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“Loud and clear, Roscosmos. I was wondering if you got lost.”
“No, no, we are right here, Captain Andreyev.”
Sasha smothered a chuckle. Some humor didn’t translate. He used to be like that. No, he used to be even worse. “Have you found what I need, Roscosmos?”
“Da!So, do you see the black-and-yellow-striped braided wire coming out of, well, what used to be the CPU?”
“I do.” Sasha delicately reached for it with his fat astronaut gloves, feathering the braided cable off the circuit board and tugging it free from its seat in the drilled-out CPU. He brought it close to his tablet, already thinking ahead to what adapter plug he needed—
“Good, move that out of the way. Now, reach for the three-inch ribbon wire beneath that. You see it,da?”
“Da. Is this the one I need, or should I throw this away, too?”
“Nyet, this is the cable. This leads to the guidance software on the—”
Sasha tuned Roscosmos out, letting the voice drone on as he pulled the ribbon wire free of the CPU and fished out the right adapter from his kit. At the end of the wire was a parallel port, and he slotted in the USB-to-parallel adapter on his tablet and then plugged the ribbon wire into the adapter. The tablet flashed, command lines opening up. “Roscosmos, Houston, I have connected to the satellite.”
Cheers rose across the radio uplink, Houston and Star City both. Over everyone, he heard Sergey’s voice, loud and clear. “Well done, Captain Andreyev.”
From there it was simple: wipe out the old guidance software and protocols and upload the new ones the CIA had coded for NASA. In six hours, once they were well clear, the old Soviet satellite would begin transiting to a graveyard orbit, slowly moving out beyond the cloud of GPS, Milstar, communications, weather, imaging, and surveillance satellites that encircled the globe. It would languish in the empty space far outside the orbital cloud, almost halfway to the moon.
And then Sasha was finished. His purpose on the mission was completed. He pushed off the satellite and burned his jets for a second, navigating clear of the structure and spinning around, taking in the view of the Earth. The Pacific Ocean lay beneath them, wide and empty, nothing but cerulean blue as far as the eye could see.
Mark had a separate set of commands to upload, straight from his own tablet via another connection to the motherboard. “Houston, rail gun commands uploaded,” he called, after he’d finished. “Moving to the rail gun now.” It was another part of the mission Sasha was passively not invited to. He didn’t mind, though. Let Mark spend the next two hours with a socket wrench. He would watch the Earth and compare the shades of the ocean to Sergey’s eyes.
“Houston, Roscosmos.” Mark’s voice broke through Sasha’s reverie, taut and edged with something hard. “We’ve got a situation. I need to speak to NASA’s leadership.”
Sasha fired his jets and maneuvered back to the satellite, diving down the outside of interwoven skirt to the bottom of the bell. Mark had finished disassembling and stowing the Soviet rail gun’s internals to bring back to NASA. Then he’d gone back to help Sarah. Sasha hovered at the base of the bell, looking up into what felt like eternity. Twin specks of white, Mark’s and Sarah’s space suits danced in the light of each other’s suit lamps, the beams playing in the endless shadows and tickling the dark.
“What’s up, Mark?” Roxanne asked. “I’ve got Bob here with me.”
Sarah spoke next. “It’s the warhead. I have detached it from the missile body, but it’s double fail-safed. It was prearmed on the ground and it’s received its activation signal, which is why we’re picking up the radiation. All it’s waiting for is the detonation command from the Russian Ministry of Defense, and then it will blow.”
“Activating a nuclear weapon requires presidential authority,” Sergey said, jumping into the conversation. Not even the static could take away from the force of his voice, the thunder trembling through him. It was as if he were right there, right in front of Sasha. “I can assure you, I havenointerest in activating or detonating any nuclear device. Especially not near one of my citizens. Near Captain Andreyev.” For a moment, a microsecond, Sergey’s voice shook.
“I would never presume to question your word, Mr. President,” Bob said, every letter, every inflection of every vowel a dance in diplomacy. “Can we be certain there are no other possible means of detonation? There has been some unrest in Russia recently. The last time that occurred…”
“I assure you,” Sergey growled, “my government is in complete control of this country. There are no threats.However, to ensure this, I will dispatch emergency forces to secure the launch control facilities at Yamantau Mountain. No one will be permitted entry. There will be no chance for this device to be detonated. None.”
A new voice came over the radio, one Sasha didn’t recognize. “Mr. President, this is General Duncan, US Joint Space Command. We have spoken once before.”
“I remember, General.”
“If these astronauts are to assume control of this device and return it to Earth, the United States military will then take control of the warhead and neutralize it.”
“Go right ahead, General. That is one less nuke I have to deal with as part of our arms treaty.”
“Wait.” Mark, cutting into the chatter. “Wait. Did you say we are taking control of this warhead? And bringing it back to Earth?”
“The warhead goes back with you to the ISS, Commander Keating,” General Duncan ordered. “And from there, you will bring it to Earth. We will take it from there.”
“We thought it was able to be fully disarmed,” Sarah said.
“It’snotdisarmed,” Mark replied. “It’s a live, ready-to-detonate nuclear device, in the three-hundred-kiloton range. And you want us to cuddle up next to it and sleep with it for the next three days? Trust that it won’t detonate? Well,Iam the mission commander, and anything that happens up here ismycall. I am not all right with this decision.”
“Commander—”
“Mr. Keating—”
