(198X) Short-Timer

A little something to tide you over while I'm away doing tank gunnery. This piece has been posted for a little while, but I figured I'd discuss it in some detail.

The depicted man is a "short-timer": an enlisted naval cosmonaut of the Federal States-Navy Space Corps (ФЕДЕРААЛ СТАТЕН-МАРИНЕ РУИМТЕКОРПС, in the Calekrossan prestige script semi-adopted for Federal institutional titles). The Federals are the dominant space power on Oid, maintaining a large orbital fleet of both civilian and military craft and stations. Consequently they need both orbital labor and security (as generally, most attacks on space assets are made with the intent to capture, not to destroy).

While space remains a hazardous and demanding workplace, it is no longer the domain of senior officers and elite civilian professionals. Mission Control keeps its missile men, but the blackwater sailors themselves are blue-collar tradesmen and lower enlisted ratings.

The short-timer here wears a basic panoply: spacesuit, life support and thruster rig (with mesh chaps), and a lanyarded pistol. He has probably left his issued rifle "indoors" for what he thought would be a sleepy shift. Others prefer a hand on their joysticks while shooting. In any case, he has six rounds in the cylinder with which to win a blackwater firefight.

Behind him drifts his post: Cosmos-401, "MANASSAS", an old 11RV2 Ravelin-series mercury-fired orbital ballistic missile defense complex. Outmoded by newer laser stations, these light-gun hipshooters have been moved into support orbits and reduced in funding. Consequently, in the "Great Game" of orbital warfare, they make ripe targets to chip away at missile defense grids. No few Ravelins now fly the flag of the Ebon Forest as a consequence of daring boarding operations.

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Out of universe, the short-timer rocks various Soviet and US 60s kit: generally cheap stuff, with the idea that Federals have hewn towards refining and mass-producing basic space equipment rather than producing more revolutionary designs.

The space suit itself is a Berkut-esque with bits of the Mercury suit, particularly its arm laces. It might not be a pure oxygen suit, though. The backpack and cowboy chaps are Gemini equipment: the AMU, a hot gas thruster system that in turn required leg protection.

The man himself is spiritually a Starcraft 1 terran (whose themes did end up on the Federal playlist, naturally). He wears Soviet Navy-style rank insignia. His pistol is the same Pequod DA that crops up in the Federal army book: it really gets around.