7. The Rescue Plan
------Capital Planet, four days later------------
"Rrrrinngggg..." a doorbell gave a dissonance.
The night had just fallen upon the suburb where Mira Nova had her dwelling. Zarah stood behind her front door, waiting impatiently someone to open up. The lights were on inside the house, so there must have been some alien life around.
After a few minutes of waiting, a tacit noise came from inside.
"She is at home... I just hope she'd open up and fast." Choi creaked her teeth, getting testier. Well, when the door finally opened, she got her hackles up for a moment because of the view. Someone tall dressed in a pink bathrobe, face all over covered with green slime stood in front of the engineer.
"Uh... I'm searching for Miss Mira Nova..." Zarah exhaled and attempted to get her pulse back.
A familiar voice came from under the green mess. "Good evening, Miss G'Deneb! Obviously you didn't recognise me... I'm having my daily face pack to give freshness to my skin! Well, what brings you here?"
Zarah eyed Mira a bit suspiciously. "Eh... Yes... that is possibly very refreshing... but, I have something important to discuss. May I come in?"
"Why, sure. It's been a bit silent for us since our Captain went to his holiday..." Mira chirped and leaded Zarah in.
Even more suspiciously Choi leered around when she saw the decoration of Mira's living room. Everything was pink, from the wallpapers to the furniture. The window was framed with magenta curtains that had big, white spots on them. The other side wall had a huge shelving which was filled with porcelain dogs, big and small. In the corner, beside a holo-telly jutted a piece of modern art, something that resembled a cross between Mickey Mouse and Coca Cola bottle. Mira bustled among all this, putting tea cups on the living-room table. Her regard attached to Zarah, who was still gaping eyes round all this fancy.
"Do you like my decoration? I designed it myself, with a little taste of Tangean elegancy!"
Choi did not quite know what to answer, so she just nodded and shrugged, "Well... it's interesting..."
Nova went to the bathroom for a while, obviously to get rid of her monster-mask. When she returned a couple of minutes later to the tea-sipping guest, even the bathrobe was gone and replaced with a simple dress. "So... what was it that you wanted to talk about? It has gone some time since we have met, recently", she smilingly asked after sitting down into the armchair.
Gravely Zarah put her cup down. She had partly forgotten her fervently urgent topic, while examining the peculiar room decorations. "Captain Lightyear has been captured."
Nova stared dull at her a couple of seconds. "WHAT?"
"That's right. This was the only way to come to tell this. No one trusts Star Command HQ."
"B-But... how? And when? Who? Buzz is on a holiday!"
For a second Zarah's mind filled with images of her ancient, extraordinary holiday, adding then, "I see... he had a holiday, right? He asked his Commander for a holiday? Well, in any case, this whole mess is because of XR's crack to the database. I know what you know. How would I put this...? Lightyear was captured when he was spying me, by Zurg. Your Captain followed me to my real home, obviously wanting to get in touch with Warp." She left a deep sigh before continuing. There would go all the secrets of her privacy now, down the sewer. "I and Warp saw the whole thing. No other eye-witnesses."
Mira was completely dizzy because of these declarations. "B-But... butbut... butbutbut..."
"Yes, I understand your confusion. I summarize; Warp is not dead, Buzz is gone and we need to set up a negotiation to solve this situation. My husband, who you know already, has offered his help. I suggest we meet at my house as soon as possible, you contact the rest of your team including Commander Nebula and tell them strictly the happenings."
Mira still could not get much out of her speaking organs, such an overwhelming experience the latest minutes had been.
"I would have come earlier, but because of certain technical difficulties it was impossible. I know I should have contacted Nebula at first, but there may be Zurg's spy devices in his office. I believe my house is the safest place to keep a debate like this." Zarah continued.
Blinking her eyes a couple of times, Nova at last got the whirr of bewilderment away from her synapses. "Oh... I... I'll do that right ahead! I'll call Nebula and Booster immediately!" Her Tangean CPU got its gigahertzes working fast. "I'll tell them to come here, then I'll reveal the situation and we head to your house, right?"
"Yes. That's the best choice to do. I'll give you're my address, the place is not far away from here. I'll be waiting, awake, no matter how late you appear there, the main thing is that you come. My street address is 1001 West Cutting Boulevard, turn left from the Sarlac Flower Shop. "
"Why didn't you tell me this all instantly when you came in?" Mira inquired.
"Uh... I got a bit sidetracked..."
With these conclusions, Zarah left Mira's house.
After two hours, a confused pile consisting of an elder man, robot and some miscellaneous races, was gathered into Mira's house. A mighty hullabaloo followed, no one could understand or comprehend the occurrences. Buzz captured? He was supposed to be on a holiday! For Nebula it was even more baffling since he knew a piece of string theory about Warp being alive and all. In this light it did not fit into his head, how the young engineer woman was related to this mess. Rushing next to her home, he hoped that there would be some light in the end of the tunnel.
-----Choi's single-family house, the same night--------
The brave rangers and their leader had sat down. The hostess had once again epitomized the state of affairs. So, it would be the right time to present the invisible helper who could possibly be the key part of the whole operation.
"I... I know someone who can help you. To save Captain Lightyear." Zarah began with a little hesitation.
Nebula took a straight pose and adjusted his hearing. "Who? Tell me. Anyone is not capable to this. Craters, there aren't many folks around who could do something relating Zurg."
Zarah twisted her fingers. "...I believe my husband can help you."
Commander got his eyes wide meanwhile his chin drooped open. "B-But... you're a MISS, Miss G'Deneb... how..."
Mira cut him short, "Actually she's not a miss."
"W-what is going on? First I hear that Lightyear has vanished, then I am invited here and I am told that the Galactic Alliance security database lies! What is this?" Commander blurted aghast and shook his head for conclusion.
Zarah drew her sleeves up and let the heavy bracelets visible. "Do you see these, Commander? These rings and wrist decorations? These are the signs that I'm a woman owned by someone. I stepped into a very ancient-type marital union some time ago."
"The database clearly states that you are a miss! You cannot be married! And... w-what do you mean 'owned'? Is there slavery here? And how do you know about this?" Nebula glowered at the rest of Team Lightyear. He was totally out of his nerves. As the commander of Star Command, he thought he knew every classified detail of the Galactic Alliance, but now he faced a situation for the first time in his life that the little birds had not sung to him. But Mira, Booster and XR just let their regards wander in the ceiling. There was no answer from them.
Then Zarah broke the silence.
"It definitely doesn't mean that if I'm the property of my husband that I'd be a slave! No! Please, Commander, this thing is not crucial now. It's that we have to get the captain out of Planet Z, right? So, can we go on with this?"
"Positively, miss... Ehm, Mrs..." Commander tangled up with his words. "Mrs... who are you now? Who is this husband of yours and how can he help? Who can be such a person that could do any wonders concerning the core of Zurgean Empire?"
Zarah grinned, stood up and peeked into the kitchen. "Come on, Darkie, your turn!" she called someone playfully.
Mira grunted and covered her eyes with a palm. "Darkie?"
A hoarse and sarcastic voice came from the open entrance. "So, ya want me to make a melodramatic entrée, what?" Then a huge figure appeared from the murky kitchen, curved behind Zarah and took her under his arm. "Here we are, babe", he gave a kiss on her forehead.
If Nebula was not puzzled already, now he got up from the chair and only could point the man beside Zarah with his finger. "W-Warp D-dark...matter... But... you're DEAD!"
Warp rolled his eyes. "Aw, c'mon, I ain't got blue skin because that I'd be a carcass!"
Even the rest of Team Lightyear stared at him. He surely looked like the 'old Warp', but had seemingly got a bit sturdier more, due to hard physical exercise and good food. The clothing was slightly different from the Agent Z-uniform they had used to see, just simple jeans and a T-shirt. He seemed to be here as if he was at home. Well, he was, in a certain way.
"Y-you're married to Warp Darkmatter?" was the next sentence Commander got out of his distorted mouth.
"Why not? He saved my life, should have the full amnesty of the Galactic Alliance, what's wrong?" Zarah raised her brows.
"And--- this man OWNS you?"
"What's the matter with that? It doesn't bother me!" she smiled and put her arms around Warp's chest, rubbing her cheek a bit against his shirt. He just chuckled back and blabbered some so sugary words down to his wife that Mira wanted to sink under the ground for shame.
"Allright. Stop the bill-n'-coo, we have to build a plan, here", XR snorted as irritated. "We're not here to watch a fluff movie."
So, all the men and women (plus one robot) gathered at the large living-room table to debate about the heated topic. What to do, who would play the saviour of the universe and so on. It was clear that there was no reason to send an army of Star Cruisers to Planet Z, since no one knew what had happened to Buzz. During the conversation was wondered, why Zurg had not contacted Star Command, like he usually did when he took hostages. Commander came to the conclusion that maybe the Emperor did not want to trade Lightyear to anything, but had other plans concerning him. Whatever they then were, they would not be sending him to an amusement park.
"Zurg has been acting a bit strangely, lately", Mira noted, "Like his strength would not be any longer as magnificent as it was some yeas ago."
"Yea, 'cause I left him. Lost the best plot-twister ever", Warp grinned smugly.
"I have a really bad feeling about this... He's acting against his usual models." Zeb added.
"Yeah, pop. We'd better save our cap before Zee mails Buzz' head on a silver plate to us." XR sighed.
"No, no. That far it won't go. We're getting Lightminute outta there before that."
"So, you said you would help us, Darkmatter", Commander gravely noted, "What is your proposal?"
Warp was silent for a while, biting his lips in deep contemplation. At last he sighed, "What if we'd do it this way. Buzz' ex-partner returns to dirty job with the rest of his team. We take a vessel and whizzz, go to the wolf's cave together. I at least know the surroundings there."
All the present people were thunderstruck. To hear such speech from the mouth of the notorious Warp Darkmatter? He would risk himself because of one missing captain? Yet, Commander and the rangers did not know the background details that were there nearly forcing him to take that step.
But Zarah raised her voice in the air. She would not definitely let her dearest there alone, but insisted that she would be taken with. Warp on the other hand opposed the whole idea. Choi back to that horrible planet from where he had once dragged her away, with tons of efforts? That would be out of question. He could not think this fragile woman taking part of such a venture.
With wrinkled forehead, he cleared it up, "No. You stay home. Ya know it very well that it ain't a place for a lass like ya."
Nevertheless, Zarah had made her mind. "You won't go there alone. If you're going, I'm going. If you resist, I get superglue and get you stuck to that chair forever. If you die or live, I die and live it with you."
"No! I'm not gonna take that risk that ya'd find yarself in front of Zurgie's bazooka blaster." Warp scolded her.
"Who's gonna watch after you there, huh? What if you are in front of Zurgie's bazooka blaster?" Zarah gave back.
"I got these rookies right behin' me! You stay home safe an' sound!"
"Nuh-uh!"
"Yeah-huh!"
"Nuh-uh!"
"Yeah-huh!"
"Nuh-uh!"
"Yeah-huh!"
The rest of the guests stared at this arguing eyes round as full moons. So, this was the scary and cynic Warp Darkmatter they had come to know. He and his wife mainly resembled two adolescents that were nagging about some candy bar. They woke up to Choi's yell.
"I'm sure coming with ya! End of story. Dot. No commas nor ifs nor buts."
Warp sighed disappointed. "Yikes, yikes, yikes. Lemme guess, you have a stubborn personality, li'l carrot hair."
"Well red hairs are stubborn and so are men with blue skin and a wreck arm." she pouted.
"Boom bam babe... ya're one cratery wee rogue..."
Zarah folded her arms over her chest and pointed her nose towards the ceiling.
A small burst of laugh croaked away from Commander Nebula's side. It was for the rest of the gang difficult to hold their laughter, either. Warp and Zarah's 'serious' argue was moreover like some big theatre.
"Alright, so what're we going to arrange, here?" Mira put her words to the middle.
Warp cleared his throat. "Me, my thingie here and your rookies are gonna stick together, I guess there ain' no other possibility."
"Kr-hm... we're not rookies, any more..." XR clarified.
"Well, whatever. We take my ship, cruise an' surf along the hot waves of hyperspace an' badda bing, pop to planet Z without detection." Warp fingered his chin.
"Why not to take 42? It's our normal vehicle and ..." Booster wondered.
"No. The Emperor will detect it. Too old tech. My shiny ship has a frequency interferator, such noveau stuff that even the purple 'bot won't be able to scan it."
Commander and the incomplete Team Lightyear could do nothing but admit that he was right. They made no extra questions about how and where Darkmatter had got such a vehicle. After an hour more, there was bound a fairly water-resistant plan, how to infiltrate Zurg's main base and save the captive. It would need the co-operation of every member of the new rescue team. It was a bright fact, that Booster, Mira nor XR still not completely trusted Warp. No wonder, because of the years of different experience of him. But they had to admit that there was a radical change in the blue alien, getting manifested by the truth, how he treated his Lady.
Therefore, after so on 24 hours Darkmatter's space ship would be headed towards the Dark Empire, to a journey that might end to the death of them all. Who knew, who knew...
------Meanwhile, Planet Z-------
Four long days... to spend in the darkness... only one's thoughts as his company. Buzz Lightyear had been locked to sit in the same chair where he had at first waken up. He was connected to a dozen tubes that transported liquidified food and nutrition into his vessels. Although Zurg did not call this torture, it was one hell and inferno to sit in that machine, let the minutes flow... the dulling greyness around you. Once, twice a day, a minion came to give the captive his regular medicine portion. That had happened even now, only a few minutes ago. Then there were the visits of Zurg, who came to snarl his lies into Lightyear's ears and to check, whether there was any yielding in his jailbird towards the evilness.
Now the sedative the brain-pod had rationed into Buzz' vein, gradually lulled him into the world of indifference and blackness. His thoughts, however, were quite lively, as if only his body had been paralyzed and his mind left to live its own life. But what was the side effect of Zurg's liquids, it was that the associations of ideas were merely mental aberration. Confused pictures of himself... as if he had followed the course of his own life from somebody else's point of view.
Loneliness... that was the one word that went on spinning around his head. Where was his family...? Mother, died ages ago. As his father... killed by the monster, whose slave he was now.
"Zurg... what were his purposes concerning my poor Dad Zoxeda... what was that name... Zoxedas¸... never mind. That name matters quite much nothing any longer... he's living only in the memories, as a young man who became the first sacrifice of the raising tyrant... why, why did it have to happen to me?" A couple of more mind-twirls concerning his dead parent got Buzz' eyes filled with bitter tears. "What had he done to Zurg? Nothing! He did not deserve it from the claws of that android... or whatever that Emperor is...? He cannot be a life form. No. But if 'he' is a robot, who made him? Who gave him an empire? Odd... what are the odds that 'he' could be some kind of alien covered with a space suit? Although... I've seen cases, I've been one kind by myself... could I have been sure about Warp Darkmatter, when I at first met him dressed to his Agent Z-suit, ready to finish me off with that robotic arm? Naturally... he was associated being a droid, the whole man. And what might I have been in the eyes of the others when I was playing my little role of Shiv Katall... so what comes to Zurg, who knows what he is."
Buzz felt his heart beats getting faster because of the muffled anger that smouldered inside him. However, the inertia overwhelmed him soon, as the tranquillizer lowered the balance of the stress hormones in his body. No adrenalin, no temper. But the hatred stayed, shadowing his mind.
"Besides... could some living person even be that ruthless and cold as Evil Emperor Zurg? But what Warp was... wasn't he alike, almost worse? However, he did reform... after seeing what kind of daemon Zurg can be in his whole power. That emperor has no conscience. Never has had. Killing thousands of innocent persons has been his joy through the decades. How long has he actually has his reign? Twenty years. Aliens have been born and died under his despotism... over twenty years?"
After some minutes, Lightyear was reflecting his own past. His whole life was being a space ranger, actually nothing else. An offer to freedom and justice. That what he had wanted his whole life, to defend the honours and virtues. Still, in loneliness. No real family around. All died, gone. Only being kicked from a distant relative to another, after he had gained so much age that he was ready to join the Space Ranger Academy. Of course, he had friends there, his faithful team, the Commander... so he felt it more comfortable at work than at home. There he was solitary. The absence of family had been a pungent experience.
Buzz remembered reading a lot about his father from the archives of the Galactic Alliance. He had worked as the ambassador of his home planet, Morph, on Capital Planet. Before he was granted with such a confidential career, he had married Buzz' mother Adi-Gaia Ganymede, at the age of 19. Buzz had none kind of memento of his mother; she had died him still being an infant. Of his father he had a certain image in his head, the synapses of a five-year-old kid. "Dad was a giant... the silent giant who was always in his own thoughts", he sighed to himself. As a boy, he had wondered that seclusion his father searched for, but now as a grown-up, he had begun to comprehend what were the reasons to that. Obviously, the elder Lightyear had suffered from depression, which had gradually made him abrupt and introvert. No wonder why, if he had lost the dearest creature he had had, killed as the victim of some mafia. Buzz did not know strictly what had happened, no one of the relatives ever discussed about his lost parents, all the information he had gained was from archives, databases and from the mouth of Commander Nebula. Zeb had distantly known Ambassador Lightyear. But that it was as said, no much knowledge was there to share about the pasts of two lost souls.
The minor register note there had been about the passing of Ambassador Lightyear, was, that on a private negotiation travel to Rontti System, he had been hearingly attacked by Zurg. Then the voices had grown silent. Only rumours, only some incoherent hollers about the death. No direct proofs, no corpse found... nothing. It was actually Zurg who had been pompous of evil glory after finishing off the elder Lightyear... Now, for the first time, it opened to Buzz that all the muttering of the defeat had come from the loudspeaker of Zurg. So he was the starting point of the grapevine. But, as Commander had told him, never there was Ambassador Lightyear after that day, the empty post had been soon replaced by a Morphean man named Kalkatus KlinkKlonk, who still worked on Capital Planet.
"Solitude... this purple chamber... the drowsiness..." Buzz' eyes were tacky. A flimsy curtain had been drawn over them for some time ago. Now it was woven thicker, a white fog descended. Solitude... next his head flopped down and was in a deep sleep.
....to be continued....