6Hello everyone. My name is ultimate deathsaurer 2. I am bit of an obscure writer and this is my first major fanfiction and would like to ask you not flame me for some inperfections. This prologue will be split into three parts which I will try to upload as quickly as possible. I hope you will enjoy this story. And a word about what had been in place before this was a sort of preview to test out my skills before really starting this fanfic. Too those who chose to follow it and have waited patiently, I thnk you and hope that this dose not dissapoint you. Enjoy!
Prologue
Solana Galaxy
Planet Veldin - Kyzil Plateau
"Hey Aphelion." Ratchet said as he approached the sentient lombax ship in his garage, a slight hint of glee in his eyes for the first time in over a month. "Hello, Ratchet. You seem to be in a good mood today." She responded in a slightly surprised tone as the lombax approached her. "I am. Want to know why?" He said in a tone that dripped with barely controlled excitement that caused Aphelion to wonder if he was going to explode, though it made her feel much better to see him smiling again after the long depression that he had been in only a day ago. She watched as ratchet reached into his left pocket and pulled out a small data chip and showed it to her.
"Do you know what this is?" Ratchet asked as his furry lips curled into the kind of smile that a child gets when their parents give them a new toy. When aphelion saw this she wondered for a moment whether the lombax had finely lost it and he was just starting to show it."I can't see what it is, remember? My sensors can detect that it is a data chip but until you plug it into my systems, that is all I am going to guess that it is." she pointed out in an 'annoyed' tone with just a hint of sarcasm to take the edge off her words.
"Oh yea, right."Ratchet said as he scratches the back of his head.
As he begins to climb into the cockpit, clank walks into the garage.
"Hello, Aphelion. I see that ratchet has shown you what he found recently."He said as he watched ratchet try to get into the cockpit too quickly, slipped, and landed on his furry rear.
"Hello clank." she said as clank walked over to ratchet and helped him get back on his feet."Yes, he was trying to plug it into my systems so that I could take a look at it. Though if he continues to act like this much longer, I may have to suggest he be committed out of concern that he may have cracked." She said with a hint of amusement.
"Ha ha, very funny." ratchet said as he rubbed the sore spot on his rear and checked his tail for any broken bones.
"Ha ha, I thought it was funny." Clank chuckled as ratchet rolled his eyes.
"What ever." Ratchet said as he climbed into aphlion's cockpit and inserted the data chip into one of her data ports.
"Well, this is interesting. Where did you get this from ratchet?" Aphelion asked him as she started to look over the coding of the data that was on the chip, checking it for computer viruses.
Ratchet looked at the screen as he shrugged his shoulders and look to his right as clank got into the co-pilot seat and got comfortable as they both look back at the screen.
"I bought it off of the plumber yesterday when I saw him at the market in town." ratchet said as he looked at the screen hoping that she would just start to decode the data already, but he forgot that he was dealing with a smart AI and she wanted a better answer than that. "You got it 'off' the plumber?" she asked in a dry sounding voice as ratchet shrugged again as he told her more. "Yea. I told him what I was looking for and he told me that he, and I quote:"Just so happen to have something about advanced lombax space travel technology.":Unquote. And he was willing to sell it to me for just 300 bolts." she could barely believe what ratchet had just said. He had told her about how the plumber had been helpful to them in the past but just having the information that ratchet needed did sound too good to be true and it made her worry how ratchet would react if this was faked. Granted, she was giving the plumber the benefit of a doubt but that did not mean that it was real where ever it first came from before the plumber came across it. But for now she was going to try and hope, especily for ratchet's sake because it had not been a good time for him since Alister's death and the following search for the lombaxes that had proven to be a complete failure. Which, in turn, had led to him becoming very depressed and had made both her and clank worry that he might try to do something possibly harmful to himself. She was certain that had clank not suggested that they should go into town to get grocerys yesterday, rather than him laying in bed all day and night, in the dark alone, the window with the 100 foot shear drop outside of it would have started to look like a good way to escape the pain he was going through, (since he couldn't find any of his guns). She was greatful that clank had thought ahead and hidden all the guns and weapons away from him or... Well, nigther her nor clank even wanted to consider what he would have done if he had gotten a hold of any of them. But now, she just had to hope that this was something real that would help ratchet's new found reason to live, continue to stay and provide him the hope he so despertly needed.
"Yes. It was a fairly good price considering what such information would truly be worth." Clanks voice broke into her train of thoughts as she pushed the memories of the recent past from her electronic mind and decided to see if she could get anymore info on where this data chip came from.
"Did he happen to mention where he had gotten this from?" she asked ratchet with a rather blunt question that made clank raise a metallic eyebrow ever so slightly as ratchet responded. "Yea, he said that he bought it from Qwark in a flea market for 500 bolts."
If aphelion where not a ship, she would have done a face palm. She would have groaned loudly at the mention of qwarks name in that sentence had it not been for clanks response to ratchets statement, "He did not mention qwark's name when he told you about from where he had proquered the data chip. He clearly said that the seller was named 'steve'."
"Oh come on clank. 'Steve' is the ailies that qwark always uses when he is trying to do something he knows he shouldn't. Remember when we were in the bogon galaxy and that info-bot girl friend of yours showed us his evil plan to become the new 'hero'." Ratchet pointed out while clank giggled remembering his old girlbot that he used to see before he became a big movie star.
As ratchet and clank started to go down memory lane, Aphelion was very troubled that the source of the data chip was qwark and given his track record, this could be another one of his scams and that could have severe repercussions and ratchet's new found hope could be dashed to the winds. "No, I must try to have faith that maybe that big green baboon might have actually done right this time and found something legitimate and that this helps ratchet to keep the spirit alive." She thought to herself as she started to scroll through the data before she could start the process of decoding and translating the lombax language to the galactic standard.
It took several hours to complete the decoding process and was midnight by the time it was ready for translation. As she looked it over, she started to see that it was a video log from a scientist that she kind of recognized as having had a hand in her creation and she began remembering how when she had been connected with his computer during her "birth", she had seen files about a new type of drive system before she was downloaded into her "bodys" computer. When she asked about it, he told her that it was nothing for her to worry about that it was just a special project that he had been asked to work on with the other research teams. Now she could see what he was working on all those years ago.
"NO!" She snapped out of her thoughts imidetly when she heard ratchet yell loudly. She swept her sensors around, trying to locate the lombax and found he was in her cockpit, fast asleep. "No Angela, don't punch qwark. You don't need to get your hands dirty." clank, who had come running in from the living area to see what was happening, giggled as he saw ratchet throw a couple weak punches at "qwark" as he dreamed. "Don't dirty your hands, I'll hit him for you." Clank tried not to laugh out loud at that as he got a blanket and put it over ratchet then sat in the co-pilot seat and watched the screen as aphelion scrolled through the data on it.
Clank remembered angela very well, partly from the time she had held him hostage but mostly from when ratchet had tried to be her friend, she didn't seem interested in him but when she disapered, they found out that she was a lombax like ratchet is and this caused ratchet to cry in his room for a while afterward. Ratchet realy did miss her because he felt alone even more than before and thus resulted in them relocating back to veldin so that he would not be reminded of her.
Thankfully he seemed to be dreaming of the better times they had with her and from the sound of it, ratchet was remembering when qwark had broken her ship. Ratchet had to hold her back from killing the idiot only for ratchet to turn qwark into a sheep unless he fixed her ship and did it right. They did get a great laugh out of it even though in the end they had to call a repair shop to have it done right because qwark had just made it worse by crossing the wrong wires and had fried the navagation computer, then angela punched him.
Clank was all of a sudden jostled from his thoughts as ratchet accidently kicked him in his sleep. The small robot looked at the sleepin lombax and shook his head in amusement."He must have kicked qwark again." He thought as he settled himself in the co-pilot seat.
"The data is ready for translation. It will only take a few minutes." Aphelion told clank in a wisper so as not to wake ratchet up from the most peaceful sleep he has had in over a month.
"That is good. Perhaps now would be a good time to start it, while ratchet is still asleep." Clank said to her as he looked over at the sleeping lombax as he dreamed of more peaceful things and times when he had no worries like he does now.
"Right. He needs to sleep and I would like to not have him bugging me every few minutes." Aphelion said with ammusment coloring her voice, as she was refering to the time when her and the boys had gone to the polaris galaxy from the solana during the search the lombaxs. Ratchet had kept asking her "are we there yet?" which had annoied her the whole way. She heard clank giggle as she started the translation, showing that he too was remembering that trip even thought the lead had been another dead end.
"I heard that." A sleepy voice cut into their revery, which nearly caused clank to jump out of his mettle skin.
Clank looked over at ratchet as he rubbed the sleep from his half closed eyes and streched his arms and legs, as much as the cockpit would allow. "Damb lombax ears, they could hear a pin drop in the next room and not even be trying." Aphelion thought as she registered the now somewhat active life sign with her sensors. She decided that she should just pull up the data rather than respond to his comment. As she did that, clank tried to appologize to his friend for waking him out of his sleep.
"Forget about it, tin can." Ratchet said which made clank giggle some more at the use of the nick name he had been given when they first met those many years ago. "You have not called me that since we defeated chairmen dreck." Clank said as the he watched the lombax shivered ever so slightly at the mention of the his old enemy's name.
"Don't reminde me of that guy. I think the blarg still haven't gotten over that incident yet." Ratchet said as he watched the holo screen in front of him. "Well they did seem very upset when you blew up their new "Planet"." Clank pointed out to his friend.
"Well that's what they get for trying to destroy the galaxy. I mean seriosly, you'd think they would figure out how their old planet got so crummy in the first place." The lombax said as he tried to get comfortable in the pilot seat while not succeding in the attempt. Clank only nodded at that comment as the screen began to beep, drawing their attention.
"I don't mean to interupt the male bonding session but I am ready to start to the translation. This will not take more than a few minutes. It seems that this is a video log of the scientist that worked on the project." Aphelion said as she got the go ahead from ratchet. "Why did it take so long for the decoding if it was only a video log?" Clank asked as the holo screen began to project the images. " Because it came from the time of the great war. It was heavly incripted so as to keep the cragmites from viewing it and possibly learning anything about this project. Such incription would undoubtly be used only for a very secrect project that might have been a war changer for the lombaxs because in the begining thay were at a disadventage in that the cragmites had a massive amount of resorces at their dispossle and the lombaxes only had their homeworld and a few outposts for mining ops. It was projects like this that gave them equal footing against their enemys and helped them to win the war." As ahpelion finished her explanation, ratchet felt a sence of pride at how his people were still remembered by the polaris galaxies people even to this day.
"It is incredible that such an important find like this has survied for so long." Clank said as Aphelion started the recording and the face of a white and yellow furred lombax was displayed.
Video log starts playing here
"This is Doctor Azyo mazznine, registration number 34A920C-119, Three bolt Magistrait for The Center For Advanced Lombax Research, classafied research division. This recording is for the military council in regards to project number H-209, codenamed Tortoise. For the past two years we have strived to develope a new form of drive system for use in the war. As you know, the cragmite ships are the fastest in the known galaxy and it is for that reason we are having such a difficult time gaining ground agaist them. The truth be told is that our ships are able to stand against theres but that fact does not help us if we are too slow to respond to an attack on one of our outposts and it takes almost two days for the closest of our fleets to respond. In responce to this short coming, me and my team have been working around the clock to achive the development of a new faster-than-light or FTL drive technollogy that will allow us to even the odds against our foes."
Ratchet and clank watch as a serise of diagrams that seemed to be of a (back then) standard lombax FTL drive are displyed as the scientist's face vanishes. As the video log goes on, clank notices a look of hope and happyness appear in ratchet's tired eyes for the first time in months.
"As you can see in these diagrams, this is an explanaion of exactly how the present FTL drive works. You see, the FTL drives that we have now is rather inadequate and frankly too slow to be able to keep up with our enemies advances, even with all the upgrades we have made to the point we can upgrade and modify no more. The way our FTL works is by using a large amount of power to excelerate the ship forward and cause it to travel at speeds greater than light. This drive allows us to travel between stars and has been our primary mode of FTL travel for years but it does have many faults to it as well. It is seceptible to influence from the gravity wells of stars and planets. The ship is still vulnerable to weapons strikes, impacts with debrise like comets, asteroids, rouge planets even- yes I am refering to the incedent with the freigter fleet twelve years ago. I have read the war reports and have found a staggering casulty rate in space battles, all from the enemy waiting for our ships and firing on them while they pass by. It would seem that they have found out about the weakness to our ships and their FTL drives, like the fact that our ships need to use their shields in order to use the drive safly and when they return to normal speed the shields need to be recharched, not to mention the drive has a cool down period of three to four hours and can not be used again during that time which makes it impossible to escape these ambushes. It is things like that which make me worry for the survival of our race and way of life... but I digress."
Then the diagrams switched to that of the project H-209. Ratchet had shivered slightly at the mention of how powerful the cragmites were and it made him even more grateful that he and his people had stopped them.
"These are diagrams of project H-209. This is our newest form of proto-type FTL drive which we have been working on to date. We have found that traveling with this device, our ships no longer are affected by gravitaional forces and no longer require the use of their shields. To explain my claims, I must first tell you how the drive works. Please direct your attention to this simulation."
Ratchet was now fully awake, all thoughts of sleep forgoten in the face of the possibility of finaly finding the lombaxes. Clank found it kind of surprizing that ratchet was paying such close attention as the diagrams moved aside to reveal a simulation that started to run, showing a ship in front of a vertical grid, which forms into a horizontal cone shape that the ship moves into.
"As you can see, this drive system works in quite a different manner than our standard FTL. Rather than just excelerating the ship forward, it opens a window into an alternate dimention that allows for much greater FTL speeds than what we are capable of at present. Normaly when a ship reaches this speed they would be torn apart with out the presence of a shield over the hull to protect it, correct?"
The simulation of the ship passing throught the tunnle then became surounded by a bubble of some kind as ratchet starts to feel his head hurt a bit as the scientist contiues.
"From what you see now in the simulation, the ship is surrouned by a bubble. It is this bubble that is the key to traveling through at this hyper velocity. When we enter this alternate dimention, which I am going to call Hyperspace, the vessel is accutly traveling at normal speed even though relative to nomale space, they are moving at FTL speeds. From what we have been able to gather, while traveling in hyperspace a ship is surrounded by a pocket of normal space which forms this bubble in which the ship is traveling at sublight speeds while being pulled along to its intended destination in a forward motion at faster speeds. This bubble also serves to protect the ship traveling at this speed, without which the intercia would rip it apart. I am still not sure a vessel can change it's course while in hyperspace, though I very much doubt that it can but I do not see that this will be too much important at this point right now."
Ratchet was starting to realy get a headache from this, though it made him feel very proud to be of the same race as this brilliant scientist they are listening to. As for Clank, his processor was starting to over heat from the massive amout of information he was receiving, but he was deeply impressed with how the lombax he was listening to made it sound so easy by comparassen. "How much longer does this got?" Ratchet asked as he placed a hand on his head to try and stop the migrain he was getting from this. "It is almost complete. He should be wraping up around about now." Aphelion said as the simulation showed the ship reaching the end of the tunnle.
"Now, gentelmen. There are some draw backs to using this "hyperdrive" in that the vessel traveling through hyperspace will be unable to arm its weapons enrout due to the drive requiering 2/3 of the ships power to enter hyperspace and maintain a stable pathway. The forming window gives off a frequency that can be detected with powerful enough sensors and this frequency is also vulnerable to disruption which, if sucessful, will cause the ship entering to be torn apart instantly. Lastly, as I mentioned above weapons can not be charged while in hyperspace due to lack of extra power, this will cause a five to ten second delay in responce time as the ship returns to normal space. This means that the drive should not be used to enter the heart of combat zones as they will most undoubtedly be open to attack in that brife moment as they decelerate. I have not been able to solve this problem yet and may not be able to solve it in any timely manner."
Ratchet watched as the simulation and the diagram faded only to be replaced by the scientists calm face and felt that they had finaly reached the end of this presentaion.
"In conclusion, it is my expert oppion that we have created a truly revelutionary technology that will hopefully give us a much need advantage against the cragmites and possibly allow us to end this war eventully. I thank you for your time and pacience today and sencirly hope that you will continue to fund this project for many more years to come. Have a good day gentalmen. Doctor Azyo Mazznine signing off."
end of video log.
To say the least, the duo were kind of awe struck by what they had learned in past few minutes. "Is that all there is?" Clank asked while he went to the garage door so that he could let in some of cool night air to help him cool off from the over heating his processer was suffering from.
"Yes. That was all the information that the data chip held." Aphelion answered as she checked her sencors to see why ratchet was so quiet.
The lombax was staring at the holoscreen as several emotions were going through his head like exitment at finaliy finding the proof to the rumors being true, confusion as to where the lombax fleet was when Fastoon was attacked, and dissapointment at this being old information from the war.
As clank walked back to his companions, he noticed that ratchet was staring off into space. He walked up to aphelion and looked at ratchet and saw that he has a lot on his mind. "Ratchet? Is something the matter?" the little robot asked as he watched to see what the lombax would do.
Ratchet barley registered his friends question as he had a million thoughts going at a mile a minute. "Ratchet?" he was broken out of his chain of thought when he heard his name and felt his friend gently shake his shoulder from the co-pilot seat. He looked at the little robot and could tell that his friend had a concerned look on his face.
"I'm okay clank. Its just that a whole lot more questions have been opened up instead of answering the ones that I had." Ratchet said as he got out of the cockpit and stared walking toward the stairwell that led to his room on the top back of the garage.
"Yes. It would apear that the lombaxes had many more secrets than any of us had thought, but it is a large step in the right direction that will possibly lead us to the remaining lombaxes in this dimention." Clank said as he and ratchet walked up the stairs and into ratchet's bedroom. The walls were covered in old blue prints and there were shelves full of little inventions that the lombax used to create when he was but a child.
Ratchet gave a weak smile at his best friends statement as he crawled into his bed as clank went into a sleep mode. As ratchet kicked off his boots and took off the rest of his cloths, he could not help but wonder about what he saw. It had filled him with awe at how truly advanced the lombaxes were but also, it made him question many things about what happened the day tachyon attacked such as where the fleet had been when during the attack and why they did not return in time to save the lombaxes. "I just don't get it. The fleet should have been there. Were they destroied or could they have..." Ratchet's train of thought trailed off as he started to concider the worst possible idea that he could come up with began to make its way into his mind. "No! They wouldn't! Even that bastard tachyon said that the lombaxes were brave and noble to the end!" He thought to him self as he pulled the covers over his body. He then huged a pillow close to his body as he drew his legs up into a fetal postion and began to cry silently into the pillow. "They wouldn't." he muttered to himeself as his tears began to soak in. "They wouldn't..." He kept muttering as he finaly drifted away to sleep. "They would never... Abandon us."
This is the end of part one. please R&R