Eagle Station

Reluctantly, Brad smiled. Then he turned to the Sky Masters technician in charge of their communications setup. “Patch me through to the president.”

After several minutes, President Farrell’s strained and somber image appeared on-screen. He had been following developments from the Oval Office. “Yes, Major McLanahan? What is it?”

“Sir, we’ve worked out another plan of attack,” Brad told him. “My team and I believe that it’s vital that we go again — and go as soon as possible. Right now, the Russians and Chinese are probably figuring out how to strengthen their lunar base defenses. If we give them too much time to prepare, they’re likely to deploy lasers of their own, and maybe even long-range, guided missiles. And once that happens, no force we can possibly send to the moon will ever be able to take that base on with any hope of success.”

“Hold on there, Major,” the president said heavily. “One thing’s for damned sure: I will not authorize another spaceplane raid against the Sino-Russian moon base. God knows, I admire your guts… but I am most definitely not in the business of abetting suicide. Because from where I’m sitting, there’s no way in hell a spacecraft in orbit can take on that Russian plasma gun in a straight-up fight and win.”

Brad nodded. “Yes, sir, I agree,” he said evenly. “That’s why we plan to go in on the ground this time—”

Korolev Base, on the Far Side of the Moon

Three Weeks Later

Even across four hundred thousand kilometers, Colonel Kirill Lavrentyev could tell that Marshal Leonov and President Li had more bad news to share with him. Discovering that the Americans could send armed spacecraft to lunar orbit had already shaken the strategic and operational assumptions on which all their plans were based. But even so, no one had imagined the spaceplane’s attack might come so close to success. No one except for Tian, he reminded himself silently. From the beginning, his Chinese counterpart had foreseen the danger… and gone on steadfastly to prepare to meet it — knowing all the while that doing so might mean his own death.

Leonov pulled no punches this time. “Our space sensors and ground-based telescopes have detected a new American spacecraft on its way to the moon.”

“Another one of their S-29s?” Lavrentyev asked, unable to hide his sudden concern.

“No, Colonel,” Leonov assured him. He sketched out what they knew. Some hours before, another Falcon Heavy rocket had launched — this time from the SpaceX complex near Brownsville, Texas, on America’s Gulf coast. Originally scheduled to carry commercial satellites for a number of different private companies, the rocket instead had carried a secret U.S. government payload into space. Neither Russia’s GRU nor China’s Ministry of State Security had been able to learn much more about this mysterious payload except that it had originally arrived in Texas aboard a Sky Masters — owned 747F cargo jet.

After entering a parking orbit — probably to check out its systems and flight readiness — the Falcon’s second-stage Merlin-1D engine had boosted this payload outward, toward the moon. Still concealed by its fairings, it was on course to enter the moon’s gravitational influence in approximately forty-eight hours.

“But nothing else is known about its nature?” Lavrentyev pressed. “This must be some kind of weapon, right?”

“That is undoubtedly so,” Li said. For once, the Chinese president’s tone conveyed his own sense of unease. “General Chen Haifeng and his Strategic Support Force experts have speculated this might be a maneuverable orbital bomb, perhaps even equipped with a nuclear weapon.”

Lavrentyev nodded slowly. In the absence of an atmosphere, nuclear detonations in space or on the moon could not destroy their targets with blast or thermal effects… but their radiation effects were far greater — with a lethal radius ten to twelve times bigger than on Earth. True, Korolev’s habitat module offered excellent protection against ordinary lunar and cosmic radiation. But while its half-meter-thick walls might shield his crewmen against a distant nuclear blast, the habitat could not save them from the radiation produced by a nuclear bomb going off at close range. And if anything, the base’s plasma rail gun and radars were even more vulnerable.

“If Chen and his officers are correct, can you defeat such a weapon?” Li asked curtly.

Lavrentyev forced himself to put a brave face on the situation. “I believe so, Comrade President. Major Liu and Captain Yanin have thoroughly analyzed the different evasive maneuvers employed by the American S-29 Shadow. Repeated computer simulations have helped them develop aiming protocols to enable our plasma rail gun to achieve kills against maneuvering targets — at least during prolonged battles fought out at long range.”