Rosa Jardine walked down the narrow aisle of the passenger cabin in the decrepit 1969 DHC-6-200 Twin Otter aircraft, jostled as she moved down the aisle, grabbing on the headrests of the well worn seats. The interior of the old plane vibrated loudly from its two propeller engines, which Rosa could see through the scratched and yellowed windows. The bright morning sun lit up the interior brightly, revealing all of its occupants resting peacefully, despite the dramatic events they escaped overnight. To her left was an old man with short white hair and beard, wearing a brown robe over a white shirt and shorts. This was Kenji Nobu, looking intently at intricate blueprints on fragile paper, tracing the four-point hull of the QuadriStar battle station. Kenji looked up at Rosa, giving a sad smile and nod, and then bowed his head again to study the plans.

To Rosa’s immediate right squatted a beautiful young woman with long, straight dirty blonde hair, the legs of her white jumpsuit hiked up over mechanical legs folded underneath her. Her natural hand was holding her robotic arm that she had removed from the stump it was designed to be connected to, and she was patiently and enthusiastically explaining it to a young boy standing in his seat in front of her. This was Jola Winters, and she winked at Rosa with an open-hearted grin, and continue to talk with Theo, Rosa’s son.

On the floor, resting quietly below Theo was Arfie, the white Husky with black and grey markings. The dog opened his bright blue eyes to look up at Rosa, and he lifted his head and wagged his tail to greet her. On the seat in front of Theo was a tightly-wrapped package that was thrown there just before take-off; Rosa picked it up and brought it with her to the back of the plane to an empty seat near the door to the cabin.

She rolled the package around in her hands, and found a loose end of the wrapping to peel back. Curious, she pulled on the loose wrapping to find tightly rolled high denomination bills underneath. She scowled darkly up the aisle through the open cockpit door to the handsome young man piloting the plane, who was busy checking the Twin Otter’s instruments, and smirking at the huge man sleeping in the co-pilot’s seat, his cowboy had pulled down over his face and his long black hair spilling over his gently heaving shoulders. Hanyo Soon looked over to Skoaler and grinned, and then looked back to catch Rosa’s stink eye bearing down on him. He gave her a pretend look of hurt, and then saw what she was upset about, as she held up the ball of cash. He gestured for her to bring it up to him, but she instead dropped the wad on the seat in front of her and looked away, ignoring him and focusing on the bright desert floor of bushes and rocks speeding away far below them. 

She saw a box under the seat in front of her and pulled it forward, lifting the lid and finding light-coloured powder contained in packets of clear plastic. She lifted out one of the packets, and sniffed at it, mumbling, “I’ll be damned… coriander.” Her stomach growled with the aroma of the spice lingering in her nostrils, and she called out to Hanyo, “You said there’s food back here?”

Hanyo looked back, running his hand through his dark, shoulder-length hair, grinning more widely on Rosa’s softened demeanor. “Yes, you’ll find some nuts, cookies, crackers and water in that compartment by the rear door. Don’t lose that package I got from Sheriff Haught… my ass will be in a sling if I don’t deliver it when we get across the border!”

Rosa got up and found the compartment by the door, twisting the latch to open it, and found packages of the promised food and water. She grabbed as much as she could hold and distributed it to the occupants in the cabin. She sat down with Kenji, who was returning the QuadriStar blueprints to between the pages in the Proud Americans Brigade manual. She gave him a thermos of water and some packets of nuts and crackers, and opened a package of cookies for herself.

“I don’t know about you, but I’m starving!” Rosa said, taking a swig of water from a battered thermos and biting greedily on a cookie. “So, I don’t know if I want to know what you can figure out from those secret plans.”

Kenji nibbled on some almonds and sipped some water from his thermos, and looked at Rosa with deep concern in his eyes. “These plans show a huge sea-going battleship that is armed to the teeth with missiles and helicopter bays. Curiously, it has a massive nuclear reactor at its center, and huge water and air turbines. I can’t quite figure out what the turbines are for, because the they are separate from the navigation systems and engines. It’s fascinating engineering… the hull is designed to change its shape, but the purpose of the reactor and turbines, that’s a mystery.”

“You almost sound impressed by this QuadriStar,” Rosa said, now quickly devouring a box of crackers.

“Yes, it’s a marvel of 1977 technology, and… oddly familiar,” Kenji said, turning to look at Rosa. “Your father, Jesus Jardine, he was a brilliant man. He had a way of turning anything to gold. Quite literally. The Cooperative’s financial success was due to his incredible intellect. He could solve any problem and find an optimal solution. He had a brilliant knack for turning a profit, but,” the old man added sadly, “I don’t think he ever truly believed in the founding principles of the Cooperative.”

“What were the principles of the Cooperative?” Rosa asked, washing down the last of the crackers with the thermos of water.

“The five principles were – are – Love, Respect, Justice, Peace and Equality, to be achieved through Perseverance, Empathy, Positivity and Collaboration. It’s a terrible coincidence that the QuadriStar is the same form as the four-point star of the Cooperative,” Kenji said, closing his eyes and putting his head back onto the headrest.

“This is all new to me, and sorry to say Mr. Nobu, these principles sound like gibberish, as far as I’m concerned,” Rosa said, closing her eyes as well and folding her arms into the folds of the yukata she was wearing.

“You don’t remember anything about your father?” Kenji asked, “That surprises me.”

“No, he was sent to the front lines of the SEA War when I was a small child, where he disappeared, as far as I know” Rosa said, her voice drifting as she started to fall asleep.

“There is a fortune of gold of the Cooperative that belongs to you, the sole heir to great Jesus Jardine,” Kenji whispered to Rosa, looking over at her son Rosa, who himself was settling down to sleep in the cabin seat across the aisle from them. Out of the corner of his eye, Kenji saw after a few minutes that Rosa’s eyes were darting under her eyelids, and added in a slow, low voice, “and you will help us find the Jardine gold hoard, to support the fight for 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. ***