Eagle Station

“A manned mission is fine,” Patrick said slowly, thinking through the problem confronting them. “But continuous surveillance of everything going on in lunar orbit and on the surface would be even better. We need a satellite up there, along with our own communications relay.”

Farrell nodded. “Good point.” He looked down the table at Admiral Scott Firestone, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs. “Any ideas on how we can make that happen… and pronto, Admiral?”

Firestone’s forehead wrinkled. “It’s possible that we could repurpose a couple of satellites slated for launch into Earth orbit over the next several months.” The short, stocky man spread his hands. “But equipping them to handle deep space won’t be easy. Or cheap, Mr. President.”

“I don’t expect it will be, Admiral,” Farrell told him bluntly. “But don’t let that stop you. Reconfigure those birds and get them on their way — and the sooner, the better.”

Thirty

National Defense Control Center, Moscow

Several Weeks Later

For once, Marshal Leonov was forced to admit that the theater-sized control rooms Gennadiy Gryzlov had built as a propaganda stunt served a useful purpose. During this status briefing on the progress of Operation Heaven’s Thunder, their enormous, wraparound projection screens made the televised images streaming from the moon even more impressive.

Right now, he and General Chen Haifeng were watching a recording of one of China’s large Mă Luó cargo landers as it touched down at Korolev Base, high up on the rim of Engel’gardt crater. Its rocket engine flared brightly in the last few seconds and then winked out. When the haze of dust cleared, they saw the spacecraft silhouetted against an infinitely black sky. Beyond it, they could see the shape of another cargo ship and the abandoned descent stages of three manned landers. One belonged to the first spacecraft to reach this site, Chang’e-10. The other two were more recent arrivals.

Slowly, the remote-controlled camera panned across the desolate moonscape. It zoomed in on what looked like an inflated, whitish-gray cloth cylinder anchored solidly to the surface. This was the first of the base’s planned habitation modules. Based on concepts originally developed by a pioneering American space technology company, Bigelow Aerospace, Korolev One was twelve meters long and six meters in diameter. The inflatable habitat gave the four cosmonauts and taikonauts currently stationed on the moon close to three hundred cubic meters of living and working space. Multiple layers of insulation, foam, Kevlar, and Nomex cloth produced half-meter-thick walls — offering excellent protection against micrometeorites, radiation, and the moon’s harsh temperatures.

Thick orange power cables snaked across the gray moonscape. They connected the habitation module to a much smaller, metal-walled upright cylinder deployed at the base of one of the Chinese cargo landers.

Chen peered intently at the three-meter-tall cylinder. “That is the fusion reactor?” Leonov nodded proudly. “So small,” the Chinese general said slowly. He shook his head in amazement. “And yet it produces two megawatts of power.”

“More than enough for all of Korolev’s needs,” Leonov agreed. The fusion power breakthrough Russia had achieved was what made the establishment of this manned lunar base possible in the first place. Without that reactor, its crew would have been dependent on solar panels — which were useless during the moon’s fourteen-day-long nights — and on backup batteries, which were comparatively heavy and inefficient. Limited-duration visits would have been possible, but not any sort of permanent presence.

One of the Russian officers assigned to monitor communications with the base turned toward Leonov. “We have a live feed from Korolev Base, sir.”

“Put it on-screen,” he ordered.

Briefly, static flared across the huge displays. When it cleared, Leonov and Chen could see Colonel Tian Fan and his Russian counterpart, Kirill Lavrentyev, looking back at them. They had arrived on the lunar surface forty-eight hours ago, as part of the Pilgrim 3 mission — joining Liu and Yanin, who’d already been on the moon for nearly two weeks. The video signal, routed through the Magpie Bridge relay to Russia’s network of military communications satellites, was remarkably clear, with only minimal distortion. Wearing green flight suits, the two officers sat next to each other at a console. Racks of electronic hardware and storage compartments lined the curving habitat wall behind them.

“Korolev Base here,” Tian said without preamble. “All of the payload aboard that just-landed Mă Luó appears to be in good condition. Liu and Yanin are outside now, off-loading the consumables. Once we have those stored safely, we’ll begin assembling the rest of the equipment.”