Eagle Station

Two

A brisk northerly wind had temporarily freed Beijing from its near-perpetual blanket of thick, choking smog, and the August 1st Building’s tall white walls and columns gleamed in the spring sunshine. The whole enormous edifice, with its faintly pagoda-style roofs, loomed over its neighbors in the capital city’s western reaches as a reminder of the state’s power and authority. Named for the Nanchang uprising of August 1, 1927—a bloody clash between Communist and Nationalist forces later celebrated as the founding of the People’s Liberation Army — it was the headquarters of the Chinese Communist Party’s Central Military Commission.

In a command center buried deep below the surface, the commission’s seven permanent members and an array of other senior PLA officers had gathered to control the events unfolding thousands of kilometers away in the South China Sea. In both law and current practice, the Central Military Commission exercised complete authority over China’s armed forces. Its chairman was always the Party’s general secretary, the man who also served as president of the People’s Republic. And now, more than ever, the ruling communist elite was determined to keep the levers of military power firmly in its own hands.

Several years before, the machinations of an ambitious chief of the general staff, Colonel General Zu Kai, had threatened the Party’s absolute authority over the nation. Once his coup was quietly quashed, China’s shaken civilian autocrats had tightened their control over the armed forces. Purges disguised as anti-corruption campaigns had systematically eliminated a whole generation of senior officers tainted by what was labeled “inappropriate interest in politics.”

The younger generals and admirals who survived were only too aware that their careers, and even their very lives, now rested entirely in the hands of China’s new leader — President Li Jun. He was younger, better educated, and far more ruthless than his aging and ill predecessor, Zhou Qiang. Zhou’s hold on the Party had weakened steadily in the wake of the attempted military coup and his abject kowtowing to Russia’s now-dead leader, Gennadiy Gryzlov, during yet another confrontation with the United States. Last year’s orbital battles between Russia’s Mars One space station and America’s revolutionary spaceplanes had struck the final blow. Confronted by the shattering realization that both Russia and America had leapfrogged China in critical areas of military space technology, a cadre of Party leaders organized by Li had shunted Zhou aside — sending him into retirement in permanent, guarded seclusion.

A skilled political infighter with a thorough grounding in the technologies of the future, Li Jun kept himself fit and trim. He moved with the athletic grace of a man in peak physical condition and perfect health, ostentatiously refraining from the “Western vices” of alcohol and tobacco. Part of this was from personal conviction. More of it was the result of pure, cold-blooded political calculation. Zhou’s growing illness had been the catalyst for his ouster, eventually persuading the Party’s top echelons that the old man was too feeble to threaten them. Li Jun had no intention of sending any similar signals of weakness. In the fiercely competitive and sometimes deadly sphere of China’s internal politics, it was essential that he remain the apex predator.

With that in mind, Li studied the others seated around the long rectangular table. Most of them were relatively new to their posts, handpicked by him for their loyalty, competence, and eagerness to pursue innovative weapons, strategies, and tactics. One by one they met his gaze and nodded. If any of them had doubts about what he planned, those doubts were well hidden.

Satisfied, Li turned to Admiral Cao. “The Americans have ignored our repeated warnings?”

“Yes, Comrade President,” the stocky naval officer said. “Their ships are still continuing on course into our territorial waters.”

Li shook his head in mock dismay. “Most unfortunate.”

He turned to a middle-aged army officer farther down the table. General Chen Haifeng headed the Strategic Support Force — an organization that combined the PLA’s military space, cyberwar, electronic warfare, and psychological warfare capabilities in one unified command. “Are your satellites in position, General?”

“They are, Comrade President,” Chen said calmly. He activated a control on the table in front of him. Immediately, high-definition screens around the room lit up, showing the sunlit surface of the South China Sea as seen from orbit. At the touch of another control, the view zoomed in — focusing tightly on the two U.S. Navy destroyers as they steamed northward. “This is a live feed from one of our Jian Bing 9 optical naval reconnaissance satellites. We are also receiving good data from a synthetic aperture radar satellite in the JB-7 constellation. And three of our JB-8 electronic intelligence satellites have successfully triangulated the radio signals and radar emissions emanating from those enemy warships.”

Li nodded in satisfaction. Between the tracking data streaming down from China’s space-based sensors and that acquired by ground- and sea-based radars in the Paracel Islands, his forces now knew, to within a meter or so, precisely where those American ships were at any given moment. They were like flies trapped in an invisible electromagnetic web. “What is the current position of the armed American space station?”

“Eagle Station is currently crossing over South America on its way toward Europe,” Chen answered. “For the next fifty minutes, it will be beyond our visual and radar horizon — unable to intervene with its plasma rail gun.”

“What excellent timing… for us,” Li commented dryly.

There were answering smiles from almost everyone else in the room. Only the high-ranking foreigner the president had specially invited to witness today’s “weapons test” looked unamused. In fact, the man’s broad Slavic face appeared frozen, almost as though it were carved out of ice. Hardly surprising, Li thought.

Marshal Mikhail Ivanovich Leonov had been the mastermind behind the creation of the Mars One space station, its powerful satellite- and spacecraft-killing Thunder plasma weapon, and the breakthrough small fusion generator that powered both of them. Their capture by the Americans had been a disaster for Russia — a disaster magnified when a missile fired from Mars One, either accidentally or deliberately, obliterated the center of the Kremlin… killing Russia’s charismatic, though increasingly unhinged, leader, Gennadiy Gryzlov. Although Leonov himself had emerged unscathed from the political chaos that followed, the reminder that his prized weapons were in enemy hands could not be pleasant.

Li dismissed the new Russian defense minister’s irritation from his mind. For too long, Moscow had taken China for granted, despite the fact that its economy was four times larger and its population almost ten times bigger. If nothing else, what was about to take place in the South China Sea should prove that Beijing was still a power to be reckoned with — whether as an ally… or an enemy.

He turned to the chief of the PLA’s Rocket Force. “Are you ready to carry out our planned missile readiness exercise and flight test?”

Lieutenant General Tao Shidi nodded. For the first time in decades, some of the advanced weapons he had spent his career developing were about to see action in earnest. “Yes, Comrade President,” he confirmed. His raspy voice betrayed the faintest hint of excitement. “My launch crews are prepared. They have received the updated targeting data supplied by General Chen’s satellites.”

“Very well,” Li said flatly. “You have my authorization to fire.”