NUCLEAR WAR: THE WAR FOR ORBIT A standalone novel set in the world of DAY ZERO. No prior reading required. Humanity has returned to orbit. So have the weapons it left behind. Five years after nuclear war, two events are meant to prove that civilization is recovering. At Cape Canaveral, Orbital Dawn One prepares to carry the first human crew into space since the strikes. In Moscow, Serhiy Lavrov, president of New Russia, prepares to address the nation after the country’s first postwar election. Both events are being watched live around the world. In the Northern Urals, an abandoned military facility activates an aging inspector satellite known as Grach-3. International catalogs list it as dead debris. Its guidance system says otherwise. Minutes after Orbital Dawn One reaches space, a routine tracking warning becomes a lethal conjunction. Mission Control orders an emergency maneuver. Then the spacecraft disappears from the tracking screens. At almost the same moment, an explosion tears through Red Square. With the crew lost and Lavrov critically wounded, the first evidence points toward Moscow. But the data reaching Washington may have been prepared before either attack occurred. An American operative and a Canadian negotiator are sent into a city where the lawful chain of command is collapsing by the hour. Their task is to recover the original records before a political faction uses the catastrophe to seize power—and before an accusation becomes the opening move of another war. The question is no longer simply who ordered the strike. It is who can make the world believe their answer first. NUCLEAR WAR: THE WAR FOR ORBIT is a military-political technothriller about orbital warfare, manufactured evidence, and a struggle for power unfolding across launch centers, buried command posts, and a capital on the edge of a coup.
