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39

“This is Ensign Marshall Hunter, acting commander of the American spacecraft Borman.”

Liu recognized the voice. Interesting. “Ensign Hunter,” he said with mocking surprise, “you are not aboard the Borman, I believe.”

“You have a good memory, Colonel. I’m aboard our shuttle Specter with the Jiangs.” A pause, as if the young man were working up the courage to go on. “On behalf of our—my—crew . . . we surrender. I am requesting rations and safe passage aboard your vessel to Earth.”

It sounded as if he was choking on the words, Liu thought. That spoke well of him. “A wise choice, Ensign, which we are willing to accommodate. What is your current situation?”

“We took some damage from your point-defense rounds and our landing gear is damaged,” he said, rubbing it in that he’d at least managed to take out their gun emplacement. “We still have maneuvering ability but do not have much delta-v left. Less than ten meters per second.”

“Is that enough for you to rendezvous with our ship?” Liu asked, feeling magnanimous.

“Affirmative. Please advise the berthing port you wish us to use, and transmit your rendezvous and docking procedures.”

Liu hesitated, and shot Wu a questioning look. “He will need that information, sir,” the senior pilot advised him. “There is a significant collision risk without it.”

“Very well,” Liu said. “Prepare the information he needs and send it.”

“One other thing,” Marshall said. “We sustained some damage when we, well, rendezvoused with your satellite. I’m going to have to get outside to inspect our docking ring. That’s going to delay us several hours.”

Liu’s lips drew thin, showing his mounting irritation. “You have done enough damage for one day, Ensign. I advise you to make haste.”


Rosie ripped off her surgical gloves and shoved them into a biohazard container, angrily enough to almost take a layer of skin with them. “We’re doing what?”

“You heard me,” Garver said impatiently as he stripped out of his spacesuit. “The good young ensign doesn’t see any other way that keeps us alive.”

“What about you, Chief? Hunter’s good people, but he’s not salty. There’s got to be a way out of this.”

He took in the chaotic scene of the normally squared-away med bay—the complicated negative-pressure isolation tent could only do so much to contain the mess—and his eyes settled on an exhausted Rosie, still in her cooling garment and covered in Simon Poole’s blood.

Emergency surgery in the field was trying enough for a paramedic; having done it in zero gravity on her CO must have left her drained in ways they’d never imagined. Or maybe it was her having taken a life for the first, hopefully only, time.

He turned to their commanding officer, still under sedation beneath the protective cocoon of an EMS pod. Submariner, then an astronaut, now some crazy combination of the two. Garver tried to draw on his own experience, put himself in the skipper’s shoes. Poole could be insanely inventive. Would he have made the same call as Hunter?

“If there’s an option he hasn’t considered, I can’t see it,” he finally said. “Hunter said we should expect one of their Shenzou craft to arrive here after he’s aboard Peng Fei. Let’s get the docking node prepped for that. We’ll worry about the rest later.”

“Aye, Chief,” Rosie said, and tiredly began to strip down to her underwear. It spoke volumes of their current state that in a confined space with three other men, no one seemed to pay any mind.

* * *

“Ugliest weld I’ve ever done in my life,” Marshall said as he climbed back into the shuttle’s cabin. He locked down the outer hatch and placed a vacuum torch back into the equipment locker. “Not that I’ve done many. None in space, for that matter.”

“Will it hold up?” Jasmine asked. “You’re certain this will be safe?”

“Sure, until it’s not,” Marshall said tiredly as he began repressurizing the cabin.

“I trust you,” she said, “but you must understand. I would rather have you open that hatch and throw me into the vacuum than be imprisoned on a PRC ship. We’ll eventually be just as dead.”

“I’m really trying to keep it from coming to that,” he said, and gestured at a tablet strapped to the control pedestal between the pilot seats. “Are you able to make sense of their specs, Mr. Jiang?”

The older man smiled. “I think we’re well past that. It’s Max, okay? And yes, my Mandarin is still perfect.”

“Didn’t mean that, but it’ll be helpful. Sorry but I can’t even read a Chinese menu. I’m going to have to lean on you two pretty hard.”

“We have no choice but to help,” Max said, and pulled up a list of procedures. “These are their rendezvous protocols, including terminal control frequencies and holding gates. And here”—he scrolled down to a vehicle diagram—“is the layout of their primary docking node.” It held three docking ports in a T arrangement. “They want us to berth at portal one, the forward ring. Portals two and three each have a Shenzou-B docked to them. They are each capable of holding up to seven crew, and maintain a normal sea-level oxygen-nitrogen mixture at fourteen psi.” He moved the image along with his fingers, tracing the ship’s length. “At the far end, adjacent to the waste reclamation compartment, is the brig.”

“They won’t waste any time taking us there,” Marshall said. “Nice how they thought to put it at the smelliest end of the ship.” He took a deep breath. “Fourteen psi, huh? That’s what I thought. Let’s enjoy breathing without helmets for a bit longer. We might be in them for a while.” He checked each of their fittings to make sure their suit bottles were replenishing from the shuttle’s supply.


Marshall had piloted them into the Peng Fei’s approach zone slowly, unfamiliar with the hulking ship and not wanting to waste an ounce of precious propellant. Max sat beside him, following his movements while picking up everything he could about piloting the spacecraft. The controls he’d mastered for Prospector were much more intuitive compared to Specter, which Marshall called more “government issue.” It had less glass, fewer touchscreens, more hardwired switches and buttons.

Marshall had first needed to program their automated docking sequence, translating the procedure from Mandarin with Max’s help. The shuttle’s lidar system was still working and would guide them into the docking target on Peng Fei’s forward node. As they glided silently toward the hulking Chinese ship, he let the flight-path director pulse thrusters to keep them on course.

“The biggest difference between this and flying an airplane is timing,” Marshall explained. “Piloting a spacecraft ultimately depends on timing. We use the RCS to fine-tune our position and everything else comes down to hitting our burns at just the right second. A flight computer in a lot of ways is just a sophisticated countdown timer.”

As the shuttle backed into Peng Fei’s forward docking ring, he made one final pass on the routine he’d programmed into the master flight computer and checked his watch against it. As he finished, the small text screen flashed a single prompt: EXECUTE?

Marshall entered the final command. “Yes, please.”


The Peng Fei’s docking node was squared away, Marshall had to admit. Sparkling white, with no clutter nor a single piece of gear apparently out of place. A large red-and-yellow PRC flag dominated one side of the module while a portrait of the Party chairman adorned the other. Two unsmiling crewmen of the People’s Liberation Aerospace Force stood on either side, their feet in floor restraints in front of the open Shenzou spacecraft. SOP, Marshall thought—keep the crew vehicles on standby when an unfamiliar spacecraft is berthing. You never knew when things might go sideways and the crew would have to bug out. He just wasn’t used to seeing armed guards.

He moved aside so the Jiangs could emerge from the docking tunnel, the three of them still in their spacesuits. They each found nearby foot restraints and approximated standing as a wiry figure emerged from the opposite end. He pulled himself upright before them, and while Marshall could not decipher the characters on his name tape he recognized the three cherry-blossom insignia on the epaulets of his jumpsuit.

Marshall cracked open his visor to speak. “Colonel Liu,” he said stiffly. “Ensign Marshall Hunter, US Space Force, Orbit Guard.”

Liu grunted a brusque greeting and eyed them like a cat regarding its kill. He’d seemed a lot more friendly on the radio. He nodded to one of the guards—judging by the ranks on their collars they had to be more than that, though right now Marshall could not think of them as anything else—who presented him with three bundles of clothing.

“You know what is happening here, Ensign Hunter,” Liu said. “Remove your spacesuits and put these on,” he ordered. “You will be escorted to our secure facility.”

“I’m afraid we can’t do that just yet,” Marshall said nonchalantly. He kept one hand on his visor. “We’ve been in a pure oxygen environment at five psi since yesterday. We need a few hours to adjust our gas mixture so we don’t get decompression sickness. I’m endangering myself just talking to you like this.”

Liu glared at him. “Indeed you are. First you need time to inspect your damaged spacecraft, now you need time to acclimate your compromised bodies.” He smiled thinly. “Is there anything else you require, Ensign?”

One hand still on his visor, Marshall’s eyes darted to the watch on his wrist ring. “No sir,” he said, looking at his companions. “Max and I were just having that conversation—timing is everything in spaceflight, right?” He slid his visor back down and took a deep breath of pure oxygen.

“In your case, it has run out.” Liu turned to one of the crewmen. “Zhou, you will stay here with the Jiangs and manage their acclimation to our atmosphere.” He angrily snapped open Marshall’s visor. “You and I, however, have much to discuss. Perhaps a little discomfort will encourage your cooperation.”

Marshall ignored him, still eyeing his watch. “That’s five.”

Liu furrowed his brow. “Five?” What was this idiot going on about now?

“Three,” Marshall replied, then: “Two.” He met Liu’s eyes. “One.”

The blast from Specter rocked the ship. A cloud of exploding hypergolics thundered out of the connecting tunnel, tearing the shuttle apart and opening them up to space. Marshall held his breath and slammed down his visor. He shoved Liu aside, the colonel’s face a mask of shock as the ship’s atmosphere emptied into the void.

Marshall sprang off the sidewall and dove into one of the adjacent tunnels, right behind the Jiangs. “Find me the flight manual!” he shouted over their suit intercom as he slammed the hatch shut behind them. He winced at the sharp pain in his elbows, already getting his first taste of the bends. He hurriedly double-checked his helmet lock and turned up his oxygen supply to burn the nitrogen out of his system.

The Shenzou-B layout was remarkably similar to the Russian’s advanced Soyuz. “Geez, do they have to steal everything?” Marshall wondered aloud as he strapped himself into the center pilot’s seat.

“The answer to that is yes,” Max said, strapping into next to him as Jasmine settled into what was nominally the engineer’s seat. “And right now, you should be grateful.” He tapped a few commands into a touchscreen and the glass control panels flickered to life.

All of the information was in Mandarin, of course. “I can’t read a damn thing,” Marshall said. The pair of hand controllers and eight-ball attitude indicator in the center of the console were easily understood, and there was no time to rely on the Jiangs translating the rest for him. “You undock us, I’ll pilot us out. Deal?”

“Deal,” Max said, his fingers dancing across the screen as he searched for the right commands. “Ah, there we go. Emergency separation engaged.”

A thud echoed through the little spacecraft as clamps unlocked and spring-loaded bolts pushed them away from the Peng Fei’s ruined docking node. As they pulled away, Jasmine activated a periscope mounted in the side of their flight module and trained it on the remains of Specter. The shuttle’s tail had been torn open, exposing its cabin—and by extension, Peng Fei’s cabin—to space. Among the cloud of shredded alloys and composites, she counted at least three bodies in PRC uniforms. She and Max watched the scene in fascination and horror as Marshall pulsed thrusters, pushing them farther away. “I know we had to ride rockets to get this far,” Jasmine said, “but to see that much explosive force . . .”

“A little frightening, isn’t it?” Marshall said.

“And in such a small ship,” she said.

“Hypergolics are wicked. They’ll deep fry your lungs when they’re not exploding on contact. I hate the stuff.”

“I suppose it has its uses.” She shuddered. “After this, I don’t intend to ever be out here again. It’s not safe.”

Marshall suspected that was intended for her husband as much as anything. “To be fair, those engines worked fine until I welded the thrust chambers shut.” He found a radio panel and dialed in his ship’s frequency. “Ahoy, Borman.”


Colonel Liu Wang Shu gasped reflexively, his lungs violently emptied of air and unable to replace it. Numbing cold at first, he felt burning heat as the unfiltered Sun bore down on him in its full force as he fell into the void. The silence was like nothing he’d ever experienced, a complete absence of sound so utterly consuming that it was as a noise unto itself: The silent music of the planets eternally tracing their orbits. He could feel the raw scream in his throat, though he could not hear it.

His ship swirled past in his fading vision as he tumbled through space. How odd to see it from here, he thought. How few space travelers got to see their vessels like this—had any, in fact?

It was liberating in a sense, and would be quite the story could he ever tell it. So much to . . .

All became darkness.


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