Liu pulled the worn leather-bound Art of War from beneath the elastic straps on his desk to reverentially place it in a drawer with the few other personal effects he’d brought with him. There was another precept of Sun’s which he thought applied perfectly to this situation: When seeking to determine the conditions for battle, with whom lie the advantages derived from Heaven and Earth?
He chuckled to himself as he closed the small drawer: He was certain this would be the most unique application of that question yet.
There was a muted knock on the door of his sleep chamber—like most spacecraft, the commander’s quarters were not much larger than the closets that sufficed as berthing for the other crewmen. Until they could find more efficient methods to build ships in orbit, mass and volume would always demand a steep price.
“It is t-minus ten minutes, Colonel.”
He recognized Lieutenant Zhou’s voice—young, serious, eager to please. “Thank you, Lieutenant,” he said through the door. “I will be in the flight module shortly.”
“Very good, sir.”
Liu checked himself in the small mirror adjacent to his sleeping bag. His stiff, bristle-brush hair was clipped close, flecks of gray becoming more and more prevalent. He patted his eyes reflexively, as if working out remnants of sleep he hadn’t had in hours. He pulled at his chin, ensuring he hadn’t missed any stray whiskers.
His eyes swept the small stateroom one last time: nothing out of place, drawers and cabinets secure, sleeping bag tightly rolled up against the bulkhead. A small writing desk was folded into the opposite wall, beneath a personal TV monitor on standby and displaying the shield of the People’s Liberation Aerospace Force. By his design, it looked almost as if no one lived there. No distracting family photos or personal mementos other than a single peony blossom pressed between glass plates, which his wife had plucked from her garden before he left Earth. It had no identifying markings, no hand-scribbled notes attached, no photograph to perhaps put it in context. Privacy aboard a spacecraft was scarce and something to be carefully cultivated. Being the only man aboard who knew its significance made it all the more meaningful.
Satisfied that his chamber was secure, he made his way through the short docking tunnel into the forward control module. It could comfortably hold four men at a time—one fourth of his crew—not including him. As the ship was about to depart its long-occupied halo orbit at L1 for interplanetary space, all four flight stations were occupied: two pilots, an engineer, and a weapons officer, in pairs facing what would be forward once the ship was under thrust. The pilots sat before two large triangular windows. Between the two pairs of consoles was a single, simple chair unfolded from the floor. Though it was supposed to be stowed to open up space, it never had been. The commander’s chair was symbolic, it represented his command presence even during those rare periods when he was off duty.
He noted the command crew subtly tense up as he floated into the cabin. “As you were, gentlemen,” he said before someone could announce his presence on deck. It was one of the very few departures from military customs he was willing to allow: In orbit, there was nothing more ridiculous or counterproductive than a small crew trying to snap to attention when there was no way for them to properly stand. It made for an odd combination of naval and air force courtesies—while the ship itself could be more closely compared to a naval vessel underway, the crew had to function more like a strategic bomber crew in flight and nobody snapped-to every time the aircraft commander left the cockpit. He suspected the Borman’s crew would have been much the same had its captain not been such a dedicated naval officer in his former life. But then, there were undeniable parallels between this and the submarine service. They would see for themselves soon enough.
“Major Wu,” he said as he strapped into his seat, “are we ready?”
The command pilot, and Liu’s executive officer, turned to face him. “The ship is ready, sir, as is the crew. All off-duty crewmen are secure in their chambers. Control is awaiting your confirmation of final orders, sir.” He tapped a screen on the pedestal between the pilot stations and a message appeared on a tablet attached to one of Liu’s armrests. It did not waste words: CLEARED TO PROCEED.
“L1 departure approved,” he said calmly. “Initiate terminal countdown at two minutes from injection node, as planned.”
Wu entered a command into the flight computer and their new orbit path appeared on a large status screen mounted between the triangular windows. “Two minutes . . . mark. Countdown begun, sir.” There were muffled bursts of control jets outside as the ship automatically adjusted its trim angle to keep them on a precise course.
“Beginning ignition cycle,” the engineer, Lieutenant Zhou, reported. “Reactors will be at full capacity at T-zero, sir.”
Liu imagined he could feel the ship gathering its full strength as distant turbopumps began whining, drawing propellant from the massive tanks behind the crew modules and into the manifolds. It would all come together to ignite in the plenum chambers at the precise moment to put them on the optimum minimum-time trajectory to intercept the Borman. Harnessing the ruthless efficiency of their nuclear engines with such exquisite precision was deeply satisfying. He suppressed a smile. Ready or not, here we come, as the Americans would say.
23
Marshall flew headfirst out of the node and into the command module, almost missing a handhold and managing to stop himself before tumbling into Poole and Garver.
“I didn’t know taking inventory could be that exciting,” Poole said bemusedly, looking over Garver’s estimates. He adjusted a pair of reading glasses on his nose. “Find something interesting, Mister Hunter?”
“Them!” he blurted out. “I’ve found them!”
Poole peered at Marshall over his glasses, his interest piqued. “Clarify, please,” he said, dispassionately projecting calm to get the young officer to settle down himself.
Marshall caught his breath. “I found the Jiangs.”
Poole exchanged surprised looks with the chief, and Marshall noticed sideways glances from the other crewmembers. “Now you’ve got my interest. Where and how, Mister Hunter?”
“In their command module—I mean, I used the biomonitors to home in on their position. I powered up their module interface to access inventory logs, figured I could get through it faster. The biomonitor came on, I reset it, then it came back with faint telemetry—their suits are still transmitting data but it’s really weak, sir. I used their directional antenna to get a bearing on them.”
“And?”
Marshall tipped his head up toward the cupola, where RQ39 still loomed outside. “They’re at the asteroid. With the ISRU and cargo sled gone, I think they’re probably on it.”
“But you couldn’t pin them down with just one bearing,” Poole said, thinking out loud. “We’ll need to get multiple bearings and triangulate.”
“Do you know the frequencies their suit telemeters used?” Garver asked.
“Haven’t found that yet, Chief.”
Garver looked for Rosie, who’d been watching intently from the far side of the cabin. With a jerk of his thumb, she took off down the tunnel into Prospector. He looked back at Marshall. “It’ll be faster to let her find it, sir.” He glanced at Poole. “I suspect you’ll be busy with other things soon.”
“Damn straight he will,” Poole said. “Get the shuttle prepped for departure ASAP. Once Rosie comes back with their suit frequencies, set your radios accordingly to get bearings on them.” He raised his voice, drawing the crew’s attention. “I know you’re all a bunch of damned eavesdroppers, so let me make it simple: Mister Hunter here may have found our missing spacefarers. Before anybody gets their hopes up, at this point remember we are almost certainly recovering casualties.”
Turning back to Marshall, he lowered his voice. “Now there’s something you don’t know about.” He handed over the message printout.
Marshall’s brow furrowed as he tried to digest it. “I . . . don’t understand. Chin
a has an interplanetary spacecraft we didn’t know about?”
“More correctly, we did know about it,” Poole said. “We just thought it was a fuel depot.”
He stared at the message, trying to recall what he knew about the Peng Fei and make sense of it. “Nobody in CIA or the Pentagon had a clue? How could they miss that?”
Poole regarded him with grim amusement as he took back the paper. “I’m just impressed that’s your first thought and not ‘Yippee, someone’s coming to our rescue.’ Makes me glad I kept you on the crew.”
Marshall blushed. “There’s that too, sir.” He hadn’t been looking forward to spending the next several months counting out all those meals and subsisting on a starvation diet.
“So what are your thoughts, Mister Hunter?”
Was the captain really asking him that? If he was, he might as well go with his gut . . .
“The Chinese lifted a lot of mass up to L1 over a couple of years to build it,” he said slowly. “It was supposed to be a waystation for their lunar ops, but those never really got going, did they? Not to the extent they’d need a propellant depot that large. And if they put engines on it without us noticing, then what else is on it?”
“Meaning?” Poole prodded.
Marshall shrugged. “We’ve got weapons, we’re just up front about it. They’ve already kept one big capability secret. There’s got to be more they’re not talking about.”
Poole poked him in the chest with the rolled-up paper. “Very good, Mister Hunter. Maybe when you get back from your next trip you can help us figure that out.”
With their departure burn complete, Liu saw to it that the Peng Fei’s crew fell back into their normal routine as it sped away from the Earth-Moon system. They had trained and rehearsed scenarios to the point where any contingency could be reacted to from memory. Now, it was vital that the men be either at their posts or resting, ensuring the ship ran smoothly now that their mission beyond Earth was underway.
Though he had hoped to someday be the first to do so, he could still be satisfied in the knowledge that the first people to escape cislunar space had indeed been Chinese even if they had been using American-made equipment. Whether the Jiangs still thought of themselves as Chinese mattered little to him—it was their heritage, as inescapable as the physical laws that defined their travels out here. It was a pity that they could not reconcile themselves to that reality, though they had to know the Party would not tolerate their insolence forever. They had already made a worldwide nuisance of themselves spouting insufferable lies about the supposed deprivations suffered by average citizens—as if they had experienced such oppression themselves!
They had finally found the limits of their own supposed freedom. Expatriates or not, they had gone too far for their own good, at long last running afoul of their birth nation’s economic and security interests. As an officer of the People’s aerospace forces, he could feel no sympathy for their plight. Leaving the confines of Earth’s atmosphere and straying far from its gravity well exposed them to innumerable hazards, most instantly fatal. It was an environment not meant for humans, and it was only through meticulous preparation and exhaustive training that even the most superior specimens could hope to withstand an extended tenure in deep space. The thought of an average Americanized upper-class couple making such a jaunt filled him with disdain. What could they hope to accomplish other than survive? They accomplished nothing without the tireless work of hundreds of unheralded workers behind them, yet they achieved all the notoriety and amassed all the wealth.
It was the way of the world, Liu knew. His people had found a better way, one which the Jiangs had chosen to abandon. Not just abandon, he knew—they had actively opposed it from every vantage point they could take. And as their illicit fortunes had grown, they had found more ways to undermine his nation’s unity. From speaking at universities, to mouthing their propaganda on news programs, to addressing foreign government assemblies, to ultimately financing those querulous little “nongovernmental organizations” that harassed and undermined the PRC . . . No, the corner of his soul that at one time might have felt concern for their plight was instead filled with contempt.
Their failures needed to be held up to the world as an example. Their disappearance had already shown the world how dangerous deep space was, and the crippled American vessel sent to their rescue only served as a punctuation of this fact. Never a place for the timid, it was certainly not a place for the foolhardy or the overly confident, which the Americans certainly were. Now, they’d tempted fate and needed rescue themselves. Fortunate for them that his ship was in a position to offer aid and assistance as the world watched in morbid fascination. Watch, and hopefully learn.
While used to being under constant scrutiny from military and party leaders, Liu was not accustomed to being in the public eye. Already known for being coldly efficient, he was compelled to see that his crew exceeded the already high standards he’d set for them.
He brought this merciless focus to bear on the mission plan and status report now laid out before him on the widescreen monitor in the command deck. Major Wu hovered behind him, feet slipped in floor restraints and hands clasped behind his back in a stiff parade-rest stance. This allowed him to surreptitiously worry at a fingernail, keeping his apprehension out of Liu’s sight as he awaited questions from his commander.
“I see we are over two meters per second below our target velocity,” Liu noted. “In one day’s time. Why is this, Major Wu?”
“I am investigating this anomaly, sir. Our residuals after shutdown were within the lower bound of acceptable error, but clearly they have propagated more than anticipated.”
“Clearly,” Liu said. “And be careful about what you consider ‘acceptable error,’ Wu. What may be acceptable to the mission planners in their offices is not acceptable to us. There are no fuel farms, ocean currents, or jet streams out here to turn to our advantage. Every meter per second represents future opportunity to be lost or gained—ours or theirs. Is this understood?”
Wu lowered his head deferentially. “Of course, Colonel.”
Studying the projections further, Liu decided to let him off the hook a bit. They had lost more velocity than planned but it could be made up with a correction burn soon. If main engine cutoff had indeed occurred almost at the exact second—which it had, he’d been there when it happened—then it left few alternatives. “Either our trajectory planning is in error or our mass budget has been miscalculated,” he said, stroking his chin. He turned to Wu and lowered his voice enough that the rest of the command deck crew couldn’t hear. “You know I don’t like to guess, Wu. But since I am in a position to, I would speculate that it’s the latter. We are carrying too much mass. Whether it is essential equipment, or our crewmen smuggled too much into their personal allowances, we may have to lose weight.” He patted his flat stomach. “It’s rather late to put the ship on a diet, correct?”
A slight smile from Wu. “Correct, sir.” He eyed the connecting tunnel behind them, toward the aft modules. “If I may?”
Liu nodded his assent.
Wu cleared his throat. “I inspected each crew’s personal equipment packages before launch, sir. If there is a gross error in that budget, I take full responsibility.”
A thin smile crept across Liu’s face, ending at his eyes. “But a gross error of that magnitude isn’t likely, is it, Major?”
Wu continued. “It is not, sir. It is likely that our consumables inventory is in error, but much of that was predetermined on the ground. No, I believe it is one of two things: either density variations in our hydrogen and oxygen—”
“Which would be in our favor, over time,” Liu interrupted.
“Yes sir, we’d have more propellant than budgeted,” Wu agreed, “or Captain Huang’s squad brought more equipment than they reported.”
“That seems most likely to me as well, which in the end also redounds to our favor. Do not waste your valuable time with further investigation. Focus i
nstead on correcting the shortfall with our next burn.” Liu’s eyes narrowed, though they signaled amusement. “One can never have too much fuel or ammunition.”
Nick Lesko had been stuck with what little fare was available on the base hospital’s limited television service, and with no internet he couldn’t even stream from his own accounts. His phone was useless, as was the expensive laptop still sitting in its rad-shielded case by his bed. That thing could probably split atoms but it might as well have been a paperweight to him now.
He flicked through the same baker’s-dozen channels, most following the same banal formula with only the faces changing. There was exactly one news station, but that at least meant the occasional sports programming so he could maybe catch up on some of the bets he’d laid before leaving Earth.
Lesko drummed his fingers impatiently. Not even two weeks yet, and it felt like a lifetime ago. There’d been too much work to do even without his contacts in Macau scrupulously monitoring every aspect of their preparations. He had no illusions that they hadn’t also managed to plant an informant somewhere in Stardust’s mission control team back in Cali.
If things had gone to plan, they’d have expected to hear from him by now. But things had most definitely not gone according to plan.
Why had he done it? There’d been a plan to eliminate the others after reentry, about which Lesko had his doubts—not that it couldn’t have been done, but that it couldn’t have been done without him somehow being connected to it. The alternative had seemed like an easy choice once it presented itself. “Natural causes” were always a better choice than an obvious hit if you had the opportunity.
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