Bridge Carson, Secret Agent Extraordinaire

A.N: I suppose I should say something about the chapter length. It'll be short, I promise you that. Just don't expect all chapters to be the same length, as some may be longer, others may be shorter and pretty much everything else in between.

And one teeny last thing that has been bugging me, and no doubt virtually every other author on this site: alerters. As in, non-reviewing alerters/favouriters as some do have the politeness to drop a review. You should know who you are. Could it hurt if you guys just dropped a line or two commenting on the story or even asking for an update? It won't take more than a minute of your life.

That's all from me, remember to review, and I'll see you all next week hopefully!

Disclaimer: I do not own Power Rangers

"You're Chimera?"

"Yes and no: yes, I am a Chimera agent, no; I do not go around shooting everything that moves."

S.P.D. Intelligence Agent Bridge Carson and Chimera Agent Katherine 'Kat' Manx, first meeting aboard Valda Kintopp's frigate

Time: 0114 hours, galactic standard time / Location: Bridge of Valda Kintopp's frigate, somewhere near Austruss III

The bridge was a very tense space to be in currently, as the small figure of Valda Kintopp paced angrily around the bridge. His hands were clasped behind his back, as he walked circles around the consoles, the two support pillars, down to the lower level, and back again. A pair of his elites stood at the door, ready to put a laser into anything that so much as moved against him.

"Where is the agent?" Valda demanded, still pacing. Although he did his best not to show it (after all, he did have his mob boss image to maintain), he was quite clearly nervous about the agent who had managed to defeat two of his elites without much difficulty, shot down one of his pilots and now was nearly nowhere to be found.

"Um, we still haven't found him yet boss…" one of the people manning the consoles said as Valda reared on him.

"What? How can you not find him?" he demanded. "The agent is in a suit! A suit for crying out loud! Everyone onboard this ship is or should be wearing a uniform! How can he not stand out?!"

"Uh, it's not that sir," the person said, beginning to sweat a lot more. "The thing is…we can't find him on the cameras."

This time, Valda grabbed the poor person by the collar. "I don't care what you have to do: I want you, any of you, to find that damned agent! Can I make that any clearer?!"

Everyone on the bridge began nodding, before shaking their heads, and then, after a moment of confusion, nodded again, before realising that they weren't sure of which one of their leader's questions they were nodding/shaking their heads to. This time, they settled for simply shrugging.

"Unbelievable," Valda sighed, letting go of the person's collar, much to their relief. "You cannot find good help anywhere in this galaxy anymore."

This time, no one decided to answer, for fear of invoking Valda's short-tempered wrath. A silence reigned king on the bridge, only punctuated by Valda's attempts at deep breathing to calm down, the tapping of people's fingers/claws on consoles, and the consistently insistent beeping of very self-important consoles.

"Have the pilots reported in yet?" Valda snapped suddenly as he once more began pacing.

"Not yet sir," the flight officer said, checking the records in an attempt to look busy. It was hard to be busy as a flight officer when there hadn't been any flights launched that hadn't been ordered or checked out.

"How long have they been out there?"

"Nearly ten minutes. Sir," the officer hastily amended as the two heavily armed guards at the door glared in his direction.

"Ten minutes," Valda mused, holding a hand to his chin as he paced around. "That should've been more than enough time to destroy that agent."

"Perhaps they ran into a little trouble," the flight officer said, his oily-looking skin flushing a deep blue as his species often did in times of stress.

"Alert everyone aboard the ship," Valda said. "We have a loose S.P.D. agent potentially aboard the ship, and a reward goes to anyone who can find him and bring him to me, and I don't care if he's dead or alive!"

The officer in charge of all inter-ship and a cross-ship communications saluted, and then proceeded to relay the information and the bounty.

"Get us full speed to the point where he awaits our arrival," Valda ordered, stopping his pacing at the front of the bridge. "Repair any damage that we have sustained because of that blasted agent, set up checkpoints everywhere onboard the ship, and I need one every ten metres starting from the corridor leading to the bridge, and have whatever spare security personnel we have man them. Get someone to check our torpedos, and also get another person to check the armoury. And I want at least five guards in the armoury at any time, understand?"

"Yes sir!" the entire bridge crew said in unison, before they turned back to their stations with their new orders.

They then immediately set out to carry out the madman's slightly (perhaps a bit more considering what he was demanding) excessive, if not paranoid orders. Within minutes however, they had hit a snag: they simply lacked enough security guards and soldiers (properly called militia, all things considered…) to carry out all the things that he needed to be done.

"Outrageous! How can we run out of people to carry out the tasks?" Valda demanded once the officer had approached him about it.

"Well, you see," the Soletuan native officer was quite nervous, and it showed in all her mannerisms as her large elf-like ears folded up, and she moved around in small circles. "This is a fairly small ship, and a lot of the people onboard are here to maintain it, though we do have a somewhat large security detail…"

"How can it happen?" Valda demanded again, before sighing. "Better yet, how can we fix it?"

"Ah, I just happen to have a solution," a voice said from the bridge's entrance.

A tall, caped bat-like person entered. The cape fluttered around him as he walked forward, and the person wore a glass dome akin to a fishbowl over his head.

"Broodwing," Valda said. "What do you have to offer this time?"

"A large number of cheap security robots at a cheap price. Krybots, you see," the intergalactically infamous weapons dealer offered, holding out a small metallic ball unlike a miniaturised soccer ball.

"What's the catch?" Valda asked, suspiciously eyeing Broodwing.

"Nothing, as long as you get that data disc to the point," Broodwing said, handing over three of the balls that contained the Krybots. "And by the way, I left something in the armoury for you that I think you'd appreciate. I expect to have it back when this is over."

He then proceeded to walk out of the bridge, where a trio of Krybots with orange, spiky heads escorted him away.

Valda turned to the officer and handed the Krybot soccer balls/containers over to her. "Here are your new security troopers. Get started on setting up everything I told you that I needed done, got that? Or else it's your head on the line."

"Yes, yes sir!" the officer nodded furiously in agreement and understanding this time, before clutching the containers to her chest tightly and heading out to set up the checkpoints with the new security detail.

"And I want someone to go down to the armoury and to check out what Broodwing has left for me!" Valda snapped to the other people on the bridge.

"Yes sir," another bridge crew officer said, tapping commands into the console.

Valda sighed as he stopped pacing for once, and sat down in his command chair which was located at the centre of the upper level. He had the feeling that today wasn't to be going to be as good as the other days.

Time: 0115 hours, galactic standard time / Location: Hangar Bay 01, Valda Kintopp's frigate, somewhere near Austruss III

The hangar bay that had once housed the pair of fighters was now, in short, a complete and utter mess. The equipment that had once been used to maintain the fighters in a decent condition to fight was now strewn all over the place, in walls, corners, and even some mysteriously stuck up on the lights. Many of the consoles were now rendered inoperable; some would've argued that the consoles were actually better off than they were before, what with Microsoft Windows™ 2027 and all its non-functionality. It was a moot point when the fact that regular users of the consoles believed that a smashed up console was far better than a working one with Windows™ 2027 installed. But that wasn't the point.

In the centre of the whole mess was a small capsule. Sparks flew around it from the broken wires and the lights flickered on and off randomly as the power supply was either cut or reconnected.

A groan came from the capsule/ejection pod as Bridge pushed open a hatch on the side, and clambered out. He was completely unharmed, despite the harrowing ejection, and the subsequent landing in the hangar of the very ship he had to follow. The only thing that had gone wrong so far in fact was that his shuttle had been destroyed: the fighter who had been behind him had smashed into rear of his pilot-less shuttle, and both ships were then reduced to atoms in a rather magnificent explosion, if one would omit the fact that Bridge had just lost his ride out.

"Every cloud has a silver lining I suppose: I won't be leaving here without Valda," Bridge sighed to himself, dusting the…dust off his suit. "So at least Commander Cruger won't be barking up my tree about this whole Valda business anymore."

Before Bridge could make the connection between Commander Cruger being a dog and barking up a tree, which may or may not have resulted in a particularly long monologue about figures of speech, the door was busted down in a flagrant display of power and awesomeness. From the smashed down door a trio of Krybots stormed in, who stared at their surroundings for a while before noticing Bridge who in turned stared at the mechanised drones in the staring match of the century.

"Umm…you guys wouldn't happen to be the cleaners, would you?" Bridge nervously asked, reaching for his holstered pistol.

His question was answered when the three Krybots made that strange sound that was typical of the cheap, massed-produced robots, and levelled their lasers at Bridge, and fired. The beams went wide, exploding against the wall far above Bridge's head.

"Okay, I guess not!" Bridge shouted, hurling himself back against the side of the capsule even as more lasers exploded against the side of the capsule and the floor next to him.

He drew his laser pistol, and began to fire back at the Krybots, exchanging one laser for every three they sent his way and turning the messy hangar into an even greater mess as things started to be blown into small bits and pieces which then took up residence in new places.

"Hey, hey! Don't you think we could like negotiate a truce or something?" Bridge shouted. A laser bolt whizzed above his head and struck one of the holding cranes that unsurprisingly, held the fighters in position. The crane was sent flying around crazily, as the lasers continued to fly around the room.

By now, having not only fought off the ninjas and the way out of the MaxStar Casino parking bays, his pistol was starting to run out of energy. While it would slowly recharge itself over time, Bridge was using energy nearly twice as fast as it was charging. Which of course meant that sooner or later, he was going to run out of lasers to shoot back at the Krybots and therefore, he would have to end the gun battle they were currently holding relatively quickly.

"Come on, one last chance!" Bridge shouted again over the whine of lasers firing and the ensuing explosions, none of which thankfully, struck him. "We can discuss this over a drink of anything like a cup of oil or wine like real gentlemen would instead of shooting it out like gangsters!"

If the Krybots had noticed his offer, they either took no notice of it or outright ignored it, as they continued in their rather futile attempts to blast Bridge as the aiming of the lasers was amazingly poor. Two lasers exploded against the floor to the right of Bridge, showering him with harmless sparks and incidentally cleaning the grime that had collected there.

"Fine then, if you don't want to talk!" Bridge snapped. He loosed three quick random shots in succession over the top of the battered and dented capsule. They landed close enough to the Krybots to trigger their defence mechanisms: they stopped shooting, to find a suitable bit of cover.

But a number of things quickly complicated the matter: firstly, the newly developed systems designed to prolong the life of a Krybot in a battlefield (from an approximate of three minutes to hopefully five) had been installed without much testing, which meant they had to spend an average of three to ten seconds find an appropriate piece of cover. Secondly, the amount of lasers that had been traded between them and Bridge had resulted in basically the destruction of the hangar bay: there was barely anything large enough for them to cower behind now. And thirdly, they completely stopped shooting to divert power to the systems that had been installed to search for cover.

The resulting lack of return/suppressing fire meant that Bridge was able to leap out of his hiding place, and bolt like greased lighting towards the Krybots. His first shot after bolting from behind the capsule caught one of the Krybots in the chest, sending it spiralling around. The sudden attack from Bridge prompted the Krybots to cancel their search for cover, and the remaining duo launched themselves at Bridge.

The agent lifted his pistol, and shot at one while it was still flying midair, scoring a beautiful midair shot to the chest that abruptly reversed its direction and sent it spinning like a top. The Krybot crashed into wall, knocking down what little equipment that was still hanging on the wall.

Meanwhile, the third Krybot raised its bladed arm in midair as Bridge finished off the second one, intent on running through Bridge with it while his back was turned. He turned to see the Krybot flying through the air, and let out a yelp as he jumped back. The blade passed through the place he had been standing in just a few seconds ago, barely missing him.

"Play nice!" Bridge said, kicking the Krybot's arm away.

It stumbled, before righting itself and thrusting the blade straight at Bridge's chest. He managed to deflect the blade upwards with the handle of his pistol, leaving the Krybot's chest wide open to a wide variety of attacks. Running out of time, Bridge just decided to unload a pair of lasers into its chest, sending the mangled ruins of a Krybot into the ground.

"Time to get out of here," Bridge said, smoothing out his suit and taking one last look around at the now-thoroughly devastated hangar before running for the destroyed door.

Twenty minutes later…

Bridge panted as he stopped and leaned against the wall to catch his breath. He had run into three Krybot patrols so far and had succeeded in destroying all three, though not without a little difficulty. There was also the issue of one of the checkpoints which he had blazed through, leaving behind the unconscious bodies of the three security officers, and the smouldering ruins of a dozen more Krybots. He still couldn't understand why anybody would use Krybots. Sure, they were a bit of a challenge for the basic militaries and police forces, but Rangers and Chimera Black Ops soldiers typically would just laugh at the presence of Krybots and treated them as little more than target dummies that (very inaccurately) shot back.

Krybots only provided a challenge when they numbered in their hundreds against a much smaller enemy force where they simply filled up the air with laser blasts; accuracy was hardly an issue when an enemy had nowhere to dodge. Bridge and Sky actually held the record for the simulator's endurance battle: they had managed to defeat the one hundred Krybots within ten minutes, a record that anyone still had yet to beat.

Shaking his head to get rid of any thoughts that were not related to the mission (a hard task to do: the more he tried not to think about them, the more he actually was thinking about them), Bridge sneaked down another hallway, conscientious of any cameras that would locate him.

Either through luck or skill, or even a combination of the two, Bridge had managed to slip past every patrol he had encountered without too much difficulty as he searched for an adequate place to hide in. Preferably somewhere with lights and a nearby light switch, and boxes to hide inside as well.

And two minutes later, he hit the jackpot: a storage room that seemed abandoned. He scrambled around the room, and felt his way through the darkness, hearing the door close behind him with a slam, albeit much quieter.

After having sufficiently scrambled and felt his way deep enough into the room (at least, he thought it was far enough: it was hard to tell, given the darkness), he stopped, and hoped that he wasn't staring into the barrels of a dozen laser rifles. Reaching and then fumbling around in his pocket, he retrieved the communicator he kept there.

Unlike other standard communicators however, his one and indeed, all of the S.P.D.-issued communicators had been upgraded with an extra-powerful transmitters and receivers, so they were almost capable of galaxy-wide communications; if there was a comms buoy close enough, of course.

So Bridge grabbed the communicator, and started to tune it to the standard S.P.D. frequency, and simply hoped that there was an S.P.D. outpost or ship nearby to receive it.

"This is Agent Carson, S.P.D. Intelligence, can you read me? I'm in pursuit of the package, and I need some assistance pretty damned soon…and I've got a homing beacon activated now," Bridge said, pressing a small device the size of a button that was a tracking device. "Recommend you come with heavy firepower: these guys are well armed."

Time: 0142 hours, galactic standard time / Location: S.P.D. frigate Pegasus, in orbit over Austruss III

The bridge of the SPDS Pegasus was, in comparison to the awkward silence of Valda's frigate, a peaceful place. As typical to most S.P.D. vessels and also very prevalent in the Command Centres of outposts and bases, the bridge was bathed in a soft blue lighting. The captain sat at his seat, folding his long, leafy fingers together as he watched the others go about their business with a quiet murmur in the air.

"Sir!" one of the officers called out. "We've received a transmission from an agent!"

This caused an obvious excited stir throughout the bridge as the captain stood up.

"Play it over the speakers," he said.

"This is Agent Carson, S.P.D. Intelligence, can you read me? I'm in pursuit of the package, and I need some assistance pretty damned soon…and I've got a homing beacon activated now. Recommend you come with heavy firepower: these guys are well armed."

The captain frowned as he started to walk back to his seat, thinking. "Relay that message to Central HQ and the Old Dog," he said, referring to Commander Cruger's nickname among nearly everyone. "And then hold and await further orders."

"Yes sir."

Time: 0144 hours, galactic standard time / Location: S.P.D. Central HQ, at unknown position

The aide hurried to the office that belonged to Commander Cruger as fast as he could, puffing and panting. He wasn't a very athletic person; he was a desk jockey, a job that rarely required much strenuous physical activity. But now he was in a hurry to rush from his office outside Cruger's office to the communications room, where they had something that needed to be personally delivered to Cruger, and to hurry back.

Finally reaching his destination with the report in hand, he approached the door leading to Cruger's office, and knocked three times, waiting for the Commander's typically growled response.

When none came, he knocked another three times, and a minute later, another three times. After a total of nine knocks, he decided that Cruger quite obviously now wasn't there. With another sigh, he realised that he would have to go for another run around the station to hunt down Cruger.

Steeling himself for the worst, which amounted to a run around the whole station and back again, he took off in search for probably the most important person in the station, trying not to think about the distance: it was probably large enough to have him faint on the spot.

Ten minutes later, he had finally heard something that made his heart soar: he thought he heard Commander Cruger's voice from inside one of the close-combat/hand-to-hand training arenas that were located in various areas of the station. Walking up to the room, and placing his ear against the door, he listened in for a while.

"Again," the Cruger-like voice said, which was followed by the clanging of the practice swords against each other. "No no, not like that. Again!"

The aide then decided that he had heard enough to reach the conclusion that Commander Cruger was in the room. He brought his fist up, and knocked on the door three times and then stepped back to an adequate distance as not to alert Cruger to the fact that he had been listening in.

"Yes?" Cruger asked as he poked his head out, followed by Sky.

"Sir," his aide panted. "I've got a top priority report for you from the Pegasus."

"Very well. Do you have it on you now?" he asked.

His aide handed forward the report.

"Good man," Cruger said, opening the report and beginning to scroll through it. When he had finished, he stiffened up. "Okay, Sky, I need you to pick three of our top close-combat teams. We've got a situation from Bridge."

Instead of asking stupid questions, Sky nodded. "Yes sir."

Time: 0142 hours, galactic standard time / Location: Beutat's office, onboard Chimera Mobile HQ Phoenix

"Commander," Felix greeted as he entered Betuat's office.

"Doctor, please sit," Beutat said, gesturing at the seat, in which Felix carefully sat down. Both males watched each other with their own observations, neither inclined to trust each other.

"You may want to know why I've called you here in the middle of the night," Beutat started.

"Hard to tell when it's night or day when we're in space," Felix shrugged. "And I wasn't sleeping so it wasn't any problem."

"I see. In any case, I have called you here to ask you about our mutual friend, Kat. I have not received a report from her in over a day. Nobody else seems to know where she has gone, so therefore, I'm asking you," Beutat said, drawing a gulp from his omnipresent cup of coffee.

"I haven't seen her either," Felix said cautiously. "The last time I saw her was yesterday, after her physical. I ordered her to get some rest, and that was the last time I saw her."

"What did that physical involve?"

"The usual: tests, reflexes, any internal injuries. I do have the full report filed in the system, so it may be more accurate to check it from there," Felix remarked.

Beutat rose out of his seat, cup of coffee in hand and began pacing around the room. Felix watched his movement like a hawk, never letting his guard down. He and Beutat always had a very strained relationship: they both disliked (read: hated) each other with a passion. And Felix would've betted his life salary on the fact how he knew the true reason why: he thought it was because of Kat and how he had a better relationship with her than he did.

"So you still haven't seen her?"

"As I confirmed to you moments ago, no, I haven't."

"Then find out," Beutat snapped, downing the rest of his coffee and headed for the refill table. "And dismissed."

Time: 0158 hours, galactic standard time / Location: Unknown room in Valda Kintopp's frigate

Bridge sighed as he sunk down ever lower, if such an act was possible. He already was crouching down, leaning against one of the crates in the room, and now almost had his head buried in his knees. Almost, but not quite.

It was nearly two o'clock in the morning now, according to the timer on his communicator. Not that it meant much in space: space was dark wherever you went. In fact, the only thing that the time had meant was that he had now gone for nearly a whole day without sleep, and now he was weary. Which of course meant that he would be easier to pick off and have someone be given the honour of the guy who killed the most famous S.P.D. agent in the galaxy.

Maybe he'd just nod off for a while; not sleeping, he reminded himself, just closing my eyes for a while…which probably is sleeping.

Before he could do that however, the overhead lights of the room suddenly snapped on with a noise not-too dissimilar to a giant mechanical switch being flipped, and flooded the room with a bright light. Bridge leapt to his feet, and then quickly blinked in the sudden harsh light.

"Well well, if it isn't the famous Agent Carson," Valda's sly voice came over the speakers mounted across the room.

"Hey, I was trying to sleep!" Bridge shouted back.

"I have to congratulate you: no one else has made it so close to bringing me to justice."

"Well, thanks, but I don't really intend to stop now, you slimy git: I'll drag you to the cells by the ear if I have to!"

"I'd imagine that that would be quite hard to do without hands, Mr. Carson," Valda said, starting to snigger.

"Huh?" Bridge asked, glancing down momentarily to check that his hands were still attached. "What do you mean? I have all four limbs still intact and ready to kick your ass back to Jupiter!"

"I'd love to see you try…when that room you're in is flooded with concentrated sulphuric acid!"

As Valda finished speaking, small vents on the walls opened up, and a clear, sludgy liquid began pouring into the room against Valda's maniacal laughter.

"So long agent! I'll enjoy ejecting your dissolved remains into space!"

And with that, the speakers clicked shut, leaving Bridge to his acidy fate.

"Oh boy," he sighed, glancing at the liquid that was now almost reaching his position.

Not wanting to have his foot dissolved, Bridge thought quickly, and came up with a (very) temporary solution: he climbed up onto the crates around him just as the place he had been standing moments ago was smothered in acid, which wasn't eating into the conveniently acid-proof walls and instead began to rise.

Bridge climbed higher and higher as he did his best to avoid the rising acid levels, until he was at the very top of the tall stack of crates which also were acid-proof.

"Why is everything in this room acid-proof except for me?" Bridge muttered, staring dejectedly at the level of acid. "Why can't I be acid-proof?"

The acid level continued to rise.

Nearly ten minutes later, Bridge was nearly about to be dissolved by the acid, which had at this point risen to nearly the top of the stack of boxes he was standing on. With no hope of escape from a very messy ending, Bridge couldn't help but wonder what it would feel like to be eaten away alive.

"What a way to go," he sighed.

Just as the acid was about to reach his foot, he heard a cutting noise above him, and looked up to see a circle being cut in the roof above, sparks flying down. The cutting and sparks stopped, and then the circular plate was lifted up.

A semi-familiar face stared down at him, but also, a lot more importantly, dropped a line of rope to him.

"Grab on!" the person shouted at him.

Bridge, with the acid nearly on his heels, needed no more inspiration as he grabbed the rope and began to pull himself up. The person on top also pulled at the rope, and managed to winch Bridge to safety, mere moments before he would've been dissolved by acid.

As soon as he was through the hole, Bridge sank down onto the ground, panting with the effort as his saviour placed the disc-shaped piece of roof back, and sealed the hole.

"Come on," she said, brushing a stray lock of hair out of her eyes. "This seal won't last forever, and I'd rather not be here when the acid gets through."

With barely more than a nod being as tired as he was, Bridge followed her to a safer area, which turned out to be the next floor up in another deserted room. And it was in there where he found the identity of his saviour as she locked the door.

"Renee?!" he asked in disbelief.

"Actually, no," Kat answered.

"Then who are you?" Bridge demanded as Kat sat down next to him.

"My name's actually Katherine Manx. Friends call me Kat," Kat introduced.