Page 78 of Stars

Sasha had initially stayed back, using a quick-release tether to secureFreedomto the satellite’s latticed bell while Mark assisted Sarah inside the belly of the satellite. Mark was her floating toolbox, everything she could possibly need velcroed to his belt and thighs. She was going down in history: she was performing the first nuclear disarmament in space, and Mark was her assistant, at least for the tricky first hour.

Once Sarah gave the all clear—the warhead wasn’t about to blow up in her face, and the most critical part of the disarmament process had passed—Sasha had grabbed his gear bag and strapped his SAFER pack on.

He’d hesitated at the hatch, frozen in the open airlock, one foot extended but both hands clinging toFreedomwith all of his strength. His arms had seized, biceps and triceps as hard as rocks, shaking as if he were dangling off a cliff by only his fingertips.

There was nothing out there,nothing. Black emptiness as far as the eye could see. Earth wasn’t even in sight, since they were facing away from her. It was a void, like something from a nightmare, and he was going to tumble and fall forever if he stepped out of the hatch.

Letting go of the airlock and taking that step into nothingness had been harder than deciding to kiss Sergey for the first time.

When he finally did let go, the immensity of space slammed into him, and he flailed, tried to kick his legs, wheel his arms. His tiny, insignificant body, a speck of a fraction of the universe, floated in the cosmic void, untethered to anything or anyone. For a moment, he was more alone than he’d ever been in his entire life.

He’d finally turned around, maneuvering slowly until he’d risen aboveFreedomand was facing Earth.

Clouds covered his view of the northern hemisphere, and he couldn’t see where they were orbiting. It could have been Moscow or Mongolia or Missouri, but somewhere down there was Sergey. It was like an invisible chain connected them, looped from Sasha’s heart to Sergey’s and back, and suddenly he didn’t feel so alone. In the vast endlessness of the universe, Sergey Puchkov loved Sasha Andreyev. And Sasha loved him back, a love that stretched the breadth and depth of space, like the light of the sun reaching all the way out to Pluto and beyond.There is nowhere I am where you are not with me. There is nowhere I do not love you.

Sergey was always with him—and, at least for that moment, literally watching him. Roscosmos was tied directly in to NASA, and President Sergey Puchkov had joined the radio loop as Mark flewFreedomto the satellite. “Astronaut Andreyev,” Sergey had said, “I hear you are having a great mission.”

“It’s going very well, Mr. President,” he’d said. As they spoke, Mark’s gaze slid to him before snapping back to his display.

“You are making all of Russia proud,” Sergey had said. “And you have made me very proud.”

“Spasiba, Mr. President.”

Now, almost four hours later, Sasha was tethered to the Soviet satellite’s dome, working through the layers of paneling that shielded the onboard computer.

Mark maneuvered himself into a hover by his side, his mirrored-gold face mask catching the light of the sun and sparkling it back against Sasha. The satellite was in a semisynchronous orbit, stationed farther out than the ISS and moving more slowly. Beneath them, the ISS zipped by, a speck of light glinting in the sun.

“How’s it going, Sasha?”

He grunted. Out of the three simulations they’d practiced in Houston, reality was a combination of the worst parts of all three. He’d already decided to go straight for Plan C.

“Andreyev to Star City,da?” NASA and Roscosmos, in Star City outside Moscow, were looped on the same radio band for this mission, sharing audio and video telemetry in real time. What he needed now wasn’t with NASA.

“We read you, Captain Andreyev,” came a staticky voice over the radio. The man sounded fourteen cups of coffee too wired. “How can we be of assist?”

Sasha smiled, his heart lurching. Homesickness caught him off guard at times. He’d always been a loner, a rover. But he’d never been so separated from his people before, from everyone and everything he knew. Just the sound of a Russian accent, sometimes, was enough to tug on his heart. He’d play black-and-white Russian movies on YouTube or listen to Russian radio in his apartment to not feel so alone. Now, in orbit, a young man’s overeager accent made him want to turn back toward Earth, watch her rotate in slow motion until his home appeared.

“I’ve removed the outer casing on the mainframe.” He stared down at the 1980s-era motherboard, a two-foot-square circuit board stuffed with capacitors, stacks of ancient memory sticks measured in megabytes, ports, and ribbon wires splicing off in a hundred directions. His cell phone was more powerful than the entire Soviet satellite’s operating system. “Can you see what I’m looking at?”

“Da, Captain Andreyev, we see what you see.” A flurry of frenetic Russian tumbled through the static behind the operator’s voice. “We are pulling up the design specs now. One moment.Spasiba.”

“I need to know where the main CPU core is.”

“Da, da, one moment.Spasiba.” Russian, fast and furious, mixed with turning pages and crinkling paper. NASA and Houston were silent. On a separate channel, Sarah was working with her partners at the military and CIA. No Russians were invited to that radio loop.

“Okay,da, we have it. Captain Andreyev, in the upper left quadrant, do you see the eight white rectangles?”

“Da.”

“Okay, left of those, mmm, little distance, you see the large gray unit?”

“That’s the CPU?”

“Da. Now, to remove it—”

Sasha grabbed the drill tethered to his thigh and placed the bit in the center of the CPU. He flicked it on, and in seconds, the CPU was nothing but dust.

Silence from Roscosmos. There was a soft snort from NASA, a chuckle on the less-staticky line.