Commander Bartran had served the Sylan empire through thousands of conquests, having directly fought in hundreds over his millennia of existence. There were rare few as long lived as he, and his core DNA was incorporated into each subsequent general that was birthed to subjugate a species. He would never have children of his own, as the capacity to birth or sire was removed from all the generals. Producing offspring was just asking for a species to rally around the children in a bid for independence.
He had participated in two such pacifications early in the Empire’s expansion. His own planet was long since dead, having elected to collapse themselves into a singularity rather than be subjugated. A pity, but he had come to cherish the role that The Prime Administer granted him. Maraline was the latest of his charges. General two hundred and seven that he had personally assisted in the conquest of their chosen planet.
She was also among the most troublesome.
Maraline had taken on many of the social traits of her core DNA, and had a strong fascination with the Earthling culture and sought to preserve much of it following the conquest. He had several talks in private with her about that curiosity. She often pondered dangerous subjects that bordered on treason.
Why the Earth needed conquest when they could have instead come as benevolent liberators was a valid question. The Earth was a prime candidate for such methods, and would have preserved many resources if they followed through. That did not change their standing orders, however, and Bartran was privy to things that Maraline was not.
When word came that Rangers emerged on Earth, he wasn’t surprised. The information on how many Ranger teams had emerged from their experiments was carefully guarded, though some inevitably slipped out over the millennia. Those rumors paled in comparison to the truth. Hundreds of worlds, all chosen to drive the conflict that the Source thrived upon.
Only worlds with technology worth harvesting and minds to drive advancement were spared their wrath. Enlightened worlds rarely spawned Rangers, making conquest a moot point. The Earth was one of dozens of worlds on the docket expected to produce Rangers, yet something was different this time.
The advancements in the technology they used to draw upon the Source didn’t account for the anomalies that kept cropping up. There was something about the Earth that was different, he just didn’t know what it was. There were possibilities, but he wasn’t ready to jump to those conclusions. Thorough surveys of the planet were completed in the lead up to the invasion, and the natives were swift to advance their technologies, yet that didn’t explain anything.
Details of the original species were before Bartran’s time, but he’d read the reports The Prime Administrator had on the phenomena now called the Source. The species, referred to simply as The Progenitors, were one of the earliest to fall during the birth of the Sylan Empire, but their protectors were some of the fiercest.
His birth came during the final years of the struggle, the Sylan Empire finally coming to being when he took to the field. He was one of many sent into battle, the first sentient mutants deployed by his creator. The battles with those Rangers were perilous, with many of his batch-mates falling by the day.
Still, he endured. Within short order he became known to The Prime Administrator as someone who could stand against the Rangers, he wore that distinction with pride and fought valiantly. He still remembered the day that the Rangers deployed their fighting machines, styled after many constellations revered by their planet. Funny enough, one such star in those myriad of patterns was the Earth’s very own.
The Sylan fleet eventually brought down their greatest fighting machine and Bartran himself tore the Rangers from the remains. Despite that loss, they fought on in desperation. Many ships attempted to flee in those final days, yet most were reduced to slag before they escaped the solar system.
Three remained unaccounted for, one of which had a star drive unlike anything they had ever encountered before. Their current designs eclipsed it, yet the example had been what spurred them forward with the knowledge of what was possible by harnessing the Source.
The Prime Administrator desired that power, but only fragments of the technology were recovered. One such was a damaged device that would bestow its wielder with the Ranger abilities, he’d pried it from that creature’s corpse personally. The original never functioned again, even after it had been repaired and reverse engineered. He rubbed at the device hanging from his neck, honored with the task of guarding such a prize.
Millennia of experimentation was finally paying off, and each time a world manifested, Bartran was sent in to manage the Ranger phenomena. They could direct it, supply their own altered devices by utilizing the call that went out when people fought back with true courage. All of the Earth’s Rangers should have belonged to them, yet outliers kept appearing. He shivered at the wealth of data they had already recovered.
The human anomalies were powerful, only a step below those first Rangers of the Progenitors. It was the closest they had ever come to a true repeat of the feats of those that came before. Yet, they couldn’t do it on command. The team from Minneapolis was the first to show signs of enhancement among the entire team, with the Black Ranger being their core anomaly.
He would soon order another team to be sparked, the plans for Kansas would move forward to test the hypothesis. If he could replicate the power increase across the board, that would be one step closer to finally figuring out how to bestow that power upon their own mutants. That was the final hurdle to crack, one The Prime Administrator was all too eager to see accomplished.
It would open the floodgate on advancing their technology further, to grasp for the true goal of his creator. They would rule everything, everywhere. The Prime Administrator had caught glimpses of other realities, some long dead, others only now being born. The Source was just one such universe, a place of pure energy that defied all logic.
Not to mention all attempts to observe. Somehow a member of the Progenitor species had stumbled upon it by pure chance and developed it into fantastical technologies, all off their information grids. Securing full access to a planet’s information grids was always a priority for their forces, it often meant the difference between a swift victory and protracted conquest.
Humanity’s own grid, the internet, was a treasure trove of truly entertaining things. Humanity would do well for bolstering the entertainment sector of the Empire once fully assimilated and properly educated.
Bartran had honed the craft over the course of thousands of worlds across multiple galaxies. Tens of thousands more were being observed, prodded forward towards a point where they might be of use. They had to be advanced enough to not see their forces as the coming of the gods, no matter how true it might be. The Earth barely qualified, some small parties clinging to superstitions.
It was a good method for securing a world in infancy, but never for long term advancement. Worlds rich in vital resources were the only places where such methods were deployed, and were thankfully rare. He did not like it when an entire species dropped to the floor in worship of anything other than his martial might.
He read over one such theory that the Sylans were demons sent by hell and could only chuckle. He logged into one of his many accounts and added some fuel to that particular fire so he could watch it burn. Information campaigns were effective, but it was always entertaining to dabble with his own four hands.
Glancing across the screens, an alert pinged that his target was in the open. He glanced at the forces that were in production and found no issues that might delay things. Another check found Maraline sitting with a now fully recovered Guiana following what should be her final regeneration cycle. With her occupied he saw no reason to not deploy the forces he’d arranged for the next test. A simple command and all alerts flagged for the pair were muted.
He didn’t need her sentimentality getting in the way of results and hard data. The Earth was producing such fabulous information for their research that there was no need to rush to the final stages of their plans, but it wouldn’t hurt to deploy a single city killer early. He submitted the request to The Prime Administrator and saw it approved in less than ten seconds. Most of that would be caused by a time delay given The Prime Administrator’s personal ship wasn’t even in the galaxy at present, though it was on standby, ready to make the jump at the first sign of true success.
Returning his focus to the forces that were now allocated to the offensive, he paused on the city killer class mutant. Alone it couldn’t destroy a city, but a dozen could. He had vivid memories of swarms of them rolling through the Progenitor’s final stronghold after their final gambit failed. Deploying a single one was rare, but this would be worthwhile.
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He would also be deploying a hoard of yellow band drones with the instruction to kill anyone they saw unless directly engaged by a Ranger. It would be simple and effective for drawing them in. Every Ranger team felt a duty to defend their people, though some outliers had cropped up among humanity. He attributed that to the nature of the species and how they could twist their own virtues in such a myriad of ways.
Bartran knew Maraline would be cross with him, but she would get over it with time. One pet human wasn’t worth jeopardizing the mission. With a final confirmation the teleport was initialized and the drones were deployed. The city killer would take a few additional moments to materialize, a calculated delay as always.
The Rangers would be tested once more, and if they passed muster, he would take to the field himself to collect their measure. The drones began to provide their feedback as the two primary targets morphed into their Ranger forms and began to do battle. Humans died in droves due to the raw numbers, leading to a spike of power from both Rangers. Intense emotions were good for drawing out greater depths of their connection to the Source, and the readings allowed their models to become ever so slightly more complete with every conflict.
Drones were seen as their ground forces, but the humans hadn’t seemed to grasp that their true purpose was taking detailed readings of the Rangers they engaged in combat. That was why a drone attack always preceded new Ranger teams emerging. All it took was one person to cross the boundary, to touch upon the source, and a new team could emerge. That one person would cause a ripple that extended to anyone else who was desperate to protect others. It was an insidious ploy, and Commander Bartran couldn’t help but feel some pride in The Prime Administrator for having solved that dilemma.
It didn’t take long for the remainder of the team to assemble, and the Commander was pleasantly surprised when Gold joined them. He was one such anomaly that had outlived their usefulness to the experiment and could be disposed of at will. This battle would prove to be a grand opportunity to see a potential thorn removed before the next stage of the plan would begin.
The Rangers fought valiantly, to the point the Commander almost decided to forgo the mutant all together and just go down himself. Even the yellow models were falling with minimal effort and those were designed to push individual Rangers to their limits. Truly they were on the cusp of a breakthrough.
Idly, he touched the device at his neck, wondering if he would soon be able to harness the power it had once demonstrated once upon a time. Merely recreating the damaged device hadn’t been enough, nor had restoring the original that now hung around his neck. Whatever the problem was, it didn’t come down to technical matters.
The device should function just fine, yet it remained ever inert.
Avoiding a sigh, the Commander turned his attention back to the battle at hand, marveling at the displayed abilities of the Rangers. Such unique powers were hardly typical, yet each member of the team seemed to possess some unheard of skill.
Green was the most obvious, commanding plants to become things that completely defied the physical laws of reality. Truly, the Source was something marvelous. It powered their main reactor, provided for replication, yet they couldn’t fully harness it even after all this time. The Progenitors were truly advanced with what they could do, and even after all their conquests, the collective knowledge of the Sylan Empire hadn’t matched that species.
Black’s ability was far less flashy, yet the utility was unmatched. It brought her into a state completely outside of standard physics, almost as though she shifted into a parallel reality. It would make defeating her in combat truly migraine inducing when the time came.
Silver could project barriers of energy on par with their ship’s own shielding, something he was still relishing collecting data on. He’d already managed a ten percent efficiency improvement fleet wide from the data collected so far and had hopes of extending that to a one hundred percent increase before he was forced to end the Ranger team completely.
Purple’s ability was simple movement redirection. He could cancel his momentum instantly, turning it in any direction then accelerate further from there. Simple in concept but dangerous in utility once he obtained a better grasp of it.
Then there was Red. Seemingly she held no spectacular ability, but it hadn’t escaped his eye. She possessed more raw power than anyone else on her team, and arguably, more than the entire combined New York teams. Her manifestation had taken all the latent energy and put it towards pure destructive force.
Each one would be troublesome on their own, but for all five to manifest like that at the same time meant a pattern, and that was what he sought to recreate. Rare outliers had abilities in the past, maybe once every other experiment. Five at once meant they had discovered something, and Commander Bartran was determined to find the causation.
“Yes, fight on Rangers,” he said, watching as they continued to tear through the machines. “Now, how will you contend with a city killer class mutant?”
The readout finally clicked over and the teleport began, sending the recently awoken monster down into the metropolis to begin its destructive rampage. Even with all their power, such a beast had taken the Progenitor’s combined machines to defeat. The Minneapolis Rangers had no such fighting vehicles to call upon.
Commander Bartran couldn’t wait to see how they handled it.
The beast roared and the Rangers began to move, yet he was surprised to see Black step forward on her own. Did she mean to fight the beast without assistance? Truly marvelous how deep her hubris ran, and he couldn’t help but lament the data that would be lost should she die. He would need to attend the battle in person so that he could intervene if needed.
He didn’t need to deal with a General experiencing a bit of rebellious attitude over a dead pet. Worse, replacing her would be a major setback to the plans as they would need to devote another decade or more to education and socialization that he didn’t want to spare. The next planet on the docket for Guiana was set to begin data analysis in only another two decades, far too little time for them to prepare a new ruler for the Earth, especially with the further education that would be required for a General birthed after the planet had fallen. It was so much easier to teach them through interaction with the target species, led by a General who was experienced in avoiding unnecessary attachments.
Guiana was one such expert, able to endear a General to the species without building ties that would threaten the mission. Generals attempting to rebel against them in protection of their chosen species were rare, but did happen from time to time. In such cases, cybernetics could be employed to ensure obedience. Such Generals were never as effective as those who could think freely, but it was less of a loss than replacing a General outright and Maraline wasn’t crossed with a species that would reject the augmentations.
The Commander had eliminated three such Generals himself, and ordered cybernetics for a dozen others. Guiana insisted Maraline was progressing properly, yet he could see a situation where she might decide her pet was worth protecting even if it meant treason. If he suspected it might come to that, he would need to remove Black before Maraline made that final decision.
Inputting the coordinates, Commander Bartran took a breath and let the transporter bring him to the surface. Such teleportation technology wasn’t uncommon in advanced species, but it often took many forms. The least savory would replicate the original at the destination site, creating a clone. He had confirmed they were clones easily enough by checking the quantum entanglement within the mind of the transported being. They were different signatures.
All such technology was prohibited within the Sylan Empire for anything sentient.
The technology he was using simply tore a hole in reality, moving him from one location to another. It was unpleasant, but far faster than the other options they had reproduced. The only other option that might be preferable was the one employed by the Progenitors using the Source as their power. He still hadn’t unraveled it, but the concepts defied all reason.
Thoughts of theory had to be put aside as he arrived planet side. He was on a building that overlooked the current battlefield where Black was dancing around the City Killer with almost insulting ease. Idly he pulled up the readouts from his own cybernetics, tapping into the data feed from one of the drones playing dead.
“Marvelous,” he muttered, watching the readings for Black steadily rise. “Such power is something we haven’t seen since the Progenitor War…”
Immediately he requested a direct line to The Prime Administrator. There was no doubt in his mind that his creator would want to observe in real time. Such communication was resource intensive, and used sparingly, but this was worth it. A window opened in his HUD, showing the visage of The Prime Administrator. He knew his creator could see everything he was witnessing, as well as parsing all the data collected so far and what was being collected in real time. Such information would no doubt be invaluable for solving the remaining mysteries.
The battle continued, as did the silence from his creator.
It was mesmerizing to watch as Black used her ability to avoid all damage from the Mutant, methodically carving it apart. He wished to test himself against her in combat but knew that to do so would mean a fight to the death. He would only do so if ordered, because the potential for data was simply too great otherwise.
So he watched, taking notes on everything he saw that might be of interest even as his creator remained silent. It didn’t take long for the Mutant to finally fall, leaving the battlefield still and calm as a graveyard. Hundreds of humans had died, and he had enough data to parse for the next lunar cycle.
“I’ve seen enough,” The Prime Administrator said suddenly. “This Black Ranger is a threat to our mission and cannot be allowed to continue. Eliminate her immediately and her team if necessary.”
Bartran only allowed himself a moment to be surprised. So much potential for data would be lost, but The Prime Administrator knew that. They must have seen something that the Commander had missed. He brought a hand to his chest even as he sent a signal to the ship to send his weapon down to him. The Greatsword materialized before him even as he bowed.
“By your will it will be done.”