“It worries me that he took every single Orion we supposedly had. As if this rip is important and he doesn't want us fixing it.”

  I nodded. I couldn't argue with the old man. Everything about this was alarming. Luniks had landed at RATS in the past, of course. Hell, Mimi’s parents had been on one of them and damn near blew RATS into pieces. They did kill twenty of our people at the time. A fact that to this day made it difficult to agree with Mimi’s desire to reunite with them.

  But never before had Sergei attempted such a ballsy move as he did last night.

  In one fell swoop, he’d attempted to ground us. If not permanently, because we could rebuild them if we had the time, then at least for long enough for him to do whatever it was that he was planning to do. That he appeared to be doing right now in 1967 Singapore.

  “We’ll have to use the 6s,” I said.

  “You know they’ve not been cleared yet,” Clive argued.

  “What choice do we have?”

  “There’s always a choice, son.”

  I shook my head, staring at the ever-expanding sine wave on the Dispatch screen.

  “If there is, I can't see it. Can you?” I asked.

  Clive stood beside me, his coffee forgotten and stared at the same sine wave. Then slowly shook his head in agreement.

  “What do we know about the anomalies?” he asked.

  “Twice Orion 3 returned to an alternate RATS,” I said.

  “And two Orion 6s appeared from out of nowhere, returning to our RATS,” he added.

  “Is there a connection there? An explanation?” I asked.

  Clive huffed out a breath. “If there is, I can’t see it,” he muttered in an imitation of my earlier remark.

  “Cathcart’s working on stripping the 6s’ databases,” I offered. “He has Dean Jordan trying to replicate their flight paths in the simulator, but so far, they’ve had no luck finding the catalyst to all of this.”

  “And we don't have Orion 3 to cross-check,” Clive muttered.

  We both stared at the sine wave. My head was numb. My eyes were gritty. The coffee had already worn off.

  “What do we know about Sergei’s intentions?” Clive finally asked.

  “He plans to destroy RATS but not before he’s secured Lunik. And that means…”

  “There’s something in Singapore that he wants,” Clive finished for me.

  “What was in Singapore in 1967?” Amanda asked.

  We both jerked where we stood; not realising we’d been discussing highly sensitive information within listening distance of a non-managerial member of staff.

  “I won’t tell anyone,” she said quickly, clearly seeing the look of alarm on our faces. “I can be discrete. But it seems to me; you were on to something. 1967 Singapore?”

  I glanced at Clive, who was assessing the dispatcher.

  “Look it up,” he eventually said, and she immediately started tapping away on her keyboard.

  He flicked a pointed glance at me.

  “She does seem always to be here,” I murmured.

  “And she appears extremely astute,” he murmured back.

  “Got it,” Amanda announced. We crowded around her console. “1967 Singapore,” she read aloud. “February 15th, a civilian memorial is unveiled in the Kranji War Cemetery. March 14th, the National Service bill is passed in Parliament. March 28th, registrations begin for their national service. June 12th, the first Singapore Dollar is issued. August 8th, Singapore becomes a founding member of ASEAN: Association of South East Asian countries.”

  “That’s it?” I asked.

  “That’s it,” she said.

  “What the hell does he want with any of that?” Clive demanded.

  “To control the Singapore Dollar?” Amanda offered.

  I shook my head. “Too abstract. He would be better off controlling the US Dollar.”

  “There’s nothing at all to indicate what he might be after,” Clive concluded.

  “It’s got nothing to do with any of that,” a voice said from the back of the room.

  We all spun around and glared at the newcomer. And then I realised it was Mimi. I smiled. Clive continued to scowl. And Amanda ducked her head and concentrated on her console.

  Astute and capable of avoiding conflict.

  “Miss Wylde,” Clive said gruffly.

  “Sorry, couldn't sleep,” Mimi muttered.

  She still sounded half asleep; her voice that husky, sexy drawl she has when she first wakes up. Or maybe, she was still hurting from Winchester’s abuse.

  I scowled down at Clive and said, “She’s right. Something off the record went on there, and Sergei knows about it.”

  “Then we need to dig deeper,” Clive said, thankfully looking away from Mimi and in that one move accepting her presence.

  “Amanda,” Clive announced, “how good are you at research?”

  “I can enter a command on a keyboard as good as the next person, sir,” she said. “But it will take time. This is a needle in a haystack search. It would be best if we have more than one set of eyes on it.” She looked at Mimi expectantly.

  “Miss Wylde will be flying with me,” I announced, cutting off that train of thought.

  “Will she?” Clive asked, half amused and half irritated.

  I nodded toward the sine wave. It took up the entire screen.

  Clive sighed and ran a hand through his thinning hair.

  “How do you want to do this?” he asked.

  “Send both 6s,” Mimi said.

  We stared at her. Mimi just offered a self-deprecating smile.

  “Tether them to each other. Halve the risk.”

  “Or double it,” Clive pointed out. I had to agree with him.

  “At least they'd be able to look after each other,” she said quietly.

  I let out a breath of air and stared at the floor. It was hardly a failsafe. But those simple words said it all.

  We needed to look out for each other. RATS was under attack, and the casualties were rising.

  But there was no way we could stop flying.

  Time relied on us. And we relied on Time not to bloody well fuck it all up.

  I just wondered what Sergei Ivanov was relying on.

  I stared out the window toward the near-empty hangar and sighed.

  It didn't matter. We needed to end this.

  And end it now.

  Before we became that alternate RATS. Covered in ash and fallen. Like soldiers left on a battlefield after the wrong side wins the decades-long war.

  It wasn’t a pleasant analogy.

  23

  Including My Family

  Mimi

  I was grateful that Grand Theft Spaceship was off the menu. Trying to steal an Orion while RATS was on high alert would have been difficult. But now I’d been assigned to Jack’s flight crew, along with Rafe, and Sally would have to stay behind. Dr Bauer and her crew, which unfortunately included the batshit crazy Dr Pratt as her Intern, had been assigned the second Orion 6.

  I’d wondered briefly if we were avoiding Jack’s dream by insisting we flew in the first Orion 6; the one from our timeline. And then I reminded myself that Time had a way of mucking things up at the moment and there was nothing we could do to prevent it.

  Which made our jobs here at RATS seem superfluous.

  “Everyone ready?” Jack asked, from the command chair.

  “Ready as I’ll ever be,” Rafe muttered in reply.

  Jack’s eyes met mine. I nodded my head; talking was still a little hit and miss for me. Which should have meant Sally was the Novitiate for this flight. But Sally was an emotional mess. I wanted to be there for her, but all I’d managed to do was make sure Dean was.

  Dean who was cut up almost as much as Sal. Because he hated seeing her hurting and he knew despite Fawkes being gone, his chances were still slim to none. Instead of fighting a person he was now facing a ghost. And ghosts tended to hold a power over the living.

  At least, the ghost of Bryan Fawkes held sway over Sally.

  “We have no way of knowing what’s going to happen on this flight,” Jack said. “The tether could break. We could exit the Vehicle, and it could be taken away. We could come face to face with one of our own Orions and have to battle for it. Chances are we’ll find Sergei Ivanov, and we’ll be forced in some capacity to exit the Vehicle. In which case, it’s been decided that two from one Vehicle only will step outside. That the hatch will remain open and the Vehicle will remain in the same dimension as those two crew members. In this way, we hope to avoid the Vehicle taking flight.”

  “What about the second 6?” I asked. “Will that be in Real Time?”

  “No,” Jack said. “We’re hoping by keeping it a dimension away; we’ll cover our bases and avoid Time stealing them out from under our noses.”

  “Or double the risk,” I whispered, a repeat of Dr Crawford’s words from last night.

  “Or double the risk,” Jack murmured in reply. “In any case, we drew the short straw. Or the long straw, depending on how you wish to view it. But ours will be the crew to exit the Vehicle and our 6 the Vehicle to remain in Real Time.”

  “Who’s stepping out?” Rafe asked. “Or more importantly, who gets to be the MPCV’s babysitter?”

  Jack grimaced.

  Rafe swore. “It’s always the bloody Intern who gets left behind.”

  “Should it be the Surgeon?” Jack asked. “The most senior and therefore most experienced? Or should it be the Novitiate? The least senior and therefore least experienced?”

  “OK. OK. I get it,” Rafe muttered.

  “If you don't like it, Dr Hoffman,” Jack said steadily, “then sit your bloody Surgeon’s exam.”

  “Maybe I will when this is all over.”

  “Good,” Jack snapped.

  “Right,” Rafe snapped back.

  “Ah, guys?” I said. “Bauer’s ready to fly.”

  Jack let out a long breath of air and scratched at his scar. Rafe rolled his head on his neck, making it creak and click.

  “OK,” Jack said. “Ready?”

  “Ready,” both Rafe and I replied.

  “When did we start dropping the ‘sir’?” Jack mused.

  Rafe smirked as I let out a raspy laugh.

  “When you became a jackass,” Rafe replied. “Get it? Jack…Ass?”

  Jack rolled his eyes but didn't say anything. He simply lowered his hand and hit the launch button.

  I held my breath, as outside a nebula would have been forming, and waited for the g-force of spaceflight to hit me. Stars burst out behind my closed lids and not for the first time, I wondered why they did that. Why they appeared when we went back in time. How shifting a dimension made it possible to shift times.

  Then the rocket roared, and the module shuddered, and my body was pressed back into the seat with enough force to make it difficult to breathe. I held onto my chest harness and counted slowly inside my mind, making it to twenty. And then the MPCV touched down with a small thump and the engines fell silent.

  “Time?” Jack asked.

  “Time matches,” Rafe supplied. “1967 Singapore. We’re just off Orchard Road.”

  “Dr Bauer is still tethered,” I said from the Novitiate’s seat. “Both Vehicles are one dimension away from Real Time.”

  “You’re getting good at this, Mouse,” Rafe said with a huge grin.

  “I’ve had a good teacher,” I said back with a smile.

  “I just bet you have,” Rafe offered and received a whack over the back of his head from Jack, reminiscent of Professor Snape in the study hall of Hogwarts. I almost mentioned it, but I wasn't sure if they’d even remember Harry Potter. And I couldn’t quite face that reality right then.

  “If you’ve finished, we’ve got a Lunik to find,” Jack said.

  “Just making conversation,” Rafe muttered, entering commands into his keyboard. “No sign of Lunik.”

  “That sine wave is international orange,” Jack observed. “He’s here. Search for an Orion.”

  Rafe scowled down at his keyboard and entered another command.

  “Orion 1,” he said through gritted teeth.

  “Of course,” Jack offered, not sounding surprised.

  “Our Orion,” Rafe muttered.

  “That’s why he chose it,” Jack said.

  Whatever history Ivanov and Jack had, I didn't know. But it was personal. This was personal. Sergei might have an ultimate goal of destroying RATS to ensure Lunik is the only time travelling vessel in the future. But his vendetta with Jack was separate from that goal. And it was very personal.

  I just didn't know why yet.

  Jack hit a button and brought up our view of 1967 Orchard Road on the main screen. We all stared at it. I’d seen pictures of Singapore back in my time, but I’d never been there. I was pretty sure it had been modern and sleek, with hints at its colonial history, and covered in electronic signs. This Singapore was a little grimy; multiple chip-painted signs were hanging across shop windows in Chinese. A Triumph Herald was parked on the side of the road. A rickshaw beside it. The road was wide and held potential for being a major shopping centre in the future. But the Singapore of this time had only recently obtained its independence. It had a long way to go to reach the bustling, successful, self-sufficient metropolis of my day.

  What the effing hell did Sergei Ivanov want here?

  “Why here?” Rafe muttered, thinking along the same lines as me.

  “That’s what we aim to find out,” Jack said, releasing his harness and moving across the module to the munitions locker. “We’ll be armed, Miss Wylde. Have you been practising?”

  “I thought we didn't take weapons from the future into contemporary time,” I said meekly.

  “As long as the bullet hits either an Orion, Lunik or Sergei himself, we’ll be fine.”

  “And if it doesn’t?”

  “Have you been practising?” he repeated smoothly.

  I slowly nodded my head. Part of our lessons at the Academy involved time with Security. I’d fired a pistol or two since arriving at RATS.

  “Good. Then you shouldn’t miss,” Jack said, offering me a handgun.

  I took the weapon reluctantly and checked the chamber as I’d been taught. Jack watched as I ensured the safety was on and then secured it in my flight suit’s pocket.

  “It’ll be all right, Mouse,” he whispered.

  “You don't know that.”

  “I know we have to succeed.”

  And that was Jack; determined and entirely focused on the outcome he wished to see. If the RATS Winchester and I had flown to was some sort of portent to what could happen to our RATS, then we really did have to succeed.

  Sergei had the upper hand; he thought he controlled the playing field. If we were lucky, he’d not seen those two Orion 6s when he’d dropped into RATS and stolen all our Vehicles.

  But then, when I looked at the screen which confirmed Orion 1 was in this time, I realised that was a pipe dream.

  He knew. And he expected Jack to go after him. And he’d be ready.

  My hand found the gun inside my pocket, and I swallowed down my rising panic.

  He’d killed Fawkes and Jessop. I told myself I’d do what I had to do to make sure he didn't kill anyone else.

  Including my family.

  24

  I Started Running

  Jack

  “He could be anywhere,” Mimi muttered.

  Her hair was already sticking to her neck and forehead. She raised a hand to her ponytail and tugged at it, then swiped at her nape when she lifted her hair free. It was hot. Unbelievably hot. And raining.

  We’d changed into contemporary clothing; a simple sundress for Mimi and light trousers and short sleeved shirt, no tie, for me. Our weapons were concealed but within easy reach. I pushed the hat I wore off my head and wiped the back of my hand across my brow.

  People milled around us, rapidly talking in Chinese. Some wore business suits; some wore mini skirts, others dressed in shorts and sandals and striped tees. There were Europeans amongst the locals; a lot of them. Remnants of colonial Singapore and the British Empire’s influence. They dodged puddles and hid under umbrellas and took the chaos in their stride.

  It was taking me a remarkably longer time to find my stride.

  “We know he’s here,” I said. “And securing something.”

  “But how do we find that in amongst all of this?” Mimi demanded.

  “We walk, Miss Wylde. Come on!” I started off in the direction of the Istana; the palace that had housed the Singaporean presidents since 1965. If Sergei wanted anything here, there was a high probability it would be found in Istana.

  Failing that, we could try Parliament House down by Raffles Landing.

  We weaved in and out of the throng of people and crossed a side street to the honking of horns. The rain persisted until we were drenched, and had started to receive strange looks from the locals, who were significantly more prepared for this weather than either of us. I tapped on Mimi’s shoulder and nodded towards an ice water stall providing a small amount of cover for its customers.

  I fished out a Singapore Dollar from my pocket and ordered two glasses of water. Mimi offered me an arched brow when I handed it to her and proceeded to make a show of wringing out her ponytail full of rainwater.

  “Yes, yes,” I muttered. “Drink up.”

  We stood side by side watching the crowd move past; managing to avoid the bulk of them until an American soldier rushed up and almost bowled Mimi over.

  “Sorry, ma’am,” he said, tipping his cap. “This rain makes it hard for a man to see where he’s goin’.”

  Mimi smiled, but there was something off about it.

  “You’re American,” she said.

  “Yes indeed, ma’am. Fourth Infantry Division,” he said and saluted.

  “What state are you from?” she asked.

  “Florida, ma’am. Ever been there?”

  “Yes,” Mimi said softly. “I have…had a friend who was from there.”

  The soldier studied her for a moment, then said, “I’m sorry for your loss, ma’am.”