Rosa Jardine watched the beautiful young woman striding crane-like away from the airplane on her mechanical legs, looking through the cabin window from her seat in the 1969 Twin Otter DHC-6-200. Rosa’s son Theo strained to look from his seat across the aisle from her, trying to catch a glimpse of Jola Winters sprint back to the aircraft hanger. The old man sitting behind Rosa, Kenji Nobu, was watching Jola’s progress under the crescent moon back to the silver Datsun 280Z parked next to the hanger, muttering, “I hope she finds the PAB manual in glove box quickly; this whole trip will have been in vain if we can’t recover the battlestation plans contained in it…” 

The battered, old Twin Otter bounced on the uneven ground as it taxied away from the hanger, causing the passengers to jerk sideways and the cabin door at the back slam closed. The handsome young man piloting the plane turned around and shouted through the open cockpit door into the cabin, “Hang on, we’re in for a bumpy ride!” Kenji released his seatbelt and jumped to the back of the plane to the closed cabin door, struggling to open it again. Hanyo glanced back into the cabin to see Kenji yanking on the door, and slapped his hulking co-pilot on the shoulder, yelling, “You take over, Skoaler! Bring us to the end of the road so we can take off heading south!”

Theo called out excitedly to Hanyo as he rushed past him down the cabin aisle to help Kenji with the door, “She’s got it! I can see that Jola’s got the book and she’s coming back!” Rosa squinted across the moonlit bushes and rocks of the desert valley, and could see too that Jola was holding the Proud Americans Brigade manual in her natural hand, and was heading back towards the plane, the red LED lights on her mechanical arm and legs glowing in the darkness. Skoaler turned the plane around abruptly, causing Kenji and Hanyo to lose their balance and fall onto the cabin floor. 

“Hey, Skoaler, take it easy!” Hanyo admonished his business partner, who was looking back under the rim of his cowboy hat with an expression of urgency on his face and pointing at the approaching car headlights bearing down on them through the cockpit’s windshield. Hanyo saw what Skoaler was pointing at and shouted out to everyone, “Get ready for takeoff! We’re leaving now!” Skoaler nodded and revved up the twin props on the plane, making it vibrate loudly.

“We can’t leave Jola behind! She’s got the plans!” Theo almost screeched, holding tightly on to Arfie, the white and grey Husky with blue eyes, whose weight was keeping the boy from getting out of his seat. “Arfie! Get off me, oof!”

“Theo, stay where you are!” Rosa commanded her son, “Is Jola near the plane yet? Can you see her?” Theo stopped struggling under Arfie and looked out his window, which was now facing the hanger and the parked car. There was a loud bang at the back of the cabin with Hanyo kicking the door hard with his motorcyclist’s boot, making it swing open. 

Hanyo shouted through the opened door out to Jola, now in full sprint towards the rolling plane, picking up speed and heading straight for the brightening car headlights, “We can’t stop!” Hanyo watched the young woman speed towards her, her bird-like mechanical legs gracefully sidestepping the bushes and boulders on the sandy ground, and adjusting her direction to meet up with the plane rolling down the uneven dirt road. Her natural hand holding the PAB manual pumped as she ran, and she reached out with her mechanical hand, the pincer on the end open. “Grab this handle!” Hanyo directed Jola, holding onto a metal bar just outside the cabin door.

Everyone inside the plane could now hear the roaring engines of the cars just ahead of them, over and above the vibration of the propellers at full throttle. Jola was now alongside the plane and matching its speed as it bounced on the dirt road, stretching to reach the handle on the side of the door. With a clang, the pincer on her mechanical arm sideswiped the handle as the plane bounced. She kept up with the plane, and once the wheels started lifting off the road, she lunged again at the handle and was able to close the pincer around it and with a yank started to lift her off the ground too. She pulled her mechanical legs up under her and threw the manual with the white star on blue and red stripes cover into the cabin so that she could grab onto Hanyo and Kenji’s outstretched hands to pull her in. She swung her legs onto the cabin floor and released her mechanical hand from the exterior handle.

Skoaler pulled the plane into a steep climb, the tires of the landing gear nearly grazing the hoods of the cars skidding to a halt underneath the Twin Otter. Hanyo, Kenji and Jola slid into the back of the cabin, getting tangled in each other and trying to find something to hold on to, while Rosa and Theo were still safely strapped into their seats and looking back at them wide-eyed. Skoaler leveled the plane, letting Hanyo untangle himself from Kenji and Jola and try to close the cabin door. He fought against the rushing wind pulling the door open, and was assisted by Jola how grabbed the door’s interior handle with her mechanical arm, and leveraged it against the toes of her mechanical feet digging into the worn, rubber cabin floor. The door slammed shut, stopping the wind from rushing into the cabin, and Hanyo secured it so the only noise in the cabin was the vibration of the propellers and Jola’s gasping for breath.

“I didn’t think I was going to make it!” Jola gulped, “I hope this book was worth it! You can get a PAB manual anywhere you know! Gas stations and supermarkets, for gosh sakes! You said something about plans?”

Kenji picked up the PAB manual jammed under a seat on the floor and dropped into a seat to let Hanyo go by and return to the cockpit, who then flipped on the cabin lighting so everyone could see. Jola let her legs fold under her, lowering herself down and resting next to where Kenji was sitting. He flipped the manual open and carefully lifted out the rice-paper blueprint to rest it on his seat’s table tray. “Your courage and strength in recovering this has assisted the California Independence Movement in identifying this new threat,” he said showing the plans to her of the four point star-shaped seagoing battlestation.

Jola immediately had an alarmed look on her face and asked in a quivering voice, “The QuadriStar! How did you get this? And what the hell is the California Independence Movement?”

*** This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, places, events and incidents are either the products of the author’s imagination or used in a fictitious manner. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental. ***