From the author: this is a bit of lore for one of the currently-in-progress stories from the Spacers Saga universe, a tale called Petrichor. This story is in many ways an origin point for the entire Spacers Saga universe, given that it deals with the very earliest stirrings of what would become the ICA, the Spacer Corps, and the various corporate and political entities which would shape Solar Space throughout the 21st - 26th centuries. Hope you enjoy! :)
The World of 2046
(An annotated map showing the different affiliations of nations in 2046, and regions of conflict therein)
(A chart providing additional detail on the above map)
October 2046. Six decades after an asteroid leveled Phoenix, Arizona, helping to end the First Cold War, China leads the Shanghai Pact amid a new era of global geopolitical tension. As instability drags on in Central Asia and Eastern Europe following a series of proxy conflicts between the two poles of global power, tensions between the Shanghai Pact and the North Atlantic Treaty Organization increase month by month.
The U.S. and NATO still represent the largest economic power on Earth, with the existential threat posed by the Shanghai Pact sustaining their long-term economic growth. But as this currently only ideological conflict escalates, the high frontier of space provides a new arena for the two superpowers to exercise their might and stimulate their economies. Expansion into this new frontier offers an opportunity to seize new resources and new heights of prestige for the two opponents, each of which seeks dominance there.
Regional powers, such as Brazil, India, the South African People’s Republic, and ASEAN maintain order in their own way, as conflicts in Central America, Africa, and Asia leave the world on the knife’s edge. With the civil war in Russia leaving thousands of nuclear warheads dangerously within reach of radical groups, fears of World War III have reached an all-time high. But these are not the only threats facing humanity.
Using captured alien technology, the secretive Special Intelligence Directorate has militarized the New Space Race under the name Operation Petrichor. On the moon, both sides have deployed special operators into a top-secret and not-always-bloodless standoff to control lunar resources. As 2046 drags on, the threat remains that this currently top-secret conflict could be revealed to the public back on Earth, sparking a rapid escalation and breakdown in diplomacy that could see the Second Space Race end in nuclear fire.
The Lunar Cold War
(An annotated map showing the disposition of forces at the Lunar south pole as of 2046)
After being dormant for more than thirty years, the Cold War heated up following the Russian invasion of Ukraine in 2022, which brought about a massive military intervention by the Western countries. As China and its allies flooded money into Russia’s military machine in the ensuing conflict, a new power dynamic emerged: on one side, the old North Atlantic Treaty Organization, and on the other, the Shanghai Cooperation Organization, an alliance led by an ascendant China and opposed to the Western world’s dominance of global politics and economics.
But that was only the beginning. As the New Cold War ramped up and demand for control of offworld resources grew in the governments of both superpowers, a new dimension to the conflict emerged. As of 2049, NATO’s Joint Lunar Operations Command and the Shanghai Pact’s Ministry of Aerospace Security are carrying out a tense cold war of their own across the craters and rilles of the lunar south pole. From bases tucked into the regolith and staffed as much by scientists as by both sides’ elite military personnel, a secret conflict played out during the heady years of the Second Space Race. From there each side watches the other, and on occasion, send out armed patrols to kill their opponents.
The Second Space Race may have begun with the United States having established permanent moon bases in the 2010s, but many on Earth now share fears that it will end with the outbreak of World War III. As the competing powers of NATO and the Shanghai Pact continue down the path of lunar brinkmanship, the ongoing specter of a Chinese attempt to seize Taiwan on the centennial of the PRC’s founding looms large in the minds of soldiers everywhere, including those sequestered on the moon’s southern pole. For they know that what begins on Earth may soon migrate to the heavens, and could spell doom for every one of them…
Timeline of Yesterday and Tomorrow
1989 - Asteroid 4581 Asclepius hit Phoenix, AZ, killing over a million people
1990 - USSR collapses as external pressures lead its constituent states to secede
1993 - Special Intelligence Directorate formed to shore up U.S. defense of space
1997 - Bureau of Special Investigations formed by Congress at behest of S.I.D.
2003 - Space Force founded to answer spaceborne threats to U.S. space power
2007 - Larsen Enterprises emerges as a major contractor for the U.S. Space Force
2014 - Russian aggression towards Ukraine catalyzes start of New Cold War
2018 - NATO forms Joint Lunar Operations Command to oversee cislunar space
2019 - U.S. initiates Artemis program in a bid to establish the first lunar bases
2021 - Revolution begins in Iran, leading to a U.S./NATO invasion & occupation
2022 - Russia invades Ukraine following an eight-year period of high tensions
2024 - Russo-Ukraine War ends in stalemate thanks to mediation from China
2026 - First U.S. base set up at Lunar south pole, with other nations following
2027 - S.I.D. initiates Project Petrichor to establish U.S. dominance in space
2029 - Charles Larsen reveals fusion breakthrough to a joint session of Congress
2036 - NASA-ESA team lands on Mars and sets up a base in the Valles Marineris
2039 - Occupation of Iran ends as UN organizes a new provisional governments
2043 - Global recession begins as betting on fusion power exceeds production
2045 - NATO initiates Operation Keystone to drill for lunar combat operations
The Players in Petrichor
Major Characters:
Agent Thomas Morrow:
Age Demographics 33 (born August 27, 2013, in El Paso, Texas)
Personal History: joined the Army out of high school under pressure of his father, future Chief of Staff Alan Morrow, Jr.; served several tours in Iran during the war which erupted following the September Revolution in 2021; was badly wounded in his third tour and took online courses for a degree in criminal justice while in physical therapy; left active duty in 2037 and joined the Bureau in 2039 after completing his studies in three years; has served as a field agent for seven years, with an exemplary record and excellent case closure rate
Personal Profile: a veteran of the B.S.I. who was inspired to join because of a “close encounter” in his own childhood, he has since grown jaded and sarcastic about the subject of his job, as years of investigating bogus claims of alien visitation have worn down his confidence in himself and the choices he has made in life; however, the Svalbard relic dubbed Item 531 will begin to reinvigorate this faded spirit and give him a renewed direction in life
Dr. Alicia Ricardo:
Demographics: 30 (born November 2, 2015, in Santa Fe, New Mexico)
Personal History: graduated top of her class at age 17, attained a Master’s Degree in anthropology at 22, and a PhD in archaeology at 28; pursuit of high academic achievement won her notice from government review boards for such agencies as NASA and DARPA, but she turned all offers of employment down in favor of pursuing her own goals, namely the research of ancient civilization; departed on an around-the-world trip in the fall of 2043 to pursue these goals, and is currently co-lead on an archaeological expedition in Svalbard
Personal Profile: a talented young anthropologist, linguist, and reported UFO truther who has spent the two years since receiving her doctorate traveling the globe in search of evidence for her belief in the unsupported ancient astronaut theory; her discovery of a strange relic in Svalbard as part of her hunt for a greater truth regarding the cosmos sets the plot in motion, and in many cases, it is her enthusiasm for finding the truth that moves the story along
Major Teresa Khorasani:
Demographics: 37 (born April 5, 2009, in Tehran, Iran)
Personal History: showed aptitude for STEM in primary school; family was forced to flee Iran in 2022 as a result of instability caused by the U.S. invasion the prior year; family eventually settled in the United States, where she won an appointment to the Air Force Academy in 2028 and graduated near the top of her class four years later; flew an A-10 strike aircraft during the tail end years of the occupation of her homeland, but transferred to the Space Force’s Special Investigations wing in 2039 after being grounded due to macular degeneration
Personal Profile: an up-and-coming officer, she has since come to believe that the U.S. involvement in Ukraine was a mistake, an opinion which has won her little praise from hardline Air Force brass who held onto old prejudices; since transferring to the Space Force, she has worked to research and assess threats to U.S. interests in space, and will come to serve as military liaison within the team that assembles to investigate Alicia’s find
Dr. Walter Fujitsu:
Demographics: 49 (born March 13, 1997, in San Francisco, California)
Personal History: with both parents dead by the time he was twelve, Fujitsu dove into physics as a lifelong passion; eventually moved into an emergent field called “special physics” which attempts to branch special relativity with quantum theory; has spent most of the years since receiving his doctorate in 2027 teaching & researching in this field at Caltech; some records indicate he may have had ties with the SID early in his professional career, which could be the reason he is kidnapped by their organization early on in the narrative
Personal Profile: an experimental physicist who gained his doctorate in the field of “special physics”, he was a consultant for the S.I.D. for a brief period during his postdoctoral studies, which leads them to seek him out near the start of Petrichor; after the others rescue him from captivity in one of the story’s pivotal sequences, he will be the brains behind the newly-assembled team’s investigations of the Directorate’s activities
Vernon “Thoth” Morrow:
Demographics: age 62 (born December 19, 1983, in Chicago, Illinois)
Personal History: son of Vietnam-era Army Major Alan Morrow, Sr. and younger brother of Army Chief of Staff Alan Morrow, Jr.; recruited to the CIA in 2019, he served during as a station chief and Special Activities Center ops chief during the Iranian War; records go dark in 2040, during that year’s hectic election cycle; he resurfaced following his supposedly anonymous disclosure of a trove of state secrets via his “Thoth” personality in the spring of 2042; has been elusive since then, only showing up online to leak further documents
Personal Profile: a former high echelon CIA officer who fell off the grid after finding out the truth about Phoenix, he became a diffuser of conspiracy theories, chief among which is the notion that the Phoenix Event has U.S. government ties, and that the cover-up is part of a larger conspiracy relating to the ongoing Second Cold War and New Space Race; he will be a key, albeit enigmatic contact for the Skywatch Alpha team as they probe the case
Supporting Characters:
Major General Luisa Jacoby: the commander of the United States Space Force’s Special Investigations wing, she has fought for the entirety of her two years in the post to transform this subdivision of the Space Force into a respected organization; she charges Major Khorasani with being the USSF’s eyes and ears in Skywatch and is very involved in supporting her mission as it becomes more complicated
Charles Larsen: the charismatic CEO of Larsen Industries, a major defense and commercial aerospace contractor; he has come to believe that humanity must become a multi-planetary species at any cost, and uses his nearly unlimited resources to serve this agenda; he is also a de facto antagonist, as his overriding ambition to control space often puts him at odds with the aims of the protagonists
Senator Janice Sandusky: the chairman of the Senate Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs, who often plays antagonist to Skywatch's mission to investigate the events surrounding Petrichor; though this seems to come naturally from her role in the grand scheme of National Security affairs, her hidden motivations are much more complex and insidious in nature
Ian Cavanaugh: the leader of field ops for Project Petrichor, he is the primary antagonist in the story; he is the truest version of a status quo nationalist, and after the events and revelations of the past few decades, he has concluded that the United States must be ready to stand against whatever threats the world might send to our doorstep, even if it means overlooking moral and ethical boundaries
Major Factions:
Bureau of Special Investigations: Government agency formed in 1997 to investigate unorthodox incidents around the U.S., particularly those with potential extraterrestrial links. Born in the aftermath of the Phoenix Event, it was conceived by the S.I.D. as a misdirection to hide the real cause of this catastrophe. It has been a joke in the intelligence community for most of its life, but the discovery of a strange relic in Svalbard is about to change that, as the BSI will soon be forced to team up with the USAF to investigate threats posed by the collision of unscrupulous factions on Earth
U.S. Space Force: Founded in 2003, supposedly in response to the increase in spaceborne threats to U.S. interests, the USSF was in fact dreamt up as a means with which to address increased foreign presence in space. As of 2046, most of its roughly hundred thousand enlisted and officers are involved in ongoing operations aimed at monitoring the skies for dangers that may originate from regions beyond Earth’s atmosphere. Major Khorasani is an officer in the Special Investigations wing, and will represent the interests of the Department of Defense as part of Skywatch Alpha
Project Skywatch: Formed as a partnership between the B.S.I. and Space Force, it is tasked with tracking down information on the S.I.D. and Operation Petrichor. Its main mission in the story, and the one which will drive the plot forward, is to prevent the ongoing Cold War in Space from erupting full-scale into World War III, a task made more and more difficult as the machinations of the S.I.D., Black Sun, and Charles Larsen converge to make a conflict over control of the moon all but inevitable. The four main characters are part of its advance field team, Skywatch Alpha
Larsen Enterprises: An aerospace contractor that grew exponentially thanks to post-Phoenix Event spending, it now has branches in virtually every field. Its current CEO, Charles Larsen, has grown restless with simply leading his family’s company, and instead dreams of leading our species to a future in space. He has unknowingly profited for years on the secrets being drip-fed out of the programs organized directly at the behest of the SID, and soon lays plans to co-opt the findings of Operation Petrichor for his own gains when he learns the full breadth of its potential in 2046
Special Intelligence Directorate: The archetypal covert group whose name hides its purpose, S.I.D. was formed in 1993 as a response to the Phoenix Event. In the years since, particularly in the aftermath of the Phoenix Event, it has gained significant power to leverage against threats to American interests. It runs Operation Petrichor to establish American military control of cislunar space in advance of the Shanghai Pact. This is done both to seek out and reverse-engineer alien artifacts and to acquire a new high ground in a Cold War which has dragged into the early twenty-first century
Order of the Black Sun: Founded by escaped Nazis after World War II, it grew into a full-blown death cult in the wake of the Phoenix Event. Since then, they have infiltrated government & industry to manipulate global geopolitics to suit their sinister agenda. One such infiltrator is a well-respected U.S. Senator, who will attempt to co-opt the Skywatch program to benefit the Order’s plans. By the mid-2040s, it has also caught on to Project Petrichor, and intends to use it as a means to bring about the “final conflict” from which they will emerge as the masters of the human race
End transmission. Fucking perfect.