THE GREAT BATTLE OF UNKNOWN GAMMA... The AW fleet was getting badly hurt by Rheinland and Phantom combined forces
"This is Jamie, Vice Admiral, I see an opening in The Devastator's fighterbay!" he was taking down fighter after fighter as if he was an ancient Viking Berserker at the highest of his strength. Again he dodged another torpedo and he took down the phantom fighter firing it "I told you the torps are too slow for me you phantom b*stards! Sir, I have a few Supernovas left, are you thinking what I'm thinking?"
"Do your thing, brave warrior! It was an honor having you on my side!" said Nightfall encouraging the brave but suicidal act of the young pilot.
The Maul has reached the middle of the heaviest concentration of enemy capital ships, it stopped there and it's modified AI started ripping through targets of opportunity... every weapon it had fired at double rate.
"Valhalla, here I come!" screamed Jamie directing his Talon through the fighterbay doors of The Devastator, releasing the remainder of his supernova mines behind him. He hit a fighter inside the bay, his speed bounced him into a group of fuel containers at the back of the fighterbay, with the five supernova mines he dropped detonating at the same time causing massive damage from inside the fighterbay of the Devastator. The Devastator was crippled and left floating dead in space as it's power generators failed. Jamie saw a bright flash of white light... then nothing...
"All AW forces, retreat, keep clear of The Maul's blast" shouted Nightfall.
Moments after that The Maul's engines exploded, ripping apart everything that had no shield, sending a swarm of reprogrammed nanobots to "eat" the hull of anything they fell on... thus destroying most of the enemy forces along with some AW ships left there damaged beyond any repair and disabling every single ship and fighter caught in the blast.
Silence...
A life pod drifts slowly to the outer perimeter of the former battlefield. Now it's a debris field of capital ship remains, pieces of fighter craft and various unexploded ordnance waiting for the unwary.
Jamie had just enough time to hit the eject button before the supernova mines exploded blinding him and rendering him unconscious. Escape pod lights glimmer for the last few seconds until they turn off for the last time as a short-circuit caused by the explosion shuts down most of the power grid. The beacon stops functioning rendering the pod completely silent.
Jamie wakes for a second to somehow realise the Darkness that engulfed him was not a good sign. "Uhhh!" Pain. "My head, my arm! D*mn, my everything hurts!" More pain kicked in as he thought "Wait a minute, why is it so dark?"
He tried to move his hand when a sharp spear of pain got through half his body. He remembered, the Devastator, the fighterbay, supernova mines, had five... "Eject! yeah! Have I succeeded?" he thought "I probably did, don't believe death may hurt so much! I can't see a d*mn thing!" and then it hit him "Novas! Must be blind!" and then another thing he realised... there were no steady beeps of the rescue beacon. "D*m why did you have to fail on me?"
"Who would find me? Friend? Foe? Or would I drift forever in space like a ghost ship - better say ghost escape pod?" he thought as he fell back into the bliss of uncounciousness...
A group of Zoners passing by in the vicinity of the battlefield...
"This is Zoners-Brown 5 to Zoners-Brown Leader, are you seeing what I see on my sensors?"
"We certainly are! Looks like a great battle happened here!"
"I'll go closer and scan the debris?" asked Brown 5, the escort scout. Not waiting for confirmation, his Hawk light fighter's thrusters burst and in a matter of minutes he reaches the debris field.
"Those stupid pilots.... At least be carefull out there!" said Brown Leader, the pilot of a Dromedary Freighter full of fertilizers intended to go to Freeport 9 "Hurry up, the Junkers are already there, hardly anything left if you're looking for souvenirs!"
Big chunks of what once were great ships drifted free in the space. A few Junker CSVs were already cleaning the field.
"I found something, it just hit me!" Brown 5 sounded so excited.
"Quit playing there and resume formation! I just want to get rid of these fertilizers and have a drink in the bar. Remember we are on a schedule and need to be back at Atka in time with the order of alien organisms!" Brown Leader was annoyed "Come back and tell me what is it anyway!"
"It's an AW marked escape pod, looks like it survived some big-time pounding! Think the guy inside is still alive? There's nothing comin' out of it!"
"This is Zoners-Brown 1, pilots, cut the chatter and hit the cruise! I have something waiting at Freeport and I don't wanna be late too much!"
With that said, the six sets of cruise engines started their screaming song while Brown 5 was entering back in formation and they reached full speed.
The doctor was puzzled looking at the young man's body so battered "What's this guy been through?"
"He was found in the debris field after the latest 'skirmish' of our friends - the Asgard Warriors. He crippled the Phantom ship - The Devastator, all by himself. Or something like that - judging by his talk in his sleep. The escape pod has AW 282nd markings on it - four Kings of Spades, so it's quite possible. The Suicide Kings are known to really live up to their name." said the nurse in one breath.
"Whatever..." spoke the doctor "What the...? He's waking up from the coma! Kate, check his heart rate! I'll get the tubes out! Tell somebody to contact the AW!"
***
MEDREC ROOM 10, FREEPORT 9, OMICRON THETA
A few hours later...
"I... I can't remember my name! Why is it so dark?" asked Jamie as the drugs kicked in...
THE BAR, FREEPORT 9, OMICRON THETA
A few weeks later...
The three men were celebrating. Big time. Asgard Warriors officers by all means. "Let's get one more and we should inspect the new incarnation of The Maul" said VA Fokke to his two happy looking companions "The construction is nearly completed".
Jamie, with his pair of freshly synthesized eyes, was examining every detail in the room, the bar, the lights, he looked at the bottle again - a bit fuzzy, the drink started getting to his brain... He tried to do a spectral analysis of the stuff inside, then he noticed a beautifull zoner girl in her early twentys, long dark hair tied in a pony tail. "Err, nice underwear" he keept the thought to himself smiling. He enjoyed his new ability... Everything looked so beautifull and shiny. Only if it weren't for the memory loss... that can't be synthesized.
The doctors said it may come back in time. The brain has it's own defense mechanisms. Maybe if he goes to the places where he grew up... "That means going back through half of Sirius to Bretonia..." Jamie thought "Maybe worth a shot!"...
After parting ways with his companions, Jamie went to the Freeport 9 docking bays. VA Fokke assigned an unmarked Talon fighter specially equipped for him. Jamie admired the greatness, the slipstream curves of the craft, then he looked at the bird's cannons - mean things. The tech team was finishing the final job of fueling it.
"Sir, she's ready to go as soon as she feeds!" saluted the tech team chief.
"Good! I feel like stretching her wings a bit."
The fueling of the bird being done, Jamie entered the cockpit, flipped a few switches and a hundred little lights lit up. The HUD was showing "STAND BY..." after a few seconds the AI declared in a pleasant voice "All systems nominal! Status green!".
"Flight control, this is Jamie on special mission for VA Nightfall, requesting permission to take her out!"
"Jamie, you have the go out of bay 4! Good luck out there!"
"Thank you FP9!" he jetted out on full thrusters, killed the engines after 300 meters, made a full 180 and hit cruise past the control tower missing it by a few inches.
"Was that necessary, Jamie?" asked the annoyed Freeport 9 flight control operator.
"MUUHHAAHAAAAAAAAAA!" he heard from Jamie.
"I see you haven't lost your sense of humor! Be careful!" he said closing the comm channel.
The cruise engines were screaming through the void towards the Omega-41 jumphole...
DAYS LATER, OMEGA-49 JUMPHOLE, DUBLIN SYSTEM, BRETONIA SPACE
A lone, unmarked Talon fighter jumps in in the middle of a Molly battlegroup. It briefly stops as the pilot plots the course for Arranmore Base. He kicks the cruise engines but only to be disrupted by a salvo of Hornet missiles. The energy bolts from the Molly battlegroup met only the space vacuum as Jamie hit the thrusters to come in behind one of the Molly Wolfhounds, blasting it into nothingness with a few salvos of his cannons.
"One for the shields, two for the fighter!" thought Jamie with a smile.
"This is Molly patrol omega 13! Unmarked fighter, cease fire and identify yourself!" reacted the Molly captain.
"OK! OK! No need for hostilities captain!" replied Jamie "I am known as Manincap" he said as he tractored the pilot's life pods into the cargo hold "I'll take them back to Arranmore as it's my destination"
Jamie exits the cockpit of his Talon, "Deck officer, see to it these guys in my hold be taken care of. That's what you get when you mess with the wrong people!" he continued his walk straight to the pair that waited for him, they recognised him as he didn't change much in a few years since he left Arranmore and Dublin in search of a better opponent for his suicidal flight skills.
Then it all came back. Henry and Elisabeth Sparrow. Those were his parents.
Images of his past were running through his brain. Before his eyes - a blur. He saw himself as a thirteen-year old, leaving home as a Molly ace pilot "in search of truth" as he called it back then. He remembered that, at that fragile age, he already took down 148 fighters, 21 of those being ace pilots. For the first time since he woke up in the Medrec room at Freeport 9 he really remembered... he knew his name was George Sparrow the Man in Cap, the Grim Reaper of Bretonia. He remembered everything.
Jamie fell lifeless on the floor.
His parents ran to him, his mother taking him in her arms, crying. His father called for a medic.
Jamie opened his eyes to see the doctor. "What...?"
"Easy boy" said doctor Crabtree "how do you feel?"
"Dizzy... I remembered... everything... My parents..."
"Don't worry boy, it's allright. It seems that your brain has 'overloaded' somehow. I'll arrange a transport for you to Liberty Medical Institute. They have to look at this it's strange. Appears to be something Nomad in your head."
This said, the doctor left.
Jamie opened his eyes to a blue interior of a nomad battleship. Confusion was raving in his head while he was getting a grip to reality. "This is not a hospital..." no, it wasn't a hospital.
He was on a nomad battleship. He was abducted along with the rest of the survivors from the freighter convoy that was taking him to New York. The good doctor sent him on a pretty round way, through the omegas to Omicron Delta and finaly to New York... Obviously, the nomads didn't touch him he didn't know why. He didn't care why. He had to escape while he was still himself.
He didn't know that, but the nomad tissue in his head saved him. The nomads felt him as one of their own so he was ignored. He got that piece of nomad in the last battle when the Devastator was disabled, it slipped somehow, breached all the protections of his fighter and got to him but the nomad died before it could take over, only that part remaining, living, feeding off his blood but not doing anything else. Well, anything except the nomads would take him as one of their own.
After much wandering, he found the fighterbay. He also found many fighters, some healing, of course, much more of them completely healthy... He never piloted a nomad fighter... and how could he do?
As he got nearer to a group of fighters, he started sensing something like chatter, it became stronger. He engaged the extra sensors in his eyes - nothing no controls whatsoever in any of the fighters. The chatter became louder, clearer. But it was more inside his head than he was hearing it actually. "Do you need a lift somewhere, brother" he heard it inside his head, he turned, nothing, no one except the fighters, then he turned back to the one in front of him "yes, it's me!" said the nomad fighter "all new hosts act that way, you will get used to it as the link grows stronger with us".
Jamie's brain wanted out of his skull. It was screaming. Then he calmed down and thought to the fighter "You will take me anywhere I need to go?"
"Yes!" Jamie had the impression that the being was getting amused by this.
He entered and the organic tissue of the fighter enclosed around him, he was tucked in comfortably in there "Destination?" asked the nomad
"Human settlement Freeport 9 in what humans call Omicron Theta!" he smiled "this can't be that easy!"
