Fic: A Time For Great Things - Chapter 5
TITLE: A Time For Great Things - Chapter 5
FANDOM: DC's Legends of Tomorow
RATING: Gen
PAIRING: Len/Sara (eventually)
Ray learns something shocking during his mission with Sara to a booze cruise, and Rip gets a shock of his own.
AUTHOR’S NOTE: While I’ve tried to be accurate about the Morro Castle, for storytelling purposes, I have condensed the timeline of the events of September 7th and 8th, 1934. (I feel justified, since the LoT Writing Room put H.G. Wells into the U.S. decades before his actual first trip.)
Many many thanks to Jael/stilltheworldgirl for going through this very very long chapter and making sure things stayed consistent.
----
Aboard the S.S. Morro Castle - September 7, 1934
Rip was right; Sara now knew more than she ever wanted to about the S.S. Morro Castle, from the number of passengers on board during this run (318, plus the two of them) to its gross tonnage (11,520, as if that really mattered). She knew it ran on turboelectric engines, and that it catered to mostly middle-class folk who wanted to escape the woes of the Great Depression. And she knew it was supposed to dock in New York tomorrow.
But instead, it would run aground on the Jersey Shore.
She and Ray had boarded the ship in Havana two days before, posing as newlyweds staying in first class. It gave them a good excuse to spend their evenings locked in their stateroom more often than not. Judging by the knowing looks other passengers gave them at meal times, everyone thought they were in there… doing what newlyweds do.
In actuality, Ray put on the ATOM suit, shrank and slipped out to explore the ship, going places passengers wouldn’t be allowed and feeding the information back to Sara, who took careful notes on routes and schedules.
She thought Leonard would have loved this.
It didn't take Ray long to scout the spot where they needed to plant the chronium shield. It would have to be inserted between two steel plates on the inner hull.
The bad news was that the spot was in the #2 hold, near stacked crates labeled "Sporting Goods" but actually carrying drugs and bottles of Cuban rum to New York, in exchange for guns that had been (illegally) delivered in Havana.
Of course there was only one way in. And of course it was guarded around the clock by a single seaman, with a shift change every six hours.
It would be so much easier if Ray could just shrink the chronium down in his suit and sneak it in that way. But he said that would alter the atomic structure of the metal and render it useless. So they’d have to get the guard away from the door and then get into the hold to plant the shield.
And they’d have to do it just before one in the morning, the time when passengers would be alerted to the fire and panic would sweep through the Morro Castle, drawing Jurgen’s Ridge like a magnet drawing steel. Too early, and the deflection wouldn’t work. Too late, and they’d lose their chance to redirect the Ridge and eventually save Leonard.
Sara looked over her notes, glad that their first-class stateroom included a large table where she could spread out the pages. She wondered what Leonard would do in her shoes. She’d never been the kind of planner he was; her specialty involved less thinking and more hitting.
But still, it was better for her to plan this than Ray. Cunning and deceitfulness just weren’t in his toolbox, and he wasn’t happy with her suggestion for getting the guard away.
To be honest, she didn’t much care for the idea either: Playing the siren to lure the poor man elsewhere so Ray could break in. But they both thought a honey trap was less risky than an outright fight that could draw unwanted attention. And they agreed it was better than knocking the guard out and possibly leaving him to die when the fire swept through the ship. They both knew that could change history.
But knocking him out was still a last resort, if she couldn’t lead the guard away on a wild Canary chase.
She looked up from her notes to her reflection in the vanity mirror, making one last adjustment to her hair as she ran through the plan again in her mind. She stood and turned at the sound of the ATOM suit expanding behind her.
Ray was gaping at her, just a little. “Wow. That’s a killer dress.”
She raised an eyebrow at him. “That some kind of League of Assassins joke?”
He put up his hands and shook his head. “No, of course not! You look great!” He began removing the ATOM suit piece by piece.
“All the better to seduce the guard away from the hold later,” she said, smoothing her hands down the light green silk of her evening gown. It had a fitted, halter-style bodice and a skirt that flowed just enough for her to be able to move in a fight if she needed to.
Ray chuckled. “Sara, these guys probably haven’t touched a woman in months. They can’t go ashore unless they want to lose their jobs, and they don’t get to be around the women who are on board. You could wear a burlap bag and still seduce one of them.” She snickered at that, not taking any offense.
The ATOM suit finally removed, he shrank it back down and put it into its carrying case. “You should keep the dress, though. And when we get Snart back, wear it to take him dancing.” Now stripped down to the thermals he wore under the ATOM suit, he stepped into the bathroom to put on the evening wear that was waiting for him.
“Leonard doesn’t dance,” she replied. She raised her skirt to slip a dagger into her garter. Just in case.
Ray laughed from the other side of the bathroom door. “If he sees you in that dress, he’ll dance. Or he’ll come up with some other excuse to put his arms around you.”
She let the skirt fall again and surveyed her reflection one more time. “What makes you so certain?”
“Trust me, Sara. The Professor’s not the only one who was observant,” Ray answered as he opened the door. He was now wearing black dress pants, a dark green cummerbund, a white tuxedo shirt and a white dinner jacket. He began tying his dark green bow tie. “Keep the dress. I’ll make sure you get a chance for that dance.”
She smirked at him and stepped closer to him, so she could reach up and adjust the bow tie. “Still the hopeless romantic, aren’t you?”
He smiled down at her. “Hopeful romantic, to quote ‘Romancing The Stone,’” he corrected. “If you two can come through all of this, then there’s some hope for the rest of us.” He glanced at his wristwatch. “It’s 8:55. Let me bring you up to speed before we go to dinner.”
She sat in one of the chairs, while Ray settled onto the end of the bed (which they’d deliberately mussed to keep up appearances for the maids who would make up the bed during dinner). “Captain Wilmott is dead. They found him in his own bathroom about an hour ago.”
That was another of the facts he’d rattled off to her. “You told me it happened tonight.”
He nodded. “Sure. But it’s one thing to read about history. It’s another to see…” His voice trailed off as he looked down.
“Ray, you weren’t in there when he died?” she asked with some concern. Ray wasn’t a trained killer, able to be objective about death.
“No, no, no.” He shook his head. “But… I went in after, and got a sample of his blood and did a bio-scan.”
“Bio-scan? Since when can you do that?” she asked curiously.
He shrugged. “Well, while you were busy blacksmithing on the Waverider, I adapted the bio-scanning program from Gideon and added it to my faceplate. I figure it will come in handy.”
She nodded. Ray did come up with some good ideas. “So what did you find?”
“Arsenic,” Ray answered in a grim voice. “He was poisoned. And I found a bottle of arsenic in the Chief Radio Officer’s quarters, along with the makings of a fountain pen bomb. ”
Sara wasn’t surprised. Ray had spent the past two days telling her about the theories and suspects in the wreck of the Morro Castle. Particularly about the Chief Radio Officer, George White Rogers, a serial arsonist and killer who would, incredibly, be lauded as the hero of the Morro Castle disaster until years later. Ray’s description of the man made Vandal Savage seem…. well, maybe not sane, but perhaps… better adjusted.
For a lunatic.
“It’s just what you suspected,” she reminded him. “But like you said, reading about it is very different from actually seeing it.”
“Yeah. I don’t think I’ll ever be able to watch ‘Titanic’ again,” Ray said. “I know we haven’t spent much time with these people, but still… knowing so many of them are going to die tonight… It’s just too real.”
“It is reality,” she reminded him. “We don’t have to like it. We just can’t get in the way.”
“Yeah. I don’t know how the Time Masters were able to let things like this happen. To make things like this happen.” He shook his head with a sigh and looked at his watch again. “We should head out. Don’t say anything about the Captain; it’s going to be announced to first class at dinner.”
He picked up the case for the ATOM suit and tucked it into his coat pocket while she gathered up her notes and packed them into her trunk so the maids wouldn’t see them, keeping only the section with the floor plan Ray had drawn of the hold. Then she took the small but all-important piece of chronium out of the trunk and put it with the sketch into the beaded handbag Gideon had fabricated for her. It was a little larger than was fashionable, but form was more important than fashion tonight.
Ray offered her his arm. “Mrs. Palmer? Shall we go puttin’ on the Ritz?”
He started humming the old tune. She smirked at him, grabbing a silken shawl to throw around her shoulders before they swept out of the room.
----
Normally, the last night of a cruise would be filled with all kinds of festivities. But dinner was a somber affair once the passengers were told about the death of the ship’s captain.
There were a few spots around the ship where small groups were trying to enjoy a revel during their last night on the ship. But the cruise director, normally in charge of onboard fun, had appointed himself the onboard killjoy for the night, stopping all carousing in the public rooms out of respect for Captain Wilmott.
At one point he glared at Sara and Ray, who had been at the edge of a small party in the verandah café. “You two have barely come out of your stateroom since you boarded. Don’t you want to go back?”
Sara giggled at him, perfectly playing the part of the blushing bride. Ray grabbed her hand, and after a sly wink at the cruise director, led her out of the cafe onto the outside deck.
It was damp and chilly, and Ray draped his dinner jacket over her shoulders. The ship had been skirting a storm for more than a day, riding through rough seas, but right now they were in a brief respite from the weather.
Ray looked at his watch. “It’s midnight. If the theories are right, Rogers will plant the pen bomb in the writing room sometime in the next twenty minutes.” He met her eyes. “I know it sounds crazy, but…”
“But you have to see,” Sara finished.
“That’s not weird… Is it weird?” Ray asked in that tone boding a babble ahead. Sara reached up and put a hand over his mouth to stop it.
“Out of all the weird things we’ve done and seen since we joined the Waverider, this may be one of the least weird, Ray.” She pulled her hand away and reached for the ATOM suit in his jacket pocket. “Go on, solve your mystery.”
He took it with a nod. “I’m gonna just… change in the storage closet at the end of the passageway. I won’t be long. What about you?”
“I’m just going to walk around a bit, get a little air while I can, before the winds pick up again. The room’s getting a bit stale.” She huffed at the look of concern he gave her. “Ray, I’ll be fine. The shipwreck fear is turning out to be easier to control than the bloodlust.”
“We’re still in the easy part of this mission,” he reminded her.
“I’ll be fine.” She flipped open her locket to check the countdown clock. “Just keep your comm on. I’ll meet you at the stairway near the hold door in forty-five minutes.”
“It’s called a companionway,” he corrected. He grinned at her glare and went back inside.
Sara closed the locket again and adjusted the jacket over her shoulders before ambling down the deck toward… what was it called? Oh, right. The stern of the ship.
The sky was clouded over, so all she could see on the water were the glades of light thrown by the Morro Castle’s lamps. No other passengers were out on the deck. According to Ray’s information, most of them had taken to their beds by this point.
She stopped and leaned against a railing about halfway down the ship. (“Amidships,” said the little Ray voice in her head. Yet another bit of nautical knowledge he’d shared with her.) She ran over the plan one more time in her head:
Just before one a.m., she would approach the guard at the hold entrance and convince him to follow her to a small cleaning closet Ray had discovered down the passageway. As soon as they were gone, Ray would break into the hold and plant the chronium shield, then shrink and make his escape, signaling Sara over the comm to leave the guard high and dry (or maybe hot and bothered, though she really hoped it wouldn’t get that far).
Gideon had projected the emergence of Jurgen’s Ridge right after one a.m. If all the math done by Ray and Stein was right, it would be bounced away from this place and time almost as quickly as it appeared.
Then they would have to wait about fifteen more minutes, until the Morro Castle lost its electric power. That was when Rip was scheduled to return with the Waverider to pick them up, under cover of smoke and darkness.
It sounded simple enough, but Sara could remember Leonard’s dark warning that the best-laid plans could go sideways. And she didn’t feel this was anywhere near a best-laid plan.
It was just all they had.
She opened her locket again, this time to look at Leonard’s picture. She still wondered what he’d been looking at when Gideon recorded it, but she was also pleased that Rip had picked this particular image. It reminded her of how Leonard had looked at her when they were trapped together in the engine room, back when they took those first tentative steps toward trusting each other.
“It’s a chilly evening for a young lady to be out alone on deck, even with a borrowed dinner jacket.”
She looked up to see a large man in a white officer’s uniform approaching her. He was carrying a small box, and wore a smile that didn’t quite reach his eyes. “You are… Mrs. Palmer, correct? I believe I saw you boarding with your husband in Havana?”
“That’s right,” Sara said warily.
“George White Rogers, Chief Radio Officer, at your service, madam.” His gaze traveled up and down her body, finally resting on the locket, which still lay open in her hand. “A handsome gentleman… but that’s not your husband.”
She quickly closed it. “No. He’s my brother.”
He raised an eyebrow, possibly detecting the lie. “An unusual choice for a newlywed, to wear a locket with a photo of her brother instead of her husband.”
“Well, my husband is here with me, but Leonard is… very far away. In the service.” She narrowed her eyes at him. “And I don’t think it’s appropriate for a member of the crew to have this kind of conversation with a passenger, even if he is the Chief Radio Officer.”
The cold smile grew just a little wider, a little chillier. “My apologies, Mrs. Palmer. But if you will take some advice from a seasoned seaman, you should get back to your stateroom… and your husband. This break in the weather won’t last long. Do you need an escort?”
She drew back. “No, I can find my way.”
“Ah, one of those new independent women,” he said in a voice that didn’t quite sound approving.
“Perhaps. Good evening.” She turned away and headed back inside.
Ray’s voice came over her comm. “Are you all right, Sara?”
“Yeah,” she answered quietly, after making sure there was no one else in the passageway. “Had a little run-in with your prime suspect.”
“I heard.”
“He was carrying a box, Ray. I think he’s heading your way.”
---
She was fuming when she met him at the top of the companionway. “You were supposed to leave your comm on, Raymond!” she scolded him. Then she registered his haunted look. “So, were you right?” she asked him in a softer tone.
“Kind of, but not exactly,” he said, flipping up his visor. “Rogers did plant a fountain pen bomb, just like all the theories said. But…” he trailed off and swallowed.
Sara furrowed her brow. “But what?” she prompted.
“Now I know how the Time Masters were able to let things happen. It’s because history said they had to.” He took in a deep breath. “Rogers got the wiring wrong. His bomb wouldn’t have gone off.” He looked down, unable to meet her eyes. “And we know that bomb had to go off. So… I fixed the wiring. The bomb’s exploded, and the fire has started. I turned off my comm because I needed quiet to think this through.”
He shook his head and let out a heavy sigh. “I’m the one who caused the Morro Castle disaster.”
Her heart ached for this man who wanted nothing more than to help others. “Ray…”
“Hey!” They were interrupted by a shout from the bottom of the companionway, where a crewman was gaping at them. “What the hell are you?”
Ray and Sara exchanged a look, the somber mood broken for the moment. “So much for the honey trap,” she said.
“Guess we have to go for the vinegar,” he agreed. “Ladies first?”
She smirked at him, throwing off the dinner jacket and bounding down the stairs. She grabbed the railings about halfway down and swung her legs up to kick the crewman in the face, laying him out cold. She’d just landed in a swirl of her skirt when another crewman came running down the passageway. Ray took this one out with a literal flying punch.
They stood back to back in the passageway, the unconscious crewmen at their feet but no other opponents on the way. Then they ran down to the entry to the hold. No one blocked their path.
“One of those guys must have been the guard,” Sara said, trying the door. It was locked.
Ray aimed his gauntlet at the handle and fired. Sara could now pull the door open.
“You go place the shield,” he told her. “I’m gonna put those two guys into a lifeboat.”
“Ray…”
“There’s enough blood on my hands!” he snapped. “We’ll meet back at the stateroom.” He ran back down the passageway and grabbed the two men, then flew up the companionway out of sight.
Sara slipped into the dark hold and pulled her flashlight out of her bag. She could smell smoke wafting through the ventilation system. The Morro Castle didn’t have much longer to live, but she had even less time to complete her mission. She flipped open the locket to the countdown timer, which showed two minutes left.
Leonard would have been able to find the spot instantly, but Sara wasn’t blessed with his eidetic memory. She pulled the floor plan sketch from the bag, looked at it and then looked around to orient herself.
Her objective was on the other side of the room, near the loading door. She picked her way through the stacks of crates, stopping once when her skirt caught on some splintered wood. The silk tore when she pulled it away.
One minute left, and still a little ways to go. She crossed the remaining distance quickly, and cursed when she realized the target spot between those riveted plates was well above her reach. But there were crates stacked right underneath, so she began to climb.
The silk skirt was getting in her way, getting caught on rough corners of the crates. The delicate fabric shredded as she kept yanking it away. “So much for keeping this,” she muttered.
The locket had started beeping. She was running out of time.
The target was now within reach. She pulled the chronium shield out of her bag and wedged it into place just as the beeping turned into a high-pitched whine. She glanced at the locket: Just in time.
She climbed down the crates again, and briefly considered the ones carrying the rum. She heard the echo of Leonard’s voice: “There’s always time to steal,” and knew he’d have grabbed a few bottles and tucked them into the seemingly bottomless pockets of his parka. But she needed her hands free, so she turned her back on the crate and started heading for the door.
She paused at a groaning sound that did not come from the ship. The walls reflected a strange blue light. She whirled to see something like a tornado appear in the hold. It glowed blue, but also had other colors running through it. No, not just colors. Images, flowing too quickly for her to recognize. And there was a cacophony of sound, mostly human voices.
She shrank away from the disturbance as it moved through the hold, heading straight for her chronium shield. The shield flared as the tornado touched it. Then the vision was gone, leaving no trace except for the now-glowing piece of chronium.
“Oh, my God,” she whispered. “Ray, I just saw the Ridge. It was like some giant tornado.”
His voice crackled over the comm. “Did you see Snart?”
She started walking quickly, heading back to their room. “No. But I got an idea of what he might be seeing right now. There was a lot of noise, and images like a slideshow at a hundred miles an hour.”
“Did the shield work?”
She hesitated. “I don’t know. I think so. The tornado touched it and disappeared. Is that what I should have seen?”
Ray was quiet for a moment, probably thinking. “We weren’t sure how it would manifest, but that sounds right,” he answered at last. “The Waverider will be off the bow in a few minutes. Where are you?”
“Just about to take the stairs to our deck. I’ll be there in a minute.”
He didn’t bother to correct her with the nautical term. She climbed the stairs and found herself in a knot of panicked people, some wearing life jackets, many not, pushing toward the nearby doors that led to the outside deck. The smell of smoke was getting stronger, and she could hear panicked cries farther down the passageway.
Just for a moment, she flashed back to the Gambit. To the Amazo. But then she heard the voice of Ra’s al Ghul reprimanding her: “The past cannot hurt you or kill you. It can only distract you. Distraction is what kills.”
She shoved down the memories and started to push against the tide. A steward shouted at her, “Miss, you have to go out on deck!”
She ignored him, continuing to force her way through the crowd until she was free of it. She kicked off her heels to run down the passageway to their room.
“It’s a madhouse out there!” she said as she pulled the door shut behind her.
“And it’s my fault,” Ray said. His visor was up, and he was still wearing that haunted look.
He had gathered all her careful notes from her trunk. He carried them to the bathtub, dropping them in and setting them ablaze with a blast from his gauntlet. He looked at her. “We can’t leave any traces of what we did. Of what I did.” He turned back to staring at the small fire.
“Ray.” He wouldn’t look at her. “Raymond!” She laid a hand on his shoulder, encouraging him to look her way. “Rip is always telling us time wants to happen. Even without the Time Masters, I think that’s still true. We knew this ship would be wrecked even before we came on board.”
He shook his head. “Yeah. But seeing it and knowing that I…”
“You did what you had to, Ray. We’re supposed to be taking care of history now, and that’s what you did,” she reassured him. “You have to remember that.”
Ray thought it over for a moment, then gave her a resigned nod. “Thanks, Sara,” he said, leaning over to kiss her forehead.
The room went dark, and something on his suit began beeping. “What’s that?”
He smiled slightly. “I built a Waverider beacon for the suit.” He flipped his visor back down and blasted out the triple windows of their stateroom, giving them an escape route. “You ready to get off this boat?”
She grinned and stepped closer so he could grab hold of her. He flew them out into the night, towards the bow of the burning ship. She looked down, but thankfully couldn’t see much detail because of the smoke, the darkness and their increasing altitude.
She could still hear, though, and what she heard would probably give her nightmares again tonight.
She looked away from the Morro Castle and peered in the direction they were flying. “I can’t see the Waverider,” she shouted to Ray. “Are you sure it’s there?”
As if in answer, a small patch of light appeared ahead of them. Rip had kept the ship camouflaged. The patch was an open airlock. Ray headed for it, and in moments they were back on the Waverider.
“Welcome back,” Gideon greeted them.
“Did it work?” Ray asked the AI.
Rip answered, coming down the corridor toward them. “Apparently so. Gideon says the Ridge has course-corrected.”
“Rip, I saw it,” Sara said. “I saw Jurgen’s Ridge. It looked like some kind of storm or tornado. How can Leonard survive that?”
Rip took in a deep breath and laid a hand on her shoulder. “The Ridge manifests differently in our world than it does in the time stream,” he said. “You already know he does survive.”
They heard the sound of the jump ship docking. “Ah, there’s our other team!” Rip said, rubbing his hands together. “Let’s see how they’re doing.”
They quickly made their way to the jump ship hatch. Stein and Jax were already out.
“Gentlemen! Gideon says the first phase of our plan has succeeded!” Rip told them. Then he furrowed his brow. “Where is Mr. Rory?”
“Right here, Rip.”
Sara gasped in surprise as Mick emerged from the jump ship. He was cradling a sleeping, dark-haired girl, who couldn’t have been more than two or three years old.
Rip’s face turned red. “You brought…” he began to shout, then lowered his voice at Mick’s glare. “You brought a child back from Lewiston? What were you thinking?”
“We were following orders,” Jax said.
“Whose orders?” Rip’s voice had now dropped to a hiss of anger.
Martin looked at the others uncomfortably before answering, “Gideon’s.”
A shocked expression crossed Rip’s face before he looked up to address the AI. “Gideon, do you mind explaining? Why did you have them take a child out of the timeline?”
Gideon almost sounded… patient. “History demanded that this child be taken out of her timeline. She must be brought to the Refuge.”
“Why?” Sara asked. “Who is she?”
“It is not who she is, but rather who she will be that makes her important.”
While Gideon sounded patient, Rip’s tone was the exact opposite. “And who will she be?” he demanded.
“She will become the Time Master trainee Miranda Coburn.”
There was stunned silence. Then Ray said, “So this little girl…”
“…is my future wife,” Rip finished.
---
Information about the Morro Castle comes from Wikipedia and also the 1972 book "Shipwreck" by Gordon Thomas and Max Morgan Witts.
Please let me know what you think in the comments. (Looking at you with big brown eyes.)
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FANDOM: DC's Legends of Tomorow
RATING: Gen
PAIRING: Len/Sara (eventually)
Ray learns something shocking during his mission with Sara to a booze cruise, and Rip gets a shock of his own.
AUTHOR’S NOTE: While I’ve tried to be accurate about the Morro Castle, for storytelling purposes, I have condensed the timeline of the events of September 7th and 8th, 1934. (I feel justified, since the LoT Writing Room put H.G. Wells into the U.S. decades before his actual first trip.)
Many many thanks to Jael/stilltheworldgirl for going through this very very long chapter and making sure things stayed consistent.
----
Aboard the S.S. Morro Castle - September 7, 1934
Rip was right; Sara now knew more than she ever wanted to about the S.S. Morro Castle, from the number of passengers on board during this run (318, plus the two of them) to its gross tonnage (11,520, as if that really mattered). She knew it ran on turboelectric engines, and that it catered to mostly middle-class folk who wanted to escape the woes of the Great Depression. And she knew it was supposed to dock in New York tomorrow.
But instead, it would run aground on the Jersey Shore.
She and Ray had boarded the ship in Havana two days before, posing as newlyweds staying in first class. It gave them a good excuse to spend their evenings locked in their stateroom more often than not. Judging by the knowing looks other passengers gave them at meal times, everyone thought they were in there… doing what newlyweds do.
In actuality, Ray put on the ATOM suit, shrank and slipped out to explore the ship, going places passengers wouldn’t be allowed and feeding the information back to Sara, who took careful notes on routes and schedules.
She thought Leonard would have loved this.
It didn't take Ray long to scout the spot where they needed to plant the chronium shield. It would have to be inserted between two steel plates on the inner hull.
The bad news was that the spot was in the #2 hold, near stacked crates labeled "Sporting Goods" but actually carrying drugs and bottles of Cuban rum to New York, in exchange for guns that had been (illegally) delivered in Havana.
Of course there was only one way in. And of course it was guarded around the clock by a single seaman, with a shift change every six hours.
It would be so much easier if Ray could just shrink the chronium down in his suit and sneak it in that way. But he said that would alter the atomic structure of the metal and render it useless. So they’d have to get the guard away from the door and then get into the hold to plant the shield.
And they’d have to do it just before one in the morning, the time when passengers would be alerted to the fire and panic would sweep through the Morro Castle, drawing Jurgen’s Ridge like a magnet drawing steel. Too early, and the deflection wouldn’t work. Too late, and they’d lose their chance to redirect the Ridge and eventually save Leonard.
Sara looked over her notes, glad that their first-class stateroom included a large table where she could spread out the pages. She wondered what Leonard would do in her shoes. She’d never been the kind of planner he was; her specialty involved less thinking and more hitting.
But still, it was better for her to plan this than Ray. Cunning and deceitfulness just weren’t in his toolbox, and he wasn’t happy with her suggestion for getting the guard away.
To be honest, she didn’t much care for the idea either: Playing the siren to lure the poor man elsewhere so Ray could break in. But they both thought a honey trap was less risky than an outright fight that could draw unwanted attention. And they agreed it was better than knocking the guard out and possibly leaving him to die when the fire swept through the ship. They both knew that could change history.
But knocking him out was still a last resort, if she couldn’t lead the guard away on a wild Canary chase.
She looked up from her notes to her reflection in the vanity mirror, making one last adjustment to her hair as she ran through the plan again in her mind. She stood and turned at the sound of the ATOM suit expanding behind her.
Ray was gaping at her, just a little. “Wow. That’s a killer dress.”
She raised an eyebrow at him. “That some kind of League of Assassins joke?”
He put up his hands and shook his head. “No, of course not! You look great!” He began removing the ATOM suit piece by piece.
“All the better to seduce the guard away from the hold later,” she said, smoothing her hands down the light green silk of her evening gown. It had a fitted, halter-style bodice and a skirt that flowed just enough for her to be able to move in a fight if she needed to.
Ray chuckled. “Sara, these guys probably haven’t touched a woman in months. They can’t go ashore unless they want to lose their jobs, and they don’t get to be around the women who are on board. You could wear a burlap bag and still seduce one of them.” She snickered at that, not taking any offense.
The ATOM suit finally removed, he shrank it back down and put it into its carrying case. “You should keep the dress, though. And when we get Snart back, wear it to take him dancing.” Now stripped down to the thermals he wore under the ATOM suit, he stepped into the bathroom to put on the evening wear that was waiting for him.
“Leonard doesn’t dance,” she replied. She raised her skirt to slip a dagger into her garter. Just in case.
Ray laughed from the other side of the bathroom door. “If he sees you in that dress, he’ll dance. Or he’ll come up with some other excuse to put his arms around you.”
She let the skirt fall again and surveyed her reflection one more time. “What makes you so certain?”
“Trust me, Sara. The Professor’s not the only one who was observant,” Ray answered as he opened the door. He was now wearing black dress pants, a dark green cummerbund, a white tuxedo shirt and a white dinner jacket. He began tying his dark green bow tie. “Keep the dress. I’ll make sure you get a chance for that dance.”
She smirked at him and stepped closer to him, so she could reach up and adjust the bow tie. “Still the hopeless romantic, aren’t you?”
He smiled down at her. “Hopeful romantic, to quote ‘Romancing The Stone,’” he corrected. “If you two can come through all of this, then there’s some hope for the rest of us.” He glanced at his wristwatch. “It’s 8:55. Let me bring you up to speed before we go to dinner.”
She sat in one of the chairs, while Ray settled onto the end of the bed (which they’d deliberately mussed to keep up appearances for the maids who would make up the bed during dinner). “Captain Wilmott is dead. They found him in his own bathroom about an hour ago.”
That was another of the facts he’d rattled off to her. “You told me it happened tonight.”
He nodded. “Sure. But it’s one thing to read about history. It’s another to see…” His voice trailed off as he looked down.
“Ray, you weren’t in there when he died?” she asked with some concern. Ray wasn’t a trained killer, able to be objective about death.
“No, no, no.” He shook his head. “But… I went in after, and got a sample of his blood and did a bio-scan.”
“Bio-scan? Since when can you do that?” she asked curiously.
He shrugged. “Well, while you were busy blacksmithing on the Waverider, I adapted the bio-scanning program from Gideon and added it to my faceplate. I figure it will come in handy.”
She nodded. Ray did come up with some good ideas. “So what did you find?”
“Arsenic,” Ray answered in a grim voice. “He was poisoned. And I found a bottle of arsenic in the Chief Radio Officer’s quarters, along with the makings of a fountain pen bomb. ”
Sara wasn’t surprised. Ray had spent the past two days telling her about the theories and suspects in the wreck of the Morro Castle. Particularly about the Chief Radio Officer, George White Rogers, a serial arsonist and killer who would, incredibly, be lauded as the hero of the Morro Castle disaster until years later. Ray’s description of the man made Vandal Savage seem…. well, maybe not sane, but perhaps… better adjusted.
For a lunatic.
“It’s just what you suspected,” she reminded him. “But like you said, reading about it is very different from actually seeing it.”
“Yeah. I don’t think I’ll ever be able to watch ‘Titanic’ again,” Ray said. “I know we haven’t spent much time with these people, but still… knowing so many of them are going to die tonight… It’s just too real.”
“It is reality,” she reminded him. “We don’t have to like it. We just can’t get in the way.”
“Yeah. I don’t know how the Time Masters were able to let things like this happen. To make things like this happen.” He shook his head with a sigh and looked at his watch again. “We should head out. Don’t say anything about the Captain; it’s going to be announced to first class at dinner.”
He picked up the case for the ATOM suit and tucked it into his coat pocket while she gathered up her notes and packed them into her trunk so the maids wouldn’t see them, keeping only the section with the floor plan Ray had drawn of the hold. Then she took the small but all-important piece of chronium out of the trunk and put it with the sketch into the beaded handbag Gideon had fabricated for her. It was a little larger than was fashionable, but form was more important than fashion tonight.
Ray offered her his arm. “Mrs. Palmer? Shall we go puttin’ on the Ritz?”
He started humming the old tune. She smirked at him, grabbing a silken shawl to throw around her shoulders before they swept out of the room.
----
Normally, the last night of a cruise would be filled with all kinds of festivities. But dinner was a somber affair once the passengers were told about the death of the ship’s captain.
There were a few spots around the ship where small groups were trying to enjoy a revel during their last night on the ship. But the cruise director, normally in charge of onboard fun, had appointed himself the onboard killjoy for the night, stopping all carousing in the public rooms out of respect for Captain Wilmott.
At one point he glared at Sara and Ray, who had been at the edge of a small party in the verandah café. “You two have barely come out of your stateroom since you boarded. Don’t you want to go back?”
Sara giggled at him, perfectly playing the part of the blushing bride. Ray grabbed her hand, and after a sly wink at the cruise director, led her out of the cafe onto the outside deck.
It was damp and chilly, and Ray draped his dinner jacket over her shoulders. The ship had been skirting a storm for more than a day, riding through rough seas, but right now they were in a brief respite from the weather.
Ray looked at his watch. “It’s midnight. If the theories are right, Rogers will plant the pen bomb in the writing room sometime in the next twenty minutes.” He met her eyes. “I know it sounds crazy, but…”
“But you have to see,” Sara finished.
“That’s not weird… Is it weird?” Ray asked in that tone boding a babble ahead. Sara reached up and put a hand over his mouth to stop it.
“Out of all the weird things we’ve done and seen since we joined the Waverider, this may be one of the least weird, Ray.” She pulled her hand away and reached for the ATOM suit in his jacket pocket. “Go on, solve your mystery.”
He took it with a nod. “I’m gonna just… change in the storage closet at the end of the passageway. I won’t be long. What about you?”
“I’m just going to walk around a bit, get a little air while I can, before the winds pick up again. The room’s getting a bit stale.” She huffed at the look of concern he gave her. “Ray, I’ll be fine. The shipwreck fear is turning out to be easier to control than the bloodlust.”
“We’re still in the easy part of this mission,” he reminded her.
“I’ll be fine.” She flipped open her locket to check the countdown clock. “Just keep your comm on. I’ll meet you at the stairway near the hold door in forty-five minutes.”
“It’s called a companionway,” he corrected. He grinned at her glare and went back inside.
Sara closed the locket again and adjusted the jacket over her shoulders before ambling down the deck toward… what was it called? Oh, right. The stern of the ship.
The sky was clouded over, so all she could see on the water were the glades of light thrown by the Morro Castle’s lamps. No other passengers were out on the deck. According to Ray’s information, most of them had taken to their beds by this point.
She stopped and leaned against a railing about halfway down the ship. (“Amidships,” said the little Ray voice in her head. Yet another bit of nautical knowledge he’d shared with her.) She ran over the plan one more time in her head:
Just before one a.m., she would approach the guard at the hold entrance and convince him to follow her to a small cleaning closet Ray had discovered down the passageway. As soon as they were gone, Ray would break into the hold and plant the chronium shield, then shrink and make his escape, signaling Sara over the comm to leave the guard high and dry (or maybe hot and bothered, though she really hoped it wouldn’t get that far).
Gideon had projected the emergence of Jurgen’s Ridge right after one a.m. If all the math done by Ray and Stein was right, it would be bounced away from this place and time almost as quickly as it appeared.
Then they would have to wait about fifteen more minutes, until the Morro Castle lost its electric power. That was when Rip was scheduled to return with the Waverider to pick them up, under cover of smoke and darkness.
It sounded simple enough, but Sara could remember Leonard’s dark warning that the best-laid plans could go sideways. And she didn’t feel this was anywhere near a best-laid plan.
It was just all they had.
She opened her locket again, this time to look at Leonard’s picture. She still wondered what he’d been looking at when Gideon recorded it, but she was also pleased that Rip had picked this particular image. It reminded her of how Leonard had looked at her when they were trapped together in the engine room, back when they took those first tentative steps toward trusting each other.
“It’s a chilly evening for a young lady to be out alone on deck, even with a borrowed dinner jacket.”
She looked up to see a large man in a white officer’s uniform approaching her. He was carrying a small box, and wore a smile that didn’t quite reach his eyes. “You are… Mrs. Palmer, correct? I believe I saw you boarding with your husband in Havana?”
“That’s right,” Sara said warily.
“George White Rogers, Chief Radio Officer, at your service, madam.” His gaze traveled up and down her body, finally resting on the locket, which still lay open in her hand. “A handsome gentleman… but that’s not your husband.”
She quickly closed it. “No. He’s my brother.”
He raised an eyebrow, possibly detecting the lie. “An unusual choice for a newlywed, to wear a locket with a photo of her brother instead of her husband.”
“Well, my husband is here with me, but Leonard is… very far away. In the service.” She narrowed her eyes at him. “And I don’t think it’s appropriate for a member of the crew to have this kind of conversation with a passenger, even if he is the Chief Radio Officer.”
The cold smile grew just a little wider, a little chillier. “My apologies, Mrs. Palmer. But if you will take some advice from a seasoned seaman, you should get back to your stateroom… and your husband. This break in the weather won’t last long. Do you need an escort?”
She drew back. “No, I can find my way.”
“Ah, one of those new independent women,” he said in a voice that didn’t quite sound approving.
“Perhaps. Good evening.” She turned away and headed back inside.
Ray’s voice came over her comm. “Are you all right, Sara?”
“Yeah,” she answered quietly, after making sure there was no one else in the passageway. “Had a little run-in with your prime suspect.”
“I heard.”
“He was carrying a box, Ray. I think he’s heading your way.”
---
She was fuming when she met him at the top of the companionway. “You were supposed to leave your comm on, Raymond!” she scolded him. Then she registered his haunted look. “So, were you right?” she asked him in a softer tone.
“Kind of, but not exactly,” he said, flipping up his visor. “Rogers did plant a fountain pen bomb, just like all the theories said. But…” he trailed off and swallowed.
Sara furrowed her brow. “But what?” she prompted.
“Now I know how the Time Masters were able to let things happen. It’s because history said they had to.” He took in a deep breath. “Rogers got the wiring wrong. His bomb wouldn’t have gone off.” He looked down, unable to meet her eyes. “And we know that bomb had to go off. So… I fixed the wiring. The bomb’s exploded, and the fire has started. I turned off my comm because I needed quiet to think this through.”
He shook his head and let out a heavy sigh. “I’m the one who caused the Morro Castle disaster.”
Her heart ached for this man who wanted nothing more than to help others. “Ray…”
“Hey!” They were interrupted by a shout from the bottom of the companionway, where a crewman was gaping at them. “What the hell are you?”
Ray and Sara exchanged a look, the somber mood broken for the moment. “So much for the honey trap,” she said.
“Guess we have to go for the vinegar,” he agreed. “Ladies first?”
She smirked at him, throwing off the dinner jacket and bounding down the stairs. She grabbed the railings about halfway down and swung her legs up to kick the crewman in the face, laying him out cold. She’d just landed in a swirl of her skirt when another crewman came running down the passageway. Ray took this one out with a literal flying punch.
They stood back to back in the passageway, the unconscious crewmen at their feet but no other opponents on the way. Then they ran down to the entry to the hold. No one blocked their path.
“One of those guys must have been the guard,” Sara said, trying the door. It was locked.
Ray aimed his gauntlet at the handle and fired. Sara could now pull the door open.
“You go place the shield,” he told her. “I’m gonna put those two guys into a lifeboat.”
“Ray…”
“There’s enough blood on my hands!” he snapped. “We’ll meet back at the stateroom.” He ran back down the passageway and grabbed the two men, then flew up the companionway out of sight.
Sara slipped into the dark hold and pulled her flashlight out of her bag. She could smell smoke wafting through the ventilation system. The Morro Castle didn’t have much longer to live, but she had even less time to complete her mission. She flipped open the locket to the countdown timer, which showed two minutes left.
Leonard would have been able to find the spot instantly, but Sara wasn’t blessed with his eidetic memory. She pulled the floor plan sketch from the bag, looked at it and then looked around to orient herself.
Her objective was on the other side of the room, near the loading door. She picked her way through the stacks of crates, stopping once when her skirt caught on some splintered wood. The silk tore when she pulled it away.
One minute left, and still a little ways to go. She crossed the remaining distance quickly, and cursed when she realized the target spot between those riveted plates was well above her reach. But there were crates stacked right underneath, so she began to climb.
The silk skirt was getting in her way, getting caught on rough corners of the crates. The delicate fabric shredded as she kept yanking it away. “So much for keeping this,” she muttered.
The locket had started beeping. She was running out of time.
The target was now within reach. She pulled the chronium shield out of her bag and wedged it into place just as the beeping turned into a high-pitched whine. She glanced at the locket: Just in time.
She climbed down the crates again, and briefly considered the ones carrying the rum. She heard the echo of Leonard’s voice: “There’s always time to steal,” and knew he’d have grabbed a few bottles and tucked them into the seemingly bottomless pockets of his parka. But she needed her hands free, so she turned her back on the crate and started heading for the door.
She paused at a groaning sound that did not come from the ship. The walls reflected a strange blue light. She whirled to see something like a tornado appear in the hold. It glowed blue, but also had other colors running through it. No, not just colors. Images, flowing too quickly for her to recognize. And there was a cacophony of sound, mostly human voices.
She shrank away from the disturbance as it moved through the hold, heading straight for her chronium shield. The shield flared as the tornado touched it. Then the vision was gone, leaving no trace except for the now-glowing piece of chronium.
“Oh, my God,” she whispered. “Ray, I just saw the Ridge. It was like some giant tornado.”
His voice crackled over the comm. “Did you see Snart?”
She started walking quickly, heading back to their room. “No. But I got an idea of what he might be seeing right now. There was a lot of noise, and images like a slideshow at a hundred miles an hour.”
“Did the shield work?”
She hesitated. “I don’t know. I think so. The tornado touched it and disappeared. Is that what I should have seen?”
Ray was quiet for a moment, probably thinking. “We weren’t sure how it would manifest, but that sounds right,” he answered at last. “The Waverider will be off the bow in a few minutes. Where are you?”
“Just about to take the stairs to our deck. I’ll be there in a minute.”
He didn’t bother to correct her with the nautical term. She climbed the stairs and found herself in a knot of panicked people, some wearing life jackets, many not, pushing toward the nearby doors that led to the outside deck. The smell of smoke was getting stronger, and she could hear panicked cries farther down the passageway.
Just for a moment, she flashed back to the Gambit. To the Amazo. But then she heard the voice of Ra’s al Ghul reprimanding her: “The past cannot hurt you or kill you. It can only distract you. Distraction is what kills.”
She shoved down the memories and started to push against the tide. A steward shouted at her, “Miss, you have to go out on deck!”
She ignored him, continuing to force her way through the crowd until she was free of it. She kicked off her heels to run down the passageway to their room.
“It’s a madhouse out there!” she said as she pulled the door shut behind her.
“And it’s my fault,” Ray said. His visor was up, and he was still wearing that haunted look.
He had gathered all her careful notes from her trunk. He carried them to the bathtub, dropping them in and setting them ablaze with a blast from his gauntlet. He looked at her. “We can’t leave any traces of what we did. Of what I did.” He turned back to staring at the small fire.
“Ray.” He wouldn’t look at her. “Raymond!” She laid a hand on his shoulder, encouraging him to look her way. “Rip is always telling us time wants to happen. Even without the Time Masters, I think that’s still true. We knew this ship would be wrecked even before we came on board.”
He shook his head. “Yeah. But seeing it and knowing that I…”
“You did what you had to, Ray. We’re supposed to be taking care of history now, and that’s what you did,” she reassured him. “You have to remember that.”
Ray thought it over for a moment, then gave her a resigned nod. “Thanks, Sara,” he said, leaning over to kiss her forehead.
The room went dark, and something on his suit began beeping. “What’s that?”
He smiled slightly. “I built a Waverider beacon for the suit.” He flipped his visor back down and blasted out the triple windows of their stateroom, giving them an escape route. “You ready to get off this boat?”
She grinned and stepped closer so he could grab hold of her. He flew them out into the night, towards the bow of the burning ship. She looked down, but thankfully couldn’t see much detail because of the smoke, the darkness and their increasing altitude.
She could still hear, though, and what she heard would probably give her nightmares again tonight.
She looked away from the Morro Castle and peered in the direction they were flying. “I can’t see the Waverider,” she shouted to Ray. “Are you sure it’s there?”
As if in answer, a small patch of light appeared ahead of them. Rip had kept the ship camouflaged. The patch was an open airlock. Ray headed for it, and in moments they were back on the Waverider.
“Welcome back,” Gideon greeted them.
“Did it work?” Ray asked the AI.
Rip answered, coming down the corridor toward them. “Apparently so. Gideon says the Ridge has course-corrected.”
“Rip, I saw it,” Sara said. “I saw Jurgen’s Ridge. It looked like some kind of storm or tornado. How can Leonard survive that?”
Rip took in a deep breath and laid a hand on her shoulder. “The Ridge manifests differently in our world than it does in the time stream,” he said. “You already know he does survive.”
They heard the sound of the jump ship docking. “Ah, there’s our other team!” Rip said, rubbing his hands together. “Let’s see how they’re doing.”
They quickly made their way to the jump ship hatch. Stein and Jax were already out.
“Gentlemen! Gideon says the first phase of our plan has succeeded!” Rip told them. Then he furrowed his brow. “Where is Mr. Rory?”
“Right here, Rip.”
Sara gasped in surprise as Mick emerged from the jump ship. He was cradling a sleeping, dark-haired girl, who couldn’t have been more than two or three years old.
Rip’s face turned red. “You brought…” he began to shout, then lowered his voice at Mick’s glare. “You brought a child back from Lewiston? What were you thinking?”
“We were following orders,” Jax said.
“Whose orders?” Rip’s voice had now dropped to a hiss of anger.
Martin looked at the others uncomfortably before answering, “Gideon’s.”
A shocked expression crossed Rip’s face before he looked up to address the AI. “Gideon, do you mind explaining? Why did you have them take a child out of the timeline?”
Gideon almost sounded… patient. “History demanded that this child be taken out of her timeline. She must be brought to the Refuge.”
“Why?” Sara asked. “Who is she?”
“It is not who she is, but rather who she will be that makes her important.”
While Gideon sounded patient, Rip’s tone was the exact opposite. “And who will she be?” he demanded.
“She will become the Time Master trainee Miranda Coburn.”
There was stunned silence. Then Ray said, “So this little girl…”
“…is my future wife,” Rip finished.
---
Information about the Morro Castle comes from Wikipedia and also the 1972 book "Shipwreck" by Gordon Thomas and Max Morgan Witts.
Please let me know what you think in the comments. (Looking at you with big brown eyes.)
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