Chapter 1

Jack Landors strode through the halls of Space Patrol Delta (S.P.D.) headquarters in his red and gray uniform. He freshly pressed it the night before and smirked to himself how funny that was. It was only six months ago when he was appointed to the position of leader of B-Squad; he could have cared less about the uniform or how it looked back then.

Now, he wore it with a level of pride which reflected his determination to be the best leader to the team he could be. There were some things he could not compromise on such as his dreadlocks which he wore tied up. They weren't regulation but nobody gave him any static about his hair due to his effectiveness in the field.

It wasn't long before he found himself in front of the door to the office of his commander, Anubis "Doggie" Cruger. The door slid open before he could even knock, startling Jack. Wow, that's new. It must be pretty serious he thought to himself as he crossed the threshold. Due to the abruptness of the door opening, he began to wonder if he'd done something wrong but for the life of him, he couldn't think of what that could be.

Before Jack stood his commander, facing a window overlooking the city seemingly ignoring him. Commander Cruger, a member of the dog-like Sirian race, stood nearly seven feet tall. To complement his height, he was broad shouldered and heavily muscular. The commander was the only sirian that Jack knew but he couldn't imagine other sirians being smaller than Cruger.

"SPD 1 reporting for duty sir!" Jack said, coming to attention and saluting the commander of the Space Patrol Delta (SPD) corps.

"Jack, good to see you, please have a seat." Cruger said turning around. He returned the salute. Jack was used to the commander's visage but even still, he couldn't help but feel at least a little bit intimidated by the sharp canines and the deep bass of Cruger's voice. Still, he relaxed from this previous stance and did as he was told.

"What's up Commander?"

Commander Cruger slid a datapad across the table into Jack's waiting hands. "You're new assignment.

Picking it up cautiously, Landors scanned through the datapad and smiled grimly. It was a prisoner pick up of one of their old foes, Dru. imprisoned on the penitentiary planet, escaped from the prison planet Golgos. Dru had been the Blue Ranger and second command of B-Squad's best friend who had gone rogue. It was unclear how he did it, but he apparently escaped with a prison transport. "Want me to pick up your dry cleaning while I'm at it sir?" he remarked casually.

Cruger's usual stern countenance softened. A few months ago, he would've reprimanded his subordinate for his familiarity, now he took the B-Squad's team leader's jocularity in stride. "All kidding aside Jack, I want you to stay focused on this one. Dru is wiley and the ship in which he escaped in, disappeared off sensors shorty after his jailbreak. Not only that, Lambda Sector has been experiencing some anomalies lately, so my command of 'staying focused' goes double."

"Any leads on where he might be sir?"

The commander shook his canine-like head. "Negative, but I have a hunch that he may be on Erebus 1. Those transports don't have a whole lot of range.

"Yes sir, of course. I'll assemble B-Squad at once."

"Negative Landors, this is a solo mission for you."

Surprise framed Jack's features as he stared at his commander. "Come again sir?"

"The rest of the Rangers are on separate assignments. Z and Bridge are busy in the garment district of Newtech City making sure new the new defensive tech that Kat just dreamed up are installed." Cruger said, referring to the yellow and green rangers respectively as well as their resident engineer. "And Sky and Syd are busy at court testifying at Broodwing's trial, so that leaves you."

A shudder shot through Jack at the mention of Broodwing. The Rangers had captured one of their deadliest foes in the form of Broodwing not too long ago; the battle had been pitched and deadly the Rangers as always, emerged triumphant. A pang of regret shot through Jack as he wished he could have been there to testify and help put Broodwing away permanently.

"So that just leaves me then." Jack surmised. On top of that, he realized why his commander didn't want the other rangers, especially Sky in on this mission. Though Sky had been the one to ultimately put Dru away, there couldn't be any risk of personal feelings getting in the way of the mission. Cruger nodded grimly in response to Jack's question. "Yes sir, you can leave it to me!"

"I know can count on you Jack, I wouldn't have assigned you if I didn't think you could handle it. Dismissed!"

The shuttle craft transport that SPD used for interstellar transport was fueled up and ready to go by the time Jack got to the hangar. The sleek, blue and white ship gleamed brightly under the lights as he approached. Smiling, he sat in the command seat and his hands flew over the controls with a speed borne by familiarity. "It's a simple milk run, what can go wrong?" Jack smirked to himself as he activated the launch sequence.

The launch-bay technician gave Jack the thumbs up, signaling that he was good to go for launch. Jack reciprocated the hand signal and activated the engines; the ship shuddered from the ignition. Not more than a minute later, he was under way, breaking out of Earth's atmosphere. "Shuttle one, engaging hyper-drive...now!" The ship's faster than light (FTL) drive engaged and slingshot the shuttle into the distant reaches of space.

When he neared the Lambda Sector, he shut down the hyper-drive and turned on the sublight engines. He leaned back as the computer ran the calculations for arrival time and landing coordinates. The He figured he had another two hours before he would make planetfall so he decided to catch a quick power nap. Since the sensors didn't pick up any of the anomalies that Cruger talked about, he figured he would be alright. Capturing Dru he figured, would be a full time job so he wanted all of his faculties sharp.

Violent shuddering woke him out of his doze with a start. "Wha-what's going on?" He asked in half-doze.

"Warning, anomaly detected!" The computer blared in response.

"Anomaly, what anomaly?! There was no anomaly before!" He shouted, now fully awake thanks to the adrenaline pumping through his system. He gripped the controls and set them to manual. He wished that he could say that he was surprised when he found that they were unresponsive but he would have been lying to himself if he did. "Display the anomaly on-screen!"

The computer obeyed and Jack looked at the screen in puzzlement. It was gigantic tear in space known as a wormhole. Cruger had warned him of anomalies that were present in the sector but he said nothing about a wormhole! He yanked with all of his might on the controls, trying to alter course hoping that they would magically respond. They didn't.

It's sucking me right in! He thought frantically as he tried everything that he could think of, including wishing, to make the ship alter course. As he got closer, the fissure grew ever larger on the screen. It was at least the size of Newtech City or bigger, Jack figured.

"Oh cr.." Jack began to say but was cut off as the shuttle entered the wormhole. There was a bright light, the sound of a loud "Bang!" and then Jack perceived, nothing.