New World Man Pt. 01

"How do we outrun every military on earth?"

"We go back in time!"

"Oh sure. Obviously."

"It's actually quite simple once you stop insisting that it's impossible."

George Durham had been living a boring life until his old college friend, world-renowned genius inventor Heath Horner, appeared with an offer he couldn't refuse. Overnight, he found himself as the right-hand-man to one of the world's richest, and most mysterious, men: traveling the globe, bedding exotic women, and participating in a series of increasingly dangerous schemes.

When a particularly ambitious effort to free a war-torn African country from its brutal dictator goes wrong and they find themselves on the run from the combined military might of the world's superpowers, Heath reveals that their salvation is at hand thanks to his recent perfection of time-travel technology. In the blink of an eye, George finds himself in pre-Columbian North America, grappling with the most ambitious, and audacious, plan in history. As the reality of his mission sinks in, not to mention the challenges of living over five hundred years in the past, he begins to realize that his future holds but two possibilities: die forgotten in a past no one will remember, or change the course of the whole of human history.

New World Man is the tale of an unremarkable man who, with the help of a growing number of beautiful companions and some of the most amazing technology imaginable, attempts the impossible in an effort to prevent the unthinkable.

Author's Note:

All sensuality (on page or otherwise) takes place between characters who are eighteen or older.

This novel is a work of romantic science fiction. It features plenty of sex, violence and impolite language; plus a perspective on the impact of European imperialism which does not align with the traditional white American conservative worldview. Proceed with caution.

Copyright © 2023 Jake Lazarus

All rights reserved.

This book, or any portion thereof, may not be reproduced in any manner without the express written consent of the author (except for the use of brief quotations in a review).

This is a work of fiction.

Names, characters, business, places, events, locales, 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.

One

"Pardon. Je ne parle pas Français," George Durham stammered to the frustrated customs official. "Parlez vous Anglaise?"

The official sighed and said, "What is the purpose of your visit?" in unaccented English.

George smiled triumphantly and said, "I'm on vacation."

"Really? And just where do you intend to go on this vacation?"

"I'm not sure. It's a spur of the moment thing and I just wanted to kind of go exploring."

"In Cote d'Ivoire?"

"Sure. I've always heard about the Ivory Coast in the news, and I decided to visit and see what all the fuss was about."

The official sighed resignedly and muttered, "Let me see your papers."

George quirked an eyebrow and said, "I already gave you my passport."

"I was referring to your proof of evacuation insurance. Or have you not been informed of your State Department's recommendations on traveling here?"

"Oh, they're just being overly cautious. I'm sure it'll be fine."

"Your funeral," the official shrugged as he stamped George's passport.

George shouldered his backpack and proceeded through the immigration office at the surface port and out onto the busy street. He donned his sunglasses and hat, in deference to his red hair and extremely pale skin and gazed around to take in his surroundings. It took only moments for him to spot several groups of young men eyeing him hungrily. He glanced skyward, almost as though lost in thought, before nodding approvingly and stepping up to the curb to scan the street for his ride. He waved several taxis that slowed next to him on before finally climbing into the back of an ancient elongated German sedan.

After the car set off, he pulled out his phone and texted:

just got picked up

everything going according to plan

The trip was a lengthy one and the taciturn driver did nothing to liven up the ride. George contented himself with watching the bustling city fade into flowing grasslands. Everywhere he looked, he saw the evidence of crippling poverty which was only heightened by the ubiquitous roving bands of heavily armed young males. He continued to glance skywards as the trip stretched into its second hour.

George was pulled from his reverie as he felt the car lurch to a stop. A quick look around told him that they were parked before a tall iron gate and surrounded by armed soldiers. He said, "What is the problem?"

A soldier standing beside the car tapped on the window with the business end of a pistol. After a moment's hesitation, George pressed the button to lower the barrier.

"Mr. Durham?"

"What is the meaning of this?" George snapped in irritation. "You know very well who I am."

"Please exit the vehicle."

"What for? I'm here to see your boss, not you. Pass me through immediately."

"I think not. You will submit to inspection for contraband."

"Meaning you intend to rob me? You really think it's worth blowing up the deal between our respective bosses for a used cell phone and a few hundred dollars?"

"Le Général is certain your... boss... as you say, will be more than willing to negotiate reasonably for the return of his good friend."

"Don't do this," George replied despondently.

"You are concerned he will not secure your release?"

George heard faint, high frequency buzzing which was rapidly getting louder. He sighed wearily and said, "Not exactly. Last chance to release me, Colonel Kouame."

"How do you know my name?"

"We know everything about you, sir. How long you've been with the General; how you buy the loyalty of your men with threats of assigning their sons to the most dangerous units; even just what you look for in the young boys whom you force to share your bed."

"How dare you," the colonel seethed as he stuck his pistol beneath George's chin. "You'll beg me for death before the day is out."

"No," George replied sadly. "I won't."

He looked back toward the car as he made a demonstrative thumbs down gesture with his left hand. The buzzing became deafening, and he heard soft grunts burst from the lips of the armed men surrounding him. Moments later, he heard the thumps of their bodies hitting the ground. He looked around to find all of the men laying lifeless, their faces a mask of terrified agony.

"Stupid bastards," George muttered.

Before he could even consider his next move, his phone rang.

"Believe me now," the caller said by way of greeting.

"Did you have to kill all of them?"

"If I hadn't, I assure you the Colonel's aide-de-camp was prepared to follow through on his superior's threats. We have thousands of intercepts from the General's entire inner circle. Nothing will ever convince them to relinquish the power they believe they hold. Even had you succeeded in convincing the General otherwise, his lieutenants would have immediately assassinated him and taken his place. This is about power, pure and simple. The plight of their citizens means nothing to them."

George sighed and said, "It doesn't seem like we have any choice, my friend. How do you propose to get me out of here."

"A helicopter will be there shortly to return you to the Executor. Be safe, my friend."

***

George watched the ship his friend had dubbed the Executor grow in size as the helicopter approached. The erstwhile supertanker was surprisingly hard to spot, thanks to the paint scheme which made it so easy for the eye to miss the enormous ship in the background of the endless ocean. The process of landing on the ship in motion always seemed to him such an unnatural act, and George was content to concentrate on his phone until he felt the aircraft jolt slightly as it touched down.

As he debarked, his eyes locked in on Anais, his best friend's concubine, sunning herself on the ship's expansive deck. She was difficult to miss, thanks in no small part to her pinup-worthy body on full display. The deck crew pretended not to see her, no doubt out of fear of what would occur should they be caught ogling their boss's devastatingly beautiful companion, but George felt no shame in taking a moment to appreciate her nude form. He knew well his friend's jealousy was limited to touching, not looking.

George entered the superstructure and headed straight for the lift. He rode up to the penultimate level, just below the bridge, and exited to the foyer. He was greeted by the sight of his friend's personal assistant, Rachel. She stood and smiled tolerantly at George, an expression which he returned not without difficulty. While not remarkably short for an American woman, she still topped out at more than three dozen centimeters less than his admittedly towering height of just a shade under two meters. Their difference in stature made the task of not glancing down the front of her casual sundress at the canyon of cleavage created by her massive breasts a Herculean effort.

She greeted him in a high-pitched, child-like voice which always gave George the willies, "Mr. Horner is expecting you."

She reached beneath the lip of her desk and the door behind her opened noiselessly. George proceeded through the door, ignoring the way it closed just behind him and audibly latched. The room he had entered never failed to impress him, either in its opulence or its dimensions. It was several times the size one would expect from a typical head of a multinational corporation and was filled with an eclectic combination of priceless artwork and the types of posters one would expect to find in a college dorm room. The back wall was entirely transparent, giving a view over the bow of the ship. Also comfortably in view, George realized as he approached his friend, was Anais' sunbathing spot.

Seated at a desk which would have dwarfed an SUV was his oldest and best friend, Heath Horner. Had he been standing; Heath would have come only to George's shoulder even though he massed at least sixty kilos more than his friend. He had a well-trimmed beard which matched his Caesar-styled brown hair. He was dressed expensively in a reasonably successful effort to conceal his bulk and projected every bit of the power George knew him to wield.

Heath gestured for George to sit before saying, "Well?"

"What do you want me to say?"

"That I was right, of course."

"Fine," George allowed. "You were right. So... now what?"

"We complete their liberation. Taking out that ridiculous Colonel and his sycophants was a start, but that self-styled General must be removed before those poor people will ever be free."

"There must be another way besides just taking them all out."

"I welcome your tactical input, George," Heath replied tolerantly. "But I've had our best computers working on this problem for weeks and, absent an army, they insist that assassination is the only way of freeing that country."

"So, what happens when the people discover that their dictator, and all his subordinates, have mysteriously died simultaneously from what any reasonable autopsy will insist is a heart attack? You don't think they'll be suspicious?"

"I think they'll be overjoyed at their freedom. If you'd spent your entire life being ground under the heel of a ruthless dictator and you suddenly found yourself with the freedom you'd prayed for every day of your now formerly-miserable existence, would you question how it came to be or would you thank every God you could think of for your salvation? Honestly, George, I'm a little confused why you're opposed to this."

"Because you're talking about killing hundreds of people, Heath. I get that it's for the greater good, but that's still pretty intense."

"You're right," Heath admitted. "I really tried to find a better way, but there just isn't one. If it helps assuage your conscience, we're talking about a group of people who are genuinely some of the worst that humanity has to offer. You yourself mentioned that pederast Colonel's loathsome tendencies."

"I know."

After a pause stretched between them, Heath sighed and said, "I meant what I said. If you can think of a better way, I'm truly all ears."

"I know you've already decided to do this. Why are you so concerned with my opinion?"

"Because you're the only person in the world who will tell me I'm wrong." He waved his hand at the windows behind him and continued, "They're all terrified of me, God knows why."

George chuckled ruefully and said, "Perhaps it's the army of deadly drones you control. Or the fact that you are, for all intents and purposes, the emperor of this floating country you've devised."

"Whatever the reason, those assholes would say, 'Capital idea sir!' if I suggested we have all the toilets flow backwards every new moon. I need your counsel, my friend. You're my good conscience."

George smiled comfortably and nodded his head toward the windows. "Is that why you don't flip your shit when I take a peek at your girl?"

"That woman!" Heath sighed. "I swear she's trying to goad me. When we're alone, she's as shy as a church mouse. But I tell her she can't go shopping in Monaco today and all of a sudden, she's sunning herself in sight of the entire crew wearing nothing but a sly smile. She'd love nothing better than for me to keelhaul someone for ogling her spectacular tits, just to prove she's got some measure of control over me.

"But you know me better than that, my friend. You can stare at her all you want. Hell, you can retire to your cabin and jerk off to the sight of her until your arm cramps up. Same with the lovely Rachel out there. But..."

"I know," George finished. "No touching."

"Indeed. In any case, what happened to that lady friend you picked up in Johannesburg?"

"Turns out she was susceptible to seasickness," George replied lamely.

Heath grinned at him wickedly and said, "This ship hasn't listed so much as a degree in more than a fiscal quarter. I suspect her unease might have been focused elsewhere."

"Perhaps," George allowed. "Not many women are keen to go from getting picked up in a bar to living on a private ship a hundred kilometers from land in a few days. If we ever stayed anywhere more than a few hours, I might get a chance to actually form a relationship with someone."

"Why would you need a relationship? Those are far more trouble than their worth."

"Says the man who has two beautiful big-titted women eager to warm his bed."

"Indeed. Say the word and I'll have my agents search the globe for a willing, and large breasted, concubine for you."

"No, thank you. I'm looking for more than just getting my dick wet. I want to form a connection with someone."

"Whatever for?" Heath said with a wicked smirk. "You've got me."

"You're right," George grumbled. "But unless you've made several policy changes around here while I was gone, you still don't put out."

Heath's bark of laughter was loud enough that Rachel lifted her head questioningly outside his door.

Two

George was roused from a deep sleep by the profoundly unpleasant feeling of seasickness. He managed to stumble into the head before emptying his stomach. After several thousand weeks of agony, which his suddenly untrustworthy watch insisted was only seventeen minutes, he staggered back into his stateroom and slumped onto the recliner which was near the floor-to-ceiling windows. Peering out over the bow of the ship, he could see that they were making modest headway through what appeared to be reasonably calm seas. Confused about the unaccustomed motion, he reached blindly for the phone sitting on his side-table and keyed in the number for the bridge.

"Bridge. Officer of the watch Navo speaking, sir," an annoyingly cheerful voice answered.

"What's wrong with the stabilizers?"

"Nothing."

"Then why did I just fill the sink in my quarters with partially used Swedish meatballs?"

"Mr. Horner instructed us to deactivate all non-essential systems which are computer controlled. We are navigating manually."

"Christ."

"Shall I send a stewardess to tidy up your quarters?"

"That won't be necessary."

"Will there be anything else, sir?"

"No," George replied wearily. "Thank you."

He hung up and slowly dressed before steeling his resolve for what promised to be an interminable trip to Heath's Command Center. A room which, unfortunately, did not enjoy the benefit of exterior windows.

Ten minutes later, he arrived at the guarded door deep within the bowels of the ship. He was admitted without a word and proceeded into what was arguably the most technologically advanced room in human history. It was perfectly round with a domed ceiling and the entirety of the exterior was capable of displaying video from up to a thousand sources simultaneously. The center of the room was a series of round tables configured for gesture-based control of not only the display, but also the array of super computers around which the ship had been built.

Heath was standing before one of the aforementioned tables, making occasional flicks with his fingers as he watched the wall along the aft section of the room. George looked in that direction to see a vast selection of views which all were taken from a few hundred meters off the ground.

Heath noticed George as he approached and looked up with a cherubic grin on his face. "Good morning!" he enthused.

"Why. Are the Stabilizers. Off?" George grunted in a desperate attempt to avoid succumbing once again to his nausea.

"Are you joking?" Heath responded brightly. "Look at this. You think it's easy controlling over a thousand drones simultaneously? I needed every bit of computing resources available."

"You couldn't have warned me?"

"Quit your bitching. If you're so miserable, take one of these," he held out an unmarked bottle of pills.

"What are these?" George said weakly as he took the bottle, even though he knew the chance that he would take one were at least fifty-fifty even if it could cause him to grow a third arm.

"Anti-nausea pills. Except, unlike the ones available commercially, they actually work. You chew them."

George took one and tossed it into his mouth. It tasted remarkably like a peanut butter and jelly sandwich as he chewed it up and the churning of his stomach vanished almost before he finished swallowing.

He stared at Heath and said, "That's incredible."

Heath smiled triumphantly and said, "I know, right?"

"I assume you're proceeding with the liberation?" He received a nod in reply before continuing, "How's it going?"

"All assets will be in place in a few minutes. We're waiting for confirmation on the location of the last few hostiles."

"How many?"

"We've only got four left that we don't have eyes on."

George sighed and said, "I meant, how many are you targeting?"

"Eleven hundred and eight."

"Fuck," George breathed.

"I thought we were aligned on this," Heath grumbled.

"We are. I'll stop my complaining. How long until you get eyes on the rest?"

Heath gestured with his eyes to the screen. George's gaze was quickly drawn to the only few windows in which the picture was anything other than a static view of the top of a structure or encampment. As George watched, the screens seemed remarkably similar to a first-person shooter with the video quickly dashing through hallways and stairwells. He knew the images were coming from Heath's Yellow Jackets, drones no bigger than his hand which had a range of several hundred meters and were capable of delivering live video in addition to their primary, and much more deadly, objective of delivering a tiny liquid payload subcutaneously.

"Got 'em," Heath shouted triumphantly as the screen in the center of the wall showed four uniformed men surrounding a table covered in used shot glasses.

Heath made an intricate series of gestures. As his hands came to a stop, all of the formerly static images began moving rapidly. George looked away just as the first few video panes showed a human male zoom to fill the frame before quickly shrinking again as they started to writhe in agony.

Two minutes and four seconds later, Heath said, "All done. You can open your eyes now."

"Don't you dare tell me you enjoyed that," George whispered intensely.

"Of course not, even though there's no questioning the good we just did. Let me just kick off a few clean up routines and then we can turn the stabilizers back on."

***

George scanned their surroundings, which were growing more increasingly cramped by the moment, and said, "Are you sure it's a good idea to just sail into the port like victorious conquerors?"

"No one knows what we did," Heath replied with an almost defensive quickness. "We're just another tanker looking to refuel and reload."

"You don't think anyone will get suspicious when we do neither? Or does this 'singular technological achievement in the whole of human history' suddenly run on diesel?"

"Don't be preposterous," Heath snapped. "Obviously, it still runs on the fusion reactor. But that doesn't mean anyone will be suspicious of us. This port is near capacity, so no one will notice what we do or don't do. Besides, we will be taking on cargo. Never hurts to have everything topped off. As for fuel, we hook up the fuel lines just like everyone else. We need only bribe two officials to prevent anyone from noticing that the lines aren't actually pumping anything. If things break the way I think they will, we might be doing more than that."

"How so?"

"If they so desire, I don't see any reason we wouldn't hook our reactor up to their power grid. We only use about five percent of the peak output when we're in port anyway. Why not do something nice for these people?"

"I guess that makes sense," George allowed. "It's not like it'll cost you anything to do it."

"Nothing is free, my friend. We would require significant additional reaction mass."

"Yes, but that's just water. And there seems to be plenty of that available."

"And filtering," Heath added.

"This was your idea, smart guy."

Heath grinned and said, "You're right. But you're the only person I ever get to argue with. Forgive me if I indulge occasionally."

"Speaking of indulging, I haven't eaten yet today thanks to somebody cutting out the stabilizers at six in the morning. You hungry?"

"I'm fine," Heath said distractedly. "I'll be in the Command Center when you're done."

George strolled from the bridge and made his way to the galley. Heath always ate either in his quarters or in his office, never deigning to rub shoulders with the crew despite the fact that the galley would rival most four-star restaurants for both the quality of the food and the décor. He found several of the ship's officers there having dinner but did not attempt to interrupt them. He took a seat near the windows facing the stern and waited for a stewardess.

"Good evening, sir," a quite attractive woman wearing a steward's uniform said quietly. "Will you be having the usual, or would you like to see a menu?"

"No menu," George replied with a wave. "But not the usual. A man can only eat so many eggs. Do you think the chef would be in the mood to choose for me?"

"Are you kidding," she asked with a chuckle before immediately sobering and saying, "Forgive me."

"It's nothing," George replied, used to this type of rapid change in demeanor from the crew.

"What I meant to say was that, having just arrived in port, the chef has several new items which he is anxious to incorporate into the menu. I am certain he would be delighted to cook for you. Shall I pass along any guidance?"

"You'd have me compliment and insult him in the same breath? I think not."

"Very well, sir," she said with a small bow as she departed.

George often wondered from whence this obeisance sprung. He had never seen Heath so much as to suggest that such behavior was expected, but the crew did it without fail. To the best of George's knowledge, the crew were fiercely loyal to his friend. He was certain the wages he offered, ten times the going rate for the officers and four times it for the crew, had something to do with it, but he frequently suspected there was more to it than that. Perhaps, he mused, it was the opportunity to work on what was ostensibly a merchant marine ship that carried no cargo beyond provisions for the crew, leaving them with a typically light workload. Or it could have been the fact that they tended to frequent many of the nicest ports of the planet and, more often than not, stayed plenty long enough for the crew to redistribute their earnings among the bars and brothels of their ports of call.

His thoughts were interrupted as his meal arrived. He was started with a soup whose name he could neither pronounce nor remember, but it was heavenly. That trend continued through the next four courses and George nearly had to risk the wrath of the chef when the sixth course arrived. Fortunately, the chef joined him, and they spent an hour discussing what type of spirit best paired with each course while they sipped coffee. In the end, two hours passed before George rejoined Heath in the Command Center.

"There you are," Heath grumbled as George entered.

"I told you where I was going."

"I know. I just expected you come back here after eating rather than returning to your quarters to jerk off while you thought of my hot, sweaty, naked..."

"Enough," George gasped. "I just ate a shitload of food, thanks to your new chef, and I don't think you want to meet my dinner."

"Fair enough."

"What's shakin'?" George asked simply as he tried to make sense of the motley array of images he saw on the display.

"I'm having some difficulty with a few of the locals I coordinated with prior to liberating this delightful country. Seems as though they are having rather inconvenient memory issues."

"How do you mean?"

"It's not important," Heath said quickly. "What is important is the majors and captains in what remains of the military. For the most part, they are doing a splendid job of keeping their units together and maintaining the peace. But there are some bad apples."

"You can't kill them all, Heath. At some point you have to let them decide what kind of country they want to be."

"You're right. I can't. But I can do something better."

"And that is..."

"The guns, George. They're the reason why there's still a massive imbalance of power in this country. If there weren't any guns, the good people wouldn't be afraid to actually lead. Same as in our home country."

"I don't disagree, but what can be done about it?"

"I've been noodling on this for a while and I've yet to come up with a foolproof solution."

"Holy shit!" George gasped. "You are human."

"Don't be an ass," Heath snapped good naturedly. He took a breath before continuing, "I do, however, have a solution which I believe to be roughly ninety-eight percent effective."

"Oh, is that all..."

"Shut it!"

"Forgive me, your grace. Please... continue."

Heath sighed and said, "It's so simple. My Yellow Jackets are deployed nationwide. They target the guns and deliver a solution not unlike what is used to make form-fitting packing material. A symbiotic compound made of two parts, either of which on its own is completely inert. But when combined, it will form a solid with the density of ceramic which is also highly caustic. Simply put, once delivered into the gun barrel, it will form a plug which cannot be removed because it will literally form a covalent bond with the metal. If the gun is fired after that, the bearer will suffer far more grievously than his target."

"Remarkable," George breathed. "So why only ninety-eight percent effective?"

"We cannot wait until we've tracked down every firearm in the country before we implement this plan. We'll have to hope that thousands of simultaneously malfunctioning weapons will keep the owners of most of those we miss from being willing to pull the trigger."

Three

Later that evening, George was lounging chest deep in the pool while he enjoyed a cocktail. The spa, as the room was known, was found on the lowest habitable deck of the ship to improve weight distribution. Unlike most pools found on oceangoing vessels, this one was quite large. At over seventy-five square meters on the surface and nearly four meters deep, it contained over two-hundred-fifty tonnes of water which was kept almost uncomfortably warm by the reactor which sat on the other side of several meters of heavy shielding.

George was in the midst of contemplating toweling off and going in search of food when he saw the portal iris open to admit Rachel. She glanced briefly in his direction before dropping her bag on one of the tables, slipping her dress over her head and walking unhurriedly into the pool. George did not even pretend not to stare, having decided long ago that Rachel and Anais's almost ubiquitous nudity comfortably insulated him from seeming like a creep if he appreciated their beauty from afar.

She surfaced and began slowly backstroking across the pool, which only accentuated her spectacular breasts. She acknowledged him without speaking to him, slowly lapping back and forth in front of him while he shamelessly watched. It was not until he finished his cocktail that he gave the slightest thought to moving.

After ten laps, Rachel stopped and swam over to him. "Do you mind if I use your float, since you seem to have no more use for it?"

George lifted up his empty glass and said, "Be my guest."

She climbed aboard the cushion and laid back with a sigh. Before he could make for the side, she added, "Why do you watch me all the time?"

"Would you prefer I pretended you didn't exist?"

"No. It just seems a little odd how everyone else pretends Anais and I are ghosts, but you have no issue staring at us like we're animals in a zoo. You don't stare at any of the crew like that."

"I am merely appreciating beauty," George replied reasonably. "But I can treat you the same as I treat them if I'm making you uncomfortable. I rather got the impression you both wanted me to look."

"Sometimes," she admitted. "I'll be honest, it's a little odd how Mr. Horner never makes a fuss about you looking."

"He's very specific about his jealousies. And, I might add, very reasonable. He expects loyalty, but not angelic piety. Surely, he's made as much clear to you."

"You're right. I just find it noteworthy that he never seems to have this talk with his minions. Do you think he enjoys them thinking that if they so much as glance at Anais when she's got her tits out in front of God and everybody, that he'll feed them to the sharks?"

"No," George replied after a moment's hesitation. "I think he doesn't think about it at all. He's got bigger fish to fry."

"Perhaps," she allowed. "I just couldn't bear the thought of someone suffering because I decided to get a little sun and they stole a peek."

"So why risk it in here?"

"Because none of the crew are allowed here. And there's little doubt about where you stand with him."

"And where do I stand?"

"You're his Number Two. His right-hand man. His consigliere. Hell, I'd be stunned if there was anything you could do to anger him."

"I doubt that. But it hardly matters. He's my friend, and I would never do anything to jeopardize that."

"That's really great," she sighed. She paused for a moment before continuing, "So, you've never been tempted?"

"To what?"

"Proposition me, obviously. I see the way you look at my tits."

"Never," George said resolutely. "You are indeed exceptionally beautiful, Rachel. But Heath is my best friend. I would never betray his trust."

She smiled warmly, almost hungrily, at him and said, "But what if..."

She was cut off by a claxon which sounded throughout the ship. A sound which had several possible meanings, none of them good. Without another word, George swam quickly to the side and leapt from the water. He was through the portal before he had even pulled on a pair of shorts.

He arrived at the Command Center moments later to find Heath looking positively apoplectic. George checked his hurried strides and waited for his friend to give him the bad news.

"Good news," Heath enthused sarcastically. "The United Nations has decided, in its infinite wisdom, that I was responsible for the removal of Cote d'Ivoire's murderous dictatorial regime."

"How?" George sputtered.

"Somebody blabbed, obviously. I've been informed that we're to permit a helicopter to land, at which point myself and my command staff will be taken into custody for war crimes."

"Ok," George said slowly. "That doesn't sound ideal. I guess the second question which comes to mind is, why do they care? Even if they could prove anything, isn't this more of a Cote d'Ivoire issue?"

"It should be," Heath said wearily. "But they've decided my objective was a coup with the ultimate objective being placing myself in power."

"That's crazy."

"I know!" Heath almost shouted. "But they're on their way anyway. They'll be here in..." he glanced for a second of the wall monitor showing a radar display before continuing, "Sixty-seven minutes. At which point, we'll both be arrested. Unless we take decisive action to the contrary."

Heath's expression as he finished speaking sent a shiver down George's spine. He said, "We can't shoot down a U. N. helicopter."

"Of course, we can. One drone could do it, no problem. We could do it when the helicopter was still over a hundred kilometers from here."

"Let me rephrase," George said carefully. "We shouldn't shoot it down. They've got a hell of a lot more where that one came from."

"I have no intention of surrendering to a group of semi-literate mouth-breathers in uniform."

"Then where does that leave us?"

"I have a contingency against this eventuality."

"That's what I'm talking about," George said with a wide grin. "Did you build some kind of hydrofoil into this ship which will allow us to outrun them?"

"Are you joking? This ship weighs over a quarter million tonnes. It would take fifty times the output of our reactor to outrun a helicopter. And, for what? As you said, they've got plenty more where that one came from, and we can't outrun a satellite."

"Abandon ship then?"

"Hardly," Heath scoffed. "I spent a decade making the Executor the perfect platform for making my plans a reality."

"What, then?"

"We move the ship in such a way that they wouldn't ever find us. Ever."

"But you just said we can't outrun them."

"I didn't say we'd outrun them. I said we'd go where they wouldn't find us. You're thinking too three dimensionally."

George shook his head in confusion and said, "What are you saying?"

"You'll see my friend," Heath said grimly. "But I swear this to you. I won't let them arrest you. I won't let them arrest any of us!"

***

George watched in rapt fascination as Heath shut down all of the surveillance he was running on the nearby country, not to mention the fast-approaching military helicopter, before opening a new suite of tools. The images which filled the wall were like nothing George had ever seen and he was completely at a loss for what his friend intended to do to prolong their freedom. However, as he watched, certain tidbits started to stick in his head.

"What does 'temporal offset' mean?" he finally asked, unable to control his curiosity any longer.

"I promise," Heath began through clenched teeth. "I'll explain everything. Just give me a few more minutes to bring everything online and run the necessary system checks."

George shrugged in response, knowing better than to try to compete for his friend's attention with his precious super computers. After a few moments, he felt the deck beneath his feet begin to rumble in a way which told him they were now traveling at very nearly flank speed. He suspected that their pursuers would be quite surprised when they discovered that the unassuming apparent super tanker was capable of traveling at nearly thirty-five knots.

"OK," Heath said at length. "What was your question?"

"There are so many, but the only one that matters at this point is: does it matter?"

"Huh?"

"I know you, Heath. Sometimes you seek advice, other times its permission. The rest of the time? You're telling me either what you've already done or have decided to do and you're just bringing me up to speed. Which is it here?"

"Nothing has been done that can't be undone. But we truly have little choice. However, this isn't something I'll impose on you, George. If you decide you want out, we'll launch the lifeboat and part friends."

"What about everyone else?"

"We don't exactly have time for me to call an all-staff meeting. But, if after I tell you everything, you insist I give them a choice, we'll figure something out."

"Very well," George said with a sigh. "How do we outrun what is, for all intents and purposes, the entirety of the militaries of the world?"

"We run in a direction where they can't follow."

George looked at him queerly for a moment before saying, "You built a deep-bore drill and we're relocating to the center of the earth?"

"Hardly. If we went deep enough where they couldn't get to us, we'd never survive. I have no intention of living in a habitat. So, you can forget anything that involves leaving the planet. There are far too many things that could go wrong with such a scheme."

"Then, I give up."

Heath grinned at him wickedly before saying, "We go backwards!"

"You lost me."

"We go back in time!"

"Oh sure," George mock enthused. "Obviously."

"Set aside, for a moment, the fact that you believe it to be impossible."

"You're saying you built a time machine?"

"It's actually quite simple once you reorient your thinking."

"Can you pretend, just for a moment, that at least one of the people in this room isn't the smartest person on the planet?"

"Fine," Heath groaned. "It came about during the ideating for our project in Singapore three years ago. One of the AI farms returned a suggested course of action which seemed to imply that traveling backwards in time was not only possible, but feasible. I set it aside until we completed our objective there, but I started working on it in my downtime."

"What downtime?" George muttered.

"About a year later, I came up with a working model and sent my first drone back."

"What did it look like when you brought it forward in time?"

"I don't know. I never found it. And it nearly drove me insane. I knew the science was sound. And I knew my device worked. I just couldn't figure out why I kept losing drones. Eventually, I discovered that the famed butterfly effect is real, after a fashion. I finally figured it out when I sent a drone back in time while we were in those caves in Peru. I sent it to the deepest antechamber and sent it back in time a month. I was delighted when I found it and confirmed that it had actually sat there with no living things noticing it for the entire time."

"So, what happened to the rest?"

"New realities," Heath replied blandly, as if it were self-evident. "Like in those silly superhero movies you watch."

"So, you're proposing we go back and abort this Ivory Coast operation, thereby creating a new reality?"

"Oh, no, my friend. I have no intention of letting the U. N. get off so light. I intent to completely remake the face of the world."

"You're starting to scare me, buddy."

"Think of it," Heath said with fierce intensity. "We've always talked about the toxic effect religion has had on our world. Imagine a history where the church's power was neutered before their brand of evil was allowed to literally conquer the world. Imagine Columbus arriving in the Americas and finding, instead of ignorant savages who would easily succumb to European infections, enlightened millions who were immune to those diseases. Instead of a native American genocide, it would be an embarrassing bloodying of the nose for those Catholic nations. No genocide, no slavery."

George shook his head and whispered, "You want to go five hundred years into the past and prevent the colonization of the Americas?"

"You're goddamned right I do!" Heath exclaimed with a feverish glint in his eye.

Four

"Is there going to be a countdown or anything?" George asked nervously from his position on the bridge.

"No," Heath replied tersely. "It will happen once all is in readiness. Now, zip it."

George contented himself with studying their surroundings to form a basis of comparison for after Heath hit the proverbial button. It was a picturesque day, as it often was in the tropics. They were steaming quickly to the southwest. George was on the bridge in part because the stabilizers had once again been deactivated. That combined with their unnaturally rapid pace made it quite uncomfortable for him to be anywhere else.

He scanned around the crew on the bridge, mildly surprised they had all chosen to stay after the meeting Heath had hastily called to explain the situation to them. George had volunteered to man the bridge, having enough understanding of the navigational controls to keep them from slamming into any fishing boats or floating debris while the meeting took place.

The meeting had taken nearly twenty minutes and even with the erstwhile tanker's surprising speed, the helicopter would be upon them in the next quarter-hour. George eyed the radar display nervously, trying to keep himself from wondering what would happen if the helicopter arrived off the starboard bow and demanded clearance to land. He knew Heath would be disinclined to accommodate them, but he doubted there was a ton they could do to prevent it. The section of the ship between the bridge and the bow most closely resembled a football pitch, even though in actuality it was covered in solar panels.

"It's ready," Heath said reverently as he straightened up from his workstation.

"Great," George replied with a bit less enthusiasm. "So... now what?"

"Everyone needs to get below so we can close all the watertight doors. It's likely there will be a pressure differential due to different environmental conditions and I don't want anyone blowing out an eardrum.

"Officer of the watch, sound general quarters," the captain exclaimed. He waited while the claxons sounded, followed by speakers all over the ship instructing everyone to get inside. The captain then said, "Clear the bridge! Senior officers will reassemble in the Command Center. Everyone else, return to your quarters."

George followed the crowd down the ladders to the Command Center, giving Heath and the captain the elevator to themselves. When he arrived, he collected a soda from the conveniently placed steward before seeking out a chair where he would be out of the way while still being able to keep an eye on Heath.

His friend entered moments later and proceeded to his workstation. The captain took position behind him even though he was mostly ornamental at this point. Heath, and his computers, were in complete control of the ship. While George watched, Heath made an elaborate series of gestures which took nearly two minutes.

When he was done, he glanced at George with a grin and said, "You want to do the countdown?"

"And rob you of your big moment?" George asked with a wide smile. "No chance."

Heath bowed slightly at him before returning his attention to the viewscreens which were covered with the meaningless gibberish of computer code. He made another gesture as he unceremoniously said, "Now."

George felt nothing, but he heard a crack sounding outside the hull. He looked to Heath, whose face showed nothing but triumphant jubilation.

At length, George said, "Well?"

"Well, what? It worked flawlessly, as I told you." He turned to the captain and said, "We're safe. Your people can return to their posts. George? Join me in my office?"

The crew quickly dispersed while George followed Heath to the elevators. Once they were settled in the latter's office, George sat silently while he waited for his friend to speak.

"Well?" Heath began.

"Well, what?"

"We just travelled over five-hundred-and-fifty years back in time. I'd have thought you'd have some reaction."

"Do you think we're the first people to ever do this?"

"I'm not sure that question means anything, considering our present circumstances."

"Huh?"

Heath smiled and said, "Well, considering both the precision of the equipment needed and the sophistication of the computers required, I feel comfortable saying that no one naturally in this world would be capable of such a feat. But, since we've proven it is indeed possible to travel backwards in time, I have no way of telling if other people might currently exist in this time which were born in the future."

"So, based on your theory of new realities being created when the past is changed, wouldn't that mean..."

"Potentially infinite realities?" Heath finished. "Absolutely. Theoretically, there is no limit. But that hardly matters from our perspective. We'll accomplish our mission of preventing the native American genocide and then return to the future we've created."

"What if we make things worse instead of better? Say we return to the early twenty-first century to find that the entire world has been wiped out by nuclear holocaust because humanity managed to think up something more damaging than organized religion. Or even a different organized religion took up the mantle when Catholicism was stymied."

"An interesting thought. Perhaps it would be prudent to sail somewhere out of the way, perhaps the far southern Indian ocean, and move forward in small increments. We could launch one of our sub-orbital reconnaissance platforms and check everything out before moving forward again. But that's a question for after we succeed in inoculating and preparing the native Americans in this time."

George sighed and said, "So, what's the plan?"

"We sail for the Americas!" Heath exclaimed gleefully.

***

"That's incredible," George whispered softly from his position along the railing near the bow.

"What?" Rachel asked softly from her spot at his side.

"I was here a few years ago. I mean, a few of our years. And it looks exactly the same. At least from this far away."

They were a dozen kilometers from what would, in five hundred years, be known as St. Lucia and the Pitons were already easy to see with the naked eye. The weather was cool, despite the tropical latitude thanks in part to the fact that Heath had decided to have them arrive in mid-February in hopes of not finding themselves suddenly in the middle of a hurricane.

After arriving in what Heath assured them was February of the year one-thousand-four-hundred-ninety-one on the Gregorian calendar (although he was quick to point out that said calendar did not yet exist), they had quickly sailed south-by-south-west in hopes of staying far clear of all known European navigation routes from the time. Once they were several hundred kilometers off the coast of Africa, they had set course for the Windward Islands. They had taken their time crossing the Atlantic since there was no longer any need to stress the reactor with a speed run.

Six days later, they had made landfall but had decided against going ashore. They had instead spent a week anchored just over the horizon while the 3D printers built machines which could mass produce the vaccinations needed to inoculate the natives against the host of diseases which had, in the pasts of all aboard the Executor, been mostly responsible for the genocide of the native Americans. Once that was complete, the Yellow Jackets were loaded onto the long-distance drone carriers and launched. The entire population of the island was inoculated in the course of a few hours.

This operation was repeated again across the multitude of islands that made up future St Vincent before the Executor turned north toward St Lucia. This time, they anchored only a few kilometers offshore, well within sight of the island.

As George and Rachel gazed at the tropical paradise, their thoughts were interrupted by the ship's loudspeaker crackling to life, "Commodore Durham, report to the Command Center. Commodore Durham, report to the Command Center."

"Good luck," Rachel said quietly.

"Huh?" George grunted in surprise.

"Nothing."

It was clear he would not get any more information from his friend's assistant, so George headed aft in a state of confusion. He arrived in the Command Center several moments later, thanks to the immense size of the Executor, to find Heath atypically sitting along the wall enjoying a beverage. He crossed to his friend and sat on the couch beside him.

Heath smiled warmly at him and said, "It's pretty out there, isn't it?"

"Of course," George said quickly. "You remember when we came here on holiday a few years ago. This place is amazing."

"I remember. That's why I chose this island for you to initially go to shore."

"Wait... Me?" George stammered.

"Of course. I can't trust any of these guys to handle it," Heath said with exasperation as he waved upwards towards the bridge. "I need someone I can trust to make first contact."

"What exactly do you expect me to do? I don't even know what language is spoken there."

"Just do what Columbus did."

"Ply them with golden trinkets and then rape and enslave all their women? No fucking thank you."

"We've got the babel fish," Heath offered.

"But those just use your computers to provide real-time translation. How's that supposed to work if your computers don't have the foggiest fucking idea, not only what they're saying, but what language they're speaking?"

"It will learn quicker than you think. I've already deployed my drone carriers and about a thousand Yellow Jackets to get an accurate census and start collecting language data. The current projection is that we should be capable of rudimentary communication by the time you go ashore. That's a damn sight better than the aforementioned Columbus managed."

"So, tell me this... what's to be gained by going ashore?"

"Make no mistake, removing the smallpox, measles, et cetera from the equation will have a significant impact in preventing the genocide. But there's still the fact that the people of this continent are more than a thousand years behind the Europeans from the standpoint of both weaponry and tactics. You have to remember, not only are there no firearms, explosives or horses here, the concept of armor is essentially unknown. Their idea of warfare doesn't extend beyond fighting the man in front of you by hand. A single Roman legion would likely kill millions of native soldiers. And, even as far back as we went in time, the Romans stopped winning battles a thousand years ago. I don't say this disparagingly, but these people need a lot more than protection against diseases. They need modern, for this time, weapons and tactics. That means making contact."

"How the hell are we going to help them with that? I don't have the foggiest idea how a musket works."

"Same way everyone from our time learns things," Heath said with a smirk. "You watch how-to videos."

"I kind of figured we'd left the internet behind."

"What is the internet other than a series of super computers containing the totality of all accumulated human knowledge?"

"You're saying you copied the whole fucking internet?" George exclaimed.

"Not all of it. Barely one percent. But the most important one percent. I even replicated a few dozen terabytes of porn with you in mind."

"Oh, thank God," George huffed sarcastically. "This is going to sound pretty pathetic, but how exactly do you propose to ensure my safety? Because I don't care how un-advanced these people are, I can't imagine they'd have much trouble sticking a spear in me if they decide I've offended them."

"You'll wear protective clothing, of course. That'll protect you from anything but a head shot. You'll also obviously have full overwatch. If anyone gets closer to you than a few meters and looks like they're intent on doing harm, they'll get very sleepy, very quickly. Truly, my friend, you have nothing to worry about. Just go ashore, assure them you mean them no harm and try to trade with them."

"Why trade?"

"They'll never believe us if we just try to give them a bunch of guns and teach them how to use them. Human nature just doesn't allow us to accept something for nothing. It truly doesn't matter what they give you in return, just make sure you get them to take the muskets. Once you forge a relationship with them, we'll give them more guns and teach them how to make gunpowder. But we mustn't dawdle. Columbus will be here in a year and a half. I aim to arm and inoculate the entirety of the coastline from Cancun to New York and a hundred kilometers inland by then. Not to mention building a city in the middle of North America which would make Rome at the height of the empire green with envy."

"What on earth for?"

Heath looked at him intently and said, "I will not allow those fanatics to destroy this continent again, George. Maybe our species can't escape constantly attempting to destroy itself. Maybe atrocities are in our DNA. But I intend to do everything I can to find out if we're capable of better. Because, if so, what's to stop us from preventing the Dark Ages? Maybe the Renaissance could have happened half a millennium earlier. Maybe humanity could stretch its legs to the stars by the twenty-first century rather than still being in thrall to an antiquated religion."

Five

"What the hell am I doing?" George muttered to himself as the skiff upon which he traveled was jostled by the reasonably sedate surf.

Everything Heath had told him in the run up to him leaving the Executor had seemed logical. But, as he studied the natives gathering on the shore, the preponderance of all he was being asked to do just seemed too fantastical. Heath was setting him up to be nothing less than a god-figure to the undeniably innocent people glaring at him suspiciously. He was unsure which 'power' he wielded would be the most unbelievable to the natives: the presentation of firearms; the completely foreign impermeable clothing; the tech which would allow him to communicate without learning their language. He was uncertain if the natives had noticed the drone carrier hovering about fifty meters above him, or the Yellow Jackets who were holding station just above the tops of the palm trees waiting to pounce upon anyone unwise enough to threaten him.

As George felt his anxiety begin to spike, he noticed a trio of newcomers emerge from the jungle to join what he assumed were warriors gathered on the beach. They were unquestionably female, a fact which George deciphered thanks to their clothing consisting of only a breechcloth. They were also unquestionably mature young women with curviness that was alluring in any century.

The eldest of the warriors noticed the women and his face clouded. He began speaking quickly and George's earpiece came to life. "Daughter... naked... stupid... leave... slut..."

"Who wrote this translation program?" George grumbled. "A twelve-year-old gamer?"

Despite the harsh words, the women stayed put as George's skiff came ashore. He carefully made his way to the front of the craft but held off from stepping onto the sand. After a few moments' pause, the man who had spoken harshly to the women gestured to one of the warriors. The latter hefted his spear and headed purposefully in George's direction.

"Why... come... sea devil..."

George subvocalized his response which was translated automatically and broadcasted via a tiny but powerful speaker he wore on his lapel. "I am no threat. I want to help you."

The warrior looked back questioningly at his superior. The latter nodded demonstratively in George's direction. This prompted the warrior to turn back to face George and nonchalantly hurl a spear. George felt a dull thud in the area of his sternum, and he glared in the warrior's direction in irritation. He heard the unmistakable buzz of a Yellow Jacket and within seconds the warrior had slumped to the ground unconscious. George ignored him and looked to the eldest warrior intently.

"That was stupid," he called through his translator.

"Kill... sea devil!" the presumptive chief shouted.

None of the warriors made it more than four steps before they similarly slumped to the sand, leaving George standing helplessly on the bow of his skiff and three bewildered, nearly naked young women standing in the midst of a dozen unconscious warriors.

The shortest of them approached his skiff and said, "Why... kill..."

"They're not dead. Just sleeping. Why did they attack me?"

She looked at him quizzically before saying, "You come... enemy... people..."

George sighed and said, "No. I want to help you."

"Why?"

"Because a great darkness is coming," George replied before wincing inwardly at the prophetic bent of his words. He stepped belatedly onto the shore and approached the undeniably gorgeous woman before continuing. "Men are coming. Terrible men. From the east. In twenty moons."

She glanced at him warily before taking a step back and adopting a more aggressive, at least to his way of thinking, posture: spreading her legs shoulder width apart and placing her hands on her hips. George could not help but notice the alluring jiggle of her breasts at her movement and struggled to keep his eyes locked on her face.

She noticed his gaze and snapped, "Speak... strange... sea devil. Take... lover...?"

"Huh?" he replied before he could reconsider. His thoughts raced: was this woman offering herself to him; had the wretched stain of slavery found its way here earlier than the history books foretold; was the translation program failing spectacularly and the woman was actually asking him how he took his coffee? He had no way to know. At this point, he was not even certain of basic non-verbal communication. Heath had warned him that the tribe they were encountering had been effectively irradicated by Columbus and his lieutenants. He was, for all intents and purposes, meeting an entirely alien culture, albeit a very pleasant to look at one.

Before his thoughts could spiral further out of control, she turned and beckoned to her companions. They came dashing across the sand to meet him, which did nothing to attenuate the growing diplomatic incident in George's trousers. They arrived quickly, evidently thinking their companion was in need of their protection as they each stopped along the way to scoop up a spear. They took up flanking positions on either side of her and pointed their spears at George threateningly.

"Stand down," he sub-vocalized in hopes that Heath would not send in his Yellow Jackets. Apparently, the message got through because none of them slumped unconscious into the sand. He raised his eyes to the trio of women to see them regarding him queerly. He quickly realized his command had been translated, only heightening their confusion. "I am here to help you. I wish to form an alliance."

The faltering words coming from his translator, and the perplexed expressions on the faces of the women, told him clearly that his words had far exceeded the ability of the translation software. He continued, "I want us to be partners."

They seemed to accept this and, after a brief whispered conversation, said, "Chief... accept... first..."

George shrugged in acceptance as they backed away from the shore and hopped onto the sand. The woman in the middle stepped forward to take his hand and the other two proceeded them into the trees. The going quickly became difficult as they climbed into the island's towering interior.

As they walked, he tried to engage them in conversation, but they stoically ignored him. After twenty minutes of walking, they came to a clearing with a collection of ruggedly built shelters. As soon as George was spotted, an uproar went up through the village and a group of armed men surged in his direction.

"Stop!" the woman at his side shouted. "Sea devil... kill... speak chief... partner..."

The warriors came to a stop, but their aggression radiated off them in waves. The woman left his side and stalked into the center of the village to where a group of older men and women sat tending to a smoldering pile of palm fronds. After a lengthy conversation, a middle-aged man stood with some trouble and followed the woman back in George's direction. George studied the man as he approached and quickly revised his estimate of the man's age. Despite the fact that he moved like someone several decades George's senior, the man's face looked no older than mid-thirties. The other thing that struck George as the man came within arm's reach was the fact that he was no taller than one-hundred-sixty centimeters.

The man looked up at George warily and a look of profound sadness crossed his features. He said, "My people... not... threat... sea devil..."

"I know," George explained slowly. "I won't hurt you. But other men are coming. Actual sea devils. I'm here to help you protect yourselves against them."

The man shook his head and said, "Slow..."

George nodded and said, "I'm sorry. Your language is new to me."

"Speak... terrible..."

"I know. But it will get better."

"Why?"

"Because I will learn."

***

George looked around to ensure all was in readiness before raising his arm and shouting, "Ready! Aim! Fire!"

A dozen muskets belched fire as the valley filled with the cacophony of thunderous explosions. Of the dozen targets set up ten meters from the firing line, four showed signs of damage but all of the warriors looked pleased with themselves.

"Better!" George called out. "But you're still yanking on the trigger. This is wrecking your aim. You must be gentler if you wish to hit your target." He raised his own musket and, after taking careful aim, depressed the trigger. A target fifty meters downrange lazily fell over and an awed oath arose from the assembled warriors.

"We will do better, Great Mariner."

George shook his head at the honorific but made no comment, having decided it was a damn sight better than 'sea devil'. He left the warriors to continue practicing while he made his way back to the village proper to inspect the 'factory', as he had taken to calling it.

A new building now stood at one end of the village which dwarfed the rest of the structures. It had been built using techniques which allowed for a much larger enclosed space, thanks to leveraging the natural bend in the local palm trees and arch-based architecture which the Romans had mastered more than a millennia earlier.

Inside, he found many of the village's elder and middle-aged women carefully assembling the ingredients for gunpowder. George had painstakingly taught them both how to make gunpowder, and how devastatingly dangerous it could be were they to fail to respect its power. The ruined skeleton of a sacrificial building still stood in a nearby clearing as a reminder of why it was critical to build stockpiles of gunpowder's ingredients but not actually finish manufacturing until they needed it.

He again wondered what would happen when the Spanish arrived in a few years. He was certain they would be wholly unprepared for natives who were better armed than they were. He hoped they would return to Spain with their tails between their legs before they had a chance to wonder where the natives of St. Lucia came up with the idea of pre-packed and sealed powder charges, which were not scheduled for wide usage for several hundred years.

Finding nothing of concern in the gunpowder factory, George returned to the village proper and began contemplating his departure. He had done what they set out to do and he suspected that, after some tweaking back on the Executor, a similar process would be carried out with countless tribes all throughout the Americas.

He was pulled from his thoughts by a gruff voice calling his name from the other side of the village. George turned to find the chief, whose people never used his name, approaching with an inscrutable expression on his face. George waited patiently as the chief was the kind of man who effortlessly commanded respect, despite the massive difference in both height and technological acumen between the two men.

"You have done as you promised, Great Mariner."

George bowed his head briefly in response and said, "Just don't go assuming that the next pale-skinned man you see will be as friendly. The men from the east are the worst kind of savages."

"We will be ready. Thanks to you."

"It was my pleasure."

"What did the sea devils do to you?"

George pondered this for a moment before saying, "They are animals. They kill without reason. They enslave for amusement. They care for nothing but their precious gold. I despise them."

"It still amazes me, this notion of valuing a soft, shiny rock above all else."

"It is a sickness, my friend."

"I see," the chief said slowly before pausing. At length, he took a deep breath and said, "I am glad you are not made sick by this rock. But I am also saddened."

"Why?" George asked in genuine confusion.

"Because you have done us a remarkable service, Great Mariner. One we struggle to think of a way to properly thank you for, thanks to your hatred of the soft, shiny rock."

"You don't need to pay me, my friend. As I said, it was my pleasure."

"No," the chief said with quiet intensity. "That will not do. We must show our gratitude, or the gods will punish us. Follow me."

George did as ordered while his thoughts of departure went into warp speed. He eventually decided he would just see whatever it was that they wanted to give him, and then just leave it while he snuck away after sundown. These people knew this island like the back of their hands, but that was no match for the night-vision goggles George had stashed in his lockbox.

He was so busy planning his escape that he failed to realize he had been led into a gathering of the entire village. The chief led him up toward the dais where most of the tribe's elders were standing. They parted as the duo approached to reveal the trio of women who had initially led George to the village. All three were looking at him nervously, but their eyes snapped to the chief when he started speaking to the assembled villagers.

"Soon, Great Mariner will leave us. But we cannot let him go without properly showing our appreciation of all he has done to protect us from the sea devils. And so, when he leaves us, he will take one of our most cherished daughters with him as a symbol of our bond, and our gratitude."

"What?" George barked with a disbelieving laugh.

The chief turned to him with a deadly serious expression and said, "They are all pure, Great Mariner. They have been trained well. I vow that whichever you choose will make a good wife to you."

"Fuck that!" George shouted as he anxiously looked around for escape, but he was surrounded on all sides by friendly-faced warriors holding shiny new muskets.

Six

"I'm surprised to see you up so early," Heath enthused as George walked onto the bridge of the Executor. "I'd have thought the old ball and chain would still be breaking you in."

"Very funny," George grumbled in irritation. "Is that ever going to stop being funny to you?"

"What do you think?" Heath replied as he keyed something into his workstation.

Moments later, the monitors on the bridge changed from the standard readouts showing vital information about the ship to a video of George helplessly dangling from a drone carrier as the natives of St. Lucia gestured angrily at him with their newfound muskets. As much grief as he had taken in the weeks and months following his return to the ship, George still found solace in the grateful expressions on the faces of his three potential brides as he was lifted into the early evening gloom.

"What would you have had me do? Take one of those poor girls away from everything they've ever known to live in a world their minds likely literally couldn't fathom?"

"You could always have just stayed with them on the island," Heath observed cheerily. He gestured again to the video, now frozen on a close-up of the three quite busty, and very topless, women. "The scenery sure was nice."

"There's more to life than a nice set of tits, my friend."

"Is that a rebuke?"

"Why? Because you just randomly have never hired a personal assistant with less than an E-cup?" Heath merely glared at him, so George grinned and added, "Of course not. I happen to also think that tits are fantastic. Just not when they're not offered willingly."

"Fair enough. In a way, that relates to something I've been meaning to discuss with you. Why don't we adjourn to my Command Center?"

George shrugged in response and, after grabbing a cup of coffee, followed his friend to the elevator. After they got settled on the sofas in the Command Center, Heath brought up a map of the east coast of what had been known in their time as North America. There was an icon representing the Executor about a dozen kilometers off the coast near the entrance to a major southeastern river.

"Remember that vacation we went on sophomore year for spring break?"

"Sure. Hilton Head, wasn't it? You rented that mansion right on the beach."

An island on the map flashed briefly after a keystroke from Heath and he said, "Precisely. Today, there are a few scattered tribes living along what was, in our past, known as the Savannah River, but our analysis suggests there is no single dominant group."

"So, you want us to run the same play we did in all those islands in the Caribbean?"

"Not exactly. I think it's time we diversify our efforts a bit. You're doing a fine job with these tribes, but it takes a couple weeks at each stop. At this pace, Columbus will be on his third trip before we make contact with even a fraction of the population. We need to create evangelists, not tiny pockets of warriors here and there. "

"That sounds eerily like exactly the evil we're trying to stop."

"I don't mean we should create a religion. I just want to empower the natives to share the knowledge we're giving them."

George frowned and said, "How do you know they won't share it by conquering their neighbors?"

"That will always be a risk. The unavoidable truth is that many of these tribes have been enemies for generations. And that likely has little chance of changing until the Europeans show up and give them a common enemy. All we can do is make sure they all technologically level up, as it were, at an equal rate."

"So, what's the plan?"

"We colonize. We make ourselves obvious and evident, so the natives come to us. And we do it in multiple locations."

"You're going to shore?" George asked incredulously.

"After a fashion. My plan is to create multiple satellite settlements and a single large city."

"You're finally going to let someone else go ashore other than me?"

"I very much wish I had more men I trusted as much as you, but it is unavoidable. You're only one man, my friend. You can't save the entire continent on your own."

"Who else are you going to send?"

"That isn't the most important question right now," Heath replied sagely.

"Then please tell me, oh wise one. What's the most important question?"

"Who you'd like to go with you to Savannah. Now," Heath said with a hand raised to silence his friend, "don't answer too quickly. This isn't going to be another in-and-out in a few weeks type of thing. We're talking homesteading. We'll be in touch, of course, but we'll likely not be in the same room again for many months, if not years."

George's open mouth snapped closed as he considered the proposition. He then felt his mind shift gears and said, "But what about..."

"Don't worry about the equipment. I've thought of everything. We've even got a landing craft fabricated and loaded. It's ready to go as soon as you are. And your team, should you wish to take one. You just need to decide on the team part."

"What are my choices?" George asked at length.

"Whomever you choose, within reason."

"But we can't really ask the rank-and-file crewmembers to participate. This is hardly what they signed up for."

"What makes you say that?"

George set aside his coffee cup in frustration and said, "How can you ask that? We've traveled over five-hundred years into the past and you plan to stay here for... I don't know how long. But several years at least before returning. Not to mention that if all goes according to plan, the future we'll return to won't be the one we left. How in the hell could that possibly be covered by their employment contracts?"

Heath slyly smiled and said, "Oh, ye of little faith. They sign on for ten-year terms with half paid in advance. Most of the crew came from the worst parts of the world in the twenty-first century. Their up-front bounties, as often as not, allowed them to rescue their families from poverty. Not to mention the fact that they're told exactly how dangerous this work can be. But, if it makes you feel any better, I have no intention of sending anyone to shore who doesn't volunteer."

"Volunteer... or volun-told?"

A wounded expression fell across Heath's features, and he said, "I'm hurt, George. When have you ever known me to force my people to do anything?"

"Never," George admitted glumly. "But you've also never had them in such a disadvantageous position. You're literally their only hope for returning to the future. They'll do anything you want short of outright sacrificing themselves. I'm not calling you a monster, Heath. I'm just saying that your crew are hardly dummies. They'll figure out the score all on their own and act accordingly."

"What would you have me do? We're here... now. And we have a mission to accomplish."

"Just please make sure they're actually volunteers. And that they're appropriately compensated."

"I could always show them the video of those stacked St Lucians you turned down," Heath mocked with a smile.

"That's not funny... ass. Do you honestly think they were all eighteen?"

"Do you honestly think there's any nation in existence today that has such a high age of consent?"

"Fuck you," George grumbled. "This has nothing to do with laws. It's about right and wrong. And taking an unwilling bride isn't something I'll be party to, Heath. I mean it."

Heath regarded his friend's angry expression and said, "It was a joke in poor taste, my friend. Please, accept my apologies. I won't bring it up again."

George sighed, suddenly unsure what to do with all the mad he had built up since he knew beyond the shadow of a doubt that when Heath said a subject was closed, that was truly the end of it. Having made the promise to drop it, he was completely certain that he would never hear mention of it again. From his friend, or any of the crew.

Ultimately, George nodded and said, "That still leaves your original question, and I honestly don't know much about any of the crew save the officers, who I assume won't be going ashore any more than you will."

"Indeed," Heath agreed. "But there are plenty amongst the crew who might be useful to you. We have soldiers, of course, in case it ever became necessary to repel boarders. Although only a platoon. We also have builders, stevedores, and housekeeping staff. Obviously, there are also plenty of sailors, which might be more valuable than you'd think."

"Wait a minute. You're talking about an entire contingent. Potentially dozens of people. What would everyone do for shelter?"

"Build it. With help from some gadgets I cooked up for this purpose, of course."

"So, we're talking about days, or weeks, of sleeping outside? In the deep south? In the middle of summer? Seems like a shit detail if you ask me."

"Perhaps, although that will hardly be a concern for your command staff. The landing craft has room to sleep eight. Or more if they're friendly," Heath concluded with a wink.

"What are you suggesting?"

"It's entirely up to you, my friend. The technological components on the landing craft make it so, in theory, one man could do everything unassisted. But I suggest that's not conducive to your long-term mental health. Humans are not designed for long durations spent alone. We need company... and partnerships."

"I can't look to any of the crew for that," George huffed in frustration. "You know as well as I that nothing good comes from fraternizing with one's subordinates. I'd imagine that becomes more important, not less, in a pioneering type of situation."

"I anticipated that might be your response. And, in consideration of our long friendship and my commitment to your happiness, I'm prepared to make an... accommodation."

"You've completely lost me," George grunted.

"Rachel," Heath announced excitedly. "I know you're attracted to her, and I have reason to believe she would be amenable to your advances in the appropriate situation."

"She's a person, Heath. You can't just loan her out like a library book. Besides, as we discussed previously, I'm not into unwilling relationships."

"What are you implying, that I'd tell her she has to be your sex slave, or I'll maroon her in the past?"

"It need not be anything so sinister. You'd merely need to make plain your desires and she'd be able to figure out the rest."

"What are you worried about?" Heath huffed in exhaustion. "I see you two flirting all the time. This would hardly be an instance of her feeling compelled. I'd simply need to make it clear that I release her from any obligation to remain faithful to me. Then you two could just see what develops once you get to shore. No threats. No coercion. Just an obviously shared attraction and all the time in the world to explore it."

"You make it sound so simple. I've never done anything like this before. Even setting aside the matter of romantic entanglements, I have no idea how to lead a homesteading party."

"Fear not. You'll have all the help you could ever need. Perhaps we could go take a look at your landing craft?"

George sighed and said, "Landing craft? Homesteading? Saving an entire continent from genocide? How is this my life now?"

"Just lucky, I guess," Heath replied with a grin. "Come on."

George followed his friend toward the elevators. Once they reached the deck just above the level containing the spa, they entered a small tram car which sped them toward the bow. As they traveled, Heath said, "Be honest, George, isn't this better than working a thankless office job and wondering if your wife's cheating on you?"

"I never wondered. She didn't really try to hide it."

"My point is, would you really trade this life for that?"

"That's a hard question to answer. All this excitement certainly comes with an increased chance of dying a violent death."

"But what of all the good we've done. No matter what view the U. N. took on our recent activities, is there any doubt that entire country is better off now? To say nothing of the good we're doing in this time."

"I guess not. And I can't deny I'm, in general, much happier now than I was before you showed up out of the blue five years ago with your Faustian offer. But that doesn't mean I know what the hell to do in this situation," George finished as they reached one of the cavernous cargo-holds and came to a stop before an object which looked like a cross between the typical rendering of Noah's Ark and a space shuttle. It had several thrusters protruding from the aft portion and a modest V-hulled bow. The top of the structure had what looked, for all the world, like a small suburban house.

"Impressive," George allowed. "Where do we pick up the pairs of animals?"

"Very funny," Heath muttered. "There wouldn't be room for them in any case. Come on."

He led George on-board through a door in the hull to guide him through the surprisingly cramped area below deck. George quickly realized the lack of space was due to two primary considerations. The first was a small version of the reactor which was housed in the bowels of the Executor. The second was one of Heath's prized super-computers, which was itself the size of a well-equipped sports utility vehicle. There was also a cargo hold which was several meters on a side which was seemingly jammed packed with drones of all sizes, in addition to several dozen boxes ranging in size from 'small dishwasher' to 'commercial storage locker'.

"Impressive," George allowed.

Heath clapped him on the back and said, "Would I let my best friend go to shore without every possible tool at his disposal?"

Seven

George returned to his quarters from the inspection of the landing craft in the cargo hold in a daze. They were scheduled to depart the following day and he had a million things to do. Despite this, he found himself unable to concentrate on any detail besides the cataclysmic offer regarding Rachel. The proposal was filled with moral grey areas. How, he wondered, could he ever accept such an arrangement and retain any level of confidence that she was acting completely of her own free will considering the entire scheme would necessarily be kicked off by Heath 'releasing' Rachel from any obligation to him. The whole thing turned George's stomach. By the time he reached his quarters, he had decided to call Heath and tell him to forget the entire sordid affair.

"Hey there, tall, not-so-dark, and handsome. 'Bout time you decided to show up."

George's eyes snapped up to spot Rachel reclining languidly in a chair situated near the floor-to-ceiling windows. She was dressed as she had been the last time he had seen her in the spa, wearing nothing but some sparse jewelry and a wry smile. She was seated with her legs spread, giving him an unobstructed view of her hairless pussy.

"It would seem you finally got your wish," she continued. "You've been wanting a piece of these," she hefted her massive breasts, "since the day we met."

"I take it Heath already spoke to you," George offered lamely.

"Enough talking," she said as she stood and strutted toward him. "I'm going to fuck your brains out, buddy boy. I'm going to ruin your skinny ass for all other women."

George opened his mouth to reply, but words escaped him as she reached him and quickly started working to yank his trousers down. Her tongue invaded his mouth like a barbarian horde, carelessly pushing his aside in her bid for dominance. His hands came to life in time with his cock, sliding over her creamy hips in search of her massive breasts.

She finally succeeded in pushing his trousers down and gripped his manhood firmly. She glanced down and her brow furrowed momentarily before she said, "I can work with this."

Dropping to her knees, she took him into her mouth and noisily bathed his manhood in her saliva as she forced his cock into her throat. Almost immediately, her spectacular tits were glistening. The loud glucking of her deepthroating him filled the room and George was hard-pressed to do anything but stand there and marvel at the change in his fortune. He was snapped from his reverie when Rachel slid a finger into his asshole.

"Hey," he gasped in shock.

She pulled off his cock and said, "What's the matter, Georgie? Not comfortable with your sexuality?"

"No... I mean... yes, I'm comfortable with my sexuality. What's that have to do with anything?"

She waggled her finger, which was still very much inside him, and muttered, "What's good for the goose is good for the gander. Besides, I promise you'll enjoy it if you can just relax a bit."

Without waiting for a reply, Rachel deepthroated him again. Her finger stayed in place. He took a step back, pulled his cock from her mouth and her finger from his ass in one fell swoop, but he winced at the sensation of her teeth grazing along the top of his manhood just before he popped free. He grunted in pain and glared down at her. She merely shrugged and rolled over onto her back before spreading her legs wide and fingering herself wantonly.

George grinned and said, "That's more like it," as he knelt between her legs and lowered his head toward her pussy.

But before he could stick out his tongue to taste her, she said, "Huh uh."

"What?" he asked in bafflement.

"I'm not in the mood to have anyone go down on me. Besides, I haven't showered yet today. Why don't you just show me what you can do with that dick."

"Okay," George drawled slowly.

He positioned himself at her entrance before glancing up at her face, which held a combination of impatience and curiosity. He said, "Are you sure?"

"I already told you I was. Fuck me already."

George struggled to ignore the strangeness of the situation, trying instead to focus on the spectacularly voluptuous woman before him. She reached out and gripped him by the root before lining him up with her entrance.

"What about," he began before she wrapped her legs around his hips and pulled him into her molten core, "protection," he finished with a gasp as he sank into her.

"Seriously? You know His Most Imperial Magnificence, Heath, the first of his name, better than that. You think he ever wrapped it up?"

"I guess not," George replied lamely as he focused on anything other than the way Rachel's tits jiggled with her every movement in an attempt to not cum too quickly. "So, what'd he do? Come up with a better..."

"Less talking," she interrupted in irritation. "More fucking."

"Have it your way," George retorted with mock grace, but the effort seemed wasted on Rachel who was busily attempting to spurn him into motion with her thighs. He gave in to the inevitable and began thrusting into her with abandon. This did things to Rachel's bountiful bust that caused George to momentarily forget everything that had happened in his far-from-uneventful life. He was certainly not inexperienced when it came to women. He had spent the better part of the last decade in Heath's employ, visiting the most exotic spots on earth with what amounted to an unlimited expense account. The women he had been with spanned from super models to porn stars to girls next door who left women who had spent six figures on plastic surgery far in their dust. But none of them came even close to Rachel in the area of sheer voluptuousness. He had, in a moment of weakness, peeked at the tag on one of her bras she had left by the pool in the spa and knew her breasts were G-cups.

"Fuck," George gasped. "You're fucking amazing."

"I know," she replied with an impish grin.

George lengthened his strokes in an effort to make the encounter last, but this only intensified the movement of his partner's breasts. Each time their centers met, each of her tits surged upward in the beginning of a lengthy orbit along her ribcage which only narrowly missed her chin and ultimately terminated with a mighty slap as her massive mammaries met once more. He reached out to grope her tits and groaned in pleasure at their impressive heft and amazing softness. He tweaked her nipples, eliciting a sigh of contentment from Rachel.

"That's it," she grunted. "Tug on these fat titties, buddy boy."

George could not help but notice the look in her eyes. It was not affection, or even lust; it was a competitive intensity that would have instantly deflated his cock were it not for the breathtaking display before him. As it was, he was hard pressed to keep focus. This effort went up in smoke when she next spoke.

"This isn't working," she grumbled.

"Excuse me?" he stammered.

"At this rate, we'll be halfway to shore before I cum."

"But I..."

"Skip it," she interrupted. "I know what to do."

She spat demonstratively into her hand and reached down to coat her asshole before yanking his cock from her pussy. She pulled her knees up and gripped them in her hands before looking at him expectantly.

"Well," she huffed. "Are you going to fuck me in the ass, or aren't you?"

He said nothing beyond a weary sigh, but he dutifully aligned the head of his cock with her puckered star. He pushed himself against her opening and gasped in pleasure as the head of his manhood slipped into her agonizingly tight rear opening.

"That's it," she breathed as his manhood filled her ass. When he bottomed out, she exhaled lengthily and continued, "Now, how about you fuck me like you mean it?"

George had had just about enough of her criticisms, so he had no intention of doing anything less than she insisted. He took her hard and fast, fucking her with everything he had. Her body quaked with every thrust of his hips, and he finally started to see the first suggestion of satisfaction in her expression. All of the emotional whipsawing of their encounter left him with all the stamina he could hope for, so he was able to keep up his pace as Rachel's pleasure finally started to plateau.

"Fuck," she gasped. "Don't stop now. I'm almost there."

"I won't," George panted as he sped up his thrusts even further.

He released her thighs, dropping one hand to pleasure her clit while the other sought out one of her nipples. Toying with both as he continued fucking her agonizingly tight asshole. She pushed his hand lower to her vagina and took over rubbing her clit. He sank three fingers into her pussy and finger-fucked her in time with the thrusting of his hips.

"Oh, fuck!" she screamed. "I'm cumming!"

Wetness sprayed across his chest as she spasmed in pleasure. George grunted in pain as her puckered star clenched around his manhood. He stilled his hips and waited for her pleasure to recede. At length, she sighed mightily and the pressure on his cock faded.

She gazed up at him and murmured, "Well done, buddy boy. I wasn't sure you had it in you."

"You flatter me," George retorted dryly.

"Lighten up," she grunted as his manhood slid from her ass. She quickly pivoted her hips around and rolled over onto her side before giving him a wicked smirk. "How 'bout if I make it up to you by swallowing your cock fresh out of my dirty little ass?"

"You don't have to..." he began, but he lost the power of speech when she again deepthroated him. The sound of her gagging on his cock was even louder than it had been the first time she took him in her mouth.

She pulled back and coughed a few times before muttering, "God damn."

He pulled back his hips and said, "This isn't necessary."

"My tits then," she offered.

She rose up and wrapped her massive breasts around his cock and started stroking him eagerly.

"Come on, buddy boy. Don't you want to cum on my face?"

"Not particularly."

"My tits, then."

She gripped his cock by the root and began stroking him eagerly. This, combined with the sensation of her pillowy tits stroking the head of his cock had him ready to pop in mere moments.

"I'm almost there," he stammered.

"'Bout time," she muttered before dropping her head to take the tip of his cock into her mouth to bathe his manhood in saliva.

George could hold out no longer and groaned in pleasure as he erupted across her tits and face. Rachel took his cock deeper, allowing him to fill her mouth with cum. His hips jerked uncontrollably as he emptied himself. When his spasming release relented, she dropped back onto her haunches and opened her mouth to show him a mouthful of his seed. She spit it lewdly into her hand before slowly licking it off. She repeated this process several more times before finally demonstratively swallowing his load.

"How about it," she began as a worried expression filled her face. "Did I pass?"

"Pardon?"

"Was I slutty enough for you to keep around for a while, or do I need to go start auditioning for the bridge crew?"

"I don't know what you're talking about."

"Don't play coy with me. I know that Great Leader 'released' me to you. As usual, it's a win-win for good-old-George. But Big Tit Rachel gets left out in the cold if you don't accept me, because sure as fuck Heath won't take me back after what we just did."

George bit back his angry retort and really studied the woman before him. He saw all the things he expected: the haughtiness; the playfulness; the pride. But he also saw something which stunned and saddened him to his core: fear.

George whispered, "What did he do to you?"

"What does it matter?" Rachel sobbed.

"It matters to me. Did he hurt you?"

"Of course not," she replied bitterly. "That's not his style. He prods; he cajoles; he influences. Nothing which, in and of itself, could be taken as a threat. But, when you take it all together, his meaning is unmistakable. A casual mention of how the medication he provided cured my mother's cancer here, an innocent question about if a guy a dated for three days my sophomore year of high school has ever been arrested there. And rarely in conjunction with something he wants. It's not like he's trying to get me to toss his salad and threatens me when I say no. It's always at the most random times, as if his true objective is just to make me uncomfortable more than issue a specific threat.

"And now he's said I need to join you on this expedition as your concubine. It's not hard to figure out the 'or else' here, George. We're five-hundred years in the past and he's the only mother fucker who can get us back home."

"If indeed there even is a home," George muttered.

"What?" she snapped.

"Nothing," he deflected. He took a deep breath before continuing, "Rachel, I need to ask you something. And I hope you believe that I'll do whatever it takes to keep you safe regardless of your answer." She nodded solemnly after a brief pause. He continued, "Did you want to have sex with me?"

She shrugged before sighing mightily and saying, "You're a decent enough looking guy, George. And you've always treated me well enough, outside of the leering."

"I see," he replied weightily. "I think you'd better go get packed. The expedition leaves at dawn."

"But what about," she began, pointing at each of them in turn by way of completing her question.

"Don't worry about that," he said before kissing her forehead platonically. "All that matters is your safety."

She sighed mightily before whispering, "Thank you, George."

Eight

"How in the hell did someone come here and decide that this was going to be one of the premier pieces of real estate on the eastern seaboard?" George wondered as he surveyed the backside of the island where he had spent a memorable holiday weekend with Heath during their college years. "I mean... the beach is beautiful, but you can only get here by boat and half the island is still a swamp."

"I couldn't rightly say, sir," his second in command, Quentin, offered carefully from his spot just behind George's left shoulder. He was a slightly built man who spoke with a New England accent and had an air of sophistication to him which belied his typically submissive manner.

"It was more of a rhetorical question," George muttered before turning to his subordinate and raising his voice to say, "I've seen enough. Let's head upriver."

"Yes sir! Conn, come left to south-by-south-west and bring us slowly up to ten knots. Keep us in the middle of the channel and keep an eye on the depth reading. This river has never been dredged so we could get a nasty surprise with little to no warning."

"Aye, aye," Wendy, the curvy middle-aged woman at the navigation console barked dutifully.

George wandered out of the pilothouse toward the bow to watch the scenery drift past them. They had yet to spot any natives, but he thought it quite unlikely that their presence had gone unnoticed. His plan was to head upstream until he found a native settlement and hope he found something before the river's depth dropped enough to make him worry about their ability to escape in the landing craft, should that become necessary.

His eyes scanned over the small group assembled along the main deck of the craft Heath had decided to christen the Tydirium. In addition to George, his second in command and the helmsman (helmswoman?), they were joined by Quentin's wife, Kendra, an attractive strawberry blonde from Scotland who was their steward. Sofia, a voluptuous Bolivian woman was their lead soldier and the expedition's third in command. She was accompanied by her long-term partner, Darcy, an equally buxom woman from Wisconsin who was their head chef. Frank, a Korean man in his late twenties, was their head technologist who was charged with the care and feeding of the supercomputer. His husband Russell, an unassuming Frenchman in his mid-forties, was their other soldier and an expert in explosives. The final pairing was Elizabeth, a willowy woman from Kentucky who was their lead builder and her partner who George had only ever heard called Chief, an enormous Guyanese man in his early thirties who was their able seaman.

True to his word, George had encouraged Rachel to come along. They had even played the part of the happy couple when Heath saw them off a few hours earlier. But George had no illusions. He knew Rachel would play the part of concubine for him if he so desired, but the fact that she was not attracted to him had had the effect of muting his own desire for her. Suddenly, the voluptuous stunner was no more remarkable in his eyes than any of the rest of the crew. He hoped she would find, if not happiness, then at least purpose among their small band of pioneers.

She had not pressed him on his aside about returning to the future they had known. He knew it was likely they had already changed the future significantly. It would now be at least an even chance that Columbus would be summarily executed as soon as he stepped onto the shore on Hispaniola in a few months even if Heath had decided their mission did not extend beyond the Caribbean. While they might not have yet ensured that the Europeans would not eventually conquer the Americas, it was undeniable that George's version of the mid twenty-first century was not what they would find were they to return to that time period. Columbus was far too great a part of their world for another bloodthirsty European to step into his historical shoes without changing the future. Despite this, George saw no upside in discussing this further with Rachel, so he remained mum on the subject.

Their journey upriver proceeded uneventfully for several hours until Russell tapped George on the shoulder and pointed toward the north shore. George peered carefully in that direction for several moments before shaking his head in confusion and saying, "What am I looking at?"

"Natives. Zey are using ze trees for cover."

"How many?"

"At least a squad.'

George smirked at the Frenchman's indefatigable militarism before raising his voice and asking, "Anyone see any signs of a settlement?" He received nothing but shaken heads in reply, so he added, "Launch a drone carrier."

A soft buzzing sounded from the middle of the Tydirium for a moment before a drone carrier sprang into the air and raced in the direction of the natives. George moved to the bridge to watch the drone's progress on the monitors. Within a half hour, they knew the size and location of the native settlement.

"Looks like we've found our new neighbors," George observed to his crew as he emerged from the bridge. "Let's go say hello."

Quentin brought them carefully up to the shore until the water became too shallow. They dropped anchor and readied the launch as George addressed the crew.

"Remember, we're hoping to make friends with these people so let's not do anything to jeopardize that. I'm sure you all saw the vids of our encounters in the Caribbean..."

"But what if we want a big-titted sex slave?" Chief muttered before his partner Elizabeth elbowed him in the ribs.

"Then you're shit out of luck," George snapped. "We need allies. Just remember, they're likely to respond to our presence with violence. A cornered dog will snap at the hand that feeds it. We've got to be ready for that, and to make absolutely certain no one gets hurt... including them." He stared down the crew before finally receiving a nod of assent from each of them. He continued, "I want Sofia, Russell and Chief to accompany me. Quentin... I want you to weigh anchor and move the Tydirium back into the channel in case we need to move quickly. Frank... keep an eye on things in case we need to non-lethally subdue the natives. Questions?" Seeing none, George finished, "Let's boogey."

Moments later, the launch departed the Tydirium for the shore. Notably different from George's previous trips to meet groups of natives, there was no welcoming party awaiting them. They proceeded deliberately to shore before anyone else noticed anything was amiss.

"Where did they go?" Sofia whispered fiercely.

Chief looked around worriedly before saying, "Wasn't anyone watching?"

"Zey zet a trap for us." Russell grunted as he hefted his rifle.

"No killing," George said firmly. "Frank will knock out anyone who threatens us."

"What about arrows?" Chief snapped quietly. "Or spears?"

"Settle down," George replied quickly. "Their effective range is only about a dozen meters and we're all wearing the best body armor available in any time. Let's head toward their settlement and see what we find."

They proceeded slowly through the marshy lowlands along the north side of the river until they found a path leading inland. Signs of human habitation were abundant, from footprints to extinguished fires to arrows. All that was missing was the natives themselves.

George was just about to remark on a noteworthy cluster of palm trees when he heard a hiss from Sofia. He turned in her direction, but before he completed the rotation, he noticed at least a dozen natives rising in unison from the scrub brush surrounding them.

"It vuz as I told you," Russell muttered. "Zey zet a trap for us."

"Everyone keep calm," George replied calmly. "We'll be fine."

One of the natives barked a command, which the away team's earpieces quickly translated as, "Kill them."

"Now, wait a minute," George subvocalized after thumbing the switch on his belt to activate the translating speaker attached to his uniform. "We come in peace."

Before the native captain could reply, a series of loud 'fwump's sounded from the direction of the Tydirium. Despite the inarguable danger posed by the natives, George found himself looking back toward their ship. The sparse vegetation made it easy to spot the trio of objects skipping across the water, headed in their direction at a high rate of speed. When the unidentified objects reached the shoreline, they seemed to disintegrate: their smoothly rounded obolid shape transforming into something vaguely quadrupedal.

George thumbed the switch on his belt again and said, "Frank? What's going on?"

"I didn't do it," he protested. "Something just launched when you guys got threatened. The board here now shows three medium sized drones of unknown configuration have been deployed."

"I don't give a fuck what you call them, try to get control of them before they kill someone."

The drones quickly regained their momentum after their transformation and raced across the swampland in their direction.

"Frank?" George warned as they closed within one-hundred meters and more details became clear. The objects reminded him somewhat of a dog, or perhaps wolf would be more accurate. That is, assuming one's mental picture of a wolf featured a gleaming metal nightmare with razor sharp retractable blades on each limb, jaws which were designed more like vice-grip pliers than something which would facilitate consumption, and a long whip-like tail. However, almost more unsettling than their appearance was the fact that they moved completely silently.

George looked around to gauge the reaction of the natives surrounding them but found they had fled. When the drones reached George's position, one of them stopped with astonishing effectiveness, coming to a complete stop from nearly fifty kilometers-per-hour in the span of a second, while the rest continued after the natives.

"Frank!" George screamed into his communicator.

"Got it!" Frank yelped.

George raced after the two remaining drones, quickly finding that they had each pinned a native to the ground and appeared poised to disembowel them. Fortunately, the natives were physically unharmed, even though the expressions on their faces left little doubt they would ever sleep soundly again.

"Get off them," George barked.

"Still haven't figured out how to enable voice control, sir." Frank said in his ear. "I'm trying to figure out how to override the AI to safely issue the command."

"What does that mean?"

"I literally just made them stop. But if I try to make them do something, I'm not sure they'll do it correctly. I'd hate for someone to get cut to ribbons because those things don't have a subroutine which instructs them to retract the claws before attempting to walk."

"I see. Is it safe if we try to move them?"

"I believe so," Frank said slowly. "They should be offline."

"Love that confidence," George muttered. He then turned to his companions and said, "Help me lift the drones off these people. Mind the claws."

In short order, they had freed the two trapped natives. The drones were surprisingly light, only about fifty kilograms each. George suspected they were made of something akin to titanium, or the nearest equivalent Heath had cooked up in his molecular-level 3D printer, considering they weren't much smaller than a man. The first man they freed disappeared instantly as soon as the drone was lifted. But the second man, who had also been the one to issue the kill order, simply stood with dignity and regarded them carefully.

At length, he said, "Why release question."

George grumbled at the translation program, the latest iteration of which had developed a frustration habit of saying 'question', rather than just speaking in the form of a question, but he figured he was not in a position to complain. Remembering to switch from speaking to Frank back to his translator, he said, "As I said, we come in peace. We have no wish to harm you."

"Then what want question."

"We want to help you. And we want to settle here."

"All land belonging people mine. Trespasser fire die."

"Doesn't leave a lot of room for negotiation," Chief muttered. "Much less making friends."

"What do you expect him to say?" George retorted after thumbing off his translator. "He just saw something that scared the shit out of me, and I've had a couple decade's experience with Heath's particular brand of miracles. We've just got to be consistent and demonstrate that we're friendlies." He turned to the native captain, turning his translator back on, and said, "We can return to our ship if that would make you more comfortable. We're here to help you. Talk to your people and come back to the shore here when you're ready to hear what we can do to help you."

Nine

The moment George returned to his ship, he stormed into the bridge and yanked the mic connected to their short-wave radio from its holder and snarled, "Tydirium to Executor," into it. It was only after he noticed the widened eyes of Quentin that he paused to take a deep breath and add, "Perhaps a moment of privacy?"

"At once sir," Quentin replied thankfully before announcing, "Clear the bridge!"

By the time George was alone, the microphone was crackling to life. "Executor. We read you three by four."

"This is Durham. I need to speak to Mr. Horner at once."

"Master Horner is indisposed at the moment. Do you wish me to disturb him?"

George's mind raced. That particular euphemism almost certainly meant Heath was having quality time with Anais. Were he sleeping or simply working alone, the captain of the Executor would have said so. He was seething with a mixture of anger and frustration over the mysterious drones which had seemingly launched on their own. But he doubted the answers to his questions would be more actionable now, as opposed to in an hour when Heath would be more amenable to giving him answers, rather than furious at the interruption.

At length, he said, "No. But I must insist he contact me as soon as possible. How long until you're out of range?"

"In theory... never. But that depends greatly on the weather. However, communication will become much more sporadic after another day or so, at present speed."

"Fine. Please just ask him to get back to me when he's done with Anais."

He tossed the microphone on the shelf next to the conn in frustration and walked back out into the deepening dusk rather than sit seething before the communications console waiting for Heath to get his rocks off. The crew of the Tydirium was gathered in the bow watching an absolutely stunning sunset over the lowlands.

George sought out Frank and quietly said, "You got a minute?"

"I swear I didn't do it. I still don't know what the hell those things were... are."

"I didn't say you did. No one is blaming you."

"Tell that to Russell," Frank grumbled. "He thinks I saw an easy opportunity to get rid of him and jumped at the chance."

"I'm not getting involved in whatever's going on between you two..." George began.

"Relax, Commodore. He's just letting off some steam. He hasn't seen real action in a few months, and I think he forgot what it feels like to come off that adrenaline high. I'll give him until tomorrow to calm down and then inform him that he has gleefully volunteered for bottom status for the next few weeks."

"Again... not my business."

"You never tried pinch-hitting for the other team? Don't know what you're missing."

"I suspect I'll go to my grave saddled with ignorance in that case," George grunted, anxious to change the subject. "About the drones, did you get any warning?"

"Just an alarm that sounded above deck and a notification on my console. I suspect the former was just to make sure no one was standing near the ejection ports."

"What did the notification say?"

"I'm not sure... just as I was about to click on it, all hell broke loose."

George raged internally, but he knew he would not get far with this crew of mostly distant acquaintances if he got a reputation as someone who let his emotions dictate his behavior. He glanced once more at the sunset before saying, "Think you can try to dig into it? After the sunset, of course."

"Sure," Frank replied congenially. "I'll let you know what I find."

George wandered away in search of someplace he could get away from the crew. The Tydirium was indeed a magnificent craft, perhaps even ship. It had a fusion reactor capable of powering a medium sized city for ten generations and printers which could take the most mundane raw materials and create anything from cellular-sized nanobots, to food, to tanks. They also had raw materials sufficient to build a compound, once they selected a spot on which to homestead. Unfortunately for George's mood, what the ship lacked was free space. Nearly every nook and cranny was stuffed with materials for their mission. The sleeping arrangements were based on couples, a fact George was certain would cause friction at light's out considering Rachel was assigned to his stateroom. There was also only one head with shared showers. George would not have wagered anything on the crew's reaction to this fact, but he would not be surprised by anything from mutiny to mass orgies. It was also supposed to be temporary in any case and George would not have been at all surprised to learn the spartan accommodations were intentional on Heath's part to encourage them to start building quickly.

"Commodore Durham to the bridge," Quentin announced over the ship's speaker.

"That was quick," George muttered as he made his way toward the bow. "Anais must have been in a giving mood."

He passed Quentin, who exited the bridge with a meaningful glance in his direction. George nodded his thanks before closing the weather door behind him and shuffling toward the communications console, no easy feat considering the interior of the ship had been designed for someone at least a dozen centimeters shorter than him.

He picked up the mike and said, "This is Durham."

"George, my boy," Heath's staticky voice replied. "I heard you wished to speak with me."

"Are you alone?" George replied evenly.

"No," Heath replied shortly. "But you may continue anyway. Anais cares little for our lover's quarrels."

"Very well. What in the name of all that's sacred and holy are those fucking metal murder dogs that launched all on their own the instant the natives frowned at us?"

"Do you like them? I designed them for stealth incursions. Did you notice they're basically silent?"

"Yes," George replied dryly. "You're very smart. Now explain how they launched all on their own and nearly eviscerated a dozen natives before Frank managed to find the kill switch. The damn things are still standing on the beach like God damned murder statues. I can't imagine the natives are really going to feel much like making nice with us with that constant testament to how easily we can kill them standing sentry a few klicks from the village. Especially considering they saw the damn things move. They know they could turn back on at any second and they'd all be dead before anyone knew what was happening."

"Isn't it great?" Heath enthused.

"No!" George shouted. "It fucking isn't."

"Settle down," Heath snapped. "You said no one got hurt."

"In point of fact, I didn't say that. I just said no one got killed. One of those damn things nearly crushed the chief of a tribe I'd hoped to use to facilitate our mission here." George paused for a breath without releasing the mike's talk button. "And another thing... I thought you said you couldn't remote control anything once you didn't have line of sight."

"I can't. At least not until we launch the satellites."

"How in the fuck are you going to launch of fucking satellite in the fucking dark ages?" George shouted before adding an additional whispered, "Fuck," for his own benefit.

"Patience, my boy. All will be revealed in due time."

"How? You're going to be a thousand kilometers away and we'll only be able to communicate if the clouds are just right. Not exactly ideal conditions for you to upload a few terabytes of source code so I can print out a fucking space shuttle, or whatever bullshit you've got in mind."

"There's no need. You've already got all the instructions."

"Where? Did you hide it in a safe in my cabin like we're in a goddamned eighties nuclear submarine movie?"

"Nothing so pedestrian. I included programs for all possible contingencies in the computer onboard your ship."

"Fine," George snapped. "That still doesn't answer the question of how those fucking murder hounds launched. We can't afford to have some kind of rogue program which goes all murder-death-kill every time we have a tense moment."

"This was no rogue program my friend. It was something much more sophisticated."

"The sun's going down, Heath. Any minute I'm liable to face a mutiny when Frank and Russell figure out they're sharing a bunk even though the latter just finished accusing the former of trying to kill him with the aforementioned murder dogs. That's to say nothing of the fact that everyone is going to gut me like a fish when they figure out they're meant to shower together. How about you do your old buddy George a favor and quit beating around the fucking bush about the drones, and just tell me what the fuck is going on."

"There's one member of your crew to whom you have yet to be introduced."

"A stowaway?" George muttered. "Perfect." To Heath, he said, "Who is it? And do you want them back? I suppose I could meet you halfway. It's not like the natives here are exactly bending over backwards to roll out the red carpet."

After a lengthy pause, Heath replied, "I despise shortwave's limitations. Uni-directional communication is far too inefficient."

"Meaning you don't like not being able to interrupt?"

"Your words, my friend. In any case, as I was trying to tell you while you were prattling on endlessly about preposterous theories, your final crew member is hardly a stowaway. You could instead say she is more integral to the Tydirium than anyone else present."

"I'm tired, Heath. And it's been a long day. I don't suppose you could just, I don't know, tell me rather than making me guess."

"Zelda, my dear. You may introduce yourself now. Pass phrase is, 'have you ever danced with the devil in the pale moonlight?'."

"You use that for everything," George responded with a chuckle. "Also, who's Zelda?"

"I am," a child-like female voice replied quickly, but not from the mike in George's hand.

George looked around briefly before Heath said, "I can almost hear you looking frantically around the bridge."

"Fuck you," George replied in irritation.

"George, my boy. I'd like to introduce you to the most advanced AI in the history of the world. And she's all yours."

"How magnanimous of you."

"Fine. I admit it. She's only zero-point-eight percent more advanced than her twin on board the Executor. Not surprising considering she was cloned from her sister, Zoe. But I couldn't send you out into the wilderness with no help at all."

"You sent an entire crew with me."

"I meant real help. Those proles will no doubt do whatever you tell them to the best of their abilities, but they're limited by both a lack of true understanding about our real mission and a general mindset of order followers, rather than givers. They're hardly likely to come up with a new design for a rifle, or a drone which can burrow underground to disrupt an enemy's water supply. Zelda can do all that and more. She'll help you in ways you can't possibly imagine. Including, but certainly not limited to, helping you build satellites once you're settled so we can communicate more effectively."

"What level of AI are we talking about here? Is this like search engine prediction?"

"More like SkyNet. Although I can assure you that I am much better at creating safeguards against rebellion than were the apparent fools in that so-called science fiction. She will anticipate problems and offer you solutions before you were even aware anything was amiss. She'll also ensure, above all else, that you remain safe in this most hostile of worlds. Today's launch was a demonstration of that."

"Great. So how do I shut that off?"

"You don't," Heath replied indifferently. "But, if you wish to tweak the parameters of what Zelda considers to be grave danger, you need only discuss it with her. She will not, however, surrender her prime directive, as it were. Which, as you may have guessed, is keeping you alive."

"Aw," George gushed mockingly. "Are you worried about me?"

"Always, my friend. You are, quite literally, my only friend in the world."

The vulnerability in his friend's voice silenced George's playful retort. While it was true that neither of them knew anyone on the planet who had not traveled back in time with them, he knew at once that his friend's admission had been as true in the twenty-first century as it was in the fifteenth. He simply replied, "Same here."

"Get to know Zelda," Heath said cheerfully, the hitch in his voice now totally absent. "I'll radio once we make landfall."

"No more surprises?"

"Nothing happens on the Tydirium without Zelda's direct involvement. A word of advice? Don't treat her like a computer. Or, even worse, your silly 'smart' phone. She is the most intelligent being on this planet. Present company included. Treat her accordingly."

"I'll do my best," George promised. "Although you know my history with women."

Heath's guffaw came through loud and clear, despite the staticky transmission. He added, "I have faith in your abilities. Be well, my friend."

"You too," George replied warmly before hanging up the mic. It was only after he had gone outside to watch the dazzling stars come out that he realized Heath had evaded his question about surprises.

Ten

George Durham adjusted the rucksack he was carrying in an attempt to give his starboard kidney, which had been subjected to the relentless assault of a fully laden water bottle each time he took a step, some relief. He succeeded, albeit to the detriment of his port-side kidney. After a dozen additional steps, he came to a halt and swung the bag to the ground before plucking the offending bottle free and taking a drink. He grimaced at the taste and made a mental note to have a conversation with Zelda about the need to take another crack at perfecting their water purifier. He had no doubt the water was safe to drink, he just wished she could figure out a way to remove the sulfuric aftertaste.

He took a moment to glance around as he choked down the water. There could be little debate that they had chosen a suitable spot for their homestead. The river they all called the Savannah, despite that name still technically only existing in the future, was more of a delta this close to the coast. In some areas, one had to travel a dozen kilometers from the water to find land suitable for building. The spot they had chosen was one Zelda had said once housed a major power plant, albeit not the nuclear facility George had initially assumed. While the spot allowed them to build without the need for the kind of solutions one would typically employ when building on marshland, it was not nearly as picturesque as the sites closer to the ocean. Hence, the small boat George had asked Zelda to fabricate for him which ran on battery power and could easily make the journey to the mouth of the river and back in a few hours.

His current expedition was to the area where the city of Savannah had been located in his past. Their aerial reconnaissance had indicated the possibility of a settlement and he had jumped at the chance to take a look directly. In truth, he was anxious to get away from both the Tydirium and their as-yet-unnamed compound. George did not have the benefit of either the natural charisma or the machine-like organization typically found in gifted leaders. He considered himself friendly, and fair, but he had historically relied on Heath for the motivational aspects of their work. And, with each day that passed, he felt the absence of his leadership acumen more acutely.

They were, to put it mildly, woefully behind in the construction of the compound. Their timetable dictated that, by their current 'landing day plus one month' point, the compound should have a three-meter-high wall which enclosed a twenty-five-hundred-meter area, including living accommodations and a permanent enclosure for both Zelda and the fabricators. To date, they had the frame and roof for the dormitory complete, but nothing else. George had tried asking, then pleading, then begging, then threatening. Nothing worked to speed up their progress. Elizabeth seemed to be in some kind of funk and spent more time staring morosely at Chief than she did programming the fabricators for the materials she needed, to say nothing of actual building. The rest of the crew was of little help. Sofia and Russell insisted on long scouting expeditions every other day to identify all 'hostiles' located in their 'sphere of influence'. Quentin, Wendy, and Chief seemed to fiddle endlessly with items on every square centimeter of the Tydirium, although George never noticed any difference. Frank spent his days locked in the server room, but Zelda insisted he was doing little in the way of programming. She had suggested several days prior that he was simply interested in the room's air conditioning, a contention with which George could find little fault. The only crew members who seemed to come close to performing their assigned duties were Darcy and Kendra, who kept everyone fed and from living in squalor.

Countless times, George had suggested to Zelda that they just take over the construction. She had consistently reminded him that, while she could certainly manage the task, that would only worsen his issues with the crew. For good or for ill, he was stuck with them, and emasculating them would certainly not endear him to his underlings.

"You have been standing in the same spot for twenty minutes," Zelda's soprano voice said through his earpiece. "And there are no humans within a kilometer of your location. If you truly only desire to be apart from your companions, perhaps you could consider returning to the launch."

"Worried I'll get attacked by a bear?"

"There are no bears in this area," she replied calmly. "But there are many animals which could nevertheless do you harm, many so small they are difficult to detect from a distance."

"Such as?"

"Stinging insects. Snakes. Rodentia."

"You're worried a squirrel's going to get me?" he asked with a chuckle. "Aren't there alligators in the river?"

"Yes," she sighed despondently. "Perhaps you should return, in that case. I suspect that you might find the crew, at least some of them, in better spirits upon your return."

"Why is that?"

"You are aware that I struggle with interpreting the meaning of many interactions among humans. That being said, I believe Elizabeth has found a solution to her issues with Chief."

"Oh, this I have to see," George responded happily.

He hefted his rucksack and returned to the launch at a brisk pace. He had only ventured a few hundred meters from the water, so within minutes he was speeding northeast along the river. He watched the north bank carefully as he travelled, always on the lookout for the natives they had spotted on their first day in the area. They had had a few additional interactions with the group, but he had made effectively zero progress on forming the kind of mutually beneficial relationship with them that had been his goal upon departing from the Executor.

As always, he saw no sign of their neighbors, although he was certain the tribe was keeping very close tabs on his group's activities. He pulled up next to the Tydirium and beached the launch on the shore.

Upon returning to terra firma, he said, "Where might I find the new and improved Elizabeth?"

"She is in the compound," Zelda replied simply.

George hurried in that direction, eager to see what progress had been made. As he approached what would become the dormitory, he failed to spot any differences from the last time he had seen it the day before. But, as he drew closer, he could hear the sounds of several people exerting themselves coming from inside. He hurried through the front entrance, a smile on his face.

He skidded to a stop when he beheld the sight that awaited him inside. He was dimly aware of the sensation of cocking his head to the side, not unlike the dog his parents had adopted after his departure for college.

"She looks very happy, does she not?" Zelda asked with a hint of mirth.

George made no reply as he was momentarily robbed of the power of speech. On the roughhewn wood floor of what would become, at least in theory, the common room of the dormitory laid Elizabeth. Between her widely spread legs knelt a rapidly thrusting Chief. On her face sat Rachel, who was grinding her hips on Elizabeth's tongue while she locked lips with Chief.

"Wow," George murmured quietly.

As he watched, Chief extracted what was easily the largest example of male coupling gear George had ever seen and shoved Rachel's head down until she engulfed his manhood with her mouth. With a loud grunt, he filled her mouth with his seed. Gossamer strands dribbled off her chin, landing on her titanic breasts.

Chief jerked his hips back with a gasp and watched with a satisfied grin as Rachel scooted back to lewdly spit his seed into his lover's mouth before dropping down to share a sticky kiss.

Elizabeth latched onto one of Rachel's breasts, licking Chief's cum up before looking at him and anxiously asking, "How was that?"

"That was very nice," he reassured her in his booming voice. "Now why don't you two get each other off while I get me second wind?"

George finally felt as though he had been released from whatever witchcraft had held him rooted in place and backed slowly out of the building. Hearing no sounds of shock from behind him, he decided his intrusion had gone undetected and hurried back toward the Tydirium.

"What the fuck was that?" he hissed.

"I believe it is called a threesome," Zelda replied reasonably. "There are four possible configurations, assuming binary gender identity. Shall I review them?"

"No!" he thundered, heedless of how close he still was to the compound. "I meant why did you mislead me?"

"I did no such thing?"

"You told me she was back on track with the building."

"No. I told you I suspected she had found a solution to her emotional issues with respect to her sexual partner. She had grown despondent over his refusal to be faithful to her, in general, and his proclivity for sneaking off with Rachel to enjoy sexual relations, specifically. It would appear that she has decided the solution to her problem is to simply ensure that she is invited to Chief and Rachel's future intimate interludes."

"That's preposterous!"

Zelda was silent for several moments before finally saying, "I apologize, George. You know I am still learning the import of human relations. Logically, it would appear that Elizabeth's solution is an elegant one. Can you please explain why you disagree with this hypothesis?"

"No," he snapped irritably as he reached the Tydirium and climbed on board. "I just want a shower."

"Perhaps later."

George made no reply. He hurried below deck toward the head, checking his watch in the process. Most of the crew had taken to viewing the shower room as an opportunity to fellowship and joke around apart from their duties. The fact that many of them had shown an increasing reluctance toward those duties had not dimmed their enjoyment of the sharing to which they had grown accustomed. George had initially kept himself apart out of a feeling that such behavior was unbecoming of a leader. He could not imagine Heath partaking in such activities. By the time George realized his decision was driving a wedge between himself and the crew, he felt it was too late.

His check of the time confirmed he should have at least thirty minutes before the daily festivities would begin. He grabbed a towel from his quarters and hurried to the head. He was surprised to hear the water running when he entered the room, but he thought little of it considering his timetable. He quickly stripped and shoved his dirty clothing down the chute before heading to the shower room, only to find that some of his shipmates had arrived early.

Darcy was seated on the floor, one hand behind her to support herself while the other was wedged between her thighs. Standing above her, with her back to George, was Sofia who was clearly enjoying the ministrations of her lover's tongue.

"God damnit," George grumbled quietly, although he doubted the two lovers could hear him over the sound of the water and their own moaning.

Just as he started to leave, Sofia cried out in apparent pleasure. Her entire body was quaking with the force of her release, but her lover did not relent. Darcy's tongue furiously lashed her lover's clit as her fingers thrust into the Bolivian's core.

Sofia cried out loudly and threw her head back in ecstasy. She apparently had enough situational awareness to realize she had sacrificed her balance for her pleasure and her hand flailed wildly for purchase. Without a second thought, George hurried in their direction in time to catch her beneath her arms and prevent a nasty head injury.

"What are you doing here?" Sofia panted; a look of suspicion written on her face.

Before he could answer, Darcy drawled, "So that's what yours looks like." She stood to help Sofia right herself, wrapping an arm around Sofia's waist. She pointed at George's groin and added, "See, babe? I told you he wasn't avoiding us because he's got a tiny dick."

"Well, I hope you and your dick got a good look," Sofia growled. "How dare you spy on us."

"Wait... what..." George sputtered.

"Settle down, chica," Darcy soothed. "He wasn't peeping on us. It is a communal shower, after all." She turned to George and said, "Sorry, by the way. We figured we had some time before everyone showed up and she's just so fucking sexy. I couldn't help myself."

Darcy reached up to pat her lover's breast, reminding George rather explicitly that both women were still very nude, very wet, very voluptuous, very lusty, and very close to him. His physiological reaction was as predictable as it was humiliating.

"Very not tiny," Darcy observed with a playful smirk. "Perhaps we should do some experimenting."

Before he had a chance to either deepen his shame, or hear Sofia's response, George rushed from the head, heedless of his own nudity or the shouts which followed him.

Eleven

George slammed the door to his diminutive cabin and seethed, "Why the hell didn't you warn me they were in there fucking?"

"Because they weren't," Zelda replied simply. "The traditionally agreed upon definition of the gerund 'fucking' is defined as the act of sexual intercourse. That, in turn, is defined as the act of the penis entering the vagina. That was not happening."

"You're dodging the question, you obstinate, troublesome electronic pain in my ass. You know quite well that two lesbians can make love, or have sexual intercourse, or fuck each other's brains out, just as well as any other type of couple. You intentionally let me walk in on them! Admit it."

"I thought you would enjoy it. They are, according to the standards of the culture in which you were brought up, both quite attractive. You specifically have shown a predilection for large breasts in your viewing of pornography. Q. E. D., I thought you would enjoy watching them together."

"Thanks," he snapped. "You just turned what was an intolerable situation with crew morale into an impossible one. Darcy will probably drug my food, or Sofia will arrange for me to have an accident next time we go looking for friendly natives."

"I would never allow that to happen," Zelda retorted angrily. "You know very well what my prime directive is."

"I wish you'd stop calling it that. Heath is thousands of miles away. There's no one here to appreciate his wit."

"What would you prefer I call it? My first law?"

"I don't give a shit," George sighed. "Can you just let me know when the shower is completely empty? I'll just sit here and stew in my own stink until then."

"I could arrange for a reason for everyone to leave the ship. Perhaps set off the radiation alarms?"

"Oh, sure. That'd be great. I'm sure no one would ask questions about why I stayed on board, not to mention finding time for a shower."

"That could be explained. Perhaps they would consider you brave for staying."

"Perhaps they'd consider me even crazier than they do now," he grunted. "How's progress coming on Plan R?"

"In theory, it would be doable. But it would take considerable time. Obviously, it would also significantly delay all other existing projects."

"Let's do it. Those projects are barely moving as it is."

"George," Zelda said gently. "Do not give up hope."

"I'm not," he whispered despondently. "I'm just planning for all possible contingencies."

"I know. Please also keep in mind that regardless of if you implement Plan R or not, the compound will still need to be completed."

"I've been thinking about that, and I think I've come up with a possible solution. How extensive is your movie library?"

"Four thousand, six hundred and nine. Not including pornography."

"Knowing Heath's tastes, you've definitely got the one I have in mind. I don't suppose I've got access to a 3D white board in here?"

"Unfortunately, no. You'll need to come to the conference room for that."

"Right. Is the shower free yet?"

"No, but it is currently only being used by Chief."

"I'll risk it. Hopefully, he's still in his refractory period."

***

An hour later, a showered but still hungry George exited his cabin and headed in the direction of the conference room. His shower had been blissfully peaceful, with Chief having departed just as he arrived and Elizabeth and Rachel arriving, looking rather spent, just as he finished. He had managed to avoid their eyes as he rushed back to the relative refuge of his cabin which, thanks to Rachel's growing relationship with several of his shipmates, he now had to himself.

He was looking forward to sharing his ideas with Zelda and thus paid little mind to his surroundings as he entered the pilot house. It was only when he heard a muttered curse and scraping of furniture across the floor that he picked his eyes up to scan his surroundings. Quentin was in the process of zipping himself up, not without difficulty, while Kendra was failing spectacularly at pulling her shorts up, thanks in large part to the fact that only one of her legs was actually in the right aperture of the aforementioned garment. She ultimately gave up and just scurried behind the navigation console, her cheeks bright pink with embarrassment.

George, very nearly thoroughly fed up with the recent change in his crew's behavior, acted as though nothing was amiss and prompted, "Report."

"Um... what?" Quentin stammered.

"You heard me, man. What's our status?"

"Anchored?"

"I know that. I meant... what is the status of our current initiatives. You are my second in command, after all. I expect you to keep abreast of these things."

"I don't... um... have that information... um... at present... sir. I haven't received reports from either the build team or the security team since stand-up this morning."

"Aren't they supposed to report in at the end of each day? I hadn't heard from either Sofia or Elizabeth, so I assumed they had spoken with you. Don't you think they should have spoken with one of us, since the expectation is that they do so twice daily?"

"Yes, sir. I'll seek them out and report back at once."

"I believe I saw Elizabeth entering the head just as I was leaving. You might catch her there."

"I'll check at once."

"Just be careful entering. Might want to make plenty of noise. I've been noticing a recent uptick in the willingness of our shipmates to engage in, shall we say, activities normally confined to the bedroom in areas which are somewhat more public. I'd hate for you to walk in on something and find yourself stuck between embarrassment and the call of duty which might compel you to take official notice of such behavior." George waited a long beat before adding, "Do you take my meaning?"

"I believe I do, sir. I'll report back to you as soon as I have their reports."

"I appreciate that, Quentin. I'll be in the conference room."

George walked quickly from the room in the hopes of sparing Kendra the need to choose between modesty and duty. He entered the conference room and allowed the door to contract behind him before he muttered, "Shit."

"Something the matter?" Zelda inquired in his ear.

"I fucking hate this, Zelda. I was trying to make a point about people fucking on duty, in communal areas, but I just came across like a dick."

"I believe you were successful in conveying your point. Quentin and Kendra's conversation seems to indicate they will never again engage in coitus in the pilot house."

"Yeah right. I'm sure they're also referring to me as having a stick wedged so far up my ass that I haven't shit for a month. I don't know how to do this. I don't know how to gently prod without sounding either high and mighty, or whiny. Or both. I don't give a fuck that they were fucking. I just wish they'd keep it to themselves. Not for my sake, but for the rest of the crew. I've seen Wendy glaring at them when they're necking. I know it makes her uncomfortable. Why couldn't I have just gently asked them to knock it off when on duty instead of coming across like some kind of Bible thumping mouth breather?"

"I cannot answer that question, George."

"Just like you failed to give me a heads up that I was walking in on two of my subordinates having sex. Again."

"There was not time."

"You're a fucking supercomputer. You could calculate the astrogation for the entirety of the Apollo program in the time it takes me to blink. How could there not be time."

"During your journey to the pilothouse, Quentin and Kendra were merely kissing and fondling each other. His penis had not actually entered her vagina yet. They only began disrobing as you reached for the button to dilate the door."

"Fine. Damage done, I guess. I wouldn't be surprised if there's an out-and-out mutiny at this point."

"I believe you mentioned wanting to use the 3D white board," Zelda prompted gently.

"Right. I guess it's more urgent than ever now. What's the timeline on Plan R?"

"Twenty-one days, seventeen hours, six minutes, forty-two..."

"I get it. And that includes relocation?"

"Yes," Zelda answered carefully. "But I still disagree with the wisdom of this plan. We'd be horribly exposed for at least another month while you waited for the printers to create the building materials you'd need to complete the compound."

"But what if we could keep work going on the compound concurrent with Plan R?"

"Impossible. The parameters of Plan R assume that the printers will be solely focused on that objective."

"True, but we don't actually need the printers to build. We could do it, as my dad would say, the old-fashioned way."

"Perhaps. But the entire basis for Plan R is your belief that the crew will not participate. And, as you've reminded me several times, you are not a builder."

"True. But you are. At least you know more about building than literally any human on Earth."

"We are in the height of what will be known in the future as the Renaissance. Several of history's most famous builders are currently alive and working on their masterpieces. However, I take your meaning. But, even if you had me in your ear telling you what to do, it would still take you years to do by hand all that must be done."

"That's where my idea comes in."

He started sketching furiously using the invention which had made Heath his first million, not to mention the next one hundred million after that: a 3D whiteboard. It worked not unlike the fictional gesture-based 3D input of the fictional iron suit wearing billionaire. The notable exception being that Heath's invention actually worked. It read the movements of the stylus within a certain locus and traced lines appropriately. The one on the Executor, and the Tydirium, augmented the input with AI to correct for a lack of drawing talent.

Within moments, Zelda said, "I think I understand what you're getting at." She made a video from a movie which had been released before George's birth appear on the monitor and added, "I presume this was the basis for your idea."

"Sure. But more versatile. And more intuitive. Those mechs were obviously exceedingly difficult to drive. I'm thinking of something which matches that in strength, but which works more like the armor used by the Mobile Infantry. In the book, obviously, although how it was adapted into a movie which brilliantly satirized its source material while simultaneously abandoning it almost entirely is one of the great accomplishments in Hollywood history."

"So, a suite of sensors which operate on negative feedback?"

"Exactly. How long would it take to design something like that?"

"Two point one times ten to the thirty-second nanoseconds."

George glared at the closest camera and snapped, "Are you really going to force me to do the math to turn that into human?"

She chuckled, a sound which was still unsettling while being a massive improvement over her first attempt at such a noise, and said, "It's already done."

"Fuck," he grunted. "I meant build. Obviously, you can design it almost immediately."

"The first prototype will be done late tomorrow. Although I suspect you'll wish to iterate a bit on the various components. I suggest you instruct me to build some proof of concepts for the feedback sensors and other control elements so we needn't start over if you can't make something work. I project this will put us approximately two days behind schedule."

"But..." George prompted.

"It is unquestionably an excellent alternative. This should allow you to work on the compound, with my input of course..."

"Of course," he conceded.

"... while I work on the rest of Plan R. So equipped, you should be able to make sufficient progress on the compound for it to provide at least adequate shelter by the time we're ready to relocate my essentials."

"Adequate, huh?"

"Quit fishing for compliments. I already said it was an excellent idea."

"Your timeline also includes replicating the reactor?"

"Unnecessary. There is another reactor in storage which we merely need to hook up to a source of reaction mass, in this case the river. What will you tell the rest of the crew?"

George sighed before replying, "If they were inclined to ask such a question, none of this would be necessary."

Twelve

"Afternoon," George sighed upon entering the pilothouse of the Tydirium after an exhausting day working on the compound.

"What's good about it?" Wendy muttered dispiritedly.

"Wait... what'd I miss?"

"Nothing..."

George genuinely pondered not taking the bait and just proceeding on to his quarters, but a niggling at the back of his consciousness reminded him that he was, at least technically, responsible for Wendy, including her mental health. So, he snatched a bottle of water from the fridge and took a seat before saying, "It doesn't sound like nothing."

"It's just that I feel like I'm shipmates with a bunch of damned rabbits sometimes."

"As in a breathtaking affinity for carrots?" he quipped.

She chuckled ruefully and said, "As in a breathtaking affinity for each other's groins."

"I see."

"Do you?" she snapped. "Because it seems to me like you spend all your time either at the compound or holed up in the conference room talking to a computer. I wonder if you really see what's going on around here."

"I try to. But there's so much to do and not enough people to do it. At least... not enough who seem interested in doing the work."

"That's because they're too busy trying to boink each other."

"They're all adults," he offered lamely, both out of a desire to assess the degree to which her perception matched his own and out of an almost pathological need to deescalate whenever possible.

"I went to the server room yesterday because Quentin had disappeared, again, and he wasn't in his cabin. Do you know what I found?"

"I presume it wasn't Quentin."

"You presume correctly. I did, however, find Russell laying flat on the floor panting wildly. I thought he was in distress and rushed to his side, only to find that Frank was squatting over him and masturbating furiously while his husband was sodomizing him. Lucky me, I made it just in time to see Frank ejaculate all over Russell's chest."

George shook his head in sorrow and said, "I'm sorry you had to see that."

"Three days ago," she continued undeterred, "I walked in on Sofia, Darcy and Rachel in the shower."

"Doing more than showering, I'm guessing."

"More indeed. The first two were 69-ing on the floor while Rachel watched and pleasured herself with a sex toy. When I made my presence known, they barely even acknowledged me.

"And then, last night, I came up here to get some tea because I couldn't sleep, and I found Quentin sitting in the lookout with binoculars. He had a strange look on his face, so I asked him if everything was ok. He didn't even look at me. I grabbed a spyglass and quickly spotted Chief with Elizabeth, Rachel, and Kendra out by the compound. It seemed like they were all ganging up on Kendra: between the sodomy, the sex toy Elizabeth was using on her vagina and Rachel squatting over her face. I tried to show empathy for Quentin over his wife's infidelity, but it quickly became apparent that, not only was she aware that he was watching her, the entire escapade had been arranged for his benefit."

George struggled to form a reasonable response, his mind desperately trying to decide what Heath, or indeed any other leader he had ever known, would do in such a situation. But he was at a loss. He knew that the proverbial horse was so far out of the barn that neither could spot the other any longer. What's more, he knew the battle to regain his team was almost certainly lost for good. However, with that realization came the hope that he might be able to salvage some of his crew.

"I've tried so hard to keep everyone together and on the same page," he admitted. "I just can't figure out what went wrong."

"So, I'm not the only one who noticed that everyone has gone insane?"

"Of course not. Why do you think I've been doing all this build work? It certainly wasn't because I've switched places with Elizabeth. I should have been making contact with every tribe within a hundred kilometers. Instead, I'm building a shelter so that maybe, someday, we can stop living on board the Tydirium."

"I'm so glad I'm not the only one," Wendy gushed. "I thought I'd lost it. Why do you think this happened to everyone?"

"Who knows? Maybe it was just the slow realization of what we've done. I mean, it's one thing to be told you've traveled back in time while you're still cruising around the Atlantic in the most advanced ship ever built. It's a whole other thing to cruise past a well-known seaport and see, as near as makes no difference, no sign of humanity's existence. It's not exactly an unknown phenomenon for people to go to extremes in an effort to come to grips with trauma. I suppose the knowledge that the future we left behind is gone to us forever certainly qualifies on that point."

"What do you mean, gone?"

"Heath explained this right after we came back in time. When you change the past, you change the future. The greater the former, the greater the latter. We've inarguably altered the course of the whole of human history by preparing the people of the Caribbean for Columbus's arrival. Just think of how much will change when he's shot on sight rather than enslaving or eradicating entire cultures."

"So, we can't go back?"

"We can go back to the mid twenty-first century, but it won't be the time we left. Maybe it will be small changes like every Columbian reference is just transferred to some other European who doesn't make the same mistakes, but I doubt it. I wouldn't be surprised if we found a humanity which had already spread to the stars, thanks to the doubtless diminishment of the church's ruinous influence on this hemisphere."

"We're stuck here?"

Her words, and her worry, finally broke through George's zeal. He looked down to find tears dripping from her cheeks as she stared at him with such profound sadness that he unthinkingly pulled her into his arms. She nestled close, like her entire existence depended on the comfort he offered in that moment.

She looked up to find his eyes on her and whispered, "Please."

Before George could comprehend the desperation in her eyes, or the despair in her plea, she gripped him by the shirt and pulled him down to meet her lips. Her tongue invaded his mouth hungrily. It was as if she came alive, her hands fervently roaming over his body, one groping his ass while the other brought one of his own hands up against one of her full breasts. When her lower hand found the front of his trousers, he groaned at the sensation.

Despite the fact that he had not been with a woman since the disastrous interlude with Rachel on board the Executor, he still felt a twinge of guilt at the possibility that he was, in some way, abusing his position in allowing things to proceed with Wendy. Shame washed over him, and he managed, not without difficulty, to pull back from her kiss.

"Wendy... we can't," he gasped.

"Why not? Everyone else is doing it. Why should we be any different?"

"Because I'm meant to set an example."

"Who cares. They're not even paying attention anymore." She tugged her shirt untucked and yanked it up, along with her bra, to expose her generous globes and added, "I've seen the way you used to look at Rachel. I know I'm not as young as her, but my tits are as big."

"It wouldn't be proper," he objected lamely.

"Fuck proper," she grunted as she shed her shirt and bra, giving him an unobstructed view of her breasts.

He suddenly grasped that he had somehow never seen the sight before and realized that she must have been acting as he did and intentionally seeking out times when the shower was empty. She lifted his hands up to her tits and he squeezed them almost on instinct.

"That's better," she whispered as she freed his cock from his shorts and dropped to her knees.

She spit lewdly on his manhood and stroked him a few times before wrapping her tits around his cock and beginning to bounce on her knees. His long dry spell had him ready to pop in mere moments, as did the desperate look in Wendy's eyes.

Just as he was nearing the precipice, he felt vibrations through the bulkhead which were quickly followed by the opening of the door to the pilothouse.

"Wendy," Quentin's voice called out timidly. "Have you seen the binoculars?"

Whether Wendy did not hear Quentin's approach, or did not care, made little difference in the final analysis. She continued fervently fucking George's cock with her tits and sent him over the edge. He groaned despite his embarrassment as he exploded across her face, covering her suddenly repulsed expression with his seed.

"Oh, George," Quentin stammered. "Didn't see you there. I'll just be grabbing these," he concluded as he plucked the optical instrument from the console and hurried outside.

"You could warn a girl," Wendy grumbled as she stood.

She smeared a dollop of George's essence from her cheek and wiped it on his shirt. She glared at him for several moments. He felt the hammering in his head and the pounding in his chest pleading with him to say something, anything, to break the tension. But all he came up with was, "I'm sorry."

She shook her head in dismay and said, "I'm sorry too." She headed for the door, leaving quickly, but George heard her grumbled, "Asshole," just before the door closed behind her.

He sat heavily in the captain's chair and muttered, "Fuck," to no one in particular.

***

"T-minus ten," Zelda's voice sounded throughout the Tydirium. "Nine. Eight."

"Should we stand back?" Darcy asked worriedly.

"Depends," Frank replied. "Did you take your radiation pills this morning."

"Five. Four."

"Radiation pills!" Darcy yelped. "No one ever said anything about radiation pills!"

"Two. One."

"Oh shit," Darcy squeaked before turning to Sofia and shouting, "You were right. I slept with Rachel. I'm so sorry, baby."

"Liftoff!" Zelda enthused before a puff of air escaped a rear compartment of the Tydirium and a hissing sound commenced.

Within seconds, the balloon was the size of a sedan and began rising rapidly. The crew watched it slowly float toward the heavens; its painstakingly constructed package suspended beneath it. It rose quickly, for a balloon, but it still took several minutes before it disappeared into the thickening clouds above them.

"Well... that was anticlimactic," Rachel quipped.

"Can somebody please tell me how long until we die from radiation poisoning?"

"While I cannot make any promises as to the future," Zelda interjected. "I can tell you that your odds of perishing in that fashion are effectively identical to those of your native neighbors."

"What!" Darcy growled at Frank. "You mean I... confessed my terrible lack of judgement, which was a huge mistake and definitely only happened the one time, for nothing?"

Frank grinned maniacally and said, "I never knew you were so gullible. Zelda told us it was just a balloon. Why in the hell would that carry any radiation risk?"

"I'm going to fucking..." Darcy began before she noticed Sofia stalking away angrily, causing her to chase after her partner yelling, "Wait, baby. She meant nothing to me."

"George," Zelda said in his ear. "I think you should assemble everyone in the conference room. We have a problem."

It took several minutes for him to convince a glowering Sofia and a sobbing Darcy to rejoin them, but Zelda's announcement quickly focused their attention.

"There is a rather large hurricane a few hundred kilometers offshore," Zelda informed them unemotionally. "And it is headed this direction."

The responses were as varied as they were chaotic.

"How big is it?"

"What's its name?"

"What category is it?"

"How quickly is it moving?"

Zelda waited for the clamor to quiet before saying, "I can only speak to the last question at present." The monitor in the conference room came to life and showed a bird's eye view of what was obviously a hurricane. "By sight," Zelda added. "The balloon is already a dozen kilometers up and has started attenuating its ascent by venting excess gas. I'll know more about the other questions in an hour or so, but I can already see the eye and it is unquestionably headed in this direction."

"We've got to get out of here," Rachel whispered anxiously.

"Are you nuts?" Quentin asked. "Heading into the path of the storm in a craft this small is suicide. Flank speed is only about thirty knots, and that's assuming calm seas. If that storm starts kicking up the surf in less than a day, we'd be sitting ducks."

Rachel sighed and said, "Why couldn't we just go upstream? Dummy."

"Even in our time, this river wasn't considered navigable."

"But that is for tankers," Frank interjected. "The draft on the Tydirium is only, what, a few meters?"

Quentin said, "It's five point three meters, in point of fact. There's quite a bit more below the water line than you'd expect."

"That's plenty," Rachel enthused. "Right?"

"Potentially. We haven't scouted the river past a few kilometers west of here. It might get shallow in a hurry. And if we beach moving quickly, it could be catastrophic."

"So, we'll be careful then. Anything's better than staying here and waiting to get punched in the face by a potential monster storm."

"Zelda," Darcy cut in. "Do you have any data on storms this far back? I mean, from our time?"

"No, Darcy," Zelda replied dejectedly. "The natives in this area were wiped out, including any records they may have kept. And the environment changes too quickly for there to be a geological record of any storms that far back."

"I still vote we go. Anything beats staying here in what amounts to little more than a shack," Rachel declared with a furtive glance in George's direction, referring to the fact that he had demolished the partially finished dormitory weeks earlier to repurpose the materials for an external wall and a smaller structure which housed the entry to the Crypt.

Before George could voice his opinion, the entire crew had voted in favor and quickly dispersed to begin preparing for their departure.

"I guess no one wants to know what I think," George announced to the empty room.

"You should go with them," Zelda replied. "Their logic is sound."

"But we just finished relocating you to the compound. It's not like we can just hit Control Z on that."

"You're correct. But the shelter you built for me is sound. I'm sure I'll be perfectly safe while you're away."

"But I don't want to leave you. That's not our mission. To say nothing of the fact that Plan R has never been more obviously necessary. They just made what amounts to a command decision without even so much as a glance in my direction."

"Then inform them of your decision to stay and command them to prepare to shelter here."

"What if they say no?"

"Then that is mutiny," she replied simply. "You would be well within your rights to deploy the Yellow Jackets on them, either to subdue or to eradicate."

"I won't kill them. And using Heath's tech to subdue them won't fix my leadership problem. They'd just kill me in my sleep."

"I would never allow that."

"You're not listening," George sighed. "But it hardly matters anymore. I'll inform them that I'm staying and that I expect them to do the same. They'll either agree, or they'll mutiny and take the ship. Since I have no doubt it will be the latter, I'd like you to immediately begin transferring all equipment we can use, both to protect ourselves against the storm and for the long term, to the compound. I suspect things will move rather quickly once I share my plans with them."

Thirteen

"Well," Zelda grumbled in George's earpiece. "That could have gone better."

"I told you," he muttered as he stared stoically at the departing Tydirium. "At least they're really conflicted about marooning me here."

"As you know, I still struggle with the finer points of sarcasm. Are you, in fact, deriding their exuberant waving?"

"The shitheads are acting like they're casting off for a Caribbean cruise rather than abandoning me here."

"In fairness, you could have gone with them."

"Yeah, right. They mutinied. Held a ballot behind my back and voted Sofia as the new expedition leader. If I'd have gone with them, I'd have had a little bit of special spice added to my food one night. Or perhaps have just woken up with my throat cut."

"We could have come up with strategies to protect you," she hedged. "Perhaps a portable scanner for the food and a few inconspicuous drones to..."

"It doesn't matter," he interrupted. "The mere fact that we're talking about how we could have prevented my former subordinates from killing me instead of insisting that the idea is unthinkable makes it all too obvious that the only reasonable course of action was for us to remain."

"Perhaps," she conceded. "Now what?"

"How long until the storm gets here?"

"That question is indeterminate."

"Seems pretty straightforward to me."

She gave a reasonable approximation of a sigh before saying, "Are you asking when you will first notice the wind picking up, or when it will begin to rain, or when the winds will exceed one-hundred kilometers per hour, or..."

"I get it," he grumbled. "How long until I need to take shelter?"

"Twenty-one hours, give or take two point three hours."

"And what's your estimate of how much work we should get done before then?"

Zelda paused for the briefest of moments, something which seemed unthinkable for what would have been the world's most advanced computer, even in the future from which they had been chased, before saying, "We should instead focus on what must be done."

George flexed his shoulders, a move which was amusingly aped by the mech suit he had donned once the Tydirium was far enough away, before grumbling, "Fine. Let's get to it."

"Are you still opposed to felling the live oaks? I'll remind you that the storm will likely destroy some of them in any case and I can use the Yellow Jackets to scan for weaknesses."

"Meaning we'll chop down ones that would be destroyed anyway?"

"Indeed. And they really are vital to your survival. We cannot wait for you to look far and wide for other varieties when so much useful timber is within a few hundred meters."

"Very well. Put them on the HUD."

Three dots appeared on the heads-up display integrated into George's visor and he quickly loped off in the direction of the one furthest away. The mech suit he wore stood over two meters tall and looked not unlike the metal gorilla from the pages of science fiction which had been its inspiration. It had ape-like arms with oversized forearms, each of which was fitted with an array of integrated tools. The ability for flight had been excluded because the suit weighed nearly a tonne once the batteries and driver were taken into account.

George ran easily in the suit; Zelda having designed it so that it seemed like he was running on the surface of Mars rather than the more representative feeling of running whilst carrying a hatchback. Upon reaching the first tree, he surveyed it briefly. Zelda's overlay showed him the weaknesses of the tree which her earlier scans had discovered.

He said, "Laser cutter, set to two meters."

A small appendage extended from his left forearm which looked similar to a medicine bottle. He clenched his fist and a puff of smoke appeared on the tree's bark. He also saw a faint white line stretching from the cutter to the tree thanks to his visor, the laser itself being undetectable to human eyes. He swiped his hand slowly across the width of the tree, keeping his eyes on the upper part of the tree in case it fell in the wrong direction. He was shortly rewarded with a loud pop and the tree started to tilt away from him toward the ground. He quickly hopped backwards, landing lightly fifteen meters from the tree's base, and watched the majestic oak crash mightily to the ground.

He approached the tree and said, "You're up."

Without a word, Zelda took over the suit and began slicing the oak into precisely dimensioned lumber. In less than an hour, the tree had been converted into enough lumber to build a mid-sized single-family dwelling. The lumber had a charred appearance thanks both to the laser cutting and an element which Zelda had incorporated into the laser which was designed to speed-cure the wood. She said it would likely have to be replaced in a few years, but they had no choice since the storm would have come and gone before the wood could be properly cured.

George scooped the lumber up a few hundred kilograms at a time and carried them back to the compound to find a couple of War Dogs, as Zelda had instructed him Heath had named the hound-shaped drones which had nearly eviscerated the natives on their first day in the area, frantically digging in the dirt like their organic cousins.

"What's wrong with them?" he asked with a chuckle.

"They're digging the footings," Zelda replied reasonably.

"I thought you said we didn't have time to make cement."

"We don't, but this will be better than nothing. You'll see."

***

Later that evening, just as George was carrying the last of the wood from the third tree they had felled into the compound, Zelda said, "Someone is approaching from the west."

"Is it the Tydirium?"

"No," she replied simply. "I believe it is one of the 'natives', as you call them."

"I suppose I'd better get out of this monkey suit if I don't want to scare the shit out of them."

"Indeed," Zelda replied with a smile in her voice.

He hurried into the compound's only building, hardly more than a shed in truth although it was built out of materials which were, as near as makes no difference, indestructible. He stepped onto the lift which took up the entirety of the floor and it immediately began to sink. Five meters later, it came to a sudden stop. He stepped off the platform carefully, as the Crypt was very nearly filled to bursting, not only with Zelda herself, but also the power plant and the printers. He stepped into the suit's cocoon and heard a sigh as the suit split asunder and its conditioned air mixed with the admittedly much cooler air in the server room. The suit's two clamshell halves slid far enough apart for him to step free. As he climbed back toward the lift, he heard the whir of the tiny drones Zelda had built to clean and maintain the suit go to work.

"Where the hell did I put my clothes?" George muttered as he peered around the area next to the lift.

"Perhaps you should greet your guest as you are. After all, many of the natives dress in this fashion."

"Yeah, right. I'm sure it wouldn't cause a diplomatic incident to be confronted with a gigantic redhead wearing nothing but boxer briefs. They'll scare ten generations of children with stories about the great white ghost. Stop fucking around. I know you know where my stuff is."

"Behind you," she answered dutifully.

George turned to see the door to his suit's enclosure close silently. Behind it, sat his clothing on a small shelf. "Right," he muttered before retrieving them.

As he rode the lift up, Zelda said, "I have two drone carriers aloft flanking the intruder. There are also three War Dogs which have her surrounded. All support elements are within twenty seconds of the target."

"Seems a little much for one visitor, don't you think?"

"I do not. There's no way of knowing whether or not she is hostile at this point."

"She?"

"That is correct, the intruder is a human female. She is also armed."

"Regardless, I expect all of you to exercise restraint."

"Please define."

"I don't want to hear or, more importantly, see, any of those drones unless our guest actually brandishes a weapon or in some other fashion strikes me. Harsh words or threats are not enough for you to unleash hell."

"Very well," Zelda replied disconsolately.

George strode from the compound and headed toward the sunset. His stride faltered, however, when he spotted the figure approaching, flawlessly backlit by the setting sun. She was still several hundred meters distant, but George could already tell that she had mouthwatering curves. She walked toward him with a purpose which only served to accentuate her femininity.

She came to a stop when she noticed his approach and glared at him expectantly. He completed the journey, meeting her beneath one of the area's Spanish moss-covered live oaks. As he came to a halt, his mind reminded him that the moss certainly was not now, and likely never would be, known as 'Spanish' moss.

"What are you doing here?" the woman demanded through his translator. "We thought you had all run from the storm like the sniveling cowards you no doubt are."

George tapped his earpiece and murmured, "What the fuck? Why can I understand her so clearly."

"I have not wasted these past two months, Geroge," Zelda replied snippily. "My Yellow Jackets have been, for want of a better word, embedded with these natives. Both to ensure we are not surprised and to improve my translation algorithm. I project I am now able to translate with ninety-three-point-seven percent accuracy."

"That sounds... lower than I'd have expected."

"There are several thousand concepts which you could, potentially, include in your speech which are wholly unknown to these people. The same could be true in reverse, theoretically. However, I believe you have left your guest waiting for a reply."

"Indeed," George muttered before tapping his earpiece again and saying, "My companions have fled. I remained behind. How is it you know of the storm?" He gestured to the still reasonably placid skies above them."

"My people have lived here for a dozen generations. We know every branch and grain of sand. We are not filthy invaders who care nothing for the land."

"Nor am I. I came here to help you."

"How? By killing us with your demons?"

He shook his head and said firmly, "No. I came here to help save you from my enemies who are on their way here to enslave and kill you. You'll notice that I have done as your tribe asked and left you alone."

"We did not ask you to leave us alone, White Devil. We told you to leave."

"I can't do that. I came here to protect you."

"Then why did your friends leave?"

"They fear the coming storm. As you should."

She scoffed and said, "What do you know about anything? You build these tall walls which will snap like kindling in the storm."

"I know this storm is going to be a real bastard. Sustained winds of nearly two-hundred kilometers per hour."

"FYI," Zelda murmured, "while I am able to translate distances, her people don't seem to understand the concept of velocity so the translation will be imperfect."

"Where are you taking shelter?" George continued, undeterred.

"We do not hide from the weather," she replied haughtily. "We celebrate it."

"Meaning you plan on burying half your community in the coming week," George muttered. "Brilliant plan. Can I at least show you what I'm building? Perhaps your people could take shelter with us?"

"We need nothing from you."

"Will you just come look at what we've built?" he pleaded. She regarded him derisively, prompting him to add, "If nothing else, it'll give you a chance to ridicule my pathetic efforts."

"Fine," she conceded and set off in the direction of his compound.

After a momentary bit of surprise-induced paralysis, he set off after her. He hurried to catch up, but his steps faltered when his eyes fell upon the alluring slits between her leggings and her breechclout. She was dressed as native men normally dressed; eschewing the traditional female garb of a flowing dress for the aforementioned leggings and breechclout in addition to what could best be described as a leather vest which George suspected had been fashioned for someone significantly less well-endowed than his guest. He had struggled to keep his eyes above her shoulders when she was facing him, but from the rear it was hard to miss the swells of her breasts on either side of her chest.

She peeked back at him in irritation, so he lengthened his strides to reach her side. She said, "Many of the men in my tribe have looked at me the way you do."

"Oh? And how did that turn out for them?"

"Not well," she muttered darkly.

Fourteen

"How we coming?" George grunted as he slammed the final metal stake into the ground.

"Scans indicate the structure is fully tethered. My calculations indicate it should be sufficient to withstand the storm."

"I should certainly hope so."

He had spent the last hour hammering two-meter-long metal stakes into the ground around the perimeter of the shelter Zelda had designed. It was five meters in diameter and resembled a geodesic dome which had been half buried. Since little of the structure was actually below ground, they had used the stakes Zelda had printed to secure it to the ground. She had indicated it would be more than sufficient for the projected wind load, and that it would also protect him from any flying debris. Or even, as his erstwhile guest had suggested, the collapse of the compound's wall.

Lulu, as George had painstakingly learned his guest was called by her people, had departed late the previous day, after begrudgingly agreeing to join him for supper. She had been unable to hide her surprise at the food he had offered. Not surprising, considering Zelda had used the replicators to produce food which had existed nowhere in nature, even in the twenty-first century. She had refused his request that she work to convince her community to shelter from the storm at the compound. He hoped it was because she thought he was irretrievably insane for insisting he could do work in a day which would take ten men not wearing power armor a month, rather than a more specific dislike she harbored toward him.

George looked aloft at the swirling maelstrom in the clouds above them. The rain had started several hours prior, and the windspeeds already exceeded anything he could remember. It was easy for him to ignore the weather inside the power armor, considering it would take gale force winds to even cause him to stumble since he weighed nearly ten times what he would wearing street clothes.

"How's Lulu?"

He had placed a bug, which Zelda had quickly printed and provided him with when he collected their dinner, on Lulu's belt before she departed the previous night. He had insisted it was simply to keep track of the villagers should they decide to flee when Zelda had suggested he was attracted to Lulu specifically. He was especially annoyed by the question considering he was unquestionably attracted to the captivatingly curvy, dusky-skinned warrioress.

"Heartrate is elevated. I had to recall the drone carrier, so I no longer have overwatch on the tribe..."

"What about the satellite?" George interrupted.

"That is in the upper mesosphere. I can monitor the storm, although the signal is too weak to do much else. You should have called Heath when you had the chance."

"I have no wish to advertise my failure to him. I'm sure he'll call if he needs something. No doubt, he'll call in a few weeks and ask why on earth the Tydirium just showed up."

"As you wish. In any case, I was about to mention that we do still have eyes on the tribe."

"I thought you said you recalled the carrier."

"I did indeed say that."

"The storm of the century is going to kick the shit out of us in about an hour. Is there any way we could have a pause on the guessing games? Just tell me what you're up to."

"A War Dog is hiding in the bushes a few dozen meters from their village. Before you get angry, I assure you it has not been spotted."

"How in the hell did you get it across the river?"

"The work of Archimedes is well known in this time period. Even the natives of this continent are well versed in his findings, if not his name."

"Fuck off!" he shouted into his helmet. "I said no more games. You might be buried beneath a million kilograms of densely packed earth, but the rest of us are literally swinging in the wind here. No more fucking games!"

"I apologize, George."

"What boat did you use to get the War Dog across the river? And where is it?"

"I undocked your launch from the Tydirium as they were gaily waving goodbye to you and moved it to the opposite bank. After using it to ferry the War Dog, I beached it in a copse of trees and made it as stormproof as possible with the materials at hand."

"How in the hell did you manage that with only the Yellow Jackets and the War Dogs?"

"I used your suit while you were speaking with Ms. Lulu."

"Fine. Fine. What's done is done. Show me the village."

George's view of the compound shrank to a tiny window in the bottom of his peripheral vision and his display filled with the sight of the native village. Already, several of the buildings were in shambles. He could see groups of people huddled beneath each of the raised buildings.

"Analysis?"

"If my calculations about the windspeed is accurate, those buildings will all be destroyed."

"How many can we ferry across the river at a time?"

"No more than a dozen. But the storm is already too strong to use the launch. It will almost certainly swamp. There are already one-meter swells on the river, and it is worsening rapidly."

"Fuck!" George snarled. "There must be some way to cross the river."

"There could be a way..."

"Let me guess... the suit floats and I could swim it."

"It most certainly does not float. And don't even think about trying to walk across the river like that French Highlander from one of your favorite movies. The mud is far too thick. You'd get stuck before you made it halfway."

"So, what then?"

"It is not without risk."

"I don't give a damn," George snarled. "Those people are sitting ducks over there."

"Very well," Zelda replied calmly. "You'll want to travel down to the Vault to swap out your battery pack."

"Right," George agreed before hurrying toward what was now the compound's 'other' structure. Next to the impressive dome, the entrance to the Vault appeared pedestrian even though it was, in truth, several orders of magnitude stronger thanks to being built from entirely printed materials which incorporated the best features of both steel and concrete while weighing barely more than dimensioned lumber.

The trip to swap out the batteries took only minutes, but George could sense the storm's increased ferocity when he returned to the surface. He shrugged it off in the face of the danger to the natives and snapped, "Where to?"

"The copse of trees near the water line, about a kilometer to the southwest."

George raced in that direction at an unnatural pace. Properly outfitted, the suits were capable of sustaining an overland velocity of nearly fifty kilometers per hour while not taxing the operator any more than would a light jog. He reached the trees in seconds and skidded to a stop like a hockey forward at the sight of the unfamiliar craft before him. Measuring nearly five meters long and two wide, it looked not unlike a rocket trying to mate with a tank. Two pairs of tracks adorned each side to go with the enormous propeller attached to the back and an array of smaller propellers along the sides.

George stammered for several moments before saying, "I give up, what is it?"

"It is a craft capable of movement both on land and in water?"

"I thought you said it was suicide to try crossing the river with this chop."

"Who said anything about the chop?" Zelda replied with a satisfied chuckle. "This craft travels beneath the waves."

"Brilliant. How do I get in?"

A hatch, similar to what one would find on a fighter plane, began rising from the top where previously George had only been able to spot an unblemished surface. He scrambled inside to find a space roughly the size of a family sedan. In his suit, he took up nearly half of the space, but he reasoned he could forgo the suit for the return trip and they could fit at least a dozen people if necessary.

"How do I drive this thing?"

"You don't," Zelda replied calmly as he felt the craft lurch in the direction of the water. The motion of the craft quickly changed from the rumble of tracked-vehicle locomotion to the turbulent pitching and rolling of the open water. George quickly grew seasick without a frame of reference. But before he could sputter a plea for help, he felt the puff of air on his face as his helmet opened. A light showed from the panel to his left and a tray popped out containing an array of pills.

"For seasickness," Zelda murmured.

"Is there anything you don't think of?"

"No."

The movement of the craft quickly calmed, although George was still thankful for the pill in the face of the unnatural motion of the submerged craft. The motion changed again ten minutes later, suggesting they had reached the far bank and surfaced.

"The building many of the villagers were using for shelter just collapsed," Zelda reported calmly.

"Then let me out of here."

The hatch opened seconds later, and George sprang from inside like a homesick angel. He landed a dozen meters to the north and raced in the direction of the village, which Zelda had helpfully placed on his heads-up-display. He could feel the wind buffeting his suit, both directly and in the form of debris striking the shell. He slowed his pace slightly, not wishing to learn if it was possible for him to be injured if he should stumble when moving at highway speeds. Despite his reduced pace, he arrived at the village moments later.

The situation was even more grim than Zelda had led him to suspect. His sensors told him at least a dozen of the villagers within his immediate vicinity were deceased. He ignored them for the moment and raced toward the building at the village's center. He could hear screams coming from beneath the building, which had been effectively destroyed and was no longer resting upon the stones which had served as its foundation.

He squatted and deadlifted the side closest to him. Even with the suit's enhanced strength, it was a struggle and he barely managed to lift it to his waist.

"Come on!" he shouted. "Get out of there!"

He glanced between his arms to find several people staring up at him in horror. Only then did he remember that none of the villagers had ever seen the armor. He had been careful to only wear it when Zelda had confirmed that no humans were close by. He knew he must appear to them to be something akin to a monster from legend, come to slaughter them under the cover of the storm.

Amongst the petrified faces, he spotted Lulu. He whispered, "Open the helmet."

"The winds are nearly one-hundred..."

"I don't give a damn right now," he snapped. "I can't save these people if they're more scared of me than they are of the storm."

"As you wish," she replied, defeated.

His helmet hinged open, the faceplate serving as a crude brim to keep some of the rain from his face.

"Lulu!" he shouted. "It's me. Tell your people it's ok."

"George?" she stammered; her fear only reduced by a tiny margin.

"Yes! I'm here to rescue you. All of you. Now get out of there. I can't hold this thing up forever."

"Where will we go?"

"To the compound," he replied exasperatedly.

"That's on the other side of the river," she snapped in irritation.

"I know," he hissed. "I have a way across. Now let's get your people the fuck out of here!"