"You are not powering down the system," Norbert warned Cordelia as she got up and opened the hatch.
"I know. I'll be back soon so there's hardly the need to power down. I'm having some ideas I need to work out for a bit."
"I will engage standard protocol 6 for power consumption."
Cordelia looked at the monitor as there was no other thing she identified Norbert with. "Whatever." She was convinced she had once learnt about protocol 6 but her mind was occupied with something else.
In the living room, which still looked as if there had been a big fight, she sat down and studied the paper the alleged bounty-hunter had left. He had mentioned a place and time to meet. Cordelia knew she could do something with that. She wanted to go there twice, even if that meant taking a risk. Meeting yourself in one place had always been seen as a dangerous thing and for that reason no one had ever done that, as far as she knew. But first she had to make sure no one would recognise her that first time. Which meant dressing up like someone from that time and place. Her plan was forming and while it did so, Cordelia went to her bedroom to fetch a few necessities and then returned to the cellar.
"We're off, Norbert," she said as she entered the location coordinates. She adjusted the time to August 1st. "Give me a location where we can arrive." The monitor in front of her showed her a dot on a large square. The exact location where the bounty-hunter wanted to meet her. The image zoomed out as Norbert scanned for a safe spot to arrive unseen. They'd need that anyway. They'd need several, actually, because arriving in the same spot twice would be a recipe for disaster. It worried Cordelia that Norbert needed a long time to find a good place to go to in 2199 but in the end it reported it had found a good place.
"It is the garden of an experimental food facility," Norbert said. "It's not very close to the city proper but there are many containers there. The STAR should not attract much attention when parked there."
"That should work." Cordelia copied the coordinates of the square and those of the garden to the handheld device and tucked it into a pocket. "Okay. Garden, here we come."
~
As soon as she could, Cordelia inspected the area around her. On three sides there were huge containers, keeping the time-machine out of sight. Perfect. She powered down the STAR and got out, the navigation device in hand. The garden was an insane mess. It gave her the impression that the entire food facility was an experiment. A glance at the device told her she had a three-mile walk ahead of her. "Okay then. Boots... start walking."
She hummed the tune of the Nancy Sinatra-song as she continued on her way. The road to the city was one straight line, which made it easy to get there but at the same time utterly boring. The 'garden' where she had parked the STAR seemed to stretch almost to the city limit. Perhaps coming here next time, she could arrive a lot closer to town. But then, that would be almost half a year earlier and she had no idea how this place would look back then.
Using her gadget, Cordelia made it to the square without a problem. It also was the place where she wanted to be. There were many shops here and so she went into the first one that looked promising. She needed clothes that made her look like she lived here. The people in the store were glad to help her and didn't ask annoying questions. It took a while before Cordelia was satisfied because she wanted clothes that didn't look too new as she wanted to blend in.
She praised her own insight to visit several time-periods after leaving her home in 2251 and making sure she had valid ways to pay for things under several names. That had been a lot of work, but through the years that had paid off.
"Would you know a place where I can change the colour of my hair easily?" she asked the lady who handed her the bag with her clothes.
"Permanently or just for a funky night out?" The woman clearly had experience.
"A night out," Cordelia said. "To surprise friends." The woman pointed her to a place in a side street.
"Hair Jewels. You can't miss it, trust me."
Cordelia took her word for it and walked over the square and into the side street. The woman was right. "Hair Jewels" was very present in the street. A colourful hologram over the street flashed the name, and the shop itself was decorated with braids of artificial hair twenty feet long.
"Hey," a man said. "What can we do for your hair, jewel?" His own hair lit up every few seconds, changing colour each time.
"I want to have black hair for a few nights," Cordelia said, "and someone told me to come here."
"Aha! Whoever your someone is, that's some sound advice." The man studied Cordelia. "You have pretty hair. Ever considered selling some of it? People pay max for wigs with that kind of hair." Cordelia assured him she wasn't planning on that anytime soon but if she did, he would be the first to know. "Great, good, fantabulous. Now... let's see what we can do for you. Black you say? Sure? Not purple? Pink? Green? Green's very trendy these days."
Cordelia had an idea and carefully asked if she could have her hair in the colours of the day when the settlement in Phobos had opened. "Because that was so cool that day."
"Are you for real? That's so long ago!" The man looked shocked but Cordelia said she was for real, so he shrugged and left to get a box. "This is what you mean." He pulled a tightly-woven net from the box and helped her pull it over her own hair. It felt awfully tight. "And then we have this here thingy..." The man showed her the remote control that came with the net. "You can have the three presets, see? This first one is Phobos-day style." He pressed the button and pointed Cordelia to a screen with a built-in camera which functioned as a mirror. Within half a minute, an outline of Phobos had formed all around her head. It did obscure her vision a little but that was hardly noticeable.
"This is perfect," she said. "Exactly what I was looking for." In fact it was what she needed; she hadn't had a clue that something like this even existed. Using the remote, she made the Mars moon disappear and waited for the salesman with the rainbow-hair to wrap the package up for her. While waiting, she looked at a weird-looking mask. "How much is this?"
"That? Hah, no one wants it. You can have it for free if you want to," the man said, who was just done wrapping up her moon-decoration. He tucked the mask into the bag. She thanked him, paid and left the store, excited that this was going so well. As she walked down the street, she saw a shop that sold jumpsuits. This had to happen; the thing she was walking around in now was almost an embarrassment...
An hour later she was the proud owner of three new jumpsuits. Cordelia was aware that the funds on this period's credit card were running low, but she would have time to fix that later. At the moment she had everything she needed for her plan to save David.
~
"You took a while."
"And you are a system intelligence, not my mother," Cordelia told Norbert after returning to the time-machine. "What I needed to do took a while so don't give me that tone." She put on her newly acquired clothes. They still felt a bit new but that was unavoidable. They were new. Part of her new outfit was a long, cloak-like coat. Perfect to hide the Skreller-gun. She gave it a try. The gun hardly showed on the outside. Her only problem was that the coat was so wide that getting the gun out wouldn't be as easy as she would like to. It would have to do, though.
"Right." Cordelia sat down and checked the coordinates for the meeting with the person who had abducted David. "Let's go and have a look there."
The transition to March 23rd of the same year went fast. Cordelia had decided to leave the STAR in the same spot, which proved to be a clever move. As she passed the location she had selected earlier, she found the remains of a concrete shed there. That might have damaged her machine badly.
"I'm really getting my exercise today," she muttered as she was approaching the town again. From afar she already heard music and noise. She checked the time. Nice, half an hour early. That was good.
Cordelia stopped at the first building she encountered and put on the net which would make Phobos appear around her head. She didn't want to risk being recognised going into town and this was a perfect disguise. Looking at her reflection in the window, she switched on her mask and waited for it to form. It was amazing to see it happen, even when she knew this kind of technology from back home. She had never seen or used it there, and now it would help her.
With the nav-module in hand she found her way back to the big square. The town hadn't changed much in six months, which was a good thing. She made her way to the big square using a detour. She didn't want anyone to see her, even when she was unrecognisable.
Giant screens hovered over the square where an incredible amount of people had gathered. Everyone's attention was on the image displayed there: a broadcast direct from the Mars moon where the settlement had been built. It was close to the official opening. Cordelia found it fascinating to witness, even when the station had been old news in her youth. For a while she was so fascinated to see all this that she forgot why she had actually come here. It was only when someone bumped into her that she was brought back to this moment. David had to be here, she knew, and the bounty-hunter would be with him.
Cordelia made sure the Skreller-gun was where it had to be. The feeling of it gave her confidence. Slowly she started walking over the square, pushing through the throng. Minutes passed. Minutes that counted down to the official opening, which on Mars had already happened, she knew. Transmissions to and from the moon took a while.
It was hard to keep somewhat of a pattern going while searching the square. People kept moving and shoving; at times she felt like she was going the wrong way. Her vision wasn't perfect because of the moon-image that hung around her head, and that didn't help either.
"Only one more minute!" a loud voice from the screens boomed over the square. Cordelia saw people in uniform. Those guys weren't here to celebrate, clearly. They had to be law-enforcement, to see that nothing bad would happen. In huge crowds, a bad thing could quickly grow into a disaster. Not something anyone wanted to happen on a day like this.
Slowly she came near the hovering screen that was at the far end of the square from where she had entered it. That meant, if she had done this right, she had covered all of the square, and there still was no sign of David - unless she had missed him. He might be dressed up as well, but how would the bounty-hunter then stand a chance of Cordelia recognising him? He couldn't leave that to chance, could he?
Cordelia froze. She saw David standing there, in the clothes he had worn when she had left to recharge the STAR. Because of his clothing he stood out like a sore thumb, and next to him stood a tall woman with her hair cut so short it was impossible to see what colour it was. The woman wore black leather with bulges in strange places. Cordelia didn't know much about bounty-hunters, but those bulges definitely weren't fat. They hid weapons and bombs, more likely, and seeing the number of them, the woman was a walking arsenal.
"And here is the moment we've all been waiting for!" The loud voice of the announcer made Cordelia jump; she hadn't expected that. Part of her automatically wanted to look at the big screen, to see what was going on there, but she forced her attention back to the woman in black leather who held David by an arm.
Then, to her surprise, someone in a strange mask walked up to the two from behind. In a shock moment Cordelia realised that this was her other self, wearing the weird mask she had just gotten! That was her! She watched how she punched the big woman in the kidneys. Why didn't she go down? Instead, the bounty-hunter turned around and ripped the mask away. Cordelia was certain she said something and saw a movement. This wasn't going the way it should, she knew, when she saw a knife in the bounty-hunter's hand while the woman kept holding on to David.
She couldn't just stand here and watch. Cordelia brought out the Skreller-gun and rushed forward as well as possible. Once she was almost on top of the bounty-hunter, she raised the gun and slammed it on the woman's nearly bald head. The bounty-hunter shook her head and turned to Cordelia, waving the knife as she did so. Cordelia was too close; she couldn't avoid the sharp blade and felt it slice through her coat and arm.
The bounty-hunter screamed, which was barely audible because of the festivities around them. Cordelia clutched her arm and saw a knife sticking out of the bounty-hunter's arm. David pulled himself free and stepped away after looking at Cordelia, not understanding what was going on. The next moments were the strangest she had lived through: the other Cordelia looked at her from behind the bounty-hunter and yelled, "Run!"
Cordelia had no idea what would happen next but she took her own advice, turned around and hurried away from the bounty-hunter and herself. And David. Holding her bleeding arm made getting away even more difficult. She hurt, and the gun kept slamming into her hip and thigh. Also, the crowd was cheering and singing, presenting one huge, living and moving obstacle to push through.
When she finally reached the side of the square, Cordelia felt exhausted. It had already been a complicated day, and now she had done all these preparations here, endured the insane number of people and she'd been so close to David without being able to rescue him. Another sting from her arm told her she had to get away from here and do something about that cut. She didn't even have an idea yet how bad it was, and she was losing blood.
"Hey, miss, are you okay?"
Cordelia looked around to find a young man, perhaps in his twenties, looking at her. "Not really. Some idiot cut my arm," she said, hoping the man could somehow help her.
"Cut? Let me see. I'm not a doctor but I've learnt the basics..." He helped her out of the coat and frowned as he saw the Skreller-gun. "What's that?" Cordelia told him it was part of her job. "I don't want your job then," the man said. He told her to stand still and ripped the sleeve off her shirt and used that sleeve to wipe off her arm. "Clean cut," he said. "I need your other sleeve."
Cordelia let him rip it off and watched how he wrapped it tightly around the wound.
"That should hold for a while," the man said after checking his work. "It won't bleed for some time but you really need to see a doctor and have that fixed."
She felt relieved that he wasn't some kind of tech-head who didn't know what to do except call for help or faint. "Thank you so much. I will, trust me." She put her coat back on. "Thank you again."
"Sure, you're welcome. Anything else I can do for you?" he asked.
"No. Go back in there and have fun. It's not every day a moon station is opened," Cordelia said. He grinned, wished her well and walked towards the crowd. He did look back once before disappearing into the throng of people.
~
The walk back to the STAR was strange for Cordelia. Only slowly the tension was wearing off, and despite knowing David was probably safe, she still worried. She felt goosebumps all over when she thought back to seeing herself in that square, looking around the bounty-hunter. Remembering the bounty-hunter made her shiver. What a big, dangerous woman that was. That black leather outfit had made her look even scarier than she probably already was.
She reached the STAR and sat down in the pilot's seat, taking some time to rest and get herself together. All the way here she had kept looking back to make sure no one was following her. Only now she noticed how badly her injured arm was throbbing,
"Are you well?" If even Norbert noticed something, that meant she was worse than she had thought. After explaining to the system intelligence what had happened, it told her they had to get to a medical facility. "Your face is pale and your heart-rate is too high. You may have lost too much blood."
Cordelia attributed these facts to what she had just been through, but having someone check the arm was a good idea. There were a few doctors at home, in Newcastle, that she trusted. She set the coordinates for her cellar, added some hours for the time spent here, and then she pressed "Go".