Katja Pt. 22

Azlan nodded, "That sounds like a smart layout."

Harry nodded as he pulled up to a locked gateway and stopped. He turned around, "Well, the planes that mainly used this base were the big cargo planes and ones they used to do mid-air refueling. They're really loud, and because the refueling planes carried so much fuel when loaded, they wanted them as far away as possible from all the people in case of an accident."

Azlan nodded his understanding, then looked at the gate they pulled up to. It didn't look like a permanent gate, but looked like the ones the contractor had used in New Lyonn around some places they were working on. Harry looked back again as he opened the van door and asked, "Azlan, could one of your people give me hand opening this gate up? It's a little hard to get it opened up wide enough to get the van through with just one person."

Azlan nodded and told one of his people to assist him. He got out and gave him a hand sliding the gate open once Harry unlocked it. Once they had it open, they got back in the van and they took off down the street. It wasn't that far and they pulled up into a large parking lot in front of the largest barracks.

Azlan thought it looked a little like the one they had turned into apartments for the single people or mated couples with no children. He mentioned that to Harry and he smiled, "Yes, it probably does, as this was an air force base also, they're all laid out pretty much the same, that I've seen. The first two barracks here, were for the single enlisted people, this bigger one was for males and the other was for the females."

Then he pointed to one farther down the street. "That one there, was for the single officers, but that's really two buildings in one, it's divided in half for the male and female officers because they had a lot more enlisted people, than officers, so they only needed the one building. We'll take a look at these first, then we'll go to the married officer and enlist housing, they're all townhouses. But there are some small ranch houses farther down that were mainly for the married senior officers with families."

Azlan nodded, "Okay, that's sound fine. Can I assume the utilities are all secured to the buildings?"

Harry nodded, "Yes, none of the buildings, except the ones we're using, have any utilities connected, it's all secured outside leading up to the buildings. This way if something happened, like a water leak, or electrical problem, nothing would happen to the buildings." He shrugged, "It's just safer that way."

Azlan nodded once more, "It was the same way at New Lyonn, so that's not a problem, we have portable lights with us so we can look at them."

They all got out of the van and Azlan followed Harry up to the first building. Once they got to the doorway, Harry looked at the ring of keys he had and look for the building number. Once he found it, he and Azlan walked up to the door to open it, while the others grabbed a couple of bags out of the back of the van.

Harry looked at Azlan, "Just a heads-up Azlan, these building are more or less intact, but they're not in very good shape. The first few years after this base was closed, they more or less ignored everything. They emptied out the buildings of anything salvageable, and then locked them it up. We've only been here a couple of years and Nicholas had us looking after things a bit more, but the damage was done already. If you know what I mean."

Azlan nodded his understanding. From what he'd heard talking to some of the others yesterday, and seeing the outside of this building, he knew exactly what Harry meant.

Harry opened the door and led them into a main lobby. Azlan could smell the condition of it the minute they walked in. It was dusty, dirty, and he could smell the mold and dampness. He also got a whiff of some kind of animal excrement.

Harry could see the look on his face, "Yeah, like I said, they really didn't take care of anything." He shrugged, "They basically couldn't see spending any money on anything, as they were planning on tearing down most of these buildings. But again, that also costs money."

The building was three floors so they started walking down the main hallway to begin. All the rooms had the doors propped wide open, and they could see the place was in sorry shape. As they looked into the rooms, Azlan could see where some of them looked and smelled like some type of animal had made themselves at home, and some of the rooms had broken glass in the windows and were covered with... plywood he thought the name was.

They continued walking and inspecting the rooms and they could see that water had leaked into a few of them, either from the water pipes or maybe from the broken windows allowing the weather to get in. After they looked down the first hallway, they made their way back to the front of the building. The hallways went to the left and right of the lobby area, so they continued down the other hallway. It was as bad as the first one, if not worse in a few of the rooms. They made their way back to the lobby where the stairs were to go to either the upper floors, or the lower utility level.

As they got back to the main entrance, Harry looked at Azlan, "Azlan, do you want to look at the other floors, or have you seen enough?"

Azlan looked around once more, "Can I assume the others are like this first floor?"

Harry nodded, "More or less."

Azlan shook his head no, "There's no sense wasting your time or ours. But I think we'll take a quick look at the lower level so we can see some of the utility spaces and take some pictures."

Harry nodded okay and led him to entrance to the lower level. As they made their way down the stairs, Azlan and the others could smell and feel the dampness. They took a quick look around and took a bunch of pictures, then headed back up to the main floor. The condition was like Azlan thought it would be, it was dirty, musty, and damp, and he thought he also heard the sounds of some animals trying to hide from the lights and them.

Harry locked the entrance back up, then they walked back to the van. He looked over at Azlan as he was typing on the tablet he carried. Once he was done, Harry said, "The other two barracks are basically the same, do you want to look at them now?"

Azlan shook his head no, "No sense wasting our time if they are. Let's go and look at some of the townhouses instead." He looked at the time on his tablet, "After that, we'll head back to main building to get lunch and I'll ask Erik if he wants to look at more."

He thought for a minute, "But if we have time after looking at the townhouses, maybe we'll look at one of the houses, and take some more pictures. That way I've got a good sampling for today, then they can choose if they want to look at more.

Harry nodded, "Sounds like a plan to me." He looked around and shook his head, "You know, it's a damn shame they didn't secure these buildings better when they first closed this base. But I guess you can't blame them too much, they originally had plans to level most of this place, and build some factories and other buildings to make it an industrial area from what I understand, but like I said before, they didn't."

He shrugged once more as they walked over to the van, "I never heard exactly why they didn't, but it was kind of bad all over at that time, so I guess they just didn't want to spend the money or whatever had been planned, fell through." They all got back into the van and headed over to the townhouses.

Axel, Tony and their people, along with a couple of people from New Tygris headed over to the airfield. Another of the Nicholas's people named Steve was driving and telling them about everything like Harry did for Azlan. "Axel, I think you'll find the main airfield here is in good shape more or less. The smaller hangers over on the other side are pretty rundown and in need of some upkeep and repairs. But the two big hangers here just really need maintenance, but because they are so big and you really can't get at anything without lifts and things, it hasn't been done. Also, none of us know how to do that, and there's no funding for us to hire anyone. But they're in better shape overall."

Axel looked at Tony and nodded saying, "Well, we are more concerned about the airfield really, we need to run some tests to make sure it'll handle the ships coming."

Steve nodded as he drove to the airfield ramp access. "It should be okay, as long as the ships are spaced out and not right next to each other. They do tend to over-build these airfields, but I doubt they had that in mind when they did."

He stopped in front of the gate and rolled down the window, then punched in the access code on the control panel mounted on a post. Once he did, the gates rolled to the left and right, then he drove onto the airfield and headed towards the main hanger. He parked in front of it, then turned to Axel, "This hanger is the one they normally used when they were testing planes and things. So, it's not too bad like I said, and you can access the control tower from the office inside. It's more or less still functional because it's used every now and then. They did use it more at one time, but all that testing is over with so they don't really use it that much anymore." He shrugged, "But we keep it up as best we can in case they want to."

Axel nodded as they all got out. He looked at the huge hanger doors and with the exception of needing paint, the lettering on it was about gone, they looked in halfway decent shape. He glanced at the tracks for doors and they didn't look to bad, but they did need some maintenance done.

Then Steve said to him, "Since your inspecting the airfield, we put two golf carts in there they normally used, and their hooked up to the battery charger. You can just use them instead of walking." He smiled, "It is a fairly big airfield to walk."

Axel smiled, "Thanks, I was kind of dreading that." Then he turned to Tony, "Tony, how about this, you and Strix take a look at the hanger, the office, and the control tower to see how it is and get some pictures and notes for Erik. I'll take the others and we'll lay out the landing grids so we can test them with the gear from New Tygris."

Tony and Strix nodded, "That's fine by me, from what I see so far, it doesn't look all that bad, but it good use a big dose of TLC."

Tony grabbed his backpack, then he and Strix walked through the hanger doors to start their inspection. Axel looked at the person from New Tygris, his name was Mika, and he would be doing the actual testing of the airfield. "Mika, I assume we'll lay out the landing grids first, then test them. But since I've never done that, how do you test it?"

Mika smiled, "It's fairly easy Azlan, especially since we have the golf carts. We'll drive around the outside of the grid first and mark it out. Then we'll mark the test spots at twenty-foot intervals over the entire grid, and do a visual inspection on it as we lay it all out to look for any blatant damage. Once we've got that done, we can start the testing, and that's easy really. What we do is put an ultrasonic test probe at the spot we're testing, then by passing a pulse of ultrasonic waves through the concrete, we measure the time it takes the pulse to get through it, and we can tell how good it is. We'll be checking for the uniformity of the concrete and look for any cracks or voids' that may be present in it. Basically, the higher the velocities of the pulses we get back, indicate good quality and continuity of the material, while slower velocities may indicate it has cracks or voids." He shrugged, "As I said, its easy, but it is time consuming"

Axel nodded, "All right them, let's get it laid out." They walked into the hanger and got one of the golf carts, and drove it out to the van. Then they loaded the cart up with the markers for laying everything out and drove over to the starting point.

Tony and Strix started their inspection of the main hanger and at first glance, it didn't look all that bad. Tony looked over at Strix after taking a few pictures, "It's not as bad as I expected it to be."

Strix nodded as he wrote on the tablet he carried, "I think you're right Tony, it could use some... what did I hear you and Erik call it? TLC." He looked upwards scanning the overhead, "But, they did say they used this one occasionally, so I guess that's why it's not real bad. But I can see what the driver meant about not being able to do much to it without lifts like we have back at New Lyonn for ours."

Tony nodded as they walked around inspecting different areas. "Yeah, that's the acronym we use, basically it means it could use some maintenance, maybe some repairs, and a good cleaning." He looked around, then asked, "You think we should get them to check the floor in here also? I guess they'll want to use it for whatever shuttles they have. Are their shuttles like ours?"

Strix nodded, "Similar, works the same way, just shaped a bit different really. I guess we can ask Mika after they get everything laid out for testing the airfield. It'll probably take them two or three days to finish, that is a pretty big area to check."

Tony took a few more pictures and nodded, "Alright, sounds good to me, we'll ask him when we break for lunch."

They spent the next hour or so going over the hanger, then compared notes after walking into the office area to look at it, as that was where the staircase was to get up into the tower.

They sat down in the office, there was a few desks and chairs from when they were doing testing here and Tony said, "Well, that wasn't too bad I guess, I really didn't see anything majorly wrong, did you?"

Strix looked at the tablet, "No, not really. I think it'll be fine as long as it's cleaned up and some maintenance gets done. But like Erik said, we don't know if they'll use it yet. Let's go and check the control tower next, granted it'll have to be updated with our equipment along with replacing the parabolic reflectors and receivers with our sensors." He shrugged, "That would have to be done anyway no matter the condition."

Tony nodded, then laughed a bit, "I'll take your word for it, you kind of lost me at parabolic." Strix laughed, then they made their way up to the tower as he explained it all to him.

Med-tech's Tikal and Theo, with the help of one of the others from New Tygris and one of the people from the base made their way over to do the inspection of the main medical center. He was told there was another small one by the housing area the humans call a clinic and that one was for normal day to day things, while the big one here was for major medical problems and tests. The centers they had like this one at New Lyonn and New Tygris were in excellent shape when they took them over, and they still had a lot of the human medical equipment still installed. They had kept about half of it and augmented it with some of theirs that was more advanced.

The human from this base, his name was Bruce, had warned them on the way over that like all the other places, all the equipment was removed from here also. He told them that if it had been still usable, they removed it for use in other places. Tikal had thought that made sense, with this place closed down, why waste money and let the equipment sit and rot when it could be used someplace else. He had also told them that the... hospital, the human word they used for it, was in a lot better shape than the others buildings, that they had sealed it up better.

They parked in front of the building and he saw that like theirs had been, all the windows and doors had thin sheets of wood over them to protect the glass from getting broken. They got their bags from the van and walked up to the main entrance, then Bruce opened the doors for them and they went in. Tikal smelled dust right off, but that was pretty much it, the counter near the entrance had been covered in sheets of some thin flexible plastic to keep things clean just like they did at their places. The lobby didn't look to bad, nothing looked broken at least, so they started walking around taking notes and pictures like Erik asked for and asking Bruce questions.

After about two hours, they made their way back to the lobby. Like Bruce had told them, there wasn't much in it but empty rooms, all the medical equipment had been removed, including the beds in the patient rooms, but the place seemed to be in good shape, just dusty from not being used and closed up. The surgical and examination rooms were also empty with the exception of some lighting and some built in cabinets and other things like that. The store rooms were also empty of all but some shelving, and when they went to the lower level, it looked to be in good shape, but all the utilities were shutoff and disconnected. 'So,' Tikal thought to himself as he made some notes, 'If they used it, the whole place would have to be outfitted and updated.'

Then he turned to Bruce and asked, "Ah, the small med-center... the clinic I believe you call it, is it like this place? More or less?"

Bruce nodded, "Yes, more or less. The clinic was used for more day to day type care of the people here. Simple things like cuts, sprains, colds, basically minor medical problems that didn't require a hospital or even a doctor most times. Mainly it was staffed by people like you, from what you said you did, with maybe one doctor and some nurses."

Tikal nodded, "Thanks, that's what I figured it was. We also had a something like that on the ship, but now, we just use the med-center in town that we converted from a place like this and we have a section for things like that." He looked at the time, "Well, let's head back, I think we have enough to give Erik a status and let him know what kind of shape everything is in." He looked around the lobby, "It's not in to bad a shape, but if they decide to use it, it will have to be outfitted again and updated. But it beats having to build something from scratch I guess."

Bruce nodded as they walked out and he locked the doors back up, "You're right there, I heard that your people in Australia and Switzerland are having to build everything from scratch."

Tikal nodded, "That's correct, it's also why a lot of them came here. We've had it so much better than those sites thanks to the help from the governments here." He smiled as he looked around, the area was nice here, it reminded him of home world a little, climate wise, "We really love this country, and I'm so glad we came here to settle."

Bruce smiled, "I hear you, this country has its problems, but I guess every place does. I was in the Air Force for ten years before I went to work for them as a civilian. So, I've been all over the world at different places and I still love it here and wouldn't want to be anyplace else."

Erik, Geoff, Nigel, Mr. Hayes and Nicholas, finished up walking around the main buildings and the general area around it. Erik looked at the time, "I guess we're done for now, let's head inside and wait on the others to get here. Thankfully, I haven't received any calls, so hopefully nothing's drastically wrong."

They walked back into the main building and Erik smiled as he saw Jim and Jeff talking to a couple of the others on the security force. They stopped and he asked, "All finished looking around Jim? Or do you still need to look at more today?"

Jim smiled, "Yeah, pretty much Erik, we still got a couple things to look at after lunch. It wasn't much different than our place, Jeff and his guys got everything under control for now."

Erik nodded, "Well, we're headed to the conference room to wait on the others and lunch, you ready to join us?"

Jim nodded, "Yeah, I think so." Then he smiled, "I believe I've annoyed Jeff enough for now, I'll be there in a few minutes."

Erik grinned, "Alright, sounds good. We'll see you there in a bit."