Once We Lived in Nanjing

Zhao Bowen immediately got furious.

He dashed to the eighth floor at a speed comparable to Liu Xiang running 110 meters hurdles, burst through the door and yelled: "It's done! It's done!"

"What's done?" Bai Zhen asked.

"What's done?" Wang Ning asked.

"We've passed the toughest hurdle! Applaud! Applaud!" Zhao Bowen was visibly thrilled, while Bai and Wang clapped somewhat confusedly without understanding why, as Zhao happily hummed a tune and continued to draw circles on the map of Nanjing City with a compass and a pencil.

What followed could only be described as a miracle, as Zhao Bowen's luck came in. Whether it was because he changed into red underwear that morning, or because he stepped on dog poop as he left the house, Zhao should have bought a lottery ticket on his way to work—there might have been a chance he'd win five million. But what pleased Zhao Bowen even more was the end of the long silence of their phones; the engineering, aerospace, physics, astronomy, computer, and decryption teams finally emerged from their coffins, as cell network signals flew into the window like homing pigeons, bringing news from afar.

Zhao Bowen immediately convened a deployment meeting for the "East Red" action.

The plans he had been harboring in his heart were finally starting to reveal themselves.

"Is it set?"

"Shift it a little to the left, just a tiny bit, to ensure that they can see the whole map..."

Zhao Bowen stood in front of the map, facing the camera set up in the middle of the living room, with Bai Zhen helping to adjust the lens and Wang Ning adjusting the projector and screen. Zhao adjusted the collar of his sweater and his tortoiseshell glasses, cleared his throat, and stood upright in front of the camera waiting for the signal to connect.

This was a large-scale video conference.

By 4:30 PM, various specialist groups had joined the meeting one by one. Zhao Bowen's gaze moved past the camera to the projector screen, seeing the last little square on the Tencent meeting bright as a light bulb, he knew everyone was present.

"Comrades, I'm about to formally start the deployment of the East Red operation."

Regarding the "East Red" action, nobody knew exactly what it meant—not because it was highly classified, as even core members like Bai Zhen, Wang Ning, and major specialist groups were unaware, but because it was a name Zhao Bowen had just come up with; an hour ago, there was no operation code-named "East Red".

Several pairs of eyes on the screen stared at Zhao, waiting for him to continue.

"As you all know, due to the existence of 'Big Eye', MSR is in a very dangerous situation, and more importantly, it can't reach the first and second bases at Purple Observatory and Mochou Lake. Without reaching the bases, we won't receive enough information and data. Hence, our ultimate goal for the upcoming plan is to eliminate the 'Big Eye'." Zhao paused, "This is the East Red Plan."

Bai Zhen and Wang Ning, sitting one on each end of the sofa, looked calm—everything Zhao Bowen mentioned was expected, and getting rid of the Big Eye was their acknowledged best option.

In the past few days, people got together for countless meetings, large and small, proposing various reliable and far-fetched plans, and in the end, directly eliminating the Big Eye received the most votes.

Everyone believed that BG4MSR could not contend with the Big Eye, but just because a young girl can't eliminate it doesn't mean all of humanity can't handle it.

At this moment, she had the support of seven billion people.

"The East Red Plan will be carried out in three steps; first, the reconnaissance phase, where we need to launch a remote sensing satellite twenty years ahead to establish the map of Nanjing City and the motion trajectory model of the Big Eye twenty years later."

The leader of the aerospace group didn't curse this time.

Over the past few days, the aerospace group had intensely debated the feasibility of Zhao Bowen's suggestion from a layman's perspective, ultimately concluding there was zero feasibility.

They had rejected Zhao Bowen's idea, which was not to send the detector to the moon. Instead, the Eighth and Fifth Institutes designed their own orbit—chief engineers even said sending it to the Inner Solar System was more reliable than the moon. To ensure that the satellite could enter orbit accurately twenty years after leaving Earth, people racked their brains.

"The conditions are very harsh, like dancing ballet with shackles; it's barely feasible. We've done our best to reduce the satellite's size and weight, and perform telemetry with Synthetic Aperture Radar (SAR) in S or X band," the aerospace team was cautious, "Adding in the limited lift capacity of the rocket and the complexity of orbit adjustment, this will substantially shorten the satellite's lifespan."

"How many months of lifespan are we talking about?" Zhao Bowen asked.

"We might have to calculate it in hours," replied the aerospace team. "Surveillance satellites are like this; maintaining surveillance requires energy-intensive orbit adjustment, which inevitably burns through the satellite's lifespan. We estimate that a telemetry satellite sent over will not operate more than 160 hours."

Zhao Bowen did the math, "That's seven days."

"That's under ideal conditions. It must be launched from the equator and achieve precise orbit insertion. If there's any glitch during launch or re-entry, the result would be even worse," the aerospace team reminded.

"That's enough; this is all about tackling the impossible," Zhao Bowen was surprisingly optimistic. "As long as it's feasible, we must strive to do it. Where is the satellite now?"

"It's in the 812 Satellite Assembly Workshop."

"When can we launch it?" Zhao Bowen asked.

The aerospace team hesitated, "Well... we need to find a rocket. This satellite is too heavy for a Long March 6; it requires at least an Ariane or a similar rocket."

"Find one! Find the next available rocket!"

"Where could we possibly find a rocket at such short notice?" The aerospace team was baffled.

"Ask! Call and ask now!"

The relentless and determined nature of Zhao Bowen was fully visible again; he couldn't wait a moment. He almost wished he could traverse through the network to the other side and lash them with a whip to hasten their pace.

Moments later, they found the world's next available rocket that was both closest in time and physical proximity.

The Russian-made Soyuz-STB rocket, as the elder statesman of the rocket community, holds the record for the most launches in history. It has done it all, and now it was set to save humanity.

This rocket was currently on the other side of the Earth, in northern South America, at the French Guiana Space Center, across the entire Pacific Ocean.

"The launch is scheduled for December 18th. It's likely a commercial Russian order for launching satellites for Italy and the European Space Agency—a 2-ton+ Italian CSG1 Earth observation satellite, also using synthetic aperture radar for telemetry, and a space telescope named CHEOPS for the European Space Agency, expected to operate in a Sun-synchronous orbit. Both payloads will be launched by a single rocket," the aerospace team reported. "It's in... ten days."

"Snatch it! Intercept it!"

Zhao Bowen waved the pencil in his hand.

"But that's a European rocket..."

The opposite side hesitated.

Zhao Bowen had done this before, intercepting his own country's rockets, but intercepting a foreign rocket was much trickier—a transnational interception was fraught with more challenges.

"Is it not a commercial order? Let's buy it! Ask the Italians to delay their satellite slightly; we go first."

Zhao Bowen believed that money paves the way and there's no problem that can't be solved.

"It's launching in just ten days, can we make it?" someone asked. "Changing plans at the last minute, the Russians might not agree to breach the contract."

"Dealing with the Russians is too easy." Old Zhao was emphatic, "How much for the rocket? Tell them we'll pay double!"