Page 48 of Stars

Sergey grabbed his phone and dialed Ilya’s number. He pushed to his feet as it rang, shoved his rumpled shirt back into his suit pants.

“What is it, Seryozha?” Ilya snapped.

“Find me everything.” Sergey’s voice shook, trembling as cold fury took root at the base of his heart. Something was squeezing there, something that had his heart in a vise. “Find me fucking everything about this satellite.”

“It’s been half an hour!” Ilya puffed on a cigarette. “I’m going, I’m going. I’m driving to the airport now. I should be at Svobodny this afternoon. What’s so important you had to call again?”

“Sasha. He’s—”

“What the fuck is going on with him now?”

“He’s boarding that Soviet satellite, with those damned crazy Americans. So you have to find me everything, Ilyukha, before he flies to his death.”

* * *

16

Johnson Space Center

Houston, Texas

“That was damn impressive.”Roxanne, her hair piled on top of her head in a messy bun with two half-chewed pencils sticking out, smiled at Sasha, his EMR-1 crew, and a jam-packed Mission Control.

Everyone had bags under their eyes, dark smudges like bruises on haggard faces. Flight controllers clutched mugs of coffee, their polos and khaki pants rumpled and stained from a half dozen spills over the last twenty-four hours.

Sasha, Mark, and Sarah slumped in their chairs by Roxanne’s flight director station. The twenty-four-hour simulation had taken everything out of everybody. Integrated sims were nightmare versions of the mission, crisis-jammed alternate realities where everything went wrong, from start to finish, for both the crew and Mission Control.

They’d practiced the entire rescue mission, from undocking at the ISS to docking with the Soviet satellite. Dressing for the EVA and then moving through their boarding maneuvers in the NBL.

The simulation threw three different problems at Sasha while he was trying to take over the Soviet satellite, power down combat operations, and reprogram its guidance computer. First they gave him a busted power core and a corrupted mainframe. He’d swapped the power cells and brought the creaking computer system back online. On the second, he spent too long trying to code through the guidance system, and the simulator made him pay for it. His tether assembly jammed on his return to the capsule, and by the time he switched out his spare tether and made it back to the Orion capsule, his oxygen tanks were nearly depleted.

The third run-through, Sasha drilled through the Soviet computer and ripped the entire mainframe out of the housing before connecting his simulated laptop and installing fresh programming for the satellite’s combat operations and guidance system. Mission Control had chuckled when he brought out the drill.

While Sasha was floating in the NBL, Sarah practiced assessing and disarming nuclear devices in space. Three scenarios were thrown at her: a reactor leak from a nuclear propulsion system; a damaged nuclear weapon, possibly struck by a meteorite or other space debris; and a live, armed, fully powered nuclear warhead, ready to launch at America.

She must have passed each scenario, because the simulation continued, pushing the three of them off the satellite and back to the ISS. Malfunctions and catastrophes were thrown in along the way, from engine failures to sensor glitches as the hours bled on. Mission Control gave them a forty-five-minute nap after they docked with the ISS, and then it was time for their deorbit burn and return to Earth. Mark and Sasha piloted the capsule together, side by side as they rocked and rolled on the simulator’s shocks.

“Houston, we have splashdown,” Mark had said, ending the simulation to a chorus of cheers and applause over the radio from their Mission Control room.

“Time to debrief,” Roxanne had called. “Everyone grab something to eat and meet back in Mission Control in an hour. Astronauts, take a shower and get a change of clothes.”

Roxanne walked through the highlights and the low points of the simulation. Sasha was dinged for using all his oxygen. Mark had made a risky call on the docking return to the ISS, overriding a faulty sensor reading based on a gut feeling. It was the right call, but mission specs called for another EVA.

Sasha fought to keep his eyes open. Now that the simulation was over, the adrenaline that had kept him wired was bleeding out, the edge-of-the-seat rush he’d felt with every new challenge long since evaporated. Twenty-four hours on edge, living that rush, left Sasha nearly lifeless. He listened with half an ear as Roxanne debriefed Mission Control.

The door to Mission Control opening stopped Roxanne in her tracks, made everyone sit up.

Integrated sims were lockdown drills. No one disturbed a simulator crew. No one broke the aura of real-life mission tension. Not even in the debrief, when everyone was still coming down off the high of a successful run. Roxanne rose and glared at the door, feet planted and arms crossed.

Two security guards escorted a short, heavyset, round-faced woman into the room. She wore a dark plaid skirt and a brown cardigan, even in Houston’s summer, and she looked like she hadn’t smiled in three decades.

Sasha leaped to his feet. His coffee spilled over his hand, burning him, but he didn’t notice. He stared at the woman, met her eyes across Mission Control. She stared right back, her gaze hard, her expression flat.

“Sorry, ma’am,” one of the guards said, nodding to Roxanne. “This is Ms. Breasha Turgenev from the Russian consulate. She has a diplomatic packet for Captain Andreyev.”

Breasha stepped forward, holding a maroon zippered bag the size of a manila envelope in her hands. “Diplomatic pouch for Sasha Alexanderovich Andreyev, direct from Kremlin. It must be given directly to him.” Her Russian accent was as thick as the Siberian fog, even after years working at the consulate.

All eyes flicked to Sasha.