Hover Junkers: First Kill

The scrap-built bar is empty. At the counter is a robot, made of miscellaneous metal junk, with glowing blue eyes, washing a cup by hand. “Mr Sandman” is playing on the speaker on the robot's neck. It sets the glass under the counter. As the song ends, the robot lets out a sigh from its speaker. This was the first time in weeks that the bar had been so calm, and the robot was enjoying it. Then, from outside, the robot heard the hum of a hovercraft engine coming to a stop. The door opens as a woman in a red shirt, grey overalls and dirty yellow gloves and boots walked into the bar.

“Gunther, how is my favorite metal-man today?” The woman asked, sitting down at the counter.

“I am fine, Edie Cartwright. What can I get you?” Gunther asked in a very human-like voice.

“I’ve told you a hundred times, just call me Edie,” She said, clearly a bit annoyed.

“Are you going to order anything or not?” Gunther said with lower bass than before.

“You know I don’t have any money. That’s actually why I’m here,”

“You’re asking if I can loan you some money? This is a bar not a bank,”

“No, that's not it. Because you are my best friend …”

“I may be sentient, but that is still very sad,”

“Because you were my best friend,” Edie corrects herself, glaring at Gunther, “I wanted you to be the first to know that I decided to become a Junk-hunter,”

A spit-take sound effect from a pre-apocalypse sit-com blares from Gunther’s speaker, “What! That's the most dangerous profession in the waste-land!”

“And the most lucrative. Besides it’s not like any of the megacorps are hiring; they replaced all their employees with robots before the crisis even started,”

“There has to be a safer job you can take. What about being a mist farmer, or part-time bartender?”

“Sure, those jobs would be safer, but they aren’t anywhere near as adventurous, no offence”

Gunther’s speaker plays a groan sound effect, “You’re just like your parents. Well it sounds like you have your mind already made, so I guess that means there is nothing I can say to convince you to change your mind?”

“Not a thing in the world,” Edie said, smiling.

“Well, seeing as we are friends, and this could easily be the last time I see you alive, how about a drink on the house?” Gunther grabbed a glass from under the counter.

Edie gasps, sarcastically, “Gunther, you do care!”

“Don’t make me change my mind,” Gunther said, handing her a glass of a strange black liquid.

The door to the bar opened, and in came a black and orange robot made of junk. It was taller than Gunther and more armored.

Edie turned to them and said, “Oh! Hey, Rivet, I thought you were going to stay in the ship,”

Rivet replied in a very metallic voice, “You said,” he plays a recording of Edie’s voice, “It’ll only take a couple of minutes,” Rivet clicks back to his metallic voice, “It has been exactly 2 minutes,”

“Who are they?” Gunther asked clearly bothered by their voice.

“Why? are you jealous?” Edie said in a mocking tone.

Gunther looked at Edie, his eyes now glowing red.

Confused, Edie asked, “Are you trying to glare at me, because it’s kinda hard to tell, with your lack of facial features?”

Gunther’s “glare” continued

Edie continued, “Anyway, this is Rivet. He is my Junk Hunting partner. I found his head on sale, and the rest of him is built from parts I stole,”

“There is no need to worry, sir. I will take sufficient care of your daughter; she will be safe within my proximity,” Rivet said

Gunther snapped out of his “glare”, “What?”

Edie leaned towards Gunther and whispers “He has a few wires loose,”

Edie choked down her drink, and stood up, “Next time you see me, I’ll be a legendary Junk-hunter,”

“There aren’t any legendary Junk-hunters,” Gunther corrected.

“Not yet,” Edie said as she walked out of the bar with Rivet.

Edie and Rivet left, leaving Gunther alone, again. On his speaker, “Where Everyone Knows Your Name” began to play. He heard the hovercraft engine start again, and then zoom into the distance.





Edie and Rivet’s longboat hovercraft zoomed through the vast empty desert. Rivet was driving, while Edie laid in a lawn chair, reading a manual.

Edie looked up from her book, “It says here that the first thing we should do before starting our junk-hunting adventure is get measured at the undertaker’s. I suppose with the incredible decrease in the population, the undertaker had to start doing other work,”

“Do undertakers make good physicians?”

“Apparently, either way I guess we should go see the undertaker. Full speed ahead!”

“Yes, Captain!” Rivet replies, puting the hovercraft into gear, accelerating at an incredible rate.

Edie and her lawn chair were nearly thrown off of the ship by the speed. She struggled to get to her feet, cheering excitedly and holding on to the ship’s railings, “This is what I’m talking about, baby!”

After an hour of full speed travel, they arrived at the undertaker’s shop. Much like everything else it was made of random repurposed junk. The sign on top read, “Morty’s Morticians”. Edie and Rivet park the hovercraft and walk into the hut.

“Hey, Morty, I’m here to get measured,”

The hut was dark Edie could just make out the silhouettes of coffins haphazardly placed around the single room hut on the floor and on shelves. In the back of the room was a work table, and a variety of crafting tools. A tall thin man wearing black slacks and a white collared shirt stalked out of the shadows in the corner of the room.

“You must be an aspiring Junk Hunter. So full of optimism, that will change soon enough,” The man said in a gravely voice.

“Well aren’t you just a regular ray of sunshine, Morty?” Edie asked, impatiently.

“Yes, I am. It’s a pleasure to meet you. Wait right there while I get my measuring stick,” Morty walked to the workbench and began digging around in the crowded drawer.

“I do not trust this man,” Rivet said, watching Morty intently.

“Well, we don’t have much of a choice; we have to get measured before we can be proper Junk Hunters,” Edie said, mindlessly looking around the room.

“Actually only the lady has to get measured; it makes no sense to bury good scrap metal,” Morty said, still searching through the workbench drawer.

“Bury?”

“Yes, You’re here to be measured for your coffin, since you decided to become a Junk Hunter, right?” Morty said walking towards Edie with a folded ruler.

“Well, I did come here to get measured, but I didn’t know it was for a coffin,”

“Why else would they give the job to me?”

“It just seems a bit pessimistic to prepare for failure, don’t you think?”

“Failure is what keeps me in business, young lady,”

Edie sighed, “Fine,” She turned to Rivet, “Rivet, get the ship ready this shouldn’t take long,”

Rivet left to prepare the ship while Edie stepped into position to be measured.





The desert mountains and mesas zoomed past Edie, who was sitting on top of the longboat with a pair of binoculars. She scanned the horizon, looking for anything other than rocks.

“Considering how empty the wasteland is you’d think it would be easier to find scrap metal,” Edie said dropping off of the roof landing behind Rivet, who was steering the ship.

“Maybe this area has no more junk to claim,”

Edie turns her head into the distance, “Slow down. Do you hear that?”

Off in the distance they could hear war cries slowly gaining in volume.

“It sounds like the mating call of some fast moving sad deprived animal,” Rivet replied

The war cries continued to get closer.

“I didn’t know you could make jokes. Grab your pistol,” Edie said pulling a rifle out of the gun box next to Rivet.

Rivet’s chest opens up, and he pulls a pistol from the opening, “Joke?”

Edie climbs back on top of the ship and takes aim in the direction the cries are coming from. From behind one of the nearby mesas, a hovering school bus manned by 2 screeching people, armed with uzis, rocketed towards them.

“Maybe this is customary greeting for them,” Rivet suggested. A small hail of bullets hits near his head, “Nevermind,”

Edie began taking shots at the other ship’s passengers, only for them to hit the hull having no effect.

“Ramming Speed!” the other ship pointed themselves at the longboat and accelerated.

“Hold on,” Rivet yelled as he nearly avoided the other ship.

The other ship stopped next to them. Edie jumped back on to the main deck and pulled a shotgun from the gun box, setting aside the rifle, and diving behind one of the ship's walls. Rivet was already shooting back at the attackers with his pistol and ducking under cover.

“Looks like we’re going to be needing that coffin sooner than expected,” Edie said, waiting for a pause in the enemy’s gunfire. Soon the gunfire stops. Edie pokes her head up, and is almost shot in the face. She drops back behind the wall. “Crap, what do we do?”

They heard the hiss of a flare flying into the air.

“They appear to be calling for reinforcements,” Rivet said, “We can’t run …”

“... but we can’t fight, either,” Edie added

“I have an idea,” Rivet assured, “How many rockets did you purchase?”

“I could only afford one, so I stole the rest of the clip. That makes 5 rockets, one shot. Why do you ask?”

“Calculating … That should be enough,” Rivet answered, “Cover me,”

“How?”

“You don’t need to see the target to shoot at them,”

“Oh, right,” Edie pointed her gun over her wall and shot all three shells. She heard one of the attackers scream in pain.

Rivet quickly moved to the gun box and pulled out the guided-missile launcher, and ducked back behind cover, only barely avoiding getting shot. He began loading the weapon.

“I liked that arm” One of the attackers yelled angrily. They leaped onto the longboat, and looked over at Edie, who was reloading the shotgun, “Die!” Their right arm and side was covered in their blood. They aimed their working arm, holding an uzi, at Edie.

Panicked Edie threw the gun at their face, stunning them, then she tackled them onto the ground, making them drop their gun.

“Flint!” The other one yelled from their ship. They jumped onto the longboat, Rivet set down the rocket launcher, and grabbed the other attacker’s wrists, forcing them to drop their guns while screaming in pain. Rivet kicked the attacker in the gut, knocking them onto their butt.

Edie continues to wrestle with Flint, trying to make sure that he can’t get his gun back. She punched his injured arm, he tried not to yell, but his face was deformed by the agony.

“Rivet! Pistol!” Edie yelled.

“Understood,” Rivet pulled his pistol back out of his chest and tossed it to Edie who caught it by the barrel.

She smacked her attacker with the gun’s stock, quickly grabbed the gun properly with her other hand, and shot him in the face, splattering her face in blood.

Rivet reached down and picked up one of the uzis and riddled the last one with bullets. Edie was breathing heavily, frozen over the body of her attacker.

“Edie?”

Edie quickly shot up and threw her head over the edge of the boat. Rivet turned his head, but could still hear her gagging over the edge of the boat. When it stopped, her breathing was still heavy. She took a deep breath, stood back up, and turned back to scene of the fight.

“Why are you looking away; it’s not like you can feel disgusted,” Edie asked

“It seemed polite,” Rivet replied

In the distance in the same direction their first attackers came from, they could hear a horn honking as it came closer.

“Sounds like it won’t be long until the cavalry gets here,” Edie said, “what are we going to do about them?”

“The GML is locked and loaded, it should be enough to take care of them,”

“ … and if it’s not?”

“It will be,” Rivet picks up the missile launcher, and offers it to Edie “Would you like to do the honors?”

“I think I’m fine for today, I’ll start gutting the bus,” She said. She grabbed a tool box from under the pilot seat, jumped into the other ship, and started working on pulling it apart from the inside.

As the reinforcements rounded the same mesa as its ally did before, Rivet took aim with the GML and fired, propelling the five missiles towards them. It didn’t take long for them to notice the missiles coming towards them, and they began shooting at the rockets trying to shoot them out of the sky. Rivet controlled them to evade their shots, and when they had to reload, he dropped the missiles on top of them. Some of the crew was thrown off of the ship by the explosions, and when they landed, almost instantly eaten by the sand worms. The ship, on fire, lurched to the side as it crashed into the sandy desert, knocking more people into the ravenous mouths of the sand worms. After he was sure their ship wouldn’t fly again he joined Edie in dismantling the first enemy ship, and reported the interaction.

After they salvaged what they could from the two ships, and upgraded their own, they rushed off to find somewhere to sell the leftover scrap. Rivet piloted the ship while Edie lay in her lawnchair like normal.

For a few hours they flew in silence until Rivet spoke up, “Are you doing ok?”

“I’m fine,” Edie deflected.

“Are you certain? You have not said anything in hours; which is very unlike you,”

“I just have a lot on my mind, right now,” she answered, annoyed.

“Is it about the encounter?”

Edie sighed, “Yes, It was my first time being that close to it, you know? I’m use to killing bandits, but with my sniper rifle. I was never able to see the life leave their faces, like that. It was uncomfortable.”

“Is there anything I can do to help,”

Edie smiled, “Not unless you're a therapist.”

“I do have an encyclopedic knowledge of most things, some psychology is included in it,”

Edie laughed, “You’re a good friend, you know that, right?”

“I do now,” Rivet answered.

Edie laughed even harder, and got out of her chair, “Thank you, I needed that,” She stretches, “Aw, that chair sucks. Ok, Let's do this, my head’s back in the game!”

Rivet wasn’t sure what he was being thanked for, but he was satisfied he could be of assistance.

Edie climbed onto the front of the ship and pointed forward, “Full speed ahead, Rivet! We’ve got scrap to sell,”