“We’ve got firebombs!” Laertes shouted.
“We don’t have firebombs,” Brent amended. “But you know we can get some.”
I laughed and signed off, probably for the last time in a while. I glanced up and saw a young woman looking over to me.
“Sorry,” I said. “I should have had earphones on for that conversation.”
“No, it’s fine,” she said. “It’s nice to hear people having lives outside of this”—she indicated the lounge and the KPS staff—“whatever this is going to turn out to be.”
“Ah,” I said, getting it. “This is your first day on the job, too.”
“Yes,” she admitted. “There are a couple of other of us new people, too, over there.” She pointed to a pair of grad-school-looking sorts, animatedly chatting, and then turned back to me. “I’m Aparna Chowdhury. Biology.”
“Jamie Gray. Lifting objects.”
She smiled at that. “Would you like to come sit with us?”
I put my phone away. “I would,” I said. We walked over, and the grad-school-looking pair looked up.
“I found another newbie,” Aparna said, excitedly, and pointed. “Jamie lifts things!”
“That’s me,” I confessed.
“Well, at least one of us is useful, then,” the one closest to me said, and waved. “Kahurangi.” He pointed. “And this is Niamh. They do astronomy and physics, and I do organic chemistry and some geology. We’re nerds.”
“Hi,” Niamh said, waving.
I waved back. “I mean, I was doing a dissertation on science fiction novels, so I think I qualify under ‘nerd.’”
“Wow, you really do,” Kahurangi said. “And here I thought you were just here for the meat hydraulics.”
“Oh, I am,” I said. “The failed doctoral dissertation is just a bonus.”
“Tell Jamie what we were talking about earlier,” Aparna said.
“Oh, right,” Niamh said, and turned to me. “Greenland. What the actual fuck?”
I was going to respond, but someone started clapping their hands for attention. We all looked up to see a very authoritative-looking woman standing up. Everyone stopped talking, put their phones away, and gave her their attention. A couple of people started booing her, mockingly.
“Oh, shut up,” she said, fake irritably, and there was laughter. “For those of you who are back, it’s good to see you back. For those of you who are new—who is new here?”
The four of us raised our hands.
“Oh, clustered up already, very nice,” she said, and there were laughs at that. “For those of you who are new, I’m Brynn MacDonald, commander of KPS Tanaka Base Gold Team, which is what this is.” She motioned around to the room, which offered up slight cheers and applause. “Don’t get too excited,” she said, deadpan, and there was more laughter about that. “Now, I’m sure you new people have a lot of questions, including—” She motioned to the crowd.
“Why Greenland!” everyone shouted back, except the new people.
“—and we could tell you now, but we’re not going to,” MacDonald said. “Not because we’re cruel—”
“Although we are cruel,” someone interjected, to laughs.
“—but because it’s a tradition to not spoil the surprise. Trust us, it will be worth it. In the meantime, just know none of us knew, either, until we saw it with our own eyes.
“With that out of the way: As usual, the flight to Thule Air Base departs at two a.m., it’s a six-and-a-half-hour flight, and again as usual, we’ll have a mix of civilian and military folks with us on the flight. This means that for the duration you’re going to have to wear your masks”—there were groans—“and I don’t want to hear whining about this. Just because you’re vaccinated doesn’t mean other people are or that you can’t still transmit to the uninoculated, so don’t be an asshole.” More grumbling, but people settled down.
“Now, we’re all supposed to be seated together, but some of you might still have non-KPS people strike up a conversation, so if anyone asks why you’re going to Thule Air Base, use our usual backstory of being Department of the Interior employees doing a geophysical survey of Greenland’s glaciation. For the new people, we use that story because it’s so boring that in the entire history of KPS, no one has ever followed up on it.” Laughter.