Fiction Week

By Paul Viscovich, CDR, USN (Ret.)

“What if the People’s Liberation Army lures us to the wrong landing beach?”

“Say again, Commander?” Admiral Dale Lee gave his operations officer a quizzical look.

“Well sir, with the GPS network out of action and dead reckoning iffy, they could replace charted radio beacons with temporary transmitters elsewhere, supported by some decoy landmarks to make the wrong site look like the right one. Maybe they can’t build a lighthouse overnight but they can easily mimic the correct light’s characteristics in the wrong location.”

“Interesting thesis, Ops. But you’re assuming they already know where we’re going.”

“All due respect Admiral, can we assume they don’t?”

“No. No we can’t. Share your theory with Intel, so they can make appropriate inquiries through back channels.”

__________________________________________

 “Jade Gate, this is Qinglong Leader, over.”

At the mobile command post ashore in Taiwan, a radio operator keyed his mic and replied, “Leader, this is Jade Gate, send your traffic.”

“Coastline in sight, over.”

The watch commander, a PLA colonel, ordered the air search radar energized. “Tell me when you see them.”

“Aye, sir.” The operator switched on the radar and looked intently at the scope, assisted by unnecessary spectators staring eagerly over his shoulder.

“Colonel, I hold three contacts in formation, bearing 137 degrees, 55 kilometers.”

“Very good! Place air search in standby. Radio Qinglong Leader to report his position, then FINEX and return to base.”

“Jade Gate, this is Qinglong Leader. My radio navigation position is 24 degrees, 31 minutes north, 122 degrees, 3 minutes east. Shifting back to VFR. Qinglong Leader, out.”

“Plotter, did you get that?”

“Yes Colonel. Qinglong’s reported position is 40 kilometers south of actual.”

The colonel took a long pull on his cigarette and smiled. “Comrades, we have just filled a major gap in our defenses.”

__________________________________________

China’s invasion of Taiwan triggered setting DEFCON 1 for the first time in U.S. history. Manning at NORAD’s Missile Warning Center in Cheyenne Mountain was on a wartime footing. Though the atmosphere in the control room is never relaxed, its intensity now was unprecedented.

“General, PACOM Site 3 reports possible rocket launch from Yulin.”

General Greg Kellogg, laconic at the best of times, had been listening silently to the stream of information directed at him for analysis and action. The unforgiving speed of inbound ICBMs and irrevocability of actions taken in response allowed no time to correct any error in judgment.

“Corroboration?”

“Querying Site 5, sir.” Seconds passed. Tension mounted.

“Clock’s ticking, Major.”

“Site 5 confirms possible launch, sir. Standby. Site 5 now reporting a second launch. Site 3 confirms.”

General Kellogg cocked an eyebrow. One launch in a day is unusual. Two within five minutes? Almost unheard of. “Captain Brewster, put me through to National Military Command Center.”

“General, Sites 3 and 5 both report a third rocket launch. Now tracking three separate contacts.”

“NMCC on the line, General.”

The familiar voice of the President asked, “What have you got for me Greg?”

“Confirmed reports of three rocket launches, southeast mainland China. No trajectory yet but it’s a highly anomalous event. We must consider the possibility of an ICBM strike.”

“What’s your status of silo readiness?”

“Ready FIVE, Mr. President.”

“Okay, what do I need to trigger a counter-strike?”

“Any confirmed inbound trajectories, sir.”

“Okay. Stay on the line, I’m passing the phone to my military aide.”

General Kellogg covered the mouthpiece and called to his track evaluator. “Report any additional launches and trajectories.”

“Aye sir. Still tracking just three. These are not, I repeat not, in attack formation. None are heading towards the U.S. at this time. One is tracking to southwest, away from us. The second is tracking northeast and the third is tracking southeast.”

“Your assessment?”

“These three present no immediate threat to CONUS. Will report probable targets when they attain final altitude.”

The three missiles soon revealed their purpose, peaking in low earth orbits and launching a single satellite each. One settled into geosynchronous orbit, 300 miles above the Molucca Sea; the other two attained 130-mile altitudes, with orbital paths crossing over the Philippine Sea every 90 minutes.

__________________________________________

An alert watch stander near the entrance announced, “The admiral is in Combat.”

Admiral Lee secured the watertight door behind him and stepped into the eternal twilight of USS Tripoli’s Combat Information Center.

“Good morning, sir. Can’t sleep?”

“Actually, I set my alarm for 0400. Since surprise attacks often happen around sunrise, I wanted to be on station early with a cup of coffee. What’s going on? Anything from NMCC on yesterday’s rocket launches?”

“A follow-up came in on the Midwatch. It’s the top item in your message traffic. The quick and dirty is, because of the confluence of those satellite transits over the Philippine Sea, the Joint Staff suspects they’re reconnaissance birds looking for us.”

“That would make sense. How’s the weather, still overcast?”

“Yes sir, Met Officer says we can expect cloudy skies for 18-36 hours.”

A buzz over in CIC’s navigation plot caught their attention but the 21MC intercom at the admiral’s console interrupted before they could investigate further. “Flag Plot, Bridge.”

“Plot aye, Admiral speaking.”

“Good morning sir, Officer of the Deck. We just got a line of position on our GPS receiver. It just came out of nowhere.”

“Are you sure it’s a valid signal?”

“No sir, but we’re rounding up the techs to check it out.”

“Thanks Bridge. We’ll check on this from our end as well and let you know what we find.” Turning to his Staff Watch Officer, “Get the Intel Officer up here.”

“He’s already on watch sir, I can probably raise him on the 21MC.” He punched the appropriate button on the Station Select panel. “Intel, Flag Plot. The admiral has a question.”

“The Bridge reports GPS may be coming back online. Do you have any idea where this signal’s coming from? Zombie satellites saved for use only during war?”

“I can’t say, sir. If so, it’s classified at a higher level than I’m cleared for.”

__________________________________________

The stress in the PLA mobile headquarters was evident in the short-tempered demands of senior officers for more and better information, the frustration of junior staff and equipment operators struggling to find connections among an overabundance of clues, and the resulting clouds of cigarette smoke. Where were the American naval forces and where were they heading?

They knew two large formations of warships were crossing the Pacific. One, an Amphibious Task Group carried a Regimental Landing Team of Marines. The other was a Carrier Strike Group to provide direct support to the amphibs. Their likely mission was to land the Marines somewhere behind the PLA invasion now menacing the beleaguered Taiwanese forces.

Not knowing where or when the blow might fall made this knowledge almost useless. The atmosphere of borderline chaos in the headquarters tent was sustained by the uninterrupted squawk of voice radio messages coming from the overhead speakers. The watch commander noticed an unusual huddle of junior officers around the table of the radio decryption specialists.

“Have you lieutenants learned something interesting or are you merely exchanging gossip?”

“A contact report from Picket #3 has just arrived, Comrade Colonel. We are double-checking the decoding. Sir, the sub has visual contact on several large units with escorts, position 23 degrees, 11.4 minutes north by 127 degrees, 34.8 minutes east. Their approximate heading is 280 degrees at 20 knots.”

“Thank you, Lieutenant Chen. I look forward to more useful information like that from you.” He smiled and raised the handset of a landline telephone. “This is Colonel Feng, put me through to General Hui.”

__________________________________________

“Admiral, USS Mahan got a couple of active pings, correlating with a reported periscope feather before losing contact, classifies it ‘probable sub’.”

“Thanks Ops. Likely a diesel boat on picket station. Radio the carrier group, we may have been compromised.”

“Aye, sir. Will this affect the landing?”

“Not likely. With H-hour less than a day away, the Chinese won’t have much time to reposition before we get the Marines ashore. How’s the nav plot looking?”

“GPS is still questionable, but improving after that big correction.”

“About that …”

“Still trying to figure it out, sir. It’s possible that while the Chinese were destroying our satellites, GPS was being slowly degraded without us realizing it. By the time the system was hard down, who knows how far off track we might’ve been?”

“The quality of the fixes was going downhill toward the end. How’s it looking now?”

“The current difference between GPS and the corresponding Ship’s Inertial Navigation System’s dead reckoned position has settled down to a steady mile or less north of DR, sir.”

“Do we know what’s causing this?”

“The Met Office says it could be the wind. It’s been veering from south-east to southwest for the last 14 hours, strong enough to set us off track to the right. On this heading, we’d expect more of an error in latitude than longitude, and that’s exactly what’s happening.”

“Very well, then. Signal a change in base course by another two degrees to the left to get us back on track.”

__________________________________________

Electronic warfare is a stand-off weapon, and so is its management.

The plan to trick the approaching Americans was developed and controlled at the highest levels of the Defense Ministry in Beijing. An assembly of top-ranking generals and admirals rose respectfully as Minister Su Lumin took his seat at the head of the table.

“Comrade Chou, what news of this threat approaching Taiwan Province from the east?”

“Two U.S. naval formations were organized in the central Pacific seven days ago and commenced a westerly transit under cover of bad weather. One formation is an Amphibious Task Group of seven troop transports and one America-class amphibious assault ship. The estimated size of the landing force is about 2,200 Marines. They’re accompanied by four Arleigh Burke Class destroyers.

“About 200 miles behind this group are two aircraft carriers in company with another nine destroyers and two oilers. We expect this force to provide pre-landing fires against our positions ashore, using ship-launched cruise missiles and carrier-based close air support during the landing.”

Minister Su turned to the PLA chief of staff. “General Wu, how would this landing imperil our advance on Taipei?”

“The threat, Comrade Minister, lies not in the enemy’s numbers but his ability to establish a beachhead. Once ashore, he can build airstrips and improve the site with floating piers, fuel dumps and field hospitals capable of supporting division-sized formations to challenge us on the battlefield.”

“Then how can we prevent this?”

“If we divert our forces away from the offensive, it will slow our advance. And not having time to prepare our defenses on the beach will expose us to heavy casualties.”

“I have known you, General Wu, for too long to think you would present me with problems and no solutions.”

The PLA chief of staff relaxed slightly. “We have developed a tactic to lure the Americans away from their planned invasion site, wherever it is, to one at greater distance from our forces. We also believe we can decoy the carrier strike group’s fires to unintentionally hit their comrades at the false landing site.”

“Interesting, General. But this tactic is not original.”

The chief of staff stiffened nervously.

Minister Su continued, “The opportunity of defeating the enemy is provided by using the enemy himself.” He paused. “So wrote Sun Tzu. Please explain to me how this will work.”

__________________________________________

“Will these seas never calm?” Tripoli’s quartermaster of the watch twisted his body painfully, trying to simultaneously brace his legs against the rolling deck while sighting his sextant on the lower limb of the sun. “Mark. Elevation 40 degrees, 44 minutes.”

“Got it,” replied his chief. “Shoot another as a check. God knows when we’ll see the sun and the horizon at the same time again.”

“Damn, Chief! Isn’t GPS sending the Inertial Nav System regular updates again?”

“Yeah, but Gator thinks it’s too soon to trust it. I think he’s right. Every time we get a GPS update, it puts us a mile or two north of where SINS dead reckoning holds us.”

“What’s that got to do with shooting sunlines?”

 “Can’t tell if the problem’s with SINS or the satellites. Won’t be able to either, not without a good celestial fix. So you keep an eye out for topside shadows and a clear horizon. If you see both, hot-foot it up here and take a sunline. Right now, I’d trust even a celestial running fix more than what those high-tech gizmos are telling us.”

A similar argument was taking place down in Flag Plot.

“I’m not comfortable with repeatedly adjusting base course left another degree or two with every new GPS fix. Can anyone explain to me what’s happening?”

“We’re working on it Admiral. Tripoli’s navigator has collected GPS fixes from the ships in company for comparison. The error, if indeed that’s what it is, is consistent. The GPS longitude agrees with our SINS dead reckoning, but there’s an error of about a mile to the north in latitude.”

“And we’re still blaming this on the wind?”

“No, Admiral. Wind speed has dropped by half and we’re still being offset to the right of track by the same amount.”

“It’s probably a fault with the satellites,” offered the ops boss. “I mean, it’s unlikely all the SINS units would have developed the same error independently.”

“I agree,” offered the chief of staff. “It seems we have only three functional GPS satellites and I’ve polled the COs on each of our ships. They all report their SINS units are ops normal.”

“You people are getting too mesmerized by technology. What we really need are some celestial observations. The heavenly bodies don’t break and sight-reduction calculations don’t lie.”

The chief of staff cleared his throat. “I was talking with Tripoli’s CO. He said that for the last couple of days his navigator has been trying to get a fix, but the weather isn’t cooperating. The best he got were a couple of estimated positions that were so poor as to be useless for checking GPS and SINS against.”

“Then I suppose we must work with the tools we have. Change base course another degree to the left.”

__________________________________________

“Gator! Wake up!”

“What? Hells bells! It’s half-past midnight for God’s sake!”

“Chief says he needs you on the Flying Bridge now sir! The skies have cleared and the rising moon’s shining on a good horizon.”

“Tell Chief I’m on my way!”

Forty-five minutes later, Tripoli’s navigation team had plotted a three-point celestial fix. It placed them nowhere near where GPS and SINS indicated.

The navigator rapped on the CO’s Cabin door and entered. “Skipper? We just got a good celestial fix. I hold us 23 miles south track.”

“We have to wake the admiral.”

Ten minutes later, the key decision makers clustered around the navigation plot in CIC. Admiral Lee clutched a mug of stale Midwatch coffee while his staff, the ship’s CO and navigator awaited his decision.

He addressed the navigator directly. “Gator? How long will it take to get us to the correct beach?”

“Nine hours at flank speed, sir.”

“That will delay H-Hour by four. We’ll be landing in broad daylight. Well, it can’t be helped. Signal the task group. Immediate Execute, Base Course 286, Base Speed 22. Ops, gin up an Immediate message to Admiral Funke, info the carrier group. Report that we are off-station, GPS is unreliable, and H-Hour is delayed to 0900. Provide our true current position, time, course and speed. He’ll figure out where we’re going.”

__________________________________________

General Hui was awakened less than an hour later. Nodding in response to his aide’s whispered report, he put on his slippers and a non-regulation silk robe festooned with dragons for this pre-dawn visit to the command center. His aide met him there with a steaming cup of green tea.

“Comrade General, the Americans have discovered our ruse. Our picket submarines report their landing ships are now tracking north-north-west at top speed, toward what we evaluate was their original landing site.”

“Then place reconnaissance teams near that beach to report developments as they occur.”

As this discussion concluded, a Shaanxi Y-9LG long range electronic warfare aircraft launched from Hainan, enroute to the Taiwan Straits. It rapidly attained cruising altitude of 35,000 ft.

__________________________________________

D-Day, H minus two hours. The Boat Group Commander was on station, forming the landing craft into waves for their assault on the landing beach. The escorting destroyers had moved into their assigned stations, ready to provide naval gunfire support.

On the Bridge of the Primary Control Ship, Gator was one of several officers scanning the beach for any sign of enemy activity.

At H minus 15 minutes, the destroyers commenced gunfire support while those 200 miles out to sea launched a salvo of land-attack cruise missiles.

High above the Taiwan Straits a Chinese EW aircraft began emitting a UHF transmission in a focused beam on 1226.7 MHz. Simultaneously a satellite in geosynchronous orbit over the Molucca Sea switched the coded signal of its transmission.

“Gator? GPS is acting up again.”

“What is it now, Chief?”

“We just got a two-line estimated position that puts us right on the beach!”

“Oh, you mean where the Tomahawks from the carrier group are about to hit? Good thing that’s bogus.”

The Bridge 21MC suddenly squawked, “Vampire, vampire, vampire! Incoming cruise missiles! Tomahawks locked on Tripoli with terminal homing! Recommend setting General Quarters!”

“Gator, those Tomahawks must be receiving the same bogus GPS coordinates we are!”

“Damn Chief! We’ve been spoofed!

Paul Viscovich is a retired Surface Warfare Officer with 20 years’ service, twelve of that on sea duty. He is a frequent contributor to CIMSEC.

Featured Image: Art created with Midjourney AI.

Fiction Week

By Malcom Reynolds

Undisclosed Location
Eastern Theater Command
3 March 2027
2125 local time 

“Comrade General, welcome,” said Colonel Pei Yuanqing as he saluted, then sat behind his desk. The general sat, and the meeting Yuanqing had restlessly awaited began.

For years Yuanqing planned this operation, ever since the Chairman revealed his private timeline for reunification with the defiant island to the east. Disguised as foreign students for insertion into the adversary’s homeland, Yuanqing’s teams had rehearsed every conceivable variation on the plan. They’d incorporated observations from Ukraine, Iran, and elsewhere. Their intelligence had penetrated the targets’ lax communication protocols and then simply watched and listened. They passed up myriad exploitation opportunities to retain their access and achieve the Chairman’s goal. The targets remained arrogantly unaware of their vulnerability throughout.

The Chairman had launched the last piece—the qīpiàn, the deception—three days ago. Public self-abasement, a pledge to deal, the humble request for a summit—all to get their targets out in the open. It was Yuanqing’s moment. Yet when he’d received the code word trigger, anxiety long buried within gripped his insides.

Yuanqing knew why. The actual landing aside, his operation was the most important ever undertaken by the People’s Liberation Army in its hundred years of history. Should it fail, severe punishment would fall on him and his…and thus he’d struck a deal with the general. Succeed or fail, Yuanqing would join the landing’s first wave. He and the general knew this was a death sentence. But death as punishment for failure, or death in the vanguard of the invasion whose success his team had assured, were quite different legacies. Following the final teleconference with his teams a few days ago, Yuanqing trusted that their performance would ensure his family received a posthumous 1 August Medal rather than join him in death. But the anxiety remained.

“I received word that all is ready,” said the general without preamble. “Has any intelligence suggested a change to the timeline?” Such an innocuous question, thought Yuanqing, about whether the millions of men and machines coiled to strike will win or lose depending on whether my plan succeeds or fails.

“None, Comrade General,” Yuanqing replied. “Only a few hours ago we intercepted further text exchanges confirming the targets’ timelines and locations. I’ll admit, I almost admire their stubbornness in continued use of their texting application despite years of publicized leaks. In some ways they mirror us, refusing to submit to the old order of things.” The general chuckled.

“In some ways, yes. But the old order kept us vulnerable; it kept them safe. They’ll pay the price for misunderstanding the distinction.”

“Indeed,” smiled Yuanqing. “And they seem quite convinced that—” Yuanqing hesitated.

“Go on, Comrade Colonel,” said the general. “Your thoughts match my own. I and the Chairman have full faith in your loyalty.”

“Their…tone. They’re certain we’ve acquiesced. That the Chairman has submitted to their incoherent demands. That we—” Yuanqing paused, tapped the screen of his mobile phone to bring up the precise text from the intelligence intercept—“that we’re the bitch we always knew they were.” He struggled to control his anger. “It is much to bear. Especially watching the Chairman’s public responses appear to confirm their arrogant assessment.” He fell silent, the general watching him closely. Then the general nodded, and something Yuanqing hadn’t even known was clenched inside of him relaxed.

“It is much to bear,” agreed the general. “But such appearances are necessary. They’re the fulcrum of our qīpiàn, to lull them enough to expose themselves. You and I, and the Chairman, know just how temporary our submission is. And if the Chairman can bear it, so can you.” Amusement flickered across the general’s face, though his eyes remained cold. “Your teams are our instrument for punishing that arrogance, and the arrogance of all the decades preceding it.” The general checked his watch. “My apologies, Comrade Colonel. You must head to the assembly area, and I’m delaying you.”

Both men stood, but as Yuanqing brought his arm up for a final salute, the general waved it away, extending his hand instead. “Comrade,” said the general simply. “Serve the people.”

Yuanqing’s voice caught in his throat. “Serve the people,” he whispered back.

The Base by the River
3 March 2027
0930 local time

Looks to be a beautiful day, thought Sergeant Zoë Alleyne as she strode to the hangar after FOD walk. This was one of those few northern Virginia mornings when humans could walk outside without immediately sweating or freezing. The river shimmered in sunlight, the sky was clear. Nothing to keep Marine Two from its quick visit.

Alleyne’s flight line shop had churned all week once rumors of the hasty summit were confirmed. Now all the birds were loaded and gone on C-17s. The Vice was coming to thank his fellow Marines for their hard work before flying back up the river to depart for the summit. The only other white top flying today had already gone up north to bring the CINC to Air Force One. For the moment, the day was beautiful, the air quiet.

A few seconds later, Alleyne heard the faint whop-whop of a helicopter in the distance.

____________________________________________

Wei eased the semi into the pull-off next to the base. He’d rehearsed this endlessly—sometimes going to one of the other three pull-outs, changing the time of day, varying how long he lingered before leaving again. Each time, the tension that this would be the one where his luck ran out gripped him a little tighter. He didn’t fear blowing the actual operation; for their rehearsals, the trailer’s contents were perfectly legitimate. Any inspection would reveal only reams of paper. But Wei was incredulous that he could park a truck carrying who-knew-what next to a military base, sit there, and no one would care. Yet for each rehearsal, he parked in a pull-out by the base, he sat, and then after a while he left again. No one came. No one cared.

He had a different trailer today. Today, they’d regret their indifference.

Wei checked his phone. His extraction driver, Xia, had already texted confirmation that she was staged in the the park just over the rise in the road. Yichen, their spotter, was on the far side of the river, ostensibly bird-watching should a nosey observer wonder why someone was pointing a pair of binoculars in the direction of the base. Everything was on timeline.

 He shut off the engine, then pulled the modified tablet from underneath his seat and woke it up. His phone silently thrummed on the seat, it was a short message from Yichen: five minutes out.

Hotel North of the Executive Mansion
3 March 2027
0938 local time

Ling pulled the phone from her pocket and glanced at it. “The others are in place,” she said, unslinging the heavy backpack. “It’s on us now not to fuck things up.” Bo grunted but kept his attention on pulling the contents from his heavy duffel bag. Theirs was the highest-value target and because of that, the narrowest window of opportunity to strike. And they were already 45 seconds late getting into position. Each second weighed on Ling like a millstone, spurring her hands to help Bo assemble their package.

The hundred-year-old hotel chosen as the launching point had an excellent view. There was clear line of sight to the landing zone on the executive mansion’s southern lawn. But the best efforts of their intelligence agencies hadn’t conjured an excuse for Ling and Bo to loiter on the premises. There were no job openings and no room vacancies. Under other circumstances, the intelligence offices could take direct actions to create those openings, but the Chairman himself quashed anything that might draw scrutiny to the hotel before the operation.

Thus their rehearsals had been conducted on mock-ups derived from secondhand sources along with pictures from a handful of dinners they’d reserved to scout the property. Ling and Bo were pretty sure their rehearsed route to the roof was accurate, but wouldn’t know until the day of execution.

Then there was the timing. Because they couldn’t loiter, they had to blend in with pedestrians while their observer, Zhou, did the same. Zhou was well south near the river, watching the normal route the helicopters took to the executive mansion. So Ling and Bo would walk around until Zhou signaled the helicopter was inbound, and then time their ascent for when they estimated the target would walk out on the southern lawn to board it. They’d studied enough news footage to calculate a rough average for how long after the helicopter landed that the target left the mansion to board it. But again, they wouldn’t know for sure that their target was in the open until they got to the roof.

They had one advantage—they didn’t have to worry about extraction.

But they were late, because after entering the rear of the hotel and starting their climb, they’d first come across a bellhop, and then a janitor, coming down the stairs on different floors. Ling left both to die quietly in pools of their own blood. But it cost time. Eventually someone would discover the bodies and raise the alarm. They had to complete the mission before that happened.

Bo watched the mansion through binoculars as Ling snapped the last rotor of the FPV drone into place. “Target’s in the open,” he said quietly. With a smooth motion Bo dropped the binoculars and slid the FPV headset down from the top of his head over his eyes. His hands activated the controller.

“Power up,” he said, and Ling armed the drone, then the payload. This, right here, was what mattered. She checked payload’s indicator light three times to be sure.

Police sirens wailed in the distance.

Touching Bo lightly on his left arm, she whispered: “Launch.”

The Base by the River

Wei’s phone buzzed with a message from Yichen: he’s taking a walk. That meant his target was in the open. Here we go.

His movements on the tablet were smooth and rehearsed. First he touched the icon that opened the hatches on top of the trailer, revealing the hidden space housing his flock of drones. Another tap and the repeater drone lofted upward to the altitude where it had line-of-sight to the airfield by the river. A third tap launched the swarm.

Wei’s screen filled with the first-person view from the lead drone. With most of the three miles between him and the airfield covered by forest, he wasn’t concerned about being intercepted en route. Their intelligence was confident the airfield lacked robust electronic countermeasures. The only thing that could stop him now was an inquisitive passerby along the road. But in all his rehearsals, no matter how long he’d loitered, no car had even slowed down. That pattern need only hold a couple minutes longer.

Gliding his fingers across the screen, Wei guided the lead drone along its flight path. The rest of the swarm followed in a loose formation. The drones quickly cleared the family housing area on the base’s perimeter and flew low over the forest treetops. After a couple of miles, Wei bumped the drones over the main base road and then turned them east just above the water of the tidal inlet that funneled to the airfield. Just before the water met the shore near the airfield road, Wei climbed the drones over the roofs of the aircraft hangars. As they cleared the hangars, the people clustered on the tarmac slid onto his screen, as perfectly centered as he could ask for.

Tapping the screen one last time, Wei pushed his drone into a dive. “Serve the people,” he whispered as the screen went blank.

Alleyne shook the Vice’s hand, then grinned as he pushed a challenge coin into it. The Vice’s formal remarks were brief, he’d quickly shifted to mingling with the Marines for handshakes. Alleyne gripped the coin tightly and made room for another Marine to receive the same gift. On the outskirts of the throng, she opened her hand to examine the coin more closely.

Buzzing caught her attention. Alleyne looked up to see a small shape diving toward her. She thought, that’s a weird-looking bird—

Then she tumbled, her skin burned, and screams filled the air.

Near the Executive Mansion

The sirens were close now.

Ling followed the drone through Bo’s binoculars. Their sole drone wasn’t large given that both it and its payload had to be carried on their backs. But the theory was that if they delivered it into the spinning helicopter, the explosion would generate enough dynamic pieces of death to do the job.

It was a short flight, but Bo’s challenge was flying the fiber-optic FPV high enough to keep the wires clear of street traffic and then dive it under the rotor arc into the aircraft before the wires drifted to the ground. They knew electronic countermeasures guarded the mansion, which was why they used a wire-guided FPV. It all came down to Bo’s finesse on the controls.

Bo caressed the controls gracefully. The drone cleared the street, cleared the fence, and then floated gently toward the lawn. Through the binoculars, the finale unfolded in slow motion. No one in the target zone raised any warning. The target himself walked toward the spinning helicopter, waving at a press gaggle behind him. The target was ten steps from the helicopter, then five. Bo plunged the drone into the fuselage just under the main rotor head.

Ling heard banging on the roof access door behind them, followed by shouts. No matter, we’re almost done.

A fireball obscured the helicopter’s fuselage. From the flames chunks of metal corkscrewed out, just as they’d planned. The main rotor blades flew in all directions, some gouging out chunks of turf as they pinwheeled along the lawn, one flying directly into the face of the executive mansion. The tail rotor’s torque ripped the tail boom away and flung it into the ballroom east of the landing zone. Fingers of burning jet fuel arched through the air, setting the lawn ablaze where they landed.

Ling locked the binoculars on the target area. What she saw through the flames made it clear that no living thing was left in, or near, the helicopter’s remains. She pulled out her phone to send a single message: done.

Bo flung his goggles away. The access door sounded like it was about to give way from the pounding. Ling and Bo briefly locked eyes as they removed their final pieces of equipment from duffel bag.

“Serve the people,” said Bo.

“Serve the people,” replied Ling. Together, they moved to the access door, each gripping a pistol in one hand and a blocky device in the other.

Ling unlocked it and pulled violently on the handle; a police officer fell forward and tumbled to the ground. Bo shot the man three times in the back. Ling slid into the doorway to find another officer staring in shock. Ling shot him in the face, then pulled back as a hail of bullets answered.

She and Bo hoped to make it to the ground floor before their own finale, but she knew now this would end on the roof. Ling barely felt the bullets passing through her as she emptied her magazine into the mass of uniforms. Next to her, Bo sighed softly and sank down, his knees shredded by bullets.

He looked up at her and nodded. Ling nodded back. Together, they released the dead man’s switches on the bombs they held.

The Base by the River

Alleyne lay on her back, head tilted toward the river. The screams had stopped. She heard flames crackle, smelled smoke and burning flesh, but couldn’t move her head to see if her squadron mates or the Vice were nearby. She felt cold.

Alleyne tried flexing her hand to see if the challenge coin was still there. She couldn’t move her hand either.

The world around her darkened, which was strange since the sun was still in her field of vision. She tried moving her head again. Nothing. The world got darker, and suddenly she felt very tired.

It was supposed to be a beautiful day…

In the Straits
Eastern Theater Command

Yuanqing leaned on the ship’s starboard railing, black water gurgling below as the vessel churned eastward. Klaxons would shortly call the embarked troops to their loading areas. He’d be on the first landing craft off the ship, in the first wave, just as he requested.

He’d learned of the operation’s success awaiting embarkation pier-side. The general personally delivered the news. The teams had destroyed both targets and left bloody, beautiful chaos behind them.

They’d broken the adversary’s chain of command. Embolisms of rage convulsed the adversary’s population. Half the country didn’t know who to blame and the other half…well, it blamed the first half. Yuanqing knew they’d figure it out eventually. But by then the landing would be over and their adversary left with few good options.

The distant adversary, Yuanqing reminded himself. The near adversary will soon feel the first raindrop that signals the typhoon.

An orange streak flamed through the sky, curving down to the eastern horizon. After a few seconds another followed, then another, and then the fiery streaks came so often that the water glowed orange from their reflection. The glow illuminated the other ships around him. The great fleet, amassed over decades for this moment, stretched as far as his eyes could see. The eastern horizon began to burn on its own. Soon Yuanqing couldn’t tell where the flames from the sky stopped and the flames on the horizon began. It was the gate of Armageddon, and his teams had opened it.

Klaxons blared. Yuanqing turned from the inferno. “Serve the people,” he whispered as he opened the hatch for the ladder to the well deck. The 1 August Medal bumped gently against his chest as he descended into darkness.

Malcolm Reynolds is a pen name for a former Marine officer.

Featured Image: Art created with Midjourney AI. 

Fiction Week

By Till Andrzejewski

Act 1 – Opening Moves

February 11, 2050.

Today would not be the first time two women, three mothers, seven children, and one grandchild mourned. And of course, not the last time.

United States Coast Guard

The sea lies like amazonite beneath a sky just as blue. USCGC Miguel Diaz cuts a white, foaming scar into the morning Caribbean. On the bridge, Captain John Ramirez stands with his arms folded, coffee untouched, eyes fixed southwest where the AIS shows nothing but silence. His home, Puerto Rico—the 52nd state—is only about 350 nautical miles away.

“Target confirmed. No identification. Thermal signature: three persons plus one heat source, likely an outboard.”

The sensor specialist’s voice is dry. On the main display the fast boat appears—a grey wedge, four meters long, carbon fibre, flat as a blade.

Ramirez nods. “Guardian One, cleared for launch. Maintain distance.”

The drone lifts off from the aft deck—a slender dragonfly, barely more than a stroke against the west wind. Below, five cable lengths off the beam, the sea bulges, then the boat cuts across the line of sight, sprays white, vanishes, surfaces again. No response on radio.

“Warning shot,” says Ramirez.

“Aye.”

From the cutter’s bow the 57-millimeter barks—a short cough and a fountain erupts ahead of the speedboat. The boat jerks, accelerates.

“No response.”

Ramirez lifts his gaze—only briefly. In offense there lies a kind of calm he knows well: those ten, fifteen seconds when decisions, aided by algorithms, no longer feel as heavy as they once did.

“Open fire. Destroy.”

The second round hits. The boat shatters as if made of glass. Something black—a barrel? —tips overboard, rolls, sinks. A body half-bursts from the water, then falls back, vanishes. Smoke lies like a stain on the surface. Cold optics, hot barrel.

“Hit confirmed. Debris field.”

Ramirez inhales. The coffee is cold. On the screen the program begins to place red rectangles around floating objects: a crate, another, a torn-off outboard, a slick of fluid spreading like ink in a bowl.

“Do we recover anything?” asks the executive officer.

Ramirez closes his hand around the mug without looking. “Negative. Mark, report, destroy.”

He knows how that sentence sounds. He also knows it’s the eighth time this year he’s said it. He’s been a Coastie twenty years—since the year the USCG adopted Navy tactics and began blasting apart anything that even vaguely looked narco. They’d saved America that way—or at least its health system. The conflicts with Venezuela, Colombia, and Brazil were another matter. And, of course, Europe’s economic decline.

Outside, the 25-millimeter opens up—short, clinical bursts. The crates burst. The sea swallows quietly. On the display, rectangles vanish one by one. At the edge, the drone hovers for a moment before it drifts away like a vulture losing its prey.

Ramirez thinks of Europe—of images from Copenhagen, Munich, Naples; train station squares, madmen snapping in subways; of women who enter apartments and never leave; of men raised on spirals of violence—and remembers the stench of cities.

“Cocaine is cheaper than chocolate now,” a German analyst once said—half cynical, half drunk—at a NATO briefing.

What kind of world makes candy more expensive than cocaine?

He takes a sip of cold coffee and thinks something he would never say aloud:

We choked the routes—and rerouted the currents.

Netherlands Coast Guard

The harbor water breathes slowly, muted. Hr.Ms. Texel of the Kustwacht Caribisch Gebied rests in the cross of sunlight, its white paint still warm. Luitenant ter zee Eva van der Meer holds her pen so the paper barely feels it, beside it a camera, beneath it Form E/9-2050: “Search, Seizure, Preparation of International Legal Assistance.”

“Four containers, route Paramaribo–Willemstad–Rotterdam. Manifests plausible. Owner is a foundation in Belize, managed by a law firm in The Hague. Ship is chartered for single voyages.”

Her first officer reads steadily, then mutters, “Damn Suriname.”

Van der Meer shoots him a look. “We go in. No heroes, no quips. Every recording redundant, each container with dual witness oversight. The Hague wants evidence.”

She straps on her vest, pulls the gloves tight. On the freighter the smell shifts—from food and garlic to laundry and wet steel. The cargo: bananas in reefers, fair-trade, Ghana seal, a smiling boy on the box.

“Container 12C,” someone calls. “Anomaly on scan.”

She steps forward. “Container shifting No. 3. Open it.”

The scanner shows a shadow that doesn’t fit the fruit. Peel back the lining, cut the straps, pull the clips—tension rises. Inside: a second wall, neatly fitted. Behind it, packages bound with plastic banding—tidy, almost tender. Logo: a billiard ball. A knife in, powder meets reagent and blooms blue. Someone says, “Positive.”

Van der Meer feels a burn behind her forehead. You know it’s not enough, she thinks. This is only the finger. The hand is elsewhere.

They photograph, film, weigh. Open samples, record label numbers: “Boxes 1–20: 997 grams, purity 74 percent.” The list fills, the camera hums. Outside, seagulls bark. Inside—the whistle of lungs behind tight respirators.

Later, on deck, she leafs through papers, speaks to the captain who wrings his hands and swears he knew nothing. It’s possible. It’s also irrelevant. She says, “You have the right to remain silent,” and finds the address of the registered agent for the Belize foundation—a P.O. box in Rotterdam where no one has ever worked.

That evening, shortly after a call with her children in Zwolle, The Hague rings. “Good work,” says someone sounding like a tie and cufflinks. “Six-hundred-eighty kilos. Press photo is important. Europe needs to see that…” She stops listening. She knows what she sees: grand words about crimefighting while in a kindergarten in Groningen a five-year-old girl draws her parents with nosebleeds.

She hangs up and keeps writing. The evidence isn’t spectacular. But maybe it pushes the world one millimeter in a different direction.

French Navy

Off Martinique, the blue is deeper than time. Capitaine de frégate Armand Deschamps is in the Caribbean mostly because cigarettes are still affordable here. He rests a hand on the bridge rail; the ship is so quiet you could forget it moves. On the monitors: lines, numbers, tide models, supply routes—drawn with the graphic eye of a program he doesn’t love yet adores for the patterns it gives him.

“The tanker turned off course, west of Grenada.”

The navigator points with his pen. “No reason. No storm. Reduced speed, five hours adrift, then reverse course.”

Deschamps’s eyes follow the track. Five hours is a gap where things happen—rendezvous, dark transactions, a transfer into a belly empty enough to carry secrets. He flips through a folder that smells of toner. Photographs: hulls that gleam at the seams, hatches that aren’t, boats that leave almost no wake—semi-submersibles, narco subs—a fashionable word for 30 years, but one you don’t hear when you stand alone at sea at night.

“They don’t see it,” he says to no one. “They only see waves.”

The French aren’t shooting today, he thinks. They’re painting. With thin lines across charts. With arrows that end in places that don’t exist.

He has no romance for it, but respect. It is as if the sea sends him signs, and his task is not to be a hero but a pair of reading glasses.

Since he lost his daughter to ‘Mont Blanc’—that’s what they call the deadly powder in France—Deschamps has changed. Quieter now. Rarely speaks. His officers appreciate that, unaware of the reason. He has the face of a man who watches the world pretend to be new each morning while only finding new names for old things. And he knows in the end others will act, and perhaps he has just shown them where.

Act 2 – Entanglements

February 13, 2050.

The semi-sub never surfaces again.

Before anyone can read its shape from the corrugated sea, it has swallowed water, lost air, taken two lives. A patrol craft of the Royal Montserrat Border and Narcotics Force spots the large white bubble rising through the blue, then reports several faint echoes—and a ship without AIS, without signature.

USCGC Miguel Diaz catches the message first. Guardian One transmits imagery: a hulking silhouette without a phosphorescent wake. Around it, small craft, diffuse signatures under water. Ramirez is still half-thinking that the Brits always report first and hope someone else will act. Then the thought snaps, he’s in the present again: “Mothership.”

The word is old. It explains almost nothing—and everything.

On the Texel, the fail-safe VHF squawks:

“All units in Sector Yankee November nadazero-bissotou, anomaly detected. Possible sub-surface operation with low signature, likely multiple semi-subs. Suspected mothership on same position. Confirm coordinates.”

Eva van der Meer turns the volume up.

“Confirmed. We’re six hours out. Offering reconnaissance and evidence collection.”

So the narco subs are being pregnant now, she thinks.

“USCG here—we’re going in,” says Ramirez. “Keep clear if you don’t intend to fire.”

A pause—then the French:

“Marine nationale: we have movement data. The presumed mothership sits where a tanker drifted two days ago. We’re tracing the drift backward. There is a corridor.”

“A corridor?” asks van der Meer.

“A mental one,” says Deschamps. “It begins south of Tobago.”

“And what does that mean?” asks Ramirez.

“It means,” says Deschamps, “we’re not here by accident.”

The argument between van der Meer and Ramirez mirrors three decades of diverging political instincts.

“We have to secure evidence,” she insists. “Names, routes, logs, communications, encrypted drives, manifests—without that we have nothing.”

“We destroy routes, not hard drives,” Ramirez replies. “Europe isn’t our mandate, and your islands profit from ours.”

“Your mandate changed Europe,” van der Meer says—the word changed sounding as though she meant wrecked. “You rerouted the stream. Now we drown.”

“We saved our country,” says Ramirez, then adds, “If you want to save yours, shoot here—not in the free port of Rotterdam.”

Deschamps says nothing. He lets the lines crawl across the screen, the software run its correlations. In his mind a geometry of the sea unfolds—one without borders. Today, he thinks, we’ll all be right—and all be wrong.

Act 3 – The Hunt

That same afternoon, the sea rumbles softly, as if somewhere a volcano had forgotten to erupt.

Three silhouettes form a triangle—Miguel Diaz to the northwest, Texel to the south, the French frigate to the east, almost within the shadow of its own sonar. Between them lies water that seems made for this single moment.

“Corridor updated,” says Deschamps. “Target twelve nautical miles west of our position. Low speed. Diffuse signature. Possible mothership with deck containers, camouflage irregular.”

“We’re going in,” says Ramirez.

“Negative,” says van der Meer at the same instant. “We’ll begin with reconnaissance. Boarding team, cameras, legal oversight.”

Ramirez glances over his shoulder. Guardian One hangs above the scene like a mosquito over a net. He knows what happens if he waits: another loophole, another route, another later.

He’s seen the faces of mothers who never knew why their sons coughed blood in the mornings—his own mother, his own brother.

“Sécurité broadcast: this is USCGC Miguel Diaz. We will open fire once positive identification is achieved. This is your warning.”

“Miguel Diaz, this is Texel: negative, negative—we’re approaching with helicopter for boarding. Give us ten minutes!”

She knows they’ll need longer.

“Marine nationale: target altering course—slightly. It has detected us.”

Time bends. Ten minutes at sea can hold one lifetime—or the death of three living.

Ramirez sees the gray bulk of the target—no, the enemy, he deliberately chooses the old word—emerge optically on the horizon, like a sea monster rising from literature into the reader’s dreams.

“Open fire,” he says.

The 57-millimeter spits a cascade into the air, like a failed rainshower. Impacts tear bright splinters from the mothership’s hull; smoke thickens, gains shape. Texel screams over the radio, legal articles dissolving in the clatter of guns. The French say nothing—their cameras run, their algorithms drink in signatures, reflections, vectors.

“Effect unknown,” reports the fire-control officer.

“Follow up.”

The second burst finds material eager to escalate—a pressure bubble, a tank, a space that held too much air.

The explosion unrolls from the ship like a torn-open heart. A fragment—perhaps a hatch—arcs into the sea with perfect geometry. Smoke settles; then the hull breaks along a line that had looked like paint. Water rushes in. Somewhere, someone screams—but the wind is faster.

“Target burning, sinking.”

Van der Meer watches the images as if staring into an aquarium where someone had switched off the filter.

“Cease fire!” she shouts. But her words die in VHF static.

“USCGC Miguel Diaz confirms—target no longer maneuverable.”

“You have…” she begins, then the link collapses into crackle—an open space for interpretation.

When the flames gutter out, only a black carpet remains. Debris floats—no crates, no laptops, no logs—only charred timber, Styrofoam, shreds of cloth. Texel later fishes out a metal plate, hand-sized, three fused letters visible: ARA.

Van der Meer holds it, feels her heart stutter twice and return to rhythm—as if her body had decided calm was safer.

Ramirez steps onto the bridge without a helmet—Kilgore-esque, as if someone had turned the war off.

“They’d have destroyed the evidence as soon as you boarded,” he says into the radio silence. “Or they never had any. There are two kinds of ships: those we sink, and those we haven’t sunk yet.”

On the French frigate, Deschamps leans against the chart house. With his Gauloises he traces a line in the air that leads nowhere, then dissolves. “He’s right,” he murmurs, “and he’s wrong.”

His officer nods. “As always.”

By evening the sea turns gray, lights bloom at its edges like very small harbors.

Ramirez transmits openly on the shared channel:

“For the record: I destroyed the mothership on my own authority. I concluded this was the only way to end smuggling in this corridor. Europe needs what we learned in the States—routes die when you burn them.”

No one answers immediately.

Van der Meer sits in the radio room, staring at her hands—clean papers meaning nothing now.

Deschamps looks toward the horizon and realizes he still finds it beautiful.

Act 4 – Reactions

The steak in Buenos Aires is still steaming when Comandante David Rodriguez of the Argentine mercenary company ‘Libertad’ sets his knife to it.

Across from him sits Maurice Estevez—sleek, a man untouched by heat.

Through the window, the Río Matanza–Riachuelo slides past, sluggish as lead.

“Chile to Canada,” Estevez says, as if naming a holiday. “From there down into the U.S. Ore is our friend. Consistency is a religion, and we are atheists.”

“Routes?” asks Rodriguez.

“Two-thirds by sea, one-third by air. Sea transport’s a joke now—nobody watches the old lanes, the little ports, the coal, the ore, the ferromanganese. Everyone’s staring at the boats, the subs, the Cessnas.”

He smiles. “And when they look, they see only rocks.”

Rodriguez drinks his beer—pale, cold.

“I’ll need more men in the Argentine cities and in Uruguay,” Estevez continues. “We’ve been moving freight to Portugal via Angola for years—nice and far from the uniformed Caribbean. From there, Europe’s a medium stroll. But the gangs are jumpy. Too many cowards. In Montevideo, you don’t die at the docks anymore—you die in the logistics park.”

“Libertad delivers,” says Rodriguez. He says it because it’s the line he has to sell.

In truth, he’s tired of fighting. The mercenary contract gives his men one more chance to claim a slice of the buffet.

“The Americans are making life hard up north,” Estevez says, “but they’ve turned Europe into our promised land—a continent of greed, a continent of noses. The Russians pay if I keep going. The Chinese pay if I stop. I’ve taken both their money. That’s why you get double.”

He raises his glass, knowing he’ll still profit the most.

“To the war of routes.”

Later, when the city outside dissolves into its own light, a news ticker glows above the bar:

‘Suspected smuggler mothership destroyed in the Caribbean. No arrests. USCG confirms operation. European authorities criticize.’

A few patrons glance up, nod, order beer. Then someone starts talking football.

Estevez pays. Rodriguez pockets the receipt as if it were for the tax office.

“You’ve lost,” Estevez says—to the window, the river, the city, to no one at all.

“Who? Our people?” Rodriguez asks.

“Everyone.” Estevez smiles thinly. “Everyone who ever believed the sea could be controlled.”

Till Andrzejewski is a senior police lieutenant with the Maritime State Police of Lower Saxony, Germany, currently focusing on interagency cooperation against maritime smuggling networks. His experience includes leading operational shifts at maritime police stations, serving in a police diving unit, acting as operations leader within maritime patrol units, serving as commanding officer on coastal patrol vessels, and contributing to the Joint Emergency Reporting and Assessment Center Sea (JERACS) in Cuxhaven.

Featured Image: Artwork created with Midjourney AI.