Empire Games Series, Book 1(36)
“Tomorrow. But first, to bed.”
Empire Games
MARACAIBO AERONAVAL COMPLEX, SOUTH AMERICA, TIME LINE THREE, SPRING 2020
Two vast concrete buildings sweltered beneath the noonday heat on the northern shore of Lake Maracaibo in New Granada, bleached white by sun and storm-driven spray from the Gulf of Venezuela to the north. Both buildings supported gigantic level platforms on their roofs. Bunkers and warehouses off to the west were linked to the platforms by gravel roadbeds. The complex was surrounded on all sides by razor-wire fences, patrolled by sweating soldiers from the Commonwealth Guard, who stuck to the air-conditioned interiors of their half tracks as much as possible.
On the far side of the isthmus, gleaming silver arrowheads waited beside a broad military runway, baking hot despite the canvas shades draped across their bubble canopies. The distant buzz of a trainer conducting touch-and-go landings on the second runway rose and fell periodically, disturbing the too-still air. But nobody ventured outside in the noonday heat without good reason.
Then, as if in competition with the somnolent drone of the trainer’s engine, another engine note began to rise. It was the shrill jet-howl of a government courier plane, on final approach into the sprawling lizard-stillness of the Maracaibo Aeronaval Complex. The Explorer-General’s wife (who according to persistent rumors was herself involved at a high level in MITI’s para-time espionage program) was returning from the capital, two thousand miles to the north.
The Explorer-General himself was being fitted for a pressure suit when the telephone rang. He was standing in a sagging mass of fabric and artificial rubber, suspended by its shoulders from a scaffold while a pair of technicians worked on his inner helmet: “If it’s for me, I’ll be ten minutes,” he said. “Oh, and find out who—” Only a very few people could get through to him while he was spending either of the two days a week he jealously clung to for practical work, as opposed to the endless meetings and administrative sessions that had eaten his life since he became a senior officer.
“Sir, it’s your wife. She said to say she’s landed and she’ll meet you in staging area two in an hour.”
“Oh.” Huw nodded—or tried to, inasmuch as nodding wasn’t terribly practical while wearing a rigid helmet with a raised glass visor. “Let’s finish up with the helmet today and we can sort out the legs tomorrow—”
“Sir? Would you mind holding still for a minute?”
Huw surrendered. The pressure suit was a new model, loosely copied from a Russian Sokol KV-2 that Brilliana had somehow obtained for him by way of the DPR: a survival space suit, designed to keep cosmonauts alive inside their Soyuz capsules in the event of an in-flight emergency. It weighed only ten kilos: cumbersome, but far easier to move in than a full-up EVA-certified suit. Huw wanted it very badly. It was intended to keep Explorer Corps world-walkers alive during the critical minutes it might take before they could escape, if they found themselves trailblazing a time line with a nonbreathable atmosphere. But being fitted for any space suit was tedious—like all pressure garments, it had to be tailored to the individual wearer and adjusted for a good fit. And he’d insisted on seeing for himself, a decision he was now regretting.
Half an hour later the suit team allowed him to undress, their final set of measurements recorded. “We should have it ready for you by next Wednesday,” said the seniormost fitter, “assuming they’ve got enough umbilical sets. There was a parts shortage last month.”
“Fine,” Huw grunted. The astronaut corps was greedy for all the space-rated kit. But it wasn’t as if his part-time project was going anywhere in the next week anyway. “Send me a memo when it’s ready.” He pulled up his trousers. “See you on Wednesday.”
The suit-fitting department was part of a clump of windowless, fiercely air-conditioned buildings along one side of the road leading to the staging platforms. Huw walked to the parking lot, surrounded by the clump of bodyguards, assistants, and factotums that seemed to adhere to anyone of any importance. The cars were waiting under a shaded awning, engines already running. “Take me to staging area two,” he said, climbing into the back of the frontmost vehicle.
“Sir.” The cars moved off in convoy, chillers roaring in the heat. Huw glanced out at the parched, browning vegetation. Six days, he noted. This was the sixth consecutive day in which the nighttime temperature hadn’t fallen below thirty-seven Celsius. Daytime temperatures were in the death zone—without forced ventilation or HVAC, people couldn’t work outdoors here. Global warming had already bitten this time line hard: its population wasn’t any smaller than that of time line two, and they’d stayed on coal-and wood-burning fires longer than the more developed world. Another decade or two of rising sea levels and strengthening hurricanes and they’d probably have to abandon Maracaibo completely: even the desperate plan to switch the Commonwealth over to nuclear power in the next ten years would be too little and too late to stop the warming in its tracks.
The cars scurried like shiny-carapaced ants from shadow to shadow, until they pulled up beside a windowless door opening onto the second of the big staging area platforms. The guard in the front passenger seat jumped out and held the door for Huw: he stepped into the searing oven-heat of early afternoon. His entourage followed: a few seconds later they reached the lobby. The doors opened automatically; the guards saluted, opening the inner doors before them. “She said you can find her in Hangar B,” said the sergeant on duty.