The Third Jump

The human scientists had prepared well against every plan I devised for freeing Epokap. There was really only one option they had overlooked, and I was loathe to use it.

I activated the recall device on her ship.

Of course the ship was contained within the facility. Low on power, its engines were still sufficiently mighty to blow a massive hole in the science facility, and in the confusion Epokap managed to escape.

But the ship was destroyed, of course. All of that technology - my best chance of getting home - wasted in a purely kinetic exercise to save a member of the race that my people fear and hate more than any other. I was almost inconsolable; in my depression the symbiotes failed to anchor me into Turtle's body.

But as Epokap herself noted, it was actually not as hopeless as it appeared. While her ship was merely an expensive paperweight, she did manage to salvage many exotic materials that, with appropriate imagination, could be made to work wonders. The first use that I put this too was to create nanites that converted human muscles into reinforced carbon fibre capable of much higher tensile strength. Of course the process was somewhat invasive, but when it is endorsed by the most legendary sportsman ever to hurl a leather sphere around at a sporting ground...

... it quickly caught on, and many large scale construction projects were now possible even without the robotic assistance I wished I could risk introducing. Trips body would now be fine with its limited human cerebrum; I made the jump into Turtle as his body matured.

It was time to infiltrate the human's military. So many scientific and technological programmes were still limited by their short sighted interference. So I turned down several opportunities over the next few days until a lowly military position appeared. When I applied, I was initially going to be turned down, until it came out that I was the son of Epokap, the famous actress:

The promise of an autograph was all it took to make my enlistment official.