With pilots from other settlements no longer permitted to come up from the spaceport to the residential sector of Shepardsport, Drew had decided there was no real point in trying to get a permanent transfer to the regular run over there. Better to just stay on the orbital missions than to have Brenda and the kids so close but out of reach.
So here he was at Luna Station, waiting for the cargo handling robots to finish loading the lander so he could take it down. Live fish, according to the manifest. Probably one of the big agricorps that ran the South and West Farms was broadening their genetic stock.
Still, it gave him some downtime, and with the current situation he and his pilot weren’t allowed to go aboard Luna Station. Which meant no opportunity to hang out and visit with the pilot-astronauts from the other settlements.
On the other hand, it did give him other opportunities. Even if he couldn’t go visit Brenda and the kids in person, he could spend some FaceTime with them.
Or so he’d thought. He’d texted Brenda to make sure she and the kids were where they could talk, and she’d answered right back that they had a few minutes before she needed to get Randy to class and Leonie to nursery.
But when he tapped the FaceTime icon, it took forever to connect. When it did, the lag time was so bad it was impossible to carry on a conversation. The kids were getting frustrated, so Brenda had suggested they drop the call and try again.
Now it was just ringing and ringing, like it couldn’t connect. He’d tried three or four times, and the window of opportunity was rapidly closing. Not to mention that he’d just gotten a notification that loadout was winding up, so he’d better start prepping for undock and descent back to Slayton Field.
But first he wanted to see if he could find out what was going on. He didn’t usually listen to Shepardsport Pirate Radio while he was on a mission, but right now he wanted to see if they were reporting any kind of network issues.
However, when he entered their web address, he got a 503 error. A second try got a 502, and after a few other assorted errors, he had to conclude that there was something seriously wrong with their network connection.
On the other hand, given that they were now one of the best sources of honest news reportage, if something serious had happened and the Administration was trying to cover it up, it was completely possible that their servers were getting swamped. When he got back to the Roosa Barracks, he’d have to connect with some people in Grissom City’s IT department and see if they had any ideas.
In the meantime, he needed to put those concerns out of his mind and concentrate on getting ready to fly this bird back home. Brenda was a smart cookie and knew how to take care of herself in a pinch.
And she had a top-notch commandant in Reggie Waite. If Drew couldn’t trust his clone-brother to protect his own, who could he?