Xaneda was as quiet as always. The burning-hot sand played its dull game among the rocks and rare vegetation. A lonely ship flew quietly over the surface. Only there was the fact that no one could see nor detect it. A shield generator that interfered all electromagnetic radiation, protected the traveller from not being spotted. Generally, the vehicle was invisible for any outsider. Only the Xanedian radar devices were able to scan it, announcing to the controllers and guards all over in the hidden cities that a member of the culture was landing to the sheds of the unknown.
Zarah had tuned the shield on, before jumping out of hyperspace, as always. Therefore, the landanah digger community that lived in the second moon, neither anyone else around, could not see her. But she did not feel safe, from some time on, she had sensed that there was a pair of external eye organs watching her, as if there had been a spook on her heels. Whatever it was, she could not comprehend it.
With blundering steps, Choi descended from the cockpit. The main flight deck of Xatagah was completely empty. Tarnished lamp crystals were the only souls that cast some live among the metal figures of the ships.
"I have to find him!" she slapped her forehead and opened the heavy lock-gate that leaded to the accommodation wings. After that was a half-mile walk along a tunnel. Rambling thoughts were her company during the accelerated travel. How would she choose her words for to tell the whole thing to Warp?
"Am I too worried? It is just four persons that know about this... but still..."
There was time to think about these issues. The long corridor was the dullest thing in the Universe, according to Zarah. And also a bit scary. She had wandered it from end to end dozens of times, but never got used to the shadows that were caused by the alcoves and joints. And the nastiest thing was that she always had to travel alone there.
A hundred metres until the last door was left when something peculiar happened. Suddenly the woman felt someone grapping her tight backwards and as its intention, started to drag her to one of the niches. Her shrill scream was choked by a large palm that was put over her mouth. A couple of seconds she fought back the unknown terror, but as she was finally pinned against the wall backwards, a familiar, deep voice whispered at her ear: "Shht, babe li'l... it's me..." The hand was taken away from her mouth and apparently the whole arm that owned it, was wined around her. A pair of lips began to caress her cheek ardently.
Hot tears appeared into her eyes. She knew perfectly who was this 'attacker' and that made the sorrow even bitterer. How she was supposed to tell her bad news now that Warp there gave her his tokens of affections? His lips turned to kiss hers. Only when heavy tears trickled along her cheeks, he stopped and silently turned her around to face his aghast expression. Zarah did not usually cry in his presence. Never had she cried in his arms after the one night over seven months ago, when he had picked her up from that dirty lane on Capital Planet. There was something not right, now.
"What is it, Za? Why are ya crying?" he looked straight into her eyes.
"I..." she could not get the words out of her dry mouth.
"D... did I... hurt you somehow...?" he asked horrified, as if she had out of the blue lost her love towards him.
She nestled against his chest and sobbed: "No! T-That's not what I meant... please take me back into your embrace... I... I h-have to... t-tell you something..."
Stammering and sniffing she narrated the happenings of the last days. Warp, who had been so eager to see her after two lonely weeks, so happy to know that he could hold her again, turned very grave. He was about to loose her from his arms, but saw now that she literally searched for an asylum in his enfold. So he pressed her tighter against his massive chest, but talked now in a severe tone. He did not scold her, of course it was not her fault, but wanted to know, how much information she had given to Buzz Lightyear about him.
"I... I d-did not tell him anything t-that could make him know where ya are..."
"What did he ask about me?"
"He... mainly... w-wanted to k-know that... ya were all right."
Warp felt very odd. He never had thought Buzz would ask anything like that.
"He did?" he stared at her with round eyes.
"He did."
A green light beeping in Warp's wrist communicator stopped their hugging. After pressing it to hear the incoming message, both Zarah and he winced.
"Boss, betta come here immediately! Whole Xaneda is in the state of emergency. An unknown private ship has been detected in the near space of Xaneda, as well as Dreadnaught!"
No time to explanations was there now. Darkmatter gripped his wife, put her on his shoulder and ran the rest of the distance to the Site B control centre.
Warp's familiar guards Neder and Eisley stood flabbergasted in front of a large radar monitor screen. Warp rushed in.
"Boss, the common reflector shield of Xaneda's cities has been activated." Eisley blurted while twisting all kinds of levers and typing buttons for to get the nanoradar satellite scan better.
Warp was not any more only the leader of the tech stock, but had gained vastly more power and might since he was lastly heard about. The Eldest of Xatagah had granted him with many responsibilities, among others handling a part of this community's security issues.
"Now it should be all right with the energy shield, no outside technology detector can pass that. But we need the screen better, I want to see what's going on out there. There should be no transportations to Deneveria what I've heard from listening the Star Command's frequencies. So this has to be something else." Darkmatter rushed back and forth the control room, trying to get sense to the situation.
"Did you say that Dreadnaught was there, too?" Zarah put her words in the middle of all this.
"Yes, Lady Darkmatter. But we're not sure, yet. But according to the size and the alloy type the holo indications give this far, it is most possibly that vehicle." Neder politely answered. Zarah was a very respected guest in the city, and not least because of being owned by Warp. She was treated mainly like some royal person.
Meanwhile Eisley had got the scan holo clearer. In front of the spectators opened an odd and sad view.
"T-Thah... that's L-Lightyear's n-new...ss...!" Zarah stuttered and got her sentence not finished.
"Bursting quasars! You were being followed! By him!" Warp gasped.
That was not all the image gave as a presentation. No, behind Buzz' ship was delineated The Imperial Ghost, gradually taking the poor hunk of metal totally into its control. Zurg used the magnetic force field generator to swallow the tiny vessel. A hatch opened in the side of it and Buzz as his captive, vanished inside the Leviathan of the Space. What is more, as soon as it had devoured its booty, its acceleration engines started to roll, letting it glide silently away from Xaneda, to the black vacuum.
All the spectators of the holo screen were timid. After a minute Zarah broke the silence with a teary inhale. She turned about without saying a word and slouched towards the door.
"Z-Za?" Warp blurted, wrinkling his forehead. Tapping at her, he swung the little woman around.
"It was all my fault! Just give me a cuff on the ear and send me away!" she cried as if she had lost her reason.
"Fault? What fault? Babe, sweet li'l babe, what on asteroids are ya jabbering about?" Warp stared at her.
"I shouldn't have left Capital Planet so heedlessly. I should've noticed that I was followed. Now Buzz knows 'bout Xaneda. Then Zurg gets him. Then he knows all. I'm a doomed, cursed person..." she gave an outburst of teary rage. Choi was about to leave the control room with a fast run, but did not in her state observe where the doorframe was. She collided with it, hit her forehead and got her eyes dizzy. Next, she was lying on the floor on her hinterland.
In his large living-room, Warp sat on a sinking sofa, Zarah put nearly invisible to rest under his arm. He attempted to mollify her and give the best words to tell that it was not her fault. It took her somewhat long to accept the truth that she could have not prevented it anyhow, how many ifs and yets she ever had repeated.
"What are we gonna do?" a sniffle came somewhere under his sleeve.
"I don't know, toots tiny... At least this time the danger concerning Xaneda was avoided. But we dunno what happens tomorrow. The purple Space Beacon has been quiet a long time, but now... no one knows."
"What about Lightyear?" Zarah raised her regard to meet his severe eyes.
Warp swallowed a couple of times. That was a topic he always shirked. But now there was no loophole away, the pondering of it could not be avoided. So... Why was it so awkward for Warp? Because he was in a way indebt for Buzz. If he had been still his old rebellious self, he would have given a piece of rotting meteoroid to the whole thing, but now the situation was quite diverse. The obligation was about the formal amnesty he had been given a generous six months ago. The results had been immense; he could freely walk in disguise almost anywhere because he did not have to be afraid of an army of space rangers after him. Zurg's bounty hunters had been scattered who knows where because everybody had the illusion that he was dead. Well, of course so the space rangers thought, too, but because of Buzz Lightyear's efforts, his reputation was purified in everyone's eyes.
"Yeah... I know. He's possibly getting zips and zaps in Zurg's agony bubble... and someone shoul' get him outta there", he sighed.
"Who else knows about this? I mean... they don't use that kinda scan radars in the mining moon as we have here. Some 500 folks there concentrate nearly only on the landanah processes. Most possibly Dreadnaught was even outside the range of their detecting devices."
Warp gazed long at the table in front of him. Zarah rested supply against his chest, letting him cogitate whatever he needed to. His fingers wandered among her locks, giving him the tinkering job he always did when he reflected something.
"So... we're the only ones who know... And that makes us eye-witnesses... and that makes us kinda responsible of what we just saw..." he monotonically put the syllables into words.
"And there's the risk that... Zurg picks out all the data out of Captain Lightyear's head... that you're alive, hiding..."
"That's it. It's up to us to get that Lightsnack outta Zurg's claws... That's what at least you're thinking." he looked down to her, "Aren't ya?"
But she bowed her head and timorously answered: "You're the master here. I'm not the one that decides this thing."
Warp's face twisted into a pitiful grimace. He pressed Zarah against his chest as hard as he had the courage. "D-Don't call me that way, li'l thing. I've said it a dozen times before. I-I know that I... but still. In your heart you still seem to be afraid of me, is that it? I know I'm the same huge scary alien that once chased you there in that moon, but ya know that I'd never put a leg across your road..." His sentence he concluded by kissing her long and fierily.
They sat quietly for half an hour. What Warp did, it was only meditating. He felt truly bothered knowing it was up to him to solve the whole situation. What could he do...? In every case, it would be jeopardizing his own life now because of that captured space ranger... but was there an alternative? Buzz had to be released out of the Emperor's clutches, if he, Zarah and the planet wanted to maintain their safety. Xaneda would not be long considered as a Space Sahara, if Zurg would get the important clue, why Lightyear was following G'Deneb.
Finally the blue alien decided to polish his brainwork.
"So... we're both leaving to Capital Planet tomorrow. Ya try to catch that old macho Nebula and tell him whaddya know. I'm staying on the background and make a resurrection if necessary... phew, that's for bein' a zombie..."
Zarah leered at him. "Are ya sure? That's what we should do... but... you're putting yarself in quite a danger! It's not a problem for me to go in front of the Commander, but you... are ya sure that ya want to return from 'beyond the tomb'?"
"Who the blasting proton would be better to give advice how to get to planet Z to save that RightLight? The Big Izzard may have changed the local plan a bit since I habited that joyous wormhole, but the basics are the same. And... as Buzzy gone, Star Command doesn't have another as skilled ranger to do his job. Besides, that guy hardly can save himself. So, then steps ol' Warpy from the background... one of the top graduates of the Space Ranger Academy."
Zarah could not give counterarguments, since she knew that he was completely right with his semi-egoistic words.
---------------
Whatever happened to Buzz Lightyear? He had steered, in a curious state of mind, his ship towards the aim where Zarah's vessel was going. By tracking her energy levels in hyperspace, he had been able to spy her from a suitable distance. She would have of course spotted him, if she had been monitoring the warp energy diagrams during her flight. Nevertheless, so much was rambling around her mind on those moments, that she had not studied so strictly such random data.
But Lightyear... for his amazement, he had suddenly lost the reconnoitring indications. Banging the buttons, he had given the computer an umpteen instructions for to find the lost energy readings, but in vain. Zarah had snapped on the hindering shield generator that was used in all Xanedian ships during the landings and left-offs in the near space of the asylum planet. Therefore, thinking that she had possibly left hyperspace, Buzz had activated the jump gate and returned to the four-dimensional world. For his surprise, he found himself at the edges of the Alliance, near the one mining moon. Now he was deadly sure that he had lost her tracks completely.
But what he had not noticed, was Dreadnaught. Just like his 'prey', he had not paid attention to some details of the holo screen. Only for the moment, when the functions of the ship went slack, he understood being under the flux of some magnetic field. A vessel was pulling him towards it. He got sweat flooding along the back of his neck, when making the conclusion of the laming Colosseum. Zurg.
His puny craft was soon squatting on the flight deck of the imperial flag-ship. A hissing noise reached his ears when the hornets melted the door open, soon invading the cockpit. The space ranger was violently clung from his arms by two droids and dragged away, towards the pharynx of malevolence.
A few hours the ranger was kept in a brig, before a brain-pod came to register the captive. Zurg had had something more interesting to do for the while, he had not namely been aware that the loot of the day was his greatest enemy, Buzz Lightyear himself. The secretary brain-jar got his wheels rolling for hurry, after he had in passing looked over the man sitting behind the bars.
In front of his master, he hastily clarified: "Your dark gloriousness, uh... we have something extraordinary, here..."
"What? Did I not say that I want to play Super-Multi-Hyper Mario in peace? My agent just hacked the game from Norbert Klerm's intranet and..." the Emperor let a murderous glance flash towards the minion.
"Uh... I apologise, but Buzz Lightyear is..."
"What about Lightyear? We do not need that pest here, now. Always he shall mess my giga-excellent evil plans! Always he! He, he, he! Why not me instead? Me, me, me!" the Emperor snarled.
"But Sir... the captive..."
"Yes, I said that I shall pick his or hers brains when we are back home, embracing the sweet, evil air of Planet Z. Now leave me alone."
"But... the captive is Buzz Lightyear!" the unlucky henchman finally got out of his speaking organs.
Zurg's response was something totally rave. He turned around in his chair so that the whole piece of furniture was twisted into a shapeless wreck. He got his laser regard flare in sheer amazement, as if he had heard the most unbelievable news of the century. Well, it was, for him.
"WHAT? Lightyear? Why did not you say that three hours ago when the ship was sucked in here? Now, bring him to me, take two hornets and order them to zap right ahead if he resists!"
After half a minute, the ranger stood proud and rough in front of the Dark Lord. Zurg sat in his throne, fingering his loudspeaker very confident.
"Well well! Lightyear! Well what a pleasant rendez-vous!" He was so much delighted about the happenings that did not even remember to ask WHY Buzz had been alone in the near space of Xaneda.
"The pleasure's all yours", Buzz grunted back.
"Yes, that was very kindly said! Hmhahhahhahhaaah..."
The ranger glared at his nemesis under his black brows. "What do you want from me? If you're planning to kill me, then do it already."
The villain shrugged in sudden astonishment, rising up from his seat, leading his steps to Buzz. "Kill you? Why would I do that? I shall have a lot better use for you as a living person, rather than a corpse."
Lightyear was surprised, too. The only thing he would expect Zurg to do him, was to finish him off and fast. Alternatively, at least torture him. "I know your plans", he muttered suspiciously.
"Oh no, you do not," the villain sneered and did a small movement with his hand.
For the same moment, Buzz' eyes blackened.
A brain-pod appeared in front of Zurg to take his orders. "Yes, my Evil Emperor?"
"Take Lightyear to the dressing rooms. Demolish every part of that space ranger uniform he has on, including that stupid hood. Take a fresh, starched robe, ask the dressmaking department to make it smaller, if it will not fit, then put it on him. Guard that man, and if he comes conscious before the bourn, make sure that you will bring him back to the worlds of dark dreams. Back on Planet Z, I shall give further instructions."
The hornets hauled the indolent ranger away, leaving The Emperor chortle alone in his hall. "Mwahhaahhhhhaaaaahhhhhhhaaah! He is mine, MINE, mine! Ruhahhhaahhhaaahhhhhhaaah! MINE!"
...to be continued......