Chapter XXIII
A/N: Dialogue credit and special thanks at the end of the chapter!
Rivet climbs out of the ship first, Klunk quickly following and landing at her side. The smoke from all the burning buildings feels ominous, even with the rain slowly putting them out. It feels like the whole city is holding its breath.
The place looks even worse than it did in the news footage, and it hadn't taken them that long to get here— especially considering it turned out that the Gemlik moon base is orbiting the planet. Ironic, she thinks drily.
"Alright, we're here," Rivet says, moving to step off the landing platform. "Let's—"
There's the sound of scorching and sparks behind her, and she whirls around to see a steaming Klunk collapsing onto his back, eyes fallen shut.
"Klunk!" Rivet screams, kneeling down and picking him up gently. He doesn't respond and it sends her spiraling into an even worse panic. "Klunk! Say something! Please…"
Klunk's eyes slide open and he sits up. "The final digit of pi is…"
Rivet almost cries out of relief and from the echo of the first words he ever said to her. She picks him up, despite his protests, and carefully sets him back down inside the ship.
"Rivet!" Klunk crosses his arms, glaring at her. "What are you doing?!"
The glare falls away somewhat when he sees the look on her face.
"You got toasted by lightning," Rivet tells him. "It's not safe for you out here. I'll have to go alone."
Klunk merely nods, looking uncertain.
"I'll be back soon."
With that, Rivet steps away, letting the cockpit window close shut. The Lombax presses one of the buttons on her glove, unequipping her Robot Pirate Armor for good measure. She doesn't want to attract the lightning by being nearly completely covered in metal— unlike Klunk, she's not sure if she'd survive being struck.
Rivet surveys her base clothes, noting how they're in a similar state to her Rebel Armor. Not nearly as bad, but her clothes have seen better days for sure.
She sighs, sprinting on ahead.
It's deathly quiet here now, the attack having ended some time ago. It leaves Rivet on edge once again as she steps onto a still functional elevator platform.
She finds the whole Ranger team on the roof down below, talking in hushed voices.
Elaris is the first to see her, and waves her over. "Rivet! Glad you could make it."
Rivet nods, crossing her arms. "So what's the situation?"
After Qwark's betrayal, the Rangers had been at an absolute loss as to what to do. At first they were angry, according to Elaris, cursing the former Captain out for his actions. Then it turned to sadness at the fact that someone they considered a friend turned out to be in cahoots with the enemy, and shame for the fact that they fell for the excuses he gave for his recent absences.
Elaris was eventually given the role of acting leader by President Phyronix, but she told Rivet outright that she doesn't even want the job. She just wants things to be back to normal, even if that normal wasn't that great to begin with.
"We have eight people who are still unaccounted for," Elaris explains, turning the data pad in her hands around so Rivet can see. "The reporter Darla Gratch, a local mechanic named Sam Cog…"
The guy who got struck by lightning mid-news feed, Rivet realizes.
"We'll split up and search the city again," Cora continues. "We could really use your help, Rivet."
Elaris holds out an earpiece. "For you to keep in contact with us. And so Cora doesn't have to hack your comm again."
This earns an indignant "Hey!" from Cora and some strained laughter on Brax's part.
Rivet takes the earpiece, nodding again. "Thanks. And… be careful out there, guys."
"You too."
. . . .
Rivet takes the path with the magne-strip (old-fashioned and impractical, she thinks— grav-ramps are more efficient and less likely to have the wearer pull a muscle in their ankles), and the very scary upside down elevator that's thankfully magnetized too, but does little to stave off her fear of slipping off and falling to her death.
Thankfully before long, the elevator turns right side up, and once it stops in front of a small stretch of land, she immediately steps off, not wanting to spend another second on that thing.
She climbs up a stack of crates and is miffed to discover the path ahead is frozen over with ice. And surrounding the area is an electric fence that would probably kill her with the first shock or two. Great.
Rivet climbs onto the ice, being careful not to slip as she slowly skates across it to the non-frozen ground on the other side. A strong gust of wind nearly sends her flying, but she manages to get across and latched onto another old magne-strip.
"Mines!" She stops upon seeing a small mine of all things revolving around the magne-strip. "Who thought it was a good idea to put this here?!"
A quick shot from her Dual Raptor blows away the mine, and she's able to continue down the strip safely. She's relieved for a moment when she finally steps off the magne-strip— only to groan in frustration when she sees more ice ahead. "Come on!"
"How's it going over there, Rivet?" Elaris' voice crackles over the comm.
"Could be better," the Lombax answers. "But I'm working on it."
She climbs onto the strip of ice, carefully skating on ahead. She leaps over the first electric beam and almost loses her balance upon landing. The second one isn't much better, and by the time she leaps from one strip of ice to the next, anyone within a 50 meter radius would be able to hear the stream of curses flying from her mouth.
She steps onto the next magne-strip, trudging along as she gauges the path ahead. There's more ice, this time as a curved path, and more of those stupid electric beam things. She's going to have to be insanely careful here.
Some more insane gymnastics and several instances of her almost falling to her death, Rivet manages to reach the next magne-strip.
"There'd better be one of those stupid taxi things at the end of this," she growls, "because I don't even wanna think about coming back this way."
. . . .
Rivet can't believe her eyes. She rubs them, looks, and then rubs them again, just to be sure.
She's pretty sure he can't believe it either, if the look on his face is anything to go by. She's not sure if she even wants to comment on the fake mustache plastered under his nose.
"Qwark?" she asks.
Qwark sputters indignantly, his fake mustache nearly falling off. "Where?!" He takes a breath and says more calmly, "I don't know anybody by that name. The name's Steve McQwark."
He looks at the clipboard in his hand and is about to read off of it when Rivet shoots back, "Steve McQwark? Really? You're not even going to put in the effort to come up with a fake name that doesn't incorporate part of your actual name?"
"Give me a break!" Qwark hisses, already giving up the act. "I've never been in hiding before! I mean, there was the time I went undercover as a nurse to... never mind the details, the outfit burned up in the crash anyway."
"What…?" Rivet stares at him, bewildered. "Never mind, I don't wanna know. Anyway, does Gadgetron know that you're selling bootleg copies of their products?" She points to the obviously fake Gadgetron PDA sitting on the kiosk table.
"Look, I need the bolts to get onto an escape transport, okay?!" Qwark quickly shakes his head. This time the mustache actually falls off. "I know I screwed up," he begins.
"Yep," Rivet answers, emphasizing the "p". "And big time."
"Please let me finish," the green-clad traitor pleads.
Rivet heaves a sigh, crossing her arms. "Fine. Just get on with it."
"I can't change the past," Qwark starts again, "but maybe I can still do some good." Rivet blinks at him, not quite believing what she's hearing. "Drek's next target is Veldin." Her heart stops, but before she can say anything, he continues, "If you don't believe me, here are the coordinates for planet Quartu! You can find more information there!"
He waves a data pad in her face.
"Uhh…" Rivet takes it from him, still looking at him warily. "Thanks, I guess…?" She uploads the data pad into her neural interface, and settles her hands on her hips as she continues to look at him. "This could be a step in the right direction for you, but you've still done a lot of bad things, Qwark, so—"
Qwark gasps in horror and points at something behind Rivet. "LOOK! AN OBVIOUS DISTRACTION!"
"What?!" Rivet ducks to the side, spinning around with her FissionMallet appearing in her hands. She blinks, and then whirls back around to see Qwark leaping off the ledge behind the kiosk. "I can't believe I fell for that… he even said 'an obvious distraction!' GET BACK HERE, CAPTAIN SQUISHY! WE WEREN'T DONE YET!"
Qwark is still running away, sprinting across a pathway that without the extra boost from Klunk, the Lombax wouldn't be able to reach using her hoverboots without potentially overshooting it and plunging to her death.
"WOULD YOU PLEASE STOP CALLING ME THAT!?" Qwark calls back, his voice quickly fading in the distance as his body begins to disappear behind some thick mist.
"WELL THEN, STOP BEING CAPTAIN SQUISHY AND I'LL THINK ABOUT IT!"
Rivet watches as he finally disappears. She spies the "Gadgetron" PDA he'd left behind, and she takes that too. As it vanishes into her neural interface, she can't help but wonder what brought on this… behavior on Qwark's part.
Maybe, despite how far he'd fallen since his glory days, there is still some good left in him.
. . . .
It didn't even occur to Qwark that they would be here. In fact, he really shouldn't be too surprised, since this is a part of the Ranger job description. So they're here, and he's betrayed them, and they're heavily armed. So it's a no-brainer that he keep himself hidden. Still, he can't help but listen to their conversation, watching them from afar as he peers around the corner of a building.
"He's been holding us back from the start," Cora says, carefully scanning the area through the sights of her modified Combustor. "Elaris especially! Hell, he wouldn't let her train at all in the advanced training facility!"
"He wasn't always like that," Brax points out. "Back when I was a cadet, he— well, he still had an ego, but it wasn't like, Kreeli Comet-sized yet. More like Maktar Resort-sized. Which isn't much better, actually, but you get my point."
"Before he… did this—" Elaris gestures wildly. "— I always thought that he was trying to do the right thing. Or his version of it, anyway…" She lowers her data pad with a sigh. "Now, I'm not so sure."
Cora nods along. "Makes me wonder what else he's been hiding over the years, honestly."
Overwhelmed with utter despair, Qwark shuffles back into the shadows of the alleyway, struggling to hold the tears back.
"I just wish I could talk to him," Elaris murmurs. "Ask him why he did what he did…"
"Me too, Elaris," Brax mutters. "Me too—"
He cuts short, and starts running. Elaris and Cora both whirl around to see him kneeling in front of a pile of debris, his head pressed close to it.
"What is it?" Cora calls.
"I think I found someone! Help me get them out!"
It takes the strength of all three of them combined to lift the rocks one by one off the survivor, but they quickly manage to free the individual in question, and find themselves face to face with reporter Darla Gratch.
"Thank you," she says, trembling as sparks fly from the damaged parts of her body. "I didn't think anyone would find me."
Cora places a comforting hand on her shoulder. "You're safe now. Let's get you some Nanotech, okay?"
. . . .
When updating the Rangers on her progress, or rather lack thereof, Rivet doesn't mention encountering Qwark or the information he gave her. For one, she still doesn't know for sure if anything he said was true, and two she doesn't want to give them false hope or reopen still fresh wounds.
Since the Rangers are still searching the city for any more survivors, she decides to keep searching on her own. This other path's seen better days— most of it has crumbled away, forcing her to drop down from ledge to ledge, down onto the crater-ridden street below.
Despite the fact that there's nothing left for her to fight, the invasion is over, her instincts still remain on high alert.
It's a lot of climbing and leaping around the desolate city, the only sounds being the rain and the occasional roll of thunder or the rumbling roar of something being struck by lightning. She's grateful there's no more ice, though. That was completely unnecessary.
It's when she reaches the grind rail that she runs into a problem.
Apparently there's a Plasmabot Pod planted near the rails as a security measure, and sure enough, almost as soon as she starts sliding down one of the rails at high speeds, she's being pursued by the bots.
"Oooof course," Rivet mutters as the bots say something about her "violating a regulation" and to "cease and desist." "Pretty sure no one cares right now," she shouts back at them, "since the city's literally on fire!"
The robots just repeat the same spiel over again. She rolls her eyes, and then focuses on the railing ahead. "Another day, another homicidal robot…"
Rivet leaps from rail to rail, avoiding the streams of plasma coming her way.
Her eyes widen upon spying the electric barrier ahead. She flips onto another rail, narrowly avoiding the barrier. She hears the sound of scorching and something bursting into flames. One of the Plasmabots must have hit it instead.
Rivet sees another ahead, this time taking up two rails, and she immediately flips and flips till she's on the rail that isn't covered by the barrier.
Another Plasmabot bites the dust.
As soon as she sees the third and final barrier, she repeats, and smirks when she hears the subsequent crashing and burning of the last bot. Her grin quickly fades as rail comes to an end, and she quickly kicks on her hoverboots, safely gliding down to the ground below.
With a hushed sigh of relief when her feet hit the ground, Rivet sprints on ahead, and skids to a stop when she sees none other than the missing civilian Sam Cog still in his workshop. His hair is still scorched, and he looks about ready to collapse at any moment.
"Hey, hey!" Sam greets amicably despite his state. And loudly too. It's like he has no indoor voice! "Welcome to my shop! What can I get you?"
"Hi, the name's Rivet!" She holds out her hand for him to shake. "Listen, I gotta get you outta here—"
"Sure, yeah! I got lotsa stuff on sale!" Sam interrupts, much to the Lombax's utter bewilderment. "After the bombing, no one is around to buy anything!"
"Uhhh…" Rivet blinks. "Are you okay…?"
"Low prices?! You bet, Ratchet!" Sam points to various objects of questionable state around the shop as he continues, "I can make you a deal on a busted turborater, or a mangled carbonizer…"
"That bombing was pretty loud, huh?" Rivet tries signing along with her spoken words, hoping that at least this would get through to him.
"Quit your complaining, people would kill for this stuff!" Sam shouts. He whirls away and crosses his arms, pouting. "Sheesh!"
Rivet just blinks at him. Okaaayy, so maybe she's a bit rusty when it comes to her sign language… She takes a deep breath and yells back as loud as she can, "I am here with the Galactic Rangers! We're trying to locate the rest of the survivors of the attack! Can you please come with me?!"
Sam turns around, understanding finally washing over his face. "Oh! Sorry about that! I can't hear very well right now!"
Rivet just nods and offers a reassuring smile, along with her hand. She helps him climb out of the shop. Thankfully, a button to lower the ladder ahead is right there, so it's a simple matter of stepping on the button and then climbing down.
Funnily enough, it leads right back to the place where she initially met up with the other Rangers, and that's where she finds them now, along with a couple of civilians— Darla Gratch and Dallas Wanamaker among them.
Rivet quickly counts the number of heads, including Sam's. Her heart sinks. Only four people total.
The other four are still unaccounted for.
She leads Sam to the Rangers, quickly explains the situation regarding his hearing, and adds that she has to go now. "I may have found a lead on Drek's next target," she says, "but I want to make sure it's the real deal. I'll keep you guys posted."
Elaris nods in understanding. "Take care of yourself," she says.
Rivet smiles. "You too."
. . . .
As Rivet climbs back into the ship, she tells Klunk, "Turns out Captain Squishy is still alive. He got away. Again."
"Unfortunate," Klunk comments.
"Buuut, we did find some of the missing civilians, and I might have a lead."
"Why did you grimace when you said you might have a lead?"
"Because that lead came from Captain Squishy," Rivet grumbles. "He says Veldin is the next target, and that we can find information on planet Quartu."
Klunk ponders this for a moment, tapping his chin. "There is a warbot factory on Quartu," he says. "The one that I escaped from after my creation. It is possible that there is information there regarding Drek's plans… but I would not count on it."
"Well, it's all we've got right now," Rivet says. "Wanna check it out?"
Klunk looks at her, visibly puzzled. "I suppose."
The feline nods and starts the ship. It's a quick trip out of the planet's atmosphere and back into the starry depths of space.
Rivet stares out the cockpit window for a long time, thinking. Klunk almost died today, they both said some pretty hurtful things to each other not that long ago, and now she has no idea if things can be fixed.
But if anything is going to get fixed, she needs to put in the work. Granted, she's not the only one who has to, but… maybe she can at least take the first step.
"I'm uhh—" Rivet glances at Klunk awkwardly. "I'm sorry. About what I said on Hoven." He looks at her, blinking, and she sighs. "I said some pretty awful things. Stuff that I shouldn't have, and I'm really sorry."
"I am sorry too." Klunk pauses as Rivet glances over again, and then continues, "What I said to you was unfair, especially considering how far we have come thanks to both our efforts. You are correct in that I have a problem with organic life, and I am not certain that it will change much anytime soon." He places a hand on her arm. "But I do promise to make an effort when it comes to you. I truly do consider you to be my partner and my friend, and I did not show that very well in my actions."
Rivet smiles a little at that. "And I'll try to do better by you, too." There's a stretch of silence, and then quietly, like she's afraid her voice will shatter the moment like glass, she asks, "Team?"
"Team," Klunk amends.
Rivet's smile widens.
She returns her gaze to the stars, definitely feeling a lot better now. Sure, they'll definitely still hit some more rough patches down the road, but that's what friendship is all about, right? Taking the good with the bad and sorting out issues as best you can.
"There's still some more stuff I've gotta tell you," Rivet says, thinking of her past and her recent nightmare last night. Was it last night? It feels like it was ages ago, but it all still rattles in her mind, leaving her still agitated and anxious.
"We have plenty of time."
A/N: Credit for almost all of the dialogue between Qwark and Rivet goes to Tangent, along with the bit between Klunk and Rivet about him getting away. Also thanks to Awareness Bringer for his contributions: the idea of Qwark overhearing the Rangers talking about him, as well as their reactions and thoughts about what happened.