The microphone in Jake's hand was heavy, chrome, and cold.
It wasn't connected to a speaker system. It was wired into the captured IBM Mark V Synthesizer, which hummed with the heat of a thousand vacuum tubes.
Jake adjusted his headphones. He looked at the waveform monitor. It wasn't a flat line. It was a jagged, angry red scar.
"Link status?" Jake asked.
"Stable," Yuri replied. The boy sat at the main console, his fingers hovering over the keyboard. "We are piggybacking on the White House secure line. Audio injection is ready."
"Do it," Jake said.
He closed his eyes. He visualized the man on the other end of the line. J. Edgar Hoover. The most powerful man in the world. The man who had blocked the sun.
Jake leaned into the mic. He didn't speak with his own voice. He let the machine do the work.
"Edgar," Jake whispered. "Pick up the phone."
Washington D.C. The Oval Office.
J. Edgar Hoover stared at the red telephone.
It wasn't ringing. It was vibrating. Just slightly. Like a living thing shivering in the cold.
Hoover was sweating. The air conditioning was on full blast, but he felt sticky, gross.
"It's a trick," Hoover muttered. He rubbed his left arm, the one with the phantom pain. "It's the stress. The launch is in ten minutes."
He reached for his glass of water.
"Don't touch that," the voice hissed from the receiver.
Hoover recoiled. The glass tipped over. Water soaked into the expensive carpet.
"Look at what you did," the voice said. It was disappointed. It was sharp. It was his mother. "Always making a mess. Always spilling things."
Hoover scrambled back into his leather chair.
"Who is this?" Hoover shrieked. "Security! Smith! Get in here!"
The door didn't open.
"They can't hear you, Edgar," the voice said. "I told them to wait outside. I told them you were being a bad boy."
Hoover grabbed the phone. He wanted to slam it down. But he couldn't. He held it to his ear like a lifeline.
"Mother is dead," Hoover whispered. "I buried her."
"Did you?" the voice asked. "Or did you just hide her? Like you hide your pictures? Like you hide your files in the black vault?"
Hoover froze.
Nobody knew about the vault. Not even the Vice President.
"I see the files, Edgar," the voice crooned. "I see the pictures of you at the parties. The ones with the men. Disgusting."
"Stop it!" Hoover cried. Tears leaked from his eyes. "I am the President!"
"You are a dirty little boy," the voice snapped. "And dirty boys don't get to play with rockets."
The Kremlin.
Jake wiped sweat from his upper lip. This was cruel. It was psychological torture.
But then he looked at the screen showing the Orion battleship in orbit. It was fully fueled. Its nuclear magazines were loaded. If that ship secured the Moon, the Soviet Union was finished.
"Heart rate at 160," Oppenheimer reported, monitoring Hoover's biometrics through the stolen medical link. "He's entering a panic state."
"Push him," Jake said. "Break him."
He turned back to the mic.
"Edgar," Jake said, pitching his voice lower, more menacing. "The men in the rocket... they know about the pictures too."
Orbit. The USSOrion.
Colonel Glenn strapped into the command chair.
"Main bus B is hot," Glenn said. "Reactor spin-up confirmed. We are go for injection."
Through the reinforced viewport, Earth looked peaceful. A blue marble.
"Mission Control," Glenn radioed. "We are T-minus two minutes. Awaiting final launch code."
Static hissed in his earpiece.
Then, a scream.
"Abort! Abort!"
It was the President. He sounded hysterical.
"Sir?" Glenn asked. "Repeat command."
"They know!" Hoover screamed over the channel. "The astronauts! They are looking at me! Turn it off! Turn off the eyes!"
"Mr. President, we are not looking at you. We are in orbit."
"Liar!" Hoover shrieked. "You have the pictures! Mother said so!"
On the bridge of the Orion, the crew exchanged terrified looks.
"Is this a code?" the pilot asked. "Is 'Mother' a code word?"
"I don't know," Glenn said. "Control, confirm status. Is the President compromised?"
Silence from Houston. Then, a loud click.
The uplink light on the console turned from green to red.
"Carrier signal lost," the comms officer said. "Washington just cut the hardline."
"We're drifting," Glenn said. "We have no guidance."
The Kremlin.
"He pulled the plug," Yuri said. His fingers flew across the keyboard. "The White House is offline. The Orion is floating in a digital vacuum."
"Seize it," Jake ordered.
Yuri hit Enter.
Orbit.
The lights on the Orion bridge flickered.
Then, they changed color.
The standard American white emergency lighting died. In its place, a deep, heavy red glow bathed the cockpit.
The screens rebooted. The NASA logo vanished.
A new symbol appeared. A hammer and sickle, stylized in jagged, cyberpunk neon.
"What the hell?" Glenn shouted. "We're being hacked!"
"Source?"
"It's... it's coming from the ground. High-gain signal. From Russia."
The ship groaned. The maneuvering thrusters fired without input.
"We're rotating," the pilot yelled, fighting the stick. "Controls are locked out! It's a remote override!"
Through the viewport, the stars spun. The Earth tilted.
Instead of pointing toward the Moon, the nose of the massive ship swung down. toward the atmosphere.
"They aren't crashing us," Glenn realized, watching the trajectory vector. "They're landing us."
"Where?"
Glenn looked at the coordinates flashing on the red screen.
"Siberia."
Washington D.C.
Hoover sat under his desk. He had ripped the phone cord out of the wall. He was rocking back and forth.
"Clean," he whispered. "I have to be clean."
The door burst open. Secret Service agents swarmed in, guns drawn.
"Mr. President!"
Hoover looked up. His eyes were wild.
"Did she leave?" Hoover asked. "Is Mother gone?"
The lead agent looked at the phone cord. Then at the sobbing man in the suit.
"Sir, the Orion..." the agent said gently. "We lost contact. It's re-entering."
"Good," Hoover sniffled. "It was dirty. It had to go."
Siberia. The Tunguska Exclusion Zone.
The sky tore open.
It wasn't a meteor this time. It was a billion dollars of stolen American steel.
The USSOrion didn't glide. It fell with style. Its retro-rockets fired in a staccato rhythm—controlled by a child in Moscow.
Jake stood on the balcony of the Kremlin, watching the remote telemetry.
"Impact in ten seconds," Yuri counted down. "Landing gear deployment... success."
On the screen, the massive ship slammed into the frozen tundra. Steam and snow erupted in a mushroom cloud.
The ship didn't explode. It settled.
"Touchdown," Yuri said. "The Orion has landed."
"Is it intact?" Jake asked.
"Structural integrity at 92%. The nuclear drive is stable."
Jake leaned back. He felt the adrenaline crash.
He had done it. He hadn't just stolen a car. He had stolen the Space Program.
"And the crew?" Jake asked.
"Alive," Menzhinsky said, reading the report from the recovery team already en route. "Colonel Glenn and four Marines. They are sealed inside."
"They aren't astronauts anymore," Jake said.
He walked to the window. The Aurora Dome shimmered above, reacting to the energy discharge in the atmosphere.
"What are they, Boss?" Taranov asked.
"Hostages," Jake said. "High-value leverage."
He turned to Korolev, who was staring at the data with his mouth open.
"Pack your bags, Sergei," Jake said. "You don't have to build a rocket from scratch anymore. You just have to reverse-engineer that one."
"It is American tech," Korolev stammered. "The fittings are imperial."
"Then buy a wrench," Jake said.
He looked at the red phone on his desk. It was silent. Hoover wouldn't be calling tonight.
"We have the ship," Jake said. "We have the Moon."
He poured a vodka.
"Now," Jake smiled, "we just need a flag."
The Recovery Site. Siberia.
The hatch of the Orion hissed.
Colonel Glenn pushed it open. Freezing air rushed in.
He climbed out, hands raised.
He expected to see soldiers. He expected tanks.
Instead, he saw a campfire.
A group of locals—reindeer herders—sat around the fire. They were eating grey paste from tin cans.
Behind them, a massive Soviet transport helicopter descended, its searchlight blinding.
A man in a black trench coat stepped out of the chopper. It was Taranov.
He walked up to the American astronaut.
"Welcome to Russia, Colonel," Taranov grinned.
He held out a pack of cigarettes.
"You are early," Taranov said. "The hotel is not ready."
Glenn looked at the massive, smoking ship behind him. Then at the bleak, frozen landscape.
"We were aiming for the Moon," Glenn said.
"You missed," Taranov said. "But don't worry."
He pointed up at the sky, where the Aurora Dome cast a faint, violet glow on the horizon.
"We will give you a ride."