IW 2 - King Saud's ice paradise

Context

The licensees of Charter 22 are about to launch TCIV CAMEROON to Callisto. There, they expect to find a second hand Jump-2 drive to replace the old and tired one on board.

Shatah: Saudi colony on the fringes.

Callisto

The Saudi royal family founded a colony on Callisto some 50 years ago. The colony’s main economic activity is intercept refueling for starship transiting through the Terran system without stopping at the main world. Callisto is a 100km-thick layer of ice (water and carbon dioxide) over a 10-20km deep subsurface ocean. Some 45K people, mainly arabic-speaker live there.   

Callisto (Moon)

Synopsis

Callisto is a 50 y.o. terran colony built barely outside of the 100D line from Jupiter. Its mainstay economy is fast refueling of traffic going through Terra but not heading to the mainworld. An auxiliary economy based on the harvest of rare metal at the bottom of its subsurface ocean.  

Data Block

Physical: Diameter: 2,400Km (0.4 Earth); Gravity: 0.127G; Type: Frozen(Ice); Temperature: 134K (Frozen); Atmosphere: Trace; Other: Tidal locked;

Commercial: WTN: 3.0; Gravity: 0.127G; Code: Ni, Na, Ex; Starport: Class II 1 downport, 1 refueling orbital station;  

Shatah colony

Population: 44K; Environment: Terrain: underground (ice); Hygiene: +1; Culture: Language: Terra(Middle-East); Language: Anglic, Arabic; Literacy: Normal; TL: 9; Wealth: Average; Status: 0-3;  Politics: Government: Corporate Administration; CR: 3; Military: --;  DB: +4; 

Shatah-1: Main colony (35K). Located 85Km under the surface. Home of civil administration. Homogeneously muslim. Local diet made of imported goods and locally grown autotrophic biomass from the depth of the subsurface ocean.

Shatah-2: Lowport (8K). Located 100m under the surface. Starport operations, scrapyards, and limited engineering capacity.  Magrail elevator to Shatah-1 and Gaussian Orbital canon for freight. 

Shatah-3: Corporate Mining Venture (1.5K). Run by Callisto Prospectorate LLC. Built on the ocean floor. Reachable only via submarines. 

Shatah-5: Remote nuclear fusion plant powering the entire planet. Location undisclosed. 

Notes

Shatah was founded by Saudi interest and populated with middle-eastern colonists. The moon is covered by 100km of ice (Water, carbon dioxide, volatile compounds). The moon is under regular bombardment by meteorites. As a result, the installations are all carved under at least 100m of the moon's crust. The bulk of the colony is, however, located near the ceiling of the subsurface ocean.

The main economic activity is the fast-refueling service allowing transient traffic to be intercepted out of the 100D line of Jupiter. The interceptors are refueling drones propelled from Callisto using gaussian accelerators.