Time Bomb

Chapter 09

by Richard Ryley

Doc got to his feet, putting a hand to his head. He had the grandmother of all headaches, and the sinking feeling that things were only going to get worse. Sure enough, as he looked out at the room around him, he realized that he was in one of the Queen's prison tubes.

"Awake yet, Galaxy Ranger?"

Standing below the tube was the Queen herself. There was no mistaking the purple tone of her skin, the harshness of her almost beautiful face, the vivid red of her royal robes. She regarded Doc with a mocking smile.

"Out of the frying pan and into the fire!" Doc exclaimed, as he pressed his hands against the glass.

"I hate to fall back on cliche`s, Queenie, but you won't get away with this! Your pals Macross and Kilbane betrayed you! Gooseman knows where I am, and he'll be here any minute!"

The Queen laughed. "I know about Macross and Kilbane's stupidity. It won't help you. If Gooseman comes to rescue you, he'll be killed like the rest of your friends, and if he doesn't, he'll be all alone. He'll be easy enough for me to track down."

With a sweep of her cape, the Queen of the Crown turned back to a console on the other side of the room. Adjusting a few dials, she brought up the image of a Ranger craft on the display.

"My Gooseman!" Doc said with a grin. "I told ya!"

The Queen chuckled. "That is not Ranger Two, Hartford. It is Ranger One. That is the ship carrying your two other friends, Foxx and Niko."

Doc stared at her for a moment, uncharacteristically silent. "My agents planted a homing device on their ship, so I would know the moment their mission was over, and they had lifted off. I do not want their concerns for a current mission to interfere in my plans..."

She turned back to Doc. "As you have guessed, Ranger, you will not be Slaverlorded. What good to me is a slave that can be killed, by remote control?"

As Doc's frown deepened, the Queen laughed. "You have, indeed, guessed the truth. Your own people, your trusted BETA, your 'good friends', they programmed you with a self-destruct mechanism."

The Queen put a finger to her temple. "BETA has planted a Time Bomb in each of your heads... and I intend to set it off..."

The Queen's mocking laughter was all that was left behind, as she left Doc alone in the room.

"Okay, Buzz, what the hell happened?"

"I suppose you mean with the device that Kilbane had... Zozo, may I?"

The Kiwi handed Buzz what was left of the mechanism, and he sat down at the table with it. Zozo was looking out the window at the street in front of Agbar's bar, keeping an eye out, while Buzzwang examined the strange device that had almost killed Gooseman. Daisy seemed comfortable enough, though, settling onto a couch near the door. Apparently, she used this back room a lot, as a hiding place on her visits to Tortuna.

Kilbane's device was a ruined mass of shorted wiring, blackened with soot. "At the moment that you encountered Killbane, in his room, I heard a complex series of tones, transmitted on a radio frequency. They lasted nearly a second, during which you apparently experienced extreme pain."

Goose snorted. "The sequence was interrupted, apparently when the power supply shorted out on this unit." Buzzwang looked down at the device, pulling a few wires out to look at them more closely. "I do not think that the power supply Killbane used in this unit was quite adequate to the demand. It burned itself out before it could complete its intended purpose."

"Which was to kill me," Goose finished.

Buzz nodded. He pulled the disk out of his coat pocket, and stared at it for a moment. Then, as if making a decision, he touched his palm to the surface.

Being an android, Buzz's expression could not change. Yet, there was a slightly different note in his voice when he spoke again. "It is as we suspected. After the failure of the Supertrooper Project, the members of the Senate Committe on Extra Terrestrial Affairs put in place a safe guard on any future projects. That included the Galaxy Rangers project. The implants were programmed with a failsafe, to be used if any of the Rangers went renegade."

He looked up at Goose. "The signal that Killbane sent was a self-destruct signal, intended to cause your implant to overload, and send enough energy through the tissue of your brain to cause immediate death. There is a lead shield in place, however, to prevent the signal from being sent accidently, or by an enemy agent. The signal must be loud enough to penetrate the shield, and thus cannot be sent over more than a few yards... under normal power."

He looked at the device again. "Killbane's device was constructed of inferior parts, and thus failed before it could complete the signal. Even so, only your biodefences protected you. If you had been one of the other Rangers..."

He looked up again. "You would be dead."

Goose stared at him a moment. "Does Walsh know about this?"

"I doubt it. This appears to be a secret safeguard, added to any projects by agents of the Senate during the design process. I doubt that anyone at BETA knows about this."

"But Wheiner does." Goose growled. Eve sighed heavily, putting a hand to her head. "Don't worry about it," Goose told her. "Now that we know about this, we can get it removed. And if it was so secret, maybe your father didn't know about it, after all..."

The last was said primarily for Eve's benefit. Goose wasn't sure he believed it. "So how can we protect ourselves from this thing?"

Buzz shook his head. "I don't think there is any way. The signal must be so loud, in order to overcome the shielding already in your implant, that any other shield or jamming signal would be useless. It would take an INCREDIBLY powerful signal to jam it, at least twice the power of the signal." He held up Kilbane's device. "And you can see how much good it would have to have too little power."

At that moment, the door burst open, and their ally darted into the room. "Miss O'Mega!" He said breathily, "You should see this!"

He gestured for the others to follow, and they did, hiding in the shadows of the balcony above the main floor of the bar. As they watched, the face of the Queen of the Crown appeared on a monitor down below.

"My subjects!" The Queen said, her voice as melodramatic as always. "I am pleased to announce that I have captured one of the Human Galaxy Rangers..." The camera pulled back to reveal Doc, still held in a prison tube. He wasn't trying to break out of the tube, but looked around himself furtively, as if trying to find a way to escape.

Buzz inched closer to Gooseman. "This message is being broadcast on all subspace frequencies... including those used by Earth!"

"The Galaxy Ranger will make a fine addition to my Psychocrypt," the Queen gloated. "At noon tomorrow, he will become my strongest Slaverlord!"

Behind her, Doc suddenly threw himself against the glass. "Zack! Niko! It's a trap! Don't..."

He cried out as a field of electricity enveloped him, inside the tube. Then Doc slumped, unconscious. The Queen turned back to the screen. "My subjects, I declare tomorrow a day of celebration! Rejoice, for my victory is yours!"

The screen went dead. Zozo made a thoughtful noise. "It's not like the Queen to declare ANYthing a day of celebration. What's she up to?"

"Tha' wasn't meant fer her subjects, furry-face. That was meant fer th' Rangers."

Goose nodded. "That's got to be it. She's expecting us to mount an attack. The Psychocrypt is the perfect base from which to send that signal..."

"And with the asteroid field around the Queen's Graveyard dotted with those transmitters, she could blanket the whole area with the self-destruct signal." Buzzwang paused a moment. "And Pathfinder said that the transmitters are also programmed to detect any Ranger Ships in the area. So they not only echo the signal, but they tell the Queen when to send it, as well."

"Zack and Niko, of course, will ride right to Doc's rescue, and jump right into the middle of the field. They're as good as dead."

Daisy flipped the code key for her Interceptor into the air, quickly snatching it back into her closed fist. "Unless we get there first!"

Time Bomb - Chapter 09

From Betamountain.org

Time Bomb

Chapter 09

by Richard Ryley