------Star Command HQ--------
Nebula was nearly out of his mind. "Now, now, fast thinking... Zurg is after landanah. Who else the woman could be than Miss G'Debeb, she has her holiday! Why has she gone to Trade World?" He took the microphone and dialled the wrist communicator frequencies channel. He could soon get ranger Munchapper to the other end.
"Ranger, search for your team immediately! You are next on your way to Trade World! Warp Darkmatter has kidnapped engineer G'Deneb!"
Booster's hackles (if he had any hair) rose in the air and in a breeze he was running along the corridors and gathering Team Lightyear. Mira and XR were easy to find, but Buzz seemed to be nowhere.
"How among the stars I sail, way beyond the moon... In my silver ship I sail, a dream without an end too soon..." A manly voice echoed from the shower rooms of the training hall. Water whirred playfully and sprinkled to the floor.
"Isn't that Buzz?" Booster noted when the rest of gang rushed by the space searching for their captain.
"It is him. Now there's no time to think about the intimacy, we have this emergency. We got to get him out of shower."
"Never thought Buzz was one of those corny shower-singers. At lest he ain't bawling 'O Sole Mio' in false note!" XR taunted.
After Boosted had yelled and banged the door a ten times in order to get Buzz out, the Captain appeared to the threshold a bathrobe on, his hair wet and glued to his face. "What? Can't a ranger even sometimes clear himself after a heated training?" he spat angrily. His expression changed as he noticed the rest of the team gaping at him peculiarly. "What? What's so amazing?"
"You... got hair! We always thought you were bald!" XR spread his mechanical arms.
Now Buzz fingered his crown. "Oh, no, I forgot to wear my hood! Blast!"
"What's the thing about hiding your hair?
"Ermh... I don't like the colour." He made something up. In the eyes of the others there was nothing outlandish in his hair, it was short, shiny black, straight and coarse.
"But I guess you didn't come here juts to wonder my hair! What is it?" Buzz frowned.
"Oh, sorry, we're in the middle of an emergency! Warp Darkmatter has been seen in Trade World and assumingly he has a hostage! And the captive is possibly our distant friend scientist Miss G'Deneb!" Mira declared.
"Oh, craters! Well, this is a real alarm! No one has heard about Darkmatter in a long time and now he suddenly appears! I just get my suit and then, to infinity and beyond!" Buzz bolted to the dressing room and in a nanosecond flashed back, leading the team to the launch bay.
---Space (how extraordinary), the command deck of 42---
Commander's voice raved from the comm. link: "You be extremely careful, Team Lightyear! I just heard a warning that Dreadnaught has been seen in the near space of Trade World! There's something fishy going on again! Zurg is apparently after miss G'Deneb! Why else would Darkmatter capture her?"
"Sir, we'll keep our eyes open! Over and out!" Buzz blurted back, sitting in his pilot chair.
Lightyear kept a long silence after the news. "Zurg... he just cannot stop playing the conquistador of the universe... I don't understand the sick will to rule everything... and even, when I think about the destiny of my father..." he murmured to himself, but so loud that the rest of the team heard it, too.
"May I ask... but what happened to your...father, Captain? You talk about him so often but we don't actually know anything about him. What was his name?" Booster politely took the question up.
Buzz rubbed his chin for a while after putting the autopilot on. He was not sure whether he wanted to pick up painful things from his past, but agreed that it was maybe irritating for his team-mates to listen all the time to things they knew a piece of meteoroid about. "Well... my father died when I was five. Soon after my mother had passed the border... I don't know how she died, but I assume that she was murdered. So... my father was the ambassador of Planet Morph on Capital Planet. He died in very mysterious circumstances, killed by Zurg. His body was never found, it was postulated that Zurg... used some kind of neutron riffle to him so that his corpse was literally evaporated to the air..."
Everyone of Team Lightyear saw how painful this was to their leader. His fists clenched slowly and anger reddened his cheeks. "No one knows why Zurg killed him. And speaking of this Zurg... he was something completely new, then. He just appeared somewhere with a whole empire, dreadful arsenals of weapons directed towards the peaceful milky way. Those where the days that the Galactic Alliance widened fast to fight against this new evil. Planets and solar systems were terribly afraid of this new dictator and came to find shelter from the alliance of two Quadrants."
"How was your poppa called? Booster asked it but ya started blabbering about political coalitions", XR yawned.
Buzz ground his teeth to the arrogant robot. "Of course he was Lightyear like me! But... his forename was something... it was something so peculiar that no one actually could spell it. Something Zoxe--- Zoxedas¸--- he gurgled and spat the letters. Um... I'm sorry, but I really can't get it out of my mouth."
"Ev'rything that begins with Z is dreadful nowadays... except my Zarah..." XR smacked his lips and took a cunning expression.
"He didn't even have a nick?" Mira raised her brows.
Buzz sighed. "Well how do you think I called him when I was five? Maybe 'Dad'?"
"Do you got a picture of him?" Booster inquired.
Buzz raised his eyebrows with amazement. "Team, we're in the middle of an emergency. We are commanded to capture Warp Darkmatter. And you want to know eagerly how my father looked like? Now?"
"Well... the hyperspace is pretty boing. If ya got a pic, why dontcha show it us? Better amusement than to watch the time lines of passing solar systems", XR ironized.
Buzz exhaled in bother and typed something to the computer. "Allright, if it is so interesting. I download an old holo from the Galactic Alliance Security Database."
The computer kept a couple of beeps and then a medium-sized holo of a man in his mid-twenties appeared upon the holo-transmitter.
"Whoa! He was an impressive-looking guy!" XR interjected and took a closer look at the 3D-image. The man was dressed in a majestic-looking ambassador's mantle. He had very thick, black hair, long sideburns and the same dimple as Buzz. Athletic he was too, a lot sturdier than his son was. His dark-brown eyes attached Mira's attention. The regard was extremely sharp and a bit ferocious, framed by thick, wrinkled brows. Mostly then, he looked like Buzz, if not to mention that he was a bit over seven feet tall.
"How did ya, Captain, remain such a stump if your poppa was a giant like that?" XR mocked.
Buzz boiled in bitterness and he pushed the holo-closing button. "That's enough for family relations! Let him rest in peace."
---Planet Z---
"Ruhhahhahhahhaaaah! Muhahhahhahhaah!" the walls of the throne room echoed. "Finally, FINALLY he is in my claws! There's no way to escape my spies!" Zurg whooped with evil joy and flitted around his chamber. "This day, in the sands of time, has indicated to me my lucky day and his, sad to say, last one. But I'll show what is the revenge of the most magnificent Emperor ever!"
A grub tiptoed behind him. "My evil Emperor, your ship is ready, your low blackliness... emh... black lowliness."
"Oo, fine! I ought to go! The sooner, the later I get my fingers on him... I shall make sure that his end is slow, painful and horrible. He can be guaranteed that I will pay him back every defame he caused to my dark glory. You, beatles and other bands, make everything ready for beheading: may all my faithful allies and other henchmen be invited to witness this event. May it be both a lesson and a feast, I'm sure everybody of my reign wants to see how a traitor dies!"
"Uh, yes, sir!" the grub whined and left. He was positive that he would dig himself a hole to the ground and leave the happening in its own value.
"Oh, that was the best invention of today, a feast for fools! Now, ready for action. Evil rules!" he grinned disgustingly and headed to the launch bay. The menacing figure of Dreadnaught soon glided in the velvet vacuum.
---Back in Trade World---A few hours later, Warp and Zarah had fled to a large factory hall. Nothing else suitable was there available for lurking. Into Killersville, which was the neighbour district, Warp would go with no price. Now this dusty, dark and messy industrial area had to serve them.
"I hope we can take a powder when the twilight falls..." he whispered to her. They had sat down behind some boxes to take a rest. There was not much help in his soothes for Zarah who gnawed her nails in verge of a panic reaction.
"Wesholdhave... weshould---have---..." she whimpered as she had lost the rest of her light of intelligence.
"Za... I'm so sorry... but all we can do is wait, now. I think we put the guy that was after us off our scent." He hugged her tight.
"I don't want you to die!" she sniffled under his arm.
"Shht... I'm quite sure that the rogue got caught by those rangers. At least it seems that they have handed over the whole thing."
"What if he did announce something to... Zurg? He was his spy!"
"Shht... maybe you should try to sleep a li'l. It'll go smoother after the sunset, then we're getting away from here", he mollified her.
But how wrong Warp was. The space rangers waited at the fence of the factory grounds for the star cruiser that was promised to send from Star Command HQ. And what came to Swack, he hid also behind some boxes in the same building, carefully keeping eye on his pray. He was there agog for Zurg, for to show him, where the traitor, he wanted to get in his claws, was.
After two hours more, a dull hum filled the air. Something gigantic was coming down from the skies. The space rangers got their bodies stiff of fear. Massive hyper-hornets were landing to the messy yard. A small, private ship was in the middle of them, its jet engines roaring.
"It's Zurg himself! We can't attack with this amount of men!" a ranger whispered to another one in the hideout.
"Commander promised to send us reinforcements. They should be here any time!"
"They did send Team Lightyear to handle this; those rangers know best how to fight the Emperor."
Protected by his robots, Zurg stepped out of his ship and went straight to a side entrance of one of the halls. There was Swack waiting for him, rubbings his fingers together, a greedy smirk on his face.
"Where are they?" Zurg let his hollow voice loud.
"Right over there, boss! They're like rabbits in a trip-wire"
"Well done, you shall be rewarded for this", Zurg's helmet widened to an abominable sneer.
"Okay, show me the money!" Swack licked his teeth and writhed his fingers even more.
Zurg rolled his eyes and glanced slighting the crook. "Money... they're too easy, just swing a couple of uni-bucks under their noses and they will give me their mothers into the bargain... how pathetic. However, practical. But what comes to Darkmatter, he did dare to rebel against MY supreme authority..." he thought before he took forth a bag of money from the shelter of his cloak. "Here you go. And now, get out of my way." He passed the bucks to the delight-squealing Swack and jostled him out of his way.
"Hornet CHoo-593 and all, whose last serial is Pu-PP-y050, will stay outside. Attack immediately if someone interferes with my scheme. The rest of you, come with your Master." the Emperor gave orders to his mecha-minions before he glided in.
Poor Warp and his wife. Their hiding was quite futile faced by the infrared scanners of the robots. After hearing the thunder upon the hall, Warp had fled the place where they had stayed and had run madly after an appropriate shelter. There were old boxes, empty crates, abandoned carriages and some office cubicles, but was there any use for those, now? Not exactly, they did not give safeguard. Ten minutes passed and the ambush was closed. Two hyper-hornets stood now weapons aimed right to the lovers. Warp gradually retreated towards a wall and tightened his grip of Zarah, who in vain searched for asylum in his arms.
Soon a manic and wild laughter echoed in the hall, making the walls duplicate it many times. The threatening figure of Zurg dived up from the shadows and sleeked in the middle of the hornets.
"So, my search has come to its end!" he self-satisfied creaked his metal fingers against each other.
"And good day to you, Miss G'Deneb! I see that I meet more old friends!" His eyes flashed maliciously and blasted a laser beam towards her. She ducked towards Warp and survived without an injury.
"Darkmatter, Darkmatter, what a glorious future you had in front of you, indeed. And what did you do? Betrayed your Master!" Now nearly smoke was coming from Zurg's collars. "And WHY, may I ask, my 'loyal' apprentice" he ironicly continued, "Because of one pathetic WOMAN? You have had dozens of them before that one, wasn't you always basking in your evil glory and surrounding yourself with female beauty, Mister Casanova? What's making her so special that it was worth betraying ME? WHAT?"
"...you sick despot..." was the only thing Warp spat back.
"Mmm... 'sick despot?' Oh, the gratitude... the gratitude of everything I gave you. Didn't you have enough money? Enough lustrous fortune? Dark honour? Hm-hm-hm. So, now there's only left to think about the most wasting way to end your poor choices of life. The dark side is not left easily, it will remember... and have its revenge." The Emperor fingered his helmet and soon turned his fierce smile to Warp.
"Now I know! Thanks again to my supreme intelligence... You shall be slowly tortured to dead with that electronic chair your little chick was so keen on once!"
Warp's mouth distorted into a horrible grimace. His wife under his arm burst into tears and in her sad state hollered: "No, no..."
"Oh, yes. I forgot the reason for your deception. I'll make it even funnier to you, you can watch and enjoy when I at first fry her in that same chair and then it's your turn!" A mad laugh followed the sentence.
Warp therefore let a fierce roar out of his mouth. Bitter tears rose up to the corners of his eyes and he attempted to attack Zurg, yet in vain. The hornets grapped him and threw him against the wall.
"You won't touch her, ya filthy living demon!" he cursed.
"Sure I will, still there are even better ways to make you see how she can suffer. By the way, my young apprentice, that name 'living demon' is just appropriate for me, thank you. I shall have it carved to the side of the Dreadnaught. Of course you are not invited to see that, you will be ashes before that."
Darkmatter frowned at him.
"One little detail, may I ask, my coxcomb henchman, why aren't you using your handy machine arm to defend yourself and your pretty little sweetheart?"
No answer.
A wide smirk spread on Zurg's amorphic helmet. "I see. it's functionless, isn't it? No maintenance from the grubs in a while, the parts become little oxidized, don't they? But this babbling is getting boring. Hornets, take them to Dreadnaught." He clicked his fingers and the robots grapped both Warp and Zarah.
She shed tears madly and fought against the hornets with her full strength. Warp therefore seemed to have sunken into depression, there was no spirit left in him. The image, the horror of being forced to see how his dearest would face her end was too much for him to think. Was it like a closed circle that would happen? How he desperately had tried to save her from Zurg... and now the history would repeat itself? In the middle of her futile fight, his solemn voice reached her ears: "I'm sorry... I should have listened to you and stayed where I was. Goodbye, my love..."
........To be continued........