Empire Rising

AUTHOR’S NOTE

I hope you enjoyed reading Empire Rising!

This was a more difficult book for me to write than The Trident Deception, for two reasons. The first was that it covered areas where I was not a subject matter expert and I had to rely heavily on the expertise of others. The second reason was the scenario itself — war with China and the potential outcome. Some of you will no doubt take exception to the way the U.S. Navy responded, and are convinced there is no way China could destroy virtually all of the Pacific Fleet. I offer you this in my defense — I think you’re right!

My personal opinion is that an all-out naval war between the United States and China would be one-sided in the United States’ favor and resolved rather quickly. Unfortunately, this would result in a pretty short book. So I “tweaked” a few things so China could go toe-to-toe with the Pacific Fleet, which hopefully made for more exciting reading. Although I try to keep things as grounded in reality as possible, there is no secret Chinese base at Yin Bishou, no sonar pulse that will dud our MK 48 torpedoes, and no malware in our Aegis Warfare System software. (At least, I hope not!) Additionally, I am aware of our war plans with respect to China and therefore cannot replicate them in Empire Rising. Or maybe I did. (Gotta keep ’em guessing, right?) Whether our carrier strike groups would actually swing inside the Taiwan Strait, for example, I leave for you to decide.

Also, some of the tactics described were generic and not accurate. For example, torpedo employment and evasion tactics are classified and cannot be accurately represented in this novel. The dialogue isn’t 100 % accurate either. If it were, much of it would be unintelligible to the average reader, the book filled with Navy acronyms and terms that even I had a hard time following, particularly in the aircraft carrier scenes. (Command and control aboard aircraft carriers is incredibly complicated compared to submarines, with multiple spaces — Combat Direction Center, Air Ops, ID Ops, the Tactical Flag Communication Center, Bridge, Tower — and it would take several chapters just to explain who does what to whom.) To help the story move along without getting bogged down in acronyms, weapon systems, and other Navy jargon, I simplified the dialogue and description of shipboard operations and weapon systems. Those of you who are sticklers for everything being 100 % correct will hopefully forgive me.

For all of the above, I apologize. I did my best to keep everything as close to real life as possible while developing a suspenseful, page-turning novel. Hopefully it all worked out, and you enjoyed reading Empire Rising.