Phase 4: Defenders of the people, now

"I can't hold onto this velocity for much longer." Jedi thought. True, while his design had been greatly improved, he still had limits, one was Mach 50. When he hit that velocity, he traveled at 11 miles per second. The smallest turn put immense strain on his internal structure. So far, G forces of 173 times normal Earth had been clocked. This rivaled the pull of Jupiter.

Soon after the formation of the United Earth government, and the putting down of the subsequent rebellions, skrimashes, and humanitarian disasters, ther had been a call for a memorial to the near extinction of man. Thus the New Hope Museum was created. Artifacts recovered fromall over the globe from the period of one month twenty years ago were now in one place. The Phoenix, now over a hundred years old, was also there. Jedi was able to be there when she was carefully landed into the still uncompleted building by a slightly older Areana. When she had asked for permission to land, she used the ship's prior name, a name inspired by a television show, which showed people how far man could go, Enterprise.

"Warning, incoming fire."

"Activate the Close-in Weapons System, and lock on to the targets. Evade best as you can."

"Danger," a small part of Jedi's vision (what little he had, since everything was blurred) was blocked by a box, " current velocity of Mach 65.3 is causing the main fusion/antimatter reactors to overload. 35 seconds to critical."

"BETH. Time to Target?"

"37 seconds."

"Yes, its me. I think that story would be better told by Julie as to how it happened though."

"Indeed. Before you is the fruit of Jedi and mine's work. A few stray nanobots were found at the former US Space Force base in Nevada. More accurately, three from Ivan, seven from Albert, but only a single one from Chang."

"Wait a minute. I thought only you and Jedi had nanobots." Pyunma looked up from one of the daignostic screens he was consulting with Joe on.

"That was true until Black Ghost got ahold of you, and you were.....remodeled. BETH units were installed along with the injection of nanobots into your bodies. Their mission was mainly to gather data on the performance, but with your corruption by the BETH's they began making themselves at home, and encoded into themselves your DNA and your mental patterns. In essence, each nanobot made itself capable of coping you, given time of course." Julie walked to a closet, opened it, and hefted out a large blaster, and stuck it to her hip. "When we found them, they were damaged, so they couldn't repair each other, but sensing Jedi and my signals, automatically made way to us. When they were accepted into our bodies, we immediately knew what we had. So, Jedi safely stored them inside of him while he was.........making repairs. Anyway, we were about to initiate the final test to make sure they were stable, but then this arose. We were going to announce it next week to you guys, but...." A tear appeared on her face.

"Iknow." Francoise came up and took her head and started trying to comfort her.

"Upgrades complete." The computer chimed. "Do you wish to upgrade subjects 001, 004, and 006?"

"There's the big question, how deep do we go?" Albert said as he held up his hand. It was cold, he could feel goosebumps appear on it. Jedi had saved him, had given him a new chance. Taking a step forward, he lost his balance and fell and hit the floor, hard.

"Albert!" Everyone chimed.

"Stay back! I am capable of doing this on my own. If Jedi is willing to protect us, help us, even after we almost destroyed him, then I say we help him! We have a duty to protect And as part of that duty we must be strong." Albert got back up, and made his way to the console. He was there a second later, and found Ivan and Chang there with him.

"Intitiate." They said.

"Upgrades underway." Three tubes descended, and took them away.