Eagle Station

His predecessor, President Barbeau, had been infamous for packing the ranks of her senior advisers and cabinet officials with nonentities, tame “yes-men” and “yes-women” who never bucked her decisions or challenged her assumptions. In the end, left entirely to her own whims and preconceived ideas, she’d run the United States into grave danger, damaged its standing in the world, and, ultimately, wrecked her own hopes of winning a second term in office.

“Speaking truth to power is our duty,” Nadia said seriously. Her chin lifted slightly to emphasize the point. Even this tiny motion, in zero-G, caused a lock of her thick, dark hair to float across her face. Impatiently, she brushed it aside. Then she smiled. “Admittedly, doing so is much safer from here. The rest of your advisers trapped down there on Earth with you will just have to take their chances.”

That sparked a soft ripple of laughter from around the table.

“Well, all right, then,” Farrell said after a short pause. “Is there some way we can stop them from sending any new spacecraft to the moon?”

“By imposing an orbital blockade over their launch sites?” Kelleher asked.

Farrell nodded. “Something along those lines, General. Whatever Moscow and Beijing are doing on the lunar surface, shutting down their ability to reinforce and resupply from Earth could be crucial.”

“You’re right about that,” Patrick McLanahan agreed. “But—”

“Ah, hell,” Farrell grumbled. “It’s impossible, right?”

Patrick shot him a rueful smile. “I’m afraid so. One of our S-29 spaceplanes would only be in effective range of any of those Russian and Chinese launch complexes for about two minutes out of every ninety-eight-minute orbit. Between life-support limitations and the need to cover different orbital tracks, seriously blockading their launch sites would take a force of dozens of armed spacecraft. Building that many spaceplanes would take years.”

“Years we don’t have.”

“That’s about the size of it,” Patrick admitted.

Farrell scowled. “Are y’all telling me we’re just going have to sit tight and do nothing? Because I will be damned if I intend to let those bastards Leonov and Li lock us out of the moon and all its resources.”

“Whatever weapons Moscow and Beijing have deployed to the moon are around on the far side,” Taliaferro pointed out. “So they’re only a threat to spacecraft going into lunar orbit. What if we just skipped that part of any moon mission and sent our rockets straight to the near side — where everything suggests the highest concentrations of helium-3 are anyway?”

Kelleher shook his head. “Direct descent to the lunar surface might work for some unmanned missions, but it’s awfully risky. One small engine misfire or bad burn and you end up with bits and pieces of expensive hardware scattered across several hundred square miles of the moon. And you sure can’t take those kinds of risks with live astronauts. Shooting for lunar orbit first at least gives you the option of a free-return trajectory, where the moon’s gravity slings your ship back toward Earth if anything major goes wrong.”

“Like Apollo 13,” Farrell realized. Kelleher nodded.

“Even if we were willing to take those risks, we’d only wind up being too late,” Patrick said. “All along the way, the Russians and the Chinese have been ahead of us. Once they learn we’re planning to send landers and mining equipment straight to the lunar surface — which isn’t something we can keep secret — there’ll be nothing stopping them from deploying additional weapons to the near side of the moon.”

Farrell grimaced. “What you’re saying is that we either win this fight now, somehow… or we kiss the moon, its resources, and everything they can do for our economy, our technology, and our future, good-bye.”

“Yes, sir,” Patrick agreed solemnly. “That’s the way it lays out.”

A grim silence fell across the Situation Room.

“Excuse me, Mr. President,” Brad said quietly over the link from orbit.

Farrell looked up. “Yes, Major McLanahan?”

“On that score, Nadia and I have been working through some alternatives,” the younger man told him. “And we’ve come up with what we think could be a workable mission plan for an armed reconnaissance of the moon’s far side.”

With a skeptical look on his face, General Kelleher leaned forward. “Using what hardware, exactly?” He snorted. “Reconfiguring that Orion crew vehicle and our other deep-space-capable craft to carry weapons would take years of engineering and flight testing.”

“The Orion’s not going to cut it,” Brad agreed evenly.

Kelleher frowned. “If you’re not going to fly the Orion, what have you got in mind? There’s no other piece of human-rated space hardware in our inventory that’s designed to go beyond Earth orbit, never mind all the way out to the moon and back.”