Eagle Station

Tian checked their flight path again. They were still right in the groove, orbiting westward around the moon at sixteen hundred meters per second. He glanced at Lavrentyev. “Go for landing?”

The Russian nodded decisively. “Da. We are go for landing.”

“Initiating landing sequence… now,” Tian said, entering the necessary command code. New menus opened on his display. “Automated sequence activated. The computer is in control.”

In milliseconds, the Chang’e’s flight programs assessed their position, heading, and speed, made the necessary calculations, and sent commands to different spacecraft systems. “Three… two… one,” Lavrentyev counted down. Indicators flashed green. “Pitch over.”

Thrusters popped, rotating the lander through 180 degrees so that its engine was aligned against their direction of travel. Inside the cabin, Tian and Lavrentyev were now looking “up” at the moonscape through their windows.

With a muted whummp, their descent rocket motor lit. Instantly the two men were jolted forward against their restraints. As the engine fired, the spacecraft’s forward velocity decreased. Too slow now to resist the pull of the moon’s gravity, the lander slanted downward.

Ninety seconds later, the engine cut out.

“Good burn,” Lavrentyev announced. Numbers and graphics scrolled across his display. “No residuals. Our rate of descent looks good.” He activated their lidar again, double-checking the computer. “Altitude now seventy kilometers. We are descending at one hundred meters per second. Speed over the ground eleven hundred meters per second.”

More thrusters fired, pitching the Chang’e back around so that they could see where they were headed. The lander was sliding downward across the Hertzsprung crater. It was enormous, several hundred kilometers in diameter. Nearly a dozen smaller craters pockmarked its gray surface. Beyond Hertzsprung’s west rim — torn and gouged by other aeons-old impacts — they could see more large craters, Kibal’chich, Vavilov, and Tsander.

Tian took another navigational fix, again checking to make sure the flight control computer was still hitting its marks. “Range to target area now eight hundred and thirty kilometers. Everything looks good. We are still go for landing.”

Fifty kilometers downrange and thirty kilometers higher than the Chang’e-10 lander, the Federation 2 spacecraft spun end over end. Thrusters pulsed, stopping its rotation with the command module facing aft. Inside the Federation’s cabin, Major Liu Zhen tracked Chang’e-10 through remote-controlled television cameras. Even at high magnification, the lander was more a blur of reflected sunlight from its gold- and orange-colored insulating foil than a distinct shape as it sloped downward. “Well, they’re committed now,” Liu commented to the Russian cosmonaut hovering close by.

Captain Dmitry Yanin nodded. Even if Lavrentyev and Tian aborted their landing at the last minute, firing their engine again to climb back into orbit, it was too late for their spacecraft to dock with Federation 2 again before both machines circled back around the moon’s near side — and into view of America’s spy satellites and ground-based telescopes.

In truth, neither Yanin nor Liu expected their fellow crewmen to abort. During the long months of training and preparation, both Tian and Lavrentyev had made it pretty clear that they’d prefer to die trying to land, rather than experience the humiliation of a failed attempt and a long trip back to Earth under the mocking gaze of their American enemies.

Holding on to the edge of the Federation 2’s control console to avoid drifting off across the cabin, Liu spun slightly to look at Yanin. He indicated the descending lander, now little more than a pinpoint of light against the rocky, crater-strewn surface below. “Do you wish you were aboard? That we were the ones making this first landing?”

“My God, no,” the Russian lied. “My parents raised me to be a spaceman… not a lunonaut.” He shrugged. “Now, ask me again on our next trip… and you’ll certainly get a different answer.”

Liu nodded with a smile. If all went well, he and Yanin were slated to crew the next Chang’e lander.

An icon on one of the console displays pinged sharply, calling for their attention. It had been triggered by a coded ground controller message relayed through the Magpie Bridge comsat. Liu tapped at it. The icon opened into a menu headed deception operations. Frowning, he checked their position. They were still thirty-odd minutes from AOS, or acquisition of signal, the point at which Earth-based sensors could see them. “Moscow is impatient,” he told the other man. “They want us to go ahead and deploy the decoy early.”

“I guess now’s as good a time as any,” the Russian said offhandedly. “Not that we can do anything if there’s a fuckup at this point.”

“True. On both counts,” Liu agreed. He scrolled to the first necessary command button and pushed it. “Decoy deployment arming switch enabled.”