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"Okay," Bryan repeated, sounding surprised. He recovered quickly enough. "Better get things squared away then and get ourselves kitted out. You secure him." He nodded toward Grumpy. "And I'll haul Black's ass back inside the Vehicle."
I grabbed some handcuffs — flexi-cuffs having been lost to all and sundry in the time slip — from one of the cupboards, and secured Grumpy by the wrists behind his back, just above the elbows, and again at the ankles. Then I rolled him onto his side and left him in the corner to sleep it off. Just in case manslaughter was added to our list of crimes, I ran the med device over him and made sure he wasn't going to die on us.
I'd already checked on Black, so when Bryan brought him back aboard and started zip-tying him up at every possible joint location, I ducked into the bathroom and got dressed. 1966 Soviet Union clothing wasn't that different from 1966 clothing anywhere else. But because this was a military base, the clothing Technical had placed in the Vehicle was a uniform.
A starched tan-with-hints-of-green shirt, a darker green-with-hints-of-tan tie, and a muddy brown jacket and knee-length skirt. The material was wool and scratchy, the tights were thick and had no give in them, the shoes were sensible. On the jacket, there were medals and ribbons, but I had no idea what they were for. In fact, I had no idea what rank I supposedly was. It didn't matter; not like I could reply to anyone if they called me by rank. My Russian was rudimentary at best.
There was a peaked hat with a wide blue ribbon around it, and little metal wings and stars attached. I guessed I was someone not to be messed with. Maybe a cosmonaut. Maybe they'd styled my uniform on Valentina Tereshkova's. By 1966, Tereshkova had already been in space, having orbited earth 48 times on Vostok 6. The first and only woman in space on a solo mission. She'd spent three days up there.
I straightened the jacket and looked at myself in the mirror. "Here's looking at you, Tereshkova," I murmured and then exited the bathroom.
Bryan whistled. "That issomehat," he said and ducked into the bathroom behind me.
I checked on Black, using the med device again just to be sure, and then rolled up some blankets from one of the ubiquitous cupboards, and placed them under both of their heads. I'm not sure if that was the correct procedure for the recovery position, but I felt guilty leaving them tied up like that.
By the time Bryan emerged from the bathroom, resplendent in a matching male Russian military uniform, I was just finishing up donning the last of my armament from the weapons locker. Bryan was quick to follow suit.
Our weapons weren't standard 1960s Russian military issue, but at a glance, they'd pass muster, and we'd only use them on Sergei or a Lunik. Time was sketchy enough without us adding an out of time bullet into the mix.
I rolled my shoulders, feeling that strange itch between them on my back. No one was behind me other than Bryan, though, and he was too busy adjusting his gun belt. I looked out of the Orion, but couldn't see anyone in between the skeletal trees. I had no idea if someone had spotted us from one of the building's windows, though. But no alarm had been sounded, so I had to assume they hadn't yet.
"What if the Orion disappears on us?" I asked Bryan. "We weren't the ones to make it shift planes."
"If there's a glitch, and it returns to RATS, they'll send someone back for us. In the meantime, we do our job, try not to get caught and fuck things up any more than Sergei has, and catch the asshole who destroyed my universe."
I studied Bryan for a moment.
"Can you keep this from getting personal?" I finally asked.
"Hell, no," he said, then looked right at me. "Can you, Mouse?"
Good question. I shook my head, but said, "We're in enough trouble as it is, Bryan."
"All the more reason to go out with a bang, ain't it?"
We checked the Orion one last time, made sure our recall buttons sewn into the sleeves of our uniforms were active, and then exited the Vehicle. Bryan did the honours, making the MPCV wink out of sight.
"It's still there," he said, checking his tablet, then slipping it out of sight again. He looked up and took in our location. The forest. The stretch of bare concrete we'd landed on. The building that blocked us from the majority of Star City itself.
"Admin at a guess," he muttered.
"Somewhere in there," I said, "is a Luna secret Sergei thinks he can steal that will lead him to control time travel in the future."
"Best we get to it first, then," Bryan said.
I nodded my head and then followed his lead, walking as if we had every right to walk here, towards the end of the building. There was no door on the rear of it, so we needed to circumnavigate the structure to find an entrance. I would have preferred climbing in through a window to a vacant office, but the first row of windows was on the second storey and we didn't have a convenient ladder.
We found a door on the side, though, so didn't have to continue around to the front entrance, which was undoubtedly busier and better guarded than this one. There was security on the door, but 1960s locks were no match for 23rd-century lock picking devices. Bryan broke us in without triggering an alarm, and soon we were making our way down the stark, utilitarian corridor.
Everything already looked a little worn, which was surprising. Star City had only been around in its current form since 1960; six years ago, contemporarily speaking. It shouldn't have looked so worn, but everything in the Soviet Union seemed to look worn to me. It didn't matter how old it was, or how young for that matter, it always looked worn and dirty, as if the bleak weather and living conditions in this part of the world couldn't possibly allow for anything new and shiny.
The one time I had thought a Russian building truly stunning was in St Petersburg. St Petersburg where the Tsars' Winter Palace stood as a testament to their affluence and superiority, and where my parents had died when their paths had crossed Sergei Ivanov's.
It was an unsettling feeling. I felt all out of sorts. And then I realised that what I was feeling was more than just a vague sense of disquiet at painful memories; it was physical. Like a touch of a hand on my shoulder, or the press of a gun to the back of my head.
But when I turned around, there was no one standing there, just an empty, worn Soviet corridor in a working military facility in the middle of nowhere. I tried to shrug the sensations off, but they persisted. In fact, they got worse.
The colours, already dimmed in this autumnal lighting, dimmed even further until it was as if I were looking at a faded painting; two dimensional and suffering from sun damage.
