A/N: Thanks again to everyone reading this. Cookies to Xanthiae, Pandora, Kate and Smallfri for their reviews. There will now be a total of 19 chapters for this as the the ending of 18 was just too much fun to ditch but wouldn't have tied things up nicely and you have no idea how much fun I had trying to imagine Captain Becker in the costume he's about to get landed with! I do hope you all enjoy it. Please let me know what you think. :)

Chapter 17

Captain James Becker leant back against the cold stone wall of his new quarters. Their hostess, with the help of Elizabeth, had led them to their rooms herself. She had stationed the four healthy soldiers in a dormitory out in the servants quarters. It had once been intended for troops, but now lay empty. Elizabeth had been given the larger guest room, with instructions left for one of the maids to make up a cot for John, whom it appeared was now Elizabeth's grandson. Across the hall, the only other guest room had been given to Kate and Becker, with no similar instructions.

"For the record, young man, I shall start at the beginning," Elizabeth had told Becker once their hostess had left to find them more suitable attire. "Lady Berenger now believes that I am your mother-in-law, as well as translator and advisor. She believes that Kate is my youngest daughter and you her husband. She also believes that John is the son of my elder daughter and her husband, both now sadly deceased. I would have said he was yours but that would have made madam here a very young mother, even by today's standards, and you only have to take one look at her to know she hasn't given birth! Besides, he looks nothing like either of you, save for the dark hair, and they might not have paternity tests here but I'm willing to bet any noble lady worth her salt knows breeding!"

"I still don't see why you had to say we're married!" Kate had spat indignantly.

"My dear, the two of you argue so much it would be hard to convince the natives otherwise," Elizabeth smiled sweetly. "Besides," she added, "even with a husband you will attract considerable unwanted attention from the men around here, especially with those curls flying everywhere. At least with him on your arm you should scare some of them off!"

Becker had decided not to argue that point. It hadn't really occurred to him that Kate would need help scaring off men, but now it had been mentioned he could see the logic in Elizabeth's idea. Mercifully, Kate had seemed to see this too. The only problem was that now left them in a smallish room with one smallish double bed and no sofa.

Thankfully the bed had curtains, on the other side of which Kate was currently stomping and swearing herself into a 13th century gown. She had spent the past twenty minutes since their new clothes arrives stomping and swearing herself into it. He had taken little more than ten minutes to change into the array of clothing left for him. The undergarments had been simple enough: loose breeches with long stockings that attached to them and a tight-sleeved undershirt that came down to his knees. On top of those, a blue, shin-length tunic and grey surcoat were fastened with a wide leather belt. Short, ankle high shoes had also been provided. Kate had been provided with similar garments, albeit in a longer, more feminine cut, so he was beginning to wonder what was taking the time.

"Need a hand?" Becker called as another loud curse echoed across the room.

"Don't laugh!" Kate called back.

Taking this as an affirmative reply, Becker pushed himself up off the wall and sauntered round to the other side of the bed. He certainly had to bite back a laugh at the sight of her. The emerald green surcoat was laying in a heap on the floor, as was the light red gown. Kate was standing in the long, loose underdress with her arms hunched up and her hands jammed in the tight sleeves.

"I didn't think the sleeves would be this tight!" Kate hissed, her face turning scarlet at the look of obvious amusement on Becker's face. "And I don't know what you're grinning at over there in your dress!"

"I'm only wearing what every other man in this era wore," Becker grinned. "There is no way you are going to deflect this one onto me."

Reaching under his surcoat, Becker produced a short bladed knife and began cutting the fabric along the seam of the sleeve. Soon Kate's hands were free and he was helping her lower the ruby red dress over her head, followed by the green surcoat and narrow belt

"Do you want a hand with your hair?" Becker sighed as he watched Kate smooth down the fabric and untangle the long, loose sleeves of the gown.

"What's wrong with my hair?" Kate grumbled.

"Women cover their hair in this century. It's a modesty thing. Look, the wimple they've left you is simple enough to put on."

"How come you know so much about it?" Kate raised an eyebrow in Becker's direction.

"I've been to a few re-enactments," he replied. "My family has Norman roots and they're proud of it."

"So what? You might bump into your great-great-whatever-grandfather while we're here?"

Becker grimaced and moved to take over braiding Kate's hair, batting her hands away when she protested.

"Have you never done this before?" Becker sighed, taking out the mess Kate had made of her hair and starting the braid again.

"What, and you have?" Kate snorted.

"Actually, yes," he replied. "My mother used to get me to braid her hair for her when she wasn't able to any more. She had MS."

"I'm sorry," Kate's voice dropped to a whisper.

"Don't be. It was a long time ago and you didn't know her."

"You never talk about your family."

"There's not much to talk about. My mother died when I was seventeen. My father was killed in action before I even really got to know him. In the Gulf war."

"No brothers or sisters?"

"None."

Kate went silent for a moment. Something was nagging her.

"So why did John call you Uncle Pete? He said he got his uncles mixed up, but if you don't have a brother..."

"John has known me a lot longer than you have," said Becker quietly. He took a deep breath before he continued with his explanation. If ever there was going to be a right time to tell her, this was surely it. "Up until about three years before I got the job at the ARC, my name was Peter. I was part of an operation that left me in need of a new identity. I disappeared off the radar for a while and reinvented myself. When the job at the ARC came up. Sir James Lester came looking for me. He still has contacts that were able to find me, even if he didn't get all the details until I saw him and was able to talk to him face to face."

"But you knew him before?" Kate asked.

"Yes," he replied. "Lester was one of my father's friends who came to my mother's funeral. I'd met him occasionally before, but he took more of an interest in me then, for my father's sake, he said, and helped me through the rest of school and Sandhurst." Becker took another deep breath. "He also recruited me, three weeks after I graduated from Sandhurst, and had me seconded to MI6."

"What!" Kate tried to turn her head, but found it pulled back into place by Becker. She frowned and continued in a quieter tone. "So you're what? James Bond or something?"

"Not quite," Becker replied, his voice completely devoid of emotion. "That's more like Lester actually, although he got out of it after I managed to mess things up for him."

"What happened?"

"I got careless. I messed up. Our cover was blown. I was captured. Lester got me out," Becker's hands slipped from the finished braid to Kate's shoulders. "He saved my life. At great risk to his own. I'll never forget that. That's why I took his name when I chose my new identity. His first name and the surname of the doctor that patched me up so that we could get back to Britain."

"So what's your real name then?" Kate asked, finally able to turn and face him.

"It's Berenger," he whispered. "Peter Berenger. And yes, I'm well aware that I may have just saved the life of my great-great-whatever-grandfather!"

XXXX

Connor stood before the anomaly. The enforced sleep had done him some good. His mind felt clearer than it had in a long time. While he slept, Peta and the others had found a suitable time zone to aim for. Cai's team of engineers had miniaturised the equipment needed to produce the anomaly and put it into handheld versions. They had programmed a test run into a handheld and it had worked out. Now they had called up an anomaly to the middle of the 31st century and Connor was getting ready to step through it. On one side, Peta, Nigel and the others were lined up with various bits of kit. On the other side stood the one person in the caves who gave Connor the creeps even more than the big-eyed women: Doctor Nick Cutter. A younger version of Cutter taken from a wholly different timeline, Helen had explained. He had been the person who had walked into Darwin House with that strange warning so very long ago, not the professor. Now that he saw him up close, Connor was kicking himself that he hadn't spotted the difference between them, but then it was hardly something you looked for in a person. Doctor Nick, as Connor had decided to refer to him, was coming along because Helen believed him to be immune to the virus. By her logic, if their Nick Cutter was immune, so should this one be. Connor hadn't asked how she knew their Nick Cutter was immune. He was afraid he might get an answer he didn't like.

Making sure that everyone had everything, including a number of handheld anomaly devices, Connor led the team through the shimmering aperture.

As the anomaly winked out of existence, Helen Cutter turned away and smiled. She looked down at the device in her hand. So much power in such a small thing, she thought. And none of it would have been possible without you, you clever boy.

Leaving Cai's people to play with their new toys, she made a beeline for the barracks. Two of her clones guarded the entrance. The rest waited patiently inside. She ordered the two guards inside, locked the door behind her and turned to her troops.

"Finally," she said, holding up the handheld device. "Finally we have the power to choose our path through time. We failed once, but where direct persuasion failed, guile won through. You have your orders. Go now. Collect the equipment we will need. Meet me in the main engineering lab in two hours. If anyone tries to stop you use my name. Do not use force. We don't want our clever friends here to find out who we really are just yet."

XXXX

Connor sat in the observation lab, watching Abby. He would glance across to the monitor watching Cutter's bed too sometimes, but most of his attention was on Abby. When she woke up, he wanted to be there. If he couldn't be there in person, at least he could be here. And there really was no way he could be there in person. Not until they were sure she was clear of the virus. Even with the future technology they had brought through from Cai's people, there was no way they could manipulate the genetic sequence accurately enough to create immunity in himself or any of his team. An ordinary vaccine didn't work either. That had been the first thing they'd tried. The antibodies were not ones that were produced in an ordinary immune response, they were proteins that were present in the immune person's blood all the time, just like the A and B antibodies that had made early blood transfusions so much of a lottery. It was possible to treat the virus by injecting a non-immune person with the antibodies, but once in the blood stream, whether attached to a virus or not, the antibodies denatured within two days. The only good point was that any virus caught up in them died long before the antibodies themselves denatured.

Connor spun round in the comfortable padded viewing chair. He felt like Captain Kirk in this thing. Buttons on the arm allowed him to move the chair up and down in front of the monitors, as well as back and forth along a track line should he wish to move from one screen high up at one end of the observation lab to another high up at the other end. The chair was programmed to conform automatically to his body, ensuring perfect posture at all times. On the few occasions that his attention wandered from Abby's unconscious form, he easily filled the time marvelling at the gadgets available to him in just this room.

The computer was voice activated, which just made him feel more like Captain Kirk, but without the aliens. With a simple command he could increase or decrease audio to whatever camera he was watching, he could zoom in on areas in each camera's field of view, he could patch his own voice through to loudspeakers in the isolation ward if he wished, he could even order beer and a pizza. After more than a thousand years of rebuilding civilisation from scratch, this new breed of humans had done pretty good!

A noise behind him made Connor spin the chair back round to the isolation ward monitors. There was a bustle of activity around Abby's bed. He started to push himself to his feet then remembered he was six feet off the floor and standing up right now might prove painful. Zooming in on the bed, Connor watched nurses fuss over their patient, blocking his view. When they finally moved away, he let out a breath he hadn't realised he was holding.

She was awake.

Finally!