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A sun-battered shuttle lander sat lop-sided and abandoned a quarter mile from its launch pad. Apartment bloc-sized treads were sunken deep into an overgrown carpet of gravel.'
“Surprised the damn thing hasn’t keeled over. It’s leaning like that one tower in…” the man’s voice trailed off. “Y’know. Spain. Or wherever.”
Two figures stood under a simple white awning. It was the only shade in the paved-over lot. Both wore loose-fitting, short-sleeved clothes with pockets sewn into any available surface. One stared over at the prototype shuttle, while the other remained buried in a mountain of paperwork.
“Why does the permit keep calling it that?” the second man asked. “The Canaveral Cosmodrome?”
Germaine scratched at uneven patches of stubble near his chin. His associate, Soto, stood behind a fold-up desk. A bulky but state-of-the-art laptop sat between the pair.
“Sign’s still up.” Soto motioned west; towards the road they had come in on. “It’s still called Cape Canaveral,” Soto said.
“What, we’re not supposed to change the name?” Germaine looked about for an audience that did not materialize. “All those car dealership moguls and county sheriffs on the news have started calling themselves commissars.”
They’d be arguing about this well into the afternoon. Unsatisfied with their current sample size, Germaine thumbed at his radio.
“Hey, Demolition Man!”
Static rippled over their comms network.
“It’s Dan.” A voice rose over the static, insistent.
“Right. Demo Dan. We’ve got a question for you.”
Germaine waited as the radio crackled with interference.
“Command center is empty. A dozen groups got to it before we did. But it looks like there’s a floor safe they missed. Maybe get Soto in here to crack it.”
“Hold on, this is important: Is this ‘Kennedy Cosmodrome’ or is it ‘Space Center?’”
“The hell are you talking about?” Bland upper-midwestern dulcet tones overwhelmed the synthetic screech of their radios.
Germaine looked to Soto, then to their salvage crew down the tarmac, then to the radio. Dan awaited a response.
“Well, aren’t we supposed to change the name?” Germaine asked.
Theoretically, now, just in some bizzarro alternate version of 1993, if the Soviets had splintered into their constituent states – all political and economic models down the drain, worldwide influence flown the coup, federal credibility squandered – wouldn’t those former Soviet satellite states adopt names and formalities of the capitalist west? Party officials would waste no time in appointing themselves presidents and board-chairmen of newly privatized oil conglomerates, or whatnot.
“Look, that community college down the road gets to call itself a commune. I want my Cosmodrome. It sounds fancy.”
Having badgered his way to victory, Germaine’s gaze returned to their command desk. An uneven mesa of balsawood sat on rusting fold-out legs. Layers of survey maps and assorted legalese covered the table. Coffee cups, a stapler, and a souvenir snow globe pinned a map of the cape in place.
“Command center is a bust. Launch pad is barren.” Germaine crossed these sites out with a brush-like red pen. “About the only thing we’ve got any claim to is the damned gift shop.”
Few locations remained untouched. Hangars were the first place to look, naturally. Digging in would allow the crew to stake their claim, discourage other salvagers from muscling in on the site.
“Unlicensed salvagers have taken anything not nailed down,” Dan reported. “What’s left is: two shuttles, three trunksful of assorted electronics, and whatever’s in this safe.”
“Shuttles are dead weight until they can be moved or deconstructed from the bolts up,” Germaine said.
The craft wasn’t leaving the tarmac without a jumbo jet and all sorts of specialist equipment that got pawned off when NASA got downsized into nonexistence. Deconstruction came with its own risks but was imminently more doable than flying the glider to Kourou or Maranhão, let alone Baikonur.
Soto nodded towards the derelict shuttle, miming a snip-snip motion with spare wire cutters. “Electronics alone will be worth millions.”
“Putting aside cost of labor and time it takes to hawk the stuff…” Germaine tried out the math in his head – accounting for hyperinflation tended to summon a splitting icepick migraine dead between his eyes. “Eh, enough to turn a profit. But securing the fuel lines is essential. Lord knows what kind of carcinogens are in that rocket fuel.”
Can’t set Dan loose with the explosives, went unsaid by the pair.
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A sweltering afternoon wore on. Germaine called the trucks up to the tarmac, where he spent long hours running inventory.
Mechanical doodads, rare metals, and spare computer parts paid the bills. Chips and motherboards fetched a fair price, even as scrap.
These old, decommissioned government sites were treasure troves for “misplaced” hardware. Things that missed the official federal restructuring liquidation drives of ’89. Beige-hued office computer casing, state of the art software in thirty-set floppy disk collections, kilobytes of hard RAM, megabytes of storage space. Everything an enterprising rocket scientist needed to run a modern, national aerospace operation. Any foreign organization, surviving corporation, or aspiring militia would buy this right out the back of the storage van.
Paper documents, unwiped hard drives, specialty hardware – these were potentially more valuable. Most documents were just invoices, HR dossiers, and press releases. But anything related to space flight sells like hotcakes on the international markets.
Their last big job was in Houston. Germaine took a moth-eaten instruction booklet on how to repair the orbit of Spacelab as part of his cut. Spacelab didn’t even exist anymore – fell apart long before the federal system. Within a week, some suit with a Portuguese surname contacted him, unsolicited, with instructions to meet at an upscale NOLA hotel. Germaine had traded the book over in exchange for one hundred eighty thousand Brazilian real, snug in an accompanying briefcase.
Naturally, Germaine had called up Soto and Dan, and the crew was off to a rocket production facility in Alabama. The proceeds of that salvage proved enough to fund a trip to the Atlantic coast.
Cape Canaveral (Cosmodrome – whatever!) was the public face of the old American space program. Smaller-scale salvagers had poured over the easy pickings like subsequent bands of voracious locusts. But there were still ripe pickings for larger crews.
It would take days, months even, to sort through the documents. Even five hidden gems like that instruction manual would cover operating costs. And that wasn’t even considering the shuttles; find the right contact in India, Japan, or Brazil, and even the lowliest grunt worker on their crew could walk out of Florida as a millionaire in a currency that was only experiencing a thousand percent inflation as opposed to a million.
Germaine sat in the lead truck. The back hatch was open, with a portable fan set at full blast. Bundles of insulated wiring ran from a custom socket over to a distant generator. Atop this generator sat a fancy solar array they’d fished out of R&D. So long as there was sun, there would be power. And Central Florida was scorching whenever it wasn’t flooding.
Inventory came to an abrupt halt when the radio blared.
“Got motion at the gate.” A distorted voice warped into Soto’s South Texas drawl. “Need eyes on ‘em, over.”
“Alright, alright,” Germaine responded. “Over.”
With the trucks secure, Germaine made for an ATV parked at the head of the convoy.
Narrow, elevated dirt roads radiated out from between the major launch sites. A larger road cut off due west, passing by a welcome sign on its way inland.
One aspect of the Canaveral site beguiled scouting and watch duty; it was nothing but swamp for miles around. Flat like Nebraska and two-thirds of that was flooded. Remaining stealthy required inching at glacial pace through the swamp with the alligators and all manner of poisonous snakes. Flat roads and lines of sight meant anyone who approached could spy on guards just as well as they could be spotted themselves.
“Approaching the front gate,” Germaine yelled over the radio.
Roar from a motor engine drowned out any response.
Welcome to Cape Canaveral.
The plain stucco sign served as fair-enough cover. Guess they never bothered changing the sign to “cosmodrome.” Probably budgetary issues.
Germaine poked his head out above the sign, using his now-inert ATV as a boost. A ghillie-covered helmet wouldn’t fool anyone aside from Germaine’s own nerves. Still, it had an aesthetic quality to it. A pair of binoculars scanned the same road tourists used to drive down.
A boxy monstrosity approached at idle speed. It was a sleek metallic black, with mirrors tinted so dark it looked like a solid box with wheels.
“Probably bulletproof. Goanna maintain radio silence until I determine their intentions, over.”
No response. Taking “radio silence” to heart, it seemed.
The armored vehicle continued its slow approach. Germaine sat behind his precarious cover, wondering what they could use to damage this thing. Wheels were an obvious weak point, but Germaine’s trusty 9mm might have trouble piercing through any armor at all.
Broken branches and assorted palms bobbed about in the swamp. There was just enough driftwood within grabbing distance to throw into the road as a makeshift barricade.
The truck inched closer. It had an angular, blocky design common to the larger trucks of the era. Curiously, it was a Ford. Only government agents and millionaires bought domestic.
“What’s the situation?” asked Soto over the radio.
“We’re going to need a larger barricade.”
The radio crackled. “Is it a convoy?”
“No. One truck. A Ford. Which is weird, right?”
Soto radioed in an affirmative. “Feds.”
“Or someone wanting to look like a fed,” Dan added once Soto’s transmission died down.
“Somebody needs to go back to base camp and find the permit.”
Before the salvage crew could respond, the truck rolled to a stop in front of the meagre roadblock of driftwood. There Germaine waited five feet from the hood of the car. Only the gaudy stucco welcome sign provided any amount of cover at all.
It was more a limo than a truck, and a super-stretch at that. A good twenty feet stood between the front wheels and back. While the hood possessed the usual sleek luxury you’d expect out of a limo, the back end was blocky like a Humvee. A sunroof towards the back would have been an excellent place to mount a turret. And yet, it was bare; style won out over function. A rare occurrence in those days.
While Germaine was preoccupied thinking of how to up-armor this monstrosity, the unseen driver was sizing up the obstacle. After a moment’s hesitation, the limo-Humvee flattened the barricade with relative ease.
The third-to-last window rolled down halfway. The sun caught on the mirrored glass at just the right angle to blind Germaine.
“Hey, you.” An airy voice came from an open window. “I’m looking for NASA.”
“Packed up and left a few years ago. Here’s what’s left of it.” Germaine motioned towards the welcome sign. “Hope you’re not here for a rocket launch.”
“Well,” the mystery woman said. “Is there anything left?”
“An old shuttle or two, launch pad equipment. Snow globes too. Gift shop’s still there.”
There was a dull mechanical thunk as the doors unlocked.
“Hop in.”
Germaine scanned the length of the overlong limo. It dawned on him, belatedly, that rival salvagers were not about to shoot him.
The door swung open. Germaine hopped in.
Eleven empty seats waited, with one occupied by a woman with a shoulder profile buffered by a puffed-up business suit.
Another pane of tinted glass sectioned off the lounge from the driver’s compartment. At the woman’s signal, the driver – a gray haired, besuited fellow with a crew cut – continued the slow advance down the causeway.
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