Eagle Station

Her fingers rattled across the largest of her multifunction displays, interrogating the S-29’s attack and threat-warning computers. In response, text boxes and schematics flashed across her screen — graphically illustrating the results of their simulated battle against Eagle Station. Her mouth turned down slightly at the corners. “It’s kind of a coin toss.”

“As in?” he asked.

“The computer figures we got nailed at least twice. Both times when we were within just a couple of hundred miles of the station.”

He nodded. No real surprise there. The Thunderbolt rail gun’s plasma projectiles flashed across that distance in just over three one-hundredths of a second. Barring luck, that was much too short an interval for any random thruster pulse to kick their S-29 safely out of harm’s way. “And on the plus side?”

Craig gave him a thumbs-up. “We scored at least three solid hits on Eagle before we got killed. So, if this had been a real fight, Colonel Reynolds and his crew would have been learning how to breathe space dust right about now.”

“Not bad for a first whack at this whole space combat deal, I guess,” Miller decided.

She shrugged against her harness. “I guess not.”

“But?”

“Ties don’t count for shit,” Craig said simply. “It’s not really a win unless you zoom off in one piece, leaving the other guy drifting downwind under his parachute and wondering what just happened.”

Miller nodded seriously. “Yeah. I see your point.” He checked his own displays. “But since that one pass just burned over seventy percent of our hydrazine, we’re done for today. Let’s get this crate configured for powered reentry on the next orbit. Then we’ll head back to base, rethink our tactics, and try again tomorrow.”

“Sounds like a plan,” she said. Her smile returned. “You know, Colonel Reynolds is really going to get tired of seeing us pop up on his radar.”

Miller shrugged. “Probably so. Still, Mal shouldn’t gripe too much about sharpening up his team in mock battles against us — not when the alternative is tangling with the Russians or the Chinese for real.”

Craig looked seriously at him. “You think that’s likely?”

“Oh hell, yes,” he said. “Those guys aren’t going to sit dirtside forever. Sooner or later, they’ll come boiling back up out of the atmosphere, spoiling for a fight. And when they do, that’ll be a very interesting day, Major.”

Nine

West Wing, General Staff and Ministries Building, Palace Square, St. Petersburg, Russia

A Few Weeks Later

The enormous neoclassical General Staff building curved around the vast expanse of Palace Square. Two wings, one on the west and one on the east, were joined by a huge triumphal arch commemorating Imperial Russia’s victory over Napoleon. The Winter Palace, once home to the tsars, loomed directly across the square in regal splendor.

Until last year, one wing of the building had been occupied by the headquarters of Russia’s Western Military District. Now, with much of the Kremlin reduced to blackened rubble, its offices were filled by a number of senior government officials and their staffs. What was supposed to have been a temporary emergency relocation to the old imperial capital showed signs of becoming permanent — at least for the ministers and their closest aides. They found the grandeur and luxury of St. Petersburg’s palaces far more appealing than Moscow’s official government buildings, many of them uncomfortable concrete relics of the Stalinist era.

Marshal Mikhail Leonov was an exception to this new rule. By staying in Moscow, he had become the de facto face of authority for the hundreds of thousands of bureaucrats, military officers, and intelligence officials who carried out the real work of government. That was not an accident. Because the other ministers were reluctant to subject themselves to another all-powerful autocrat like Gennadiy Gryzlov, they’d delayed elections for a new president yet again. But what they seemed not to understand, Leonov thought coldly, was that the Russian people instinctively craved strong leadership. And the eyes of the people were already turning toward him.

But even he found it useful to conduct certain meetings — those with his new Chinese allies, in particular — amid St. Petersburg’s imperial pomp and magnificence. The abandoned Kremlin, with its surviving damaged buildings covered in scaffolding, was a stark reminder of weakness and defeat. It was better by far, Leonov knew, to give President Li Jun’s representatives an impression of strength and stability.