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Return
B-squad cadets Carson, Tate, Drew, Delgado, and Landors were being briefed on a new criminal when Crugar first received the news.
Kat Manx who before this had been inexplicably unavailable stormed through the Command Center doors with her assistant Boom not far behind.
“Commander! You might want to take a look at this!” Kat called to him urgently from the doors. He quickly followed her out of the room.
A few seconds later they saw Commander Cruger fly past the door and run down the hallway.
The cadets glanced at each other then hurriedly chased after their leader.
“When was the message received?” he demanded of Doctor Kat Manx.
“Just moments ago, sir,” she responded promptly, “She should be landing, any time now.”
“Assemble all squadrons and instructors for her welcome. Do we now how she escaped?” Cruger inquired.
“No sir, I didn’t think to ask. She looked so weak.”
“Understandable, Ms. Manx. You’re dismissed.”
“Thank you sir.”
Cruger stopped to face his rangers.
“Cadets, I expect you to treat this welcome as one of a high ranking academy official, understood?”
“Yes sir!” They responded mechanically though they did not understand what he was talking about.
As they entered the landing bay and took their stances to welcome their unexpected guest, an orange and grey regulation S.P.D. jet pulled slowly into the bay.
The room was silent as they watched the figure step out of the jet. Once she was in view a collective gasp of recognition escaped the mouths of the instructors that had been assembled in the room.
Sky and Bridge’s eyes widened as they too recognized the figure currently walking toward the Commander.
She made her way to the Commander and his five rangers, slightly limping as she did so. Two instructors reached out to steady her but she waved them off. Instead she stood confidently and proudly in front of The Commander and Ms. Manx.
“Cadet DeSantos returning from duty, sir!” she announced with an S.P.D. salute. She winced in pain once she was finished, and almost fell over but the Commander quickly caught her.
“Welcome home, Cadet,” he responded softly.
“Cadet Carson, Cadet Tate! Escort her to the infirmary immediately,” Cruger instructed the blue and green rangers.
Cadet DeSantos! Sky’s mind screamed in recognition as he stole a sideways glances at the petite redhead that he and Bridge were currently supporting as they trudged down the hall.
Their backgrounds were kind of similar, but where his father had been the first S.P.D. Red Ranger, her father had been S.P.D.’s first Commander. She’d been trained all her life for a position at S.P.D. She’d jumped straight to B-squad after getting a nearly perfect score on the S.P.D. entrance exam, she’d been the first female to lead a Ranger squad at S.P.D, and apparently she had survived five and half years in Gruumm’s prison.
He observed her torn SPD Uniform. She wore a B-squad badge, but her uniform looked drastically different then his own. It was black with a neon orange stripe across her chest, and two more stripes on either side of her trousers. Like Syd and Z she had a skirt around the upper part of her pants. He tried to picture the uniform without rips and holes in his head, and began to wonder why hers looked different than the other B-squad cadets. It wasn’t because she was the leader because if that had been the case Jack’s uniform would be similar to hers.
Her wince brought him out of his thoughts, and he shifted his arm to keep her weight off of her right ankle. He glanced over her current state and tried to assess her wounds.
Her right ankle was definitely broken, her cheeks and eyes were slightly sunken in, the imprint of her ribs could be seen against her skin, and from the way she kept sucking in sharp breaths it seemed she had broken a couple of ribs as well.
He noticed something even more disturbing as he and Bridge set her on one of the infirmary’s beds. Her sleeve around her upper arm had been ripped, and he could make out raised scars that had obviously been placed in specific patterns. Torture, had been his first thought. It was Gruumm’s signature means of prying information from his prisoners.
Yes, Tammi DeSantos had physically survived, but how much of her emotionally survived? He doubted she was anywhere close to the person she used to be.
Kat quickly shooed himself and Bridge from the room, and called the Commander to the infirmary.
He and Bridge quietly began their trek to the Common Room.
“Umm, Sky,” Bridge asked in a sad tone.
“Yeah, Bridge?”
“Do you think she knows about her brother, and her dad?” he asked solemnly.
Sky hadn’t even thought about that. Her brother, Brandon, was the A-squad Yellow Ranger. He’d gone missing almost four and half months ago, and her father has been missing for almost two and a half years. Both were classified as MIA. How heartbreaking would that be? To come home and discover that everyone you loved was gone.
“I don’t know, but I doubt it,” Sky responded darkly.