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"By Fawkes and Wylde?"
"So it would seem, sir."
"You don't sound positive."
"Time can be tricky."
"This is your job, Dispatcher! You should be able to give me a straight answer."
"If it were as easy as that, sir, then any monkey could do it."
Silence consumed the sound waves. The way Amanda had said monkey led one to believe she'd meant politician. Or maybe, overseer.
"I like her," Rafe announced. "Think she'd go have a coffee with me?"
"Why don't you ask her," I replied, waiting for something to happen.
"I think I will. Maybe take her into the city. No prying eyes that way. You know how RATS can be."
"I know it only too well," I told him dryly. Rafe had been one the most prying of the eyes that had watched me woo Mimi.
"Well, what's happening now?" Anderson finally demanded. The alarm had changed pitch. I couldn't quite identify what the new tone meant.
"Do you recognise that one?" I asked Rafe.
"It's new to me," he replied grimly.
"That is not an alarm I have heard before, sir," Amanda offered. "One moment, please, while I look it up."
"What do you mean, you haven't heard it before? Are you or are you not the Head Dispatcher?"
"Promoted before my time, sir," Amanda said distractedly. "Death in the ranks, and all that."
"Death in the..." Anderson trailed off.
Images of our former Dispatcher's unmoving body, after Mimi's parents had stormed RATS on orders of Sergei Ivanov, rushed me. I'd liked Suzanne. Two Ns and an E. I'd never told her that. I was not one to dish out compliments willy-nilly. It was a regret that still haunted me.
Mouse would have told her. Mouse shared her emotions easily. Thoughts of what might be happening to Mouse right now assailed me. My breath caught, my heartbeat raced mercilessly, my hands bunched into impotent fists at my sides.
Come on, Amanda. What is it?
"Well," Amanda's voice said a few long moments later. "That is not good. Not good at all."
"What is it? What's happening?" Anderson demanded.
"One moment, please," Amanda replied. Then, over the hangar speakers, probably the entire building's speakers, her voice rang out. "Prepare for an Emergency Return. I repeat, prepare for an Emergency Return. Incoming Time Corrected Event. This is not a drill. This is not a drill. Time Corrected Event emerging."
"Oh, shit," Rafe muttered beside me.
For a stunned moment, I couldn't move. And then my body caught up with my mind and I was up and out of my seat and exiting the Vehicle.
The hangar was in an uproar. I'd only ever experienced one TCE, and that was when Clive appeared from the past to take over control of RATS when our last Chief Surgeon died of a heart attack. At the time, I wasn't sure if the heart attack was naturally occurring or not. Clive's appearance had halted my efforts in determining an answer to that. We'd all known him. Respected what he'd done in the early stages of time travel. Admired the man, even.
And there he was. An icon of our past come to visit us. Not an entirely unusual thing at RATS, of course. But before we knew it, he'd taken hold of the reins, our current Deputy Chief Surgeon unable to function adequately with the loss of the object of her Prophetic Dreams. It had been a clusterfuck to rival all clusterfucks. I'd not long been on the job myself, but from the ranks of Surgeons available, Clive had chosen me as his 2IC.
The rest, as they say, is history.
I'd forgotten what that alarm sounded like. I'd even forgotten that Time had been involved in placing Clive here in the 23rd century. It was a reminder of how essential Clive was to RATS. I might not agree with everything the old man did, but Time had approved his appointment, and so, then, had we.
