(Author's Note: Sub-genre Piratepunk.   Prompt below:-

Welcome, me hearties, to The Sunk'n Norwegian, a bar with a difference. See, this is a temporal bar and can be any/where/, any/time/, any/when/... Picture the scene... A dark, damp, dingy bar; the rank stench of every conceivable bodily excretion permeating ye're nostrils and making it rather difficult for ye to stop ye'reself adding to the rancid concoction.

A few tables away ye notice two people huddled, quite obviously deep in conversation. One of them is a pirate of old (my character was Charlotte Badger) whereas the other, ye can quite clearly tell simply by looking at him/her, is a space pirate. Ye strain, attempting to listen in on the conversation. Ye're only able to pick up snippets at first, but ye manage to glean that the space pirate is attempting to recruit for his/her next raid, whatever that may be. As casually as ye can ye move a table closer to the conversation. From there, ye can hear everything.

Ye're task for this round, troopers, is to start ye're story from there. Where you finish it is up to ye, but ye be havin' an upperlimit of 1500 words)

When I came to my senses, the first thing that struck me was the god-awful smell! Sweat, piss and vomit—and they weren't the worst of it. I had a mug containing some sort of dark liquid in my hands, my elbows rested on an old wooden table bearing the scars and stains of unmentionable accidents and I was sitting on a ricketty chair which had one leg shorter than the others. Smoke stung my eyes.

The room was shadowy, with a couple of lanterns hanging from the roof, casting a faint glow over a long wooden counter and the man standing behind it.

Where the fuck was I this time? Or rather 'when'?

I sat still, unobtrusively examining my surroundings - I needed more information. My initial scan identified twenty one people in the room, including the man behind the bar. There were five individuals leaning on the counter, but most sat in twos or threes, hunched around small tables. Everyone present was male, except for a pair of women huddled at the back of the room, large mugs of ale hiding their faces. That reminded me.

I wondered if it was safe to take a sip of what was in the mug. I brought it to my lips, sniffed, and analysed a drop with my tongue. The nanobot assessment came back instantly—it was ale, and safe enough to drink if you didn't mind the odd small rodent hair.

I risked a sip, burying my face in the mug as my ears strained to recognise the language being used around me. 'English' I thought, although strange words such as 'skillogallee,' 'swaggie,' and 'flash-cove' peppered the air, and it took a while for my translator to identify the dialect. Australian convict slang—late eighteenth or early nineteenth century. At least it gave me the approximate period and location.

Then my GPPPS (Global Place and Period Positioning System) finally kicked in. I was in a pub, The Sunken Norwegian, Launceston, Tasmania, on the 16th of June 1806, time 20:14 hours, to be precise.

Off hand, I couldn't think of a single important event which occurred on that date but I checked my internal data base to make sure. No, nothing. Which meant... well, what it meant was that there was about to be an unscheduled break in the space-time continuum.

And I had been sent here to stop it. Or at the least, mop up, so that it—whatever it was—didn't impact too heavily on the future.

Fuck!

I took a hefty swig from my mug and listened. All I could hear was low murmurs, bragging about whores, ships, and races - nothing of any significance. I cast another casual glance around the room, careful not to let my gaze linger on any individual and froze. What the-!

I quickly lifted the mug, just letting my eyes turn to the couple at the back for one more split second. Head down again, I studied the image imprinted on my lens. The two women. Well, it was true enough that they were both female but only one was human. The other was a Venusian shapeshifter, or I was an ape-descendant's uncle.

I increased the amplitude of the audio receiver embedded in my ears and tuned in to what they were saying.

"... low tide... Maria... Venus..."

Venus? Despite my best efforts the reception was poor and I had to resort to shifting my table a little closer, pretending that I was moving away from a rowdy group of sailors on my right.

The Earth woman was dressed in a grey shirt and trousers, her hair tied back and a wide brimmed hat on her head. Her face was dirty but she had strong features showing beneath the grime. From where I sat, I could only see the back of the shapeshifter, but she wore a similar outfit. Why had they been talking about Venus? This was the 19th century - space travel was still several centuries away. The shapeshifter was talking, giving instructions by the sound of it.

"The Venus sails tomorrer on the tide. Get y'self there tonight with Maria, and what ye can carry."

"Aye, Cath, but what about Captain Chase?"

"Don't worry about him, Charlie. He ain't due to arrive until the day after, we'll be long gone by the time he turns up." The Venusian chuckled.

The woman smiled grimly. The two of them drained their mugs then stood up. "Righto. Sea-rovers it is, then."

So, the Venus was a ship, that was a relief, but nothing else was clear to me. I could only guess the shapeshifter was the reason I was here.

Leaving my ale on the table, I rose to my feet and followed. This was the nineteenth century, I would have to track them the old fashioned way, by eye and foot. I had to work within the tech constraints of the times. I had my own personal cybertech upgrades of course, but they were invisible to the native inhabitants and I had to keep them that way. The Time-Cop's code would stop me doing anything else.

As soon as they left the building, the two went in opposite directions. I followed the Venusian all the way to the docks. A large frigate was moored out in the river and I could see a couple of small boats ferrying sailors and goods back and forth.

She walked up to the man in charge of proceedings.

"Ahoy! Kelly," she said. "Charlie's coming as soon as she can get her swag - and the girl."

And before I could decide whether to intervene or not, she had slipped over the edge of the wharf, and was climbing down to the waiting boat.

I sidled up to the man she had addressed as Kelly.

"Boss? Got any work 'ere for a lagger?" Luckily my internal translator provided the appropriate words and accent for me. I would never have guessed that 'lagger' meant 'sailor.'

A few minutes later I was on board the Venus as its newest deckhand.

The Venus sailed on the tide early next morning, up the river and out into open sea—heading for New Zealand. It was certainly the smoothest act of piracy I had ever seen.

I was kept busy climbing up and down the rigging, but it was soon obvious to me that Charlie and the shapeshifter ran the ship, along with Lancashire, a giant of a man whose jacket had gold braid on the sleeves. Perhaps he'd been an officer once, but now he was a pirate.

It took us two weeks, and the sacking of two unlucky ships in our path, before we reached New Zealand, and by then I was heartily sick of the whole affair. I had yet to fathom the shapeshifter's motives.

There were no white settlers at that time in the North. The inhabitants were a warlike people, the Maoris, and I soon found out what the shapeshifter was after. Nephrite or greenstone—pounamu the Maoris called it, and to them it was sacred. Who could guess it would become so fashionable in the Intergalactic 27th century? Each tiny piece worth thousands of credits?

The Venus worked her way up the coast—plundering as she went.

I was dozing in my hammock, when I heard the sound of bare feet on the deck above. My blood chilled, as fearsome cries pierced the night. Screams and the crash of weapons followed. We were under attack! Hastily I scrambled to my feet, my hand searching futilely for my laser.

Men poured up on to the deck and I followed cautiously. As I suspected, a Maori war canoe was alongside us. My foot slipped in blood and I clung to the rigging, then scooted up a few metres to see what was happening.

Where was the shapeshifter in all this? Where were Charlotte Badger and her daughter? They were the only ones I had any concern for.

From my vantage point, it looked like the Maoris and their clubs were winning.

Then the sky thundered and a silver spaceship appeared. Instantly everyone was flat on the deck, cowering in terror. I saw the shapeshifter climbing up on the bridge, pulling Charlotte and Maria along with her. All of them carried sacks, presumably filled with greenstone.

Before I could move, a second ship appeared in the sky, alongside the first. Rival or ally? The shapeshifter snarled, baring her teeth at the intruder. Evidently the pirate was being pirated. There was an almighty crackkkk and a blinding flash.

When I could finally see again, I was the only person on the ship, still clinging to the rigging.

I stayed there—or then—for another week, taking refuge with a group of whalers. By the time I left, the news had spread. Everyone was talking about The Venus' crew, eaten by Maoris.