Once We Lived in Nanjing

East Red Action leadership group was fully assembled today, for the first time since the plan was launched. Associate leaders left their posts to gather at the command center, witnessing a historic moment. People had started arriving since 4 PM, Bai Yang didn't recognize anyone, yet everyone came to shake hands with him.

Zhao Bowen and Wang Ning introduced him around; Bai Yang was dizzy with all the titles he heard, each sounding very impressive. Uncle Zhao introduced some as professors, directors, and chiefs, while Wang Ning mentioned some were at the associate bureau level, deputy department level, and department level.

A certain chief told Bai Yang that although it was their first meeting, they had been collaborating for a long time. Bai Yang felt anxious, wondering how he mysteriously became colleagues with a department head.

Bai Zhen was timing with a pocket watch.

He was keeping time for now and for twenty years later. Tonight at seven, the operation would officially commence.

Notebooks littered the coffee table and dining table; cables were dragged out of the room, and the floor was a mess of wires which required careful stepping. Various strange peripherals flickered red or green lights. A white screen was set against the wall, the projector was on, and the command center finally resembled a joint operation command center—the only flaw being the lack of lighting effects. Bai Zhen suggested adding some blue cold light to mimic the CIC of an Arleigh Burke-class destroyer.

"Miss, is everything ready?" Bai Yang held a handheld radio, "OVER."

"Ready."

Ban Xia also held a handheld radio; she had completed all the preparations up to today. Baofeng UV9R was attached to the Yagi Antenna on the rooftop, the Celeron 3150 industrial motherboard was connected to cameras, monitors, and keyboards mounted on the wall—these were two sets of peripheral systems that could be switched via the hand mic jack of Icom725—when Ban Xia connected the Icom725 to the radio's audio output, it linked to the satellite data transmission system, whereas connecting it to the industrial motherboard switched to the image data transmission system.

Since the Icom725 only had one mic jack, the two systems could not be connected simultaneously but could be switched.

Tonight, both systems were scheduled for testing. The first was to test whether the Reconnaissance Star and relay satellite were successfully launched and working properly, and the second was to test whether the image transmission link could transfer pictures or videos.

If Heng and Ha successfully entered orbit, then Bai Yang and the others would obtain the first telemetry image of Nanjing twenty years later.

If the image transmission link was successfully established, then Bai Yang would be able to see BG4MSR, and vice versa.

Ban Xia also held a pocket watch; the time was now 6:45 PM.

"BG, how many photos have you prepared?"

"I took hundreds of photos, I'm dead tired this afternoon, my legs are virtually broken. I definitely have the most steps on WeChat today. We picked twenty out of these hundreds, I'll send them to you later," Bai Yang said, "Anyway, the data link is already set up, tell us whatever you want to see, and we'll capture it, OVER."

"Do you have pictures of you guys?" the girl asked, "Yours, Uncle Zhao's, my dad's, Uncle Wang's, and everyone else's."

Bai Yang paused.

"That's easy, we'll take one right now..." he put down the handheld radio, "Uncle Zhao! She wants a photo of all of us together—!"

Zhao Bowen was adjusting the projector, checking the router, and when he heard Bai Yang, he stopped his work, raised his hands and clapped, "Comrades, guys, put down your work for a bit, let's take a group photo!"

Lian Qiao took out a mobile phone: "I'll take it for you!"

Everyone squeezed together, backed against the screen and the giant map of Nanjing City, Bai Yang stood in the center, his dad on the left, Old Wang and Old Zhao on the right, along with other members of the East Red Action leadership group—a total of eight or nine people. Lian Qiao was in charge of photography; she raised her cell phone, stepped back a few steps, capturing the people and the surroundings cluttered with documents, computers, tables, and sofas—

"Ready, smile, say 'Eggplant'!"

With a crisp shutter sound, time froze, leaving behind the only group photo in the entire story.

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At seven o'clock that evening.

Ban Xia took a deep breath, removed the coin from her neck and tossed it again, landing heads up.

"BG4MXH, BG4MXH, beginning to cut off voice communication now."

"BG4MSR, this is BG4MXH, confirm cutting off voice communication, OVER."

Ban Xia removed her headset and unplugged the hand mic from the Icom725, freeing up the mic jack. From now on, she couldn't communicate with the other side anymore, replacing it was the radio's audio output line, which she carefully plugged into the mic jack. This black cable connected to the Icom725 radio on one end and the rooftop radio on the other.

The radio was tied to the Yagi Antenna to receive signals sent back by the relay satellite.

The first test was planned as follows:

The Reconnaissance Star would operate in low orbit, and when it passed over Nanjing City, it would activate its synthetic aperture radar to scan the area from Qinhuai District to Xuanwu District. The scanning method was strip imaging; this SAR satellite was equipped with a folding radar antenna one meter wide and ten meters long. The scanning area was a huge rectangle, five kilometers wide and twenty kilometers long.

After the strip scanning was completed, it would switch to spotlight imaging mode, and magnify a specific area within this vast hundred square kilometers strip, capturing a photo with higher resolution—and this photo would be the first image sent back from doomsday to the present.