Chapter One
June, 1931
Hampstead, England
Wilma and I had received our battle equipment from the Gear boss. It consisted of a long-gun, a hand-gun, with a special case of ammunition constructed of inertron, which made the load weigh but a few ounces, and a short sword. This gear we strapped over each other's shoulders, on top of our jumping belts. In addition, we each received an ultrophone, and a light inertron blanket rolled into a cylinder about six inches long by two or three in diameter. This fabric was exceedingly thin and light, but it had considerable warmth, because of the mixture of inertron in its composition…**
“Margaret!”
The peace and quiet of the mild afternoon shattered with the peremptory shout of a single name across the stillness of the pleasant, rose-filled garden. The owner of said name cringed, burrowing further into her makeshift hiding place, ignoring the note of maternal command in the voice as she flipped a page in her magazine, hoping against hope that the voice would stop and she could finish the chapter before giving into its demands.
Unfortunately, fate stepped in and took a hand.
“You know, she’s going to find you eventually and it's only going to be worse for you.”
Obstinance and annoyance flared up in the tiny, ten-year-old as she peeked up from under the confines of her hidden fortress at the irritating voice just outside. “She wouldn’t if you didn’t stick your big nose into it.”
“I’m just saying,” Michael Carter shrugged with all the indifference and supposed wisdom of his fourteen years. Tall and gangly, his voice cracked with the long-suffering knowledge of an elder brother, sent to fetch his younger sister into tea, which was precisely what he was up to. “Besides, you don’t think that this hiding spot will precisely fool Mother, do you?”
“It fooled Father last week,” Peggy insisted, slipping back underneath it. In truth, it was little more than an old bit of oilskin fabric used to protect the gardening equipment behind the shed that she had spread over a stump and several crates to make it look as if there were things underneath it. She had erected it the very day she had come home from school and was planning to spend her all-too-fleeting summer under it, at least when she wasn’t running the heath not far away.
“At least Father let you think he was fooled.” Michael used that aggravating tone again, the one that said he was so superior because he was fourteen and knew adult things now. “He lets you get away with anything.”
“Not everything,” Peggy protested, knowing Michael was mostly right. “He sent me to bed without supper two days before you got home for the holidays.”
“Really,” Michael snorted, all dubiousness as he rounded her fortress to settle himself on the low, rocky garden fence. “What for this time?”
“Kicking the Andrews’ cat!”
Michael, caught strangely between being a man and being and adult, tried to scowl at her, but as he really wanted to laugh the end result only came out looking rather painfully comical. “Why would you do that?”
“Keeps leaving dead rats on the kitchen doorstep for Mrs. Jenkins and it gives her a fright, so I shooed it off.”
That finally did make him obviously laugh outright as he reached over to ruffle her dark hair. Peggy smirked and ducked, but alas, was not faster than her brother ,who had shot up several inches and seemed to have strings for arms. “Ge'off!”
“Peggy Carter, defender of old women and baby dolls,” Michael teased, even as she danced out of his clutches. “Don’t let Mother hear you using slang or it will be no supper tonight, either.”
“She probably sent you looking for me for tea, didn’t she?” It didn’t take much for her to guess that. After all, if Amanda Carter was screaming in the garden for her at this time of day, it was usually because she was having one of her fancy friends over for tea and wanted to parade Peggy off like a show dog. She’d be scrubbed within an inch of her life, shoved in a clean and appropriately ladylike dress, her dark hair brushed and banded back with a shining ribbon, and made to sit on the itchy, uncomfortable cushions of her mother’s sitting room, carefully sipping weak tea out of a china cup and told under the strictest terms to not spill on herself or there would be no cake for her. When compared to that, Peggy would take her chances with hiding under the oilskin and having no supper.
“She’s having Lady Manning over, which means your presence is required.” Michael flipped back the corner of the tarp, unmercifully. “You know how the old bat is, she is going to want to eye you up and down and tell Mother all your imperfections.”
Peggy rolled her eyes in utter disgust. “Why does Mother even have her for tea if she’s so horrible?”
“Because she’s a lady and she wants to impress her.”
“She’s only called ‘lady’ because her husband is a knight, and not even a real knight. Papa said he got knighted for making widgets, but Mother insists it was because he gave a lot of money for the war veterans home. Whatever, none of it is a good reason to be made a knight. Bet he has never even picked up a sword or shield.”
“Neither have you,” he reminded her, which she didn’t think was very fair, seeing as she was a child and no one used swords and shields anymore. Instead, he reached for the book in her rather grubby hands, his long, gangly arms snagging it before she could yank it out of his reach.
“Hey!” She scrambled for it, but he dug a shoulder in, holding her off as he examined the tattered cover.
“Adventure Stories?” He snorted as he studied the bright, yellow cover with its flying man on it, flipping it open with a dubious grin. “Dad been getting you those American magazines again?”
“Don’t tell Mother,” Peggy hissed, trying to reach around Michael to grab at it and failing. “Last time she caught me she took all of them and had Mrs. Jenkins burn them in the rubbish!”
“Pity, that,” Michael sympathized. “What’s this story? ‘Armageddon: 2419’? What is it this time, the end of the world?”
“I would have thought the title was a dead give away, stupid,” she snorted, throwing herself at him helplessly. “Give it back!”
“How do I know it’s worthy reading material for a young girl your age?”
“It isn’t, that’s the point!”
He laughed, flipping the pages. “Buck Rogers, huh? What sort of name is Buck?”
“His real name is Anthony.” Peggy wasn’t sure how that explained the name “Buck”, but “Anthony” at least sounded a tad more dignified. “And he’s a former soldier and he wakes up in the future in Pennsylvania where everything is ruled by the Chinese, but they have this mad technology that allows them to fly and do all sorts of other things.”
“Imagine if they had suits that let you fly in the future,” Michael mused, flipping to the front cover picture. “A long way off from your knights in shining armor.”
“It’s still an adventure story! Besides, Buck Rogers is rather like a knight, just in the future. He uses his wits and his skills as a soldier to help protect people and save them from what threatens them. But in this future, the women don’t need as much saving, they are warriors too and can fight on their own, thank you very much!”
“Sounds like your ideal,” he teased, continuing to flip through the pages.
The sarcasm in his voice made her frown. “You don’t think I can?”
“Oh, I know you will, Peg!” He spoke with the sort of assurance one might give over the sun rising in the morning or that summer would come every year. “Remember! You and me on adventures to the Amazon or Madagascar, hacking through the jungles of India to find ancient treasure.”
“And save the people from evil sorcerers and kings,” Peggy reminded him. That was a crucial part of the story, after all.
“That too.” He laughed, tossing her back her magazine and using the distraction to succeed in tousling her hair this time. “You and me, brat, off to save England and the empire, eh?”
“Or the world,” she grinned, smoothing out the creases in her now well-worn, pulpy magazine. “You think when you are done with school and all, we can do it? Become adventurers?”
“I’ll be in school a while, you know.” Michael was at Harrow now, their father and uncle's old haunt, and then it would be off to Oxford as was expected. “Maybe by then you’ll be all grown up and not want to go adventuring and fighting evil sorcerers and saving people!”
“I will not!” Peggy quelled at the very idea of ever being that grown up. “I’ll be done with school when you are and we can go out together.”
“Mother won’t think it very lady-like.”
“Hang what she thinks,” Peggy muttered, darkly. “I shan't ever become a respectable lady with garden parties and social teas. And what about you? Are Mother and Papa going to make a boring old barrister out of you someday?”
“I don’t know about that.” Michael was set for the law, that’s what Mother told everyone. Right now, he didn’t argue with her, how could he? Like Peggy, they were at their parents’ mercy for the moment. “Perhaps when we are done with school and free we can go out, travel the world, have mad adventures...just you and me!”
“I like that idea,” Peggy hummed, leaning her dark head against Michael’s shoulder companionably. That Michael could be a monster sometimes was the nature of him being her elder brother, but sometimes he was rather sweet and understanding. “What kind of hero do you want to be?”
“I don’t know,” he shrugged, picking at a bit of wood mulch to toss across the grass. “Maybe something like St. George or King Arthur, defending England against anyone who dares to attack her. What about you?”
Peggy studied the front of her now much battered magazine. “Maybe something like Wilma Darling in this story. I’d be a woman who learned to fight on her own and could do what it takes to keep the world safe and fight with other people who believe like that. I don’t know, it’s a nice dream, isn’t it?”
“It is,” he agreed, reaching up to tweak a strand of hair, causing her to yelp.
“Margaret? Michael? Where are you two?” Amanda Carter’s voice rang in the garden with the angry force of a field general, betokening horrible things if they didn’t present themselves immediately for duty. Peggy groaned.
“Come on, then, she’s not going to let us get away with just hiding away, now matter how much we may wish it.” Michael stood up, brushing off his trousers before reaching a hand to pluck Peggy up behind him. She tossed her beloved Buck Rogers magazine into her makeshift tent, better to hide it from Mother, before following behind. “Besides, you need to go get primped and pressed to be presentable for company.”
“Blast company,” Peggy snorted, her mind still on her fantastical story. “If I had a flying jetpack I wouldn’t have to be here for tea!”
“And I would get all your portion of cake, which is fine by me!”
“I’d like to see you try,” Peggy crowed, racing ahead of him to her glaring mother, submitting herself to the despair and dismay that went with it, deciding that even if she couldn’t be a knight in shining armor today, lemon cake at least was a temporary balm to her soul. How was little Margaret Carter to know on that June day in 1931 that within two decades she would, like her much adored Anthony Rogers, end up going to a future where men had flying suits, strange floating cities could wage war in the skies, and invaders would threaten everything she loved.
She would not have been surprised by the fact that she was working with one of the few groups who could stop it.
**(The opening paragraph is taken from "Armageddon: 2419" by Philip Francis Noland, which first appeared in Amazing Stories, of August, 1928. This passages is cited from Project Gutenberg on May 23, 2021: https://www.gutenberg.org/files/32530/32530-h/32530-h.htm)