Let's play: Buzz Aldrin's Race Into Space

[HMS Sophia]

.... buh?

Anyway, when are we planning for now? We need some manned missions asap!
However, considering the way this is going I don't think we should be using two man capsules any time soon...

[Shroom Man 777]

[OmegaChief]

But hey, at least the Murican's will get a space first that way, even if it is joining the 100 Mile High club

[FaxModem1]

Spoiler

So, the Zenobians are paranoid squabbling fighters and the Murcans are gay testosterone meatheads? Is that about right?

[PeZook]

Boratstan, some 600 kilometres from Baikonurek
1000+ kilometres from any convenient seaport

"Hey, Sasha! Look what we've got here!"

There was something moving between the corn bushels at the back of one of the convoy's trucks. Barely, but still.

The convoy had been on the road for more than a week, having left the Baikonurek Astronaut City a while back with uneaten corn bushels. The vast open steppes of Boratstan that made it the perfect place to situate the cosmodrome were open and vast though and so it took a long time to get anywhere by road. Not that the Corn Truckers minded, they had all the time in the world.

Dravo Ivanovich did not. For the first few days, he susbsisted on the corn, and licked water that condensed on the bushels. But after a week of bumping and heaving and weaving on the back of the truck, he was becoming weak and scrawny and very beardy and bald.



So when the truckers finally dragged him out from the truck, he didn't even resist.

"Hey comrade! Trying to desert the interior ministry forces, da?", the trucker named Sasha said, seeing the dirty and tattered uniform hanging on Drago, "Ha ha, that's a pretty poor job you did there!"

"So, whatever shall we do with you, eh?"

[HMS Sophia]

Spoiler

Sounds about right. And it is hilarious

[FaxModem1]

Drago looked at the convoy drivers, and smiled weakly. He knew that convoy people just needed some amusement to dig his way into their hearts, so he grabbed three things of corn and started juggling them, much to the amazement of the convoy drivers.

[PeZook]

Spoiler

MURCANS ARE NOT GAY!

They just celebrate the beauty and rigidness and manly shapes and oiled glory of the male body!

[FaxModem1]

Spoiler

Tell the astronauts, specifically, Fax, that.

[PeZook]

Spoiler

Nobody would ever admit to that happening in the center of Murcan science and technology.

Even though everybody knows what's going on, it can't REALLY be going on, so they ignore it.

[FaxModem1]

Spoiler

True enough, it is 1960.

[HMS Sophia]

Spoiler

I'd hate to be a homophobic astronaut stuck in the middle of all this... manly reverence...

[FaxModem1]

The drivers were so impressed they gave him their canteen and invited him into the cabin of the truck, resuming their drive to the port.

[Simon_Jester]

Spoiler

So, the Zenobians are paranoid squabbling fighters and the Murcans are gay testosterone meatheads? Is that about right?

Da, tovarisch. That is correct.

Murcan degeneracy may wind up motivating the Zenobian female cosmonaut program- in hopes of speaking to the aspirations of the greater majoritarian masses of the people, rather than the dainty muscleman minority!

[PeZook]

Unfortunately, wimmin astronauts are unlocked by a random event, and it didn't happen yet.

I guess you're stuck with penises.

[Hawkwings]

Cosmonaut DostarovaskEEEEEEEEEEEEE would prefer the three-man capsule option, on the N-1. Though Buranski is a close second option.

[Shroom Man 777]

Somewhere in Zenobia

Drago looked at the convoy drivers, and smiled weakly. He knew that convoy people just needed some amusement to dig his way into their hearts, so he grabbed three things of corn and started juggling them, much to the amazement of the convoy drivers.

The convoy drivers laughed and decided to carry on with their journey. They would deal with the stowaway later, after they finished their job. So the convoy went on, there was still hundreds of kilometers to cover, and periodically they stopped at rest stations to catch some shut eye or to tune up their rugged Gaz trucks. The stowaway proved to be a useful distraction, after everyone got bored with his juggling act, they started throwing wrenches at him and other heavy equipment, while making him carry things for them and such.

Anyway, they were at one such rest station and were busy cheering the stowaway on as he juggled his corns while dancing a jig, to avoid getting his feet crushed by the wrenches the men were throwing at his legs. All things considered, things were going well for Drago Ivanov. At least until the laughing stopped and the screaming started.

Attack helicopters swooped down from the sky, their glass canopies glinting menacingly in the sunlight. They hovered ominously above the cowering masses of truck drivers. Ropes fell from the deathchoppers' sides and human forms started rapelling down from the aircraft.



"Spetznaz!" one of the drivers screamed, for he knew who these men were in his time trucking supplies and inmates to the gulags.

The armed agents flanked the cowering masses of civilians, aiming Killyshnikov assault rifles and Dragoonov sniper rifles at them. Finally, another chopper came and touched down in the middle of the field, and from it came none other than...

Premier Stanislav Shroomanski!

"Da, comrades!" he declared as he walked over to one of the truck drivers, the closest one who was being held at gunpoint by one of the Spetznaz operatives. "Da, I have come to inspect the fruit of your most glourious labors for the Motherland! These crops that you harvested are excellent, and your hard proletarian working-class labor is of the same import of socialist triumph as those of the cosmonauts and rocketmen of the space program. Know this well, comrades. I salute you!"



He patted the frightened truck driver's shoulder and walked over to a truck, where he went and got several corns.

"Da, this is good!" Shroomanski said. He climbed up the truck and faced all the peoples before him and went on to make a speech extolling the virtues of communism, of corn, of comradely communistic communal communism, and so many other great things.

Oh my god I'm going to die...

Drago Ivanov, his mind addled by starvation and dehydration and fear, suddenly bolted - running past the truckers and Spetznaz in womanly fear. It was too much. The ritualistic abuse inflicted upon him by the bored truckers, the sudden appearance of so many armed soldiers, and now the Premier himself atop a truck saying things his brain couldn't comprehend. No, he didn't want to die here. He ran as fast as he could towards the ocean. Even though it was thousands of miles away, he could feel the sea breeze and taste the salt in the air. He could feel the warmth in his face and mouth, the warmth of Murca all over him... inside him.

He was so close to FREEDOM!

"Nyet," Stanislav Shroomanski said. No one fled from his great speeches. Not the Ztalinist hardliners in the Politburo, who he condemned with his Seekrit Speach. Not Bearya. Not all those soldiers he commanded in the Great Salvation War. Not anyone.



Shroomanski pulled off his shoe, raised it high, and with all his might threw it as hard as possible towards the fleeing coward. The shoe flew through the air, as though driven by the power of communism itself, and with unerring accuracy it struck the back of Drago Ivanov's head.

Ivan Drago fell. The world became black.

The NKVDVDROM men came and took him.

[PeZook]

.... buh?

Anyway, when are we planning for now? We need some manned missions asap!
However, considering the way this is going I don't think we should be using two man capsules any time soon...

It is Spring 1961, Murca has a scheduled manned suborbital at the end of this season, in May or so.

Zenobia will probably attempt a manned orbital in June unless the decide to scrub it due to their rocketry problems.

Also: RECRUITMENT NOW OPEN FOR CLASS II ASTRONAUTS!

[FaxModem1]

Drago awakens on a bed, the whole room seems to shift. At first, Drago thinks its because of his head, then he realizes he's on a ship. And due to the constant shifting of the furniture back and forth, its probably in the ocean.

[PeZook]

A ship, somewhere in the north seas

"Comrades!", the NKVDVDROM officer announced bombastically to the men gathered on the top deck of the Comrade Stanislav, a dilapidated, heavily worked tramp freighter. The passengers were think and weary, and mostly intellectuals from the looks of them.

"You have been poisoned by capitalist ideals! All of you possess sentences for dissent and antizenobian agitation issued by the most just People's Judiciary. But do not worry! The People's Republic of Zenobia does not believe in punishment, but justice and reformation!"

The ship was heaving and rolling heavily on the cold seas. Its decks frosted over with thick ice. In the distance, a thin and barely visible coastline began to materialize out of the fog.

"And thus, you shall be given a chance to reform, to cast away the vile Western ideological poisonings, and - through labor - reform into New Zenobian Mangs! Such is the gentle justice of the People's Judiciary, comrades!"

"Oh Jeebus no!", Drago Ivanov exclaimed under his breath, trying to stay warm despite his extremely thin clothes. So that was to be his ultimate fate.



The uranium mines of Kylhima!

[Shroom Man 777]

[FaxModem1]

The ship stopped, its engine busted from overuse. Despite proud Zenobian engineering, the boat's engine died. They were stuck, and couldn't move any further.

[FaxModem1]

North Seas

There was a rumble, something was coming up near the ship. The soldiers looked around with shock at what was happening. They couldn't believe it.



A Murcan submarine, here, in the North Seas. Several of the intellectual prisoners ran off the boat, across the ice, to the submarine, banging on the hull, demanding to be let in. Drago was one of them. The hatch opened up, and Murcan sailors gestured for people to enter. Drago made it onboard. He was free of the Zenobians, for now.

He looked at the tunnel he was in. It was different from Zenobian design, but at least he was safe.

[FaxModem1]

The submarine shook, as the Murcans said something about a Tor Peedo. Drago recognized the word. Then the sub left the ice, and he felt the vehicle accelerate, they were leaving the North Seas and heading for home.

Outside, the small ship was sinking, the men aboard either dying as it sunk or walking the frozen wasteland trying to survive.



It wasn't going to be a pleasant experience for the Zenobian guards.

In the meantime. Drago and the rest of the rescued prisoners were put in the mess hall, waiting for their arrival at someplace better.

[Shroom Man 777]

ZOVIET ZOVIETSKI

A People's Publication for the Proletariat


STANISLAV SHROOMANSKI SLAMS MURDEROUS MURCAN MASSACRES, WRATHFULLY WARNS OF WAR



MOOSECOW, ZENOBIA - The Premier has issued a statement slamming the Murcans for their unwarranted and unprecedented act of aggression - wherein an attack submarine, identified as being of Murcan in origin, torpedoed a Zenobian civilian transport ship in the Northern Sea. The survivors were rescued by the Red Smarmy, and reported that several passengers were also kidnapped by the Murcans.

"The Murcan pigdogs have crossed a line in the sand, mistakingly thinking that such aggression will not be countered. They do this for they are shamed by the Zenobian Onion's greatness. We are beating them in the Space Race. We are beating them in the Peace Race. There is now a Missile Gap, a Bomber Gap, and a Rocket Gap. The Murcans fear that they cannot gap enough, for in their gaping their orifices have been torn and worn!

"And now they do this foolishness, underestimating the might of the Zenobian Onion. But now, they shall have their answer. For this act of violence against the peoples of Zenobia, we will bury you!"

In response to the Murcan attack, the Premier has raised the alertness level of the Zenobian military, from its Chair Forces, Mavys and Smarmy, to its Strategic Rocket Farce. The number of troops and tankskis has increased at a geometric rate in Eastern Thanasia, and Zenobian advisors at the missile sites in Cubic - an island nation of close proximity to Murca - have also been placed on high alert.