Tom Fleet was a bit of a misfit as the second son of a minor English noble in the 1880s. Once he finished his schooling he had little to do. His grandfathers had left him adequate finances for his needs and with his elder brother set to take the title, he gave in to his fascination with gadgets and began to tinker and invent. His goal was to create a sky craft to go to the moon. Surely if Jules Verne’s characters could go there and many other places, he could do as well.<br><br>Rowan Farrell followed in his Uncle Gordon’s footsteps, joining the UniFleet, but went a step farther and became an officer. Assigned to his first command level post, he takes a small patrol ship out to scout a region of interest to the Council and report if any signs of the enemy Angevirian Empire in the area. When one of his crew spots a strange, tiny craft, he decides to capture and study it. After all it could be an Angevirian Trojan horse. But the odd cylindrical vessel holds only one man, unconscious and suffering from hypothermia and lack of oxygen. When the man comes to, he claims to come from the earth ... five centuries in the past!

Tom Fleet’s Machine

“This will do fine for a short burst of heat.” Tom beamed as he stuffed them into the furnace unit, ready to light. Next, he rigged some complex links with fine wire and fiber optic strands. “I hope these will carry other energy besides images,” he said, shaking his head as he eyed the spider web delicacy of his connections. “While I’d prefer to be close…“


“We’ll have to be outside the bay,” Rowan reminded him. “When the main doors open, this area decompresses—no oxygen and nothing to hold us inside, plus the bitter cold floods in. We have to recharge the area before we can open the air locks.”


“Go get ready, then,” Tom said. “I’ll light the furnace and follow right behind you.”


Rowan led the crew members back through the air lock and watched anxiously while Tom tended to firing up his craft


I hope the fool doesn’t try to go out with it. That’s not what I want to see happen here. His weird expertise is going to be too valuable to lose and he’d never survive a second crazy trip.


Chapter 14