I’ve been to New Svalbard a few times, but always as a passenger on a ship stopping for water. I’ve never been down to the civvie airfield. When I ask Constable Guest if he can give me directions, he shrugs with a smile.
“Sure thing, but it’s a bit of a hike. You can hoof it across town, or I can give you a ride, if you don’t mind being the passenger on a dinky ATV.”
“I’d appreciate that,” I say. “And you can be sure that any dignity I may have retained after Basic is long gone by now.”
The airfield is much more sophisticated than I expected. I had pictured a gravel landing pad and a few fuel tanks, like the ones that seem to be standard on every minor colonial outpost. Instead, the constable’s ATV rolls onto a facility that looks more advanced than the drop-ship landing pad up at Camp Frostbite. There are half a dozen hangar buildings with abnormally thick concrete domes, and as we drive up the central alley formed by the hangars, I can see thick hydraulic blast doors that look like they’d stop a MARS warhead cold.
“They built it to handle all the planetary freight traffic and then some,” Constable Guest says over the low hum of the ATV’s electric drive. “We don’t have an orbital replenishing facility yet, but the crew at the water storage depot can refill the tanks on a tanker shuttle in twenty minutes flat.”
The tarmac here is smooth concrete. There’s a landing area for VTOL traffic that has a dozen individual landing zones stenciled onto it, and the facility has an actual runway, thousands of meters of smooth blacktop stretching into the distance.
“Dual redundant AILS, for the frequent shit weather, full civil and military refueling capacity, and all the latest in weather systems and navigational aids. We even have a satellite network now for comms and nav fixes. The place may not look like much, but we have pretty shiny gear down here. All we’re missing is an orbital service facility, so the big guys don’t have to send the tanker shuttles down here to top off their drinking water or reactor-fuel mass. ’Course, the way things are going, we won’t be getting any upgrades any time soon. Not with the colony flights at an end.”
The constable lets the ATV roll to a stop in front of a building that looks like a small-scale copy of the massive admin facility in town. The only difference is the obvious air-traffic-control tower grafted onto the short side of the building that faces the runway and the VTOL landing pads.
“It’s not just the colony flights,” I say into the silence following the shutdown of the ATV’s power train. Constable Guest looks at me with a raised eyebrow. “You’re missing a peach of a briefing up there in Admin Central,” I tell him. “You want to tag along while I bring the local ATC crew up to speed?”
It takes me all of two minutes to introduce myself and share the news with the half dozen air-traffic controllers and pilots on duty this morning. By the time I finish, there is utter silence in the flight-ops control room for a few moments, and the expressions of polite interest have given way to unconcealed shock and dismay.
“You can’t be serious,” the flight-ops supervisor says. He’s a stocky and hard-looking man who wouldn’t look out of place in a master sergeant’s uniform. His name tag says BARNETT, and even though the civvie overalls don’t have rank insignia, his demeanor marks him as the guy in charge. “Shut down all of it? The whole thing?”
“Yes, the whole thing. No traffic into or out of the solar system, or between the extrasolar transit hubs. They pushed out a bunch of ships with supplies for the colonies, and pulled the plug. We’re on our own.”
“For how long? We got all the water we’ll ever need, but we do need food deliveries. This place isn’t exactly popping with agriculture, you know.”
“I have no idea,” I say. “I’m a staff sergeant. They don’t usually invite me to staff officer briefings. The general says they’ll keep it locked until they’ve figured out how to stop the Lanky expansion.”
Chief Barnett chuckles without humor.
“If the people at Defense are as dim as the ones running the Colonial Administration, that could take a few decades.”
“I guess we better figure out how to grow lettuce and potatoes in permafrost,” Constable Guest says.
The local airfield’s control center has better gear than any military facility I’ve ever seen. I’m in the middle of updating my tactical computer with the civilian frequencies when the earbud of my comms unit chirps with incoming traffic.
“Sergeant Grayson, Major Vandenberg. What’s your status over there?”
“Updating my tac kit, sir. Another ten minutes, and I’m good.”
“You may want to expedite. We’re heading back to the ranch, RFN.”
“Copy that. I’m on my way. Grayson out.”