22.oct.2120.
The glass doors automatically parted to the sides. Zavirdyaev stepped towards the darkness, colored with all sorts of lights. Once again, the journey into the unknown began, if not at night, then in the evening, when darkness reigned all around.
In the middle of the platform, onto which the doorway led, stood a quadroplane ready for takeoff. The machine was, of course, not civilian - it was a military transport quadroplane of the "U" class, that is, "utilitarian", in other words, poorly suited to carry any serious fire systems. To put it simply, it was a flying military bus.
Zavirdyaev hurriedly approached the machine and jumped up the folded ladder.
Hello! I'm Ready - he shouted to the pilots through the noise of the engines.
The ladder rose with a mechanical hum, the door-flap lowered. The machine went up.
Zavirdyaev, who had settled down on one of the seats, watched the lights of the base float down.
Now for some reason he remembered how, being this worthless clerk of the CSCE, he traveled around the SFS, including by bus, when, out of stupidity, they sent a huge bus to pick up only him, Zavirdyaev, who had been taken by official transport to a nearby town. And there, in his previous life, there was this constantly dissatisfied Landskricht. Dissatisfied because Siberia, being the same northern region, was still not what its herring Norway was. There was also the colorful top of the SFS, with whom he, Zavirdyaev, was practically on friendly terms. Now all this remained somewhere in the past, in this darkness.
Over the past two days, Zavirdyaev seemed to have put his agitated convolutions in place. An important part of the restored memories was occupied by the last Hanover update - then it was brought to his attention that he would have to pilot something different from what was previously assumed - now some new shuttle had been built, significantly exceeding initial expectations. He still hadn't remembered some of the organizational information, but that wasn't necessary.
At some point, pits illuminated by lights scattered in disarray and working equipment appeared. People could still be discerned swarming - this is how the SFS was preparing to meet with the OMSDON units. On the Left Bank, everything was the same. It remained only to guess how further events, in which he, Zavirdyaev, was destined to become a key figure, would affect the course of a possible invasion and these people in particular.
About an hour after takeoff, the lights of more buildings appeared - this was already a rocket launch site. Now Zavirdyaev was... for the quadcopter crew, he was an officer of the rocket launch site's technical service, an American.
The legend was multi-level and multi-faceted. Zavirdyaev himself, if he knew all the details, would have spent a lot of effort to remember everything, but he did not need to know everything. The intricate conspiracy was something that was very suitable for storage and processing by some computer, and there was probably such a computer somewhere. Invisible threads of false biographies and assignments grew into a global electronic bureaucracy and moved the entire process in the right direction, unknown by whom set and controlled by whom. It was much more intricate than the gloomy concrete labyrinths and streets of the citadel, but unlike the concrete piles erected for no apparent reason, there was a clear and definite goal here - in the automatic mode of a half-human-half-cyborg to deceive everyone and everything in his path, almost everyone and everything, and do a great job.
The quadrocopter hovered and began to slowly descend over the platform. Soon the machine firmly landed on the ground. The door swung open. The pilot, sitting on the left, stuck his hand out into the aisle between the seats with his thumb sticking up. Zavirdyaev silently got out of the car and walked towards the two-story building, its glass windows glowing in the darkness.