What Could Possibly Go Wrong?

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> What Could Possibly Go Wrong?
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> Cover of What Could Possibly Go Wrong?
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> ### Author
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> Jodi Taylor
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> ### Illustrator
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> Zoe Foster
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> ### Published on
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> 20 Aug 2015
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> ### Publisher
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> Accent Press
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> *To do what I do - go where I go - see what I see - it's a wonderful, unique, never-to-be-taken-for-granted privilege.*
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**What Could Possibly Go Wrong?** is the sixth novel in the Chronicles of St Mary's. It tells the story of Max and her struggles to train a group of future historians - and trying to find out who sold out St Mary's to Ronan for the second... third? Well, whatever-ed time in recent history. This should be fun.

## Blurb

**What if the course of history was on your shoulders?**

With great privilege comes great responsibility, something Max knows only too well, and as newly appointed Chief Training Officer at the St Mary's Institute of Historical Research, it's up to her to drum this guiding principle into her five new recruits.

With a training programme that includes Joan of Arc, an illegal Mammoth, a duplicitous Father of History, a bombed rat, Stone Age hunters and Dick the Turd, the question everyone is asking themselves is - what could possibly go wrong?

## Plot

It's been a while. Or maybe not. Max is back from her honeymoon with Leon - if you can call it that - and ready to get on with her newly made training schedule. With actual trainees. Dr Bairstow has found her five willing and hopefully capable applicants: Constance Lingoss, Elizabeth Sykes, Celia North, Phillip Atherton, and the non-American Laurence Hoyle. They're to complete the rigorous training in record speed - a total of six months.

First up are seven weeks of theoretical study on Historical events, the Time Map, and how to conduct proper research for assignments, paired with practical study on pod-familiarity, self-defense, and public speaking. The weeks pass fairly easily, and it's soon time for the trainees' first actual jump, which Max has arranged to be to the Valley of the Kings in Egypt, near the end of the 18th dynasty. A most regular, completely blemish-free assignment. One would think.

Lingoss is named mission controller, and the team takes TB 2 since they're carrying a lot of equipment and, of course, people. During their expedition to some of the unexplored tombs, the team is overrun by a flash flood. Everyone goes back to the pod, but security guard Randall slips and gets stuck in a crack in the bedrock - meanwhile, back at the pod, a shuddering discovery is made: the giant pod is blocking the waterflow. In order for Tutankhamun's tomb to be buried beneath enough silt and sand, the pod needs to jump back to St Mary's, and it needs to happen now. Max makes a hard decision.

TB 2 is ordered to make the jump while Max, Markham, Lingoss, Sykes, and Randall stay behind. Randall is stuck in an unfortunate position right in the way of the oncoming water, but since St Mary's never leaves anyone behind... The team manages to stay afloat and in the same place, with Sykes giving mouth-to-mouth to a slowly drowning Randall until the worst is over. The rest of the Security Section reappears with crowbars and hammers and makes quick work of hacking and breaking Randall out of the bedrock, after which everyone goes back home. Max is angry with Lingoss and Sykes for disobeying her order to go back to the pod and gives them a right bollocking, then leaves them in Helen's nicotine-deprived clutches for recovery.

Before training started, Markham had alerted Max to the fact that someone inside the unit must have leaked Ronan the coordinates for their jump to the Great Fire of London, and it's now thoroughly worrying Max. She makes a list of every St Mary's employee, then starts crossing off names; she halts at Rosie Lee. Apparently, Lee hadn't fought in the Battle of St Mary's, and when considering that nobody really likes her, Max thinks she's found her traitor. Before doing anything about it, she is interrupted by Elspeth Grey, who isn't sure she wants to go on being a historian. Max sends her on the salvage mission with Thirsk to 'discover' the lost Botticelli's in the Belvedere caves. She then moves on to the next training exercise: a jump to the Stone Age.

Sykes is named mission controller, and the team is to jump to the site of a known human settlement to observe a day in the life of a group of either Homo Sapiens or Neanderthals. They're in luck - the settlement is actually inhabited by both, and they're friendly and cooperative with each other. As the team witnesses their Day In The Life, a portion of the group is called away to hunt. All able-bodied people grab a weapon and go, while the elderly stay back to care for the young. The people hunt a pack of woolly mammoths, and manage to take one down and take the tusks, a lot of the meat and the pelt back with them. The team films the carcass up close and gets inevitably covered in mammoth blood.

On their way back to the pod, the team is dogged by sabre-tooth tigers, but North's anti-rape lipstick, the Security Section's sonic blasters, and the pod's Sonic Scream chases them off. The team makes a hasty getaway, during which Lingoss tries to tell them something but is ignored; back at St Mary's, Max and Guthrie discover that she, Sykes, and Evans had 'accidentally' locked the butchered mammoth's baby daughter in the bathroom. They smuggle the baby mammoth - quickly dubbed Mary the Mammoth by the team from Research & Development - out of Hawking Hangar and into Professor Rapson's broom closet, then back into Hawking when they've formed a plan of action. Maxwell, Lingoss, Sykes, and Evans jump to the Pleistocene Park, where researchers have been trying to clone a mammoth for some time, and leave her there.

Max shows the trainees what happened the last time someone (allegedly) removed a contemporary from their own time - a wrecked St Mary's and eight people dead after the battle with the Time Police - and they all apologize. Except for Hoyle, of course, who's been a serious wild card up till now. Lingoss decides to switch departments and leaves Max for Professor Rapson in R&D.

Next on Max's training schedule is a visit to Herodotus, the Father of History. Or the Father of Lies, whichever you prefer. Either way, the team is without security guards on this one, since Markham, who was supposed to go, got an allergic reaction. They're joined instead by Leon. The team poses as a group of travelers who just so happen to move through Thurii, a Greek colony on the Tarentine Gulf, while Herodotus lives there and writes his Histories. Forget the revered Father of History, the man turns out to be a right plonker. He's actually an employee of a future St Mary's who faked his death on an assignment and then told people he was Herodotus, and now lives as a king whilst treating everyone around him like filth.

Since he doesn't want to go back tot the future, he has the local 'police' arrest the team except for Max and Leon, who went for a comfort break. The duo quickly makes their way back to 'Herodotus' and - there's no good way to say this - beat the crap out of him. Because he's a foul piece of shit. It's justified. He then kindly agrees to help get their colleagues out of goal. One warehouse fire, a small riot, and another brutal beating of the Father of History later, the team is free to leave Thurii.

The trainees go on two additional jumps with some of the other historians, both of which go reasonably well. Max then takes them to witness the execution of Joan of Arc in Rouen, 30 May 1431. Atherton is named mission controller, receiving strict instructions of staying inside the pod at all times. The execution is absolutely awful; Joan is burned at the stake. It takes a long time, and the screams and the sights are terrible to witness. Security officer Randall, who had finally recovered enough to go with them on the assignment, takes a gun from a locker and backs out of the pod. Peterson follows him. Joan of Arc stops screaming, but no gunshot can be heard over the sounds of the riot.

Just to make everything a little more interesting, the Time Police show up. Captain Matthew Ellis is convinced she's the cause of the present anomaly, even after Max assures him that she isn't responsible this time, Sykes promptly projectile-vomits all over the console, and the rest of the trainees follow suit - though a little less artistically. He leaves, choosing not to report the incident or do literally anything about it. Peterson and Randall, supporting each other, show up back at the pod; both of them are seriously wounded and on the verge of dying. History has intervened, and things are not looking good.

The pod won't do an emergency extraction, for there's a foreign object inside - namely the sword stuck in Randall - and Max has to make a difficult choice. Again. She reassures Randall, who uses his dying breath to tell her to '', and then pulls the sword out of his body. Randall dies during the emergency extraction, while Peterson survives and is taken to the Medical Section for surgery. The trainees are slightly - all right, moderately - traumatized by the situation, and get some time for themselves and light duties to recover.

Dr Bairstow calls Max into his office and reads her William Randall's last will and testament, which every employee is required to bestow onto him. It's a written letter by Randall himself, in which he explains that a long time ago, he and some of his mates beat up a guy in retaliation for something he did to a girl so bad that he became paralyzed, and that that information had somehow made its way to Ronan. He was offered a large sum of money to give Ronan the coordinates, and was promised that no one would get hurt; obviously, that wasn't the case, and he felt incredibly bad. His name is put on the Board of Honour.

The show must go on, however, and the next assignment Max has chosen is a happy time and place with only a slight chance of being trampled by a crowd: the opening of the Clifton Suspension Bridge in Bristol on 8 Dec 1864. She and the trainees - Hoyle is named mission controller this time - are joined by Markham, and joyously join in the celebrations in Bristol before retreating to the pod at Hoyle's behest. Suddenly he turns around, points a gun at Max, and demands she lay in a new set of coordinates. Max finally realizes who he resembles: King Richard III - or as Miss Sykes calls him upon her realization, Dick the Turd.

He tells Max, Markham and the trainees that he'd been approached by a mysterious 'them', who had used his lineage as an incentive to manipulate him into studying History and getting accepted into St Mary's for the sole purpose of getting him to 22 Aug 1485 CE to witness Richard III's defeat in the Battle of Bosworth Field. Max makes the jump, after which Hoyle - or should we say Richard Neville Laurence Hoyle? - exits the pod with a gun. Max puts on Atherton's trousers and then she and Markham follow Hoyle into the ensuing battle.

It's a struggle to find him, and it's almost too late, but they manage to disarm a very distraught Hoyle who was ready to shoot Henry Tudor and restrain him to simply watch the battle. Hoyle sees an opening and seizes his chance, running off to fetch Richard III a horse when he needs it most, only to be rammed back into the bog and trampled by a pair of soldiers on horseback. He is severely injured and practically dying, but Max and Markham drag him to safety and prop him up to watch the end of the battle, then back to the pod.

Hoyle finally understands why St Mary's seems like a bunch of nutters - they witness horrible, terrible, downright awful things and need to keep up their spirits - and Max and the rest of the team make a plan. They jump to a car park in Leicester and paint an 'R' over Richard III's lost grave with a spray can of WD40, and Max tells a dying Hoyle that because of him, the circle is whole again. This 'R' will stand the test of time and enable future excavators to find Richard's grave, just like they would in the future. Or their past. Whatever. Thing is, they've landed late in the 20th century and that's within the 100-year rule, and thus only have five minutes to do so before the pod automatically makes an emergency exit.

They jump back to the Battle of Bosworth and leave the naked body of Hoyle - since they can't leave any future clothes lying around - with the rest of the bodies of dead soldiers. At last, they can go home. Hoyle's name is put on the Board of Honour, his awful deeds a secret for the rest of St Mary's. Dr Bairstow tells Max she's skirting a fine line with her recent actions, and to watch out in the future. She tells him she will. Meanwhile, Elspeth Grey and Thirsk's expedition to the Belvedere caves has been a success, and a party is held. Helen tells Max to meet her tomorrow at ten.

Max is speechless after hearing what Helen has to say, then timidly goes back to her rooms and finds Leon reading on the sofa. She nervously but happily tells him Dr Bairstow's going to be a godfather.

## Dramatis Thingummy

* Dr Edward Bairstow - Director of St Mary's Institute of Historical Research
* Mrs Partridge - Kleio, daughter of Zeus, Muse of History, PA to Dr Bairstow

### History Department

* Dr Tim Peterson - Chief Operations Officer.
* Mr Clerk - Historian.
* Miss Paula Prentiss - Historian.
* Mr Tom Bashford - Recently rescued historian.
* Miss Elspeth Grey - Ditto, but strangely reluctant to resume her duties.
* Mr Gareth Roberts - Historian.
* Mr David Sands - Historian and possessor of the world's worst collection of knock-knock jokes.
* Miss Rosie Lee - PA to Chief Operations Officer.

### Trainees

* Dr Maxwell - Chief Training Officer. Also Mrs Leon Farrell.
* Mr Phil Atherton - The quiet one.
* Mr Laurence Hoyle - The mysterious one.
* Miss Constance Lingoss - The misfit.
* Miss Celia North - The perfect one.
* Miss Elizabeth Sykes - The psycho.
* Mrs Shaw - PA to the Chief Training Officer

### Technical Section

* Chief Leon Farrell - Chief Technical Officer
* Mr Dieter - The other Chief Technical Officer

### Medical Section

* Dr Helen Foster - Suffering nicotine deprivation and possibly even more unstable than usual.
* Nurse Fortunata - Junior Nurse.
* Nurse Diane Hunter - Recipient of Mr Markham's affections.

### Security Section

* Ian Guthrie - Head of Security Section
* Mr Markham - Security guard and winner of the one-handed bra-unfastening competition.
* Mr William Randall - Security guard.
* Mr Evans - Security guard.
* Mr Gallaccio - Security guard.
* Mr Cox - Security guard.
* Mr Keller - Security guard.

### Research and Development

* Professor Andrew Rapson - Head of R&D
* Dr Octavius Dowson - Librarian and Archivist.

### Others

* Mrs Theresa Mack - Kitchen Supremo.
* Mrs Mavis Enderby - Head of Wardrobe.
* Miss Polly Perkins - Head of IT.

### The Time Police

* Captain Matthew Ellis - Looking for trouble and choosing not to find it.
* Dr Kalinda Black - Liaison officer to Thirsk University
* Vortigern - Agoraphobic kitchen cat reluctantly participating in vital historic research.

### Historical Figures

* Herodotus - Father of History, Father of Lies, and a complete bastard.
* Joan of Arc - not having a good day.
* Richard Plantagenet - Dick the Turd
* Henry Tudor - A Man who would drink his own bathwater.
* Sundry Egyptian tomb-builders, Neanderthals, Homo sapiens, mammoths, citizens of Rouen, the entire city of Bristol celebrating in the streets, various medieval armies, and a couple of passing politicians.