(eng) Patty Jansen- Ambassador 1.5 by The Sahara Conspiracy

Author:The Sahara Conspiracy [Conspiracy, The Sahara]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 0101-01-01T00:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER 16

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THE RESEARCH STATION’S box-like residential building was so hot that it almost hurt to breathe the air inside. We opened the doors and windows, and the breeze that came through was a little cooler, if extremely dry. It stank of sulphur. Everything around here did.

The research station’s air-conditioning was fried. Thayu spent some time trying to get it going, but too much of the insides of the machine had been fused together by an electrical fault, and rusted over because of the salt-laden air.

We inspected the living quarters. Sweat was running down my back, and Henri’s face was shining with it. Evi and Telaris remained on the veranda with the excuse that we needed a lookout.

Thayu and Nicha didn’t care about the heat. I didn’t care too much because I could take an extra dose of adaptation, but I worried about Henri. The station had closed years ago because people had died from heat stress after the electrical meltdown. Henri was our only way of getting out of the place. Yet when I asked him about coping with the heat, he said he was fine, albeit in a slightly nervous way.

We allocated rooms: one for me and Thayu and one for Nicha and Henri and one for Evi and Telaris, although they hadn’t yet come inside. We unpacked our food supplies. Henri looked suspiciously at the packets of red-coded sauce.

He didn’t say much, watching with wide eyes. He seemed too innocent for the type of job he did. I asked him some questions. Yes, he had grown up in Canada, but had left during the North American crisis. There were no jobs, he said, no nothing if you came from the wrong part of town. People were just being shot in the street and their only crime was to be poor. Was it any wonder that unrest had broken out and that people with extremist views on both sides had gone to battle?

He was black because his mother came from Ethiopia so he had gone to stay with his family. He had learned to fly locally. To the questions where he had gotten the money for such an advanced plane, he merely smiled. Crime, I suspected. Smuggling of something or rather. I still wondered what the CF on his pass stood for, but I didn’t ask because I could look it up.

We ate from our rations around the rickety table in the single kitchen-living room. At least us four did. Evi and Telaris seemed to prefer to stay outside. Both the heat and the tense conversation were pressing.

I explained to Henri what we wanted to do tomorrow: survey as much of the shoreline as was feasible and take photographs of the soil and geological features.

He asked if we knew that we would need permission from the local ruler to fly over the shore to the north. I said we did. We planned to get that permission.

He laughed, uneasily.

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