This is one of three text adventures from the GR annual, put out by Marvel UK. I am archiving them here so everyone can access them, as the original is quite unfindable. Thanks to Greg "Tripwire`" Weir, who sent me scans from his copy, and transcribed these.

"It's too quiet."

"Gooseman, it's always quiet in space!"

Galaxy Ranger Shane Gooseman turned from the array of instruments in thecockpit of his Interceptor and looked sharply at his friend and fellow Ranger, 'Doc' Hartford.

"That isn't what I meant, and you know it.We're in a perfect spot for an ambush here and yet there hasn't been asingle attack on this ore convoy in the three weeks we've been with it!"

"It'll come when you least expect it," interrupted the Rangers' squadleader, Zachary Foxx, on the ship-to-ship link. "So stay alert, OK?"

"I'm ready, Captain. Just let them try to take this train!"

"That's what I wanted to hear. Niko, how we making out back there?"

'Back there' was the tail end of the massive ore convoy that was on its way to Kirwane. Niko had brought her own Interceptor into line with the last of the five ships in the flight, providing escort whilst the crew on board the huge ore carrier frantically tried to repair meteor damage to its engines. As she watched from her fighter, servo-bots and heavily space-suited men worked to move a broken hyper-drive unit away from the main engines.

"They're doing fine, but I think they'll be on repairs for another two or three hours."

"Make it two, Niko. With that ship slowing us down, the whole convoy's in danger from a raid. You know we can't afford to lose any of theseships."

Foxx switched off his ship-to-ship links and turned on a holographic scan of the space quadrant the convoy was running through. He cursed softly when he spotted the asteroid belt coming up ahead, knowing that if an attack was to come on the convoy, it would be there, where the Rangers would be least able to provide a proper defense. But they had to get all the ships through! On Kirwane, scientists were waiting for the elements these ancient cargo hulks were carrying. With them, they could build new generators and weapons to protect their defense wall.
If the ships didn't make it, the wall could collapse within weeks and the scientific heart of the League of Planets would be open to the raids of any marauders that came Kirwane's way. This was not the time for the League to lose such an important, vital part of it's defenses ...

A flashing light on his instrument panel jerked Foxx out of his reverie. Gooseman, riding shotgun in his specially equipped Interceptor at the front of the convoy, was trying to talk to him.

The hardened space veteran flicked a switch. "Foxx."

"Zachery?" came a young voice that disguised so well the skills of this fighting machine. "Something strange about those asteroids ahead. . ."

"Can you get Doc to patch it through to me?"

"Sure, hold on." There was a pause, then Foxx heard the sound of one of Doc's programs working to link Gooseman's ship's detectors with his own. Seconds passed, then his visual scanners blurred and changed so he could see what Gooseman was seeing. Up ahead were the asteroids that had alarmed the young Ranger.

"I don't see the problem, Shane."

"Zachery, the asteroids aren't moving."

"What?"

Zachery had learnt, almost from day one of his training, that NOTHING stays still in space. Nothing natural anyway. "Think they could be disguised space ships?"

"I'm sure of it! Want me to go in and blast a few of them to make sure?"

"NO!" Niko cut in on the conversation, her voice filled with alarm. "There's something there, sure - but those things AREN'T spaceships!"

Zachery frowned. Niko's powers of precognition had saved them many times, but these asteroids were so strange ... what could they be if they weren't ships, lying in wait for the convoy? He flicked his own scanners back on, but told Gee-Vee, the Galaxy Ranger's computer, to link with Gooseman and run a few checks on the asteroids. Then he checked the status of the convoy ships. The repairs were still taking up valuable time, and there was no way they would be completed before the convoy reached the strange rocks.

"Better take personal guard of that last ship Niko - we'll cover the other four."

"The asteroids do not register on my scanners, Captain Foxx, Sir," cut in Gee-Vee.

"..This is crazy! You should be able to detect something!" Gee-Vee wasone of the finest ship's computers in the fleet. It had a memory capacity for strange phenomena that never failed to surprise him.

"Zachery!" Shane again. "We're within missile range of the asteroids now. Waiting for orders."

The commander of the convoy was rapidly running out of time. It made sense to blast one of the asteroids, but what about Niko's warning? Could she be wrong?

"Shane, prime your missiles. But no attack, not yet."

"If we get in amongst those things and they ARE ships, we're sitting ducks."

"I know that Shane, but Niko's predictions are nearly always right..."

"You've got to believe me," Niko cut in again, "Attacking those asteroids is a BAAD move ... wait! There's something on my scanners. . ."

"Niko! Identify!"

Niko, further back with the damaged ship, switched her scanners back along the route the convoy had taken.

"Twelve large marauders, heavily armed. They're coming in fast now."

"Zachery, I have new information on the asteroid belt."

"Give me the bad news."

"The asteroids have a positive outer rock shell, but it is heavily magnetic. I also detect a hollow interior."

"So there is something inside them?"

"The magnetic field holds anti-matter in place at the center of each asteroid."

The report hit Zachery like a lightning bolt. Antimatter! If anything made of positive matter, like one of Gooseman's missiles, had hit one of those deadly asteroids, the space sector for hundreds of miles would have become an incandescent ball of energy with the destructive power of a small sun.

"Gooseman! You get that report from Gee-Vee?"

"Yeah, looks bad."

"Hey," said Doc. "Those marauders have us pinned against some of the deadliest space mines we've ever come across!"

"Not yet they haven't, thanks to that slow ship Niko's nursing. All ships, change course 180 degrees starboard. We'll be moving parallel to the asteroids and far enough from them to avoid the worst effects of any explosion. Niko, how long to contact?"

"They'll be with me in five minutes, and you in seven."

"Long enough. We divert, and wait."

The wait had to have been one of the longest five minutes in the life of Zachery Foxx and the rest of the Rangers. As the marauders drew ever closer, Niko ordered all the repair teams on the last ship to get inside. The last servo-bat was just through a maintenance duct when the black of space was suddenly alight with the blaze of laser fire.
A quick scan told Foxx that the marauders were big and well armed, but the pirates had sacrificed their armor for weaponry. That was an advantage the Rangers could exploit, but it would need some skilled flying to avoid being blasted.
Gooseman and Doc went in first, while Niko took up a strategic position near the last ship, ready to defend it.
So, although Gooseman started to draw fire, it was Niko who drew first blood as a marauder came too close to her guns and she blew it to pieces with a cool efficiency that had earned her a place in the Rangers.

"No more than they would have done to me", she said over the radio link.

It was then that the battle began in earnest, with Gooseman riding beneath the larger weapons of the marauders and hitting the poorly protected underbellies of the ships. Zachery preferred a frontal assault, blazing into the pirate ships with a speed that would have killed an ordinary man, then pulling out at the last possible moment as he released his missiles. He praised the scientists who had given him the cybernetics that allowed him to perform such feats as yet another marauder became an expanding cloud of space debris.

The marauders, badly mauled, panicked and turned tail. Four ships hit hyperdrive and vanished in a splash of ion trail, six were either crippled or destroyed and the other two... Zachery checked his scanners.

"Niko! Watch your tail!" One of the remaining ships was coming dangerously close.

"I know he's there - have you ever tried to sneak up on a precog? But thanks anyway."

Niko suddenly blasted away from the ship she was defending and turned her fighter in a tight arc. It was the last thing the marauders ever saw before she let fly with her lasers and cut their ship to ribbons.

Zachery watched the last marauder head towards the asteroids. "He could be trying to set them off!" warned Doc.

"If he does that, we're finished," said Gooseman. "We'd never survive the anti-matter blast of all those things going off at once, not at this range!"

"I'll take it!" Without any argument, Zachery swung his interceptor towards the last marauder, knowing it was going to be a close thing ...

Gooseman, Doc and Niko watched in horror as Zachery sped after the last ship, lasers ablaze.

"..He's too close," cried Niko. "Too close!"

Suddenly the laser fire stopped and space went dark for long seconds. Then the airless black sky seemed to explode, as if a sun had come on without warning. The Rangers shielded their eyes, knowing that they were far enough away from the explosion to be safe, but Zachery?

"One of them must have hit a mine," said Gooseman, "But which one?"

Space warped white, red, then blue and faded to a velvet black. Where the marauder and Zachery had been, there was nothing.
Complete annihilation. Their leader was gone.

"Looks as though you're in command for the rest of the flight to Kirwane, Niko," Doc said gravely.

"Don't be too ready to take command," came a faint voice on their radios. "I may be battered and bruised, but I can still give orders!"

"Zachery!"

"I broke away just in time to miss the fireworks."

"You and those cyborg parts," said Gooseman, his voice filled with admiration.

"Come on, let's get to Kirwane. We've got a job to complete."

One week later, Joseph Walsh, the Commander of BETA was sitting in his office at Longshot when a very angry-looking Zachery Foxx came through his door. In his hands was a space flight report. He slammed it down on his Commander's desk so hard that it rocked.

"What the heck is the reason for this?" he nearly shouted.

Walsh looked at the report. "This is the debrief on the ore convoy that delivered the precious elements to Kirwane."

"But it's not the convoy we were guarding, is it?"

Walsh stared Zachery straight in the face and smiled at his old friend. "No, it isn't. I'm afraid I decided that we needed a decoy to get the ore through, so I put my best man on the job."

"You set us up, Walsh! We gave everything to save those ships, and they were running empty!"

"If you hadn't done your best, I'd have been very disappointed. "Walsh stood up and looked out across Longshot Base through his window. Far below him, new spaceships were being readied for final test flights, new ships with the elements his deceptions had got through safely. New ships to bring law and order to the space frontiers.

"Zachery," he said, not turning round, "sometimes we all have to do things that don't seem right, even to our oldest friends. We have to do what we believe in, no matter what. Some day, when you're in a position like mine, I hope you'll realize that too."

When he turned Zachery had gone, leaving the report on his commander's desk. It was signed by him.

"Read and Approved."

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