Errr, hello again, everyone. Sorry for the inordinate delay in getting things up and running again. For those of you unfamiliar, I have a rather hectic work schedule that makes it difficult for me to update regularly. Adding in problems with my computer dying and a still ongoing struggle to recover the data I had that was not backed up, and we reach our current predicament.
That being said, this is the first chapter-proper in this story, and I hope I've done a good job. Thanks once again goes to Swordsman289 for helping to proof this chapter. I owe him big time. And thank you to everyone who has taken the time to read this story, I hope you find it worth your while.
Chapter One: In Which Fate is tempted
"They're doing what?" Ratchet arched an eyebrow as he stared at the holoscreen in front of him, his ears rising up. Had he heard correctly?
"They're shutting the project down," Angela muttered softly, pacing back and forth inside her prefab. "We're apparently not making enough credits for their liking, and since Barti can't think about anything except what color ink is being used to write the quarterly numbers, we're on the chopping block." She pivoted about, her teeth clenched as she started to grumble under her breath.
Ratchet's ears drooped a bit as he watched his friend clomp back and forth in front of him. "This close," he heard her muttering, holding her fingers a centimeter or two apart. "This close, another month, and we'd have it figured out…" She suddenly sighed, and turned, collapsing into a chair. The hovering drone that was providing the holofeed moved in closer. Her chest rose and fell evenly, but her eyes were closed, her fingers clenching once again.
"How many other projects are getting axed?" Ratchet asked, as he sat down in one of his own chairs, heedless of the fact that he was getting oil on the fabric.
"At least a dozen, Fizzwidget's been trying to pull Megacorp out of a tailspin for years, ever since Qwark …" she draped an arm across her face.
"I'm sorry, for what it's worth," her friend said softly. "Maybe… maybe you can find something in the time you've got left… or maybe you can get another opportunity, back in the biogenetics labs?" he tapped a finger against his chin as he spoke.
"You don't get it, Ratchet. I've been on the run from a crazed, midget dictator with delusions of grandeur and a thirst for revenge that might make Doctor Nefarious wonder what his problem was," she let her arm slip away, her blue eyes gazing up at the screen. "This was the first time in years that I've been back to work for them. Fizzwidget had to pull some strings, call in a lot of favors, to get me back in. This was my chance to prove that it was the right choice."
"Well… it's not like it was your fault that there was nothing in this… tomb… or whatever it was. And you helped keep the machines running smoothly, right?" the male Lombax smiled a bit as he spoke.
"That and other things. Apogee showed me a few tricks when I was with him." She said, a bit of pride slipping into her voice.
"Then how's it your fault? You did everything right, it just didn't pan out. Maybe the tomb's a decoy or it was abandoned before it was completed, who knows? It's not like you personally set out to make the project flop." His smiled widened a bit, and for a moment, Angela let a grin of her own creep across her face.
"You're getting better at the 'giving someone a hand while they're down' routine," She said, shifting a bit and staring up at the ceiling. "That's the truth, but you know how cutthroat multi-stellar corporate politics can get. Someone's going to try and use this failure against Fizzwidget…" she shook her head. "Nothing I can do but keep trying… it's almost personal at this point."
Ratchet's ears perked up a bit once more and his face became a study in confusion. "Not following you," he said.
"Ratchet, it took an Earth-Cracker half a standard year to bore a half meter wide hole through that door!" Angela sat back up again, her eyes burning with a bit of an inner fire. "The material technology that implies… you could probably blast the whole planet into a molten slag-heap and that tomb… facility… whatever it was supposed to be would probably be fine. Structures like that aren't just left empty and abandoned." Her eyes narrowed and she bared her teeth again. "It's got a purpose… a reason for existing… I just have to figure out what it is."
Ratchet frown for a moment, suddenly realizing that the backs of his hands were sweating. "Tell you what… before you go back to Yeedil… you're going to have a stop-over, right?" Oh, god, I hope I know what I'm doing here he thought to himself.
"Yeah, we're going to be traveling by a civilian convoy towards Ichar III, pirates and mercenary raiders are getting pretty bad lately." She gave him a look. "Why?"
"Why don't I meet you there? You'll have a couple of days off while they get everything organized and ready for the convoy. Take some time, hang out, just… do the sort of things friends do? You sound like you could use a break."
Angela chewed on her lip for a moment and frowned. She mentally weighed her options. It had been some time since she'd allowed herself to relax… and a while longer since she'd seen Ratchet in person. Years, in fact. Was this rushing back into things too quickly? Holo-communications and audio messages were one thing, but was she ready to meet him again in person? For that matter, was he? She ran her fingers through her hair, raking out more of the dull gray sand and dust from the wasteland outside. Blasted stuff, clung to everything. Over and over again, scenarios played out in her mind as the Lombax contemplated her options, trying to think of every way that this could possibly end. It took her a moment to realize that she still hadn't given Ratchet an answer.
"Sure… why not? What's the worst that could happen?" she said, leaning back in the chair. "Clank going to come along too?"
"If he wants to, sure," Ratchet said, his smiling widening a fraction.
"You're not going to be leaving some other obligation if you come over here, are you?"
"Not a chance," he waved a hand dismissively as he spoke. "There's nothing going on over here in Solona. Well, nothing that the Federation can't handle on its own."
"Odd… usually someone's trying to stir up trouble of some kind," she muttered.
"I know... you think maybe they're getting smarter?" he asked with a chuckle.
"Ratchet, if half the cutthroats, villains, and mad scientists in this neck of the universe were as smart as they proclaimed themselves to be, they'd stop trying to take over the galaxies, settle down, and realize they could make ungodly amounts of money simply selling their doomsday devices to interested parties." Angela's face broke out into a smirk, before she joined in with his laughter.
"True… but I think that would require them to think rationally. And I'm pretty sure when you accept the title of 'Super-Villain' that you're contractually required to toss that out the window and replace it with the need to monologue incessantly and come up with grandiose, over the top revenge schemes." Ratchet said as he wiped away a tear from his eye.
Angela merely nodded her head and looked around at the spartan furnishings of her apartment. "Yeah… I think… I think I will take some time off when this is over with and I get done running damage control. Might be best to let things blow over after that, try and find a nice, quiet area where I can turn out some stuff quickly, show them I've still got what it takes."
"Just let me know what I can do to help," he said with a smile. "In the meantime, you should probably get some sleep. You look like you could use it. What time is it over there?"
Angela groaned and stared over at a clock that was off screen. "About midnight, local time. Gah," she shook her head. "It's too easy to lose track of time over here."
"Get some rest, okay, I'll talk to you again soon." Ratchet said.
The two bid farewell, and the screen soon went dark. Ratchet leaned back in his chair, tapping his fingers together. What to do, what to do? A tingling of nervousness he didn't fully understand swept over him for a moment, and he frowned. Why was he starting to get nervous again? Was it because he hadn't seen her in so long? Or was it something else? He growled as he ran his hand through his fur, cut short to keep it from getting in the way. He'd worry about nervousness later. He should probably try to find out if there were any movies or plays or things like that where Angela would be interested in seeing.
He moved over to his computer, typing in the relevant data and pulling up a display of Ichar III. N class planet, predominantly arid, with two large temperate bands around the polar areas. A connected network of massive hive cities represented most of the population concentrations, and only one major spaceport, linked to the planet's surface by a series of massive orbital elevators. Seemed a nice enough place, but he'd probably bring his weapons' storage deck unit. His ears lowered and he frowned again, for a moment, hating that "always be prepared" paranoia that years of fighting had instilled in him. Still, better to have and not need, he supposed. A quiet voice in the back of his head spoke up then. If the only thing you wind up having to worry about is whether or not a couple of thugs want to try their luck, then consider yourself lucky. True enough, he supposed, remembering all the times when he'd tried to do something mundane and routine and it had abruptly snowballed into something that typically left half a galaxy crying out for someone to come save them.
He leaned back in the chair, listening to the soft creaking it made, thinking idly about what the future might bring to him.
As Ratchet and Angela had discussed, it was a relatively quiet time in the galaxies. Solona, Bogon, and Polaris were all in states of relative peace. Of course, there were always mega corporations that were out to take over and expand their powers and influences, legally and otherwise. Pirates and rogue mercenaries were often problems for lesser-defended worlds and one planet or another was always in the midst of some form of political instability. However, these issues were all relatively minor compared to the likes of a true crisis. Indeed, Solonians often joked that a conflict hadn't reached a crisis level until at least twenty five worlds had been bombarded from orbit.
In short, it was the type of situation where fate, the universe, or some other power might decide that things were far too boring and it was time to spice life up a bit.
If he'd been in a better mood, Doctor Nefarious might have felt inclined to give the galaxies a bit of that aforementioned "excitement". Instead, the robotic scientist simply sat hunched in a chair, tapping his clawed fingers together as he gazed up at a large holoscreen. There were two sets of images on the screen before him, but both depicted the same thing: his battle with Ratchet and Clank at the Great Clock. One depicted the fight from his own point of view, images captured by the cameras built into his eyes. The other was captured by the remote sensors of his station.
He watched the dual images; analyzing as the pictures progressed slowly, frame by frame. His burning crimson eyes narrowed as his fingers drifted down over the armrests of his chair, where they drummed out a steady, clinking beat. How many times was this, a subroutine distantly wondered. How many times, today alone, had he watched this play out? Ten? Twelve? He'd lost track some time ago, he realized, and growled softly.
"How…" he muttered quietly, his mechanized voice grating through the air. "How do they do it? I am their superior… I am stronger, faster, tougher, smarter… in every way I am better… yet still, I am continually delayed, beaten, and denied what is rightfully mine due to an over glorified house-pet and a tricked out backpack!"
He suddenly leaped up to his feet, slamming his booted heels down into the floor hard enough to leave a dented impression in the metal plates. He paced back and forth, his form quivering, twitching, a hissing noise escaping between his skull-like "lips." Even though he'd long ago left his flawed biological body behind, he still couldn't shake the instincts that he'd been born with, and found himself "breathing" heavily as he continued to glare up at the screen. He found himself desperately wishing that he had a henchman in front of him, if only so that it could serve as a convenient moving target. He clasped his hands behind his back, shifting about, to and fro as he paced his way back and forth in front of the screen, wincing momentarily as he got a dual-perspective look at a RYNO rocket slamming into his face and catapulting him into his station. Was it a mere habit of underestimating the diminutive robot and his squishy partner that had gotten him into this? Was it something more complicated?
How many times, how many times had he had that insufferable duo dead to rights only for them to either turn out to not have been as dead as he thought they were or for Ratchet to pull out yet another weapon in his seemingly never-ending arsenal and unleash the damnable thing on him. He watched as the Lombax jetted about, evading a series of pulse laser shots and plasma blasts that the Doctor had fired at him.
Did his body need yet another upgrade? He glanced down at his newly reinforced endo and exoskeletons, the bulges on his arm from where he'd had a couple more weapon systems thrown in after his latest humiliation. Was it simply a matter of being able to outlast the fool and his companions? Of being able to bury them in firepower?
A second subroutine discounted that notion almost as soon as it had come up. If it had been that simple, the annihilator laser that he'd had Lawrence use in the showdown at the station would have been enough. There was something he was missing, some crucial element that he just hadn't thought of yet; something that maybe this viewing of the recording would yield to him.
"Excuse me, Sir," came a calm, accented voice.
Nefarious let out a surprised screech and jumped eight meters into the air. He landed with a yelp and a colossal "bong" of metal striking metal, before shaking his head and glaring at the source of the intrusion. There was a translucent image of a robotic butler standing before him, hands clasped behind his back.
"Lawrence," Nefarious' voice was quiet and his eyes seemed to glow brighter as he stood up, clawed hands outstretched. "I have told you many times to never to interrupt me when I am sulking… you have precisely five nanoseconds to give me one good reason not to—"
"My apologies for interrupting your revenge plotting, Sir, but I thought you might want to know that a number of our remote sensors are detecting abnormal readings." If Lawrence was at all bothered by the fact that his boss was about to threaten him with some form of dismemberment, he did not allow it to show.
"What do you mean, 'abnormal readings'?" Nefarious leaned in closer. "If those idiot maintenance drones have managed to screw up the sensor network I'll..." he started to pant a little harder, his body quivering once again.
"No, Sir, nothing like that," Lawrence said quietly. "Rather, they began detecting a series of sub-spatial rifts and tears appearing in random sections of the Bogon and Polaris Galactic regions. I thought it best that you were informed now, rather than when you were done with the remainder of your scheduled sulking time."
"How long ago?" Nefarious' eyes dimmed a bit, his hands returning to his side.
"Approximately five minutes, Sir." Lawrence turned and looked back over his shoulder at something. "We're still detecting new ones as I speak."
"Diagnostics?"
"Inconclusive at the moment, Sir. They appear similar in nature to mass teleportation tears, but it doesn't match any known frequency or pattern… and we're not aware of any galactic government that would have a rhyme or reason to suddenly do this… to say nothing of the sheer number of them." Lawrence tapped a finger against his rather large mouth, "I must admit, it is rather baffling."
"Are they natural or not?" The Doctor crossed his arms over his chest, the proverbial and literal gears in his brain beginning to turn.
"Also inconclusive. The sheer randomness of the rifts is making it difficult to determine the answer to that question. Some are appearing in unstable regions, some in perfectly normal ones, and more than a few are actually appearing on or… inside of… planets." He shifted back over to look at something once again. "Current count is well over five hundred of these anomalies, and it's still climbing. Pollyx and his compatriots have been informed and are currently analyzing the data as I speak."
"Then what are you waiting for, you idiot?" Nefarious clamped his hands together as he spoke, before hopping up and down and gesturing wildly. "Dispatch scouting drones to figure out what they are, and more importantly, how we can use them!"
"Yes, Sir, right away, sir." Lawrence said with a bow, before glancing up at the still slowly playing images of the battle on the holoscreen. "Shall I leave you to your… activities?"
"Yes, yes," Nefarious waived him off as he turned back towards the holoscreen. "I shall be engaged in… strategic planning for some time, I suspect." He didn't see his second in command shake his head and roll his electronic eyes.
"Very good sir, happy planning…"
Nefarious rubbed a claw along the underside of his chin as he contemplated his next course of action. He picked up a remote and paused the recording a split second before he took another shot to the face. Grimacing and snarling he glared hatefully at the duo that had thwarted him. The organic and that robotic traitor would suffer, and suffer greatly, for all the setbacks and humiliations that they had given him. He would find the flaw, find the trick, remove it from the equation and then crush them like the bugs they were. He raised his left hand up, cupping it around Ratchet's head in the projection, imagining that he held it for an actual moment. He slowly squeezed his talons shut, his circuitry and mental vision filled with the images and thoughts of killing his nemesis in any one of a hundred agonizing ways.
Perhaps he could find a weakness in them… or perhaps these new discoveries could help him. Spatial rifts, oddly enough, did seem to have a tendency to spit out tools by which one could bring about change. Either in the form of energy that could be harnessed, or lost alien technologies, or the like. Nefarious paused in his scheming, cocking his head to the side and frowning. Rather funny that. Perhaps they'd get lucky this time, and it would turn out to be the case.
The robotic Doctor started to pace back and forth once again. He had to admit, it was rather bizarre. Sufficiently powerful energy sources were known to be able to rip open holes in the fabric of reality. Dimensionators and the Great Clock itself had been capable of doing that. This probably wasn't the same, though. Lawrence would have mentioned that if it had been the case. Nefarious kicked the base of his chair and frowned once again. What could it mean? The appearance of so many rifts so quickly? He shifted about, walking back over to the far side of the room. They'd have to move quickly. No doubt, there would be a hundred other powers in the galaxies that would have noticed these readings as well, and he had to be the first one to capitalize on it. If these rifts really did happen to spit out something that he could harness and use to fuel his plans…
A maniacal grin appeared on his skeletal face, and his eyes started to burn once again. Oh, the possibilities.
He shifted back towards his chair abruptly. Too soon, too soon for that, a small voice in his head reminded him. It could lead to nothing, and assuming it might have been caused by some sort of xenotech was overly optimistic, when for all he knew it could have been caused by "Captain" Copernicus L. Qwark's ego simply growing so large that it had altered the gravitational center of the known universe. On the other hand, still best to get there first. Even if it turned out to be nothing, he could still their presence to ambush any late arrivals. He chuckled slightly at the thought of blasting a Polarian cruiser to pieces. Hell, even a civilian bulk freighter would be nice and cathartic. Maybe play a nice bit of upbeat music to go along with the horrified screams and futile pleading for mercy… Yes, that would be just the thing. Something to take his mind off his recent defeats, a little bit of a confidence building exercise. That would be just perfect, he thought, as he rubbed his hands together gleefully.
Angela Cross found herself sighing once again as she turned over, stuck in the strange, gray area where she wasn't truly asleep, but wasn't truly awake either. It had to be probably two o'clock in the morning, local time. At least, that was what she was guessing. Her bedroom area lacked windows… not that there would have been much to stare at even if she'd had them. Sand. Dust. More sand. Another dust covered prefab. That would have pretty much covered the spectrum. She snuggled into the soft bedding underneath her, the one luxury they were given out here, and tried to will herself to fall asleep. She was going to need every bit of rest she could get if they were only going to have two days left to finish here.
However, sleep continued to elude the young woman. Insomnia brought on by a combination of frustration at the earlier lack of progress with the dig, the lack of support now that they finally seemed to be getting somewhere, and the fact that she swore this place was taunting her. She groaned and flopped over onto her back, her weary eyes opening up at the ceiling above her. She could just faintly make it out in the darkness, her large eyes taking in every scrap of stray illumination that it could find. Was this really the way that it was going to be? For her to have escaped Tachyon's attempts to kill her, have successfully stayed in hiding for all this time, and managed to both outlast him and every other threat she'd gone up against… only to fail now? Now that she had at last gotten some semblance of her old life back?
She let out another low sigh and blinked a few times as she placed her hands behind her head. She'd find something… some way to turn this around. There had to be an answer to the secret of this place, something she just hadn't thought of yet. She'd get up "tomorrow", get Mr. Arden to let her pilot one of the sensor drones, and take a detailed sector by sector sweep of the interior of that… facility… tomb… whatever it was. Perhaps a few deep spectrum active scans might do the trick? Reveal if there were any hidden panels or false walls over hidden chambers? Maybe even show some hidden circuits?
Her thoughts drifted again, as she forcefully cut off that train of thought. You go down that path, you won't ever get to sleep she thought inwardly. Instead, she tried to focus on something mildly less frustrating: Ratchet and Clank. It felt… it felt good… to be speaking with them again after all this time. Getting back in touch with them and stoking the embers of their friendship had proven to be easier than she'd feared it was going to be. But then again, the two had first been introduced with him being Qwark's pawn to con his way back into the superhero business without regard to the cost, and she'd tried to shoot him for it. Granted, he'd been blissfully ignorant of his actual role in things and had been quick to forgive the misunderstanding once the truth had come out.
She supposed that was his nature. A little brash and short tempered from time to time, but more than willing to let bygones be bygones… unless you threatened his homeworld or another friend of his. A faint smile teased at the edges of her mouth as she thought about seeing him in person for the first time in years. Silver lining and all? Angela giggled for a moment. He was certainly quite a bit taller than he used to be, if the vids were any indication; though he still wasn't as tall as she was. Distantly, she wondered if female Lombaxes were always larger than the males. Information on their species was surprisingly scant. She mentally shrugged. Didn't really matter in the end, she supposed.
It would be good to see Clank as well. The little robot had always been kind to her, despite a similar misunderstanding at the start of the protopet disaster. She'd gotten lucky with those two. Friends like that weren't common.
She closed her eyes once more, and let her mind start to drift, images of the three of them simply hanging out. No jobs, no super villains or galactic disasters… maybe getting Ratchet to blast the next smug grin off Randolph Barti's face… she couldn't help but giggle a bit at that thought. She closed her eyes, and finally felt sleep come to her.
She wasn't sure how long she'd been asleep when her sensitive hearing picked up the sound of someone banging on the door to her prefab. She groaned and shifted on her bed, hoping whoever it was would go away. The banging returned a moment later, and she grumbled as she slowly got to her feet and made her way out of her sleeping quarters and into the main room of the structure. She picked up the remote to her holoscreen and keyed it to the camera on the outside of the airlock. There was a person standing there, anonymous behind the mirrored visor of the filtration mask that he or she was wearing. Medium height and build, no indication as to who it was as they raised a three fingered hand and banged on the door a couple more times.
"What is it?" she mumbled, and the person jumped back a bit.
"Oh, sorry, Angela," the person said. She recognized the voice: Sartanus Arden. "I know it's an ungodly hour, and all that, and I'm sorry about it, but you need to get out here now!"
"What is it?" she asked, trying to force her body to wake up, rummaging around for a stimulant pill. She grimaced at the thought of having to swallow one of the things, but damned if they didn't work. "What's wrong?"
"Nothing's wrong, per se…" Arden reached up and scratched the back of his helmet. "It's the doors, Angela."
"What about them?" She rummaged under the counter, and pulled out a small, standard issue bottle of Megacorp brand mental stimulants.
"They're opening up."
Angela quickly forgot about the pills and her fatigue as she raced to get out of her sleeping attire and into her work clothes.
And that's it for chapter one. Hopefully the next update won't take several months, and I do hope that it was a decent update. Any advice and feedback, as always, is more than welcomed, especially regarding characterization and the like, as I'm always nervous that in my attempts to develop and advance the characterization in these stories, I'm going to wind up morphing the individual into something their note. Nefarious is a particular cause for concern, so any advice and feedback on how I'm portraying him is definitely going to be welcomed with open arms.
In the meanwhile, I hope that everyone has a Merry Christmas and Happy Holidays. Take care, and be safe.