It's deathly quiet within the cavernous space.
Mostly built to cater to a booming tourist industry, Camp Armstrong National Space Flight Museum was now brought to its proverbial knees thanks to the official red-level travel alert. A population consisting of simple janitorial robots and a handful of extremely bored commercial workers, the party of System Defense Force marines and F.B.I. agent didn’t actually seem out of place for once. An integration thanks to absolute desperation, any signs of life perfectly integrated into an ecosystem of scientific exhibits and interactive augmented reality simulators.
Lieutenant Keys makes a mixed joke and suggestion to the rest as they all idle in front of one of the central plaza’s information kiosks. “Yeah… any of you guys think the Space Liberation Front’s gonna actually attack this place? Cause there ain’t anything to make a statement about here unless you count the copied pendants from Luna 2… or the Apollo 11 replica which is like… I mean… come on.”
“Good to see the place. Just a vacation ok?” Ling simply dismisses the concern, targeting Agent Morsow with his next slice of advisement. “Should have three layer security on choke point, not just one. Easy to stop bad thing from happening than shooting it in here.”
Keys flaps his lips as he sighs. “It’s all guns and guns with you guys. Cherny and I want more representation in this security assessment.”
The Medic is taken aback at the mention of his name. “Me?”
“Yeah old solo-man mentioned that there weren’t any chemical sniffers here right? That means they can’t detect you bringing cans in with sarin gas right? You can just walk right in with a coffee thermos and kill EVERYONE since this is a closed air-circulation system. Forget the guns, forget the bombs, we gotta go efficient and deadly. It's the medical way to do it.”
Marauder Team just stares at their Combat Engineer with absolute horror.
“In-game.” Lieutenant Keys adds quickly.
Agent Morsow counters the suggestion without pause. “The environmental system within this space is capable of resisting chemical attacks, if they occur.”
Mercier asks the Lieutenant the question. “Is this what you were considering at police station?”
Keys innocently shrugs. “I mean… yeah. What else?”
The Squad Leader places a gentle hand onto his friend’s shoulder. “Keys, after you are done in System Defense Force I will need to kill you.”
“I was JOKING.” Lieutenant Keys insists as they all continue to stare at him. “Ok stop looking at me like that guys, that's an order.”
Four wings flanking a single main thoroughfare, each one left to the four sections of humanity’s flight to the stars. Each left with its own unique design, independent of the neoclassical arches of the main hall and instead allowed to flourish within its own identity.
Humanity’s history of spaceflight is, at least with best estimates, only under a century and a half old. Yet even within such a short amount of time, there's still enough artifacts to fully furnish three out of the four spaces.
With a bit of cheating.
Brutalist architecture represents beginnings, the first stumbling forays beyond the atmosphere of earth. Small model rockets from a Nazi V2 to a full scale replica of Sputnik line one of the walls, in between them several interactive displays featuring a game of rocket creation and fun, child aimed mathematical rocketry activities alongside the replica Apollo 11 lander.
But Marauder Team remains affixed to the one major feature.
The Saturn V first stage takes up so much space it crushes human beings by comparison. Up close the thing envelops the entirety of the visual spectrum, a near twenty digital plaques lining the ground with scrolling images detailing the slow, inevitable development of the orbital lanes.
Several more warning signs also line the fuselage, printed in the languages of the international gang of four giving its designed purpose.
Careful climbing is allowed.
Lieutenant Keys defends his own country before anything else. “Ok, is it so bad that we Americans like to celebrate our national achievements? I mean we got a man on the moon first. And technically we got someone on Mars as well. ”
“Russian in space first.” Cherny casually jokes with his thick accent.
Keys groans. “Alright fair, but we’re in an American station, it’s gonna be ameri-centric alright? Like you could go to Mond-1 and their museum is gonna be filled with all the European probes and stuff. Not to mention Gegerian…”
Master Sergeant Ling immediately goes for the exposed handles as he reads the chinese translation of the plaque, a confirmation of interactivity giving way to childlike wonder. A subordinate Marksman follows as well, a single bounding leap off the ground sending Mercier masterfully towards the very peak of the horizontally mounted cylindrical structure.
The playground is made for children of course.
Mounted and padded handles spaced evenly on each side, an interior cut out both as cost savings as well as a self-descriptive exhibit. Empty fuel and oxidizer tanks crafted as cavernous jungle gyms, bundles of wire stripped away for crawl spaces able to capture the vast scales needed for mankind’s initial attempts at inter-orbital missions.
The structure provides some challenge to the System Defense Force, bodies undershooting hand holds as unacclimated minds try to wrap around the light, but still existent pull of lunar gravity. Warriors in the orbital lanes completely out of their element here, trying to make the most of their situation.
The Medic of the team shouts caution towards both of the climbers from below, a left hand slapping his forehead with a charade translation of broken english. “Watch head bang!”
He’s too late as Master Sergeant Ling slams his forehead against a padded aerodynamic fin. Sharp pain surges through his face as he suddenly pulls himself back, the dull thud resounding across the empty space. “AUH, 操他妈!!!”
Lieutenant Keys makes the obvious joke at his friend’s expense. “He’s got a thick skull, he’ll be fine.”
“Look bad.” Cherny counters with a bit of concern.
“Ah well he’s part of the helmet shot club. Bumping your head on a kids’ playground is nothing.”
“Helmet shot?”
“Ah.” Keys takes a moment to find the correct definition for the uninitiated Medic. “We sorta brought that back from the old Nanshan operators; to get in you just gotta get shot in the helmet and not die.”
Cherny scrunches his eyes at the near absurd entry requirements. “That is… bad.”
“Well with the GEN III suits that came out like seven years ago, you can literally take anti-armor rounds into the visor no problem. One of the reasons why the System Defense Force informally brought the club back: more of a ‘look how awesome this new body armor is’ sorta a deal now that almost anyone can survive taking a round right in the face.”
The Medic’s expression pulls itself downward, a long silence as he tries not to bring his memories back.
Lieutenant Keys’ laughter stops as he realizes it too, suddenly sucking air through teeth as he accidentally finds the social red flag. “Uhhh… fuck… well. Anyway…”
The second museum wing takes a completely different turn, an architecture more naturalistic in replication of an Appalachian forest. Real oak trees crossing a digital blue sky, an exhibit of greenery mixed with speakers playing a nature based ambient soundtrack. A full replication of the American woodlands, an exhibition focused on the secondary effects of space-research upon the natural world.
They’re trying to reverse the decay of an era of unfiltered progress, their first hurdle the reversal of a self-caused climate disaster. An American central design; genetically modified plantations of fast growing, carbon sequestering algae strands occupying massive dystopian farmlands. Plantlife utterly ravenous in a near-daily life cycle of death and decay, sucking in atrocious amounts of carbon dioxide in the process. Engorged corpses remain as pungent sludge to be pumped deep into an earthen crust, both as a causal sequestration within abandoned salt mines and additional disposal within nuclear storage sites.
A disgusting and quite potent smelling reality rejected here, instead opted to maintain the illusion of utopian abundance. Forests of trees, fields of poly-growth crops, and happy farming communities; easily digestible for the new American way.
All of them hyper focus on the sealed off exhibit at the center of the wing, a real patch of grass sitting beneath a massive oak tree of unimaginable proportions. Green leaves flutter in a faked wind, a trunk swaying at the center of an artificial habitat; beautiful and picturesque despite its surroundings.
“Soil real.” Cherny notes, passing over the park-like structure. “No hykroponick system.”
Corporal Mercier gives them all her analysis of the situation, dark eyes hovering over each detail of the exhibit. “It is tres beautiful…”
Agent Morsow, the interloper, interrupts with a clearing cough. “Apollo Park is larger, for all intents and purposes.”
“Yeah but we’re not there are we?” Keys turns towards Corporal Mercier, pointing at her with a fast finger gun. A non-serious abuse of authority as he commands her with the most forbidden of tasks, the fifty year old joke somehow even more relevant given the circumstances. “Touch grass Mercier, that's an order.”
A case of content theft: this narrative is not rightfully on Amazon; if you spot it, report the violation.
She narrows her eyes at the Lieutenant, a long pause before turning back to the exhibit with a dismissing huff.
Again, it's meant for children. Interactive exhibits focusing on the control of climate and various other natural forces. Simulation games accurate enough to replicate a generalized package of a planetary ecosystem, played through the lens of a heavily implied global dictator hellbent on the restoration of a half-destroyed biosphere. More adversarial ones exist as well, games involving armies of ants fighting over pies played out through nearly thirty square meters of low gravity ground and the redirection of holographic rivers with placed dams.
“Boooring!”
They don’t stay too long, instead instinctively drawn towards the second to last exhibition.
It's built as a combat simulation; like some sort of orbital station in the midst of a gunfight.
It’s a war in the orbital lanes, a propaganda piece as a warning for the dangers of unscrupulous power brokers and corporations. Artifacts from that era on display, the archaic combat space suits left unrepaired as trained eyes catch signs of bullet holes and patchwork repairs. Photographs and videos, all censored upon interactive plaques, show glimpses of brutal close quarters combat; the vicious muzzle flashes intermixed with the detonations of HE grenades recalling a lawless era from before their time.
Master Sergeant Ling summarizes the entire squad’s attitude as he captures their dull faces. “Long time ago, bad times.”
Agent Morsow blinks at the unexpected reaction. “Really?”
“Yeah, wasn't exactly a fun time or place to be in if you weren’t part of NanShan Corp’s personal death squad.” Lieutenant Keys follows off his friend. “Around the 2040s it was just mercs and pirates shooting each other without any sort of rules of engagement with weapons and ammo smuggled aboard rackety lift vehicles from very, very poor nationals. Absolute psychopaths live streaming vacuum executions, children getting kidnapped from low gravity medical clinics… no dress code too, so you had uneducated idiots painting suits bright pink for IFF and getting wasted by snipers.”
Almost on cue the image appears on one of the main walls, a short video of the wildly decorated operator maneuvering through space caught barely on camera before a convenient camera cuts away from impending violence.
Cherny adds onto the Combat Engineer. “And then, no medikal system to save you if hit bad. So one real wouand in chest, you die.”
Keys provides the context to the observing FBI agent. “Yeah, wounds don’t exactly stitch up quite right when there’s a hundred kPa difference between your internal organs and the cold, lifeless vacuum of space. Not to mention…”
“The lower gravity affects first aid.” Morsow finishes from Lieutenant Keys.
“Well I was gonna say that it’s a coin toss between getting lucky and having your innards freeze like a plug or getting boiled alive from the inside out… depending on if you’re on the light or dark side of the orbital of course. But uh, that’s only back then when almost nobody had those fancy self-sealing suits and all.”
The mental image is enough to ward off any other conversation piece, instead leaving all of them awkwardly standing around a display of artifacts.
There’s enough here to fill the space wall to wall, ceiling to ceiling. Memories of an orbital defense force, left to the viewers to assume their stories and meanings.
A broken half of an antiquated deployment shuttle sticks from the ground, its hull perforated by high caliber autocannon rounds and subsequently totaled by an assumed explosive atmospheric decompression. Sharpen edges of shrapnel polished dull by museum curators for the exhibit, yet some of the vessel’s internals remain exposed. Wiring and kevlar fabric ripped to shreds, alongside a near perfect cross section of an atmospheric recycler; only now starting to decay through atmospheric exposure.
A holographic screen describes the internals of the vessel, brief descriptions hovering over sections as Marauder Team slowly pass through the space. Trained eyes making sense of the cramped, claustrophobic area; imaginations attempting to quantify spending any extended period of time within roller-coaster style deployment seats.
All of the marines catch the familiar logo in latinized chinese, the lettering spelling out the romanization of eastern language. Plastered everywhere, from every single window, cargo door, to even the seats themselves:
NanShan industries
Corporal Mercier blinks as her sharp eyes catch the figure of the item. “Strange to think about that… most NanShan things we see are in pirates guns. They used to have ships as well as mercenaries.”
“They had everything.” The Squad Leader continues. “But they are gone now.”
“Is that…?” Morsow begins before being interrupted by Lieutenant Keys.
“Yeah, the old chinese mega corp that had a monopoly on all the guns, the ships, the stations in orbit and took none of the insurance costs for blowing them up. Got so rich off of everyone that for a few years in the 40s and 50s they basically were the Chinese government.”
“Until Station One.” Ling reminds.
The Combat Engineer takes sarcasm to the event, trying to ease the absolute tragedy of the event. “Yeah, when you’re implicated in being complicit in a terrorist act for insurance money that’s a bit of a bad vibe. Chinese government came down hard, and now the corp’s broken up into what they are now.”
Cherny adds the name of his previous employer. “Like Orbital Defense Company.”
Keys does the math. “Yeah, I mean Officer Solomasturbator’s gotta be old enough to have been in during the NanShan days right? Like… right?! Might explain why him and the Admiral have that… bit of history.”
He’s made aware of the Agent’s presence with a curious glance, Master Sergeant Ling pulling his friend downward in a whisper huddle. “Hold a second. So Officer Solomon is here to advise America government on security? Old Nanshan helping Americans?”
Cherny pulls himself into the conversation as well, answering his squad leader’s question. “Orbitkal Dfence Company is West Russia now.”
“So not America?”
Mercier narrows her eyes as she joins in as well. “I do not think it is.”
Agent Morosow clears his throat. “Excuse me, is something…?”
They all pull themselves out of the huddle, a furious glance between each as Lieutenant Keys is chosen as the random spokesperson from the group project. He turns with a smile. “It’s nothing, we’re just discussing strategic level stuff. Not technically our problem, but whatever good for us idiots right?”
There’s a constant to the descriptions, overtly technical and anti-conflict. A full description of the horrors of warfare within the hostile environment of space, the vowing to keep peace despite the penchant for violence amongst the stars. A reality of their current situation ironic, the preaching of non-violence spitting in the face of events wrought in a prior book amongst the orbital lanes of earth.
All of Marauder Team takes a comedic moment to make eye contact between one another before continuing.
They all come to gaze upon a strange and vast mixture of discarded magazines and broken firearms mounted atop the flanking wall. Familiar forms of the GSW series of firearms pockmarked with debris impact with the absurdist bodies of literal hundred year old kalashnikov rifles. Double barreled shotguns smuggled into orbit from homesteads, disposed of after their two included shots and later naturally cold welded together in the hostile zero gravity environment.
The weapon magazines are as diverse as they come, the earliest forms of caseless munitions painted with yellow stripes as a display of their experimental status while some half-melted plastic bodies are left with some disabled ammunition unfired. Various other debris recovered from cleanup drones, delivered to motherships and subsequently sorted into the archives of historical curators and displayed within climate controlled museum environments.
All marked with the obvious red line of DO NOT TOUCH.
Master Sergeant Ling leans into the display slightly, a gaze set on the off-color white bullpup rifle. Mechanism still somewhat intact, minus a deactivating bullet hole passing right through the upper receiver. “Old kind of GSW looks like what we have.”
“Don’t fix what ain’t broke bro.” Lieutenant Keys whistles.
A hand outstretched towards it, stopped by Agent Morsow. “The plaque says don’t touch.”
The Marine doesn’t pause as he gives his observation. “Is this secure? To have firearm out in the open?”
“They’re all deactivated.” The FBI Agent informs. “Plus the security system will monitor any suspicious activity such as an attempt at stealing any of the displays. Not that anyone would try.”
Lieutenant Keys points towards the closest ones with a finger, an engineering degree paying out dividends now. “Well I can see there’s also securing bolts attached to each one. See those punched holes through the upper receiver? They’re used to secure ‘em to the wall so nobody gets any funny ideas. Anyway, I wanna go get dinner, let’s…”
She has gifted eyes. A brain specially structured by evolution to give credence to the optical organs mounted within her skull, mutated slightly through random genetic folds to an even more talented degree. An ancestral history of humanity in its hunt for the beasts of vast grasslands, now used in first person shooters and lethal takedowns with marksman rifles.
Corporal Estelle Mercier’s gaze processes batches of dozens, a mind hyper focused on anomalies within thousands of different pieces of debris. Near perfect eyesight scanning each and every one of them, processing every single broken edge, deactivated bullet, and securing bolt.
Almost every securing bolt.
“Hold.” Mercier stops them as sharp eyes catch the almost innocuous mistake three and a half meters above them. “There is no bolt on that one.”
She points upward, forcing everyone to squint towards the near unidentifiable object.
A specification comes as she pulls out of her hyperfixation, providing a locational context to it. “GSW-MSP pistol at ten meters, between old AK-mag and big piece of EMU.”
It blends in perfectly with the rest, the insignificant firearm amongst thousands more easily missed by a casual observation.
They all see it as well.
“No fucking way….” Keys begins as gears within his brain begin to collide.
“Ok. Keys, you are with me.” Master Sergeant Ling gives the Marksman a short nod and a thumbs up to the Combat Engineer, the two leaping off the ground towards the display.
FBI Agent Morsow objects immediately. “Hey, you shouldn’t be touching…!”
It takes a few seconds in .11 gravity for them to reach the intended target, hands grasping onto various other pieces of debris as they settle onto the display. Feet planted onto the wall, a discomforting bit of mountain climbing exercise bringing semi-happy memories of System Defense Force basic training.
The Combat Engineer needs only three seconds to diagnose the issue. A thin plastic breakaway tie holding the thing in place, his mind thinking aloud. “Yeah wait, that’s not a securing bolt. And wait a fucking…”
From below both Chenry and Mericer stand with readied stances, a position ready to assist any incoming dangers. Agent Morsow, standing next to them, simply gives an exasperated sigh as the obvious sound of snapping plastic resounds across the museum wing.
A system alerted as monitoring machine learning algorithms detect the anti-citizen act, a response time of three minutes calculated. But the signal doesn’t connect, a security staff blissfully unaware of the disabled connection.
Through security cameras, isolated machine learning algorithms watch as both the System Defense Force soldiers descend slowly back down onto the ground.
The half handgun, half personal defense weapon is large enough to comfortably fit both hands within the grip, specifically created for operators in bulky space suits to stuff digits into the oversized trigger guard. Short barreled for close quarter gunfights, the reversed horizontally mounted feeding system allowing for a profile to be cut down to a point of extreme hazards. A vertical grip extending beyond the barrel itself, the design flaw seemingly made to guillotine suited fingers off with muzzle blasts in the midst of panic firing.
A NanShan Industries branded GSW-MSP; undamaged in its display.
“Сука Блять…” Cherny immediately swears as he recognizes the implication.
Agent Morsow gives a nervous insistence as he watches the Lieutenant hold the supposedly deactivated firearm. “Please… you’re not allowed to take items from the…”
“Oh trust me buddy, if there’s anyone here allowed to have it it's us.” Lieutenant Keys interrupts coldly, carefully handing the thing towards Corporal Mercier with an implicit intent. “You saw it first, you get the honors.”
It's an inside joke amongst the Combat Engineering Corps of the SDF, passed on through the generations without a full understanding of its actual purpose. Part of the optional, not really enforced, yet critical 15 rules of their own clique is suddenly made clear as Lieutenant Johnathan Keys removes the earplugs from within his upper chest pocket.
Wordlessly distributed amongst his squad, a final outsider stared at.
“W-what do you need them for?” Agent Morosow nervously begins to reach for his phone.
Lieutenant Keys chuckles as Corporal Mercier flicks the safety lever to live, aiming the weapon towards a thick, far off wall. “Just cover your ears dude.”