Sara walked in the middle of the line, eyes alert around her. She had decided to keep an eye on things that looked close to where they were instead of trying to track everything that was going on. The two confrontations her group had been involved in had not been the only things leaving fireworks in the dark air.

Lightning flashed as a freelancer with a hammer destroyed something that could have been a hunchbacked minotaur. A helicopter flew by with cannons whirring at green shielded octopi in the air. A team of five dropped a building on a target right before the transition shifted things over two more notches on the hub belt.

“If we could get the freelancers together,” said Sara. “We could have a better chance of getting everyone to a door.”

“Everyone but us is engaged,” said Sheira. She waved her hand at the chaos.

“Not everyone,” said Wayne. He pointed to a lone figure traversing the roofs on thin lines of silk. “A gathering point would be nice, but I feel the Dark would like their seat at the table too.”

“A fort is doable,” said Bob. “The Light has spots they run after all. The real problem is a building would move when the rest of the city moved. If you didn’t account for that, then your gathering point wouldn’t do any good unless that was the point.”

He paused as a sudden thought crossed his mind.

“Thought of something?,” asked Wayne. He picked up a piece of brick and idly threw it down the street. It vanished with the crack of a bullet.

“You could maybe build above a moving track to keep your hypothetical fort in one place,” said Bob. “The Dark would spend a lot more resources to crack that than chasing freelancers. But maybe acting as a distraction would be the point. All the Dark are at one spot, and the freelancers are wisely not taking part of that battle.”

“Or the second option would be a lot more viable.”

He stared at the ground in thought. Dust played around as he tried to check

mathematical figments against the reality around him.

“You thought of some application to the fort idea, didn’t you?,” Wayne asked.

“What if the moving fort was actually a battleship?,” asked Bob.

Everyone stopped at the thought of what was being suggested. Nasser and Sheira glanced at each other with their dark eyes. Wayne smiled. Sara scratched her jaw under the ear and considered what was being said.

“You’re talking about changing the game on a grand scale, Bob,” said Wayne. “The Dark would definitely try to kill you if you stayed and tried to put the idea in motion.”

“I don’t think it would change all that much,” said Bob. “The first thing you’re going to need is a moving track with a clear space like that area in front of us.”

He pointed to an overgrown lot ahead that had seen a few conflicts in its days.

“Then you need to make sure you have a foundation to build on.” He waved his hand to create a floating slab of dirt on a grainier bed in front of him.

“Once you have the foundation, the trick is the walls.” The model tried different shapes to show what he meant. “And defenses. No freelancers mean no protection or attacks.”

“I have a question,” said Sheira.

“Go ahead,” said Bob. “Every question is an answer.”

“That may be, but if you build your fort to sail like a ship, will it be able to tack like a ship?,” asked Sheira.

“I’m sorry?,” said Bob.

“Will it be able to change lanes, Bob,” said Wayne in way of explanation.

“That is a good question,” said Bob. “I have no idea. We do know the hub is

spherical, which means anything we put on a track will go in one direction on that one track. If we had some way to move the fort itself, maybe we could move the whole thing closer to the center wall and a shorter track so it could orbit faster.”

“You’re saying that the closer we get to the wall, the faster the tracks will move,” said Sara.

“Not necessarily,” said Bob. He summoned up a set of tracks like the hub and placed a counter on it. He started spinning the tracks. “If each of these are an orbit, the wider orbits take longer to reach the same spot as the counter goes around. The base problem is all of these tracks are moving at the same speed. Our counter would be on the same line as he went around. Now if each track sped up a little, and the distance shortened, we could expect the counter to be pushed to the right by let’s say a current to keep things simple.”

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“So if we turned directly with the track, the track would carry us without any effort of our own,” said Sheira.

“Exactly, but we would never see the inside of the center wall because none of these tracks interact with that,” said Bob. He placed a cone in the center of his display. “We would essentially have a moon spinning around this center of gravity. The only way to get closer would be to jump tracks as we went around.”

“Everyone knows this, right?,” said Sheira.

“Do they?,” asked Bob. “We only know that the tracks move in the same direction because of Sara noting the map changing at Starting Point. How many others paid attention to it?”

“And the fighting also, wife,” said Nasser. “If the freelancers aren’t as strong as we are as a group, they might not know that the buildings are pushing them away from the goal.”

“And the briefer at Starting Point only touched on the fact that the central wall might also be spinning,” said Bob. “So we’re pushing against the current to the next track to a spinning center which might be pushing the opposite direction.”

“This is suddenly more complicated than I want,” said Sara.

“And it does nothing about building a battleship,” said Wayne.

“If we had the platform, we would have to add arms unless we just depended on freelancers to do all the work,” said Bob. “Walls would naturally have to be included but I assume some of the bigger Dark guys could break a wall easily. That’s why I would propose wheels of some kind.”

“So this fort would need an engine of some kind,” said Wayne.

“Or some kind of sails,” said Bob. “Air manipulation would also require a weapon to power it to push the ship anywhere we wanted to go.”

“Let us look at what the Light did for their zones of control,” said Nasser. “Why

create the wheel, when someone has done most of the work for us?”

“I think we’re not taking care of our business,” said Sara. This fort thing had been a good distraction from the grimness around them. She wasn’t sure if she wanted to make it a practical reality.

“Don’t worry,” said Wayne. “I don’t think time works the same here as it does out there. We’ll get you home.”

“I don’t know how you know that,” said Sara.

“What was the year when you died, Sara?,” asked Wayne.

“Nineteen seventy six,” said Sara.

“When I died, the Romans were still a military force,” said Wayne. “How are they doing now?”

“The Roman Empire with Caesar?,” asked Sara.

“That one,” said Wayne.

“Fell a long time ago from my point of view,” said Sara. “Centuries.”

“They had not started their march when we died,” said Sheira. “We only know of them from others like yourself.”

“Bob?,” asked Sara. “When did you die?”

“November eighth, nineteen sixty five,” said Bob. “Not so far from your time from the sound of it.”

“So we can stay here as long as we want and go back to the proper time?,” asked Sara.

“No one knows, and the Doctors and the Light refuse to tell us anything,” said Bob. “Something about paradox if someone remembers something.”

“What could they take back from here?,” asked Sara.

“How to build mobile forts on self powering tracks,” said Wayne.

Sara glared at him for a moment. Then she threw up her hands.

“Fine,” she said. “Let’s see if we can find a Light redoubt and look at what they built in this pit of everlasting darkness so I can find a gate and get home.”

“That’s the spirit we’re talking about,” said Wayne. “We will certainly find an answer to Bob’s burning questions. And then we’re back on track.”

“I doubt the Light is going to let us just copy one of their existing forts to use as we see fit,” said Bob.

“We’re just going to look at it,” said Wayne. “I think we need some height if we want to pinpoint one of their redoubts.”

“I’ll get us to a roof,” said Sheira. “But Sara is right. We should press on afterwards.”

“We will, but if Bob is right, think about the future freelancers that will be eternally grateful to you forever,” said Wayne.

“No one is ever that grateful,” said Sheira.

She touched each of the group on the arm. She ordered them to fly to a designated roof. She ordered her clothes to carry her up the same way.

Sara looked across the night sky from the roof. It wasn’t so tall that it would attract the predators in the darkness, but was tall enough to clear some of the smaller ground clutter. She scanned the closest section until she saw a bright light in the distance.

It looked like a church next to an apartment building.

“I think there’s the closest Light buildings,” she said, pointing at the lit buildings. “It doesn’t look that big compared what’s on the rim.”

“Anybody see anything else?,” asked Wayne.

A chorus of nos answered the question.

“Do you think we can fly over there?,” asked Wayne.

“I don’t think so,” said Sheira. “There’s forces moving around us. If we take to the air, they’ll try to take us apart.”

“I got it covered if you can give me the sightlines,” said Bob.

“There are two there in that building there, three in the building next to it, some kind of monster moving between the two, and a swarm of flying things heading away from us beyond that group,” said Sheira. “The close ones are moving around trying to get position on us, or each other.”

“Get ready to run,” said Bob.

He brought his hands down and seized the top of the building they stood on. The concrete and mortar flexed under his control and lifted them into the air. A narrow gray rainbow fell short of the Light campus in the distance.

“The swarm and the monster are coming at us,” said Sheira.

“Run faster,” said Bob. He kept himself in the middle of the pack as they ran across the shifting bridge.

“Meet us at the number twenty two,” said Sara. She grabbed Sheira and vanished.

“What does that mean?,” Bob asked.

“I’m really fast,” said Sara. She grabbed Nasser and vanished.

“The building with the double two sign,” said Wayne. “That’s where she wants you to land.”

“All right,” said Bob. “It looks like the sign of a hotel.”

“Maybe that’s what it would be in the real world,” said Wayne.

“It doesn’t matter,” said Sara. “Hustle it up.”

“And here you are all alone against Charlie,” Bob said to himself. He willed the stone and dirt to carry him faster toward the marked building. Sara must have come up with something when they got moving.

He nodded when he saw Wayne waving him in. He dropped off the bridge as a blast of light shaped like a sword cut across the dark sky. Something roared and crashed down over there.

“I can’t see,” said Bob. “That was a big flash.”

“Hold this,” Sara said in his ear. A piece of enchanted rock was placed in his hand. Instantly his eyes cleared. He looked down at the octagon in his hand. “It’s the dog.”

“That’s how you were able to turn everything around on those raiders,” said Bob. He handed the stone back. “Thank you.”

“Get ready,” said Sara. “The second wave is coming in.”