Page 56 of Stars

“Freedom, prepare for MECO.”

“Roger, Houston. Preparing for MECO.”

Eight minutes after liftoff from Kennedy, Mark flipped his switch for main engine cutoff, andFreedomslipped into low Earth orbit as she soared over Nova Scotia.

“Freedom, prepare for core-stage sep.”

“Houston, core-stage sep in 3… 2… 1.” Abangand a rumble, and the core stage, the main body of their SLS rocket, separated fromFreedom’s upper stage. It fell away, rust orange plunging down toward the mountains of clouds that looked like grains of sand scattered on a cosmic beach.

Mark took control ofFreedom, feathering the control stick as he guided them higher into orbit. “OMS engines on my mark, Sasha… Go.”

The orbital maneuvering engines fired, pushingFreedomthe final fifty thousand feet to their insertion vector.

“And that is it, everyone,” Mark said, unlocking his helmet. He let go, and it floated forward until he grabbed it and shoved his gloves inside. It bobbed next to his head like a ghost was among them. “Let’s get out of these monkey suits and get down to business.”

Sarah was already moving, unbuckling from her seat and stripping out of her pressure suit.

Sasha made it as far as lifting his visor and unbuckling from his harness. He floated forward, swimming in the weightlessness, and touched the cockpit window with his gloved hand. His nose pressed to the cold glass.

Spread beneath him, the curve of Earth dominated the cockpit, and the arch of the Atlantic as it lapped against Western Europe and the United Kingdom and wiggled into the North Sea. They’d launched at night, racing toward the sunny side of the Atlantic as they ascended. The terminator, the line between day and night, knifed over the United Kingdom. Sunlight poured onto the planet, liquid fire like life itself illuminating a pre-Genesis void. Electrons scattered off the atmosphere and refracted 180 degrees of perfect prismatic color, there for a moment and then gone.

“Amazing, isn’t it?” Mark floated beside Sasha. “You never forget your first launch. There’s nothing in the whole world that can compare.”

Sasha picked out the snow-speckled fingers of the Nordic countries, the fingers of the Arctic reaching down from the North Pole. Twelve minutes after launch, and he held his breath as the coast of Russia appeared, carved out of the Baltic Sea and the Gulf of Finland. Saint Petersburg soared beneath him, and then—

Moscow. Sergey.

There’s nothing in the whole world that can compare.

Sergey’s face, the look in his eyes as he gazed up at Sasha, their bodies as tightly joined as two humans could be. Kissing him and never stopping. Running to him across NASA’s simulator bay, grabbing him in his arms and swinging him around in front of everyone. Coming out voluntarily for the first time in his life.

Kissing Sergey goodbye and then hello again at each break in his training. The moment he’d fallen into Sergey’s arms after the Heroes Ball and surrendered to the love of his life, been greedy,wanted, grabbed hold of the one thing he craved more than anything—everything—else: Sergey.

Walking into his cabin in the Shipunovskaya forest and finding Sergey there like he’d dreamed of every morning.

Making love to Sergey beneath the Arctic ice. Sergey’s voice bouncing offHonolulu’s metal walls as he screamed that he chose Sasha, he wanted Sasha more than he wanted Russia, he wanted their love and what they could be.

Holding Sergey beneath the stars on a black sand island at the end of the world.

Sergey’s voice in his ears, the last sound he thought he’d hear in his life—and being thankful for that, for the choked way Sergey said his name, like Sashameantsomething to him—before his canopy blew and the ejection seat flung him clear of the missile’s impact on his MiG.

Kissing Sergey beneath his MiG’s shadow, feeling his body, his heat, the curve of his hips and his lean thighs, his slender chest. The unchaining of his craving, the yearning he’d nurtured in moments and touches and traded smiles and soft looks and warm laughs ever since the night he’d first met Sergey, aching and alone and brokenhearted as his dream of touching the stars and escaping Earth’s hold on his life had bled out of him in the snow on the side of the road outside Andreapol.

Thirty years of yearning—of always looking up, of wanting to stand between the sun and the moon and feel starlight on his skin—and now that he was in orbit, the first thing he did was crane his neck and search the Earth for Sergey.

Moscow floated beneath them, spinning there and away in a single breath.

Nothing in the world, not even launching into space, not even seeing the stars a handbreadth away or feeling gravity lose its hold on his bones, compared to his love for Sergey.

Sergey’s ring and his dog tags floated free of the neck of his undershirt in the cockpit’s weightlessness. The titanium ring made lazy orbits around the chain, each spin catching the sun’s glow in the center of the cobalt diamond.

Sasha fisted the ring as he pressed his fingers to the cold cockpit window.

* * *

Kremlin

Moscow, Russia