So, Percy brought the ship down to Earth and into an out-of-the-way ravine far from any signs of civilization. The ship itself was pretty damn big, considering it had its own docking bay full of fighters. It was basically the size of a skyscraper set on its side. Though not exactly shaped like that. From the outside, the ship looked like a Y, with a cargo bay on one of the diagonal slants and the docking bay with the doors out into open space on the other one. The engines and more cargo and crew quarters were along the main vertical part of the Y, and there was a bubble/ball part that stuck out right in between the two diagonal bits. That was where the bridge was.


    Fortunately, the North American continent wasn’t exactly heavily populated yet, so we were able to find a decent spot to hide it away from any signs of civilization, at least for a little while. I’d find a way to deal with it more directly later. But I hadn’t been kidding about not letting Ehn have it. He wasn’t here to help, and I had been the one who killed the previous captain. It was my ship. He could find his own.


    The two of us, with Cerberus and Eurso trailing behind, made sure the ship’s cloaking device was active. Then we scattered around a few spells across the area that were meant to direct people away from it. Finally, I summoned all my ghosts (thanking them for helping out so much and keeping everything together), and left some volunteers to watch over the ship. They would alert me if anything happened so I could jump back here. That would have to do for the time being.


    Of course, once I had my ghosts back, Seth, Grover, Jason, Kaleigh, and the others all had some choice words about what had happened. They firmly insisted that I make it a point to never send all my ghosts away again, just in case something like that happened. Grover even sadly informed me that he hadn’t truly been able to bask in the stabbing he’d managed, because he was too worried about what was happening to me. Which was twisted, but really sweet in its own way. I used my power to make him solid enough to give the ghost boy a hug. And I did the same for Seth and a couple others who expressed their own concern. I also promised to keep their advice in mind and always keep some of them in reserve just in case. I could have pointed out that I’d survived after all, but it didn’t seem like the right way to go. Especially not after they all made it clear how worried they were.


    With all that done, I took a moment to collect the metal pieces of Fahsteth’s body (that was all that had been left behind after the biological parts melted into goo) so I would have some sort of proof about what had happened when the subject came up. Besides, he had been positively full of tech he’d gathered over the centuries, some of which had to be more advanced than it should be. Who knew what would happen if someone from this time happened to find them in the ground or something? I had seen the Terminator movies, so I knew that sort of thing never turned out well.


    Finally, I used my transportation power (thank God for being on solid Earth once more) to go right back to the old crashed ship alongside the others. Sure enough, it was the site of a slaughter. As soon as those two, along with Gaia, had been freed from holding back when they didn’t have to protect the timeline, the pirates hadn’t stood a chance. There were broken, battered, destroyed bodies lying everywhere. It was honestly a little intimidating. Okay, a lot intimidating. Percy by herself probably could have ripped through all these guys, if I was being honest. But with the other two added in? Yeah, there was no contest. This whole thing hadn’t been an actual battle. It was a massacre. Which, come to think of it, we probably needed to do something about these bodies too. These people were all from the future, so just leaving them out here with everything they had on them could cause problems.


    Actually, come to think of it, I had another idea about how to deal with all that.


    Instead of focusing on that immediately, however, I made my way onto the broken ship while Percy and Cerberus stayed outside to look around a bit more. Eurso looked conflicted, but I told him to go ahead and stay out there with his new three-headed robot friend, which he seemed happy enough about.


    Gaia was just inside, writing something in a journal as she stood in one of the twisting corridors near where the former prisoners were waiting. When she saw me approach, the woman smiled and tucked her book away while asking, “Does it feel better to be down here on solid ground?”


    “You have no idea,” I muttered before adding, “But seriously, thanks for all the help. And, you know, for not pushing too much. I know it can’t be easy. I’m standing right in front of you and I know things about what’s going to happen over the next few hundred years. But you haven’t even really tried to get anything.”


    There was silence for a moment before Gaia stepped over to me. Her hands found my shoulders as she met my gaze with a very intense stare. “That is where you’re wrong, Jacob. I told you before, what matters to me is that I become the type of person who would elicit the very reaction you had when you saw me. You have given me proof that I can become that person. The details don’t matter. Not right now. I will see those details for myself, as they come. And I greatly look forward to meeting you. When you return to the future, when we see one another again, we will sit down and have a very long discussion.”


    Swallowing hard, I met her stare with my own smile. “Yeah, we will. Believe me, I’m gonna have a lot of my own questions for you.”


    “I know this isn’t your real face,” Gaia informed me slyly, looking me up and down a bit. “I wonder how long it will take me to realize who you really are when we do meet. From your reaction, you didn’t expect to meet me here. So I won’t tell you about this trip, or that we’ve met before, even though you clearly know me very well.” She sounded thoughtful, before visibly shaking that off.


    “Ah well, mysteries to be examined in the future, perhaps.” She gave a very soft chuckle at her own joke. “In the meantime, I’m certain you’d like to speak to the people in there.” Her hand gestured toward the nearby door. “I would like to speak with your sister about something else in the meantime.” Starting to walk that way, Gaia paused and glanced back at me with another slight smile. “Don’t worry, I won’t pressure her for answers either.”


    With that, she headed off, leaving me in front of the room with the former prisoners. Right, now I just had to go in there and figure out where they all needed to go to get home. It was the least I could do considering what they’d been through. So, letting out a deep breath, I stepped that way and let the door whoosh open before moving inside.


    Once in, I took a moment to look at the assembled group, who were all clustered around a single table. A table that was laden with the remains of the emergency food rations they had so hungrily devoured. Gaia was right, these people had been starving. Which just made me even more happy about slicing Fahsteth in half, and that was already a pretty high bar.


    Besides Millersby, they were all Native American. Were these people from the same village that Sonoma, Aylen’s mother, was at? More to the point, was the village safe now that I had killed that bastard? His troops were dealt with, at least the ones I knew about. But what if there were others watching the village? Hell, what if his mysterious employer from the future sent someone else back? I needed to find out what was going on with that whole thing. But first, I needed to talk to all these guys.


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    They were watching me expectantly and a little nervously, clearly anxious about what was going to happen next. Instead of addressing all of them immediately, I gestured toward Millersby. “Can I talk to you for a moment?” While the others stared blankly, very clearly not understanding the words, I held up my hand in what I hoped was an understandable gesture for them to wait briefly.


    Millersby was obviously confused, but he got up and came closer hesitantly. The short, goat-like man starting to launch into a whole spiel about how he wasn’t involved with anything and he didn’t even know why they had taken him, but his wife was going to be very upset, and–


    “It’s okay,” I interrupted, keeping my voice low. “It’s me, Millersby. It’s Felicity.” As his eyes widened, I pressed on before he could blurt out anything. Not that Gaia was around to overhear, but I didn’t want him to reflexively say my name loudly and get that stuck in the heads of those other guys so they would say it around her. “The woman who helped rescue you, she’s an old friend. But she can’t know who I am. She can’t know my name or what I look like. It’s a long story, but I need you to call me Jacob for now, okay?”


    The poor guy had been through a lot, but he rolled with that well enough and gave a quick nod of agreement. “I’ll call you anything you wish,” he whispered. “You saved all of us. You saved me, Miss–Mister Jacob. If you hadn’t shown up, I’d never see my Katya again, I’d never get to tell her everything I need to. I’d never–I’d never do so much. You are Mister Jacob now, or anything else you wish to be called.”


    “Jacob’s fine,” I assured him. “I just had to warn you that it was me.” With that, I put a hand on his shoulder and gently squeezed before facing the other former prisoners. They looked very interested now, having basically not turned away at all since I started talking to the other man. Taking a breath, I raised both hands reassuringly before carefully summoning several of my ghosts. Specifically, I summoned a few Native American ghosts whom I’d picked up from the dark forest the first day we arrived in this time period. Obviously, me casually conjuring up a handful of ghosts like that raised–well, not quite a panic or anything. But they were definitely excited about it. And not exactly calm. The seven Native Americans all jumped up from their seats and stared back-and-forth between me and the ghosts. They were murmuring to one another. The impression I got without actually understanding the words was that they were all saying they had to calm down and not freak out.


    Yeah, I definitely needed to address this quickly. So I spoke as calmly and clearly as I could, glancing toward the ghosts. “Could you guys say it’s all okay and they’re still safe in your own languages? I need to try to find out if any of you can communicate with these guys.”


    There was a brief pause before the ghosts each took their turn saying something to that effect, or as close as they could get anyway. I had carefully made sure that each of the ghosts I’d summoned for this was from a slightly different tribe, time period, and region. So their languages would be somewhat different, and hopefully at least one would be recognizable for these people I was trying to communicate with. Maybe in a vacuum that would’ve been a long shot, just hoping one of my ghosts would happen to know their language. But since I knew some future version of me had created that forest and made sure the ghosts were there, maybe she/I had also thought/remembered to leave someone like that in the place.


    Sure enough, it only took a few moments for one of the ghosts to start communicating with the other former prisoners. To say they were relieved to find out someone actually understood them was a bit of an understatement. As soon as they realized what was going on, all seven of them started bombarding the poor ghost (his name was Utatci) with a bunch of questions all at once. Utatci did his best, but admitted that the language he was using wasn’t his first, and he had to get them to repeat themselves a couple times just to be certain he understood. Eventually, however, he managed to tell them that we were going to make sure they all got home, and established that they had come from a village a little over a thousand miles south. Well, they didn’t say that themselves of course, but from the description they gave, we figured out they were from around the Gulf of Mexico. To get more specific than that, I was just going to have to jump them around until something looked familiar and go from there.


    At least, I was going to have to do that. But then Percy poked her head in and let us know that she looked at one of the computers the now-dead pirates had on them and narrowed down exactly where these guys were picked up from. As in exact latitude and longitude plus some pictures of the area, since the guy whose computer she checked was apparently some sort of amateur photographer. Pictures the former prisoners immediately recognized.


    So, as it turned out, I didn’t need to go through all those details with these guys to figure out where they were from. But still, talking like that seemed to calm them down a fair bit, and they were still chattering away at Utatci. He, meanwhile, had been overjoyed to find out that one of these former prisoners was a descendant of someone who had been a childhood friend. Which gave him a chance to start throwing questions at them. Soon they were deep in discussions about all that.


    Leaving them to it, I gestured for Millersby to join me. He (somewhat awkwardly) thanked his fellow prisoners for ‘keeping him company’ and said something about keeping in touch. Then he came with as I left the room. On the way out, I remarked, “Pretty interesting week you’ve had, huh?”


    “Oh yes, Jacob, far too much excitement for me,” the man agreed while emphasizing my fake name given Gaia was standing at the end of the corridor. He didn’t quite give an exaggerated wink when he said it, but it was a pretty close call. Which wasn’t as bad as it could be since the only real point was that Gaia couldn’t know what my real name was, but still. I managed to avoid groaning with a little effort.


    He’d said he wanted to thank ‘the red woman’ as well, so I stood back and let him do that. With Percy standing beside me, we both watched as the small man presented Gaia with something from the bag at his side. It was a rolled up painting, something he liked to do in his offtime while fishing. And as he unfurled it, I recognized the picture. Back in Gaia’s office at Crossroads, she’d had a lot of paintings on the walls. Some had looked quite professional and perfect, while others had been far more amateur. This painting was one of those amateur efforts. But now I recognized the image. It was a picture of the lake Millersby had been abducted from, with his cave right there in the corner, and fish jumping out of the water. In the top left was a gray vaguely Y-shaped image that I had originally took to be an awkward cloud, but now realized was the ship that had abducted him. From the look of things, he’d added that one later, probably while he and the others were waiting back in the cafeteria.


    She kept it. All those years later Gaia would still have the painting. Or at least she would until the Crossroads people arrested her and–yeah, best not to dwell on that. But I did tell myself that we were getting that painting back at some point, one way or another.


    Once Millersby said thank you and presented his gift, I jumped him back to the village. Needless to say, his wife and all the others were ecstatic to see him. I had to promise to come back to help celebrate his safe return later, before leaving him to tell his side of the story for his adoring public.


    With that done, I went back to talk to his fellow former cellmates a bit more. They’d had a chance to talk with Utatci enough by that point, so they were willing to chat (through him, of course) about their villages. They weren’t all from the same one, but they were from the same general area and all knew one another to one degree or another. They also knew ‘the crow woman,’ whom I took to be Sonoma. Which wasn’t information I asked for, but rather, information they said Fahsteth had demanded. It turned out Sonoma didn’t stay in one village, but instead traveled a lot and only showed up once in awhile. So it seemed like they’d been abducted as a way of finding out where she tended to roam and when she might show up again.


    Promising once more that I was going to take them back as soon as I took care of a couple other things (I wanted to make sure I wasn’t delivering them right into a massacre, for one), I left them to talk with Utatci some more before heading out to where Percy was waiting. She met me with a smile. “Are you ready to talk to Laein?”


    “Not yet,” I replied after a brief hesitation. “First, I need to do something that will impress her so she’ll listen to me.”


    “What are you going to do?” the Revenant girl asked curiously, bouncing up and down a little on her toes with a look of intense excitement at the very idea that I wanted to impress someone.


    “Oh, not much.” Saying that, I began to head for the ramp leading out of the ship. “We know she likes Necromancy.


    “So I thought I’d just raise an army of the dead.”