by F X Holden
His operations orders said he was to patrol a grid 200km northeast of the carrier, but after conferring with his superior officer, he had taken his flight 220km out. It meant burning into his fuel safety reserve, but it meant he might have a slight element of surprise over the ‘attacking’ Chinese force. There was no guarantee of course that they would attack from his sector, but…
“Momiji one, I have a target. Fast mover, 030 degrees, low,” his wingman called, voice supernaturally calm. “Patching data through to Hawkeye.” The man had picked up the electronic signature, or ELINT, of a Chinese fighter aircraft. Possibly.
“Momiji flight, turn to 030, weapons safe, passive arrays only,” Kato said, flicking his fighter onto its wingtip and beginning a sweeping starboard turn. “Waiting Hawkeye confirmation.” He needed the commander aboard the airborne warning aircraft to decide how to react to the possible threat. It could be a a phantom. Or it could be a feint, designed to draw the Japanese fighter cover away from the real threat. Right now, aboard the Hawkeye, they would be trying to triangulate the electronic signature picked up by his flight with their own data, with infrared satellite detection, with data from other fighters. It was the third time today they had seen a Chinese yurei, or ghost. Like ghosts, the other two had evaporated. Without thinking, he reached up and touched the silver pendant of his Kami, hanging at his throat. It had the stylised form of a large, breaking wave.
His personal Kami was the Tsunami, or Tidal Wave. It had been passed on to him by his grandfather with great solemnity in a personal family ceremony that he had learned had less to do with the Shinto religion, than it did with his family’s nascent nationalism. He had been seventeen years old when his father had ushered him into his grandfather’s living room on a hot, grey autumn day. It had been raining all morning, and he remembered still the smell of warm steaming bitumen as he blinked his way into the room, eyes struggling to adjust to the darkness. His grandfather sat in his big armchair and beckoned him over.
On the table before him was a blue, velvet covered box.
“Sit boy, sit,” his grandfather had said. He was sitting in a corner in a pool of lamplight. “How old are you today?”
Kato had sat, and then looked up at his grandfather in confusion. Had the man not just been to his birthday party? He knew very well how old Kato was.
“Uh, seventeen grandfather.”
“Yes. Seventeen. And it is time for you to receive your Kami.”
“Yes grandfather.” Like most of his generation, Kato had been a self-absorbed, ignorant child. More interested in the latest fashion craze from Shimokita, or the newest VR game, than the history of his ancestors. And though he would soon be leaving to join the air defense force academy, he had walked into the dark room thinking about nothing deeper than the pair of Energy Pump Nikes he had just unwrapped, and what his girlfriend Noriko might say when she saw him casually charging his phone from his heel.
His grandfather knew enough about his grandson to know he needed to be brought into the now, with a small, sharp shock.
“Your great grandfather Tateo Kato chose this Kami, on 10 May, 1942, the day before he dived his airplane onto the deck of a British oil tanker, killing himself...”
“Grandfather…” Kato-san had interrupted. “Was my great grandfather a Kamikaze?”
“Yes. Be quiet,” the old man said. “I will read you his Jisei. The Jisei was a poem our pilots took with them into combat. He made two copies, one of which he always took with him, and one which he left on board his ship, for my mother.” The old man unfolded a piece of ancient rice paper.
“For the Emperor,
I will fall as a wave
With joy
In my heart
Your jade will shatter.”
Kato stayed silent this time. The old man was breathing softly. After a minute, he spoke, “He had with him, on that final flight, a jade ring my grandmother gave him.” He folded the rice paper and placed it in his shirt pocket. “The report of his death, stated that his machine was hit by enemy machine gun fire while attaching a formation of British bombers. It caught fire. But he did not jump from his aircraft. He could have saved himself, but instead, he aimed his Nakajima airplane like a flaming arrow at a British oil tanker on the sea below.” He reached forward out of the lamplight, and lifted something from the table. “All pilots were required to choose their Tami when they graduated from flight school. Your great grandfather chose the Tsunami. It was recorded that this surprised his training officer, who asked him why he had chosen this, and not an animal spirit like most other pilots … a tiger, a wolf, or a shark. Your grandfather said that he chose the Tsunami because a tiger can be shot, a shark can be speared, but the Tsunami is unstoppable.” The old man’s hand lifted a pendant on a silver chain from the table. “In honor of his sacrifice, my father commissioned this necklace from a jeweller in my father’s village,” he said and held it out to Kato. “And gave it to me. But I was a poor student, who became a simple accountant, and I did not feel myself worthy. I offered it to your father, but he also declined.” His hand was shaking, the silver wave at the end of the chain quivering. “You are the first in our family to serve in the military since your great grandfather. I want you to take it.”
“Grandfather,” Kato had said, “I can’t. I haven’t earned it.”
“No, but take it now, and do your utmost to earn it,” the old man had said, pressing it into Kato’s palm.
Over the East China sea, his radio pulled him away from his thoughts. “Momiji leader this is Arakashi Control. Target confirmed, you are cleared to intercept. Vectoring support to your sector, you are lead.”
His heart caught in his throat but he took a deep breath and forced it down. The target was real! His eyes flicked across his display panels as his fingers tapped commands into a panel beside his throttle, “Roger Control. Momiji flight, targets on your tac monitors, roll out to formation 4 and follow me in. Select AAM-6s.” The Japanese AAM-6 was an adaptation of the British Meteor medium-range ramjet powered air to air missile that flew at Mach-4 and had a ‘no escape zone’ three times that of its Chinese counterpart. If they engaged, they would be firing in simulation mode, but the lethality of the Japanese missiles would weigh in their favour when the AI referees tallied up kills and losses after the merge.
A tone sounded in Kato’s ears and six green dots appeared in his heads-up display, bracketed with glowing red circles. His targeting system had analysed their electronic signatures and was calling them Chinese Chengdu J-20 stealth fighters. They were heading in at wavetop height, apparently oblivious to the Japanese fighters about to drop on them from above.
His eyes flicked from his instruments, to his visor, to the skies around him as he gripped his stick tight and pushed his throttles forward, “Momiji flight, targets low on our 11 o’clock, engage engage engage,” he called. With a grunt, he rolled his fighter on its axis, stopped it with the canopy pointing at the ground and pulled it into a screaming dive just as the Chinese aircraft flashed under his nose 30,000 feet below.
And the second he did so, he recognised the nagging uncertainty that had suddenly grabbed him. The J-20 was a land-based aircraft. To get the exercise area north of Okinawa, it would have had to fly from Wenzhou or Shanghai on the Chinese mainland, and possibly refuel in flight. There were not supposed to be any land-based aircraft in the Chinese order of battle for exercise RED DOVE! As he closed on the Chinese fighter formation and the missile targeting tone in his helmet began to beep faster, indicating his AAM-6s would soon be in range, he knew he had flown his men right into an enemy trap. Even as the thought registered, a missile warning tone screamed in his ears and his combat AI wrenched control of his fighter from his grip and pulled it into a screaming starboard banking turn that snapped his head back, and pushed him into his seat as though a giant had just laid a hand on his chest.
Fighting for air, he tried to make sense of the icons in his visor and managed to key his comms, “Momiji flight,
J-31s, high on our six! Evade and…”
A new tone sounded. Miss! The enemy missile had failed to get a lock.
“…evade and engage with short range missiles!” he completed, taking control of his aircraft back and flinging his machine into a climbing reverse turn to try to get his nose pointed at the source of his attack. An icon flashed on the visor of his helmet and he screwed his head around – there! High on his four o’clock, a small silver speck. He rolled his F-35E as he and his enemy closed at a combined velocity of twice the speed of sound.
The J-31 was the newest and deadliest fighter in the Chinese arsenal; with flight and weapons systems controlled by an advanced combat AI, the human pilot was a more a part of the aircraft, than master of it. The enemy fighter immediately grew from a dot, to a small silver arrow and his offensive system automatically selected the short range Mitsubishi AAM5-B air to air missile and locked up the enemy plane. Tone! He hesitated. For a millisecond. The AAM5 had a poor record for accuracy in a high-speed head-on merge. He cancelled the missile and switched to guns, his gun pipper appearing now in his helmet visor and bobbing around, trying to lock onto the enemy aircraft screaming down at him.
Before he could get a lock, a new missile warning alarm screamed in his ears. The enemy had fired! His joystick was pulled from his hand and his machine rolled into a hard inverted turn. His vision began to blur and he just had time to register the G-force warning on his visor before the enemy missile tone became a long, flat, drawn out screech and his aircraft righted itself as it resumed straight and level flight.
It was a screech designed to bore into a pilots soul. It was the scream of digital death. Sure enough, the computerized voice of a RED DOVE referee broke in on his comms channel, “Momiji 1 this is RED DOVE control. Please maintain your current altitude and heading and respect radio silence until you exit the exercise area. You are Killed In Action.”
He slumped forward against his harness, breathing hard. He should have taken the shot when he had it, could have followed through with guns. Why did he hesitate?!
His fist hammered into the glass over his head. One by one, the icons of the doomed aircraft in his flight flashed and showed red crosses, indicating they too were KIA. They had only claimed one Chinese fighter. Diving on the Chinese decoy flight below, he had exposed himself to their unseen escort above and they had swatted his machines from the sky. The short ranged Chinese J-20 decoys had done their job, and as he watched, they broke off, headed back to the mainland. Switching a display screen to show a feed from the RED DOVE strategic overview – a view only available to ground controllers and ‘dead’ units – Kato now saw no fewer than 24 attack aircraft from the Chinese carrier, Liaoning, speeding into the sector he had just been forced to abandon. And headed straight for the JS Izumo.
It may only be an exercise, but the Chinese had just blown a hole in the Japanese defenses and they were about to pour pain and humiliation through it.
Shanghai, China, April 2033.
His hacker handle was Dragon Bird, and he was about to fire the first shot in a new global war.
He stood at a traffic light across from the 24 hour electronics market on Beijing East Road, near the harbourside clamour of Shanghai’s Bund and at the bottom of one its many skyscrapers. Even at this early time of morning, the market teemed with customers buying everything from solder, to integrated circuits, chips and power supplies. The store owners were gruff and unfriendly to casual shoppers like Dragon Bird, as they mostly serviced tradesmen, technicians and electronics repair firms. So he rarely shopped there.
Dragon Bird made his way down the steps and through the basement, past the small shop fronts, with weary resentment. He especially disliked the sharp, nostril stinging stink of burning solder and ozone that seemed to pool in the basement, and the slap slap slap of his Huili Warrior sneakers across the fake white marble floor. Every day, slap slap slap on his way in, slap slap slap on his way out. Yeah, sure, he could do up his laces and cut down on the slapping, but casual civilian dress was one of the few personal privileges he was allowed, and he was milking it.
At the back of the basement he turned a corner to a service elevator marked ‘technical staff only’. It had no button, just a card reader. He fished in his bag for his card, shoving aside the thermos of pot noodles, his keys and phone to pull it out by its lanyard, hang it around his neck and swipe it through the reader. As he waited for the elevator, he reflected he may as well have slept under his desk overnight, since it was only six hours since he had slapped his way out across the tiles in the early morning hours of last night.
But at least today would be a break from the usual drudgery. Today his system was going live. The system he had worked to perfect for nearly five years, that no one had believed was possible and that sprung from an idea his former boss, the Golden Idiot, had even mocked in front of his fellow programmers. Not that he would get much credit for it, he was still only a lowly Shàowèi or Captain, and his small team of five coders, the ones who had been toiling away all these years to bring them here, would never be recognised. His officers would take all the credit if his system worked, and be the first to grab him by the collar and throw him in front of a disciplinary tribunal if it didn’t.
The elevator pinged open and he waited as two young privates slouched out, looking more tired and washed out than him, if that was possible. They were not permitted to salute him, so they just nodded and started fishing cigarette packets out of their pockets as they exited the elevator. He stepped into a fug of spicy aftershave and sour sweat. As the elevator clunked into motion, he checked his WeChat Moments account one last time before he had to hand the phone over to the security staff. Just a message from his mother. He sighed. As usual. His other friends from college had landed themselves jobs at Baidu and Huawei, and lived glamorous, glittering lives with high salaries, street clothes and girlfriends with narrow hips and luscious lips, while he had let himself be lured into a job with Unit 61938. He was promised the chance to work on technologies his friends could only dream of, but he hadn’t been told he would be doing it in numbing social isolation.
The elevator opened onto what looked like a small airport security gate. He stepped out and walked up to a desk and handed over his shoulder bag, with everything inside it except his lunch thermos. The private behind the desk handed him a bag tag and stuck his back on in a pigeon hole. There were already others stacking behind him and she waved him out of the way. He put the thermos onto an x-ray belt, then stepped over to a body scanner, stepped inside when he was called forward, held his hands in the air and made a circle. The machine beeped. It nearly always did. He stepped out and waited as a soldier ran a detector wand up and down his arms, legs and around his waist. The soldier checked a screen and then waved him into the locker room. From his locker, he took his light green uniform shirt with its green and gold shoulder boards and dark green baseball style hat. Then he stowed his lunch thermos where his shirt had been, checked himself in a mirror and got ready to go through to his team’s work area.
It was the same routine as every other damn day. But today was not every other day. Today, he and his unit were going to war.
China’s first modern aircraft carrier, the Liaoning, started its life as a cold war wreck. Its keel was laid down in 1985 as a Soviet aircraft cruiser, the Varyag, but the regime collapsed before it was completed and its hull lay rusting in the Ukraine until China bought it in 1998 and towed it to its Dalian shipyard in Liaoning province.
The rebuilding of the carrier was a herculean task that took nearly twenty years – it wasn’t until 2016 that the ship named after the province that had birthed it, the Liaoning, was declared combat ready.
The announcement sent geopolitical tremors around the world, particular among the nations that border the disputed South China sea; the Philippines, Vietnam and Japan. It was more than a military signal, it was a political signal to the region that a resurgent China, landlocked for centuries without a true blue water nav
y, it nevertheless had a proud naval history dating as far back as 210 BC when the royal sorcerer Xu Fu led a fleet of 60 ships and 5,000 sailors on a search for the elixir of life across the seas to the east of China. He was believed to have made landfall on the western coast of Japan and declared himself emperor. Neither he, nor his ships and crew ever returned.
As a metaphor for China’s naval ambitions, it was apt. Concerned with civil wars and invasions from the west, and later from Japan, China built up a strong green water or coastal navy, but did not pose a naval threat to other Pacific powers. With the launch of the Liaoning, that all changed. Ship by ship, port by port, China built up its navy, so that by 2030 it had matched the US Navy in blue water capability. The numbers were telling. In attack submarines, it could field 87 to the US 42. In ballistic missile submarines it matched the US, 12 to 11. In large surface ships and carriers, it lagged, matching only a third of the US firepower in missile cruisers and helicopter carriers, but this was due a focus on smaller surface ships suited to battle in the waters of Korea, Japan and the South China sea, in which it outnumbered the US 123 to 40.
