The TARDIS materialized with its customary subtle shimmer just behind a two-story warehouse on the hill above Port Royal. A full, rising moon bathed Fort Royal’s darkened walls in silver, the ancient stone standing sentinel over the torchlit town below. In the harbor, a dozen tall-masted merchantmen and sloops rocked gently in the calm, night-black waters, while a solitary warship guarded the mouth like a watchful hound. The warm, humid air barely stirred with a soft sea breeze, carrying the harsh cries of jungle birds from the inland darkness and the faint, briny promise of adventure laced with peril.
The companions emerged cautiously. A wide, flattened trail led downhill toward the harbor—grasses and plants crushed flat by some immense weight, now slowly springing back, with splintered saplings scattered like broken bones. On the warehouse wall, an oddly shaped metal plaque caught the Oracle’s eye. It refused to budge, featureless as a forgotten tombstone, yet uncomfortably warm to the touch. His temporal senses prickled; this was an anchor for a time tunnel, intersecting this very spot. He left it undisturbed—for now.
From around the front came raucous noise. The same four swaggering pirates, Bloody Bill Ryan at their head with the map cylinder tucked under his arm, vanished into the open doorway of a boisterous tavern. Above it swung a sign: a black hound with fiery red eyes, raising a rum bottle in eternal toast. The Black Dog. The place looked packed to the gunwales with every rogue, cutpurse, and freebooter the Caribbean could spit out.
“Scouting first,” the Oracle decided. “Duggan and Adric—blend in, observe, report back. We need that map.”
Adric raised an eyebrow. “Without disguises? We’ll stand out like Alzarian math theorems in a den of illiterates.”
The Oracle sighed, glancing back at the sleek Type-70. “The CIA provided sparse tools for this trial. No full armory, no psychic paper. Very well.” They raided the TARDIS wardrobe, emerging minutes later in rough 18th-century garb: shirts, breeches, coats that smelled faintly of mothballs and history. Duggan looked every inch the disreputable docker; Adric, a wide-eyed clerk gone to sea.
The pair slipped inside. Silence crashed over the room like a breaking wave as heads turned. A tall, slim officer in blue coat surveyed the crowd with a cold, measuring gaze, ten red-coated marines at his back. The noise gradually returned to ear-splitting normality. Duggan, ever practical, kicked over a drunk giving him the stink-eye, claimed a chair on the west side with a clear view of entrances, and bought uneasy peace with a round—paid for by surrendering his mother’s heirloom compact mirror to a sharp-eyed wench. Four tankards slammed down; the mirror vanished into her pocket.
Adric lingered, observing. The disguises held. Duggan sketched the room and its occupants on his pad, then passed it over. Adric slipped out to report: packed house, no sign of Bloody Bill yet. But Duggan, scanning from his post, finally spotted the pirate and his mates in a shadowed corner. No one—not even the serving girls—dared approach their table.
The Oracle, upon hearing the news, judged wisely. “Bill will drink himself insensible. We return at midnight.” He, Leela, and Adric stepped back into the TARDIS. Duggan remained, cigarette eventually lit as he watched a small crowd gathering outside. Through the front window, blue-coated soldiers and navy marines assembled under a captain’s command. Voices drifted: one of Bill’s retinue boasting crudely about plunder and worse.
Midnight struck. The TARDIS rematerialized as the soldiers prepared their move. Duggan reunited with the others just as a local beggar bellowed, “It’s Mad Dog Hawke!”
The Oracle approached the captain in parley. Captain John Hawke, tall and weathered, listened politely but firmly ushered civilians off the street. “Official business,” he growled. The Oracle warned him of Bloody Bill inside. Hawke’s eyes sharpened. “I know. We’re here to arrest him.”
The soldiers stormed the tavern. Moments later, Bill and his gang emerged in irons, the map now in Hawke’s possession. The group followed as the marines marched their prisoners toward the beach and a waiting longboat bound for the HMS Leopard.
Knowing the map was slipping away, the Oracle confronted Hawke once more, offering the bag of old gold coins in exchange. Suspicion flared. Hawke demanded to examine a coin; his man scanned it with an eyepiece and confirmed something damning. Marines surrounded them. Yet the Oracle spun a tale of plundered gold of uncertain origin, emphasizing the map’s deeper value. Hawke eyed them, then lowered the weapons. “Aboard as my guests, then. We’ll discuss this properly.”
They rowed out to the Leopard under starlight. In the captain’s day cabin—a low-ceilinged space with a table, two cannons, and black-and-white checkered canvas floor—Hawke studied the map. Vague answers failed; the Oracle declared himself an agent of the Northern Department under Secretary of State James Stanhope, naval affairs. A bag of jelly babies sealed the ruse. Hawke bit into one, delight warring with suspicion, then reflected deeply on past dealings with Stanhope’s shadows—anti-Jacobite work after the ’15 Rising, lost kin at Preston and Sheriffmuir, the realm’s fragile stability. Strange allies were sometimes necessary. He treated them as Admiralty civilians: polite, listening, but firmly in command.
Charts compared, Hawke pinpointed the skull-shaped isle as St. Gabrielle, a day’s sail away. “Teach’s treasure! We’ll be waiting.” The Leopard steered northeast.
Just before dawn on April 3, 1717, the island’s grey outline rose on the horizon. Hawke’s plan to sail around and bombard shifted after tavern tales of a “sea monster” with fire-beam eyes. A scouting party went ashore: Hawke, Sergeant Drummond, five marines, and the companions, weapons returned in trust. They landed near a shallow creek, then trekked through stunted palms, dense underbrush, tangled grass, flowers, and thorn bushes alive with birds, flies, and mosquitoes. The island felt deceptively lifeless.
From a hill above the eastern anchorage, they saw it: the Ravager, Blackbeard’s hovercraft, over a hundred feet long, black-hulled with skull-and-crossbones, laser turrets gleaming. Cargo ramp down. Fresh pits dotted the beach where ragged men dug frantically under the fierce gaze of a tall, black-bearded figure—Blackbeard himself—flanked by silver-skinned Cybermen. Two more guarded the ramp.
As the party prepared to withdraw, a flat mechanical voice rang out behind them: “Humans. Surrender or you will be utterly destroyed.”
They whirled. A Cyberleader and three Cybersoldiers rose from camouflaged pits, blaster rifles leveled. Two marines fainted outright; the rest dropped their muskets. Hawke and Drummond held nerve, but Hawke’s pistol shot sparked harmlessly off the Cyberleader’s chest. In retaliation, a blaster felled one marine. “I shall kill all your servitor units, human, unless you yield immediately.”
Hawke raised his hands. The others followed. The Cybermen herded them down the hill toward captivity, the Oracle’s prescient visions fracturing into new, darker branches—silver giants, fire from the sea, and a treasure that was never mere gold. The island’s birds screamed on, indifferent to the temporal storm now breaking upon its shores.
