar as she rains pellets of fire down on the pirate. Meanwhile, the Gadge-bots hurry after her.
Blackstar, in spite of the heavy fire being delivered to him courtesy of Rivet, stumbles to his feet and unsheathes his sword before charging after her.
The Lombax stops shooting to scoop up the little Gadge-bots into her arms before sprinting down the corridor ahead, Blackstar still hot on her tail.
"This is certainly not how I was expecting my day to turn out," Klunk calls to his partner.
"I know, right?" Rivet engages her hoverboots and, once she enters the next room— where there were at one point a bunch of forcefields that needed destroying— and leaps from platform to platform, her heart pounding hard in her chest. The feline dashes through the room where she and Klunk had seen those empty cages, and hurls herself down corridor after corridor.
"He is gaining on us!"
"I know, I know," Rivet tells him, glancing over her shoulder to see the pirate literally flying after them. "Grrf, why can't Gadgetron vendors sell R.Y.N.O. ammo?"
"Because the R.Y.N.O. is illegal in eight galaxies, including this one?"
"Not helping!" Rivet shuffles the Gadge-bots around a bit so she can hold them with one arm before reaching out with the other and re-equipping a Dual Raptor. "Here, catch!" Before Klunk can question, she's tossing the weapon over her shoulder. He barely manages to catch it— if anything, he almost drops the thing in the process. "See if you can do some damage with that! I'll try to keep some distance between us and him for as long as I can!"
Klunk's eyes widen as Blackstar whips out an energy pistol of his own. "Rivet, to your left!"
The feline doesn't question, quickly shifting to her left just as a ball of electrified matter blasts past her.
"Thanks!" Rivet calls to her partner.
"Why won't ye just die already, foul creature?!" Blackstar screams at them.
Klunk fumbles around with the Dual Raptor a bit, and then manages to pull down on the trigger with one hand while supporting the weapon itself with the other. The kick of the Dual Raptor nearly sends the thing flying out of his hands as fire bursts from the barrel. His aim is way off, hitting anything and everything but the intended target— including a pipeline that sprays some of that toxic gas right in Blackstar's face.
Naturally, him being a robotic space pirate— and a ghost, at that— it has no effect on him.
"Now to your right!"
Rivet dashes to the right just as Blackstar fires his weapon again. Upon entering the room carved from the inside of an asteroid, she leaps off the platform and relies solely on her hoverboots to glide down to the entrance of the next corridor below.
Meanwhile Klunk manages to land a few hits on Blackstar, who'd skidded to a halt upon reaching the edge of the upper level. Just as Rivet's feet hit the floor, the echoing thunk behind her announces the pirate captain's resumed pursuit. She blasts off once again, zipping down hallway after hallway.
The Lombax reaches behind her back and grabs Klunk before pulling him off.
"What are you doing?!" Klunk demands as Rivet tucks him under her arm for the moment.
"This isn't working! I need to take him out myself! You just get to the ship!" Rivet deactivates her hoverboots and puts the silver robot down, along with the Gadge-bots. "Go! I'll be there in a few minutes." She whirls around, tele-equipping her Spiral of Death at the same time. Blackstar's stopped too, now seemingly waiting for her to make a move.
"But—"
"Just go!" Rivet watches Blackstar intently, ears twitching as she listens to the fading footsteps of her partner. "Sooo… Angstrom Darkwater's a bit of a sore spot for you, huh?"
"Arrgh!"
Rivet tucks and rolls as Blackstar lunges at her— and instead of burying his sword in flesh, he buries it deep into a pipe that sprays more of that toxic gas in his face.
"I'll… take that as a yes," Rivet snarks as she whirls around and pulls the trigger of her weapon. The pale blue spinning blade tears up some of Blackstar's armoured carapace to flimsy little shreds instantly as he tries to yank his sword out of the pipe.
When that doesn't work, he leaves the sword in there and opts to try shooting the Lombax with his pistol instead.
"So what'd he do? Yipe!" Rivet leaps to the side to dodge a spray of fire. "Steal something of yours? Yikes! Stab you in the back, literally or figuratively?" The feline fires her own weapon again before dashing to the side a third time, her fur slightly singed from the heat of the rounds. "Put a weird magical curse on you?"
"Owwwff!" The razor-sharp circular blade slices off part of Blackstar's shoulder this time, taking an arm with it. "Do ye ever shut up, ye miserable swine?!"
"Not on your life, pal!"
"I'm not yer pal!"
"I didn't— oh, never mind!"
Rivet switches over to her FissionMallet and lunges forward as she swings the weapon up high before bringing it down hard on the ghost pirate's head.
"It is good to see you are still in one piece," Klunk observes as Rivet hurriedly clambers into the cockpit.
"No time! We gotta get outta here before Blackstar catches up! And he's really, really mad now."
Klunk presses a button to close the ship's cockpit, and starts turning the ship around to face the hangar doors. "Remotely opening the hangar bay doors…" The silver robot mutters to himself as he continues to press the buttons and pull the levers on the dashboard.
Once the ship is finally blasting off into space, Rivet allows herself to breathe again. And then she realises she's still wearing her O2 mask. She pulls the thing off and slides it into the empty space behind her chair for the time being.
And it's in that moment that the speakers lining the top of the dash crackle to life.
"Ye thought ye could get away that easily?"
"Of course," Rivet grumbles. She reaches for Klunk and pulls him off the pilot's seat. "Okay, my turn to drive!"
"Hey!"
"C'mon, bolts— I promise I won't crash." Rivet shuffles into the pilot's seat and then sets Klunk down on the chair beside her before quickly taking the controls and swerving to the side to dodge a spray of fire. "I'll even stake it on my, err… nonexistent… pilot's license?"
Klunk groans in exasperation, facepalming.
A/N: Not really sure if I did Captain Blackstar justice this chapter... at least Klunk got to use the weapons a little bit more. That snapper had no idea what hit it until it was too late lmfao (that scene is really the only part of this chapter I like...)
Also, yes- apparently ghost pirates can still feel some forms of pain...