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. 

Fiction Week

By Ben Plotkin 

/ˈɑnːɑ pɑˈlɑː/ — Finnish, idiomatic interjection

Literal: “let it burn” (anna = “give/let,” palaa = “burns”).

Idiomatic sense: “go for it,” “bring it on,” “hit it,” “keep it coming.”

Raahe
West Coast Finland
The near future

Seppo took a long inhale from the gilt vape pen and felt the immediate adrenaline rush from the custom blend of nicotine, amphetamine and menthol spreading its barbed tendrils pleasantly through his body.

Anna palaa!

The loud drum beats from the old Killers song throbbed through his oversized headphones, enveloping him in an aural bubble.

Time to get to work.

Outside was Arctic winter. The cold that went to the bone, to the marrow. Freezing, bleak, and forever dark.

Inside the dark room, the wall was covered with a bank of glowing monitors. A single metal-framed window provided a view of the small harbor. A two-toned grey corvette lay at berth, lit by the orange glow of a sodium-vapor dock light.

On the monitors Seppo tracked the approaching flight. They thought they were undetected as they crossed the border and flew low over the Finnish countryside, but Seppo had been tracking them since they had left Murmansk. Thanks to a well-placed asset, Seppo knew their route and loadout.

They were a trio of coaxial Ka-97 “Bereza-M” assault helicopters (NATO: HAG), designed for stealth and deep penetration assault missions. Each could be piloted by a single human, or capably controlled by the internal AI node. It was standard practice to have at least one human pilot in nominal command of a flight, although this was redundant. The HAGs were equipped to carry an interchangeable mix of men, machines, and weapons. This flight carried an offensive and defensive drone mix: 72 Skvoret and 36 Sapsan.

The Skvoret were assault drones. They carried a small charge and had just enough brain power to operate independently although they were more effective when mesh-linked with the command node aboard their HAG mothership. The Sapsan were interceptor drones. They handled short-range air defense with a small warhead, flechette guns, and a micro-EW suite. In addition to the drones, each HAG carried two Kh-86U “Rusalka” light air-launched anti-ship missiles.

Seppo knew they were dangerous creatures.

The custom keyboard off to his side was marked with a series of brightly color-coded buttons. He queued the kill-macros and waited. It wouldn’t be long.

Seppo leaned back in his chair and took a sip of now cold coffee from the black and red Robert’s Coffee cup.  He didn’t notice the taste. The red blips on the screen got closer.

Seppo looked out the window. The Kemi-class corvette, Oulu, was tied at the quayside.

A tangle of umbilical lines linked ship to shore. Protective RF-mesh anti-drone netting tented the ship. A quintet of interceptor drones languidly patrolled the perimeter of the harbor.

Kemi-class corvettes were built for surveillance and interception in the narrow Arctic skerries and confined Baltic waters. They hit Russian intruders so hard that their patrol boxes turned to ghost zones. Moscow prioritized their destruction.

Seppo finished the last of the cold coffee, cracked his knuckles, looked at the screen and readied himself.

________________________________________

 

The three HAGs approached from the northwest. After crossing Lapland they tracked southward along the Bothnian coast weaving around the small rocky islets. The AI nodes precisely flew each craft within 15 meters above ground level, occasionally popping higher to avoid poles and the trees.

Chameleon composite IR damping nanotiles coated the HAGs, morphing and mirroring the bleak winter palette. The coaxial rotors ran individual blade control—piezo flaperons twisting each blade to kill harmonics at the source—while higher-harmonic control flattened the acoustic lobes. Their rotor signatures muted to a murmur. Skimming the frozen flats, the three helicopters were almost invisible and unnervingly quiet.

Five kilometers out from their targets, the HAGs slowed and deployed their drone swarms. The Sapsan fanned out in an equidistant shield covering the frontal aspects of the attack formation.

The Skvoret formed up near the center awaiting their targets.

The Raahe harbor lay quiet. An ephemeral fog flitted across the shore. The darkness broken only by a few streetlights.

The starboard side of the corvette Oulu was dark, mirroring the blackness of the bay. Its superstructure obscured by tarps, the port side dully reflected the orange glow of the lone quayside lamp, its protective netting nearly invisible in the winter night.

Pavel was a veteran. This was his 13th deep penetration raid. Lucky number, he thought. He checked his displays to ensure all was as it should be, then took the controls and began the assault run. He reflexively glanced to either side for his autonomously piloted wingmen. The other two HAGs were barely visible in the dark winter night. He locked onto his target, one of the hated corvettes, and tapped his screen, designating targets and issuing commands. There was little left to do but watch. He thought about smoking, but decided he would save it for the long dark flight home.

The assault drones divided into three wings and each began their attack run. One group had been designated to take out harbor defenses while the other two would approach the corvette from bow and stern.

The small group of defenders rose from the harbor to meet the attacking swarm, but Pavel’s briefing had assured him their numbers were limited and only a single reserve Maakuntajoukot defense platoon was tasked with providing security for the corvette. They would pose no trouble.

The flight of five Finnish Kotka drones formed up and headed toward the attackers. Each was armed with short range micro-rockets, miniguns, and self-detonating charges. Ukrainian designed, Finnish built, workhorse general purpose defense drones.

Five against a hundred and eight. The Finns were used to those odds. They rather liked it that way.

A continuously undulating screen of mesh-linked Russian drones awaited the small band of Finnish attackers. Pavel smiled. Too easy, he thought. All too easy.

The Finnish Kotka drones pressed forward. They flew straight into the cloud of defenders, penetrating toward the high value HAG targets. The Kotkas launched a swarm of guided micro-rockets. Scores of rockets gyrated, twisted, and exploded as they found their marks.

Dozens of Russian drones fragmented and fell into the waters of the icy bay. The center of the swarm fell back, allowing the Kotka drones to penetrate further toward the massed assault drones and the controlling HAGs.

Flechette rounds filled the sky. The armored Kotka drones shrugged off most of the impacts, motors were sliced away, but built-in redundancy kept them flying forward, in a constantly charging erratic jig of evasive maneuvers.

The defensive screen thinned, creating a pocket through which the Finnish drones pressed on. The Kotkas penetrated further into the defensive cloud, pushing through a disintegrating storm of defending Russian drones. Then the two flanks of the Russian interceptors closed around them. The Kotkas were surrounded and trapped as the flanks of the Russian drone shield completed their encirclement. Using short range peroxide micro-thrusters, the interceptors surged toward the rear of the penetrating Finnish wing. Small talons emerged and they impaled themselves into the flanks and rear of the Finnish drones before detonating.

Shards of metal, plastic, and smoke filled the dark night sky.

A lone Kotka survivor surged forward, its target HAG almost within range. Three guided missiles locked on its rear, accelerated, closed and detonated. The Kotka disintegrated in debris and flame.

Pavel smiled, and rolled the cigarette between two fingers. If that was all, he might just light up now.

An alert flashed on his screen. He dropped the cigarette and silently swore. Pavel’s sensor-fusion display bloomed with range rings from his six, counting over a hundred tracks. The camera panels and EO/IR feeds showed only snow and dark, yet the millimeter-wave radar painted menacing tracks.

Where had they come from?

Overriding the AI node, Pavel swung his HAG around to face the threat. His two AI-controlled HAG wingmen followed pirouetting in a perfect pattern. The HAGs’ front-mounted minigun unleashed a wall of lead into the dark night sky targeting the cloud of new threats.

From the pylons of each HAG shrapnel-filled rockets fired and detonated in clouds of lethal metal. When the minigun ammunition had been nearly depleted, Pavel ordered the drones forward to mop up the survivors.

Pavel glanced down at his display. The Finnish attackers looked to be pressing forward undeterred. Not a single one seemed to have been hit. The range was closing quickly and they would soon be a threat. Pavel didn’t understand. He scanned the night sky with his goggles, but could see nothing. No attacker. No contacts.

His defensive drone swarm buzzed angrily ahead but found nothing to engage. Pavel cursed, and suddenly realized he had been deceived. It was too late.

In his small room Seppo watched and smiled. His hack had perfectly spoofed the sensors of Pavel’s HAG. The ghost contacts vanished, they had done their job.

The four stealth missiles fired from a concealed rooftop cell now rapidly approached the HAG trio, precisely aligned along their aft sector blind spots. Two targeted the lead HAG, the others split, each targeting one wingman. Nearly simultaneously they closed and detonated. From outside his window Seppo grinned as he saw two fireballs bloom in the dark sky.

________________________________________

The blast that blew in the front door nearly knocked Seppo from his chair. Even through his music-filled headphones it was deafening. The alarms sounded. Useless, thought Seppo, after someone had just blown a hole through the front.

Quickly recovering his composure, Seppo jabbed at the specially colored keyboard enabling a series of defensive mechanisms. From under his workstation he pulled his old Glock and chambered a round. As he did, he saw that to his exasperation one of the HAGs had survived and was still pressing forward with its swarm of drones.

“Vittu,” he muttered. Must be damaged though, he thought, but he didn’t have time to worry about it. Seppo had shot his bolt. It was all he had, his ambush had only been partly successful.

Three heavily armed operators rapidly entered the main entry room in staggered formation.

The leader rolled a stun grenade through the far doorway.

Seppo’s control room lay off an L-shaped corridor from the main entry. He saw the flash and heard the bang, but now he was ready.

Seppo knew they were a deep infiltration Spetsnaz team. They had been a constant bane, targeting equipment, individuals, and command centers across NATO’s rear areas. How had they found him?

Another grenade rolled through the corridor with a flash and blast. Seppo didn’t have time to figure out where he had screwed up. Survive first, then assess. Glancing up at a monitor he saw the three Spetsnaz operators slowly clearing the room. Three against one. I like those odds, he thought.

The lead Spetsnaz operator stepped forward and edged into the corridor. Seppo watched. The operator crouched and swung into the corridor. The small autonomous defense unit fastened to the ceiling fired an aimed cloud burst of jagged fragments into his head. Seppo saw a quick mist of flesh and blood and the operator crumpled to the ground.

The remaining two fired into the corridor, wildly spraying rounds from their short-barreled assault rifles. The small defense node’s last shots harmlessly impacted the body armor of the second Spetsnaz operator as he attempted to cross the corridor to the adjoining room. He fell backward, stunned but unharmed. His companion rapidly aimed and fired a long controlled burst toward the ceiling shredding the defense node and gouging huge holes in the ceiling. Two small drones hovered into the corridor spraying restraining foam. The compressed foam when released, instantly expanded in an explosive exothermic reaction creating a hardened cocoon nearly impossible to escape.

The drones were quickly dispatched, but not before one of the Spetsnaz had his foot tacked to the floor immobilizing him. He cursed loudly in Russian and called for his comrade. The other operator continued down the hall toward Seppo’s control room, constantly firing controlled suppressing bursts as he advanced.

Outside, the surviving swarm of assault drones spread out across the harbor and detonated around adjacent infrastructure and defense points.

The last Spetsnaz operator rolled a grenade down the hallway detonating astride the door to Seppo’s command center. The blast was deafening in the narrow confines, and the room filled with smoke, but the ballistic walls prevented any major damage.

Well, this is it, thought Seppo. He balled up into a compact shooting crouch and pivoted around the doorjamb. The acrid smoke caused him to cough and he had difficulty sighting the advancing Spetsnaz—a blurry dark form in the chaotic hall. He emptied the magazine, trying to maintain control and discipline as he fired each round.

Click. The magazine emptied.

He tried to retreat into his control room but a well-aimed shot slammed into his left shoulder and knocked him backwards against the wall. He dropped his Glock and let out a reflexive cry. The more rational part of his mind continued with an internal damage assessment—not good, not fatal but clearly fractured.

Before he could react, the operator was standing over him, his black rifle aimed at Seppo’s head, the targeting laser barely bobbing. His face was masked. Seppo yelled the worst Russian curses he could.

The operator pulled one hand away from his rifle and pulled off his mask. He had short-cropped blond hair, and an incongruous young face, almost like a model.

Seppo flipped him off.

The operator’s finger tightened on the trigger. There was a series of sharp concussive cracks.

Seppo closed his eyes. A loud thud. Seppo looked up—the man lay sprawled across the floor, a pool of blood leaking from a well-placed headshot.

At the end of the corridor stood another figure, rifle held at ready.  The figure lowered the rifle and stepped forward. Seppo could see the man stuck to the floor by the foam was dead, bent against the wall at an unnatural angle, one leg still planted to the ground.

She wore the uniform of the regional defense forces. She was young, long blonde hair wrapped tightly back in a series of braids. Soot and smoke smeared her face—her eyes were wide with fear.

Seppo smiled at her. Her face remained a tightly controlled mask. An explosion from the quayside rocked the building. Seppo ran back into the control room and looked out the window. Where the ship had been was now a burning conflagration.

The soldier followed him. Seppo saw the flames mirrored on her pale face—a face plainly writ with anxiety. He smiled at her again. She seemed confused.

Seppo picked up the vape pen from his desk and took a long inhale.

“Decoy,” he slowly said. “Not the real ship, dressed up old barge. Just bait.”

It took a moment for the soldier to understand, then finally she smiled too.

The surviving AI-piloted HAG began its egress from the flaming quay accompanied by its remaining drones. Thick black smoke belched from its wounded rotor hub.

On a rooftop along the edge of Raahe, another young reservist stood and fired a MANPADS at the fleeing helicopter.

He watched in satisfaction as it spiraled into the sky and detonated against the HAG’s underbelly.

Anna palaa!

Ben Plotkin is a physician in Southern California. He can be reached at phaenon@gmail.com.