Jae's Fortune

"Even in our day, science suspects beyond the Polar seas, at the very circle of the Arctic Pole, the existence of a sea which never freezes and a continent which is ever green."

– H. P. Blavatsky,

The Secret Doctrine - Volume 2,

May 2008

***

They waited for the ship to board them, and sprang into action when it got close.

The C'Nosi flew near the military patrol ship and opened its mouth. The resulting decompression launched them towards it with velocity.

They immediately activated their armours' magnetic greaves and landed on its bow. It was easier than Jake thought it would be.

The ship tried to launch missiles but the C'Nosi was too close. The missiles deactivated when they couldn't compensate for a sufficient turn, and the duds coasted into space. At such a close distance, the turrets couldn't get a lock either.

They quickly approached an exterior airlock. Jake touched it and Siren began overriding the protocols, the airlock opened in a matter of seconds.

"Are you ready to do this?" Jake asked them.

"Oh, yes. We've been ready for this for a long time." Michael said with a feral grin from behind his visor, the men nodded their approval.

They burst into the airlock and repeated the process. When the pressure equalised, they entered the ship's forward batteries. The gunners freaked out and bolted out of the compartments as they moved forward.

"Follow me, I know my way around these."

"I thought there'd be a newer model by now. It's been a long while since any of us visited Sol."

"They keep the old ships for mundane patrols. Enough to scare the pirates away but not enough to require massive upkeep."

Jake and the two men followed Michael through the corridors, and they met the boarding team on the way to the bridge.

Both parties took cover quickly and started exchanging fire. Jake had an idea.

"My name is Jake Evans, surrender now and your lives will be spared." he bellowed through his armour's external speakers.

"You lie. Jake Evans is at Tansa, a quarter of a century away." shouted their leader, trying to steel his comrades.

Jake moved into the cross fire and his fists crackled with energy. All fire ceased.

"I do not lie."

"God, it's him! Fire!" their leader shouted.

Nothing happened.

"I said fire! God damn it!"

"Do you think pulse weapons are going to harm me?" Jake asked with a smirk.

They dropped their weapons and surrendered immediately. Similar scenes happened all over the ship. After the crew were confined to the brig, they moved on to the bridge, and it was sealed from the inside.

Jake pressed a button on the intercom, and the familiar voice of the captain crackled as it greeted them.

"Well, if it isn't the great Jake Evans himself. Welcome aboard, you traitor. I see you brought Cromwell with you as well. Good."

"I'm not sure how you got here in record time, but I assume your friend out there had a hand, or rather a wing, in it."

"Sadly, I'm about to rip it a new ass, and a new asshole to go with it."

"The bridge is sealed, there is no way inside, and thanks to our counter-mutiny measures, you are now in your new prison cell: the entire ship."

Jake listened in amusement. He touched the intercom. Siren got to work with glee.

"Captain! The manoeuvring controls are not responding!"

"What the hell? Check it again, ensign."

"Same result, sir!"

"Sir! The reactor just shut itself down, we're dead in space!"

The sealed hatch to the bridge opened and Jake stepped inside.

"Hello, captain."

The crew looked at him with terror.

***

After they secured the rest of the crew, they set the ship's autopilot on a docking course with Mars and gave the captain a message to deliver. Then they returned to the C'Nosi, which was waiting patiently.

"I can't believe you just captured an entire heavy cruiser with threats and a touch of your fingers." Michael said in disbelief.

Jake laughed.

"I didn't do it alone. We all did."

They looked at him incredulously.

"Okay, you made your point, but at least we spared ourselves a bloodbath." Jake commented.

"That's true. So, what's our next step?" Michael asked.

"We see if we can avoid the next bloodbath."

"Not likely, we lost the element of surprise."

"Also true, but I still have a few tricks up my sleeve." Jake said with a smirk.

"Can you cold-coast?"

he asked the C'Nosi.

"If you mean hibernate and reduce our heat emissions, we can."

"Just like the way I found you in the hangar bay at Ita, correct?"

"Correct, but we can't breathe."

"Do it."he told it.

"General, we're going to lose air soon. Be ready to switch your armours to rebreather mode." he told the soldiers.

"It will switch automatically."

"I didn't know that model, and I wanted you to be ready."

"Thank you, we stand advised. What's going on?"

"We're going to cold-coast the rest of the way to Luna."

"You mean like silent-running on submarines?"

"Yes, but we are not in a submarine."

"I didn't know the C'Nosi could do that."

"It was hibernating when you found it. It says it can do it again." Jake pointed up at the C'Nosi and shrugged.

"Make sure you turn off your radio gear and switch to direct laser comms for now." Jake advised.

"Good thinking, Jake. They won't be able to detect us! They won't know what hit them!"

"We're not attacking just yet."

"What are we doing then?"

"Just wait and see."

***

One their way to Luna they met an awesome fleet. Six battleships, eight carriers, and innumerable heavy cruisers, light cruisers, destroyers, and frigates.

A single UEAF battleship was a sight to behold. Stretching over thirteen kilometres from bow to aft, it was a weapon of mass destruction. Unlike the battleships at Tansa, their UEF brethren were enormous, perhaps due to the size difference of normal Terrans versus the average height of a Tansan sailor. Turret emplacements and external missile racks adorned their hulls, and their massive thrusters roared as they flew by.

"We just passed them by, and they couldn't detect us." Michael whispered over the laser comm, although no whispering was necessary. He was observing the passive sensor equipment they brought along.

"Yes, we're basically a stray rock to them right now. They'd need a very powerful optical telescope focused especially on us to detect us at this range." Jake replied as he observed their surroundings through the eyes of the C'Nosi.

Passive sensor suites were nothing compared to its sight. He could perceive motion, zoom in on distant objects, and 'see' various other properties of the objects he observed. Siren helped him even more by highlighting what she deemed interesting and plotting projected trajectories in his mind.

"Oh, for the love of mathematics. You nerd!"

he thought to her.

"Hey! I'm only helping!"

she exclaimed.

"Thanks, you really are."

he thought with sincerity.

He took another look at the fleet and their projected path.

"Looks like they're heading towards Mars with speed. They expect us to be there, I suspect." Jake said.

"Good, then they won't be in our way when we reach Earth." Michael said.

They monitored the news broadcasts as they approached Luna, and as always, the news of their arrival had leaked somehow.

They watched in amusement as the records of their assault on the heavy cruiser spread like wildfire. News stations were broadcasting the footage non-stop now, and the authorities were refuting it with every breath they had.

Jake chuckled when a news anchor described him as a "demon in heat". The soldiers laughed, but Michael wasn't amused.

They could finally see the Earth in the distance now, and it was growing steadily. The old planet was beat. Consumed by centuries of wars and pollution, the polar caps flared with their lush greenery and great walled cities. The equator looked like a wasteland, with varying degrees of desolation in between.

They couldn't see the aquatic city of Oceania, but knew it was there on the planet's dark side. The ocean was glowing with very faint lights where its space-port lay.

Jake gathered them around and laid out the plan.

"Are you sure about this? Your armour alone can't handle the reentry heat." Michael looked doubtful.

"I can handle it, don't worry about me." The C'Nosi had assured him that it would work and he believed it.

***

Right on schedule, they reached Luna, and performed an orbital slingshot manoeuvre that would have made any human starship pilot seethe with envy. The C'Nosi were masters of space travel, it seemed.

The C'Nosi adjusted course very slightly and they were suddenly inserted into an orbit around Earth.

Coming about the other side of the planet, they ran into the rest of the fleet, with almost the same composition as the one they saw heading for Mars. They waited till they were over the dark side again.

Jake briefed the C'Nosi and gave him his instructions on what to do next. He observed Michael as he looked at them with determination.

"Standby for orbital insertion sequence." Michael commanded his men.

"Yes, sir!"

They took positions by the sides of the enormous mouth, and Jake followed suit.

"There will be comm silence from this moment and until we reach the surface. We can't use laser comms mid-flight and we don't want to expose our positions using radio."

They both nodded.

Jake asked the C'Nosi to open its mouth and it did. There was no decompression this time though, and they had to use their armour's thrusters to decelerate enough for gravity to do its work.

Jake clenched his teeth tightly as the temperature rose around him and he descended rapidly into the atmosphere.

He felt the pressure and the heat and his heartbeat quickened. The temperature was rising rapidly and it was starting to scorch his skin. He felt like he was about to be cooked alive inside of his armour when something shredded it from the back and engulfed him. Oxygen wouldn't reach his lungs and his consciousness quickly faded.

His last conscious thought was of his family.

***

He was jolted into awareness by the air on his face and the lack of pressure on his body. He looked around and saw that his armour was covered in soot and burnt crystals, and that he wasn't falling down any longer.

He looked up and found that his armour's chute wasn't deployed either.

"Soar."

something whispered in his mind.

He tried to clear his head and looked behind him, where he found the wings from his dream. Four long wings sprouted evenly from his back and gently swayed with the breeze. They were carrying him gracefully. He tried to move them and they tilted with grace. The veins glowed with a faint blue light just like when he saw them in his dream back in quarantine.

"Soar."

Siren whispered again.

"How is this possible?"

he asked Siren.

"The crystals in your body responded to the danger and engulfed you in a protective shell at the last moment. That's how you survived reentry."

"Why do I have wings? I thought it was a dream."

"The crystals have a mind of their own, Jake. You can't fully control them. They observe and they adapt. They will also obey, as the C'Nosi told you. I couldn't open your chute myself, so I told them to give you the wings from your dream and they did."

Jake was in shock. He hadn't realised how powerful the crystals were. He knew they had changed him physically, but he would have never guessed to what extent. Was he becoming less human with every passing day like his uncle said? Or was this the next step in human evolution?

He had to find out, but he convinced himself to wait for answers later.

"At least they're not fluffy wings like yours were."

he thought with a smile, trying to lighten up a little.

Just then he saw a small anti-air missile launching from the ground and heading up his way.

He frowned and dove with great speed, and down he went. The missile followed through. He waited until the last moment before lurching to the left and upwards, the missile detonated where he would have been seconds later.

He flew with purpose to the source of the missile, and found an anti-air battery awaiting him. He showered it with sparks until it went inert.

He landed close by to inspect it. He found two dead soldiers holding their launcher.

"What a waste." he whispered in defeat.

He flew up again and towards the spot where he and his team were supposed to meet.

***

Compared to the crushing gravitational pull of Tansa, Earth was a cakewalk, although the atmosphere was much worse for wear. Centuries of pollutions and constant wars had their effects on the atmosphere as well.

Luckily, Michael and his team were all combat veterans, and had seen much worse. Jake's body simply shrugged off the pollution thanks to the crystals in his bloodstream. The antibodies in his blood helped him fight off the pathogens that assaulted his body, which were similar but not quite the same. His immune system adapted quickly to the new invaders and dispatched them with efficiency.

Jake spotted Michael and his team far in the distance, he closed in and swooped by, then landed nearby. They had their weapons trained on him the whole time, until they finally recognized him; they looked at him with mouths agape.

"Holy shit, Jake. When did you sprout wings?" Michael asked in awe.

"On the way down."

"You'll never cease to surprise me."

"I've never stopped surprising myself. How is everybody doing?"

"Thomas here..." he pointed at a soldier, "...sprained an ankle."

"Don't worry about it, sirs. I can handle it!" the soldier said.

"Perhaps it would be better if you waited for us here..." Jake started.

Michael gave him a silent "Don't".

"Never mind me. Where were we?"

"What do we do next, sir?" a soldier asked.

"We blend in." Jake told him as he started taking off his armour.

"What?" they all asked in shock.

"If we have any chance at all of getting into the Senate, it won't be by battling our way through."

He willed his wings to retract as he removed his breastplate, they were completely gone by the time he took off the rest of it. They looked upon him with astonishment.

"Get to it. We don't have forever. They surely are searching for us right now. I just destroyed one of their anti-air batteries." he didn't mention the two soldiers he'd killed by accident.

"Yes sir!" the older soldiers echoed, as Michael began removing his armour.

They were all wearing standard jumpsuits underneath their armour, so they decided to find new clothes as soon as possible. They pulled out inflatable bags from their armours and used them to conceal their weaponry.

They stashed their armours and marked their locations on their data-pads.

And thus began their long march towards a terminal for Oceania.