Free Stars Across Time by Ruby Lionsdrake

to go far from the women, especially given some of the speculative grumbles that had come from the men about having their blankets warmed tonight. But he couldn’t be seen drawing maps and taking notes about landmarks; his fellow kidnappers would wonder why he was so eager to keep track of the way back to that time machine.
    Part of him was tempted to take off as soon as everyone went to bed. If he alternated between running and marching, he might be able to make it back to that cave to destroy the machine and then return by dawn. That was half of his mission, making sure that the thieves no longer had access to the past. That would put an end to all of this kidnapping and stealing. But the women—the ones in his group, the ones in the other group, and any others the army could find once the market was discovered—needed to be sent back to their own time. When General Morimoto had given Theron this mission, he had spoken of a second time machine—or rather the original time machine—that was locked within a secret base deep within Mount Olympus, a unit that had been guarded by the military for generations. The general planned to use it to return stolen people to their time period, but Theron was reluctant to rely upon something he had never seen. What if he destroyed the one that he knew worked and they later found out the one in Mount Olympus hadn’t worked for ages? The general had spoken of a previous group that had gone back in time to hunt for the thieves, trusted soldiers who had failed to return. Morimoto believed they had decided they preferred living in the past to returning to the present, but what if the fault had been in the machine? What if those soldiers had never made it to the past? Theron would hate for his brash actions to condemn these women to stay in his world.
    Even Andie?
    The question came from the back of his mind, making him pause in his sketching to think about her. No, he would not mind if she stayed in his time, if she wanted to, but he highly doubted that. Even when he got her away from the kidnappers and the threat of slavery, she might not be that impressed with his world and the simple lives people led these days. Theron hadn’t seen any populated areas during his visit to her time period—the kidnappers deliberately chose isolated people and belongings so that the police and military of the past would not be able to find them—but he had heard about the great megalopolises and all that they offered. During his brief time there, he had spotted satellites orbiting in the night sky, moving in a way that stars did not, and had seen a passenger airplane flying overhead. Amazing.
    He had wanted so much to ask Andie more about her experiences as a pilot. Some planes existed in his world, with the military having a few of them, but they were mostly propeller-driven one-or two-man craft. Simple machines for a simple time. The term fighter jet certainly stirred his imagination. But Theron hadn’t wanted to inundate Andie with questions, lest he scare her, make her think he was interrogating her. For some reason, she had relented and told him about herself, and he treasured that. He had wished he could share more about himself, but he hadn’t dared say even his name where someone might overhear.
    A few more days of this ruse, and he should have the location of the market. He already had the location of that time machine, so long as the other team didn’t move it when they were finished using it. Theron worried that might happen—if it stayed in one place and was easy to find, someone’s team should have done so long ago. Morimoto and the other higher-ranking officers didn’t want a time machine out there in the hands of civilians, especially civilians who were using it for theft.
    Not all of the higher-ranking officers...
    Theron grimaced, still shocked that General Duckworth had strolled into that cave—and that the kidnappers had acted as if it was a perfectly normal thing. He was