///From the author: these are some of the details for another story in the Spacer's Saga universe, called Outpost Providence. This story deals with yet another "crusty veteran who's moved on to bigger things but still carries the ghosts of his past," who in this case retired from the Space Force to go work as a scientist on Mars. But the ghosts of the past sometimes have a way of following you, especially when we're talking about the horrors of war...
(SADI research locations across the southwestern Arabia Terra as of April 2059)
The Story:
Not long after Russia's invasion of Ukraine in 2022, the new Space Race between NATO and the Shanghai Pact heated up in short order. By the 2030s, the moon had become the New Cold War’s next battlefield, culminating in the Lunar War of October 2038. This conflict ended in stalemate after only three weeks, but prompted the United Nations to form the Interplanetary Cooperative Administration (ICA), which now oversees all affairs beyond Earth’s atmosphere, including the Martian Settlement Program which has been active since 2029.
In the years since the first outposts were set up on Mars in 2036, the various spacefaring nations of Earth have spread their influence across the Red Planet in slow, incremental step. Most of this progress now takes place under the umbrella of the Scientific Advancement & Development Initiative (SADI), which founded in 2047 as a means to test new methods of living and working there, with in-situ research projects carried out by astronauts from the various nations party to the ICA’s founding document, the Tyndall Treaty.
Mars Outpost Delta-4, located in the Arabia Terra, is home to twenty-four such scientific staff members, who come from the five main spacefaring power blocs: the EU, India, Russia, China, and the United States. The intrepid scientists and engineers of Outpost Delta-4 run excursions into the highlands, or out into the plains of the Chryse Planitia, but recently their main point of interest has been the Mawrth Vallis, where the detritus of an ancient river keeps group biologists constantly on the edge of discovering something amazing.
One of those awaiting such a discovery is Daniel Zemanski, the head of the outpost’s NASA contingent, chief of ground ops, and third in command after Lunar War hero Bruce Treadwell and his X.O., Beth Dalton. But when Treadwell turns up dead under suspicious circumstances, it kicks off an investigation which could undo all progress made in the ten years since the Lunar War. As Zemanski and his associates will soon discover, the web of loyalties leading from Earth to Mars could threaten much more than the stability of the ICA…
(A close-up on the location of Mars Science Outpost Delta-4 in the Arabia Terra)
The Timeline:
1989 - Asteroid 4581 Asclepius destroys Phoenix, Arizona, killing over a million people
1991 - USSR collapses as external pressures cause its constituent states to secede
1993 - Special Intelligence Directorate formed to lead investigation of Phoenix Event
1997 - Bureau of Special Investigations formed by Congress at the behest of the S.I.D.
2004 - Space Force founded to deal with spaceborne threats to U.S. space power
2006 - Larsen Enterprises emerges as a major U.S. aerospace & defense contractor
2009 - U.S. initiates program to establish lunar bases on the anniversary of Apollo 11
2013 - First American base set up at Lunar south pole, with other nations following
2018 - NATO forms Joint Lunar Operations Command to oversee cislunar space
2022 - Russia invades Ukraine, and Iran breaks out in country-spanning civil unrest
2023 - S.I.D. initiates Operation Petrichor to establish total U.S. dominance of space
2024 - The U.S. and NATO send in troops to stabilize Iran after two years of turmoil
2025 - Russo-Ukrainian War ends with little change in the status quo antebellum
2028 - Major fusion power breakthrough makes commercial space travel viable
2029 - United Nations begins multilateral peace talks in a bid to end the Mideast War
2031 - Global recession begins thanks to rampant speculation on fusion power tech
2033 - Last U.S. troops leave Iran, leaving behind a small UN peacekeeping force
2036 - Joint NASA-ESA team sets up a base in the central Valles Marineris on Mars
2038 - Lunar War occurs as major spacefaring powers battle to control resources
2039 - Charles Larsen discloses the existence of lightspeed teleportation technology
2042 - Brookenden Accords passed to regulate growing commercialization of space
2047 - SADI organized by UN to oversee international scientific research beyond Earth
2051 - UN founds Interplanetary Cooperative Administration to run offworld affairs
2054 - ICA forms Interplanetary Defense Corps as peacekeeping force for local space
2057 - Centennial of Sputnik I celebrated by ICA as SADI program continues apace
(Layout of Mars Science Outpost Delta-4 in northeastern Crater Oyama)
You should do the interplanetary defense Corps next!
Hey man this is great! I so enjoy all your maps and lore!