From The Ashes
by Cheryl Roberts

Chapter 11

For a moment, both father and son were too dazed to say anything, then Jamie managed hoarsely, "It is her."

"It can't be," Tommy insisted. He turned helplessly to Vlar. "Can it?"

"That depends. Jamie, did you seal your mother in one of the life support pods when you buried her?" Vlar asked, hoping to get a coherent response from his bewildered friend.

"Y-yes," Jamie stammered. "There was nothing else to use as a coffin; I did not wan to leave her just laying out in the open." He turned to Tommy and clutched his arm. "It has to be Mother. No one else saw her corpse to be able to duplicate it so exactly not even Norzod."

"A zord's life pod is designed to survive the extreme conditions of space. Absolute cold, radiation maybe not a trip through a star's core but certainly a skim through the corona," Vlar said. "Let us not get ahead of ourselves. Zol will run a variety of scans bio-signatures, brainwave, tissue, bone and blood samples.... We have enough data on the Great Imbera to insure that everything is an exact match."

"You'll have to open the capsule to take the samples," Tommy noted.

"If Synn can get those shields down, Zol will be able to breach the outer casing without opening it," the security chief informed him.

~*~

It would be several hours before Zol would have the results, so Tommy and Jamie returned to the family quarters, ostensibly to rest before dinner, but neither one could settle down. They were too keyed up about this latest development. They attempted dinner, but neither had much of an appetite. Their food went untouched.

"They will need to consult Marg's archive to obtain all the pertinent records on Mother," Jamie ventured at last.

"I hope Marg can find them," Tommy remarked. "That place still is a mess after the break-in."

The two fell into another lengthy silence. Both could focus only on the possibilities, but neither wanted to give voice to their thoughts on the matter.

"So um you and Lris completed your bond?" Tommy asked awkwardly, trying to find anything else to talk about.

"Yes."

"What happened to the wedding plans? Or did you decide not to...?"

"When this crisis is over, Lris and I will formally declare our lifebond," Jamie confirmed. Then he cocked a lopsided smile. "Someday in the not too distant future, you will be a grandfather again."

The thought was a little unnerving, causing Tommy to mutter, "I'm too young to be a grandfather."

"Tell me something," Jamie went on. "When you spoke with Jax, did he confide in you about his matebonding?"

Tommy answered his son evasively,"More or less."

"The bond was not with Trin, was it?" was the query. "It has been half a turn of seasons since Trin died; the severed bond should have either dissipated or claimed Jax's life. The bond is still calling to him."

"Let's just say that he has a lot of issues with the bond." He didn't want to say anything until Jax made his decision, but that brought up the most troubling aspect of their conversation. "He did say that he didn't know how to use his powers."

"What?"

"I'm guessing Twyn wasn't able to finish the transfer before her mind was shut down."

"That would explain a great deal; I could not understand why he was having such difficulty with even the simplest of tasks like sending his thoughts out over great distances." The former Imbera shook his head in disbelief. "Why did he not say anything? I could have tried to link with him or Twyn could have begun training sessions."

"Can you still link with him? Jax needs whatever guidance he can get."

Jamie frowned. "I do not know. Parent to child is easier for this type of linkage, but that is not the complication I fear. It is the matebond. Nothing can be done until Jax answers the bonding; if anyone was to intrude on an open bond...."

"You could wind up bonding to his mate?" Tommy essayed.

"Or he could be bonded to Lris. The newly matebonded are very vulnerable psychically. Until a child is conceived the bond is not considered closed. The risks of me attempting to link with Jax right now are great."

"Then Twyn had better start a crash course in Imbera 101," was Tommy's sober reflection.

~*~

The moon was on the rise when the two found themselves back in the Command Center labs. They simply could not stay away any longer. They did their best not to get in the way as they anxiously awaited the Blue Ranger's results. The Green Ranger noticed their arrival and headed towards them.

"Vlar had me run a check on the solar and meteor activity in the Atler System," Emd reported, handing Jamie a copy of the results. "Also, I have computed the possible trajectories for the pod away from the inner system."

"Where is Vlar?" Jamie asked distractedly as he scanned over the contents of the printout.

"Long range sensors have picked up activity on the fringes of the solar system. He and Brath are investigating."

The Green Ranger left them to pursue the data.

"What did he find?" asked Tommy, peering over his son's shoulder even though he couldn't read Threan.

"That it is possible for the pod to have survived," Jamie answered in disbelief. Before Tommy could ask the obvious question, his son volunteered the information. "There was a great deal of solar activity: solar flares, solar winds all within a day of my departure. When the asteroid exploded, much of the debris was pushed out away from the star. The chances are high that the pod was among the flotsam not caught in the gravitational pull."

"Jamie, Kim's been dead for centuries; that body looked battle scarred, not decomposed," Tommy pointed out, trying to be the voice of reason when his heart wanted to be anything but reasonable.

"Granted, but the suspension field is still intact," Jamie countered. "When I placed Mother in the pod, the life support system automatically cycled when the locks engaged which occurred when the lid was closed.

"If I had been able to get Mother into the pod before she died, she could have been returned to Threa and healed."

Tommy put a reassuring hand on Jamie's shoulder. "You had no choice; you had to stop Norzod."

"Obviously, I succeeded in neither task," Jamie said bitterly.

Tommy had no answer for him. Instead, he asked, "What about how long it took for the pod to get here? It didn't take you two and a half centuries to get home."

"The ship I escaped in had supra-light drive; the pod only has sublight propulsion. While made to withstand the rigors of space, it was only intended to travel short distances."

"Any indication of what that unusual radiation was that Synn detected?" Tommy wondered, getting back to the data.

"Hmm... one possible route has it passing through the Siseneg Nebula." Jamie paused thoughtfully. "According to the information Atir and D'Ez provided the original team of Rangers, scientists from Taramu used the nebula for much of their weapons testing. Though it has been a millennium since there was any such activity, the after affects remain. According to Synn, Siseneg radiation has affected the controls of the pod it has mutated the shield configuration. He says he should be able to compensate and get the shields down."

"We can't forget that the pod didn't make it here on its own. Someone planted it on that asteroid. There's no telling what's been done to it," Tommy cautioned. "Are there any inhabited planets in the Atler System? Could someone have tampered with the pod?"

"There is one planet, but it is on the outer reaches of the system. According to Atir's records, it is a harsh, forbidding world the inhabitants war-like and more concerned with their own battles and survival than with the universe beyond."

At that point, a somber looking Blue Ranger approached. Jamie regarded her with anxious eyes.

"We were able to make a small hole in the cover of the pod so we could gather blood and tissue samples," she began. "We scanned for brain waves, but in this dormant state, there is not much to pick up except for baseline readings. Bio-scans, x-rays, blood and tissue analysis everything confirms that this woman is Kimberly Hart-Oliver, the Great Imbera."

The son of said woman turned his helpless gaze to Tommy. "Why would He return Mother's body to us? Why this charade?"

"I don't know, Jamie. I really don't know."

Later, after Jamie had left to pay Lris a visit (among other things, to see if she was still speaking to them after spending so much time with energetic and curious Shan!), Tommy paced Kimberly's room like a caged tiger.

"So, what do you think?" he put to his invisible companion, having run out of options to consider.

"That can't be Kimberly," the Presence said definitively.

"Why not?" Tommy asked, playing devil's advocate. "All the evidence confirms it the medical scans, Emd's research...."

"Do you know the odds for any one of Emd's possibilities happening, let alone enough to get the pod where someone could find it? There are an awful lot of 'ifs' in his data."

"Stranger things have happened," Tommy said with a mental shrug.

"Atler is Norzod's homeworld, even if his base was on an asteroid in the inner system," the voice revealed. "I know what your head is telling you; look to your heart, Tommy. What does it tell you?"

"You mean you don't already know?" Tommy was only half joking.

"I don't intrude where not invited," came the affronted sniff.

"My heart is telling me that the reason you know that can't be Kim is because you are."

Silence greeted his assertion.

"So, were you ever going to tell me the truth?" he challenged.

At last she said, "No."

"Why not?"

"I hoped you wouldn't find out," she continued sadly.

"Kim, I've known it was you in my heart since the first you contacted me. Even Jamie's oh-so-logical explanations couldn't shake it loose," Tommy countered. "Why didn't you want me to know?"

"Because it doesn't matter; it won't change anything. I'm dead, Tommy, really and truly dead!"she shouted, causing his head to ring. The pain in her voice was as raw as the pain in his heart. "I died on that asteroid, and my spirit was sucked into the Morphin' Grid. Zordon didn't bother telling us that all dead Rangers don't go to Heaven. They go to the Grid. That's how we have the knowledge to use the Powers when we get our coins. The spirits of all the dead Rangers who've ever used the Power provides it."

"The Grid? Forever?" he gulped. He'd never given much thought to the afterlife, but he'd always assumed, being a good guy and all....

"As long as the Grid exists, that's where we'll be. The consensus around here is that once the Grid is gone, we'll go on to whatever rewards our various people believe in."

"If you're in the Grid, then how come you're getting weaker? Surely there's enough energy to support you." Tommy asked, totally at sea with all these revelations.

"Spirits don't hold their individuality forever. If we lie quiet, we can last for centuries, but the more we try to do to reach out to others beyond the Grid the more quickly our consciousness disperses.

"I've been keeping an eye on things back on Threa since I 'arrived' here. There was something fishy about Norzod's death; he died too easily when I stabbed him. Tommy, the man was incredibly powerful."

"A nick on the heel felled Achilles," Tommy reminded her, thinking of Mrs. Appleby's unit on Greek mythology.

Kim went on as if she hadn't heard him. "My guess is that he sent out a portion of his consciousness at the last moment an evil seed to grow and come back to haunt us."

"And you know this because...."

"Because of the black wave. Mystical energy isn't good or evil of itself; it just is. It needs a mind to shape it, to color it good or evil. If Norzod hadn't been present at all in his body, there would have not been the evil residue to contain."

"Actually, I meant how did you know he'd 'sent' himself out. And why only part of his consciousness? Why not all?"

"He might have been successful on the asteroid after all, then he could have reclaimed what he sent out." Kim paused to consider. "He had to have done it when I would've been too preoccupied to notice probably when I was transferring the Imbera powers to Jamie.

"As to how I know, Norzod would have a contingency plan in case the fight didn't go his way."

"I'd have figured that he'd have been his most confident facing a rookie Imbera."

"A brand new Imbera is both at his most vulnerable and his most dangerous."

"How so?"

"An Imbera draws his power from the cosmos; literally, the power is siphoned from one source and channeled into the Imbera. This maintains the balance of the universe. When I first became Imbera, I lost control. I tried to use my powers and a world died, Tommy."

Kim's voice became a hoarse whisper.

"It was a dying world circling a dying star; the 'people' had long since abandoned it, but there was still life there. Life I destroyed in a single, thoughtless blink of an eye when I absorbed the energy of that star.

"Not only did a world die, but so did every last person in Norzod's citadel. His Dark Rangers, the putty-like henchmen, innocent prisoners...."

Her anguish washed over Tommy, staggering him.

"You don't know how badly I wanted to get rid of my powers after that," she continued. "I didn't want to be responsible for any more deaths I heard their death cries, Tommy! They'll be with me forever! I swore I'd never use the powers if I couldn't get rid of them, but Norzod left me little choice. The only way I could do it was Sahr and Rhee helped me find stars to absorb with truly lifeless worlds or no planets at all. If I knew exactly where they were, I didn't have to rely on random choice and risk destroying a populated planet."

Both were silent, Tommy trying to absorb all Kim had told him and Kim trying to regain her emotional equilibrium. At last, Tommy ventured, "So, do you think Norzod's out there in a time warp, like Zordon?"

"No, from what I know of him, he wouldn't be content staying behind and letting others do his dirty work. He trusts no one."

If Tommy hadn't known better, he'd have sworn Kim was blushing.

"Who else would I turn to when I need help? Who else has always been there for me?" she asked with gentle affection. "After that initial call which was made in a moment of panic I wasn't going to contact you again. I couldn't bear 'being' with you and knowing I couldn't stay. Every time I touch your mind, it gets harder and harder to say good-bye."

"Then don't," he said simply.

"What? Don't contact you or say good-bye?"

"You won't, Tommy. You can't. We're lifebonded. Someday you'll be with me in the Morphin' Grid and don't get any funny ideas!" she scolded.

Tommy smiled, knowing exactly what she meant. Once upon a time in his moment of greatest despair, he'd thought suicide was the answer, but Kim had showed him that giving up wasn't the way: "It only gives Rita a victory she doesn't deserve!" And he had never regretted listening to her.

"I promise not to do anything stupid."

"Live for me, Tommy," she pleaded.

"Kim, I know I can't bring you back from the dead, but at least let me keep you with me while I can. If for no other reason than we need you. No one understands Norzod like you not even Jamie. Plus, you have a granddaughter, great-grandchildren and more on the way that you've never known. Our family needs your help."

"That's fighting dirty," she muttered.

"Kim, please. I want to do this. I have to. I couldn't be there for you when you were the Imbera. I had to stand by helplessly and let you live and die in another dimension. Now I have a chance to...."

"To do what?" she asked gently. "Bring me back? Keep a part of me with you? It won't work like that. You won't be able to keep me inside of your mind indefinitely, and even if you could, I wouldn't want to exist like that. I'd be forced to watch from the sidelines, never able to participate, never able to feel anything on my own.

"You won't; I know it," he told her confidently. "This is a risk I'm willing to take."

Kim sighed in the face of his obstinacy. "Well, my best guess is that since I'd be leaving the Morphin' Grid, I'd need to gather all my individual energy and travel along your link to the Grid back to your mind."

That gave Tommy pause. "And if this doesn't work, would you be able to go back?"

"I don't want anything to happen to you...." He wavered in his conviction. The last thing he wanted to do was jeopardize what existence Kim had. His selfish desires weren't worth that!

"Don't worry, Tommy; I've already made up my mind," she interrupted, silencing him, appreciating that his concern for her outweighed all else. But then, the reverse had always been true for her. "This is a risk I'm willing to take."

In spite of everything, Tommy couldn't help smiling. "Okay, what do I need to do?"

Tommy laid down on the bed and tried to will his body to un-tense. He was nervous, excited and a little scared. He clutched Kim's insignia tightly. Closing his eyes, he tried to find a meditative state to let his thoughts drifts. However, before he gave over to his relaxed state, he said, "I love you, Beautiful."

~*~

Tommy awoke an indeterminate time later, his head feeling stuffed full of wool, and fragments of dreams drifted away, ephemeral as smoke.

"Kim?" he called out hopefully.

"I'm here."

"It worked?" She sounded stronger, felt closer, but....

"You sure know how to make a girl feel welcome," she teased, a smile of amusement evident in her tone.

Tommy blushed, knowing she was referring either to his unshielded thoughts or to his dreams, both of which centered on her. He didn't care. She had seen him at his lowest and at his best. He'd been intimate with her; he had nothing to hide.

"I do feel like I've come home."

However, before the two could explore their new connection more fully, an alarm claxon sounded. Tommy was on his feet and ready for action. As he rushed from his room, he all but crashed into Jamie in the outer corridor. He hadn't heard his son return.

"What is it?" Tommy asked.

Jamie didn't answer at once. First he slid into the chair before the main computer and tried to raise the Command Center. "Communications must be down. I'll try security...." he barked out in clip tones, as battle-ready as his sire. "Security breach in the Command Center. Level A, section 5 Zol's lab!"

"Let's go," Tommy declared.

"Wait, Tommy," Jamie began, even as Kim was saying, "You won't be able to teleport."

"No teleporting," Tommy voiced Kim's report.

Jamie confirmed with a nod. "Scramblers were activated to contain the intruder; no one teleports in or out. This is what should have happened the night I was almost abducted."

"Any other way in? We can't just sit here and do nothing."

"We could teleport directly outside the Command Center, but the security field will be activated."

"The buffer will let in known patterns but no one can get out."

"And there will be security guards to contend with."

"What about the lower levels?" Tommy asked excitedly. "Those entrances probably aren't too heavily guarded. I know my way around down there pretty well thanks to my unintended tour with Lris. We wouldn't be in security's way, and we can get to the lab quickly through the maintenance corridors."

"Inputting the coordinates to the backdoor," Jamie said with a grin.

In a flash literally the two were racing toward the Rangers' headquarters. They passed through the security barrier without any difficulty, though Tommy experienced some concern for Kim's presence in his head.

"You remind me of me when I was pregnant with Jamie," Kim laughed.

While Tommy's memories of the building were still fresh, Kim's were more detailed. The duo unerringly made their way through the dimly lit hallways and service corridors. Instinctively, they were silent, their senses on alert for the subtlest sign of danger. When danger struck at last, it was anything but subtle; it literally ran right into them.

"Jamie, down!" Tommy ordered as he bore the brunt of the initial impact. The light was so low, he could only make out the intruder's silhouette, no details. However, their assailant was more concerned with flight than fight. He recovered from the fall quickly and tried to sprint away.

"No you don't," Tommy grunted as, from his sprawled position, he lunged after his unknown foe. He managed to snag his opponent by the foot and bring him down. The villain kicked out and caught Tommy with a glancing blow from a large, solid foot. Tommy, however, maintained his grip on the other's appendage, reaching for a more secure hold about his ankle.

By this time, Jamie had recovered and entered the fray. Not particularly elegant but effective nonetheless, Jamie sat down on their struggling foe.

The man continued thrashing frantically, his strength seeming to increase with desperation. He flung Jamie aside easily, but the former Imbera had bought his father time to recover. Tommy was ready and waiting when their opponent surged forward.

"I will call for reinforcements!" Jamie shouted.

"Good," Tommy muttered, not caring if Jamie heard him or not. His foe had an exceptionally long arms; it was difficult to remain out of his reach while landing his own blows. Also, his desperate assailant was not using martial arts, just sheer brute force. While Tommy had the advantage of being able to land his strikes with precision, planned to land to the greatest effect (in spite of his being out of practice), his sparring partner was unpredictable, and even a glancing hit landed with painful intensity. The longer Tommy kicked, blocked and struck, the more mindlessly savage his opponent became.

Suddenly, the darkness was filled with multi-colored light. Red, Blue, Yellow, Green the Rangers had arrived. Two took up positions up the hall and two held firm down the hall, blocking off any escape.

"Tommy, down!" someone shouted.

He hit the deck seconds before the air was filled with the whine of a Power Blaster.

The first beam failed to fell the invader. Then came a second and a third; still the intruder struggled to break free. Finally, all four blasters targeted the villain.

"Don't kill him!" Tommy and Kim shouted as one.

The Rangers almost drained their weapons dry before their opponent finally collapsed.

"Do not worry, Ranger of Earth," the Green Ranger remarked, his tone cocky. "Stun first; ask questions later."

"Let us return to the lab with him," Brath directed. "Contain him in a security field."

"Tommy, are you hurt?" Jamie asked as he helped his father to his feet.

"I'm going to be black and blue for a week," Tommy groaned, "but it's nothing serious."

"Have a healer examine you just in case," Kim advised. "Remember that cracked rib you swore you didn't have?"

"This is going to be worse than you sitting on me all the time, isn't it?" he complained with a long suffering sigh. Aloud he said, "but Zol or Marg can check me out just to make sure."

"Thank you."

"Are you well enough to go to the lab?" Brath asked. "I assume you would like to be present when we see who it is we have caught."

"Just try and keep him away," Kim snorted.

"Of course," Tommy agreed. To his lifebond, he added privately, "As if you wouldn't do exactly the same thing."

"He's a grown man now, Kim," Tommy reminded her with a touch of amusement.

"I don't care if he lives to be 1000; he'll always be my baby," she asserted with that illogical logic Tommy knew so well from his own mother. Perhaps if he'd had a hand in raising Jamie, he might understand that a little better.

"Where is Prist?" Brath asked as father and son joined the two Rangers. "We could use her help figuring out who or what this is."

"She should be in the infirmary with Jax," Jamie replied. "She could probably be spared now to come help. What do the computers say his race is?"

"That is the problem. He does not conform to any one species or race we have on file," Emd added.

Tommy looked at their prisoner. Though he had never seen the face before, he knew this to be the leader of the would-be kidnapers that he'd glimpsed in Jamie's room. The hunched shoulders, the long, heavily muscled arms, the conical head.... However, he hadn't needed to hear Emd's words or to have seen this type of being before to know that there was something not quite right about their captive.

A sense of wrongness emanated from him. It was in the contorted features a disfigurement unnaturally made as if someone had grabbed a handful of face and squeezed until fleshed oozed between fingers. It was in the cruel shape of the limbs like they had been forced to function in ways other than nature had intended. It was in the emptiness in his eyes....

"Omigod! D'Ez!" Kim cried out in Tommy's mind. "Who did that to him?"

"D'Ez?" Tommy murmured aloud.

"What did you say, Tommy?" Jamie asked. "There is something vaguely familiar about this man. Is he one of those who tried to abduct me?"

"I think you know him from somewhere else, Jamie," Tommy said, horror making his voice tight. "Brath, try scanning for..." he paused to let Kim provide him with the correct term, "a Grolad bio-signature and see if it matches any pattern in your database."

Perplexed but willing to try anything, the Red Ranger complied.

"Why Grolad?" Jamie wondered, "and how do I know this being?"

"You've known him since you were a kid...."

"I am coming up with a match," Brath interjected, his voice full of astonishment.

"D'Ez," Tommy concluded, speaking the name Kim had cried out with such anguish. "Atir's helper."

"No...."

"Yes," the Red Ranger Confirmed.

"That's how he was able to get in the security system recognized his patterns, twisted though they were," Tommy realized.

"What happened to him?" the Green Ranger asked, abhorrence filling his voice.

"Where's Vlar?" Tommy asked suddenly. Jamie had gone pale, appearing to be in shock. He did not look to be in any condition to talk.

"He is still on monitor duty. The activity the long range scanners detected are unknown ships massing at the system's edge."

"Ships?" Kim perked up.

"How about Beys?" Tommy tried again. They needed someone else who had known the shaper.

Shock built upon shock as Zol shouted, "Someone get me a healer quick! I am picking up life signs from the Great Imbera!"

Chapter 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | 10 | 11 | 12 | 13 | 14 | Epilogue