Tamsin Beech Ch. 06: Ayr

"GENERATOR ROOM," Leonid grinned and pushed the doors open.

In a wide concrete room, an emergency generator the size of a small car stood on a rusting steel frame, slowly corroding in the damp atmosphere. Beside it, not one, but two enormous green plastic oil tanks of a similar size occupied the rest of the space.

"Now we just need to measure how much diesel is left inside, if any, and think about how we'll get it back to the Novoye Nachalo."

As Leonid placed his AK12 carefully on the grimy floor and began examining the oil tanks, Tamsin set the lantern down and cautiously opened another door in the far wall. The flickering light illuminated the top few steps of another stairwell heading down, "I've found something."

Leonid strained as he attempted to twist the plastic filling cap off one of the oil tanks, "Nnng ... what now?" he asked irritably.

Tamsin lit the second lantern and drew her Grach, "I don't know. You wait here and I'll take a look."

Leonid said nothing but continued to struggle with the cap.

Another wide flight of steps led down, the flickering lantern casting demonic shadows across the stained walls as Tamsin descended. She realised belatedly there were no rat droppings or spider webs this far down. Had something scared the vermin away?

More double doors with a smashed keypad opened onto a bland looking corridor with rooms on either side. Tamsin paused to read a faded plastic sign attached to them as she pushed her way through, "PROJECT CHRONOS. Authorised personnel only beyond this point."

Chronos? What the hell was Chronos?

There were six rooms. Each with a single door and a wide observation window beside it. The first, 'STORE' seemed to be filled with empty metal shelving, the contents of which had obviously been looted. The second, 'CREWROOM' held lockers, a coffee table littered with magazines, and brightly coloured plastic chairs.

Tamsin peered around. She was tempted to go back for Leonid. Something was making the skin crawl on the back of her neck and she had no idea what. Not Reivers. This was something worse than Reivers. But if she went running upstairs to her second in command because a feeling had spooked her, her credibility as a fearless resistance leader might just take a tumble.

The third room, 'TEST SUBJECTS' contained cupboards, a stainless steel sink that remarkably still retained some of its shine, and racks of small cages covering an entire wall. Many of which held tiny skeletons that Tamsin guessed may have belonged to small rodents or birds. The next room, 'PROJECT DIRECTOR' appeared to be an office. Desk, filing cabinets and a few pieces of worthless pre-Thanatos technology. Much like General Volk's office back on Lindisfarne but without the spectacular view.

Tamsin moved on, her sense of foreboding growing stronger. She gripped the handgun tightly enough to turn her knuckles white. The fifth room, 'PROJECT CHRONOS CONTROL ROOM' contained banks of consoles and computer equipment. Dark screens coated in a thick layer of dust covered an entire wall. And ...

Tamsin blinked and moved the glare of the lantern to one side.

There ...

In the bottom corner of one monitor, a tiny LED glowed a cheerful green.

. . .

"Does that mean there's power?" Tamsin asked a few minutes later.

Leonid hunched over the workstation, "It must be on standby. The generator is off so it must be a battery somewhere. Can't believe it's lasted forty years."

"But if there's power can we find out what the fuck this place is? I mean, Chronos? Have YOU ever heard of it?"

Leonid shook his head. He hit return on the monitor's keyboard. The screen flickered on, the words 'POWER SAVING MODE' flashed across it and then went dark once more, "I think we'd have to get the generator up and running to see any more. I've noticed the cabling ..."

"Cabling?"

"The power supply from the generator. It doesn't feed the rest of the university building. It only feeds through into here. Into these rooms. Whatever this is it uses an enormous amount of energy."

Tamsin noticed a printed page of verse attached to one of the bare walls - 'To A Mouse' by Robert Burns it read, "Wee, sleekit, cow'rin, tim'rous beastie, o what a panic's in thy breastie! Thou need na start awa sae hasty, wi' bickering brattle!"

"What language was that?" asked Leonid.

"English, almost ... I think. I don't have a clue what it means though," she picked up a ring binder from the workstation and idly flicked through it. Pages and pages of incomprehensible graphs and diagrams, charts and handwritten notes on coloured post its.

"What is it?" asked Leonid.

"Old world stuff. It doesn't mean anything to me ... ewh, yuck!"

Tamsin opened the binder to a full page colour photo. A pile of glistening red entrails with bits of white fur sat in a stainless steel bowl.

"What the fuck is that?" Leonid asked, incredulous.

"That ... is 'TEST SUBJECT #0001', dated 11th November 2015, according to this."

Leonid frowned, "What the hell were they testing here? Some kind of weapon?"

Tamsin turned a few more pages, "29th June 2016, 'TEST SUBJECT #0036' ..."

A dead white mouse sat in another stainless steel bowl, its face deformed and intestines bursting through its skin.

"Whatever they were doing that's an improvement," Leonid said.

"Not much of an improvement. It's still dead," Tamsin answered sourly. She thumbed through a few more sections, "this is more up to date, 'TEST SUBJECT #0144', 30th October 2019."

A white mouse sat upright in the stainless steel bowl, washing itself. It regarded the photographer with milky, sightless eyes, "Fuck," murmured Leonid, "whatever it is they were doing they'd almost got it. Is there any more?"

Tamsin turned the page, "Last entry is dated August 2021, but ... the page is blank."

"That was when my government launched the missile at Thanatos," Leonid explained, "they never had chance to complete their work and see if they'd got it right."

Tamsin tucked the ring binder under her arm and swallowed, "Got what right?"

"If ... this is the control room, have you looked in the last room yet?"

"I was about to."

. . .

'PROJECT CHRONOS - TEMPORAL DISPLACEMENT UNIT.'

Tamsin stared hard at the sign, as if by doing so she'd understand what the words meant. She knew virtually nothing of old world technology. Growing up in Berwick Upon Tweed and later on Lindisfarne she'd been aware that there had been such things as computers and smartphones, but it had all seemed rather pointless to her. Why spend hours typing messages to virtual friends when you could go outside and spend time with real friends?

The ways of the old world were as beyond her as the words on the sign.

"What does it mean?" she asked.

Leonid Denisovich had been born onboard the aircraft carrier Lenin as it had fled the flaming ruin of his motherland. He'd learnt the English language out of necessity as a means to infiltrate and interrogate prisoners. Words like 'temporal displacement' had never cropped up before, "I have no idea."

Inside the sixth room, sat an egg.

An egg approximately eight feet long and six feet tall covered in hundreds upon hundreds of minute white ceramic tiles, each so precisely fitted against its neighbours that not even a hairline gap showed between. Thick power cables supplied a steel cradle surrounding the enormous egg and an oval panel sat hinged open, revealing a similarly tiled interior.

"Do you think this is what the mice were put inside?" Tamsin asked, "it looks almost big enough for a person. Why is all this here in a university?"

Leonid huffed, "I've no idea Tamz. I've no idea. We really don't know what we're dealing with. There's nothing here we can use so we may as well get back to Cooper. Those tanks upstairs are almost full. If we can find some way of transporting the diesel down to the harbour we can be on our way."

Tamsin nodded. With one last look at the mysterious egg, she turned and followed the Russian back upstairs.

PART THREE: THE LAST SUPPER

Using a pair of two gallon plastic containers, it took them the rest of the day to drain the first tank in the university's generator room and transport the desperately needed diesel to the trawler. First of all, however, Leonid and Cooper gutted the deer stag and carried the carcass back so that Ross and Merida could make a start on butchering it.

"Bloody hell Tamz. We barely eat for days. Now we've got more food than we know what to do with," Ross grinned as they dropped the deer on the fishing boat's foredeck.

"If you don't want it we can take it away again," Tamsin replied.

"Don't you bloody dare. McTavish mate! Can you find some firewood and some seasoning for this?"

There would be no need to take any diesel from the second tank. It would be there if they ever needed to stop off in Ayr at any point in the future - a secret fuel supply.

. . .

They built a small fire inside one of the old warehouses that evening, away from prying eyes. Taking it in turns to stand watch from a creaking fire escape leading up to the roof, they ate a hearty meal of venison and rice, flavoured with wild garlic and sliced apples. They all agreed it was the best meal any of them had tasted in months.

"If we smoke the rest of the meat tomorrow," said Ross, licking his greasy fingers, "it'll last a lot longer."

Leonid nodded in agreement, "That'll mean staying here for at least another day."

Tamsin stifled a belch, "It'll give us time to explore the south side of the river. Look around the rest of the town. There's apparently a hospital that may still have useful stuff. And I'm sure if there were Reivers here we would have heard from them by now."

"I go too," McTavish growled.

Ross slapped a hand on the Reekie's blue shoulder, "No mate. You stay here with me an' Meri. Need your muscle to cut up the rest of this deer. Coop'll take care of them."

Merida pointed to the ring binder Tamsin had brought back from the university, "Is that what you found, love? Can I take a look?"

Tamsin handed the ring binder to her mother.

"Hmm ... Project Chronos. Never heard of it."

Tamsin wiped her greasy fingers on her trousers. She'd rarely used cutlery since her incarceration on Lindisfarne and much preferred to eat with her hands, "What does it mean mum?"

Merida pulled a disgusted face as she came to the graphic images of the project's failed test subjects and quickly moved on to the graphs and charts, "I've no idea. Temporal displacement it says here ..."

"Temporal. Something to do with ... time?" offered Ross.

Merida flicked quickly through a few more pages then handed the binder back, "Some crazy experiment funded by the National Lottery I should think. Ha! Either that or someone's invented a time machine."

. . .

Later that night, Cooper and McTavish stood on watch out on the trawler's foredeck while Ross and Merida snoozed in the wheelhouse. It had been a good day. They had loaded enough fuel to hopefully get them beyond the northern edge of Reiver territory and for the first time in weeks, they'd eaten well. No more was said about the mysterious laboratory under the university campus but Tamsin promised herself time to read through the binder of notes properly.

Below decks, in what had once been the boat's fish hold, Leonid leaned back against the bulkhead on a rumpled sleeping bag, watching Tamsin as she pottered around lighting the stumps of a few candles they'd discovered.

"Why are you doing that?" he asked.

She continued lighting the candles scattered around the room, then turned to him, the tiny flames flickering in her blue-green eyes.

Leonid smiled, "Does that look mean what I think it means?"

"Perhaps," breathed Tamsin. After months of stress and being on the run, she knew what they both needed. And she guessed that the more turned on the Russian became, the better it would be for her. She peeled off her patched trousers, slinking them down over her hips. Realising with dismay that she'd lost a noticeable amount of weight. Above that she wore a softshell, two t-shirts and a thermal top. Leonid would only be able to glimpse her underwear beneath all that every now and then, so gyrating to some imagined music inside her head, Tamsin slowly pulled her softshell and t-shirts off.

Leonid adjusted his position, making himself more comfortable as he watched, "You realise you're too sexy to be a resistance leader?"

"How many resistance leaders do you know?" Tamsin responded by lifting the hem of the stained thermal top, first showing her panties, then her navel, then the smooth skin of her torso, and finally the black cotton of her sports bra. Leonid's eyes were transfixed.

"Enjoying the show so far?"

Leonid nodded, "I just hope none of the others come down right now."

"That'd just be too bad," Tamsin pulled the top up over her head and threw it at Leonid, then stood facing him in her underwear. The Russian's hands lay flat on the deck to either side of him, as if ready to pounce, and she could see a faint glistening of sweat on his brow.

Leonid licked his lips.

He's wondering if he's going to get any, Tamsin thought to herself with a smile. She ran her hands over her body, delighting both in the feel of it and in the effect it was having on Leonid. The control she felt over him was intoxicating. She cupped her breasts, feeling the soft cotton of the bra and the hot flesh of them under her palms.

Then she slid both hands down her stomach and down the front of her panties.

"Bozhe moy, ty takoy krasivyy," murmured Leonid thickly.

He reached out for Tamsin, but she jumped back, "Back in your spot. I move. You stay still. That's the deal."

Warned, Leonid sat back, as Tamsin began to move again, swaying in time to the rhythm in her mind as she held an arm across her breasts while at the same time pulled the bra off, letting it fall. She moved closer to Leonid, and leant down slightly in front of him, the firm swelling of her breasts accentuated by the slight pressure of her arm.

Tamsin moved away and turned her back, letting her arm fall. Then she moved her hands down, running them over the curves of her waist and hips. She slowly wriggled her way out of her panties, pulling them down bit by bit until more and more of her rear was revealed to her Russian lover. She could hear his muffled groans, and turned to face him once more.

Tamsin noted with satisfaction that under his trousers Leonid was sporting a massive hard-on. She advanced on him slowly, and he couldn't take his eyes from her body. He stared at her breasts, then down to her thin strip of curling public hair and back again, "I want you Tamz."

"Ssh. Stay still and say nothing," she ordered. This wonderful sensation, of being in control and being able to do whatever she wanted, was something Tamsin indulged whenever she could. Back on Lindisfarne where her life had been so regimented she hadn't had a fraction of this freedom. And after six months of being hunted by Volk and her grandfather's Coalition forces, she wasn't going to waste this opportunity either. Tamsin went over to the sleeping bags and lay down with her legs apart, her sex pointing up at Leonid. His eyes locked instantly on her most intimate spot.

With her legs bent slightly at the knees, Tamsin slid her hands down to her mound. The thought of what she was going to do was stimulation enough, she was wet and ready before she had even touched herself. She lazily slid a finger down over her curls, searching out the part which needed satisfying the most. Her fingers found her clitoris first, and slipped lower, sliding effortlessly into her slippery warmth.

"You're, um ... a bit turned on I take it?" Leonid stared as Tamsin's fingers disappeared almost up to the knuckles. She smiled to herself. Wanting to make him squirm, she began to work busily, flicking her fingers in and out and moving upward now and then to caress her clitoris in a lazy, circling motion.

She ignored him. Tamsin's desire was so great that thoughts of her audience gradually disappeared, as she was overcome by the need for release. Her stomach tensed, and the sudden rush of her orgasm overtook her. Her body trembled, shook, her fingers working frantically until the last tremors had subsided. She looked over at Leonid lying beside her.

His eyes had a glazed expression and, from the size of it, she guessed his crotch looked close to bursting. Tamsin rolled onto her side and reached down to unbuckle his belt. She could feel his hardness under her fingertips, as she slowly unzipped his fly.

"Uh, what exactly do you think you're doing?"

Tamsin looked him in the eye, "I've had a stressy day. And this is how I want to relax."

"I'm surprised you've any energy left," Leonid gasped as Tamsin's fingers tickled the soft blond fuzz and solid shaft of his cock nestled beneath. She reached in and gripped him in her hand, making a fist around the thick girth, gently drawing it out of its lair.

Leonid gave another groan, and Tamsin could feel his cock hardening even more in her hand. She bent her head down into his lap and kissed the marbled tip, running her tongue over it. The Russian groaned, urging her to continue. But this wasn't about him, it was about her. Tamsin removed her mouth, sensing his frustration. She straddled him, hovering barely an inch above Leonid. She knew that he wanted more, that he'd no doubt want to taste her too. But he'd have to damn well wait. She gripped his cock with one hand, and slowly lowered herself over it.

Tamsin could feel Leonid pressing against her, as she allowed herself to gradually engulf him. She could feel him filling her, stretching her. It was time to let him do the work, "Fuck me," she whispered in his ear, her arms draped lazily over his shoulders.

Leonid needed no second bidding. He grasped her round the waist and began to thrust up into her, lifting her up and down over his cock at the same time. His rhythm increased, fucking her faster. She knew that it wouldn't take him long to cum, the poor man could only take so much stimulation, she thought.

Sure enough, Tamsin felt him thicken inside her, and then came the unmistakable groans which signalled his orgasm. She felt him plunge into her for the last long, shuddering strokes. Then he kissed her neck before collapsing back against the bulkhead. Tamsin smiled with satisfaction, "Think we better get some sleep."

. . .

The following morning, Tamsin, Leonid and Cooper crossed back over the River Ayr to explore the main part of the town. While Ross, Merida and McTavish stayed behind to retrieve the dinghy, prepare the rest of the venison and turn the Novoye Nachalo around ready for a swift departure. Food, fuel, tools, weapons or clothing - they'd salvage anything they could before returning to the boat.

Trees had sprouted up out of pavements, ripping up road surfaces with their tremendous roots and some building facades were now obscured completely by ivy and hanging vines. Tamsin had grown up in the ruins of the old world. But now after over forty years since the rogue asteroid Thanatos had devastated the planet's surface and plunged it into a years long winter, places like the town of Ayr were beginning to look beautiful once again. She forced the troubling events of the previous day from her mind as she wandered along the high street with the sun on her face. After all it had only been a feeling. A sense of some terrible impending loss, but just a feeling nevertheless.

Feelings had never hurt anyone.

Along Kyle Street, they passed Ayr's railway station - one of the only buildings in the town it seemed that had suffered a direct meteorite hit. Mangled tracks climbed high into the air, like some immense sculpture made of rusting steel spaghetti, creaking eerily as it rocked steadily in the breeze.