As soon as Cordelia had sat down in her seat, she frowned. What kind of food should she get for so many people? She had counted on only the Duke and the two would have survived on sandwiches, but now there were kids around. And David. It wouldn't work to bring regular food from 1875 over; they had no kitchen to prepare it. Cordelia also didn't feel like standing in the kitchen for hours and quickly transporting the food over here. That would be too much of a hassle and it would take too much of her time too.
"Norbert, what is the smartest time to get packaged, healthy food for six people for a few days?"
"2032," Norbert said. "I suggest arriving in late spring. Your financial account for that time should still be operational."
Cordelia had made it a habit to deposit some money in bank accounts in various time-periods for occasions like this when she needed money. "Good. Let's hop over to the house and collect the bank card for then." She looked at the monitor to be certain everyone was still accounted for. David sat with the Duke and Duchess. Things were fine. As she pressed "Go" she wondered how she would have managed this without him.
~
After picking up the bank card and changing into clothes that would look acceptable, she travelled to Los Angeles. Big cities were great to hide in. No one knew each other there, and anyone was just a face in the crowd, hardly seen and instantly forgotten. With her she had a big backpack, which would be her shopping bag.
It was easy to hide the STAR in this big city with its many houses that were left to crumble after a giant earthquake. Cordelia wouldn't be here long enough for bad things to happen. She had her nav module with her, which guided her to the nearest bank building where she obtained some money, after which she walked into a supermarket and loaded up a lot of food that was prepackaged and would last for several months. If the Dukal family didn't eat all of it, David and she would have an easy time with lunch for a while. She also bought a few large bags to put all the waste in. She didn't want to upset history by having twenty-first-century trash on an island that for her was located in 1715. It would be shocking for researchers and she didn't want that to happen. It took her a lot of effort to get all her groceries back to the STAR. She didn't know the appetite of those people so she had bought plenty of food. The backpack was quite heavy and Cordelia hoped there wouldn't be any trouble. With that weight literally on her shoulders, she would have a hard time fighting off nasty people. Her luck stayed with her though; no one paid her any mind and so she reached the time-machine quickly.
"Whoa, glad I'm free of this," she sighed as the backpack hit the floor of the STAR. Cordelia took a little time to flex her shoulders before going back to her house in Newcastle. There she had to repack everything into bags that should look acceptable to the Duke and his family, and she put on her Victorian dress again. She didn't want those people to go through too many changes; they were going through enough already.
The bank card was stored with the collection of other cards she had on file and she returned to the island. The Percy family would be glad to see her again, and David most of all.
~
Her return to the island, however, held a surprise she didn't like. No one was there. "What the hell..." David had promised to keep an eye on the family as long as she was gone, and now everyone had run off? Why? And where?
Cordelia left the machine and looked around. In the sand, she saw lots of footsteps, which was to be expected. Again she checked her surroundings but saw no one. She also heard no one. This was not good.
"Norbert. Can you locate anyone here?" she asked as she entered the STAR. "We did get to the right island, right?"
"Affirmative. There are three people about half a mile away. There are about thirty-five out at sea, quite close to the shore."
"What? Thirty-five? How is that possible?" She looked at a monitor that flickered to life. "Oh. No." She saw a large sailing ship and on the highest mast waved a black flag with a skull. Pirates. Cordelia sat and stared, not knowing what to do. She could never have imagined that. There were a lot of criminals in the time she had grown up, but pirates were a thing of the distant past, and now she ran into them. Okay, not physically yet but that could change quickly. "Where are those three people? And are they ours?"
Norbert showed her on a map where it had detected the three. "I cannot determine if they are ours but since one of them is rather small I can compute with reasonable accuracy they are."
"At least that's something." Cordelia took the Skreller-gun and switched it on. This was serious. With the nav module strapped to her arm, she left the machine, locked it, and walked to where the module guided her.
Getting there was difficult as the ground was uneven and covered in all kinds of crawling plants that had to be designed to trip people. She could imagine those plants wanting to suffocate any victim they made and cast that bit of imagination aside. This was not the time for such things. She walked and stopped regularly, looking and listening for people she didn't want here. A slight vibration on her wrist made her look at the nav module. The three that she was looking for were moving! Damn, they should stay put! This meant Cordelia had to speed up on a terrain that did its best to prevent that. Having the big gun with her didn't help much either.
It took a while before she had reached the spot where, according to the module, the three people were. To her relief, she saw David, with the Duke and one of the children. She felt her heart jump for joy. "David!" She called out as quietly as she could, seeing the three slowly move through the odd forest.
"Cordelia!" The three looked up. She had never seen anyone look so happy while she was holding a Skreller. "There are pirates," David said. "They took the Duchess and most of the children. We managed to get away; there was nothing we could do."
"I saw their ship. We'll have to go there and get them." Cordelia had already thought of that. The details on how to actually get the Duke's family were still somewhat fuzzy but she had to do something. She had taken this assignment and she was going to get these people back home, safe and sound, even if she had to take that whole ship apart with her Skreller and some props from the STAR.
"How do we do that?" The Duke looked quite bad. Clearly some of the pirates had used him as a punching bag. It would be quite a challenge to patch him up or explain to the Queen why her Treasurer looked beaten up after coming out of safety.
"We're taking the STAR and parking it on that boat." That was almost her entire plan for now but it would give her a lot of space to improvise. "From inside the STAR we'll first scan their ship and see where your family is. That will make it easier to get them. And this is going to point the way." She held up the Skreller-gun. Despite his punched-up face, the Duke looked eager to get his hands on it.
Cordelia led them back to the STAR where, to their mutual relief, no pirates had shown up. On the way to her machine, Cordelia had thought about the Duke and his desire to shoot things. "Sir, how good a shot are you?"
The Duke liked that question and rapidly detailed the many shooting contests he had participated in and how he had won quite a lot of them.
"That sounds impressive, sir. Listen..." Cordelia wanted to talk shop now, and being overly polite didn't fit in with that. "I'm going to look at their ship and locate your family. For this one time I will let you handle the Skreller. You have to promise you are not going to change the settings on it because if you do something wrong, you can blow up the entire ship, us included. You don't want that, trust me. Nor do I." Nor does history, she added, and she wished there was a way to lock the Skreller into one mode.
"I promise I will not alter anything on that weapon," the Duke said. "On my word." Cordelia knew that was quite a promise so she gave the man a crash-course in holding and firing the Skreller. It was uncanny how naturally he took to the gun. It almost looked like it was made for his hands. "This is enough training," the man said. "Let us go there and make those people pay."
"We will, sir, first give me some time to find them." Cordelia looked at David. "Sorry, my love. There is nothing you can do but sit and hope for the best."
"I can do that, Cordelia," he said as he sat down.
She swallowed hard, then got to work on the scanners of the STAR. Such a blessing that those were fully operational and, for that time, top of the line. She pulled up the ship as closely as she could and counted life-signs that the infra-red scanner picked up. It looked as if the family was one deck down, which wasn't too bad, although there were lots of pirates around. That made it bad enough, since there were plenty of them on deck as well.
"This isn't going to work," she muttered. "Too many of them on the deck. We need to get them away from there."
"I can shoot them off," the Duke said, as calm as if he was talking about the weather.
"Not possible, they are too scattered. You have to be outside and even with their old-fashioned stuff they can hurt you badly. Nope, not today, sir."
"Your speech has changed remarkably, Miss Lexington."
Cordelia swallowed again. Damn. She had to watch her tongue and her speech, and come up with a fighting strategy.
The Duke leaned over her shoulder and studied the deck as far as they could see it from inside the STAR. "Would you be able to place your contraption on the deck, here to the front?" he asked as he pointed.
"That should be no problem."
"And here?" He pointed to the after-deck. That too wouldn't be a problem. "I am beginning to understand what your machine is capable of, Miss Lexington. Now, if it were possible to land here and our friend David tosses out some burning wood, and a few moments later, no more than a minute later, you land here and we hand them some more burning wood, wouldn't that keep them occupied? As long as they are working on saving their ship, we could land here, in the middle, make our way down to the hold where they keep my family and liberate them."
This gave more shape to the overall plan but the part of having burning bushes inside the STAR worried Cordelia. The machine was made to move people, not to hold fire. For long seconds the three waited for someone to make a suggestion after she had voiced her unease with the plan.
"Can we get some phosphorus?" David then asked. "I know phosphorus will burn quickly without the need for open fire."
Cordelia looked at him and beamed. "That is a fantastic idea!" She looked at the clock that showed her the local time and date and stored that information in a memory bank of the machine. "Let's get to work. Sit down, gentlemen, we're going to start some fires."
The Duke didn't like to part with the Skreller but he handed it to her for safe-keeping while they were on the 'road' for phosphorus and some dry wood...
~
It didn't take Cordelia long to find out that most phosphorus was found in Morocco and Russia. She picked Morocco as a place to start and selected a spot high over one of the old mines to appear. That would give them an opportunity to find a good landing spot without being seen. She also decided to go back about fifty years.
"It looks like I guessed right," she told the two men. "That's a mine and that's a city. Norbert, can you determine if there is a market of sorts near that town?"
"It is called a bazaar, and yes, there is one."
Henry Percy, seventh Duke of Northumberland, jumped to his feet and looked around. As he did so, Cordelia knew where she had gone wrong: she had never told this man that the STAR had its own voice. She did what she could to put the man at ease, but despite that he didn't really look calm. Since Cordelia didn't want to lose much time, she returned to her seat and, together with Norbert, she found a good spot to hide the STAR.
The trip to the bazaar was quite an enterprise. It was easy to find, but their clothes were out of style in this exotic place with many colours, wide robes and turbans. Finding someone who sold what they were after was quite easy as well, but the payment for the goods ran into a snag as Cordelia had no money of this time and place with her. The Duke came in handy as he unhooked the gold chain on which he had his pocket watch. The phosphorus dealer was eager to get his hands on the gold and offered them several more of his wares, but that wasn't what the small group was after.
With two jugs filled with phosphorus they started to go back to the STAR. David noticed several people, most of them children but also some adults.
"We can't have that," Cordelia said. "I don't want them to see the craft. Can we chase them away?"
David handed his jug to the Duke and fell behind as they walked on. "I'll try to divert them," he said. "You two find a detour to the STAR. I know where it is."
"I don't want us to get separated, David," Cordelia said, but she knew they didn't have much choice.
"We should have brought your gun with us, Miss Lexington," the Duke said. "It might have attracted some attention but it would certainly have been a bloody good deterrent." For once Cordelia had to agree with the man.
"Go ahead. I'll catch up with you," David said. He turned around and walked straight to the people who were following them. Cordelia wanted to yell at him for being a pig-headed idiot who had no idea what he was getting into, but she also had her loyalty to her vow to keep the Duke safe. And that meant also taking care of his family.
"I'll come back for you as soon as I can if you don't get there in time!" She felt tears on her cheeks as she saw him duck into an alleyway. The Duke pulled at her arm, yanking her into another street.
"I know!" she heard David call out. She hated this situation with a vengeance she hadn't felt often but there was nothing she could do about it. Using the navigation module they hurried through the streets and alleys while holding the jugs with water and phosphorus. Twice Cordelia and the Duke ran into what had seemed like a way through that ended up in a pile of junk, but finally they made it to where the STAR was hidden.
"We need to go now," the Duke commanded, but Cordelia wasn't going to give in to everything he said. She could get them back to the right time so she would wait for David as long as possible. "What are you waiting for?"
"For David."
"You said you could come back for him so do that. We have to go back and save my family!" The Duke looked as if he was going to take control of the STAR's console.
"There he is." Cordelia saw David running towards the STAR. The bad thing was that there was quite a crowd coming after him. It would be a very close call to get him inside, close the door and disappear without harming any of the locals. "Norbert, get everything ready to close the door as soon as he's inside."
"Affirmative," Norbert said. That took the Duke's mind away from his demands just long enough. Cordelia started the systems and set the temporal and spatial coordinates to where they had just come from and watched the monitor that showed David. He was mere seconds away from the craft. Her finger hovered over the "Go"-button. Three, two, one... David made a dive for the hatch that slammed shut behind him so fast that Cordelia was certain he'd felt a slap under his feet.
"Go!" she said as she slapped the button. The time-machine shuddered under the impact of three people throwing themselves against the hull before the STAR vanished from Morocco and reappeared on the Hawaiian island. Cordelia kept her eye on the monitor because a few minutes had passed here so there might be pirates around now. To her relief, the area was as deserted as it had been when they left. For a moment she wondered what had happened to the people attacking the STAR but there was nothing to be done about that now, whatever had happened.
By that time David had gotten up. "That was close," he said as he also looked at the monitor.
"And we still need wood to burn," the Duke said. David told him not to worry because there were plenty of palm leaves on the ground on this island, most of them very dry. Cordelia kept her eye on the monitors as David went outside to collect enough palm leaves to burn down half a fleet.
"The tricky part will be to set the leaves on fire without doing damage to the STAR," David said as he was satisfied with the loot. The Duke, looking after the colourful jugs with their fiery contents in the far corner, agreed. This mission hadn't started to go down in flames instead of the pirates.
"Since this contraption of yours is capable of flight, wouldn't it be wiser to fly over the ship and throw the leaves down?" The Duke looked at the two.
"I doubt that. There's quite some wind. Throwing the leaves down doesn't guarantee that they will hit the ship, sir," Cordelia said. "We'll have to get on board and set the fire there. That is the only way. The safest." It sounded weird that way. Setting fire to a ship wasn't safe. "So how are we going to do this?" She didn't want the water from the jugs being poured out inside.
"We open the hatch and pour out the water from one jug. You take us to the ship, we open the hatch and throw out the leaves with the jug. That will break and spread the fire. While the front burns, we come back here, empty the second jug and do it again to the back end of the ship." David looked at the Duke, wondering if he had a better idea. The Duke however promptly agreed with David's suggestion.
"Okay, let's do that. And when we're here to empty the second jug, the Duke gets the Skreller for the return trip when we go for his family," Cordelia decided. That made a smile appear on the Duke's face.
"Are we ready for this?" David asked.
"I am," the Duke said as he picked up the first jug.
Cordelia nodded and pressed a button to open the hatch. "Norbert, help me set the proper coordinates to hit the deck of the ship just right," she said. The system intelligence showed the layout of the ship and the spot where their first visit would take place. "Great." She checked the coordinates for the second visit as well. Those would put them as far to the back of the ship as possible. The last set was in the middle of the ship, between the front masts and closest to where they suspected the entry into the belly of the ship. That felt like the weakest part of their plan: they didn't know where exactly that entry was.
"Let's do this."
The Duke handed the jug over to David who was up to his knees in palm leaves. He poured the water out. "Ready," he said as he closed the hatch, carefully balancing the odd jug with one hand.
Cordelia made the STAR jump to the deck of the ship.
The short fall to the actual deck shocked everyone. The spot was perfect, the altitude had been a few inches off. STARs were however built to withstand such small miscalculations.
"Oops," Cordelia said, looking over her shoulder for a moment. David was still on his feet, holding on to the jug. The hatch opened. David and Cordelia furiously threw out the palm leaves after which David tried to pour the phosphorus over them but the stuff only spattered out of the jug in tiny amounts. Since time was of the essence, Cordelia grabbed the jug and threw it out onto the deck with force, amidst the palm leaves. The jug didn't survive the crash and its contents jumped around, hitting the leaves. Smoke and flames started up within a few seconds. Cordelia slammed the hatch shut and rushed to her seat, making the STAR jump back to the island.
David and the Duke had grabbed on to what was close as there had not been time for them to sit down and secure themselves.
"That almost went wrong," David said. "Throwing the jug out is clearly the best way to go about this."
"Here. You can have this one," the Duke said as he held out the second jug to David. Together, the two men shoved the remaining leaves towards the hatch, so they could be pushed out fast.
"We're ready for the next visit," David said, who held the jug in an arm as he held on to the hatch's handle.
Cordelia watched Norbert set the coordinates for their next arrival and hit "Go". The transition went fast and swiftly, and judging from the screams they heard after David had opened the hatch, the pirates were hard at work trying to get the first fire under control. Leaves were pushed out and the second jug was smashed into them, after which the STAR disappeared from the ship again.
"You are draining the energy reserves, Cordelia," Norbert warned her. "Recharging will be necessary soon."
"Don't say that," she warned the system intelligence. "We have more work to do." She already feared all this jumping would go through the energy-cells fast. Norbert's warning emphasised that fear. Cordelia opened the compartment where she had stored the Skreller and switched the gun to stun. Again she warned the Duke not to play with the settings before handing it over to the man.
"So now we go back for your family. You will need to hurry," she warned the two men who were going to do the actual saving. She had to stay with the STAR and wait for them, which was a nerve-wracking idea, with fires on both sides and a bunch of severely pissed-off pirates everywhere. The more she thought about this, the more the whole plan struck her as a bad idea.
"We'll be back as soon as we can," the Duke said, holding the Skreller as if he was born with the weapon in his hands.
Cordelia nodded and had a last look at the monitor that showed the pirates' ship zoomed in as much as possible. "Damn, that's an idea!"
"What is?" David asked.
"We're going to be there twice. When you go outside, remember that this is the actual STAR you need to get into when you've got the family." Cordelia set the temporal coordinates for one second after they had arrived on the ship to set the front deck on fire. "This will confuse the hell out of them. We're going to make two fast jumps. On the first you throw the jug and after the second you go out to do your hero-things." She preset the second jump and hit "Go".
The STAR vanished from the island and appeared on the ship. Less than sixty feet away was the STAR on its first visit, which only Cordelia saw as the two men threw out the leaves and then sent the second jug flying. The slamming shut of the hatch told her they were done.
"Hang on!" She shifted the temporal coordinates to the preset and their location to the centre of the ship. The "Go" button got slapped again. Two minutes into the future, the STAR appeared again, the hatch pointing to the opening in the deck where a staircase gave access to the inner spaces. "Go, hurry, be careful!"
The hatch flew open. The Duke had the Skreller at the ready and as soon as he was outside, Cordelia heard its familiar whine-and-buzz. The man really knew what he was doing, using short bursts of fire to disable the pirates. After the first salvo, she closed the hatch. The risk of a pirate coming in and making life hard on her was too great. Cordelia cycled through the views of all available outside cameras. The front and aft of the ship were burning like crazy, and the more seawater the pirates threw on the fire, the fiercer it flamed. The fires were so aggressive that she wondered how long they would have before the ship decided it had enough of its above-water existence.
Time crawled as she sat and waited. How long would they need to go down, disable the guards and get the family out of there? A minute? Two minutes? Cordelia eyed the controls and was of half a mind to jump forward in time. That would get her away from the pirates for a while and also from the fire. But Norbert had warned her about the energy level in the power cells so she didn't dare to take the risk. They had to get away from here, back to safety somewhere and back to England, 1875, to get everyone home. What was taking them so long? Her clock lied to her as it showed they had gone for only one minute. What was happening? To take her mind off her worrying for a moment, she set the next coordinates for a forest area in the United States, in the summer of 1200. Damn, all that food was still on the island, she thought, but she didn't dare to go there to collect it.
Outside she saw a few pirates scream at each other while one of them pointed at the STAR, a knife in his hand, ready to be thrown. The STAR wouldn't be harmed by it, but the other pirate knocked the knife-man in the face and yelled something she couldn't hear. The outside cameras didn't have microphones; they were useless behind the thick, artificial glass.
Another minute crawled by and Cordelia kept the camera on the spot where David and the others had to appear.
"Come on, come on, you have the Skreller with you," she growled, getting impatient. A quick glance to the front and back of the ship told her that the vessel would go down very soon. Parts were already breaking off and falling into the sea where they created puffs of steam.
Finally the Duke came up, the Skreller still in hand. Behind him were the children and then his wife came up. Cordelia threw the hatch open and wanted to get out to see David come out as well but she knew she had to get things ready to leave as soon as everyone was inside the machine.
"Go, go, go!" That was David's voice. From a corner of her eye, Cordelia saw that he was carrying one of the twins as he almost stumbled into the STAR.
"Go"...