The silence was the loudest thing Jake had ever heard.
Three days of travel. Three days of floating in a tin can powered by nuclear explosions.
Jake Vance drifted near the viewport of the Orion. He held a pouch of water. It was American water, filtered and recycled, but it tasted like metal.
Outside, the Moon grew.
It wasn't a flat white disk anymore. It was a world. A landscape of scarred grey skin, pockmarked by eons of violence.
"We are approaching the perilune," Valentina said. She was strapped into the pilot's couch, upside down relative to Jake.
"How does it look?"
"Like a graveyard," she said. "Beautiful and dead."
Jake pulled himself to the console. He looked at the instrument panel. Taped over the English labels—ALTITUDE, VELOCITY—were strips of masking tape with handwritten Cyrillic.
It was a cyberpunk mess. A stolen Cadillac hot-wired with a paperclip.
"This isn't just a landing," Jake said. "It's a statement. We need to broadcast it."
"The high-gain antenna is damaged," Valentina noted. "From the ice cream barrage."
"Fix it," Jake said. "If we land in the dark, Hoover wins. He'll tell the world we crashed. He'll tell them we died screaming."
"And if we do die screaming?"
"Then let the world hear it," Jake said. "At least it will be the truth."
Washington D.C. The Basement.
Hoover wasn't in the Oval Office. He was in the bunker.
The walls were lined with screens. The "Soft Power" war had turned into a siege.
"They are broadcasting," an aide said, his voice trembling. "They bypassed the NASA feed. They're transmitting on the open bands. Ham radio. Commercial frequencies."
Hoover stared at the screen. Static cut in and out.
Then, an image.
The interior of the Orion. The red emergency lights bathed the cockpit in the color of blood.
Jake Vance floated into the frame. He looked tired. Unshaven. He didn't look like a statesman. He looked like a pirate.
"People of Earth," Jake said. His voice crackled with cosmic interference. "This is the Soviet Ship Gagarin."
Hoover twitched. "He renamed it. He renamed my ship."
"We are entering lunar orbit," Jake continued. "We are not here to claim this rock for a party. We are here to claim it for the dreamers."
Hoover grabbed the microphone.
"Jam it," Hoover whispered.
"Sir?"
"Jam the audio," Hoover ordered. "Leave the video. But change the context."
"How?"
"Voiceover," Hoover said. His eyes gleamed with a manic brilliance. "Tell the networks that the ship is malfunctioning. Tell them it's a suicide run. Tell them the Bolsheviks are crashing it on purpose to weaponize the Moon dust."
"Weaponize the dust?"
"Fear," Hoover said. "If they feel awe, we lose. If they feel terror, we win."
Lunar Orbit. The Descent.
The Orion flipped.
The massive pusher plate—the shield that took the nuclear blasts—turned to face the Moon.
"Targeting Tycho Crater," Valentina said. "It's deep. High walls. Good shadows."
"Why the shadows?"
"To hide from the sun," she said. "The thermal expansion will crack the hull if we stay in the light too long."
"Initiate braking burn," Jake said.
Valentina flipped the switch.
BOOM.
The ship shuddered. A tactical nuke detonated behind them.
The deceleration was brutal. Jake felt his stomach slam into his spine.
BOOM. BOOM. BOOM.
A rhythmic pounding. Like a giant fist hitting the ship. They were riding a jackhammer down to the surface.
Through the rear cameras, Jake watched the lunar surface rushing up.
Dust kicked up. Not a cloud—there was no air. It sprayed out in perfect mathematical arcs, grey rays shooting into the black sky.
"Altitude two thousand feet!" Valentina shouted over the roar of the hull. "Velocity is too high! We're coming in hot!"
"Burn the reserves!"
"We'll be stranded!"
"Better stranded than flattened!" Jake yelled. "Drop the hammer!"
Valentina slammed the throttle.
The nuclear drive fired a rapid staccato burst. The Orion groaned. Rivets popped. An alarm screamed—STRUCTURAL FAILURE IMMINENT.
Then, the final impact.
CRUNCH.
The landing legs buckled. The ship tilted.
Jake was thrown against the restraints. The world spun.
Then... stillness.
Absolute, heavy stillness.
The red lights flickered. The hum of the reactor whined down.
"Valentina?" Jake wheezed.
"Alive," she groaned. "I think I broke a rib."
Jake unbuckled. He floated—no, he fell. There was gravity here. One-sixth. He drifted down to the deck like a feather.
He crawled to the window.
Dust was still settling outside. But through the haze, he saw it.
The horizon. Curved. Sharp. Black sky above, grey desert below.
And high above, hanging like a sapphire in the void... Earth.
It was mesmerizing.
"We made it," Jake whispered.
He looked at the console. The "Live" light was still blinking. The camera was rolling.
"Time for a walk," Jake said.
The Surface. Tycho Crater.
The airlock hissed. The last breath of Earth escaped into the vacuum.
Jake stepped onto the ladder. He was wearing John Glenn's suit, with a Soviet patch roughly sewn over the American flag.
He climbed down.
His boots touched the regolith.
It didn't feel like sand. It felt like charcoal.
He turned to the camera mounted on the landing leg.
Millions of people were watching. In Moscow. In New York. In the jungles of Vietnam.
He knew what he was supposed to say. Something about the Proletariat. Something about Lenin.
He took a breath of the canned oxygen.
"We are here," Jake said. Simple. Final.
He looked around the crater.
And froze.
"Valentina," Jake said on the comms. "Are you seeing this?"
"I see it," she whispered.
Fifty meters away, half-buried in the grey dust, was metal.
Twisted, shattered metal.
It wasn't a rock. It was a wing. A jagged, swastika-painted wing.
"The German base," Jake realized. "The Sun Gun."
Back in the war—in the timeline he had broken—he had crashed the N-1 rocket here to stop the Nazis.
He walked toward the wreckage.
It was a tomb. A shattered dome lay on its side. A robotic arm, frozen in a final salute, stuck out of the ground.
Jake knelt by the debris. He brushed the dust off a metal plate.
PROJEKT MOND - 1944.
"They beat us," Jake said. "They died, but they beat us."
"They were ghosts," Valentina said, bouncing over to him in the low gravity. "Machines sent to die."
Jake looked at the Earth. He saw the continents. He saw the borders that people killed for.
From here, you couldn't see the Iron Curtain. You couldn't see the camps.
"We aren't claiming this," Jake decided.
He reached into his utility pouch. He pulled out the flag he had brought.
It was the Soviet flag. Red with the gold star.
He hesitated.
Then, he took out a marker—a thick, black grease pencil.
He knelt in the dust. He drew on the fabric.
He drew a circle around the star. An orbit.
"What are you doing?" Valentina asked.
"Updating the software," Jake said.
He stood up. He jammed the flagpole into the lunar soil, right next to the shattered Nazi wing.
The flag hung limp in the vacuum.
Jake looked at the camera.
"This is not Soviet territory," Jake announced. "And it is not American."
He pointed to the Earth.
"That is the Game Board," Jake said. "This..."
He stomped his boot on the grey dust.
"...this is the Respawn Point."
The Kremlin. The War Room.
Yuri watched the screen.
The image of Jake standing next to the Nazi ruin and the defaced flag was being beamed to every screen in the world.
"Respawn Point," Yuri whispered.
He pulled out his slide rule. He moved the center bar.
"Variable added," Yuri said. "A Third Faction."
Menzhinsky looked worried. "He just declared independence, didn't he? He just seceded from the Earth."
"No," Yuri said. "He just expanded the map."
Yuri looked at the blueprints of the Orion. Then at the schematics for the Lunar Base.
"He needs supplies," Yuri said. "He needs oxygen. Water. Reaction mass."
"We can't send another ship," Taranov said. "We don't have one."
"We don't send a ship," Yuri said.
He pointed to the "Soft Power" map.
"We gamify the logistics," Yuri said. "We tell the Americans that the Moon Base is neutral ground. A scientific park. We invite them."
"Invite them?"
"To survive," Yuri said. "If Hoover attacks, he attacks a neutral peace station. He looks like a villain. If he sends supplies, he acknowledges Jake's claim."
Yuri smiled. It was the first time he had smiled since the reboot.
"Checkmate," the boy said.
The Moon.
Jake sat on a rock. He watched the Earth rotate.
"Hoover is going to scream," Valentina said, sitting beside him.
"Let him scream," Jake said. "Sound doesn't carry in a vacuum."
He looked at the wreckage of the Nazi base. There were usable parts there. Tanks. Solar panels.
"We have a lot of work to do," Jake said. "We need to bury the dead. And build a house."
"A house for who?"
"For anyone tired of the gravity," Jake said.
He closed his eyes. For the first time in four years—since he woke up in Stalin's body—he felt light.
The weight of the millions of dead, the weight of the war, the weight of the crown... it was all down there.
Here, he weighed thirty pounds.
"Welcome to Terminal," Jake said.
He opened his eyes.
"Now," he stood up. "Let's go find the ice cream."