On The Armada Command Ship, Lavira was in her laboratory, but for once, she wasn't working. Although, strictly speaking no one had used terms like 'confinement' or prisoner, she was under no false impressions that now, the ship was not a safe place for her. While the Prince was alive, she enjoyed a lot of freedoms on the ship. She was technically below Damaras in the command structure, but the Prince tended to value her advice and her counsel just as much as his, even before they had begun a relationship.
When their relationship began, she had been elevated to a level far beyond what she was used to. She was, to all intents and purposes, as important as Vekar himself. No one would dare to defy her, knowing that if she even mentioned it to the Prince, he would see them punished. When she joined the crew all those years ago, she never would have dreamed that she would find herself in the position of almost becoming the Queen of the entire empire!
Unfortunately for her though, they had never gotten around to getting married. While they were all but married, once even going so far as to BEGIN a ceremony, the fact that they never exchanged vows and signed the register meant that she was, as far as the Empire was concerned, still just a servant. The laws of succession made it quite clear that since Vekar, the first in line to the throne was now dead; the line of succession would pass to the next in line. The Emperor had no more legitimate children, so normally the line would pass to other relatives, nephews and suchlike. However, there was another option. Although he was illegitimate, a fact that Vekar had delighted in reminding Vrak throughout his life, crowing about the fact that although Vrak was actually the first born, HE would take the throne, now Vrak was the next in line. He had just been elevated to Prince, meaning that now the ship, the fleet belonged to him.
She had little doubt that he had engineered her beloved Vekar's fate. She wouldn't even be surprised if he had murdered him himself. If the Emperor was here, if he had any reason to believe that Vrak was responsible, she had little doubt that heir or not, he would annihilate him, but there was simply no proof. She had tried to enact her vengeance herself, but that was when she found out that Vrak had somehow found and disabled her over-ride code. One of the things that gave her so much freedom was the fact that she had nothing to fear from the droids and weapons aboard the ship. She could turn all of them to her will any time she wanted. Now though, that wasn't an option. If Vrak was to order them to attack her, there would be nothing she could do about it. She now only lived as long as Vrak willed it, and she had a feeling that right now, he delighted in her misery.
As she looked among the monitors in her lab, she noticed something unusual. Surveillance to one of the hangars had been disabled. She just sighed as she went to the computer and tried to bring it back up. Grieving or not, she was still the ship's Chief Engineering Officer, and she was certain that Vrak would just relish any opportunity to call her out on failing in her duties.
As she tapped some keys though, she couldn't bring it round. After trying another command, she furrowed her brows as she saw something odd. There was nothing wrong with the surveillance, the infrastructure, the technology was still there, and still functioning. She pulled up another command and confirmed her suspicion that the surveillance had been voluntarily disabled. She entered her password, only to find that it had been changed. She could not access the feed.
"What are you up to?" She asked herself, getting up and heading for the door. She went towards the hangar, avoiding patrols where she could. The patrols of the corridors were a lot more frequent here than normal, but as the Chief Engineer, Lavira knew every inch of the ship intimately. It was a simple matter to avoid the patrols.
She got to the door, and tried to open it, but again, her access had been revoked. She just snorted as she pulled out a tool kit.
"Do you really think this will keep me out?" She asked dismissively. She pried off the control panel, accessing the circuits. Working the wiring briefly, the door slid open, allowing her inside.
As she made her way inside, she marvelled at what she saw. Three devices, which looked a lot like drills were standing on end in the hangar. She knew exactly what they were, she had designed them, but it had been a long time since any had been deployed. They were Planet Busters. It was a Weapon of Mass Destruction designed to drill into the ground, and detonate at the core of a planet, literally tearing it apart. It was a weapon of last resort that The Armada rarely used. What was the point in conquering a planet when its resources were lost forever to the void of space. She heard someone coming and hid behind some support struts. She had just managed to get out of sight as Vrak, Damaras, and a couple of Kingsmen came into the room. It galled Lavira to see that Vrak had attached a deep, violet cloak to his cybernetic armour, both marking his new position and also aping his brother's grandiose and regal style. Damaras looked up at the Planet Busters in disbelief.
"Your Highness...are you certain about this?" Damaras asked him. Vrak just smiled.
"I am not as arrogant and sentimental as my brother. I know when an investment has gone badly." He told him. "We have already wasted far too many resources on this planet. The cost of the materials we've wasted alone is a testament to my brother's recklessness."
"But Your Majesty...we still don't know what resources, what treasures we could glean from..."
"Damaras, I was on the planet for most of the last year." Vrak reminded him. "While I cannot deny it would have been a rich prize, the fact is I sincerely doubt that anything we find there will justify the time and resources my brother has wasted on it. It is time to cut our losses."
"Then...the Robo Knight?" Damaras asked him. He looked to Damaras.
"A distraction." He insisted.
"And the Pink Ranger's father?" He asked. Vrak just smiled.
"Well, I have to entertain myself SOMEHOW until these weapons do their work." He responded. With that, they left the Hangar.
Lavira came out of her hiding place, unable to believe what she had just heard. Vrak had entered an Endgame, one that none of them would ever have anticipated. She was still under the impression that they intended to take over the world, not destroy it. If they had wanted that, they could have deployed the Planet Busters months ago! To imagine that he would do so now, it caused something in her to stir. While she hadn't been the most sociable person on the ship, she had met most of the Commanders. Some of them had been friends. Then there was Vekar, the man she had pledged to spend the rest of her life with. All of them would still be alive. If they destroyed the planet now, then all those who had died in the invasions would have given up their lives for nothing.
As she came out of her hiding place, making sure no one was around; she headed over to the Planet Busters to get a closer look.
Down in Harwood, the Rangers were locked in battle with the newly empowered Robo Knight. Mikey threw himself at them with a dangerous power, one they knew all too well. The Robo Knight was a powerful weapon, individually stronger than any single Ranger. They also had the added complication that they knew that Mikey was inside the armour. While he had done plenty of bad things in his life, it wasn't as though they felt they had any real right to execute him for any of those things. His crimes in no way matched the suffering he had gone through. His months of crippling insanity, inflicted by Gosei had been what had led them to this place now.
None of them was able to really unleash on Mikey, something which made the whole battle a lot tougher. However, it wasn't as though they didn't have a couple of things going in their favour. The first was experience. While Mikey had gotten himself into some violent scrapes in his time as a result of his acts of eco-terrorism, it wasn't as though he was any kind of soldier. He hadn't dedicated himself to training the same way the others had, and this was, as far as anyone was aware, the first time he had used the Robo Knight technology.
Right now, their chief tactic was basically to avoid him for the most part, to redirect his clumsy strikes and use his own momentum against him. While the Robo Knight was resilient, it wasn't indestructible, and sooner or later, he would exhaust its energy. If it took all day, they were determined to wear him down enough to try and bring him down without harming Mikey too much.
"Hold STILL will you?" Mikey screamed as he ran for Jake. The Green Ranger parried his blow, rolling over Mikey's back as he guided him past him, giving him a hard kick up the backside for good measure just to infuriate him. He snarled in frustration as he picked up a car, turning towards them. He threw it straight at Noah. The Blue Ranger quickly assessed where it was going to land, and figuring it wasn't going to hit anything that would put innocent lives at stake, he just leapt out of the way. "Damn it, stand STILL!"
"Yeah, because THAT'S going to happen." Gia responded sarcastically, swinging two sabres on the cable whips. Mikey tried in vain to block them, but they rebounded off his armour, sparking as they did so. He finally managed to grab them, starting to pull Gia towards him, but she just knelt down, at which Emma launched off her back, blasting into him with twin blasters, knocking him backwards. The team all assembled before him.
"You can't win Mikey; we've been doing this far too long." Troy told him. "I know you can't disobey Vrak, but at least you can make this less painful on yourself. We're not going to let you hurt any innocents!"
"What makes you think that these people are so innocent?" Spider snapped at him. "That plant is STILL STANDING! We produce more toxic waste and spent nuclear fuel every year!"
"Those are our problems, and we need to work on them." Troy agreed.
"We've had DECADES to work on them!" Spider argued. "These aliens, they...they want the planet! They want to take it from us, what's to say that they won't treat it better than we do?"
"We are sure he's meant to be sane right?" Noah asked. "Come off it Spider, you've seen what these guys have done, the innocents they've killed, what makes you think they give a damn about the planet?"
"Who tries to steal something if they don't value it?" Spider asked them. Just then, they all looked up as they heard a roar from overhead. They all looked up to see three massive objects streaking towards the Earth. They all struggled to remain standing as they slammed into the ground in three different points across the city.
"What the...?"
"I guess now we know what they want with the planet." Troy stated, staring at Spider.
"What...they...?"
"They attacked another planet before, a planet called Andresia!" Gia told him. "It's the planet Orion comes from! You know Orion right? The guy that was taken to wake you up?"
"They decided there wasn't anything they wanted on his planet." Emma told him. "So they just destroyed EVERYTHING! They wiped them all out!"
"They don't care about this planet or anyone on it; they only care about what they can get from us!" Jake told him. Just then, he clutched the sides of his head. He fell to his knees, crying out.
"OK, he isn't going to be reasoned with." Troy told the others. "You all go. Take the Zords and see if you can deal with those drills."
"But Troy..."
"Beating Spider won't mean anything if there isn't a planet left to defend." Troy interrupted Gia. "Get rid of the drills. I'll deal with Spider."
"Hey, Jordan, bring the Zords around!" Gia called into her communicator as they ran from the scene. Meanwhile, Troy just faced down Spider.
"You sent away your back-up?" Spider asked him. Troy just nodded.
"Let's see if that evens up the odds a little for you." He answered as Spider ran for him, gripping his sword tightly.
Gia and Jake were speeding towards the first drill, which had come to rest in the centre of the city. Gia's truck smashed through some vehicles which had been abandoned in the middle of the street, sending them spinning out of the way.
"Holy crap, that thing is huge!" Jake commented. "It'll tear up the whole city if that thing starts up!"
"So let's take care of it before it does!" Gia answered. "Open fire!"
They fired their weapons, which seemed to just rebound off its hull with no effect.
"Damn it, we didn't even dent it!" Jake complained. "Noah, how are you getting on?"
Jordan, Noah and Emma were heading out into the harbour, having been sent to deal with a drill that had come down in the sea. Noah's jet launched a couple of missiles which slammed into it, but he had to pull aside as he realised the drill was still in his path.
"Not a scratch!" He sighed. "Whatever these things are made of..."
Just then, his display started going haywire. He stared at it.
"Guys, my Zord...something weird is going on!" Noah stated.
"Something's going on with my Zord too!" Gia stated. "Wait...it's...its data...its information on those drills."
"Where's it coming from?" Emma asked.
"I don't know, but...it says they're not drills at all! They're some kind of planet buster weapon! They're trying to detonate the planet's core!" Jake called out.
"Guys, it's a full schematic." Noah told them. "And...it includes a weak spot!"
"Someone's telling us how to get rid of them?" Noah asked.
"I guess there's one way to find out!" Emma responded, setting up her targeting system. "Guys, wish me luck!"
She fired a missile from her Zord, which headed for the drill as it started to rotate. She gripped the controls, praying for a solid hit. As the missile hit home, it exploded. At first, nothing else happened, but then there was another explosion. In a chain reaction, the rest of the drill started to blow itself apart. Emma let out a huge yell of excitement.
"Guys, it works!" Emma told them. "Whoever sent us that information, its good!"
"Then start making your way to the third drill." Gia told them. "We'll take care of this one!"
Up on The Armada Command Ship, Vrak was watching events unfolding. He smashed his fist into the control console as the display told him that the second of his Planet Busters had been destroyed.
"Blasted Rangers! How could they have figured out my plan so quickly?" He roared.
"My Lord, we only have one Planet Buster left." Damaras told him. "We must protect it..."
"Never mind, I'll do it myself!" He replied, picking up his Cyber Rang. As he left the Bridge, Damaras just stood out of his way. He had backed Vrak in the war all along, but right now...he was finding it worrying to see him reacting this way. He couldn't help seeing a certain similarity to the late Prince Vekar.