Eagle Station

by Dale Brown

  In her view, today’s briefing for the international media was simply a somewhat more modern version of an age-old ruse. Time and again throughout history, emperors, kings, and generals had dispatched heralds of peace to their enemies, buying time with meaningless talk while secretly massing their armies for war.

  Putting on a warm and gracious smile, Titeneva followed her older, male Chinese counterpart, Peng Xia, out into the Foreign Ministry’s press briefing room. The two other human props in this little piece of diplomatic theater trailed behind her. Bearlike, with a shock of thick white hair, Anatoly Polikarpov was the head of Russia’s state-owned civilian space corporation, Roscosmos. He dwarfed Shan Min, the director of China’s National Space Administration.

  Peng led them all to a lectern facing the assembled journalists and TV news crews. They lined up together, flanked by the red-, blue-, and white-striped Russian flag and China’s gold-starred red banner. Huge projector screens covered the wall behind them. Titeneva and the others stood quietly for a few moments, giving the assembled journalists and camera crews time to take in this unexpected exhibition of high-level Sino-Russian diplomatic and scientific unity.

  Murmurs and whispers tinged with sudden interest rippled through the crowded room. What had originally been billed as a relatively routine press conference after a meeting between the two foreign ministers now seemed more likely to produce real news.

  With exquisite timing, Foreign Minister Peng moved forward to the lectern. “Honored comrades of the international press corps, thank for your presence here this afternoon.” He offered them a slight smile. “I promise you that your diligence will be rewarded with more than the usual dull diplomatic platitudes.” That earned him laughs from some of the Western journalists present. “As you may have guessed, this is no ordinary briefing,” Peng continued.

  To her amusement, Titeneva saw the array of reporters suddenly sit up even straighter. They reminded her of a pack of hungry dogs slavering at the sight and smell of a treat in their master’s hand.

  Peng paused briefly, allowing their anticipation to build. Then he went on, speaking calmly and precisely. “Earlier today, three rockets were launched into outer space—one from the territory of the Russian Federation and two from the People’s Republic of China. The timing of these launches was not an accident. It was deliberate, the result of careful planning and many months of closely coordinated effort between our two countries.” If anything, the assembled journalists grew even more eagerly attentive, straining at the leash, as they waited for more details.

  Still smiling, Peng half turned and beckoned Titeneva to join him at the lectern. “I now invite my esteemed colleague, Foreign Minister Titeneva, to provide you with more details of this historic and unprecedented event.”

  She stepped forward, squaring her shoulders to present an image of resolute confidence. “Thank you for your gracious invitation, Minister Peng,” she said with a quick nod. Then she turned back to the waiting journalists. “Ladies and gentlemen, I am honored to inform you that the People’s Republic of China and the Russian Federation have today embarked on the first of a new series of peaceful voyages of discovery to the moon. Our first unmanned mission together is called Pilgrim 1—Cháoshèng in the language of our hosts or Palomnik in my own native tongue. This symbolizes the sense of awe and wonder with which we approach the moon, Earth’s closest neighbor.”

  Left unspoken but perfectly clear, Titeneva knew, was the vivid contrast between this seemingly peaceful Sino-Russian scientific mission and the greed and crass commercialism at the heart of America’s own revived lunar program. Behind her, the briefing room’s two large projector screens lit up.

  Each showed full-color video imagery from the Yuanzheng-2 boosters heading toward the moon. Bright sparks flared on both screens as the boosters separated from their payloads and drifted off into the infinite blackness of space. There were more flashes as new explosive bolts detonated. Slowly, fairing panels detached and spun away, tumbling end over end—revealing the payloads flying toward Earth’s moon for the first time.

  Titeneva waited for a few seconds, allowing the first, sudden buzz of excitement and curiosity to fade a little. “What you see are the two halves of China’s most advanced lunar lander, Chang’e-Ten,” she explained. “One is its descent stage. The other is its ascent stage. If all goes well, these two spacecraft, controlled by their own onboard computers, will rendezvous in lunar orbit and dock. The goal of this first test of circumlunar vehicle assembly is to produce a single, mated lander . . . a spacecraft capable of carrying taikonauts and cosmonauts safely to the surface of the moon and then returning them to orbit.”

  She glanced toward the Chinese technicians controlling the video feeds. Obediently, they switched both screens to a new view, this one showing the joined Federation command module, support module, and space tug sliding away from the spent Energia third stage. “And here is Russia’s own Federation 2 spacecraft, also on its way to lunar orbit. Once the Chang’e lander has assembled itself and appears stable, ground controllers on Earth will signal the Federation to match orbits and dock.” She shrugged. “If this were a manned mission, that is when our cosmonauts and their Chinese taikonaut comrades would transfer to the lander . . . and begin their preparations to descend to the moon.”

  Titeneva saw a young woman, a reporter for one of the American cable news networks, shoot to her feet—evidently unable or unwilling to wait any longer to ask a question. “Yes, Ms. Meadows?”

  “But there aren’t any cosmonauts or taikonauts aboard that spacecraft?”

  “No, there are not, Ms. Meadows,” Titeneva said firmly.

  “Well, why not?” the young journalist demanded. “I mean, if you’re committing so many resources to send these spaceships all the way to the moon . . . why not just go ahead and land?”

  Titeneva’s polite smile broadened. “Because we are not in a race, Ms. Meadows. Space flight is inherently dangerous, and our top priority is the safe return of any crews we do eventually send to the lunar surface.” She adopted a more serious tone. “Pilgrim 1 is first and foremost a test flight—both of these brand-new spacecraft and of their ability to autonomously rendezvous and dock. As it stands, this multi-vehicle mission is already one of the most complicated space flights ever attempted. But I can tell you this: whatever happens, the experience we gain over these next several days will pave the way for future manned Sino-Russian expeditions to the moon.”

  With that, she signaled the men still waiting behind her to come forward. She turned back to the increasingly restless gaggle of journalists. “I’m certain that you all have many questions.” She indicated her Chinese counterpart. “However, I’m equally sure that neither Minister Peng nor I is qualified to answer those questions. Now, if you’re really more interested in the finer details of our most recent agricultural commerce talks, both of us would be glad to address those issues . . .” She let her voice trail off as the whole room broke into laughter.

  With a chuckle of her own, Titeneva shrugged. “No? Then we will gladly yield the floor to Administrator Shan of China’s National Space Administration and Director Polikarpov of Roscosmos. After all, this space mission is, as the Americans say, their baby.”

  Together, she and Peng left the room to a smattering of applause. Behind them, the two civilian space chiefs were already answering the first shouted questions. Inwardly, Daria Titeneva relaxed. She had carried out Marshal Leonov’s instructions with consummate skill. Now the task of deception fell on other shoulders.

  She knew that Polikarpov and Shan had been painstakingly briefed on what to say. No one listening to them would ever suspect that neither of their civilian agencies had any real role in the so-called Pilgrim 1 mission. For the time being, the knowledge that all three spacecraft now speeding to the moon were entirely controlled by Leonov and General Chen Haifeng, the commander of China’s military space operations, would remain a tightly held secret.

  Twenty-Five


  Sky Masters Aerospace Inc., Battle Mountain, Nevada

  Seventy-Two Hours Later

  Brad McLanahan glanced over his shoulder when his father and Kevin Martindale entered the secure conference room he’d commandeered for his special analysis team—which he realized was sort of a grandiose term for a group that really only consisted of him, Nadia, and Hunter Noble. Still, it was better than adopting Boomer’s tongue-in-cheek suggestion that they call themselves the Triad of Genius Analysts, or TOGA for short. “Hey, Dad! Hey, Mr. Martindale. It’s nice to see you guys in person for a change, instead of just on camera.”

  By air, Scion’s Utah headquarters was only three hundred miles from Battle Mountain—less than an hour’s flight time for one of Scion’s Gulfstream executive jets. He’d been hoping his father would take advantage of that. They hadn’t seen much of each other lately. Between the joy of actually being married to Nadia and the day-in and day-out hard work needed to train new Space Force crews to fly and fight Sky Masters–built spaceplanes, whole weeks and months seemed to have slid past in a blur.

  “Glad to be here, too, son,” Patrick McLanahan said warmly. “With things heating up, we thought it was best to—”

  “Is that situation board up-to-date?” Martindale interrupted, waving a hand at the conference room’s large LED screen as he took a chair. The screen showed a 3-D image of the moon, with the orbital paths of different spacecraft depicted as green lines circling it. Red triangles indicated the current reported positions of each vehicle.

  Nadia swung round angrily. Her eyes narrowed. She’d never had much patience with the former president’s flashes of arrogance and condescension. There were moments when Martindale—highly intelligent though he was—completely misjudged the temper and tolerance of those around him.

  Sensing the imminence of a full-on Rozek-McLanahan explosion, Brad quickly interceded. “Yes, sir, it is.” He helped his father to a seat, noting sadly how much more awkwardly the older man moved, even with the most recent software tweaks for his LEAF exoskeleton. “We’re getting continuous updates from NASA tracking stations, from DOD’s space surveillance satellites, and from its ground-based telescopes in New Mexico, Hawaii, and Diego Garcia.”

  Taking his cue, Boomer nodded. “Brad’s right. We’ve got a pretty good handle on everything going on in lunar orbit,” he told Martindale and Patrick. He shrugged. “Well, everything happening on the near side of the moon, anyway.”

  There was the rub. The United States didn’t have satellites or telescopes in position to see anything happening on the far side of the moon—the side permanently hidden from anyone on Earth. Unfortunately, the same restriction did not apply to the Chinese or their Russian partners.

  Five years before, China had put a communications relay satellite, called Queqiao, or Magpie Bridge, in a halo orbit around the Earth-Moon system’s Lagrange-2 point, L2. Lagrange points were places where the gravitational forces of larger bodies, like the earth and the sun, combined to produce points of relative stability. Smaller spacecraft and satellites could hold station at these Lagrange points without having to expend large amounts of fuel. From L2, about forty thousand miles from the moon, the Magpie Bridge communications relay allowed Beijing and Moscow to continuously monitor space operations on the moon’s far side.

  Boomer pointed to a red triangle currently circling east to west across the moon’s near side, about sixty miles above the Sea of Tranquility—the site of Apollo 11’s historic landing way back in 1969. A tag identified it as the Chang’e-10. “So here’s the deal. About five hours ago, both the ascent stage and the descent stage of that Chinese lunar lander successfully entered stable, circular lunar orbits. Right from the get-go, they were in close formation, maybe only five to ten miles apart.” His mouth tightened. “That’s pretty damned impressive flying, considering each machine covered more than two hundred and fifty thousand miles to get there.”

  Patrick McLanahan and Martindale nodded somberly.

  Calmer now, Nadia took up the thread. “Two hours ago, during their second consecutive orbit, the Chinese vehicles conducted a successful docking maneuver. They are now mated together, apparently joined as a single spacecraft.”

  Martindale frowned. “Without any signs of trouble?”

  “None,” Brad answered. “From what we can see, everything about that lander appears nominal.”

  Patrick raised an eyebrow. “That’s a pretty neat trick.”

  Brad nodded. “Yep.” He pulled up a graphic of China’s Long March 5 rocket. “But it explains how they blindsided us. The maximum payload a Long March 5 can send to the moon is around nine tons. Since any decent-sized crewed lander, like the Apollo Lunar Modules, weighs in around eighteen tons, we figured the Chinese would have to design, flight-test, and build a new type of heavy-lift rocket first. Before they could kick their plans to send taikonauts to the moon into gear, I mean. What we didn’t figure on was the idea of sending a lander’s ascent stage and descent stage to the moon separately . . . and then assembling them in lunar orbit.”

  “Which brings us to the next piece of this complex enemy space mission,” Nadia said bluntly. Using a keyboard, she zoomed in on the 3-D image of the moon—revealing another red triangle so close to the Chang’e-10 that it had been invisible at the larger scale. Its alphanumeric tag identified it as the Federation 2. “The unmanned Russian spacecraft has conducted its own successful lunar insertion burn. And it now trails the Chinese lunar lander by just a few miles.”

  Martindale grimaced. “Good God,” he muttered. “You’re telling us they’re actually going to make this work.”

  “Barring some unforeseen accident while docking, that’s the way to bet,” Brad agreed. He hesitated, just for a second or two, and then went on. “Which raises an ugly possibility . . .”

  His father nodded. “That Beijing and Moscow are lying through their teeth. What if that supposedly unmanned Federation command module actually has cosmonauts and taikonauts aboard?”

  “You think they might be planning a manned landing on the moon after all?” Nadia said slowly.

  This time, Brad and his father nodded in unison.

  “Whoa there, fellas,” Boomer interrupted. “Now, I know thinking outside the box is kind of a McLanahan specialty, but that’s pushing way beyond the envelope and out into wacko land.” He shook his head. “Particularly when everything we know about Leonov and the Chinese leader, this Li Jun character, suggests they’re both a hell of a lot more careful and cautious than the guys they took over from.”

  “Cautious and careful doesn’t mean cowardly,” Brad pointed out.

  “No, but at a minimum it means these guys aren’t stupid,” Boomer retorted. He shook his head. “Okay, look, I get the drift. A surprise return to the lunar surface would be a huge propaganda win for Russia and China. But the risks involved in using a wholly untested spacecraft for a stunt like that are huge. One serious hardware malfunction or one software glitch at just the wrong time and five gets you ten, you end up with a bunch of dead guys drifting in orbit or smashed to pieces in some crater.”

  Nadia frowned at him. “You should not assume that Marshal Leonov and President Li Jun share our views on the value of human life.”

  “Oh, I’m pretty sure they don’t,” Boomer allowed. He gave her a wry smile. “But I do bet they know how to figure out the right side of a cost-benefit ratio.”

  Martindale looked pained, Brad noticed. He was probably remembering the argument he’d lost over rescuing Sam Kerr.

  Boomer pressed his argument. “Look, guys, the Russians and the Chinese don’t need to take any more risks than they already have to rub dirt in our faces. As things stand, even this one unmanned flight to the moon leapfrogs all of our half-assed plans to send astronauts back there.”

  “President Farrell’s helium-3 lunar mining operation is a pretty big deal,” Brad commented dryly.

  Boomer waved that away. “One, it’s still all on paper. And two, even if that mine ever g
ets built, it’s gonna be automated.” He folded his arms. “Robots just aren’t sexy,” he said straightforwardly. “Not compared to real spaceman boots on the ground.”

  A chime interrupted them. On the screen, the icon representing the Russian spacecraft turned orange. Numbers appeared beside the orange triangle. They were decreasing.

  “That’s updated tracking data from NASA,” Brad explained to his father and Martindale. He looked closer and frowned. “It looks like the Federation 2 is conducting its final maneuvers to close with that Chang’e lander.” He turned back to them. “Based on those closure numbers, they’ll be in position to dock somewhere around the far side of the moon.”

  “Well, there you go,” Boomer said. “If those ships are manned and they’re going for a real honest-to-God landing, we’ll know soon enough. Just as soon as that Russian command module comes back around the edge of the moon on some orbit without the lander anywhere in sight.”

  Twenty-Six

  Aboard Federation 2, in Lunar Orbit

  That Same Time

  Colonel Tian Fan, China’s senior military taikonaut, floated next to his co-commander, Russian cosmonaut Colonel Kirill Lavrentyev. He kept his arms and legs carefully tucked in. While the clean, spare, off-white interior of the Federation capsule was significantly less cramped than the old Soyuz and Shenzou capsules they were used to, it was still not spacious—especially with a full long-duration crew of four aboard. Its total usable volume was only about nine cubic meters, though that was about 50 percent bigger than America’s Apollo-era command modules. Below their feet, Federation 2’s other crewmen, Major Liu Zhen and Captain Dmitry Yanin, were strapped into their couches, staying out of the way of their senior officers during this maneuver.