by Dale Brown
Slowly, the remote-controlled camera panned across the desolate moonscape. It zoomed in on what looked like an inflated, whitish-gray cloth cylinder anchored solidly to the surface. This was the first of the base’s planned habitation modules. Based on concepts originally developed by a pioneering American space technology company, Bigelow Aerospace, Korolev One was twelve meters long and six meters in diameter. The inflatable habitat gave the four cosmonauts and taikonauts currently stationed on the moon close to three hundred cubic meters of living and working space. Multiple layers of insulation, foam, Kevlar, and Nomex cloth produced half-meter-thick walls—offering excellent protection against micrometeorites, radiation, and the moon’s harsh temperatures.
Thick orange power cables snaked across the gray moonscape. They connected the habitation module to a much smaller, metal-walled upright cylinder deployed at the base of one of the Chinese cargo landers.
Chen peered intently at the three-meter-tall cylinder. “That is the fusion reactor?” Leonov nodded proudly. “So small,” the Chinese general said slowly. He shook his head in amazement. “And yet it produces two megawatts of power.”
“More than enough for all of Korolev’s needs,” Leonov agreed. The fusion power breakthrough Russia had achieved was what made the establishment of this manned lunar base possible in the first place. Without that reactor, its crew would have been dependent on solar panels—which were useless during the moon’s fourteen-day-long nights—and on backup batteries, which were comparatively heavy and inefficient. Limited-duration visits would have been possible, but not any sort of permanent presence.
One of the Russian officers assigned to monitor communications with the base turned toward Leonov. “We have a live feed from Korolev Base, sir.”
“Put it on-screen,” he ordered.
Briefly, static flared across the huge displays. When it cleared, Leonov and Chen could see Colonel Tian Fan and his Russian counterpart, Kirill Lavrentyev, looking back at them. They had arrived on the lunar surface forty-eight hours ago, as part of the Pilgrim 3 mission—joining Liu and Yanin, who’d already been on the moon for nearly two weeks. The video signal, routed through the Magpie Bridge relay to Russia’s network of military communications satellites, was remarkably clear, with only minimal distortion. Wearing green flight suits, the two officers sat next to each other at a console. Racks of electronic hardware and storage compartments lined the curving habitat wall behind them.
“Korolev Base here,” Tian said without preamble. “All of the payload aboard that just-landed Mă Luó appears to be in good condition. Liu and Yanin are outside now, off-loading the consumables. Once we have those stored safely, we’ll begin assembling the rest of the equipment.”
“Excellent work, Colonel. And you, too, Lavrentyev,” Leonov said warmly. While the automated furnace and chemical reaction unit built into Chang’e-10’s descent stage could supply the base with precious oxygen and water separated out from regolith, food and other necessary stores still had to come all the way from Earth.
A little under two seconds later, he saw the two men nod as his words finally reached them. Every signal from Earth to the moon’s far side had to travel 450,000 kilometers to the Magpie Bridge relay satellite and another 60,000 kilometers from there before it reached Korolev’s antennas. The communications lag wasn’t crippling, but it was just long enough to render conversations somewhat more stilted and less spontaneous.
“Thank you, Comrade Marshal,” Tian replied.
Chen leaned in beside Leonov. “When do you believe your base will be fully operational?”
This time Lavrentyev answered. “We still have considerable EVA work left to excavate the necessary sites for our sensors and other hardware. But we expect to be finished by the time the next cargo lander arrives. After that, it should only take us a few days to install, camouflage, and test all our systems.”
Leonov nodded. Teams at Vostochny Cosmodrome were preparing another heavy-lift Energia rocket for launch in the next week. Its payload was a third Chinese-built Mă Luó spacecraft destined for the moon. This robotic lander would carry the final components needed to make Korolev Base a full-fledged instrument of offensive Sino-Russian military power.
“Do the Americans realize we’re here?” Tian asked seriously.
“Not yet,” Leonov assured him. Chinese agents and cyberespionage had confirmed Washington’s belated realization that Pilgrim 1 had been a manned mission . . . one that had successfully landed cosmonauts and taikonauts on the moon. In a way, that made the follow-on Pilgrim 2 and Pilgrim 3 missions easier, since they didn’t need to carry and deploy decoy landers of their own. However, to hide the fact that crews were staying behind at a permanent base, Pilgrim 2 and 3’s empty Chang’e ascent stages were flown back into lunar orbit under remote control. Once there, they docked with waiting Federation command modules, which then returned to Earth . . . supposedly carrying full four-man crews. To all outward appearances, Russia and China were simply carrying out a series of short-duration exploration landings—with the aid of rovers and other scientific equipment delivered by separate cargo spacecraft.
For now, Beijing and Moscow claimed they were keeping more details of their “purely scientific program” secret because they didn’t want to provide data that could aid the United States in its greedy quest to “rape the virgin lunar soil for riches.” Feeble though that excuse was, a number of Western environmental groups and left-wing political parties seemed willing to believe it.
President Farrell and his advisers were deeply suspicious, Leonov knew. All available intelligence indicated they were scrambling to mount their own missions to lunar orbit. But they were starting too far behind. The months they’d wasted trying to uncover the secrets of his fictitious Firebird spaceplane program simply could not be made up.
In Earth Orbit
Several Days Later
Two hours and forty minutes after liftoff from Cape Canaveral Air Force Station’s Space Launch Complex 37B, the Delta IV Heavy rocket’s powerful second-stage engine relit. Within seconds, as the booster accelerated, its attached payload began moving into a much higher, far more elliptical orbit.
Several minutes later, the RL-10B engine shut down on schedule. Bolts fired and slowly the Delta Heavy’s second stage fell away from the satellite it had just launched toward the Earth-Moon Lagrange-2 point. This Advanced Extremely High Frequency (AEHF) U.S. military communications satellite, the seventh in its series, had originally been intended as a replacement for the aging AEHF-1 in geostationary orbit high over the Galápagos Islands. Now it had been given a new purpose. As the satellite moved away from the earth at more than twenty thousand miles per hour, its twin solar panels unfurled in response to commands from ground controllers.
It had taken weeks of frantic work by Space Force civilian contractors to make the hardware and software alterations needed to fit AEHF-7 for service in deep space. Once it reached stable orbit around the distant Lagrange point, the satellite would act as a jam-resistant radio and data-link relay for any U.S. or allied spacecraft operating in lunar orbit. Routing signals through its powerful antennas would give both human crews and robotic spacecraft the ability to communicate with Earth in real time while swinging around the moon’s far side.
Thirty-One
Hangar Two, McLanahan Industrial Airport, Battle Mountain, Nevada
A Short Time Later
Brad McLanahan watched the solid black Scion executive jet touch down. Slowing quickly, the Gulfstream G600 came to the end of the runway, turned, and taxied on toward Hangar Two. High overhead, its two Texas Air National Guard F-16C Falcon fighter escorts peeled away, rolling south as they flew off toward Nellis Air Force Base near Las Vegas. Late afternoon sunlight glinted off their clear bubble canopies.
For a moment, Brad stayed outside, watching the agile F-16s dart across the sky. At one point in his life, and not so long ago, either, flying high-performance aircraft like those Falcons for the U.S. Air Force would
have been his dream job. He shook his head. Things sure had changed over the past few years. Silently, he turned and walked back inside the hangar to join the little group waiting there. He slipped into place between his father and Nadia.
Kevin Martindale checked his watch. “Well, at least they’re right on time.” He looked tense. “And a good thing, too. The turnaround on this visit is tight. Which is why I told that Gulfstream’s flight crew not to screw around.”
Next to him, Hunter Noble half turned with a quizzical look. “So what would have happened to your guys if they had run late? This time of year, that’s not so unlikely, you know—between normal bad weather and air traffic control delays, I mean.”
Martindale gave him a thin smile. “Bad things, Dr. Noble. Very bad things.”
“Oh,” Boomer said. He mimed a pistol pointed at his head. “As in bang.”
The former president snorted. “Of course not. I can’t just have people killed on a whim.”
“Well, that’s a relief,” Boomer said, winking quickly at Brad and Nadia, who were trying hard not to laugh out loud.
“Not legally, anyway,” Martindale continued darkly.
Perhaps fortunately, the shrill, earsplitting whine of the executive jet’s twin turbofans made any further conversation impossible. Slowly, the Gulfstream rolled in through the hangar’s big open doors. With its engines spooling down, the midnight-black aircraft swung toward them and then braked to a stop just a few yards away.
Its forward cabin door opened. Several serious-looking men and women in dark suits hurried down the Gulfstream’s cabin steps and spread out into a semicircle. Slight bulges marked the holstered weapons concealed under their jackets. After a few moments, during which they carefully scrutinized their surroundings, one of them turned back toward the jet and nodded.
Brad and the others straightened to attention as a tall, broad-shouldered man emerged. Buttoning up his own suit coat against the cold, he trotted down the steps and came toward them with a friendly grin on his face. His security detail closed in around him, parting only when Martindale stepped forward with an outstretched hand.
“Welcome to Battle Mountain, Mr. President,” the head of Scion said quietly.
A few minutes later, they gathered in a small, windowless room at the far end of the hangar. Ordinarily, Sky Masters used it to brief pilots before test flights aboard new experimental aircraft. Now the president’s Secret Service detail was stationed outside the briefing room’s closed door. Corporate security personnel, all former military, held a discreet perimeter around the hangar itself.
“I wish we had time to give you a real tour,” Brad told Farrell as they sat down. “From the air, Sky Masters is just a bunch of industrial-looking buildings. The really cool stuff goes on inside.”
Farrell nodded regretfully. “I surely would have enjoyed that, Major. Maybe I’ll get the chance someday when I’m not pretending to be somewhere else.”
Right now, as far as the press, public, and, with luck, Russia and China were all concerned, J. D. Farrell was only on a quick working vacation at his private ranch in Texas’s Hill Country—with no plans to go anywhere but back to Washington, D.C., in a couple of days. Arranging the logistics for this secret visit to Battle Mountain had taken a lot of doing. Overruling the Secret Service’s objections to the president going anywhere without the usual army of White House staff, bodyguards, medical teams, helicopters, and armored limousines had finally required direct intervention by Farrell himself.
It would have been much simpler, Brad knew, to hold this meeting by secure video link. But the president had made it clear he was tired of “dealing with y’all mostly through some damned television screen. Maybe it’s old-fashioned, but I sort of appreciate seeing the folks working for me in person every so often.”
Meaningfully, Martindale laid his smartphone faceup on the table. He’d set it to display the time remaining before they needed to hustle Farrell back aboard his plane for its return flight to Texas. “The clock’s ticking here,” he reminded them all.
“That’s for sure,” Farrell agreed. His mouth tightened. “So I’ll get right down to it. Right now, we’re getting our asses kicked by the Chinese and the Russians in deep space and on the moon . . . and all I hear from NASA are a lot of high-sounding explanations about why we can’t do anything to change that. At least not in time for it to matter a damn.”
Patrick McLanahan looked him in the eye. “That’s a self-inflicted problem, Mr. President. This country’s manned space efforts have focused almost entirely on operations in low Earth orbit for decades—ever since the end of the Apollo program.”
Martindale nodded. “There were various plans for longer-ranged manned missions, but every administration’s priorities kept shifting. So no one ever succeeded in setting clear, achievable goals for NASA.” He looked dour. “Not even me.”
“And now a lot of the best people have left the agency,” Boomer volunteered from his end of the table. “Eventually, just about anyone who’s seriously interested in doing real things in space ends up signing on with SpaceX, or Blue Origin, or one of the other innovative private aerospace companies.”
“Like Sky Masters?” Farrell said with a wry smile.
“Yes, sir,” Boomer acknowledged, matching the other man’s lopsided smile. “There are still talented engineers and astronauts and technical people at NASA, but they’re always fighting an uphill battle against the suits at headquarters to get anything done. And if there’s any serious risk involved?” He shook his head in disgust. “Shit. Calling NASA HQ risk-averse is like saying Ebenezer Scrooge was a little tight with his money.” He saw the suppressed grin on Brad’s face and spread his hands. “Okay, yeah, I’ve had my share of new engine designs blow up, so maybe I lean a little too far the other way. But, hell, rockets are inherently dangerous machines. Sure, you can make ’em safer . . . but there’s no way you can guarantee perfect safety, especially not with a new spacecraft. Well, not unless you don’t ever to plan to actually fly it.”
“Which just about sums up where we stand,” Farrell said with a frown. He sighed. “I keep looking at that fancy NASA logo during their presentations, and all I can hear is what my old grandad always used to tell me. ‘J.D., just because a chicken has wings don’t mean it can fly.’”
He looked around the table. “Which is why I’m here. I need better answers than I’ve been getting in D.C. Boiling all their bullshit down, NASA can’t send Americans back to the moon, not even on a flyby. Not anytime in the next twelve to eighteen months.”
“By which time, our enemies may well be in a position of tremendous advantage,” Nadia said grimly.
Farrell nodded. His frown deepened. “Let’s just say this is a comedy of errors, except without the laughs. NASA’s already built several of its brand-new Orion crew vehicles. And the European Space Agency’s done the same with the service module it’s building for the Orion program. Hell, everybody I talk to claims both of those spacecraft are flight-ready. So you’d think everything would be set to go for a manned lunar flyby—”
“Except we don’t have any rocket capable of lifting an Orion crew vehicle and its service module off the launchpad and boosting them into a translunar injection orbit,” Brad said quietly. “Because NASA’s heavy-lift SLS isn’t ready yet.”
“Yep,” Farrell agreed. “And none of the other private commercial rockets out there, not even a Falcon Heavy, can do the job.”
Brad took a deep breath. “Well, sir . . . we may have a fix for that. See, Boomer, Nadia, and I have been working the problem pretty hard ever since my dad figured out the Russians and Chinese had already landed on the moon.”
“No need to apologize, Major,” Farrell said with a hint of amusement. “I’d kind of bet on that being the case.” He looked at them more seriously. “Is this fix of yours something NASA’s going to approve of?”
“Not in a million years,” Boomer admitted.
“And why not?” Martindale want
ed to know.
Brad shrugged. “Because we’re proposing to steal a page out of the Chinese and Russian playbook.”
“It’s our new definition of genius,” Boomer added smugly. “One percent perspiration. Ninety-nine percent sheer larceny.”
Patrick smiled as he saw what they were driving at. “You want to assemble that Orion crew vehicle, service module, and booster in space.”
“In Earth orbit,” Brad confirmed.
Farrell looked surprised. “I asked NASA about the idea of doing something similar and they told me it was flat-out impossible.”
“It is impossible . . . for NASA,” Brad said bluntly. The space agency’s reaction was perfectly understandable. Mating an Orion crew vehicle to the ESA-designed service module in orbit would be an intricate and complicated task. First, it meant checking, and if necessary, fixing the hundreds of bolts, power cables, and fuel and water pipes and conduits that tied the service module to its adapter ring. Then it required maneuvering the gumdrop-shaped crew vehicle into precise alignment with the adapter ring, all before carefully connecting an umbilical boom containing fluid, gas, electrical, and data lines. On Earth, at the Kennedy Space Center, the process took weeks of work by skilled technicians.
He saw the president eyeing him and walked through his reasoning. “So there’s no way astronauts wearing standard EVA suits could handle the job,” he finished.