Page 144 of Stars

“Seryozha,” he whispered. “I will love you forever.”

“Sasha, Mark, come in. Do you read me? Do you read me, over?”

Dan’s broken voice tickled through the static, barely there. “I read you! We’re here.”

“Do you read me, over? If you can read me… You guys hang on, okay?” Dan’s voice warbled, slid away on a radio squeal. “Hang on—”

* * *

43

Jiuquan Space Launch Complex

Inner Mongolia, China

“We are holdingat T minus one hour to launch. We have a three-hour launch window.”

Jack stuttered to a stop behind Sergey as his friend barreled out of the elevator behind Colonel Song at the Jiuquan Mission Control Center.

One hundred flight engineers sat in rows of trenches facing computer terminals and a wall of display screens two stories tall. Front and center, a video feed from the Launch Control Tower showed a Long March rocket on the north pad at Launch Area Four. Beyond the rocket, wind-scoured lowlands and desolate steppes unfolded beneath a cloudless azure sky. A ribbon of blue cut across the dried valley: the Ruo Shui River.

The Chinese Long March was similar to the NASA SLS, a tall core stage with two solid rocket boosters on the lower segment. The Long March was slender, its boosters relatively small, and she seemed more delicate than the American sledgehammers the US hurled into space.

Jack and Ethan bracketed Sergey and Kilaqqi. Jack had Ethan, Kilaqqi, and the others fly to Dingxin Airport under Chinese military escort while Sergey used the last of his waning presidential powers to commandeer a jet out of the country. Dan and the rest of their rebel mission control stayed at Roscosmos, bouncing signals off every satellite they could and tracking Sasha and Mark’s degrading orbit.

“How quickly can you get to our people?” Kilaqqi asked.

“Depending on their orbital position at launch, we can reach them between 47 and 109 minutes after the main engines start,” Song said.

“What the fuck are we waiting for?” Sergey’s hands trembled. He slid one palm flat against the other, over and over.

Song’s gaze slid sideways to Jack. “Your people in orbit are infected with a virus. One that has no cure.”

Jack nodded.

“The American government has told the world they will shoot down anything returning from the ISS. If we launch, we risk their retaliation against our program and the possible destruction of our rocket.”

“What the fuck did you call us here for if you weren’t going to launch?” Sergey roared. “You arewastingtheir time!”

Song turned away from Sergey and moved to Jack, standing face-to-face with him. “We have a level four biological research facility one hundred miles from here. When your people are brought down from orbit, we will take them there and attempt to treat them. Anything we gather from this treatment will remain the property of the People’s Republic.”

Now he understood: the price of Song’s help was the virus. Not just information about it, but to possess it, own it. To be the only nation on the planet that had it.

That is exactly our concern. If anyone gets their hands on this virus and weaponizes it, that’s the end of humanity.

“It’s more dangerous than you can possibly understand,” he said softly. “It can spiral out of control faster than you can blink.”

Song stared.

Would it be better to leave them up there? Would it be better, in the end, after everything, to let them go quietly? What would it mean if China possessed the virus? What would they do with it?

How would the world pay for his choices, his fight for Sasha’s survival?

What if next time it’s Ethan who’s infected, and the virus comes from a rocket launched against the US?

“I have an idea to treat them.” Kilaqqi stepped forward, squaring off against Song. “If treatment is what you are interested in.”

Sergey stared at Kilaqqi like the old man had eviscerated him, like he’d stabbed him in the gut and run a blade up to his throat. “You say thisnow?”