Page 105 of Stars

“If this were Ethan. If it were him in orbit, with an outbreak like this, would you sit back and do nothing?”

“No.”

“No, you’d strap yourself to an Acme rocket and fly off after him, I know you would. And you’d be a hero when you returned, the death-defying American president rescuing his husband,again,” Sergey spat. His voice was turning vicious, cold and cutting. “You’d save him. You always have. You always will.”

“I paid for my choices, Sergey, choices I made helpingyouand helping Russia—”

“I just want to save Sasha!” Sergey roared. “I don’tcareabout anything else! I don’tcareabout this fucking country anymore! Let the dogs have it, Idon’t care! I’ve given my whole life, everything I am, to this fucking place! After all of it, the only thing I want is him—and I cannot save him! There is nothing I can do to save him! If I resign as Zeytsev wants,maybehe won’t be blown up! But that sickness—”

Silence filled the office, save for Sergey’s harsh, wet breaths, the sound of his anguished sobs. He paced to the wall and sagged against it, hiding his face.

“I’m going to DC,” Jack said softly. “I’m going to the White House.”

Sergey turned. Some dam inside him had broken, and agony poured down his weary face in waves. The waters of his soul soaked his skin, rivers of salt glittering like falling stars, or pieces of a spaceship breaking apart in orbit. He stared at Jack. “You’ve never been back, not since...”

“Not once. But I’ve got to talk to President Wall.” He tried to smile. “I’m a former president, albeit a disgraced one. I still have some rights. Access to intelligence is one of them. And Elizabeth is a friend. We can figure something out. I know we can. Some solution that doesn’t involve murdering the world’s astronauts.”

Sergey hissed. Jack watched him close his eyes, swallow hard. Visibly gather himself, all the broken parts and pieces of his soul, and draw them in. His face was splotchy, as red and pale as if he were sick, fevered and delirious like the astronauts slowly succumbing in orbit.

In a way, he was. He was lovesick, staring up at the stars in ninety-minute cycles, watching the love of his life streak by, there and gone again.

Maybe that was as close as Sergey was ever going to get to Sasha again.

Jack couldn’t believe that. He couldn’t accept that.

There had to be a solution. A cure, a treatment—something. Something beyond just barricading the doors to Earth and letting the heavens burn, leaving corpses in orbit forever.

“Can I borrow your plane?” he asked, standing. “I want to make DC before sundown, and I’m chasing time zones.”

“Of course,” Sergey said. “You will always have whatever assistance you need from me. Anything, always.”

“Thank you. I’ll do everything I can. Everything.” He tried to smile at his friend. It was like trying to smile at a funeral.

Sergey nodded. “When you’re in America…”

“Yes?”

“Call Roxanne Villanueva. I’ll send you the number. She is—was—the flight director for Sasha’s mission. The military threw her and everyone else out when they took over. They’re trying to work around the military. I offered my help. Whatever they need.”

“How’d she reach you?”

Sergey quirked a tiny smile. “Commander Mark Keating’s wife texted me. I met her, and everyone else Sasha works with, when I went to Houston. That is, when Sergey Ivchenko visited the love of his life in Houston for Family Day at NASA.” Sergey hissed, and his smile fell. “He had the time of his life.”

“I’ll call her. We’ll figure this out, I promise.” He crossed the office to Sergey and took his hand, squeezing once.

Sergey squeezed back, almost hard enough to break his bones. “Please, Jack. Bring him home to me.”

* * *

32

ISS

Tumbling in Earth’s Orbit

“Keep an eye on your oxygen,”Mark said, his voice scratchy over the space-to-space UHF radio. “We didn’t get a chance to refill the suits to full capacity. We only have about six hours out here.”

“I think we will need longer than that.” Sasha followed Mark as they climbed hand over hand across the ISS’s shuddering main support truss. Cross-strapping power fromZvezdahadn’t worked. Too much on the station was broken, too many conduits and power couplings and backups failing. They were trying to manually fix what they could, if anything, to try and get some solar power flowing again.